62 alfredo viggiano
with exemplary rigor.25 But the failed attempt to unify the juridical system
through the cancellation of Venetian particularism appears even more
significant. For the first time, there was a serious discussion in Venice
regarding the centrality of the old statutes passed by Jacopo Tiepolo (1231):
the complexity of the world demanded radical integration with respect to
the venerated corpus of the old laws of the medieval city. Gritti and the
staff that collaborated in the revision would attempt to introduce in Ven-
ice the norms of Roman/Common law already in widespread use in the
world of the terraferma. In such a way, they believed, that barrier, cultural
even more than it was administrative, which separated governors and the
governed might be breached.26 The commission worked with alacrity in
examining the centuries-long production of laws and decrees. In the end,
nothing was done: traditionalist resistance and class interests proved too
strong. The adoption of common law, because of its technical demands
and specialization, would in fact have made necessary the creation of a
class of learned experts. This sort of separate body represented a novelty
which the Venetian nobles, who considered themselves oracles of the law,
found intolerable.
The response to the crisis was found, rather, in the creation of new mag-
istracies for the city and the dominions. This innovation would be deter-
mined partly by utilitarian motivations, such as widening the possibility
of employment for discontented nobles, and guaranteeing protection for
Venetians possessing rice fields, forests, and seigniorial jurisdictions in the
terraferma. But the multiplication of offices also satisfied the intentions of
those within the Venetian ruling class who believed that the relationship
between the city and its dominions ought to be something less vague and
contradictory. A thorough study of the decisions of the Provveditori sopra
Feudi, the Provveditori ai Beni Inculti, and the Provveditori ai beni comunali
(magistracies charged with controlling, respectively, feudal jurisdictions,
land reclamation, and territories left to the disposition of rural communi-
ties for agricultural cultivation and the grazing of animals)27 could show
25 Vittorio Lazzarini, “L’obbligo di assumere pubblici offici nelle antiche leggi venez-
iane,” Archivio Veneto, 5th ser., 19 (1936), 184–98, Donald E. Queller, The Venetian Patrici-
ate. Reality versus Myth (Urbana-Chicago, 1986); Dorit Raines, “Office Seeking, the Broglio
and the Pocket Political Guidebooks in Cinquecento and Seicento Venice,” Studi veneziani,
n.s. 22 (1991), 137–94.
26 Gaetano Cozzi, Repubblica di Venezia e stati italiani. Politica e giustizia dal secolo XVI
al secolo XVIII (Turin, 1982), pp. 295–310.
27 Guida generali degli Archivi di Stato italiani, vol. 4 of Archivio di Stato di Venezia
(Rome, 1994), pp. 962–65.