SESSION 3
Consumption and Power: The Doge and Rituals of Marriage Primary Source Readings Chambers, David, and Brian Pullan (eds.). “The Doge.” In Venice: A Documentary History 1450-1630, 45-51. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.
Secondary Source Readings On the doge and the dogaressa Fortini Brown, Patricia. “Measured Friendship, Calculated Pomp: The Ceremonial Welcomes of the Venetian Republic.” In Private Lives in Renaissance Venice: Art, Architecture, and the Family, 136-187. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2004. Hurlburt, Holly. “Introducing the Dogaressa.” In The Dogaressa of Venice 1200-1500, 44-80. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
On marriage Chojnacki, Stanley. “Nobility, Women and the State: Marriage Regulation in Venice, 1420-1535.” In Marriage in Italy, edited by Trevor Dean and K. J. P Lowe, 128-154. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
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Labalme, Patricia., Laura Sanguinetti White and Linda Carroll (eds.). “How to (and how not to) get married in sixteenth-century Venice (selections from the diaries of Marin Sanudo).” Renaissance Quarterly 52.1 (1999): 43-72.
Further Readings Allerston, Patricia. “Wedding Finery in Sixteenth-Century Venice.” In Marriage in Italy, edited by Trevor Dean and K. J. P Lowe, 25-41. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Muir, Edward. “Twelve Wooden Marys and a Fat Thursday: A Serene Society.” In Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice, 135-181. Princeton New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1981. Hurlburt, Holly. “Legislating the Dogaressa.” In The Dogaressa of Venice 1200-1500, 15-43. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
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David Chambers & Brian Pullan eds. The Doge Death and election of a Doge noted by a visiting pilgrim, 1462 From the Latin. Wey ed. Williams 1857, pp. 83-6. On 3 May of that year [1462] the lord Pasquale Malipiero, the very illustrious Doge of Venice, quitted this world,* and was laid out in his palace for three days. Then he was taken for burial. At his funeral first arrived all the confraternities, in religious dress with candles and scourges in their hands. Before them crosses and tapers were carried. Then came the parish clergy of Venice, the secular and regular clergy, and lastly the canons of St Mark’s with a cross and tapers. Next came two noblemen carrying his arms. Then came his body laid out as follows: on his head he wore his biretta and his face was uncovered, under his head was placed a cushion of cloth of gold. His body was dressed in the golden robe of his office and a cloak. On his feet there were slippers, with golden spurs to one side; on the other side was placed his sword in a gilded scabbard. And with these accoutrements he was buried high up in the wall of the church of the Friars Preachers [Santi Giovanni e Paolo] in Venice. After his death and burial, the Venetians met to elect a new Doge, summoned by the appointed Councillors. Called to the election were all the eminent nobles, who, on oath, were to choose from among the more noble of those lords firm in the Catholic faith. They themselves had to swear, on pain of losing all their worldly goods, to choose the man who was the wisest, the best provided bycircumstances, the staunchest in defence of the faith and the most experienced in the affairs of the world, to serve the city and its dominions. Those 100, with some notaries, were confined to a house from which they were not to emerge until they 197
had elected forty of the more noble for this honourable task.** Then the forty took Communion so that they might elect him whom they believed would be most firm in upholding the Catholic faith and of the greatest benefit to the city of Venice. And the man acknowledged to have the majority of the votes they accepted as their Doge. They will not, on pain of death, reveal the name of the loser. Then he who has the majority and who is elected to the office of Doge is taken to his house. As he is taken by water, the Venetians come up to him saying, ‘All your possessions are now ours’; and he says, ‘I know that well, but I beseech you to accept between you 100 ducats, and that will content you.’ And he gives them the money, and scatters coins as he goes, to clear a way home. And, after he has settled his domestic affairs, he is led by the lords of the city to the Ducal Palace. They make him a knight, and then they robe him in the vestments of his office and place a biretta [berriculam] covered in precious stones on his head. And the following Sunday he comes to the church of St Mark, and before him process all the confraternities, one of which puts on a pageant for him. Then come the religious in procession with relics, torches, crosses and canopies. Among them are many children dressed as angels; they are carried on high floats, and they sing to the Doge while the secular clergy sing Te Deum laudamus, etc. And thus he leaves the church of St Mark with a great procession, and a multitude of the people. Coming to the Ducal Palace, he stands on the threshold, turning to face the people. Then all the lords climb towards him in reverence to pay their respects. Once all this is over he dines in his Palace, where he will remain for the rest of his life. After his election, ambassadors from the various subject provinces attend him bearing gifts, heartily congratulating him on his elevation to such a dignity. The Doge elected that year is Cristoforo Moro, a man strong in his Catholic faith. * The Doge actually died on 5 M ay 1462. William Wey (c. 1407-76), a Fellow of Eton College, was making his second pilgrim age to Jerusalem; he is inaccurate on dates as on many other particulars. ** Wey telescopes the complicated procedural stages of the election; the ultimate electoral college numbered forty-one [see below, II.3(c), 14(b). He seems not to have known that the election took place within the Ducal Palace.
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Some restrictive obligations in the promissione of Doge Moro, 1462 From the Latin. Selection from 127 clauses in BL Additional ms. 15816. 12 May 1462 Proemium . . . We, therefore, Cristoforo Mauro [Moro], by the Grace of God Doge of Venice etc., promise to you, the whole Venetian people, great and small, and to your heirs . . . for the rest of the days during which we shall bear the Dogeship, to govern and uphold the state. . . . 54 And if we shall suffer any temporary impediment, whether on account of illness or any other cause, whereby we are unable to carry out the government of the Doge of Venice in the Ducal Palace, one of our Councillors, whom the said Councillors have elected by a majority vote, must act on our behalf, until we shall be able to exercise the said government. . . . 71 Item, we cannot nor ought we to engage in trade, nor arrange for it to be done by any person in any way, or of any kind, either in or outside Venice, nor must we invest in any partnership; and we shall make our Dogaressa and our sons and nephews, whether or not they are living with us, swear that they will not engage in trade, nor arrange for it to be done by person in any way or of any kind either in or outside Venice, nor invest in any partnership. And similarly our daughters and nieces living with us are held and bound to the observance of all the foregoing. Nor even can we have or keep as associate any notary, page, servant or household retainer who engages in or arranges any commercial business, or who invests anything in a partnership. . . . 83 Moreover, we are obliged every two months to have the present capitulary and promisso of the Venetians clearly read out to us, in the right order. 96 Moreover, we cannot nor ought we to go outside the Dogado* of Venice, unless by the wish of our Small and Great Councils. Item: we cannot pass through the port of Malamocco or the bishopric of Torcello, unless by the wish of our Small Council or a majority of it. . . . 199
101 We shall also arrange that, within three months of our entry' into the Dogeship, we shall have made two capitularies similar to this one, one of which must be kept in the Chancery and the other in the Procuracy of St Mark’s, the third one remaining with us. These three capitularies are secured with our lead seal. . . . 117 Moreover, we are obliged to have an ermine cape [baverum], which we must wear at least ten times during the year, and more often if we please, and on those days which shall seem, appropriate to us. 118 We are held and obliged under oath, whenever the Great Council is called, to be present and to stay in it, unless some personal impediment prevents us, and the same we are bound to do whenever the Senate is called. 119 Also, we are held and obliged to give audience with our Councillors at least once a week, and the statutory day for this is Monday. And, if, because of other urgent business, this is not possible, it shall be on the following Tuesday or the next day after that. And this pious and necessary provision must without fail be observed at least once a week. * Places in the vicinity of the Lagoon, listed by Sanudo at the end of his description [I.i]
Publication of the new Doge, 1474: an eyewitness report. From a letter to Marquis Ludovico Gonzaga from the Mantuan ambassador, Giacomo di Palazzo, Venice, 15 December 1474: ASMn. Archivio Gonzaga, b. 1432, f. 932. At the fifth hour [i.e. after sunset] I embarked [at Padua] for Venice, but while transferring to the ferry at Fusina, getting back into the boat at night in the rain, I was in danger of losing the use of my leg from a blow on the shin. I don’t know how it will turn out. At the fifteenth hour [probably about 8 a.m.] I reached Venice and found my messenger, who told me that he had heard that the lord Petro Mocenigo had been created Prince, and moreover that they were making preparations for the publication [of his name] at St Mark’s in the customary fashion. He told me that he could not talk to any of the people he had been 200
ordered to find, because the doors below the palace, where usually such conversations could be held, had been locked The messenger returned at about the sixteenth hour with news that the church of St Mark and the whole Piazza were packed with people, and that the newly created Prince was expected to come into the church. Without wasting a moment, I rushed there and made my way through the Piazza with great difficulty, and with even more difficulty managed [to push my way] into the church and to reach the High Altar and enter the chapel adjacent to the Palace. There I found the lords Marcho Cornaro and Marcho Barbarigo, who kept me beside them, while everyone awaited the entrance of the Prince, who after a short while arrived with the forty-one electors who had been shut up together and by whom he had been elected. . . . I accompanied the Prince to the [high] altar, where he knelt without the ducal insignia, and, having offered up the customary prayers at the high altar, he ascended the pulpit outside the choir, in the part of the church nearest to the Palace. Not all of the forty-one could be together in the pulpit; the leading ones came, but not Andrea Vendramin,1 and the Prince asked for him and he was made to come up, and when he was there [Mocenigo] spoke to him and they embraced, calling for Andrea Leone and Bernardo Giustinian.2 After a short delay Andrea Leone,3 took off the biretta and proclaimed to the people that Petro Mocenigo had, on account of his virtues, been canonically elected Prince of the whole Republic of Venice, and subsequently the Prince showed himself to the people. 1. A favoured candidate, who was the next Doge to be elected (1476 -8). 2. Bernardo Giustinian (1408 -89), statesman and historian, was several times a favoured candidate for the dogeship (Labalme 1969). 3. Leone was presumably Vice Doge, i.e. the senior Councillor at the time of Doge Nicolo Marcello’s death, and so had acted as temporary head of state during the vacancy.
Ceremonial dignity: the Doge’s procession. Sansovino 1581, pp. 193-4 (ed. Martinioni 1663, pp. 492-3). The Prince ... every year makes various progresses [andate] to different parts of the city on certain festal days, solemnized either by the rites of the Church, by public decree for perils averted, or as an act of thanksgiving. The palace officials commonly call them triumphal progresses, because, in addition to the fact that the Doge wears all the insignia of the principate, the Signoria turns out in full, i.e. 201
with the additional persons required for these progresses. Thus on these occasions the body, which the Prince accompanies as head, consists of a variety of persons and magistrates. And they go in order, thus: first, the eighty Banners that were presented by the Pope,1 then the Silver Trumpets, borne on the shoulders of children, and two by two the heralds [comandcitori] called by the Romans praecones; the latter are always dressed in blue [turchino] except for those of the Proprio,2 with long gowns, wearing on their heads a red biretta with a small gold medal on one side with the emblem of St Mark. In earlier times they each held a staff, but in 1323 this was exchanged for the biretta. And they are created by the Doge, up to the total number of fifty, over whom he has jurisdiction. Behind these come the pipers and trumpeters, wearing red, all playing harmoniously. They are followed by the Doge’s shield-bearers [scudieri], two by two, wearing black velvet. Then come six canons [of St Mark’s] wearing their pluvials, because it was always the custom of our forebears that temporal matters should be accompanied by religion. Close behind them walk the stewards [castaldi] of the Doge, and the secretaries of the Collegio, the Senate and the Council of Ten; then come the Doge’s two Chancellors, who are called the Inferior and Ducal [Chancellors], as distinct from the Grand Chancellor, who is in the service of the Republic; and behind them the Grand Chancellor follows. They wear purple [pavonazzo] but with the sleeves closed, unlike the Grand Chancellor, who wears senator’s robes. Immediately after him comes the Prince’s chaplain, with the page [zago] who carried the Wax Candle, and the ballot boy [ballotino] of the Doge. Then come the Seat and the Cushion, one borne on the right hand and the other on the left, together with the Umbrella. Shortly after them appears the Doge in person, surrounded by the ambassadors of foreign princes. And in triumphal processions he always wears the ermine cape [bavera]. After them follow the Councillors and the Procurators of St Mark’s two by two (at least, according to the law of 1459), the Avogadori, the Heads of the Ten, the Savi Grandi, the Savi of War (called Savi di Terraferma), and the other senators and magistrates two by two according to the laws, all wearing crimson-coloured silk with sleeves alia Ducale, with a magnificence and grandeur that cannot be surpassed. 202
1. These and the emblems listed below were allegedly presented by Pope Alexander III to Doge Ziani in 1177 (Muir 1981, pp. 103-19). 2. That is, of the three Giudici (judges) di Proprio. See Glossary.
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Patricia Fortini Brown Measured Friendship, Calculated Pomp: The Ceremonial Welcomes of the Venetian Republic ... it is known to everyone that this State always paid extraordinary courtesies to those Princes who, for whatever reason, came publicly to Venice.
– Francesco Sansovino, 1581.1
Sansovino was, perhaps, unduly modest. By his time, the Republic had entertained with notable pomp three popes, eight emperors and countless kings, queens, princes, cardinals, ambassadors and nobility of every rank.2 The extraordinary courtesies that he referred to were often visually spectacular affairs. But pageantry is the most ephemeral of art forms. Once performed, it no longer exists. The sounds and shouts are gone forever. Only through the often awe-struck accounts of witnesses may we begin to fill in the concrete details. As the German priest, Felix Faber, observed in 1484: on the entries of princes and ambassadors, one sees marvels; [and for such festive occasions] they proclaim days of amusement, with incessant pealing of the bells and bonfires on their towers in the evening. By day they go in boats to the sea playing music and shooting fireworks and set fire to the worn-out sails; such are the enjoyments of the solemnities.3 We need not be reminded that such welcomes played, for all their frivolous aspect, a serious role in Renaissance life. They were as integral to the statecraft of the period as a summit conference or the signing of a treaty. Their effectiveness lay in their ability to give visible form to many-layered messages, both abstract and material: transcendent civic ideology (sovereignty, honor, security, permanence, tranquility, concord, order); immediate civic concerns (wars and threats of war, trade agreements, alliances); and tangible civic resources (money and goods, real estate, commerce, loyal citizens, maritime power). With their scripts deriving from 205
the elaborate diplomatic etiquette of the period, they were thus not just aimless diversions, but powerful vehicles for communication. But it was communication of a complex nature, for princely entries were also more than staging areas pure and simple for state propaganda. Indeed, every spectacle was a multivalent affair. Messages were sent, and perceptions formed, from at least three loci of participation: the host government and its officials, the citizen-spectators, and the distinguished visitor.4 As Peter Burke asked of public papal ceremonial: “Who is saying what to whom through all this spectacle and sound? The speaker is elusive, as so often in the case of rituals, which is part of their force.”5 The central role of pageantry in Italian civic life in the Renaissance period has brought forth a number of excellent studies in recent years.6 Venice has received a good share of the attention, ranging from Edward Muir’s comprehensive and concise treatment of civic ritual in general in that city to many specialized contributions.7 None of the latter, however, has focused on the diplomatic visit, and the rituals associated with it, as a ceremonial genre in itself. Furthermore, while triumphs and ceremonial entries have been examined in detail for other Italian cities, particularly Florence and Rome, these events reveal only limited affinities to those in Venice.8 The unique aqueous setting of Venice comes first to mind as an essential difference, but the quality of the visitor is another; for no Venetian guest arrived in triumph as a conqueror, actual or potential. Bonner Mitchell states the case succinctly: “Unlike all other major Italian cities during the period of the Italian wars, 1494-1559, it had an overbearing visit neither from the invading French kings, nor from the Emperor Charles V or his son Philip II. When it did invite the new king of France Henri III in 1574, it did so freely and as an equal. Neither he nor any other foreign visitor entered with an army.”9 Indeed, the same can be said of Venice for the full millennium preceding the fall of the republic in 1797. Bearing in mind these distinctions, we can now proceed to the central aim of this paper—an examination of the structure of a Venetian ceremonial visit during the Renaissance period. In the course of our consideration, we will find several issues to be of particular interest: the challenge of the site, both as an asset and a limitation; the play between calculation and accident; and the invention of 206
paradigmatic tradition as a means to create hierarchy and distinction between successions of like events, as well as to provide continuity and consistency. Angelo Gabrieli, a patrician writing in the early years of the sixteenth century, had to acknowledge that the splendor of the Venetian triumph came not only from vast expenditures, but also, as we have observed, from a unique physical ambient (Fig. 4-1). “For a certain novelty of placement and opportune position,” he wrote, “[Venice was] by itself the only form in all the universe [so] miraculously disposed.” 10 As one visitor had exclaimed upon first view, the city “was standing in wondrous fashion in the midst of the waters ...”11 Another would write “I have seen the impossible in the impossible.” 12 Such remarks provide a key for understanding the true uniqueness of Venetian ceremonial. If the real appeared so illusory, then what are we to make of the spectacle? —an imaginary construction by its very definition. Each princely welcome involved a chain of ceremonial moments—a series of spectacles—that were calculated to provide a progressive revelation of the visible — and, as we shall see, the not so visible—city. These exercises in self-presentation involved a peculiarly Venetian alchemy of transformation and disguise. The challenge was to maintain the proper balance: to show off the real, while maintaining the illusion. Generally speaking, these occasions included three phases: 1) preparations; 2) the ceremonial entry; 3) the revelation of the city. Although the entry ceremony—occurring on a single day—was symbolically the most potent affair of the entire chain of experiences, no one component should be regarded as trivial. Each was essential to the occasion as a whole. We will examine them in turn.
I Preparations Princely entries were less spontaneous than Felix Faber had suggested. As Peter Burke has observed, the intended effect of spectacle in a “theatre society” like Venice was a certain sprezzatura or the “illusion of effortless spontaneity.”13 But the image of a prosperous and peaceful republic—la Serenissima—was too important to be left to chance. By the end of the quattrocento, the main features of diplomatic visits were regularized and predictable. Routines and protocols 207
ensured a reasonable state of readiness, and the Republic could respond to most such demands on short notice. Doing things right was given a high priority on the other hand, and on some occasions guests who arrived before they were expected or before the Venetians were ready were forced to wait at the edge of the lagoon before their welcome could begin.14 The primary responsibility for the organization of diplomatic receptions and entertainment was centered in the Collegio, the steering committee of the Senate. Two bodies within it were directly concerned with diplomatic visits: the Savi di Terra Ferma and the Savi agli Ordini. Each was composed of five patrician officials who held six-month terms. Record-keeping and protocol were the concern of the Savi di Terra Ferma, with one of its members charged with keeping the Cerimoniali or ceremonial books.15 These were compilations of accounts of state visits and other official ceremonies that could be consulted on future occasions for points of precedent. The actual maintenance of the books was carried out by a chancery secretary, one of a group of non-patrician ceremonial specialists who provided continuity for the Savi, whose membership was constantly changing. By the late sixteenth century it appears that the ceremonial books, like so much else, had come under the jurisdiction of the Council of Ten.16 The Savi agli Ordini, having jurisdiction in maritime affairs, were entrusted with the logistics of the diplomatic entry. The lowest ranking group in the Collegio, the Savi had become a proving ground by the second decade of the sixteenth century for young patricians beginning their careers in the higher councils of government. 17 Sanudo wrote of them: “These [officials], when some lord comes to Venice, in order to honor him, are allowed to have paraschelmi adorned, and they assign [their decoration] to whomever they please.”18 The paraschelmi were escort vessels for the doge’s ceremonial barge, the Bucintoro. Responsibility for their decoration and manning was generally given to the various arti or trade guilds.19 A third body, the Rason Vecchie, also played a key role in the festivities. Since 1433 it had been responsible for handling financial arrangements, making disbursements and providing accommodations and hospitality for the visitors within the city.20 Here again Sanudo defined the duties of its members: “They are 208
in charge of the expenses that are made here for Lords and ambassadors who come to Venice, and they keep tapestries and other necessary furnishings of adornment to prepare the houses for said foreigners.�21 A daily allowance was set for each guest, depending on his or her rank and the size of the party. This practice was not peculiar to Venice. It would have been true of any court or republic of this period, where the subsistence as well as the entertainment of official visitors was understood by both parties to be the obligation of the host.22 The palace of the marquis or duke of Ferrara on the Grand Canal, also called simply the Casa del Marchese, was the most commonly used accommodation for visitors of the highest rank (Fig. 4-2). Now known as the Fondaco dei Turchi, it had been built in the thirteenth century in a Veneto-Byzantine style, with end towers flanking a wide, arcaded fagade in two stories. The large androne or foyer at ground level offered a water portal expansive enough to accommodate a large diplomatic retinue. The loggia functioned as a transparent screen through which the residents inside could observe the happenings, both spectacular and mundane, on the canal below. Admirably situated for observing regattas and other marine spectacles, it featured many windows which allowed a mobile, ever-changing light —suffusing water reflections, sky, opposite windows and artificial lights—to penetrate the interior spaces.23 The visual experience, so characteristic of Venetian dwellings, would have been a novel sensation to many of the foreign guests who were still accustomed to fortress-like residences, with small wall openings and limited illumination. Among its distinguished guests were the Byzantine Emperor John VIII Paleologus in 1438 and the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III in 1452 and 1469.24 Other signorial residences were requisitioned for such occasions as well, the degree of comfort and commodiousness varying according to availability and the rank of the guest. While Anne of Foix, the seventeen- year-old bride of the king of Hungary, stayed in the Casa del Marchese during her visit in 1502, her party was lodged in sixteen additional palaces, holding fourteen to twenty beds each.25 Ecclesiastical dignitaries, however, often stayed in monasteries.26 Rooms were also made available at the Benedictine monastery of S. Giorgio Maggiore for 209
ambassadors and secular visitors of less than royal rank (Fig. 4-3). They seem to have been located in a building separate from the monastery itself, for the accommodation was called casa nova when Francesco Maria della Rovere, duke of Urbino and captain general of the Venetian armies, stayed there in 1524. He was also given a daily allowance of forty to fifty ducats and the use of twenty barges.27 The duke of Milan stayed in the comfortable and centrally located apartments of the Procuratorie on the Piazza S. Marco in 1530. He was allowed a generous 150-200 ducats per day for expenses. Where his complement of 800 men and 600 horses were accommodated does not seem to be recorded.28 On the other hand, the Ottoman ambassador, Cassan Chiaus, who visited Venice in 1576, was allotted a modest five ducats a day, the use of a gondola and a house on the Giudecca owned by the Scuola Grande di S. Maria della Carità.29 Sanudo’s diaries offer abundant evidence that even the most careful preparation and planning were quite often overridden by the specific exigencies of any given entry: arrival dates were changed, the tides and weather were unfavorable, cultural differences between hosts and guests created misunderstandings and disappointments. For example, a minor annoyance can be sensed in the account of a Milanese eye-witness in the company of the German emperor on his second visit to Venice. “The house is very well adorned with many goods. But there is not order; they do not know how to achieve it.”30 Another more serious case of cultural incoherence involved the accommodations for the 700 Hungarian horsemen accompanying Anne of Foix. Their captain was told that the hospital of S. Antonio, newly built in Venice, had been prepared for them. It became immediately apparent that an embarrassing miscalculation had been made. Sanudo reported: “When [the Hungarian captain] heard these words he was disturbed, saying it was an indecent place for them, [as] orators of such a king. [But he was] not considering the quality of the place, which was new and not used, and most beautiful. Now from Treviso they came, through Sii, to Torcello and arrived at San Tomà di Borgognoni. Fifty barges were sent to meet them, seven with our gentlemen dressed in scarlatto, to conduct them to San Antonio, where [everything] had been prepared. They responded that they wished to stay there [where they were] to await the queen, [for] they did not wish to give injury to their king by being lodged in a hospital; therefore, having understood this, the Signoria 210
swiftly sent other barges with gentlemen, declaring to them that other palaces were prepared in Cannaregio, fitting to their grandeur; and so they then came to Venice.�31 Thus, preparations were only one part of a successful ceremonial equation. Flexibility was also essential. Venetians, as merchants attuned to recognize every nuance that might imperil a negotiation, were characteristically sensitive to the demands of each situation, and their responsiveness helped to preserve national honor from damaging diplomatic incidents.
II The Ceremonial Entry The next phase of the reception, the solemn entry, began with the arrival of the guests. As we shall see, it not only called for careful planning, but upon occasion it could challenge even more urgently the Venetian capacity for quick improvisation. In practice, the Venetian ceremonial entry defied rigid formulation. Although they shared structural similarities, no two entries were exactly alike in practice. Each was highly personalized and tailored to the specific guest and occasion, and subject to the exigencies of weather and tides.32 The entry commenced at the water’s edge. For, like the outer walls of a city, the lagoon defined the perimeters of Venetian ceremonial space. Four harbors served as entry portals to this space, the choice depending on the direction from which the guest had arrived: Marghera from the north (Fig. 4-4); Chioggia from the south (Fig. 4-5); Lizza Fusina via the Brenta Canal from the west (Fig. 4-6); S. Nicolò di Lido for those who came by sea from the east (Fig. 4-7).33 Already the visitor was presented with an illusion. For while such an expansive and fluid surface might seem to offer an infinite choice of possible routes toward the city, in fact, the shallow waters allowed entry only through a small number of deep, while hidden, channels (Fig. 4-8).34 In most cases, the route was also made deliberately indirect, with several intermediate island stops before the city itself was reached. The ceremonial transit of the lagoon was conceived in terms of a hierarchy of distinct welcomes of increasing splendor and dignity. Let us now examine the ritual itinerary in more detail. We will begin with the most modest programme: the reception of a professional diplomat. In 1494, the French 211
ambassador Philippe de Commynes was given a respectful, but not unduly pretentious, welcome. He was met at Fusina by “twenty-five gentlemen, elegantly and richly dressed with beautiful scarlet silk material ...”35 Had he been a duke or a cardinal, by contrast, he would have been met by thirty patricians.36 In accordance with the elaborate diplomatic etiquette of the day, the Venetian hosts had to maintain a delicate balance between pomp and discretion. Diplomats required one level of courtesy, princes—whether of church or state— another. De Commynes was taken into a gondola, one of a fleet of “neat little barges covered with tapestries and with beautiful thick rugs inside to sit upon” (Fig. 4-9). Thus comfortably installed, he was escorted by the welcoming party to S. Andrea della Certosa on the western tip of the city (near the present Piazzale Roma). There he was met by a second contingent of twenty-five patricians and the ambassadors of the dukes of Milan and Ferrara. The company, now numbering at least fifty- three, boarded two larger boats called piatti, each seating forty, “covered with crimson satin and carpeted with tapestries” (Figs. 4-10 and 4-11). De Commynes was placed between the two ambassadors. He noted that “to be seated in the middle is the place of honor in Italy.” But, as an ambassador, of course, he did not warrant a personal greeting by the doge. He was then taken along the Grand Canal, “all the way through the town” as he put it, to a final destination at the monastery of S. Giorgio Maggiore. The indirect route had clearly been chosen to impress de Commynes with a first view of—to use his own words—“the most beautiful street in the whole world.”37 Sometimes the most carefully made plans went awry. Four doctors and twenty-four “very young” gentlemen were chosen to go to Chioggia to greet Cardinal Nicolò Fiesco, archbishop of Ravenna, in 1519. On the day of his scheduled arrival there was heavy rain, and only two patricians actually went to Chioggia to greet him. As it happened, he too had found the weather daunting and kept his modest reception party waiting until the next day.38 Such experiences counseled caution. When another twenty-eight patricians were ordered to meet Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan, at Chioggia in 1530, they were to be fined 10 ducats each, if absent, “and, moreover, they will be named in our first Great Council so that everyone would know their disobedience.”39 212
A more elaborate itinerary than that of de Commynes was required for visitors of higher rank. For such arrivals, the islands of the lagoon were usually pressed into service as intermediate points of reception. Each stop involved disembarking and a change into a larger-sized watercraft. The final island reception involved a greeting by the doge himself on board his ceremonial barge, the Bucintoro. This vessel was specially constructed and adorned for the doge’s use on ceremonial occasions, particularly for the feast of the Sensa and the reception of foreign princes. It was first mentioned by name in mid-thirteenth century sources, although the use of a privileged ducal vessel probably pre-dated that period and derived from Byzantine custom. Over the years, there were several versions of the Bucintoro, each replacement larger and more sumptuously accoutred than the one that preceded it.40 A detailed description of its appearance in the fifteenth century was made by a member of the Greek contingent enroute to the Council of Ferrara in 1438. Observing that it was shorter and wider than the galley on which the Byzantine emperor had arrived, he wrote: It is composed of two decks. The lower deck was reserved for the oarsmen who sat in this place; they could row through the small openings provided, while two other boats preceded it and drew it by means of cables, when it was necessary to navigate. The upper deck was arranged in the form of a salon for the nobles; at the poop a seat had been disposed for the Doge in such a way that when he sits here he could see all the officials present. Opposite [him] there was a seat in the manner of the first, only far enough away to allow a free passage between the seated persons. From there down its length, it was full of other seats: two next to the side and two others opposite, then some others in the middle, leaving only a passage between them. All were covered with satin fabric in colors and diverse floral motifs. Above were disposed some baldachins, painted red, in the form of cylinders, elevated at a good height and covered with a tapestry of crimson wool, which fulfills, not without pleasantness, the function of a covering. The exterior of the walls were decorated with wood carvings and other delicate ornaments, [painted] blue and red and trimmed with gold. Some Lions of S. Marco, gilded and carved, were placed two at each side of the poop at the exterior and another on the prow.41 He made no mention of the gilded wood figure of Justice that would also have been affixed to the prow.42 213
Two early images may be combined mentally to give some sense of its festive appearance in this period. The boat is shown unadorned and docked in the Arsenal in Jacopo dei Barbari’s view of Venice of 1500 (Fig. 4-12). It appears with decorations, if less accurately rendered, in a manuscript of about 1522, where it is adorned (probably fancifully) with not just one, but two figures of Justice (Fig. 4-13).43 A new Bucintoro was constructed in 1525 and was first used for the feast of the Sensa the following year. Sanudo stated that it was longer and wider than the one which it replaced and was “very beautiful with much gold. The gold cost 600 ducats or more.”44 The prow of the new vessel, fully accoutred and showing again a figure of Justice, appears in a print by Jost van Amman of 1565 (Fig. 4-14). Refurbished in 1574 for the entry of Henry III of France (see below), it was replaced with a new version in 1601 at a cost of 70,000 ducats (Fig. 4-15) 45 Honor was also demonstrated by a maritime escort of the Bucintoro by several paraschelmi (also called palaschermi). The paraschelmo was a characteristically Venetian deception: it was a small fighting galley with twenty to forty oarsmen whose military character was disguised by means of special decorations, tapestries and banners (Fig. 4-16). During the pompous arrival of the Emperor Frederick III in 1469, one observer noted drily: “These fetes will pass ... [and] these palaschermi will be changed into galleys to go against the Turk.”46 A typical itinerary of the more extended variety was followed by Venice’s own Cardinal Grimani. He arrived at Chioggia with an entourage of 150 for a brief visit in 1498, enroute from Rome to his patriarchate in Aquileia. Sanudo wrote: Many patricians were sent to honor him at Chioggia and Malamocco; then the Bucintoro came to San Antonio with the Prince and orators and more than 500 gentlemen dressed in gold, silk and scarlet. Five paraschelmi were prepared. [The Cardinal] came in a ganzara [a felucca-like vessel with thirty oars] up to San Antonio and boarded the Bucintoro before the Prince; he was conducted to the house of the Marchese of Ferrara.47 Again, in spite of careful planning, there could be mishaps. Sanudo reported a less than successful visit made the following year by Cardinal Giovanni Borgia of Valencia, nephew of Pope Alexander VI. Five paraschelmi were readied and the 214
doge with five ambassadors, various bishops and prelates and many patricians went with the Bucintoro to the island of SS. Biagio e Cataldo to await him. After receptions at Chioggia and Malamocco, Borgia arrived at the island: Having disembarked in a heavy rainstorm, he was received by the Prince, and, completely drenched, they boarded the Bucintoro; [it] came through the Grand Canal to the house of the Marchese of Ferrara which had been prepared, and the Prince accompanied him to his room. I will not hesitate to say that all the paraschelmi were adorned just as usual by the Savi agli Ordini, but the standards were soaked and ruined …48 After the sodden guests had dried out and departed for Padua two weeks later, Sanudo made the further note that “in the house of the Marchese where they stayed, his Spaniards had robbed two carpets and linens belonging to our Signoria.”49 Malipiero elaborated further: “And those of his company had taken away blankets, curtains of gold, fine linens [and] tapestries; and at Murano they robbed a cloth of gold, taken from the high altar where it had been placed.”50 Adverse weather also caused ritual itineraries to be altered. The rainy arrival of the prudent Cardinal Fiesco in 1519 tested Venetian skills of improvisation. Originally expected at Chioggia on 18 October, he was to be escorted to a second reception on the 19th at Malamocco. He was then to proceed directly to S. Clemente where he would be given a ducal welcome on board the Bucintoro with the usual escort of five paraschelmi for his final entry to the city. It was only on the 21st, after the Signoria had twice assembled to greet him without success, that he finally arrived at the Bucintoro, now moored at the fondamenta of S. Antonio, just steps away from the Ducal Palace. With apologies for delays due to the continuing storm and an overnight stop at S. Spirito, he was taken on board the Bucintoro by the vice-doge, the Signoria and several prelates and ambassadors, including the papal legate who was on crutches. Sanudo noted, however, that among those greeting him, “there was not any Procurator, only those obligated to go during these months to accompany the Signoria.”51 The paraschelmi, as well, seem to have been forgotten. The ceremonial visit in 1524 of Francesco Maria della Rovere, duke of Urbino and commander of the Venetian land armies, was an altogether happier occasion (Fig. 4-17). He had come to receive the baton and office of Captain General of 215
