Republic of Venice
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  The flag and coat of arms of the Republic of Venice, displaying the Lion of St. Mark. |
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| Official languages | Venetian, Latin |
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| Established church | Roman Catholic |
| Capital | Venice |
| Largest City | Venice |
| Head of state | Doge |
| Existed | 9th century–1797 |
The Most Serene Republic of Venice (Venetian: Serenìsima Repùblica Vèneta; Italian: Serenissima Repubblica di Venezia) was a Venetian city-state originating from the city of Venice (today in Northeastern Italy). It existed from the 8th century until the 18th century (1797). It is often referred to as the Serenissima, which is Latin for its title, "Most Serene".
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[edit] History
The city of Venice originated as a collection of lagoon communities banded together for mutual defence from the Lombards as the power of the Byzantine Empire dwindled in northern Italy in the late seventh century. Sometime in the first decades of the eighth century, the people of the lagoon elected their first leader Ursus, who was confirmed by Byzantium and given the titles of hypatus and dux. He was the first historical Doge of Venice. Tradition, however, since the early eleventh century, dictates that the Venetians first proclaimed one Anafestus Paulicius duke in 697, though this story dates to no earlier than the chronicle of John the Deacon. Whatever the case, the first doges had their power base in Heraclea.
[edit] Rise
Ursus' successor, Deusdedit, moved his seat from Heraclea to Malamocco in the 740s. He was the son of Ursus and represented the attempt of his father to establish a dynasty. Such attempts were more than commonplace among the doges of the first few centuries of Venetian history, but all were ultimately unsuccessful. During the reign of Deusdedit, Venice became the only remaining Byzantine possession in the north and the changing politic of the Frankish Empire began to change the factional division of Venetia. One faction was decidedly pro-Byzantine. They desired to remain well-connected to the Empire. Another faction, republican in nature, believed in continuing along a course towards practical independence. The other main faction was pro-Frankish. Supported mostly by clergy (in line with papal sympathies of the time), they looked towards the new Carolingian king of the Franks, Pepin the Short, as the best provider of defence against the Lombards. A minor, pro-Lombard, faction was opposed to close ties with any of these further-off powers and interested in maintaining peace with the neighbouring (and surrounding, but for the sea) Lombard kingdom.
[edit] Early Middle Ages
The successors of Obelerio inherited a united Venice. By the Pax Nicephori (803), the two emperors had recognised Venetian de facto independence, while it remained nominally Byzantine in subservience. During the reign of the Participazio, Venice grew into its modern form. Though Heraclean by birth, Agnello, first doge of the family, was an early immigrant to Rialto and his dogeship was marked by the expansion of Venice towards the sea via the construction of bridges, canals, bulwarks, fortifications, and stone buildings. The modern Venice, at one with the sea, was being born. Agnello was succeeded by his son Giustiniano, who brought the body of Saint Mark the Evangelist to Venice from Alexandria and made him the patron saint of Venice.
During the reign of the successor of the Participazio, Pietro Tradonico, Venice began to establish its military might which would influence many a later crusade and dominate the Adriatic for centuries. Tradonico secured the sea by fighting Slavic and Saracen pirates. Tradonico's reign was long and successful (837 – 864), but he was succeeded by the Participazio and it appeared that a dynasty may have finally been established.
[edit] High Middle Ages
In the High Middle Ages, Venice became extremely wealthy through its control of trade between Europe and the Levant, and began to expand into the Adriatic Sea and beyond. Venice was involved in the Crusades almost from the very beginning; Venetian ships assisted in capturing the coastal cities of Syria after the First Crusade, and in 1123 they were granted virtual autonomy in the Kingdom of Jerusalem through the Pactum Warmundi. In the 12th century the Venetians also gained extensive trading privileges in the Byzantine Empire and their ships often provided the Empire with a navy. In 1182 there was an anti-Western riot in Constantinople, of which the Venetians were the main targets. The Venetian fleet was crucial to the transportation of the Fourth Crusade, but when the crusaders could not pay for the ships, the fleet was directed against Zara, a city on the Adriatic formerly under Venetian control. The crusade was then diverted to Constantinople, which was sacked in 1204. As a result of the partition of the Byzantine Empire which followed, Venice gained a great deal of territory in the Aegean Sea (three-eighths of the immense Byzantine Empire), including the islands of Crete and Euboea. The Aegean islands formed the Venetian Duchy of the Archipelago. Later, in 1489, the island of Cyprus, previously a crusader state (the Kingdom of Cyprus), was annexed to Venice.
