Marriage, Manners and Mobility in Early Modern Venice (Historical Urban Studies)

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Marriage, Manners and Mobility in Early Modern Venice

Historical Urban Studies Series editors: Richard Rodger and Jean-Luc Pinol Titles in this series include: Heads of the Local State Mayors, Provosts and Burgomasters since 1800 edited by John Garrard The Making of an Indian Metropolis Colonial Governance and Public Culture in Bombay, 1890–1920 Prashant Kidambi Who Ran the Cities? City Elites and Urban Power Structures in Europe and North America, 1750–1940 edited by Ralf Roth and Robert Beachy Corruption in Urban Politics and Society, Britain 1780–1950 edited by James Moore and John Smith Medicine, Charity and Mutual Aid The Consumption of Health and Welfare in Britain, c.1550–1950 edited by Anne Borsay and Peter Shapely Testimonies of the City Identity, Community and Change in a Contemporary Urban World edited by Richard Rodger and Joanna Herbert Public Health and Municipal Policy Making Britain and Sweden, 1900–1940 Marjaana Niemi Paris-Edinburgh Cultural Connections in the Belle Epoque Siân Reynolds The City and the Senses Urban Culture Since 1500 edited by Alexander Cowan and Jill Steward The Transformation of Urban Liberalism Party Politics and Urban Governance in Late Nineteenth-Century England James R. Moore

Marriage, Manners and Mobility in Early Modern Venice

ALEXANDER COWAN

© Alexander Cowan 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Alexander Cowan has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Gower House Croft Road Aldershot Hampshire GU11 3HR England

Ashgate Publishing Company Suite 420 101 Cherry Street Burlington, VT 05401-4405 USA

Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Cowan, Alexander Marriage, manners and mobility in early modern Venice. – (Historical urban studies) 1. Marriage – Italy – Venice – History – 17th century 2. Marriage – Italy – Venice – History – 16th century 3. Venice (Italy) – Social conditions – To 1797 I. Title 306.8’1’094531’09032 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cowan, Alexander. Marriage, manners, and mobility in ealry modern Venice / by Alexander Cowan. p. cm. – (Historical urban studies series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-7546-5728-6 (alk. paper) 1. Marriage–Italy–Venice–History. 2. Social mobility–Italy–Venice–History. 3. Social classes–Italy–Venice–History. 4. Elite (Social sciences)–Italy–Venice–History. 5. Venice (Italy)–Social conditions–16th century. 6. Venice (Italy)–Social conditions–17th century. 7. Venice (Italy)–Social life and customs–16th century. 8. Venice (Italy)–Social life and customs–17th century. I. Title. HQ630.15.V465C69 2007 305.5’1309453109031–dc22 2007009669

ISBN 978-0-7546-5728-6

Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall.

A Michèle

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Contents List of Illustrations List of Tables General Editors’ Preface Foreword List of Abbreviations 1 Noble Status and Social Differentiation in Early Modern Europe

viii ix xi xiii xvii 1

2 The Avogaria di Comun and the Prove di Nobiltà

23

3 Outsider Brides and Their Families

47

4 Huomini Civili and Patrician Marriage

67

5 The Social Dimensions of Acceptability

91

6 Concubinage and Natural Daughters

117

7 Gender and Honourable and Dishonourable Behaviour

135

8 Marriage and the Patriciate

151

Conclusion

169

Appendices Bibliography Index

177 187 203

List of Illustrations 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Venetian gondolas Venetian prostitute in wintertime Venetian widow Street dress of young Venetian woman after marriage Venetian merchant Young Venetian nobleman up to the age of 20 Chiefs of the Council of Ten Venetian senator Venetian noblewoman dressed for a public celebration

108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116

All illustrations are from Cesare Vecellio’s Habiti antichi, etmoderni di tutto il Mondo (Venice, 1598), reproduced from Vecellio’s Renaissance Costume Book (New York, 1997) courtesy of Dover Publications Inc.

List of Tables 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7

Patrician marriage contracts, 1580–99 Prove, 1590–1699 Social origins of outsider brides, 1589–1699 Geographical origins of prove women Ages of widows Ages of applicants at start of prove di nobiltà Success rates of prove

50 52 53 56 58 59 63


Historical Urban Studies General Editors’ Preface Density and proximity are two of the defining characteristics of the urban dimension. It is these that identify a place as uniquely urban, though the threshold for such pressure points varies from place to place. What is considered an important cluster in one context - may not be considered as urban elsewhere. A third defining characteristic is functionality - the commercial or strategic position of a town or city which conveys an advantage over other places. Over time, these functional advantages may diminish, or the balance of advantage may change within a hierarchy of towns. To understand how the relative importance of towns shifts over time and space is to grasp a set of relationships which is fundamental to the study of urban history. Towns and cities are products of history, yet have themselves helped to shape history. As the proportion of urban dwellers has increased, so the urban dimension has proved a legitimate unit of analysis through which to understand the spectrum of human experience and to explore the cumulative memory of past generations. Though obscured by layers of economic, social and political change, the study of the urban milieu provides insights into the functioning of human relationships and, if urban historians themselves are not directly concerned with current policy studies, few contemporary concerns can be understood without reference to the historical development of towns and cities. This longer historical perspective is essential to an understanding of social processes. Crime, housing conditions and property values, health and education, discrimination and deviance, and the formulation of regulations and social policies to deal with them were, and remain, amongst the perennial preoccupations of towns and cities - no historical period has a monopoly of these concerns. They recur in successive generations, albeit in varying mixtures and strengths; the details may differ. The central forces of class, power and authority in the city remain. If this was the case for different periods, so it was for different geographical entities and cultures. Both scientific knowledge and technical information were available across Europe and showed little respect for frontiers. Yet despite common concerns and access to broadly similar knowledge, different solutions to urban problems were proposed and adopted by towns and cities in different parts of Europe. This comparative dimension informs urban historians as to which were systematic factors and which were of a purely local nature: general and particular forces can be distinguished. These analytical and comparative frameworks inform this book. Indeed, thematic, comparative and analytical approaches to the historical study

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MARRIAGE, MANNERS AND MOBILITY

of towns and cities is the hallmark of the Historical Urban Studies series which now extends to over 30 titles, either already published or currently in production. European urban historiography has been extended and enriched as a result and this book makes another important addition to an intellectual mission to which we, as General Editors, remain firmly committed. Richard Rodger Jean-Luc Pinol

University of Leicester Université de Lyon II

Foreword Some books are commissioned; many more are planned from the first stages of the research; yet others grow organically. This study falls into the final category. Its roots lie far back in my academic career and the result may be considered in part as the completion of some unfinished business. In the early eighties, I ended my doctoral research on urban elites in early modern Lübeck and Venice with a certain sense of regret that a formative part of my work as a scholar was over, but equally with a nagging sense that something important was still missing in relation to the behaviour of the Venetian patriciate. Under the influence of the ‘myth’ of Venice, and of several generations of eminent scholars, I had been seduced by the idea that the Venetian patricians were a group set apart by law, custom and culture from the rest of the city’s society. By focusing on the internal organisation of the elite in order to determine where power lay and whether it was possible to write of the patricians as a cohesive social group, it was all too easy to neglect the equally important relationships between the patricians and those below them, and the dissertation and the book which grew out of it left this dimension to one side. Several years later, out of a sense of curiosity, I began to study the prove di nobiltà. I had understood that these were substantially investigations into claims by men of patrician descent to be accorded patrician status, permitted to sit as members of the Great Council and take part in the cycles of elections which gave access to magistracies and other offices. It would, I thought, be interesting to see what kind of men came forward to make such claims, the grounds on which they justified them, and the criteria according to which their claims were measured. It was a matter of some surprise to find out that many of the cases considered under the heading of prove di nobiltà by the magistracy of the Avogaria di Comun were not concerned with men claiming patrician status at all. On the contrary, they concerned a group of women whose gender precluded them from claiming to become members of the Great Council, and who came forward for consideration because Venetian law regulated the registration of all marriages by patricians. Outsider brides were of particular interest precisely because they were outsiders and consequently differed from the patriciate in terms of their social status. The dossiers in the archives of the prove di nobiltà were nothing less than inquisitorial investigations into their social and moral backgrounds. This has proved to be a constant source of surprise and in some cases amusement. Like most other archival documentary series, the degree of repetition in the prove di nobiltà of both standard questions by the magistrates and stock answers from the witnesses called before them have the power to lull readers into a premature doze, but the capacity of ordinary Venetians to use a striking phrase to make their points or to go off in unexpected tangents

xiv


also brings its own rewards. The use of verbatim records by the clerks serving the magistrates succeeds in creating a sense of immediacy in which words can be heard as well as read. While an emphatic denial in Venetian dialect that the witness knew anything at all about a particular matter does not necessarily provide the kind of evidence which advances historical scholarship (‘I don’t know nothing about nothing’), it does help to build up a verbal picture of men and women, often ill at ease in an environment where they were being interviewed inside the Ducal Palace by members of the patriciate, and an insight into the ways in which they were accustomed to express themselves. It was the gradual realisation that the prove di nobiltà offered far more than answers to straightforward questions about the women who were taken by patricians as outsider brides in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which initially prompted this book. This also brought me back to my earlier concerns that not only had all not yet been said about the blurred areas on the edge of the patriciate, that more research was necessary to examine the many different kinds of relations between patricians and non-patricians, and that by doing so, it would be necessary to evaluate the patriciate itself as a social group in a different way. In methodological terms, this study also offers an opportunity to bring together the history of ideas, the history of mentalités and the more mundane patterns of social history arising from statistical analysis. Each approach has its own merits, and I have been more at ease with some than others in the past. Studies of ideas about the family, the household, gender differences, definitions of gentility and so on have all benefited from careful analysis of Renaissance treatises, conduct books and printed sermons. The result has all too often been a kind of self-referential exercise in which important changes over time in ideas and concepts and key influences of one writer over another have been traced. This book owes a considerable debt to such studies. On the other hand, the prove di nobiltà permit us to answer a number of further questions about the nature of these ideas and the extent to which they influenced social behaviour and interacted with important social, economic and cultural considerations. In this way, the book links intellectual history at a high level with the ways in which these concepts were translated into the attitudes and prejudices of people drawn from a wide range of social groups in Venice and beyond. What results is far from a sense of what may have taken place in the past, more a sense of how certain patterns of behaviour were shaped and perceived of by others. Story telling remains at the heart of many forms of historical writing. This book has many stories to tell. Many more had to be omitted with regret for reasons of space. The overall effect is, I hope, more than the sum of its parts. The research for this book was largely carried out during comparatively short visits over more than two decades to the Archivio di Stato in Venice, the Archivio Patriarchale in Venice and the city’s Marciana Library. I could not have completed these visits without external financial support nor without the understanding and support of Northumbria University, which permitted me relief from teaching and administrative responsibilities on several occasions.

FOREWORD

xv

I have to thank in particular the Trustees of the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation in New York, the British Academy, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Thanks to the latter’s ‘Research Leave’ scheme, I was able to transform a sabbatical of a single semester into 12 months of welcome absence from the university in which to shape this book. Early thoughts arising from my research took shape in the form of papers to audiences in places ranging from Ottawa, Strasbourg, Budapest, Prague, Lyon, Lucca, Cardiff, Newcastle and Nottingham. Many of these have been subsequently published as journal articles and book chapters. The work has also been informed by three other projects which have run in parallel with it: my attempt to bring together a general discussion on the urban history of Western Europe between 1500 and 1700, which was published in 1998, the extended work of the urban team in the European Science Foundation-funded project on ‘Cultural Exchange in Europe 1400–1700’, which began in 1999 and has now come to fruition in the form of a substantial volume in a series of four arising from the project as a whole, published in 2007. Lastly, since 1992, I have been working closely with my colleagues Malcolm Gee and Jill Steward, and my former colleague Tim Kirk, now of the University of Newcastle, as a member of the Research Group for European Urban Culture at Northumbria University. Together, we have brought together colleagues from all over Europe who share our interest in the history of European urban culture to take part in seminars and conferences, some in Newcastle upon Tyne, which has its own very particular forms of contemporary urban culture, others in Prague, Nice and Venice. The experience of organising this programme and contributing to the shaping of several of the publications which have arisen from it has been greatly influential, not least in providing a much broader chronological and geographical range of reference within which to place the specific conditions in Venice. I have many personal debts to others in the making of this book. I should like to first thank Richard Rodger for inviting me to take part in this series of Historical Urban Studies and for allowing me to draw heavily on a chapter which has already appeared in the same series in a collection on the city and the senses. His encouragement has been central. I should also like to thank Federica Ambrosini, Jim Amelang, Anna Bellavitis, Joanne Ferraro and John Martin. Each of them has read one or more chapters of this book, and I am grateful to them all for their feedback and suggestions. All judgments and potential inaccuracies remain, of course, my responsibility. Many others have discussed and encouraged my work over the years. Some may not even have been aware of their contribution at the time. They have every right to be thanked alongside the others in this list. I include among them multiple generations of final-year undergraduates at Northumbria University who studied courses with me on the history of the family and marriage in pre-industrial Europe. As one anonymous piece of student feedback at the time commented quite accurately, there was ‘too much about Venice’. Fiona Colclough (now White) indulged me by undertaking a successful doctoral dissertation on widows and widowhood in early modern Venice and left me

xvi


with a feeling of envy at the dedication and organisation which led to the completion of the project in record time. My former colleagues, Peter Coss, Jeremy Gregory and Donald MacRaild were all involved in the transformation of the project into something resembling a book. Discussions over a protracted period with the following (in no particular order) have also been of considerable help: Christopher Black, Donatella Calabi, Matteo Casini, Simona Cerutti, Monica Chojnacka, Stanley Chojnacki, the late Gaetano Cozzi, Libby Cohen, Tom Cohen, Stephen Turk Christensen, Nicholas Davidson, Bob Davis, Daniela Hacke, Ray Honeybourne, Derek Keene, Ellen Kittell, Richard Mackenney, Ed Muir, Dorothea Nolde, Brian Pullan, Silvana Seidel Menchi, James Shaw, Avram Taylor, Jo Wheeler, Jim Williamson, Keith Wrightson and Andrea Zannini. Charlotte and Benjamin grew up surrounded by books about Venice and can now look back on a series of family visits to Venice, which were never quite the untrammelled holidays which they had secretly hoped for. Their reactions and questions brought me to look at the city and its people in a new light. Michèle has lived with this project alongside me. Her contribution in every possible way from unpaid research assistant, welcome critic and emotional support is reflected in the dedication to this book. Newcastle upon Tyne, February 2007

List of Abbreviations AdC A.N. APV ASV A.T. Correr Marciana Matr. ND NH QS

ASV, Avogaria di Comun ASV, Archivio Notarile Archivio Patriarcale, Venice Archivio di Stato, Venice ASV, Archivio Tiepolo Biblioteca Correr, Venice Biblioteca Marciana, Venice, APV, Matrimoni Segreti Nobil Donna Nobil Homo Biblioteca Querini Stampalia, Venice


CHAPTER ONE

Noble Status and Social Differentiation in Early Modern Europe In 1637, three Venetian magistrates, the Avogadori di Comun, sitting in a room in the Ducal Palace close to one of the corridors linking the palace with the prison across the Bridge of Sighs, considered a file submitted by a young Paduan woman, Prudentia, the daughter of Zuanne Bonzanino and Antonia Porcellini. It was marked per maritarsi in nobile Veneto (application to marry a Venetian nobleman). The preamble began: I, Prudentia Bonzanino, the legitimate daughter of Signor Zuanne and devoted subject of your illustrious selves, have always expressed a devotion inherited from my ancestors for the most Serene Venetian Nobility. As the Blessed God has given me a favourable social condition at birth – my forebears are numbered among the Gentleman of Padua – which fully permits me to confirm my devotion by joining myself in marriage to a Noble of the Most Serene Great Council.

The petition was submitted in the hope that it would be approved of by a major organ of the Venetian government, the Collegio, and that she would be declared appropriate to bear sons who could legitimately sit in the Venetian Great Council themselves as patricians. Her petition made four statements: she was the legitimate and natural daughter of her parents; her father was a member of the Council in Padua and had always lived ‘civilly and honourably’; her paternal grandfather had done the same; and finally, that she herself had always lived ‘modestly and honestly’.1 Her petition was successful. After having interviewed a number of witnesses, the magistrates sent on her file to the Collegio, with a recommendation for approval. The following February, the nine members of the Collegio voted on Prudentia’s application and decided in favour by eight votes to one.2 Prudentia Bonzanino was one of some 500 women who applied to the magistracy of the Avogaria di Comun between 1589 and 1699 for permission to marry a Venetian patrician (1589 was the year in which definitive legislation was passed).3 She was born outside Venice of high social status in a city which had its own elite but which, since the end of the fourteenth century, had been subject to rule by the republic. Although she was only 15, the recent death of her father from the plague had precipitated the need to arrange a marriage for 1

Archivio di Stato, Venice (ASV), Avogaria di Comun (AdC) 206/31. AdC 108, fol. 48, dated 7 February 1637. All dates in this book are more veneto, following the custom which began each year at the beginning of March. 3 See below, pp. 29–32. 2


2

her. It is also a fair assumption that his death also released funds for a dowry large enough to interest a potential husband among the Venetian nobility.4 In spite of their general aspirations to marry into the nobility in principle, petitions of this kind were never speculative. They were submitted once marriage negotiations had reached an advanced stage and official permission to marry was needed before they could move on. The language of the preamble to her petition, which corresponded to the phrasing used in many others, conveyed two main messages. As a supplicant (these applications were referred to officially as suppliche), she recognised the supremacy of the Venetian patriciate as the governing elite within the Venetian Republic and the status of her family in this context as subjects. As the daughter of a Paduan nobleman, on the other hand, she considered that her status brought her within the circles of families with whom patricians might be associated in marriage, and that she fulfilled the criteria for such families set out by law. The case of Prudentia Bonzanino illustrates many of the key issues to be discussed in this book. As an outsider asking for official permission to marry into a closed elite, her case takes us into the complex world of social relationships and the ways in which they were mediated through the links and potential links created by marriage in early modern Europe in general and in Venice in particular. It illustrates the blurred lines which separated elites from those immediately below them within the social hierarchy. As one of the prove di nobiltà, the official Venetian investigations into the validity of applications by outsider women to marry into the patriciate, it is symptomatic of a complicated process which involved men and women drawn from all levels of Venetian society and beyond and is a unique source for understanding social attitudes and the cultural assumptions which underpinned society in Venice during the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Lastly, Prudentia was present at the investigations on paper only. According to the very nature of these records, she and the hundreds of other women and their mothers who were investigated by the Avogaria, appeared as passive subjects rather than actors. They were portrayed in the petitions and in the testimonies of witnesses as a potential means to several ends: upward social mobility by association for their families, and as sources of dowries and potential procreative channels for patricians. There were instances of female agency within the structures of a patriarchal society, but they only appeared very sporadically in the prove di nobiltà. This does suggest that it is possible that behind the scenes, mothers and widows, as in other circumstances, were able to engage in informal pressure or to conduct their own business directly with the Avogaria. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were a time at which the growing pressures for upward social mobility, fuelled in particular by greater economic opportunities for profit accumulation, came into conflict with privileged aristocratic interest groups determined to maintain the statutory and ideological distinctions between themselves and those below them in the 4

AdC 206/31.

NOBLE STATUS AND SOCIAL DIFFERENTIATION

3

social hierarchy. In reality, this was also a time of considerable change among elites, and many of their responses to pressures from below for greater social flexibility were a reaction to these changes. The rapid increase in literature devoted to discussions of nobility and gentility, particularly in the sixteenth century, was far from a reflection of social certainties, but more a search for certainties at a time when they were being brought into question not only by pressure from below but also by the actions of territorial rulers. The latter’s exploitation of new sources of much-needed income through the sale of offices and noble titles undermined long-held beliefs about the sources of noble status by introducing new criteria. One corollary of these changes was a re-figuring of definitions of social status among those below the elite. As possibilities arose for upward social mobility, either through the promotion of males to noble status themselves, or along the more circuitous but equally value-loaded route of marriages between their daughters, sisters or mothers and members of the established elite, those with aspirations to higher social status came to take on some, if not all, of the ideological clothing of the elite. In France, for example, they also did so in material as well as figurative ways by ‘living like nobles’. This category was widely recognised and soon became one of the criteria for consideration as a candidate to purchase title-bearing public offices.5 Elsewhere, this adoption of a noble life-style was not identified so explicitly but contemporary commentators were not slow to identify the adoption of airs and graces by those of whom they disapproved. One of Stefano Guazzo’s protagonists spoke with scorn of the sons of wealthy artisans who ‘dressed themselves nobly without shame and have gilded arms, which were the signs by which we should know the real cavalier’. If one had not seen them later selling goods from their shop, one could not have know their status.6 It exposes a contradiction at the heart of the Venetian ruling elite which had important resonances elsewhere. The unity of the elite depended on a shared conceptual belief in their inherent noble status, which was based on a number of criteria including the hereditary transmission of this status through both parents, exclusive access to the organs of government, and the expression of more general ‘civil’ values. The elite was supposed to be hermetically closed to male outsiders. On the other hand, there was a long-standing pattern, stretching back into at least the fourteenth century and probably beyond, for a minority of patricians to find wives from outside their own circles and to expect their sons to follow them as members of the Great Council. The reasons 5 See, for example, A. Jouanna, ‘Des “Gros et gras” aux “gens d’honneur” ’, in G. Chaussinand-Nogaret, (ed.), Histoire des élites en France du XVIe au XXe siècle (Paris, 1991), pp. 17–141 (27–8, 32–3, 39–43); R. Mousnier, The Institutions of France under the Absolute Monarchy, 1598–1789, vol. 1, Society and the State (Chicago, 1979), pp. 214–34. 6 F. Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (London, 1973), vol. 2, pp. 729–31; C. Donati, L’Idea di Nobiltà, Secoli xiv–xviii (Rome, 1988), p. 161; E. Eisenach, ‘ “Femine e zentilhomeni”: concubinato d’élite nella Verona del Cinquecento’, in S. Seidel-Menchi and D. Quaglioni (eds), Trasgressioni. Seduzioni, adulterio, bigamia (XIV– XVIII secolo) (Bologna, 2004), pp. 278–81.

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for marrying out in the past were never made explicit, but perceptions of the potential damage to the ‘purity’ of the patriciate were strong enough to lead to the passage of a series of laws regulating patrician marriage from the early fifteenth century.7 In order to place this study in a wider context, this chapter considers the extent to which the Venetian ruling elite corresponded to others elsewhere in Italy, both in terms of composition and ideology. It argues that in spite of some major differences the Venetian elite came to resemble other Italian elites both in cities and in the countryside, and that issues of self-definition in the face of the aspirations of others to upward social mobility were just as much a concern in Venice as elsewhere, shaping behaviour towards families with aspirations to become connected to them by marriage. The chapter concludes by setting out the broader issues under discussion in the book and by outlining how they are illuminated in detail by the prove di nobiltà. Organisation and Ideology The ruling elite in Venice during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was widely known across Europe for its longevity, its commitment to public office, the fortunes made by its members from long-distance trade during the Middle Ages, and the clarity with which it was hermetically closed to outsiders by the law. Their renown was indissolubly linked to the broader myth of Venice, according to which the Most Serene Republic was alone in Europe for having found solutions to the problems of internal feuding among the elite and the maintenance of public order through the complicated series of checks and balances in its constitution and its emphasis on rotating election to office, rather than long-term appointment through inherited rights or political favour.8 Much of this reputation was unjustified or inaccurate, and revealed more about the local concerns of commentators in England, Spain, France or Germany than it did about the realities of power, government or social organisation in the Venetian Republic. The longevity of the Venetian elite was certainly greater than that in Milan, Parma or Naples, for example, where the inflation in noble titles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries created ruling elites most of whose members could not trace their noble origins back 7 S. Chojnacki, ‘Marriage Legislation and Patrician Society in Fifteenth-Century Venice’, in B.S. Bachrach and D. Nicholas (eds), Law, Custom and the Social Fabric in Medieval Europe (Kalamazoo, 1990), pp. 163–84; S. Chojnacki, ‘Nobility, Women and the State: Marriage Regulation in Venice 1420–1535’, in T. Dean and K.J.P. Lowe (eds), Marriage in Italy 1300–1650 (Cambridge 1998), pp. 128–51. 8 J. Martin and D. Romano, ‘Reconsidering Venice’, in J. Martin and D. Romano (eds), Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilisation of an Italian City State 1297–1797 (Baltimore, 2000), pp. 3–10; J.S. Grubb, ‘When Myths Lose Power: Four Decades of Venetian Historiography’, Journal of Modern History 58 (1986): 43–94; E. Crouzet-Pavan, Venise triomphante: les horizons d’un mythe (Paris 1999). For contemporary foreign views of the myth, see J. Howell, A Survey of the Signorie of Venice (London, 1651); A.T. Limojon de Saint-Disdier, La ville et la République de Venis (Amsterdam, 1680).


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for more than a century.9 Few members of the English House of Lords in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries could trace their membership back to the Wars of the Roses. The widespread use of the venality of office by the kings of France and Spain also transformed the numbers and composition of their aristocracies. The Venetians, on the other hand, were proud of their long pedigree and of the unusual circumstances of the foundation of their city. These shared beliefs came to shape patricians’ attachment to their status. It scarcely mattered that only 24 families were able to trace their roots to the early years of the city in the lagoon. After 900 years or so, the collective longevity of the republic and its patriciate fostered the legend that they were a race apart, born of the sea and nourished by it, free from identifiable overlords, particularly Rome, for the settlements which eventually coalesced into the city of Venice had no urban existence at the time of the Roman Empire.10 The Venetian patriciate, then, was self-defining. For the families which belonged to the Great Council in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, their right to be there and to exclude all others was based on events at the end of the thirteenth century, the so-called Serrata, when decisions were taken to restrict membership of the government to members and descendents of named families. Other families which had participated up to that point in 1297, were excluded. Historians have ceased to accept this simple story for some time. Frederic Lane, in a ground-breaking article in 1971, established that the decisions taken in 1297 were only part of a process which continued into the early years of the fourteenth century, resulting in a widening rather than a refinement of membership of the Great Council through the inclusion of wealthy families who had not up to that time consistently taken part in the Venetian government.11 More recently, Stanley Chojnacki has argued that on two further occasions the Venetian government acted in order to clarify and redefine the membership of the Great Council. His case is that the growth in the numbers of patricians made it impossible for all patricians to know each other personally or for any individual to prove without question that he had a right to sit in the Great Council on the grounds that he was descended either from one of the families listed at the beginning of the fourteenth century or from the 30 families admitted in 1381 after the Venetian victory over their commercial rivals, the Genoese, in the War of Chioggia. There was little certainty over who had the right to sit in the Great Council. According to Chojnacki, when the Avogaria di Comun drew up a list of member-families in the early fifteenth century,

9

Donati, L’Idea, pp. 279–80. See Lane’s comments on Cassiodorus’ letter to the king of the Ostrogoths in 500. F.C. Lane, Venice: A Maritime Republic (Baltimore, 1973). For the patriciate’s historical vision, see P.F. Brown, Venice and Antiquity: The Venetian Sense of the Past (New Haven, 1996). 11 F.C. Lane, ‘The Enlargement of the Great Council of Venice’, in J.G. Rame and W.N. Stockdale (eds), Florilegium Historiale: Essays presented to Wallace K. Ferguson (Toronto, 1971), pp. 237–74. 10

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many of those listed were already extinct or on the way to extinction.12 The confusion was solved by legislation in the first half of the fifteenth century to control the entry of young men into the Great Council. The Avogaria was given powers to examine all potential cases and to validate entry into the council. A pattern was established by which the Avogaria came to take on increasing responsibility for examining all matters concerned with patrician status. For the first time, too, a law was passed in 1422 which linked patrician status to both parents rather than to the father alone and began a process according to which criteria for patrician membership were linked to marriage. From that time onwards, men whose mothers were servants, slaves or other very low status, were excluded from membership of the council.13 Chojnacki also argued that a similar construction may be placed on the legislation passed at the beginning of the sixteenth century when the Golden Book, listing all patrician births, marriages and deaths was instituted for the first time in order once again to attempt to set out the definitive list of members of the Great Council. Numbers of potential patricians had been growing during the fifteenth century. The relationship between patrician status and the Great Council had in some ways become reversed. While earlier, patricians held that status because they were members of the Great Council and could therefore take up elected government office as a central part of their responsibilities to the republic, office-holding in the council came to be seen as an end in itself, often a lucrative one for those patricians whose external income was too low to maintain an appropriate standard of living. Competition for office not only attracted men whose claims to membership were far from obvious. It also engendered an increasing wish on the part of those who believed that they incarnated the noble traditions of the republic to find mechanisms to exclude those whom they believed to present the greatest threat to their ‘purity’, the illegitimate sons of patricians and the men whose mothers came from outside the patriciate. The law of 1589 was only the culmination of a process which began in the early fifteenth century.14 While the establishment of the Golden Book in 1506 may have clarified the membership of the Venetian patriciate, developments in the seventeenth century gradually placed the rigidity of the patriciate and its theoretical justification under further pressure. From 1646, individual families purchased patrician status in return for donations of very large sums of money during several costly wars to defend the eastern Venetian Empire from the Ottoman Empire. These families came from the same social backgrounds as the outsider

12 S. Chojnacki, ‘Social Identity in Renaissance Venice: The Second Serrata’, Renaissance Studies 8 (1994): 341–58 (346–7). 13 Chojnacki, ‘Social Identity’, pp. 347–52. 14 S. Chojnacki, ‘Identity and Ideology in Renaissance Venice: The Third Serrata’, in Martin and Romano (eds), Venice Reconsidered, pp. 263–94; V. Crescenzi, ‘Esse de Maori Consilio’. Legittimità Civile e Legittimazione Politica nella Repubblica di Venezia (secc. XIII–XVI) (Rome, 1996), pp. 4–19.


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brides chosen by patricians and the process may be seen in parallel.15 Further confusion and pressures developed as a direct result of the return to Venice from the island of Crete of the descendants of patrician families who had been sent there several hundred years before in order to ‘constrain an indomitable and seditious population’. The words are those of Louis XIV’s ambassador to Venice, who prepared a short history of the patriciate for his master.16 Following the successful Turkish occupation of the island, these families came to Venice as refugees, often having had to leave their property behind them, but with the right to sit on the Great Council. Their presence was far from welcome. One commentator referred to them as ‘false in loyalty, barbaric in custom and useless in volition, arrogant and desperately poor’.17 The continuity of the Venetian constitution was based in part on legislation brought in at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth centuries.18 In the long term, it was successful. There were comparatively few cases of public disagreement among the Venetian elite, with the exception of the Baiamonte Tiepolo revolt of 1310 and the opposition of a group of poor nobles led by Renier Zeno in 1623.19 By contrast, feuding among elite families was widespread in other Italian cities.20 Outside Italy, the internal divisions among French urban elites which played such a part during the religious wars of the sixteenth century both pre-dated those conflicts and resurfaced after they had come to an end. Major differences of opinion in Marseille over the administration of the city’s public finances at the beginning of the seventeenth century caused so much elite-sponsored mob violence around elections to the city council that the king was forced to intervene.21 The widespread reputation for commitment to public office by members of the Venetian ruling elite also illustrated a major contrast between the Venetians and elites elsewhere. The Venetian ruling elite was defined exclusively in terms of membership of the Great Council, (the Maggior Consiglio), which was the sovereign body of the Venetian Republic. All high status flowed from the 15 For the purchase of patrician status, see R. Sabbadini, L’acquisto della tradizione. Tradizione aristocratica e nuova nobiltà a Venezia (Udine, 1995); D. Raines, L’image du soi du patriciat vénitien aux XVI e XVIIe siècle (PhD thesis, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1998–99); A. Cowan, The Urban Patriciate: Lübeck and Venice, 1580–1700 (Cologne and Vienna, 1986), pp. 84–6. 16 ‘Della Nobiltà Veneta. Trascorso Istorico Al Rè Cristianissimo Luigi XIIII’, ASV, Compilazione Leggi 294, fols 800–811. 17 G. Bacco (ed.), Relazione sulla organnizzazione politica della Repubblica di Venezia al cadere del secolo decimosettimo (Vicenza, 1856), p. 62. 18 G. Maranini, La costituzione di Venezia dopo la Serrata del Maggior Consiglio (Venice, 1931). 19 G. Cozzi, Il Doge Nicolò Contarini. Ricerche sul patriziato veneziano agli inizi del Seicento (Venice, 1958), pp. 185ff. 20 C. Bitossi, Il Governo dei Magnifici. Patriziato e Politica a Genova fra Cinque e Seicento (Genoa, 1990), pp. 24–8; E. Grendi, La repubblica aristocratica dei genovesi: Politica, carità e commercio fra Cinque e Seicento (Bologna, 1987); R.B. Litchfield, Emergence of a Bureaucracy: The Florentine Patriciate, 1530–1790 (Princeton, 1986). 21 R. Pillorget, ‘Luttes de faction et intérêts économiques à Marseille de 1598 à 1618’, Annales: économies, sociétés, civilisations 27 (1992): 705–730.

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council members’ exclusive right to be candidates for elective offices of all kinds in the republic. They had a monopoly of magistracies, ambassadorships, and military and naval commands. They made policy and carried it out.22 Only supporting roles were entrusted to members of the permanent secretariat, who were not members of the elite, and to members of high-ranking families on the Italian mainland.23 In other parts of Italy, membership of urban ruling elites was becoming increasingly complicated as a result of several factors. Because of the development of medium-scale territorial states and the expansion of Spanish power within the peninsula, many were transformed by the fusion of older urban elites defined in terms of office-holding and membership of representative assemblies with feudal nobilities whose power had been largely rooted in the land and expressed in social terms by the use of noble titles.24 This commitment to public office in Venice hid important differences in wealth and power within the Venetian patriciate. Some historians have gone so far as to suggest that the patriciate as a whole no longer fulfilled the criteria for a ruling elite in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and that consequently for comparative purposes it is more appropriate to consider only a small group of men who largely monopolised the major offices of state and did their best to circulate their substantial patrimonies between them.25

22 For the political organisation of the Venetian Republic, see P. del Negro, ‘Forme e istituzioni del discorso politico veneziano’, in G. Arnaldi and M.P. Stocchi (eds), Storia della Cultura veneta. Il Seicento, vol. 4, tomo II (Vicenza, 1984), pp 407–436; O.T. Domzalski, Politische Karrieren und Machterteilung im venezianischen Adel (1646-1797) (Sigmaringen, 1996); R. Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice (London, 1980). 23 Gian Battista Padavin, who was appointed to the head of the Venetian secretariat as Cancelliere Grande in 1639, had previously served as Secretary to the Venetian Senate and on diplomatic missions to Florence, Rome, Constantinople, Madrid and Vienna. M. Casini, ‘Realtà e simboli del Cancelliere Grande veneziano in età moderna, (secc. XVI–XVII)’, Studi Veneziani 22 (1991): 234–5. For examples of men from the Terrraferma in official Venetian positions, see S. Olivieri Secchi, ‘Ascesa sociale e ideologia in una famiglia Polesana fra Cinquecento e Seicento: i Bonifacio’, Studi Veneziani 21 (1991): 172–3. 24 Litchfield, Emergence (on Florence and Tuscany); P. Lanaro, Un’oligarchia urbana nel Cinquecento veneto. Istituzioni, economica società (Turin, 1992) (on Verona); G. Borelli, ‘Patriziato della Dominante e patriziati della Terraferma’, in A. Tagliaferri (ed.), Venezia e la Terraferma attraverso le relazioni dei Rettori (Milan, 1981), pp. 79–95 (on the Venetian Terraferma); D. Ferrari, ‘La famiglia Arrigoni tra città e corte gonzaghesca’, in C. Mozzarelli (ed.), ‘Familia’ del principe e famiglia aristocratica (Rome, 1988), pp. 471–85 (on Mantua). For a more wide-ranging comparison, see M. Aymard, ‘Pour une histoire des élites dans l’Italie moderne’, in La famiglia e la vita quotidiana in Europa del ’400 al ’600: atti del convegno internazionale Milano 1–4 dicembre 1983 (Rome, 1986), pp. 207–219; and F. Angiolini, ‘Le basi economiche del potere aristocratico nell’Italia centro-settentrionale dal XVI al XVIII secolo’, in C. Mozzarelli and A. Schiera (eds), Patriziati e aristocrazie nobiliari. Ceti dominanti e organizzazione del potere nell’Italia centrosettentrionale dal XVI al XVIII secolo (Trento, 1978), pp. 37–63. 25 P. Burke, Venice and Amsterdam: A Study of Two Seventeenth-Century Elites (London, 1974); M. Scazzoso, ‘Nobiltà senatore e nobiltà minore a Venezia tra sei e settecento’, Nuova Rivista Storica 69 (1985): 797–817. For alternative views of the patriciate, see J.C. Davis, The Decline of the Venetian Nobility as a Ruling Class (Baltimore, 1962); Cowan, Urban Patriciate; V. Hunecke, Der venezianische Adel am Ende der Republik 1646–1797. Demographie, Familie, Haushalt (Tübingen, 1995).


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It is certainly clear that there were major wealth disparities among patricians which had been in existence for some considerable time, and that this reinforced the social and economic differences between those who aspired to and were elected to high office, others who were elected to middle-ranking offices which still brought them and their families prestige, and poor patricians. The latter competed with each other for access to salaried offices established primarily for the purpose of providing subsidies to maintain a modicum of status and self-respect and an easy target for wealthier patricians buying up votes to bolster their chances of election.26 In spite of the general contemporary rhetoric which frequently associated nobility with wealth, the Venetians were not alone in maintaining that inherited status rather than great wealth was what counted most in defining a member of the elite. The Genoese were also confronted with the presence of poor patricians (bisognosi). In his Ricordi of 1610, Andrea Spinola considered two options to solve the problem of noble poverty, neither of which was adopted officially. If they could not temporarily renounce their patrician status to enable them to turn to arte meccanica as a way of restoring their fortunes, he suggested a scheme of paid public office very similar to that employed in Venice.27 Contemporary comparisons with urban elites elsewhere also highlighted a major difference between the Venetians and others. In spite of the growing prestige of legal training in Italy and north of the Alps, the Venetians were proud of their status as amateur judges without formal legal training. This was a subject of great surprise to the Count of Bedmar, the Spanish ambassador in the early seventeenth century.28 The rise in the social and political significance of men with legal training was by that time a widespread phenomenon elsewhere. Not only was their occupation highly valued in itself, lawyers had come to use their skills to occupy high office in Germany,29 France,30 Catalonia31 and in 26 L. Megna, ‘Nobiltà e povertà. Il problema del patriziato povero nella Venezia del ’700’, Atti dell’Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere, ed Arti, 140 (1981–82): 319–40; L. Megna, ‘Grandezza e miseria della nobiltà veneziana’, in G. Benzoni and G. Cozzi (eds), Storia di Venezia (Rome, 1997), vol. 7, pp. 161–200; Scazzoso, ‘Nobiltà senatore’; Hunecke, Der venezianische Adel, pp. 55–65; Domzalski, Politische Karrieren; D. Raines, ‘Office-Seeking, Broglio and the Pocket Political Guidebooks in Cinquecento and Seicento Venice’, Studi Veneziani 22 (1991): 137–94. 27 Bitossi, Il Governo dei Magnifici, pp. 76–7. For the linkage between nobility and wealth, see the discussion of Antonio Tiraguera and Stefano Guazzo in Donati, L’Idea, pp. 112–17, 158–60. 28 Biblioteca Correr, Venice (Correr), Donà 448/19. 29 M. Häberlein, ‘Sozialer Wandel in den Augsburger Führungsschichten des 16. und frühen 17. Jahrhunderts’, in G. Schulz (ed.), Sozialer Aufstieg. Funktionseliten im Spätmittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit (Munich, 2002), pp. 73–96; A. Hansert, ‘Adel der Geburt und Adel des Geistes. Zu einem paradigmatischen Rang- und Standeskonflikt zwischen Patriziern und Gelehrten in Frankfurt im 17 and 18 Jahrhundert’, in Schulz (ed.), Sozialer Augstieg, pp. 113–47. 30 B. Chevalier, ‘Le pouvoir par le savoir: le renouvellement des élites urbains en France au début du l’age moderne (1350–1550)’, in C. Petitfrere (ed.), Construction, reproduction et représentation des patriciats urbains de l’antiquité au XXe siècle (Tours, 1999), pp. 73–82; Jouanna, ‘Des “Gros et gras” ’, pp. 28–9. 31 J. Amelang, ‘Le oligarchie di Barcellona nella prima età moderna. Studio comparativo’, Studi Storici 23 (1982): 583–602. This essay also considers several important broader issues in a comparative context related to the development of urban elites in Italy and the empire.

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some parts of Italy.32 Tiraguera, himself a member of the noblesse de robe in Parma, grudgingly argued that lawyers might be considered as nobles.33 While it is clear that in many ways, the Venetian patriciate was a case apart from other European urban elites, through their longevity, their statutory definition and the absence of a feudal element, they considered themselves as nobles on a par with both other urban elites and with the traditional feudal nobility. In the case of the elites in the cities subject to the republic, of course, the Venetians’ political position placed them at an even higher level. They had always refused to use feudal titles, but used both Patritii and Nobeli to describe themselves.34 Outside commentators of high status also used Nobeli, doubtless because this conformed to their own wish to locate the patriciate within a generally recognised context of high status.35 There was some use of the title Cavaliere, but this was neither exclusively patrician, nor given by the patriciate to its own members. The title tended to be an honour given to Venetian ambassadors by their hosts.36 The convergence between Venetian patricians and other Italian elites was also facilitated by the way that from the late fifteenth century, Venetians increasingly relied on landed income and passive investments rather than their traditional sources of income from long-distance trade. They owned substantial proportions of land on the Terraferma and developed a rural lifestyle in which they spent much time there in houses which had been specially built for them and undertook the traditional pursuits of hunting and travelling around on horseback.37 This change in focus enabled patricians to share more fully the criteria for nobility expressed in other parts of Italy. Much of the writing on this subject in the sixteenth century had recognised the exceptional position of Venice and 32 For Udine, see R. Corbellini, ‘Modelli di aggregazione: tradizione urbana, tradizione communitaria, tradizione cetuale’, in M. Bellabarba and R. Stauber (eds), Identità territoriale e cultura politica nella prima età moderna (Bologna, 1999), pp. 239–54 (249–51). 33 Donati, L’Idea, p. 116. 34 The cittadino Cavazza family noted that many of its female members were nel numero delle Donne maritate nell’ordine Patritio, Biblioteca Marciana, Venice, (Marciana) It. VII 183 (8161). An official decree of 1687 referred to the Patritia Nobiltà. Biblioteca Querini Stampalia Venice (QS) IV, cod. XXXIII. 35 See, for example, the French Della Nobiltà Veneziana, Compilazione Leggi 294, fols 800– 811; F. Moryson, Shakespeare’s Europe (London, 1903), p. 152. 36 M. Casini, ‘Gli ordini cavallereschi a Venezia fra Quattro e Seicento. Problemi e ipotesi di ricerca’, Atti dell’Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti 146 (1997–98): 179–99. The Veronese patrician Antonio Giusti was rewarded with this title by the Venetian government for having played host to Margaret of Austria when travelling therough the republic on her way to marry Philip III of Spain in 1598. P. Mometto, ‘ “Vizi privati, pubbliche virtù”. Aspetti e probleme della questione del lusso nella Repubblica di Venezia (Secolo XVI)’, in L. Berlinguer and F. Colao (eds), Crimine, giustizia e società veneta in età modern (Milan, 1989), pp. 237–71 (241–2). 37 U. Tucci, ‘The Psychology of the Venetian Merchant in the Sixteenth Century’, in J.R. Hale (ed.), Renaissance Venice (London, 1973), pp. 346–78; Cowan, Urban Patriciate, pp. 195–203; Borelli, ‘Patriziato’, 79–95; G. Gullino, ’Un problema aperto: Venezia e il tardo feudalismo’, Studi Veneziani 7 (1983): 183–96; S.J. Woolf, ‘Venice and the Terraferma: Problems of the Change from Commercial to Landed Activities’, in B. Pullan (ed.), Crisis and Change in the Venetian Economy (London, 1968), pp. 175–203.


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Genoa as cities in which long-distance trade was the foundation of their elites. Their default position, however, was that trade was not a civilised practice worthy of a gentleman and that merchants should be ranged alongside arte meccanica. Muzio’s Il Gentilhuomo, published in Venice in 1571, illustrates this perfectly. A noble merchant was a man who engaged in trade for the common good, who carried this out in a supervisory capacity, and who sold all his goods at a just price, without taking any illicit profits. This should permit him to live like a gentleman. On the other hand, Muzio identified ‘sordid trade’ as retail trade motivated by greed.38 Lanteri drew a different distinction, based on the extent to which men were engaged in trading activities. In his view, men who were fully engaged in trade were mechanicals, while those who combined trading with other, gentlemanly activities, and were therefore at a distance from this kind of behaviour, could be considered gentlemen.39 This willingness to include both merchants and landowners in the same social bracket was also reflected in Orazio Ferrari’s marriage conduct book, Fido Conseglio, published in 1632, and in the general patterns of recruitment to convents admitting only high-status women. In his discussion of the importance of good health to wives and husbands, he warned that a sick man would be unable to conduct his business. ‘All men, whether they are responsible for land or commerce must not catch cold … but ensure that their ship travels in security’.40 Both authors, along with many other commentators, placed their main emphasis on more traditional criteria for nobility. On the other hand, these traditional criteria themselves contained an inherent tension between inherited noble status and the virtues which might allow a man to become a noble even if he had been born a commoner. The need to resolve these differences arose from the reality that many elites were admitting newcomers from below. Commentators failed to agree on a single solution to this phenomenon. Some, like Muzio, insisted that noble families of long-standing were more authentically noble than any newcomers, but also accepted that noble virtues could be seen in individuals who had not inherited a noble status but displayed these virtues through military prowess. ‘Nobility is natural and not civile. It should be recognised in a person and not his forebears. If someone demonstrates nobility in himself, we should not wait three or four generations.’41 Definitions of nobility were often accompanied by discussions of where the line should be drawn between the noble and the non-noble. From the perspective of the Venetian prove di nobiltà, theoretical writings about the capacity of a woman to transmit nobility were particularly important. On the one hand, a nobly born woman could not transmit nobility on her own account if she married below her. Hereditary status was expected to pass 38

G. Muzio, Il Gentilhuomo (Venice, 1571), ‘Mercatantia’, pp. 128–30. G. Lanteri, Della Economica (Venice, 1560), ‘Differenza tra mercante e mecanica’. 40 O. Ferrari, Fido conseglio ne gli sposalitii, libri tre, avanti le nozze, nelle nozze, doppo le nozze. Opera utilissima, e curiosissima per le persone vergine, maritate, vedove (Moderna, 1628), p. 61. For recruitment to convents in northern and central Italy, see G. Zarri, Recinto: donne, clausura e matrimonio nella prima età moderna (Bologna, 2000), pp. 56–8. 41 Muzio, Il Gentilhuomo, p. 136. 39


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through the male line.42 On the other, the same writer argued that since the mother provided a child’s blood, if she was of non-noble birth, this then placed the child’s status in question. A child of a noble father and a non-noble mother had the least claim to be considered as a noble.43 The old debates about the criteria for nobility resurfaced in Venice in both 1645 and 1684, when the senate was faced with the choice between admitting lower status families in return for large donations to the war chest against the Turks, and of losing territory as the price for maintaining the purity of the caste. Introducing new blood to compensate for falling numbers of patricians was also a major consideration. The debates were particularly intense in 1645 and 1646 because this was the first time that the principles on which the patriciate had been founded had been put into serious question. While the law of 1589 may have been drawn up to exclude certain women from the patriciate, it also confirmed the principle that non-patricians could give birth to sons with the right to sit on the Great Council. This made it more difficult to assert in the 1640s that non-patrician families did not possess the qualities necessary for inclusion in the patriciate. The positions of the main protagonists, NH Angelo Michiel, an Avogador di Comun, who opposed the proposal to admit newcomers, and the Ducal Councillor, NH Giacomo Marcello, have been studied in detail by Dorit Raines.44 Interestingly enough, they did not disagree in the terms of whether men could become nobles or could only be born noble. There were increasing examples elsewhere of men rising into the nobility. On the other hand, the practice of selling office to wealthy men who had nothing else to recommend them than their capacity to pay, worried Michiel because he believed that there was no consistency between owning great wealth and a capacity for noble behaviour. He chose the alternative criterion of nobility as a reflection of virtue, illustrated by meritorious behaviour. Marcello was equally quick to argue that the proposal to admit a small group of families who had offered a large sum of money should not be interpreted as the equivalent to the sale of offices in France or Spain. There was nothing contractual here. Instead, the Doge should graciously accept the offers and as a mark of his gratitude confer patrician status on them on behalf of all patricians.45 The proposal was rejected, but the principle of offering patrician status by grace (grazia) was adopted on a piecemeal basis.

42

Muzio, Il Gentilhuomo, pp. 139–40. Muzio, Il Gentilhuomo, pp. 189–90. Muzio wrote approvingly of the Venetian law of 1422, which stated that the sons of patricians and women of lowly condition could not become nobles. 44 NH (Nobil Homo) was the common prefix used in Venice to identify a male patrician. The feminine equivalent was ND (Nobil Donna). They are also used for this purpose throughout the book as a form of shorthand identification. 45 D. Raines, ‘Pouvoir ou privilèges nobiliaires. Le dilemme du patriciat vénitien face aux aggrégations du xviie siècle’, Annales: économies, sociétés, civilisations 46 (1991): 827–47. 43


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Aims and Objectives This book sets out to examine upward social mobility through marriage in early modern Venice. This was a process which had considerable implications for a hereditary elite which was collectively determined to maintain its reputation for purity at all costs but whose members individually undermined its closed nature by seeking wives and dowries from outside. The men who married outsider brides were only a minority, but the potential for disruption within the elite was strong enough for legislation to be passed in 1589 to control the process and exclude undesirable women. The process by which this was carried out forms the backbone of this book, but the issues which this source material addresses range far more widely than administrative procedures. On the one hand, it considers the implications for social differentiation within Venetian society, particularly between the ruling patriciate and those families below them who aspired to be associated with them and to pull away from their contemporaries. The presence of aspirant families from the subject elites within the Venetian mainland empire raises equally important questions about their own relationships with the ruling elite. Given that increasing numbers of families of both kinds were becoming related to patricians over time through marriage, some, but not all of the social differences were being put into question. A further implication is that this increase in marriages contracted with outsiders may have undermined a complex system of dowry exchanges within an endogamous framework.46 It is not possible to discuss this process of upward social mobility through marriage and patrician responses to it without considering the importance of marriage itself in the context of relationships between patricians and non-patricians. Marriage is considered here as two separate, but linked phenomena. The investigations carried out by the Avogaria di Comun concerned prospective marriages rather than the functioning of marriages once the wedding ceremonies had been completed. One might almost argue that the sole concern of the legislation and the investigations which flowed from it was neither marriage in prospect nor marriage in reality, but its function to procreate legitimate sons who would ensure the continuity of the patriciate and of the Venetian political system by sitting as members of the Great Council.47 For the Avogadori carrying out the investigations, the families of the proposed couple and the witnesses who were interviewed, however, there was a much wider recognition of the place of marriage as a facilitating mechanism within Venetian society, and it is this theme above all which runs alongside questions of social mobility and social exclusivity in this book. The social significance of marriage in Venice needs to be considered in a further context illustrated by two inter-related concerns about sexual morality. 46 This lies at the heart of the arguments presented in J. Sperling, Convents and the Body Politic in Late Renaissance Venice (Chicago, 1999), see p. 6 in particular. 47 S. Chojnacki, ‘ “The Most Serious Duty”: Motherhood, Gender and Patrician Culture’, in S. Chojnacki, Women and Men in Renaissance Venice: Twelve Essays on Patrician Society (Baltimore, 2000), pp. 169–82.


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The criteria used by the law of 1589 to test applicants to marry patricians listed the requirement that both the applicant and her mother must have lived modestly and honourably.48 It was incumbent on the investigators to screen out anyone whose past or existing behaviour broke strict moral laws, a particularly important issue in the case of widows wishing to marry into the patriciate. An exception was made tacitly in the case of the natural daughters of patricians, who were a significant category among applicants. Fourteen per cent of all applicants had patrician fathers. Most of them were illegitimate. Their fathers had been living in concubinage with women of a lower social status and had consequently broken the same moral code as the women whom the laws were designed to exclude. Their own status was enough in most cases to counterbalance any potential social and moral disadvantages. From the perspective of historical enquiry however, the practice of concubinage opens up important questions about the sexual behaviour of patricians and others and about the social acceptability of the households which were created as a result. This, in turn raises wider questions on the one hand about patricians’ sexual behaviour and its implications in a city which was renowned for its prostitution, and on the other about the shifting categories occupied by women outside a secure marital framework.49 Much Venetian legislation passed to control the entry of men into the Great Council was intended to reinforce the authority of the ruling patriciate by maintaining high standards of gentility. Like their contemporaries, the Venetians saw this kind of authority as predicated by the division between rulers and subjects. This book allows us to examine the context if not the fine detail of an equally important set of power relationships through vertical in addition to lateral networks. The groundwork for this approach lies in the work of the German historian, Wolfgang Reinhard, in his study of the Roman elite at the turn of the sixteenth century.50 He argued that wealth and office-holding were less important in the exercise of authority and high status than self-balancing networks among the elite, and that these networks were complemented by others based on clientage. Relationships through marriage between patricians and those below them in Venetian society were also an important element in this context. They were not the only forms of clientage. The dominance of neighbourhoods by patrician palaces is well known, as are

48

AdC 108. See M. Roche, ‘Gender and Sexual Culture in Renaissance Italy’, in J. Brown and R.C. Davis (eds), Gender and Society in Renaissance Italy (London, 1995), pp. 150–70; G. Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice (New York and Oxford, 1985); N. Davidson, ‘Theology, Nature and the Law: Sexual Sin and Sexual Crime in Italy from the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth Century’, in T. Dean and K. Lowe (eds), Crime, Society and the Law in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 74–98; L. Ferrante, ‘La sessualità come risorsa. Donne davanti al foro arcivescovile di Bologna (sec XVII)’, Mélanges de l’Ecole Française de Rome (Moyen Age–Temps Modernes) 99 (1987): 989–1016. 50 W. Reinhard, Freunde und Kreaturen. ‘Verflechtung’ als Konzept zur Erforschung historischer Führrungsgruppen. Römische Oligarchie um 1600 (Munich, 1979). See also Häberlein, ‘Sozialer Wandel’, pp. 73–82. 49


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the relationships between patricians and others in the major confraternities, the Scuole Grandi.51 These issues can be focused into a number of more specific questions which this study endeavours to clarify. The investigations carried out by the Avogaria into the prove di nobiltà submitted by women wishing to marry into the patriciate enable us to establish the social range, geographical origins, age, marital status and occupational backgrounds of the women and their families. In many cases, we can also use their baptismal information to establish their ages at the point at which a marriage had been arranged and their supplica had been submitted. These patterns can be corroborated and in some cases reinforced by a second category of cases considered by the Avogadori, in which patricians who had married outsider brides without having received prior permission to register their marriages, petitioned the magistrates for permission to do so subsequently.52 Identifying the families of applicants as members of the Terraferma nobility, as in the case of Prudentia Bonzanino with which this chapter begins, enables us to consider not only how these families presented themselves but also how patricians regarded members of an elite group which shared much of their own behaviour in terms of life-style, social position and ideology, but occupied a subsidiary position in political terms. Identifying the families as Venetian citizens (cittadini), on the other hand, opens up an area of debate over whether this social category, which for so long has been a basis in historiography for describing Venetian society in tripartite terms (nobles, citizens, common people), is a useful way of describing the upper levels of Venetian society.53 Following the work of Bellavitis, Casini, Zannini and Grubb in particular, the evidence that there was a broader range of merchants, lawyers and rentiers in Venice from whom patricians chose their brides, supports a case that the cittadini should be in many ways subsumed into a more amorphous category.54 These are referred to in this study as huomini civili.

51 J.-F. Chauvard, ‘Pour une histoire dynamique de la propriété vénitienne. L’exemple de la paroisse de San Polo (XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles)’, Mélanges de Ecole Française de Rome 111 (1999): 7–72 (18–23); B. Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice: The Social Institutions of a Catholic State, until 1630 (Oxford, 1971), part I. 52 A strong incentive for these retrospective applications was the simultaneous registration of their marriages with the formal recognition of their sons as patricians with the right to sit on the Great Council when they came of age. 53 For contemporary views of Venetian society, see the Relazione of the Conte di Bedmar (Correr, Donà 448/19) and Giannotti’s comments in his Della Repubblica de’ Veneziani, cited in G. Trebbi, ‘I diritti di Cittadinanza nelle repubbliche italiane dalla prima età moderna: gli esempi di Venezia e di Firenze’, in G.M. Favaretto (ed.), Cittadinanze (Trieste, 2001), pp. 135–81 (159). 54 M Casini, ‘La cittadinanza originaria a Venezia tra i secoli XV e XVI. Una linea interpretativa’, in Studi Offerti a Gaetano Cozzi (Venice, 1992), pp. 133–50; A. Zannini, Burocrazia e burocrati in Venezia in età moderna: i cittadini originari (sec. XVI–XVIII) (Venice, 1993); A. Zannini,‘La presenza borghese’, in G. Benzoni and G. Cozzi (eds), Storia di Venezia dalle Origine alla Caduta della Serenissima (Rome 1997), vol. 7, pp. 225–72; J. Grubb, ‘Elite Citizens’, in Martin and Romano (eds), Venice Reconsidered, pp. 339–64; A. Bellavitis, Identité, mariage, mobilité sociale. Citoyennes et citoyens à Venise au xvie siècle (Rome, 2001).

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The prove di nobiltà were only part of an extended process, during which written depositions and evidence were considered and the oral testimony of two groups of witnesses, those nominated by the applicant’s family and those recruited independently by the Avogadori, was obtained. It was then incumbent on the Avogadori to come to a collective decision, in which individual dissenting views could also be recorded, before forwarding the case to the Collegio, a small body of prominent men numbering either nine or ten depending on the presence of the Doge. The final resolution of each case was then determined by voting in the Collegio. To the applicant families, these votes determined whether or not their projected marriage would be registered by the Avogaria di Comun, permitting any sons subsequently born of the marriage to take their place on the Great Council as patricians. For our purposes, these decisions are less significant than the evidence for social attitudes and prejudices which arise from the ways in which the witnesses were questioned, the testimony which was given, and the responses of the Avogadori themselves. The Avogadori considered with great seriousness their role as guarantors that Venetian law was being fully applied to protect the nature and interests of the republic.55 In some cases, however, their recommendations were not respected by the Collegio. In others, their actions during the investigations brought them to a premature close. It is therefore only by examining each investigation with care that many of the nuances and ambiguities of social distinction and attitudes about moral behaviour can be discussed in any detail. These ambiguities were particularly apparent in their consideration of one of the most important tests of social acceptability, whether or not the applicant’s father or grandfathers had been associated with arte meccanica, and consequently lacked the qualities of civility. The Organisation of the Book In order to explore these issues, the book has been organised into seven further chapters. ‘The Avogaria di Comun and the Prove di Nobiltà’ provides a context for the analysis of the evidence arising from the prove di nobiltà, focusing first on the law of 1589 and its successors and then on the nature of the individual cases, the strategies used by the applicants and their families to put their cases as convincingly as possible, and the actions taken by the magistrates to evaluate these cases by selecting and interviewing additional witnesses. It considers the solutions found by the magistrates to three major practical difficulties: applicants who lived far from Venice, older applicants whose fathers and grandfathers had been active economically many years before, and whether or not to accept hearsay evidence. When applicants lived a considerable distance from Venice, it was not always possible to find witnesses in the city who were 55 I. Cacciavillani, Storia dell’avvocatura veneziana (Venice, 2001), pp. 104–143; G. Cozzi, ‘Note sopra l’Avogaria di Comun’, in Tagliaferri (ed.), Venezia e la Terraferma, pp. 547–57. See also A. Viggiano, ‘Istituzioni e politica del diritto nello stato territoriale Veneto del quattrocento’, in Berlinguer and Colao (eds), Crimine, giustizia e società, pp. 309–356.