the Republic. After the usual receptions and transport, the duke disembarked near the Rialto Bridge at the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, which the German merchants who did business there had decorated with tapestries. Dressed all in black velvet, della Rovere awaited Doge Andrea Gritti, who was attending vespers at S. Salvador. They greeted each other, according to plan, outside the door of the Fondaco. After crossing the Rialto Bridge together, they boarded the Bucintoro with at least 150 gentlemen dressed in silk and in scarlatto.52 Sanudo wrote: And with the greatest triumph ... the Bucintoro ... went through the canal with the paraschelmi in front, and before them a sottile armed galley ... which will be departing tomorrow ... And [the Duke] was accompanied to the habitation prepared in the house of San Marco at San Giorgio Maggiore, and the Prince accompanied him to his room just as usual ... So that the city was in a very great jubilee, and such arrival was well regarded by everyone, for his having behaved well in this war.53 Aside from the precise location at which the doge greeted the guest—the further from the Palazzo Ducale, the greater the honor54—two factors were most significant, and most closely watched on such occasions: the character of the doge’s greeting—whether or not he took off his corno, and the seating arrangement. For the most honored guest, the ducal throne was removed, and both shared a richly upholstered bench in equal status.55 Exceptions were carefully noted. When the doge removed his corno to greet the duke of Milan in 1530, for example, Sanudo noted that although this gesture was forbidden by law for less than kings, cardinals or electors of the empire, in this case it was appropriate; it was the first time a duke of Milan had ever visited Venice.56 During the same visit, the Signoria chose not to embarrass the orators of France, the emperor and the king of England by inviting them to the reception on board the Bucintoro. They had let it be known that they did not wish to be seated “below” the duke as Venetian protocol would require.57 Genuine royalty required an even more impressive tribute. Anne of Foix, the young bride of Ladislaw, king of Hungary, was welcomed into Venice in 1502 and lavishly entertained for three weeks at Venetian expense. According to a Venetian observer, she was greeted at Fusina by one hundred patricians in gondolas, “all dressed alike in togas of velvet, damask and crimson satin and directed to 216
compliment the queen.”58 Pierre Choques, Anne’s own man-at-arms, made a more flattering estimate, counting a reception committee of 140 to 160 noblemen. 59 According to custom, this initial reception was brief. It was generally limited to mutual salutations and a welcoming speech, delivered by the youngest doctor on the reception committee.60 Political concerns that underlay the festive occasion were often revealed at this point. Anne of Foix was thus praised for her “faith, constancy, probity, justice, sublimity of mind, moderation, prudence, humanity, clemency [and] ... liberality,” and asked to intercede on behalf of the Republic with the kings of France and Hungary in favor of an alliance against the Turks.61 At times, the Venetians over-estimated the capacity of their guest to appreciate the tribute. As Sanudo would observe of the duke of Urbino’s reception in 1524: “Ser Andrea di Prioli, the doctor ... made a Latin oration, and the Duke did not understand [it]; whence [Ser Andrea] was told that the Lord Duke did not know it by word, and he went to sit down, and he did not say anything else.”62 That the island stops served a genuine ritual function, and were not simply convenient intermissions to break up a long and tiring voyage, is indicated by the digressive itinerary that was followed in the entry of Anne of Foix. The queen and her party were taken onto elegantly decorated barges—the queen’s fitted out with tapestries—and followed a course along the south shore of the Giudecca to the island of S. Giorgio Maggiore for a second greeting. They were received there by “seven or eight hundred noblemen, dressed in silk and scarlet” and transferred onto one or more large flatboats, “adorned with gold drapery and crimson satin.”63 Turning back toward the west, the direction from whence they had come, the visitors were now conveyed along the Giudecca Canal in a flotilla of a hundred barges to the tiny church of SS. Biagio e Cataldo at the western tip of the island [now Sacca Fisola]. They had, in fact, zig-zagged. The doubling back was required to create the proper scenographic frame for the spectacle that was now to begin. Again, the intention was to amaze and delight with a stunning display of sight and sound. Here the queen was welcomed by Doge Leonardo Loredan 217
himself, who along with the six Procurators of S. Marco, was waiting in the Bucintoro, described by Choques as a “galleon all covered and hung with drapes of silk and adorned with gentlewomen admirably conspicuous for gold, gems and every sort of feminine galanterie ...” Again, he was particularly concerned with the size of the greeting party—the tangible measure of Anne’s honor. He now noted with satisfaction, “more than 1200 persons, all dressed in cloth of gold, velvet, damask and satin crimson; the least well dressed were in scarlet wool.” 64 Emphasizing the huge crowds who had gathered in boats and lined the embankments to observe the festivities, a Venetian observer estimated that “almost none of the innumerable inhabitants of the city remained in the house on this day.”65 As the queen was taken onto the Bucintoro, “there was a clamorous explosion of shouts from sailors and applause from the people ...” 66 She was seated at the stern, next to the doge, with the other persons disposed according to their rank. The ambassadors of France, Hungary, Ferrara, the pope, and other lords were in the party. In the main section of the boat, Choques counted 240 noble ladies, glittering with “diamonds, rubies, emeralds, topazes, pearls and other stones.” 67 Confections of sugar in the form of animals were brought on in 300 vessels of gold and silver, to the “surprise and admiration” of all (for example, Fig. 4-18). Then the Bucintoro departed, beginning the third phase of the queen’s circuitous approach to the city. Surrounding it were many boats of various sizes and shapes. Some of them served as small floating stages for tableaux vivants and masquerades, many with classical and chivalric imagery (cf. Fig. 4-19 for an eighteenth-century version). Choques described one, designed to honor the young queen: “a god of love, standing on a pillar green with foliage, who pointed his finger at that lady [the queen], and said in his speech: Soyez amoureux; he was accompanied by some ladies dressed in the Italian manner and some doctors holding books. Each of them said that there was no life without love.”68 Other floats were timely and political, referring explicitly to the Turkish threat that was foremost among Venetian concerns at the time. One held a castle with three kings, representing France, Hungary and the Signoria of Venice. Each armed with a sword, they encountered three Turks and put them to 218
flight. A lady dressed a la Francoise [sic] then arrived. She was crowned by the kings, and, all four dancing together, they concluded the performance.69 Some craft, surmounted by castles and towers, staged mock battles; others carried dancers. All these theatrical diversions were accompanied by musicians in boats ... of which there were such a great quantity, and which covered so much sea, that not any other thing, for however much one would draw the eye, could one see; although the surface of the lagoon extended in that part in the vastest space.70 On the Bucintoro itself, the ladies began to dance, as it slowly made its way through the mass of boats into the mouth of the Grand Canal. Both sides were packed with “men and women of all ages, everywhere,” lining the embankments, filling the windows, sitting on the rooftops.71 By now, ceremonial had turned into theatre proper, with the Bucintoro providing a movable stage which displayed the visitors to the city and, conversely, the city to the visitors as it made its way to its final destination. The royal party reached the Casa del Marchese in the evening, and the queen disembarked, accompanied by the doge and all the senators. Taking her leave, she offered thanks, and the doge escorted her to her apartments and withdrew. Choques concluded: “And it would be strange to many folk to see so many people, for it can be estimated that there were seen on this day more than 200,000 people.” 72 At this point the first phase of the queen’s visit, the ceremonial reception, was over. Three weeks later, upon her departure from the city after many entertainments, she told her hosts: “While I was with you, for the first time I believed myself to be queen.”73 Arrivals at S. Nicolò di Lido posed different problems. It was so close to the city that island stops were not practicable. Here the full scenographic potential of the expansive Venetian lagoon as a setting for the jewel-like city could best be exploited. When John Paleologus, the Byzantine emperor, arrived at the Lido from Constantinople in 1438 (Fig. 4-20), he was reluctant to leave his galley because of infirmity. The Venetians, always sensitive to potential diplomatic embarrassments, reacted quickly and put the Bucintoro at the disposal of the emperor, not as a conveyance but as a stately escort for his galley. A member of the Greek contingent recorded his own impressions of the approach to the city:
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And then, on the order of the emperor, the imperial galley lifted anchor, advancing slowly and as at a walking pace, accompanied and escorted by the Bucintoro and other ships, of which one followed them and the others made a circle all around them. Some of these vessels even found themselves carried along in front by the group. Such a great number of vessels had gathered together, in effect, that the sea in front of Venice was nearly hidden. One would have said when faced with this spectacle that this edge of the sea formed another moving Venice ... Only one thing threw a gloom in a certain manner over the lustre of this cortege: the humid and rainy character of the day.74 In 1489, Queen Caterina Cornaro, who had just relinquished the kingdom of Cyprus to the Venetian Republic, was also welcomed at the Lido upon her return to Venice. The Venetian patrician, Pietro Bembo, witnessed her reception by Doge Agostino Barb ari go and the Senate, and, as he put it, by an infinite multitude of all the orders, in fact by all the men of the city, who gaily accompanied her on their barges; and, carried in the ship called the Bucintoro in the midst of senators and the noblest ladies, she entered Venice. This had not happened to any Venetian woman before that day; which was, in truth, most joyous and festive to all the city.75 Bembo’s allusion to a panoramic view of all the orders of the city (cf. Fig. 4-21), the ‘social epiphany’ so characteristic of civic pageantry in general, gives a clue to the attractiveness of an entry from the Lido. Although guests arriving from other entry portals could also be greeted by a lagoon full of barges and gondolas, only at the Lido was the city itself the backdrop for a route that led straight into its principal thoroughfare: the Grand Canal. It is perhaps for this reason that the sumptuous entry of Henry III in 1574 featured a particularly protracted itinerary. 76 When Henry, as the new king of France, reached Marghera in 1574, he was greeted by a salvo of artillery fire and, according to Sansovino, “seventy patrician senators in ducal dress of crimson, each with his own decorated gondola.” To increase his honor, a novelty was introduced. He was given his choice of gondolas, each manned with four servants dressed in livery: one with a covering of black velvet, one of crimson satin, and one of gold brocade.” He chose the latter, boarding it with the duke of Ferrara.77 220
Successive blasts of artillery fire greeted him as he sailed for Murano, past S. Giuliano, S. Secondo, S. Alvise and S. Cristoforo della Pace. The royal party was met in mid-course by an additional forty gondolas covered with black velvet, which flanked the king’s boat in a lunette formation. Each carried a young patrician, “nobly dressed alla lunga alla Romana,” appointed to the service of the twenty-two year old king during his visit. Disembarking, the king was met by sixty halberdiers, dressed in orange and turchino silks, who were armed with antique weapons lent by the armory in the Palazzo Ducale. He was saluted by eighteen trumpeters and twelve drummers, dressed in the colors of the house of France.78 One is reminded that apparel on such occasions was a form of communication every bit as powerful as speech.79 The ducal greeting took place the next day. Doge Alvise Mocenigo went to Murano in a fleet of fifteen galleys, the fuste of the Council of Ten and a great multitude of barges. He took the king on board his own galley, which Sansovino described as the “most beautiful that ever came out of the Arsenal.” He added: “And what gave to each a marvelous delight, 354 Dalmatians placed at the oars, all dressed in yellow and pavonazzo taffeta in the livery of the king.” The king himself was seated in the place of honor at the end of the boat, between the doge and the cardinal of S. Sisto, and was then conducted in triumph to the Lido, where another flotilla and the newly gilded Bucintoro awaited him (Fig. 4-22).80 Disembarking at the Lido, opposite the church of S. Nicolò, the king and the doge walked into a stage set, fabricated especially for the occasion (Fig. 4-23). They first passed through a triumphal arch made of wood with three portals. It had been designed by Palladio on the model of the arch of Septimius Severus in Rome and was decorated with figures, trophies and history paintings of signal events of the king’s life painted by Veronese and Tintoretto (Fig. 4-24).81 Although similar devices of classical inspiration had long been standard components of entries in many Italian cities, this is the first appearance of such an apparatus in a Venetian entry for a foreign prince. Beyond it was a loggia— another equally transient construction—also built according to Palladio’s design (Fig. 4-25). It featured ten Corinthian columns and a compartmented ceiling painted with four winged victories holding palms and crowns. Sansovino observed 221
that when the king entered to pray before the altar placed against the back wall, it appeared as if he were personally being crowned by the victories.82 The formal ceremonies over, the royal party boarded the Bucintoro (Fig. 4-26). Surrounded by smaller vessels, they set sail to Ca’ Foscari, the king’s lodgings in the city, “with a perpetual thunder and rimbombo of artillery, of trumpets, of drums and of bells, that rose to the heaven; and with order made thus, that one could not desire better.”83 The king’s day ended at the window of the palace from which he observed a display of lights contrived in the form of lilies, pyramids, crowns, and other devices. “And because all the lights reflected in the water with splendor, it seemed that below the canal was another starry sky.”84 ***
Some conclusions may be drawn regarding the particularities of the Venetian ceremonial entry. The watery ambient is the single most striking feature that set apart Venetian receptions of foreign visitors from those elsewhere in Italy. To the hosts, it presented both opportunity and challenge; forced to accommodate to its limitations, they were also able to exploit its unique potentialities. Four distinctive features emerge from this examination of the Venetian entry that may help to define the special quality of its venezianità. First, the processional sequence of two or more receptions was based upon a tradition developed for land- based cities. It was, for example, closely analogous to a Florentine entry. Here the visitor was typically greeted at three reception points: on the road several miles outside the city; at the city gate; and finally at the ringhiera in front of the Palazzo Vecchio.85 A similar segmented course would have been followed in other Italian republics. But the Venetian situation afforded the hosts a much higher degree of control. Once the visitor was taken onto the lagoon in Venetian barges at the entry portal, he was deprived, ipso facto, of his freedom of independent movement and choice. As a result, the Venetians were able to manipulate the behavior and to regulate the experience of their guests to a profound degree. The historian Richard Trexler has pointed to the Florentine vulnerability to diplomatic insult. At the culminating reception of the entry ceremony in Florence, 222
which took place at the Palazzo Vecchio, an insensitive (or assertive) guest could impugn the honor of his hosts by riding all the way up to the ringhiera on horseback instead of dismounting at a respectful distance and walking the rest of the way on foot.86 Such opportunities were rare in the Venetian entry. One might imagine that the most a guest could do was simply to refuse to proceed further, an unattractive option if he were surrounded by the waters of the lagoon. The reception on the Bucintoro was controlled by the Venetians, with the signs of honor theirs to give. Second, the physical fabric of the city itself was not violated by the intrusion of temporary theatrical apparatus during the Venetian entry ceremony. Its embellishments were largely confined to ornaments: tapestries, banners, carpets and torches affixed to facades, and, as the sources often pointed out, richly dressed and bejew- eled women—metaphors for the republic’s prosperity. It is not by accident that the arch and loggia designed by Palladio for the entry of Henry III in 1574 were situated on the Lido, detached from the urban center.87 The purpose of such apparatus used in entries elsewhere in Italy was to transform the city into festive space and to honor the guest with personalized and topical references. These tributes were not abjured in Venice. But they had simply been displaced to “another moving Venice”: the sea of boats that filled the waters of the lagoon to surround the arriving guests. While temporary architectural forms like pavilions, arches and castles would be used right in the city in spectacles and entertainments on subsequent days during the visitor’s stay, his or her initial impression was that of a city already perfected. Third, in Venice, the linear character of the entry ritual was dominated by a panoramic spatial dimension. The visitor’s initial experience was (ideally) one of unimpeded movement through a labile, aqueous medium toward an isolated architectural mass of truly phantasmic character. As the ceremonial barges were rowed swiftly through the waters, the city would have seemed ever more “the impossible in the impossible,” the closer one came to it. Once there, the city was revealed primarily in terms of facades flanking the Grand Canal, with distinct visual penetration possible only between the columns of the Piazzetta. It defined the formal entrance to the political and religious heart of the city, as represented 223
by the Palazzo Ducale, the Basilica and the Piazza of S. Marco (Fig. 4-27). As Edward Muir and Ronald Weissman observe, visitors arrive in Venice quite suddenly at the center of the civitas. They do not move through it toward the center. During their visit, therefore, they proceed to experience the city from the center outward.88 If a visitor’s visual apprehension of other cities could be characterized as microcosmic, with each turn of a street corner offering new particularities, in a Venetian entry it might be regarded as macrocosmic, with the city perceived pictorially, as a whole. Finally, the revelation of the city behind the facades was programmed to unfold on subsequent days. One could characterize the process as a progressive unveiling of the several cities that made up the whole: the festive, the political, the religious, the mercantile. It is to this exercise in self-fashioning that we will now turn.
III The Revelation of the City The visit of the foreign dignitary was filled with various entertainments, with one or more official audiences with the doge in the Palazzo Ducale, and with excursions to those characteristic monuments and sites that served to define the city in a concrete sense.89 In general, this agenda remained fairly constant over time, but its particularities changed. The aim was to honor, to amuse, to amaze, to seduce, to deceive, and ultimately to put under obligation.
Entertainments For secular guests, typically on the day following the solemn entry, the festive face of Venice was displayed. Various diversions and spectacles were offered, according to season, fashion, and the tastes of the guest. These took four general forms: 1) games of combat, including the joust, mock battles involving the siege of a floating castle, or the traditional first fight on the Ponte dei Pugni by two neighborhood groups of popolari called the Nicoletti and the Castellani (Fig. 4-28); 2) regattas, a less contentious form of competition; 3) theatre, with open-air performances on water and on land; 4) banquets, most officially and lavishly in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio of the Palazzo Ducale, but also in private palaces.
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Over the course of the Renaissance period, several tendencies can be observed in the evolution of these festivities. First, there was a gradual shift from land to water based events. The joust, for example, had been a straightforward affair in the fourteenth century. Transplanted from the solid soil of the terra ferma, it initially took place on the equally solid ground of the Piazza S. Marco. It remained an important item in the repertory of princely entertainment until the end of the fifteenth century.90 One of the last proper jousts took place in 1491, with Caterina Cornaro, one-time queen of Cyprus, in attendance. The contenders were Stradioti, knights recruited by Venetians in the Levant. It was an ambiguous event, held on neither land nor water, but on the frozen Grand Canal. It portended the future, for with a few exceptions, later jousts were floating affairs: naval battles or sieges of castles that exploited the scenographic potential of the Grand Canal.91 Secondly, the productions themselves became increasingly more complex and lavish. Such a development can clearly be traced in the regatta, the most commonly offered daytime diversion. The earliest notices define them as military exercises or naval maneuvers to exercise galley crews. By the early fourteenth century the term was applied to simple boat races that were held on feast days of saints. Like jousts, they were initially regarded as Venetian alternatives to mainland activities. A Latin poem, datable to around 1300, described a race between two barche on the Grand Canal on the Feast of the Maries. The winner took a prize, “as is customary in a horse race.”92 In the regatta honoring Francesco Sforza and his wife Bianca who visited the city in 1442, a chronicler spoke of a “race of gondolas that is without the movement of the feet, but with that of the arms, it is more swiftly made on the slippery path of the waters »’93 By the end of the century, women began to participate in the regattas (Fig. 4-29). Sanudo wrote of the visit of Eleonora, duchess of Ferrara, and her daughter Beatrice d’Este in 1493, when “there were made regattas, first [with] men, then women of Chioggia, Murano, the contrade, and Malamocco, that was beautiful to see and that was not done before; there were twelve barges in number.”94 Water theatre and other aqueous displays included floating orchestras, choruses, dancing and pantomimes on rafts and temples called “theatres of the world” (Figs. 225
4-30, 4-31 (see page 136), and 4-32).95 These, too, following European-wide trends, became increasingly more lavish and magnificent over time. In Venice, as in any Italian city, the success of the spectacle was measured by the wonder and amazement that it evoked in the spectators. Some contrivances were peculiarly Venetian. For example, during the stay of Henry III in 1574, one of the successes of the celebration was a glass furnace on a wide raft that floated on the Grand Canal in front of the palace where the king was staying. Glass objects were made there all one evening before his eyes.96 But in general, again in congruence with larger trends, the imagery became more consistently romanizing and classical over the course of the sixteenth century.97 Third, as the productions became more elaborate, their planning and direction shifted from amateur into professional hands. Up to the middle of the sixteenth century, the Compagnie della Calza, brigades of (mostly) noble youths, had played two important roles in extra-governmental diplomacy. On the one hand, they appeared in notices as early as 1401 as masters of revels or heralds, sponsoring banquets for foreign guests and producing momarie and other theatrical events to entertain them. On the other hand, toward the end of the fifteenth century when Carpaccio painted them onto many of his narrative canvases for the scuole (Fig. 4-33), they began to function frequently as diplomats without portfolio under the close surveillance and control of governmental authorities.98 They did this by inducting foreign princes of their own age group into their societies and serving as intermediaries between them and the Republic. Not only did they create personal bonds between the Venetian patriciate and lords of surrounding states, but their unofficial status allowed them to seek small diplomatic favors without loss of face if unsuccessful. The Mantuan orator wrote in 1523: “Whoever has a friend among these Grandi in Venice, obtains what he wishes The Compagnie are not mentioned in the sources after 1565. After that time, the official responsibility for each fete was taken over by an ad hoc committee formed especially for the occasion. Theatrical diversions became less improvisational, and professional and semi-professional troops began to take charge of spectacles.100 On the whole, the self-presentation of the republic—projecting an illusion of wealth, splendor and liberality—involved an alchemy (here peculiarly Venetian) of 226
transformation and disguise. It epitomized the outward expression of a “theatre culture,” as defined by Peter Burke, with all the insincerity and self-awareness which that involved.101 As we have already pointed out, the challenge was to maintain the proper balance between showing off the real and fashioning the fictitious city, as well as masking contradictions between them. A successful display often involved breaking the rules. This is particularly apparent in the suspension of sumptuary laws during visits of distinguished guests. The show of private wealth, particularly on the bodies of noble women, was as essential as the liberality of public hospitality to give the correct image of a powerful republic. As one scholar put it: “The women of the patriciate then assumed a function of state: the function of making a part of those immense riches known, that allowed the government to attain both war and peace according to their designs.”102 Sanudo thus wrote of the reception by the dogaressa on the Bucintoro of the Emperor Frederick III and his spouse in 1452: “with about 200 ladies very well adorned with jewels, and with gowns of gold and silk, since it had been voted to suspend the law, already passed, against dressing in gold, for this occasion.”103 Venetians were also forbidden to wear mourning clothes during that visit and again in 1469 when the emperor returned to the city. Likewise, ‘blue laws’ prohibiting masquerades and momarie were often conveniently suspended in the name of princely entertainment. 104 Furthermore, the splendid fagades that lined the Grand Canal were not always what they seemed. During a festa made for the duke of Milan in 1530, Sanudo described the palaces of several nobles, beautifully adorned with fine carpets. He added, not without malice: And of this I will not be silent: that [palace] of Ser Francesco Querini, Cavalier, and his brothers was also decorated, the columns of the balconies below and above with carpets, but all the glass of the windows was broken and they have such riches!105 Likewise, Venetian manners were sometimes less decorous than officials would have desired. During the same visit, Sanudo was particularly critical of the comportment of some fellow patricians at a meal served after a mock naval battle. Praising the “magnificent and sumptuous” repast that included 250 confections of sugar made in various shapes, he added: 227
... it was a most beautiful collation, but badly served, because the Milanese gentlemen who were on the viewing platform with the ladies did not receive anything, but many [Venetian] senators stuffed their sleeves with confections to the great shame of those who saw them, and among the others, Ser Victor Morosini of S. Polo who stuffed himself with many confections.106 Small successes in deliberately fooling the visitor were, however, recorded with relish. At a lavish banquet honoring Henry III in 1574, the king was offered a sugar figure made in the semblance of a folded table napkin. To the delight of the spectators, he expressed amazement when it broke into pieces in his hands.107 Other illusions appeared not so much to create false realities as to transcend the laws of nature itself. The day of the regatta honoring Henry III did not end at sunset, and the ineluctable fall of darkness was denied its due course. Working a miraculous transformation, Sansovino wrote that fireworks illuminated the sky “against its natural order all night long.”108 The double illusion seemed nothing less than a secular joining of heaven and earth: “the impossible in the impossible.” Even the ritual calendar was open to manipulation if the spectacle demanded it. Time itself could be bent. Regularly scheduled processions and other observances held on religious feast days were postponed on occasion for the convenience of guests. Presumably the saint to be honored could wait. In 1493, for example, it was a small matter to extend the feast of the Sensa—regularly held on the day of Christ’s Ascension—for one day so that Beatrice d’Este and her company could admire the glassware displayed on the Piazza S. Marco.109 Again, in 1524 the Signoria persuaded a reluctant patriarch of Venice to depart from his normal custom of celebrating mass on the feast day of St. Peter in the cathedral church of S. Pietro di Castello. Instead, he was obliged to preside at a ceremony in S. Marco, wherein Francesco Maria della Rovere would be presented with the baton of the Captain General of the Republic. The event had originally been scheduled to take place three days later, but upon the advice of his astrologer, della Rovere insisted upon a change to a presumably more propitious (if less convenient) date.110 Four Japanese princes, recently converted to Christianity, came to Venice in company with a Jesuit priest in 1585 (Fig. 4-35). The Signoria was prompted to defer the procession normally made on the feast day of the Apparition of Saint 228
Mark to that honoring Saints Peter and Paul, three days later. A member of the visiting delegation explained, “Because in place of games and similar celebrations, that are customarily made for visits of other princes, they judged that for these new Christians ... only a spiritual and devotional celebration would be appropriate.”111 With the canopies and other decorations used for the feast of Corpus Christi still in place, the spectacle was all the more impressive (Fig. 4-34). 112 That the procession was unusually magnificent is indicated by the fact that Padre Stringa described its various aspects in unusual detail in his additions to Sansovino’s Venetia città nobilissima. In the forefront, he counted over 700 reverend fathers of fifteen monasteries, “the majority then adorned in pivials and vestments of gold and with the most holy relics in hand of the greatest and infinite value ... that increased the devotion.” These were followed by the nine congregations of priests, each with their standards, relics and candles. The Scuole Grandi, numbering about 3,000, constituted the third part of the procession. It was here that the ideological content of the celebration could be expressed through allegorical figures carried on palchi or platforms. One held a figure of Venetia: a “young woman, dressed nobly and very richly with jewels ... and very large precious pearls in great number.” Six members of the Scuole Grandi knelt in front of her, asking what they must do. She gave her response in the form of a motto written in large letters: “Servate praecepta” (observe the rules). Stringa admitted in conclusion that “I have not recounted the thousandth part of what would be necessary to express the whole thing minutely, so many were the number of persons, the adornments of the apparatus, the silver objects, the pearls, the jewels, the gold; that without doubt it was worth millions if not billions of ducats.”113 While ostensibly it was the piety of the young converts that was being addressed, the procession clearly offered the republic the singular opportunity of displaying its political ideology and material riches to the ambassadors of a truly exotic and distant foreign power. But as we would expect, the message of such a spectacle was multivalent: to the citizen, a call to civic virtue and an opportunity to participate in the Venetian consensus; to the visitors, a display of civic wealth and piety; to
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both, the power of the Republic reified by men and material goods in a splendid epiphany of the religious and social orders of the city.114
The Ducal Audience The day of festivities was often followed on the next by the audience with the doge in the Palazzo Ducale. In the fifteenth century, ambassadors were received in the Sala delle do Nape, also called the Sala dell’Audientia, and visitors of higher rank like princes and dukes in the Sala del Collegio (Fig. 4-36). Here protocol set a standard that allowed for every nuance of gesture and placement to be carefully calibrated according to the rank of the guest and for every deviation to be noted with care.115 Typically the guest was brought from his residence by an escort of gentlemen and conducted to the Ducal Palace in piatti.116 The location of the ducal greeting was the first gauge of the dignity of the guest. Ambassadors were met inside the Sala del Collegio at various distances from the doge’s throne, while those of princely rank, like dukes and lords, warranted a greeting outside the room on the landing of the staircase.117 A painting in the Museo Correr of the arrival of a foreign dignitary in the Piazzetta suggests a visitor of high rank—a head of state—for the doge has met his guest at the molo and is escorting him on foot toward the Ducal Palace (Fig. 4-37).118 A similar situation is shown in another painting in which Caterina Cornaro, the former queen of Cypress, is greeted by the doge in the Piazza S. Marco (Fig. 4-38). The meeting in 1438 between Doge Francesco Foscari and the Byzantine envoys on the day before the solemn entry of the emperor and patriarch to the city was recorded in unusual detail, and it gives some sense of the choreographed texture and nuance of such occasions. Sylvestre Syropoulos, a Greek member of the visiting delegation, wrote of the doge as he received a high Byzantine official: And noticing us at the door of the room, he stood up at once and as much as we went toward him, in the same manner he advanced toward us. In this way, it is at the middle of the room that we saluted him and addressed him. He received us with joy and made a speech to us. Then he grasped one of the [official's] hands and one of mine. The first lords of his entourage took, on his order, the other hand 230
of each of us ... Holding us and marching thus, the doge conducted us to the ... seat on which he himself sat. Then, turning back to seat himself, he made us turn also, for he still held us by the hands. He then had the [official] sit at his side, and me directly next to him and at this moment he let us go.”119 Seating arrangements were important indicators of respect and, as such, were always carefully noted by observers. The place of honor was at the doge’s right, the usual seat of his oldest councillor. As on the Bucintoro, it was an additional honor for the doge’s throne to be removed and two cushions put side by side for him and the guest.120 For an audience to function smoothly, both parties had to understand the conventions. They depended on a common European culture to avoid embarrassment and insult. The customs of the Japanese ambassadors were thus of considerable interest to their hosts. One Italian observer wrote that “in their rites and conversation they have customs so different from all the other nations, [it is] as if they had contrived to do everything in reverse from the others ... thus, when we, to honor others, take off our hats, they take off their shoes; and when we stand up, they sit down, holding it to be the greatest discourtesy to receive someone standing upright.”121 Aside from the formulaic rhetoric and false sincerity that were essential to the smooth functioning of such meetings, Venetian diplomatic welcomes had a further element of illusion. Nobles of foreign states were regularly inscribed in the Venetian nobility in a meeting of the Great Council (Fig. 4-39) and allowed to participate in the elections to office held on that day.122 Although these honorary patricians could attend meetings on future visits to the city, there would have been no assumption of the rights of real citizenship and ongoing participation in affairs of government. Conferral of patrician status was simply a polite fiction that honored the guest explicitly while placing him implicitly in a position of obligation to the republic.
Visits to Notable Things In his short guide to the city, written in 1493, Sanudo made up a list of “the notable things that are shown to lords in Venice.” In it, he adumbrated the basic 231
program of visits and activities through which the desired image of the city was to be revealed. Some of these items we have dealt with already: the solemn entry on the Bucintoro, the regatta, the audience with the Signoria in the Sala del Collegio and attendance at the Great Council. Along with a general visit to the Ducal Palace, which typically included a tour of the armory, these activities served to introduce the visitor to the political and festive sides of the city. Aside from attendance at religious processions, if the calendar was amenable to adjustment, the guest was also to be shown the city’s religious magnificence. While a tour of S. Marco, including its treasury, was mandatory, a visit to the convents at S. Maria dei Vergini or S. Zaccaria to hear the nuns’ choir was also recommended.123 A day at the Arsenal to view the fabled, and real, source of Venetian naval power was a privilege that was offered even to reluctant female guests. The young bride of Lionello d’Este was taken there in 1444 to view the galleys and munitions. She wished, however, to see the Marzaria, another point of interest later recommended by Sanudo along with the Rialto, with all the finest goods on display. Taking visible delight in the fabrics, jewels and metal work, she walked toward the Rialto. She was an object of interest herself and attracted a great crowd of spectators. As she crossed the Rialto Bridge, a chronicler noted, the sides broke through and many were drowned. She left Venice undaunted, nonetheless, escorted by senators and laden with expensive gifts.124 A Milanese observer had few illusions about Venetian aims of self-definition through its commercial activities. During the visit of Emperor Frederick III in 1469, he wrote that all the botteghe were spread with the best goods “to signify to [the emperor] and those who are with him, as well as those who are watching, that they are rich, powerful and that they are great lords, and they spare no efforts to make them realize this.”125 Sanudo’s list also advised a visit to Murano to view the glass-making and concluded with a climb to the top of the Campanile of S. Marco for those “who wish it; and other things are shown according to what appeals to them and what they wish to see.”126 Most often, any additional excursions would be confined to visits to churches or notable residences. Henry III, however, demonstrated his universal tastes and obtained an even more complete picture of Venetian life and 232
culture than the typical diplomatic guest, by visiting Titian in his studio as well as the famous courtesan Veronica Franco.127
The Leavetaking The final act of a diplomatic visit involved the leavetaking and the presentation of gifts by the Republic. Most commonly offered were money, chains and collars of gold, silver vessels and clothing or lengths of fine cloth. Attempts to limit the total yearly expenditure on gifts and other expenses relating to the reception of ambassadors met with little success.128 Distinctions were made according to the rank of the guest.129 A gold chain worth 200 to 300 scudi, the value depending on the dignity of his princely employer, was a typical present for an ambassador in the mid-sixteenth century.130 The papal nuncio who presented the Golden Rose to the republic in 1577 on behalf of the pope received 500 scudi “as a sign of gratitude according to its usual custom.”131 The four Japanese princes who visited the city in 1585 received lengths of gold and silk cloth worth a total of 1000 ducats.132 That genuine warmth and affection had nothing to do with the size of the diplomatic gift is amply demonstrated by the lavish tributes given to Turkish ambassadors. Donald Queller observes that when the Venetians were not trying to destroy the Ottomans, they were trying to placate them. In 1484, the Turkish ambassador was given a robe of gold cloth and 200 ducats, and each of his servants received a robe of scarlet wool.133 The ante had increased considerably by 1576, when the Ottoman legate Cassan Chiaus—who had been housed so modestly on the Giudecca—received 500 ducats and ten very rich garments: five of damask, four of scarlatto and one of velvet.134 ***
Unlike land-bound cities, Venice revealed its constituent parts, in a topographical sense, only after the initial ceremonial entry. In Venice, already extraordinary, it was the ordinary itself that was made to appear to be unreal. Its ritual transformation involved the construction of a new reality, that was in fact, no more than an alternate unreality: an illusion based upon an illusion. As Sanudo had written about the site of Venice: “It is a miraculous thing to believe, if one 233
does not see it.�135 To this one might add, that one perhaps should not quite believe it even if one does see it. And so the deliberately calculated ritual entry to the city, along with the carefully programmed movement within it, played a decisive role in forming the long lasting view of Venice as la Serenissima: the most triumphant and serene Republic.