[edit] 15th century
In the early fifteenth century, the Venetians also began to expand in Italy, as well as along the Dalmatian coast from Istria to Albania, which was acquired from King Ladislas of Naples. Venice installed nobility to govern the area, for example, Count Filippo Stipanov in Zara. This move by the Venetians was as a response to the threatening expansion of Giangaleazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan. Control over the north-east main land routes was also a necessity for the safety of the trades. By 1410, Venice had taken over most of Venetia, including such important cities as Verona and Padua.
The situation in Dalmatia had been settled in 1408 by a truce with King Sigismund of Hungary. At its expirement, Venice immediately invaded the Patriarchate of Aquileia, and subjected Traù, Split, Durazzo and other Dalmatia cities. The difficulties of Hungary granted to the Republic the consolidation of its Adriatic dominions.
[edit] League of Cambrai, Lepanto and the loss of Cyprus
In 1499 Venice allied itself with Louis XII of France against Milan, gaining Cremona. In the same year the Ottoman sultan moved to attack Lepanto by land, and sent a large fleet to support his offensive by sea. Antonio Grimani, more a businessman and diplomat than a sailor, was defeated in the sea battle of Zonchio in 1499. The Turks once again sacked Friuli. Preferring peace to total war both against the Turks and by sea, Venice surrendered the bases of Lepanto, Modon and Coron.
Venice's attention was diverted from her usual maritime position by the delicate situation in Romagna, then one of the richest lands in Italy, which was nominally part of the Papal States but effectively fractionated in a series of small lordship of difficult control for Rome's troops. Eager to take some of Venice's lands, all neighbouring powers joined in the League of Cambrai in 1508, under the leadership of Pope Julius II. The pope wanted Romagna, emperor Maximilian I Friuli and Veneto, Spain the Apulian ports, the king of France Cremona, the king of Hungary Dalmatia, and each of the others some part. The offensive against the huge army enilisted by Venice was launched from France. On 14 May 1509 Venice was crushingly defeated at the battle of Agnadello, in the Ghiara d'Adda, marking one of the most delicate points of the enitre Venetian history. French and imperial troops were occupying the Veneto, but Venice managed to extricate herself through diplomatic efforts. The Apulian ports were ceded in order to come to terms with Spain, and pope Julius II soon recognized the danger brought by the eventual destruction of Venice (then the only Italian power able to face national states like France or the Ottomation). The citizens of the mainland rose to the cry of "Marco, Marco", and Andrea Gritti recaptured Padua in July 1509, successfully defending it against the besieging imperial troops. Spain and the pope broke off their alliance with France, and Venice regained Brescia and Verona from France also. After seven years of ruinous war, the Serenissima regained her mainland dominions up to the Adda. Although the defeat had turned into a victory, the events of 1509 marked the end of the Venetian expansion.
[edit] 17th century
In 1605 a conflict between Venice and the Holy See began with the arrest of two members of the clergy who were guilty of petty crimes, and with a law restricting the Church's right to enjoy and acquire landed property. Pope Paul V held that these provisions were contrary to canon law, and demanded that they should be repealed. When this was refused, he placed Venice under an interdict. The Republic paid no attention to the interdict or the act of excommunication, and ordered its priests to carry out their ministry. It was supported in its decisions by the Servite monk Paolo Sarpi, a sharp polemical writer who was nominated to be the Signoria's adviser on theology and canon law in 1606. The interdict was lifted after a year, when France intervened and proposed a formula of compromise. Venice was satisfied with reaffirming the principle that no citizen was superior to the normal processes of law.
[edit] Decline
In December 1714 the Turks declared war when the Peloponnese (the Morea) was "without any of those supplies which are so desirable even in countries where aid is near at hand which are not liable to attack from the sea".