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sufficiently informed about them and their families to be able to provide enough information. Solutions included asking Venetian officials in the relevant areas to interview witnesses on their behalf, or arranging for Avogadori travelling on other official business to carry out the interviews. The search for information from the distant past was even more problematic. Most potentially wellinformed witnesses had long since died or had moved away. It is a sign of the tenacity of the Avogadori and their commitment to obtain information about all three generations of an applicant’s family as required by the law of 1589 that they sought out as many elderly men in the relevant parishes as possible to build up a picture of what had been. The issue of whether or not to accept hearsay evidence was fairly easily resolved. If it corroborated or extended information already in their possession, it was accepted without question. If, on the other hand, it was unclear or suspect, witnesses were put under pressure to say more. The veracity of the witnesses is also a matter for consideration and opens the way to a more extended discussion of the methodological difficulties of interpreting evidence of this kind. Given that applicants were asked to list witnesses who could be interviewed to corroborate individual statements in their petitions, it was to be expected that they would in some ways embellish the facts or at least do their best to present them in the most favourable way. This in itself is also indicative of attitudes and conventions and has much potential for analysis. Comparing their testimonies with those of the witnesses who were selected independently permits the judgment that they were guiltier of the sin of omission than of commission. It is also clear from some of the lines of questioning by the magistrates that they did not rely exclusively on the written and oral testimony before them but drew on other knowledge in their possession. This also raises the question whether, given the considerable matters at stake as a result of the investigations, the magistrates were subject to external pressures to come to a particular recommendation. Corruption of judges was not entirely unknown in Venice.56 The chapter on ‘Outsider Brides and Their Families’ sets out the statistical basis for patterns of applications for the registration of outsider brides between the passage of the law of 1589 and the end of the seventeenth century. These are based on analyses of two databases constructed from information in the files of the prove di nobiltà, one concerned with standard applications and the other with applications for retrospective registration by patricians who had already married outsider brides. It considers the extent to which these patterns can be accepted as an accurate reflection of the total number of applications made as opposed to those which have been conserved in the records of the Avogaria di Comun at the Venetian state archives, and concludes that there are lacunae between 1589 and 1639, and for this reason more emphasis should be placed on trends than on precise statistical data. On the other hand, the substantial scale of the prove, 484 cases over the entire period, complemented by a further 87 cases in which patricians requested the retrospective registration 56 G. Cozzi, Giustizia ‘contaminata’. Vicende giudiziarie di nobili ed ebrei nella Venezia del Seicento (Venice, 1996).

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of their marriage to outsider wives, may be said to provide a solid basis for this discussion. The chapter first places the overall numbers of prove in the context of all the patrician marriages registered by the Avogaria to establish the scale of marrying out, before considering changes over time, the social backgrounds of applicants and their geographical origins. A third section examines the women in greater detail, whether they had been married before, their ages in the year in which their suppliche were submitted, and whether they were fatherless at the time of application. The final part of the chapter is devoted to two issues: the extent to which applications succeeded or failed, and the reasons why some patricians still chose to marry outsider brides in spite of their failure to obtain official approval for them. Calculating the success and failure rates of applications establishes both why certain cases failed and whether there is any evidence of a softening or hardening of attitudes of the Avogadori during the period under discussion. It also permits the consideration of the reasons why applications were withdrawn before any official conclusions had been drawn. They, too, must be considered as rejections even though the Collegio were never given an opportunity to vote on them. The fourth chapter, ‘Huomini Civili and Patrician Marriage’, focuses on a specific aspect of the data concerning the social background of applicant families identified in ‘Outsider Brides’, the significant presence of lawyers, merchants, doctors, high-level administrators, rentiers and nobles from inside and outside the Venetian territories. It examines these social groups in greater detail in order to establish why the social background of these women should have been considered appropriate by Venetian patricians, given the wellestablished social distinctions in use at that time, which placed the patriciate in an exalted position. It argues that each of these social or occupational groups belonged to a category which we may call huomini civili, to borrow a term already in circulation in seventeenth-century Venice. In other words, Venetian patricians recognised that they did not have a monopoly of the qualities of ‘civility’, even within their own society, and that this permitted them to consider other families as ideologically sound and worthy of associating with through marriage. This attitude also enabled them to come to terms with the paradox that while sixteenth-century legislation created an increasingly clear social distinction between those who were cittadini and those who were not, in reality, this distinction was blurred by men who shared almost everything with the cittadini but lacked the all-important criterion of long residence in Venice. Social relationships were not only created as a result of theoretical rules and distinctions. The testimonies given to the Avogadori clearly document in detail how the complex of relationships between patricians and non-patricians created an environment in which families got to know each other and came to accept each other as worthy of closer relationships. The incremental association of some patricians with outsider families through marriage, which is also documented over time through the prove di nobiltà, also established social networks which generated new relationships of this kind.


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The chapter on ‘The Social Dimensions of Acceptability’ approaches the issue of social differentiation from a different perspective. As we have seen, one common characteristic of the definition of nobility across early modern Europe was the absence of any association with arte meccanica, the vile and mechanical arts. Opinions differed over whether or not to include men engaged in trade among the mechanicals and consequently to exclude them from any possible association by marriage with nobles. The Brescian, Giacomo Lanteri, devoted an entire section of his treatise Della Economia to the difference between mercanzia and mecanica.57 The law of 1589 was explicit that no woman would be accepted as the wife of a patrician if there were any evidence of arte meccanica in the activities of either her father or grandfathers. The presence or absence of arte meccanica would therefore seem to have been the acid test for social acceptability in a city where wealth and high status had been based on the profits of long-distance trade in the Middle Ages. This chapter illustrates more than any other not only that the lines between trade and arte meccanica were blurred but that neither magistrates nor witnesses were entirely agreed about the precise dividing lines between behaviour which was civile and that which was not. Two areas were particularly contested: whether a man who owned a shop could ever engage in practical selling in a way which involved handling his goods, and whether a man’s current status could be affected by his activities in the past. Differences in specific occupations and evidence of whether there was any hardening or softening of attitudes over time are also considered here. The final three chapters, ‘Concubinage and Natural Daughters’, ‘Gender and Honourable and Dishonourable Behaviour’ and ‘Marriage and the Patriciate’, bring together a consideration of the place of marriage in the lives of Venetian patricians from several different perspectives. They are as much about relationships outside marriage as they are about the burgeoning significance of marriage to patrician families and to that minority of male patricians who took wives at all. They argue on the one hand that marriage was of paramount importance to patricians in Venice, as elsewhere in Italy, as a means of circulating wealth, reinforcing or enhancing social and political relationships, and as a context for the legitimate procreation of male and female children. The prove di nobiltà were evidence in themselves of the particular significance of the social status of outsider brides given that patrician status was transmitted down the legitimate male line from one generation to the next. Even the admission of new families by purchase did little to alter this essential factor. Successful applicants purchased the right to pass on their new status to all legitimate male descendents in the same way. But this section of the book is also about alternatives to patrician marriage and their implications for the general place of women in Venetian society. There is widespread evidence that patricians, a minority of them married men, either lived in a household with women of lower status to whom they were not formally married, or established

57

Lanteri, Della Economica, pp. 94–5.

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women elsewhere under their exclusive protection.58 The names of natural (illegitimate) sons and daughters of patricians recur in many contemporary documents, including those of the prove di nobiltà. The presence of natural daughters is of particular significance in this context because their patrician fathers chose to reintegrate them within the patriciate by arranging marriages with patrician husbands, thus raising issues about the comparative importance or unimportance of the fact that their parents had been living in concubinage given their fathers’ status as full members of the elite. ‘Concubinage and Natural Daughters’ explores these issues from the practical perspective of the arguments put forward by patrician fathers in the suppliche submitted on behalf of their daughters and measures the responses of the Avogadori when faced with cases of this kind, particularly as many of the patrician fathers would have been known to them personally. At the same time, because the applications present a considerable amount of information about patrician concubines and their relationships with patrician sponsors of natural daughters, this chapter explores the world of patrician concubinage, seen from the perspective of the patricians themselves and their friends, and that of the community at large. The frequent use of the term come se fosse sua moglie (‘as if she were really his wife’) by witnesses from the lower levels of society is indicative of the way in which contemporaries integrated concubinal relationships into a society in which Christian marriage was the norm. Three different protagonists are considered at this point: the patricians who chose to develop concubinal relationships and subsequently to promote their natural daughters as potential wives for other patricians, the natural daughters themselves and the women who became patrician concubines. The natural daughters had an almost ephemeral existence in Venetian society, even more so than their legitimate female relatives, and were kept out of sight in their fathers’ homes or as schoolgirls in convents. They were often separated from their mothers at a comparatively early age when their fathers chose to end the concubinal relationship. The social origins of the concubines, the circumstances in which they entered these physical relationships, and above all the inherent instability of such relationships are all considered in detail. The successful presentation of a natural daughter for a prova di nobiltà was far from a foregone conclusion, and the richness of testimony collected here and the detailed interest on the part of the magistrates in the fine detail of concubinal relationships permits us to develop a more nuanced analysis of this shadowy world of relationships between men and women outside marriage. It is clear that what seems to have been almost a joint act of conceptual blindness on the part of the patrician fathers and the magistrates did not completely hide the full range of these relationships and their social and moral significance. A fiction was created which effectively likened concubines to 58 G. Martini, ‘La donna veneziana del ’600 tra sessualità legittima ed illegittima: alcune riflessioni sul concubinato’, Atti dell’Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti 145 (1986–87): 301–339; A. Cowan, ‘Patricians and Partners in early modern Venice’, in T. Madden and E. Kittell (eds), Medieval and Renaissance Venice (Chicago, 1999), pp. 276–93.


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wives. Like nubile girls, these had all been all young virgins, who subsequently had an exclusive relationship with the man who had taken their virginity. This made a clear distinction between the mothers of girls who might be considered as the wives of patricians and anyone else whose behaviour might not conform to the high level of moral and behavioural propriety required by the law of 1589. All applicants were expected to demonstrate that both they and their mothers ‘lived modestly and honourably’. Any suggestion that this might not have been the case led to more intensive investigations and much debate among the magistrates and uncertainty among the voters in the Collegio. The life-experience of some of the women who became patrician concubines did not accord with the ideal model set before the Avogadori, either before they began a relationship with a patrician, or, in some cases after the relationship had come to an end. The same conditions also applied to other women who had not been living in a concubinal relationship with a patrician but who were considered by the Avogadori. Some were applicants themselves, whose widowed status raised a number of questions about their moral reputations, given the widespread acceptance of a polarity between chaste and lusty widows. Others were the mothers of applicants, whose moral behaviour was also a matter of concern. The chapter on ‘Gender and Honourable and Dishonourable Behaviour’ places this conceptual polarity alongside the evidence from detailed testimonies and explores the more complex world of Venetian sexual relationships in which women negotiated their way through a difficult and uncertain world in order to obtain a degree of security and protection.59 The world of prostitution which was presented by contemporaries and historians alike alternatively in a glamorous light or with an emphasis on its inherent seediness here receives a more rounded analysis which seeks to integrate it into the broader discussion of marriage and concubinage.60 The final chapter in this section, ‘Marriage and the Patriciate’ attempts to draw together the two strands in this book, by examining the making of patrician marriages, the roles of dowries and inheritance in the choice of brides, with special reference to non-patricians, and the wider implications of upward social mobility through marriage. It draws on the growing historiography of Counter-Reformation marriage in order to place the detailed conclusions of this study within this broader context and considers the relative roles of secular and ecclesiastical considerations and jurisdictions in the extended ceremonies which took place. Much of the evidence for this chapter draws on the retrospective applications for registrations rather than the standard prove. The primary evidence for such registrations depended on testimony from guests at the weddings to demonstrate that a ceremony had taken place and that consequently any sons born within the couple were legitimate. The preference of houses rather than churches as the location for the exchange 59 See, for example, D. Hacke, Women, Sex and Marriage in Early Modern Venice (Aldershot, 2004); and M. Chojnacka, Working Women of Early Modern Venice (Baltimore, 2001). 60 See, for example, the comments by the English visitor, Thomas Coryat, Coryat’s Crudities (Glasgow, 1905), vol. 1, pp. 401–403; and the discussion in M.F. Rosenthal, The Honest Courtesan: Veronica Franco, Citizen and Writer in Sixteenth-Century Venice (Chicago, 1992).

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of promises before a priest and witnesses suggests that in the circles of the Venetian patriciate at least, the Tridentine emphasis on a church location for weddings was less important. The chapter also considers the prevalence and reception of bridal pregnancy and enables us to draw a distinction between brides who were pregnant at the time the promises were exchanged, and those who had become pregnant because couples began to cohabit at this point, before the priestly blessing had been given in a separate ceremony. This again, ran counter to the Tridentine doctrine which required couples to consummate their marriages only after the priestly blessing. The broader communal interest in impending marriages is also considered. As major life-cycle events, news of them was circulated among neighbours and fellow-parishioners, both through gossip and the saying of banns during the period immediately before the exchange of promises. Witness testimony demonstrates how much interest was aroused, to the extent that neighbours sometimes believed that a marriage had already taken place when this was not so. Expectation was a powerful aid to the imagination. It also arose from the same strong sense of shared communal values about marriage which had encouraged friends and neighbours of concubinal couples to assume that they were man and wife.

CHAPTER TWO

The Avogaria di Comun and the Prove di Nobiltà The detailed discussion of the prove di nobiltà begins with a consideration of the institution which carried them out, the ways in which this was done and the nature of the evidence which was thrown up by these investigations. Perhaps its is because these records are so rich in detail and convey an immediacy which is rare in contemporary sources that it is necessary to spend some time over methodological considerations. In the past 10 years, investigations carried out by Italian courts both secular and ecclesiastical have come to be recognised as a major source for the social history of the early modern period.1 In methodological terms, it is generally agreed that there are pitfalls in using such sources uncritically, a subject which has been discussed at length by Silvana Seidel-Menchi.2 Although there are considerable differences between the nature of the sources generated by ecclesiastical courts concerned with matrimonial matters, and the Avogaria investigations on which this book is based, this study equally requires an examination of the origins, the organisation and the process by which the investigations were carried out in order to understand the nature of the evidence and the uses to which it may be put. Seidel-Menchi and the other members of her research team were concerned with ecclesiastical courts where two parties confronted each other before a judge in order to persuade him of the justice of their claims.3 The prove di nobiltà, on the other hand, were secular investigations in which the chief protagonists, the women who had applied for permission to marry a patrician were notable by their physical absence from the investigations, and the role of the magistrates was to examine the evidence and not to come to a binding judgment. The applicants were represented by a written statement, supported by other written evidence, and by males who chose or were appointed to liaise with the magistrates. The nature of the evidence was therefore different from the matrimonial courts. A second major difference was the ‘passive’ nature of the ecclesiastical cases, in the sense that 1 See, for example, J. Ferraro, Marriage Wars in Late Renaissance Venice (Oxford, 2001); Hacke, Women, Sex and Marriage; and the excellent trio of collections edited by S. Seidel-Menchi and D. Quaglioni, Coniugi nemici. La separazione in Italia dal XII al XVIII secolo (Bologna, 2000); Matrimoni in dubbio. Unioni controverse e nozze clandestine in Italia dal XIV al XVIII secolo (Bologna, 2000); and Trasgressioni. 2 S. Seidel-Menchi, ‘I processi matrimoniali come fonte storica’, in Seidel-Menchi and Quaglioni (eds), Coniugi nemici, pp. 15–94. 3 Seidel-Menchi, ‘I processi matrimoniali’, pp. 59–63.

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the judges listened to the evidence and came to their conclusions. The first part of the Avogaria investigations was equally passive. The contrast arises in the second, and usually the longer part of their investigations during which the Avogadori selected an independent group of witnesses and interrogated them in order to elucidate the claims made by oral testimony in support of a supplica. In both cases, however, the structure of a judicial investigation provided an essential framework for an understanding of the nature of the sources which they generated. This was a non-confrontational process, an Inquisitio,4 although occasionally a hesitant or recalcitrant witness needed to be reminded that they were in the presence of the law.5 Joanne Ferraro’s study of applications for separation or annulment before the church courts in Venice provides a second methodological approach. It is predicated on the idea that the evidence that was presented to the court should not be treated as an accurate reflection of events that had taken place, but as a series of narratives designed to make a case for one side or the other.6 These ‘fictions’ had an important social reality in themselves which is of considerable importance to the social and cultural historian.7 They corresponded to a set of social constructs which were developed by the judges but were also widely shared across Venetian society. The adulterous husband who left his wife without enough income with which to dress or feed her family was a character who was as widely recognised in neighbourhood gossip as it was inside the ecclesiastical or secular court.8 This approach is equally valid in terms of the Avogaria investigations. Only very selective information was required to meet the criteria for social acceptability established by Venetian law. A woman had to be legitimate, unless the natural daughter of a patrician. Her family should not have been associated with arte meccanica et manuale over three generations. Her father and grandfathers had to have no criminal record, and she and her mother had to live according to the highest standards of morality.9 Judgments were made according to these criteria, and consequently a narrative was developed by the applicant and her advisors in accordance with the wider social constructs of legitimacy, respectability and sexual purity. During the interviews with the witnesses chosen by the Avogadori, a second set of social constructs also emerged, overlapping but inter-cutting those shared by the applicants and their judges. These are equally important to an understanding of Venetian society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 4 There are some parallels between the approach of the Avogadori, secular judges and those taken by the Venetian Inquisition but there was a element of confrontation in the latter. See B. Pullan, The Jews of Europe and the Inquisition of Venice 1550–1670 (Oxford, 1983), pp. 109– 116. 5 When Piero Ridoli di Piero, a clerk at the Arsenal, showed some uncertainty about the moral reputation of one Anzola Giudati, he was told that ‘the Law (la Giustizia) desires more precise information’ (AdC 237/87, 1691). 6 Ferraro, Marriage Wars, pp. 6–7. 7 N.Z. Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France (Cambridge, 1987). 8 See Hacke, Women, for corresponding investigations in the secular Giudice de Petizion. 9 See below, pp. 29–30.

THE AVOGARIA DI COMUN AND THE PROVE DI NOBILTÀ

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This study is not exclusively concerned with social constructs, however, and the use of the term ‘fiction’ in this context must be treated with caution. Many witnesses, mostly those chosen by the Avogadori, and largely drawn from below the patriciate, provided details of behaviour and practices which we may be confident took place. In these cases, the written record was preceded with the Latin word dicens, indicating that the witness had gone beyond an answer to the question which had been put to them.10 The written record is also reassuring in the sense that there was no linguistic filter between the witness testimony as spoken and the language in which it was recorded. While many court records elsewhere suffer from translations into Latin or reformulation in the words of an educated scribe or notary.11 Venetian records reflected the mixture of Venetian dialect and standard Italian which was spoken by people of all social levels. Thus we find Alvise di Balbi, a ferryman at San Marcuola on the Grand Canal, explaining that he was unsure whether the daughters of NH Vettor Priuli, were legitimate or not in the words: Mi non so se siano legitime o naturale. Another boatman recounted how it was said that his late master’s widow was courted by the secretary of the Imperial ambassador, whose name he did not know, (Doppo, ch’è vedova se diceva che il Segretario dell’Imperador, che non ghe sò il nome ghe facesse l’amor).12 From a methodological point of view, too, there are important parallels between the Avogaria testimony and the pitfalls and benefits of contemporary studies using oral history. Some of the questions require the respondent to remember a much earlier time in order to provide information about an applicant’s grandfather. While the accuracy of such memories may have been limited, the specific cases recalled by a witness and the terms in which he or she expressed them are of considerable interest in themselves. The structure of the interview is dictated by the questioner, and while some of the responses may be shaped by an assumption of what the questioner wishes to hear about that subject, others, because of a misunderstanding, or simply a pleasure in speaking, go beyond what is wanted and follow the respondent’s own concerns. Often what was being offered was a micro-autobiography, one which was shaped both by the context in which the witness recalled past events and by the context in which this took place.13 In common with the best practice of oral historians carrying out interviews, the Avogadori often asked open10 Marcantonio Stella was interviewed about the merchant Antonio Cima in 1599. When he was asked if he sold goods personally in his shop, Stella replied that: ‘He sold goods and organised others to sell them’. The record then states dicens: ‘He was the boss’ (AdC 304). 11 This has come to be seen as one of the major methodological weaknesses of Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s study of Cathar heresy in Montaillou, which is based on Inquisition records in Latin used by scribes to represent evidence given in Occitan. Montaillou: Catholics and Cathars in a French village, 1294–1324 (London, 1978). 12 ‘Later on when she became a widow, it was said that the Secretary of the Emperor, whose name I do not know, courted her’, AdC 211/67, 1647, case of Camilla Spina; AdC 207/75, 1642. 13 See R.J. Grele, ‘ Movement without Aim: Methodological and Theoretical Problems in Oral History’, in R. Perks and A. Thompson (eds), The Oral History Reader (London, 1998), pp. 38–52, esp. pp. 41–5. For an introduction to language analyses by sociolinguists, see L.

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ended questions in order to find the answers they were seeking. On the other hand, they combined these with specific questions when they were pursuing a particular matter about which they already had information.14 From the historian’s perspective, it is often this final type of testimony which is the most interesting, alongside the interstitial evidence that has been introduced in relation to an entirely different subject. The Magistracy of the Avogaria di Comun and Its Investigations The prove di nobiltà took place in the offices of the Avogaria di Comun in the Ducal Palace, close to one of the corridors linking the palace with the prison across the Bridge of Sighs. They were carried out by the Avogadori di Comun, patrician magistrates elected from among the members of the Maggior Consiglio, aided by a staff of notaries, clerks and fanti, minor officials whose task it was to bring witnesses to the magistracy for interrogation. In terms of the overall workload and responsibilities of the Avogaria, these investigations only represented a part of the magistrates’ workload. Even at the height of applications to marry into the patriciate in the 1640s and 1650s they were dealing with an average of six cases per year, supplemented by smaller numbers of applications for marriages to be registered retrospectively, and applications by the male descendants of patricians to be allowed to become members of the Maggior Consiglio. The length of time devoted to these cases varied considerably. Some were settled within a few weeks. Others lasted years.15 As members of the Avogaria di Comun, the patrician Avogadori had many other responsibilities, whose procedures and objectives impinged on the seriousness with which they took their responsibilities and reinforced their attitudes about standards of social distinction and moral behaviour. The history of the magistracy mirrored that of many of the older institutions of the Venetian Republic. The original purposes for which it was set up were eroded over time and given to newer institutions, while aspects of its original remit proliferated.16 As the name suggests, the Avogadori were state lawyers. According to Paolo Morosini, writing in the mid-fifteenth century, they were the supreme Venetian court, with overall oversight over legislation once it had been passed. No law could be passed by the Senato unless an Avogador was present.17 Some of their investigative powers waned in the later fifteenth Wright, ‘Speaking and Listening in Early Modern London’, in A. Cowan and J. Steward (eds), The City and the Senses: Urban Culture in Western Europe from 1500 (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 60–74. 14 See Appendices 1 and 2 for extended transcripts of interviews. 15 Achille Dondiorologio married Isabetta Conti in 1661 but only applied to register their marriage 6 years later. The final decision to allow them to do so took place in 1684 (AdC 233/69, 1667). 16 Cacciavillani, Storia dell’avvocatura, pp. 104–143. 17 Cozzi, ‘Note sopra l’Avogaria di Comun’. See also Viggiano, ‘Istituzioni e politica’. Detailed examples of Avogaria investigations in the fifteenth century are discussed in Ruggiero, Boundaries, pp. 4–5, 61–2, see also J. Ferraro, ‘Coniugi nemici: Orsetta, Annibale e il compito dello storico (Venezia 1634)’, in Seidel-Menchi and Quaglioni (eds), Coniugi nemici, pp. 141–90.


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century, and while it was still customary for the Council of Ten to appoint an Avogador in the seventeenth century to establish whether judicial corruption and maladministration had taken place, their jurisdiction was far from clear in other cases.18 Since the early sixteenth century, the Avogadori had been given the overall responsibility for ensuring efficient record-keeping to underpin the validity of membership of the Great Council, and consequently of the Venetian patriciate. The key to membership of the Great Council was legitimacy. Without it, no man claiming direct descent from a patrician had the right to be accepted. Record-keeping therefore focused first on marriages and then on births. Both marriages and baptisms were normally recorded in the registers of the parish in which they took place.19 This was required by the ecclesiastical authorities. The secular legislation introduced by the Venetian government in stages from the early sixteenth century both duplicated this information, and concentrated it in a single place, the Ducal Chancellery, where it could be consulted if needed. By ensuring that all patrician births and marriages were recorded in this way, it was hoped to avoid the mistakes of the past, when men had entered the Great Council claiming to be patricians and it had emerged subsequently that they had not fulfilled all the necessary criteria. The legitimacy of marriage was recorded in two stages. This reflected the multi-stage nature of the making of marriages, in which the engagement, the exchange of promises and priestly nuptial blessing were preceded by the signature of a contract regulating the size, content and repayment conditions for dowries.20 All marriage contracts drawn up by notaries involving two patricians or a male patrician and a woman whose prova di nobiltà had been successful, had to be placed with the Avogaria di Comun.21 Once the priestly blessing had been given, it was incumbent on the family of the husband to register this marriage with the Avogadori. The absence of official registration of a birth represented an almost insurmountable problem for any sons who wished to claim their place in the Great Council.22 The Avogadori administered the increasingly complex laws surrounding the official registration of the birth of sons to patricians.23 As in the case of other statements attesting to patrician 18 Cozzi, Giustizia ‘contaminata’, pp. 27–49; C. Povolo, L’intrigo dell’onore. Potere e istituzioni nella repubblica di Venezia tra Cinque e Seicento (Verona, 1997), pp. 27–8, 35–6, 38–9. 19 The ecclesiastical authorities were required to make a special statement in the case of Laura Veggia di Antonio because not only had her emergency baptism at home not been recorded in the parish registers of San Marcilian, but neither had her official baptism 3 years later in the diocese of Vicenza (AdC 216/76, 1652). 20 See Chapter 8. 21 The main purpose for this record-collection was to ensure that no patrician had broken the sumptuary legislation which limited the total value of a dowry to 6,000 ducats. Bellavitis, Identité, pp. 160–61. 22 Crescenzi, ‘Esse de Maiori Consilio’, pp. 12–13; Hunecke, venezianische Adel, pp. 75–9. Marriage records for the second half of the seventeenth century are in AdC 100–101. 23 Copies of these laws are collected in a number of different collections in the Venetian State Archives, including the Compilazione Leggi. See especially AdC 186/10. See the discussion in Chojnacki, ‘Identity and Ideology’, pp. 263–94.

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status, the danger of widespread fraud was countered by requirements to send in supporting documentation, including witness statements. This was particularly important when the birth had taken place outside Venice.24 Statements of this kind permitted chancellery officials to draw up accurate records. From 1506, all patrician male births, wherever they had taken place, were listed in the Libro d’Oro (The Golden Book), a document which permitted all those entered in it to be considered for early membership of the Great Council at the age of 1825 or the more conventional entry point at 25. An analogous process to the prove di nobiltà was also undertaken by the Avogadori from the middle of the sixteenth century. This was the investigation of the social backgrounds and moral status of men who had applied for the status of cittadini originiari.26 There are some parallels in procedure between these investigations and those carried out as prove di nobiltà, but also some significant major differences. Both procedures emphasised the fact that the Avogaria di Comun was not a decision-making body but an investigative organisation contributing to a process of validation. Its function was to ascertain as much information as possible before passing their conclusions elsewhere for approval, rejection or reconsideration. Both types of candidate submitted a written application (the supplica) which frequently included details of the previous history of the applicant’s family. On receipt, the Avogaria di Comun proceeded to call witnesses in connection with individual clauses of the supplica, before voting on the application. The two investigations also shared common social criteria, insisting on the legitimacy of the candidates, unless they were the natural sons or daughters of patricians, and on three successive generations of acceptable social status.27 On the other hand, the strong emphasis on several generations of Venetian residence which was initially a prerequisite for cittadino status28 was in no way matched by the women who applied to become patrician wives. Candidates from outside the city were common, and some came from other parts of Italy and occasionally from further afield.29 The key distinction between the two procedures, however, lay in the identity of the investigators. While the prove di nobiltà were carried out exclusively by patrician magistrates in the presence of the notaries working for them, it was the latter who took the responsibility for investigating candidates for 24 See the case of Marin Foscarini di Francesco, whose birth on his father’s villa was registered in 1589. His father informed the authorities through the local district governor, who enclosed depositions by the midwife, a second woman present at the birth and baptism, and the baby’s godfather (AdC 282). 25 For details of the procedures by which they were selected each year on St Barbara’s Day, see Domzalski, Politische Karrieren, pp. 31–5. For the apprenticeship roles undertaken by these young patricians in the fifteenth century, see S. Chojnacki, ‘Kinship Ties and Young Patricians’, in Chojnacki, Women and Men, 206–226; see also Chojnacki, ‘Social Identity, pp. 343–7. 26 Zannini, Burocrazia. All applications for cittadino status can be found in the archives of the Avogaria di Comun. 27 Zannini, Burocrazia, pp. 61–6. 28 Bellavitis, Identité, pp. 19–63; but see Zannini’s suggestion that from the 1620s, secondgeneration immigrants were considered for cittadino status. Zannini, Burocrazia, pp. 64–5. 29 See below, pp. 55–7.


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cittadinanza. The subsidiary importance of this status did not require direct patrician participation, in the same way as the selection of the mothers of future patricians. Legislation Concerning the Prove di Nobiltà The initial legislation of 30 June 1589 set out the parameters for the investigations in the centuries which followed. Later modifications did not substantively alter either the intentions of the initial law or the way in which submissions were made itself. The detailed prove di nobiltà offer a number of answers to issues relating to the operation of the submissions and investigations in practice. In common with the general pattern of Venetian legislation, the law which established the prove di nobiltà in 1589 was part of a continuum. It underpinned the belief that unless the Venetian patriciate was entirely free from the stain of ‘base’ blood among its membership, it would lose its legitimacy as a body of nobles with the right to rule the republic. Patrician marriage had never been fully endogamous, but it was only in the early fifteenth century that concerns about the growing phenomenon of marriages between patricians and non-patrician women became the subject of legislation. For the first time, it became necessary for patricians to identify their mothers when wishing to take up a place in the Great Council. Until then, all that had been necessary was the proof that they were the legitimate sons of another patrician. In 1422, a law excluded from membership of the Great Council all sons of patricians whose mothers were either slaves or servant girls. Controls were tightened up even further in the law of 1506, which established the Libro d’Oro. Now, the identity and consequently the social status of a future patrician’s mother had to be established at birth, not when he came to enter the Great Council. His future life was mapped out from the start.30 The preamble of the 1589 law reasserted the government’s primary responsibility to maintain the purity of the patriciate, and expressed the objectives of the new law as an enhancement of a long-standing commitment. Our most wise forebears who organised the government of this Republic with great zeal know of nothing more central, more fruitful and consequently of the highest priority than keeping the status of Nobiltà of the Great Council free from stain. This purity, which contributes to its greatness and decoro, has been protected at all times by the most prudent laws to avoid any stain or denigration of their honour and public dignity.31

The new law purported to tighten up the conditions according to which marriages by patricians were to be registered with the Avogaria di Comun, requiring all such marriages to be registered within 15 days by two senior 30

Chojnacki, ‘Nobility, Women and the State’; Chojnacki, ‘Marriage Legislation’. AdC 108. Venetian political theory associated the concept of nobility with a virgin female body, which required defending from corrupt elements. Sperling, Convents and the Body Politic, pp. 12–13; 87–90. 31


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notaries at the magistracy, but the main change consisted of the introduction of a lengthy investigation into the status of non-patrician women before their marriages to patricians could be registered. Now, not only were the applicants to put forward written evidence to justify the women’s claims to high social status, the Avogaria was to carry out: A formal trial through inquisition, using every possible accuracy and research in order to bring out detailed knowledge of the social status of the woman, and of her father and mother to ensure that not only those women be excluded who were referred to in the laws of 1422 and 1533, but also those born of fathers and grandfathers who have exercised arte meccanica et manuale or of a similar status, always ensuring that women who have had an immoral life can not be admitted.32

A further distinction was also introduced. The law explicitly included the natural (illegitimate) daughters of patricians among the women to be investigated. While the Avogadori were appointed to carry out these investigations, the final decision whether or not to approve of an individual marriage between a patrician and a non-patrician women, did not lie within their remit. This was passed to the Collegio, comprising the Doge and the eight Consiglieri and the Capi of the Quarantia (major law courts).33 It is not clear why new legislation was required in 1589. We may deduce that earlier controls had not been enough to ascertain the social status of non-patrician mothers, and that anxieties had grown as a result of a widening of the circles from which patricians were drawing their wives. Certainly, the institution of a lengthy process by which the Avogadori were required to test the veracity of written evidence from the interested parties by interviewing a range of witnesses, not all of whom were necessarily connected with the applicants, was something quite new. For the first time, too, clear criteria were established according to which the acceptability of a women’s social status could be tested. The families of non-patrician women considering marriage with a patrician, and indeed the families of patricians considering such a step, were informed of the criteria which would lead to social exclusion. No association with arte meccanica et manuale or similar manual occupations for two generations on either side of the family was allowed. Nor was any suggestion that she had led an immoral life. These rules set down the framework for the prove di nobiltà until the fall of the republic in 1797. This framework remained fundamentally unchanged by subsequent seventeenth-century legislation, whose task was to clarify ambiguities and to close loopholes. The potential incentives of contracting a marriage with a patrician were so great that applicants did their best to interpret the law of 1589 in their favour. For example, just over a year later, legislation had to clarify the position of patricians’ natural daughters. Now, not only did all other applicants have to be legitimate, but the natural daughters of patricians had to have been recognised by their fathers from birth and to have been 32 33

AdC 108. See Negro, ‘Forme e istituzioni’, p. 428.


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brought up by them.34 The absence of an explicit reference to legitimate birth in the 1589 law must have encouraged non-patrician families to push forward their own illegitimate daughters. Equally, some women had come forward whose patrician fathers had not necessarily recognised them.35 The modifications introduced in 1605 suggest that patricians intending to marry non-patrician brides considered the prova di nobiltà as yet another administrative obstacle to overcome in order to ensure that their sons could follow them onto the Great Council. It is clear that many of them had got married before the investigation had ended. From 1605, patricians were no longer allowed to submit a prova after they had celebrated a marriage following the Tridentine rites in the presence of a parish priest. If they had already done so, then all written testimony was to be accounted as ‘without value’.36 This new law may also be interpreted as a clear statement of the primacy of secular rules over ecclesiastical marriage. Although the validity of the church in defining marriage was fully accepted by the Venetian government, the potential social importance of marriages by patricians required a secular judgment before the process of making a marriage had even reached the stage of signing a contract. Patricians were free to marry whom they chose, but they needed to be aware of the social penalties if they did not take the time to obtain official approval. The celebration of marriages in advance of official government approval remained an issue throughout the seventeenth century. On the one hand, the Council of Ten permitted a number of patricians who had married without submitting a prova to make a case before the Avogaria. The magistracy then carried out a separate investigation before deciding whether or not to recommend the late registration of these marriages, and the registration of the births of any legitimate sons.37 On the other hand, pressure from patricians who did not wish to delay their marriages by potentially lengthy investigations provoked a number of attempts to modify the rules.38 A law was passed in 1678 which relaxed some of the rules over applications to register marriages after they had taken place and the numbers of prove of this kind considered by the Avogaria rose accordingly after this date.39 The majority of applicants, however, did adhere to the rules and were fully aware of the implications of 34

AdC 108. The paucity of the evidence from these early years unfortunately does not document such cases. We are left to extrapolate this from the need to introduce new legislation so soon. 36 ASV, Compilazione Leggi 294. Cattarina Marcello di Mutio was an example of the uncertainty over the timing of marriage which this legislation was intended to correct. She was married in 1603 by her father to NH Giovanni Battista Contarini di Marin before her application had been fully resolved. The Avogaria then agreed to register the marriage (AdC 327, 1604). See also Andrianna Bertolucci, Querina Ruberti, Felicità Fernandi and Alberta Alberti, who married before approval of their prove in 1596 and 1597 (AdC 108; 283). 37 See the cases of Giacomo Pisani di Vicenzo in 1620 (AdC 319) and Luca Barozzi di Zorzi in 1647 (AdC 211/72). 38 ASV, Compilazione Leggi 294. 39 See the reference to the law of 1678 in AdC 231/94. Twenty-six cases of this kind were considered between 1678 and 1699. 35


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concluding a marriage before the end of a prova. As one patrician commented in 1618: ‘I hear [she] is to marry a gentleman from Ca’ Grimani,40 but the negotiations have been suspended until they have come to a judgment on her capacity to procreate noble sons’.41 The Avogaria Investigations Within the legal framework the Avogadori attempted to make sense of the cases which came before them. They read the paperwork submitted to them. They called witnesses nominated by the applicant’s family to substantiate individual points in the initial written statement and questioned them, before calling a second set of witnesses to test the evidence they had already read or heard. They had considerable freedom to call for additional written evidence and an entirely free choice in choosing witnesses. The testimonies were written down by clerks and a summary report was drawn up to enable them to make a recommendation to the Collegio. These recommendations were accompanied by their own justifications for their position. This took place as a matter of routine,42 but was particularly important where there was ambiguity over a decision or where there were significant differences of opinion between the Avogadori. It was essential to summarise complicated cases because there was a possibility that they could be reopened later. Some applicants were very tenacious. Some cases were very complicated. Zanetta Sarcinello, the daughter of Bernardo, a sollecitador (a minor legal official), was determined to marry a patrician husband. In 1653, while her case was being investigated, she married NH Nicolò Salamon di Alvise. The case had dragged on. Two inconclusive votes took place and there was potential for a long delay. Salamon then died, and a second patrician marriage was organised. The summary drawn up on behalf of the Avogadori is instructive as it explains not only their reasoning, but also the conventional process according to which a prova took place. In its own way, the case also illustrates some of the pressures placed on the magistracy by patricians in a hurry to marry.43 According to the summary, Zanetta had presented a written statement in January 1653 to prove that she was of the appropriate condition to marry a noble of the Serenissima Maggior Consiglio. The Avogadori in office at the time expressed their doubts over her case because her father was only a sollecitator. If he had been a notary or an avvocato, there would have been no such concerns. The case was sent 40

It was common to refer to patrician families as case, usually abbreviated to Ca’. AdC 359. Similar comments were made about a member of the Bergamo nobility, Camilla Marenzi in 1622 (AdC 327). 42 In the case of Angela Gaio di Bernardino in 1612, the records contain written statements by all three Avogadori that they swore by God that the case of Anzola, the daughter of the most excellent Bernardo Gaio to bear legitimate sons to be members of the Great Council had been proven and therefore each gave his consent (AdC 319). See also the general approval given by the Avogadori to the three-times widowed Marietta Bottoni in 1621 (AdC 109/34). 43 AdC 217/101, 1653. 41


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to the Collegio in mid-February and an inconclusive vote was unresolved by the second vote.44 At this point, Zanetta married Salamon, who asked to be exempted from having his wife investigated. The Avogadori replied that this was not possible and that according to the law her case had been dropped because she had celebrated her marriage before having completed the prova. Salamon then died and the widowed Zanetta asked for her case to be reopened because she wished to marry a second patrician. She submitted further documentary proof, including genealogies for both sides of her family (her paternal grandmother was a patrician member of the Salamon family) and her grandparents’ marriage contract. Curiously, she attempted to short-circuit the process a second time. She married NH Pietro Sagredo di Alvise without waiting for approval. In a written statement, the latter claimed that he had assumed that her case had been approved before she had married Salamon, and that when he discovered that this was not the case and that their sons’ births had not been registered either, he applied for them to be registered retrospectively. More than 7 years had passed since the marriage, during most of which he had been absent on official business. The Avogadori passed their summary of the case to the Collegio, where, in accordance with the law, it was rejected.45 The Supplica There was no such document as a standard supplica. The law of 1589 required certain pieces of information to be presented as statements. The names of the woman concerned and those of her parents were given. The common Venetian practice of using patronymics to identify individuals also enabled the Avogadori to identify her grandparents by name. Widows identified the name of their former husband or husbands. Since all applicants had to be legitimate except the natural daughters of patricians, a statement was made attesting to the woman’s legitimate birth. Similarly, the supplica stated that no link with arte meccanica et manuale had existed for at least two generations on both sides of her family. The legal requirement that the applicant had to be free from any stain to her moral reputation was extended to include her mother and was expressed in positive terms. Both mother and daughter were stated to be have lived an ‘honourable and modest life’. Although the law did not require this, many applicants also submitted a statement that their fathers and grandfathers were free from criminal convictions, usually expressed as infamia.46 It was then open to applicants to ornament their suppliche with deferential introductory 44 From 1608, a five-sixths majority was required in these cases. ASV, Compilazione Leggi 277. It was the convention that inconclusive votes were followed by a second opportunity to resolve the issue. 45 AdC 217/101. 46 The small number of cases where infamia was demonstrated does not justify a detailed discussion. See, however the cases of Biasio Colpi (AdC 226/137, 1674) and Marcantonio Saetta (AdC 205/19, 1636), guilty of tax-evasion, and Marchese Carlo Cassoni (AdC 231/88, 1682) and NH Alvise Foscarini (AdC 237/89, 1691), banished for 5 years.


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statements about their motives for applying for consideration as the wife of a patrician supplemented by proud assertions of their own high social status.47 A variant on this format was used in suppliche by those patricians who wished to register their marriages to non-patrician wives together with the births of any legitimate sons. It was important to emphasise that their wives met the relevant social criteria. However, in order to allow witnesses to confirm the details of the marriage ceremony and consequently the legitimacy of any sons, these suppliche also included information about the time and place of the marriage ceremonies. NH Almoro Zorzi di Alessandro identified his wife as legitimate, named her parents, stated that her father and grandfathers had always lived honestly and civilly without practising arte meccanica or being guilty of any crimes, and that Diamante and her mother had both lived modestly and honestly. Details were then given of the marriage contract, the church wedding in San Vio some 15 months later and the emergency baptism give to their son.48 Defence Witnesses and Their Evidence Most of the work of the Avogadori, however, consisted of hearing oral testimony from two groups of witnesses. The first group was selected by the applicant or her family. A list of names was submitted, with a clear indication of the specific clause of the supplica on which they were to be questioned. This procedure was indicative of the non-confrontational nature of the process. The purpose of the inquisition was to determine the answers to a limited number of questions. While some supporting evidence was submitted on paper, abstract matters such as a person’s reputation or way of life could only be elucidated by those who knew them well. The relatives, friends, neighbours and employees of the applicant’s family who were selected as witnesses were expected to present the most favourable picture possible, leaving out any information which could damage their chances. On the other hand, the procedure permitted the applicants to present their case in as much detail as possible. The function of positive witnesses can be illustrated from one of the hundreds of cases which passed before the Avogaria di Comun during the seventeenth century. Riosa Giron di Innocente applied for permission to marry a patrician in 1680 at the advanced age of 38. In addition to her supplica, she submitted details of her baptism in 1642, which demonstrated that she had a patrician godfather, and of her father’s baptism in 1605. In the latter’s baptismal record, her paternal grandfather was listed as a timber merchant. Three of the supporting witnesses were also merchants. They presented a picture of occupational respectability. Her maternal grandfather was a merchant, while her father and grandfather combined trade with landed incomes. The Giron family were commission merchants. Marco [her grandfather] was a timber merchant who retired to live on the land he owned outside the city. The two 47 48

See the statement by Prudentia Bonzanino cited at the beginning of Chapter 1. AdC 239/17, 1695.


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patrician witnesses confirmed that the Giron were worthy of their company. The final witness, a neighbour and fellow confraternity member, had known Innocenzo Giron for many years.49 It was never quite clear to contemporaries where the dividing line lay between a person who was civile, and was therefore acceptable to the Avogadori, and who was not. Consequently, many witnesses provided additional information about the life-style of the applicants’ family in the hope that this would corroborate more general statements about their status. In this context, dress codes were of considerable importance. According to one French visitor in the later seventeenth century, ‘the dress of male patricians is not exclusive. It is also worn by doctors, lawyers, secretaries, notaries and many other administrative officials, and by the cittadini. It is impossible without much practical experience to distinguish them from the patricians’.50 Doubtless, the patricians would have preferred there to have been a distinctive dress code by law, but, as studies of sumptuary legislation throughout the mediaeval and early modern periods have demonstrated, those with aspirations to high status expressed this through the way in which they dressed.51 The Avogadori shared this recognition of the social importance of dress. Guglielmo Rubi, a merchant, was explicitly asked in 1590 how the father of Vittoria Rossi was dressed, and replied ‘con cappa’ (in a gown).52 One of Isabetta Baccucci’s supporting witnesses asked the Avogadori if he could correct some of his earlier evidence, for fear that it would undermine the picture which had been given of her father. He had said that Pietro Baccucci had gone about dressed in a long gown, while in fact he was dressed in the style of the manega comedo.53 The parish priest of San Aponal described Zuanne Chiodo in 1621 as a man who lived from unearned income, and went ‘dressed in manega comedo’.54 Often this description was added to with the words con ferariol. This was a cloak in blue or black material which was worn over other clothes in the winter months.55

49

AdC 230/66, 1680. Limojon de Saint-Disdier, La ville, p. 294. 51 See, for example, P. Venturelli, ‘La moda come status symbol. Legislazioni suntuarie e “segnali” di identificazione sociale’, in R. Varese and G. Butazzi (eds), Storia della Moda (Bologna, 1995), pp. 27–54. Venetian sumptuary legislation never explicitly drew distinctions between patricians and other members of society. M. Newett, ‘The Sumptuary Laws of Venice in the 14th and 15th Centuries’, in T.F. Tout and J. Tait (eds), Historical Essays, (London 1902), pp. 245–78. 52 AdC 208/3, 1590. 53 AdC 285. 54 AdC 208. See also Alessandro Varisco’s description of himself in 1606 as a man who had ‘always lived civilly and honourably from his unearned income, paying his taxes and dressed a Manica comedo, as do other Cittadini’ (AdC 324). 55 The chronicler of the ‘Wars of the Fists’ in early modern Venice referred to the non-artisan spectators as gente dei ferrarioli. R.C. Davis, The War of the Fists: Popular Culture and Public Violence in Late Renaissance Venice (New York and Oxford, 1994), p. 54. Giacomo Cortesi, a spice merchant, was described as standing in his shop ‘col ferrariol’ (AdC 312, 1630). For the ferrariol, see G. Boerio, Dizionario del Dialetto Veneziano (Venice, 1856), p. 728. 50

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Owning one’s own gondola was also seen as a mark of wealth and high status. Not all patricians could afford their own mode of transport,56 but is evident that some other men could do so. Alvise Bembo’s witnesses emphasised that his gondola was not a recent acquisition.57 The iron merchant, Giovanni Grotta, lived on the Giudecca with all the signs of opulence before he fell on hard times because of gambling and worse. He ‘lived with large numbers of servants, a gondola and a carriage, and [his family] were very rich indeed’.58 Significantly, Luca Maria Lucadelli, a lawyer, was described as ‘living with honour with a gondola with two oars, and male and female servants in his house’.59 Linking the ownership of a gondola with that of a carriage as in the case of Giovanni Grotta reinforced this image of wealth and high social status. For Venetian applicant families, it placed them in the context of a lifestyle close to that enjoyed by wealthy patricians who owned land on the Terraferma. It also echoed the patrician use of the outward signs of gentility which they aspired to share with the feudal nobility in northern Italy. In 1662, a fellow nobleman described Paulo Dotti, a member of a leading Paduan family, as ‘always living nobly, with carriages, horses and an open house’.60 Ownership of a gondola and, where appropriate, a carriage, was only an extension of a broader picture of a neo-patrician lifestyle given by supporting witnesses. In most cases, this was only alluded to in terms of living ‘honourably’ or ‘civilly’, but in cases where the applicant might have been considered to equal, or even to surpass wealthy patricians in the way in which they lived, a more detailed case was made, illustrated by references to the furnishings of their houses and to the high status of their visitors. In 1593, a double application was made on behalf of Isabella and Vittoria Maldotto, the daughters of the late Agostin Maldotto, who had come to Venice from Lodi in his youth to work as a merchant.61 His material success could be measured by the location and decoration of his home. The Maldotto family lived on the second floor of a palace on the Grand Canal, the soler di sopra, which they rented from another non-patrician family, the Cucina. Their landlords had given up the wool trade in order to maximise their income from rents and investments.62 56 D. Romano, ‘The Gondola as a Marker of Status in Venetian Society’, Renaissance Studies 8 (1994): 359–74. For passenger transport by water in general, see G. Canioto, ‘Traghetti e barcaruoli a Venezia’, in M. Cortelazzo (ed.), Cultura popolare del veneto (Cinisello, 1993), pp. 149–67. 57 According to a lawyer, he had ‘always owned a gondola, and a carriage’ (AdC 217/91, 1653). 58 AdC 224/47 2o, 1666. 59 AdC 228/39, 1678. The wool merchant Iseppo Fantini had both a gondola with two oars at the end of the seventeenth century, and a carriage drawn by four horses (AdC 237/83, 1691). According to the diarist Marino Sanuto, writing in the early sixteenth century, only patricians used gondolas with two oars. Romano, ‘Gondola’, p. 360. 60 AdC 221/3, 1662. Agostin Teniva, a noble from Pordenone, had a carriage drawn by four horses (AdC 224/89, 2o,1670). 61 AdC 326. Double, and occasionally triple, applications for daughters were unusual but this was not an isolated case. See below, p. 60. 62 See the case of Zanetta Cucina di Francesco (AdC 312, 1625).


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Several witnesses commented with enthusiasm on the splendour of their home as it had been in the 1570s. One placed a value of 5,000 ducats on their annual expenditure on furnishings alone. Their rooms had seen a succession of high-status visitors: members of the Venetian Senate, other patricians and men of high status, and ‘foreigners’, presumably of equivalent standing.63 Living in rented accommodation was not a source of stigma. On the contrary, wealthy families, both patricians and non-patricians, frequently lived in rented accommodation either by choice because the houses which they owned did not meet their current needs, or because it was difficult to break into the top end of the housing market when so much was circulated through inheritance or marriage contracts.64 Reporting the presence of patrician visitors in their house was a clear sign to the investigators that the Maldotto had strong patrician connections. Friendship links with patricians acted as implicit evidence that the applicant families were considered to be worthy of membership of the upper levels in Venetian society. Existing marital links reinforced their case even further. It is far from surprising that both written petitions and supporting testimony emphasised this point, particularly when sisters or aunts had already successfully been given permission to marry a patrician. It was assumed that if the criteria which had applied to close kin had been acceptable to the Avogadori, this would also apply in the application under consideration and facilitate a rapid decision. Iseppo Tirindello di Iseppo, a lawyer, petitioned the magistracy in these terms: after having by the grace of God, been able to join one of my daughters in marriage to the Nobil Huomo Nicolò Michiel fu di Angelo, on which occasion I was able to provide all the supporting evidence to this most excellent magistracy … now the Divine Grace has given me a second blessing of accompanying a second daughter, named Giulia, born of the same mother, Signora Andrianna Morosini di Zuanne … The conditions of father, grandfather and mother have already been presented and authorized with the approval of the Collegio of the most Serene Prince.65

By the time Iseppo’s youngest daughter, Laura, applied for consideration in 1663, her father assumed that a truncated application would be acceptable. This time, the supplica stated briefly that thanks to the grace of God, he had married two daughters to patricians. He offered confirmation of her birth and legitimate status.66 63 AdC 326. For a general discussion of Venetian material culture among the wealthy, see P.F. Brown, Private Lives in Renaissance Venice (New Haven, 2004). 64 L. Megna, ‘Comportamenti abitativi del patriziato veneziano, (1582–1740)’, Studi Veneziani 22 (1991): 253–324; Chauvard, ‘Pour une histoire dynamique’, pp. 7–72. 65 Virginia Tirindello’s successful supplica was included in her sister’s application (AdC 220/40, 1661). Virginia’s prova of 1654 is in AdC 217/110. For a similar application in 1671, in which an older sister’s successful prova was also included, see the case of Anzola Moretti di Giovanni (AdC 225/112). 66 AdC 221/14, 1663. The other daughters were not named, only their patrician husbands. He may have taken this brevity a little too far. In contrast with the first two cases, one of the Collegio abstained.

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When applicants claimed linear descent from patricians, they used their supporting witnesses to reinforce this point. This claim had a two-edged effect. While proof of patrician forebears suggested that a projected marriage between a patrician and a female descendent was entirely appropriate, it also begged the question why a member of her family had not inherited patrician status as a matter of course. There must have been some kind of relationship in the past which had led to either illegitimacy or an unregistered marriage. On balance, applicants believed that even these tangential links with the patriciate had such force that they and their supporting witnesses made considerable play of this in their applications. Isabetta Priuli di Zuan Piero, was the granddaughter of NH Domenico Priuli. Her father was a notary at the Avogaria di Comun, and consequently well placed to assess the potential success of her application and effective ways of making her case. Close relatives of her grandfather came forward to support Isabetta’s case: they were quite explicit in claiming a close family relationship with Zuan Piero. Bartolomio Memmo explained that the latter lived ‘honourably’, ‘if that had not been the case, he would not have been welcome to visit my house, nor to accept visits from me and my sons’.67 While applications from women whose mothers were the natural daughters of patricians were in danger of being clouded by the issue of illegitimacy, this does not appear to have deterred some applicants.68 The potential stain which this represented had been diluted by the next generation. Close patrician relatives were not slow to come forward in these cases.69 Applicants were also permitted to provide corroborating evidence in written form. They were given very few guidelines by the law over what kind of evidence they should submit. It was clear that they needed to demonstrate that the woman proposed as the wife of a patrician was legitimate. Consequently, most suppliche included copies of extracts from parish registers, recording the marriage of the parents and the baptism of the applicant. The latter had the added advantage of demonstrating the presence of high-status men as godfathers, which implicitly suggested that the girl’s family had high-status social connections. Many patrician godparents and other prominent men subsequently came forward as supporting witnesses to confirm that they had held the child at the font.70 While the size of a proposed dowry was only alluded to in the most general terms, relevant extracts from the wills of relatives were included to indicate that an applicant either had inherited a share of her father’s 67 NH Francesco Michiel di Marco claimed Paulina Cicogna, the natural daughter of a patrician and mother of Andriana Pizzoni, as his ‘cousin by blood’. Paulina’s half brother, NH Marco Cicogna, openly claimed her as his sister (AdC 209/40, 1645). See also the case of Agnesina Marcello di Paulo, whose grandfather was the son of a patrician. Her prova was presented by her brother, once again a notary at the Avogaria di Comun (AdC 205/6, 1635). 68 Applicants who were the illegitimate daughters of patricians themselves are discussed in detail in Chapter 6. 69 AdC 206/47, 1639. See also the case of Laura Barbarigo, whose patrician father had married the natural daughter of another patrician (AdC 289, 1613). 70 A summary of the case of Andrianna Ponte di Giovanni Antonio, who was rejected by the Collegio, listed copies of her parents’ wedding record from the marriage register of San Simon Profeta and of her baptism in Santa Maria Nova (AdC 238/2, 1695).


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estate, or expected to do so in the absence of male heirs. Applicants could not be sure that this information might outweigh any negative considerations, but they hoped to strengthen their case by including this written evidence.71 Applicants were anxious to demonstrate the high social status of their fathers or paternal grandfathers by using documentary evidence of their profession or membership of a city council on the mainland. Iseppo Tirindello included written documentation in the supplica of his daughter Virginia in 1654 that he had been given permission to practice as a notary in Venice by the magistracy of the Conservatori et essecutori delle legge in 1638, and that his father, Simon, had followed the same profession in Belluno.72 Paolo Dotti submitted evidence that both he and his father had been aggregated to the council in Padua, and that his father had reached its upper ranks in 1610.73 Rentier incomes, which were free from all association with the taint of arte meccanica, were reflected in tax records.74 The legal requirement that applicants had to be ‘modest and honourable’ was attested to in writing by the abbesses of the convents in which they had been educated from an early age, and in which they were often still living at the time the investigations began. Typical statements of this kind recorded the length of time a girl had spent in the convent, or the young age at which she entered it in order to demonstrate that she had been brought up away from worldly dangers to her modesty, surrounded by positive influences.75 Avogaria Witnesses Although the Avogaria investigations were not confrontational, they did not take the evidence submitted by applicants and their families entirely at face value. The law of 1589 required them to carry out ‘a formal trial through inquisition, using every possible accuracy and research in order to bring out detailed knowledge of the social status of the woman, and of her father and 71 This was particularly important in the cases of the natural daughters of patricians. See the cases of Camilla Basadonna di NH Giovanni Battista (AdC 214/33, 1650), Marina Priuli di NH Vettor (AdC 211/67, 1647) and Paulina da Pesaro di NH Antonio. Paulina’s parents were unable to marry because her father was an abbate. Unusually, both left wills naming her as their heirs (AdC 340, 1607). 72 AdC 217/110, 1654. See also documentation confirming the appointment of Vicenzo Zibletti as a Venetian notary in 1598 which was included in the application by his granddaughter, Maria (AdC 217/118, 1655), and of Luca Maria Lucadelli (AdC 228/39, 1678). 73 Case of Antonia Dotti di Paolo (AdC 221/3, 1662). See also lists of office-holding by the Sarmede family in Serevalle (AdC 228/27, 1677). 74 Cases of Andrea Meneghini di Giovanni Battista and Giustina Griffalconi di Giacomo, both in 1658 (AdC 219/6; AdC 219/9). 75 According to the Reverend Marina Zorzi, the abbess of the convent of the Sanctissima Concezione in Piove di Sacco, Anna Maria Foscarini had been ‘in this convent around eighteen years … and never left it without permission. During this time, she always lived in the fear of God, according to wise and prudent ways’ (AdC 237/89, 1691). See also the case of Brigida Businello di Pietro (AdC 237/90, 1691). For a general discussion of the role of convents as centres of education for high status girls, see Zarri, Recinto, pp. 156–7.

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mother’.76 Their ‘research’ consisted of identifying witnesses, calling them before one of the Avogadori, and questioning them in detail. By comparison with judges in criminal cases, they were faced with a number of practical problems to which they had to find solutions. First, with the exception of births, marriages and deaths, they were not investigating factual accuracy. Their primary concern was to establish abstractions, such as the social standing of an individual engaged in a particular occupation, their reputation among their neighbours, or evaluations of the behaviour of a woman according to commonly agreed criteria. By interviewing witnesses of both sexes and from different levels of society, they obtained evaluations of behaviour which then had to be measured against their own criteria as patricians. Second, because of the emphasis on the continuity of positive attributes in the applicants’ family across three generations, it was necessary to find witnesses who could recall events and behaviour from the past, often the distant past. Only elderly people had this direct knowledge, and the investigators were dependent on finding informed witnesses with good memories. Third, it was necessary to find witnesses with information about individuals from outside the city, either because women living outside Venice had applied for the right to marry a patrician, or because their families were recent immigrants to the city. Lastly, it was necessary to distinguish between personal knowledge and hearsay and to make use of both kinds of evidence. Who were chosen as witnesses and how were they chosen? What happened after they were chosen is clear enough. Early witnesses in the investigation had no advanced warning that they would be called. As Maria, a servant in the house of Laura dal Sol, explained: ‘an official (fante) came to call me’.77 On the other hand, they may not have been entirely surprised to have been asked, particularly in the light of the Avogaria’s practice of asking witnesses to suggest other names. Zuanne Ongarato di Nadal had difficulty answering a question about a specific clause in the supplica of Laura, the wife of NH Carlo Corner. He explained ‘the fante who is outside this office now came to my house and brought me here. He did not say anything to me about the subject over which I was to be examined, but brought me here in the Palazzo without saying anything. I guessed what this was about but do not know what is in the clause. No one told me anything about what I should be examined, only that because I was old, I was to be questioned’.78 Spiridion Capodistria, who had grown up as a boy on the island of Crete was equally aware of the general reasons why he had been called for interview in 1695. ‘I know that this investigation is about noble status (si tratta di materia di Nobiltà), and that if anyone knows any information, either good or bad, they should say so’.79 There are clear patterns 76 ASV, Compilazione Leggi 277. On rare occasions, permission was given to one of the Avogadori, accompanied by one of the Avogaria notaries, to interview a nun inside her convent. Case of Marietta Avanzago (AdC 283, 1623). See M. Laven, Virgins of Venice: Broken Vows and Cloistered Lives in the Renaissance Convent (London, 2002), pp. 95–6. 77 AdC 212/85, 1648. 78 AdC 209/24, 1644. 79 AdC 239/21.


