politics and constitution 49
1950s and 1980s—the form of institutions, their development, their con-
scious dialectic, the formation of personnel, republican ideology—and
the most recent proposals.
Among the latter, I would like to immediately underline the following
as central to the pages that follow:
- The specific attention to the stability and metamorphoses of the
idiom—and idioms—of “republican patriotism,” through a reconsidera-
tion of the hypotheses of Pocock, Skinner, and Koselleck, but with greater
attention lent to the specific political junctures, and to the consideration
of the relationship between the pragmatic and quotidian elements of
political action, the instilling of a sense of duty to office and service to
the nation, and forms of ideological adhesion to the dominant model.3 - The study of the history of Venice and its political class as a site of
complex mediations between external and internal, between the affirma-
tion of an “anthropological” difference between the inhabitants of the ter-
raferma and the maritime colonies, on the one hand, and the mésalliances
and hybridizations on the other. The construction of the state never led
to an entity established once and for all, but must be interpreted rather
as a reality undergoing continual modifications. It is interesting to note
how the old formula of the Venetian state as regulated by pacta stipu-
lated between the capital and the subject provinces has been overtaken
by the proposal to read the history of this long relationship according to
the model of empire—a dynamic tension between a centripetal and cen-
trifugal center and the agitated provinces.4 - The attention to specific forms of political communication that
could be instruments of legitimation and de-legitimation of individuals
and families. Keeping state secrets—the decisions made in the councils—
constituted in Venice, as elsewhere, the central moment in constructing
the image of power. The salvation of the Republic was entrusted to a group
of individuals, detached from the rest of the population, who acted as ora-
cles or as gods for the protection of the city. Publicizing delicate affairs of
state not only constituted a breach of the vaunted impermeability of the
3 Martin van Geldern and Quentin Skinner, eds., Republicanism: A Shared European
Heritage (Cambridge, 2002); Elena Fasano Guarini, Renzo Sabatini, and Marco Natalizi,
Repubblicanesimo e Repubbliche nell’Europa di Antico Regime (Milan, 2007).
4 Monique O’ Connell, The Man of Empire: Power and Negotiation in Venice’s Maritime
State (Baltimore, 2009); Mario Infelise and Anastasia Stouraiti, eds., Venezia e la guerra di
Morea. Guerra, politica e cultura alla fine del ’600 (Milan, 2005).