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Notes 1 Francesco Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima et singolare descritta in XIII libri, with additions by G. Martinioni, Venice, 1663, p. 439. 2 Ibid., pp. 439-465. See also Biblioteca Marciana, Venice [=BMV], MS Ital. VII 164 (7306), “Memorie del passagio per lo stato veneto di principi e soggetti esteri, 1347-1773; Dalle accoglienze usate dei viniziani ai principi esterni” Venice, 1840; Teodoro Toderini, Cerimoniali e feste in occasione di avvenimenti e passagi nelli stati della repubblica veneta di duchi, arciduchi ed imperatori della augustissima casa d'Austria dall'anno 1361 al 1797, Venice, 1857; G. Tassini, Feste, Spettacoli, Divertimenti e Piaceri degli antichi Veneziani, Venice, 1890, pp. 102-107; Pompeo Molmenti, La storia di Venezia nella vita privata, 7th ed., Bergamo, 1928, pp. 434-441; Bianca Tamassia Mazzarotto, Le feste veneziane, 2nd ed., Florence, 1980, pp. 307-315; and Edward Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice, Princeton, 1981, pp. 231-237. Useful primary sources for Venetian entries during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries include Marin Sanudo, I Diarii, Rinaldo Fulin, ed., 58 vols., Venice, 1879-1903; idem, Vitae Ducum Venetorum, Lodovico Muratori, ed., in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, old series, 22, Milan, 1733; Archivio di Stato, Venice [ASV], Collegio, Cerimoniale 1; Domenico Malipiero, Annali veneti, dall'anno 1457-1500, Agostino Sagredo, ed., in Archivio storico italiano, series 1, 7:1-2, 1843-1844; and Girolamo Priuli, I Diarii, Arturo Segre and Roberto Cessi, eds., in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, new series, 24:3, Città di Castello, 1912-1941. 3. Felix Faber, Evagatorium in Terrae Sanctae, Arabiae et Egypti Peregrinationem, C. D. Has- sler, ed., Stuttgart, 1843, 4, p. 433. According to Muir, Civic Ritual, p. 232, the diplomatic reception was “the most common ceremonial situation.” 4. Muir, Civic Ritual, p. 5. Cf. the review of Muir’s book by Richard Trexler in Speculum 57 (1982), pp. 642-646; and Alberto Tenenti, “L’uso scenografico degli spazi pubblici: 1490-1580,” in Tiziano e Venezia: Convegno Internazionale di Studi (Venezia, 1976), Venice, 1980, pp. 21-26. Cf. W. R. Connor, “Tribes, Festivals and Processions; Civic Ceremonial and Political Manipulation in Archaic Greece,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 107 (1987), pp. 40-50. On the dynamics of public ceremonial, see Sally Moore and Barbara Myerhoff, Secular Ritual, Amsterdam, 1977; Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, Chicago and London, 1969; and idem, Dramas, Fields and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society, Ithaca, New York, 1984. 5. In his The historical anthropology of early modern Italy, Cambridge, 1987, p. 174. 6. The literature prior to 1975 is summarized and discussed by Anne-Marie Lecoq, “La ‘Città festeggiarne’: Les fètes publiques au XVC et XVP siècles,” Revue de TArt 33 (1976), pp. 83-100. More recent contributions of particular interest include Richard Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence, New York, 1980; Roy Strong, Art and Power, Renaissance Festivals 1450-1650, London, 1984; and works cited in notes 7 and 8. 7. The point of departure for Venetian ritual studies is now Muir, Civic Ritual. For the relationship between public ceremonial and Venetian art, see idem, “Images of Power: Art and Pageantry in Renaissance Venice,” American Historical Review 84 (1979), pp. 16-52; Patricia Fortini Brown, Venetian Narrative Painting in the Age of Carpaccio, London and New Haven, 1988, pp. 165-191; and Wolfgang Wolters, Der Bilderschmuck des Dogenpalastes, Wiesbaden, 1983, pp. 45-56 and passim. 8 See, in particular, Bonner Mitchell, The Majesty of the State. Triumphal Progresses of Foreign Sovereigns in Renaissance Italy (1494-1600), Florence, 1986; Trexler, Public Life, pp. 297-330; Charles Stinger, “Roma Triumphans: Triumphs in the Thought and Ceremonies of Renaissance Rome,” Medievalia et Humanistica, new series, 10 (1981), pp. 189-201; Giovanni Carandente, I trionfi del primo Rinascimento, Turin, 1963; and Robert Scheller, “Gallia Cisalpina: Louis XII and Italy, 1499-1508,” Simiolus 15 (1985), pp. 5-60. 9 Mitchell, The Majesty of the State, p. 42. 10 Angelo Gabrieli, Libellus hospitalis munificentiae venetorum in excipienda Anna Regina Hun- gariae (1502), [Nozze Negri-Stecchini], Padua, 1837, p. 29. 11 Faber, Evagatorium, p. 83. 12 Francesco Sansovino, Delle cose notabili della città di Venetia. Libri II [1556], Venice, 1602, p. L 13 In his Historical anthropology, pp. 10-13. 14 On the arrival of the Byzantine emperor in 1438, see Sylvestre Syropoulos, Les “Memoires” du Grand Ecclesiarque de TÉglise de Constantinople sur le concile de Florence (1438-1439), Rome, 1971, pp. 213-215. See also Toderini, Cerimoniali e feste, pp. 9-11, for the entry of the empress in 1452; she was kept waiting at the Lido for three days so that preparations could be completed for a more impressive welcome. 273
15 Andrea Da Mosto, L'Archivio di Stato di Venezia: Indice generale, storico, descrittivo ed analitico, Rome, 1937-1940, I, p. 22. For an illuminating study on ceremonial books in Florence, see Richard Trexler, The Libro Cerimoniale of the Florentine Republic, Geneva, 1978. 16 Muir, Civic Ritual, pp. 187-188 and 232-235. 17 Robert Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1980, pp. 40 and 206-207. 18 Marin Sanudo, De origine, situ et magistratibus urbis Venetae ovvero La Città di Venetia (1493-1530), Angela Caracciolo Aricò, ed., Milan, 1980, pp. I ll and 248. 19 Richard MacKenney, Tradesmen and Traders: the World of the Guilds in Venice and Europe, c. 1250-c. 1650, London, 1987, pp. 143-149. 20 Da Mosto, L'Archivio di Stato, I, p. 139; Muir, Civic Ritual, p. 188. 21 Sanudo, De origine, pp. I ll and 248. 22 Donald Queller, Early Venetian Legislation on Ambassadors, Geneva, 1966, pp. 54-55. 23 Deborah Howard, The Architectural History of Venice, London, 1980, pp. 38-43. The republic had purchased the palace from the Pesaro family for 10,000 ducats in 1381 and gave it to Nicolò d’Este, the marquis of Ferrara. It was confiscated for a short time in 1482 during the War of Ferrara and again in 1509 during the war of the League of Cambrai. In 1621 it was given to the Turks as a trading and residential center, the side towers were removed, and it has been known since then as the Fondaco dei Turchi. Until that time it seems to have been available on request for princely habitation. See Bruce Lauritzen and Alexander Zielcke, Palaces of Venice, London, 1978, pp. 60-63. 24 Sanudo, Vitae ducum venetorum, columns 1052, 1143 and 1188. Cf. P. Ghinzoni, “Federico III Imperatore a Venezia (7 al 19 Febbrajo 1469),” Archivio Veneto 37 (1889), p. 135, citing Michele Colli, a Milanese observer, who thought that the palace belonged to the duke of Modena. 25 Sanudo, Diarii, 4, column 283. 26 For example, Annibal Capua, the papal legate who presented the Golden Rose to the republic in 1577, stayed in the monastery at the Frari: ASV, Collegio, Cerimoniale 1, folio 57 verso. 27 Sanudo, Diarii, 36, columns 430 and 460. 28 Ibid., 54, columns 30-32 and 38. 29 ASV, Collegio, Cerimoniale 1, folio 47. 30 Giuliano Confalonieri, cited in Ghinzoni, “Federico III Imperatore,” p. 137. 31 Sanudo, Diarii, 4, column 283. For other preparations for Anne’s visit, see also ibid., columns 271-272 and 277. 32 The Cerimoniale should thus be considered a casebook rather than a set of prescriptions. Cf. Trexler, Libro Cerimoniale, pp. 58-59. 33 This conclusion is drawn from a study of numerous entries recorded in Sanudo, Diarii, and ASV, Collegio, Cerimoniale 1. 34 Sanudo, De origine, p. 20: “... et ogni zorno eresse, et discresce le acque; adeo riman secho che l’acqua è molto bassa, et quasi non si puoi andar per barca dove si voria, a tempi de’sec- chi.” 35 The Memoirs of Philippe de Commynes, Samuel Kinser, ed., Columbia, South Carolina, 1973, 2, p. 489. These welcoming parties were generally composed of the youngest senators, who were on call for such duties for a period of three months. See Sanudo, Diarii, 28, column 145. 36 ASV, Collegio, Cerimoniale 1, folios 13-14. 37 The Memoirs of Philippe de Commynes, 2, pp. 489-490. 38 Sanudo, Diarii, 28, columns 26, 27 and 30-32. 39 Ibid., 54, columns 23 and 30. 40 For the Bucintoro, see Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima, pp. 449-450; Vincenzo Coronelli, Ships and other sort of craft used by the various nations of the world— Venice 1690, Mario M. Witt, trans., London, 1970, pp. 15-16; and Lina Padoan Urban, “La festa della Sensa nelle arti e nell’iconografia,” Studi veneziani 10 (1968), p p .317-329. 41 Syropoulos, Les “Memoires,” p. 217. 42 Padoan Urban, “La festa della Sensa,” p. 321. 43 Ibid., pp. 320-321. 44 Sanudo, Diarii, 39, column 469; and ibid., 41, column 317. 45 Padoan Urban, “La festa della Sensa,” p. 322. 46 Ghinzoni, “Federico III Imperatore,” p. 134. 274
47 Sanudo, Diarii, 1, columns 961-964. Cf. Malipiero, Annali veneti, p. 502. 48 Sanudo, Diarii, 2, column 1276. 49 Ibid., 2, column 1351. 50 Malipiero, Annali veneti, p. 565. On diplomatic immunity for such transgressions, see Donald Queller, The Office of the Ambassador in the Middle Ages, Princeton, 1967, pp. 175-208. 51 Sanudo, Diarii, 23, column 33. 52 Ibid., 36, columns 422, 426 and 428-431. 53 Ibid., 36, column 430. 54 Muir, Civic Ritual, p. 235. 55 Ibid., p. 233. Cf. ASV, Collegio, Cerimoniale 1, folio 13 verso. For the symbolic and ceremonial role of the doge, see Gina Fasoli, “Liturgia e cerimoniale ducale,” in Venezia e il Levante fino al secolo XV, Agostino Pertusi, ed., Florence, 1973, l,pp. 261-295. 56 Sanudo, Diarii, 54, column 36. 57 Ibid. For similar disputes amongst ambassadors over “pride of place,” see Muir, Civic Ritual, p. 236. See also Queller, Office of the Ambassador, pp. 200-201. 58 Gabrieli, Libellus, p. 31. For Sanudo’s description of the entry, see his Diarii, 4, columns 287-288; cf. Priuli, Diarii, 2, pp. 218-223. 59 Pierre Choques, “Discours sur le voyage d’Anne de Foix dans la Seigneurie de Venise,” Bibliothèque de TÉcole des Chartes, series 5, 2 (1861), p. 176. 60 Sanudo, Diarii, 36, column 431: “In questo zorno zonto il signor ducha di Urbin a Liza Fusina, li zentilhomini lo aspectava, el qual vene ... et iusta il solito il più zovene dotor li dia far le parole ...” Sanudo further notes that when the duke arrived at S. Giorgio d’Alga, he was greeted by gentlemen of greater age, implying that the concept of a hierarchy of increasingly elaborate receptions also included this factor as a sign of honor. See also ibid., 28, column 30; and ibid, 36, column 428. Molmenti {La storia di Venezia, 2, p. 434) states that the reception committee was made up of the oldest or the youngest nobles, depending on the rank of the guest. 61 Gabrieli, Libellus, pp. 31-33. 62 Sanudo, Diarii, 36, column 431. 63 Choques, “Discours,” pp. 176-177. 64 Ibid., p. 177. 65 Gabrieli, Libellus, p. 37. 66 Ibid. 67 Choques, “Discours,” pp. 177-178. 68 Ibid., p.m. 69 Ibid., p. 179. 70 Gabrieli, Libellus, p. 37. Cf. Maria Teresa Muraro, “La festa a Venezia e le sue manifestazioni rappresentative: Le Compagnie della Calza e le momarie,” in Storia della cultura veneta dal primo Quattrocento al Concilio di Trento, III/3, Vicenza, 1981, pp. 328-334; and Lina Padoan Urban, “Le feste sull’acqua a Venezia nel secolo XVI e il potere politico,” in II teatro italiano del Rinascimento, Edizioni di comunità, 1980, pp. 483-505. 71 Gabrieli, Libellus, p. 39. 72 Choques, “Discours,” p. 180. 73 Sanudo, Diarii, 4, column 296. 74 Syropoulos, Les “M ém o irespp. 218-219. 75 Pietro Bembo, Della historia vinitiana, Venice, 1552, folio 9 recto. Cf. M alipiero, Annali veneti, p. 611. 76 The fundamental modern account of this event is Pierre de Nolhac and Angelo Solerti, Il viaggio in Italia di Enrico III re di Francia e le feste a Venezia, Ferrara, Mantova e Torino, Turin, 1890. For an admirable summary of the king’s progress in Italy and extensive bibliographical references, see Mitchell, Majesty of the State, pp. 112-126. Primary sources are cited in Architettura e Utopia nella Venezia del Cinquecento, Milan, 1980, p. 283. For purposes of this article, I have followed the Venetian viewpoint offered in Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima, pp. 441-449. 77 Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima, p. 443. 78 Ibid. See also ASV, Collegio, Cerimoniale 1, folio 14, where the significance of the attire of the Emperor Frederick III during his entry in 1469 did not pass unobserved: “Cesar consueverat vestibus nigris uti: sed in 275
ingressu Venetias prodiit veste aurea preciosissima qua illum Rome Paulus secundus Pontifex maximus donaret.” 79 See Burke, Historical anthropology, pp. 4 and 173; and Queller, Office of the Ambassador, p. 191. 80 Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima, pp. 443-444. 81 Ibid., pp. 444-445. For Palladio’s stage sets for the occasion, see Architettura e Utopia, pp. 152-155; André Chastel, “Palladio et l’art des fètes,” Bollettino del Centro internazionale di studi di architettura Andrea Palladio 2, 1960, pp. 29-33; Giangiorgio Zorzi, Le opere pubbliche e i palazzi privati di Andrea Palladio, Venice, 1965, pp. 171-175; Manfredo Tafuri, “Teatro e città nell’architettura palladiana,” Bollettino del Centro internazionale di studi di architettura Andrea Palladio 10, 1968, pp. 65-78; Lina Padoan Urban, “Apparati scenografici nelle feste veneziane cinquecentesche,” Arte Veneta 23 (1969), pp. 147-152; Lionello Puppi, Palladio, London, 1975, pp. 406^108. For the architecture of pageantry, see George Kernodle, “Déroulement de la procession dans les temps ou espace théatral dans les fètes de la Renaissance,” in Les fètes de la Renaissance, Jean Jacquot, ed., Paris, 1956, pp. 443-462. 82 Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima, p. 445. Temporary arches were placed on the molo at the entrance to the Piazzetta adjacent to the Palazzo Ducale for the solemn entries of the Dogaressa Zilia Dandolo in 1557 and the Dogaressa Moro- sina Morosini Grimani in 1597 (see Fig. 4-32), and two arches were constructed at the foot of the Rialto bridge to celebrate the victory at Lepanto in 1571. See Lina Padoan Urban, “Gli spettacoli urbani e l’Utopia,” in Architettura e Utopia nella Venezia del Cinquecento, Milan, 1980, p. 146; and idem, “Apparati scenografici,” pp. 152-154. 83 Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima, p. 445. 84 Ibid. Cf. Trexler, Public Life, p. 329. 85 Trexler, Public Life, pp. 306-318. See also Philippe Braunstein and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, “Florence et Venise: les rituels publics à Tépoque de la Renaissance,” Annales 38, no. 5, (1983), pp. 1110-1124. 86 Trexler, Public Life, p. 313. 87 Puppi, Palladio, pp. 407-408, suggests that the arch and loggia helped to integrate the distant city in the event by implying its presence. Both structures thus functioned together as “foreground to a stage occupied by the city.” To Chastel (“Palladio et Part des fetes,” p. 30), the arch solemnized the entry, the loggia the reception. Taken together with the perspective view of the city, they were analogous to the three elements of a traditional theatre, as exemplified by Palladio’s Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza. The arches erected in earlier years in Venice proper (see note 82) would have had a different function altogether, for they were purely Venetian occasions and did not involve the receiving of a foreign element into civic space. 88 On the symbolic resonance of Venetian topography, see Edward Muir and Ronald Weissman, “Social and Symbolic Places in Renaissance Venice and Florence,” in The Power of Place, J. Agnew and J. Duncan, eds., Syracuse, 1988; and Denis Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape, Totowa, New Jersey, 1984, particularly pp. 102-141. 89 See Sansovino, Venetia nobilissima, p. 450: Sanudo, De origine, pp. 62 and 179; and works cited in note 2 above. Cf. Trexler, Public Life, pp. 318-323 and 326-328. 90 For tournaments and jousts in Venice, see Museo Civico Correr, Venice, Cod. Cicogna 2991, “Circa Funzioni pubbliche Veneziane e altre,” fascicles I and II; E. A. Cicogna, Lettera di Emmanuele Antonio Cicogna a Cleandro Conte di Prato intorno ad alcune regate veneziane, 2nd ed., Venice, 1856; and Elena Povoledo, “La théàtre de tournoi en Italie pendant la Renaissance,” in La lieu théatral à la Renaissance, Jean Jacquot, ed., Paris, 1964, p. 97. 91 MCV, Cod. Cicogna 2991, fase. II. 8, carta 3 recto; and Tassini, Feste, Spettacoli, Divertimenti e Piaceri, pp. 23-25. For the ritual fist fights, see Tamassia Mazzarotto, Le feste veneziane, pp. 40-50. 92 Cicogna, Lettera, p. 17. For regattas, see also Tassini, Feste, Spettacoli, Divertimenti e Piaceri, pp. 35-36; and Tamassia Mazzarotto, Le feste veneziane, pp. 51-63. 93 Cicogna, Lettera, p. 19. 94 Ibid. Cf. Marcantonio Sabellico, Epistolae, Lib. Ill, p. 18, letter to M. Ant. Barbavaro; and Emilio Motta, “Rappresentazioni sceniche in Venezia nel 1493 in occasione della venuta di Beatrice d’Este,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 1 (1886), pp. 386-392. 95 There is a particularly rich literature on Venetian theatre. Good recent studies include Muraro, “La festa a Venezia,” pp. 315-341; Padoan Urban, “Le feste sull’acqua;” and idem, ‘“Teatri e Teatri del M ondo’ nella Venezia del Cinquecento,” Arte Veneta 2, (1966), pp. 137-146; and Ludovico Zorzi, Il teatro e la città: saggi sulla scena italiana, Turin, 1977. 276
For a detailed accounting of expenses for the banquets and other entertainment of Renata d’Este, duchess of Ferrara, in 1534, see ASV, Ufficiale alle Rason Vecchie, Notatorio, Reg. 27, carta 188, published by Molmenti, La storia di Venezia, 2, pp. 494-496. 96 Molmenti, La storia di Venezia, 2, pp. 436-437. 97 See Edward Muir, “Manifestazioni e cerimonie nella Venezia di Andrea Gritti,” in ‘Renovatio Urbis”: Venezia nell’età di Andrea Gritti (1523-1538), Rome, 1984, pp. 59-77; Elena Povoledo, “Scène et mise en scène à Venise dans la première moitie du XVe siècle,” in Actes da XIe Stage International de Tours. Renaissance, Maniérisme, Baroque, Paris, 1972, pp. 75-86; and Peter Burke, “The Classical Tradition and Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe,” in Les intermédiares culturels. Actes du Colloque du Centre Méridional d'Histoire sociale, des mentalités et des cultures, Aix-en-Provence, Paris, 1978, pp. 237-244. 98 The major studies are Lionello Venturi, “Le compagnie della calza (sec. XV-XVI),” Nuovo archivio veneto, 3rd series, 16 (1908), pp. 161-221, and 17 (1909), pp. 140-233; and Muraro, “La festa a Venezia,” pp. 315-341, especially pp. 319-327. See also Juergen Schulz, “Vasari at Venice,” The Burlington Magazine 103 (1961), pp. 500-511; Povoledo, “Scène et mise en scène,” pp. 75-86; and Dennis Romano, Patricians and Popolani: The Social Foundations of the Venetian Renaissance State, Baltimore, 1987, pp. 155-156. For heralds, see Trexler, Libro Cerimoniale. 99 Sanudo, Diarii, 28, column 561 (17 Aug. 1523). 100 See Peter Burke, “Le carnaval de Venise, Esquisse pour une histoire de longue durée,” in Les Jeux à la Renaissance, P. Ariès and J. Margolin, eds., Paris, 1982, pp. 55-63; and Padoan Urban, “Apparati scenografici,” pp. 145-155. 101 Burke, Historical anthropology, pp. 1-14. 102 G. Bistort, Il Magistrato alle Pompe nella Re- publica di Venezia, Venice, 1912, p. 34. See also Mary Margaret Newett, “The Sumptuary Laws in Venice in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” in Historical Essays by Members of the Owens College, Manchester, T. Tout and J. Tait, eds., Manchester, 1907; and Diane Owen Hughes, “Sumptuary Law and Social Relations in Renaissance Italy,” in Disputes and Settlements, John Bossy, ed., Cambridge, 1984, pp. 90-91. Cf. Trexler, Libro Cerimoniale, pp. 63-64. 103 Sanudo, Vitae ducum venetorum, column 1144. Cf. idem, De origine, p. 23; and Bistort, Magistrato alle Pompe, pp. 34-38. See also Sanudo, Diarii, 21, column 411, for the suspension of sumptuary laws for di festa during a visit of the prince of Vendòme. 104 For the prohibition on mourning clothes, see ASV, Collegio, Cerimoniale 1, folio 14; and Toderini, Cerimoniali e feste, pp. 9-11 and 13. For legislation on theatrical performances, see Muraro, “La festa a Venezia,” pp. 327-329. 105 Sanudo, Diarii, 54, column 66. 106 Ibid., 54, column 81. The emphasis is mine. 107 Molmenti, La storia di Venezia, 2, p. 437. 108 Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima, p. 445. 109 Motta, “Rappresentazioni sceniche,” p. 389. 110 Sanudo, Diarii, 36, column 437. Cf. Trexler, Public Life, pp. 73-84. 111 Guido Gualtieri, Relationi della venuta de gli ambasciatori Giaponesi a Roma, fino all partita di Lisbona ..., Venice, 1586, p. 124. 112 Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima, p. 457. 113 Ibid., pp. 461-465. 114 See references in note 4 above. 115 Muir, Civic Ritual, pp. 233-234; and Queller, Early Venetian Legislation, p. 52. 116 ASV, Collegio, Cerimoniale 1, folio 13, cites thirty noble escorts for cardinals and apostolic legates. Forty nobles were assigned to accompany the duke of Milan to the Signoria in 1530, but only twenty-seven appeared. Sanudo, Diarii, 54, column 43. 117 See ASV, Collegio, Cerimoniale 1, folio 13 and passim; Muir, Civic Ritual, p. 235; and Queller, Office of the Ambassador, p. 195. Cf. Trexler, Public Life, pp. 315-318. 118 Museo Correr, Venice, inv. Cl. I, 1428: attributed to the circle of Lazzaro Bastiani. See Brown, Venetian Narrative Painting in the Age of Carpaccio, p. 254 note 25. 119 Syropoulos, Les “Memoires,” pp. 213-215. 120 See for example, ibid; ASV, Collegio, Cerimoniale 1, passim; and Sanudo, Diarii, 54, column 43. 277
121 Gualtieri, Relationi, pp. 8-9. Cf. Bernard Cohn, “Representing Authority in Victorian India,” in The Invention of Tradition, Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., Cambridge, (1983) 1987, p p .168-170. 122 For lists of the lords inscribed in Sanudo’s time, see his De origine, pp. 70 and 173. 123 Ibid., pp. 62 and 179. Cf. Trexler, Public Life, p p .326-328. 124 Dalle accoglienze usate dei viniziani ai principi esterni, pp. 24-25. 125 Ghinzoni, “Federico III Imperatore,” p. 137. 126 Sanudo, De origine, p. 62. 127 Dalle accoglienze usate dei viniziani ai principi esterni, p. 33; and Tamassia Mazzarotto, Le feste veneziane, p. 312. 128 Queller, Early Venetian Legislation, p. 54. Cf. Trexler, Public Life, pp. 323-326. 129 Molmenti, La storia di Venezia, 2, p. 438. 130 See ASV, Collegio, Cerimoniale 1, passim. 131 Ibid., folio 57 verso. 132 Ibid., folio 104 verso. 133 Queller, Office of the Ambassador, p. 203. 134 Molmenti, La storia di Venezia, 2, p. 450. 135 Sanudo, De origine, p. 38.
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READING 3
Holly Hurlburt Introducing the Dogaressa Wives should not act with their husbands as the moon does the sun; for when the moon is near the sun it is never visible, but when it is distant it stands resplendent by itself.
– Francesco Barbaro
The ducal oath of office acted not only as. an early ceremonial protocol for the doge, but provided hints about the dogaressa’s emerging ritual persona as well, and contained instructions about the two ceremonies that marked her creation: her private oath-taking and her public entrance into the Doge’s Palace. Ritual delineated the rhythms of the dogaressa’s office even as it defined much of late medieval life, creating a visual and experimental vocabulary for the celebration of crucial moments in the human lifecycle as well as communal civic and religious festivities. Ceremonial occasions allowed the expression of collective emotions such as joy, fear, or relief, and functioned as complex coded messages shaped by governing elites, the church, guilds, families, or other groups with varied and competing agendas. “Ritual was a demonstration of being but also the stage of becoming, the very working out of personal and civil order and structure. It is this combination of ritual required for showing a given order, and ritual manipulated by the participants to increase their own personality by augmenting that of the social order, that characterizes self-governing urban society in pre-absolutistic Europe.”1 Civic rites have thus proven to be useful, if complex, tools for accessing individual and group identities, relations between the state and the governed, as well as class and gender issues. The rites of passage experienced by a newly elected doge and his consort both illustrate the flexible nature of ritual and amount to a controlled presentation of the civic, social, and political tensions discussed above. The doge’s rite both confirmed the republican governmental system that curbed his power and allowed the individual who held its highest office as a moment to demonstrate personal charisma.2 A fundamental moment of transformation occurred as a member of 279
the Venetian patriciate assumed the office of doge. According to the ideology surrounding the position, the patrician in question shed his private persona, put aside the interests of his family and business, and became the human embodiment of the republic and earthly interlocutor for Saint Mark. The ceremonies surrounding his predecessor’s funeral and his own election marked this transformation and emphasized the careful balance between republicanism and monarchy; the republic crowned the doge like a king; but as we have seen, it also restricted his personal power through an exhaustive oath of office.3 The celebrations commemorating the election of the doge ideally signified the success of the unique Venetian political system as much as the triumph of an individual. Although some family members witnessed the ducal coronation celebrations, the dogaressa was conspicuous by her absence from all accounts of the event, even as a spectator; rather, the doge’s ceremony predominantly focused on the maledominated Venetian political sphere. Instead, the dogaressa’s public career began with her separate entrance (entrata). During the period under examination here as well as in subsequent centuries, the dogaressa was likely best known for this one event that followed the election of her spouse as doge and her oath-taking ceremony. Her ceremony consisted of a procession through the city to the church of San Marco, a visit to the basilica, and her eventual entrance into the Doge’s Palace. Though separated by time, space, and ritual vocabulary from the doge s assumption of office, the dogaressa’s entrata was seen as a critical element of his accession and sometimes as the culmination of the election ceremonies. The ritual entry of the doge’s consort can thus be viewed as an exhibition of the largesse of the newly elected doge—-her elaborate rite increased his prestige and curried favor with the citizenry. At the same time, this ritual further emphasized the ambiguous place of the ducal family in the Venetian state. The doge was not a divine-right monarch, and so, most references to his family were stripped from his election ritual. The absence of his wife from his coronation ceremony reminded viewers that the Venetian system denied her the traditional power base of consorts, that of mother of the ruling dynasty. In many ways the doge’s coronation emphasized the restrictions of his role; the separate entrance by the dogaressa
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further diluted potential familial ambitions of the newly elected doge and his family while lending credence to her as a ceremonial actor. Since elite women were officially politically disenfranchised and socially sheltered in Venice as elsewhere in Europe, civic rituals dedicated specifically to a living noblewoman, beyond weddings, funerals, and welcomes for visiting female dignitaries, were rare. Hence the dogaressa, who was not elected and who, as we have seen, posed a myriad of potential threats to the state, could not easily be incorporated into election celebrations, the themes of which were the affirmation of Venice’s careful republican/ princely balance and the confirmation of the doge as the conduit between Venetians, their state, and their patron saint. The dogaressa’s entrance isolated her from these ideas; in contrast she participated in a distinct ritual that emphasized those aspects of life particularly pertinent to women—namely the equally crucial sociopolitical issues of class, marriage, and family. These themes appeared in a context not designed to trumpet the individual achievements and fame of the ducal family—her marriage and her family were not the obj ects—so much as the universality and necessity of marriage as the proper place for women and the institution that held together the city’s patriciate. While her entrance encapsulated the dogaressa as the ideal wife whose rare public appearance reflected the honor and status of her husband, his absence from the ceremony transformed the dogaressa from wife into icon. She was an abstract symbol of the virtues of marriage and motherhood that underpinned the social cohesion and stability for which Venice was famous. The dogaressa’s entry illustrated the ambiguity of her office and that of doge as it highlighted civic themes, while at the same time extending the festivities and praise directed at her husband, and placing her squarely within the realm of male-dominated ritual space, thus challenging assumptions about both Venice’s republican political philosophy and its masculine gendering. The fame of the dogaressa’s entrata, already evident in the late Middle Ages, extended through the early modern period to today as the ritual is certainly the most studied element of her career. This chapter will trace the evolution of the dogaresse’s entrata as an oft-repeated rite through the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries receiving increasing attention from participants, government, 281
and the chroniclers and citizens of Venice, placing it within the context of the general intensification of ceremony in late medieval Venice. During this period, the pageantry of this event was frequently replicated and reformulated into one of Venice’s premier occasions so that by 1557, despite a seventy-year period with no ducal consort, the entrance of the dogaressa outshone the pomp even of her husband’s coronation. Thus the entrata of the dogaressa created a moment when the Francesco Barbara’s allegorical moon was indeed resplendent, unpartnered, and unsurpassed.4
The Doge’s Election The dogaressa’s entrata must be seen and understood as one element of the large body of ceremonies surrounding the election of a new doge. As the system for ducal elections and the doge’s role in government evolved, so too did his election rituals. Eleventh-century cleric Domenico Tino made one of the earliest detailed records of the ducal coronation with his observations on the election of Doge Domenico Selvo in 1071. The newly elected doge entered the church of San Marco, barefoot, where he prostrated himself before the altar, received songs of praise from the canons and a staff signifying his power. The ceremony concluded with a procession and his entrance into the Doge’s Palace, where he received an oath of fealty from the crowds and distributed gifts to them.5 Developments in the thirteenth century as related by chronicler Martino da Canal reflected changing Venetian sociopolitics; now the doge swore to uphold his promissione in the palace, and the newly formed guilds had significant roles to play in providing pomp and homage.6 Historians and contemporary observers alike have long noted that the increased ceremonial attention paid to doges and ducal ceremony by the fifteenth century was no doubt part of the larger trends of both amplified ritual expression by states, and the concomitant growth in official and personal record-keeping.7 In his observations about a ducal election, most Tikely that of Michele Steno (1401), Andrea Marini of Cremona compared Venetian election rituals with those held for the pope, and Venetian chronicler Marino Sanudo observed that the 1423 celebrations of Doge Francesco Foscari’s election spanned a full year.8 The 282
fifteenth-century trend of increased splendor was also evident in the costume of the doge, his counselors, and his wife and family. Doges increasingly asserted themselves through elaborations of ducal ceremony and the stages on which these ceremonies were set, as evidenced by the elaborate architectural adornments commissioned for the Doge’s Palace by among others Doges Tommaso Mocenigo (1413-23), Francesco Foscari (1423-57), Pasquale Malipiero (1457-62). And doges their families manifested ducal status beyond the civic center of the city and beyond the grave, blending civic and family honor in splendid tomb projects in the churches of Santi Giovanni e Paolo and Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari.9 This hightened emphasis on various elements of the doge’s ceremonial persona culminated in a new development in the doge’s coronation, instituted with the election of Marco Barbarigo in November 1485. Now the oath taking of the doge occurred publicly, on the newly constructed Scala dei Giganti in the courtyard of the Doge’s Palace, rather than in one of the rooms of the palace. These new monumental stairs accentuated the prestige of the doge, his forty-one electors, counselors, grand chancellor, and the heads of the Council of Forty, creating an architectural frame through which the people could view these men, the most politically influential in Venice. On the steps, the doge, elevated above his citizens, swore to obey his promissione and received the ducal corno. The newly conceived ceremony illustrated the fundamental ambiguity of the office of doge, ideologically constructed as “first among equals” yet ceremonially distinct and superior.10 Until this flourishing of ducal pomp in the late fifteenth century, much of the symbolism of the ceremony underscored the duties of the doge towards the people and the limits placed upon his power, creating a visual enactment of the restrictive elements of the ducal promissione. Earlier, the people of Venice had at least a symbolic vote in the election process, as the doge was presented to them with the words “this is your doge if he pleases you.” The oath the doge pledged to uphold rendered him politically submissive as did the practice of entering the church of San Marco barefoot and prostrating himself before the main altar, a ritual which suggested that the doge was merely the humble political and religious servant of the saint. Finally, the doge suffered ritual humiliation by the people of 283
Venice who stole his clothes and ransacked his house upon hearing of the election. 11 The disappearance of these traditions by the sixteenth century reflected the increasing dignity and pomp accorded to ducal ceremonies as well as the changes in the Venetian political system from which the vast majority of Venetian citizens were excluded after constitutional changes of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The force of the doge’s ceremonial persona, as presented in his coronation, intensified even as the state of Venice aggrandized itself through commercial and imperial ties in the Mediterranean and on the mainland. Venice’s emergence as an land and sea empire in the fifteenth century may have prompted it to adopt elements of the ritual vocabulary of its princely neighbors, especially the equally expansionist princely state of Milan. This increased ducal pomp allowed the fifteenth-century doges to negotiate their restricted personae and express individual and familial as well as corporate glory. As their patronage projects and tombs suggest, a ceremony such as the fifteenth-century ducal coronation lent credence to the notion of the doge as a singular, powerful leader rather than an elected figurehead, first among equals. In particular, the public confirmation of the doge with a crown on the steps of his palace made him that much more visible as a charismatic ruler to the populace. As one of the ceremonies associated with the doge’s election and coronation, the entrata of the dogaressa too became increasingly elaborate over the centuries, laden with the often-competing interests of state and familial triumphalism.