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of the kind of witnesses whom the Avogadori thought would be most helpful to their investigations. Parish priests and other clergy were the most common starting points in the search for information.80 There were good reasons for this. One of the major concerns of the investigators was to ensure that the investigation had not been invalidated because the couple whose planned marriage was being considered had taken the next step and exchanged words before a priest. Confirmation was needed from the woman’s parish priest that this had not taken place. Girolamo Arrigoni, the piovan of San Aponal was asked in 1625 whether ‘he or anyone else had said the words for the giving of hands in conformity with the rules of the Holy Church’. He denied this and said that if such a ceremony had taken place, it would have been recorded in the church registers. Other priests in the parish were equally adamant. As one pointed out, given that no banns had been said, special permission for the marriage would have had to be given by the patriarch.81 They were expected to know about their parishioners and often did so. Francesco Torre, the priest of San Barnabà, was very informative about the family of Isabetta Baccucci, even though they had moved away into a neighbouring parish. He was able to confirm that both Isabetta and her mother, Pellegrina, had lived very modestly and civilly because ‘they always lived close to me’.82 Torre was also interviewed in 1611 in the case of Fontana Pigna. Here, he gave the standard confirmation that no ceremony had taken place, claiming that only he, as the parish priest, or another priest in the parish with his written permission could carry this out.83 Parish priests frequently heard rumours of impending marriages. This was not surprising since they liked to be well informed of matters which concerned them professionally. On other occasions, they had direct knowledge of what was being planned because a member of the girl’s family had told them so. As Lorenzo Pellegrini, the priest of Santa Euffemia on the Giudecca told the Avogadori: ‘I was the house priest of the Illustrious Signor Andrea Trevisan and was a welcome visitor in his house’.84 Not all parish priests were equally well informed. Much depended on the length of time that they, or the family under investigation, had lived in a particular parish. The parish priest of San Marcuola was unable to help the Avogadori in 1660 in the case of Angelica Maria Soarez di Agostino. The Soarez had moved away and he had only recently arrived. It had been so long ago, that all the oldest clergy in the church had died.85 Given the close proximity of housing in Venice and an inbuilt capacity to engage in gossip based on visual observation, neighbours were frequent 80 Written permission by the patriarch of Venice was given so that they could be interviewed by a secular magistracy. See the dossier for Cecilia, the illegitimate daughter of NH Vicenzo Gritti, in 1620 (AdC 324). 81 Case of Zanetta Cucina (AdC 312). 82 AdC 285, 1608. 83 AdC 340, 1611. 84 AdC 209/31, 1632. NH Paulo Balbi told his parish priest, Francesco Ferro that there were discussions to marry his stepdaughter, Isabetta Scaramella, to ‘a gentleman’ (AdC 213/6). 85 AdC 224/85, 1669.

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witnesses.86 Some lived in an apartment in the same house, others in neighbouring houses or in the same courtyard. The area in which information was known about a man’s occupation, the social origin of his wife’s family, the impending marriage of one of his daughters, or about any concubinal relationships with patricians stretched further than the immediate neighbourhood, however, to the entire parish and to other contiguous parishes.87 Visitors to the houses of applicants could be equally informative. They were either friends and family, or men who came for a specific professional purpose – lawyers, barbers to cut hair and shave customers, music teachers, dancing teachers, tutors for children, midwives, tailors, messengers. As regular visitors, they not only picked up information but were also confided in by members of the household.88 Other witnesses apologised for their lack of information because they did not visit the family concerned.89 Information about the detailed activities of merchants, shopkeepers or artisans was often sought from individuals in the same occupation. They were expected to be able to explain what someone did and to offer a view of its significance in terms of their social standing.90 It was also assumed that they would know something about a fellow merchant’s household. So it was that Santo Rizzo, a draper with storage facilities at the Rialto, was able to explain both how the late Giacomo Cortesi traded on the Rialto on such as scale that he had not required a shop, and that his daughter Faustina had been promised to ‘a gentleman’.91 Cases from outside Venice posed an additional problem to the Avogadori. They were required to interview witnesses in person but could not always do so. In the case of mainland cities subject to Venice, as a first resort, they sought out the nontio, the city’s official representative. Antonio Abiani, the Paduan representative, was called in on at least four occasions in the late 1670s and 1680s.92 These men were well informed. Piero dalla Costa, the 86 See my ‘ “Looking in and Looking out”: Observation, Gossip and Street Culture in Early Modern Venice’, Journal of Early Modern History (forthcoming). 87 For examples of witnesses in the same house, see Francesco Bonelli (Gadaldin, AdC 223/75, 1667) and Triffon Fortezza (Cecilia Gritti, AdC 324, 1620); for neighbours, see Giovanni Maria Mutti (Cattarina Melchiori, AdC 223/66, 1667); for fellow parishioners, Bartolomeo Novano (Borghescalco, AdC 236/69, 1689). 88 For examples of visits by a notary, see Gerolamo Brinis (Laura Ghirardi, AdC 218/134, 1656); for a dancing teacher, see Anzolo Cormaro (Isabetta Priuli, AdC 209/40, 1640); for doctors, see Bernardo Colle (Virginia Tirindello, AdC 209/29, 1664); for midwives, see Cornelia Bianchi (Angelica Soarez, AdC 224/85, 1669); for one of the many barbers, see Tomaso Cigala (Samaritana Giustinian, AdC 208/14, 1622), for tailors, see Simon Borghese (Aurora Castelcuco, AdC 215/50, 1651). 89 Daniel Bertoletti, a servant (fante) in the Health Office, was interviewed about NH Marchio Marcello because the latter held office in the magistracy. He was unable to comment on the female members of the Marcello household because ‘I do not visit there’ (AdC 209/37, 1645). 90 See the discussion of behaviour by shopkeepers in Chapter 5, pp. 100–102 below. 91 AdC 312, 1630, case of Faustina Cortesi. 92 Cases of Lodovica Vigonza (AdC 231/92, 1678), Cecilia Grighetto (AdC 230/81, 1681), Cecilia Aldrighetti (AdC 234/33, 1685) and Elisabetta Riva (AdC 235/42, 1686).


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Brescian representative in 1622, knew that Bernardino Marenzi had houses in Brescia although he came from the Bergamasco. He spoke warmly of the latter’s 4,000-scudi annual income and his superb palace in Sarnico on the lake. He also knew that he was overweight and in ill health.93 Immigrants to Venice from the same area as the applicant could be equally informative. The growing Greek and Cretan community of refugees from the Turks was well represented. It was more difficult to access information about those parts of Italy which lay outside the Venetian Republic, such as Milan and Rome.94 Applicants from northern Europe posed other difficulties, primarily linguistic. Isabetta Vanaxel di Adolfo, whose father had moved to Venice from Flanders, supplied additional papers in French attesting to the long pedigree of the Vanaxel as an ancient family from Brabant who had served their feudal lords in both war and peace and had given much to the church in Brussels. The Avogadori employed a local Frenchman, Jacques Dupuiy, to check the Italian translation which had also been supplied.95 The frequent request to witnesses to suggest others who might help the investigation makes it clear that the Avogadori often had to cast further afield than neighbours, people from the same occupation or fellow immigrants. These searches for additional testimony were also a sign that the Avogadori did not necessarily have detailed information about potential witnesses at their disposal. This was particularly important in the case of older applicants, often widows, whose grandparents were long dead. The three-generation rule established by the law still required the investigators to look into the first generation, and while hearsay evidence was acceptable, along the lines that a witness had not met the applicant’s grandfather in person but had heard that he was a respectable merchant, eyewitness evidence was far stronger. In such cases, there was no alternative but to seek out the oldest residents possible. Their testimony did not always meet the high expectations vested in them. The wine merchant, Zuanne Bettini, was called in at the age of 70 to explain the organisation of wine retail sales in his youth. This was very informative in contextual terms, but hopes that he might have known the grandfather of Elisabetta Righetti were entirely in vain.96 Zuanne Ongarato di Nadal, whose only explanation for his appearance before the magistrates was his great age, was eventually released after much questioning on the grounds that he kept on changing his mind or could not remember details.97

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AdC 327, 1622, case of Camilla Marenzi. Isabella di Monroi spent much of her chequered early life in Milan. In her case, the Avogadori requested written evidence in 1692 to complement interviews with Milanese witnesses accessible in Venice (AdC 237/92). The Venetian ambassador to Rome was asked to collect written statements about Teresa Rigazzoni, the niece of a cardinal in 1693 (AdC 238/1). In the case of Semidea Fabricci, special arrangements were made in 1619 for one of the Avogadori who was returning from business in Vicenza to interview witnesses in Padua (AdC 317). 95 AdC 217/119, 1655. 96 AdC 236/77, 1689. 97 AdC 209/24, 1644. 94

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External Pressures and Internal Information The potential benefits of a successful application to an applicant’s family were considerable. Given this, it is surprising that the records contain comparatively few overt attempts by opponents of individual applications to influence the magistrates, and even more striking that all of these attempts were discounted, following careful evaluation. Opposition to applicants often came from other patricians, particularly in cases where a supplica requested the registration of both a pre-existing marriage and the births of sons to that marriage, and although they were cloaked in all the usual criteria to demonstrate why the application should be rejected, their motives were personal. NH Francesco Cicogna attempted to prevent his sister-in-law and nephews from being approved in order to protect his family patrimony.98 There may have been other, informal, ways in which negative influences were brought to bear on investigations. A number of cases revealed questionable moral behaviour on the part of the applicant or her mother.99 The choice of witnesses and the lines of questioning undertaken suggest a degree of foreknowledge on the part of the Avogadori. This does not necessarily mean that someone with an interest in bringing the investigation to a negative conclusion supplied this information. Some cases were causes célèbres. Franceschina Venier ran away with a Swiss army officer, following bad treatment by her husband.100 The patricians Nadal da Mosto and his distant relative, Francesco da Mosto, were both arraigned before the Council of Ten and served with orders of banishment, one for outraging public decency in a convent housing a widow with whom he had an intense relationship, the other for abducting a girl from her brothers’ villa and abandoning her.101 On the other hand, rumours of some kind must have circulated about other women in order for the Avogadori to ask leading questions of their witnesses. As a law court, the Avogaria di Comun was privy to many cases in Venice. Some may have come to mind on receipt of a supplica. Given the complexity of Venetian politics and the shifting pressure groups which built up around issues of all kinds, whether they were in support of the nomination and election of a patrician to a specific office, connected with one of the major debates of the time such as whether outsiders should be allowed to purchase patrician status, or attempts to traduce the legal system,102 it would be surprising if the Avogadori had not come under pressure to accept applicants about whom they had doubts. Evidence for this lies less in short98 A. Cowan, ‘Innuendo and Inheritance: Strategies of Scurrility in Medieval and Renaissance Venice’, in D. Cavanagh and T. Kirk (eds), Subversion and Scurrility: Popular Discourse in Europe from 1500 to the Present (Aldershot, 2000), pp. 125–37, esp. pp. 132–4. 99 See below, pp. 142–6. 100 AdC 230/64, 1680. 101 AdC 218/147, 1657; AdC 216/74, 1653; see also the case of the patrician mother of Steffana Giuroi, who was linked to an arquebus attack on her husband at his villa by NH Francesco Marcello. The case was tried by the Council of Ten (AdC 215/55, 1651). 102 Domzalski, Politische Karrieren, pp. 93–6; Raines, ‘Pouvoir ou privilèges’; Cozzi, Giustizia ‘contaminata’, pp. 27–49.


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term reversals of decisions than in repeated elections by the Collegio over a longer period, ending in a positive vote.103 Patricians hoping and expecting to receive permission to marry outsider brides had already invested a great deal of prestige in a projected union from which they hoped to obtain both material benefits and sons to follow them into the Great Council. Delays because of a long investigation were frustrating. Potential rejection was even worse. Consequently they worked hard at both ends of the investigation to present the best possible case, and to lobby against negative votes.

103 See the cases of Andrianna Foresto di Marco in 1598 (AdC 317); Lise, natural daughter of NH Vettor Soranzo, in 1610 (AdC 108); Camilla, natural daughter of NH Camillo Trevisan, in 1641 (AdC 205) and the registration of the marriage of NH Giacomo Antonio Marcello in 1695 (AdC 238/11).


CHAPTER THREE

Outsider Brides and Their Families We have established that the prove di nobiltà were carried out by the Avogadori di Comun with great care and that large numbers of Venetians and nonVenetians of both sexes and all social levels contributed to a series of discourses about the major criteria used to measure the social acceptability of the women who wished to marry into the Venetian patriciate and to bear sons to sit in the Great Council. The focus now turns to the applicants and their families. In many ways, the process of deciding whether or not to undergo a far-reaching investigation of the kind set down by the law led to a degree of self-selection. If the purpose of the law of 1589, like its predecessors and successors, was to exclude women as patrician wives who came from the margins of Venetian society: prostitutes, slaves, servants, peasants and the daughters of unskilled labourers, sailors, fishermen and journeymen, then this was a considerable success. No women of this kind featured among the applicants for a prova di nobiltà. They knew in advance that they would not be successful. This process of self-selection was also economic. Given that the starting point for marriage negotiations between a patrician and a non-patrician family was based on dowry-levels, just as it was within the patriciate itself, aspirant families were defined by their capacity to offer a dowry at a level high enough to attract interest. On the other hand, the social range of potential families of this kind was not only wider than contemporaries thought, but also exposed some of the ambiguities of the criteria listed in the law of 1589. In other words, aspirant families hoped and expected to pass the social and moral tests but were dependent on the rigour of the investigation and the prejudices of the Avogadori and members of the Collegio at the time. Some may have been unsure whether or not they would succeed. Other families hid or downplayed potentially damaging information in the hope that nothing more would emerge. All of them began from the same position. Although the 1589 law referred exclusively to permission to marry ‘a noble of the Serenissima Maggior Consiglio’, a generic principle echoed in many suppliche, each application arose from a detailed business proposition according to which a patrician family had negotiated a marriage with a family from outside the patriciate or with the natural daughter of a patrician, and now required permission to register the religious ceremony in order to secure patrician status for any sons born of the marriage. Marriages between Venetian patricians and outsider brides were a subject for discussion throughout the last two centuries of the republic’s existence, reflecting far more than a general passion for genealogy. A number of attempts


48

were made at the time to list the men and women concerned and to provide some additional information about the social and geographical origins of the brides. None of them was sufficiently comprehensive to provide a solid basis for historical analysis but their existence suggests that the phenomenon of outsider brides, and their potential impact on the patriciate continued to be a constant subject for discussion. NH Giovanni Foscarini, drew up a list in the 1630s of patricians who married outsider brides since 1600, the Notta di gentilhuomini li quali hanno preso per moglie Cittadine o altre persone inferiore dall’anno 1600 fino al giorno presente come in essa appar.1 The list is far from complete when compared with the prove di nobiltà. The same may be said for two overlapping lists of patrician bridegrooms compiled later in the seventeenth century. They also identify outsider brides by name, but the absence from these lists of many patrician marriages listed elsewhere prevents any sensible assessment of the proportion of total patrician marriages represented by outsider brides.2 Two more-considered eighteenth-century attempts by Giomo to draw on official records are more accurate but still fail to take account of some successful prove.3 Much of this chapter is based on statistical evidence from the prove di nobiltà. Several words of warning are required at this point. While all the available records in the archives of the Avogaria di Comun have been consulted for this research for the period between July 1589 and the end of 1699, these do not represent all the prove di nobiltà which took place during this period. There are lacunae between 1589 and 1639, and for this reason more emphasis should be placed on trends than on precise statistical data. On the other hand, the substantial scale of the prove, 484 cases over the entire period, complemented by a further 87 cases in which patricians requested the retrospective registration of their marriage to outsider wives, does provide a solid basis for this discussion. This chapter first places the overall numbers of prove in the context of all the patrician marriages registered by the Avogaria, before considering changes over time, the social backgrounds of applicants and their geographical origins. A third section examines the women in greater detail, their ages in the year in which their suppliche were submitted, whether they had been married before, and whether their applications may have been encouraged by existing links in some way with Venetian patricians. The final section of the chapter will be devoted to the success and failure rates of applications in order to establish both why certain cases failed and any evidence of a softening or hardening of attitudes of the Avogadori during the period under discussion.

1

Marciana, It. VII, 90. Marciana 8304–307: G.A. Capellari, Campidoglio Veneto. Alternative lists of patrician marriages can be found in Correr, Morosini-Grimani 95, Nascite, morti, e matrimoni de Patrizi Veneziani nella prima metà del sec. XVII circa and Correr, Provenienze Diverse 311c, Registro dei matrimoni dei Veneto patrizi. 3 ASV, Indice per nomi di donne dei Matrimoni dei Patrizi Veneti; 2 vols. 2

OUTSIDER BRIDES AND THEIR FAMILIES

49

The Scale of Marrying Out The levels of patrician out-marriage in Venice can be viewed in three different ways: the extent to which marriages registered by patricians with the Avogaria di Comun reflected a choice to marry an outsider bride (to be found both in official registration records and in marriage contracts deposited by law with the same magistracy), the extent to which the choice of outsider brides was reflected by the suppliche examined as part of the prove di nobiltà, and the numbers of unregistered marriages by patricians who deliberately chose to exclude their male heirs from future membership of the Great Council. The figures for the latter group are not of direct concern to us here, although Volker Hunecke argues that these deliberate decisions to place personal over dynastic interests were an increasingly important phenomenon into the eighteenth century among the poorer patricians.4 The data from marriage contracts also provides a detailed picture of the two decades immediately before and after the passage of the legislation in June 1589, even if it does not offer a definitive explanation for the timing of the law. Six hundred and thirty-three marriage contracts were deposited by patricians with the Avogaria di Comun between 1580 and 1599 (See Table 3.1).5 Fortytwo of these contracts (7%) involved outsider brides. It is clear from these figures, that the overall proportion of patricians who chose to marry out was comparatively low.6 Even if we take the 10 years before the passage of the law, only 8 per cent of marriages involved outsider brides. This undermines any expectation that the new legislation was a response to a level of out-marriage perceived as unacceptably high and leading to demands for controls over the social background of future outsider brides to be tightened up. Nor does the detailed identity of the outsider brides suggest that there had been causes célèbres in which the low status of specific brides had been a source of scandal. Four of the contracts involved the daughters of Giacomo Ragazzoni: Camilla, who married in 1588, brought her husband Giovanni Minotto a dowry of 15,000 ducats.7 Giacomo was counted as one of the wealthiest men in Venice of his time. At the time of the War of Cyprus, there was some consideration of allowing him into the patriciate in return for his contributions to the war effort, an early precursor to the debates in 1645.8 Other brides came from the same social circles, the Terraferma nobility and the cittadini, which were to feature prominently in the seventeenth century. The only striking feature of these figures is the absence of outsider marriages registered in the 2 years immediately after the introduction of the

4

Hunecke, Der venezianische Adel, pp. 241–4. AdC 111–15. 6 This level of out-marriage is corroborated by Sperling for the parish of Santa Maria Formosa between 1569 and 1649. Convents and the Body Politic, p. 19. 7 AdC 156/17. 8 Bellavitis, Identitè, p. 163. 5


50

new prove.9 However, given the later absence of outsider brides in 1595, 1597 or 1598, all suggestions that the new law introduced a deterrent element into the patrician marriage market must remain tentative. Explanations for calls for the legislation controlling outsider brides to be tightened up in the 1580s may have had more to do with other factors, such as the after effects of the plague of 1575, which led to increased migration levels into Venice to compensate for demographic losses10 and to the impact of the loss of Cyprus to the Turks 2 years earlier. From a patrician perspective, it was the arrival Table 3.1

Patrician marriage contracts, 1580–99

Year

Contracts

1580 1581

42 49

Outsiders

Percentage

6 2

14 4

1582

48

4

8

1583

40

2

5

1584

39

1

3

1585

36

1

3

1586

40

6

15

1587

29

1

3

1588

28

4

14

1589*

34

2

6

1590

35

0

0

1591

37

0

0

1592

33

2

6

1593

28

4

14

1594

35

1

3

1595

21

0

0

1596

19

2

11

1597

31

0

0

1598 1599

21 24

0 4

0 17

633

42

7

Totals

* The breakdown before and after the passage of the law of 30 June 1589 was 19 contracts before and 15 afterwards, with outsider contracts in each period.

9 At least three applications for approval were made during these two years. The first was rejected, Vittoria Rossi (AdC 208/3, 1590), the other two were successful, Isabetta Vidal (AdC 108 and 356, 1591) and Marina Vincenti (AdC 356, 1609). Isabetta only signed her marriage contract in 1592, however (AdC 114). 10 A. Zannini, ‘Flussi d’immigrazione et strutture sociali urbane. Il caso dei bergamaschi a Venezia’, Bollettino di demografia storica 19 (1993): 213–225.


51

of Venetian refugees from Cyprus which was the most troubling, for their numbers contained the descendents of long-term patricians residents on the island taking up membership of the Great Council for the first time. During the generations in which their families had lived on Cyprus, they had found wives among non-patrician families on the island. As long as they remained at arms’ length from Venice, their choice of wives had few implications for those concerned with the purity of the Venetian elite. Now that they had returned to live in Venice, uncertainties about their social orthodoxy were fuelled by the more general concerns about aristocratic purity discussed earlier. From 1589, of course, the regulations controlling the evaluation of potential outsider brides were a reality for all patricians choosing an outsider bride who aspired to dynastic continuity in the Great Council. Detailed figures for total patrician marriages during the full period are not available, but both James Davis and Volker Hunecke have made a convincing case for a decline in the overall membership of the Great Council during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, so there is nothing to suggest that the number of patrician marriages in the period between 1580 and 1599, which averaged out around 32 per year was exceeded during the seventeenth century.11 The primary focus of this investigation, however, is on the demand for outsider brides rather than on the numbers whose marriages to patricians were finally registered by the magistracy. Four hundred and eighty-four prove have been identified for the period between 1590 and 1699, together with a further eighty-seven requests for patrician marriages to outsider brides to be registered retrospectively. The data in Table 3.2 suggest some interesting patterns, although the precise figures around the turn of the sixteenth century may be a little low. On the basis of these figures, numbers of applicants remained fairly static during the first 40 years of the seventeenth century, around forty per decade, before reaching a peak in the sixties in the 1640s and 1650s. More detailed annual analysis shows that the increase began in 1642 and remained fairly constant at around eight or nine applications each year until 1653. For the remainder of the 1650s, the average dropped to around five or six, before slumping in the later 1660s. These increases in applications were accompanied by a slight increase in failed prove. Both sets of figures suggest that the 11 years between 1642 and 1653 marked a time when patricians were particularly anxious to find outsider brides and either extended the social range of families with whom they wished to become associated, or cut procedural corners in their eagerness to facilitate the process of obtaining a dowry and a wife, and paid the legal penalty of seeing the prova fail. One obvious potential explanation for this growth in attempted out-marriage in the 1640s and 1650s would be the conditions which led to the sale of patrician status from 1646 at the almost impossibly high price of 100,000 ducats, but this argument needs 11 J.C . Davis, The Decline of the Venetian Nobility; Hunecke, Der venezianische Adel. Hunecke’s analysis of marriage registrations by patricians from 1646, however, does suggest a fall in the proportion marrying outsider brides in the 1670s (p. 153).


52

to be balanced in part by the rise in the numbers of patrician brides on the marriage market fuelled by the recruitment of new families.12 Table 3.2

Prove, 1590–1699 Decade

Suppliche

1590 1600

22 44

5 9

1610

42

9

1620

36

7

1630

40

8

1640

61

13

1650

66

14

1660

49

10

1670

46

10

1680 1690

50 28

10 6

Total

484

Percentage of Total

101 (rounded up)

Social Backgrounds of Applicant Families There is no common agreement among historians or contemporaries over the precise classification of the social status of applicant families. All that they shared was their absence from the ranks of the Venetian patriciate and their conviction that they corresponded to the criteria set down by the law of 1589. Hunecke makes the common mistake of separating families who referred to themselves as Venetian cittadini from others, such as lawyers, notaries and the owners of Murano glass furnaces, whose occupations were dependent on their cittadino status.13 Pullan’s analysis, based on the Foscarini listing, conflates the fathers and former husbands of outsider brides. While this enables us to place these women in their social milieu, the inclusion of widows’ first husbands somewhat confuses the issue because the Avogadori showed no interest in the social status of these men.14 Table 3.3 is an attempt to reflect the different occupational categories used by the families to describe themselves and by the witnesses called to the Avogaria. It demonstrates that while the families wishing to be linked to the patriciate by marriage came from both inside and outside the city and engaged a variety of occupations and activities in order to bring in 12 The real impact of brides from new families seems to have been later, towards the final decades of the seventeenth century. Cowan, Urban Patriciate, pp. 86–97. 13 Hunecke, Der venezianische Adel, p. 393. Owners of Murano glass furnaces were permitted to be cittadini. Zannini, Burocrazia, p. 75. 14 Pullan, Rich and Poor, p. 107.


53

an income, they came from a relatively limited social range. Information about the social status of the maternal grandfathers of applicants was more sparse, however, and has not been included here. It only played a major positive role if the mother’s family was deemed to have a more impressive social background than that of the father, as in the case of mothers who had been born into the patriciate but had subsequently married out, or a negative role if the activities of a maternal grandfather might have been construed as arte meccanica. The difficulties in establishing social categories encountered by other historians have not been definitively resolved by this exercise. A number of choices were made when constructing Table 3.3 which require some explanation before the data set out in it can be discussed. The social categories which have been used reflect those used by contemporaries. Some of them used these categories to describe themselves, particularly those with high status elsewhere. Antonio Grighetto was described in 1681 by his daughter, Cecilia, as a gentilhuomo padovano, while Eleonora Secco di Giovanni Antonio used this opportunity in 1688 to trace at length the trajectory of her noble family through Milan and Crema to Padua.15 Others used these categories to describe their friends, relatives or neighbours. Table 3.3

Social origins of outsider brides, 1589–1699

Category

Number

Patrician fathers Nobility from Republic

69 103

14 21

9

2

Nobility from outside Cittadini (all categories)

Percentage

121

25

Non-noble Rentiers

51

11

Minor Officials Avvocati and Doctors of Laws Notaries

10

2

37

8

16

3

Secretariat

34

7

Merchants

58

12

Doctors of Medicine

11

2

Miscellaneous Unknown

6 73

1 15

Note. Percentage based on a total of 484 cases.

The use of socio-occupational categories by contemporaries also reflected some of the ambiguities of the time where individuals belonged to more than one socio-occupational category at once. It has proved impossible to avoid a certain degree of double counting in this table as a result, and the percentages 15

AdC 230/81; AdC 236/66.

54


given add up to well over a hundred. A quarter of all the women who applied for permission to marry patricians during our period were the daughters of cittadini. On the other hand, men in this social category were also merchants, lawyers, notaries or rentiers, categories shared with other families who were not cittadini and they have also been counted in these categories.16 Placing an over-emphasis on the distinctions within Venetian society between cittadini and those below them, leads to a danger of ignoring the equally important similarities between many of them, an issue which will be discussed later in greater detail.17 A similar issue arises over ways of considering that a minority of noblemen were also merchants or lawyers, either in their cities of birth or in Venice. Many of the families proposing wives for patricians had no specific occupations at all, but, like wealthy patricians, lived from passive sources of income as rentiers. In this table, however, the category of rentiers has been used exclusively to describe non-noble families living from passive income, as in the case of Alberto Veggia di Zuanne, who was described by a patrician as a cittadino who lived from a passive income, with much property (viveva d’entrata, havendo delli beni assai).18 Fifteen per cent of cases are listed in the table as ‘unknown’ because the sources do not indicate a family’s status or occupation clearly enough. It is possible to make some assumptions about certain cases on the basis of family names which recur elsewhere. Tomaso Fugazzoni, whose daughter Giustina applied in 1690, was somewhere on the edges of the cittadini. He had failed by one vote in an attempt to obtain the necessary status to become one of the secretariat. By the time Giustina’s supplica was put forward, however, her brother had succeeded where his father had failed, and was serving as Secretary to the Provveditore on the island of Corfu.19 Anna Bozza’s family had links to the secretariat by marriage. Her elder sister, Giulia, was the wife of a member of the Negri family, who, at the time of her supplica, was Secretary in Zürich.20 Other families bore patrician surnames, suggesting a strong likelihood of patrician origins several generations earlier. It was customary for natural sons of patricians, for instance, to take on cittadino status. Several appear as the fathers of aspirant wives in our data. There is little certainty, however, that their descendents retained this status. For the purposes of Table 3.3, then, we may assume that many of the families whose status or occupation was not indicated in the records were very similar to those cases where this has been identified, and their presence in comparatively large numbers (15 per cent of the total) does not invalidate the general patterns to be determined from this data.

16 In the case of 16 of these cittadino families, there was insufficient information to establish whether or not they had a profession, and they have been listed separately in the table, while contributing to the overall total for this group. 17 See Chapter 4. 18 AdC 216/70, 1652. 19 AdC 247/79, 1690. 20 AdC 218/126, 1655.


55

These figures are largely confirmed by the outsider brides involved in the much smaller number of prove following petitions by patricians to consider the retrospective registration of their marriages. Once again, the largest proportion of the women’s fathers were either Venetian patricians or nobles from the Terraferma and Candia. The two groups, families proposing outsider brides for investigation before their marriage to patricians and those whose daughters were considered by the Avogaria for later registration of their marriages, were therefore essentially the same. Some appeared a second time following the failure of their first prova. The cittadina Diamante Contarini reapplied for registration in 1695, following the failure of her first attempt on procedural grounds in 1670. Others were successful in obtaining permission to marry a patrician, only for their husbands to fall foul of other legislation because they had omitted to register their marriages. It took 2 years for Zuanne Emo to register his marriage to Francesca Flangini in 1645.21 To sum up, the outsider brides considered for marriage to Venetian patricians came from a comparatively narrow social range.22 This was far from a straightforward process of upward social mobility on the part of their families. In the case of the nobility from the Terraferma and further afield, it could even be argued that this was lateral mobility, were it not for the fact that the Venetian patricians regarded themselves as superior to nobles from the republic’s territories on the grounds that they were the ruling elite. More detailed analysis of the different social groups involved has been postponed to later chapters.23 Geographical Distribution of Applicants A significant proportion of applicants before the Avogaria di Comun were born outside Venice. According to Table 3.4, once those cases have been excluded in which their place of birth has not been recorded, around 35 per cent of all potential brides were non-Venetians. This reflected a marriage market of considerable geographical scope which was taking place in at least three different ways. Patricians in Venice were marrying women whose families had moved to the city comparatively recently but whose families were beginning to be integrated within Venetian society. They were also benefiting from a much more widespread network within which marriages were being arranged from Venice over long distances to take advantage of a larger reservoir of potentially appropriate brides. Finally, patricians also came into contact with local families and their nubile daughters when living for part of the year on their estates on the Terraferma or when working on government service. 21

AdC 229/60 and 239/17; AdC 209/34 and 212/81. Bellavitis shows similar patterns among cittadini who married brides from outside Venice. Identité, 236. 23 See in particular Chapter 4, ‘Huomini Civili and Patrician Marriage’, Chapter 6, ‘Concubinage and Natural Daughters’, and Chapter 5, which examines the blurred boundaries between ‘civil’ birth and arte meccanica. 22


56 Table 3.4

Geographical origins of prove women

Area Venice Terraferma Istria/Dalmatia

Number of cases

Percentage

282 93

58 19

7

1

Islands

17

4

Italian States

24

5

Elsewhere Unknown

13 48

3 10

484

100

Total

The patterns of geographical distribution are quite clear. The majority of women who were not born in Venice were Venetian subjects. They lived in many parts of the Terraferma, in the cities of Padua, Vicenza, Verona and Bergamo, in the rural areas around them, in Friuli, and in the areas bordering the Adriatic in Dalmatia. Seventeen were born in Venetian possessions in the eastern Mediterranean: Corfu, Cyprus and Crete, but many had been forced to leave home by the extension of Turkish power in the region from the later sixteenth century. Most of the brides of Cypriot origin were born in Venice. A double application for a prova was made in 1602 by the daughters of Benedetto Flangini, a Cypriot who had come to Venice after studying medicine in Padua. The parents of Maria di Giacomo di Andrea (prova 1636) had married in Venice in 1590.24 Flangini’s decision to leave Cyprus in order to study medicine in Padua before settling in Venice was also taken by Candian men such as Nicolò Lorandi and Bartolomio Dandolo, the great grandson of a patrician, who married Venetian wives in the 1650s.25 The confusion of the Turkish invasion of Candia and the island’s long defence by the Venetians also brought about hurried marriages on Candia and protective kidnap by patricians. Among the patricians who wished to register their marriages before the Avogaria, we find NH Luca Barozzi, who had married Orsa Gribbia in the city of Rettimo in 1645, and the blind NH Luca Falier, who married Marietta Papadopuli in Venice in 1661. Barozzi’s claim for registration was upheld, in spite of the destruction of all relevant corroborative evidence in the fall of Rettimo. Falier brought both Marietta and her mother back to Venice from Candia while he was there on army service.26 Election to a post outside Venice brought unmarried patricians into contact with a different range of potential brides than in Venice. As representatives of what was effectively a colonial authority, they were lodged in official buildings 24

AdC 317; AdC 208/48. See cases of Virginia Lorandi (AdC 208/33) and Anna Dandolo (AdC 227/7). 26 AdC 211/72; AdC 239/10. Falier’s behaviour can be compared with that of NH Lorenzo Corner, who took Maddalena, otherwise known as La Turca, away from the island of Samothrace and kept her as his concubine in Venice (AdC 224/86, 1670). 25


57

and often received social as well as business visits from high-status local families.27 Typical examples of patricians who met and planned to marry local women while in Reggimento were a Vitturi, Podestà in Castelfranco, who was named by witnesses in the case of Marina Giudozzo in 1622; NH Domenico Tiepolo, Castellan in Monfalcone, who was to marry Cecilia Manzioli; and NH Nicolò Bragadin, who married Hellena Pesenti of Bergamo in 1643 while he was Camerlengo in the city.28 In an odd twist, however, some patricians out on the edges of the republic’s territories married women while they were in post whom they had arranged to bring from Venice. Francesco Moro married Antonia Broli in Prevesa on the Greek coast near Corfu in 1695 where he was provveditore estraordinario. Her father, a Venetian merchant who had fallen on bad times, was rumoured to have arranged to bring out his 37-year-old daughter to Prevesa for the purpose. Over a century earlier, Bernardin Baffo had married Faustina di Zendrini on Zara in 1577 where he was Castellan. (He attempted to register the marriage in 1600.) Her father had given him permission to take her with him on service and the couple lived together briefly in concubinage beofre marrying. She was six months pregnant at the time.29 There is a case for suggesting that service on the edges of the republic camouflaged a number of socially questionable relationships. Widows It was not unusual for Venetian patricians to marry the widows of other patricians, particularly if they were young and childless, and offered a dowry and political connections of an appropriate kind.30 The same pattern is to be seen among the women whose names were put forward for investigation by the Avogaria. At this point in the discussion, our concern is primarily with the proportion of potential brides who had been married before and their ages, rather than the ambiguities represented by women who could not automatically claim the positive virtues of virgins listed among the criteria in the law of 1589. That issue is taken up in Chapter 7. Fifty-eight of the women investigated, representing 12 per cent of the total, had been married at least once before. Marietta Bottoni di Carlo, who was examined at the age of 36 in 1621, had been married three times before, but she was an exception.31

27 This depended on the marital status of the podestà. NH Giacomo Semitecolo di Bartolomio remembered that while he was Podestà in Monfalcone in the 1680s, his wife was visited by the wife of Rinaldo Bonavia, a local nobleman in the palace at Monfalcone. However, one of his unmarried predecessors was equally clear that in his case social visits by couples were not the norm: non essendo io maridato non pratticava in Palazzo (AdC 240/40, 1700). 28 AdC 324; AdC 216/84; AdC 212/82. 29 AdC 239/36; AdC 215/45. 30 F. Colclough, ‘Widows and Widowhood in Early Modern Venice’ (PhD thesis, Northumbria University, 2000), pp. 100–114. 31 AdC 109/34.


58 Table 3.5

Ages of widows

Age Group

Married once

Under 20 20–29

4 11

30–39

11

40–49

8

50 and over Unknown Total

Married twice

Married three times

2

1

3 14

1 3

51

4

1

Table 3.5 suggests that the youth of the widows selected by patricians was not an overwhelming consideration. Among those whose baptismal dates were recorded in the Avogaria files, only 15, under half, were aged under 30. As might be expected, there was a decline in numbers among older widows, but their very presence among these lists is significant. Although the law of 1589 and its successors had been drawn up specifically to control the social and moral backgrounds of women who were expected to give birth to patrician sons, the prove di nobiltà caught other fish in its net. Women who had passed the menopause could not bear patrician sons. Other criteria, such as dowries, must have played a part. On the other hand, dowry sizes had to be balanced by issues of age. Younger women with similar dowries could still offer more. Violante Cavagnis was 53 when she was investigated in 1672. We know that she brought her first husband, a Paduan noble, a dowry of 8,000 ducats, and may assume that the figure now on offer was a little higher.32 Widows in their 40s included Lucietta Gottardi, who was very well connected with families who were among the first to be aggregated to the patriciate from 1646. Her application in 1650 may have benefited from these links.33 Isabetta Morosini was even closer to the patriciate. She was the legitimate daughter of a patrician who had not registered his own marriage. Her sister had already successfully passed a prova di nobiltà, and her own first husband had been the natural son of a patrician.34 Both of these cases are purely indicative, however, and individual circumstances played a part in every marriage negotiation involving an older widow.

32

AdC 225/116. For widows’ dowries see Cowan, Urban Patriciate, pp. 167–8. Her supporting witnesses included the merchants, Alberto Gozzi, Francesco Martinelli and Alessandro Tasca, all aggregated in 1646 (AdC 215/46). See the discussion of links with newly aggregated families in Chapter 4, pp. 71–2 below. 34 AdC 230/73, 1680. 33


59

General Age Profile of Applicants It would be useful at this point to compare the age profile of widows with the general breakdown of age of the women whose suppliche came to the Avogaria. From a technical perspective, in most cases the precise date of birth of these women remains unknown. All calculations are based on their baptismal dates, which tended to be close to dates of birth. This means that all ages listed should be treated as approximate with the possibility that the women concerned were up to a year older than the date used in these calculations. It should also be emphasised that these were not the ages at which the women actually married. For those with unproblematic applications, the marriage ceremonies followed quite rapidly, but for others, there were delays. Many families may have begun the prove di nobiltà at an age lower that that at which it customary to marry in order to ensure that there was time for approvals to be given. Table 3.6 Age band

Ages of applicants at start of prove di nobiltà Unmarried

Widows

Combined percentage

Percentage of known cases

Under 12 12–15

4 45

0 1

1 9

1 14

16–19

97

2

21

30

20–24

87

3

19

28

25–29

32

8

8

12

30–39

31

14

7

14

40–49

2

8

2

3

0ver 50 Unknown

0 155

4

1 33

1

Total

484

101 (rounded up)

The patterns in Table 3.6 are largely consistent with what is known about ages at first marriage elsewhere.35 The two extremes of the age-range deserve a little more discussion however. Four potential brides were under 12 at the time 35 R.B. Litchfield, ‘Caratteristiche demografiche delle famiglie patrizie fiorentine dal XVI al XX secolo’, in M. Buonanno (ed.), Le funzioni sociali del matrimonio. Modelli e regoli della scelta del coniuge dal XIV al XX secolo (Milan, 1980), pp. 131–47 (139); V. Brodsky Elliot, ‘Single Women in the London Marriage Market: Age Status and Mobility, 1589–1619’, in R.B. Outhwaite (ed.), Marriage and Society: Studies in the Social History of Marriage (London, 1981), pp. 81– 100 (82–7); J.M. Moriseau, ‘Mariages et foyers paysans aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles: l’exemple des campagnes du sud de Paris’, Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine 28 (1981): 486–88; P. Deyon, Amiens, capitale provinciale. Etude sur la société urbaine au 17ième siècle (Paris and The Hague, 1967), pp. 35–6. See also Italian ecclesiastical attitudes in E. Novi Chavarria, ‘Ideologia e comportamenti familiari nei predicatori Italiani tra cinque e settecento. Tematiche e modelli’, Rivista Storica Italiana 100 (1988): 688–92.


60

of their prove. A further forty-four were aged between 12 and 15, of whom twenty-three were under 15. The girls under 12 were all already closely linked to patricians, and two of them were examined as part of multiple applications involving older sisters. This suggests that patricians were trying to play the system in order to advantage younger girls so that marriages could be arranged in the future. This is quite clear in the case of the three Gaio sisters, whose patrician maternal uncle sponsored their supplica in 1651. Anzoletta was only 8, Vicenza was 12 and Girolama was 15. All three were their late father’s heirs. However, only Girolama had a marriage in immediate prospect. Virginia Schietti, aged 9 in 1687, applied with her 14-year old sister. Their mother was also a patrician. Zanetta da Mosto (1655) and Loredana Fortunata Pisani (1670) both had patrician fathers, although only the former was of legitimate birth.36 The case of Marietta Flangini also demonstrates forethought on the part of her family. She was 12 when her father petitioned on her behalf in 1639. He was quite explicit that he would have liked her to marry but that ‘her still tender age did not permit this to happen’. The marriage actually took place 2 years later.37 The absence of deceased fathers in the case of other 12year olds may also have acted as an incentive to arrange an early marriage for them. Members of the Terraferma nobility were prominent in these cases. Camilla Marenzi of Bergamo was put forward because marriage negotiations were already underway with Leonardo Martinengo, a member of one of the families which, like the Savorgnan in Friuli, had double status as patricians and Terraferma nobility.38 The presence of older unmarried women among candidates for prove di nobiltà is of even greater interest. Given that most women in Venice and northern Italy in general were married by the time they had reached their mid-20s, why should women in their 40s have been successfully active in the marriage market? We know of two cases where they had not been married before: Andrianna Pizzoni and Isabetta Stricher. Comparatively little is known about Andrianna. She was 42 when her name came forward. Until then, she had been living in a convent on Murano. Her mother was the natural daughter of a patrician. Her father was no longer alive, but there is no indication from the files whether he had died recently, releasing funds for a dowry.39 The case of Isabetta Stricher, aged 44 in 1691, is more fully documented. Her parents, both from Amsterdam, had moved to Venice in the early 1640s. Her father, Giacomo, had enjoyed a period of great commercial success, and was appointed Dutch consul in Venice. His success may have been his financial downfall, for Isabetta’s file records a number of attempts on his part to obtain the repayment of forced loans made to the Venetian government during the campaign to hold on to Candia. By 1691, Giacomo Stricher had been dead for several years. His will (dated 1673) was pessimistic over his capacity to leave anything to his 36

AdC 215/61; AdC 235/57; AdC 223/55; AdC 224/96. AdC 206/52. 38 AdC 327, 1622. See also the case of Cattarina Melchiore of Uderzo, whose widowed mother married a patrician (AdC 223/66, 1667). 39 AdC 206/47, 1639. 37


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heirs. By 1691, the family’s material circumstances must have changed for the better to the extent that his elderly daughter was now sought in marriage.40 The release of funds was the explicit mechanism for the arrival on the marriage market in 1702 at the age of 39 of Bianca, the natural daughter of NH Benetto Barbarigo. Bianca had been placed in a convent in Capo d’Istria together with another sister, like many other natural daughters of patricians.41 One witness referred to the process as being left ‘in deposito’. Her sister became a nun, but her uncle lacked the funds to pay for her spiritual dowry and was obliged to support her there for many years before taking her into his own household. At his death, she received a bequest by which she was left some land. This changed everything. According to a patrician who had served as Podestà in the Istrian town of Dignan, where she was living with her mother: ‘I know that many gentlemen wanted to marry her because she owned property’ (havendo della robba). A marriage was finally arranged with a member of the Loredan family, the son of the Podestà in nearby Rovigno.42 Orphans It is far from surprising that many of the female applicants no longer had a living father at the time of application, and a substantial proportion of them had no living parents at all. This raises two connected issues, the responsibility for initiating patrician marriage negotiations in the absence of a living father, and the arrangements for taking care of orphan women. The cases recorded on the database fall neatly into three groups, each of which have around the same number: those where there is no information about whether fathers were alive or not, those where fathers had already died, and those where both parents were already dead. While some of the women who lost their fathers had already been married once, and were more likely to be older, most of those without the support of a father were unmarried. When cases of unmarried women without fathers are checked against their ages at the time of application, although some were aged 30 or more, the majority were younger. Candiana Querini di Cesare, for instance, whose father had been an avvocato, was only 15 in 1649. Marina Girardi, the daughter of a member of the secretariat, was 24 in 1672, and Antonia Lumaga, the daughter of a merchant, was 28 in 1673. Each found sponsors from within their families. Candiana received the support of her paternal grandfather, Marina and Antonia that of their brothers. The behaviour of their sponsors suggests that the decision to find a patrician husband was not always necessarily in obedience to the wishes of their late fathers. According to the will of Giovanni Antonio Lumaga, he was expecting his daughter to take the veil and had set aside a bequest for that 40 The Stricher file is in AdC 247/80. Detailed discussion of her father can be found in A. Cowan, ‘Foreigners and the City – The Case of the Immigrant Merchant’, in A. Cowan (ed.), Mediterranean Urban Culture 1400–1700 (Exeter, 2000), pp. 44–55. 41 See below, pp. 122. 42 AdC 241/64.


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purpose; she was already in the convent of Santa Marta. Something must have changed in the year after his death.43 The difficulties in arranging marriages in the absence of a father were magnified when women had lost both their parents. Not all of them were at the younger end of the age-range, even if widows are taken out of the equation. Both older and younger women featured among the orphans whose cases were considered.44 This suggests that two contradictory patterns of behaviour may have been taking place. On the one hand, an attempt to marry of girls at a younger age because they lacked strong male protectors, and on the other, women at an older age being enabled to raise a dowry as a result of their parents’ deaths. Each of them succeeded in finding alternative accommodation and support. Many remained in the convents to which they had been sent at an earlier age. Others lived with brothers or married sisters. Little is known of the specific intentions of their late parents, except in the unusual case of Paulina da Pesaro, the natural daughter of two patricians, NH Antonio da Pesaro di Lunardo and ND Ottavia Ghisi, who had been unable to legalise their relationship because Antonio had taken holy orders. Both parents left wills in which they expressed the desire that Paulina should marry a patrician, an attitude which was common among their patrician contemporaries.45 Acceptance and Rejection Table 3.7 confirms the general impression that the prove di nobiltà were a success. Once the general criteria for applicants were known, applications were self-selecting and patricians in general were reassured that fellow members of the Great Council born of mothers from outside the patriciate were no threat to the caste’s reputation for purity and gentility. On the other hand, almost one in ten applications was either turned down or withdrawn, and voting patterns in other cases showed that there were lingering doubts. The records of the prove are not always clear in recording the result of the investigations. As a convention, majority votes in the Collegio were recorded, and the outside of the file marked approbata (approved). When this was not the case, details of failure were not always noted. Cross-checking with other lists of patricians who had married outsider brides, and with applications for retrospective registration after marriage have clarified many others, but in a small number of cases, the outcome is uncertain, and they have been included among the failures. From the perspective of this analysis, too, proportions of absolute success and failure mask many of the doubts which the investigators discussed even 43

AdC 213/18; AdC 225/119; AdC 226/130. Maria Antonia Balbi (AdC 220/39, 1661) and Diamante Contarini (AdC 227/13, 1676) were 15, and Maria Vaura was 17 (AdC 220/37, 1661). For older orphans see the cases of Camilla Dusini (AdC 233/24, 1685), Laura Alviano (AdC 222/47, 1665) and Vittoria Santinelli (AdC 222/44, 1665). 45 AdC 340, 1607. See Hunecke, Der venezianische Adel, pp. 141–3. 44


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in cases where approval was given. There was considerable doubt in 26 cases and a lack of unanimity in many more.46 Lucia, the natural daughter of NH Antonio Navagero, was only accepted on a fourth vote with two abstentions. Another natural daughter, Maria Avanzago, was accepted after two votes with seven in favour, one against and one abstention. Cornelia Moretti was accepted with seven votes in favour, one against, and two abstentions.47 Even where voting figures were more positive, doubts could be expressed. Cases for retrospective registration, which have not been considered in the data for Table 3.7, sometimes lasted a considerable period as the Avogadori struggled to find enough evidence for a balanced judgment. The registration of the marriage between Bianca Bonamigo di Piero and NH Pietro Corner di Giovanni Francesco took 10 years to resolve positively. It was severely endangered by rumours about her mother’s morality. She had a relationship with a member of the Malipiero family before, and possibly during her marriage to Bonamigo, a notary at the Avogaria di Comun.48 Table 3.7

Success rates of prove

Decade

Prove

Unsuccessful

Percentage of total failed prove 1600–99

Percentage of prove per decade

1600 1610

44 42

1 4

2 9

2 9

1620

36

4

9

11

1630

40

9

20

23

1640

61

10

22

16

1650

66

4

9

6

1660

49

3

7

6

1670

46

4

9

9

1680 1690

50 28

3 3

7 7

6 11

484

45

101

101

Total

Table 3.7 establishes several patterns. On average, around one in ten applications during the seventeenth century did not reach a satisfactory outcome. The proportion per decade varied considerably. The highest failure 46 These were cases in which only seven members of the Collegio voted in favour while others either voted against or abstained. In 93 more cases, voting was not unanimous. 47 Navagero (AdC 215/54, 1651); Avanzago (AdC 283, 1623); Moretti (AdC 108, 1613). For other cases showing similar doubts, see Lucietta Girardi (AdC 210/70, 1641), Laura dal Sol (AdC 212/83, 1648) and Angela Moro (AdC 231/96, 1683). 48 AdC 235/46, 1686. See also AdC 229/60 (1680). This case is discussed in detail in Chapter 7, pp. 144–5 below.


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rates were in the 1620s, 1630s and 1640s. They peaked at 23 per cent in the 1630s. This did not entirely correspond to the numbers of cases being submitted, which peaked later, in the 1650s, but it is possible that in the early enthusiasm for outsider brides in the 1640s, some more-doubtful cases were presented. On the other hand, there is no evidence that the attitudes of the Avogadori when interpreting the law sharpened or became more flexible. Failure rates were around 4 per cent at both the beginning and the end of the seventeenth century. The rejections in the period 1630–39 were a microcosm of most of the main reasons why cases failed to be resolved positively throughout the century. Nine women were unsuccessful. Four, possibly five, of them broke the rules of the prove di nobiltà by getting married before their investigation was complete. Two were turned down because their fathers were associated with arte meccanica, and a third because her maternal grandfather was a fisherman. In the final case, the father had been banished from the republic for corruption. Two of these women were also the natural daughters of patricians, proof that having a patrician father did not necessarily predicate success. Inhonestà, moral inadequacy of the applicant or her mother was the only major failing criterion absent in the 1630s.49 Failure to wait for the prova to end before getting married automatically led to a cessation of the investigation.50 In the case of Giustina Coleti in 1616, the Avogadori reported to the Collegio that: they had carried out a diligent investigation into the clauses presented in her name, followed by an inquisizione carried out by Piero Foscarini, Avogador di Comun, in conformity with the law which obliges the abovesaid Avogadori to examine particularly if the women who had requested permission to marry had married any noble of the Maggior Consiglio. Consequently, it had come to light that on the 16th of June 1616, as it appears in the registers held by the sacristan of the church of San Simon Profeta, that words of marriage with NH Roberto Malatesta di Alfonso were exchanged before the first priest, the Reverend Father Gierolamo Fontana. The banns had been dispensed with by the Patriarch. Consequently, because the law obliged them to annul and break every prova in such cases, each of the abovesaid Avogadori di Comun, the Illustrious Zaccaria Morosini, Piero Foscarini and Bertucci Contarini, in the light of the contravention of the abovesaid law, have brought the case to an end.51

Why were patricians unwilling to wait for a prova to end before getting married when it was widely known that such an act was against the law? In some cases, this was a way of bringing the case to an end because negative evidence was coming forward which was likely to jeopardize the outcome.52 49

This is discussed in detail in Chapter 7, pp. 142–6 below. This was enshrined in the law of 1605, ASV, Compilazione Leggi 294. After Valeria Zantani married NH Giacomo Grimani di Giovanni Francesco in 1645, her file was marked lasciatus fuit (AdC 209/36). 51 AdC 108. 52 Helena Dante was already engaged in a high profile and scandalous relationship with NH Nadal da Mosto (AdC 218/147, 1647). See also the case of Annetta Bonamigo, whose mother’s moral behaviour was in doubt (AdC 229/60, 1670). 50


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In others, the bride came from outside Venice and distance from the capital may have played a part.53 It was unlikely, that any patrician would sacrifice the future status of his sons once his chosen bride had submitted herself to investigation. There were still ambiguities, however. Among the patricians who applied for their marriages to be registered retrospectively, were those, such as NH Andrea Bembo, who married immediately before they left to take up office outside Venice. Bembo married Virginia Locadello in 1669 as he was about to become Camerlengo in Brescia.54 This, however, is not to suggest that patricians deliberately sabotaged their future wives’ prove in the expectation that they could return later for a retrospective application. There were considerable dangers in taking this route. All retrospective applications had to be considered first by the Council of Ten, which had the right of veto. Nor could patrician applicants assume that their case was strengthened because they were now married and in some cases had sons. Prove which failed because the parties married before they were completed were not always followed by a successful retrospective application. NH Lorenzo Lombardo and Anna Bonamigo were unable to reverse the negative opinion of her mother’s morality.55 Similar concerns almost prevented the registration of the marriage between NH Andrea Manolesso and Vittoria Grotta.56 A far better strategy seems to have been to apply for retrospective registration of a marriage which had not been investigated before by the Avogaria. A typical case was that of NH Domenico Contarini and Fiordelise Longo. They had married in 1684, when she was 14. The application was made 3 years later. Her social background was impeccable. Her father was a merchant, her brother a member of the secretariat and her mother’s family were lawyers.57 It is not clear why they had not applied for a prova beforehand. As we know, doubts about a certain number of cases were reflected in negative votes although the women were eventually permitted to marry patricians. From the perspective of the applicants, these doubts were ultimately discounted because permission was given. From our perspective, the recognition that the criteria were not fully met is of considerable interest. Two of the Collegio voted against Marina Calergi, the natural daughter of NH Vettor, in 1604. Her late patrician father had left her 30,000 ducats for a dowry with the express request to marry a patrician, but there were doubts over her mother’s peasant background.58 As a baker, Angela Moro’s father was potentially a suspect of arte meccanica. Her case may have been influenced by the fact that he owned a chain of shops all over Venice, in San Lio, San 53 Orsa Manin was a member of the Friuli nobility. She married Count Carlo Savorgnan in Udine during Carnival in 1639. He was jointly a patrician and a member of the Friuli nobility (AdC 207/43, 1638). Similar circumstances attended the marriage of the twice-widowed Honoria Beltramini in Asolo in 1649 (AdC 213/19). 54 AdC 223/51, 1666. The file also contains her failed prova. 55 AdC 229/60, 1670. 56 AdC 230/64, 1680. See the original prova in 227/47 20. 57 AdC 235/51, 1687. 58 AdC 302, 1604.


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Antonio, La Madonetta, San Aponal and Canareggio. Witnesses were insistent that he only traded in bread and did not sell it personally and that he had now retired.59 There were concerns about the relationship between Isabetta Vallier’s unmarried parents. Although her patrician father spent every day with her mother, a Paduan named Angela Bianchi, and slept overnight on Sundays in her house in San Giovanni Grisostomo, they did not fully cohabit.60 Similar concerns about her mother’s moral character were raised in the unusual case of Marietta Avanzago. Both her parents were patricians, but her mother’s name was kept secret from the authorities in order to avoid scandal.61 The negative elements of this case seem to have been outweighed by the testimony of the nuns of Sant’Iseppo, who were adamant that they would never have given shelter to the daughter of ‘prostitutes and women of evil renown’.62 The reasons for other negative votes are less clear. For every case in which there may have been a cause for doubt, there was another for which there is no such evidence. Isabetta Maldotto’s maternal grandfather specialised in selling grain, a commodity which was less highly regarded than other wholesale goods.63 There were also doubts about Catterina Burratini’s father, a merchant originally from Augsburg, whose extensive business in Venice had gone bankrupt.64 Virginia Lorandi, on the other hand, aroused suspicion because of her Greek origins. The family came from Crete and worshipped in San Giorgio dei Greci.65

59

AdC 231/96, 1683. AdC 224/83, 1669. 61 This case is discussed in full in Chapter 7, p. 148 below. 62 AdC 283, 1623. 63 AdC 326, 1593. The voting was 8:1:0 (pro: contra: abstention). See the comments on ‘dirty’ commodities in U. Tucci, ‘The Psychology of the Venetian Merchant’, pp. 346–7. 64 Catterina was already twice widowed. The voting was 8:1:1 (AdC 301). 65 AdC 228/33, 1674. The voting was 8:1:1. 60

CHAPTER FOUR

Huomini Civili and Patrician Marriage Our analysis of the social origins of outsider brides between 1589 and 1699, seen through the perspective of the prove di nobiltà, has already established that these women came from a limited social circle. When not patricians themselves, their fathers were largely lawyers, merchants, doctors, highlevel administrators, rentiers or nobles from inside and outside the Venetian territories. This chapter examines these social groups in greater detail in order to establish why the social background of these women should have been considered appropriate by Venetian patricians, given the well-established social distinctions in use at that time, which placed the patriciate in an exalted position. It will argue that each of these social or occupational groups belonged to a category which we may call huomini civili, to borrow a term already in circulation in seventeenth-century Venice. In other words, Venetian patricians recognised that they did not have a monopoly of the qualities of ‘civility’, even within their own society, and that this permitted them to consider other families as ideologically sound and worthy of associating with through marriage. This attitude also enabled them to come to terms with the paradox that while sixteenth-century legislation created an increasingly clear social distinction between those who were cittadini and those who were not, in reality, this distinction was blurred by men who shared almost everything with the cittadini but were unable to apply for this status because they did not fulfil all the criteria set out by the law. Social relationships were not only created as a result of theoretical rules and distinctions. The testimonies given to the Avogadori clearly document in detail how the complex of relationships between patricians and non-patricians created an environment in which families got to know each other and came to accept each other as worthy of closer relationships. The incremental association of some patricians with outsider families through marriage, which is also documented over time through the prove di nobiltà, also established social networks which generated new relationships of this kind. While the focus in this chapter remains with the social groups who provided outsider brides for patricians, the underlying perspective remains that of the patricians rather than the social aspirations of the families who wished to be associated with them by marriage. Patricians seeking outsider brides in the later sixteenth century may have posed an ideological problem which the law of 1589 and its successors were intended to solve, but they were also collectively the men who sat in judgment on applicants and their families.


