liturgies of violence 541
still flourished, whose ideological and cultural reference point right up to
the end remained the ius comune.60
unable to redefine itself at the level of institutions and power hierar-
chies, the Venetian legal system, provided with a different form of politi-
cal legitimacy and new legal reference points, unmistakably displayed
some weaknesses in the areas of legitimacy and consensus. on the one
hand, the new legislation and the control exercised by the Venetian courts
expressed the absolute necessity of responding to social demands by inter-
vening in areas that had been under the jurisdiction of the subject cities
since ancient times. on the other hand, however, the transformation in
governance was unable to leave behind the established practice of media-
tion and embrace a different conception of the state. this process would
be even more clearly evident at the end of the 17th century, when, as we
have seen, the council of ten, using a series of incisive laws, intensified its
control over the courts of its domain and over the Quarantie themselves.
this tightening up, however, did not involve the participation of the rul-
ing classes of the subject cities and, in contrast, was accompanied, almost
as a form of compensation, by an emphasis on their ancient jurisdictions
and prerogatives.
as it was reformulated starting in the late 16th century, the Venetian
legal system led to a more direct confrontation between the law of the rul-
ing city and the more varied law of the subject cities. this confrontation,
60 for the concept of repubblica in political thought, see Quentin skinner. The Founda-
tions of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols, vol. 1: The Renaissance (cambridge, 1978). when
Venice extended its influence over the territorial state it had earlier acquired, its own
republican nature could no longer be understood simply in the traditional sense of a city-
state ruled by an aristocracy but had to be considered primarily as a particular type of
state power structure that differed significantly from a monarchy or principality in the
governing methods and power relationships that would be consolidated in the modern
period. for an important example of this, see Michael P. breen, Law, City and King: Legal
Culture, Municipal Politics, and State Formation in Early Modern Dijon (rochester, n.Y.,
2007), pp. 206–26. appeals to republican ideals, made frequently by the cities of the ter-
raferma in the 17th and 18th centuries, were in reality nothing more than rhetoric intended
to protect ancient privileges, which were constantly being challenged by intrusive and
delegitimizing government; on such appeals, see Vittor i. comparato, “from the crisis
of civil culture to the neapolitan republic of 1647: republicanism in italy between the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,” in M. van gelderen and Q. skinner, eds., Republi-
canism: A Shared European Heritage, vol. 1: Republicanism and Constitutionalism in Early
Modern Europe (cambridge 2002), pp. 181–82. in Venice, the political discourse on repub-
licanism referred exclusively to the power dynamics of the Venetian patriciate and its
institutions; for this, see Vittorio conti, “the Mechanisation of Virtue: republican rituals
in italian Political thought in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,” in van gelderen
and Q. skinner, eds., Republicanism, vol. 2: The Values of Republicanism in Early Modern
Europe (cambridge, 2002), pp. 77–83.