Evolution While plentiful details exist in several chronicles for ducal coronation ceremonies at least as early as those for Doge Selvo (1071), the earliest mention of the dogaressa’s involvement in election ritual appeared a century and a half later in the promissione of Doge Jacopo Tiepolo (1229). As noted previously, this clause focused upon ceremonial occasions at which the doge might receive gifts, and included ducal family weddings or “when we lead our dogaressa into the palace. . .”12 Already in the mid-thirteenth century, a distinct and perhaps longestablished ceremony existed for the dogaressa’s arrival at the palace. The 284
language of the oath suggests that this was a ritual distinct from the coronation of the doge but included in the larger group of celebrations surrounding the doge’s election. Grouped together in the clause of the promissione that also addressed the doge’s marriage, this reference would be the first of many to situate the persona of the dogaressa using the vocabulary of wedding ritual, a metaphor that, as we will see, became more elaborate as the entrance ritual evolved. Marchesina Ghisi Tiepolo, second wife of Doge Lorenzo Tiepolo and daughterin-law of Doge Jacopo Tiepolo, became the first dogaressa to receive notable attention from a chronicler for her participation in her husband’s post-election revelry.13 Lorenzo Tiepolo became doge in 1268 after an illustrious political and naval career in the eastern Mediterranean that culminated in a crucial victory over the Genoese at Acre that gave him heroic status in Venice. Contemporary chronicler Martino da Canal, an admirer of Tiepolo, described the ceremonies surrounding this election in scrupulous detail, paying minute attention to the dogaressa’s role.14 The people heard the news of Tiepolo’s election in the church of San Marco, where the doge was then presented to them and received the sacraments and the standard of San Marco. Next he entered the palace, where the canons of San Marco chanted the following song of praise to him: “Christ triumphs, Christ reigns, Christ rules: to our Lord Lorenzo Tiepolo, by grace of God, celebrated doge of Venice, Dalmatia and Croatia, and overlord of a quarter and half a quarter (three-eighths) of all the kingdom of Romania, safety, honor, life and victory, may Saint Mark aid you.”15 While the doge assumed the power of state and greeted the citizens of Venice, the chaplains traveled to the parish of Sant’Agostino, location of the Tiepolo palace, where his spouse Marchesina waited to receive similar adulation. The subsequent popular celebration consisted of various groups paying homage to the ducal couple: to the doge at the ducal palace and to the dogaressa, who received the greetings “with joyous expression,” at the Tiepolo palace in Sant’Agostino. The most prominent sea captains of Venice visited the doge and dogaressa before embarking on a voyage to the eastern Mediterranean; they greeted the doge with songs of praise in the Bacino in front of the Doge’s Palace and then sailed “to the middle of Venice” to visit the dogaressa. The citizens of 285
the islands of Murano and Torcello and the members of all the guilds of Venice likewise came to visit both doge and dogaressa.16 Da Canal’s description especially detailed guild participation in this ritual, devoting a paragraph to each presentation. He noted that: The men of each guild prepared their bodies richly, each guild for itself, and they went to see their new lord, Lorenzo Tiepolo, noble doge of Venice. And when they had seen the doge, then they turned around, and they went to see their lady, that is to say Lady Marchesina, the noble Dogaressa, and directly there where she waited in the neighborhood of Sant’Agostino, making such celebration as I will describe, each guild in its turn, with horns and banners preceding them.17 Masons, several different groups of skin or leather workers, weavers, tailors, woolworkers, cotton workers, coat and bed covering workers, gold cloth workers, shoemakers, peddlers, sausage dealers, bird and fish sellers, barbers, glassmakers, carders, and goldsmiths came first to the doge, displaying their wares. According to da Canal, when the doge “saw the company of those who sell fish, he purchased from them many good sturgeon and trout and other big fish.”18 Each group then went from the Doge’s Palace to Sant’Agostino to see the dogaressa. They “saluted her with much courtesy, and she like a Lady returned their salute with great gentility.”19 Tiepolo’s election occurred during the time when elements of the Venetian workforce first organized themselves into guilds, and during a moment of high social and political tension within the city.20 The visibility of the guilds in the ceremony served two purposes. First, it created a place for the newly formed guilds within an important state ritual, thus allowing these groups to play a role in politics and to exhibit publicly their significance. Secondly, the coronation emphasized the bonds of vassalage between the doge and each guild or subject group.21 Indeed, the vocabulary of da Canal’s description of the event illustrated this point; the guilds, sailors, and subject territories all addressed the doge and dogaressa with the signorial titles “Lord” and “Lady,” markedly feudal language in an emerging republic.
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This ceremony manifested a gendered duality, as two separate celebrations occurred in the “masculine Palazzo Ducale and the feminine domestic home.” The twin ceremonies increased the size, length, and sheer import of the doge’s coronation celebration, which wound across the city and took several days. Division allowed the expression of two ducal identities; the eternal office of the doge and its individual occupant, each in the geographical space most identified with it.22 Since the dogaressa’s greeting took place at the Tiepolo palace, her part of the ceremony must also have recalled the importance of family and familial reputation in the creation of doge; if Doge Tiepolo symbolized the state, his wife signified a link between state and family. Her geographical placement in the coronation ceremony suggested her uncertain position between the private and political worlds of her husband. Although outside the political center of the Doge’s Palace for the duration of the guild ritual described by da Canal, the dogaressa did receive homage equal to the doge. Many dogaresse of the preceding centuries had possessed royal blood in their own right and therefore brought their royal status and its trappings with them to Venice. While not herself royalty, Dogaressa Tiepolo was a significant heiress of lands in the Greek Islands. The memory of foreign royal dogaresse combined with the dogaressa’s noteworthy role in the tremendous pomp of her spouse’s entrance as recorded by da Canal is perhaps what prompted future chroniclers like Francesco Sansovino to conclude that she too was of royal blood. 23 The actual or imagined presence of a regal female added fuel to the image of doge as lord and detracted from his position as leader of a commune since no other commune had a female figurehead, while nearly all monarchies and duchies of the time did. Hence the election ceremonies of Lorenzo Tiepolo played upon the political tensions of the time; on the one hand, they celebrated the emerging guild system and Tiepolo as its popular champion, and on the other hand, they emphasized the still existing feudal dynastic ideology. Tiepolo was himself a feudal lord in the Mediterranean and his father had also been doge.24 Doge and Dogaressa Tiepolo were a thirteenth-century “power couple” and were thus royally received by the people.
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That Marchesina Tiepolo was a transitional figure in the history of the dogaressal entrance is evident in her treatment by Andrea Dandolo, fourteenth-century doge and historian. Though Dandolo looked back on the election of 1268 in his chronicles, he placed emphasis on differing elements of the ritual and provided a good deal less detail. “Upon his (Tiepolo’s) election, all of the people showed the most joy, and each guild according to ancient tradition, showed reverence to him. When the dogaressa came into the palace, a most honorable banquet was made for the guildsmen.”25 Though Dandolo and da Canal’s accounts appear contradictory, they perhaps emphasize two different aspects of the dogaressa’s entrata. Dandolo referred indirectly to the ceremonial visits paid by the guilds to the doge in his phrase “showed reverence,” but did not mention any accompanying visit to the dogaressa. This is hardly surprising, however, since Dandolo was not an eyewitness to the Tiepolo election celebration. In addition, this is one of the few instances in which Dandolo even acknowledged the office of dogaressa in his writings, which recorded primarily political and military events, and showed much less concern with the pageantry and spectacle of medieval Venice than had da Canal. On the few other occasions on which Dandolo mentioned the dogaressa it was usually to record the name of a foreign princess who married the doge and to note the dynastic connections she brought the city. It is likely that in discussing the banquet with the guilds, Dandolo addressed an event that occurred after the ceremonial visits of the guilds to the dogaressa. These visits took place at the doge’s private home, and so the dogaressa had not yet been brought to the palace as directed by the promissione of Jacopo Tiepolo. By the time of Dandolo’s mid-fourteenth-century chronicle, the political climate and role of the guilds in social relations in Venice had changed. The Serrata or closing of the Great Council in 1297 effectively curtailed the direct political influence of guilds along with the majority of the populace. By the mid-fourteenth century, these social groups seem to have for the most part accepted the political status quo, and perhaps did not require as much cultivation as they had in the turbulent thirteenth century. Participation in the dogaressa’s entrata and other public ceremonies by the guilds became increasingly important after 1297, when they were legally excluded from government, because it highlighted the image (if 288
not the reality) of social solidarity and cooperation in Venice.26 The position of the doge as well had changed in the seventy years between the elections of Tiepolo and Dandolo, as the commune further limited the doge’s power through the promissione. And the identity of the dogaressa had shifted from a woman typically of foreign and royal birth to a local noblewoman. Hence neither the personal pomp of the doge nor the pageantry of the guilds received substantial attention in Dandolo’s narrative; instead he mentioned only in passing the ceremony by which the dogaressa came to be at the political center of Venice, as well as her interaction with the guilds that he characterized as taking place within the restricted climes of the Doge’s Palace rather than at the doge’s private home and at places scattered across the city. Moreover, Dandolo may not have known about the remarkable guild- related festivities generated by Tiepolo’s election in 1268, perhaps because his election seventy years later in a vastly altered sociopolitical climate did not even feature such blatantly feudal behavior. However, other aspects of the 1268 ceremony that he did not discuss in his chronicle must have been familiar to him from his own coronation and the entrance of his wife, Francesca Morosini, in 1342. The promissione of Doge Pietro Gradenigo, who held the office of doge over forty years before Andrea Dandolo, legislated some of the existing aspects of the entrata as described by da Canal. According to the oath, “if the canons will have gone to the dogaressa before she would come into the Palace and sung lauds to her, then the dogaressa for compensation ought to pay twenty-five Venetian lire to them, and when she will come to the Palace, she ought to offer upon the altar of San Marco ten lire.”27 This clause linked two aspects of the dogaressa’s entrata— her praise by the canons before her entrance into the palace (as described by da Canal) and her entrance itself, which included a visit and offering to the ducal chapel of San Marco. The repetition of these items in subsequent promissioni indicates that the dogaressa’s entrata had taken shape and was, by the early fourteenth century, an accepted element of the doge’s election celebration. Entries in the Liber Promissionum, an official tome that recorded the doge’s oaths as well as marginal notes on several fourteenth- and fifteenth- century ceremonies, further codified many of the above aspects of the dogaressa’s entrata. Its 289
treatment of events surrounding the 1329 election of Doge Francesco Dandolo (1339) and the funeral of his predecessor, Giovanni Soranzo (1312—29) concluded with the following passage detailing a ceremony whose geography differed greatly from the election ritual of Lorenzo and Marchesina Tiepolo: Also, the counselors with the Bucintoro collect the dogaressa on the day on which she ought to enter the palace, and they lead her, honorably seated in the Bucintoro to the palace, followed by the guilds with boats and barges in great and solemn joy, and that day she makes a solemn feast for the people, and the guilds are invited. And the dogaressa enters San Marco by the main door, proceeding to the main altar and offering ten lire grossi, and soon she goes out through it (the main door) and under the portico of the palace and she goes to the chamber of the Lords of the Night, where she sits on the throne, and where she with her ladies sends away the counselors, and at last she does not go to the chamber but goes up above, because there is such a crowd that she cannot cross over.28 According to this, the most detailed description of the dogaressa’s ceremony to date, after she swore to uphold the doge’s promissione, the ducal counselors returned to her private home and ceremonially accompanied her aboard the state barge (Bucintoro) to the Doge’s Palace.29 Rather than being the passive recipient of the guild procession as had Dogaressa Tiepolo, the dogaressa now participated with the guilds in a spectacular passage from the private to the political sphere. Furthermore, this text highlighted the dogaressa’s entrata as a solo performance— unlike the Tiepolo ritual that featured doge and dogaressa contemporaneously receiving homage although at different sites. By the early fourteenth century, the doge and dogaressa had been ritually separated; the dogaressa is not mentioned in descriptions of the doge’s election ritual, and the doge made no appearance in the dogaressa’s entrance. The apex of the ceremony occurred when the dogaressa was seated on the throne in the chamber of the Lords of the Night, a place usually filled by her husband. Both on the Bucintoro and in the palace, the dogaressa occupied the place of her husband, who took no part whatsoever in this ceremony. The separate entrances of the doge and dogaressa meant the staging of two large-scale festivals celebrating the election of the doge, doubling the pomp and glory surrounding the occasion. However, this separation also negated any hint of monarchical ambition. 290
The ducal couple did not appear publicly together at election celebrations, nor did they simultaneously receive the citizenry. The ceremony was now much less likely to suggest the celebration of a ruling dynasty as represented by husband and wife, mother and father of future heirs. The absence of the doge coupled with the dogaressa’s occupancy of his place during the ceremony suggests that at least on this day, she symbolically occupied his position at the center of ritual power in Venice. The mid-fourteenth-century Dandolo description also noted in passing that the guilds, in addition to participating in the procession of the dogaressa to the Doge’s Palace, attended a feast hosted there by the dogaressa, a detail also mentioned in Andrea Dandolo’s chronicle. Additional details concerning the banquet hosted by the doge and/or dogaressa for the guilds emerge from a contemporaneous case brought before the state attorneys in October 1361. The suit against Marco Rosso, a member of the carpenter’s guild, recounted a brawl pitting the carpenter and ship-building guilds against the stonemasons, which broke out in the Doge’s Palace on the day on which the dogaressa processed to the palace and when “this Marco with his guild came to a meal in the palazzo and to honor the lady dogaressa. . .”30 Apparently Rosso was the instigator of the fight; as the group left the palace, he hit a member of the stonemasons’ guild who carried the guild’s banner. The result of the fight was that at least fifteen members of these two guilds received prison sentences or fines; Marco Rosso received one month in prison, a fine, and the responsibility for paying for damage to the banner of the stonemasons. This incident allows a rare glance at the entrance ceremony of the dogaressa from a popular perspective and reveals a number of important details about the ritual. First, this case provides information concerning the actual timing of events surrounding the election ceremonies. Lorenzo Celsi was elected doge on July 12, 1361, at which time he was a sea captain in the Mediterranean.31 Hence his coronation was not immediate, but must have occurred a month or so after his election. However, the entrance of his wife during which the guild brawl occurred did not take place until October, suggesting that there was a substantial period of time between the two ceremonies. In addition, the case further illustrates the 291
specific tie the guilds had to the dogaressa—they came in full ceremonial regalia, with their standards to honor the dogaressa, and not the doge, who does not seem to have been present at the altercation. Although considered part of the overall festivities for the newly elected doge, this day feted the dogaressa and the guilds that marked her entrance. In the case of the 1361 banquet, however, the guilds violated the honor due to the state with their melee, a situation even more threatening to hallowed and serene ritual moments because of the special need to protect the honor and chastity of the young dogaressa.32 The previously discussed details from various governmental sources and chronicles allow us to establish a detailed outline of the evolving fourteenth-century entrance ceremony of the wife of the doge. The ceremony took place in several phases, all of which transpired some time after the doge’s coronation. First the ducal counselors and grand chancellor administered the iuramento to the dogaressa at her home. The canons of San Marco came to her home and delivered songs of praise (laudes). Subsequently the ducal counselors escorted her onto the doge’s barge and, accompanied by the decorated floats of the guilds, they sailed to the Piazza 3 San Marco via the Grand Canal. Upon arrival she entered the church, approached the main altar, and gave an offering to the church before entering the palace where she attended a banquet with the guilds and was seated on the throne of her spouse. Many of the details from Lorenzo Tiepolo’s election ceremonies, primarily the honorific visits of the sailors, guilds, and citizens of Murano and Torcello were apparently repeated in neither the doge’s nor the dogaressa’s ritual entrances. The absence of these details from other accounts of the election festivities suggests that the celebration surrounding Tiepolo’s election was particularly extravagant and unique. Given the turbulent political circumstances of the time, the individual elected, and the status of his wife, it is not surprising that Doge Tiepolo (or the government as a whole) chose to make a particularly elaborate demonstration, and that da Canaf, a loyal Tiepolo partisan, left such a detailed description. The tradition of guild participation in election ceremonies for the doge and dogaressa that was established by Tiepolo continued even after his reign, although the guilds no longer paid homage in such an overt manner, likely because that behavior may 292
have been considered more appropriate for a signorial regime than a commune. The model of doge and dogaressa as feudal leaders established by da Canal’s description of the Tiepolo celebrations did not suit the fourteenth-century ideal of doge and republic. That paradigm was discarded in both the chronicle of Doge Dandolo, and in the official codification of the dogaressa’s entrance as it appeared in the Liber Promissionum.33 Yet the guilds continued to be active in electoral celebrations in subsequent centuries. By the fourteenth century the guilds instead formed an honor guard for the dogaressa’s aquatic procession and attended a banquet with her at the Doge’s Palace after her entrance, presumably in recognition of their day-to-day role in the prosperity of the city.34 Like the doge and the dogaressa, the guilds took an oath whose language stressed their service to the state. The guilds became associated with the dogaressa, rather than the doge, perhaps because she was not elected and not in a position of direct political authority: appearance with the dogaressa offered the guilds an acknowledgment of their services and enhancement of their status without suggesting factionalism or favoritism toward the working class by the doge.35 The 1413 election of Doge Tommaso Mocenigo, who was not married, disrupted the continuity of dogaresse stretching far into the recesses of history, and thus also interrupted the customs that accompanied her entrance. The Great Council, responding to the “stupefecation” of all at this turn of events, observed that even though “the most serene doge does not have a wife,” tradition called for a celebratory meal for the guilds, and that in this case the doge could employ the thousand lire set aside for ducal weddings or the dogaressa’s entrance.36 Clearly, by the turn of the fifteenth century, if not before, the dogaressa was an anticipated element of ducal ceremonial vocabulary, and her entrance a crucial, even longed for element in the corps of ducal ritual, firmly and increasingly placed in the city’s collective memory by the state, chroniclers, guilds and citizens.
Repetition, Reception, and Recognition As noted above, ducal ceremony became more elaborate in the fifteenth century. Concomitant with the general flourishing of a ceremonial culture surrounding the 293
doge, the chroniclers, citizens, and the guilds demonstrated continued or even increased awareness of the dogaressa’s entrance in the fifteenth century. Embellishment also occurred in the ceremony itself, perhaps prompting more frequent and detailed treatment by contemporaneous chroniclers like Domenico Malipiero arid Marino Sanudo. For example, Malipiero briefly discussed the entrance of Dogaressa Dea Morosini Tron (1472) in the context of his work on the Venetian state, noting that the doge brought his wife into the palace during the banquet hosted by the guilds.37 Sanudo provided more detailed descriptions of the entrances of two dogaresse: Tron, and her predecessor, Marina Nani Foscari (1424-2) in his Lives of the Doges. On Fosoari, he wrote, In the first year of this doge, he made festivals and jousts and other triumphs in the Piazza San Marco and the Palazzo Ducale, and at the beginning of the year he brought the dogaressa into the palace with great triumph, she who was from the house of—(sic). And the Bucintoro brought her with ladies. And she held a meal in the Palace, as one can still see in the arms.38 In this case, the entrata of the dogaressa seems to have marked the culmina- tion of the period of celebration surrounding the doge’s election. Sanudo noted many of the same characteristics common to the entrances of the fourteenth century: the procession on the state barge and the dogaressa’s banquet, presumably with the guilds. However, for the first time Sanudo mentioned of a group of ladies who traveled with the dogaressa on the Bucmtoro, presumably the ladies who attended the dogaressa in the Chamber of the Lords of the Night in the fourteenth-century Liber Promissionum description. In Sanudo’s account, these ladies appeared on the Bucmtoro with the dogaressa, forming her court, and constituting the visible core of this nontraditional feminine procession. On Dea Morosini Tron’s 1472 entrance, Sanudo observed, “All the guilds of Venice made a public banquet in the Palazzo Nuovo for the entrance of the dogaressa, who was dressed in a mantle of gold, and was met by the Bucintoro at the Ca’ Morosini in San Silvestro, where she was born, and brought into the Palazzo.”39 Here again Sanudo confirmed that many details of the fourteenthcentury ceremony remained the same: the participation of the guilds at a banquet and the procession from a private home on the Grand Canal to the ducal palace. 294
In addition, Sanudo drew attention to the dress of the dogaressa, a gold cloak. As previously observed, an official costume had been legislated in the promissione of Pasquale Malipiero (1457-62) for the dogaressa’s public appearances, presumably as part of the aggrandizement of ducal image discussed earlier. The choice of color suggested wealth and authority, made the dogaressa distinctive in the bustle of activity that surrounded her on her entrance day, and, no doubt, highlighted her gender. Finally, Sanudo carefully noted that the dogaressa was brought into the palace by the state barge from her place of birth, the Ca’ Morosini in San Silvestro. Here the entrata of Dea Tron differed from her thirteenth-century predecessor Marchesina Tiepolo, who had been received by the guilds’ procession at her husband’s home. For the celebration of Dogaressa Tron, the procession proceeded from Ca’ Morosini, rather than from Doge Tron’s palace in nearby San Polo, where the doge and dogaressa had previously lived as husband and wife. This starting point drew attention to the natal family of the dogaressa. Thus for the first time in several centuries of dogaressal entrate, the family of the dogaressa was directly incorporated into the ceremony and into the collective memory of the spectators who certainly knew that the new dogaressa came from the exalted house of Morosini one of the city’s oldest, largest and most powerful clans. In sum, Sanudo’s commentary on the dogaressa’s entrance, while not as detailed as da Canal’s two centuries earlier, suggests the continued and perhaps enhanced visibility and importance of the ceremony. Fifteenth-century noble chroniclers were not alone in observing the significance of the dogaressa’s entrance. In May 1423, Vittore Bragadin, the captain of the recently-conquered city of Vicenza and friend of the newly elected Doge Foscari, successfully appealed to the Great Council to be allowed to return to Venice from his post, so that he might attend the dogaressa’s entrance with other companions of the doge for “the sake of his honor.”40 This petition indicates that noble acquaintances of the ducal family viewed the dogaressa’s ceremony as a way to pay tribute to her and the doge himself, despite his absence from the ceremony. Perhaps acting as witness or even participant in this ritual was a subtle way for Bragadin to express or confirm a patron—client relationship with Foscari. The 295
Great Council’s willingness to acquiesce to this request further suggests that on this day, as she circled the city and occupied the ducal throne the dogaressa stood for the doge, his honor, and by extension, the honor of the state. In May 1463, the Senate addressed issues of honor and safety in the context of the dogaressa’s entrance in a law that punished untoward behavior such as the incident perpetrated by the brawling guildsmen at Dogaressa Celsi’s entrance the century before. Yet now the cautionary legislation was directed at the doge and dogaressa’s peers, the patriciate. Perhaps responding to an unrecorded altercation at the recent entrata of Cristina Sanudo Moro, the preamble invoked the need to avoid scandal at state festivals in order to preserve and enhance the dignity of doge and state. The law made such transgressions punishable by fines, banishment from the Great Council, and even imprisonment if nobles entered the palace “when the most Serene Lady Dogaressa came into the palace with her ladies.” This restriction extended to non-nobles who entered the locations of the festivities without permission, who were subject to the loss or sale of their cloaks.41 Clearly the Senate felt the need to be particularly vigilant since not only did the dogaressa’s company of elite ladies require special sheltering and protection, but they and especially the dogaressa also represented the honor of not only their husbands and families, but the reputation and sanctity of the state as well. These occasional legislative references and chronicle entries show a larger general concern not just with expressions of civic pride and pomp in the fifteenth century, but also with their control, and particular unease about the challenges posed by a ceremony dominated by a female. The fifteenth century witnessed not only an amplified awareness of the ceremonial potential and pitfalls of the office of dogaressa, but also a new interest in the individuals who occupied the office. Earlier descriptions of the entrate generally did not record the names of specific dogaresse. The legislative examples contained in the promissioni and the description in the Liber Promissionum were necessarily vague, since both applied to every dogaressa and not just individual consorts. The specific legislation concerning an entrance ceremony for the dogaressa that appeared in the promissioni of Doges Marino Morosini and Pietro Gradenigo was repeated in every subsequent oath, indicating that each dogaressa most likely had 296
some sort of entry, except perhaps the wife of Doge Michele Morosini, who reigned for only four months. The repetition of the details concerning the ceremony and the ceremony itself meant that the dogaressa’s participation came to be considered typical of the ducal election celebrations. Just as the coronation ceremony, once established, did not vary greatly from doge to doge, stressing the permanence of the office rather than the individuality of its holder, the entrata of the dogaressa likely did not deviate much from the pattern established after Tiepolo’s unusual election celebrations. Hence it is not surprising that early chroniclers generally failed to associate individual dogaresse with their entrances. Specific reference exists only to the entrances of Marchesina Tiepolo (1268), Elisabeta Contarini Dandolo (1329), and Maria Giustinian Celsi (1361), with the dogaressa’s name recorded only in the case of Tiepolo. The repetition of this ceremony with each newly elected doge— fourteen in the fourteenth century meant that it was one that became familiar to the guilds and people of Venice. Indeed, the format of the dogaressa’s entrance ceremony, as established in the fourteenth century, would remain essentially the same throughout the Renaissance and until its abolition in the seventeenth century, establishing a collective memory of the dogaresse not necessarily as individual women, but as static tools in the expression of civic honor. Yet the fifteenth century expansion in ducal pomp and augmented concern with noble pedigree and identity led to increased interest by fifteenth- century chroniclers in the dogaresse not just as ceremonial objects, but also as representatives of the city’s most elite families, as Sanudo’s interest in Dogaressa Tron’s Morosini heritage has already illustrated. Other chroniclers followed Sanudo’s lead, often recording the names of at least five of the nine fifteenth-century dogaresse whose entrances they recorded: Marina Gallina Steno (1401), Marina Nani Foscari (1423), Giovanna Dandolo Malipiero (1458), Cristina Sani/do Moro (1462), and Dea Morosini Tron (1472).42 On average, the entrances of these dogaresse took place approximately four months after their spouses’ elections. The interim period included a series of festivals, balls, and jousts, and other celebrations that often culminated with their entrate. It should not be surprising that these doges encouraged lengthy 297
celebration of their elections, since these are precisely the same doges who built large tombs, engaged in courtly behavior and generally promoted themselves in a number of other ways during the-mid- arid late-fifteenth century.43 Despite the growing attention generated by the dogaressa’s celebration as the capstone of ducal election celebrations in the fifteenth century, some uncertainty surrounds the entrances of two late-fifteenth-century dogaresse. Doge and Dogaressa Nicolo and Contarina Contarini Marcello (1473-74) had each been married and widowed before their own union in 1438. According to sixteenth-century chronicler Agostino Agostini, “this doge did not bring the dogaressa his wife into the palace.”44 The author does not elaborate: presumably he meant that the dogaressa had no official entrance ceremony. During the course of Marcello’s reign the Venetians’ war with the Turks continued; and threats to the mainland territory of Friuli and the outpost of Scutari may have dampened the celebratory spirit usually surrounding the election of a doge, and therefore prompted the cancellation of his wife’s triumphal entry.45 The normal processes of medieval life such as age, infirmity, shortness of reign, war, and death all influenced the dogaressal entrance process. After the death of Marcello, the city experienced its second moment without a dogaressa. Earlier in the century, Doge Tommaso Mocenigo’s bachelorhood had temporarily rendered the guilds without their customary moment in ducal ritual; Sanudo likewise commented on the single status of Mocenigo’s nephew Pietro, elected doge in 1474.46 After Mocenigo’s short reign, Doge Andrea Vendramin (1476-78) and his wife Regina Gradenigo entered the palace. Chronicle accounts have debated whether her entrata took place. Agostino Agostini recorded the dogaressa’s existence and the names of her children, but did not discuss her entrance, as he did with Steno, Foscari, and others. In addition, the author of an eighteenthcentury manuscript on women in Venice wrote that he could find no record of Dogaressa Vendramin’s entrance, perhaps due to her “modesty, advanced age, or suspicions of the plague.”47 Elsewhere this author noted that Dogaressa Vendramin was physically disabled. Regina Gradenigo married Andrea Vendramin in 1426—by 1476 she would have achieved at least the fairly advanced age of sixty-five.48 Her age and/or infirmity prevented her from taking part in the 298
strenuous ceremony, a practical problem that may have been common to many doges and dogaresse of the late-fifteenth century. Dogaresse Marcello and Vendramin did not represent the norm in a time when the entrance ceremony made the dogaresse unusually visible. Both Agostini and the author of the later manuscript on women record that these women did not have ceremonial entrances, suggesting that the lack of entrance was most abnormal and that Venetians expected the ceremony to take place whenever a reigning doge had a wife. The fifteenth century saw two more dogaresse enter office: Taddea Michiel Mocenigo (1478) and Lucia Ruzzini Barbarigo (1485), but again both entered without the fanfare of their predecessors. Dogaressa Mocenigo almost certainly did not participate in any ceremony due to the plague, which arrived in Venice shortly after her husband’s election in May 1478, and which likely took her fife a little over a year later, in October 1479.49 The plague still (or perhaps again) tormented the city at the time of Marco Barbarigo’s election in 1485. Yet Barbarigo was the first doge to receive the ducal corno publicly on the newly constructed steps of the Doge’s Palace; it seems odd that in the face of such growing triumphalism his wife received no particular notice, perhaps also due to the shortness of his reign.50 Despite the lack of documented ceremonies for these last ducal consorts, the century had seen a succession of dogaresse triumphantly enter the Doge’s Palace. Chroniclers, citizens, and the commune made frequent reference to the ceremony, took interest in its context and in the specific identity of participants, and took note when the ritual took place as well as when it did , not.51 The ceremony repeatedly became the subject of extra-promissione legislation in the fifteenth century, illustrating governmental as well as historical awareness. Like the preceding century, nearly all fifteenth-century doges were married upon election, so that the entrata, replicated and recorded with a degree of regularity, became fixed in the textual and collective memory of society.
