liturgies of violence 539
through the suppressed murmuring of the throng barely managing to con-
tain its anger; the rowdy catcalls and hissing that alternated with applause
accompanying the men’s entrance into the palace; the crowd’s sudden
and worrying silence; the two patricians’ exit and sudden withdrawal as
if burned by the abusive cries that met them; and finally, trento’s rapid
flight through a back door that opened off the courtyard, where two car-
riages waited with an escort of soldiers. recuperati remembered all this
very well, as well as what happened next. despite the pitch blackness, he
had glimpsed the crowd break through the gates that the soldiers tried in
vain to close; and the two carriages were surrounded, pressed, and pur-
sued by a rabid fury that the thick darkness of night seemed to make
one with the slow yet frantic tread of the horses along the road they had
to take to descend from the upper town and exit the walls toward Ven-
ice. the chancellor had clearly seen the objects (as well as the insects
and other almost unnamable things) that the angry throng had thrown
in an inglorious sendoff for the departing rector. and he had also heard
the hostile shouts sent after the podestà in thanks for the conflict-riven
period of his government. despite everything, the small, reviled proces-
sion laboriously descended to the lower part of the city, accompanied by
a thick hail of stones. but then suddenly, while the carriage carrying the
servants continued on toward the walls of sant’agostino, where the gate
led toward Venice, the one carrying trento abruptly turned toward the
osio gate, which opened in the opposite direction toward crema, and in
this way avoided the gathering mob that was waiting to bid him one last
vicious farewell.
with the image of a coach speeding away into the night along a road
weakly lit by flaming beacons, the troubled period of the government of
the podestà ottavio trento came to a close. that night revealed resent-
ments, discontents, and contradictions that inevitably were catalyzed
by the figure of a man who, over the course of about a year and a half,
had ruled the city by provoking tension and conflict. as the investigation
undertaken by the council of ten would ascertain, the hundreds who had
patiently waited for the moment of the podestà’s departure, to show with
striking brutality the entire community’s disapproval of his actions, had
symbolically enacted, in a sort of cathartic ritual sacrifice, reaffirmation of
the customary bonds that linked the community as a whole to the power
establishment of the ruling city. in so doing, they reminded Venice of the
unwritten pact that confirmed respect for the established and apparently
immutable social balance, as well as for a governance that tended toward
mediation.