politics and constitution 71
He threatened whoever refused to submit to the resolutions sanctioned by
his authority, and he presumed “to make and un-make marriages” both in
the capital and in some localities of the terraferma. The Ten condemned
him, in his absence, to perpetual exile from the entire Dominio and to the
privation of his noble title. On the eve of the Interdict dispute to which
we shall soon return, Memmo’s behavior, which seems to have encoun-
tered some favor, thus shook the foundations of the Venetian juridical
system; but it also invaded areas of responsibility pertaining to ecclesias-
tical institutions. We might hypothesize that the “non-Christian” persons
whose disputes Memmo resolved belonged to Venice’s Jewish commu-
nity, protagonist in the second decade of the 17th century in a sensational
trial regarding the sale of justice on the part of noble judges who manned
the appeals courts of the Quarantie.56
In the years between 1580 and 1620, the processes of differentiation
within the patriciate accelerated: the “mixed” constitution theorized by
the many authors of the republican myth in the 15th and 16th centuries
was by now a mere literary fiction. The clericalizzazione of behavior and
new rules of discipline accompanied this evolution of the internal rela-
tions of the sovereign body and gave a peculiar coloring to Venetian his-
tory in this period. If we want to grasp this decisive political turning point
in all its concreteness and complexity, we must look to evidence from the
justice system, and particularly to the trials that witnessed the nobility of
the capital as both accusers and accused. Numerous trials conducted by
the Heads of the Council of Ten attest to the overwhelming presence in
components of the Maggior Consiglio of attitudes, gestures, and modes
of expression that a long tradition had established as absolutely foreign
to that group: points of honor, the spirit of vendetta, and clan and blood
bonds that outweighed all other values and considerations.
On 13 August 1590, the Ten decided to prosecute Pietro Malipiero di
Sebastiano.57 The latter, having learned of the defamatory insults that
a certain Bonzuanne Bernabè (a peasant who worked the lands of the
Malipiero in San Stino di Livenza) had used in reference to Pietro’s cousin,
threatened to kill the peasant pistol-in-hand. Bonzuanne—whom we can
imagine as wealthy enough economically to bear the financial burden of a
trial in the capital and, above all, as possessing a sense of personal honor
56 Gaetano Cozzi, Giustizia “contaminata.” Vicende giudiziarie di nobili ed ebrei nella
Venezia del Seicento (Venice, 1996).
57 ASV, Consiglio dei X, Criminali, reg, 16, cc. 23r–24r.