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Model and Interpretation Not only did Dea Morosini Tron’s 1472 entrance attract the attention of chroniclers, but hers was the first to be officially documented at length in two state protocols, thus becoming the model for future rituals. In addition to the previously discussed fourteenth-century description of Elisabeta Contarini Dandolo’s entrance, an entry on Tron’s entrance also exists in the ad hoc collection of ritual records added to the Liber Profnissionutn, which in turn was almost certainly the source for the Cerimoniale, the official book of state ceremony compiled by the republic beginning in the late sixteenth century. Both accounts provide previously unrecorded details on the dogaressa’s rite, and both treated the ritual as a distinct occasion, providing it with its own heading rather than considering the event more generally within the context of the doge selection. The prominent placement of Dogaressa Tron’s ceremony in these official state records suggests that it became the model on which all future entrances would be based, and represented the culmination of the ceremony’s evolution. Here is the translated text in its entirety: At the most acceptable time after the assumption to the dominion of the most Serene Lord Nicolo Tron, Doge of Venice was celebrated, the Most Illustrious Lady Dogaressa, his wife, came in public into the, Palace, by such a hallowed ritual, and the following display was produced. On the established day, the Counselors and the entire Senate, boarding the Bucintoro, beautifully prepared as is customary, with the silver horns of the Lord Doge, set off to the house of the Lady Dogaressa, and after greetings, the musicians with long silver horns began the journey, then the manservants of the Lord Doge, and the remainder of the household servants. They were followed by the younger matrons in a most long train, and immediately afterwards the older matrons, then two flutes with the remaining silver horns and three fifes or as they say pipers, relatives and those joined by blood to the Lord Doge, side by side came the younger and older matrons, attending the wife of the Chancellor of Venice, the Procurators of San Marco, and the Counselors, the daughters and daughtersin-law of the lord doge, all of whom walked in the order determined, and in the last space, the doge’s brother, and the brother of the Lady Dogaressa, followed immediately by the Lady Dogaressa, led between the two most Senior Counselors, her train born by her damsels or servants, and in order follow the remaining Counselors, and Procurators in twos and all the rest of the Senators and Nobles. After they have boarded the Bucintoro, 300
the counselors and highest ranking with that Lady Dogaressa, and the matrons honorably arranged on the seats of the Bucintoro, the remaining patricians boarded boats an appropriate number of which were prepared for the sake of the cel- ebration, the Bucintoro set sail, and holds course, proceeding toward the palace and followed by the boats and barges of the guilds, with their golden standards prompting the extraordinary applause of the peopled When the procession reached the piazza of Saint Mark’s, all descended, and in the noted order proceeded through that piazza with the bells of Saint Mark’s ringing, through the main door of the temple of Saint Mark they entered, and at the main altar the lady dogaressa, after she showed reverence to the relics, presented ten lire grossi, after which she exited through the door of the temple joined to the sanctuary, through which she entered the Palace and ascended the stairs into the Hall of the Great Council, and she was seated on the Throne, with the Counselors in attendance, and on uncovered tables there were the aforementioned most marvelous confections made from sugar. The Counselors retired. And the Lady Dogaressa remained with her ladies, while at the same time throughout the whole Palace tables were deposited for the most celebrated and solemn feast, which was done by the guilds themselves, who were seated at each decorated space. Further, these same places in the palace were magnificently decorated by each guild with tapestries, rugs, cloths woven with gold, and similar things, and tables are arranged with vessels of silver distributed in most long succession.52 As the text makes clear, the entrata of Dea Morosini Tron retained the same basic elements and overall shape as that of the entrance of Elisabeta Contarini Dandolo a century and a half earlier. After her oath, the ducal barge, various government officials, and the guilds escorted the dogaressa from home to the Piazza San Marco. She entered the church, paid homage to it and its relies, and then entered the palace to be seated on her husband’s throne and to attend a feast with the guilds. However, the accounts from the Liber Promissionum and the Cerimoniale provide many previously unrecorded details that suggest developments and increased pomp in the festival from its inception centuries before. These protocols demonstrate that along with chroniclers, the state took an increased interest in the ritual, whose recording in official books of ceremony preserved a model ceremony for perpetuity. Although her ritual shared contextual setting with the election ceremony of the doge in both reality and records, the geography, rhythm, and meaning of the Dogaressa Tron’s entrance differed greatly from her male counterpart. A 301
significant portion of the doge’s election rite took place in the church of San Marco and addressed the doge’s function as the earthly embodiment of Saint Mark, a role for which there was no female equivalent. Unlike the doge, the dogaressa’s ceremonial office did not feature such an overt sacred aura.53 Hence, while these accounts of Dogaressa Tron’s entrance mentioned her brief stop in the church and the tolling of its bells, they did not discuss the visit of the canons to her home outlined in the promissione (perhaps because the visit occurred prior to her public entrance and not in the public eye), nor did these accounts dwell overmuch on her time in the church itself. Instead, the Liber Promissionum description of the Tron entrance placed great emphasis on the dogaressa’s progress to the sacred center, what anthropologist Arnold van Gennep famously characterized as the transitional phase of a rite of passage, in which individuals or groups pass from one state to another.54 Processions marked all the most important festivals in Venice including the ducal andate (annual official outings by the doge to various religious sites), the arrival of foreign dignitaries, and events during Carnival. Processions moVed across Venice via land and water, highlighting Venice’s unique geography and status as a maritime power, often incorporating a large geographical section of the city. These frequent pageants not only unified the city geographically, but also socially through the participation of various groups from the' doge and government to the citizen-dominated confraternities, other religious groups, and the guilds.55 Procession by water visually associated the dogaressa with the sea, like Venice herself, and meant that her cortege was visible to the whole populace as well as foreign visitors, who no doubt gathered on the bridges and banks of the canals to watch. The parade concluded with the seating of the dogaressa on the Great Council Hall’s throne, a moment, following the Van Gennep tripartite division of separation, transition, and reintegration that marked the state’s incorporation of the dogaressa into its rich symbolism. The text precisely describes the order and the exact position of the participants in the parade, from the musicians and servants of the doge to the dogaressa who came after other ladies of honor and between the two most senior ducal counselors. In many ways, this processional order mimicked the one followed in 302
the ducal andate or outings to commemorate religious and political festivals: the processions of doge and dogaressa must have appeared similar in some ways to spectators. The first group in the tripartite ducal procession consisted of musicians, servants, standard-bearers, church officials, and non-noble bureaucrats; the second contained the doge, the ballot-bearer, ambassadors, and some men bearing the symbols of the doge’s power. The doge’s procession closed with the nobility, organized by the hierarchy of their offices.56 Just as in processions that featured the doge, his musicians and servants appeared at the beginning of his wife’s entrance sequence. As in ducal processions and other civic and religious festivals, the object of veneration, in this case the dogaressa, appeared in the middle, representing the center or heart. In addition, many of the most important officeholders of Venice followed the dogaressa, ranked in descending order of consequence. This is a notable elaboration upon descriptions of the fourteenthcentury entrance of the dogaressa, which seemed to feature only the ducal counselors as representatives of the political elite. The increased visibility of the governmental elite within the fifteenth-century procession gave the event and its featured participant political value. This visibility stretched across the campi and the canals of the city. Whereas the doge’s election day rituals were generally confined to the political and sacred center of the city and included no andate beyond that sector, the dogaressa’s cortege traversed various regions of the metropolis, spatially uniting it and incorporating more viewers.57 In its wide-ranging geography, the dogaressa’s entrata more closely resembled the events from ritual calendar of annual processions the doge undertook to various churches scattered across the city. The largest citywide procession during the season of election celebrations featured the dogaressa rather than her spouse. The doge’s election procession was a confirmation that took place within the confines of the city’s narrow political space; his wife’s progress moved from periphery to the center, and perhaps called to mind in its pageantry the elaborate entrances of foreign dignitaries. Even as the dogaressa’s procession was broader and more encompassing of the spaces of the city, it had, not surprisingly, a less narrowly political focus in its geography and its symbolism, lacking several elements common in the ducal 303
processions. For instance, in the dogaressa’s entrance no one bore the city’s political or religious symbols such as the gifts presented to Venice from Alexander III; neither her office nor her entrata was visually linked to this triumphant episode in the history of the republic in such an overt way. In addition, the dogaressa’s procession did not include a rigid separation of noble and non-noble participants that defined political participation in Venice’s oligarchy. Non-noble ducal secretaries and other bureaucrats prominently preceded the doge in his cortege, representing their importance to the political system and the city, despite their exclusion from the political elite who ruled.58 In contrast, the only nonnoble participant of the dogaressa’s official cortege other than the musicians and servants was the wife of the grand chancellor. Most importantly, the number of important officeholders and the order of their appearance differed in the dogaressa’s procession. Only the ducal counselors, procurators of San Marco, and members of the Senate represented the body politic in the dogaressa’s parade. In the doge’s procession, all of these and other political figures appeared in the final third, behind the doge. The dogaressa walked between the two most senior counselors, with other counselors and procurators appearing both before and behind her. Although political representatives appeared in the dogaressa’s procession both to mark her entrance into the political sphere and to act as symbolic guardians of republican tradition, her entrata focused less on the narrowly conceived political divisions of patrician and citizen illustrated by the doge’s parade, even as it also did not manifest the religious symbolism inherent in the doge’s office. The dogaressa’s progress was most notable for its gender—the absence of the male doge and the presence, sheer number, and identity of the women who participated. Contemporaries and modern scholars alike have stressed the tendency—especially pronounced in Venice-—to shelter elite women from extended public exposure, for the sake of their safety and honor. Some evidence does indeed suggest that if women attended events such as the ducal andate, they did so only as spectators.59 Less emphasis on gendered honor seems to have allowed more day-to-day public interaction for nonelite women, but they too seemed not to be participants in rituals that marked elite, male-dominated sacred 304
and civic spaces.60 At the same time, the increase in sumptuary legislation directed at elite women in the fifteenth century in Venice as elsewhere clearly indicates that it was not just the purchase of elaborate clothes and jewels, but their visibility at weddings, balls, church, or other events. Such displays drew attention to women for their beauty and honor, and simultaneously prompted condemnation of their vain and wasteful display as well as threats to their honor and chastity. In fact, it was increasingly common in the fifteenth century for noblewomen to attend balls for visiting dignitaries, and to appear, elaborately garbed, freed from sumptuary restrictions, on the Bucintoro or floats dispatched to greet these visitors on crucial state occasions.61 In sum, sumptuary laws exhibit the gap between the ideal construction of the elite woman unseen, and the real occasions which called for and celebrated female visibility. The entrance of the dogaressa was another occasion when a significant number of elite women became civic ornaments. They contributed to the creation of an ornate tableau that visually represented the wealth and honor of the city and their families in terms not just of assets and consumable goods, but also in terms of beauty, honor, and fertility, concepts crucial for female, familial, and civic reputation. Whether spectators or participants, agents or objects, women at civic festivals were more than symbolic bodies: they also formed part of the audience who viewed the ritual and interpreted it. However, even in this procession dedicated to a woman, females were encased within a safe and confining patriarchal frame. The senior counselors escorted the dogaressa, whose brother and brother-in-law flanked her. Male relatives of the doge accompanied the matrons, especially the daughters and daughters-in-law of the dogaressa, as well as the wives of the grand chancellor, procurators, and counselors. The procession began and ended with men: servants and musicians of the doge in front, and servants of the state—members of the Senate and Great Council in the rear, safely containing the female contingent in the center. Here the dogaressa and* her elite female companions represented every woman whose purity had to be shielded from the threats of public exposure for her own sake, but more importantly for the honor of her husband and especially of the city, as the previously discussed Senate legislation of 1463 also suggests.62 The counselors 305
and procurators did not just safeguard the honor of these women; they symbolically championed the Venetian social system of patriarchy and the honor of their state.63 Further, the presence of these elected governmental chaperones guarded the sanctity of the Venetian political system. These elite members of the government escorting the dogaressa and other women representing specific families inserted republican rhetoric into a ceremony that might otherwise have become a celebration dedicated to an individual or an individual family, and which might have suggested a dynastic, signorial image projected by a woman in the position of ruler. Several types of women appeared with the dogaressa, forming a temporary court. First came a group of young married women, then older married women, in pairs. The wife of the grand chancellor, whose office was the most elite non-patrician position in Venice’s bureaucracy, followed these women. Her presence in the cortege represented the class of citizens, but she was the only other political wife identified by title who appeared in the description.64 Finally in the parade of women came the daughters and daughters-in-law of the dogaressa. Many of these women, not just the dogaressa and wife of the grand chancellor, came from the most politically and economically powerful families in Venice. The entrance ceremony created a rare moment of public interaction for many noblewomen of the city. Not only did it afford the opportunity to meet and socialize outside homes and churches, but a chance to see the spectacle of these women and their garments as well, which must have been the center of attention in the procession. Freed from sartorial restrictions, these women donned their finest and assumed personas separate from (although always related to) that of their husbands who usually accompanied them in public.65 The entrata of the dogaressa offered these women, through their fashions, an instance of self-expression, sisterhood, and citizenship in a uniquely female community, yet their uncommon moment of participation in civic ritual occurred within and highlighted the safe confines of patriarchal ideology. Only married women formed this court (with the possible exception of the maidens who carried the dogaressa’s train); and the procession, as well as the dogaressa herself, suggested the importance of marriage in republican Venice. 306
The young matrons who marched ahead of the dogaressa depicted those in the middle stage of the female life cycle, recently married and prepared to bear children and therefore maintain and augment noble family size and honor. The older matrons, like the dogaressa with her daughters and daughters-in-law, represented the female life cycle in its twilight, after they had presumably given birth to and raised many children. Dogaressa Tron was at least sixty-four when her ceremonial entrance took place in 1472 and had raised at least seven children to adulthood. Her advanced age and her court of matrons also called to mind the successful system of gerontocracy at work in Venice.66 Like the elderly men who ruled in Venice, elderly women represented the wisdom of old age and a life lived for the commune. The very presence of political wives, like the dogaressa herself, suggested that marriage and family heightened the power and prestige of the political elite of Venice and that the wealth and family connections of these women as well as their procreative ability maintained the political system.67 The entrata of Dogaressa Tron also subtly highlighted familial ties and connections, a theme already evident in Sanudo’s explicit mention of her natal name. The oath-taking ceremony as described in these sources took note of a myriad of family members who would live in the ducal palace, and who therefore were also required to acknowledge the parts of the promissione that applied to them. This legislation suggested that a large extended family could and most likely did live with the doge and his wife in the palace and that the dogaressa was the focal point of this extended group. Members of this large group were also visible participants in the dogaressa’s procession. Relatives of the doge appeared in the procession and acted as escorts for the matrons. The dogaressa’s daughters and daughters-in-law received pride of place, marching near their mother and thereby representing another generation of successful and profitable marriages. The entrance ritual, in other words, created a visual tableau of the social ties created by the elite women. Her own brother and the brother of the doge came directly before the dogaressa in the procession. The brothers symbolized the union between the families of doge and dogaressa, a union that likely fostered economic partnerships and political cooperation. In addition, the dogaressa’s brother overtly recalled the political, military, and economic achievements of previous generations 307
of Morosini, acts that formed a type of honor less associated with women than men in patriarchal societies. Hence the dogaressa, located centrally between family and government representatives, stood for the crucial role of all patrician women in Venice. She increased social and political mobility of her natal family through marriage, and within marriage produced heirs that perpetuated the system, either through another generation of advantageous marriages or through participation in the political processes.68 The doge’s coronation in these centuries stressed his obligations to the state, church, and people, an entirely appropriate gesture for the first civil servant of a republic. By contrast, the dogaressa had fewer official civic responsibilities, and her oath taking took place out of the public eye. The political disenfranchisement of her gender necessarily distanced her from republican rhetoric; instead, the dogaressa tended to represent the personal and familial elements, important for a commune that relied on the institution of the family for its very 'continuity, important also for individual doges who sought to glorify their family name and progeny in ceremony. The Liber Promissionum account of Dogaressa Tron’s entrance placed heavy emphasis on family participants and familial rhetoric, themes not addressed by previous chroniclers of the event. However, the presence and expanding function of the guilds in the entrance continued to be a dominant theme. According to previous descriptions, after their participation in the dogaressa’s water procession, the guilds attended a banquet at the palace. By the late fifteenth century, this part of the ceremony had developed into an elaborate ritual. Each guild received an assigned spot, where they assembled and decorated tables for the feast.-After the dogaressa ascended the palace stairs, she had to pass along the loggia to the Great Council Hall, where she no doubt went by many of these guild displays. The guilds now did double ceremonial duty: they appeared in the procession of boats that accompanied the Bucintoro to the Piazza San Marco and they attended a banquet where they themselves were responsible for the decorations, which included not only the elaborate tapestries, rugs, and cloths mentioned above, but also the coats of arms of the guilds, depicted together with the arms of the doge. These painted arms were still visible in the loggia of the palace in the nineteenth 308
century.69 The guilds used this and other ceremonial opportunities not only to illustrate civic wealth but also to promote their wares. In addition, the dogaressa’s entrance provided ceremonial continuity for the guilds even after their exclusion from the political elite, suggesting that they still played an important role in the overall success of the state.70 The dogaressa’s entrance ceremony incorporated two groups, women and the guilds, largely excluded from official Venetian political culture. Their participation in this ritual reminded Venetians and foreign visitors alike of their vital roles in the city. Just as some ducal andate featured citizen bureaucrats and confraternity members to illustrate the harmony between classes in Venice, the guilds appeared in conjunction with the dogaressa to further the harmonious image of the body politic, celebrating the very system that excluded them. In addition, the guilds appeared as symbols of the tremendous wealth they generated for the city. The women in the procession also represented the city’s prosperity with their elaborate gowns. However, these assemblages, grouped according to their place within the marriage cycle, emphasized the importance of that institution in maintaining Venice s political elite. These two very different groups served similar purposes in the context of the dogaressa’s procession. Far more so than the other elements of the doge’s inauguration celebrations, the entrance of the dogaressa incorporated both diverse peoples and the larger space of the city. If one function of civic ritual was to visually represent an idealized model of politics and society, in the Venetian dogaressa’s entrata then the dogaressa herself and her court of ladies and guildsmen acted as symbolic guardians of Venice’s social cohesion and serenity; a montage of the Venetian myth in action.71
Nuptial Ritual, Civic Ritual From the earliest record of the entrata of the dogaressa—a clause concerning gift exchange in Doge Jacopo Tiepolo’s 1229 promissione—the event had been linked with marriage. At that time, both the dogaressa’s entrance and ducal weddings were deemed occasions sufficiently noteworthy to merit some relaxation of giftexchange regulations. As the dogaressa’s entrance ritual developed over the centuries, it adopted many elements of the iconography and ideology of 309
weddings, thus creating a ceremony where the dogaressa symbolically became joined to the state.72 Generally, medieval wedding rituals fell into three phases: the dowry negotiations, carried out by male relatives; the celebration of the wedding at the house of the bride’s father; and the procession of the bride and trousseau through the city to the house of the husband, after which the newlyweds consummated their union.73 As we have seen, the dogaressa’s oath employed patriarchal language typical of marriage exchanges, shaping her as an obedient daughter and wife. The ritual of oath-taking corresponded in many ways to the negotiation phase of a typical wedding. Important officials of her governmental “family” witnessed this event, as in a typical marriage ceremony. Further, the event took place at the house of the dogaressa’s father, and the dogaressa gave the governmental representatives a symbolic dowry in the form of money purses. As in marital ritual, sometime after being promised, the dogaressa left home and was taken in a procession first to the church of San Marco and then to the Doge’s Palace, the home of her new metaphysical “husband,” the state, as well as where her traditional spouse awaited her. In so doing, the dogaressa allowed public participation and the legitimation of her new marriage to the state. Language provides a further link between these two ceremonies. The phrase commonly used to describe the last phase of this process meant “to bring one’s wife under one’s roof.” The same sentence construction implying an action by the doge in bringing his consort to the palace appears in more than one description of the dogaressa’s entrance.74 While, the dogaressa’s procession lacked a display of a trousseau transported across the city in cassone and baskets, as often occurred in wedding rituals, the presence of the guilds in her triumph and the marketplace they created at the Doge’s Palace suggested such an exchange and accentuated the general wealth of the state, her symbolic bridegroom. Even as husbands frequently provided their brides with elaborate clothes for the wedding to illustrate their wealth, after 1457 the state required the dogaressa to always appear in an official ducal costume that denoted her wealth and high status, and defined her as property of the state.75 Finally, the seating of the dogaressa on the ducal throne completed and consummated this political arrangement, incorporating the dogaressa, even if in a limited fashion, into the official state apparatus. 310
The parallels between the dogaressa’s entrate and wedding ritual are equally resonant when we consider actual Venetian wedding narratives. Francesco Sansovino highlighted the pageantry involved in a patrician wedding, from the participation of musicians to the particular sugary confections prepared for the event, and procession of the bride by boat to the sheer number of important dignitaries in attendance, “in short, all the nobility.”76 Certain weddings, like that of Giacomo Foscari, son of Doge Francesco, to Lucrezia Contarini in 1441 created the same festive atmosphere across the city as the entrance of a dogaressa and followed the same basic processional pattern. For this wedding of a ducal son, the bride was escorted by two procurators of San Marco and traveled to the Doge’s Palace for a banquet aboard the Bucintoro. The procession by land and water, as well as the participation of a compagnia di calza helped make this celebration encompass the entire city. This and other patrician weddings attracted prominent foreign guests, and thus became not just expressions of familial wealth and status, but of civic pride and power as well.77 Weddings, like the entrata, made women the focal points of display and consumption. Venetian sumptuary law also created a special category for brides, who were allowed certain adornments such as pearls, prohibited to other women during their weddings. In addition, this legislation revealed particular concern with the women who attended the bride, frequently decreeing the precise number of women and their marital status. As in the entrance of the dogaressa, a variety of women, young and older, married and nubile, accompanied the bride on her procession.78 The dogaressa possessed bridal status in the sense that she was always allowed the extra extravagances permitted to a bride on her wedding day, although her entrata differed from a typical wedding in that it had no sumptuary restrictions placed upon it. Not only was the entrance of the dogaressa similar to a wedding in its external trappings and pageantry, but it also encapsulated the same blend of familial and civic issues inherent in elite nuptial rites, which not only joined two people, but also two of the clans who made up Venice’s oligarchy. The dogaressa’s entrance recalled marital unions in its form, and created a visual montage of the social networks and progeny produced by good marriages, the very adhesive that held 311
together the city’s closed aristocracy. As the dogaressa swore obedience to the state, her entrance emphasized that all elite Venetian weddings were in the service of the republic, cementing the sociopolitical networks that made the oligarchy function, and producing the next generation of office holders and republican mothers. In short, the ceremony encapsulated the interconnectedness and mutual reliance of family and state. Wedding ritual then functioned as a political as well as social metaphor and was thus frequently employed in Venetian ceremonies precisely because marriage generated families and thus the state.79 Venetians made even more use of nuptial imagery and symbolism, beyond weddings themselves and the entrance of the dogaressa. Several rituals in the vast collection of religious festivals, especially those that involved women, real and allegorical, were expressed in terms of marriage. For example, the commitment ceremonies of nuns used wedding rhetoric and many of the same symbols including an oath, processions, clothing, and conspicuous display. In another convent rite, the doge “married” each new abbess of the convent of Santa Maria delle Vergini.80 Even as the dogaressa’s entrance shaped her as bride, the doge frequently adopted the persona of groom in civic ritual. One of the most significant annual rites in Venice occurred on Ascension Day, when the doge “married” the sea by dropping a blessed ring into the lagoon. On this day, the sea became the bride, and through this ritual the doge proclaimed Venice’s patriarchal authority and dominion over it.81 Yet like the unions of Venetian brides and grooms, Venetians were well aware of the contributions, economic and imperial, the female sea brought to this macrocosmic “marriage.” Like the dogaressa’s entrance, marriage rites formed the frame for these ceremonies and stressed the importance of the institution of marriage itself in addition to larger civic patriarchal implications. In the view of a patrician wedding, these ritual marriages strongly suggested unification of different parties with a male figure taking the dominant role. In these cases the doge was a charismatic stand-in for the interests of the state, whereas in the dogaressa’s entrance, the absence of a ducal figure combined with marriage rhetoric suggested that it was the state itself that the dogaressa joined. The entrata, and her husband’s wedding to the sea, were abstract applications of marriage vocabulary, 312
and highlighted the offices and duties of doge and dogaressa rather than that of the individuals who held them, a fact made evident by the absence of the dogaressa from her husband’s symbolic wedding, and the absence of the doge from hers. Ironically, the dogdressa’s marriage to the doge created her office, yet the significance of that real marriage was often downplayed in ducal rituals. Crucially important for their own political ambitions, and as representative of the glue that held together Venice’s patriciate, the ducal couple’s earthly tie also posed a hazard, and wds ultimately not as significant to the maintenance of the polity as the intangible, sacred, and eternal connections celebrated in their allegorical rites. Whereas marriages between men and women were rituals of unification and separation that marked in particular the passage of the bride from child to adult, and from father to husband, the allegorical marriages of doge and dogaressa joined them with abstract civic ideologies, while visually and symbolically separating them from each other.82 The Venetian festival dedicated to the Purification of the Virgin also employed marital rhetoric. According to a fifteenth-century chronicle, the doge’s February visit to the church of Santa Maria Formosa commemorated the city’s tenthcentury victory over pirates who had kidnapped a group of brides and their dowries. The festival came to be known as the festival of the Twelve Marys, after the original abductees and the time at which the festival took place. Two neighborhoods in Venice sponsored the event every year, during which men gathered gifts and brought them as dowries to poorer women at the church of Santa Maria Formosa. Also during the festival, which lasted eight days, the wealthier of the two neighborhoods hosted banquets, and the doge visited Santa Maria Formosa. On the final day of the celebration, statues depicting Mary were carried in a procession first to the Cathedral of San Pietro to be blessed and then to San Marco.83 The festival of the Twelve Marys provided the only known opportunity other than the entrate of the dogaressa and ceremonial welcomes for non-cloistered elite women to play an active role in Venetian civic ritual. The celebration involved women in several ways. First, it provided dowries for the poorer women of the city. Also, both married women and unmarried girls acted as attendants to the statues 313
of Mary and attended the banquets hosted by the richest residents of the neighborhood. As in the dogaressa’s entrance, these women were grouped according to their marital status in a procession that glorified the patrilinear system of Venice: “Women and girls watched over the processions, and their presence implied that the specific objective of the festival was to exalt a particular ideal of femininity to which all women were expected to conform.”84 This festival celebrated the contributions of women on several levels. Both with its references to the purity and maternity of the Virgin, and with the participation of mothers and daughters, this ritual pointed to the importance of fertility and procreation. In addition, it commemorated a group of mythical marriages of the city’s past while encouraging future marriages through the dowry gifts. However, the festival of the Twelve Marys ceased to be celebrated in 1379. The immediate cause was war with Genoa, but underlying motives appear to have included the aggrandizement of ducal power at the expense of individual neighborhoods, as well as concerns with conspicuous consumption and dangerous opportunities for interaction in public between the sexes.85 The doge still visited Santa Maria Formosa and still commemorated the defeat of the pirates, but all of the aspects of the festival requiring the participation or celebration of women vanished. When this festival disappeared in the late fourteenth century, another ritual championing marriage and civic femininity, the entrance of the dogaressa was emerging to take its place. Although the festival of the Twelve Marys had been an annual celebration unlike the dogaressa’s entrance, which occurred less frequently, marriage continued to form the structure for a series of Venetian rituals including the dogaressa’s entrance, providing continuous ritual emphasis on the significance of the institution. Venetian marriages united families, created political alliances, and economic partnerships, facilitated dynastic continuity, and therefore commanded a good deal of ritual importance. The symbolic weight of weddings reached a feverish pitch during the same period that the dogaressa’s entrance ceremony attained its most elaborate state ever—the fifteenth century—precisely because marriage was becoming more and more important a gauge for issues of status and identity amongst the Venetian elite of both sexes. Concern over marriage—who married 314
whom, for what price, and how—manifested itself in the early decades of the fifteenth century in the theoretical writings of both Giovanni Caldiera and Francesco Barbaro, and several governmental statutes on dowry size and noble identity.86 Thus it is not surprising that a woman’s procession should be seen in terms of a nuptial ritual. Women infrequently participated in city rituals— weddings provided the most common exception, and one that championed the patriarchal status quo through the ritual movement of women from fathers to husbands, a passage that initiated a new family cycle and guaranteed the existence of civic institutions and stability. The dogaressa’s entrance symbolized this same passage from father to husband, as well as the passage from husband to government, and recalled and further emphasized the overlapping concerns of family and state. The conscious use of wedding symbolism subsumed a potentially disturbing vision of women’s public interaction within the accepted ritual vocabulary of a ceremony that defined women in Venetian society.
Entrate of Italian Consorts How does the dogaressa’s entrance compare with the place of women in civic ritual in other Italian city-states of the period? Despite the similarities between Venice and Florence in terms of their status as trade centers and their embrace of republican systems of government, Florence had no equivalent to the office of dogaressa, and thus Florentine civic pageantry of the fifteenth century rarely placed sole focus on one or a group of secular females, until the Medici family began to emulate more openly the northern courts.87 The representation of Florentine government presented by ritual in the fifteenth century remained almost entirely masculine, as were the common images of David and Hercules, the cornerstones of Florentine visual symbolism, and the system of government they represented in which only men participated.88 In contrast, by the fifteenth century many powerful northern Italian city-states such as Milan or Mantua had adopted a princely style of governance under a single family and had achieved political stability, allowing increased attention to pageantry and its royal implications. In such states, females symbolized not only alliances with other such states, but dynastic continuity, and as such the ritual 315
visibility of consorts was crucial, and their entrances, the moments at which the public first viewed and legitimated them as rulers and guardians of the dynasty, significant. Unfortunately, a systematic comparison of occasions such as Bona of Savoy’s first entrance into Milan (1468) and Eleonora of Aragon’s entrance into Ferrara (1473), has yet to be undertaken by scholars of ritual or gender. Yet like their Venetian counterparts, chroniclers in these and other cities were interested in these female-dominated rituals, especially given the political and cultural influence of late-fifteenth-century courtly consorts such as Isabella d’Este Gonzaga in Mantua and her sister Beatrice d’Este Sforza in Milan.89 Although a full-fledged comparison is beyond the scope of this study, the following brief survey of northern Italian court women and entrance ritual creates a context in which the ritual importance and exceptionality of the Venetian dogaressa may be better comprehended. The first entrances of these consorts into the territories of their spouses generally coincided with their recent weddings. Galeazzo Maria Sforza married Bona of Savoy by proxy in France in 1468. The new duchess then traveled by boat to Genoa; from there, accompanied by her husband and a group of elaborately dressed ladies, traveled to Milan where they entered the city together, participated in a ceremony, and received gifts from conquered territories before the citizens of the city in a large piazza.90 Similarly, a lengthy procession on land and water highlighted Eleonora of Aragon’s entrance into Ferrara in 1473. Duke Ercole d’Este accompanied his new bride, as did Neapolitan guests, other dignitaries, hundreds of elaborately dressed ladies, and musicians. Such pageantry and female display also attended Caterina Sforza in 1477 when she traveled from Milan and entered her future home Imola, en route to meet her husband Girolamo Riario in Rome. Ippolita Sforza was similarly greeted in Bologna on her way to her marriage to Alfonso of Naples in 1465.91 In all cases, these processions celebrated not only marriages, but also diplomacy; the joining of two individuals facilitated the joining of two states, caking to mind, as did the dogaressa’s “union” with the state the common and flexible usage of the patriarchal family as a model of government, and the multiple meanings carried in the ritual vocabulary of weddings. Moreover, these processional occasions afforded women the opportunity 316
to act as emblems of wealth through dress and to form a gendered, public community. As in Venice, the coronation ceremonies elsewhere provided the opportunity for tableaux of elaborately dressed women to be seen. Women of these courtly societies were generally subject to fewer sumptuary laws, and, as we shall see, the dogaressa too was universally exempted from such restrictions.92 An anonymous Ferrarese chronicler observed that when Eleonora of Aragon came to Ferrara in 1473, she traveled with a “beautiful and great entourage,” including ladies of the realm of Naples. Like Marino Sanudo’s accounts of the dogaressa’s entrance, this chronicler described Eleonora’s costume in painstaking detail and observed that once the procession reached the Este palace, a great dance, “attended by all the beautiful women of Ferrara” commenced.93 At the same time the entrances of consorts differed from that of the dogaressa iri crucial ways that illustrate the differing functions of these honored elite women and their different relationships to their states. Bona of Savoy was nineteen at her wedding, Caterina Sforza fourteen—both gave birth to the first of several children the year following their weddings. Their entrances highlighted their beauty, youth, and fertility. Once Bona landed on Italian soil, Galeazzo Sforza appeared often with his bride; spectators of the event knew that the future of the Sforza dynasty rested with her.94 The same expectations surrounded the entrance of Eleonora of Aragon and other princely wives. By contrast, all the late-medieval dogaresse were already married to their husbands by the time of their entrances, and many had already given birth to and raised multiple children—by the late fifteenth century Venetians elected older doges whose wives were often grandmothers.95 The age of these women and the absence of the doge from proceedings reassured viewers that Venice was not a dynastic state. Rather than a sexual vessel upon whom rested the immediate future of the state, the dogaressa’s entrance and her aging body presented a timeless desexualized icon of Venetian family values. Remarkably, in some ways the entrance ritual of the dogaressa more closely resembled those of the rare women who ruled either in their own right, such as Giovanna I of Naples (1343—82), or as regent for young children, as did Caterina Sforza (1488-1500), in Forli and Imola after her husband’s assassination. These 317
women possessed actual political power and had a specifically defined overtly political role in addition to that of guardian and procreator of the dynasty. Hence their entrances tended to have some constitutional or sacred elements that confirmed their political status and were largely absent from wedding entrances of courtly consorts. Benediction in a church or by church officials was one way that entrance ritual confirmed the authority of these women. Pageantry accompanied Caterina Sforza s first mass in Forli after her assumption of power. The church of Santa Chiara, site of royal patronage and royal burials, also became the stage for Giovanna’s coronation and oath-taking, associating her with the traditions of Angevin rulers. Even though the sacred element of the dogaressa’s entrance was not held by its chroniclers to be as significant as her procession her time in San Marco still linked her with the spiritual center of the city. In addition, each woman’s entrance ritual involved some speech from oaths spoken by Giovanna and the dogaressa to Caterina’s administration of oaths upon her citizens. These women’s processions also involved representatives of the government and symbols of authority. The dogaressa processed with members of the Senate, and sat on her husband’s vacant throne; Caterina Sforza processed amongst armor- clad nobles and through a passage of pikes and military standards.96 Even though the ducal oath sought to guarantee that the dogaressa had no access to the type of political power possessed by Caterina Sforza and Giovanna I, or even the influence accessible through the courts of women like Bona of Savoy, her ritual entrance did associate her with some of the trappings of that authority. Like these women, the dogaressa possessed a constitutionally defined office with duties that extended beyond motherhood and regency. Given Venice’s connections with Constantinople and the east during the Middle Ages, historians have long pondered the influence of the Byzantine Empire on various Venetian traditions and rituals. Yet the dogaressa was not an empress, queen, or ruler. The Byzantine empress was crowned by her husband, and, like the consorts of northern Italy, drew extensive authority from her ability to act as mother and regent for her children.97 The most potent symbol of royal authority received by queens and empresses was surely a crown. Before the sixteenth
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century, the dogaressa’s ceremonial identity seems to have been marked only by her manto, rather than by specific headgear.98 Further, unlike the aforementioned consorts and rulers, the dogaressa could not be the guardian of a ruling dynasty. Sixteen-year-old Giovanna I of Naples had just come of age at her 1344 coronation, yet she had been married to her husband, the Duke of Calabria, for six years. No doubt the barons of Naples, church representatives, and spectators alike hoped queen and consort would soon give the insecure house of Anjou an heir. And the residents of Imola and Forli surely considered the fertility of twenty-five- year-old Caterina Sforza when she assumed power, since while under siege she had famously cited her pregnancy and ability to produce heirs when rebels threatened the lives of her existing children.99 Rather than presenting the dogaressa at the moment of her fertility, and despite its use of the ritual vocabulary of weddings that usually highlighted fecundity, by the fifteenth- century Venetian entrance ritual placed the middle-aged dogaressa amongst her grown children and therefore highlighted the general importance of family as a political model and protector of the social networks that preserved Venice’s serenity, rather than stressing the specific need for an heir. Finally, the dogaressa’s entrance differs from the above women’s in the remarkable fact that she had a husband who took no part in her entrance. The entrances of women like Bona of Savoy highlighted the marital couple, as did the ritual of coronation in the Byzantine Empire, where customarily the emperor first married and then crowned his wife. Even though Giovanna of Naples possessed sole sovereignty, her spouse attended her coronation ceremony at Santa Chiara.100 Hence it was customary for male sovereigns to be present at and even take part in the entrances of their wives. Only when the death of the male ruler propelled women to power, as happened to Caterina Corner in Cyprus in 1473 and Caterina Sforza in Imola in 1488, did Italian ruling consorts appear without male counterparts. Yet the dogaressa processed alone, while her living spouse awaited her in the Doge’s Palace. Although a woman’s entrance implied marriage, fertility, and the dynastic issues common to all princely states, the doge’s absence from the dogaressa’s entrance fundamentally altered the meaning of his wife’s entrance. Caught between republican values and princely glorification, the dogaressa’s 319
procession did not represent a concrete celebration of the fertility of an individual or the wedding of two powerful families. Instead, the ritual used the vocabulary of marriage to cast the state as the patriarchal bridegroom. Stripped of immediate biological importance, the dogaressa became an icon whose ritual function was thus distinct from that of other European consorts. Allegorical women who stood for civic and religious virtues dotted the landscape of Venice’s political core. The city associated itself with the Virgin Mary and decorated the ducal palace with images of Justice, an enthroned female wielding a sword understood to be analagous to the city herself (figure 2.1). Later idealized images of Venice combined these and other female allegorical attributes.101 Venice, like Constantinople and Rome, envisaged itself as a woman.102 Through its prominent positioning and repeated use, we know that this female construction of their city resonated for Venetians, but these allegories stood in sharp contrast to the starkly male political reality of republican Venice. Like these allegories, the entrance of the dogaressa employed a female body (or bodies) to bear multiple messages pertaining to doge and state. At the simplest level, her entrata amplified and diversified the celebrations surrounding the newly elected doge, his wife being simply another mode for his self-aggrandizement. Yet the doge was physically absent from this expression of honor and grandeur: his nonappearance, like the oath swearing with which the dogaressa’s ceremony began, evoked the limitations placed upon individual pomp and ducal family ambition. But the oath also juridically defined and justified the office of dogaressa, her procession through the city completed the process of her legitimation; it presented her to the citizenry who acted as witnesses to the union between woman and 'State, and employed the universally comprehended ritual vocabulary of marriage. By the end of the period under investigation here, focus on the dogaressa by the state and chroniclers alike had moved from her legal construction in the promissione to its public manifestation in her entrance ritual. The entrata ceremony evolved over the centuries. In the thirteenth century the ritual underscored power relationships between the ruler and the ruled and featured a passive dogaressa who was visited by subjects and then was brought into the palace. By the fifteenth century this rite had evolved into one that revolved 320
around the dogaresse themselves and whose most dominant theme—marriage— recalled the ideal state for women in early modern Venice. The emphasis on marital imagery in the dogaressal entrance coincided with a period in Venetian history in which Venetian authors stressed patriarchy and ideal wifehood, and when the social and political stakes in the marriage market took on increased significance. Not only did the female participants represent the various stages in a married woman’s life, their rituals also bore uncanny similarities to a wedding ceremony. The institution of marriage created, maintained, and typified the Venetian way of life in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, generating economic and political partnerships as well as increasing the size and social prestige of the city’s most prominent and up-and-coming families. Women were the conduits who facilitated these relationships—no woman more so than the dogaressa who typically came from the city’s oldest and most powerful families. Although the dogaressa had no direct political authority, no possibility of regency, and was restricted by the oath of office, her gendered entrance commemorated the role of every Venetian wife and mother whose day-to-day activities supported the men of Venice in and away from the political center. The vast procession of the dogaressa and her court dominating the streets and waterways of Venice could have been threatening to Venetian patriarchy. At the moment when the dogaressa was seated on the doge’s throne, Venice symbolically became a city of women. However, these women were not poised to upset the gender balance in Venice; on the contrary, this event that celebrated marriage and family reaffirmed the existing system and women’s place in it. In so doing the ritual echoed patriarchal theory even while it allowed the dogaressa and other, women rare visibility and action that the theory discouraged. The dichotomy between patriarchal structure and the practice of women’s lives is much debated in gender studies, and is summed up in the entrance and office of the dogaressa of Venice. The ritual journey described in this chapter concluded at the Doge’s Palace, with the dogaressa seated on her husband’s throne at the nexus of civic, spiritual, and economic life in Venice. The following chapter will examine the office of dogaressa from within those walls, walls that housed both republican government and aristocratic self-aggrandizing ducal family. The building itself was an 321
extension of its occupants and thereby further blurred the distinction between the impersonal, eternal republic, and its temporary charismatic ruler. The dogaressa’s entrance and her life before probably prepared her adequately neither for the complex physical space and geography of her office, nor for the overlapping and contradictory boundaries, and demands of the structures of state, family, gender, and tradition. The subsequent examination of the dogaressa’s life within and beyond those elaborate, gothic walls will challenge the conclusion, reached by many scholars, that beyond the ritual moment of the glory of her entrance, the dogaressa had “no function in political life.”103
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READING 4