68

Fewer than one in ten patricians who married during the seventeenth century chose outsider brides. This immediately raises the question why they wished to do so. It is not enough to argue that they chose outsider brides because they fulfilled certain criteria of social standing and moral probity, nor that these marriages, unlike those within the patriciate, were based on mutual attraction – there is no evidence for this. The final part of this chapter examines the nature of the marriage market, dowry levels and the distribution of wealth within the patriciate in order to examine the role of marriage settlements in encouraging the search for outsider brides. Prior Links with Patricians Many of the applicant families had strong pre-existing links with patricians through marriage as a result of the process of marrying out during the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Younger women built on the successful prove of older sisters or aunts in order to reinforce their case for acceptance.1 The succession of marriages with patricians by outsider women from different generations of the same family reinforced these links, encouraged future aspirations and brought the family into greater contact with the patriciate. The Beltramini clan of Asolo were a case in point. Honoria Beltramini di Cornelio, already twice a widow, was the first to marry a patrician in 1649. He was NH Andrea Balbi di Eustachio, the Venetian Podestà in the city. Although her application for a prova was withdrawn because the marriage took place before the Avogaria investigation was complete, she was followed by her cousin, Chiara Beltramini, in 1661, whose prova was sponsored by the same NH Andrea Balbi, and in 1671 and 1680 by her nieces, Sulfitia and Giulia di Nicolò. In the following generation, her great niece, Catterina di Cornelio, came forward in 1700.2 Fiordelise Franceschi di Carlo, examined in 1651, followed great aunts, the sisters of her paternal grandfather, and her father’s cousin, all of whom married patricians.3 Elena Padavin was equally well connected. Her prova in 1688 followed those of her three maternal aunts, the daughters of Iseppo Tirindello.4 When families came forward to apply for aggregation to the Venetian patriciate by purchase once it had been opened up in 1646, their suppliche also placed considerable significance on their pre-existing marital links with patricians, both men and women. Giovanni Francesco Labia, one of the first to be aggregated in 1646, was able to claim that not only had his daughter Leonora successfully passed scrutiny 3 years earlier and had married a patrician, but that he was related to patricians by marriage through his paternal aunt and two 1

See Chapter 3. AdC 213/19; AdC 220/41; AdC 225/103; AdC 230/77; AdC 240/42. 3 AdC 216/60. Pellegrina (1608), Laura (1613) and Isabetta Franceschi (1619), all in AdC 318. See also the case of Eleonora Franceschi di Zuanne in 1634 (AdC 108). 4 AdC 236/62. For Virginia (1654), Giulia (1661) and Laura Tirindello (1663), see AdC 217/110; AdC 220/40; AdC 221/14. 2

HUOMINI CIVILI AND PATRICIAN MARRIAGE

69

cousins.5 Vettor Sandi and his brother, who applied successfully for patrician status in 1685, wrote that they were prominent for their studies of the law, for their practice as lawyers in the courts and for their links by marriage with patrician families.6 Like the Sandi, the Benzon, who were aggregated in the same year, could look back to patrician links by marriage in the previous generation. The parish records of San Vidal in 1655 record the marriage of Zuanne Benzon to ND Maddalena Caotorta di Tomaso.7 He was among several men from outside the patriciate who found a patrician bride. Out-marriage by patrician daughters is a phenomenon which still requires systematic study, but there is enough evidence that it took place and helped to create the complex relationships between patricians and non-patricians.8 The absence of public concern and of any regulatory legislation relating to outsider marriages by patrician women can be linked to the way in which they took on their husbands’ status on marriage, a form of derogation. There is no pattern of regular marriages between outsiders and patrician brides to support the argument that individual families attempted to strengthen their links with the patriciate in this way, only isolated cases that demonstrate that such marriages took place. When such a pattern existed, as in the case of ND Chiara Zane, the mother of Contarina Badoer, whose paternal grandmother had also been a patrician from the Contarini family, these marriages were influenced by male descent from patricians themselves.9 The fact remains that some patrician women were found non-patrician husbands and that this played a part when their daughters subsequently applied for permission to marry patricians. There is no explicit evidence that these patrician mothers wished in some way to retrieve their patrician status through their daughters. The projected marriages should rather be seen as a reinforcement of pre-existing links. Patrician women who married out were not excluded from their natal families. There was no scandal involved. Instead, they retained close links with their patrician relatives, some of whom then came forward to support suppliche.10 One explanation for such out-marriages was given by ND Peregrina Venier in her petition on behalf of her daughter, Isabetta Baccucci in 1608. She stated that her father had been unable to marry her to a patrician because of his limited means (poca fortuna) and had therefore married her to ‘the magnificent messer Pietro Baccucci, a person of civil status, well-born and wealthy’.11 Baccucci 5

AdC 207/76, 1643. See also Sabbadini, L’acquisto della tradizione, p. 48. Congionto col matrimonio a Sangue Patritio. AdC 182, fol. 708r–v. 7 AdC 182. 8 For the contrary view that patricians deliberately prevented their daughters from marrying outsiders for fear that this would encourage political ambitions among outsiders, see Sperling, Convents and the Body Politic, p. 3. 9 Zuanne Badoer was the grandson of a patrician (AdC 229/47, 1679). 10 NH Cesare Trevisan di Steffano testified in favour of his great-niece, Zanetta Girardi, the daughter of a high-ranking secretariat official and of ND Andrianna Trevisan (AdC 319, 1607). 11 Il Clarissimo Marco Venier de Nicolò, padre di me Peregrina, non potendo per la poca fortune sua maritarmi in nobile di questa città, mi maritò nel magnifico messer Pietro Baccuzi, che 6

70


was a wool merchant, like his father before him. Peregrina’s petition, however, hid the key explanation for her marriage to Baccucci. Her own mother had not been a patrician. Her parents’ marriage had taken place before the introduction of the 1589 laws, but it is clear that outsider mothers even then represented a potential obstacle for their daughters on the patrician marriage market.12 There was a certain degree of marginality in other cases. ND Zanetta Zane di Francesco married the lawyer, Bernardo Gaio near Castelfranco in March 1636 when she was already heavily pregnant. Zanetta had been living on the family estates close to Castelfranco and married Bernardo at a very young age (giovinetta).13 On the other hand, their neighbours made comparatively little of their patrician birth. It does not seem to have been a major subject of discussion. ND Chiara Priuli married a distant cittadino Priuli relative, but all that her neighbours knew was that she was of civil condition. One knew that her father was a patrician, but assumed that she was probably illegitimate. Dolfina Dolfin also married a cittadino of patrician origin. One of the witnesses to their daughter’s prova was not entirely certain if she were a gentildonna.14 The assumption that Chiara Priuli was the illegitimate daughter of a patrician was compounded by the presence of many such women on the fringes of patrician society. Several of the mothers of applicants, as well as applicants themselves belonged to this category.15 Official and unofficial relationships between patricians and women from other social groups were an accepted element within Venetian society. As such, they created a sub-group of people, both men and women, whose status was ambiguous because although they were barred from patrician status, their reputation as the children or descendents of patricians gave them a special standing in society. This was reflected in the testimony of the witnesses called in their cases but was also encapsulated in the case of the children of two patricians forced to marry after the girl’s brothers trapped them in flagrante delicto in the early hours of one morning in the family palace. NH Benetto Venier installed his new wife, Diana Minio, in a house close to where he lived and visited her in secret in order to keep the news of the marriage from his father. A son, Antonio, was born. The daughter of a warehouseman, who was among the witnesses called when Venier attempted in vain to have his marriage registered retrospectively, remembered that she used to play in the street with Antonio. When they exchanged blows as part of their play, her mother her

fu persona civile, ben nata e comodo di facoltà (AdC 285, 1608). 12 AdC 285. 13 AdC 215/61, 1651. 14 AdC 235/52, 1687; AdC 227/5, 1675. 15 See the cases of Paulina Cicogna di NH Pasqual, wife of Zaccaria Pizzoni (AdC 206/47, 1639), and of Anzola Contarini, first the concubine and then the wife of NH Piero Barbarigo (AdC 289, 1621). Daughters of unregistered marriages with patricians also engaged in the marriage market for high-status families below the patriciate. See the case of Andrianna Morosini, the mother of Virginia Tirindello, whose patrician father had married Portia Bevilacqua (AdC 217/110, 1654).


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took her to one side and told her that he was a gentleman, whose parents had been forced to marry, and that she should not touch him.16 Natural daughters of patricians had considerable social advantages, which are discussed at length in Chapter 6. Their suppliche used a very specific rhetoric to demonstrate two things. Their concubine mothers could not be accused of immorality because they were in an exclusive relationship with their patrician partners, and the daughters of these relationships received the same upbringing in their father’s household as conventional patrician girls. Their legitimate counterparts, the daughters of patricians who were married in the eyes of the church but not registered by the state, on the other hand, were in a more uncertain position. They lacked the potential stigma of illegitimacy. On the other hand, their fathers’ status was less influential than in the cases of the illegitimate daughters because the absence of a registered marriage immediately raised doubts about the status of their mothers. Concubines could be ignored because they had no legal position in society and had often been set aside by their partners long before.17 These women, however, because they had married patricians, were the subject of concern on the part of the Avogadori and must have represented something of a wild card in the marital strategies on behalf of their daughters. Some had married in spite of a failed attempt to obtain approval through the prova process. Both Crestina Pansetta, the mother of Dorotea Moro, and Bernardina Raisis, the mother of Giovanna Balbi, had been turned down.18 In other cases, the dividing line between concubines and legitimate wives had been crossed when patricians married the women with whom they had been living. Angela Contarini, herself the natural daughter of a patrician, married NH Pietro Barbarigo in 1601. Their daughter, Barbariga, was baptised three months later. Marietta Balbi di NH Giacomo was legitimated by her parents’ marriage in 1609.19 Other couples had deliberately chosen not to go through the prova process. Anzola Fortunato, the wife of NH Tomà Cocco, had some dubious social origins. The investigation into their daughter Marina discovered that Anzola’s family had sold perfumed balls from a stall in St Mark’s Square.20 Some patricians owning land some distance from the city married locally and continued to live there. NH Alvise Contarini brought up his daughter Zanetta in Cologna, Capo d’Istria, the home of his wife’s family, the Rota. When he died, his widow married a local notary.21 Other unregistered patrician daughters were found husbands away from Venice. Lucietta Zen di NH Giovanni Antonio was married to a notary in Treviso in 1654 at the age of 20.22 Once the process of aggregations by purchase to the patriciate had begun in 1646, these ‘new families’ provided applicants for prove with even more 16

AdC 109/27, 1591. See below, p. 128. 18 AdC 220/29, 1660; AdC 233/17, 1684. 19 AdC 289, 1621; AdC 210/48, 1646. 20 AdC 209/29, 1644. 21 AdC 210/41. 22 Their daughter, Margarito Varisco, subsequently married NH Antonio Catti in 1691, although this marriage was not registered by the Collegio until 1695 (AdC 236/78, 1689). 17


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justification for claims to have associations with patricians. In spite of the animus towards the newcomers shown by long-standing patricians,23 the social cachet associated with patrician status still played a part here. Tracing these links also confirms that many of the families which entered the patriciate by purchase came from the same social circles as those which aspired to patrician links by marriage and consequently belonged to the same kinship networks. Most of them were long-distance merchants. Gozzi and Tasca were two of the first families to be aggregated in 1646. Medea Marenzi came into the care of her uncle, Alberto Gozzi at the age of 6 on her mother’s remarriage in 1650. Through her father, she was also connected to the Tasca. Two Tasca women married patricians in the 1650s. One was a sister of one of Medea’s supporting witnesses.24 Elena Agazzi was equally well connected. One of her brothers was a cardinal, and her mother was an Ottobon. Her uncles and grandfather, the Cancelliere Grande Marco Ottobon, were all permitted to joined the patriciate in 1646, 7 years before Elena’s birth and 23 before her name went forward to the Avogaria. Her uncle NH Marco Ottobon and NH Agostin Correggio were among her patrician supporters.25 Elena’s case was comparable with Vittoria Grotta, whose iron-merchant father was closely related to the Widmann family, who were aggregated in 1646, and some of whose own family joined the patriciate in 1649.26 The witnesses recruited to speak about Lucia Gottardi in 1650 were a microcosm of the wealthy merchants who purchased patrician status.27 Cittadini There are difficulties in using the title cittadini to distinguish certain of the families among the huomini civili from others. Because it was a semi-privileged legal status which was used with some pride by applicants when appropriate, the category can not be ignored. On the other hand, using this as a category can lead to confusion. Some of the applicants who were listed in Table 3.3 (Social origins of outsider brides, 1589–1699) were subject to double counting because in certain cases they were referred to simply as cittadini, while in others, they declared both their cittadino status and their occupation as lawyers, 23

Cowan, Urban Patriciate, 82–6. AdC 220/26, 1660. See also the prove for Medea’s mother, Lucietta Gottardi (AdC 215/46, 1660), Andrianna Tasca (AdC 217/104, 1654) and Veneranda Tasca (AdC 213/11, 1649). The latter married before the conclusion of her prova, and a retrospective application was also rejected on the grounds of immorality. She had been the passive victim of a forced elopement (AdC 216/74, 1653). 25 AdC 224/84, 1669. See Sabbadini, L’acquisto della tradizione, p. 42; A. Menniti Ippolito, Fortune e sfortune di una famiglia veneziana nel Seicento. Gli Ottoboni al tempo dell’aggregazione al patriziato (Venice, 1996). 26 AdC 227/47 2o, 1666; AdC 230/64, 1680. On the links between the Widmann and Grotta families, see E.S. Rösch-Widmann, I Widmann. Le vicende di una famiglia veneziana dal Cinquecento all’Ottocento (Venice, 1980), pp. 8–9. 27 Alberto Gozzi, his business associate Francesco Martinelli, Alessandro Tasca and Flaminio Bonvicini, who joined the patriciate in 1663 (AdC 215/46, 1650). 24


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merchants or high-ranking administrators in the chancellery. Others were listed as lawyers and merchants but not as cittadini because, for one reason or another, they had not achieved that status. In the most recent collection of essays to be published in English to survey the state of thinking about the history of the Venetian Republic, Martin and Romano’s Venice Reconsidered, the editors refer to the way in which ‘recent research has undermined a rigidly hierarchical tripartite model of Venetian society’.28 Generations of students, struggling with the minutiae of Venetian social and political history have latched thankfully onto the one apparent truth about Venetian social organisation, that it was rigidly divided into three status groups, nobeli, cittadini and popolani.29 Such a categorisation has the attraction of simplicity. It provides a reassuring framework, which is underpinned by the undoubted evidence that both patrician and cittadino status was defined and regulated by legislation over an extended period. No attempt was made to define the popolani. They were the great ‘other’ of Venetian society, the men and women about whom no legislative controls were ever deemed to be necessary because they had no place in the Venetian body politic. Recent work on the Venetian cittadini by Matteo Casini, Andrea Zannini, James Grubb, and above all by Anna Bellavitis, suggests that the monolithic view of the cittadini as some kind of civil-service class, second only in status to the patricians is also no longer satisfactory, and that the statutory basis for defining who was a cittadino is at best incomplete, and at worst almost an irrelevance.30 A statement of this kind certainly undervalues the importance with which the cittadini originarii who served the Venetian Republic at senior levels both at home and abroad competed with each other for office and worked hard to exclude from their ranks men whom they believed to be socially below them. It also undervalues the care with which the Provveditori di Comun and the Cinque Savi alla Mercanzia investigated applications for the status of cittadino de intus or cittadino de intus et extra, and the pride with which successful candidates referred to themselves as Venetian citizens in public and private papers.31 And yet, Venetians themselves were aware that the statutory definition of a Venetian citizen did not exactly coincide with other criteria for distinguishing men from the great mass of the population. Bellavitis cites the case of the parish priest of San Lio who was required to provide the Avogaria di Comun with a list of noble and cittadino heads of household in 1593. He added a 28

Martin and Romano, ‘Reconsidering Venice’, p. 9. The pages which follow represent my own change of position on this subject (see Cowan, The Urban Patriciate, p. 51). Other statements of the tripartite view can be found in Lane, Venice, pp. 151–2. For contemporary views of Venetian society, see the Relazione of the Conte di Bedmar (Correr, Donà 448/19) and Giannotti’s comments in his Della Repubblica de’Veneziani, cited in Trebbi, ‘I diritti’, p. 159. A contemporary definition of the cittadini is in Marciana, It. VII 27 (7761), fols 97–8. 30 Casini, ‘La cittadinanza originaria’, pp. 133–50; Zannini, Burocrazia; Zannini,‘La presenza borghese’, pp. 225–72; Grubb, ‘Elite Citizens’, pp. 339–64; Bellavitis, Identité. 31 See the detailed preamble to the supplica by Santina Correni in 1651 (AdC 216/63). 29


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separate list of merchants whom he referred to as ‘men of honour who could pass for cittadini.32 If this was an individual approach to social ambiguity, Zannini has identified even more official recognition in relation to the 1607 census, where priests were told ‘under the category of cittadini, list heads of household who are lawyers, doctors, notaries and other with civil professions, together with any priests who are not patricians’.33 The broad overlap between the social and occupational circles to which many Venetian applicants for prove belonged and the heads of household referred to in the 1607 census is an encouragement to re-examine some of the distinctions between cittadini and others who stood apart from the mass of the popolani, although they had no official status. The widespread acceptance of their daughters following their prove di nobiltà suggests that patrician opinion shared this broader view of lines of distinction within Venetian society. It is not possible to reinvent the cittadini, but it is legitimate to ask if the statutory definition embraced everyone of the same kind. The statutory definitions of who could apply to become a cittadino, whether it was de intus, de intus et extra or cittadino originario, became much tighter in the course of the sixteenth century, just as definitions of patrician status became much more precise over the same period.34 The implications of recent research into both the patriciate and the cittadini however, leaves more than a lingering suspicion that the social distinctions based on these statutory distinctions were not and could not have been so rigid, especially around the cittadini. The problem with definitions of the cittadini solely according to privilege is that not everyone who might have been a cittadino (and the status was purely a male one, even if the wives and daughters of cittadini were often referred to as cittadina) either applied to be one or fulfilled all the criteria. Long terms of residence in Venice were normally required, 15 years for cittadini de intus and 25 for cittadini de intus et extra.35 Candidates for this status had to prove that they had paid taxes to the Venetian state for an extended period. Many, who had either been born or had lived in Venice for the requisite minimum period, had not paid taxes throughout because they were the non-tax-paying dependants of an employer in the early stages of their careers. There is some evidence that older men of immigrant origin preferred to put their sons or nephews forward as cittadini in order to further their careers through the privileges which flowed from this. Some also married into cittadino families. Bernardo Gislanzoni, whose daughter, Regina, came forward for a prova in 1664, married Gratiosa Bernardi in 1632. Their son followed his maternal grandfather in the chancellery.36 Other foreign immigrants who had settled in Venice with their wives did not have this opportunity. In spite of this, men such as Giacomo Stricher, a Dutch merchant from Amsterdam. earned the respect of their neighbours 32

Bellavitis, Identité, p. 102. Per cittadini metterete Avvocati, medici, Notai et altri che esercitano professione civile et anco li Preti che non sono Nobili quando sono pero capi di casa, Zannini, Burocrazia, p. 93. 34 Zannini, Burocrazia, pp. 37–54. 35 Pullan, Rich and Poor, pp. 100–101. 36 AdC 222. 33


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for their wealth, commercial acumen and communal responsibilities. He had settled in Venice just before the outbreak of the War of Candia, bringing with him much capital, a network of international trading interests, and a reputation for financial stability and moral probity. This led not only to his election as Dutch Consul to represent the immigrant community in Venice, but also to his targeting by the Venetian government as a ‘voluntary’ contributor to the war effort against the Turks, a decision which appears to have led to his financial discomfiture.37 Stricher represented many of the criteria by which contemporaries identified cittadini. He lived in a big house in the Calle Lunga di Santa Maria Formosa with many servants. He was a wealthy and successful merchant with 200,000 ducats in an account at the Tiepolo Bank. He lived ‘civilly’. His wife conformed to the expected behaviour of the wife of a man of wealth and high status. His foreign birth might have prevented him from integrating fully into Venetian society, but the ways in which he and his wife were described in 1691 when their daughter was investigated by the Avogadori placed them squarely within a social group whose behaviour, style of life and attitudes overlapped not only with the cittadini, but also that of the patriciate.38 The natural sons of patricians, individuals who were unable to take on the title of Nobil Huomo because of their parents’ mésalliance or concubinage, were also ranked among the cittadini. Several are listed as the fathers of women wishing to marry into the patriciate.39 Their diminished status as non-members of the Great Council remained an ambiguous one. Some of their relatives disapproved and shut them out of their wills, which had major implications for their material futures.40 In 1598, ND Lugretia Contarini listed her grandsons as her heirs, but only on condition that they married appropriately. ‘Should any of them marry and take such a wife as to prevent their son from going to the Council, I do not wish him to receive anything from me’.41 On the other hand, many natural sons were provided with the means to take up occupations consistent with their status as cittadini or guided into the church.42 Others were found employment within their father’s families, looking after their estates or taking responsibility for the family accounts. Antonio Donà, the son of NH

37 A more detailed discussion of Stricher can be found in Cowan, ‘Foreigners and the City’, pp. 44–55. 38 AdC 247/80. 39 See, for example, Marco Marcello, the father of Chiara Catterina (AdC 213/7, 1649); Giovanni Paolo Contarini, the father of Diamante (AdC 226/126, 1673); and Andrea Pisani, the father of Perina (AdC 232/5, 1683). 40 As one of his neighbours in the parish of San Martin remembered, Carlo Contarini ‘wore the veste, but I do not believe that he worked. He was poor, but also civile’ (AdC 227/13, 1676). 41 Se alcuni di essi le maridasse, et tolesse persona che non andasse a Conseglio suo fiolo, non vogio che habbia cosa alcuna del mio (ASV, Archivio Tiepolo [A.T.] 221). See also the will of Giovanni Battista Cellini in 1699 (A.T. 81). 42 Bastian Marcello became a notary at the magistracy of the pompe (1604, AdC 327). NH Antonio Michiel decided that his natural sons should follow an ecclesiastical career. One became abbot of Santa Maria di Rotego (AdC 208/5, 1619). See Zannini, Burocrazia, pp. 66, 100–118.


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Marco worked for the convent of San Sepulcro as their Procuratore.43 Nor was exclusion from wills on the grounds of illegitimacy universal. Giovanni Paulo Contarini, the father of Diamante, was the sole heir of one of his aunts and married the natural daughter of another patrician.44 Just as their illegitimate sisters found acceptance and recognition by patrician kin,45 these men continued to have good relations with patricians. NH Ciprian Marcello made his house available for the wedding of his sister-in-law, Marietta, the daughter of his illegitimate cousin, Rizzardo Marcello. The patrician best man was the cousin of Rizzardo’s father. Even more distant kin recognised the relationship. NH Francesco Boldù believed that he and Rizzardo were cousins by the fourth or fifth grade, but, as he stated, ‘we always called each other “cousin” and have always been friendly towards each other’.46 The kinship relations which resulted from these marriages encouraged a much wider level of social intercourse. When two Filosi sisters applied to marry patricians in 1675, NH Bernardo Memmo di Andrea testified in their favour as a close friend of their father. The two families often visited each other at home.47 NH Zuanne Garzoni approved of his wife’s friendship with Cecilia Zanfornari, the wife of an avvocato, claiming to the Avogadori that he would have forbidden it if he had any impression that the family was dishonourable.48 Patricians frequently attended the marriages of cittadino friends or held their children at the font.49 They proudly recorded their links as fellow members of the Scuole Grandi. Zorzi dei Rei, a draper in the parish of San Marcuola was a frequent visitor to the home of NH Piero Marcello in the early years of the seventeenth century. They stood as godfathers to their respective sons, and dei Rei was among the guests in Marcello’s house when he married the heavily pregnant Dolfina Scalarin of Verona in 1606.50 Nor were these relationships limited to Venice. Bernardo Gaio had land near Castlefranco, close to patrician neighbours.51 Zuanne Nicolosi and NH Giovanni Francesco Memmo not only lived in the same parish in Venice but owned contiguous estates in the same villa.52

43

Megna, ‘Grandezza e miseria’, pp. 166–67; AdC 230/64, 1680. AdC 226/126, 1673. Anzolo Contarini inherited all his father’s property, married well on a dowry of 7,500 ducats, and was able to live as a rentier (AdC 205/29, 1637). 45 See below, p. 123. 46 AdC 109/20, 1587. 47 AdC 227/1, 1675. 48 AdC 214/39, 1650. 49 See for example NH Vettor Pisani, who was godfather to Maria Vaura (AdC 220/37, 1661), NH Gerolamo Giustinian, who was godfather to Fontana Pigna (AdC 340, 1611), and Marco Renier, who was godfather to Isabella Baccuci (AdC 285, 1608). 50 AdC 327, 1627. See also NH Donà Rubini, who was both the landlord of Giulio Malvicini, the physician, and the compare of San Giovanni Evangelista (AdC 226/122, 1673); NH Gabriel Moro, compare of Steffano Chanin (AdC 332, 1606); and NH Benedetto Sanudo, compare of Vincenzo Vicenti (AdC 356, 1609). For a discussion of social relations within the Scuole Grandi, see Pullan, Rich and Poor, pp. 84–131. 51 AdC 215/61, 1651. 52 AdC 216/83, 1652. 44


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Warm personal relations with patricians were only one dimension of the blurring around the edges of the cittadini. A second was the general agreement among government officials, parish priests and many other Venetians that the cittadini were part of a broader social group, the huomini civili, who conformed to the same criteria of social distinctiveness shaped in terms of occupation, sources of income, lifestyle and general qualities, and differed only from them in legal terms. In other words, there was a clearly defined social group which was distinct from the mass of the popolani. Writing in the sixteenth century, Gasparo Contarini separated out the cittadini as honest plebeians.53 In so doing, he referred to an older tradition, according to which it was the patricians, not the cittadini, who saw themselves as the citizens of Venice, just as the patricians of ancient Rome had a monopoly on citizen status.54 But this quality of ‘honesty’ was generally extended to the larger group of huomini civili. Much linked the lifestyle of men like Iseppo Fantini, wool merchant (1691), Giovanni Battista Castelli, long-distance merchant (1696), and Domenico Cabrini, oil merchant (1649), to the men who were defined by law as cittadini. Fantini had a two-oared gondola and a carriage drawn by four horses. When he retired, he invested considerable sums in land. Castelli also had a two-oared gondola. His house at Santi Appostoli was later owned by the Cellini family, who paid 100,000 ducats to be aggregated to the patriciate in 1685. Cabrini’s business was on such a. scale that he did not have his own shop. He owned his own house, better than many patricians, who only rented.55 Cases like these suggest that even to patricians, who greatly respected the legal distinctions which set them apart from the rest of Venetian society, there was little or nothing to distinguish these families from the cittadini as defined by law and that it is appropriate to consider all these families as huomini civili. In 1591, Vidal Vidal presented his daughter’s supplica in the following terms: ‘Zuanne de Marchi, the late father of my wife Madonna Lucietta, always lived civilly and honourably in this city, his home, undertaking large-scale trading in wool in the same way as many Venetian nobles’.56 According to conventional wisdom, Venetian patricians had withdrawn completely from international trade well before the end of the sixteenth century. This statement, on the other hand, not only underlines the continued belief that trade was something with which patricians could proud to be associated, but also corroborates other evidence that some patricians continued their trading activities. Those involved were not the poor patricians, who lacked the resources to do so,57 but 53

De Repubblica Venetorum, cited in Bellavitis, Identité, pp. 3–4. See the treatise on Della nobiltà veneta, written by the French ambassador to Louis XIV, ASV, Compilazione Leggi 294, fols. 800–811. On the Terraferma, the association between nobility and citizenship was even more explicit and persisted into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (AdC 231/92, 1678) (Padua). 55 AdC 237/83; AdC 239/23; AdC 214/26. For further discussion on modes of transport as conspicuous consumption, see above, p. 36. 56 Zuanne di Marchi, fu padre della detta madonna Lucieta mia moglie ha sempre vissuto civilmente et honoratamente in questa città sua patria, facendo negotii importantissimi della mercantia di lane si come anco molti nobili veneti (AdC 356). 57 Megna, ‘Nobiltà e povertà’, pp. 319–40. 54

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wealthy men such as NH Francesco Tiepolo di Alvise, the son of a Procurator of St Mark’s, who invested heavily in woollen cloth at the end of the sixteenth century, his son, Marin, who owned a silk shop at the sign of the Column in the 1640s, and NH Alvise Sagredo, whose brother was to become Doge, who benefited from the timber trade in Friuli.58 Activity of this kind paled in scale and significance with the profits of the spice trade which had enriched Venetian patricians in the Middle Ages, but it was also consistent with the changes which had taken place in the Mediterranean economy during the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.59 The commodities and some of the destinations may have been new, but the level of trade emanating from the port of Venice was still profitable enough to permit non-patrician merchants to live well, educate their daughters in convents and consider their potential as wives to patricians. Unlike other parts of Italy, participation in trade in Venice was far from a source of stigma. Rather, as Vidal Vidal put it, it was a high-status activity. Noble Families from Outside Venice Most of the women who came forward for a prova from the Terraferma and Capo d’Istria belonged to families from the elites of the subject cities rather than the classic feudal aristocracy. They came from the large centres of population like Vicenza, Brescia, Bergamo, Verona, Padua and Treviso, but also from smaller towns closer to the mountains – Castelfranco, Asolo, Udine, Uderzo, and Monfalcone.60 Like the Venetian patricians who increasingly used vocabulary to describe themselves as gentlemen and nobles as a way of integrating themselves into a broader western European aristocratic culture,61 these families regarded themselves as nobles. Indeed, they had a greater right to do so than the Venetian patricians with whom they wished to be linked in marriage. While patrician status was not based on any feudal precedents and a conscious expression of nobility only evolved slowly, many of the applicant families from the subject cities had feudal titles linked to their landed estates.62 They also shared many characteristics of the rural noble lifestyle, including 58 For a more detailed discussion of patrician involvement in trade, see Cowan, Urban Patriciate, pp. 197–200. 59 D. Sella, Commerci e industrie a Venezia nel secolo XVII (Venice, 1961); R. Rapp, Industry and Economic Decline in 17th-century Venice (Cambridge, Mass., 1976); L. Molà, The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice (Baltimore, 2000). 60 For urban elites in subject cities, see A. Ventura, Nobiltà e Popolo nella società veneta del ’400 e ’500 (Bari, 1964); J. Ferraro, Family and Public Life in Brescia, 1580–1650 (Cambridge, 1993); A. Smith, ‘Locating Power and Influence within the Provincial Elite of Verona: Aristocrats, Wives and Widows’, Renaissance Studies 8 (1994): 439–48; Lanaro, Un’oligarchia urbana; J. Grubb, Firstborn of Venice: Vicenza in the Early Renaissance State (Baltimore, 1988); Secchi, ‘Ascesa sociale’, pp. 157–246 (on Rovigo); and Corbellini, ‘Modelli di aggregazione’, pp. 239–54 (on Udine). 61 See above, pp. 11–12. 62 Conte Giusto Giusti was a leading member of the Verona elite (AdC 209/26, 1644); Conte Carlo Tiene described himself as a gentilhuomo di Vicenza (AdC 231/93, 1679), while


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great pride in their noble ancestry, military service and an appetite for violence in solving disputes. The widowed Eleonora Secco di Giovanni Antonio from Padua traced her ancestry in 1688 back to Leon Rosso di Campo Bianco, a noble among the Goths in the fifth century. Pietro Alberto Gratioli, a lawyer from Belluno included extracts from a family history by Giorgio Pidoni, dottor Bellunese, in his daughter’s dossier, to highlight the appointment of Francesco Gratioli in 1406 as Vicario to the patrician Podestà of Cividale (1642).63 The Mirandola family of Monfalcone, who had far-reaching interests in the horse trade stretching as far as Turkey, served with Giulio Savorgnan. The Brescian noble, Valerio Lanfranchi Corradini, was a soldier with the local Avogadro company.64 An urban setting was no deterrent to the use of violence by elite families either. The preference of landed noble families for violent acts against each other and those within their jurisdiction in pursuit of what they considered to be their legitimate interests is well known.65 Among the families projecting marriages with patricians, Rinaldo Varisco, a noble notary from Treviso, killed his brother Lorenzo with an arquebus following a violent argument. The latter had entered the family house in search of money. Rinaldo’s action was entirely mitigated in the eyes of the law, however, because his brother had broken a banishment order and this freed anyone who killed him from culpability.66 It is easy to make the case that brides from families such as these were the obvious candidates for straightforward integration into the Venetian patriciate. There were few cases of opposition to their prove. Their high status locally and documented claims to a long tradition of gentility must have been particularly reassuring. The high proportion of outsider brides in this category both reinforces this view and suggests that there was considerable interest on the part of Terraferma noble families in making these links to the Dominante. On the other hand, both the political relationship of ruling patrician elite and subject nobility and a range of circumstances specific to individual marriages suggests that the reasons for projecting such marriage alliances were not so straightforward and that these cases need more detailed analysis. Barone Giorgio Antonio Cortina, nobile di Goritia was described as having ‘horses and feudal jurisdictions’ in Capo d’Istria (AdC 222/29, 1664). 63 AdC 236/66; AdC 202/2. Posts of this kind tended to be taken by young patricians. D. Raines, ‘Office-Seeking, Broglio and the Pocket Political Guidebooks in Cinquecento and Seicento Venice’, Studi Veneziani 22 (1991): 137–94 (182–4). 64 AdC 109/31, 1584; AdC 324, 1619. 65 Povolo, L’intrigo dell’onore has become a classic analysis of the role of force in the aristocratic culture of the Terraferma. See also A. Conzato, ‘Per un profilo della nobiltà friuliana nel Cinquecento: tra permanenza e partenza’, Studi Veneziani 41 (2001): 99–177 (123–4); G. Angelozzi and C. Casanova, La nobiltà disciplinata. Violenza nobiliare, procedure di giustizia e scienza cavalleresca a Bologna nel XVII secolo (Bologna, 2003); P. Laven, ‘Banditry and Lawlessness on the Venetian Terraferma in the later Cinquecento’, in Dean and Lowe (eds), Crime, pp. 221–48. 66 AdC 236/78, 1689. See also the murder in Bergamo of Corradino Corradini Lanfranco (AdC 324, 1619) and the attempted murder of NH Nicolò Marcello in Rovigo by the jealous Count Andrea Giuroi, who suspected him of attempting to seduce his wife (AdC 215/55, 1651).

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The expansion of the Venetian mainland territories during the second half of the fifteenth century and the actions taken to reinforce the republic’s political power in the region following its collapse in the aftermath of the Battle of Agnadello in 1509, created a complex political structure within which the local nobilities retained high status and considerable power, but were deprived of major ruling functions in the areas in which they lived.67 The republic could not afford to repeat the loss of both face and territory during the War of the League of Cambrai, when leading members of the local nobility renounced their support for Venice and turned instead to welcome the imperial armies. On the other hand, they were fully aware that they could not rule alone, recognising both the potential contribution to local political and military stability which could also be made by the same noble families and the need to avoid antagonising them. The ambiguities of power-relationships on the Terraferma in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries can be illustrated by the behaviour of members of the Friulian Savorgnan family whose loyalties were split between the republic and the need to protect their power base in Friuli. One branch had joined the patriciate in the early sixteenth century. Girolamo Savorgnan, who was not himself a patrician, was given the important military office of Colaterale Generale dell’esercito based in Verona during the crisis year of 1509 but returned home only a few months later to defend his lands which were being threatened by imperial troops. His descendents continued to sustain Venetian authority in the region against pro-Habsburg nobles. Two were attacked with explosive packages as a result in 1562.68 Girolamo’s kinsman, Antonio, on the other hand, defected from the republic and a policy of reform was introduced in the Savorgnan power base of Udine to limit the family’s authority.69 Even if conditions in Friuli with its poverty, rugged topography, distance from Venice and proximity to the insecure borders with the Holy Roman and Ottoman Empires may have created a particular set of circumstances, the attitudes of other subject nobilities to the Venetian Republic and its ruling patriciate were far from straightforward. In a recent study of the cultural relationship between Venice and its subject cities Nicholas Davidson argues 67 Ventura, Nobiltà e Popolo; M. Knapton, ‘City Wealth and State Wealth in North East Italy, 14th–17th Centuries’, in N. Bulst and J.-P. Genet (eds), La ville, la bourgeoisie et la genèse de l’état moderne (XIIe –XVIIIe siècles) (Paris, 1988), pp. 183–209; M. Knapton, ‘Il territorio vicentino nello Stato veneto del ’500 e primo ’600: nuovi equilibri politii e fiscali’, Civis 8 (1984): 193–275; J.-C. Hocquet, ‘Venise, les villes et les campagnes de la Terreferme (XVe–XVIe siècles). Eléments d’un problematique’, in Bulst and Genet (eds), La ville, pp. 211–27; Lanaro, Un’oligarchia urbana, pp. 202–205; Tagliaferri (ed.), Venezia e la Terraferma for strategic awards of status of Cavaliere di San Marco, see Casini, ‘Gli ordini cavallereschi’, p. 187. 68 L. Casella, ‘La casa Savorgnan: considerazioni sul potere delle famiglia aristocratica nel XVII secolo’, in Strutture di potere e ceti dirigenti in Friuli nel secolo XVII: atti del II convegno di studi promosso dall’Associazione Nobiliare Regionale Veneta e dall’Istituto di Storia dell’Università di Udine (Udine, 1987), pp. 13–32 (21–2); T. Fanfani, ‘Problemi ed aspetti economico sociali nel XVII secolo: Venezia e la Patria di Friuli’, in Strutture di potere, pp. 34–5; Conzato, ‘Per un profilo’, p. 127. 69 G. Trebbi, Il Friuli dal 1420-1797. La storia politica e sociale (Udine, 1998), pp. 111–13.


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that far from the former being a cultural model for its subject cities, the patronage choices made by the elites of the subject cities emphasised their desire to be seen as independent.70 This also suggests that a degree of caution should be exercised before formulating any general theories to suggest that seeking a patrician husband for their daughters could be seen as a way in which elite families in the subject cities sought to enhance their status within the republic. This did not prevent them much later from capitalising on these marital links when applying to join the patriciate themselves.71 In addition to the general similarities in social background, Venetian patricians sought wives from these circles for much more specific reasons. Several patricians married local women when they were serving a period of office as representatives of the republic in Terraferma provinces.72 Their arrival must have been potentially beneficial to both sides, extending the available pool of potential partners in what was a fairly circumscribed marriage market. There was a high level of endogamy in the subject cities as there was in urban elites elsewhere in Italy and the added attractions of making links with the patriciate in this way offered additional opportunities.73 The kudos associated with marriage to patrician families even led to cases of serious misunderstanding. The Petazzo family of Trieste were reported to have been furious when it emerged that Piero Riva, whose son had married one of their daughters, was not a member of the patrician Riva family in Venice, but an avvocato who shared the same family name. This frustrated ambition was finally fulfilled by the marriage of Rosalie Petazzo to NH Girolamo Morosini, who had settled in Trieste.74 Like many of the cittadini and other merchant and professional families from Venice who initiated marriage negotiations with patricians, Terraferma families benefited from their existing connections with the patriciate by marriage. Such links must also have played a part in their initial decision to seek patrician husbands for their daughters. The links could be very close indeed. In Vicenza, Priula Capra di Bernardin bore her mother’s patrician family name proudly as her own first name. So did Dolfina Scalarrin di Marco of Verona.75 Manziola 70 N. Davidson, ‘ “As Much for Its Culture as for Its Arms”: The Cultural Relations of Venice and its Dependent Cities’, in Cowan (ed.), Mediterranean Urban Culture, pp. 197–214, esp. pp. 210–12. 71 See, for example, the Brandolini in 1686, who referred in their supplica to strettissime congiontioni di Sangue con molti principali famiglie Patritie le più stimate dell’Italia (‘the closest links possible by blood with many of the principal patrician families, the most highly esteemed in Italy’), the Carminati in 1687, congionti al sangue de più Patritii (‘joined by blood to several patricians’), and the Romieri in 1689, with allianze in soggetti Patritie (‘linked to patricians by marriage’) (ASV, Compilazione Leggi 294). 72 See above, pp. 56–7. 73 See the parentage of Anna Maria Alessandra Roncali di Prospero of Bergamo (AdC 222/37, 1665), Veronica Lanzeta di Marc’Antonio of Brescia (AdC 236/71, 1689) and Cecilia Manzioli di Andrea of Monfalcone (AdC 216/84, 1653). For Brescia, Ferraro, Family and Public Life, pp. 105–109; for Mantua, Ferrari, ‘La famiglia Arrigoni’, pp. 471–85. 74 AdC 226/127, 1673. 75 AdC 303, 1601; AdC 327, 1627. This was common practice among patricians as a way of perpetuating maternal ancestry. E.g., Morosina da Molin di Zorzi (AdC 112/177); Pisana

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di Prodolon from Capo d’Istria (1685) followed in the footsteps of two of her aunts, Cecilia and Delfina Manzioli di Andrea, who had married patricians in 1653 and 1668.76 Some 15 years after he had married her widowed mother, Bernardina Tomitano, NH Alessandro Contarini sponsored a supplica by his stepdaughter, Cattarina Melchiori in 1652.77 The presence of these patrician links also highlights a further complicating factor. Although several women may be categorised as Terraferma nobility on the basis of their fathers’ social status, they were born in Venice because their fathers had settled there and consequently participated in the city’s marriage market. This pattern of immigration to Venice by members of the mainland nobility also demonstrates some of the continuing ambiguities of the way in which members of the Terraferma nobility defined themselves. Although the process of aristocratisation had taken place earlier than in Venice in some cases – a Golden Book to list council families was instituted in Brescia in 1488, 18 years earlier than in Venice78 – and the elites of the Terraferma cities were adamant that they were free from the stain of any association with trade, some of their members benefited from the commercial opportunities open to them in Venice to engage in long-distance trade and others were able to combine high status with trade. The contrast can be illustrated by the hierarchical schema used by a lawyer to explain the high status of the Castelcucco family in mid seventeenth-century Treviso: ‘The city has three orders of inhabitants. The first call themselves Nobile, the second, Cittadini, and the third, merchants and others of the Populo’,79 and by the emphasis placed by the official representative of Vicenza in Venice, on the way in which Conte Carlo Tiene lived from a rentier income, ‘far from any profession or arte meccanica’.80 On the other hand, Antonio Bonetti was counted as a cittadino di Bergamo in spite of the fact that he traded in grain.81 Iseppo Fantini became a successful wool merchant with his own two-oared gondola after moving to Venice from the area around Bergamo. His father was reputed to have owned considerable land both in the mountains and in the plains (e in Montagna e alla pianura), and traded in wool from his estates.82 Other Terraferma nobles settled in Venice for different reasons. Conte Bernardo Bombarda left Vicenza to marry a Nobil Donna from the Nadal family in the city and became a cittadino. The move was not a long-term success in material terms, because by the time his daughter Isabetta married Bondumier di Nicolò (AdC 112/193); Bondumiera Foscarini di Giovanni Francesco (AdC 113/309). 76 AdC 234/32; AdC 216/84; AdC 223/78. 77 AdC 223/66; AdC 216/82. See also the case of Medea Marenzi of Bergamo (AdC 220/26, 1660), whose widowed mother Lucietta Gottardi married a patrician (AdC 215/46, 1650). 78 Ventura, Nobiltà e popolo, pp. 278–9. 79 AdC 215/50, 1651. 80 AdC 231/93, 1679. 81 AdC 299, 1608. 82 AdC 237/83, 1691.


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a patrician in 1690, he was known to his parish priest, his patrician landlord and one of his neighbours as a poor man, piùttosto povero ch’altro, and was living in the parish of San Martin, close to the Arsenal.83 The attraction of the Venetian marriage market also encouraged ambitious outsider families to bring their daughters to Venice in the hope of making a good match. Antonio Conti sent his daughter from the district around Belluno to live with her uncle, the doctor Livio Conti, who lived in San Giacomo dell’Orio and gave him the responsibility to find her a husband. He must have been of high status, for local witnesses noted that Antonio brought liveried servants with him when he came to visit.84 Isabella di Monroi, whose chequered relationships had brought her in swift succession from the governor’s palace in Milan to a series of convents, was eventually brought to Venice by her brother in 1692, when she married NH Agostin Barbaro.85 The pattern of planned marriages between patricians and the daughters of the Terraferma nobility was distorted in part by the anomaly that a small number of patrician families were also members of the Terraferma nobility. Some had joined the patriciate in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, usually for military services, at a time when technically the ranks of the Venetian ruling elite were tightly closed. Others took advantage of the opportunities to buy patrician status after 1646 but still retained close links with their cities of origin. In both cases, although the law required these proposed marriages with outsider brides be preceded by a prova di nobiltà, they were really extensions of provincial endogamy. The ambiguous position of the older recruits to the patriciate may be summarised in a critical comment in the late 1680s about the Collalto family, which had been accepted into the patriciate in 1306. ‘They live almost all the time in their castles, only attending the Council on the most important occasions.’86 The complex relationship between the republic and the Savorgnan family in Friuli, where one of the branches was patrician but the others were not, has already been noted. It is in Friuli, and not Venice, however, that the reasons for the marital choices of these families need to be sought. In 1622, Arpelici, the daughter of NH Antonio Savorgnan married a neighbouring nobleman, Alfonso Spilimbergo. Twenty-two years later, the daughter of this marriage, Aurelia, applied for official approval. Her destined husband was the Friulian patrician, NH Ferrante Collalto, described by one witness as nobile ancor lui Veneto.87 She was preceded few years earlier by Maria Miranda Collalto di Ottavian and by Orsa Manin di Conte Lodovico, who married NH Giovanni Carlo Savorgnan di Antonio in Udine before her prova was complete.88 In Brescia, the patrician Martinengo family also continued to intermarry with the local elite. A marriage was planned in 1653 83

AdC 239/22, 1696. Retrospective application for prova. AdC 232/4, 1683. 85 AdC 237/92, 1692. 86 Marciana It VII 2497 (10690), Blasonario veneziano. Families aggregated ‘for merit’ are listed in Marciana It VII 196 (8578). 87 AdC 209/27, 1644. 88 AdC 205/25, 1637; AdC 207/43, 1638. 84


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between one of the sons of NH Gerolamo Martinengo and Vittoria Nassino di Giorgio. The pattern was repeated a generation later between Margarita Secco d’Aragona di Ciro and NH Leonardo Martinengo (1684).89 It is far from surprising that when families from the Paduan elite purchased the right to become patricians, they still looked to their city of origin and its complex of pre-existing social relationships when choosing a bride. NH Achille Dondiorologio (aggregated in 1653) married the Contessa Isabetta Conti in 1661.90 In a variant on this pattern, once again from Padua, a marriage was arranged between a member of the newly aggregated Gambara family and Barbara Maria Scoffoni di Marc’Antonio of Parma, whose mother had also been born into the Gambara.91 Foreign Brides Women of foreign birth or descent raised some additional issues over their social acceptability. A potential absence of direct personal knowledge of their families placed an even greater emphasis on the evidence which they could bring forward about the elevated social status of their forebears and on the ways in which this could in some way fit into the criteria used for Venetians and elite families from the Terraferma. Some came from merchant families and it was particularly necessary in these cases to place them in their social context. Others belonged to the feudal nobility of their countries of origin. In the case of German and Dutch families, too, it was important to confirm that they were Catholics. The ways in which these families came into contact with patricians ran parallel to those which have already been identified in the case of the Terraferma nobility. It was rare for patricians to find a potential bride abroad and to bring her back to Venice unless they were on diplomatic service. Although these were not recorded in the dossiers of the prove di nobiltà, this certainly took place at secretariat level. Girolamo Alberti married Margaret Paston, the daughter of Lord Yarmouth in London in 1636 ‘according to the rites of the Roman Catholic Church’.92 In general, patricians came into contact with ‘foreign’ brides because they had either been brought to Venice at a young age or had been born there. In some senses, this diluted the sense of being foreign because enough time had elapsed for their partial integration into Venetian society. In others, the degree of their ‘foreignness’ continued to raise issues which required more detailed investigation. Some women came from an important cluster of merchant families who were also prominent among those who bought patrician status. Isabetta Rettana di Antonio was the daughter of an Antwerp merchant who worked in 89

AdC 217/99; AdC 232/7. AdC 223/69, 1667. She had been approved by the Collegio in 1658, but her new husband omitted to register the marriage and the case came before the Avogaria a second time (AdC 219/5). The Conti family also bought patrician status in 1667. 91 AdC 224/92, 1670. 92 AdC 237/96, 1693. 90


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partnership with another Flemish family, the Vanaxel, who were aggregated to the patriciate in 1665. Her mother was Sibilla Widman, sister to the German Widman brothers who were among the first to join the patriciate in 1646.93 The bona fides of the Vanaxel family itself were considered in 1655 in the case of the widowed Isabella di Adolfo. She submitted a document translated from French and signed by the Burghermaster and Council of Brussels which stated that the Vanaxel were ‘an ancient noble family from Brabant, having served their natural feudal lords in both war and peace, and having given much to the Church in Brussels’, confirming at one stroke their high social status and solid Catholic credentials.94 In 1646, NH Paulo Widmann supported a supplica by Camilla Peffenhauser, the daughter of an Augsburg merchant who settled in Venice and married a wife of Flemish descent. Like the Vanaxel, Peffenhauser claimed that his family were of noble status in Augsburg but did so in general terms of high status rather than using feudal criteria. The Augsburg elite were largely merchants and lawyers.95 Giacomo Stricher, the Dutch Consul in Venice during the second half of the seventeenth century, spoke in support of Isabetta Vanaxel, whose first marriage contract he had organised.96 Much later, following Stricher’s death, his own daughter, Isabetta came forward for her own prova.97 The daughters of other first- or second-generation immigrant merchants from other Italian cities were more disparate in their origin and connections. Giacomo Fiorelli had been sent to Venice from Florence by his father to represent the family interests, and married a wife from the Cavagnis family. Like him, Ulisse Gateschi, a gentleman of Pistoia, settled to trade in Venice and married into the Gratarol family. Giovanni Battista Alberti married in his native city of Genoa but brought his young daughters to Venice at an early age. Two subsequently married patricians.98 Agostino Suarez, the Spanish father of Angelica Maria, whose prova was considered in 1669, suffered from the very circumstances which permitted him to consider his daughter an appropriate wife for a patrician. As brother-inlaw to the Marchese Fonseca, who had successfully bought patrician status in 1664, his own identity was so overshadowed that it almost ceased to exist.99 Fonseca had come to Venice to trade in wool and sugar. Soarez had been among the retinue who accompanied Fonseca’s new wife on her journey to Venice from Spain, and Fonseca subsequently gave him his own sister as a bride. The couple lived in Soarez’ house and their daughter was brought up in that environment. Few knew their family name. The local barber recalled that he had always heard him referred to as Signor Agostin, the brother-in-law 93

AdC 219/22, 1659. See also Rösch-Widmann, I Widmann. AdC 217/109, 1654; AdC 219/22, 1659. 95 AdC 210/54, 1646. Häberlein, ‘Sozialer Wandel’, pp. 73–96. 96 AdC 217/109, 1654. Stricher was also called as an Avogaria witness in the case of Isabetta Rettana. 97 Cowan, ‘Foreigners and the City’; AdC 247/80. 98 AdC 219/17, 1659; AdC 218/123, 1655; AdC 108; 220/39, 1661. 99 Sabbadini, L’acquisto della tradizione, pp. 21, 172. 94


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of Fonseca. He did not know him under any other name. A spice merchant in the neighbourhood was even more explicit: ‘I have heard that he was married, but not to whom because sometimes they are mistaken for each other and generally they are known to belong to Ca’ Fonseca’. Lacking a noble title, it is probable that he was a hidalgo. His family were said to belong to ‘those circles which are called gentlemen there and who do not practice the mechanical arts’.100 Reasons for Marrying Out This analysis of the social background and geographical origins of the women who came forward as potential patrician brides has shown that in most cases, patricians did not move very far outside their own circles. Their fathers were generally either huomini civili in Venice or members of the urban and rural Terraferma nobility. In a number of cases, these marriages were part of a continuing network of marital relationships with non-patrician families, a reminder that patricians had been marrying outsider brides since the early fifteenth century at least, and in all probability much longer. The first references to this in legislative terms were in 1420.101 Given such a long-standing pattern, the question of motivation still needs to be asked. The overall explanation is a straightforward one. Marriages between men of high status and lowerstatus women all over mediaeval and early modern Europe centred on the material benefits brought by large dowries. It was one way in which wealthy families outside an elite could gain access to it in exchange for an infusion of cash and real estate. Contemporaries recorded with some awe the sums involved and the advantages brought to the husband by what was effectively a change in fortune. Marriage to a merchant’s daughter enabled NH Francesco Grimani to rise from the ranks of the poor patricians. The marriage ‘allowed him to be a candidate for the Podesteria of Vicenza and that of Verona, from which … he rose to the rank of Consigliere’.102 In a letter home in 1618, the English Ambassador, Sir Henry Wotton, attributed the political success of the late Doge Giovanni Bembo to a similar infusion of funds: ‘His name is one of the ancientiest among them. His father was a gentleman almost of the lowest poverty, till he matched with a wealthy citizen’s daughter who afterwards proved the heir of her father’.103 Scholars also tend to emphasise the exceptionally large dowries brought by outsider brides, such as the 50,000-ducat dowries left to each of his daughters

100

AdC 224/85, 1669. See the case of a Dolfin father and son who both married out. Chojnacki, ‘Nobility, Women and the State’, p. 131. 102 ‘Relazione dell’Anonimo’, published in P. Molmenti, Curiosità di Storia Veneziana (Bologna, 1919), p. 373. See also Correr, Gradenigo 15, ‘Esame Istorico Politico di cento soggette della repubblica veneta 1675’. 103 L.P. Smith, The Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton (Oxford, 1907), vol. 2, p. 133. 101


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by Bartolomeo Bergonzi.104 The significance of the large size of dowries offered by outsider brides seems, at first sight, to be borne out by references in their suppliche and in statements by witnesses before the Avogadori. The 33-year-old widow, Orsola Bonetti, who had been married to a member of the Bergamo gentry, let it be known that she had inherited 50,000 ducats from him.105 Other widows made the same point. Hellena Zobel, whose first husband died in 1699 at the age of 76, only six months before she submitted her supplica, noted his ‘considerable fortune’ (fortuna riguardevole), while Antonia Arrigoni offered an unspecified sum comprising the dowry from her first marriage supplemented by an inheritance of several thousand ducats from her father.106 Unmarried women were more circumspect. Fontana Pigna had been promised a dowry of 20,000 ducats when she married. Antonio Cesana stated that he intended to give his daughter Leonora a substantial dowry. The Paduan noblewoman, Anzola Meneghini, had inherited ‘considerable means’ (facoltà di qualche consideratione) from her father.107 While there are indeed examples of large dowries from outsider brides, it is debatable whether they were the norm. Franceschina Surian di Nicolò brought her husband 41,000 ducats in 1640, Elisabetta Scaramella just under 19,000 in 1649 and Giulia Maffetti 25,000 ducats in 1607.108 Dowry figures in marriage contracts which had been officially registered with the Avogaria di Comun are far from reliable in any case. The ceiling on the maximum value of patrician dowries had been raised several times to account for monetary inflation in general and for the spiralling sizes of dowries in particular. In 1575, this was set at 6,000 ducats, a figure which was to remain in force for most of the seventeenth century.109 As a result, fabricated marriage contracts set at the legal maximum but giving suspiciously little detail of their contents were deposited with the authorities while the accurate document was lodged in the notary’s private papers. Six thousand ducats were recorded in 1591 when Lugretia Tiepolo, the daughter of a Procurator of St Mark’s, married NH Gerolamo Grimani. The full value of the contract, on the other hand, was 20,000 ducats.110 Similar suspect dowries at the maximum of 6,000 ducats were also paid on behalf of outsider brides of different social origins: Camilla Peffenhauser (German merchant), Diana Cabrini (Venetian oil merchant), Romilda Strazzoldo (Terraferma nobility), and we must assume that the actual sums were higher than this.111 104 A. Bruni, ‘Mobiltà sociale e mobiltà geografica nella Venezia di fine ’500: la parrochia di San Salvadore’, Annali Veneti 2 (1985): 75–83 (77). AdC 210/52; AdC 217/107; AdC 218/139. 105 AdC 299, 1608. 106 AdC 239/36, 1699; AdC 283, 1625. 107 AdC 340, 1611; AdC 304, 1626; AdC 219/9, 1658. See also the statement made in her supplica by NH Lorenzo Avanzago that his natural daughter is his only heir and that consequently he now wishes her to marry a patrician (AdC 283). 108 AdC 118/8; AdC 213/6; A.N. 590. 109 Bellavitis, Identitè, pp. 160–61. 110 AdC 113/3; A.T. 72/1260. For a more detailed discussion of patrician dowries, see Cowan, Urban Patriciate, 126–73. 111 AdC 210/54, 1646; AdC 214/26, 1649; AdC 209/35, 1645.


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On the other hand, other dowry values were much lower. Maria Attaventi and Isabetta Spini both only brought 3,000 ducats, and Leonora Cesana only 2,500 ducats.112 The case of Leonora Cesana, for all its extraordinary behaviour, may help to place these lower dowries in context. During the spring of 1626 there was widespread gossip in the parish of Santa Maria Zobenigo that the wealthy lawyer, Antonio Cesana, had taken a young member of the patrician Grimani family to live in his house at the time of the Carnival and had married him to his daughter, Leonora. On investigation by the Avogadori, the local parish priest was able to demonstrate that no marriage had yet taken place. The gossip, however, was not entirely groundless. Grimani, it seems, had been on galley service in the Venetian navy, a common practice for young patricians.113 When he returned to Venice in the early months of 1626 at the time of the Carnival, he was homeless. Cesana took him in to his household, fed him, clothed him and began to arrange a marriage with the eldest of his nubile daughters, Leonora. According to one of Cesana’s servants, Grimani had been taken into the house ‘out of holy compassion’.114 In the light of the marriage that followed, it would appear that this compassion was also salted with a strong dose of opportunism. For a poor patrician, of whom there were many, a dowry of 2,500 ducats and a secure home represented a major attraction.115 Hunecke suggests, for the period between 1646 and the end of the republic at least, that the economic circumstances of the poor patricians, who had little patrimony to conserve, permitted greater numbers of sons to marry per generation than in more prosperous families. In the case of the latter, it was common for only one son per generation to marry.116 Marrying outsider brides both enlarged the pool of potential brides and facilitated an infusion of new money through dowries. There is no doubt that some poor patricians benefited from outsider marriages. Most of the men who married while in office on the Terraferma, in Istria or on one of the Mediterranean islands, held the kind of minor office to which poorer patricians were elected.117 Others, like the man who was taken into the Cesana household, were both young and poor. NH Zuanne Orio di Piero married the natural daughter of another patrician in 1682 when he was 18. He does not seem to have had a fixed home. The parish priest of San Barnabà explained that when his father returned to Venice after a term of office outside the city, he did not return to the same home but lived ‘wherever he could find a house’. Orio’s comparative poverty was also commented on by a second witness, who believed that he had taken a wife di necessità (‘out of need’).118 A similar construction may be placed on the marriage between NH 112

AdC 206/57; 118/8; 117/7. S. Chojnacki, ‘Measuring Adulthood. Adolescence and Gender in Renaissance Venice’, in Chojnacki, Women and Men, pp. 185–205 (196–7). 114 AdC 304, 1626. 115 On the social and economic diversity of the patriciate, see Megna, ‘Grandezza e miseria’. 116 Hunecke, Der venezianische Adel, pp. 134–5, 162–3, 178–9. 117 See above, pp. 56–7. 118 AdC 241/60, 1702. 113


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Antonio Alvise Balbi, who married Isabetta Bombarda di Antonio in 1690 and petitioned to register the marriage 6 years later. There was a considerable age difference. She was 30, at an age when there were strong incentives to find her a husband. He was under 18 and in need of the material support promised by his father-in-law in the marriage contract. The couple were to live with their parents-in-law at their expense until Balbi either succeeded in the lottery to gain early entry to the Great Council on St Barbara’s Day, for which the minimum age was 18, or until he took up his seat at the conventional age of majority at 25.119 The case of NH Giacomo Pisani di Vicenzo was indicative not only of the attractions of an outsider bride and her dowry to a poor patrician, but also of the pressures on a girl’s parent or guardian to arrange a marriage with some speed. Giacomo Galli had taken on the responsibility for his niece, Maria Galli di Iseppo following her father’s death and her mother’s remarriage. When he became seriously ill, he turned to Pisani, and in the latter’s words, ‘since I was aware of my limited means, and of the girl’s honourable status, I accepted the deal’.120 Jutta Sperling suggests an alternative explanation, which does not entirely stand up to the evidence. She approaches the issue of the patrician marriage market in early modern Venice from two other perspectives, the dynastic policies which led to a high level of enforced monachation among the daughters of patricians, and the avoidance of creating marital links through their daughters with families of non-patrician status. Both can be illustrated by a passage from a letter written by the English bishop, Gilbert Burnet, in the mid 1680s: The Cornaros carry it so high. But many of the daughters of that family have made themselves Nuns, because they thought their own Name was so Noble, that they could not induce themselves to change it with any other and when lately one of the Family married the heir of the Sagredo, which is also one of the antientest Families that was extream rich and she had scarce any portion at all … Some of their friends came to wish their joy of so advantageous a Match, but they very coldly rejected the compliment, and bid the others go and wish the Sagredo’s joy, since they thought the advantage was wholly on their side.121

Sperling does not argue that patricians placed their daughters in convents in order to finance the large dowries necessary to find husbands of an appropriate status – most of those funds came from female relatives – but 119 AdC 239/22. A similar case is cited by Sperling in a different context. According to his mother’s will, a member of the patrician Dolfin family was ‘unable to live like a gentleman’. He had married an outsider bride, Isabetta Maldotto many years before. Convents and the Body Politic, p. 68. On the other hand, his wife’s prova in 1593 had suggested that she was to bring a dowry of 50,000 ducats (AdC 326). Given the improbability that a poor patrician would have engaged in such a lucrative match and the negative comments by his mother, Dolfin’s financial state may have arisen from his spending patterns later in life. 120 AdC 319, 1620. 121 G. Burnet, Some Letters containing an Account of what seemed most remarkable in travelling through Switzerland, Italy, Some Parts of Germany etc. in the Years 1685 and 1686 (Rotterdam, 2nd edn, 1687), p. 134.