The Turks took the islands of Tinos and Aegina, crossed the isthmus and took Corinth. Daniele Dolfin, commander of the Venetian fleet, thought it better to save the fleet than risk it for the Morea. When he eventually arrived on the scene, Nauplia, Modon, Corone and Malvasia had fallen. Levkas in the Ionian islands, and the bases of Spinalonga and Suda on Crete which still remained in Venetian hands, were abandoned. The Turks finally landed on Corfù, but its defenders managed to throw them back. In the meantime, the Turks had suffered a grave defeat by the Austrians at Petervaradino on 3 August 1716. Venetian naval efforts in the Aegean and the Dardanelles in 1717 and 1718, however, met with little success. With the Treaty of Passarowitz (21 July 1718), Austria made large territorial gains, but Venice lost the Morea, for which her small gains in Albania and Dalmatia were little compensation. This was the last war of the Republic with Turkey.
[edit] The fall of the Republic
In spring 1796 Piedmont fell and the Austrians were beaten from Montenotte to Lodi. The army under Napoleon crossed the frontiers of neutral Venice in pursuit of the enemy. By the end of the year the French troops were occupying the Venetian state up to the Adige. Vicenza, Cadore and Friuli were held by the Austrians. With the campaigns of the next year, Napoleon aimed for the Austrian possessions across the Alps. In the preliminaries to the Peace of Leoben, the terms of which remained secret, the Austrians were to take the Venetian possessions as the price of peace (18 April 1797).
[edit] Government
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In the early years of the republic, the political system can be classified as an autocracy, with the Doge as the almost absolute ruler. In 1223, the aristocratic families of Rialto drastically diminished the powers of the Doge by the establishment of an advisory body that would later be called the Quarantia and a supreme tribunal which would later be called the Signoria. They also created two bodies called sapientes which later grew into six bodies. The combination of sapientes and certain other groups was called a collegio, a kind of ministry to carry out the functions of government. A senate, called the Consiglio dei Pregadi was organized in 1229 with sixty members elected by the Major Council[1]. During this period the Doge had little real power left, and actual authority was exercised by the Great Council, an extremely limited parliament-like body in which only members of the great aristocratic families of the republic were allowed to participate. Venice claimed that its government was a ‘classical republic’ because it was a fusion of the three basic forms present in a mixed government: with the regal power in the Doge, the aristocratic in the senate, and the democratic in the Great Council[2].
In 1335, a "Council of Ten" was established and became so powerful and secretive that by circa 1600 its powers had to be delimited[3]. Its powers varied over time, from subordinance to the Great Council to dominance over it.
A law of 1539 instituted the State Inquisitors, later known as the Supreme Tribunal. There were three Inquisitors, one known popularly as Il Rosso, "the red one", who was chosen from the Dogal Councillors, who wore scarlet robes, and two from the Council of Ten, known as I negri, "the black ones". They began as a security body at the difficult time when Venice felt herself encircled by the Hapsburgs, and gradually assumed some of the powers of the Council of Ten. By means of espionage, counterespionage and internal surveillance, they made use of a network of informers and "confidants".
In 1556 the provveditori ai beni inculti were also created for the improvement of agriculture by increasing the acreage under cultivation and encouraging private investment in agricultural improvement. The consistent rise in the price of grain during the 16th century encouraged the transfer of capital from trade to the land.
[edit] References
- ^ see entry "Venice", Catholic Encyclopedia, 1967. Vol. XIV, p. 602.
- ^ The Political Ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas, Dino Bigongiari ed., Hafner Publishing Company, NY, 1953. p. xxx in footnote.
- ^ Machiavelli also refers to Venice as a republic. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. & ed. by Robert M. Adams, W.W. Norton & Co., NY, 1992. Machiavelli Balanced Government
[edit] Sources
- Benvenuti, Gino (1989). Le repubbliche marinare. Rome: Newton Compton.
- Norwich, John Julius (1982). A History of Venice. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
[edit] See also
- History of city of Venice
- Most Serene Republic
- Doges of Venice
- History of Italy
- Historical states of Italy
- History of Byzantine Empire
- Wars in Lombardy
- Ottoman Empire
- Ottoman wars in Europe
- History of Genoa
- Holy Roman Empire
- Patriarchate of Aquileia
- Fourth Crusade
- Italian Wars
- Mariner Republics
- Napoleonic Wars
- Treaty of Campoformio
- Veneto
- History of Friuli