Stanley Chojnacki Nobility, Women and the State: Marriage Regulation in Venice In July 1457 two Venetian nobles, Jacopo Gabriel and Pasquale Malipiero, appeared in the court of the patriarch of Venice to defend Gabriel’s son, Giovanni, against a breach-of-promise suit brought by the noblewoman Orsa Dolfin.1 She claimed that in March 1455 Giovanni had married her by touching her hand in the presence of witnesses, but had failed to follow through by taking her (transducere) to live with him] now she petitioned Venice’s highest ecclesiastical tribunal to compel him to complete the marriage.2 The defence strategy of Gabriel and Malipiero was to impeach Orsa’s suitability as a wife. ‘No one of sound mind’, they declared, would credit such a marriage, since the two parties were ‘unequal in every respect’.3 They claimed that at the time of the purported touching of hands she was thirty years old ‘and more’, while Giovanni was only eighteen. Worse, she was ‘not of good or chaste life and reputation’. If Giovanni frequented her, it was not ‘to contract marriage but to have sexual relations with her, as young men do’, and ‘if he made the marriage - and we have no knowledge of it, indeed we find it impossible to believe that he did so - it was because he was seduced and tricked’.4 Above all, they stressed Orsa’s and Giovanni’s social and economic inequality. Giovanni’s paternal great-grandfather had left his two sons, Zaccaria, Giovanni’s grandfather, and Zaccaria’s brother, also named Giovanni, an estate worth 50,000 ducats, which would have put them jointly among the richest 1.5 per cent of Venetians.5 Moreover, the elder Giovanni had married the daughter of none other than Doge Antonio Venier (1382-1400). Though less illustriously married, Zaccaria had left his three sons an estate worth probably more than 80,000 ducats; 6 and, equally importantly, had negotiated prestigious marriages for them: Marco marrying Doge Antonio Venier’s granddaughter; Girolamo, marrying a woman 324
from the Mocenigo lineage, with three Quattrocento doges; and ‘ego Jacobus’, marrying the daughter of his partner on the defence team, Pasquale Malipiero, young Giovanni’s maternal grandfather, who would himself be elected doge the following year. These marriages were illustrious not only because of the paternity of the brides, but also because of their marriage portions: Marco received 3,000 ducats, Girolamo and Jacopo 2,500 ducats each. These were exceptionally - and, as we shall see below, illegally - large dowries. In stark contrast with those glittering credentials, Gabriel and Malipiero dismissed Orsa’s paternal grandfather, Luca Dolfin, as a pauper and pointed out that her father, Antonio Dolfin, and his brother, Nicolò, had married commoners (non nobilem sed plebeiam). The Dolfin brothers had ‘always lived in poverty’, been elected to few offices in the government, and lacked the means to pay government imposts. Consistent with this sorry profile was Orsa’s alleged dowry. ‘It is unthinkable’, Jacopo Gabriel declared, ‘that the dowry dorma Orsa promised my son Giovanni, 350 ducats, is suitable for a noble of respectable status such as my son; indeed, it would hardly be appropriate for an artisan.’7 Indeed, such a meagre dowry was itself evidence that Orsa and her allies ‘thought to gull him owing to the youth’s childish innocence’.8 Altogether, ‘this alleged marriage is anything but equal with regard to the age, status, nobility, wealth, influence, experience and other such characteristics of Giovanni and Orsa; on the contrary, it is of great disparity and inequality, as anyone aware of their respective circumstances would conclude’.9 How the patriarch’s court decided Orsa’s suit is not known, but the interest of the case lies less in its disposition than in the contrast between Orsa and Giovanni painted by the young man’s father and grandfather. They depicted a patrician marriage model based on worldly maturity in grooms, chaste youth in brides values shared by the Gabriels’ counterparts in Florence - and, most emphatically, the wealth and prominence of both contracting families, qualities conspicuously lacking in the Dolfins.10 The critical indicator of socio-economic status was thus a record of marriages with distinguished noble (and preferably ducal) families and generous marriage portions. For Jacopo Gabriel and Pasquale Malipiero, to be noble was to marry nobly, that is, richly and prestigiously. 325
Yet, their patrician ideal was not the only one current in Quattrocento Venice. Despite their strenuous arguments to the contrary, Orsa Dolfin also was a patrician.11 Indeed, for all that Jacopo Gabriel sought to portray his family as more noble than hers, another gauge reversed that ranking. A roster of Venice’s ruling class compiled a century earlier - during the dogeship of Giovanni Dolfin (1356-61), coincidentally- had included the Dolfins among the twelve ‘noblest’ houses, Venice’s founders in the distant past and its rulers during the intervening centuries.12 By contrast, the Gabriels were merely fisted among the noble rank and file, with no mention of great deeds or even origins.13 These differences reveal very different conceptions of nobility: one based on distinction over many centuries, the other on wealth, connections and political prominence in the present. In the fifteenth century they collided. The supremacy of the Dolfins and twenty-three other ancient houses, called the case vecchie or longhi, was challenged by a new noble elite, less ancient and historically illustrious, but more aggressive arid wealthy. The symbol of the change was the newer houses’ capture of the ducal throne.11 Whereas all but one of the doges elected in the two centuries before 1382 belonged to the case vecchie, after that year they would not see one of their number on the ducal throne until 1612, Thus when Jacopo Gabriel and the doge-to-be Pasquale Malipiero documented the inferiority of Orsa Dolfin’s family, they were asserting criteria of nobility that represented a change in die sodo political culture of the patriciate, proudly proclaimed in Jacopo’s recitation of the doges in his family’s recent marriages. But ducal politics, criteria of nobility, and die culture of matrimony in fifteenthcentury Venice are not reducible to contention between a wealthy, new power-elite and the older status-elite. Surrounding both those groups was a more miscellaneous element, the 150 houses that constituted the noble majority. Including some families of venerable lineage as well as relative newcomers, its members were united by dependence on the economic benefits of noble status and a determination to tighten their monopoly of them.14 For the men and women of this group, the ancient prominence of the Dolfins and the wealth and connections of the Gabriels were irrelevant or unattainable or both. What they possessed, beyond material need, was the capacity to press their interests in government 326
councils. Their deployment of it between 1420 and 1535 turned the attention of the state to dowries and the women they accompanied, as the chief determinants of nobility. The complex interactions between the rase vecchie, the new ducal houses and the patrician rank and file shaped the structure of patrician society and regime from the later Trecento into the Cinquecento. They were played out at the boundaries between government authority, social interaction and family interest, blending into one encompassing dynamic the meanings of nobility, government and the role of women. These were matters of contention in their own right; the persistent refashioning of each with reference to the others gives Venetian society and regime from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century wide-ranging dynamism behind its familiar facade of stasis. The principal thoroughfare through this shifting landscape is legislation on marriage. In increasingly precise enactments, the government refined its definition of nobility and extended the purview of its authority by prescribing the ways in which families were to reproduce themselves and the ruling class. Because of the pivotal role of women, the legislation focused on them. Examining it reveals conflicting interests, public and private, among nobles, within families, and between men and women. The stakes and the discourse framing them changed over the decades, and the government’s evolving responses reveal that the most consistent characteristic of ‘the state’ in Venice was its mutability, reflecting unsettled ideas in noble society about daughters, wives and mothers. To follow the regulation of marriage during those years is thus to follow change and contestation in the relationships between regime and ruling class, government and family, and men and women. The take-off point was the first third of the Quattrocento, when a cluster of laws defined noble marriage. In 1422, the Great Council acted to deny noble status to the sons, even legitimate, of noble fathers and mothers of servile or otherwise ‘vile’ status.16 The stated purpose of the legislation, to prevent ‘denigration’ of the Council by unworthy members, was overwhelmingly endorsed, gaining the votes of 422 of the 473 council members present.17 That near-unanimity is in striking contrast with the vote on a forerunner measure of 1376, prohibiting nobles’ bastards from inheriting their fathers’ status. Though also premised on the 327
need to avoid ‘denigration of the honour and reputation of our regime [dominiti]’, it prevailed only on the third reading, and then with a majority of only two votes.18 In 1376 there had been no consensus on marriage as the medium of the class’s reproduction, or on the mothers of the next generation of nobles. It was expressly to repair this deficiency that the new legislation was proposed in 1422.19 By instituting a requirement that all claimants to noble status document their mothers’ identities along with their fathers’, it made maternity a determinant of nobility. Two years earlier, in August 1420, the more restricted and powerful Senate had also moved on marriage, enacting the first limit on dowries. Alarmed by the ‘wicked practice that has arisen’ of ambitious matchmaking fathers pushing dowry levels so high ‘that many of our nobles cannot get their daughters married’, while others compromised the inheritance prospects of their sons, the act’s proponents urged imposing a ceiling of 1,600 ducats, two-thirds to count as dowry, the other one-third as corredo. The distinction is important. The dowry strictly so-called was a daughter’s share of the patrimony, to be returned to her or to heirs designated by her at the end of the marriage.21 But the corredo, originally the trousseau brought by the bride, had evolved by the early Quattrocento into a gift to the husband, retained by him or his estate when the dowry was returned to the wife.22 Underscoring the distinction, the preamble noted that fathers were earmarking more of the marriage settlement for the corredo at the expense of the dowry, with the result that daughters were losing the inheritances they would otherwise have enjoyed. Limiting marriage settlements thus had two purposes: to prevent fathers from squandering family wealth on their daughters’ marriages, and to restrain the tendency toward de-emphasizing dowries in order to inflate the corredo premiums with which fathers attracted desirable sons-in-law. Like the Gabriel-Dolfin litigation, the 1420 dowry law revealed divisions among nobles on marriage and the role of government. Proponents urged state intervention to save, and deter, fathers from the ruinous pressures of the marriage market, because ‘otherwise these corruptions cannot be extirpated’.23 But others saw government standards as an unwarranted intrusion into private matters. In contrast to the Great Council’s overwhelming endorsement two years later of the 328
law excluding low-status women from patrician motherhood, the dowry limitation measure passed the Senate with fifty-one votes in favour, twenty-seven against and twenty abstentions. Four months later the opponents acted to repeal the law, claiming that its unprecedented usurpation of the rights of fathers had thrown the entire marriage market into ‘such confusion that no marriages are being contracted’.24 Worse, it had caused a ‘significant loss of honour and freedom for our state and citizens’. The word libertas appears four times in the repeal bill, whose proponents declared that only one thing could right the wrong: to nullify the August law, thus ‘restoring to all our citizens and subjects [fideles] their customary liberty in matters of marriage and dowry’.25 Despite the support of 45 of the 126 senators present, the repeal measure failed, but its premises presented a powerful challenge to government regulation of marriage. Against state action to aid embattled fathers, unmarriageable daughters and sons with bleak inheritance prospects, it claimed the high ground of honour, freedom and Venetian tradition — as well as orderly matrimonial practice now thrown into disarray by government meddling.26 Two contending patrician ideologies were mobilized over government regulation of marriage. On one side were libertarians, invoking Venice’s most sacred traditions in opposition to restrictions on the use of their matrimonial capital. Among them were wealthy and well-connected families for whom large dowries were a means of gaining or consolidating social prominence. Indeed) if Jacopo Gabriel’s boasting about the dowries his kinsmen commanded is accurate, such families had a compelling motive for opposing dowry limits: Jacopo and his brother Girolamo were in violation of the law of 1420, both having received 2,500-ducat dowries in the 1430s.27 Joining them on the libertarian side were case vecchie men loath to lose the dowry-corredo pay-off from their marketability as prestigious sons-in-law (although poorer case vecchie fathers, such as Antonio Dolfin, welcomed restraints on dowry standards). Finally, wealthy and socially ambitious newcomers also had good reason to resist restrictions on the free marriage market. The father of the bride who brought 3,000 ducats in 1419 to Jacopo Gabriel’s eldest brother, Marco, would have chafed under the limit of 1,600 passed the following year.28 Whether as purveyors or as recipients of large 329
marriage settlements, whether members of distinguished ancient houses or of newly wealthy families striving for status and connections, men with the means and will to advance their family’s interest by advantageous marriages had no sympathy with the levelling aims of dowry limitation. For them, the salient mark of nobility was wealth, antiquity or preferably both, displayed in the marriage market by dowries and corredi conveyed and commanded. Their spokesmen in the Senate, urging repeal, could clothe their interests in the sacredness of the traditional freedom of Venetians to conduct private affairs without governmental interference. Yet they were greatly outnumbered by noble families hard-pressed to keep up with steadily rising dowry standards, who advanced a statist ideology premised on governmental responsibility for the well-being of private citizens. For them, ‘customary freedom’ counted for less than protection from economic distress, and the only agency capable of warding it off was the government. In the language of the August law, the inflation in dowries and corredi ‘had to be corrected by regimen nostrum, since otherwise it cannot be stopped’. The appeal to government intervention built on recent precedent. Starting in the 1380s the statist ideology had produced new programmes of economic relief for hard-pressed nobles and new procedures for proving patrician status, in order to prevent men of dubious credentials from claiming relief.29 The convergence of state and nobility tightened as needy patricians assigned to the government the authority to define and attribute noble status and the responsibility of assuring them its tangible benefits. Those earlier initiatives targeted men, defining noble credentials in the male line, the masculine role in government, and men’s responsibility for providing for their families.30 In contrast, the marriage laws of the 1420s emphasized the importance of women, in the determination of noble status and in the ominous consequences of dowry competition. In this they gave legislative voice to ideas that the young patrician humanist Francesco Barbaro had expressed only a few years earlier in his treatise De re uxoria (1415-16). Barbaro’s emphasis on maternal lineage in breeding worthy patricians and his disapproval of large dowries in favour of wifely virtue prefigured the legislation of the 1420s.31 The law of 1422 dictating 330
status requirements for the mothers of nobles was premised on a class- based notion of female honour. By accrediting only women of a certain economic and social substance as mothers of nobles, it explicitly fortified the bastard-exclusion law of 1376, since respectable women could be relied on not to conceive bastards who, subsequently legitimized, might ‘denigrate’ the Great Council.32 Other legislation of the time intensified scrutiny of the paternal credentials of claimants to patrician status.33 Now in 1422 it was deemed just as necessary for officials to ascertain ‘who is or was the mother’ of every would-be noble. Government supervision of marriage was the means of safeguarding the exclusiveness of the patriciate, with the status and virtue of mothers now joining paternal descent as an essential gauge of nobility. Women also preoccupied the framers of the dowry-restraining law of 1420. Curtailing matrimonial laissez-faire was a way of saving fathers from themselves: not only from the peril into which their alliance-seeking threw family finances, but from the morally dangerous effects on their daughters. Large dowries for some girls entailed imprisoning their sisters in convents or, worse, keeping them unmarried at home, an expedient so ‘dangerous and shameful [that it] was practised nowhere else in the world’.34 Even women who did marry suffered from their fathers’ avidity for desirable sons-in-law, owing to the inflation of the corredo at the expense of the dowry. These were the ‘corruptiones' into which the pressures of the marriage market were leading fathers desperate to meet the ruinous standards set by wealthy families. The measure of the corruption was its effect on the women of the class, whose need was offered as justification for government regulation. This was the first time, but would not be the last, that the state overrode the domestic authority of fathers, asserting its concern for patrician daughters and legislating measures designed to protect their interests. On the same day as the Senate passed the dowry-limitation law, it adopted three companion measures. One waived the 1,600-ducat limit for popolane girls ‘who contract marriage ties with nobles’; they could bring portions of 2,000 ducats.35 This was a concession to needy nobles such as Orsa Dolfin’s father, Antonio, who had gladly negotiated his casa vecchia credentials for the 2,000-ducat dowry his ‘plebeian’ wife brought him.36 Despite the scorn of men like Jacopo Gabriel and 331
Pasquale Malipiero, the prospect of large dowries from hypergamous brides had wide appeal among nobles: though the 2,000-ducat limit prevailed, one third of the senators favoured setting no limit on them at all. The rival proposals for the dowries of popolane express different patrician conceptions of wifely desirability, one emphasizing birth, the other dowry wealth. They parallel the contrast between the ancient but impoverished Dolfins and the rich, well-connected, but until recently undistinguished Gabriels - with an interesting twist. For it was the Dolfins whose status outweighed their current straits and who could thus marry women of the populace without fear of losing it.37 For newly prominent families such as the Gabriels, however, prestigious alliances, preferably with families with ducal lustre and forged by means of large dowries, were necessary advertisements of recently attained status. The Senate’s debate on marriage displayed a range of patrician interests. Setting a limit on settlements protected rank-and-file noble families from the derogatory effects of unrestrained dowry inflation.38 The higher ceilings extended to popolane brides legitimated fortune-hunting outside the patriciate by families down on their luck. And the effort to repeal the newly legislated dowry limit reveals the keenness of the wealthy to benefit from their advantage on the marriage market. But on one thing all interests converged: whether libertarian or statist, they pressed their objectives in the legislative councils of the government, now the arena of debate on noble marriage, on the mothers of nobles, and on nobility. But the Quattrocento state’s concern with women was not confined to their parentage and marriage portions. Another law enacted at the session of 22 August 1420 took up inheritances by married women which exceeded the 1,600-ducat dowry limit. In such cases, the excess, if liquid, was to be invested in the woman’s name in the state funds (Camera degli Imprestiti), there to remain until her marriage ended; if immovable property, it was not to be sold until the end of the marriage.39 The stated purpose of the law was to prevent women’s non-dowry wealth from serving as disguised dowry supplements or otherwise falling under their husbands’ control. Although her capital had to remain unredeemed for the duration of the marriage, ‘a married woman in this situation is at all times free to 332
make whatever use she chooses of the interest income from her prestiti or a the rental income from her real estate holdings’.40 Confirming women’s economic rights — and protecting non-dowry female inheritance, often overlooked in scholarship - was the means by which the government sought to set the terms of the economic relationship between families that came together in marriage. That aim surfaced again in 1449 in an act of the Great Council requiring notaries to submit a copy of every dowry receipt they notarized to the government chancery, there to be recorded, with the date of the receipt, in a ‘large parchment book’.41 The stated reason for the measure was that too often widows lost track of receipts notarized decades earlier, with the result that property rightfully theirs remained in their husbands’ estates. The new registration requirement would provide widows with documentation in government records, thus enabling them to recover their dowries without ‘great effort’ (labore magno). The government’s sensitivity to the varied circumstances of womanhood is evident in other marriage legislation of the 1420s. A third supplemental measure passed on 22 August exempted widows and unmarried women aged twenty-four and over from the dowry ceilings just enacted.42 Fathers and brothers themselves, the senators knew that women past adolescence had more difficulty attracting husbands and thus required larger dowries.43 The same was true of widows. Whether in the famous typology of the ‘cruel mother’ framed by Christiane Klapisch-Zuber,44 the young widow quickly forced to abandon her children and remarry for the benefit of her brothers, or in the equally likely case of a widow voluntarily seeking security and companionship for herself and her fatherless children,45 women entering second marriages had to add a premium to their dowries in order to compete for husbands with girls unencumbered by ties to earlier marriages. By tailoring marriage regulation to the phases of the female life cycle, the senators displayed awareness of the nuances of women’s roles in relations between and within families. As if to help families avoid the stain of overage female wantonness with which Jacopo Gabriel and Pasquale Malipiero would seek to taint Orsa Dolfin in the 1450s, the Senate amended its dowry regulations to enable families to avoid the perils to male interest and honour associated with mature, unmarried female relatives living outside convent walls.46 333
With another law five years later, the government further tailored its marriage rules to distinctions among women. On 22 March 1425 the Senate directed the state attorneys, the avogadori di comun, to prosecute evasions of the new limits, ordering any husband who received a dowry larger than 1,600 ducats to return the excess to his wife’s family and also pay a fine in the same amount.47 There was one exception; men who married blind women were not held to the legal limit. Eighteen years later, that exemption was extended to husbands of physically misshapen women.48 These two laws balanced the need to restrain dowries against the importance of marriage for ail women, among whom, the Senate recognized, there were distinctions that impinged on their marriageability. The preamble to the latter measure declared its concern for the ‘subvention’ of women with physical disabilities, in order that ‘those women may also marry who are physically insulted by nature but economically embellished by fortune’.49 The legislation of the early Quattrocento reveals the centrality of marriage in manoeuvres over the meaning of nobility, the issue on which status, prominence and material well-being of all patricians hinged. For all segments of die ruling class, the political and social importance of marriage was immense, fuelling private and public tensions over die assembling of dowries, to which government councils responded with aggressive new initiatives to regulate patrician marriage, the stakes were vital: to prevent the most vulnerable nobles from being priced out of the noble manage market, with all the dangers to social and political order that might follow from their loss of status and connections, a concern expressed in other legislation in the same years which underscored the importance of conducting government business ‘in the most equitable way possible, in order to prevent divisiveness among the nobles of Venice’.50 The means of defusing such problems was to deepen the state’s involvement in the business of marriage, which entailed bringing into focus the distinctive characteristics of women, who emerge in this legislation as the articulating medium of governmental direction of social relations, both within the patriciate and between patriciate and popolo. The early years of the following century saw a further escalation of marriage legislation, bringing a new ideological significance to the mediating role of women in the state's evolving definition of nobility. 334
The first decades of the Cinquecento witnessed the blossoming of the ‘myth of Venice’, the body of celebratory writing which attributed Venice’s exceptional political stability to a combination of divine favour, constitutional perfection and the patriciate’s wise government.51 The promulgation of the myth was a response to economic and political blows suffered in the decades around 1500: losses of eastern possessions to the Ottoman Turks; news of the navigation of nonMediterranean routes to the East; and, most devastating of all, the shattering defeats of the War of Cambrai.52 In the face of these reverses, adulatory treatises by learned nobles fashioned an ideology that celebrated Venice’s long history of prosperity and stability as evidence of the divinely inspired justice that uniquely marked the government and its custodians.53 The myth’s ideological application was also displayed in legislative language which to the early Quattrocento linkage between the honour of the regime and the genealogical purity of the patriciate added a new element: the divinely mandated and historically proven governing mission of the ruling class. The language appears in a 1497 law of the powerful Council of Ten, which claimed as its mandate ‘to ensure justice and uniformity [equabilitate] among all those who participate in providing peaceful and secure government for our republic, which thanks to God’s grace and mercy is prospering’.54 The chief means of carrying out the mandate was once again regulation of marriage. The best-known measure of the period is the law passed by the Council of Ten in 1506 instituting the famous Libri d’Oro, registers of male noble births. 55 Its main provision was to require nobles to notify the avogadori di comun of the birth of sons, whose names were then officially recorded. The rationale resembled that of the law of 1422 disqualifying sons of low-status women: to protect the Great Council from ‘contamination, blemishing, or any other denigration’. But there was something new as well. Keeping out interlopers was now declared to be critical to the ‘preservation of the peaceful union’ as well as of the ‘glorious reputation’ of the state - a goal that ‘our most wise forefathers’ had ‘zealously’ pursued in their diligent concern for the ‘common good’.56 The common good was thus construed as resting on concord among the nobles entrusted with the government of Venice, a principle now dignified by the 335
invocation of the past. Crucial to realizing it were the identities of the mothers who bore the sons. Henceforth, an official noble birth certificate would include not only the patrilineal qualification but also ‘the birthplace and surname of the mother’, in order to ensure that she met the criteria established in the law of 1422. Those requirements put the highest value on mothers born of noble families, whose pedigree and virtue was recognizable to all, and whose inscription in an official register would be a permanent document of the bilateral patrician bloodlines of their sons, whether born in Venice or abroad. Uniformity within the ruling class was thus tied more tightly than ever to respectable parentage on both sides. That principle, already institutionalized in 1422, required reaffirmation in the early Cinquecento because of the large number of male nobles prevented from marrying respectably in the competitive matrimonial climate. Despite the official ceiling set in 1420, dowries had continued to grow, sparking new efforts at restraint in the early Cinquecento, as will be noted shortly. Dowry inflation limited the number of patrician girls who could marry, inevitably excluding men from the patrician marriage market in the same proportion, which may have exceeded 40 per cent.57 However, whereas unmarriageable girls most often ended up in convents, permanent bachelorhood left men at large, to enter informal liaisons outside their own class or to satisfy their sexual urges in more disorderly ways.58 Marino Sanuto reported in his famous Diarii the ‘shame to the Venetian nobility’ brought by the marriage in 1526 between the noble Andrea Michiel and the ‘sumptuous and beautiful prostitute’ Cornelia Grifo.59 It was to counter the insistent efforts of fathers to insinuate the offspring of such mésalliances, legitimate or not, into the patriciate that newborn sons and their mothers were now required to be registered in the Libro d’Oro. The effect was further to refine the definition of nobility. The Libro d’Oro law sharpened the distinction between men who reproduced the ruling class in the officially prescribed way, newly reaffirmed by the Council of Ten, and others who were denied, or who rejected, the generative patriarchy which constituted the fullness of male noble status. The measure of difference was in the origins and surnames of the women with whom nobles fathered offspring, to be made public not, as in 1422, when a noble’s son sought to take his place among the male adults 336
in the Great Council, but at birth. Approved marriage, producing bilaterally qualified sons, was now proclaimed the medium not only of noble heredity and the patriciate’s reputation, but of the peace and unity of the regime; and the enforcement of proper marriage was now assigned to the oversight and recordkeeping of a government magistracy. The act also declared that henceforth entries in the birth registers of the avogadori di comun would be the only valid documentation of the credentials of candidates for membership in the Great Council or for government office.60 The identities of wives and mothers, officially noted at every stage of a noble’s political career, were more than ever the measure of a family’s conformity to the standards of patrician culture. Their importance was affirmed even more strongly two decades later. In April 1526 the Council of Ten moved the locus of enforcement from the birth of sons to marriage itself, enacting a requirement that all noble marriages must henceforth be registered with the avogadori di comun within one month of the nuptials.61 As in 1506, at stake was nothing less than ‘the honour, peace, and preservation of our state’, which rested on the ‘immaculacy and purity’ of the ‘status and order of nobility’.62 Reporting the Ten’s deliberations, Marino Sanuto explained that ‘many bastards have been accorded noble status’ and ‘the doge and the ducal council are incensed’.63 Although aimed at bastard interlopers, the law’s broader effect was to institute a civil marriage procedure for the ruling class. It was an elaborate procedure, requiring the presence of two of the groom’s near kin and two of the bride’s, all of whom were to swear to the legitimate marriage of the spouses and to ‘declare the quality of the bride’s father and her status’64 requirements that were almost certainly a response to the marriage, ten days earlier, between Andrea Michiel and the prostitute Cornelia Grifo. The information thus provided was then to be entered into yet another specially designated register and signed by all three avogadori di comun. Henceforth, any young man seeking to establish his noble credentials had to be born of a marriage recorded in that register; lacking that documentation, he would not be recognized as noble.65 The Ten represented these measures as appropriate to a well-instituted republic, which, thanks to God’s grace, Venice was - a phrase canonized in Domenico 337
Morosini’s ‘De bene instituta re publica’.66 In this treatise, written between 1497 and 1509, the politically influential Morosini proposed to reform the government by strengthening the hegemony of an oligarchical elite, who would thus be able to deal with the worrisome problems of too many poor nobles dependent on government jobs, and too many young nobles disrupting Great Council sessions.67 Morosini’s emphasis on institutions was echoed, though more optimistically, in the most widely read treatise on Venice’s government, the De magistratibus et republica Venetorum of Gasparo Contarini.68 The vein of political reflection represented by these works, urging institutional adjustments to enhance the governing mission of the patriciate, provided the context of the Council of Ten’s efforts to safeguard the integrity of the ruling class by documenting the identities of the mothers of newborn nobles. In contrast with the legislation of the 1420s, the Cinquecento laws were framed within Venice’s most hallowed traditions. The marriage registration requirement of 1526, like the Libro d’Oro law, was associated with precedents set by ‘our wise and benign ancestors’ in their efforts to safeguard the purity of the patriciate.69 This clothing of governmental innovation in the garb of tradition, a trait described by Angelo Ventura as the ‘paradox of the Venetian cultural experience’, captures the ideological evolution that the patrician regime had undergone since the 1420s.70 Then, the state’s intrusion into marriage-making had been opposed by libertarians who based their opposition to dowry limits on what they declared to be the venerable tradition of fatherly autonomy in family matters. In the anxious years after 1500, however, it was the proponents of state regulation anchoring their proposals in the heritage of ‘sapientissimi progenitores nostri' who, like their descendants in the Council of Ten, were depicted as having always promoted the common good, the stability of the ruling class, and the Almighty’s favour by means of resolute government action, now aimed at equalizing the reproductive possibilities of all patrician houses, rich and poor, ancient and recent. However, the very laws that would subordinate differences of wealth and antiquity to the government’s levelling procedures had the effect of sharpening another distinction, that between nobles who married and those who did not. Though designed chiefly to scrutinize the wives and sons of nobles, the registration 338
requirements decreed for marriages and births also certified the passages of noble men into marriage and fatherhood. It was their marriages to respectable women and the births of their sons, both now ratified by official documentation, that secured the purity of the ruling class and its unbroken continuity from revered ancestors to unblemished successors. By thus reinforcing the generative exclusiveness which distinguished nobles from other Venetians, the new requirements enhanced the dignity of domestic patriarchy at the same time as they laid down rules for its exercise. In the process they consigned the growing percentage of permanent bachelors to a second-class patrician status, forever excluded from the ritual experience of registering their marriage and fatherhood, the means by which the sacred mission of the ruling class was to be perpetuated. Further stigmatizing such men, the extra-marital heterosexual options available to, them, the women with whom they consorted, and the illegitimate offspring of their unions, were officially represented as polluting threats to the nobility’s most sacred traditions.71 As in the early Quattrocento, the initiatives of 1506 and 1526 were coupled with new efforts to restrain dowries. In the aftermath of the dowry law of 1420, the official ceiling of 1,600 ducats became the standard patrician dowry, as many fathers saw conformity with an official norm of noble behaviour as a way of affirming their families’ status; but it failed utterly to keep men of ambition and means from providing much larger portions. Nearly one-half of a group of 122 mid-century dowries recovered by widows or their heirs were larger than the official maximum of 1,066 2/3 ducats (that is, the two-thirds portion of the 1,600ducat limit designated for dowry as distinct from corredo), and many doubled or even tripled it.72 By the late 1490s, Sanuto reported, ‘conspicuous private wealth produced many marriages with sizeable dowries, because it is now the prevailing practice to give large dowries, almost all greater than 3,000 ducats and some reaching 10,000 and more’.73 In the face of this relentless surge, the Senate in 1505 passed a second dowry-limitation measure, raising the maximum to 3,000 ducats, ‘including all furnishings, personal effects, gifts, corredo and all other items’.74 The near-doubling of the limit, during a period when the salaries of domestic servants and galley oarsmen remained stable, indicates how powerful the 339
upward pressures on settlements had been since 1420.75 But the differences between the two laws involved more than concession to irresistible family urges. In 1505, the Senate’s determination to restrain dowries began the process that would make marriage a civil act in 1526, and led it to revise women’s traditional inheritance rights. The new law gave the state pre-emptive control of marriage. Whereas in 1420 penalties had been aimed at families discovered after the fact to have violated the dowry limits, now the parties were required to register contracts before the nuptials. A written copy of every marriage contract, containing the exact language used (la forma de le parole usate), had henceforth to be registered before the avogadori di comun within eight days of its signing. Once the avogadori had verified its conformity with the new limit, they were to have it recorded verbatim in a parchment register designated for that purpose and ‘kept under lock and key in the avogadori's possession’.76 The state thus introduced a documented civil procedure as a required part of the nuptial process, which until 1505 had been conducted away from government oversight: contracts were normally not drawn up by notaries; and even the dowry receipts that husbands gave their wives, though usually notarized, had not come under official scrutiny until passage of the 1449 law, noted above.77 Now, however, betrothals were not only to be public events but would require official approval to proceed beyond the signing of the contract. The requirement was given teeth. Failure to comply would result in a 100-ducat fine for the broker of the marriage, and a 500-ducat fine for the fathers of the two spouses, and forfeiture and fines for the husband, all of whom must appear in person before the avogadori to swear to the accuracy of the copy registered.78 But a far tougher sanction targeted the marrying women. Henceforth, no widow would be allowed to reclaim her dowry unless it was recorded in the avogadoris register. This was a radical departure from past practice and from the deeply engrained legal principle that the dowry, as a woman’s inheritance, was ultimately her property.79 By holding it hostage to her family’s conformity with official norms, the government forced families to choose between matrimonial ambition and desire to provide for daughters. That the target of the sanction was the former 340
rather than the latter emerges from another provision of the law, which echoed the act of August 1420 exempting a woman’s non-dowry inheritance from the limits on marriage settlements: as long as the surplus over 3,000 ducats was considered a legacy rather than an addition to the dowry, ‘it should be freely hers, as is honest’. 80 The Senate was reaffirming an important distinction. Parents were free to bequeath as much as they liked to their daughters; it was their lavish pursuit of desirable sons-in-law that must be restrained. Yet, the son-in- law would be the beneficiary of the sanctions for non-compliance with the law. Not only would he or his estate be exonerated from restitution of a deceased wife’s or widow’s dowry, but he would benefit doubly from his father-in-law’s illegal extravagance, by gaining an exceptionally large dowry in the first place, then getting to keep it. The casualties of the transaction would be his widow, losing her inheritance, and her natal family, forfeiting the beneficence they could normally expect in the will of a married daughter. By expressly permitting non-dowry bequests to women while threatening their traditional rights to their dowries, the Senate was exploiting fathers’ concern for their daughters as a way of discouraging dowry excess, and in the process distinguishing between women as daughters of generously affectionate parents and women as instruments of their families’ matrimonial ambitions. The state was dictating inheritance practice, with precisely calibrated sanctions. Its immediate goal was to force patrician fathers to discharge their responsibility for the transgenerational integrity of their family and its property, instead of alienating it in the quest for costly marriage alliances in the present. But, as in 1420, the deeper objective was to protect the interests of the noble rank and file by restraining a rich minority from further concentrating wealth and influence among themselves by bidding up, beyond the reach of less well-to-do nobles, the dowries commanded by the most attractive marriage partners.81 The dangers of such concentration were clearly recognized in legislative debates of the time. ‘In a wellordered Republic’, said an opponent of a 1511 proposal to give rich patricians special office-holding advantages, ‘equality should always be maintained so that all can share in the benefits and advantages it brings’;82 and the diarist Girolamo
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Priuli commented that ‘those who wish to preserve and maintain a good republic must above all preserve and maintain equality’.83 For the proponents of dowry limitation, good government in a well-instituted republic meant equality not just in the distribution of remunerative offices but in marriage possibilities as well. Citing the constant vigilance of our forefathers’ against all things that offended ‘our exalted Creator’, they declared that excessive dowries not only impoverished noble families, but also gave rise to ‘inconveniences of which every prudent person is aware’, and which we may understand as the patrician majority’s resentful frustration over the unreachable dowry levels of the rich. It was therefore ‘the responsibility of our well-instituted republic to enact a remedy for that immoderate and pernicious custom, out of reverence for God and for the benefit of our city.84 Here was displayed the ideology of the early Cinquecento: the ruling class’s fulfilment of its divinely ordained and historically proven mission of ensuring civil concord depended on political and social equality among its members. That required usurping the authority of patresfamilias over inheritance and marriage, of volatile potential owing to the inherent economic rivalry between the sons, who continued the family over time, and the daughters, who projected it outwards in the present. In contrast to the struggle between libertarian and statist interests over the 1420 dowry law, the new measure swept the Senate, passing with 116 favourable votes, three opposed, and one abstention. Like their Quattrocento forebears, many fathers after 1505 embraced the official norm, demonstrating their nobility by obedience to the law and by meeting the dowry level deemed appropriate to patricians. In the first two years after the law’s passage, forty-six - nearly two-thirds - of the seventy-two nobles who duly registered their daughters’ marriage contracts acknowledged dowries of exactly 3,000 ducats, affirming ‘by their oaths that this is a true contract conforming in all respects to the law’,85 and a further sixteen acknowledged dowries between 2,000 and 2,870 ducats.86 Yet other fathers blithely ignored the new limit, giving their daughters dowries that were two or three times the new maximum , reaching 8,000 and even 10,000 ducats, which the diarist Sanuto reported as if they were common knowledge.87 So in April 1535 the Senate responded with still more legislation, reaffirming its determination to restrain dowries but once again raising 342
the ceiling, now to 4,000 ducats. In the process it gave dowry limitation a powerful, new, symbolic dignity, tying it to ideals of noble behaviour, public and private, individual and familial, rooted in Venice’s most cherished traditions.88 The senators blamed three categories of patricians for flouting the 1505 law. First were fathers who, ‘heedless of their responsibilities, persisted in amassing money in order to give their daughters ‘immoderate dowries’. Then came young men, so ‘content to live off their wives, dowries, that they disdained ‘business in die city, in overseas commerce or in any other worthy industry’. Finally, even the officials entrusted with enforcing the law had fallen short of their duty.89 Women’s dowries thus led men to forsake their proper roles as nobles in the domestic realm, m economic life and in the government itself. The Senate’s response was to prescribe more precise rules for male conduct, with more carefully calibrated enforcement mechanisms, reinforced by the participation of the most exalted symbolic authority of the state - all centred on the movement and the property of women. Young men's abandonment of the patriciate’s mercantile traditions was particularly distressing. Like other commentators of the time, the senators looked back with nostalgia to the robust adventurousness of bygone days, contrasting it with the languid luxury now spreading through the patriciate, which many blamed for the crisis that had gripped Venice during the traumatic War of the League of Cambrai.90 Especially galling was the economic effeminization displayed in men’s dependence upon the wealth of their wives. This inversion of proper gender relations, negating domestic patriarchy, reinforced the current complaint that youths were losing their distinctive maleness, even to the extent of dressing like women, prompting sumptuary prohibitions of the fashion excesses of men as well as women.91 To forestall further deviation from proper masculinity, the senators turned again to the corredo, the husband a proprietary share of the marriage portion. Ever since die law of 1420 had limited the corredo to one-third of the total settlement, that proportion had been the norm in marriage contracts, including chose registered m keeping with the law of 1505.92 Now in 1535 if changed. Although the maximum marital conveyance was increased to 4,000 ducats, the bride’s family was not to ‘sink more than 1,000 ducats in the form of the husband’s third’. The corredo third was reduced to a quarter. In addition, the 343
husband was to be fined the equivalent of one-half of any excess over 4,000 ducats. The Senate was here taking aim at bridegrooms who, living off their wives’ dowries, spurned a patrician masculine ideal which blended Venice’s commercial traditions with the economic mastery of the domestic patriarch. Ironically, however, its action had the effect of further transferring wealth to women. Whereas a wife dowered in accordance with the 1505 law could expect a dotal inheritance of 2,000 ducats, after deduction of her husband’s 1,000-ducat corredo, her counterpart after 1535 would receive 3,000 ducats, while the husband’s share remained stable. Over-eager fathers also would pay a fine equal to one-half of any amount over the limit, but a new sanction menaced their immovable property as well. Evidently, many men had been including in their daughters’ dowries real estate which they deliberately undervalued, to feign compliance with the 1505 law. To discourage this fraud, the senators now gave the fathers’ kin the right to buy such properties at 15 per cent, neighbours at 25 per cent, over the value stated in the marriage contract. Even with the surcharges, such purchases would presumably entail the loss of the father’s property for a price below its real value, a loss he could avoid by having real estate in dowries officially appraised under the supervision of the avogadori di comun. This feature was a clever ploy to discourage dowry cheating) it also marked a further incursion by the government into the management of private property, a further appropriation of the prerogatives of domestic patriarchs. Two weeks later, on 12 May, the Senate took action to tighten supervision of the officials entrusted with enforcement of its dowry laws. In the process it raised the state’s regulation of marriage to a new level of solemnity by instituting a ritual involving the most exalted authority in the Venetian state. A new law instructed the avogadori di comun, on pain of a 500-ducat fine, to have every contract read aloud on the Sunday morning following its registration, at a special session of the doge and the ducal council. After the reading, the doge and at least four of the six councillors were to countersign the contract. The senators underscored the importance of this procedure: ‘because the graciousness of the most serene prince will certainly lead him to want that morning dedicated to this [reading], his 344
councillors are obliged, on their oath of office, not to take up any other matters that morning until they have expedited the avogadori’s business’.93 The Senate could reach no higher in displaying the importance of marriage contracts in the state’s business. With this action it completed the decades-long transformation of noble marriage from a private transaction to a matter of supreme governmental concern, endowed with the ritual dignity essential to the multiform programme of renovatio urbis then being carried on under the reigning doge, Andrea Gritti (1523-38).94 Manfredo Tafuri describes Gritti’s programme as a ‘radical renewal’ of city and polity, pursued according to a ‘unitary design, an organic policy implemented in a variety of areas, representing a peaceful rebirth’ for Venice, the ‘recovery of identity and internal prestige’ lost in the War of the League of Cambrai a quarter-century earlier.95 In this context, the involvement of the charismatic Doge Gritti in the campaign to restrain dowries put the state’s regulation of noble marriage on a new plane. No longer just an effort to protect family fortunes and to promote the marriage possibilities of all noble families, it was now part of Venice’s recovery of its shattered glory. The ‘recovery of identity and internal prestige’ was premised on a renewal of ruling-class virtù, as manifested in its domestic conduct, productive economic activity and discharge of governmental duties. The surest guide to virtù in all these areas was Venice’s traditions, which all came together in patrician marriage. It was therefore incumbent upon the doge, his council and the avogadori di comun to ensure, by means of rigorously enforced procedures and solemn state ritual, that every patrician marriage conform to the principles laid down by ‘i nostri maggiori’. Hence it is not surprising that one of the authors of the dowry act was the eminent Gasparo Contarmi, at the time himself a ducal councillor,96 whose treatise De magistratibus et republica Venetorum, completed two or three years earlier, underscored the crucial importance of the doge’s authority in enforcing the proper behaviour, public and private, of the nobles, on which the common good depended and for which ‘our forefathers’ in their wisdom and goodness, provided institutional guidance.97 It was this same conviction that wrote into the 1535 dowry law procedure, presided over by the doge, to redirect patricians
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toward those traditional governmental, paternal and mercantile habits that had contributed to the ancient greatness of Venice and its ruling class. Contarini brought to culmination, in ideological theory and legislative practice, a process begun in 1420. The De magistratibus and the dowry law of 1535 marked the convergence of three development that had been coming together for a century: the state’s growing direction of individual and familial activity in the domestic environment, in social relations and in public life; the refinement of the composition, relationships and ideology of a pluralistic ruling class; and the growing role of women as the symbol and medium of an articulated patrician culture. Marriage – who married, whom they married and the terms and fruits of their marriages – was the terrain on which the government asserted its authority to regulate the delicate interactions of noble families, generations and genders. The structure of patrician marriage fashioned by legislation between 1420 and 1535 was the rare fruit of shared interests between, on one hand, a majority increasingly hard-pressed to meet standards of noble social conduct set by a wealthy minority and therefore eager to conform to an attainable standard validated by the government, and, on the other, men of political weight concerned about the disruptive potential of the growing gap between the two.98 According to Sanuto, Doge Gritti himself declared shortly after his election that ‘in this state [terra] there are rich, middling and poor’; and there are indications that the Senate, the organ of dowry limitation, was regarded as the body representing the ‘middling’, seeking to maintain a balance between the truly impoverished nobles and the wealthy elite, which dominated the increasingly powerful Council of Ten. 99 This is not the place to sort through the complicated, and debated, politics of the early Cinquecento. But it is important to attend to the persistence of marriage legislation as a responsive and formative element in tat socio-political environment, and in the long-term intersection of nobility, women and the state in Renaissance Venice.
