politics and constitution 69
unstable web of opposition and protest,” wrote Maravall, “states found
themselves having to satisfy two necessities: reinforce the material means
of repression and provide themselves with tools for the penetration of
consciences and psychological control, which, by favoring the process of
integration and combatting disorder and violence” might assure their con-
trol of the situation.49
The Venetian state never faced revolts that aimed to overthrow the
foundation of the Prince’s power: the spread of noble banditry in the
terraferma provinces never threatened the legitimacy of the governing
class and was even used by a part of that group to consolidate its own
superior pacifying function.50 The years following the disastrous defeat at
Agnadello would see numerous cities in the stato da terra ready to submit
freely to Charles V and, thus, be forever liberated from the hated gov-
ernment of the “three-thousand tyrants,” as Padua’s ambassador to the
emperor phrased it.51 But from the 1530s forward, the terraferma patri-
cians would not allow their lack of love for Venice to be expressed with
such a clamor, now content to press for the validation of their old juris-
dictional autonomies.
As for the capital, after the deposition of Doge Francesco Foscari in
1457, Venice would never again run the risk of a change in constitutional
form from republic to principality.52 The figure of the Doge came to be
articulated, particularly in the first half of the 17th century, through decid-
edly baroque debates: to what point might Venice, precisely by virtue of
that singular institutional figure inherited from the Byzantine world, be
defined without contradiction as a “Republic of Princes?”53 Were not sev-
eral Venetian maritime possessions, such as Cyprus and Candia, referred
to as “Kingdoms”? If so, what then was the proper title for he who, at the
head of a Republic, ruled over a “Kingdom”? Rhetorical exercises of this
sort aimed to justify criteria for precedence at international assemblies
such as peace negotiations and the coronation of emperors and popes.
49 Maravall, La società del barocco, pp. 79–80.
50 For a general picture, see Claudio Povolo, L’intrigo dell’onore. Potere e istituzioni nella
Repubblica di Venezia fra Cinque e Seicento (Verona, 1996).
51 See the important pages in this regard in Angelo Ventura, Nobiltà e popolo nella soci-
età veneta del ’400 e ’500 (Bari-Rome, 1964); and, above all, Innocenzo Cervelli, Machiavelli
e la crisi dello stato veneziano (Naples, 1974).
52 On the Foscari affair and its constitutional consequences, see Giuseppe Gullino, La
saga dei Foscari. Storia di un’enigma (Verona, 2005); and, especially, Dennis Romano, The
Likeness of Venice: A Life of Doge Francesco Foscari, 1357–1457 (New Haven, Conn., 2007).
53 G. Cozzi, “Venezia, una Repubblica di Principi?” Studi veneziani, n.s. 11 (1986),
139–57.