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identifies the main beneficiaries as their brothers. The difference between the costs of spiritual and traditional dowries buttressed their inheritances.122 Monachation was also deemed to be a more attractive solution than marrying out. Sperling argues that not only were high-ranking patricians very cautious about the potential damage to family honour if they permitted their daughters to marry below them within the patriciate,123 but that this enhanced sense of honour was associated with an unwillingness to transfer dowry wealth to nonpatrician husbands. The transmission of dowries was understood to be part of a highly value-charged system of exchange, which Sperling associates with the practice of the potlatch, a term used by Marcel Mauss to describe exchange practices among native peoples In these circumstances, patricians preferred their daughters to become nuns. Consequently, a more restricted marriage market was created, forcing patrician men to look outside for wives.124 These would be powerful arguments, were it not for some evidence to the contrary. We have already seen in this chapter the extent to which links between patricians and outsider families were created in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries through outsider marriages by both male and female patricians. While further research is still required into marriages between patrician daughters and outsider men, issues of honour and endogamy were not strong enough to make them a social impossibility. Sperling also notes that the rate of enforced monachation, and consequently the degree to which the absence of patrician daughters from the marriage market forced men to consider outsider marriages, declined sharply in the second half of the seventeenth century.125 No clear explanation of this decline is given. What is curious here is the increase in the number of prove di nobiltà at the very time when monachation rates should have released more patrician women on to the marriage market.126

122

Sperling, Convents and the Body Politic, pp. 42–50. Sperling, Convents and the Body Politic, p. 24. This pattern was not new in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. See a fifteenth-century case in S. Chojnacki, ‘Valori patrizi nel tribunale patriarcale: Girolamo da Mula e Marietta Soranzo (Venezia, 1460)’, in Seidel-Menchi and Quaglione (eds), Matrimoni in dubbio, pp. 199–246. 124 Sperling, Convents and the Body Politic, pp. 7–12, 21. 125 Sperling, Convents and the Body Politic, pp. 26–29. 126 See Table 3.2. 123

CHAPTER FIVE

The Social Dimensions of Acceptability This chapter focuses on a key criterion which was used to determine the dividing line between social acceptability and social unacceptability, association with arte meccanica et manuale, and, more specifically the place of ‘touch’ in defining the social status of a woman according to the activities carried out by her father and paternal and maternal grandfathers. In this sense it is a discussion of social boundaries within the early modern city, how they were defined, and the extent to which these definitions were blurred by social realities.1 As an exercise in social space, it demonstrates that, rather than being characterised by distinctive groupings, the upper levels of Venetian society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries represented overlapping spaces, where what was shared, be it life-style or membership of kinship networks, was more important than what was not, such as the monopoly of political power in the hands of the hereditary patriciate.2 The distinction between arte meccanica and a vita civile was, as we know, an important element in the noble ideologies of early modern Italy.3 On the other hand, these distinctions were not easily established through visual observation. As Tomaso Garzoni, one of the most widely read of social commentators on the sixteenth century, wrote: My discourse will clarify the positions of many of today’s mechanicals, who, because they have four pennies in their purse, and wear a fine cap, really like to be called signori. They openly behave as nobles, while all that the city has to say about them is that their grandfathers were porters, their fathers, water-carriers, their brothers, night-watchmen, their sisters prostitutes, their mothers bawds, and all their forebears smeared with lard, soaked with oil … and reeking of Greek fish. I say that matters will be clarified because one will see the nature of true nobility … and they will be obliged to confess that they are plebeians, and do not possess any noble status.4 1 This chapter is substantially based on my article ‘ “Not Carrying out the Vile and Mechanical Arts”. Touch as a Measure of Social Distinction in Early Modern Venice’, in Cowan and Steward (eds), The City and the Senses, pp. 39–59. 2 G. Simmel, ‘Spatial and Urban Culture’, in D. Frisby and M. Featherstone (eds), Simmel on Culture: Selected Writings (London, 1997), pp. 137–85; see also K. Ross, The Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune (Minneapolis, 1988). 3 See above, pp. 10–11. 4 Tomaso Garzoni’s La Piazza Universale di Tutti le Professioni del mondo (ed. G.B. Bronzini; Florence, 1996), first published in Venice in 1585 and republished in many editions and translations, was the most widespread, if not the most conventional analysis of social distinction.

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The qualities underpinning civiltà, an abstract concept with important social connotations, which were defined by contemporary commentators in the equally abstract terms of honour and good reputation, or were related to easily recognised dress codes and life-styles, were widely understood both across a broad range of Venetian society and in Italian cities in general.5 The meaning of arte meccanica was less clear, not least because for the purposes of social distinction, it was defined more in terms of what it was not (civiltà), than what it was. We may read into this the simple division in society between those who worked with their brains, following a period of intellectual study, or who did not work at all, and those who worked with their hands. It was understandable in the terms of contemporary writing about gentility and nobility that coming into direct contact with the earth through agriculture, with raw materials as an artisan, or with the human body as a bath-attendant or barber invalidated a man’s right to take his place alongside men dedicated to service to the state.6 The role of long-distance trade was less clear. While in Venice this was seen as an honourable occupation, in many parts of Italy, including the subject cities of the Venetian Terraferma such as Brescia, Padua and Verona, it was categorised as an arte meccanica.7 An analysis of the prove di nobiltà brings out the perplexity with which contemporaries considered the dividing line between arte meccanica and ‘civic’ occupations as a means of establishing questions of high social status. This uncertainty arose from grey areas of definition of both arte meccanica and ‘civic’ occupations. As in the case of other individuals about whom there were potential doubts about their social acceptability, other criteria, such as the large size of dowries offered by non-patrician families, and the political influence of the patrician families with whom they wished to be associated may also have played a part.8 Explicit concerns about arte meccanica among the Venetian patriciate were only articulated in the law of 1589. Now, in addition to those listed in earlier laws, women were excluded from marrying patricians if their fathers or grandfathers had carried out arte meccanica et manuale or ‘were of a similar status’.9 The inclusion of these groups in the 1589 legislation was partly a This quotation (my translation) is on p. 223. On Garzoni’s ideas, see U. Tucci, ‘I mestieri nella Piazza Universale del Garzoni’, in Studi in onore di Luigi dal Pane (Bologna, 1982), pp. 319–20, J. Martin, ‘The Imaginary Piazza: Tomaso Garzoni and the Late Italian Renaissance’, in S.K. Cohn and S.A. Epstein (eds), Portraits of Medieval and Renaissance Living (Ann Arbor, 1996), pp. 439–54. 5 Corbellini, ‘Modelli di aggregazione’; J.-C. Margolin, ‘La civilité nouvelle de la notion de civilité à sa pratique et aux traités de civilité’, in A. Montandon (ed.), Pour une historie des traités de savoir-vivre en Europe (Clermont-Ferrand, 1994), pp. 151–77; Aymard, ‘Pour une histoire’. 6 Donati, L’Idea, pp. 93–150. 7 Ventura, Nobiltà e Popolo, pp. 306–309; Ferraro, Family and Public Life, pp. 61–5; Tucci, ‘I mestieri’. 8 A. Zannini, ‘Il “pregiudizio meccanico” a Venezia in età moderna. Significato e trasformazioni di una frontiera sociale’, in M. Meriggi and A. Pastore (eds), Le Regole dei mestieri e delle professioni. Secoli XV–XIX (Milan, 2000), pp. 36–51, considers these issues in a longerterm perspective, based on the author’s work on the cittadini originari. 9 AdC 108.

THE SOCIAL DIMENSIONS OF ACCEPTABILITY

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reflection of a substantial growth in the numbers of patricians who married women from artisan backgrounds, but it also articulated the broader Italian concern to protect noble status from contamination by outsiders by means of drawing increasingly rigid distinctions between noble and non-noble.10 The three-generation rule emphasised the part played in a man’s status by his ancestry. Merchants were anxious to claim that they had no connections with arte meccanica. In accordance with the law, the petitions on behalf of their daughters stated clearly that this was the case, but many men and their witnesses went even further, for fear that they might be suspected of such associations. Agnese Bozzetti di Giacomo, the widow of Giovanni Pietro Castelli, placed it on record that her father ‘had manufactured woollen and silken cloth, but had never carried out any artisan work or concoction’.11 The spice merchant, Giacomo Cortesi di Anselmo ‘worked nobly and stood in his shop … to supervise the sales; he never carried out any manual tasks’.12 Giovanni Frumento was equally adamant that Antonio Cima di Giacomo had not carried out any arte meccanica. He had known him for 40 years. Cima was a merchant who traded at the fairs in the Abruzzi. ‘He went up and down to those fairs, carrying his merchandise.’13 Another witness explained in greater detail how Cima and his father bought sugar, wax and spices and took them to the fairs at Lanzan, Recanati and other places in the Marche. In common with the other merchants who carried out this kind of trade, they kept their goods at home and did not sell them retail in Venice.14 How clear-cut were the social criteria used to reject women wishing to marry patricians and to become the mothers of future members of the Great Council? The cases of Paulina Aivoldi Marcellini and Andrianna Ponte demonstrate that the Avogadori were faced with finding a balance between different criteria, often from different generations. Paulina Aivoldi Marcellini, a 43-year-old widow, applied for a prova in 1684; Andrianna Ponte 11 years later. Paulina’s supplica appeared to have a high probability of success. She was the daughter of a wholesale merchant and the widow of another. She had been educated at the convent of San Iseppo, in common with other women of status. Her mother had brought a substantial dowry into the marriage. There were even family links to a high-ranking churchman, the Papal Nuncio, Aivoldi Marcellini, who had died recently in Milan.15 However, the Avogadori who examined her case stated their reasons for rejection quite explicitly. They had severe doubts about 10 Ventura, Nobiltà, pp. 301–303; Tucci, ‘I mestieri’, pp. 319–20; L. Ferrante, ‘Differenze sociali e differenze sessuale nella questioni d’onore (Bologna sec. xvii)’, in G. Fiume (ed.), Onore e storia nelle società mediterranee (Palermo, 1989), pp. 105–127 (106–110). 11 Ha fatto lavorare di lana e di sede, ma egli non ha havuto mai alcuni impiego e cucinaio meccanico (AdC 219/15, 1659). 12 Operava nobilmente et stava in bottega … come assistente al negotio, ma non operava manualmente (AdC 312, 1630). 13 L’andava in Abruzzo, sù, et zo, portando le sue mercantie a detti fieri (AdC 304, 1599). 14 AdC 304. 15 AdC 232/11, 1684.


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the civiltà of her father because of the way in which he conducted his business and because of the occupations carried out by his relatives. Not only had he been seen selling goods directly to important customers, which involved touching them, but his wife’s sister, who lived in Malamocco, at the extremity of the littoral of the Lido, had married a baker.16 In spite of the fact that both her father and grandfather met most of the criteria for acceptable social status, Andrianna Ponte was turned down on the grounds that her grandfather had been a silk-spinner, an artisan.17 The evidence for this was unclear. Silvestro Ponte, was described by witnesses as ‘a very wealthy merchant’, ‘having lived with great civiltà, and left many riches’. Silk production in Venice at the time was organised into two distinct guilds, the silk merchants and the silk-spinners. Both engaged in the manufacture and distribution of silk cloth.18 Even the Avogadori’s summary of the case concluded that ‘there was universal agreement that both lived civilmente’. While the Avogadori might have discounted all this evidence because it was presented by witnesses nominated by the Ponte family to substantiate their claims, they did not. Although their own selection of witnesses was directed at the one area of doubt, whether or not Silvestro and Giovanni Antonio Ponte were engaged in unacceptable occupations at any time, some of the latter also corroborated this sense of a civile lifestyle.19 It should have been much easier than this to identify artisans with manual work. Once again, it was not. We have already established that the authors of contemporary treatises on nobility excluded artisans from vita civile on the grounds that their manual work placed them beyond the social pale. Garzoni specified that it was not so much the work itself, but the nature of the raw material which was used, that designated an occupation as base and low in status. Castrators dealt with testicles. Bowyers and catapult makers, whose occupations had been known since antiquity, used timber and animal intestines. Pork butchers were greasy. Dyers’ faces were stained.20 The problem arose from the distribution of work carried out by artisans. In common with most other European cities of the time, the Venetian manufacturing sector was hopelessly entangled with the process of selling what had been made. While there could be a lengthy chain linking the producers to the long-distance merchants who organised large-scale overseas exports, most master craftsmen were directly engaged in the retail trade. A minority were also wholesale merchants. Herein lay the problems facing the Avogadori. If 16

AdC 232/11. AdC 238/2, 1695. 18 L. Molà, The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice (Baltimore, 2000), pp. 75–9. 19 A tailor, who lived in the same parish of Santa Maria Nova as Silvestro Ponte, remembered that he had many houses in the parish (AdC 238/2). 20 Tucci, ‘I mestieri’, pp. 328–9; Martin, ‘Imaginary Piazza’, p. 445. Attitudes such as these were reinforced in the case of certain activities which were so ‘dirty’ that their practitioners were excluded even from artisan society. See K. Stuart, Defiled Trades and Social Outcasts: Honor and Ritual Pollution in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge, 1999); A. Blok, Honoured Violence (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 44–68. 17


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wholesale merchants were believed to posses the virtues of civiltà, and many of the most prestigious had both successfully applied for the status of cittadino de intus et extra and achieved approval for their daughters to marry patricians, where was the line to be drawn? The question was not theirs alone. Families aspiring to upward social mobility of the kind who promoted their daughters and sisters as the potential wives of patricians, also wished to place clear water between themselves and those engaged in arte meccanica. There was a growing sense of self-esteem among the men who perceived themselves to be in some way beyond the world of the artisan. Evidence for this lies in the way in which the sons of men engaged in the world of production moved on to become lawyers and encouraged their sisters to marry into legal circles. This construction may also be placed on the written evidence placed by the Weavers’ Guild in the case of Cattarina Pirocco di Marco in 1695. Cattarina and her husband, NH Giacomo Antonio Marcello, had not applied in advance to register their marriage. Indeed, it was one of the Matrimoni Segreti, legitimately administered by the Venetian church, but recorded in registers stored far from the public gaze in the Palazzo Patriarcale.21 The major potential stumbling block to their sons eventual successful admission to the Great Council after six ballots in the Collegio in 1703 was Marco Pirocco’s membership of the Weavers’ Guild, the Scola di tesseri, as a master craftsman. The Weavers’ Guild stated that: All weavers who wish to work or who do work at this occupation must be members per maestri. If they are not described as masters, they are not allowed to organise production. It is the practice that the sons of master craftsmen may be registered as masters, without having been Garzoni (apprentices) or lavoranti (journeymen), and without having submitted a masterpiece. When they are masters, they make others work for them, even though they do not work. Those who are not the sons of masters, however, cannot become masters without apprenticeship or ten years as journeymen.22

This statement was followed by another that, following a diligent search of the records of masters who had been trained as apprentices and served their time as apprentices, the names of Piero, Anzolo and Marco Pirocco had not been found.23 The Weavers’ Guild shared a growing tendency across western Europe for guild masters to promote the interests of their sons above other candidates for the status of master by manipulating the rules in their favour.24 21

On the Matrimoni Segreti, see Cowan, ‘Patricians and Partners’, p. 27. AdC 238/11, 1695. 23 AdC 238/11. 24 See, for example, S. Cerutti, ‘Group Strategies and Trade Strategies: The Turin Tailors Guild and the Late Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, in S.J. Woolf (ed.), Domestic Strategies: Work and Family in France and Italy, 1600–1800 (Cambridge and Paris, 1991), 102–147; J.A. Farr, Hands of Honor: Artisans and their World in Early Modern France (Ithaca, 1988); H. Kellenbenz, ‘Zur Sozialstruktur der Rheinischen Bischofsstädte in der Frühen Neuzeit’, in F. Petri (ed.), Bischofs- und Kathedralstädte des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit (Cologne and Vienna, 1976), pp. 118–45. 22


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While their statement in the Pirocco case may have been designed to present Marco Pirocco in the best possible light as a man who organised production without ever having engaged in the manual aspects of production, it also reflected a wish on the part of the dominant group of masters in the guild to project a higher social status. Equally ambiguous evidence of status arose in the cases of Appolonia Bianchi, the non-patrician wife of NH Piero Michiel di Antonio, and of Laura Petrobelli, the concubine and later the wife of NH Carlo Corner di Hierolamo, whose sons applied for patrician status in 1678 and 1644 respectively. There is no record that either application was successful, and although Laura’s earlier position as a patrician concubine may well have played a part in the negative decision, it is clear from the line of questioning by the Avogadori, that it was her grandfather’s occupation which concerned them most.25 Valerio Bianchi, the father of Appolonia, was recorded in her baptismal entry as a muschier, a glover. He had a shop at the sign of the Lion di Francia. Because his name also appeared among the members of the Mercers’ Guild, he therefore straddled the dividing line between producers and retailers.26 On the other hand, glovers were engaged in small-scale production. Their shops sold items in small quantities. They were associated with other socially doubtful activities whose business would have been well known to patrician customers, such as the perfumers who made their products smell sweeter.27 Bianchi was known to several witnesses as a cittadino. Although he seems to have given up his shop and to have lived from an indirect income,28 it was not enough to guarantee the future of his grandsons. The case of Santo Petrobelli was in many ways analogous to that of Bianchi. He was also a shopkeeper who sold high-quality products manufactured under his direction. Petrobelli manifested signs of considerable social esteem. His shop was in one of the two arcades which bordered the Piazza San Marco, a high-rent, prestigious location.29 He followed the dress code of a man of civiltà. ‘He dressed in silk, with a coat of damask or similar material which reached below his knees, and a silken ferariol’, a garment worn by cittadini, but not by patricians.30 ‘He was the gastaldo (treasurer) of the confraternity of the Santissimi Sacramenti in the parish church of San Maurizio. His portrait

25

AdC 231/94; AdC 209/24. AdC 231/94, 1678; Tucci, ‘I mestieri’, p. 325; for the wide-ranging activities of the mercers and their attempts to achieve a more enhanced social status in the later sixteenth century, see R. Mackenney, Tradesmen and Traders: The World of the Guilds in Venice and Europe, c.1250– c.1650 (London, 1987), pp. 90–97. 27 Garzoni, Piazza Universale, p. 795. For the cultural significance of positive odours, see C. Classen, D. Howes and A. Synnott, Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell, (London, 1994), pp. 51–92. 28 AdC 231/94. 29 AdC 209/24, 1644. 30 Vestiva in sette et una vesteria sotto il ginocchio di Damaschino, o cose simili, et anco il ferariol le portiva di sette (AdC 209/24). For the ferariol, see G. Boerio, Dizionario del Dialetto Veneziano (Venice, 1856), p. 728. For the significance of dress codes, see above, p. 35. 26


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was displayed there, close to the high altar.31 Suspicions about his status arose because of two independent elements in his business which, when combined, potentially placed him among a group of men whose activities were entirely beyond the social pale, the charlatans or quack doctors.32 On the one hand, he sold oils and other distillations for medicinal purposes. On the other, in common with many other shopkeepers in the arcades along the Piazza San Marco, he placed a bench in the square, from which his products were also sold.33 The link with the behaviour of charlatans was only hinted at by the line of questioning of witnesses, but in 1649, a year after Carlo Corner’s death, his widow Laura sent the Avogadori a strongly worded objection to the evidence which had been submitted. ‘Those with evil intent have led the authorities to believe that Santo Petrobelli, my grandfather, was called the man of oils, owned shops and carried out the occupation of a charlatan.’ She argued that this could not have been possible, both because her husband would never have considered marrying a woman of this social background – a point which lay at the heart of the debates about the social background of women worthy of marrying patricians – and because Santo’s activities were entirely honourable. His was the thought behind the creation of the oils.34 Others manufactured and sold them. She presented the Avogadori with a new set of witnesses who confirmed that Santo never sold his goods from the bench in the piazza.35 Petrobelli could not have been a charlatan because one of the characteristics of this activity was its itinerant nature. He was well established in the city and had a shop in a select position. On the other hand, even the slightest association with such activity could be damaging and may well have been used to undermine the application on behalf of Carlo and Laura Corner’s sons.36 In a surprising admission, one of Corner’s former servants testified that he had been told by his master that Laura was of low social status and since a member of her family, either her father or grandfather, had sold oils in the piazza, there could be some difficulties in demonstrating the boys’ right to sit in the Great Council.37 This makes an interesting contrast with Laura’s own argument that the fact of their marriage validated her social status and that of her family. Laura Trevisan, the wife of NH Girolamo Barozzi di Antonio, was described as a persona ordinaria by the patrician-born Capuchin friar Father Marin. When pressed by the Avogadori, he replied that he had meant that she was neither

31

AdC 209/24. Testimony of Bortolo dei Bianch di Francesco, pisier. D. Gentilcore, ‘ “Charlatans, Mountebanks and Other Similar People”: The Regulations and Role of Itinerant Practitioners in Early Modern Italy’, Social History 20 (1995): 297–314; D. Gentilcore, Healers and Healing in Early Modern Italy (Manchester, 1998), pp. 115–17. 33 AdC 209/24. 34 A ducal official, Antonio Carnevali, referred to Santo Petrobelli as a Filosofo (AdC 209/24). 35 AdC 209/24. 36 Attempts to blacken the social reputation of boys’ families in these circumstances were not unknown. Cowan, ‘Innuendo and Inheritance’, pp. 125–37. 37 AdC 209/24. 32


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noble, nor cittadina, nor a person of status from the Terraferma.38 Subsequent witnesses built up the detail to such an extent that Laura’s sons were rejected in their search for patrician status. Laura and Barozzi had met in Istria, whence she had accompanied her father. Marco Trevisan was an iron merchant from Burano, whose internal trade within the Venetian territories and the nature of the commodity traded placed him immediately at a social level below the international merchants operating from Venice. Burano society offered fewer opportunities for social distinction based on occupation. Marco worked in the shop associated with this business. His son, Rocco, was a blacksmith – the iron trade could be seen as an adjunct to this occupation. Rocco testified that several of his sisters married artisans, fishermen and boatmen, although he himself succeeded in marrying into patrician circles. After going into business with NH Marco Barbaro, importing grain, he had married the latter’s niece, Chiaretta. Nothing more is known about her background. We may infer that Barbaro had married a non-patrician wife and that Rocco’s marriage to Chiaretta was not entirely unusual. On the other hand, the information may only have reinforced the disquiet experienced by the patricians evaluating the status of the Barozzi sons.39 Men associated with the medical profession generally enjoyed high status as physicians or surgeons. In the case of the latter, however, there was always an element of doubt. This represented a major concern in the case of Laura Castello in 1607. Her father, Alessandro Castello, had been a member of the Venetian College of Surgeons since 1593. He worked for many convents and monasteries. His father was also known as a surgeon. They both dressed a manega comedo. Laura’s mother was a patrician, admittedly only a member of the Candian branch of the Ruzzini family, but a patrician even so. It finally emerged that both Alessandro and his father Francesco had been barbersurgeons. At least, they had a barber’s shop in the sestiere of Castello, conditions in which it was common to treat minor injuries. In the words of a man who had worked in the barber’s shop in his youth, ‘afterwards [Francesco] turned to treating people through surgery, and I believe that from the time of the plague [contaggio], he began to dress a manega e comedo and to work as a surgeon’.40 Opinions of barber-surgeons varied. Garzoni observed that their art was ‘clean and neat, having as its end goal the cleanliness of the body’. He excluded them from his list of ‘vile’ occupations. On the other hand, Tiraguera stated that surgery was mecchanica et illiterates.41 The Venetian College of Surgeons was always careful to distinguish itself from the guild of barbers, although many Italian contemporaries were less concerned about this distinction. In the absence of a qualified surgeon, the Terraferma city of Feltre petitioned for permission in 1580 to employ a barber-

38

AdC 238/18, 1693. AdC 238/18. 40 Et dopo si messe a medicar da cerusia, et credo dal contaggio in su vestisse a manega e comedo et si dottori in chirurgia (Leonardo Barbitonio di Domenico) (AdC 109/30). 41 Tucci, ‘I mestieri’, p. 445; Donati, L’Idea, p. 117. 39


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surgeon who had been trained by one of the previous incumbents.42 A list of Tuscan surgeons drawn up in the plague year of 1630 also included a number of barber-surgeons.43 Surgery was itself regarded as a manual occupation, but one which counted among the liberal professions. It required its practitioners to come into direct contact with the human body and its effluvia.44 On the other hand, the requirement for surgeons to study at university raised the occupation to a level almost equivalent to that of the physician. The considerable care with which the Avogadori examined questions of social status related to a man’s occupation may be illustrated by the case of Elisabetta Righetti, whose supplica was submitted in 1689, but only approved by the Collegio in 1705. There were considerable difficulties over her grandfather, the wine merchant, Lodovico Righetti, who was listed in 1630 as ‘selling wine at the sign of the Fox’ (vende vin alle Volpe).45 The ownership of a shop with a sign, placed him closer to merchants with shops, but also raised the possibility that he was primarily engaged in the retail trade.46 Merchants of food and drink rarely proposed their daughters as wives of patricians. Buying wine over the counter was less likely to be within the direct experience of the Avogadori. It would have meant mixing with artisans and others of even lower status. The wine trade had also been the subject of regulatory legislation earlier in the century. Following a pause in the investigation, the Avogadori decided to investigate the organisation of the wine trade in order to base their decision on detailed information. A retired merchant in his mid eighties who had specialised in importing Greek wines told them that there used to be 54 wine shops with signs between San Marco and the Rialto. These were Magazzeni, where wine was sold both wholesale and retail. All had been closed down at a single stroke (tutti in una volta) by the Senato during the 1670s. He was not asked to explain this, but it would appear that this action was taken to remove illegal wine shops that had not registered in the hope of avoiding taxes.47 Wine was also officially sold retail in bastioni and osterie. Other witnesses narrowed down the location of most of these magazzeni to the parish of San Luca in the Calle de Carbon, with a scattering in San Marco and San Zaccaria. 42 R. Palmer, ‘Physicians and Surgeons in Sixteenth–Century Venice’, Medical History 23 (1979): 451–60, esp. pp. 453, 455–6. 43 C.M. Cipolla, ‘The Medical Profession in Galileo’s Tuscany’, in C.M. Cipolla, Public Health and the Medical Profession in the Renaissance (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 67–116 (77, 85). 44 A Venetian physician, Gian Giacomo Strata, who had originally trained as a surgeon, was said to have combined l’arte physical with l’operation manual, cioè la chierusia. Palmer, ‘Physicians’, p. 458. The choice of two contrasting terms arte (for a profession based on lengthy study) and operation (for the manual activity of the surgeon) is significant, placing the latter in the world of artisans and merchants. Surgeons were excluded from the council in sixteenth-century Padua. Ventura, Nobiltà, p. 326. 45 AdC 236/77, 1689. 46 See, for example, Luca Pesenti, a mercer, who had shops at the Tre Marchi, and the Carezze (AdC 233/25); and Mackenney on apothecaries’ shops, Tradesmen, pp. 88–90. 47 AdC 236/77; U. Tucci, ‘Commerci e costumi del vino a Venezia in età moderna’, Quaderni della Rivista di Storia dell’Agricoltura 1 (1989): 191–5. Anxieties over links with bastioni stretched as far as a wine merchant named Capreto, wrongly assumed to be the stepfather of Giovanna and Catterina Facci (AdC 235/54, 1687).

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Wholesale wine merchants, on the other hand, had their guild on the opposite side of the Grand Canal, in the parish of San Silvestro. Members comprised both merchants and bastioneri. It became clear that there was considerable confusion over the regulation of the wine trade in Venice. The bastioneri were regulated by the Sette Savii della Mercanzia, but this practice was so recent that few records existed, and certainly none which might have recorded whether or not Piero Righetti, Elisabetta’s father, was among them. The clerks of several government offices were called before the Avogadori, but none were able to provide any definitive information. Eventually, one of the wholesale wine merchants explained that owners of wine shops in his experience did sell wine in the shops, but only wholesale. This information, together with confirmation that the shop at the sign of the Fox was a magazzeno, was enough to arouse considerable doubts about Righetti’s civiltà,48 but were not enough to convince the Collegio, who eventually voted in favour of Elisabetta’s prova. The Avogadori’s question in the Righetti case about the exact nature of the work carried out by the owners of shops was central to the consideration of the social status of the majority of men considered in this uncertain area. Merchants who did not own shops at all were above suspicion. Carlo Bottoni was described by a fellow merchant in 1621 as a merchant ‘who was honoured in this city, trading particularly with Puglia, wealthy, but who never had a shop, nor carried out any vile or mechanical art’.49 Domenico Cabrini was described as ‘a wholesale merchant trading in all things. He did not have a shop’.50 Owning a shop could have a variety of implications. It might mean an investment, similar to the ownership of land or real estate, in which the owner rarely participated at all in the day-to-day activities of the shop. It might also have been one of a series of enterprises, in which case he would not have spent much time physically in any one of them. Several men under investigation were reported as owning a number of shops at the same time, often drawing income from additional sources. Giulio Cesare Aivoldi Marcellini, the spicer, had three or four shops but also received an income from land near Lake Como which he had inherited from his father.51 Others owned shops as an extension of the manufacturing carried out in their own houses, or as outlets for goods imported wholesale from elsewhere. Ownership of a single shop could also have been a full-time supervisory function. In every case, witnesses conformed to the conventional distinctions between arte meccanica and a vita civile by emphasising the division of labour between the shop owners and their subordinates, the fattori and garzoni. It was the latter who carried out the manual labour of moving goods around, selecting it, wrapping it up and handing it to customers. The task of the latter was quite different. In Giovanni Girolamo Vento’s shop on the Rialto, trading 48 49 50 51

AdC 236/77. AdC 109/34, 1621. AdC 214/26, 1649. AdC 232/11, 1684.


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in says, velvet and damask, his factor did the selling, while Giovanni Girolamo spoke about his goods to the customers.52 According to the barber who went to shave Giovanni Giacomo Bosello, the latter ‘never worked manually in his shop, but had his fattori and many workers who worked for him’.53 Giovanni Cossali ‘bought and sold merchandise. For manual and inferior operations he had apprentices and other workers who packed the goods, and others who did what was needed for the shop’.54 The distinction between the supervisory role undertaken by merchants and other shop-owners and that of the fattori may have played a part in the rejection of Andrianna Ponte by the Avogadori in 1695. Her case was one of the few for which an official summary survives, listing the evidence and explaining the negative conclusions of the investigation. The conclusion that her grandfather, Silvestro, was a silk-spinner before he became a silk merchant has already been discussed. Doubts about the family’s social status were compounded by the information that her father, Giovanni Antonio, had served as a fattor of the Badoer (patrician) and Gozzi (silk merchant) families. While one witness had explained that he was Fattor General for the Gozzi, ‘in charge of all the business, and to whom all the other fattori were responsible’, others had described Giovanni Antonio as working as an ordinary fattor beforehand, an experience which was not unusual for a young man training to become a merchant on his own account one day.55 The activities which he carried out were largely administrative and secretarial, Ultimately, this was enough for the Avogadori to conclude that they were doubtful if the work of fattor should exclude Giovanni Antonio from association by marriage with the patriciate.56 This distinction between shop-owners in a supervisory capacity and fattori and others who did the manual work becomes clearer following an examination of the detailed behaviour of merchants described by witnesses in these cases. One key distinction was the location in which merchants worked. They were not necessarily inside their shops. It was their task to stand outside and discuss business with customers and associates. They also devoted time to travelling between their homes, shops, warehouses and suppliers. Giovanni Giacomo Bosello manufactured woollen cloth in his house for sale in his shop and storage in his ‘vaults’ on the Rialto. ‘He came into the shop from time to time but did not carry out any work there because he was a merchant’ (my emphasis).57 The description of a man as ‘a merchant on the Piazza’ was both value-based and literal. Merchants devoted much of their time to walking 52

AdC 206, 1639. AdC 222/48, 1666. 54 AdC 221/22, 1663. Egli operava a vender e comprar mercantia, per le operationi poi manuali et inferiori havessi giovini et altri operaii, che si essertivano a far bolle, et altre, che recovero per esercitio della bottega. 55 See the case of the mercer, Bartololomio Bontempelli, G. Corazzol, ‘Varietà notarile: scorsi di vita economic e sociale’, in Benzoni and Cozzi (eds), Storia di Venezia, vol. 6, pp. 775–91 (780–83). 56 AdC 238/2, 1695. 57 El capitava qualche volte in bottega, ma non operava niente perche era mercante (AdC 222/48, 1666). 53

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around either the Rialto or the Piazza San Marco, exchanging news, doing business and making their presence felt.58 The concept of ‘selling’ clearly also had more than one meaning. Giulio Cesare Aivoldi Marcellini was described as selling his goods in the shop, but the witness immediately qualified this to convey the conventional picture that he did not work or sell in the shop, only his young men. The latter sold goods manually by selecting them, wrapping them up, carrying them to the customer and handing them over.59 Selling involved talking up one’s merchandise. Santo Petrobelli ‘sat in a chair and discoursed on the quality of his goods to those who came to buy … He showed them the certificates from the Health Office so that they would believe that his goods were perfect, wholesome, unique and rare’.60 Much of the merchant’s work was administrative. Aivoldi Marcellini answered letters, came to his two shops in the evening, and sent money to the bank.61 Zuanne Cosalli traded, sold and kept his accounts. On the other hand, before he took over the shop at the sign of the Unicorn from his relatives, the Morana, he had worked there as an employee, ‘selling and buying merchandise, but leaving manual work to the young men and other workers’.62 This suggests that there was a very thin dividing line between merchants who owned shops, and shop-managers in terms of the non-manual work which was carried out. Once again, these clear distinctions were blurred by the realities of the working day. According to a dyer, the wool merchant Giovanni Giacomo Bosello, sometimes weighed out his merchandise. While most of his activity was involved in taking payment and selling his goods, he also touched it. The witness felt obliged to explain to the Avogadori that while it was the task of the merchant’s employees to weigh the wool, on occasion the master would also do so.63 Giulio Cesare Aivoldi Marcellini sometimes also worked manually. ‘Sometimes he sold and had many apprentices and fattori, sometimes he worked, but only a little, for he was only in the shop for short periods.’64 Luca Pesenti and his father ‘worked, sold and measured their goods; I believe that they also engaged in trade’.65 The mixed responses by the Avogadori and members of the Collegio towards these families who were in some way close enough to arte meccanica to be of uncertain social status were replicated in three analogous contexts. These comprised responses to cases in which men or women were believed to have come from a peasant background, the assessment of men wishing to become cittadini originari, and the judgments on and subjective responses to 58 Domenico Cabrini was described as honoratissimo et delli principali della Piazza (AdC 214/26, 1649). Bartolomio Vaura was mercante principalissimo della piazza (AdC 220/37, 1661). 59 AdC 232/11, 1684. 60 AdC 209/24, 1644. 61 AdC 232/11, 1684. 62 AdC 221/22, 1663. 63 AdC 109/32, 1618. 64 AdC 232/11. Testimony of Francesco Alcido di Cesare. 65 AdC 233/25, 1685. S’impiegavano, vendevano, misuravano, e credo facessero anco a lui negocii.


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the social background of the men who successfully purchased patrician status from the middle of the seventeenth century when financial difficulties forced the republic to break with tradition.66 It is not surprising that patricians should have been particularly reticent over links with individuals who might have had a peasant background. The regulatory legislation excluded women who were descended from a ‘vile’ background, as well as those associated with arte meccanica. This category included unskilled workers and slaves. It also included anyone who worked with their hands in the countryside. What is surprising is that there are analogies between upwardly mobile peasants and the socially ambitious artisan/merchants who have already been discussed. Even more surprising was the extent to which these social aspirations were grudgingly accepted. This can be illustrated by two examples. The first was a complex case over the rights of the sons of NH Giovanni Francesco Salamon to be registered as patricians. Cattarina, the mother of their maternal uncle, Francesco Cocco di NH Marin, was rumoured to be descended from a peasant family in the Bresciano named Zamboni. The second case was a petition by Maria Crivelli, the widowed second wife of NH Zuan Domenico Cicogna.67 Both cases took far longer than usual to complete their examination by the Avogadori, 6 years in the case of Cocco/Salamon, 4 years in the case of the Cicogna marriage. It is equally significant that, in spite of strenuous attempts by patrician relatives to blacken the reputation of the two petitioners with their peasant associations, both were ultimately given approval by Venetian authorities. In the case of Salamon, his rejection by the Avogadori was overturned by the Collegio on its third vote.68 The gap between the civile patrician culture and the lowly status of the peasant could be summed up by the description of Battista Zamboni as ‘a poor peasant, who manually ploughed and tilled the land, from which vile and abject work he sustained himself’.69 Ploughing and tilling the soil was his principal source of income. The origins of the family were well known in Brescia and were used as an insult in the course of a heated dispute at the house of the Bishop of Brescia in Rome between Agostin Zambelli and the 66 For applicants to the status of cittadini originari, see Zannini, Burocrazia, pp. 69–76. Responses to newly aggregated families believed to be of low status are discussed in Sabbadini, L’acquisto della tradizione, pp. 33–55; Raines ‘Pouvoir ou privilèges’, pp. 827–47; Cowan, Urban Patriciate, pp. 84–6. 67 AdC 304, 1637 (Salamon); AdC 211/79, 1648. The case of Marina Crivelli is discussed at greater length in Cowan, ‘Innuendo and Inheritance’, pp. 132–4. The case of the two daughters of NH Pietro Giupponi, aggregated to the patriciate in 1658, and of his peasant concubine, Giustina Ravazzola, is not entirely comparable because of the element of concubinage. On the other hand, the Avogadori were torn between the negative aspects of the mother’s status as a donna vile e abietta and the fact that Giupponi was offering dowries of 50,000 ducats for each of his daughters. Ultimately, it was the latter which swung the vote in their favour (AdC 226/136, 1674). 68 The first vote, in July 1643, attracted 13 votes for Salamon, 23 against, with 14 abstentions. In the third vote, scarcely two weeks later, extensive lobbying resulted in a complete reversal: with 49 votes in favour, 3 against and 3 abstentions (AdC 304). 69 Un povero contadino che manualmente arava, et zappava la terra, dal quale tanto vile, et abietto essercitio rileva il sostentamento di sei stesso (AdC 304).

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illegitimate son of Mattio Pisani, a Brescian citizen. When Agostin insulted Pisani by calling him bastardo, the latter riposted by referring to him as a villano (peasant), an even deeper insult.70 This negative presentation of families with peasant origins can be contrasted with the case of Bianca Osello, the mother of Marina Crivelli. Although born in Villa Onigo, she was referred to by one witness as a member of ‘Cha Osello’. Just as Venetian patrician families were referred to as Ca’ Grimani or Ca’ Contarini, families whose identity was so clear that it could be expressed in both linear and lateral collective terms had detailed genealogies to prove it: Marina Crivelli was able to submit in evidence a family tree which spanned five generations. While there were family connections which placed the Osello among the ranks of the lower orders – one of Bianca’s sisters married a peasant while her brother Beltrame worked as a journeyman furrier in Venice and Rome – Bianca herself married the Venetian notary, Francesco Crivelli in 1594. In her dowry, she brought him a house and shop in Venice close to the Rialto. Significantly, this property had been placed under mortmain (fideicommissum) and was due to pass to her from her childless brothers, Alvise and Beltrame. Only the wealthy went to the trouble of protecting their property in this way.71 There was further confusion over the reputation of the Zamboni because at some stage they had changed their name to Bianchi. It was claimed Andrea Zamboni had ‘dishonestly hidden his true family name of Zamboni because that would have revealed his abject birth, and had taken on the name of Ca’ Bianchi, an honourable family of which he is clearly not a member’; the evidence was in his tax records.72 There was some truth in this. It seems that he was known among the wealthy as Bianchi and by the poor as Zambelli. On the other hand, he followed a civile dress code, employed servants and was known to own some land just outside one of the city gates. This confusion was made worse by his failed attempt to become a notary in Brescia per gratia because he did not otherwise meet the customary criteria. In spite of having worked for several years as an administrator, he was turned down on the grounds that he was not on the appropriate tax lists.73 Neither the Zambelli/Bianchi and Osello families conformed to the traditional image of the peasant as perceived by the propertied classes in northern Italy. On the other hand, their attempts to become landowners and to rise socially through appointment to official positions were characteristic of changes which were taking place among the wealthy peasantry across the region. This helps to explain why female descendants of both families succeeded in marrying patricians. Claudio Povolo’s study of power relations between 70

Agostin was later murdered with an arquebus in an unrelated incident (AdC 304). AdC 211/79. For the fideicommissum, see J.C. Davis, A Venetian Family and its Fortune, 1500–1900: the Donà and the Conservation of their Wealth (Philadelphia, 1975), pp. 74–8. 72 Ha malisettamente nascosta la sua vera fameglia Zamboni, perche con quella si conscevano li suoi abietti natali, et fattosi chiamar da ca’ Bianchi famiglia honorata della quale veramente non è (AdC 304). 73 AdC 304. 71


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the peasantry and the local nobility in the village of Orgiano in the Veronese exemplifies the new sense of self-assertion among peasants with legal training, who were accustomed to go to Verona, and even, on occasion, to Venice, to lobby for their cases. Members of lower status families were using the wealth they had accrued to acquire the educational tools necessary to obtain minor official posts or work as notaries.74 Zannini’s study of applications for the status of cittadinanza leaves the clear impression that the Venetian government not only used the same criteria for civiltà when granting cittadino status: absence of links with arte meccanica, and the retail trade, legitimate birth, appropriate dress a manega e comeo, but also manifested the same uncertainties over how to evaluate the evidence. In these cases, although the Avogaria di Comun was responsible for the investigations, they were carried out by notaries, not patrician magistrates. It is clear from the evidence that these cittadino officials shared all the social doubts and certainties of their patrician superiors. One typically thorny case was that of the spicer Zuan Bernardo Franceschi, whose three grandsons applied to become cittadini in 1577. Bernardo sold medicines and wax in his shop, where the goods were sometimes weighed out by the proprietor, and sometimes by his assistants. Their application was eventually approved at the third vote.75 Suspicion of the social status of new families who applied to purchase patrician status was reflected in the votes on each application in the Great Council. While it was common for votes opposing an application to be in the 70s or 80s, families such as the Zolio, who received 709 votes in favour, 344 votes against and 34 abstentions, or the Minelli, who received 548 votes in favour, 346 against and 40 abstentions were far from popular.76 Both sold olive oil and salted fish.77An anonymous patrician commentator wrote of the new families after they had been admitted to the patriciate, ‘the great part of them were artisans, shopkeepers, oil-suppliers and small-scale merchants. I fear that their baseness has defiled the nobility more than noble status has refined their manners’.78 His tone was substantially less virulent than some of the other contemporary comments on their lack of gentility. Two separate issues were judged in the prove di nobiltà: the criteria according to which a women could be permitted to marry a patrician and bear sons who could sit in the Great Council, and the criteria for admitting men to the Great Council whose parents had not registered their marriages with the state. This discussion of the criteria governing social distinction has drawn on both kinds of prova. The lines of the investigation and the decisions taken were often entirely consistent with each other, but there is some suggestion that the sons of unofficial mixed marriages were treated according to a harsher 74 See, for example, the case of the Bonifacio family in Rovigo, Secchi, ‘Ascesa sociale’; Povolo, L’intrigo dell’onore, pp. 59–101. 75 Zannini, Burocrazia, pp. 69–76. See also Zannini, ‘La presenza borghese’, pp. 225–72. 76 Cowan, Urban Patriciate, p. 85. 77 Correr, Provenienze Diverse 613. C/IV. See also Sabbadini, L’acquisto della tradizione, pp. 43–4. 78 Bacco (ed.), Relazione, p. 41; Cowan, Urban Patriciate, pp. 85–6.

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interpretation of the criteria than the women applying to marry patricians. The case of Andrea Pisani in 1654 is a good example. Pisani’s parents, Lucietta Damiani and NH Piero Pisani di Marin, married in the church of Sant’Elena in 1620. They did not apply to the government for permission to marry, and it was therefore necessary for both Andrea and his sister Chiara to apply for a prova once they had grown up so that he could sit in the Great Council and she could marry a patrician husband. Chiara Pisani’s application was accepted nem. con. Very little attention was paid to her. Her father was a patrician, she was legitimate and her maternal grandfather was a silk merchant.79 The file on her brother was much thicker. Quite early in the investigation, one of the Avogadori, NH Zuanne Dandolo, intervened to say that no marriage certificate had been presented with the written evidence from the family, nor any documents attesting to the condition of Domenico Damiani, Andrea’s maternal grandfather. Andrea’s patrician uncle also opposed the application, arguing that Damiani was a silk-weaver. The case went against him.80 Personal circumstances may have entered into this opposition, but the Pisani cases suggest that while a girl with a patrician father had an advantage when applying to marry another patrician – to the extent that negative evidence about her grandfather could be conveniently ignored,81 the road was much harder for the sons of patricians wishing to enter the Great Council. Defending the purity of the membership of the Great Council was a subject of considerable discussion, but the potential benefits to members underlay many of the concerns raised in individual cases such as that of Andrea Pisani. The growing tendency on the part of patricians to disinherit heirs in their testaments if they were not ‘members of the Great Council’ was both an indication of an awareness that this was a distinct possibility as a result of the rise in mixed marriages, and an incentive on the part of the sons of patricians to ensure that they were allowed to become members.82 The law of 1589 to regulate the entry of non-patrician women to patrician circles through marriage established clear criteria for civiltà. By permitting women to enter the patriciate whose families had been free from the taint of arte meccanica for three generations, it was anticipated that in future, patricians would only be borne by women of high status and good breeding. They also believed that this legislation would reinforce the barriers between patricians and those below them in Venetian society by preventing men who lacked civiltà from drawing on the positive benefits of kinship links with patricians. On the basis of the cases analysed in this chapter, this legislation was only a partial success. It broke down for two main reasons. One was the sheer complexity of Venetian society and its economic organisation. Any attempt to identify occupations of great merit, such as long-distance wholesale merchants, doctors or even government officials broke down in the face of 79

AdC 217/102, 1654. AdC 217/106. 81 A. Cowan, ‘Mogli non ufficiali e figle illegittime a Venezia nella prima età moderna’, Quaderni Storici 114 (2003): 849–65. 82 Cowan, ‘Innuendo and Inheritance’, pp. 133–4. 80


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the ambiguities of what individuals did in order to earn a living, and how far different facets of their activities transcended straightforward divisions between making and selling, or between working in a shop and engaging in the abstract business of trade. This was compounded by the social ambition of those whose economic success had provided them with the wealth and means to adopt a lifestyle closer to patricians than artisans. The second factor was the uncertain attitudes of the patricians themselves towards the criteria for civiltà. For the most part, the views of the Avogadori may only be seen through the prism of questions to witnesses. These were consistent with the laws setting out the basis for the prove di nobiltà. If there was any hint of arte meccanica, witnesses were pressed to give details. Even if the answers were a categorical denial of any association with arte meccanica, the question was frequently restated, but in greater detail, in case the witnesses had not understood the implications of the first question. From this, one might conclude that touch was the central indicator of the dividing line between manual and other work. On the other hand, in those cases where the judgments of the Avogadori are recorded, they frequently established that evidence suggesting arte meccanica was not valid. Giovanni Antonio Ponte was judged to be civile, in spite of the evidence that he had worked as a fattor in a merchant company. The frequent use of dubbio, (doubt) in the wording of their judgments reinforces the view that not only were difficult investigations carried out with great care, but also that the men entrusted with establishing clear social dividing lines were not entirely certain themselves. Finally, there remains that puzzling evidence that in several disputable cases of touch-related work, even though the Avogadori considered them to be beyond the social pale, subsequent voting in the Collegio led to the woman’s approval. While the length of time between the initial application and the final vote must be emphasised, much more needs to be known about the process of voting in the Collegio in individual cases before we can deduce clear social attitudes from these approvals. These votes were no different from others in the various organs of Venetian government. In other words, they were highly political and susceptible to outside pressure from the parties involved.83 In every case of a woman wishing to marry into the patriciate, there was a patrician family waiting to benefit from the projected marriage. In every case of a young man under consideration as a future member of the Great Council, he had a patrician father, who was determined to ensure the legitimate continuation of his family’s status. One recent study of the analogous investigations into men applying for cittadino status concluded that ‘one has the impression of being present at a kind of commedia whose plot was known to both witnesses and interrogators’.84 If this were entirely the case, then all participants would have known their lines and there would be little to learn. This analysis suggests that it was precisely because no one was quite sure of their lines, the play has much to tell us. 83 84

Raines, ‘Office-Seeking’, pp. 137–94. Zannini, Burocrazia, p. 74.

1.

Venetian gondolas

2.

Venetian prostitute in wintertime

3.

Venetian widow

4.

Street dress of young Venetian woman after marriage

5.

Venetian merchant

6.

Young Venetian nobleman up to the age of 20

7.

Chiefs of the Council of Ten

8.

Venetian senator

9.

Venetian noblewoman dressed for a public celebration

CHAPTER SIX

Concubinage and Natural Daughters Around one in nine of all the cases which passed before the Avogadori between 1589 and the end of the seventeenth century concerned women whose fathers were patricians but who had been unable to take up patrician status themselves because they were born of concubinal relationships between their fathers and women of lower status.1 Although they were illegitimate, the technical term used to describe them was ‘natural daughters’. This was intended to distinguish them from other women who were both ‘natural’, the biological offspring of their parents, and ‘legitimate’, and from adopted daughters.2 Because these girls were ‘natural’ daughters, they were required by legislation to undergo the same prove di nobiltà as the legitimate daughters of non-patrician families. On the other hand, because their fathers were members of the Great Council, the treatment of these cases was different from the others in two important respects. Their fathers’ status was not questioned. All the emphasis was placed on the background of the mother, her moral reputation, which could have been questionable given that she was not married to the father of her daughter, and on the nature of the relationship between father and mother. All cases concerning natural daughters were examined in considerable detail and enable us to consider two related issues, the way in which the cases of natural daughters were presented, and the nature of the consensual relationships which patricians developed with concubines as an alternative to formal marriage. Many of the latter lasted as long if not longer than conventional marriages. The presentation of natural daughters did not represent a justification of concubinage as a practice in itself, let alone an unbiased narrative of each relationship. On the contrary, what was given and shared by the investigators was a construct of concubinage as a context for bringing up a girl as a patrician daughter. It is therefore necessary to disentangle two different matters. Why did the patrician fathers of natural daughters engage in the artificial construction of an identity for them, which may be considered as part of a long-term game plan to bring men engaged in unorthodox relationships back into the heart of the patriciate? Secondly, what was the nature of concubinal relationships? In order to discuss the evidence for this, it will be necessity to go into reverse, to discount much of what was presented to the Avogaria in the daughters’ applications, and to examine a 1 See Table 3.3. These figures do not include other cases of retrospective applications by natural daughters. 2 See T. Kuehn, ‘ “As if Conceived within a Legitimate Marriage”: A Dispute Concerning Legitimation in Quattrocento Florence’, American Journal of Legal History 29 (1985): 275–300.

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second highly subjective source, the applications made by patricians to the Venetian church for permission to marry their concubines in secret ceremonies. By doing so, we may begin to determine the social origins of the concubines, the circumstances in which they entered these relationships, and what happened to them once they had given birth to children. A recent study of concubinage in early modern Verona questions whether high-status men took concubines because their families prevented them from marrying and suggests that keeping a concubine was part of the culture of a man of high status because it was an expression of his wealth and power.3 It is also important to ask whether the female partners saw concubinage as an opportunity or a trap to which they had fallen victim. While this chapter is primarily concerned with that minority of the natural daughters of patricians who went on to become the subject of a prova di nobiltà and, in most cases, to marry a patrician husband, this should be placed in the context of the experience of other natural daughters. In common with large numbers of the legitimate daughters of patricians, many became nuns.4 The wills of NH Santo Moro di Gasparo and NH Francesco Tiepolo di Alvise at the turn of the sixteenth century both refer to natural daughters who were nuns or were intended to become nuns.5 Others found husbands among the cittadini and other circles just below the patriciate,6 the common destination of their brothers.7 Dowry sizes in such cases could be quite substantial. Zaccaria Pizzoni received 3,000 ducats in 1594 on marrying Paulina, the natural daughter of Pasquale Cicogna. The following year, Alvise Valier was given 5,000 ducats by his new father-in-law, the Procurator of St Mark’s, NH Marco Michiel.8 Examples such as these are naturally heavily weighted in favour of those patricians who officially recognised their natural daughters and brought them up to make socially acceptable marriages. Much more needs to be know about the less fortunate women who slipped through the social net, such as Foscarina Memmo, the natural daughter of a patrician, who was brought up by her mother, and descended into prostitution before contracting an uneasy marriage to the son of a Venetian publisher.9 The long-term purposes of patrician fathers were made clear from the start by the terms in which they represented their behaviour towards their concubines and daughters. They made little or no attempt to hide the illegitimate origins of 3 E. Eisenach, Husbands, Wives and Concubines: Marriage, Family and Social Order in Sixteenth-Century Verona (Kirksville, Mo., 2004), pp. 143–5. 4 Laven, Virgins of Venice; V. Hunecke, ‘Kindbett oder Kloster. Lebenswege venezianischen Patrizierinnen im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert’, in G. Bock (ed.), Lebenswege von Frauen im Ancien Regime (Sonderstück aus Geschichte und Gesellschaft 18; Göttingen, 1992), pp. 446–76. 5 QS, IX, VI doc 240; A.T. 99. Extracts from Francesco Tiepolo’s will have been published in English translation in D. Chambers and B. Pullan (eds), Venice: A Documentary History 1450– 1630 (Oxford, 1992), pp. 248–50. 6 Bellavitis, Identité, p. 236 ; see also the cases of Anzola Marcello (AdC 208, 1621), Cattarina Contarini (AdC 239/17, 1695) and Zanetta Zane (AdC 340, 1611). 7 See above, pp. 75–6. 8 AT 223/39; AdC 206/47. 9 Ferraro, Marriage Wars, pp. 142–53.

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their daughters. On the contrary, their petitions to the Avogaria conventionally began with a statement that established the girl’s illegitimate birth. In 1644, NH Luca Pasqualigo di Giacomo stated that he had ‘a natural daughter, named Marta, procreated with the Signora Laura Gritti, legitimate daughter of the late Alvise’. This pattern was also taken up by natural daughters whose fathers had died. Maria Madeluzza Zen, the daughter of NH Domenico Zen di Piero, stated in 1680 that she was his figliola naturale.10 Patrician fathers were equally open about having had a daughter with a woman who was not their wife. On the other hand, the stock phrases used to describe patricians’ relationship with their concubines were clearly designed to demonstrate that their paternity was not in doubt. The petition of NH Donà Pisani di Bartolomio referred to Giulia Negri as ‘a lady of civil condition, who has always been available to me’.11 Giustina Sanudo’s daughter, Margarita Agnesina Pesaro di Giovanni Antonio, stated in 1660 that at the time of her birth, her mother was at her father’s disposal and under his protection and care.12 Paulina Donado di Domenego referred to her mother, Chiara Rossini, as ‘reserved to the said NH Domenico, my father, by whom she was held to be exclusively available to him’.13 Other witnesses called before the Avogadori made the same point. Santa Beccalisa, later the wife of NH Andrea Minio di Lorenzo, was said to ‘live in the same house, sharing with him both home and hearth’ (stava in Casa con lui loco et fuoco).14 Veneranda Negri, the concubine of NH Andrea Trevisan di Polo, ‘lived at his expense, maintained by him in a house belonging to him next to his own house’.15 Claims that a woman had an exclusive sexual relationship within a state of concubinage were supported by testimony that she had nothing to do with other men. Veneranda Negri ‘never had anything to do with any other men’ except NH Andrea Trevisan.16 Laura Gritti di Alvise, ‘to my knowledge had no relations with any other men apart from the abovesaid Illustrissimo Luca Pasqualigo’.17 Menego Pizzochero di Maffio, a boatman at the Grand Canal ferry crossing at San Tomà and former servant in the household of NH Marin Pesaro di Giovanni Antonio, was equally certain that Giustina Sanudo, Pesaro’s concubine, was in an exclusive relationship. ‘During the whole time I served

10

AdC 209/23; AdC 230/63. AdC 217/112, 1654. 12 AdC 220/33, 1660. 13 Io Paulina sopradetta son stata procreata da detto NH Domenego e della Signora Chiara Rossini sua amica e che è stata riservata al medesimo NH Domenego, mio Padre, del quale era tenuta a sua sola requisitione (AdC 220/50, 1650). 14 NH Benetto Trevisan di Marcantonio (AdC 215/41). 15 Ella non ha mai havuto da far con altre che con lui et è vissuta alle sue spese mantenuta da lui in sua casa contigua alla sua habitatione (Girolamo Trevisan) (AdC 209/31). Trevisan was married at the time, but took Veneranda to live with him once his wife had left him (A.N., Testamenti 1177, 37. Atti Francesco Erizzo). 16 AdC 209/31, 1650. 17 Alcun comercio con altre homeni fuor che con il detto Illustrissimo Luca. (testimony of NH Andrea Falier di Francesco) (AdC 209/23, 1644). 11

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in his house’, he said, ‘I did not know anyone else who had her. I don’t believe that there were any others because he paid for everything.’18 The case for exclusivity was sealed in many people’s eyes by claims that a woman had been a virgin before becoming the patrician’s concubine. The force of such testimonies was enhanced in cases where the girl was from a ‘good’ family, and consequently would have been expected to retain her virginity in order to protect her family’s reputation. Angela Petris, daughter of the wool merchant, Liberal Petris, and concubine of NH Francesco Loredan di Bernardin, was believed to have been a virgin at the start of the concubinage ‘because her father was a man of comfortable means’. NH Vettor Priuli di Domenego stated proudly that he had fallen in love with Virginia Fidati, a young virgin, and had subjected her to his power in spite of her resistance.19 Virginity was also more credible because of the young age at which many girls became concubines. Antonio Balbi, an eel-fisherman, was convinced that Veneranda Negri must have been a virgin when NH Andrea Trevisan took her because she was still a girl.20 Indeed many patricians were anxious to boast of the way in which they had abducted or raped the virgins who became their concubines. One of the close friends of NH Vettor Priuli di Domenico Giovanni recalled how he returned to the Villa di Maron after Mass to find Virginia Fidati crying in a room in Priuli’s house while he consoled her. She never left.21 Gregorio Cima, a mercer, reported that NH Giovanni Battista Basadonna had told him several times of how he had taken Cattarina Bressana’s virginity and had then led her away from her home in Brescia.22 There appears to have been a great deal of openness about the conditions in which patricians took women as their concubines. While, at first sight, tales of rape, abduction and false promises appear to have been told by their perpetrators to friends, relatives and servants as a form of male bravado, they had a serious function. In order to defend the status of natural children, it was necessary to prove their father’s paternity. This could only be achieved by demonstrating that the women concerned had an exclusive physical relationship 18 Per tutto il tempo, che mi son capitato in casa non so che altro che lui la teneva e credo che non si capitava altri perchè egli la spesava di tutto ponte (AdC 220/33, 1660). For similar cases see the testimonies of the Carmelite Padre Giacomo (Chiara Rossini) (AdC 220/50, 1662); Domitio Fonte (Angela Bianchi) (AdC 224/83, 1669); Ottavio Peroni di Angelo (Veneranda Negri) (AdC 209/31, 1632) and Girolamo Vidal (Zanetta Pasotta) (AdC 226/124, 1672). 19 Caminava con essa allora che la fosse donzella perchè suo padre era persona comodo (Francesco Martinengo, another wool merchant) (AdC 224/90, 1670). Il NH Vettor Priuli di Domengo prese affetto alla Signora Virginia Fidati, giovane donzela, e riddottela anche con resistenza di lei nella sua potestà (AdC 211/67, 1647). For the social importance of virginity in Italy, see S. Cavallo and S. Cerutti, ‘Female Honour and the Social Control of Reproduction in Piedmont between 1600 and 1800’, in E. Muir and G. Ruggiero (eds), Sex and Gender in Historical Perspective (Baltimore, Md., 1990), pp. 73–109; Povolo, L’intrigo, pp. 356–60. 20 AdC 211/67. See also the testimonies of Nicolò Contarini and Benedetto Pesconi (Maddalena di Moscaglia) (AdC 205/1, 1594); Mattio Peretti di Pietro (Lugretia Carrara) (AdC 229/48, 1679) and Padre Anzolo Pizzoni (Beatrice Piazzola) (AdC 220/28, 1660). 21 AdC 211/67. 22 AdC 214/33, 1650. See also the case of Cattarina Polo di Giacomo who was taken away from Monfalcone by Antonio Loredan di Carlo at the age of 14 (Matr. III, 54).


