politics and constitution 65
monasteries would be condemned to five years exile from the city.36 In
a move that would anticipate and accompany the “clericalizzazione” (an
increased identification with the values and interests of the Church) of
society in the age of the Counter-Reformation, the Esecutori were made
responsible for ensuring printers and booksellers possessed the “licenses”
of the Council of Ten so as to prevent the circulation of too many books
“of a dishonest and evil nature.”37 It was at this moment that the question
of the relationship between the closed class of the nobility and that of the
“cives,” the citizens, would find an enduring solution.
During the 15th century, various laws of the Council of Ten had estab-
lished norms and provided for specific forms of control over the criteria
for admission to the ducal chancellery—the “heart,” it was said, of the
Venetian state—and the privileged role the cives were supposed to occupy
within it. These laws foresaw the institution of specialized, loyal personnel
whose members, while not coming from within the political elite, were
supposed to be closely linked to it. It was from this primitive distinction
that an enduring constitutional-linguistic invention would take shape: the
class of the so-called cittadini originari, a socio-professional group, both
prestigious and privileged, placed between the “popolo” and the patriciate.
The political rhetoric of the Myth of Venice (see particularly the important
contribution of Gasparo Contarini)38 represented the cives originarii as
the middle element, equidistant from lively world of the guilds and trades
and the closed exclusivity of the upper class. For this ability to foster com-
munication between the two potentially antagonistic poles of society and
power, the function of these citizens was to guarantee the peace and tran-
quility of the state. In reality, the models of collective self-representation
elaborated by components of this “middle” class in civic rituals and the
forms of deference and respect demanded among its members rather sug-
gest an imitation of the rituals and forms of legitimation of the nobility,
devoid of any plebeian or popular valence. This was a complex process of
differentiation known in part to historians: matrimonial politics39 and the
acquisition of particular signs of distinction through the control and pos-
session of literary-humanistic and scientific culture (possession of a large
36 Ibid., reg. 54, c.33v, 21 dicembre 1541.
37 Ibid. For the legislative provisions, see reg. 54, cc. 36v–37r and cc. 37v–38r, 12 febbraio
1543 and 7 settembre 1543.
38 Gigliola Fragnito, Gasparo Contarini. Un magistrato veneziano al servizio della cristi-
anità (Florence, 1988).
39 Anna Bellavitis, Identité, mariage, mobilité sociale: citoyennes et citoyens à Venise au
XVIe siècle (Rome, 2001).