Economic Development and Urban Growth in the High Middle Ages 189revolved in favor of the major guilds in 1382, but in
1434 a clientage group headed by the banker-statesman
Cosimo de’ Medici gained control of the machinery of
government. Though republican institutions were os-
tensibly maintained, the Medici and their friends were
able to manipulate the constitution for their own pur-
poses until 1494.
Venice, settled only in 568 and located among the
desolate islands at the head of the Adriatic, had never
been part of the Holy Roman Empire. Its development
was therefore unlike that of any other Italian town. Sev-
eral small refugee settlements coalesced during the
ninth century into a single city ruled by an elective
doge, or duke. Isolated from the imperial struggles on
the mainland and interested primarily in the develop-
ment of trade and an overseas empire, the Venetians
evolved a system of government that has been called
both a model republic and a class despotism.
Like other cities, Venice was troubled by clientage
groups headed by prominent merchant families. To pre-
vent any one family from gaining control of the state,
the monarchical powers of the doge were eliminated
between 1140 and 1160, and legislative power was
vested in an elected Great Council with forty-five
members. A Minor Council was established to assist the
doge in his new role as administrator. The system was
given its final form between 1290 and 1310 when a se-
ries of mishaps and scandals raised the specter of social
revolution. The Great Council was expanded and then
closed to anyone who did not have an ancestor sitting
on it in 1297. A geneological registry was kept to estab-
lish pedigrees, and the membership hovered thereafter
between twelve hundred and fourteen hundred certifi-
able members of the Venetian aristocracy. The Great
Council elected the doge, whose role became largely
ceremonial; his counsellors; and the Senate, a 160-man
body that controlled the state. The Great Council was
thus both the electorate and the pool from which of-
ficeholders were drawn. Only a direct appeal to the
people could alter this closed system, and the chances
of such an appeal succeeding were greatly diminished
by the Council of Ten. This was a committee on state
security, elected by the Great Council for one-year,
nonrenewable terms, and granted almost unlimited
power to deal with threats to the Venetian state at
home or abroad. The constitution remained in effect
until 1798.
Broad-based participation in public affairs, at least
among the upper classes, is thought to have produced a
civic culture of unusual vitality in both Florence and
Venice. Though the government of the Medici has
been called a family despotism, Cosimo made every ef-
fort to draw everyone of importance into his web of
clientage. In Venice, a fairly numerous aristocracy had
no alternative to participation in civic life, whereas in a
true depotism, participation was restricted to the ruler
and his immediate entourage. This level of civic activity
contributed to the cultural and intellectual movement
known as the Renaissance, but from the standpoint of
social history, the Renaissance as a historical period has
little meaning. The underlying realities of daily life in
the Italian towns changed little between 1200 and
1500, and most generalizations that can be made about
urban society, whether in Italy or elsewhere, are good
for the Middle Ages as well as much of the early mod-
ern period.The Cities of Northern Europe
Beyond the Alps only a relative handful of cities
achieved anything like full sovereignty. Most were in
Germany. In the period of imperial disintegration that
followed the death of Frederick II, free cities and those
that owed their allegiance to the emperor were gener-
ally able to expand their privileges. The larger, richer
communities, such as Nürnberg or Lübeck, were virtu-
ally city-states on the Italian model, though they re-
tained their allegiance to the empire. Others were less
secure, as emperors had been known to pledge them to
neighboring princes in return for support or in the set-
tlement of disputes.
Though almost all German towns, including those
that had been founded by princes, enjoyed a wide mea-
sure of freedom guaranteed by charter, the threat of no-
ble encroachment and the uncertainties of imperial
politics favored the formation of leagues. The various
Hansas of north Germany had political and economic
purposes. The Rhenish League (1254) and the Swabian
League (1376) provide further examples, while the Swiss
Confederation, founded in 1291, evolved with relatively
minor changes into the Switzerland of today. The origi-
nal nucleus of three small forest cantons—Uri, Schwyz,
and Unterwalden—was joined by larger communities
when it demonstrated its ability to defend itself against
the Habsburgs at Morgarten (1315). The process of con-
federation culminated only with the admission of Basel
in 1501 and Geneva in 1536. Each canton governed it-
self as an independent unit and sent representatives to
the Swiss Diet when presenting a united front became
necessary. Though in many ways typical of late medieval
leagues, the Swiss survived through sheer military