liturgies of violence 535
this legal and political separateness of the mainland appeared even
more obvious when looked at in light of the distinctive Venetian legal
system. while Venetian statutes and customs had originated in the shared
framework of roman law, they had been decisively shaped by the city’s
merchant and mercantile character. the essential pragmatism of Vene-
tian law was also accentuated both by its customary nature and by its
open hostility to the intervention of jurists that was normal elsewhere. in
cases not anticipated by statute or custom, Venetian judges were expressly
urged to use their own discretion, while in other major italian cities judges
were required to rely on the ius comune and its distinctive technical-legal
structure. this was important, given that in the city on the lagoon the
patricians who served as judges were the same men who monopolized
political office, a direct overlap between justice and politics that had no
equivalent in the majority of european states.
the structure of the jurisdictional state of the Middle ages and ancien
régime, however, was capable of overcoming this diversity and of making
the relationships between the large ruling cities and their heterogeneous
domains operate smoothly. this quality was particularly important in the
case of Venice, because it was a large ruling city that was also a mercantile
aristocratic republic which found itself ruling a territory made up mostly
of large cities that were themselves also republics.50 even as the magis-
tracies of this ruling city notably increased their activity, the structures of
the jurisdictional state remained essentially unchanged, particularly the
institutional framework created with the formation of the dominium. as
in other north-central italian states, the relationship between the ruling
and subject cities was characterized as cooperation, and the subject cities
maintained unaltered their laws, local cultures, and hierarchies.
beginning in the second half of the 16th century, economic and social
changes compelled italian and european states to take more incisive action
with respect to their subject territories, a phenomenon that has been well
studied. the republic of Venice, as discussed above, also followed this
path. if the creation of new magistracies—importantly, for example, the
Provveditori ai beni inculti, which reflected a different perception and use
of the territory—was the result of the remarkable economic growth of
the 16th century, it was the rise of new social groups and the intensifi-
cation of conflicts that led the ruling class of Venice to intervene more
50 claudio Povolo, “honour and virtù in a sixteenth century aristocratic city,” in
g. beltramini, ed., Andrea Palladio and the Architecture of Battle, with the Unpublished Edi-
tion of Polybius’ Histories (Venice, 2009), pp. 258–60.