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with their patrician partners, that they had been virgins before they met, and that they had no contact with other men. If the contrary was the case, there could be doubts about paternity and about the moral character of the mother which could reflect badly on the reputation of the children. In a variation on these stories, some patricians took advantage of young girls who had been confided to their care. Laura Petrobelli referred to the man who later married her as the protector of her family. After her father’s death, NH Carlo Corner di Hierolamo placed her with a woman who had recently lost her own daughter and was suffering from depression.23 Fatherlessness was a common element in exposing young girls to seduction. ‘After the death of [her father], this gentleman took her away’ (Angela Petris). The abbot, NH Camillo Trevisan, took Meneghina Pavanello away from her father’s house on Murano following his death. Anzola Gasparini, the daughter of a small landowner on the Terraferma, visited the house of her neighbour, NH Vettor Callergi di Mattio, where her sister was working. ‘The said Anzolina stayed there with her sister in the house of Callergi because they were women without father or mother, and it was generally known that the said Vettor had to do with Anzolina there in his house.’24 A strong element of persuasion also appears to have played a part in the cases of Chiara Cassuto and Felicità di Valentina. Chiara Cassuto had been born a Jew, but converted to Christianity after eloping with a member of the Salamon family. It is something of an irony that he claimed to have abducted her out of religious zeal, but then proceeded to live with her in concubinage for many years until in 1691 he was persuaded to save himself from a state of sin by marrying her.25 Felicità, on the other hand, gave herself to NH Francesco Balbi di Zuanne after he had promised to marry her and never to give her up, a frequent ploy in early modern Europe. It took him 4 years and the birth of several children to fulfil his side of the bargain.26 In reality, these criteria of youth and virginity, which were intended to put the status of natural daughters beyond question, were not always met. Some concubines were widows. Paola Fressana, the concubine of NH Prospero Gozzi di Alberto, was said to have been of gentle birth from Vicenza. Giustina Sanudo, also of gentle birth, was the widow of Girolamo Leoncini before she took up with NH Marin Pesaro di Giovanni Antonio.27 Others were still married,28 and there is evidence that some concubines were passed from one 23 AdC 209/24, 1644. This case may be compared with that of Camillo Malipiero di Camillo, who sponsored a widow called Margarita, whom he married secretly in 1687 (Matr. II/52). 24 AdC 224/90, 1670; AdC 205/28, 1637. Detta Anzolina stava con detta sua sorella là in casa del Vettor, perchè le erano esse donne senza padre, et senza madre et per pubblica voce e fama el detto Vettor hebbe da fare con la detta Anzolina là in casa sua (AdC 302, 1604). 25 Matr. III/38. 26 Matr. I/104. 27 AdC 228/36, 1678; AdC 220/33, 1660. Interestingly, Giustina’s widowed status was hidden from the Avogaria di Comun. It was only recorded when she secretly married another patrician, Vicenzo Gussoni, in 1655 (Matr. I, 31). 28 Santa Beccalisa, the daughter of an oarsman at the Arsenal, was still married to Anzolo Pos di Bortolo, ‘a man of low condition’, when she went to live with Andrea Minio di Lorenzo

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patrician to another. Andriana Buchisa had a particularly chequered history. Having left her native Asolo under a cloud, she was the mistress successively of three patricians. Avanti di me capitava il NH Alvise Dolfin di Girolamo, non so di altri; dopo me ando in potestà del NH Domenico Zen fu de Piero, che la tolse, e tene in casa propria.29 This does not seem to have disadvantaged her daughter, nor to have prevented Andriana herself from marrying the notary, Simon Bonhomo, after her longest-standing relationship ended with the death of Domenico Zen.30 Venetian legislation both reflected and encouraged the sponsorship and recognition of natural daughters by patrician fathers. Regulations controlling applications for approval to marry a patrician made special provision for natural daughters of patricians. They set a number of conditions. Their fathers had to be registered as members of the Great Council. The women had to be recognised by their fathers as soon as they were born, and brought up in their custody.31 Natural daughters whose mothers were of very low condition were forbidden to apply, but this did not prevent patrician fathers with peasant and servant concubines from aspiring to marry their daughters to noble husbands in the hope that the eminence of the father outweighed the ineligibility of the mother.32 Natural daughters were brought up by their fathers in conformity with these expectations. Their education differed little if at all from the experience of legitimate patrician daughters. Like their legitimate counterparts, too, they benefited from their father’s interest and affection, and from the support of their wider kinship network. The sources tell us far less about natural daughters than they do about their mothers. This is not surprising given the relatively young age of many of the daughters and the investigative concerns of the Avogaria, which focused on the status of the mothers of these girls and on their male relatives.33 What we do learn is that natural daughters were (Zuanne Dolfin di Andrea) (AdC 215/41, 1650). 29 ‘Before me she belonged to NH Alvise Dolfini di Girolamo; I know of no others. After being with me, she passed into the power of NH Domenico Zen, son of Piero, who took her and kept her in his own house’ (Testimony of NH Marc’Antonio Mocenigo di Lunardo). Zen lived with his uncle, another Domenico, who also had a concubine (AdC 230/63, 1680). When Chiara Rossini was abandoned by Domenego Donado di Andrea upon the latter’s marriage, she was taken up by another patrician who subsequently married her (AdC 220/50, 1662). 30 AdC 230/63, 1680. For a discussion of other cases which were less successful, see Chapter 7. 31 AdC, Registro 16, fol. 58. Before 1590, a clear statement of the facts was enough. In July of that year, new legislation was introduced to ensure that their cases were subject to careful investigation by the Avogaria di Comun, see ASV, Compilazione Leggi 294. 32 NH Bernardo Venier, Duca di Candia, (the Venetian governor of Crete) used his will to sponsor the daughters which he had with his servant Cattarina Franzona (AdC 109/33, 1618). Maddalena Ronca was Pietro Basadonna’s housekeeper. Significantly, he did not recognise his daughter immediately but only had his paternity inserted into the baptismal record later (AdC 208); Santa Beccalisa (AdC 215/41, 1650) and Lugretia Carrara di Naddalin (AdC 229/48, 1679) were the daughters of oarsmen in the Arsenal; Zanetta Pasotta (AdC 225/114, 1672) and Giustina Ravazzona (AdC 226/136 1674) were both peasants. 33 See the case of Veneranda Negri. The Avogadori were far less interested in her adulterous relationship with the married NH Andrea Trevisan than they were in her father, Cesare, who


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generally educated in convents close to Venice alongside the daughters of the elite until the first steps were taken to arrange their marriages. This was a major step in their preparation for integration into patrician circles. Not only were they educated alongside girls from leading families, they were frequently taken under the wing of one of their father’s female relatives among the nuns, and reinforced their male social contacts in the relaxed regime which permitted visitors.34 Such an education also reinforced their reputation for honesty and modesty, necessary qualities in one who might be investigated by the Avogaria. Samaritana Marcello di NH Girolamo was educated at the convent of San Maffio in Murano in the later sixteenth century under the tutelage of a Marcello nun. While her father was away on government service, his agent, Giacomo Benzoni, visited her to ensure that she was looked after.35 NH Andrea Trevisan was reputed to have visited his daughter Laura almost daily in the convent of the Spirito Santo in Venice.36 The convent was also considered a suitable home for unmarried natural daughters no longer in their first youth.37 Integration into patrician society was also facilitated by the degree to which close paternal kin were prepared to recognise natural daughters. Illegitimacy was far from a stigma. Once she had been weaned, Lucietta Basadonna di Pietro was brought up by her father’s sisters. NH Jordan Dolfin, half brother to Stella Dolfin di NH Alvise, referred to her in 1609 as one of his illegitimate sisters. NH Giovanni Paulo Querini openly showed affection to his illegitimate granddaughter, Cateruzza (1676). Maria Alba Barbarigo di NH Piero (1702) was brought up by her paternal grandparents, the Procurator of St Mark’s, Giovanni Barbarigo, and his wife, Maria Bernardo. Maria Teresa Gozzi (1678) was brought up alongside her cousin Alberto, who later did his best to fulfil the obligation to look after her laid down in his uncle’s will.38 Public recognition by their fathers and by some of their kin was open encouragement to a wider circle of contacts to do the same. Some, such as Meneghina Rovi di Nicolò, a wet-nurse, were involved in the early stages of their upbringing.39 Visitors saw the young girls living in their father’s house in the years before they went to the convent and were able to identify them as full members of the household. NH Piero Emo di Gabriel often saw the young Laura when he went to see his friend NH Andrea Trevisan on the Giudecca.40 NH Giovanni Francesco Pisani di Almoro visited his uncle, the Procurator Alvise Pisani, and saw Loredana eating at her father’s table and sleeping in a room close to his. Another patrician visitor noted how Alvise could not bear combined minor tasks in painting and sculpture with building walls, and was therefore suspected of being an artisan (AdC 209/31, 1632). 34 Laven, Virgins, p. 43; Zarri, Recinto, pp. 84–6. 35 AdC 205/1, 1594. 36 AdC 209/31, 1632. 37 Anna Maria Foscarini di Alvise was still in the convent of the Holy Conception in Pieve di Sacco at the age of 34. She had been taken there 26 years earlier by her uncle, Nicolò Foscarini, following her father’s death (AdC 237/89, 1691). 38 AdC 208/32; AdC 206/40; AdC 227/7; AdC 240/51; AdC 228/36. 39 AdC 220/50, 1662. 40 AdC 209/31, 1632.

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to be far from his daughter and took her away with him to the country each year. Exceptionally, she was not sent to the convent.41 With such attention given to the dress, upbringing and treatment given to natural daughters, much ambiguity grew up about whether or not they were legitimate. No attempt was made to hide their status within the household. All the servants knew, and so did the clergy, close kin and frequent visitors. It was in their fathers’ interests to demonstrate exactly what they were – formally recognised natural daughters, who could take their place in patrician society. For more distant observers, shop-keepers, and neighbours, who might have seen the girls from a distance when they were young and who never came into contact with them later because their education took them away from home, they could easily have been legitimate. After all, this was the norm, just as people were predisposed to think of concubines as married women when they saw them fulfilling all the roles of a married woman. The two conditions of concubinage and illegitimacy were of course intimately linked. As Francesco Bozetti di Giacomo testified: ‘It is said that Signora Anzola her mother lived in his house for many years. She might be his wife or she might not, so I can’t say if her child is legitimate or natural’.42 Altena, the widow of a furrier, was even more explicit about her expectations. She told the Avogadori that she thought that Marietta and Chiara Valier di NH Baldissera were legitimate because ‘their mother, Signora Isabella, was also in the house, and I have always considered her to be a gentlewoman. They were dressed very well, with servants, gondolas and every comfort because he was a very rich gentleman’.43 It is something of a paradox that patricians paid so much attention to their natural daughters when men who had married for dynastic reasons were at their wits’ end how to protect the patrimony and yet dower their daughters appropriately. It is equally surprising that these girls were sought after as the wives of patricians when the elite seemed to suffer from a collective paranoia about anything which might stain the purity of their collective heritage. In other words, when dowries were spiralling and there was a superfluity of legitimate nubile girls, why did patricians attempt to promote their illegitimate daughters? Part of the answer lies in the fact that the upbringing which has been described so far was not exclusive to daughters who were being prepared for patrician marriage. Certainly, once a daughter was born to a patrician and his partner, her potential as a patrician bride must have been one of the considerations influencing the way in which she was brought up. On the other hand, public recognition at baptism followed by a ‘civil and modest’ upbringing were also prerequisites for natural daughters who became nuns or were married to nonnoble husbands drawn from the merchant and professional cittadini.

41

AdC 224/96, 1670. AdC 224/90, 1670. 43 Perchè pratticava anco la Signora Isabella loro madre e sempre l’ha tenuto per gentildonna, e con telli habiti, servitori, massere, gondole e ogni commodità, perchè l’era gentilhuomo ricchissimo (AdC 290, 1623). 42


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It is clear that these patrician fathers were going far beyond their responsibilities as fathers. It could be that, although natural sons were excluded from membership of the Great Council by law, natural daughters were a way to express the dynastic ambitions of men who had been unable to marry, or if married, had been unable to have children within marriage. According to Volker Hunecke, fulfilling dynastic imperatives through marriage and the procreation of heirs was not high on the list of priorities for Venetian patricians.44 In the light of the extent to which patricians wished to promote their natural daughters, either the absence of family compulsion or the presence of other impulses seem to suggest that this thesis needs some modification. It would be understandable if all the patrician fathers were wealthy, and their daughters were their sole heirs, but this was not so. One persuasive explanation for the behaviour of patrician fathers is closely linked to the second unresolved question: why were these girls sought after as the wives of patricians? The key attraction of the natural daughters of Venetian patricians over legitimate outsider brides was their paternity. Marriage to the natural daughter of a patrician who had been fully recognised by her father, brought up by him and educated in the same way as legitimate patrician girls brought all the indefinable advantages of links to the other patrician families through the father’s kinship network. While those links reinforced the inner unity of an elite, they offered important material advantages in terms of political support during election to offices by the Great Council or one of its subsidiary organs. The unrecorded actions of patricians on behalf of one another in business matters, marriage negotiations and the broader support functions of kinship networks, also made a patrician father-in-law an attractive prospect. Once their applications to marry into the patriciate had been approved, the illegitimate birth of natural daughters ceased to be a stigma. The relatively small size of their dowries compared to those given to legitimate daughters were still large enough to compete with those offered by other outsider brides. In all respects except for one, these outsiders were insiders, with all that this represented in terms of kinship links and political connections. For their fathers too, these marriages were a way to wipe away an unusual situation and pretend that they were ready to conform to what was expected of them as members of the elite of the Venetian Republic. Concubinage was a relatively frequent phenomenon in Venetian society, both among the Venetian patriciate and the huomini civili.45 It evoked little or no surprise. The vocabulary which was used to refer to concubines suggests that consensual marriage was a widely recognised, if irregular phenomenon. The attribution donna for a woman outside the circles of civlità was widely 44

Hunecke, Der venezianische Adel, pp. 128–41. For examples of concubinage outside the patriciate, see G. Ruggiero, Binding Passions: Tales of Magic, Marriage, and Power at the end of the Renaissance (Oxford, 1993), pp. 175–9, and the will of the cittadino lawyer, Steffano Contarini, dated November 1639, who left his concubine Margarita six ducats a month to bring up their son Alvise (A.N. 253/ 4, Testamenti Bianconi). A more general discussion of concubinage appears in Martini, ‘La donna veneziana’, pp. 301–339. 45

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accepted as having two meanings. It was used to refer to a woman of low social status, as in una donna di vil condizione.46 On the other hand, it was the most common term for a concubine. In this case, it was frequently preceded by the possessive pronoun. NH Carlo Corner di Hieronimo was said to have married ‘a woman whose name I do not know, whom he maintained in his house as his concubine before he married her’.47 A further variation was to refer to a concubine as una donna libera as opposed to una donna del mondo (prostitute).48 This meant that she was at the free disposition of her partner and no other. Giuseppe Todeschi confirmed to the church authorities in 1693 that Maddalena Sabusi di Antonio had never been married to her partner, NH Alessandro Contarini di Girolamo. He had always known her to be in his household as a ‘free woman’.49 Several witnesses referred to Giulia Negri as una donna a dispositione libera.50 A careful distinction was made, however, between una donna civile and una donna del mondo,51 where the latter phrase was a euphemism for a prostitute. Concubines, because they were associated with only one partner, were given the higher status. Their patrician associations were even capable of transforming the generally accepted meaning of donna to something approaching the title Nobil Donna given to all female patricians. Isabella, the concubine of NH Baldissera Valier di Bartolomio in the later sixteenth century, was referred to by her partner’s factor as ‘truly a woman of noble presence’ (veramente una donna di nobil presentia).52 The less ambiguous term of amica was widely used in the prove of patricians’ natural daughters. Chiara Rossini’s daughter, Paulina, stated that she had been procreated by the ‘said Nobil Huomo Domenico and by Signora Chiara Rossini sua amica’,53 while NH Marc’Antonio Balbi di Andrea testified that 21 years ago, NH Lorenzo Grimani di Lodovico, ‘took away Signora Maddalena, his amica. She has always been maintained by him just as she is today’.54 There was considerable visual ambiguity in public over whether a woman was a concubine or a wife. Grevembroch’s eighteenth-century collection of engravings of Venetian dress codes noted that ‘sometimes courtesans and concubines looked like married women, even wearing rings on their

46

See Venetian marriage legislation in Venice, Marciana, It. VII, 966 (8406). Una donna alla qual non so il nome che teneva in casa per sua donna prima che la sposasse (AdC 209/24, 1644). 48 See below, p. 147. 49 Matr. III/ 55. 50 AdC 217/112, 1654. 51 A mercer who lived opposite Chiara Rossini, the partner of Domenico Donado di Andrea, expressed some confusion about her status. He stated that she was neither a married woman nor a widow, but was careful to specify that she was not a prostitute either (AdC 220/50, 1662). 52 AdC 290, 1623. 53 AdC 220/50, 1662. 54 Menò via la signora maddalena sua amica e questa è stata sempre mantenuta da lui solo come pure il giorno d’hoggi la mantiene (AdC 224/86, 1670). See also the cases of Cattarina Padovan di Paulo and Cattarina Pula di Giacomo (Matr. II, 26; III. 54). 47


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fingers’.55 The adoption of the outward symbols of a married woman by the female partner had three purposes: to enable the concubine to blend into the background among married women, to use the clothes she wore to mark out the particular relationship which she had with a man of high status, and above all to distinguish herself from the prostitutes and courtesans who mixed with patricians but were formally excluded from patrician circles.56 What kind of women became concubines and why? There is no single answer to this question. The women who appeared in the prove di nobiltà and the records of the secret marriages came from a wide social and geographical spectrum far beyond the classic expectation of relationships between male patricians and female servants or the daughters of shipyard workers. The picture may be distorted because it is based on petitions by natural daughters whose sponsors hoped that their illegitimacy could be compensated for by the high status of their fathers. On the other hand, the fact that a proportion of concubines who contracted secret marriages but were not involved in the prove also came from relatively comfortable social circles suggests that this phenomenon was relatively common. Some concubines came from families of high standing with lands of their own. Maddalena Moscaglia, later the wife of NH Girolamo Marcello di Andrea, was the natural daughter herself of a Veronese nobleman who lived from the sale of agricultural produce, while Cattarina Bresana, as her name suggests, came from a patrician family in Brescia.57 Others belonged to the Venetian professional and occupational circles below the patriciate. Laura Petrobelli and Virginia Fidati were both the daughters of notaries. Beatrice Piazzola was the niece and ward of the notary Piero Solandi.58 Chiara Rossini came from a silk merchant’s family; Isabetta Balanzan was the daughter of a cittadino, while Lugretia Manzini had been the wife of a government legal official, a sollecitador.59 Giustina Sanudo and Giulia Negri were variously described as coming from good families or of an honourable line.60 Several concubines were born outside Venice. Some came to the city as immigrants, such as Elisabetta Cabrati, a widow from Dolo in the Padovano, and Isabella Gasolini from Lucca,61 but others came into contact with their 55 Alle volte le Cortegiane, e le concubine rassembravano donne maritate, mettendosi anche anelli in dite. ‘Gli abiti dei Veneziani disegnati del Grevembroch’, in A. Barzaghi, Donne o cortegiane? La prostituzione a Venezia. Documenti di costume dal xvi al xviii secolo (Verona, 1980), pp. 100; see also the discussion of confusion in female Venetian dress codes in Brown, Private Lives, pp. 117–19. 56 For prostitutes and courtesans: Rosenthal, Honest Courtesan, pp. 21–3; L. Ferrante, ‘Legittima concubina, quasi moglie, anzi meretrice. Note sul concubinato tra Medioevo ed età moderna’, in A. Biondi (ed.), Modernità. Definizioni ed esercizi, (Bologna, 1998), pp. 123–41. See also the case of Bianca Sanuto, who was accused of dishonest acts with the friar, Aurelio of Siena. Ruggiero, Binding Passions, pp. 185–8. 57 AdC 205/1, 1594; AdC 214/33, 1650. 58 AdC 208, 1644; AdC 211/67, 1647; AdC 220/28, 1660. 59 AdC 220/50, 1662; Matr. III/70; 121. 60 AdC 220/33, 1660; AdC 217/112, 1654. 61 Matr. I/10, 94.

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patrician partners when the latter’s interests took them beyond the lagoon. Thus we find that Lucia Corradina, later the wife of NH Antonio Michiel di Piero, lived close to Michiel’s estate in Villa Urbana, and ‘drew his attention to her beauty’, while NH Lorenzo Corner di Lodovico took Maddalena, known as La Turca, away with him from the Greek island of Samothrace off Corfu while on naval patrol against the Turks.62 Perhaps the most striking characteristic of consensual marriages by Venetian patricians was their stability. The records of secret marriages offer some indication of the time some couples lived together before marrying. The numbers of cases involved are not high enough to be analysed statistically, but it would appear that while in earlier years petitions for permission to marry in secret referred in general terms to couples who had been together ‘for many years’, it came to be more acceptable later in the seventeenth century to indicate the exact length of concubinage. These periods ranged from the 4 years during which NH Francesco Balbi lived with Felicità di Valentin to the 26-year relationship between NH Alessandro Contarini di Girolamo and Maddalena Sabusi di Antonio.63 On balance, most of the cases for which exact figures were given lasted at least 6 to 10 years. This evidence is corroborated by the experience of couples whose daughters came forward for a prova. Not all couples went on to marry. NH Lorenzo Grimani and his Greek concubine, Maddalena, were still together after 21 years of co-habitation. The consensual relationship between Santa Beccalisa and NH Andrea Minio di Lorenzo lasted for 20 years before they married.64 Such figures require contrasting with the 5 or 6 years in the 1650s during which Angela Bianchi and NH Francesco Valier di Alessandro lived together, or the 2-year relationship between Chiara Rossini and NH Domenico Donà, which produced a daughter but ended when he married a patrician bride.65 Many concubines only had a short-term association with the father of their children. It was almost as if, having served a purpose by giving birth to children who were then recognised by their patrician fathers and brought up to marry patricians or enter a convent, the concubine was a disposable commodity. Some were found husbands of some status, aided by a generous dowry. Giustina Ravazzol brought 2,000 ducats with her. Giacoma Orlandi, the concubine of a Procurator of St Mark’s, was disposed of in a similar way.66 Others were passed to patrician husbands. After spending much time with NH Marin Pesaro di Giovanni Antonio, Giustina Sanudo was married off to

62 AdC 208/5, 1619; AdC 224/86, 1670. Maddalena owed her nickname in Venice to Turkish sovereignty over her island. 63 Matr. I/104; Matr. III/55. Relationships of this length were nothing new. The diarist Marin Sanudo, lived with a concubine for at least 20 years in the early sixteenth century. Ruggiero, Binding Passion, pp. 175–9. 64 AdC 224/86, 1670; AdC 215/41, 1650. 65 AdC 220/50, 1662; AdC 224/83, 1669. 66 AdC 226/136, 1674; AdC 224/96, 1670.


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NH Vicenzo Gussoni, an invalid who lived in the street leading from Santa Caterina to the Fondamente Nove.67 Between them, the witnesses who contributed to the prove di nobiltà investigations provide a rare picture of the kind of households formed by couples in consensual marriages. At one end of the spectrum were the couples who lived apart but who to all intents and purposes formed a household. NH Francesco Valier di Alessandro spent his waking hours with Angela Bianchi in a house in the parish of S. Giovanni Crisostomo, returning to his palace each night to sleep, except on Sundays. This was corroborated by a number of witnesses who visited him there. Chiara Rossini, who accompanied her partner each time he left Venice, did not live with him fully, either, but was maintained in a house on the fondamenta between the Tre Ponti and the Ponte dei Ragusei. Once again, witnesses reported that they knew the couple were living in concubinage because they always found Domenico in Chiara’s house. Chiara’s laundrywoman told the Avogadori that: ‘I saw him coming there to her house many, many times. Every time I called in at the house of the said Signora Chiara, I always found him there’.68 There is nothing to suggest that these relationships, which were known in public as consensual marriages, were any less of a household because the male partner lived elsewhere than in those cases in which a concubine lived with her partner in seclusion. Virginia Fidati, who had been abducted from the Terraferma by NH Vettor Priuli di Domenico, was kept well away from the world in which he moved. Giustina Sanudo spent much of her time away from Venice in her partner’s villa.69 Many consensual relationships were far more public. The phrase come se fosse sua moglie (‘as if she were his wife’) appears so frequently in the records that it could be said to be a formal description of a woman in a consensual relationship.70 While it is important to be sensitive to the context in which these statements were being made, when witnesses were trying to put the most positive construction on the conditions in which a patrician’s natural daughter had been brought up, other evidence suggests that consensual households had indeed many similarities with conventional marriages. Many witnesses emphasised the appearance of a marital relationship between a concubine and her partner because, to all appearances, they were a married couple. This comment is less ingenuous than at first appears because although it must have been evident that the couple came from different social backgrounds, it was possible that they had married secretly, just as indeed many of the couples under discussion were to do later on. This expectation would have been reinforced by the fact that a household based on marriage was the social norm.

67

AdC 220/33/50, 1660. El vedevo vegnir là da ella spessimine volte, perchè ogni volta che havevo occasione di capitar alla casa di detta Signora Chiara e’l trovavo sempre là (AdC 220/50). 69 AdC 211/67, 1647; AdC 220/33, 1660. 70 See the cases of Isabella, the mother of Marietta Valier (AdC 290, 1623), Maddalena di Moscaglia (AdC 205/1, 1594), Virginia Fidati (AdC 211/67), Giulia Negri (AdC 217/112, 1654), Beatrice Piazzola (AdC 220/28, 1660) and Giustina Sanudo (AdC 220/33, 1660). 68

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When asked how NH Domenico Donà behaved at Chiara Rossini’s house, Meneghina Rovi said that at first sight she believed them to be married. So had Benetta Benetti, whose husband had taught Chiara how to play a musical instrument. Chiara was living a modest and reserved life, just like a woman of high status.71 Long before she married her partner, the behaviour of Santa Beccalisa had persuaded a local weaver that she was indeed NH Andrea Minio’s wife. Another witness referred to Virginia Fidati as Vettor Priuli’s wife. Pietro Barozzi believed that Anzola Alberti and NH Giacomo Balbi di Piero were married.72 All witnesses were either servants or artisans. Their readiness to believe that the couples were married reflects the difficulty with which they were able to come to terms with concubinage. Witnesses from patrician and professional circles could be much more worldly in this respect. The late sixteenth-century case of Maddalena di Moscaglia, later the wife of NH Girolamo Marcello di Andrea, also illustrates the reasons why witnesses were ready to invest her with the status of a married woman. A frequent visitor to their house and distant relative of Marcello, NH Nicolò Contarini, was surprised to learn that they had got married very recently because he had seen her running the household as madonna and patrona. NH Giovanni Corner di Benedetto, another visitor and Marcello’s brother-inlaw, described how Maddalena ‘sat at table and ate with us as if she were his wife, giving orders to all the servants with complete obedience’. Maddalena seems to have been a lady of spirit. A local man on the estate at Montagnana recalled that on several occasions, Marcello had given an order to his servants, and Maddalena had countermanded it, and he had to give way because she was ‘the resolute mistress of everything, and of all workmen, rents and other income’.73 Isabella, who lived with NH Baldissera Valier di Bartolomio, also behaved as a patrician’s wife should. An elderly workman from the Arsenal, who had often carried out jobs in their house recalled that she went about like any other gentlewoman, with many servants and her own gondola.74 Faustin Taneglia offers a contrasting picture of the household of NH Carlo Corner di Hierolamo and Laura Petrobelli. Upon hearing that Corner was unwell, his cousin sent Taneglia to his house to offer help. He reported that Corner refused his help, insisting that only his donna and their children should go out to buy things for him.75 While it is extremely doubtful whether he would have reacted in the same way if he had been married to a patrician wife, this episode reinforces the picture of a household based on a close and affectionate relationship. The transition from concubinage to marriage was thus an easy one. Couples who lived together as if they were married, with children of their own, servants and frequent visitors from many levels in society, lacked only the blessing of 71

AdC 220/50, 1662. AdC 215/41, 1650; AdC 210/48, 1646; AdC 211/67, 1647. 73 AdC 205/1, 1594. 74 AdC 290, 1623. On the social importance of gondolas, see Romano, ‘Gondola’; Hunecke, Der venezianische Adel, pp. 319–26. 75 AdC 208, 1644. 72


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the church offered through the mechanism of the secret marriage ceremony to fulfil everything that was expected of them. The reasons why they chose to take this step are not so easy to discern. One might argue that concubinage was always a pragmatic solution. It was easier for a patrician to live together with a woman of a lower social status than it was to marry her. The relationship could always be ended in such circumstances to enable a patrician to marry a bride who was approved of by his family. Marriage was an indissoluble commitment. If the relationship between patrician and concubine proved to be enduring, then marriage and social conformity were possible. Several witnesses believed that NH Donà Pisani di Bartolomio married Giulia Negri because they already lived together as man and wife, but this was more of a justification after the fact.76 On the other-hand, a non-patrician couple who married secretly in 1675 made a similar case to the church that since they were believed to be husband and wife by those with whom they mixed and among whom they lived, they wished to turn this belief into reality.77 The birth of a child to a patrician and his concubine was not in itself a reason for marriage. Some couples never married even though they had children. There was no good secular reason to do so, as Venetian law made a generous provision for natural sons and daughters. They had the right to share in their father’s inheritance, particularly if they were his only surviving children.78 Several wills survive in which patricians gave most of their estate to their daughters. As the last of his line, NH Bernardo Venier di Anzolo bequeathed his entire estate to Zanetta and Anzoletta, his natural daughters. NH Pietro Basadonna di Alvise left his estate to his daughter Lucietta, on condition that she married a patrician. He had every expectation that her petition would succeed, although, on this occasion, it was refused.79 Towards the end of the seventeenth century, patricians came under increasing pressure from the church to marry their concubines. Much time had elapsed since the decrees of the Council of Trent had stated that those who lived together without marriage were in a state of damnation and had committed a very grave sin in contempt of the sacrament of marriage,80 and it is clear that their impact on patricians with concubines had been very limited. From the 1680s, however, the petitions which were submitted by those seeking to marry in secret referred increasingly to the threat of eternal damnation and to the influence of the clergy, reflecting a change in attitudes as a result of which patricians with concubines came under far more pressure to marry them.81 The vocabulary, which was often supplied to the petitioners by their confessors, evolved from a straightforward acknowledgement of the influence of a member of the clergy to a full-blown self-abasement of the conscience76

AdC 217/112, 1654. Matr. I/111. 78 M. Ferro, Dizionario del diritto commune e Veneto, VII (Venice, 1780), pp. 291–3. 79 AdC 109/33, 1618; AdC 209/32, 1645. 80 H.J. Schroeder, Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent (Rockford, Ill., 1978), p. 188; Zarri, Recinto, p. 229. 81 Martini, ‘La donna’, pp. 323–6. 77

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stricken. In 1661, following the advice of a priest from San Francesco della Vigna, NH Tomaso Gritti di Nicolò decided to marry Marietta Stella di Domenico after several years of concubinage. Twenty-two years later, NH Benetto Michiel di Domenico acknowledged that he had been living in sin for 14 years with Cattarina, the daughter of Paolo Padovan, and widow of Domenico Vospata, and that although he had tried several times to abandon these practices and live in God’s grace, he had been unable to give them up and now wished to marry in secret.82 There are no firm answers to the question why Venetian patricians should have engaged in consensual marriages. It is not enough to explain their behaviour in terms of physical appetite. This was indeed how many longterm consensual relationships were justified to the ecclesiastical authorities by patricians seeking to marry in secret. Unable to help themselves, and in spite of many attempts to cool their desires, they had concluded that marriage was the only way to save their immortal souls. While such arguments conformed to the official view of the penitent who was willing to confess his sins, it is difficult to take them at face value. They do not explain why consensual relationships which may have begun with rape or a form of kidnap sanctioned by the girl’s family should have endured so long, nor why the patricians concerned should have been so ready to recognise the children born of such relationships as their own. It is equally difficult to see such relationships in the context of older preTridentine attitudes towards marriage in which the verbal consent of the two parties with or without witnesses was deemed enough for such a marriage to be consummated.83 An alternative explanation for consensual marriage lies in the socio-economic forces within the Venetian patriciate which placed heavy restrictions on the number of men permitted to marry. Some of the others turned to consensual marriage, which lay outside these norms because natural children were normally excluded from family patrimonies, in order to have a fulfilled life. One way of testing this hypothesis is by using the one source which places patricians engaged in consensual partnerships in the context of their own families, the so-called Barbaro genealogies. These largely eighteenthcentury compilations enable us to identify each male patrician and to place his experience alongside that of his brothers. Sadly, the evidence remains inconclusive. What can be made of NH Lorenzo Corner di Lodovico (1617– 74), who held a senior naval office and lived with a Greek woman whom he had abducted from the island of Samothrace? Their daughter Maria was born in 1652, 3 years before the officially sanctioned marriage of his brother Polo.84 Either the family had chosen Polo much earlier as the son destined to 82

Matr. I/50, Matr. II/26. Chojnacki, ‘Nobility’, pp. 128–31; G. Cozzi, ‘Padri, figli e matrimoni clandestini (metà secolo XVI – metà secolo XVIII)’, in A. Manoukian (ed.), I vincoli familiarie in Italia. Dal secolo XI al secolo XX (Bologna, 1983), pp. 195–213. See, however, L. Ferrante, ‘Il valore del corpo, ovvero la gestione economica della sessualità femminile’, in A Groppi (ed.), Il lavoro delle donne (Rome and Bari, 1996), pp. 206–228. 84 AdC 224/86, 1670. 83


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carry on the line, or Lorenzo had taken Maddalena as his concubine for other reasons. NH Pietro Basadonna di Alvise (1596–1644), who lived with his housekeeper, Maddalena Ronca, was one of two brothers.85 The other did not marry. NH Girolamo Marcello di Andrea (1533–1602), later the husband of Maddalena di Moscaglia,86 was one of three brothers. Both the others married, with five and four sons respectively. If any pattern emerges at all from the Barbaro genealogies, it is that some of the patricians whose cases have been analysed here came from the minor branches of their families, or, as Hunecke suggests, belonged to poorer families where the practice of restricted marriage was neither necessary nor common.87 This suggests that there may have been fewer family pressures to conform and fewer pressures to live in fraterna (in partnership with their brothers) rather than in separate households.88 The motives of most patricians in consensual relationships are unlikely to have been committed to written record. We are left with a patchwork of evidence about their feelings. They valued their concubines for their companionship, taking them out of Venice when official business required them to travel. They took great joy in their children and recognised them openly. It is difficult not to see the way in which patrician fathers pursued the upbringing and interests of their natural children as a more general fulfilment of parenthood. In very real terms, consensual marriage provided them with a household and a family which they could not have achieved by marriage, and the acquiescence of their friends and neighbours encouraged them to persist. It is even more difficult to ascertain the motives of the women who became concubines. It is quite possible that they had no choice. Having lost their virginity to a man of high status, either with or without the complicity of male members of their own families, who saw themselves benefiting from association with patricians in some tangential way, becoming a concubine might bring security and a greater degree of comfort than would otherwise be the case. Several of the women were in a potentially insecure position, because they had either lost their fathers or their husbands. On the other hand, their social position was theoretically always in question. They had no legal rights to their partner’s property. They could not bear the title of Nobil Donna, which was the privilege of the wives and legitimate daughters of patricians. They were not technically part of their partners’ extended family, with all the benefits in the forms of friendship and support which this could bring. Above all, the absence of formal marital rights carried with it the danger of being either totally abandoned or married off to a non-noble husband, with very little warning.89 Cattarina Bressan was married to an arsenal-worker who subsequently became a woodcutter.90 Six years after their daughter was born, 85

AdC 209/32, 1645. AdC 215/1, 1594. 87 Hunecke, Der venezianische Adel, pp. 168–70. 88 Cowan, Urban Patriciate, pp. 92–5, 98–101. 89 For cases in which concubines reacted negatively to being married off by their lovers, see Ferraro, Marriage Wars, pp. 105–108. 90 AdC 214/33, 1650. 86

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the procurator, Alvise Pisani, separated from Giacoma Orlandi, saying that one daughter was enough and that he was not prepared to bear the cost of having any more. They took up different apartments in the same palace along the side of the Piazza San Marco, she on the side overlooking the canal and he on the side of the square, and he then married her off to another man who was living in his house.91 She was comparatively fortunate. Many of her fellow concubines are likely to have shared the fate of Malipiera Caotorta, who had been the concubine of NH Vicenzo Querini. ‘She used to live in Santa Maria Formosa, but then her circumstances took a turn for the worse and she moved to the Carmini; now I have no idea where she lives’.92 By comparison with their daughters, these women were often cast aside once they had fulfilled their function. The construction based on their earlier relationship with the patrician fathers of natural daughters may have been particularly positive, but it should not mask the instrumentality of the entire process. Perhaps this condition was not so distant from patrician wives, whose main purpose was to give birth to sons and daughters for dynastic reasons. Ultimately, the ‘shadow marriages’ represented by concubinal relationships had more in common with conventional marriages than at first meets the eye.

91

AdC 224/96, 1670. Questa era donna del NH Vicenzo Querini. Stava a Santa Maria Formosa, andò poi in bassa fortuna, et andò a star ai Carmini, adesso non so dove stà (AdC 224/86, 1670). 92

CHAPTER SEVEN

Gender and Honourable and Dishonourable Behaviour Recent studies of gender in early modern society suggest that the patriarchal model ought to be re-examined. Women’s behaviour and the extensive influence which it demonstrated within the household and in wider society has led to two conclusions, firstly that the influence of men was not as strong or as allpervasive as had been thought, and secondly, that the behaviour of both males and females was shaped by the other.1 Chojnacki has identified the growing influence exercised by patrician women in the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in the composition of their daughters’ dowries.2 Hitherto, it had been thought that it was their fathers who masterminded the family marriage strategy by selecting appropriate sons-in-law, determining which daughters went on to the marriage market rather than taking the veil, and who took the risks of assigning a proportion of the family patrimony as a fondo dottale to pay for large dowries.3 Because women technically owned their dowries and, according to the terms of their marriage contracts, could expect to receive all or most of their dowries back on widowhood, this property was potentially theirs to dispose of as they wished in their wills.4 This power not only freed their husbands from some of the economic pressures associated with the need to set aside a fondo dottale, but also enabled wives to play a part in determining the futures of their female kin. Nieces and granddaughters could be equally the beneficiaries of this planning.5 1 S.T. Strocchia, ‘Gender and the Rites of Honor in Italian Renaissance Cities’, in Brown and Davis (eds), Gender and Society in Renaissance Italy, pp. 39–60 (40–42). 2 Chojnacki, ‘ “The Most Serious Duty” ’. See also D. Queller and T. Madden, ‘Father of the Bride: Fathers, Daughters and Dowries in Later Medieval and Early Renaissance Venice’, Renaissance Quarterly 46 (1993): 685–711. 3 This was expressed most clearly in Florence, where the republic set up its own dowry investment fund to facilitate the marriage market. J. Kirshner and A. Molho, ‘The Dowry Fund and the Marriage Market in Early Quattrocento Florence’, Journal of Modern History 50 (1978): 403–438. 4 T. Kuehn, ‘Daughters, Mothers, Wives and Widows: Women as Legal Persons’, in A.J. Schutte et al. (eds), Time, Space and Women’s Lives in Early Modern Europe (Kirksville, Mo., 2001), pp. 97–115; Bellavitis, ‘La famiglia “cittadina” veneziana nel XVI secolo: dote e successione. Le leggi e le fonti’, Studi Veneziani 37 (1995): 55–68; Cowan, Urban Patriciate, pp. 136–40. 5 Chojnacki, ‘ “The Most Serious Duty” ’. For evidence of the same practices among patrician women elsewhere in Italy, see Smith, ‘Locating Power’; S. Cavallo, ‘Proprietà o possesso? Composizione e controllo dei beni delle donne a Torino (1650–1710)’, in G. Calvi and I. Chabot (eds), Le Richezze delle donne: Diritti patrimoniali e poteri familiari (xiii–xix sec) (Turin, 1998), pp. 187–207.

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Female testamentary influences were not necessarily limited to a domestic context either. The work of Laura McGough has shown how women’s bequests enabled new organisations such as the Zitelle, the Casa di Soccorso and the Convertite to be established and funded to aid other women both by providing shelter and financial support and by defending women’s private property against the claims of male members of their families.6 These independent activities were also a reflection of a high level of female literacy and business and administrative expertise among women of high status, attributes which were once only thought to have come to the fore when widowhood opened up new opportunities for action.7 In a further modification of conventional gender theory, Chojnacki questions whether the symbolic vocabulary with which the patriciate marked its ideas was essentially patriarchal.8 This chapter intends to explore this issue further through the criterion of honestà as it was explored through the prove di nobiltà. It is clear that this ran a close second in importance to concerns over whether or not a woman’s father or grandfather was socially beyond the pale because he had engaged in arte meccanica.9 According to the law of 1589, any woman who had followed a vita inhonesta would not be accepted. It was necessary to demonstrate that ‘she and her mother had always lived modestly and without any stain on their honour’.10 This aspect of the investigations brings us once more to the meeting of official ideology and widely shared social concepts, and the extent to which men and women conformed to them. While it is not possible to identify acceptable behaviour in detail except through the negative evaluation of behaviour which was ‘dishonourable’, we can establish the ideological roots of what passed as acceptable behaviour by women and consequently the extent to which patriarchal views of the household and of society in general pertained, as might be expected. On the other hand, these investigations also allow us to separate out the expected behaviour of three different kinds of women: unmarried girls about to enter upon marriage, their mothers and widows, whether or not the latter were also being investigated as the potential wives and mothers of patricians. ‘Dishonourable behaviour’ will also be discussed here on a number of different levels. While it is important to know whether or not cases were rejected by the Avogadori and the Collegio and the reasons which were given at the time, it is equally important to identify cases in which the line of questioning by the Avogadori reflected moral doubts, even when the case was eventually accepted. Individual testimony by the witnesses nominated by the applicants 6 L. McGough, ‘Women, Private Property and the Limitations of State Authority in Early Modern Venice’, Journal of Women’s History 14 (2002): 32–52. 7 F. Ambrosini, ‘Toward a Social History of Women in Venice: From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment’, in Martin and. Romano (eds), Venice Reconsidered, pp. 420–53; Cowan, Urban Patriciate, pp. 110–11. 8 Chojnacki, ‘ “The Most Serious Duty” ’, p 171. 9 For a discussion of the social significance of arte meccanica, see Chapter 5. 10 For the law, see AdC 108. Che lui e la madre siano vissute sempre modestamente et senza macchio all’honestà (AdC 109/34).

GENDER AND HONOURABLE AND DISHONOURABLE BEHAVIOUR

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and by those recruited by the Avogadori shows as always a great deal more about attitudes within Venetian society than the respondents intended. It is necessary to take into account what was not said, as well as what was testified. Many of the witnesses nominated by the applicants were subsequently shown to have kept silent on well-known aspects of the moral behaviour by the applicants or their mothers, or to have placed a different construction on it, as in the case of the concubinal relationships discussed in Chapter 6, where attempts were made to balance the immorality of living together outside the sacrament of marriage by the positive virtues of concubines who had given up their virginity to a patrician with whom they then lived, according to all the positive criteria expected of an honourable married woman. Not all concubinal relationships quite fitted this model, and some of the behaviour by the fathers and mothers of the natural daughters considered by the Avogaria fitted into the unofficial world of shadowy sexual relations for which the city had gained a certain reputation.11 The final part of this chapter will therefore attempt to locate the inhonestà of the women considered in the prove di nobiltà within the context of prostitution, female economic survival and double sexual standards practised by high-status men. Running throughout the discussion is the equally important perspective of the degree to which women negotiated their way successfully through a world whose parameters had been set by men. The phrase senza macchio all’honestà (‘without any stain on her honourable reputation’) used by the widow Marietta Bottoni in her petition in 1621 belongs to a body of ideas which encompassed far more than a woman’s moral reputation. Purity and an absence of any kind of stain was central to systems of self-belief among Italian nobilities. Muzio referred to the priority of keeping one’s nobility stainless. So did Guazzo, who argued that a poor nobleman was still a noble by birth and virtue and could consequently remain within the nobility without staining its character.12 The implication was clear: even though a woman might be of high birth, she could not enter the patriciate if her moral behaviour brought the same kind of threat to its reputation as if her father had been associated with the vile and mechanical arts. It was not difficult to prove that a woman and her daughter had a good reputation. All that was necessary was to make a statement that this was the case, and it was normally accepted without question, unless witnesses chosen by the Avogaria brought evidence to the contrary.13 Witnesses usually confirmed the written statement in their supplica that both lived modestly and 11 R.C. Davis, ‘The Geography of Gender in the Renaissance’, in Brown and Davis (eds), Gender and Society, pp. 19–38 (31–3); Brown, Private Lives, pp. 159–88; Ruggiero, Binding Passions, pp. 185–8; Barzaghi, Donne o cortegiane? See also E. Cohen, ‘Seen and Known, Prostitutes in the Cityscape of Late Sixteenth-Century Rome’, Renaissance Studies 12 (1998): 392–409. 12 Muzio, Il Gentilhuomo, p. 190; Donati, L’Idea, p. 158. 13 Naturally, in cases where a woman wished to hide any dishonourable behaviour, the witnesses nominated to support her supplica spoke of her as ‘modest and honourable’. They could not do otherwise.

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honourably. This kind of circularity does not entirely help us to identify what counted as acceptable behaviour nor to locate it within the general body of ideas expressed through treatises and sermons of the time. One patrician was quite circumspect. ‘I do not have any precise information about this woman and her mother, but I assume that they lived with great honour.’14 Another patrician, speaking about the same women, based his comments on his knowledge of the women’s father. ‘I have been Signor Marco’s friend for many years and have always known him to be an honoured gentleman who has always acted in an appropriate way, so I conclude that he will have looked after his wife and his daughter in a way appropriate to a man who is honourable.’15 There was a close association between the way in which a woman’s way of life was perceived by others and the reputation of the male head of her household. Indeed comparatively few witnesses, especially men, had direct personal knowledge of females outside their own families. Many only saw women in the background, or when they went to church. Paradoxically, the fact that women were not visible to male visitors was presented as a positive virtue. Ignorance of their behaviour was confirmation that they were well behaved. By expressing their ritiratezza, their retiring nature, they blended into the background, did not intervene in conversations with male visitors and kept within their private apartments. When girls were sent away to convents, witnesses found it difficult to base their comments on personal observation. A junior priest in the parish of San Marcuola had never met Fiordelise dei Franceschi. He did not even know her by name because he had only been in the parish for 2 or 3 years, by which time she was already in the convent of Santa Marta.16 A man who had known Anzola Corner told a similar story. Her father had placed her in the convent of San Gerolamo several years earlier. ‘I have not seen her since.’17 Such a comment was far from surprising, given that girls in convents only came into contact with a small number of men outside their kin. Families were able to find out about their daughter’s health in the convent either by contacting convent administrators or by speaking to someone who had recently visited a member of their own family in the convent. Otherwise, as far as their reputation was concerned, being placed in a particular convent was enough. As the Abbess of Santa Marta explained in a written statement in 1623: ‘Our convent has a ban on accepting the daughters of prostitutes (meretrici) and of women of ill fame’.18

14 Mi non posso saper cosa alcuna da scientia, ma presuppone che hanno vissuto honoratissimamente (AdC 323, 1618). 15 Essendo molti anni che pratticò il Sr Marco, l’ho sempre conosciuto per gentilhuomo honorato, che ha sempre fatto attioni degne, onde presuppone che l’habbia havuto cura di sua moglie e di sua figliuola come si conviene ad huomo che professa honor (AdC 323). 16 AdC 215/60, 1651. 17 AdC 208. 18 AdC 283. In the later seventeenth century, it became a matter of course for the abbesses of convents to submit written statements of the length of time a girl had been present in her institution. See, for example, Lucia Navagero di NH Antonio (AdC 215/54, 1651), Perina Pesenti (AdC 233/25, 1685) and Maria Alba Barbarigo di NH Piero (AdC 240/51, 1702).


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Good moral behaviour was often underwritten by a reputation for piety, both inside the house and at church. Attending religious services was one of the acceptable reasons for a married woman or her unmarried daughters to leave home. It fulfilled several different functions, not of all of which were taken into account by the witnesses before the Avogaria. Church services were social occasions at which women could meet and speak to each other. They were also opportunities to display their high status and the wealth of their family through the way in which they were dressed, a form of conspicuous consumption which was demonstrated to the full during the short journeys through the streets or along canals between their homes and the parish church.19 Caterina Querini di NH Pietro, the widow of military officer, lived very close to the church of San Severo and attended it frequently for confession.20 Elena Zonelli, the concubine of NH Zorzi Vizzamano, took on an air of conventional propriety by attending the church of San Giovanni. One onlooker was convinced that she must be a respectably married woman.21 Propriety was also measured by whether women were to be seen at the windows or on the balconies of their houses by neighbours. Rosana, the mother of Regina Contarini lived a ‘retiring life and was a good Gentlewoman, who never allowed herself to be seen on the balcony’.22 Balconies were potential sites for misbehaviour. Marco Minio and Marietta Rossi lived in neighbouring houses. Their relationship started while her husband was still alive. According to the local laundrywomen, ‘her husband was sick and he [Minio] made love to her from his balcony to hers’.23 Orazio Ferrari, warned his female readers not to engage in courtship because it would make a timid girl lose her sense of shame: [Walking about the house] with her forehead uncovered, presenting herself to the view of bold and unknown young men, looking and being seen, talking and laughing in their faces with great liberty and lightness of spirit that she would not even do with her sister or dearest friend. Nothing is of greater weight and one can not do an honourable women greater injury than to call her brazen-faced and without shame.24

His emphasis on seeing and being seen took the behaviour from within the house to a place where she could have eye-contact and possibly verbal contact with someone outside. There were gradations of acceptable behaviour on the balcony, however, for when a witness was asked in the case of Grimana Peracca whether she and her mother ever showed themselves too freely on the balcony (con troppa libertà), he replied that they were certainly to be seen clearly on 19 P. Labalme, ‘Women’s Roles in Early Modern Venice: An Exceptional Case’, in P. Labalme (ed.), Beyond Their Sex (New York, 1980), pp. 129–52 (132–5); R.C. Davis, ‘Geography of Gender’, pp. 33–6. 20 AdC 227/7, 1676. This can be compared with Santina Correni, who came to take the Sacraments several times a year in San Pantalon (AdC 216/63, 1651). 21 AdC 240/39, 1700. 22 AdC 240/44, 1701. 23 Il marito era amalato et gli faceva l’amor balcon con balcon (AdC 213/3, 1630). 24 Ferrari, Fido Conseglio, p. 13.

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their balconies, but he had never heard anything about their behaviour which could cast the slightest shadow over their honour.25 The context for honourable behaviour was rather different in the case of widows. Fifty-eight of the cases which have been examined concerned women who had been married at least once before they applied for consideration as patrician wives.26 Attitudes towards them by the investigators were shaped by the two polarities of the chaste widow and the lusty widow, which were to be found all over western Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in literature, popular songs and poems, sermons and conduct books.27 This was underwritten by the long-standing view of the church that widows should not remarry.28 While the distinction between the chaste widow and the lusty widow was clearly recognised, the two stereotypes were, of course, not polarities, but the opposite ends of a spectrum of behaviour and of expectations. The distinction is an important one. While it was straightforward for observers to identify certain extremes of behaviour and to categorise a widow as chaste or lusty, it was much more difficult for them to do so in many other circumstances. At the one extreme of the chaste widow, we have the model of a woman who, upon being widowed, effectively withdrew from all worldly behaviour, turned to prayer and other devotional activities and became in effect a pizzochera, a domestic nun.29 Some women took the next logical step and entered convents, not with the intention of becoming nuns, but of entering the only environment where they were safe from secular temptations and prying eyes.30 From what is known about convents in early modern Italy, this expectation was sometimes far from the truth.31 It is really only through the writings of Giulio Cesare Cabei in 1574 that good behaviour by widows is made explicit. In his book, the Ornamenti della gentildonna Vedova which was written as a conduct manual for widows, he recommended widows to express modest behaviour through dress, restrained

25

AdC 208/20, 1644. See above, pp. 57–8. 27 B. Todd, ‘The Virtuous Widow in Protestant England’, in S. Cavallo and L. Warner (eds), Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Harlow, 2000), pp. 66–83; E. Foyster, ‘Marrying the Experienced Widow in Early Modern England: The Male Perspective’, in Cavallo and Warner (eds), Widowhood, pp. 108–124; Colclough, ‘Widows and Widowhood’, pp. 115– 37; J.M. Lanza, ‘Les veuves d’artisans dans le Paris du XVIIIe siècle’, in N. Pellegrin and C. Winn (eds), Veufs, veuves et veuvage dans la France de l’ancien régime (Paris, 2003), pp. 109–120 (109–110). 28 E. Novi Chavarria, ‘Ideologia e comportamenti familiari nei predicatori Italiani tra cinque e settecento. Tematiche e modelli’, Rivista Storica Italiana 100 (1988): pp. 679–723 (693–4). 29 See Chojnacki, ‘Valori patrizi’, p. 242, for a fifteenth-century example. 30 P.R. Baernstein, ‘In Widow’s Habit: Women between Convent and Family in SixteenthCentury Milan’, Sixteenth Century Journal 25 (1994): 787–807. Mary Laven suggests, however, that the numbers of widows residing in Venetian convents declined in the course of the seventeenth century. Virgins of Venice, pp. 122–3. 31 Laven, Virgins of Venice, passim; Zarri, Recinto, pp. 43–143; Sperling, Convents and the Body Politic; Hunecke, ‘Kindbett oder Kloster’, pp. 462–6. 26


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gestures, a serious expression, a smooth and pleasant voice, which was never to be raised, and careful choice of the people to whom they spoke.32 At the other end of the spectrum, widows who turned to prostitution for reasons of economic survival clearly fitted into the stereotype of the lusty widow, sexually active and predatory, whose behaviour placed her outside the norms of conventional moral behaviour expected of a woman who had previously been married.33 But these two stereotypes did not match more than a very small minority of widows. Pious widows, who had no intention of remarrying or of engaging in illicit sexual relationships, still had households to run and children to bring up and could not devote all their time to pious exercises. Indeed, one of the strongest incentives to widows not to remarry was to retain their place in society by fulfilling the family duty towards their children while continuing to live in a home in which they had residential but no property rights.34 The difficulty for widows in terms of how they were perceived by others, however, was not so much what they did sexually, but what they were expected to do. On the spectrum between the chaste widow and the lusty widow, although the great majority of writing on the subject at the time concentrated on widowed chastity, informal perceptions of the widow laid far more emphasis on her as a sexually experienced woman. Widowhood was seen to have freed her both from the constraints of married life and from all the controls represented by the institution of marriage within a patriarchal society, with all that this represented in terms of control and protection by a husband. In other words, there was an unwritten assumption that all widows were not only potentially lusty widows, but also that they were likely to be so. In this way, widows represented both a threat and an opportunity for men. Because of this perception, all widows rapidly became aware of their ambiguous position, that their behaviour would be the subject of more neighbourhood gossip than would their case as married women, and that this gossip could be very damaging to them and those around them. It was necessary to chart a careful course in these dangerous waters. Consequently, Camilla Colonna, who had much to hide, constructed a way of life which she hoped would place her above suspicion. The testimony of her neighbours in the Campo San Barnabà presented positive picture of virtue and chastity. Indeed they saw what they expected to see. She lived with three servants in an apartment above the fruit and vegetable shop on the campo. She was seen to have only two male visitors, her brother, whose little daughter she was looking after, and her landlord, whom she called from time to time to carry out some services on her behalf. She crossed the campo to go to Mass in

32

Colclough, Widows and Widowhood, pp. 120–27. Ruggiero, Binding Passions, pp. 24–56; for a case of prostitution, see Samaritana Giustinian (AdC 109/36, 1626). 34 See, for example, patterns of guardianship awarded to Tuscan widows. G. Calvi, ‘Diritti e legami. Madri, figli, stato in Toscana (xvi-xviii secolto)’, Quaderni Storici 86 (1994): 487–510. 33

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the church of San Barnabà. In the words of one of her neighbours, she ‘lived a modest life’.35 Identifying ‘dishonourable behaviour’ is straightforward, but only in certain senses. In every case turned down by the Avogadori, there was a divergence from the sexual norm according to which women were required to remain chaste before and after marriage and to have an exclusive sexual relationship with their husbands. The expectations for men were less evident, but any adultery between married men and married women was deemed to be against the moral code because of its potential implications for the security of the household. Sons born of such relationships could have a claim on the patrimony of the household to which they belonged.36 The responses of the Avogadori varied according to the perceived degree of female immorality. Male immorality was not under discussion in this arena; there were both secular and ecclesiastical courts for this purpose.37 In two cases, one involving a widow, and the other an unmarried woman, the men concerned had already been punished by the Council of Ten, but the perception that the women under investigation by the Avogaria had in some way consented to these activities led to the refusal of their applications. The presence of only one case involving an unmarried woman among these judgments is not a surprise. The point has already been made that applicants for approval as the wives of patricians were self-selecting. The expectations of modest and honourable behaviour were so high that unmarried women did not normally put themselves forward if there were any doubts. On the other hand, it is a source of surprise that similar behaviour by mothers or widows did not prevent applications to which they were connected from being put forward. Veneranda Tasca di Gerolamo, the only single woman whose behaviour came under the spotlight, came from a leading cittadino family, and even in her case, her reputation was only investigated as part of a retrospective application to register her marriage.38 A branch of her family was among the first to purchase patrician status in 1646. Her father, Gerolamo Tasca owned the Villa of Vetugo near Mian. After his death, he left his daughter a very large inheritance, producing an annual income of 5,000–6,000 ducats. She was left in the care of her brothers. In 1648, NH Francesco da Mosto di Benetto, a friend of Veneranda’s brothers, was condemned by the Council of Ten for rape and abduction. One night, he and an armed servant had broken into the villa where she was living and invited her to come away with them on the promise that he would marry her.39 He took her back to his house in Venice, where, after a month, he abandoned her. The case came before the Ten, 35

AdC 235/46, 1686. See below, pp. 144–5. Davidson, ‘Theology, Nature and the Law’; Roche, ‘Gender and Sexual Culture’, 150–52; Ruggiero, Boundaries of Eros, pp. 44–69. 37 Hacke, Women, Sex and Marriage. 38 What follows is based on AdC 216/74, 1653. 39 For similar behaviour, see J. Walker, ‘Bravi and Venetian Nobles, c. 1550–1650’, Studi Veneziani 36 (1998): 85–114. 36


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and da Mosto was imprisoned. Offered the choice between remaining there and marrying Veneranda, now pregnant, to restore her honour, he chose the latter.40 Following his death several years later, Veneranda made an unsuccessful attempt to register the marriage and the births of their two sons. The decision ought to be understood less in the context of further punishment of da Mosto’s crime – that had been redeemed by his agreement to marry – than in the context of Veneranda’s dishonourable behaviour while unmarried. By agreeing to go away with da Mosto, even under pressure and in the presence of armed men, and by giving up her virginity, she had broken a major rule. The restoration of her honour through marriage did not wipe out this potential threat to the purity of the patriciate. The activities of a second member of the da Mosto clan also brought him before the Ten and threatened to disrupt the prova of his intended wife, the widow Hellena Dante. In this case, the Avogadori were not given the opportunity to come to a judgment because the couple married before that could take place and the enquiry was closed. It is clear, however, that they were very concerned. The case illuminating in particular because it is a rare opportunity to study a woman engaged in proactive behaviour and the ways in which those around her responded to it. Helena Dante was 43 in 1657, the year in which she applied for permission to marry a patrician. She had brought a substantial dowry to her first marriage to Andrea Mutti. Her father had been a wealthy paper merchant. By 1657, she had been in the convent of San Vido in Burano for some 8 years, an obvious destination for a high-status childless widow who was no longer in the first flush of youth. When the Avogadori interviewed her brother-in-law, Francesco Mutti di Andrea, however, he did not want to testify because to do so would harm the honour and reputation of his family. He was put under pressure to speak and said that she had left the family home following the discovery of some letters she had written to NH Nadal da Mosto. She had a hidden doorway in her room in her house in the parish of San Cassian which permitted her to go through to the house next door to see him. She departed for her mother’s house, but, on hearing about her daughter’s behaviour, the latter refused to let her stay there and sent her to the convent of Santa Marta, where she was visited by da Mosto. The abbess and the nuns were scandalised and she left again for the convent of San Vido in Burano, where further scandals developed and da Mosto was banished from Venice by the Council of Ten. Da Mosto certainly went to see her in the convent in Burano and took her away by boat to go to the opera, theatres and other entertainments.41 The act of condemnation by the Council of Ten goes into even more detail. It appears that da Mosto and his male friends also went into the convent: eating and talking in the parlatorium at unsocial hours and sleeping in a house very close to the convent. One evening during Carnival, accompanied by men with firearms, he went into the convent and organised entertainments of a dubious nature 40 41

See S. Cavallo and S. Cerutti, ‘Female Honor’. AdC 218/147, 1657.