Notes 1. Portions of this essay were presented to the Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, Washington, D.C., in 1992; the Middle-Atlantic Renaissance and Reformation Seminar, Charlottesville, in 1993; and the European History Seminar, Syracuse University, in 1995. The author expresses his appreciation for valuable suggestions and criticisms received on all 346
three occasions, with special thanks to Barbara J. Harris for invaluable advice. Venice, Archivio storico della Curia patriarcale, Sezione antica (hereafter APV), Causarum matrimoniorum, busta 2, fase. 1, doc. 5 (27 July 1457). 2. For marriage rituals in Florence, see C. Klapisch-Zuber, ‘Zacharias, or the ousted father: nuptial rites inTuscany between Giotto and the Council of Trent’, in Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy (Chicago, 1985), pp. 183-7. 3. Non debit cadere in triente alicuius sane mentis, cum dictum matrimonium esse ac fuisse mequaie omni respectu’: APV, Causarum matrimoniorum, busta 2, fase. 1, doc. 2 (5 May 1457). 4. ‘Si forte frequentlsset ipsam domum illud fecisset non causa contrahendi sed causa habendi eam carnai iter ut faciunt iuvenes cum ipsa sit inh[on]este vite’; ‘si Johannes illud matrimonium fecisset fuisset seductus et circumventus non autem asseveravimus id quod ignorabamus imo quod nullo modo credimus’: ibid., doc. 4. 5. This estimate is based on calculations in G. Luzzatto, Storia economica di Venezia daU’X I al XV I secolo (Venice, 1961), pp. 129-32; and F. C. Lane and R. C. Mueller, Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice, 1: Coins and Moneys of Account (Baltimore, 1985), PP290-1. 6. Extrapolated from figures of interest and rent stated in APV, Causarum matrimoniorum, busta 2, fase. 1, doc. 5. 7. ‘Item quod fuit et est absque eo quod dos quam dicit d. Ursia promisisse ipsi Johanni filio meo de ducatis 350 sit conveniens viro nobili bone conditionis qualis est filius meus, ymo talis dos non esse ferre conveniens inter cerdones.’ Compare similar scorn of Alessandra Macinghi Strozzi: G. Brucker, The Society of Renaissance Florence: A Documentary Study (New York, 1971), p. 38. 8. ‘Item ex quantitate dotis, ex qua constaret de puerilitate istius iuvenis ut sic voluerint eum decipere’: APV, Causarum matrimoniorum, busta 2, fase. 1, doc. 2. 9. ‘Item quod fuit et est absque quod dictum assertum matrimonium foret equale etate, genere, nobilitate, divitiis, potentia, annorum, et similibus, inter dictum Johannes [sic] et dictam Ursiam, ymo omnimodo disparitas et longa inequalitas et ita quilibet sciens utrasque condiciones comuniter judicaret’: ibid. 10. S. Chojnacki, ‘Measuring adulthood: adolescence and gender in Renaissance Venice’, Journal of Family History, 17 (1992), pp. 373-5, 378-91 D. Herlihy, and C. Klapisch- Zuber, Tuscans and Their Families: A Study of The Florentine Catasto of 1427 (New Haven, 1985), pp. 203-7;A. Molho, ‘Deception and marriage strategy in Renaissance Florence: the case of women’s ages’. Renaissance Quarterly, 41 (1988), pp. 194, 204—10, and passim', J. Kirshner, Pursuing Honor while Avoiding Sin: The Monte delle Doti of Florence, Quaderni di Studi Senesi XLi (Milan, 1978), pp. 6-10. 11. ‘dominam Ursiam filiam quondam domini Antonii Dolfino ex nobilibus Veneriarum’: APV, Causarum matrimoniorum, busta 2, fase. I, doc. 3. 12. Veneriarum historia vulgo Petro lustiniano Iustiniani filio adiudicata, ed. R Cessi and F. Bennato (Venice, 1964), pp. xviii-xxv, 258, 276. 13. Ibid., p. 272. 14. ‘Distinzioni segrete che corrono tra le casate nobili di Venezia’, Venice, Biblioteca marciana, MSS ital., cl. VII, 1531 (7638), fols. 2v-3r. See S. Romanrn, La stona documen tata di Venezia, third edn (10 vols., Venice, 1972-5), IV, pp.305-6; R. Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice (New Brunswick, 1981), pp. 92-6. On the number of patncmn houses, see S. Chojnacki, ‘Social identity in Renaissance Vemce: the second Serrata , Renaissance Studies, 8 (1994), pp. 345-6. 15. S Chojnacki, ‘Political adulthood in fifteenth-century Vemce’, American Historical Review, 91 (1986), pp. 797-9; F. C. Lane, Venice, A Maritime Republic (Baltimore, 1973), pp. 196-7, 201.
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16. Venice, Archivio di Stato (ASVe), Maggior Consiglio, reg. 22, Ursa, fols. 47V-48r (26 May 1422). 17. ‘Quod ullo modo denigraretur nostrum maius consilium’: ibid. 18. ASVe, Maggior Consiglio, reg. 19, Novella, fol. 171V (28 Dee. 1376 ). 19. ‘Et dicta pars fuerit et sit non tantum utilis’: ASVe, Maggior Consiglio, reg. 22, Ursa, fol. 47V. 20. ASVe, Senato, Misti, reg. 53, fol. 7or-v (22 Aug. 1420). The preamble is printed in G. Bistort, i7 Magistrato alle Pompe nella Repubblica di Venezia (1912; repr. Bologna, 1969), p. 107. For discussion, see S. Chojnacki, ‘Marriage legislation and patrician society in fifteenth-century Venice’, in Law, Custom, and the Social Fabric in Medieval Europe: Essays in Honor of Bryce Lyon, ed. B. S. Bachrach and D. Nicholas (Kalamazoo, 1990); Chojnacki, ‘Social identity’, pp. 350-1. Bistort (pp. 106-7) considers laws of 1334 and 1360 to have been aimed at restraining dowries, but they actually concern trousseaux and wedding gifts. 21. M. Bellomo, Ricerche sui rapporti patrimoniali tra coniugi (Milan, 1961), pp. 131—85; S. Chojnacki, ‘Dowries and kinsmen in early Renaissance Venice', Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 5 (197?).- PP- 575-80; F. Ercole, ‘L’istituto datali nella pràtica e nella legislazione statutaria dell’Italia superiore’, pt. 1, Rivista italiana per le science giuridiche, 45 (1908), pp. 197-232; D. O. Hughes, ‘from brideprice to dowry Ln Mediterranean Europe’, Journal of family History, 3 (1978), pp. 278-85, J. Kirshner, ‘Wives’ claims against insolvent husbands in late medieval Italy’, in Women of the Medieval World-- Essays in Honor of John H. Mundy, ed. Kirshner and S. F. Wemple (Oxford, 1985), pp. 256-65: C. Klapisch-Zuber, ‘The "cruel mother": maternity, widowhood, and dowry in Florence in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries’, in Women, Family, and Ritual, pp. 121-4: T . Kuehn, ‘Some ambiguities of female inheritance ideology in the Renaissance’, in Kuehn, Law, Family and Women: Toward a Legal Anthropology of Renaissance Italy (Chicago, 199V PP- 238-41. 22. S. Chojnacki, ‘From trousseau to groomgift in late medieval Venice’, in Venice: Society and Crusade. Studies in Honor of Donald E. Queller, ed. T. F. Madden and E. E. Kittell (Urbana, HI., forthcoming). See also A. Caso, ‘Per la storia della società milanese: i corredi nuziali nell’ultima età viscontea e nel periodo della Repubblica Ambrosiana (1433-1450), dagli atti del notaio Protaso Sansoni’, Nuova rivista storica, 65 (1981), pp. 523-7; J. Kirshner, ‘Materials for a gilded cage: non-dotal assets in Florence, 1300-1500’, in The Family in Italy from Antiquity to the Present, ed. D. I. Kertzer and R. P. Sailer (New Haven and London, 1991), pp. 192-5; C. Klapisch-Zuber, ‘Les corbeilles de la mariée’, in La maison et le nom: Strategies et rituels dans VItalie de la Renaissance (Pans, 199c), pp.216-20. 23. Bistort, Magistrato alle Pompe, p. 107. 24. ASVe, Senato, Misti, reg. 53, fol. 94V (30 Dec. 1420). 25. Ibid. 26. On ‘liberty” see E. Crouzet-Pavan, ‘Sopra le acque salse’: Espaces, pouvoir et société à Venise àlafinduM oyenAge (2 vols., Rome, 1992), n, pp. 980-1; A. Tenenti, ‘The sense of space and time in the Venetian world of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries’, in Renaissance Venice, ed. J. R. Hale (London, 1973), pp. 35-7. 27. Marco Barbaro, ‘Libro di nozze patrizie’, Biblioteca marciana, Venice, MSS ital., cl. VII, 156 (8492), fol. 96V. 28. Ibid. (for date of the marriage). 29. Chojnacki, ‘Political adulthood’, pp. 797-8; Chojnacki, ‘Social identity’, pp. 343- 8. 30. A law of 1392 raised stipends of offices usually occupied by ‘poor nobles’ ‘unable to live or support their families on the basis of them’: ASVe, Maggior Consiglio, reg. 21, Leona, fol. 6iv. 31. F. Barbaro, De re uxoria liber in partes duas, ed. A. Gnesotto (Padua, 1915), pp. 42-4, 50-3. 32. ASVe, Maggior Consiglio, reg. 22, Ursa, fol. 47V. 348
33. Chojnacki, ‘Social identity’, pp. 344, 347. 34. Bistort, Magistrato alle Pompe, p. 107. 35. ‘Parentelam contrahentibus cum nobilibus’: ASVe, Senato, Misti, reg. 53, fol. 7or. 36. ASVe, Giudici del proprio, Diiudicatum, reg. 2, fol. 55V. 37. Antonio Dolfin’s brother, Nicolò, received a dowry of 1,200 with a corredo of undetermined size from his wife, daughter of a man described by Jacopo Gabriel and Pasquale Malipiero as ‘a popolano soap-maker’: APV, Causarum matrimoniorum, busta 2, fase, i, doc. 5. TTie dowry is in ASVe, Giudici del proprio, Vadimoni, reg. 4, fol iov. 38. This interpretation corrects Chojnacki, ‘Marriage legislation’, pp. 172-7. 39. ASVe, Senato, Misti, reg. 53, fol. 70r-v. 40. Ibid. The thirteenth-century statutes had already given married women freedom to make use, as they pleased, of all their property, except dowry and bequests received during marriage: Volumen statutorum, legum, ac iurium d. venetorum, ed. Jacopo Novello (Venice, 1564), Lib. I, cap. 39, p. 19V. 41. ASVe, Maggior Consiglio, reg. 22, Ursa, fol. 176r-v (28 Dec. 1449). 42. ASVe, Senato, Misti, reg. 53, fol. 70V. 43. Chojnacki, ‘Measuring adulthood5, pp. 373- 5; Molho, ‘Deception and mamage strategy’, pp. 194, 204-10 and passim. 44. Klapisch-Zuber, ‘The “cruel mother”, pp. 120-7. 45. E.g. ASVe, Procuratori di San Marco, Commissarie miste, busta 307, Nicolò Vitturi, fase. 2, 1 June 1430. 46. Compare Klapisch-Zuber, ‘The cruel mother5, p. 123; Molho, ‘Deception and marriage strategy5, pp. 206-10; Kirshner, Pursuing Honor, pp. 6-10; G. Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice (New York, 1985), pp. 16-44; D. E. Queller and T. F. Madden, ‘Father of the bride: fathers, daughters, and dowries in late medieval and early Renaissance Venice5, Renaissance Quarterly, 46 (1993), pp. 704-5. 47. ASVe, Senato, Misti, reg. 55, fol. IOIV. 48. ASVe, Senato, Terra, reg. 1, fol. 115V (21 Jan. 1443/4) 49. ‘quod erism ipse que naiurdiler sant in membris offense ci accidentaliter sunt in pecunna ornate possint maritari’: ibid. 50. ASVe, Maggior Consiglio, reg. 21 Leona, fol. 1691 (5 July 1407). 51. E. Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton, 1981), pp. 13-61; Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice, pp. 27-37; G. Silvano, La ‘Republica de’ Viniziani’: Ricerche sul repubblicanesimo veneziano in età moderna (Florence, 1993). 52. E.g., Tenenti, ‘The sense of space and time’, pp. 22-33; F. Gaeta, ‘L ’idea di Venezia’, in Storia della cultura veneta, m: Dal primo Quattrocento al Concilio di Trento, ed. G. Arnaldi andM. Pastore Stocchi, pt 3 (Vicenza, 1981), pp. 632-4i;butcf. Crouzet-Pavan,Espaces, pouvoir et société, n, pp. 970-83. 53. Muir, Civic Ritual, p. 57. 54. ASVe, Consiglio dei Dieci, Misti, reg. 27, fol. 17IV. 55. Ibid., reg. 31, fols. i09v-nor (31 Aug. 1506). See S. Romanin, La storia documentata di Venezia (10 vols., 1853-69; third edn, Venice, 1972-5), II, p. 250; H. Kretschmayr, Geschichte von Venedig (3 vols., 1905-34; repr. Aalen, 1964), n, pp. 75-7; and G. Maranini, La costituzione di Venezia (2 vols., 1927-31; repr. Florence, 1974), n, pp. 62-5. 56. ASVe, Dieci, Misti, reg. 3 1, fol. 109V. 57. S. Chojnacki, ‘Subaltern patriarchs: patrician bachelors in Renaissance Venice’, in Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages, ed. C. A. Lees (Minneapolis, 1994), pp. 78-9.
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58. Ruggiero, Boundaries of Eros, pp. 35-7, 90-1, 97-8; Ruggiero, Binding Passions: Tales of Magic, Marriage, and Power at the End of the Renaissance (New York, 19 9 3), pp. 3-7. 59. I diarii di Marino Sanuto, ed. R. Fulin etal. (58 vols., Venice, 1879-1903), XLI, col. 166 (11 Apr. 1526). 60. ASVe, Dieci, Misti, reg. 3 1, fol. nor. 61. ASVe, Dieci, Comuni, reg. 2, fol. 15V (26 Apr. 1526 ). 62. ‘Tener al tuto emaculato et neto el grado et ordine de la Nobilita... et in do consister et l’honor et la quiete et la conservation del stato nostro’: ibid., fol. 14V (25 Apr. 1526), a law reaffirming the requirements of the Libro d’Oro legislation. 63. Sanuto, Diarii, x l i, cols. 201-3. 64. ASVe, Dieci, Comuni, reg. 2, fol. 15V. 65. Ibid, fol. I7r (sic; fol. 16 is lacking). 66. See G. Cozzi, ‘Domenico Morosini e il “ De bene instituta re publica’” , Studi veneziani, 12 (1970), pp. 408-13 and passim; A. Ventura, ‘Scrittori politici e scritture di governo’, in Storia deUa cultura veneta (6 vols., Vicenza, 1976—86), in, pp. 546-8. 67. Cozzi, ‘Domenico Morosini’, pp. 421-7; Ventura, ‘Scrittori politici’, p. 547; Silvano, La ‘Republica de’ Viniziani’, p. 32. 68. E. G. Gleason, Gasparo Contarini: Venice, Rome and Reform (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1993)3 P* II4- See also Silvano, La ‘Republica de’ Viniziani’, pp. 90-109; Ventura, ‘Scrittori politici’, p. 551-3. 69. ‘li savi et pieni di bontà mazori nostri’: Dieci, Comuni, reg. 2, fol. 14V. 70. Ventura, ‘Scrittori polititi’, p. 561. 71. Echoing references to sodomy: P. H. Labalme, ‘Sodomy and Venetian justice in the Renaissance’, Legal History Review, 52 (19 8 4), esp. pp. 222-3, 232“ 4j Ruggiero, Boundaries of Bros, pp. 127-3. 72. ASVe, Giudici del proprio, De giudicatu, regs. 1 and 2; Chojnacki, ‘Social identity’, PP354-6. 73. Diarii, I, col. 885. 74. ‘Computati tuti fornimenti, robe, doni, comedi et cadauna altra cosa’: ASVe, Senato, Terra, reg. 15, fols. 93V-4V (4 Nov. 1505). 75. D. Romano, Housecraft and Statecraft: Domestic Service in Renaissance Venice, 1400—1600 (Baltimore, 1996), pp. 139-43. 76. ASVe, Senato, Terra, reg. 15, fols. 93V-4V. 77. ASVe, Maggior Consiglio, Deliberazioni, reg. 22, Ursa, fol. I76r-v. 78. ASVe, Senato, Terra, reg. 15, fol. 93V. 79. Kuehn, ‘Some ambiguities of female inheritance ideology’, pp. 2 3 8 -4 1; Klapisch-Zuber, ‘The “cruel mother’”, pp. 121-2. 80. ‘la qual sia liberamente de la dona come e honesto’: Senato, Terra, reg. 15, fol. 93V. 81. For such tensions, see G. Cozzi, ‘Authority and the law in Renaissance Venice’, pp. 296-301, and F. Gilbert, ‘Venice in the crisis of the League of Cambiai’, pp, 286, 290, both in Renaissance Venice, ed. Hale; Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice, pp. 59-81; Gleason, Gasparo Contarmi, pp. 125-8 . Sanuto reports spirited debate in the Senate on the 1505 law: Diarii, vi, col. 253. 82. Cozzi, ‘Authority and the law’, p. 314. 83. Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice, p. 74. 84. ‘nascono edam molti inconvenienti ben noti a la prudentia de cadauno. Per il che essendo officio de la nostra ben instituta republica asserir opportuno rimedio a tal immoderata et pemitiosa consuetudine, sì per reverentia del summo dio, come per beneficio de la cita nostra’: Senato, Terra, reg. 15, fol. 93V. 350
85. ASVe, Avogaria di comun, Contratti di nozze, reg. 140/1, fol. 5r. 86. Ibid., fols. ir-66v. 87. Sanuto, Diarii, xvm, col. 330 (1514); ibid, lvii, cols. 478, 526 (1533). 88. ASVe, Senato, Terra, reg. 28, fols. 15Ir-152r (29 Apr. 1535). 89. ‘dalle immoderate dote, et prohibite dale leze nostre, ne advene, che li patri, et altri che hanno cura de maritar figliole … si dano ad accumular danari, per poter dar le dote excessive, et la gioventu nostra non si da piu al negociar in la cita, ne alla navigatione, ne ad altra laudevol industria, ponendo ogni loro speranza in ditte excessive dote, Et quando [i.e., se] la solenne et sancta parte … circa le Dote fusses ta dalli Magistrati nostre ben intense, et ben exeguita, non havessamo visto tanti perniciosi effetti’: ibid. 90. Tenenti, ‘Sense of space and time’, pp. 20-4; U. Tucci, ‘The psychology of the Venetian merchant in the sixteenth century’, in Renaissance Venice, ed. Hale, pp. 352-9; Gilbert, ‘Venice in the crisis’, pp. 274-5. 91. Ibid; G. Cozzi, ‘La donna, l’amore e Tiziano’, in Tiziano e Venezia, convegno internationale di studi, Venezia 1976 (Vicenza, 1980), pp. 53-4. 92. E.g., ‘segundo consueto de la terra’: ASVe, Avogaria di comun, Contratti di nozze, reg. 140/I, fol. 4v (Piero Badoer and Cateruzza di Francesco Giustinian, 9 Feb. 1505/6). 93. ASVe, Senato, Terra, reg. 28, fol. 154V (12 May 1535). 94. E. Muir, ‘Images of power: art and pageantry in Renaissance Venice’, American Historical Review, 84 (1978), pp. 34-6. 95. M. Tafuri, Venezia e il Rinascimento: Religione, scienza, architettura (Turin, 1985), pp. 162-3. 96. Gleason, Gasparo Contarmi, pp. no, 129. Contarini’s co-author, Alvise Mocenigo, was also an important figure: Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice, pp. 253-4. 97. Contarmi, La Republica e i magistrati di Vinegia (Venice, 1544), p. IXr; Silvano, La ‘Republica de’ Viniziani’, p. 95. 98. On such tensions, see Cozzi, ‘Authority and the law’, pp. 298-301, and passim, Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice, pp. 71-81. 99. See Ventura, ‘Scrittori politici e scritture di governo’, pp. 549-52. Cf. Finlay, Politics, pp. 80-1.
