74 alfredo viggiano
Roman Church face off over jurisdictional prerogatives in 1606–07, can be
interpreted as two complementary responses to this crisis. For this reason,
then, they ought to be considered together. Both attempt to interpret and
correct the distortion of an imagined republican constitution.
At the beginning of the 17th century, Paolo Sarpi, a great thinker at
the service of the Republic, and the group of giovani that controlled the
majority of the Senate tried to redefine the character of both internal and
foreign policy in Venetian politics: questioning the traditional and prudent
neutrality of the Republic and trying to limit, and to sever if necessary,
the bonds of loyalty and subordination vis-à-vis the Austrian Habsburgs,
Spain, and the papacy. Although this moment of the giovani would not
produce any structural change from the point of view of a history of insti-
tutions and political constitution, it must nevertheless be emphasized that
the grandiose ideological side of this conflict would serve to question the
forms of belonging and perceptions of identity—of family, of clan—within
the Venetian patriciate, thus stripping away the façade of general unity. It
is opportune to remember how, from the Venetian side, the legitimation
of the conflict with the papacy was founded upon the need for a return
to the purity of the original dictates of Venetian legislation. Sarpi and the
most intransigent nobles in fact reclaimed a return to the legislative body
of the early 15th century. The evocation of the letter of such centuries-
old laws that dealt with the conferral of benefices, episcopal seats in
the dominii, the taxation of ecclesiastical entities, and the prerogatives
of civil courts over clerics who committed crimes would strengthen the
foundations of this controversy from both a juridical and an ideal point
of view. Just as Edward Coke devised the framework of Common Law as
the foundation for the exercise of power during the conflict between the
English king and Parliament in the first two decades of the 17th century,
so Sarpi perfected the idea of a distinctly Venetian law.61 This alone could
favor a progressive integration between the capital and its territorial state;
through a new intransigence, competing interests could be reinforced and
uncertainties removed. The incarceration of two ecclesiastics—a noble
from Vicenza and a noble from Treviso both accused of serious crimes—
61 For the precedents, see Aldo Mazzacane, “Lo Stato e il Dominio nei giuristi veneti
durante il ‘secolo della Terraferma,’ ” in Storia della cultura veneta, vol. 3 (1981): Dal primo
Quattrocento al Concilio di Trento, part 3, pp. 577–650; for Sarpi, see the fundamental edi-
tion now underway of the Consulti, vol. 1 (1606–09), ed. Corrado Pin; and the essays con-
tained in Corrado Pin, ed., Ripensando Paolo Sarpi: atti del convegno internazionale di studi
nel 450o anniversario della nascita di Paolo Sarpi (Venice, 2006).