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in the central courtyard in the presence of all the nuns.42 Curiously, when the abbess and some of the nuns were interviewed later about the incident, they all claimed that nothing untoward had happened.43 Both Veneranda Tasca and Hellena Dante came under consideration as applicants for registration. The Avogadori were also required to consider the moral reputation of the mothers of applicants, on the grounds that if a woman had been brought up by a mother whose reputation was not spotless, they were not fit in some way to give birth to patricians. In a society in which it was common for women of high status to put their children out to wet nurse, it was difficult to make the case that inappropriate behaviour could be transmitted through mothers’ milk, but this concept was also used as a metaphor for what present-day observers would call environmental conditions. Orazio Ferrari, for example, warned his female readers to avoid swearing, cursing or using indecent language because ‘children can drink these in as surely as milk’.44 Applicants were not necessarily turned down because of their mothers’ behaviour. Much depended on the circumstances. Andrea Giuroi di Steffano, an Albanian nobleman and professional soldier, was married to a Venetian patrician, ND Marietta da Molin di Andrea. According to the official representative of the city of Rovigo in Venice: ‘I have never heard anything at all against the daughter [Steffana], but things have been said about the mother in the past’.45 When pressed, he went on: ‘the said gentlewoman is a little licentious in her behaviour and has aroused suspicion and has done certain things but I know nothing with certainty’. A second witness from Rovigo had heard widespread rumours (mormorare) that she had committed certain ‘errors’. It appears that NH Nicolò Marcello, the nephew of the then Podestà in Rovigo had come out at night to the marital home near the city and had wounded Marietta’s husband with an arquebus. The case had come before the Ten but Marcello escaped punishment by saying that he had come to the house for a liaison with a servant, not the wife of its owner. No comments from the Avogadori are on file, but there is no evidence that Steffana was permitted to register her marriage.46 The actions of Camilla Colonna, whose smokescreen as a respectable widow in the parish of San Barnabà has been discussed earlier in this chapter, were so questionable that they placed the daughters of her second marriage to Pietro Bonamigo, a notary at the Avogaria di Comun, in jeopardy. An application to marry a patrician by the elder girl, Annetta, was turned down. As a result, 42

Statement by Council of Ten, 30 October 1652 (AdC 218/147). AdC 218/147. For similar behaviour by male visitors in the parlatorium and during Carnival, see Laven, Virgins of Venice, pp. 137–44; F. Medioli, ‘The Dimensions of the Cloister: Enclosure, Constraint, and Protection in Seventeenth-Century Italy’, in Schutte et al. (eds), Time, Space and Women’s Lives, pp. 165–80 (167–9); and, specifically in the same convent of San Vido di Burano, Sperling, Convents, pp. 159–60. 44 Ferrari, Fido Conseglio, pp. 67–8. 45 AdC 215/55, 1651. 46 She is certainly not listed in ASV, Indice per nomi di donne dei Matrimoni dei Patrizi Veneti; 2 vols, although this was not definitive. 43


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the younger daughter only chose to apply for retrospective registration several years after she had contracted marriage to a patrician husband.47 Camilla had been married to a man named Spinelli from the Venetian mainland. On being widowed, she rented an apartment above the fruit shop in the Campo San Barnabà for some 2 to 3 years before marrying Pietro Bonamigo. Although her neighbours around the campo either suspected nothing, or were unwilling to speak openly about her because she had a powerful protector, she had been established in that apartment as the mistress of NH Ottavian Malipiero. Malipiero lived just on the other side of the Grand Canal in the parish of San Samuele. How appropriate, then, that he seems to have provided her with an income based partly on the ferry which linked the two parishes of San Barnabà and San Samuele, where each of them lived, and which she used regularly to go and visit him. There is no doubt that she was his mistress. She stayed the night and slept with him. It is quite likely that she continued this relationship even after she had married Bonamigo.48 The Avogadori were divided in their judgment of the moral behaviour of another mother, Franceschina Ventura, the wife of Zuanne Grotta, a wealthy copper merchant. The couple had married in 1632 when she was 16, and he received a dowry of 21,000 ducats, most of which was in cash.49 After much debate, the Avogadori decided that although Franceschina’s behaviour made her morally suspect, it had taken place after her daughter Vittoria had been placed in a convent and should not therefore affect her own reputation and capacity to be the legitimate wife of a patrician. Zuanne Grotta had taken to drink and run through his fortune, to the extent that Franceschina was forced to go to the Venetian authorities to ring-fence her dowry. She then went to the ecclesiastical authorities to ask for a separation, (divorzio).50 Later, she left Venice with a Swiss army officer, continuing to send money to her husband. Her local parish priest was left speechless. The only explanation he could give to the authorities afterwards was that she had been stregata (bewitched).51 In 1684, the Avogadori put their comments on record. The case had been reviewed, as was customary, not only by the three Avogadori di Comun in office, but also by three other former Avogadori, whose presence was required by law in order to ensure some degree of continuity of judgment. Francesco Benzon had doubts over the ‘moral reputation of the mother of the bride because she had fled from her husband’. He judged that the criterion of moral probity had to be met in every case. The fact that Vittoria had been born 47 This application was successful, but only after much deliberation and enquiry (AdC 241/70, 1686). 48 AdC 229/60, 1670. 49 AdC 230/69, 1680. Grotta was well connected. Two families to whom he was closely related, a second branch of the Grotta (also spelled ‘Crotta’), and the Widmann, purchased patrician status in 1640s for 100,000 ducats. Sabbadini, L’acquisto della tradizione, p. 45, RöschWidmann, I Widmann. 50 For a more detailed discussion of divorzio in Venice, see Ferraro, Marriage; and Hacke, Women, Sex and Marriage; and for Italy in general, Seidel-Menchi and Quaglioni (eds), Coniugi nemici. 51 AdC 230/69.

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well before her mother’s actions should not be taken into account. Two other Avogadori, Piero Garzoni and Sebastian Capello, also supported this view. Others took the contrary view, arguing that the behaviour of a mother need not affect the moral reputation and therefore the eligibility of a daughter. Not only had Franceschina left her husband many years after Vittoria’s birth, but she had lived a honest life thereafter. (The incident of the Swiss colonel does not seem to have weighed heavily with them.) After further consideration, lasting 3 more years, the marriage of Vittoria Grotta to NH Andrea Manolesso was successfully registered by the Venetian authorities.52 If we shift the emphasis to more generalised patterns of sexual behaviour in Venice, many of which involved male patricians, it is clear that some men and women moved outside the norms of marriage or concubinal relationships. Four of the natural daughters of patricians who were rejected in spite of their fathers’ status, were born of mothers about whom there were wider moral doubts either because one of their parents had committed adultery or because the concubine mother was not under her partner’s ‘exclusive protection’. Maria Minio di NH Andrea was born when her mother, Santa Beccalisa, was still married to an oarsman at the Arsenal.53 NH Domenego Donà the father of Paulina, had a patrician wife, but lived apart from her with his concubine, a clear case of adultery.54 Maddalena Ronca, the concubine of NH Pietro Basadonna di Alvise, did not live with him permanently. In spite of cumulative evidence that she effectively ran his household, which had been her earlier role as his housekeeper, the Avogadori voted decisively against their daughter’s application.55 There were also major doubts about whether the mother of Anna Maria Corner di NH Nicolò, Giovanna Vittoria Capozucchi, lived exclusively with her father, a Procurator of St Mark’s. As Anna Maria’s petition stated: ‘for reasons which are easy to understand, at the age of seven or eight, I was consigned to Count Camillo Martinengo Cesaresco as his daughter … and he was responsible for bringing me up as is appropriate to one of his status in his household’. Nothing more was said by witnesses about Martinengo, but he certainly acted in loco parentis, and arranged Anna Maria’s first marriage to the natural son of a patrician.56 It was not unknown for patricians to pass on their concubines to others. Giustina Sanudo, the former partner of NH Marin Pesaro subsequently passed to NH Vicenzo Gussoni who was an invalid, living in a street leading to the Fondamanta Nove.57

52 Francesco Benzon had doubts ‘about the sexual morality of the mother of the bride because she had fled from her husband … her moral probity was indispensable [in such cases]’ (sopra l’honestà della Madre della sposa, per esser fuggita dal marido … essendo indispensabile il requisito della sua honestà) (AdC 230/69); see also AdC 222/47, 2o for Vittoria’s failed application to marry Manolesso in 1666. 53 Her parents subsequently married after his death (AdC 215/41). 54 AdC 220/50, 1662. 55 AdC 209/32, 1645. 56 AdC 233/23, 1685. 57 AdC 220/33, 1660.


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The experience of Giovanna Vittoria Capozucchi and Giustina Sanudo may have reflected the readiness on the part of one man to take on another’s concubine, but this experience may also have shaded into serial relationships as in the case of Samaritana Giustinian. She had been born to patrician parents. In common with a number of other patrician women, her parents found her a non-patrician husband, Gian Battista Leoni, who was subsequently banished, leaving her alone, presumably to fend for herself. While she was still married, she had an affair with at least one man, Cristoforo Martinelli, a dyer. Once she became widowed, she moved to the parish of San Gregorio where she was visited by a number of men, including a Greek merchant, Nicolo Soderini. She became Soderini’s concubine before eventually marrying him.58 Zanetta Zonca’s entire family, herself, her mother and one of her sisters, were engaged in serial sexual relationships.59 She came from a respectable background. Her father and mother were both from noted cittadino families. Her mother was a Berengo, and her father was an avvocato. At the age of 19, she married NH Marc’Antonio Zancaruol, a patrician who died only shortly before Zanetta applied for a prova, a marriage which they did not attempt to register. One of her sisters was separated from her husband and was then taken away by a patrician, who then died. ‘Now’, said one witness, ‘I have no idea what she is doing’. According to a man who had been a frequent visitor to Zanetta’s parental house, her mother had relationships in turn with Tadio Tirabosco, Angelo Cellerario and then with the lawyer, Piero Gradenigo. Berenga Berengo was described by one witness as a donna del mondo, a common euphemism for a prostitute. Her relationship with Tirabosco took place in the full knowledge of her husband. Tirabosco came and went in the house as he pleased. The prova came to a sudden end.60 The language used by witnesses in the Zonca case demonstrated both disapproval of their behaviour and a realistic appreciation that such behaviour was not entirely uncommon. Zanetta’s sister was menata via (led away) del Illustrissimo Giovanni Francesco Grimani. Another man suggested that her sister had scampò via (run away/escaped). Her mother was known per prattica, voce e fama (‘in practice, by direct spoken information and by general reputation’) as a donna del mondo. Zanetta herself ha fatta poco ben (‘has not behaved well’), both while she was married and when she was not.61 In general the attitudes of witnesses fell into one of three broad categories: the apologetic, the disapproving and the dispassionate. When Benetto Ferro was asked about the honestà and pudentia of Samaritana Soderini, he said that he was sorry he had been asked these questions because she was the wife of a friend, but in the circumstances he had to tell them that ‘by public repute, 58 1626, AdC 109/36. She had clients from a wide social range, including a dyer, who did not wish to go into much detail before the Avogadori, ‘because of the relationship which I had with her while she was married to Leon’ (per interesse che ho havuto con essa in tempo che l’era maridata con Leon). 59 AdC 213/3, 1630; AdC 207/88, 1642. 60 AdC 207/88, 1642. 61 AdC 207/88.

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Nicolò Soderini and others went to her openly when she lived in San Gregorio and had an open house’.62 A Venetian patrician who had been on visits to Milan was asked about Isabella di Monroi, who was known to have been the mistress of the Spanish Governor, the Count of Melgar, and to have been married off to a young courtier as a form of camouflage. He was happy to describe the way in which he had seen her in the Corso, at the theatre, di bel aspetto, vestita pomposamente con gioe (‘looking very fine, dressed with pomp and bejewelled’). He had wanted to know the identity of this striking woman. He expressed such reticence in discussing her unusual marriage that the Avogadore asking the questions urged him to abandon all rispetto (respect) and to say all that he knew. Since he had been in Milan for some time, he should have known more details. He still claimed that he knew very little, having been in Milan for only a short time.63 This reticence, and other examples of it suggest something of considerable importance. It reflected the need to cover for the perceived overstepping of norms by people of high status, particularly because making comments about the behaviour of females also meant touching on the honour of the males with whom they were connected. In Isabella’s case, this was the Venetian patrician whom she was planning to marry. Gossip in Milan was one matter. Concerns about reputation among patrician circles were another. This raises further questions about the extent to which money and high birth counted for more in material terms than a reputation for bad moral behaviour. Such was the case of a relationship in which the girl’s father, NH Lorenzo Avanzago, refused point blank to give the identity of her mother other than that she was a Donna Nobile and a widow at the time Marietta was conceived. He had committed adultery in this relationship because he was already married. His wife was already elderly and took care of his child. When she died, Marietta was placed in the convent of Santa Marta. Witnesses nominated by the family were equally silent about the circumstances of her mother. One of Avanzago’s servants recalled that his father-in-law had told him her name but that he had since forgotten it. Iseppa, the widow of a fruit-seller, who admitted that she had worked for the mysterious, widowed noblewoman for 24 years, also claimed not to know her name. The Avogadori later recalled her. It was put to her: ‘In your deposition, you said that you did not know where she lived, or even what had happened to her since, and now you seem to know this very well’. She justified her behaviour for saying that the woman had now remarried to a patrician and had borne him children. ‘I ask your grace not to molest her for fear of harming the honour of the family’. Nothing more was said about the matter.64 Some witnesses openly disapproved of women’s moral behaviour. Alba Musso, the widow of the notary, Martin Corte, did not wait long after her 62 Tuttavia, trattendosi di dir la verità, sò per pubblica voce et fama che il Nicolo Soderini et altre vi andavano publicamente quando la stava a San Gregorio che la teneva casa aperta (AdC 109/36, 1626). 63 AdC 237/92, 1692. 64 AdC 283, 1623.


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husband’s death before marrying a patrician from the Longo family and leaving the city with her children and her new husband. Corte’s doctor, Zuanne Buonamin, reported that Longo was already living in Corte’s house while the latter was still alive. ‘This created a little scandal in the parish’, he said.65 Hellena Dante’s mother was reportedly far from pleased with her daughter’s behaviour in developing a relationship with a patrician. According to one of her friends, a widow, ‘the poor lady wept when she told me about this. She was furious, to the point of saying that she no longer wished to be Hellena’s mother’.66 Bernardina da Veroni, a tailor’s widow, who worked in the house of Laura del Sol, the widow of Giulio Girardi, was only too ready to repeat gossip about her employer that she had done her husband ‘little honour’ during his lifetime and that after his death, she had slept with NH Domenico da Mosto, whom she was later to marry. Although the source of the gossip, a servant named Maria Camariera, later denied the story and it emerged that when Domenico had slept one night in the Girardi house, it had not been with Laura, who was heavily pregnant at the time, Bernardina’s use of the phrase ‘she did him little honour’ confirms the widespread social acceptance of an honour code which is often exclusively associated with the wealthy and powerful.67 Comments such as these were very much in the minority. Most witnesses when talking about adultery and seduction spoke of it objectively. ‘There was muttering in the parish that this young Minio had to do with Marietta Rossi before he took her as his wife and also while her other husband was still alive; this was why there was muttering.’68 Other witnesses also felt on safe ground when speaking dispassionately of cases which were well-known in the locality, rather than revealing private information. In the case of Alessandra de’ Sandi, Alvise Bughi, a surgeon who had treated her father, spoke of how he had heard ‘that after the death of Zorzi, her husband, she came into the hands of a gentleman of the Contarini family, I believe he was called Vicenzo, who it was said then took her as his wife’.69 Claudia del Ben was only 13 when her case was examined by the Avogadori. She came from a noble family in Verona. According to the fattor of the Ospedal della Misericordia in Verona, ‘I do not know anything at all about the girl, but because her mother went freely around the city, people talked about her’.70 While some of the lack of subjective comment in these statements may be linked to the inquisitorial context in 65

Solo era un poco scandolo per star detto NH là (AdC 237/86, 1691). La povera gentildonna quando mi dice piangeva, era arrabiata, a dire che non anche piu esserli Madre (AdC 218/147, 1657). 67 AdC 212/83, 1648. A detailed analysis of this case appears in A. Cowan, ‘Love, Honour and the Avogaria di Comun in Early Modern Venice’, Archivio Veneto, 5th ser., 144 (1995): 5–19. 68 AdC 213/3, 1630. 69 Ho inteso, che doppo la morte del Zorzi, suo marito, la capita alle mani d’un gentilhuomo da Cha Contarini, credo habbia nome Vicenzo, il quale per quello si dice, l’ha tolto per moglier (AdC 209/28, 1599). 70 Della putta non sè inteso alcuna cosa, ma della Madre perche andava vaga per la Città le genti mormorano d’essa (AdC 205/10, 1635). 66

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which they were made, their dispassionate tone also represents a very strong sense that what was being described was a matter of course. Witnesses did not express surprise or condemnation. They related what had happened because that was how some people behaved. This discussion demonstrates how difficult it is to disentangle specific behaviour by men and women in and around early modern Venice from highly subjective attitudes expressed within the unusual context of an inquisitorial investigation into the moral reputations of women and their mothers. Certain conclusions can be drawn from this. The first is that there is little point in working from polarities between honour and dishonour, or, if thinking exclusively in terms of widows, between the chaste widow and the lusty widow. Behaviour not only took place along a spectrum of practices, its interpretation by Avogadori and witnesses alike was coloured by the status of those involved and a range of other circumstances. Some women contravened many expectations of chastity, whether or not they were widows or wives. They did so less because of increased opportunities, or, as contemporary moralists wrote, increased sexual desire, but often out of necessity, as suggested by the work of Lucia Ferrante on Bologna.71 Occasionally, they did so out of personal choice, as in the case of Hellena Dante. The behaviour of ‘dishonourable’ women took place with the complicity of men from the same background as well as the same circles as those who made the law and sustained the principles of the Council of Trent. This espouses a range of sexual behaviour by male Venetians which also transgressed social and moral norms. The specific context of this discussion, the prove di nobiltà, exposes a further ambiguity in patrician attitudes. Not only does the evidence of these witnesses demonstrate a double standard over the sexual mores of male patricians and of the women whom they planned to marry, the decisions which were taken over the moral and social acceptability of these women suggest that other criteria could outweigh a reputation for dishonourable behaviour. While the Venetians officially only condoned sex within marriage, and publicly esteemed modest and chastity above all as the qualities to be sought after in a potential bride, they actually prized high status and access to capital resources even more. Lastly, responses to the behaviour of widows belong to a broader response to married women in general. The spectrum of these responses from the condemnatory to the dispassionate suggests that norms of acceptable moral behaviour existed which were generally recognised, but that their transgression upset far fewer people than might have been expected.

71

Ferrante, ‘La sessualità come risorsa’; Ferrante, ‘Differenze sociali’.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Marriage and the Patriciate Few institutions mattered more to Venetian patricians than marriage. If individual family units, many of them conforming to the stem-family rather than the nuclear-family model lay at the heart of the patriciate at any one time,1 then marriage was the key to continuity. It legitimated the birth of sons and daughters. It was the focus for the concentration of property in patrimonial form. It created the possibility of the transfer of that property from one generation to the next. It also ensured the continuity of the patriciate itself as a ruling elite by providing the next generation of members of the Great Council, with all that this implied in terms of service to the state. Through the transmission of dowries, it facilitated the circulation of wealth among the living and facilitated most of the activities in which individual patricians participated.2 Successive marriages consolidated existing social, economic and political relationships through the creation of new kinship networks, operating at both a personal and a family level.3 This chapter concludes the discussion in the final part of this book of the importance of marriage as an institution to individual patricians, to the Venetian state, and to the post-Tridentine church, and lays particular emphasis on the process of getting married, the location of the ceremonies, the social range of those who were present and their functions, and the degree to which there was communal involvement. Much of the evidence for this chapter draws on the retrospective applications for registrations rather than the standard prove. The primary evidence for such registrations depended on testimony from guests at the weddings to demonstrate that a ceremony had taken place and that consequently any sons born to the couple were legitimate. The importance of marriage to patrician society was something of a paradox, however, because only a minority of patrician men and women ever married. More women entered convents as nuns than took their marriage vows.4 Bachelorhood was common among patrician men, partly through choice, but mainly as a result of the growing practice of restricting marriages to one male per generation in order to protect the family patrimony from

1

Cowan, Urban Patriciate, pp. 90–125. Queller and Madden, ‘Father of the Bride’; Chauvard, ‘Pour une histoire dynamique’, pp. 41–4. 3 Chojnacki, ‘Kinship Ties’. 4 Sperling estimates that around 54 per cent of Venice’s patrician women lived in convents in 1581, with the proportion rising in the early seventeenth century. Convents and the Body Politic, p. 18. 2

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the economic dangers of fragmentation.5 This pattern did not extend to the poorest patricians because their wealth levels required no protection. It would also unwise to push the idea of marriage as a paradox too far, because its implications stretched throughout the patriciate and beyond. The importance of the institution placed it at the centre of an interlocking web of secular and religious rules and communal expectations. The secular rules about patrician marriage lie at the heart of this book. As Stanley Chojnacki has argued, the legislation of the early sixteenth century shifted the entire definition of the criteria for patrician membership from an inherited status passed from fathers to sons, to documentary proof of legitimate status from birth.6 In order for this to be demonstrated, it had become necessary to place the whole process of getting married and the making of marriages under direct state control. By the end of the sixteenth century, the emphasis had shifted not only to the registration of patrician marriages as a precursor to the recognition of legitimate patrician males with the right to sit in the Great Council when they came of age, but, through the prove di nobiltà, the identification of patrician status was determined even before the children were conceived by ensuring, or at least attempting to ensure, that potential outsider brides met the appropriate criteria for social status, civility and an absence of dishonourable indicators. In patrician circles, in other words, the state controlled the identity of the next generation of members of the Great Council through its approval of the marriages of their parents. A series of subsequent controls then ensured that the entire process was conducted properly. All patrician marriage contracts, centred on the details of dowries and conditions for their repayment, had to be registered with the Avogaria di Comun. What had begun as a piece of sumptuary legislation to ensure that patricians complied with the legal maximum set for dowries, was now an additional piece of evidence that a marriage had been contracted properly.7 Strict rules were also laid down to ensure that the marriages themselves were registered with the Avogaria. Some of the applications for the late registration of marriages with outsider brides were required because although the Collegio had given their consent to the marriage, the husband had then omitted to register it. Manziola di Prodolon di Conte Dunghello was permitted to marry a patrician in 1685.8 Five years later, her husband NH Zuanne Minio di Alvise had to send in a further petition to the Avogadori requesting the registration of their marriage. His story was that he had proceeded to take up office as Podestà in Torcello, where the marriage had taken place and a son had subsequently been born, and had omitted to register the marriage in the belief

5 S. Chojnacki ‘Subaltern Patriarchs, Patrician Bachelors in Renaissance Venice’, in C.A. Lees (ed.), Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages (Minneapolis, 1994), pp. 73–90; Davis, Decline, pp. 62–6; Davis, Venetian Family, pp. 93–106; Cowan, Urban Patriciate, pp. 144–8; Hunecke, Der venezianische Adel, pp. 133–4. 6 Chojacki, ‘Identity and Ideology’, p. 274. 7 Bellavitis, Identité, pp. 160–62, 167–88. 8 AdC 234/32.

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that all the necessary documentation had been completed in the prova process.9 Such lapses were not unusual among patricians, even when they had married patrician wives. The registration of marriages was followed by strict rules over the registration of the births of sons in legitimate patrician marriages. By the time a boy’s name was inscribed in the Golden Book, the state had already amassed a great deal of documentation about him. The legality of all marriages was still determined by the church and not the state. Marriages between patricians and non-patrician wives, which were either turned down as part of the prova process, or had never been submitted to it, remained licit in the eyes of both the church and society, and children born to them were counted as legitimate but not, as we have seen, as patricians. Since the approval of the edict Tametsi at the end of the Council of Trent, the Catholic Church had left no doubt that the criteria for a legitimate marriage included an exchange of promises before a priest in the presence of witnesses, followed by a priestly benediction.10 Other requirements, such as the obligation to announce banns in the parish churches of both bride and groom during the three weeks before the ceremony, and the registration of all marriages in the register of the bride’s parish could be circumvented, particularly in the case of high-status marriages, where the participants wished to invert the public nature of the marriage ceremony for personal reasons. In Venice, the permission of the patriarch (the Venetian equivalent to the archbishop) was required before the saying of banns could be waived. It was a measure of the influence of social rather than religious concerns that such permission was often given. Under ordinary circumstances, saying banns was an essential preventative measure to avoid bigamy or embarrassments arising from breaking prior engagements with another party. This was the norm.11 When a priest of San Aponal was questioned about the forthcoming marriage of Zanetta Cucina di Francesco in 1625, he replied that the ceremony could not have taken place unless the patriarch had given permission because no banns had yet been said.12 Their absence could invalidate a marriage.13 On the other hand, there were circumstances in which the parties to a marriage preferred to keep the ceremony as private as possible. Saying banns could alert other members of their families to an impending marriage of which they disapproved and might lead to blocking actions on their part. Marrying a woman of a lower status could fall into such a category. Marrying one’s long-term concubine certainly did so. NH Andrea Minio and Santa Beccalisa married under special licence in the church of Sant’Agnese in 1648 after some 9

AdC 237/81, 1690. Zarri, Recinto, pp. 227–38; D. Lombardi, ‘Fidanzamenti e matrimoni dal Concilio di Trento alle Riforme settecentesche’, in M. de Giorgio and C. Klapisch-Zuber (eds), Storia del Matrimonio (Rome and Bari, 1996), pp. 215–50; A.C. Jemolo, Il matrimonio nel diritto canonico. Dal Concilio di Trento al Codice del 1917 (Bologna, 1993), pp. 387–8. 11 Lombardi, ‘Fidanzamenti e matrimoni’, pp. 215–16. 12 AdC 312, 1625. 13 S. Luperini, ‘La promessa sotto accusa (Pisa 1584)’, in Seidel-Menchi and Quaglione (eds), Matrimonio in dubbio, pp. 363–94. 10

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19 years together.14 Diamante Contarini di Carlo and NH Almoro Zorzi also appear to have married in haste without banns. The ceremony took place in San Vio in November 1676 three days before her prova was considered, and both the prova and a subsequent attempt to register the marriage were turned down.15 The institution of ‘secret marriages’ also enabled the church to find a way to maintain the rules about the registration of marriages while accommodating the parties’ wish to keep the details from the public gaze. Parish registers of marriages were open to the public gaze, and certainly to government agencies such as the Avogaria di Comun, which could require these records to be searched in order to establish whether or not a marriage had taken place. In the case of Leonora Cesana di Antonio in 1626, the Avogador Donado ordered the parish priest of Santa Maria Zobenego to appear before him, bringing the marriage register for the current year and the previous year. He brought the two volumes and it was recorded that in neither book was there any record of a wedding or calling the banns (proclama) of a Leonora or Eleonora Cesana. The Avogadori and the notary had checked them fully.16 Secret marriages, on the other hand, were recorded in special registers kept in the Palazzo Patriarchale behind St Mark’s. They could be opened to prove the legitimacy of any children of such marriages, but could not be used as a justification for any claims by such children to their father’s patrimony. In this way, the ceremony was kept from the groom’s family in principle, but the method of registration offered some legal protection in the future.17 These arrangements did not always work out in practice. The blind patrician, NH Luca Falier, married Maria Papadopulo in secret in 1661. His mother and brother had opposed the marriage on the grounds that the family had little in the way of a patrimony (poche fortune). Luca’s sister, on the other hand, who was married to NH Benetto Contarini, developed such a warm relationship with her new sister-in-law that a door was knocked through the walls of their contiguous houses so that Maria could come and go easily to visit them.18 While the main participants and beneficiaries in an impending marriage were the couple’s immediate families, the news also had a communal dimension. First and foremost, it impacted on the households of the brides. Much of what we learn about this is provided by the testimonies of servants before the Avogadori. Secondly, it impacted on the immediate neighbourhood. News spread widely that a marriage was likely to take place well before the actual event. The delay imposed by the prova process in the case of outsider brides enabled rumours to circulate even more widely. These rumours were based on two independent sources, information which had been released into 14 AdC 215/41, 1650. Their daughter was still turned down by the Collegio, and her marriage to a patrician was only finally registered in 1677 (AdC 101). 15 AdC 227/13; AdC 239/17. 16 AdC 304. 17 Cowan, ‘Patricians and Partners’; Martini, ‘La donna veneziana’; Hunecke, Der venezianische Adel, pp. 110–12. For further discussion of concubines and secret marriages, see Chapter 6. 18 AdC 239/19, 1695.


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the community deliberately by the bride’s family, and visual indicators that a marriage was either about to take place, or indeed had actually taken place. It is understandable that when a marriage had been arranged between a non-patrician and a patrician family, this was a source of considerable pride on the part of the bride’s family. There was a double benefit in view. A future association with a patrician family increased the standing of the bride’s family in the generic sense that links with the elite in principle brought reflected high status. A successful prova also brought the possibility that a man might see his grandsons as fully fledged patricians sitting in the Great Council. This was not news to be kept private. Naturally, the individuals who were selected as prova witnesses by the applicant’s family all knew about the impending marriage in principle but had not necessarily been fully briefed. In the case of Faustina Cortesi, the daughter of a spice merchant, one of her supporting witnesses, a cloth merchant with a vault at the Rialto, only knew that she was to marry a ‘gentleman’: Si disse che la sia maritata in un zintilomo ma non so in chi (‘it is said that she is to marry a patrician, but I do not know his name’).19 The witnesses called by the Avogadori shared a similar awareness that there was a forthcoming patrician marriage. A second cloth merchant specified that Faustina was not yet married. She was living in the house of a female friend. His information was based on hearsay. ‘She is to be married and it is now said that she is promised to a Venetian noble … I am not sure who told me but I think I have heard that she was going to give her hand in marriage’ (ghe andava dar la man).20 There is a similar pattern in the case of Faustina Zorzi di Marin. One of the patrician witnesses nominated by her family was quite explicit about the current situation. ‘I hear that Faustina is to marry a gentleman from Ca’ Grimani, but the arrangements have been suspended until her capacity to bear noble sons has been confirmed.’ The local parish priest had also heard about this, even if he had not been informed formally. ‘I know that for several months her father has wished to marry her to a gentleman from Ca’ Grimani, but there has been no priestly involvement’.21 The gossip upon which this information was based often took place among patricians in the Piazza San Marco or on the Rialto, both places where commercial, political and personal news spread quickly because of the concentration of people there at key moments in the day,22 but there were many other points of contact where information about impending marriages was exchanged. These ranged from liminal points between buildings and the street to areas outside shops where their owners often stood in order to speak to potential customers and passers-by.23 Visual evidence that a marriage was either about to take place or had already done so was often subsequently proved to be inaccurate. Rumours about the 19

AdC 312, 1630. AdC 312. 21 AdC 359, 1618. 22 E. Horodowich, ‘The Gossiping Tongue: Oral Networks, Public Life and Political Culture in Early Modern Venice’, Renaissance Studies 19 (2005): 22–45. 23 Cowan ‘ “Looking in” ’. 20

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Cesana–Grimani marriage began when, as we know, Leonora Cesana’s father took the young Francesco Grimani in off the streets and invited him to live in his house and to eat at his table. One local witness was convinced that the marriage had taken place during the recent Carnival period because he had seen the young man going into the house. Another had heard general rumours of the marriage in the neighbourhood (per pubblica fama et voce). A third repeated that the women of the household were saying that the marriage had taken place, and that Grimani slept in the house. After questioning one of Cesana’s female servants, it became clear that the couple were not yet married, slept in different parts of the house and took their meals separately. ‘She eats separately, sometimes alone, sometimes together with the little girls.’24 What is significant here is not so much the accuracy of the testimony in this particular case, but what it reveals about expectations about a marriage based on a combination of rumours and visual observations. If a young man lived in the house of a woman to whom he was to marry, it was more than likely that they would sleep together, eat together and touch hands, all criteria for marriage ceremonies before the Council of Trent.25 In a third case, several neighbours of the Cucina family in the parish of San Aponal, whose daughter Zanetta was to marry a patrician, were convinced that the marriage ceremony had taken place some 15 days earlier. One had ‘seen the area around the house in great confusion, with many gentlemen coming in and out’.26 Scenes such as this were not uncommon around patrician weddings. Francesco Sansovino wrote that marriage ceremonies were usually carried out in the presence of large numbers of patricians and Sanudo’s diaries consider elaborate rituals of display to have been the norm among wealthy patricians.27 The prove investigations do not provide any details to corroborate the elaborate celebratory and exhibitionist rituals described by Sanudo and Sansovino.28 On occasion, however, witnesses remembered having dined with the bridal couple. Following the wedding ceremony between NH Zuanne Andrea Zane and ND Trevisana Zane, his nephew NH Nicolò Zane di Piero went with his wife a disnar con li sposi.29 In other cases, the celebration was much more low-key. NH Domenico Bollani di Iseppo has been invited to be the ring-bearer for his friend NH Domenico Boldù: ‘so after having dined, I went to the house of the said Sr. Domenego

24

AdC 304, 1626. See the significance of touching hands in the fifteenth-century Venetian case of Giovanni Gabrieli and Orsa Dolfin. Chojnacki, ‘Valori Patrizi’, pp. 202–203; O. Niccoli, ‘Baci rubati. Gesti e riti nuziali in Italia prima e dopo il Concilio di Trento’, in S. Bertelli and M. Centanni, (eds), Il Gesto nel rito e nel cerimoniale dal mondo antico ad oggi (Florence, 1995), pp. 224–47 (235–7). 26 AdC 312, 1625. 27 F. Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima (Venice, 1663), p. 401. See also P.H. Labalme and L.S. White, ‘How to (and How not to) get Married in Sixteenth-Century Venice: Selections from the Diaries of Marin Sanudo’, Renaissance Quarterly 52 (1999): 43–72. 28 See Brown, Private Lives, pp. 141–3, 150–51; P. Allerston, ‘Wedding Finery in SixteenthCentury Venice’, in Dean and Lowe (eds), Marriage in Italy, pp. 25–40. 29 AdC 213/14, 1634. See also the testimony of NH Francesco Barbo di Fantini in the case of Fontana Pigna (AdC 340, 1611). 25


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in the borgo San Trovaso, and there in the main room, he married his wife … whose name I now cannot recall’.30 It was often difficult to disentangle such behaviour from courtship. A neighbour of Anna Dandolo in the parish of San Martino close to the Arsenal had heard that she was to marry a gentleman. He had indeed seen such a man, dressed as a patrician (in veste) going into her house. Since Carnival, he had been visiting every evening and twice a day, remaining until the early hours of the morning.31 In fact the presumed marriage in this case was correct. The patrician’s boatman confirmed to the Avogadori that his employer had told him to collect his fiancée from San Martino and to take her in his two-oared gondola to the church of San Cristoforo, where the marriage took place.32 These cases only represented one dimension in the experience of young women about to be married. They are unusual for the public way in which they met their future husbands beforehand and this is what gave rise to particular comment in the neighbourhood. Most of the future brides had little or no involvement in the early stages in the making of their marriages. That responsibility lay with their parents or other close relatives. The majority of the prove files do not indicate where the applicants were living at the time of their application, but it is a fair assumption that where this information was not explicitly referred to by witnesses, the women were living with one or both of their parents. In the absence of their fathers, many were living with their mothers at this time, a smaller number with stepfathers, brothers, sisters, aunts or uncles, and a substantial number in the convents to which they had been sent for their education. Among the older women who had not been married before, Laura Bragadin, the natural daughter of NH Alvise, who was 31, lived with her paternal aunt, the wife of NH Cornelio Contarini.33 Widows, on the other hand, lived in a variety of homes. Some returned to their mothers. There was no correlation by age. Both Isabetta Cossali, who was 31 on remarriage, and Paola Lana, who was 42, had returned home.34 Twice-widowed, Cateruzza Querini di NH Piero and her son lived with her brother, who was one of the beneficiaries of their father’s will.35 Two other widows moved to convents, a conventional temporary or permanent residence for women whose families needed to dispose of them. Helena Dante moved to San Vido di Burano because scandal no longer permitted her to remain with her mother. Dianora Zaccaria di Giovanni Battista, the daughter of a Veronese noble, sought refuge in a local convent as soon as she was widowed.36

30

AdC 109/31, 1584. AdC 227/2, 1675. 32 AdC 227/2. For courtship in general, see Hacke, Women, pp. 78–80; and Ferrari, Fido Conseglio, pp. 11–15. 33 AdC 235/4, 1686. 34 AdC 221/22, 1663. 35 AdC 227/7, 1676. 36 See above, pp. 143–4. AdC 218/147, 1657; AdC 209/36, 1636. 31

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Convents were far more common homes for unmarried girls. High-status families regarded them as the most suitable environments in which they could be educated in a strongly religious environment in the company of other girls of similar status, often under the guidance of close relatives, aunts or sisters, who had become nuns. A convent education was also the most secure way of establishing a solid reputation for modesty and a retiring life, both key criteria in the prove di nobiltà.37 The women who were the subjects of the prove di nobiltà were not placed in the same convents as the most prestigious patrician families such as San Zaccaria or Spirito Santo. The daughters of lawyers, merchants and secretariat families tended to cluster in convents around the edge of Venice and further afield. Within the city, they preferred Ognissanti, San Daniel, San Girolamo, San Iseppo, Santa Anna and Santa Marta.38 Further afield, the huomini civili chose Santi Marco e Andrea, the convent dei Angeli, and San Bernardo, all on Murano, San Maffio on Mazzorbo, Santi Vito e Modesto on Burano, and Sant’ Anzolo on Torcello. At the age at which most girls entered convents as boarders, their families had not yet decided whether they should marry or take the veil. In some cases, they were given a choice, either during their parents’ lifetimes, or in the words of their wills, although the latter were frequently fenced in with recommendations to listen to the advice of close family members. In a codicil to his second will, dated 1611, NH Francesco Tiepolo di Alvise wrote: ‘as I have many sons, I beg my other three daughters to follow their sister and become nuns. They would be much happier there, considering there are many difficulties in marriage’.39 For most young girls placed in convents for their education, then, their futures were uncertain. Sometimes the outcome came as a surprise even to close relatives. The patrician maternal uncle of Cattarina Marcello, the daughter of an avvocato, had been convinced that she was going to be a nun in Padua, when he heard that she had been taken out of her convent and married to NH Giovanni Battista Contarini di Marin in 1603.40 While some girls, like Cattarina Marcello, returned to their parents’ homes in order to prepare for a wedding,41 others did not leave their convents until the last moment.42 Vittoria Giusti, who had been in the convent of San Daniel 37

Laven, Virgins, pp. 102–117, 121; Zarri, Recinto, pp. 145–200. In chronological order by prova, Santa Marta was chosen for Marietta Avanzago (natural daughter of patrician: AdC 283, 1623), Fiordelise Franceschi (rentier: AdC 215/60, 1651), Andrianna Tasca (merchant: AdC 217/104, 1654), Andrianna Paganuzzi (lawyer: AdC 223/58, 1667), Angelica Soarez (Spanish noble: AdC 224/84, 1669), Antonia Lumaga (merchant: AdC 226/130, 1673) and Brigida Businello (cittadino: AdC 237/90, 1691). 39 Zarri, Recinto, pp. 156–7; Hunecke, ‘Kindbett oder Kloster’; A.T. 99. 40 AdC 327. One of the servants of NH Andrea Navagero on his galley was equally convinced that he was planning a nun’s life for his natural daughter, Lucia. Suo padre diceva che la voleva metter monaca (AdC 215/45). 41 See also the cases of Laura Scaramella di Moderante (AdC 217, 1653), Elena Marignani di Iseppo (AdC 233/30, 1685) and Laura Trevisan di NH Camillo (AdC 205/28, 1637). 42 The Abbess of San Giovanni Laterano submitted a statement that Perina Pesenti di Luca had been in the convent since a very young age (negli anni della sua prima età) (AdC 233/25, 38


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in Verona since a very early age openly stated that she did not wish to leave her convent except to go directly to the church in order to marry and then to go directly to her husband’s house without visiting anyone else.43 In her request for the repayment of her dowry, the patrician Paulina Badoer recorded how she had left her convent at the age of 18 on 12 April 1689 in order to marry NH Andrea Boldù. The ceremony took place three days later.44 The girl’s departure was a major public event, both for the nuns and her fellow-boarders, and for the community at large. Families used these moments to express their high status as well as announcing the forthcoming marriage. Cassandra Bardellini, a boarder in the convent of Santa Marta in 1628, even used a preliminary departure for the same purpose. The marriage which had been arranged with her first cousin required a dispensation from the patriarch on the grounds of consanguinity. According to her father’s former boatman, she was so wellpresented, she could have been an ambassadress.45 Since the whole purpose of the prove di nobiltà was to establish whether or not a marriage should take place in the future, the standard applications provide little evidence of wedding rituals in Venice, other than the written testimony of extracts from marriage registers as proof that applicants were of legitimate birth. Applications for retrospective registration, on the other hand, focused substantially on the marriage ceremonies, their locations and those who attended. The procedure of investigation required evidence above all that a marriage had taken place. There is little to suggest that the organisation of most of these marriages differed substantially from those undertaken by couples who had received the approval of the Collegio beforehand, except where there was evidence of marriage in haste or in secret. This section of the chapter is therefore a useful test of the extent to which the procedures laid down by the church at the Council of Trent were followed. The evidence seems to support the view that while orthodox marriages generally followed the dictates of the church, others did not do so entirely. There is a degree of confusion between the different stages of getting married. It is generally accepted that the first stage was the drawing up and signing of a marriage contract, which set out the material conditions according to which a couple would live in general and the contents and value of the dowry in particular.46 Without this contract, there was no point in engaging in the religious ceremonies, a sign once again that the secular was more significant than the religious in the making of marriages. In patrician circles, the time lag between the signing of the contract and the religious ceremonies was comparatively short. In the case of ND Betta Grimani di Zuanne and NH Antonio Lando di Gerolamo, for instance, the contract was drawn up on 8 August 1644 by the notary, Lorenzo Marcellini. The following February, it 1685). 43

AdC 209/26, 1615.At the time she was 34 and an orphan. AdC, Miscellanea Civile 3804/8. 45 AdC 205/2, 1636. The marriage was later annulled. 46 These may be compared with practices in Verona. Eisenach, Husbands, Wives and Concubines, pp. 62–4. 44

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was officially notified to the Venetian government, and the marriage ceremony took place in the church of Santa Maria Formosa on 4 March in the same year.47 For those undertaking a prova, the delay could be much longer. The greatest confusion arises from the contemporary use of two separate terms to refer to a wedding, matrimonio and sponsalitio (sometimes written as sposalitio). In the words of a local notary, NH Pellegrin Baseggio di Giovanni Battista married Marietta Manzini di Domenico twice in 1653. El matrimonio sequi in Dignan del 1653 el la sposò in questa Città, ero il tempo non lo sò preciso.48 The matrimonio of NH Andrea Michiel and Chiara Zabarella took place in the church of San Cassian in Venice on 10 June 1641. The ceremony was conducted by the parish priest of San Giorgio in Padua. The following September, this was ratificato by the parish priest of San Cassian in the presence of witnesses.49 In the case of Gratisosa Cubli, her brother testified that the wedding had taken place a year ago, but that no benediction had yet been given (non è ancora sposata).50 In linguistic terms, maritare was an indirect action while sposare was direct. The former was generally used to refer to a process according to which a third party arranged for a couple to marry. It was often used in the context of concubinal relationships when the high-status male partner either tired of his concubine or was forced to give her up, and decided to dower her sufficiently in order for her to marry respectably. After his concubine Giustina Ravazzoni had given birth, NH Pietro Giupponi married her off with a generous dowry of at least 2,000 ducats.51 Sposare, on the other hand, was generally accepted to mean the mutual exchange of promises to marry before witnesses. Contrary to this was Orazio Ferrari’s use of maritaggio to refer to the whole process of getting married. He complained that what counted most was the material as opposed to the spiritual aspects of marriage, a comment which has particular resonance for the behaviour discussed in this chapter. ‘I know very well what abuses there are these days in the making of marriages, where the greatest concern in matters of marriage consists of property matters: bringing in large dowries, hopes of inheritance and similar matters.’52 It becomes clear that for the couples, the first ceremony was definitive and that maritare had more than one meaning. Once they had exchanged promises before a priest per verba de praesenti, they cohabited and consummated the marriage. The priestly blessing, which was supposed, in the words of the quotation cited above, to ‘ratify’ the marriage, was desirable but not fundamental. It could be postponed for a considerable time and there was no 47

ASV, Giudice de Petition, Inventari 366/20. ‘The marriage took place in Dignan in 1653, and then the blessing was in this city. I do not know exactly when’ (AdC 219/7, 1658). 49 AdC 207/81, 1642. 50 AdC 215/57, 1651. 51 AdC 226/136, 1674. 52 Ferrari, Fido Conseglio. So molto bene l’abuso, ch’hoggi si regna per le case in questa materia, dove la maggior diligenza, che si facci da chi tratta il maritaggi consiste nelle cose della robba, se porti seco gran dote, speranza d’heredità, e cose simili (p. 51). 48


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obligation to celebrate it in the bride’s parish of origin. Several women travelled with their patrician husbands when the latter took up office and received the benediction on the spot. Some were already pregnant and gave birth soon after the sponsalitio.53 In this sense, practice among high-status Venetians did not conform entirely with the norms laid down by Trent. Consummation was supposed to follow the priestly blessing, a lesson which the church also had some difficulty in teaching its flock in general, given that this had not been the practice hitherto.54 The location of the ceremonies was also not entirely in conformity with ecclesiastical expectations. As Ferrari wrote: ‘For ordinary decency, it is better to marry in a church than in a private house. If it has to be done in a house, they should then go to Church for the nuptials to be blessed. The parish priest should not ask the couple for their consent because it must be supposed that they have done so in his presence in the house. He is only to bless the marriage with solemn rites’.55 His comments reflect a resignation that his audience were still more likely to choose their houses as the locus for a wedding ceremony. The Venetians would not have disappointed him. In general, they preferred to wed in a private house and to go to church for the priestly benediction. When they did so, it was rarely to the parish church of the bride, even though the link required by the church was respected. The parish priests came to their houses. The churches which were chosen were by no means all parish churches. On the contrary, there was a preference for more obscure locations, such San Segondo, which was on an island in the lagoon between Venice and Mestre, Santa Maria della Gratia or San Cristoforo di Murano.56 The ceremonies were quiet and almost unobtrusive. A number of witnesses told the Avogaria that they had been present by chance. Contrary to any expectation that a bride would be married from her own home or that of a close relative, the majority of weddings among those who requested retrospective registrations were held in the home of the groom. In a classic ceremony involving two patricians, Leonardo Donà married Laura Vendramin in 1610 in her family’s palace on the Giudecca.57 Among the nonpatrician brides who did the same, Paulina Michiel married NH Francesco Bembo in her brother’s house in San Cancian ‘in the presence of many witnesses’, Camilla Mazzi ‘took the hand’ of NH Alessandro Badoer in her father’s house in San Beneto, and the widow Chiara Ciera married Andrea Boldù in her own house in San Gregorio.58 Ferrari suggests that widows, because they had been 53 See the case of NH Andrea Balbi and Honoria Beltramini of Asolo. They married in September 1649. Their first son was born the following July. She was already pregnant by the time of the priestly blessing in November 1649 (AdC 213/19). 54 Lombardi, ‘Fidanzamento e matrimoni’, pp. 225–6. 55 Ferrari, Fido Conseglio, pp. 105–106. 56 San Secondo: NH Vincenzo Contarini and Alessandra de Sandi (AdC 209/28, 1599), Veneranda Tasca and NH Francesco da Mosto (AdC 216/74, 1653); Santa Maria delle Grazie: NH Pellegrin Baseggio di Giovanni Battista and Marietta Manzini di Domenico (AdC 219/7, 1658); San Cristoforo di Murano: NH Domenico Contarini and Laura Gritti (AdC 236/76, 1689). 57 Correr, Donà 448/16. 58 AdC 109/23, 1589; AdC 285, 1599; AdC 213/19, 1624.

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married before, did not receive a priestly benediction and were not allowed a church ceremony.59 The Venetian evidence is contradictory. Marietta Rossi’s third marriage to NH Marco Minio in 1618 took place in her brother’s house in Santa Soffia. A dyer who had been present testified that she had not been taken to church because she was a widow. On the other hand, she does seem to have received some kind of priestly blessing from the sacristan of the church at the time of the wedding.60 Chiara Zabarello, on the other hand, married NH Andrea Michiel in the church of San Cassian in June 1641, but they also received a separate priestly blessing in his house the following September.61 The rules of the Council of Trent appear to have been bent when it suited the parties to do so, and with the acquiescence of the local clergy. It is not clear why there should have been a predominance of celebrations in the groom’s house. If we leave aside for later discussion those cases where the bride was already cohabiting and often heavily pregnant, should we assume that holding it in a patrician house provided greater esteem, or compensated for a perceived loss of esteem because the bride was an outsider? It may have been a matter of convenience. NH Alessandro Basadonna married Cecilia Contarini, the natural daughter of another patrician in the largest room in his house in San Geremia on the eve of St. Martin’s Day in November 1611. Eighteen witnesses were present at the wedding of NH Andrea Zorzi and Stella, the natural daughter of Alvise Dolfin, in Zorzi’s house in San Marcuola in 1609.62 Patricians on Reggimento married wives on the spot. Some ceremonies took place in their official residences, such as NH Girolamo Tiepolo di Francesco, who married the widow Chiara Bosello in the Palazzo della Podestà in Portobuffale, and Girolamo Barozzi, who married Laura Trevisan in the Palazzo Pretorio di Città Nova, where he was also the Podestà.63 Veneranda Tasca had no choice over holding her wedding in the prisons of the Ducal Palace. The Council of Ten had given her abductor a choice between marriage to restore her honour or banishment.64 There was no requirement on the part of the investigators to provide detailed guest lists of those who attended weddings. The names that were given were often to demonstrate that the ceremony had attracted patricians, or to provide details of witnesses who could be asked to corroborate the details given. In spite of the patchiness of this evidence, certain features of those who attended weddings can be identified. At the core of the guests were the witnesses, without whom the ceremony would not have been valid, but others joined them from a considerable social range. Kin were commonly present. NH Anzolo Gradenigo di Gabriel attended both the weddings of his kinsman

59 60 61 62 63 64

Ferrari, Fido Conseglio, p. 106. AdC 213/3. AdC 207/81. AdC 213/15; AdC 206/40. AdC 216/16, 1651; AdC 238/18, 1693. AdC 216/74, 1653.


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Marco Gradenigo, the grandson of a patrician.65 NH Agostin Tron recalled having been unable to attend the wedding of Fontana Pigna, whose mother was his first cousin, because business had taken him out of Venice at the time. His wife and daughter could not attend either because they were unwell, but it is clear that they would normally have been there. Another patrician, first cousin to Fontana’s mother through his wife, was able to attend.66 There were patterns of kin attending all family marriages. NH Francesco Barbo recalled having attended not only Fontana’s parents’ wedding with his wife, but also those of two of her sisters.67 The kinship links could be quite distant but still counted if they were recognised by the family. NH Francesco Boldù thought that his father was only a fourth or fifth cousin of Rizzatdo Marcello, but ‘they always called each other “cousin” and we were always friends’.68 Fellow confraternity members were invited. Participation in a wedding was only part of their role in the family. The bookseller, Nicolò di Ambrosi was a confraternal brother of the Augsburg merchant Tito Livio Burattini. He not only attended his wedding and the priestly benediction, but later took care of the funeral arrangements for his wife.69 Steffano Chanin, a fellow-member of the confraternity of San Giovanni Evangelista, attended the wedding of NH Gabriel Moro because: ‘ I always go to all his family events’ (sono stà sempre in tutte le sue occasione).70 At the other end of the social spectrum, it was customary to invite poorer people who either worked for one of the households or were associated with it in some way. Cecilia Contarini had invited two wives of local artisans to her wedding. Franceschina di Soardi and Margareta Boldin both worked in the linen industry.71 A local tailor joined a crowd of gentlemen at the Cubli house to see the parish priest of San Felice carry out the wedding ceremony. He did not know the bride’s name.72 Boatmen serving the family were also present. They were the equivalent of personal servants and often brought the bride to the house for the ceremony. They were also easily identifiable witnesses for the purposes of the Avogaria. Nicolò Mazzariol rowed NH Pellegrin Bassegio to the ceremony at Santa Maria della Grazia and entered the church.73 In itself, bridal pregnancy was not an issue which concerned the church. Nor, in principle, does it seem to have raised great questions of moral principle 65

AdC 323, 1626. AdC 340, 1611. 67 AdC 340. 68 AdC 109/28, 1593. This should be compared with NH Giacomo Marin, who had little contact with NH Piero Marcello, his barba zerman di sangue. ‘I only meet him in the piazza. He is a fairly retiring gentleman’ (AdC 327, 1604). 69 AdC 301, 1617. 70 AdC 332, 1631. 71 AdC 213/15, 1633. A wax-whitener was present at the wedding of Alessandro Basadonna and Cecilia Contarini. He lived in the house (AdC 213/15). 72 AdC 215/57, 1651. 73 AdC 219/7, 1658. This close relationship could extend to their widows. Faustina, widow of Mauricio, barcaruol, was present at the wedding of Anzola Marcello and Zuanne Chiodo (AdC 208, 1621). 66

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among either the Avogadori or their witnesses. Any child born within wedlock, whether or not it had been conceived after the wedding, was considered to be legitimate. Some natural children born before their parents’ marriage were also treated as having been legitimated in this way.74 Undertaking the solemn exchange of promises before a priest wiped away any potential stigma, even though sermons and confessors all urged abstinence between couples until the marriage process had been completed. This corrective element in marriage was articulated by one of the guests at the wedding of NH Domenico Boldù and the widow Diana Mirandola in 1584. Speaking of their son’s birth, he said: ‘I know that he was born after the wedding because he married her with the specific intention of preventing any children born after the wedding (sposalitio) from having any difficulties’. The wedding took place on 16 July 1583, and the baby was born the following New Year’s Day. The patrician invited to be the ring-bearer testified that he had been invited by Boldù because he was sure that his wife [sic] was pregnant. The description of the wedding was echoed by later cases. ‘He married her in the house because she was unwell; she was pregnant.’75 The theme of a wedding in the groom’s house justified by the bride’s illness was without exception a euphemism for her pregnancy. Dolfina Scallarin married NH Piero Marcello during Carnival in 1606. Carnival was a popular time for weddings,76 but in this case, the wedding could not have been delayed any longer because of the advanced state of her pregnancy. She gave birth a month later. Any delay would have taken them into the forbidden period of Lent, during which the church refused to bless marriages.77 According to a painter and decorator who was present at the ceremony and knew the couple well, ‘she was certainly pregnant and had been unwell throughout most of the pregnancy’.78 Marietta Papadopulo married Luca Falier in his house in San Raffael in May 1661. Their son Giovanni Battista was baptised two days later.79 Witnesses were equally clear about the pregnancy of Dorotea Dotto, who married NH Gabriel Moro in her house in Padua in 1600. Her maid testified that the marriage took place ‘in the house of Signora Dorotea, where she lived. It was in Padua … She was pregnant and could not leave the house’. The local midwife, who was also present at the ceremony, was even more explicit. ‘Because she was pregnant, she could not walk about’ (l’era grossa, non potteva camminar).80

74 Maria Minio, natural daughter of NH Andrea was presented to the Avogadori as ‘legitimated by their marriage’ (AdC 212/51, 1651). This is to be compared with the case of the natural children of Piero Marcello and Dolfina Scallarin discussed below, who continued to be referred to as ‘natural’ (AdC 327, 1604). 75 AdC 109/31. 76 See for example the marriage between Orsa Manin and NH Carlo Savorgnan, which took place in Udine at Carnival, bringing her prova to an end (AdC 207/43, 1631). 77 AdC 327; Ferrari, Fido Conseglio, p. 106. 78 AdC 327. 79 AdC 239/19, 1695. 80 AdC 332, 1606.


