politics and constitution 67
The difficulty in comprehending these dynamics would be further accen-
tuated in moments of crisis: it was no coincidence that, in the difficult
years around the turn of the 17th century, we witness the spread of the
myth of the Chancellor as indefatigable servant of the patria, willing to
sacrifice his health and his life.43
The second aspect I wish to underline is that of the endogenous tensions
between the higher echelons of the bureaucracy, the high functionaries of
the state who organized the bureaucracy of the great constitutional bodies,
and the minor “officials” who labored daily in the single magistracies.
It is opportune to remember that the Venetian “bureaucratic” system
functioned on two levels: the first, constituted substantially by members
of the Ducal Chancellery, was occupied by civil servants attached to the
great political councils; the second, clearly separated from the first, was
made up of a plethora of secretaries, notaries, and others who in each
single magistracy carried out the tasks of conserving the official acts and
transmitting orders and mandates. The Cinque Savi alla mercanzia and
the Provveditori alle razon vecchie, the Auditori novi and the Provveditori
di comun, the Signori di notte and the Officiali al cattaver, the Provveditori
alle pompe and the Savi alle decime: all these courts, dedicated to every-
thing from controlling the movement of merchandise, appeals in civil
affairs, and the maintenance of public order and urban hygiene to the
observance of sumptuary norms or the conservation and verification of
fiscal transactions—were run by the limited staff in question. Venetian
nobles, elected to office for a period of 18 or 24 months, would have had
little impact on the ordinary mechanisms by which these offices func-
tioned. The attention of researchers should thus turn to the physiogno-
mies of the technicians who served under the patricians: it was they who
ensured the Weberian continuity of bureaucratic activity. Yet studies
dedicated to this important sector of government service have been over-
shadowed by interest for the activity of the chancellors. The reasons for
this lack of attention are in part due to a sort of historiographical “block”
and, at the same time, to more prosaic archival causes. The motivation we
might define as historiographical is owed to the diffusion of the republi-
can myth, which has tended to idolize the role of the noble “oracle” of the
law and marginalize the cosmos of the technicians and functionaries.
The practical reason resides rather in the modes of conferring offices
within the different ministries: all mid- and low-level bureaucratic offices
43 Cozzi, Repubblica di Venezia, pp. 172–73.