society and the sexes in the venetian republic 361
preferred never to see or hear from her kin.29 Except in emergencies, nuns
in this convent were allowed to write only three letters per year, provided
that the abbess consented and supplied pen and paper.30 Aside from the
priests who heard their confessions and administered communion, Mar-
tinengo and her convent sisters had no regular contact with members of
the opposite sex. Santa Maria della Neve was a truly private, exclusively
female space.
Elite Venetian men spent many of their daylight hours in the two main
male spaces mentioned earlier. Affluent patricians attended meetings of
the Senate, Great Council, and elective magistracies in or near Palazzo
Ducale; poor ones hung about there hoping to obtain minor appoint-
ments. In the same area, cittadini originari (a legal category of prosper-
ous people ranked just below patricians) worked in the headquarters of
magistracies where they held jobs. Both men belonging to these two cat-
egories and other merchants did business at and around Rialto. Cittadini
originari administered the six Scuole Grandi, major confraternities from
which patricians were excluded. Some elite men became procurators of
female religious houses, which they often visited in order to confer with
female superiors. The same was presumably the case for socially promi-
nent men in the governmental and business centers and convents of sub-
ject cities. As patricians withdrew from overseas trade and invested in
rural property, they probably spent much of the late summer and early
fall in the country—a villeggiatura that, like that of their wives, was not
devoted entirely to leisurely pursuits.
By no means did all elite males in the Venetian Republic lead the sedate
lives just described. Other activities in public space monopolized their
time and energy. Sixty years ago, Andrea Da Mosto equated two Venetian
patricians inclined to violence with bravi: men of lower social status who
specialized in fighting and killing, either on permanent retainer or avail-
able for hire to perform particular assignments.31 More recently, Jonathan
Walker has put forward a different and more persuasive explanation of the
relationship between criminally inclined nobles and bravi. Nobles unsuc-
cessful or uninterested in climbing the Venetian political cursus honorum
employed bravi both in the city and on the mainland, often near their
29 Maria Maddalena Martinengo, Gli scritti, ed. Franco Fusar Bassini, o.f.m. Cap. (Rome,
2006), pp. 382, 781.
30 Martinengo, Gli scritti, p. 1970.
31 Andrea Da Mosto, I bravi di Venezia (Milan, 1950), pp. 62–84.