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None of the women concerned fell into the category of the shadowy sexual half-life of patricians discussed in the chapter on honestà. Each came from high-status families: Diana Mirandola was the daughter of a gentleman from Monfalcone. Dolfina Scallarin came from the Veronese nobility. Maria Papadopuli came from an honourable family on the island of Crete. Dorotea Dotto came from the Paduan nobility.81 These cases may well have been selfselecting, since they were all subject of applications for the retrospective registration of patrician marriage which their sponsors expected to be accepted. Other cases of bridal pregnancies among non-patrician brides doubtless existed but are not reflected in this source. On the other hand, these cases do indicate that patricians did not necessarily follow the moral code laid down by the church. The readiness of witnesses to talk about these pregnancies also suggests that while these circumstances were a subject for comment, they were not out of the ordinary. Nor did the Avogadori judge these cases harshly, with one exception. Retrospective applications involving bridal pregnancy were generally approved. It is worthwhile considering two cases of bridal pregnancy which were turned down by the Collegio, a forced marriage between two patricians and the thorny case of Dolfina Scallarin and NH Piero Marcello. According to Antonio Venier di Benetto’s petition to register his birth, his father was found by Diana’s brothers at three o’clock in the morning in the Minio palace in the parish of San Zulian, and at that same hour, he married her in the presence of a priest and a ring-bearer in the presence of the household and of a few others, after which he took his wife to his own house in the parish of San Gregorio (some distance away on the other side of the Grand Canal), close to his father’s house, where he kept her secretly, and where his son was born. With the exception of the time of the ceremony, everything conformed to usual practice. They were married in the presence of the parish priest, witnesses, members of her household and immediate family. He placed a ring on her finger and subsequently took her to a house belonging to him. The case only came before the Avogadori in 1591, more than 50 years later, when their son unsuccessfully tried to prove that he was born of legitimate marriage between two patricians, but those who were in the area at the time remembered the details because they were exceptional. A local barber recalled having heard that ‘he was found in the house by the gentlewoman’s brothers and that they forced him to take her as his wife’.82 Diana was not visibly pregnant when her brothers caught Venier in her room – their son was born some seven or eight months after the wedding – but everything points to a trap laid by them after Venier had been visiting their sister for some time. In was in their interest to protect the family honour. It was rumoured that the Minio brothers had threatened to kill Venier if he did not agree to marry their sister. Venier’s neighbours in the Calle della Lanza in San Gregorio, a poor area where the young Antonio was allowed to run around freely, must have been uncertain 81 82

AdC 109/31, 1684; AdC 327, 1627; AdC 239/19, 1695; AdC 332. AdC 109/27.

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whether Diana was his wife or his concubine. He had established her in a house belonging to him, but it is not clear whether he lived there permanently or with his parents. Because it was necessary to explain the situation, Venier confided in one of his close friends, the artisan Francesco Fabri, whose widow recalled hearing that ‘Messer Beneto had married her before she gave birth in that year when she was pregnant’. A second public ceremony followed several years later in the church of San Gregorio. This was still not enough to substantiate Antonio Venier’s claim to be a patrician. The criteria of the state in this case ran counter to the strong sense of family honour based on legitimate marriage which motivated the Minio brothers.83 NH Piero Marcello claimed that he had not been able to marry his pregnant companion, Dolfina Scallarin any earlier because they needed a dispensation on the grounds of consanguinity. The reality was more complicated. Marcello and Scallarin certainly needed a dispensation to marry because she was the niece of his first wife. Both were sisters of NH Baldissera Zen. Dolfina’s mother, Virginia Dolfin, had married a Veronese nobleman who served as a soldier under the command of the Conte Martinengo. We must assume that he died, because Virginia returned to her brother’s household with her young daughter, who was brought up there. After Marcello’s first wife died, he developed a relationship with Dolfina. Her uncle Baldissera testified somewhat sourly that Marcello had come to his house while he was away serving as Podestà in Adria, and had taken Dolfina away. A long period of concubinage then took place, during which Dolfina gave birth to three natural daughters, one of whom became a nun, and three sons, Bastian, Girolamo and Giovanni Battista. Bastian became a notary at the magistrato alle pompe. Giovanni Battista died young. Nothing is known of Girolamo. The delay before a dispensation to marry Dolfina was obtained cannot be fully explained by dilatoriness on the part of the papacy. Marcello’s parish priest, who was a close friend of his, complained that he had done his other sons a great disservice (un gran mancamento) because he had deprived them of noble status (per che l’havesse levado la nobiltà a quei primi figlioli).84 His eldest son from his first marriage, Lunardo, was a member of the Great Council and a member of the Quarantia. By marrying Dolfina, he may have hoped to obtain the same status for his youngest son (in principle). The manoeuvre did not succeed. Francesco waited until he was 20 before an attempt was made to register his birth and his parents’ marriage. While the final outcome of the enquiry by the Avogaria is uncertain, it is clear from the energy which they put into investigating the case and from their lines of questioning that they were very suspicious of this claim on moral grounds. The Marcello case brings this chapter in a full circle. By manifesting moral concerns over a matter of social status, the Avogadori illustrate the way in 83 AdC 109/27. Compare this with the fifteenth-century case of Girolamo da Mula, who claimed that he had been forced to marry Orsa Dolfin, Chojnacki, ‘Valori patrizi’, pp. 202–211, and with the case of Domenico Baruchelli in the Valsugana, A.M. Lazzeri and S. Seidel-Menchi, ‘ “Evidentemente gravida”. “Fides oculata”, voce pubblica e matrimonio controverso in Valsugana (1539–1544)’, in Seidel-Menchi and Quaglione (eds), Matrimoni in Dubbio, pp. 305–362. 84 AdC 327, 1627.


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which the secular and ecclesiastical elements of marriage in early modern Venice were intertwined, to the extent that it is impossible to see which element had primacy. By examining marriage ceremonies between patricians and outsider brides, we can confirm that the general rules for getting married laid down by the Council of Trent were adhered to by these couples, and, by extension, by other patricians. In common with many elsewhere, however, the Venetians downgraded the importance of the second ceremony at which the priestly benediction was given. They did not go to their parish churches in order to fulfil the law. Nor did they wait until the benediction had taken place before transferring their new wives to their houses and consummating the marriage. Once the contract had been signed, they saw no obstacles to beginning married life. Given that these cases are based on petitions for retrospective registration of marriages and the births of sons, this also suggests that there were strong pressures to marry outsider brides even if this meant the disenfranchisement of their sons.


Conclusion This book is an attempt to examine a group of insiders, the members of the Venetian patriciate in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a more diverse group of outsiders, the families whose daughters and sisters married patricians, and the relationships between them. It is also the first detailed longterm analysis of the prove di nobiltà, the investigations into the social status and moral reputation of the families who wished to marry their womenfolk into the patriciate, and consequently of the functioning of this part of the work of the key magistracy of the Avogaria di Comun, the guardians of the Venetian constitution, and consequently the gatekeepers of the patriciate. The book concerns four interlocking issues, which have been discussed in detail in its substantive chapters but now require to be drawn together for an overall evaluation. The first is the procedural operation of the prove di nobiltà, and what this may tell us about the functioning of Venetian government, both in this perspective and in general, Over 600 files survive in the archives of the magistracy, comprising both standard applications for permission to marry a patrician, and applications for the retrospective registration of patrician marriages and the births of any sons born to these relationships.1 The second issue is the social status of the families which negotiated marriages between their womenfolk and individual patricians before submitting their case for registration to the Avogaria. The analysis of their social and occupational backgrounds is a basis not only for the evaluation of their aspirations towards upward social mobility, but also for arguing that the traditional tripartite organisation of Venetian society is too inflexible. An examination of the relationships between patricians and these other families, both before and after the marriages took place, also leads to certain conclusions about the patriciate: in particular, the impact of the wide distribution of wealth among families which had been members of the hereditary ruling elite for several hundred years. Finally, by considering the overall significance of marriage to patricians and their families, we are also able to discuss the shadowy worlds of concubinage and illicit sexuality which were the part of the everyday lives of many male patricians. It has been made clear from the start that the process of the prove di nobiltà fitted squarely into a society in which patriarchal attitudes were openly evident. The women who were the subjects of the prove, were passive actors in this process. A small number put forward petitions on their own behalf, either because they were mature widows, or because they were orphans, but the majority had no voice. They appeared as data such as entries in baptismal 1 The Avogadori also considered requests from other adult males who believed that they had a justification to be included as members of the Great Council. These have not been considered here.

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registers, or as the subjects of reports by the abbesses of the convents to which they had been sent for their education and protection. In the testimonies of the witnesses who appeared before the magistrates, they and their mothers were frequently shadowy figures in the background, written out of the story in order to enhance their high moral reputation. In the terms of the law of 1589, their overall function was to be approved of as the mothers of future members of the Great Council, a conduit to ensure the continuity of the elite. In spite of the heavily male-centred nature of the investigations at the heart of this book, certain more balanced conclusions may be drawn about gendered aspects of Venetian society. The law of 1589 required the Avogadori to carry out a thorough investigation in every case in which a woman had applied for permission to marry a Venetian patrician and to bear sons worthy of entering the Great Council. All the evidence is that they did so with considerable care. Although successive men were elected to these posts, there was enough continuity represented by overlapping service of the three Avogadori, by the availability of former holders of the office who made their experience available, and the notaries who worked for the magistracy to ensure an operation of considerable care and thought. Everyone took their responsibilities very seriously, not only because there were clear penalties laid down by law for cutting corners, but also because the recommendations of the Avogadori were always more severe than those of the Collegio, which voted in favour of certain applications over which the Avogadori had expressed their doubts in writing. The occupants of the office were patricians. Given that there were comparatively large numbers of them in the course of the period with which this book is concerned, their attitudes as expressed in judgments and lines of questioning may also be taken to be generally representative of the beliefs and prejudices of the elite as a whole. The fine detail of each Inquisitio also demonstrates the readiness of the magistrates to accept and indeed to seek out testimony from a very broad range of witnesses of both sexes. Each testimony was weighed up individually. In general, non-patrician rather than patrician witnesses provided more detail. The former knew what was at stake and what was expected of them. Many of their answers were formulaic. The latter, on the other hand, servants, boatmen, barbers, parish clergy, professional colleagues of lawyers or merchants, spoke in much greater detail on the basis of personal knowledge. They seem to have been encouraged to speak as fully as possible in response to very straightforward questions. Hearsay evidence was accepted, particularly in those cases where information was sought about the applicants’ grandparents and there was little possibility of finding a living witness to interview. On the other hand, given that the information which was being sought about applicants and their families was in the form of abstract evaluations, a reflection of what was commonly thought or said about someone by their neighbours was equally valid. The work of the Avogadori was informed by a strong sense of the rules and of what was at stake in their investigations. Their task was not to ‘rubber-stamp’ applications which were simply going through the motions by

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claiming that they fulfilled all the criteria set down by law, but to evaluate them with considerable care, to express any doubts where appropriate and to identify any cases of fraud. Applicants who had married before the process of investigation was complete were summarily removed from the process. Others were turned down either because their fathers or grandfathers were suspected of having engaged in arte meccanica, or of having committed major crimes, or because they or their mothers were believed to be guilty of dishonourable behaviour. Even the natural daughters of patricians were turned down when there was a general expectation that their father’s status would overcome all potential objections. The same pattern applied to applications for retrospective applications for registration. Even though there had been an initial positive evaluation on the part of the Council of Ten, whose permission was required before a case could be made to the Avogadori, some cases were turned down according to the same criteria as standard applicants. This analysis of the prove di nobiltà has raised some important methodological issues. The first is the need to separate factual information from the ways in which it was perceived and presented. To a certain extent, the submissions by witnesses recruited to support individual points made in a particular supplica were shaped very clearly by the need to underwrite the criteria set out by law. A woman was born of legitimate marriage. Her father and grandfather were free from the stains of association with arte meccanica or major crime. The woman and her mother had lived a modest and honourable life, free from all imputations of immoral behaviour. On the other hand, although some of the witnesses called in by the Avogadori were aware of the same criteria and spoke in similar terms, others spoke more freely and in greater detail. Their answers enabled the investigators to press for further evidence. Both groups of witnesses, particularly those lower down in society, spoke very freely indeed, adding more circumstantial information than was wanted. On the other hand, some were careful to draw the distinction between what they knew and what they had heard. Recent studies in Venetian history and the analyses in particular of ecclesiastical marriage court records from northern and central Italy have demonstrated that this type of evidence has a great deal to commend it, once the institutional and ideological contexts have been taken into account. Some of the lessons learned from early forays into contemporary oral history have also been applied here. There are considerable parallels between the Inquisitio of early modern Venice and the present-day investigators with their tape-recorders. The focus on applicants rather than on those who succeeded in obtaining permission to marry enables us to make some comparisons with data used in other studies, those of Volker Hunecke in particular, which are based on the registration of patricians marriages between 1646 and 1797. The inclusion of unsuccessful applications does not widen the social range of applicants significantly. Nor did the possibilities of opening up the patriciate to entry by purchase from 1646 alter the pattern significantly. If anything, the new recruits to the patriciate during the War of Candia were even more socially and financially select than most of the applicant families. The ability to find

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the necessary sum of 100,000 ducats excluded many families which otherwise had manifested a wish to link themselves with patricians by marriage. Table 3.3 indicates a clear pattern. Taking into account some of the difficulties in double-counting applicants who claimed that their fathers were cittadini but also named a specific occupation, we may safely identify three main groups: Venetians from below the patriciate, members of the nobility in different parts of the Venetian Empire, and the natural daughters of patricians who were born of concubinal relationships. Among the Venetians, we find merchants, members of the legal and medical professions, government officials, together with a substantial group of rentiers. Among the merchants, many were also involved in the manufacture of goods and in the administration of retail outlets, which posed a number of difficulties over whether or not they were civile. There was some overlap in sources of income with members of the nobility on the Terraferma, along the Dalmatian coast and on the islands of the eastern Mediterranean. Many of the latter came from the urban elites of the region. Some, indeed, also shared some of the occupational background of the Venetians. There was nothing to prevent a nobleman from a Terraferma city from becoming a notary or an avvocato. Natural daughters of patricians were specifically recognised as a special category by a revision to the law of 1589. They were excused the requirement to be of legitimate birth, on condition that they had been recognised by their fathers from birth and had been brought up in their households in the same way as highly born girls. The absence of legal marriage between their parents was seen as an advantage rather than a disadvantage, one of the many cases where the concerns of the state overruled those of the church. The natural sons and daughters of patricians and their descendents were a widespread phenomenon in Venetian society. Their presence helped to blur some of the social if not the constitutional distinctions between patricians and others in Venetian society. Identifying the social background of aspirant outsider brides does not in itself explain why they came forward. It does help to explain why patricians had comparatively little difficulty integrating them into their families once married, and indeed in considering them as potential brides in the first place. The argument can certainly be made that, in common with potential patrician brides, the dowry element in their positioning on the marriage market was of considerable importance. There is evidence to suggest, however, that it was not the promise of exceptionally high dowries which made these partnerships possible – a few existed – but the way in which the dowries offered by outsider brides widened a marriage market limited by dynastic considerations which tended to assign to most patrician daughters a future as nuns rather than as wives and mothers. The other main factor could be taken to be a reinforcement of the thinking behind the law of 1589. The legislation was intended not only to keep out undesirable women but also primarily to allow in women whose social status and moral reputation accorded with the high standards set by the patriciate.

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There was little to take exception to in terms of the sources of income, lifestyle and attitudes of the applicant families. Given the strong presence of preexisting links between some of these families and patricians, either through earlier marriages to patricians by close relatives such as sisters or aunts, or through patrician mothers, they had a great deal in common. The attraction of members of the Terraferma nobility may also have helped to reinforce the growing sense that Venetian patricians belonged to a European nobility whose ideological underpinning owed a great deal to the virtues of gentility. Natural daughters of patricians were even more welcome, as they were effectively already members of the patriciate in all but name, and the opportunities for political advancement offered through association by marriage to their patrician fathers were particularly interesting. Considerations such as these support the case made in this book that the tripartite division of Venetian society into patricians, cittadini and popolani is too inflexible to be a useful tool with which to analyse distinctions within Venetian society. Cittadino status was certainly defined by law and was subdivided into several categories with their own privilege levels. Those who had succeeded in obtaining these privileges were justly proud of this distinction. Contemporaries placed almost as much emphasis on the Silver Book for cittadini as they did on the patrician Golden Book. Difficulties arise if this schema is followed to its logical conclusion, that is to say that all other Venetians were popolani and consequently not civile. The evidence from the prove di nobiltà reinforces the argument already made by others such as Bellavitis, Grubb and Zannini, that an upper status level existed within Venetian society just below that of the patriciate, which subsumed the cittadini, and who are referred to here for the sake of convenience as huomini civili. The attractions of such marriages to the families of outsider brides are unlikely to have been entirely straightforward. The format of the prove did not encourage the open articulation of their particular interests. They were, after all, supplicants for the right of their womenfolk to marry patricians. It is from the rare cases of opposition by third parties to their applications that we learn of the potential advantages. Their opponents, not all of whom were patricians themselves, were worried that they would be able to gain influence above all in courts of law, a reflection of the enhanced esteem which they would enjoy among their peers but also of the practical help which they might expect to receive. It remains to be seen how this was expected to play out where husbands came from the ranks of the poor patricians, but the anxiety with which some men sought out poor sons-in-law whose only attraction was their patrician status suggests that even here they perceived some social advantages. The discussion of the importance of marriage between patricians and nonpatricians, particularly between male patricians and outsider brides not only established the far-reaching social and economic implications of marriage as a facilitator but also throws into sharp relief the part played in Venetian society of alternatives to marriage, concubinage, prostitution and a range of intermediate relationships. Concubinage between patricians and partners of a lower status was a widespread phenomenon. The choice of comparatively

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high-status women as partners, which may in part have been skewed by their presence in the records as mothers of natural daughters who had submitted a supplica, is not entirely consistent with the expectation that patricians took women as concubines because their low social status placed them beyond the social pale as wives. Other circumstances played a part on both sides. The patricians were sometimes constrained by the practice of permitting only one son per generation to take a wife. High-status women who entered concubinal relationships had often been placed in a fragile social position where they had been unable to protect themselves or insist on marriage. These circumstances were mitigated to a certain extent by the universal willingness on the part of friends and neighbours to accept their relationship as one which was almost on a par with marriage. Less secure physical relationships of the kind undertaken by the women whose behaviour led to rejection by the Avogadori, and by the many other women who did not enter into consideration here, reflected many of the other difficulties experienced by women negotiating their way through a world of sexual predators in order to survive economically. Over 600 patricians married outsider wives between the passage of the law of 1589 and the end of the seventeenth century. In terms of total patrician marriages over this time, this was a small minority. We are still entitled to ask whether this degree of upward social mobility on their part had an impact on the patriciate. In practical terms, the presence of these women widened the marriage market for patricians and gave them access to new sources of dowries. Although there were some constraints on the numbers of males permitted to marry within a single generation, the availability of outsider brides may have permitted larger numbers of patricians to marry and to have compensated for an absence of patrician brides. In demographic terms, however, this small widening of the marriage market did no more to slow the inexorable decline in the total numbers of patricians, than the entry of new families by purchase from 1646. The ideological concerns which had led to the introduction of stronger controls on potential brides were protected by the actions of the Avogadori. This did little to reassure those families at the very apex of the patriciate, whose snobbery even within the patriciate was legendary. They were not among the men who chose outsider brides. The question then arises over the impact of the entry of new families by purchase from 1646. There were similarities between them. Some of the first wealthy families to join already had marital links with patricians. Others lent their support to make positive claims about women whose fathers shared their own social backgrounds. On the other hand, there is nothing in the numbers of suppliche before and after 1646 to suggest that the arrival of a small number of new families during the early years of the War of Candia opened the floodgates to the social aspirations of the huomini civili. Nor can it be suggested with conviction that the sight of merchants and others sitting in the Great Council altered patrician perceptions of the huomini civili or of the Terraferma subject nobility to the extent that they sought greater numbers of outsider brides. The parallels between newly aggregated families and outsider brides were more closely associated with the considerable level of vertical social links which

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already brought patricians together in different way with people from outside the patriciate. In the end, it is the Venetian patricians who remain at the heart of this discussion. Their concerns established the legislation to filter out undesirable outside brides. Their concerns for the purity of nobility took place at a time when nobilities all over Europe were increasingly uncertain about ways in which to define it. In some ways, in their anxiety to appear like other nobles, they took something of a wrong turn by wishing to keep newcomers out. Perhaps their survival as a ruling elite into the eighteenth century owed something to their gradual willingness to accept links through marriage with the very men whom they would have preferred to keep out. Perhaps, too, if too much emphasis is placed on ideology, and not enough on practical behaviour, which to be sure was influenced by abstract concepts of family, patriarchy and the importance of transmitting property and status from one generation to the next, we can obtain a more realistic understanding of their behaviour. By taking an interest in linking themselves with non-patricians by marriage, they publicly recognised that gentility was not something over which they had a monopoly, but a system of behaviour which was shared with many others.


Appendix 1 Grimana Peracca di Tiberio di Zuan Piero, AdC 208/17, 1644 A characteristic investigation into the daughter of a nobleman from Capo d’Istria. Tiberio Peracca had been living in Venice for many years. I, Tiberio Peracca, Cavalier, have always professed the most humble sense of devotion towards the Most Serene Venetian nobility, with which I have also come into contact to my great fortune and honour by taking as my wife the Nobil Donna Benetta Grimani, legitimate daughter of Francesco di Giacomo, with whom I have procreated my daughter Grimana, now of an age to marry. I could not show greater evidence in confirmation of my great devotion towards that most serene order than by linking my daughter in marriage, God willing, to a noble of the most serene Great Council ... I produce the following statements in the hope that my daughter will be admitted and declared worthy of procreating sons with the right to be members of the most serene Great Council: That Grimana Perachi is the natural daughter procreated from legitimate marriage of Tiberio Peracca, Cavalier and ND Benetta Grimani di Francesco, my legitimate consort. That I, the abovesaid Tiberio have always lived civilly and with honour and have never carried out any arte meccanica, nor have been known for any infamia. That D. Zuan Piero, my father was a civil and honourable person, and was never known for any infamia. That the said Grimana, my daughter, and ND Benetta, my wife, have always lived modestly and in a way which conforms to their birth.

Testimony by Witnesses Selected to Support these Statements NH Zuanne Battista Contarini di Domenego, 8 July 1644 Do you know Tiberio Perachi Cavalier and does he have a daughter to marry? I have known Tiberio Perachi for forty years. He has always behaved honourably … He always wore the ferrarolo. I do not believe that he ever carried out arte meccanica but lived a civil life. I have also always heard it said that he married the daughter of the Nobil Huomo Francesco Grimani. I do not know if they had any children.

NH Filippo Lion di Piero, 9 July 1644 Do you have knowledge of and friendship with Tibero Perachi? I have known Perachi for twenty years. He is a man of good status, behaving like all gentlemen.

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Has he carried out any actions unworthy of him, or was he known for infamia? He has never done such things. He is honoured and lives from his revenues. Is he married? Yes, to the Nobil Donna Benetta Grimani di Francesco. Does he have any legitimate children? He has a daughter named Grimana. How have Grimana and her mother lived and how do they live? Always with honour and as gentlewomen. I have never heard anything prejudicial to their honour. Have you ever heard who was the father of Tiberio? I never knew him myself but I have heard from people who knew him that he was an honourable person from Capo d’Istria, who lived from his own revenues.

NH Zuanne Zorzi di Cabriel, 2 July 1644 Do you know Signor Tiberio Peracca and is he married? I know him. He is married to a gentlewoman from Ca’ Grimani, the sister of the most Illustrious Zuan Domenego Grimani di Francesco. Has he children with the said Grimani? A daughter named Grimana. Is she legitimate? Yes, by public reputation. How has Tiberio lived and how does he live now? I have known him for more than thirty years and he has always lived as a gentleman, civilly and honourably, never being known for infamia but behaving like the Cavaliere which he is. What do you know or what have you heard about his father? I have been to Muggia in Capo d’Istria and always heard that his father was an honourable man and that he lived from his revenues. Have you heard what the father of Tiberio was called? I think he was called Zuan Piero and I have always heard that this family lived honourably and appropriately. What have you heard about the behaviour of Grimana and her mother? I have always heard that they were greatly honourable and lived honourably as gentlewomen, living in their house with honour as gentlewomen.

Francesco Bonizi di Piero of Capo d’Istria, 11 July 1644 Do you know Tiberio Peracca? I have known him for more than thirty years. Does he have children? I believe he has a daughter, whose name I do not know.

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Is she a legitimate daughter? I believe so. Who is her mother? She is a Venetian Gentildonna from Ca’ Grimani. Of whom is Tiberio the son? I did not know his father because he died a long time ago. But he was an honourable person from Capo d’Istria who lived from his revenues. Dicens. He died more than forty years ago. What do you know about the behaviour of the wife of Tiberio and of his daughter? Do you know of anything prejudicial to their honour? As far as I know, there is nothing.

NH Girolamo Donado di Francesco, 13 July 1644 Do you know Tiberio Peracca? I know that Tiberio Peracca, about whom you are examining me, has a nubile daughter called Grimana. Is she legitimate? I think that I have always heard her called legitimate. Who was her mother? The Signora Benetta Grimani, legitimate daughter of Nobil Huomo Francesco Grimani. With what honour does Tiberio live? He has always lived honourably, now he is dressed a manega comedo and is a Cavalier. Have you heard who was his father? No, only that he was an honourable person with considerable wealth. With what modesty and honour did the mother and daughter live? Always honourably as gentlewomen.

Paulo Picco di Vicenzo, portalettere di Capo d’Istria, 20 July 1644 Do you know Tiberio Peracca and of whom he is the son? Yes, I have known him for many years as an honourable person. He is the son of a gentleman from Capo d’Istria, whom I did not know because I have been away from the area for many years. What was he called? I cannot remember his name. What was his status and from what did he live? As far as I have heard, he lived from his revenues and was a gentleman from Capo d’Istria.

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Have you heard if he carried out any arte, or was known for infamia? No, I have heard he was an honourable person.

The Very Reverend Zorzi Baseggio, parish priest of Santa Maria Formosa, 22 July 1644 I have known Tiberio Peracca for a long time. He was by public repute the son of a gentleman from Capo d’Istria, as I have heard from my father. I do not remember his name but he was an honourable person who lived from his revenues as does also Tiberio. I do not know that either of them ever carried out arte meccanica. Have you heard if either were known for infamia? No.

Barnaba Benetto, Cavalier di Capo d’Istria, 3 September 1644 Do you know Tiberio Peracca, about whom you are being examined, and do you know of whom he is the son? I know he is the son of Zuan Piero Peracca of Capo d’Istria, whom I knew very well. Is he legitimate? Yes, by public repute. He had two other brothers, a priest and a doctor of medicine. What was the status of this Zuan Piero? He was an honourable person. From what did he live? From his revenues. Did he carry out any arte meccanica or was he known for infamia? Not at all, as far as I know. How did his son, Tiberio, live and how does he live now? Always with honour. Does he have any nubile daughters? I have heard that this is so, but I do not know it. Have you heard who is the mother of the said daughter? I have heard that she is a gentlewoman from Cha Grimani but I do not know her name. Have you heard how modestly the mother and also the daughter are living? Always with modesty and honour, as far as I have heard.

Alessandro Batti di Anselmo of Capo d’Istria, 24 September 1644 Do you know Signor Tiberio Peracca and of whom he is the son? I know him very well. He was the son of the Signor Zuan Piero Prtacca. What kind of status is this Tiberio? I have always known both him and his father as honourable men.

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Do you know the sources of their income? He lives from his revenues. He has lands in Capo d’Istria, and neither he nor his brothers nor his father have ever carried out any arte meccanica, but always honourable activities. Do you know if Tiberio has a nubile daughter? Yes. She is the daughter of a gentlewoman from Cha Grimani. Is this girl born of legitimate marriage? Yes. What is her name? She is called Grimana. What is Grimana’s reputation for honour and modesty? I have always heard her called a very honourable girl and of good behaviour. Have you ever heard anything against either mother or daughter? They are always considered as honourable gentlewomen. Is this Grimana married? I really don’t know anything.

Giacomo da Rin di Pasqualin, of Capo d’Istria, 13 October 1644 Do you know Tiberio Peracca and what is his status? I know this Tiberio Peracca as an honourable person, who wears the manega comedo. Of whom is he the son? I can’t remember the name of his father for certain, but I know who he was. One of the family was a doctor of medicine. From what did he live? He lived from his revenues. One of his sons was a doctor. Did he ever carry out any arte meccanica or was he known for any infamia? None at all, as far as I know. He was an honourable man. And Tiberio, from what does he live and has he ever carried out any arte? It must be forty years since I left Capo d’Istria and I have always seen Tiberio here in Venice. I believe he lives honourably from his revenues. Has he been married? Yes. He got married here in Venice, but I do not know to whom. Does he have any daughters? I don’t know anything about that.

Pre Pasqualin Tagliaferro, First Priest in San Martin, 15 October 1644 Do you know Tiberio Peracca from Capo d’Istria? Yes. Tiberio lives in my parish.

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What is Tiberio’s status? He dresses a manega comedo. I do not know his place of origin, nor what he does. Beforehand, he lived in Castello. Have you ever heard anything against his honour? No. Does he have any nubile daughters? I hear that he has a nubile daughter. Is she legitimate? I do not know for certain. With what honour and modesty does she live? She is a fine and honourable girl who never allows herself to be seen. Have you heard who was the mother of that daughter? Not at all. Have any words been exchanged between this girl and anyone before the parish priest? No. There is no record of it in the books.

Antonio Cesani di Cesare, masser at the Arsenal, 23 October 1644 Do you know Tiberio Peracca? I have known Tiberio for many years and still do as a close neighbour. Do you know if he was married and whether he has any children, especially daughters? I know he is married because I have heard his wife’s name from the women in his house, and also that he has a daughter. What does this Cavaliere do? He is the Nuncio of a city in Capo d’Istria. Does he live with honour? I have always seen him behaving honourably. There has never been any scandal about him. What is his wife’s name? I do not know. Were she and her daughter seen on the balconies with too much liberty? Not at all. They were certainly to be seen on the balconies but with great modesty. I have never heard anything which could have cast a shadow on their reputation. Have you heard that the girl is married? Not that I know of.

End of Witnesses Nominated by Peracca

APPENDIX 1

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Giacomo del Moro, proto de Favri at the Arsenal I have known this Cavalier Peracca by sight for many years and he also lives close to me. What is his status? I have always known him as an honourable person who lives civilly. There was never any scandal about him. Does he have any daughters? Yes. He has one, who was borne by a Gentildonna of Cha Grimani. Is she legitimate? Yes. What is her name? I do not know. With what honour and modesty does this girl live. Have you heard anything prejudicial about her? Nothing at all. She lives with honour. Have you heard anything prejudicial about her mother? Nothing at all. She was honourable. She is now dead. Is this girl married? I do not know anything to say about this.


Appendix 2 Camilla Trevisan di Camillo, AdC 205/27, 1637 Camilla was one of the many natural daughters of patricians to be investigated by the Avogadori. I, Camillo Trevisan, Abbate, find that I have a natural daughter named Camilla, born to me in 1623, and procreated with the Madonna Meneghina, daughter of Domenego Pavanello, Cittadino of Murano and an honourable man. Now I wish, if this should please his Divine Majesty, to join her in marriage with a noble of the most Serene Great Council. I submit the following clauses: That Camilla Loretta Trevisan is the natural daughter of myself, the Abbate Trevisan, procreated with the Madonna Menechina, daughter of Domenego Pavanello, honoured Cittadino of Murano, and has since her birth been held by me to be my daughter, and brought up and educated as such That Meneghina was held by me in retirement and always lived with me with modesty That my daughter Camilla always lived with every modesty and respect

Michiel Cassagna di Cristofolo, verrier in Murano, 3 August 1637 Do you know if the most Illustrious Camillo Trevisan has any children? Yes. I know that he has a natural daughter born of the Madonna Meneghina Pavanello, Cittadina Muranese. On what basis do you affirm that she is his daughter? He recognised her as his daughter from birth. She and her mother lived with him. What is the name of this daughter? She is called Camilla. Have you heard anything against her or her mother? I know that he took her away as a virgin and always kept her with him in his house. What is the reputation of Camilla? She is honourable. In effect, she has been brought up in the convent of Sant’Iseppo.

Andrea Basceto, pescador, lives on Murano, 26 August 1637 It must have been around fourteen ears ago that a girl called Camilla was born to the most Illustrious Trevisan. I know that he had her with Madonna Meneghina Pavanella, daughter of Domenego Pavanello, fisherman. This Meneghina was taken as a virgin by the said Camillo, after which her father gave him to her. How was the daughter brought up and by whom?

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By the most Illustrious Camillo, who had her baptised as his daughter and brought her up as such and placed her in the convent of Sant’Iseppo where she has been brought up in all modesty. What is the modesty and honour of the aforesaid mother and daughter? They certainly lived with honour and modesty and Signora Meneghina never had any relations with anyone other than the most Illustrious Camillo, who treated her as if she were his wife.

Francesco Gaio di Giacomo of Murano, 26 August 1637 I have been in the Trevisan household since I was a boy. It must have been around eighteen years ago that he took away Signora Meneghina Pavanella, daughter of Donmegho Mavanello, fisherman, and honourable person of some property. She was a virgin when he took her away and kept her with him. He had a daughter with her whom he had baptised as his daughter and always kept her in his house until she was boarded to the convent of Sant’Iseppo. The she returned to his house. What was the modesty of Madonna Meneghina. Did she have any carnal commerce with anyone else than Camillo? She lived with great modesty and always in Camillo’s house.

Zuanne Vianello, mercante di vin e legnami of Murano, 26 August 1637 I know this Camilla and her father. And her mother. She is the natural daughter of the most Illustrious Camillo Trevisan who had her with Madonna Meneghina daughter of Domenego Pavanello, Cittadino of Murano. He always considered her to be his daughter, brought her up as such and placed her in a convent. With what modesty did the Signora Meneghina live? Was she any one else’s woman? She always lived honourably. The Abbate had her as a virgin and looked after her like his wife. With what modesty did Camilla live? With great honour.

Francesco Fuza, pescador, of Murano, 30 August 1637 I have known Camilla about whom you are questioning me since she was a little girl. She is the daughter of Camillo Trevisan, his natural daughter, whom he had with Signora Meneghina. What do you know about her father? He is a fisherman and member of the Council in Murano. How did Camilla and Meneghina Live? Very honourably. Camilla was brought up in her father’s house and then in a convent. Meneghina was taken by him as a virgin, always in his house with him and never with anyone else.

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Index

Abduction, 44, 56, 72n, 120, 121, 128, 129, 132, 142, 162. Abruzzi, 93. Amsterdam, 78, 92. Antwerp, 84. Arte meccanica, 9, 11, 16, 19, 24, 30, 33, 34, 39, 53, 55n, 64, 65, 82, 91–107, 136, 171, 177. Artisans, 3, 47, 92, 93, 94–96, 98, 99, 101, 103, 104, 105, 106, 123n, 124, 130, 147, 163. Arsenal workers, 24n, 121n, 122n, 130, 133–134, 146, 182, 183. Asolo, 65n, 68, 78, 122, 161n. Augsburg, 66, 85, 163. Avogadori di Comun (magistrates), 1, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26–29, 30, 32–33, 34–39, 40–43, 44, 48, 52, 63, 64, 67, 71, 75, 76, 87, 88, 93, 94, 96, 97, 99, 100, 101, 102, 104, 106, 107, 117, 119, 122n, 124, 129, 136–137, 142, 143, 144, 145–146, 147n, 148, 149, 150, 152, 154, 155, 157, 164, 165, 166, 169n, 170, 171, 174, 185. Avogaria di Comun (office), xiii, 1, 2, 5, 6, 13, 15–8, 23–45, 48, 49, 52, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 63, 65, 68, 72, 73, 84n, 85n, 87, 105, 117–118, 119, 121n, 122, 123, 137, 139, 142, 144, 149n, 152, 154, 163, 166, 169. Staff, xiv, 26, 27, 38, 40, 63, 144, 154, 170. Prove di nobiltà, xiii–xiv, 2, 4, 11, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 23–45, 47, 48, 49, 51, 55, 56, 58, 59, 60, 62, 64, 65, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 74, 78, 83, 84, 85, 89, 90, 92, 93, 100, 105, 107, 117, 118, 127, 128, 129, 136, 137, 143, 147, 148, 150, 152, 153, 154, 155, 158, 159, 160, 164, 169, 171, 173.

Retrospective petitions, 15, 17, 21, 26, 33, 48, 51, 55, 62, 63, 65, 70, 72n, 83n, 117n, 142, 145, 151, 159, 161, 165, 167, 169, 171. Suppliche (Petitions to marry), 2, 15, 18, 20, 24, 28, 33–34, 37, 38, 39, 40, 44, 47–49, 52, 54, 59–60, 68, 69, 71, 73n, 77, 81n, 82, 85, 87, 93, 99, 137, 171, 174. Opposition to suppliche, 44–45, 79, 97n, 103, 173. Bakers, 65, 94. Balconies, 139, 182. Banks, 75, 102. Barbers, 85, 92, 98–99, 101, 165. Bedmar, Count of, 9, 15n, 73n. Bellavitis, Anna, 15, 55n, 73, 173. Belluno, 39, 79, 83. Bergamo, 32n, 56, 57, 60, 78, 79n, 81n, 82, 87. Boatmen, 25, 98, 119, 121n, 122n, 157, 159, 163, 170. Brabant, 43, 85. Brescia, 43, 65, 78, 81n, 82, 83, 92, 103–104, 120, 127. Brothers, 38n, 44, 54, 61, 62, 65, 69, 70, 72, 78, 79, 83, 85, 90, 91, 104, 106, 123, 132, 133, 141, 142, 154, 157, 160, 161, 162, 165–166, 180–181. Brothers-in-law, 85, 130, 143, Brussels, 43, 85. Burano, 98, 143, 144n, 157, 158. Burnet, Gilbert (Bishop), 89. Cabei, Giulio Cesare, 140. Capo d’Istria, 56, 61,71, 78, 79n, 82, 88, 98, 177–182. Carnival, 65n, 88, 143, 144n, 156, 157, 164. Carriages, 36, 77. Casini, Matteo, 15. Castelfranco, 57, 70, 78.

204


Catalonia, 9. Catholic Church, 27, 31, 39n, 41, 43, 59n, 71, 75, 84, 85, 93, 95, 118, 126, 131–132, 140, 150, 151, 153, 154, 156, 159, 163–164, 166. Baptisms, 15, 27, 28n, 34, 38, 58, 59, 71, 96, 122n, 124, 164, 169, 186. Consanguinity, 159,166. Council of Trent, 22, 31, 131, 150, 153, 156, 159, 161, 162, 167. Ecclesiastical courts, 23, 24, 142, 171. See also Churches, Convents Charlatans, 97. Chojnacki, Stanley, 5, 6, 135, 136, 152. Churches, 21, 27n, 34, 35, 38n, 64, 96–97, 138, 139, 141–142, 153, 154, 157, 160–162. Cividale, 79. Civiltà, 1–22, 34, 36, 57n, 67–90, 91–107, 119. Clientage, 14–15. Coats of arms, 3. Cologna, 71. Como, Lake, 100. Concubinage, 55n, 56n, 57, 70n, 71, 75, 96, 103, 117–134, 139, 146, 147, 153, 160, 166, 169, 173, 185–186. Confraternities, 35, 76n, 96, 163. Convent education, 20, 78, 93, 123, 158. Convents, 11, 20, 39, 40n, 44, 60, 61, 62, 76, 78, 83, 89–90, 93, 98, 123, 124, 128, 138, 140, 143–144, 145, 148, 151, 157, 158–159, 170, 185–186. Abbesses, 39, 138, 143–144, 158, 170. Dei Angeli, Murano, 158. Ognissanti, 158. San Bernardo, Murano, 158. San Daniel, 158. San Gerolamo, 138, 158. San Giovanni Laterano, 158n. San Iseppo, 66, 93, 158, 185–186. San Maffio, Murano, 123, 158. San Sepulcro, 76. San Vido, Burano, 143, 144n, 157. San Zaccaria, 158. Sanctissima Concezione, Piove di Sacco, 39n, 123. Santa Anna, 158.

Santa Caterina, 129. Santa Marta, 62, 138, 143, 148, 158, 159. Sant’Anzolo, Torcello, 158. Santi Marco e Andrea, Murano, 158. Santi Vito e Modesto, Burano, 158. Spirito Santo, 158. Corfù, 54, 56, 57, 128. Corruption, 17, 27, 64. Crema, 53. Cretans, 43. Crete (Candia)7, 40, 55, 56,60, 66, 75, 122n, 165, 171, 174. Criminal convictions (infamia), 24, 33, 177–81. Cyprus, 49, 50–51, 56. Dalmatia, 56. Dancing teachers, 42. Davidson, Nicholas, 80–81. Davis, James, 51. Dignan, 61, 160. Diplomats, 8, 9, 10, 25, 43n, 77n, 84, 86. Doctors, 18, 35, 42n, 53, 56, 65, 74, 83, 97, 106, 149, 180–181. Surgeons, 98–99, 149. Dolo, 127. Dowries, 2, 13, 21, 27, 38, 47, 49–50, 51, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 65, 68, 76n, 86–90, 92, 93, 103n, 104, 118, 124, 125, 128, 135, 143, 145, 151–152, 159, 160, 172, 174. Dress codes, 35, 75n, 96, 98, 104, 105, 124, 126–27, 139, 148, 177, 179, 181–182. Ducal Palace, See Venice. Dutch, 60, 74–75, 84, 85. Eating meals, 88, 123, 130,143, 156. Ecclesiastical courts, See Catholic Church England, 4. Elites, xiii, 1–22, 51, 55, 78–79, 81, 82, 83–84, 85, 86, 123, 124, 125, 151, 155, 169, 170, 172, 175. See also Nobilities. Families, 1–22, 30–32, 36–40, 41–67, 68–84, 86–92, 95, 97n, 101–105, 117–18, 123, 125, 127, 132, 133, 136, 138, 145n, 147, 151, 153, 154, 157–159, 163, 169–174.

INDEX

Fathers, 1, 6, 12, 14, 16, 19, 20, 24, 28n, 30–35, 37–39, 43, 52–55, 57, 60–62, 64–66, 67, 70–72, 75–77, 82, 85–89, 91–94, 97–98, 100– 102, 106–107, 117–134, 135– 138, 142–143, 146–149, 152, 154–157, 159, 161, 163, 165, 171–174, 177–181, 185–186. Stepfathers, 41n, 82, 99, 157. Fathers-in-law, 89, 118, 125, 148. Feltre, 98–99. Ferrari, Orazio, 139, 144, 161–2. Feuds, 4, 7, 79. Fishermen, 64, 120, 185–186. Flanders, 43. Florence, 8n, 85, 135n. Foscarini, Giovanni 43, 52. France, 3, 4, 5, 9, 12. Friuli, 56, 60, 65n, 78, 80, 83. Garzoni, Tomaso, 91, 94, 98. Genealogies, 33, 47, 79, 104, 132-133. Genoa, 11, 85. Gentility, 1–22, 36, 62, 79, 89n, 92, 105, 173, 175, 177–180. Germany, 4, 9, 84, 85, 87. Giudecca, 36, 41, 123, 161. Glovers, 96. Godfathers, 28n, 34, 38, 76. Gondolas, 36n, 77, 82,. 108, 124, 130, 131, 157. Gossip, 22, 24, 41, 88, 102, 141, 148, 149, 154–55. Grandfathers, 1, 16, 19, 24, 25, 30, 33, 34, 37, 38, 39, 43, 53, 61, 64, 66, 68, 72, 74, 91, 92, 94, 97, 99, 101, 106, 136, 171. Grandmothers, 33, 69. Greeks, 43, 66, 128, 132, 147. Guazzo, Stefano, 9n, 137. Guilds, 94–96, 98, 100. Grubb, James, 15, 73, 173. Hearsay evidence, 16, 17, 40, 43, 121, 147, 155, 170, 178–179, 182. Honestà, 1, 34, 64, 77, 123, 135–167. See also Women, modesty. Horses, 10, 36, 77, 79. Housing, 36–37, 41–43, 75, 77, 88, 119–120, 129, 134, 141, 143,

205

147, 148, 148, 155, 156, 157, 161, 165–166. Huneke, Volker, 49, 51, 52, 88, 125, 133. Hunting, 10. Huomini civili, 15, 18, 55n, 67–90, 125, 158, 173, 174. Husbands, 2, 11, 20, 24, 27, 32, 33, 37n, 44, 49, 52, 55, 58, 61, 69, 71, 81, 83, 84n, 86, 87, 89–90, 95, 97, 106, 118, 122, 124, 128, 130, 131, 133, 135, 139, 141, 142, 144, 145–146, 147, 149, 157, 159, 161, 173. Illegitimacy, 38, 71, 76, 123, 124, 127. Female, 14, 19, 20, 24, 25, 30–1, 33, 38, 39, 41n, 45, 47, 55n, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 70, 71, 76, 87n, 88, 117–134, 137, 146, 157, 158n, 162, 164, 166, 171, 172, 173, 174, 185–186. Male, 6, 20, 54, 58, 75–76, 104, 146, 164, 172. Inheritance, 21, 37, 75, 76, 87, 90, 65, 104, 106, 131, 135–136 142, 160. See also Wills. Jews, 121. Kinship, 38n, 72, 76, 86, 91, 106, 122, 123, 125, 138, 151, 163. Labourers, 47. Land ownership, 8, 10, 11, 34, 36, 55, 60, 61, 70, 71, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 82, 83–84, 86, 100, 104, 121, 127, 128, 130, 181. Lane, Frederic, 5. Language, xiv, 2, 25, 43, 144. Lanteri, Giacomo, 11, 19. Laundrywomen, 129, 139. Lawyers, 9, 10, 15, 18, 26, 35, 36, 37, 42, 52, 54, 65, 67, 69, 70, 72–74, 79, 82, 85, 88, 95, 125, 147, 158, 170. Legitimacy Female, 1, 19, 20, 21, 24, 25, 28, 31, 33, 34, 37, 38, 58, 60, 71, 106, 117, 118, 119, 122, 124, 125,

206


133, 151, 154, 159, 164, 171, 172, 173, 178–183. Male, 1, 12, 13, 16, 19, 21, 27, 29, 31, 32, 34, 104, 151, 152, 153, 154, 164, 165. Lido, 94. Lodi, 36. London, 84. Lucca, 127. Marche, 93. Marriage (See also Concubinage, Weddings) Contracts, 27, 31, 33, 34, 37, 49–50, 85, 87, 89, 118, 135, 152, 159, 167. Courtship, 25, 139, 157. Endogamy, 29, 81, 90. Legislation, 1, 6, 12, 13–14, 16, 17, 19, 21, 27–28, 29–32, 33, 39, 47, 48, 49, 50n, 51, 52, 57, 58, 64n, 67, 70, 92, 106, 122n, 136, 152, 170, 172, 174, 175. Negotiations, 2, 32, 41, 42, 47, 58, 60, 61, 62, 81, 83, 89, 125, 157, 160, 169. Registration, xiii, 15, 17, 21, 26n, 27, 31, 33, 45n, 48, 49–50, 55, 56, 58, 63, 65, 70, 95, 117n, 142, 145, 146, 151, 152, 154n, 166, 167, 169. Secret Marriages, 95, 118, 121, 127, 128, 129, 131–132, 154, 159. Separation, 134, 147. Marseille, 7. Martin, John, 73. Mazzorbo, 158. McGough, Laura, 136. Memory, 17, 25, 40, 43, 57n, 70, 75n, 94n, 156, 165, 179–181. Merchants Copper, 145. Drapers, 42, 76. Grain, 66, 82, 98. Iron, 36, 72, 98. Oil, 77, 87, 105. Paper, 143. Silk, 78, 93, 94, 101, 106, 127. Spice, 35n, 86, 93, 100, 105, 155. Sugar, 85, 93. Timber, 34, 78, 186.

Wine, 43, 99–100, 186. Wool, 36, 70, 77–78, 82, 85, 93, 101, 102, 120. Midwives, 28n, 42, 164. Migration, 28n, 36, 40, 43, 50, 55, 58, 60, 66, 74–75, 82–83, 84–86, 127, 177. Milan, 4, 43, 53, 83, 93, 148. Monfalcone, 57, 78, 79, 81n, 120n, 165. Morosini, Paolo, 26. Mothers, 2, 3, 6, 12, 14, 20, 21, 24, 29–30, 33–34, 37–38, 40–41, 44, 53, 56, 60–61, 62–66, 69–72, 81–82, 84–85, 89, 91, 93, 98, 103, 104, 117–134, 135–150, 154, 157, 163, 166, 170–174, 178–183, 185. Murano, 52, 60, 121, 123, 158, 161, 185–186. Music teachers, 42, 130. Muzio, Girolamo, 11, 12n, 137. Navy, 88. Neighbourhoods, 14, 24, 41, 42, 86, 141, 154, 156–157. Neighbours, 22, 34, 35, 40, 41–43, 53, 70, 74, 75n, 76, 83, 121, 124, 133, 139, 141–142, 145, 156, 157, 165, 170, 174, 182. Nobility, debates about, 3, 9–12, 19, 31, 53, 77n, 78–80, 91, 92, 94, 105, 137, 173, 175. See also Gentility; Venice, patriciate. England, 84. Feudal, 36, 78, 84, 85. France, 3, 4, 5, 9, 12. Milan, 4, 43, 53, 83, 148. Parma, 4. Pistoia, 85. Naples, 4. Spain, 85–6. Terraferma, 15, 32n, 49, 55, 60, 65, 77n, 78–84, 86, 87, 104–5, 165, 172–3, 174. Notaries, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 32, 35, 38, 39, 40, 42n, 52, 63, 71, 74, 75n, 79, 87, 104, 105, 122, 127, 144, 148, 154, 159, 160, 166, 170, 172. Nuns, 39, 40, 61, 66, 89, 90, 118, 123, 124, 135, 138, 140, 143–144, 151, 158, 159, 166, 170, 172.

INDEX

Old age, 17, 40, 43, 99, 130, 148. Oral history, 16, 17, 24–5. Orgiano, 105. Ottoman Empire, 6, 80. See also Turks. Outsider brides, Age, 59–61,. Geographical origin, 55–57, 78–86. Deceased fathers, 61–62, 159n, 169n. Patrician links (misc.), 13, 37–38, 54, 60, 67–90, 173,. Patrician fathers, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 70, 71, 87, 117–134. Patrician mothers, 53, 60, 62, 66, 69–70, 81, 98, 177. Rejection, 18, 33, 38n, 44, 45, 50n, 55, 62–66, 72, 93–94, 98, 101, 103, 136, 146, 174. Social background, 18, 52–55, 67–90, 169, 174, 177–183. Widows, 14, 21, 25, 32, 33 , 43, 44, 52, 57–58, 59, 62, 65n, 66n, 68, 82, 85, 87, 93, 97, 103, 127, 137, 139, 140, 142, 143, 147, 149, 157, 161, 162, 164, 169. Padua, 1, 2, 36, 42, 43n, 53, 56, 58, 66, 77n, 78, 79, 84, 87, 99n, 158, 160, 164, 165. Parma, 4, 10, 84. Parish priests, 22, 31, 35, 41, 64, 73, 74, 77, 83, 88, 132, 138, 145, 153, 154, 155, 160, 161, 163, 165–166, 180, 181, 182. Parish registers, 27, 38, 41, 64, 95, 153, 154, 159, 169–170. Patriarchy, 135–167. Peasants, 47, 65, 92, 102, 103–105, 122. Pistoia, 85. Plague, 1, 50, 98–99. Povolo, Claudio, 104–105. Prevesa, 57. Prostitution, 14, 21, 47, 66, 91, 109, 118, 126, 127, 137, 138, 141, 147, 173. Prove di nobiltà, See Avogaria di Comun. Publishers, 118. Puglia, 100.

207

Rentiers, 54, 67, 76n, 82, 158n, 172, 178, 181. Romano, Denis, 73. Rome, 5, 8n, 43, 77, 103–104. Rovigno, 104. Rovigo, 78n, 79n, 105n, 144. Sale of offices, 3, 5, 12. Samothrace, 56n, 128, 132. Sarnico, 43. Seidel-Menchi, Silvana, 24. Servants, 6, 29, 36, 40, 42n, 47, 75, 83, 88, 97, 104, 119, 120, 122, 124, 127, 130, 141, 142, 144, 148, 149, 154, 156, 158n, 163, 170, 186. Sexual morality, 13–14, 21, 24, 30, 42, 44, 63, 66, 72n, 117–34, 135–167, Shops, 3, 19, 25n, 35, 65, 77–78, 93, 96–102, 104, 105, 107, 124, 141, 145, 155. Sisters, 3, 37–38, 54, 58, 60–62, 68, 72, 76, 85, 91, 94, 95, 98, 104, 106, 121, 123, 139, 147, 154, 157, 158, 163, 165, 166, 169, 173, 178. Sisters-in-law, 154. Slaves, 6, 29, 47, 103. Social Distinctions, 1–22, 67–90, 91–107. Social mobility, 2, 3, 7, 12, 13, 21, 55, 95, 103, 105, 107, 174. Soldiers, 44, 56, 79, 139, 144, 145, 146, 166. Spain, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10n, 12, 85, 148, 158n. Sperling, Jutta, 49n, 89–90, 151n. Spinola, Andrea, 9. Swiss, 44, 145, 146, Tailors, 42, 94, 149, 163. Tiraguera, Antonio, 9n, 10, 98. Torcello, 152, 158. Tuscany, 8n. Trade, 4, 10, 11, 19, 34, 36, 42, 66, 75, 77–78, 79, 82, 85, 92, 93–94, 98–100, 102, 105, 107. Patrician merchants, 10, 77–78, Treviso, 71, 78, 79, 82. Trieste, 81. Turks, 7, 12, 43, 50, 56, 75, 79, 128.

Reinhard, Wolfgang, 14. Uderzo, 60n. 78.

208


Udine, 10n, 65n, 78, 80, 83, 164n. Venice Casa di Soccorso, 136. Chancellory, 27, 28, Cittadini, 10n, 15, 18, 28–29, 35n, 48, 49, 52–55, 67, 70, 72–78, 81, 82, 92n, 95, 96, 98, 102, 103n, 105, 107, 118, 123, 125n, 127, 142, 147, 158n, 172, 173. Investigations into status, 28, 73, 105, 107. Collegio, 1, 16, 18, 21, 30, 32, 33, 37, 38n, 45, 47, 62, 64, 65, 71n, 84n, 95, 99, 100, 102, 103, 107, 136, 154n, 159, 165, 170. Convertite Council of Ten, 27, 31, 44, 65, 114, 142–143, 144, 163, 171. Doge, 12, 16, 30, 78, 86. Ducal Palace, xiv, 1, 26, 40, 162. Elections, xiii, 4, 7, 9, 44, 45, 56, 125. Golden Book (Libro d’Oro), 6, 28, 29, 153, 173. Grand Canal, 26, 36, 100, 119, 145, 165. Great Council (Maggior Consiglio), xiii, 1, 3–7, 12–16, 26, 27–28, 29–32, 45, 47, 48, 49, 51, 62, 64, 75, 89, 93, 95, 97, 105–106, 107, 117, 122, 125, 151, 152, 155, 166, 169n, 170, 174, 177, 185. Inquisition , 24n. Lagoon, 5, 128, 161. Myth, xiii, 4. Office-holding, xiii, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7–9, 12, 14, 42n, 44, 55–57, 61, 65, 68, 73, 79, 81, 86, 88, 125, 132, 144, 152, 161, 162, 166. Parishes, Arcangelo Raffael, 164. San Antonio, 66. San Aponal, 35, 41, 66, 153, 156. San Beneto, 161. San Barnabà, 41, 88, 141–142, 144, 145. San Cancian, 161. San Cassian, 143, 160, 162. San Cristoforo, 157. San Felicie, 163. San Geremia, 162.

San Giacomo dell’Orio, 83. San Giorgio dei Greci, 66. San Giovanni Grisostomo, 66, 139. San Gregorio, 147, 148, 161, 165–166. San Lio, 65, 73. San Luca, 99. San Marcilian, 25. San Marco, 99. San Marcuola, 25, 41, 76, 138, 162. San Martin, 75n, 83, 157, 181. San Maurizio, 96–97. San Pantalon, 139n. San Samuele, 145. San Severo, 139. San Silvestro, 100. San Simon Profeta, 38n, 64. San Tomà, 119. San Trovaso, 157. San Vidal, 69. San Vio, 34, 154. San Zaccaria, 99. San Zulian, 165. Santa Euffemia, 41. Santa Maria Formosa, 49n, 75, 134, 160, 180. Santa Maria Nova, 38n, 94n. Santa Maria Zobenigo, 88, 154. Santa Soffia, 162. Sant’Agnese, 153. Sant’Elena, 106. Santi Appostoli, 77. Patriciate, xiii–xiv, 1–22, 25–29, 49, 52, 53, 58, 62, 67–72, 74–75, 77, 79, 80, 81, 83, 85, 88n, 89, 91, 92, 101, 103n, 105, 106, 107, 117, 118, 125, 127, 132, 136, 137, 143, 151–167, 169–175. See also Trade Patricians by purchase, 6, 12, 19, 51–52, 58n, 68–69, 71–72, 77, 81, 84, 85, 103, 105, 145n, 174–175. Absence from Venice, 33, 43n, 65, 71, 81, 84, 123–124, 133, 152–153, 161, 162. Bachelorhood, 151. Fraterna, 133. Titles, 10, 75, 133. Wealth disparities, 7, 8–9, 47, 77, 86, 88–89, 133, 152, 173.

INDEX

Popolani, 73, 74, 77, 173. Quarantia, 30, 166. Rialto, 42, 99, 100–102, 104, 155. St. Mark’s Square (Piazza San Marco), 71, 97, 134, 155. Secretariat, 8, 35, 53, 54, 61, 65, 69, 72, 84, 158. Senate (Senato), 8n, 12, 26, 37, 99. Serrata, 5. Zitelle, 136. Verona, 8n, 56, 76, 78, 80, 81, 86, 92, 105, 118. Vicenza, 27n, 43n, 56, 78, 81, 82–83, 86, 121. Villas, 10, 28n, 44, 76, 104, 120, 128, 129, 142, 143. Virginity, See Women. Visual observation, 41–2, 138, 139–140, 141, 155–156. Weddings Banns, 22, 41, 64, 153–4. Celebrations, 156–157, 159, Ceremonies, 13, 21–22, 27, 31, 34, 41, 59, 64, 76, 151, 153–154, 156–165, Forced, 70–71, 165, 166n. Guests, 21, 76, 151, 162–162, 164. Location, 34, 76, 106, 157, 151, 156, 160, 161–163.

209

Pregnancy, bridal, 22, 57, 70, 76, 143, 161, 162, 163–165, 166. Wet-nurses, 123, 144. Widows, xv, 2, 14, 21, 25, 32n, 33, 43, 44, 52, 57–9, 60n, 62, 65n, 68, 71, 79, 82, 85, 87, 93, 97, 103, 110, 121, 124, 126n, 127, 132, 135, 136, 137, 139–141, 142, 143–145, 147–150, 157, 161– 164, 166, 169. Wills, 38, 39n, 60, 61, 62, 75, 76, 89n, 118, 122n, 123, 125n, 131, 135, 157, 158. Witnesses, xiii–xiv, 1, 13, 16–17, 21, 22, 23–46, 87, 97, 99, 120n, 124, 136–137, 138, 147–150, 153, 155, 160, 161, 165, 177–181. Women Modesty, 1, 14, 21, 24, 33, 34, 39, 41, 123, 124, 130, 136, 137, 138, 140, 142, 150, 158, 171, 177, 179–183, 185–186. Virginity, 21, 57, 120–1, 133, 137, 143, 185–6. Zannini, Andrea, 15, 73, 74, 173. Zara, 57. Zürich, 54.

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