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READING 5
Patricia Labalme How to (and How Not to) Get Married in Sixteenth-Century Venice (Selections from the Marriage between Venetian patricians in the early decades of the sixteenth century was a matter of considerable moment. The process of joining two families — as narrated by a contemporary diarist— involved a choreography of events and a level of display in rituals more public than private in import: the lavish style of entertainment paralleled civic rituals in arguing the power of the Venetian citystate, and the strengthening of familial political and economic ties betokened the effectiveness of the city’s urban polity and economic status. When private ceremonies went awry, the subsequent opprobrium underscored the community’s interest in more proper procedures. In a Venetian governmental debate at the end of the fifteenth century, it was reported that a highly placed official hurled at a contentious colleague this disparaging description: “‘You eat alone at the table/ as if to say, stingy and miserable man.”1 For no condition seemed more abnormal than such isolation in a patrician society whose essential form was the family and familial life. And in preserving the family, nothing was more carefully structured than its marriages. This serves to explain why patrician marriage in sixteenth-century Venice was such a complex event, a many-staged procedure which took place over time, required several months, and involved, beyond the particular families, the entire community. Of the informal agreement we have no traces. But the formal procedure began with a contract of engagement which in Venetian terms seems to have been called le nozze? This not only established the relationship but, and most importantly, included dowry arrangements, that is, the total sum and what parts would be paid in cash, in goods, in jewelry, in real estate, in shares of the states 352
funded debt, etc. Then it progressed through several stages: the announcement of the engagement in the presence of the two families and officials (fare or fermare il parentado), the ritual showing forth of the bride led round by a dancing master, visits to the houses of bride and groom, and the publicly declared consent of bride and groom through the declaration of matrimonial vows (fattesiparole ceremoniali dello sponsalitio). After this ceremony, there was a feast during which gifts of candy and comestibles were made to the couple by the sponsor or sponsors (i compari). The final acts were the grooms taking his bride to live with him in his family’s house (menare a casa) and the consummation. At various points in this process, other rituals occurred. There was the ringing of the bride (anellamento). There was the mutual giving of the hand (dar la man), usually in the later stages of the wedding procedure. There were the visits by the bride in an open gondola to relatives in convents which a later sixteenth-century writer, Francesco Sansovino, was to pair with the showing forth of the bride in the house: “For since she must increase through childbirth the generation of this family onto which she is grafted, she shows herself in the household and throughout the city almost as if to so many witnesses to the contracted marriage.”3 At the same time, this author remarks, those who shared in this ceremony rejoice in it as if it were their own: “For by order of the government they are united together forever, as if they were all of a single family:”4 So public was the event that up to the sixteenth century, the bride (if an important dowry went with her) was also presented to the doge “as a public testimonial.”5 The interweaving here between the particular relationship of the conjoined patrician families and the public interest of the city is the underlying theme of the essay that follows. Venetian patrician marriages in this period exemplified the blending of familial and civic concerns, the case and the terra as the family clans and the city-state were called. “Public” and “private” did not find their way into Venetian contemporary vocabulary except that the first qualified the rest of the state as a “public thing,” a respublica. The second signified an absence and deprivation of the civic sphere, rather than a tangible property or intangible negotiation outside it. Venetian patrician marriages took place within, not without, the community. 353
The bonding of two patrician families strengthened political and economic alliances through their matrimonial arrangements. A politically ambitious patrician could count on increased votes in the Great Council, which was the main elective body. His banking and commercial investments might be enlarged. The marriage itself involved a commercial transaction with the exchange of a significant sum of money in the form of a dowry. The amount of a large dowry was generally known throughout the community and reckoned as indicative of the city’s economic strength. In spite of legal efforts to restrict the amounts, dowries escalated during this period just as they had during the preceding century, arriving at sums representing considerable fortunes and demonstrating at the same time the economic power of this merchant republic.6 For the young patrician woman, marriage was entered into normally between the ages of fourteen and twenty and initiated her into adulthood. Yet the fact that the bride’s personal name is rarely mentioned but only her patronymic emphasizes the societal aspect of this event. For the groom, usually at least a decade older than the bride, marriage represented the conclusion of a long maturing process and his assumption of a fully responsible role in the continuity of the joined families and the perpetuation of the patrician society.7 If the family was of sufficient stature and economic importance, the final ceremonies and festivities might be spread over a good week and include several banquets, large numbers of guests, processions on land and water, and performances by one of the Compagnie della Calza. These were societies mostly of young patricians who were identified by their colorful stockings (as may be seen in some of Carpaccio’s paintings) whose primary purpose was to entertain themselves and whose official purpose was la festal They were frequently invited by the government to add brilliance and festivity to diplomatic and ceremonial occasions but also participated in private gatherings such as these weddings, especially when the groom was a member of one of such Companies. There had been about thirty-four such societies by the end of the period Sanudo describes (1533), but they were ephemeral groups having incorporation for limited periods, and they seem to have come and gone as their membership fluctuated.9
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The splendor of extravagant weddings also had a diplomatic value: the great dowries, the quantity of beautiful and beautifully dressed women, the quality of the wedding feasts contributed to Venice s reputation, and foreign ambassadors were sometimes invited to witness the pomp at what often became a public event. Even during the difficult years of the War of the League of Cambrai (1509-1517), a long and costly struggle which Venice fought against a combination of Italian and foreign powers, elaborate wedding feasts might be held, in spite of the rules forbidding excessive expenditure. In Venetian law, exceptions were the rule — “una parte Veneziana dura una septimana� (a Venetian law lasts but a week).10 In such a ritualized and significant process in which the private lives of the Venetian patricians and the public reputation of the city-state were so inextricably combined, there were expectations to be fulfilled and patterns to be followed. For nearly four decades, from 1496 to 1533, these patterns were chronicled by a Venetian diarist as part of the daily life of a city whose every aspect he saw fit to record. Marin Sanudo came from a patrician family too internally divided to command a voting block, while his personal situation was too limited economically to allow him the purchasing of influence and high office. He never realized the successful political career he craved. But his noble birth and abilities afforded him entry into a number of governmental circles from which he observed and recorded, with remarkable stamina and curiosity, the quotidian civic scene, including patrician marriages. A few of these weddings have been selected here to illustrate what was expected and enacted on these occasions in which public and private interests were intricately interwoven. It was not by chance that, having begun his Diaries in 1496 to chronicle what he perceived as the great events engendered by the French invasion of Italy in 1494, Sanudo ended his long first volume, really two volumes in one, with this proud statement: I would like to conclude the writing of this volume on a happy note; it has covered the news of two years, to wit 1496 and 1497 to the last day of February, and I have completed it only with a good deal of labor and the help of God. Thus I do not wish to omit the many marriages celebrated of late and the many large dowries bestowed in this glorious city of Venice. Although they were very costly for us, they nevertheless took place because of the great wealth found here. The dowries bestowed during these years were very 355
large, nearly all of them more than 3000 ducats, and some amounted to 10,000 ducats and more. Sanudo goes on to talk about the carnival season which was also so splendid in Venice that year, comparable to those held in Germany by the emperor elect (Maximilian), in France by Charles VIII, King of France, and in Naples. Wealth, and the ability to exchange it and spend it, was power.11 So dowries were more than private exchanges of wealth. They were meant for public display and were actually publicly displayed in a demonstration of wealth which served the self-satisfaction of the city and its propaganda. Indeed, so important was the dowry in a proper marriage that its material presentation often formed part of the entertainment, as happened on 14 October 1507. On this day the Compagnia degli Eterni [Eternals] gave a party on a raised platform in Campo San Polo to celebrate the wedding of ser Luca da Leze to the daughter of the late ser Zuan Batista Foscarini. It lasted until four hours after sunset [about 10:00 p.m.]. There was a splendid momaria about Jason’s quest for the golden fleece. It should be noted that at the dinner hour, when I was present, about 4000 ducats, part of the bride’s dowry, was brought in six basins. The first one contained gold [coins], the rest [silver] coins. Well done, for those who can afford it!12 In addition to the display of wealth, the display of elegantly dressed women was part of the show. On one October evening in 1506 in the San Trovaso home of the Nani family, a simple feast was held to celebrate a Nani-Badoer betrothal, and the Turkish ambassador was “invited to see the women, of whom there were 50, dining there. And he brought with him ten of his Moorish retinue.”13 So important were weddings as a barometer of the public mood that in 1511, two years into the War of the League of Cambrai and two years after Venice’s disastrous defeat at Agnadello at the hands of a French army, Sanudo reported on two weddings with “enough women and momarie at one and the other ... so that although the city has expenses and is in mourning it still rejoices a little” (3 March 1511; 12:16). Clearly, part of the proper way to get married was to include the kind of momarie and festivities mentioned earlier. Sometimes mythological tales were presented, sometimes mere buffoonery. On 2 May 1513 (16:206-07), in the very midst of that 356
same war, an elaborate recreation of Venetian diplomatic receptions was staged, as if the reenactment of a public ceremony were being domesticated for this private alliance of two families. But one of these families was related to the reigning doge, which may explain why this type of entertainment was chosen. Among the audience were three real ambassadors, so there was a theatrical imitation of diplomatic ceremony in the presence of real diplomats, at a time when it was important to show Venice s political position in a favorable light. After dinner not much happened, just a meeting of the Collegio de’ Savi.14 The reason was that the engagement of ser Ferigo Foscari to the daughter of ser Zuan Venier, Head of the Ten, was held at Ca’ Foscari. She is the granddaughter of our most serene Prince. 15 Upon her arrival, a superb dinner was given, first of all to the ambassadors of the Pope, Spain, and Hungary, and other high-ranking senior patricians. Three of the doge’s sons attended .... Also present were the prior of San Zuane dil Tempio and a knight of Rhodes; they dined in a room apart on a silver service. Permission [to use silver] was given because of the ambassadors whom I mentioned. About 96 women were seated at table in the portico and between these and others in the rooms, there were 420 people seated at the head tables. Everything was carried out in splendid order, and it was a fine meal.16 After the feast came the entertainment, an elaborate series of scenes, generically called commedie, separated by dances in which the women usually participated, and sometimes by musical interludes. Then preparations were made for presenting a commedia or some other performance. A platform was set up for the women to sit on; a second one was constructed in the middle of the room for the recitation. The three ambassadors and other high-ranking men were to sit there, although the Spanish ambassador left early to write, he said, to the viceroy.17 One of the ‘kings’ of the Compagnia degli Eterni [Eternals], ser Francesco Zeno, came onto the platform dressed in a silver robe with a gold, Greek-style tunic over it and a hat on his head, [together with] his councillors’ ser Francesco Barbaro and ser Luca da Leze and his ‘interpreter’ or ‘chancellor’ ser Stefano Tiepolo, all of whom were well-costumed. 18 After the members of the company had danced for a while on the platform with the women, the first performance was put on. This was [presented by] ser Marco Antonio Memo dressed in rose-colored vestments as a bishop and legate of Pope Calixtus.19 Fie presented the king [of the Eterni] with a brief from the pope declaring that he had sent this bishop de nulla tenentis [without a see] to congratulate him. He also presented him 357
with a letter of credentials and, after delivering his oration, gave him a kingly crown, placing it on his head and blessing him. The king thanked him and invited him to watch a dance, which was performed on the platform by two women and two members of the company. When it was finished, the legate invited the king to listen to a member of his retinue, Galeazzo da Valle from Vicenza, who improvised a song, accompanying himself on the lyre. After he left, ser Zuan di Cavalli arrived, dressed in the German manner as the ambassador of the emperor. He carried a letter of credentials from the emperor Otto.20 He delivered his oration in German and presented a scepter to this King Pancrazio of the Compagnia degli Eterni.21 Then the women performed a dance and the ambassador asked his musicians to play a piece on flute and bagpipe. After he had left, ser Santo Contarini came on stage dressed as a Mamluk.22 Taking the role of the Sultans ambassador, he presented a letter and a lynx.23 After the women had danced, the ambassador’s retinue performed a moorish dance. Next to arrive was the French ambassador, ser Zuan Contarini, very fashionably dressed in the French style. He brought a letter from King Louis; having read it in French, he presented the king with a dog.24 Once the women had performed their dance, he had cornets and trumpets play. The Spanish ambassador then appeared, played by Zuan Falier, who spoke in Spanish. He presented the letter of credentials written in Spanish, made a gift of two men from Africa who engaged in swordplay, after which the women performed their dance.25 Lastly, the bridegroom, ser Ferigo Foscari, came as the Hungarian ambassador with a letter from King Ladislaus. He presented the king with a gilded cup and, after the dance, he had some of his Hungarian retinue play the viola and other instruments.26 It should be noted also that the interpreter, ser Stefano Tiepolo, cleverly translated into our tongue the speeches of the ambassadors and the replies of the king. A little hobby-horse ridden by a pygmy courier came on next, [along with] the ambassador of the pygmies, ser Jacomo Dandolo .... Once he had read and presented the letter from his king, he gave our king a crane.27 When the womens dance was over, he instructed his four pygmies to perform their dance, which they did well, waving hatchets and dancing to a four-meter beat.28 Then came three Venetian ambassadors: ser Beneto Zorzi dressed in gold brocade, and ser Daniel Barbarigo and ser Baptista Contarini wearing silk mantles. The letter of credentials from Doge Michele Steno was presented and the ambassadors were introduced: the first as a member of the Storlado family, a doctor [university graduate] and knight; the 358
second as a Partecipazo, and the third as a Bonzi, all families that are now extinct.29 Zorzi delivered his oration, made a gift of a silver ship, and presented a buffoon, Zuan Polo.30 After the womens dance was over, two servants cut capers and four peasants from the countryside sang songs. Then, to complete the party, Zuan Polo told a few jokes and played sleight-of-hand games on top of a stand. It was three hours after sunset and very warm because of the crush of the crowd.31 What is remarkable about the momarie and commedie of these years is that they took place in spite of stringent decrees against such representations, first formulated in December, 1508, and reaffirmed in May, 1512, only a year prior to the diplomatic reenactments of the Foscari Venier celebrations. But those strictures were against “bad language” and “lascivious action,” and the marital festivities of those who were wellborn and well-connected went on uninterrupted. 32 These elaborate entertainments involved the sponsoring companies in considerable costs, as did another wedding party in 1514, when two competing companies each rented a large barge decorated as a Bucintoro, the doges ceremonial barge, and then competed in their revelries up and down the Grand Canal “so that day and night there was feasting on the Grand Canal” for the whole city to appreciate. Such extravagance drew some criticism which Sanudo reported only to contradict: “I will not hesitate to write that this feast which took place publicly today led many to say that it would have been better to spend the money on the war; nevertheless it was to the city’s honor; given that the enemy was camped 30 miles away, and yet no one paid any heed, and here there was rejoicing, as if we were not at war, and more money spent than ever.” 33 Three years later, as the war came to an end, two weddings were reported whose large dowries signalled the return of normalcy and legitimate rejoicing: “the city begins to recover; with a little period of peace, it will be quite content.”34 The proper wedding was a reassurance to the diarist that economic activity and style were restored to the city, along with its reputation. So his satisfaction abounded in his lengthy description of another ducal- sponsored wedding in 1525, where every detail of costume, custom, and comestible was reported. For the bride on this occasion was the granddaughter of doge Andrea Gritti, who lost no 359
opportunity to promote his grandeur and that of his city, funding these nuptial ceremonies himself. Sanudo begins his account with the actual engagement (the nozze) on Saturday, 14 January 1525, and the announcement of the engagement in the presence of the families (parenti) on the following Monday.35 After dinner, the betrothal of the granddaughter of the Most Serene Prince with ser Polo Contarini was announced. His Serenity was seated in the new Audience Chamber of the Ducal Palace with the Signoria around him and ser Francesco Contarini, brother of the groom, standing, dressed in deep purple with ducal sleeves; the Prince was dressed in crimson-violet velvet. The groom [stood] at the door of the palace dressed in black, and his [other] brothers were also in black.36 There was a large number of patricians, and all took the doge s hand so that he became very weary. And the bride was led around by the dancing master who is instructing her, but she did not dance. Nothing more was done today.37 Affairs of state were suspended on the following day as well for the next phase of the series of entertainments, some of which took place in the governmental chambers of the ducal palace, and which Sanudo describes along with a meteorological omen for the city as for the ceremony. No meetings were held after dinner because the Ducal Palace was the site of a party for the betrothal celebrations. In the room where the Senate usually meets, women were being received and people were dancing. A very large number of women attended; in the evening the supper tables were prepared and the dividing partitions were removed to create more space .... It was a most elegant dinner with pine-nut cakes, partridges, pheasants, baby pigeons, and other dishes. And although more guests appeared than were expected, each one had enough to eat. The company responsible was that of the Ortolani [Farmers]; ser Dolfin Dolfin was in charge, nor was there any activity beside the dancing. The party concluded at eight hours past sunset [about 1:00 a.m.], and not without a rain that ended days and months of drought: a good sign that this ceremony is taking place in a time of abundance. Eight days later, after a procession through the Piazza San Marco to the music of trumpets and the sound of bells, the actual wedding ceremony took place in the Basilica, an unusual venue and one only for a distinguished bride.38 Today [January 25] was the feast of St. Paul, when the stars make a special aspect.39 This day has been designated for the wedding of the doge s granddaughter. About 100 360
women guests arrived at the ducal palace; some were relatives of the bride and groom and some were guests of the members of the Ortolani. They followed the bride into church, all well dressed, except for one who was the wife of ser Vincenzo Gritti. All told, I counted 95 women. Preceding the bridal procession came the captains and officials, clearing a way as they passed through the Piazza, with four large wax torches and the trumpets and fifes of the doge.40 Next came the bride wearing the latest fashion, a rose-colored velvet dress; following her was her [future] sister-in-law, the betrothed [cugnada noviza] of ser Filipo Contarini and daughter of ser Antonio Pesaro; then came the other women, all of whom were wearing heavy gold chains and lots of pearls. And the wife of ser Fantin Corner wore a collar with splendid, rich, and large jewels that had belonged to the king of Cyprus.41 The last woman in the procession was the wife of ser Domenego Zorzi; she is a Tiepolo. The next to enter the church were the six ducal councillors and all the Procurators; they numbered seventeen, but five were missing .... They accompanied ser Francesco Contarini, the brother of the groom, and ser Michiel Malipiero [representing] the doge on the bride s side. They sat in the choir. A High Mass was celebrated with vocal and instrumental accompaniment. The church was full of people, as was the Piazza. When Mass was over and the councillors and procurators, etc., had exited the church followed by the women, the bells rang None [about 3:00 p.m.]. The bride was married in church; the sponsor was ser Bernardo Capello. The company members as well as the groom wore black, which in my opinion was not the thing to do. On a day like today they should have worn [red] silk, or at least scarlet [cloth]. The lord of today s festivities, chosen from among the Ortolani members, was ser Antonio Zane. Interrupting his account of the wedding to record a list of grave criminal charges made in the Senate against a captain in Cyprus accused of sodomy, Sanudo then continues with a list of the political officials who left the ceremony early to dine with the doge. Politics clearly went on alongside the wedding observances. The following groups dined at midday with the doge: Councillors, Procurators, Savi of the Council [Savi grandi], and Savi a terraferma. However, the Heads of the Forty and the Savi et ordeni were not included.42 Before Mass was over, the dinner guests left the church and went to the ducal palace, where they met the doge, who was dressed in gold brocade with a ducal bonnet of the same material. Tables had been set up in the audience room; when everyone had been seated in a courtly fashion, they commenced to enjoy an excellent meal of duck, pheasant,
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partridge and many other dishes. For dessert there was whipped cream, marzipan, and sweetmeats followed by performances by the buffoon Zuan Polo and other virtuosi.43 Meanwhile, back at the church, the marriage procedure continued and the diarist counted the women for the second time, aware of their contribution to the splendor of the occasion. After Mass was over, the women followed the newly-wed bride out of the church. One by one they processed across the Piazza. According to my count there were 95 of them. I note that among them were six women of the people, whom the doge specially invited, and one foreigner.44 And there were many people in the Piazza. It was a fine sight to see these women walking by. The account continues with a description of the participating company to which the groom belonged: The members of the Ortolani were dressed first in black robes with full sleeves, as were the groom and his brothers. Then they stripped down to short tunics that were also black, except for the lord of the feast, ser Antonio Zane, who wore a . . . [garment] of crimson velvet. When the women and the Ortolani had been seated, they were served the usual nice luncheon with partridges and two servings of roast meats. After the meal, the doge came out of his chambers, as did the others seated around the hall of the ducal palace and the women. A single dance was danced, and since by then it was only an hour and a half before sunset, they decided to board the Bucintoro. Because the bride was the doge s granddaughter, the actual Bucintoro was available. But before the party boarded, a family scene takes place which interrupts the formal proceedings and adds a human touch not lost on the observant diarist, who uncharacteristically names the bride as she enacts her farewell to her natal family in the midst of the ritual and formal splendors. Thereupon the bride, whose name is Vienna, threw herself at the feet of His Serenity and the others seated around the hall. Weeping, she took her leave; the doge, too, got a lump in his throat and began to weep. Accompanied by the Ortolani, they processed to the Bucintoro and boarded it. The only other guests allowed aboard were the women guests of the Ortolani, who numbered 113, the majority of whom, as I mentioned, were dressed in black velvet and adorned with pearls, heavy chains, and very long chain belts.45 Many others were not wearing necklaces, but all were formally dressed. Once everyone was on board, the Bucintoro, carrying the standard and emblem of the doge, was loosed from its 362
moorings. As usual, it was accompanied by the boats from the parish of San Nicolo.46 The entire expense was borne by the doge himself. The Bucintoro sailed down the Grand Canal as the members of the Ortolani danced with their women guests to the sound of trumpets and fifes. When they drew even with the grooms house, about halfway down the canal, they were greeted by the booming of artillery as blank shells were fired from the opposite house. This was a gift from the Duke of Milan, in celebration of the marriage. Thus the Bucintoro was brought as far as Ca’ Foscari at the bend in the Canal, where it turned around and stopped in front of the grooms home, the dancing continuing all the while. Once the sun had set, 30 wax torches . . . were brought; fifteen were placed on one side of the boat and fifteen on the other. Paper lanterns festooned the top of the house, the balconies, window sills, and roof tiles in great numbers. When lit, they cast a brilliance over the festivities. After the sunset in late January, the evening grew cold and the party moved indoors. A chill wind blew up, which the women felt, even though the Bucintoro was covered, as is customary. At four hours after sunset [about 9:00 p.m.] all the women came indoors; the house and courtyard were decorated with tapestries from top to bottom, a lovely sight. Tables had been set up in the hall and the rooms all around it, and everyone sat down to dinner with the company members. It was the usual wedding feast, but in addition there was potted pheasant and baby pigeon. Many of the women and company members were young and married, so that there was a large number of people at the wedding. Once it was over, there was a little dancing, then everyone went home .... The bride and groom went to give themselves pleasure; not only had they not yet slept together, the doge had not even allowed them to be without a chaperone. This is contrary to what is done in other cases, in which, as soon as the young people give their hands to each other, they are allowed to sleep together, which is not proper. Early the next morning, the Bucintoro was taken back to the Arsenal. The diarist concludes his description with some important details he had neglected to mention: Another newsworthy item: early this morning, ser Bernardo Capello, the ring-sponsor, sent the bride a present.47 It was a large silver basket.... In it was a lovely sable wrap with a beautiful head and a little chain about its neck . . . .48
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In the Ducal Palace, a Latin oration and a rhymed epithalamium in praise of the marriage were recited to the doge and the rest of the guests .... This was done on my advice.49 Another newsworthy item: after all of the women had boarded the Bu- cintoro, the wife of ser Vetor Grimani, procurator, arrived late. Since the gangway had already been raised, she had to be hoisted on deck by her arms: this was how badly she wanted to attend the festivities. On the Bucintoro, the guests were offered a colation of biscuits, doughnutshaped cookies, focacce, and baskets of sweetmeats.50 So much for the weddings that Sanudo described as bellissimi (his choice of words was not wide, but it was emphatic): an impressive dowry, sufficient and appropriate foods, well-served in an orderly fashion, luxurious costumes of celebratory hue, the presence of elegantly clothed and bejewelled women, music, song, and entertainment formed the canon of the proper wedding. The display of wealth and the observance of ritual in the bonding of two patrician families reflected in microcosm the wealth and civic rituals of the city, as well as reciprocal arrangements between potential allies which formed the bedrock of the Venetian political system. For this reason, every aspect of the process was viewed critically for its larger political and propagandistic implications.51 That is why what might appear a minor change in the process was cause for Sanudo’s remarking upon it as he did in 1517 when two ring-sponsors replaced the traditional one: “It was a new thing . . . never before seen in this city” (26 August 1517; 24:608). Or again, there was Sanudo’s evident satisfaction in 1526, when the groom and his fellow members of a company followed the tradition of wearing crimson velvet and scarlet robes to the parentado in the ancient fashion, “a l’antica,” and the bride made her family visits seated upon the trasto, the cross-bench, of the gondola, “the way it used to happen years ago” (12 April 1526; 41:167). Ritual is best served by repetition; its variation was cause for comment. Conversely, derogation from the established norms, whether through inadequate hospitality, transgression of legal or societal barriers, or uncivil behavior, might result in a wedding process that did not come up to snuff, that was ill-performed, malfato, challenging the social ritual and public self-image of the Venetian
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Republic. Such events were described by Sanudo as so many cautionary tales about how not to get married in sixteenth-century Venice.52
The Stingy Host After dinner there was a meeting of the Collegio de’ Savi. It happened that a company of young men named the Eterni, held a dinner at the house of ser Lunardo Grimani for the wedding of his daughter to ser Alvise Morosini, one of the members of the company. But he [Morosini] gave the company members a meager dinner, and they sentenced him to appear before the consuls. Today he is in their custody.53 It was said that they were ill treated; that is why all the company members, at one hour before sunset [about 4:00 p.m.] came to Rialto in ceremonial garb.54 After they had done great damage to the Grimani house, they took two silver basins, which Father Stefano and [the buffoon] Domenego Taiacalze carried at the head of the procession55.... The buffoons made a proclamation at the Rialto that since they [the company members] had been ill used today and no women [had been invited to the supper], they had therefore taken the basins to have a fitting supper .... And they pawned them, one for wax torches and one at the tavern of the Campana where they had a nice supper at his expense.56 That wedding had taken place just before the War of the League of Cambrai (1509-1517) when living was easier and luxurious feasts were to be expected. During the darker days of the war, such expenditures were expressly forbidden, and even years after the war there remained strictures on wedding practices. Whether such prohibitions were effective may be gleaned from the types of controls mentioned in this sumptuary legislation of 1526.57
Forbidden Luxuries It is stipulated that between the time that the nuptial contract is concluded and the wedding ceremony takes place, the ring-sponsors may not give the groom more than six small suppers, of no more than twenty guests apiece, and two large meals, one of which may not exceed five hundred guests and the other eighty, including men and women and close relatives, with the exception of dinners given by the Companies. The groom may give two meals, one with fifty guests and one with eighty, including men and women and close relatives. At these meals it is prohibited to serve partridge, pheasant, peacock, francolins, baby doves, and no more than three non-gilded dishes may be served. The serving may
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only be done by the steward of the sideboard and carpets may not be placed on the tables. 58 Also prohibited are large confections of pine-nut cakes, pistachios, round filled pastries, sweets of sugar and rose-water, confections, and sweet gums, formless confections, moulded meringues, sugared fruit, and every other type of large confection that one may make or imagine. The penalty for the lawbreakers will be fifty ducats and for the pastry cook it will be twenty-five ducats . . . .59 The stewards and cooks that serve such meals are obligated under penalty of a ten-ducat fine per person and a prison term of four months to come to our office and record when and to whom and where such meals will be held so that employees of this office may be sent to determine if the law has been broken. And the stewards are obligated to take them through the rooms so that they may do their job, and if they are impeded by members of the household or others and not allowed to do their job, the stewards are obligated to leave and no longer serve their employers who must nonetheless give [them their] wages. Similarly, if more than the allowed number of guests attends a dinner or prohibited dishes are served, the servants must come to our office after the dinner is served to report what has taken place, on pain of the above penalties. And truly, those who would act so dishonestly as to throw bread or oranges at our employees, or push them or kick them out, will fall subject to a penalty of fifty ducats. The value of gifts as well as the quality of entertainment was also to be monitored. The ring-sponsors may not send the bride or anyone else associated with the wedding a present of anything other than six forks and six spoons, whose value may not exceed one ducat each. Conversely, the bride may not give to the sponsor pine-nut cakes exceeding a total of ten ducats. The penalty for such transgressions will be forfeiture of the items with which they have broken the law plus sixty ducats. The silversmiths who made the forks or spoons will incur a fine of ten ducats. These sumptuary laws were obviously hard to enforce, and Sanudo elsewhere refers to the sumptuary magistracy as officio odioso.60 Venetians evidently considered sumptuous display (la pompa) as an honorable sin, a matter of pride rather than chagrin. The impression remains that these laws were more honored in the breach than in the observance, especially when extravagance served civic reputation as well as family pride.61
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Prostitute Brides and Bigamous Husband Far more shameful than excessive expenditure was to marry way down on the social scale as happened on this occasion in 1526. Today one heard openly about the wedding between ser Andrea Michiel.. . and a certain Cornelia Grifo, a most beautiful and sumptuous widowed prostitute. She is rich and has been publicly kept by ser Ziprian Malipiero, and for a while she belonged to ser Piero da Molin of the Banco [branch of the family], and to others, who have given her a dowry of... thousand ducats. The wedding was held at the monastery of San Zuan [San Giovanni] on Torcello and has cast great shame on the Venetian patriciate.”62 Even worse, because illegal, was a misalliance compounded with bigamy. 24 April 1532: Today, after dinner, the Quarantia Criminal (Court of Forty for Criminal Affairs) met.63 It is an unusual thing to have any council meet when the doge is out of the ducal palace. Ser Filippo Tron, the avogador (state attorney), introduced the case of ser Paulo da Canal, who is accused of having taken two wives. First he married a prostitute named . . . ’balla le oche.’ Then he married a sister of ser Bertuzi Valier . . . months ago, and about 400 ducats of the dowry was [still] owed him. The said [ser Paulo] was subpoenaed in Castello by his first wife, who obtained a judgment against the second [wife, affirming] that she [the first wife] was the true one. Therefore the avogador recommended and it was unanimously decided that he be detained. [Ser Paulo] absented himself. With these words, the case disappears from Sanudo’s Diaries but not from the court records.64 One month later, a sentence of perpetual banishment was pronounced against Paolo da Canal, allowing him to pursue his life only on the island of Cyprus or in service on Venetian merchant or armed ships. It is possible that he may have received a reprieve in later years due to pressure from his family, but the sentence indicates that such flouting of social mores was taken seriously, as do the following reactions to incidents involving women (who were probably young and unmarried), the protection of whose chastity from even symbolic gestures ranked high in the legal codes of the period.
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Illicit Gestures 13 May 1500: “I will not omit something that I heard, that the son of Andrea Morosini, the former state attorney, having kissed a woman and taken a jewel from her, was brought before the Senate. And [Andrea Morosini] said publicly [of his son]: ‘Hang him! Off with his head!’ And so he was condemned.” 65 There is no further mention of this charge or punishment in the Diaries, which Sanudo would certainly have recorded had it taken place. But the paternal reaction was an entirely possible one, given the social injury such actions represented, a form of symbolic rape and infringement on the integrity of the women involved, as demonstrated three decades later by the procedures in a similar case. 29 May 1530: Bartolomeo Comin, the secretary of the Council of Ten, made public two guilty verdicts handed down yesterday in the most excellent Council of Ten against ser Zuan Soranzo and ser Marco Garzoni. On the eleventh day of the present month, the feast of St. Job, they hung around the door of his church and took handkerchiefs out of the hands and belts of the women, giving bad example. Since something needs to be done about this, these two will be banished for four years from Venice and the surrounding area, with a reward [to the informer] of 1500 ducats’ worth of their goods to be levied if they violate the terms of the banishment. If they are caught, the reward is to be paid, and they are to be sent back into banishment, which is to begin all over again, since the four years are to be continuous. Their goods are to be bound over for the payment of the reward, and if these are not sufficient, the reward is to be paid with money belonging to the Signoria. They cannot be pardoned except by vote of five-sixths of this Council, in its stated number of seventeen. This verdict is to be announced at the next meeting of the Great Council.66
The Thwarted Abduction Attempts on women’s honor were not always symbolic. In 1518, an incident took place in the Venetian terraferma, in Brescia, which involved the temporary abduction of a wealthy ten-year old girl by members of an aristocratic Brescian family, and in particular one Camillo Martinengo, who wished to make her the bride of his brother. This Martinengo was a condottiere employed by the Venetian 368
government as had been his father, and therefore entitled to have armed men with him. He went to the child’s home and engaged her mother in chit-chat while his followers seized the child, and then Martinengo put her in a convent where he had other relatives. The child’s aggrieved mother went to the Venetian governor in Brescia, remonstrating at this insult and the governor immediately had the child brought to his palazzo, then placed in another convent more securely under his authority, and he wrote the Venetian government to have the case prosecuted. After heated debate, probably due to the prominence of the perpetrators, the Council of Ten decided to send a state attorney, to try the case in Brescia. A few weeks later, the Council of Ten voted that Camillo Martinengo, with utmost secrecy, should be taken into custody.67 A month later, the case was reviewed in Venice. The reading of the 100-page dossier took two days, and on 23 June, sentences of exile were pronounced against Camillo Martinengo and his henchmen, all but one of whom were relatives. Camillo Martinengo and one other were exiled from “Verona and the Veronese and all the Venetian territory beyond Verona,” that is, in effect, from the Venetian terraferma for five years. Three of the others were exiled for three years, and the one who was not a relative but a servant who, in all likelihood, had laid his hands on the child, was exiled for a ten-year period, and should this last miscreant be apprehended in violation of the exile, he should suffer, before the door of the house from which he seized the child, the amputation of his offending hand. The child herself was to be restored to the place from which she had been abducted and reestablished in that “status, being, and legal position” she held before the abduction, an indication that her virginity, lineage, and heritage should be considered intact.68 The story has a coda. A fortnight after the sentences were pronounced, the honor of knighthood was bestowed on the child’s stepfather who, according to the records, had earlier planned, together with his current wife, that this wealthy child of hers and step-child of his should marry one of his own sons by his previous marriage. The insult therefore, had not been just to the mother and the child. Moreover, the step-father was Giulio Averoldi, a relative of the papal legate to Venice, Altobello Averoldi. Altobello Averoldi was an important figure in the 369
diplomatic and social life of Venice, and he had involved himself in the case, arousing the government against the Martinengo family for the violence committed.69 The sentences of exile against the malefactors and the palliative gesture towards the injured family therefore served a diplomatic purpose as propriety was restored to the family and the state: That morning Giulio Averoldi appeared in the Collegio. He is a citizen of Brescia and relative of the papal legate, and he was in the city because of the case prosecuted in Brescia against Count Martinengo who had abducted one of his [step-] daughters. And after the case was tried, he wished to be knighted, and he was made knight, with a gold chain placed around his neck, and spurs put on by ser Polo Capello and ser Andrea Trevixan, knights, and then, accompanied by trumpets and many companions, he went through the city to the house of the Duke of Ferrara where together with the legate, his relative, he was lodged. He held a ball all that day for some patricians, and [a few] days later [Giulio Averoldi] departed thence and returned to Brescia much satisfied, molto content.70 So the failed forced wedding was converted to the celebration of a knighthood. This was a colorful incident, but perhaps the most revealing cautionary tale in a collection of how-not-to-get-married tales is the following story of a flagrant interruption of a properly conducted wedding procedure and rejection of the societal system this procedure served. Sanudo, our diarist, was particularly incensed at this story; he tells it twice. The first mention includes the denouement. Then, after more than six weeks, he was to tell the story all over again.
The Reluctant Bridegroom 8 March 1519: Since today is Mardi Gras, no meetings were held after dinner. There is one noteworthy item, however: ser Andrea Mocenigo, doctor, former senator, and grandson of the [former] doge, agreed to be married during this past Carnival to the daughter of ser Zuan Alvise Duodo from Sant'Anzolo.71 The contract and betrothal ceremonies were celebrated together with the family presentations; it was impressive. The woman was not pretty, but he took her and, having taken her, went through with the betrothal, etc. However, some days later, even though he had given his hand, he said he no longer wanted her as his wife, and he would no longer go to her. The bride’s father and brother, who were amazed at this, did everything they could to keep the learned man, who had the reputation 370
of being wise, from inflicting such an insult on them. The dowry was reasonable, the woman was not deformed, and such things are just not done. Her family is very large, and they all consider themselves insulted. But he was adamant in stating that he did not want her, and neither the father nor the brother could persuade him to accept her. Announcing that he wished to enter a religious order, he stopped coming to public places. The whole city was talking about this, and he continued with his caprice of not accepting her all through Lent. However, after Easter he was so goaded that he took her in marriage, and brought her to his home.72 The diarist’s entry over a month later was written the day after Easter and recapitulated the story, adding that at least twice the putative bridegroom gave his hand and then refused to see the putative bride. But finally he was persuaded to return to her. And so today he was at the house of this bride and he will wed her at the agreed upon time. But the city will not forget what he has done, and that he was ill-advised to do this, and that just as [during this rejection] he was not seen around town, today he came to San Marco and the next day to the meeting of the Great Council.73 So this story ends with a wedding and with an affirmation of the close link between the proper private behavior of a Venetian patrician and his public reappearance in the central spaces and political councils of the city. It is an indication of how integrated marital ritual was with the civic ethos of the sixteenth-century Venetian city-state, how indignantly its interruption was treated, and how the city closed in upon the transgressor to assure the desired and satisfactory outcome. Andrea Mocenigo was, in effect, brought back to the family table, bringing his bride and all her family connections with him. It remains to add a final word about our source. These accounts of proper marriages and those marriages or the marital process gone awry are only a very small part of a vast and variegated record penned by the observant Venetian diarist. Sanudo fully intended someday to condense and arrange the materials into an organized history, focused on the great events he saw unfolding around him.74 In such a more formal and politically oriented account, the commedia performed before distinguished nuptial guests, the parade of 95 handsomely attired women across the Piazza San Marco, the rowdy revenge of the under-entertained 371
Compagnia della Calza, and the reluctance of a bridegroom to consummate marriage with his less-than-beautiful wife might well have suffered condensation if not eclipse. That the diarist could not forego his love of recounting the human life of the city, its governmental intrigues, its everyday commerce, its despatches from abroad, its theatrical spectacles and diplomatic receptions, its weather, famines, and funerals, and here and there, its notable weddings in all their splendid detail, is our good fortune. Sanudo may have died poor and frustrated, his grand history never written, but the legacy of his Diaries has abundantly “dowered” our appreciation of his times.
Notes 1. Sanudo, Diarii, 2 August 1499; 2:1000. In references to the Diarii, the date of his entry (which is not necessarily the date of the events he describes) is cited, along with the volume and column number of the printed edition. This edition, published in fifty-eight volumes over 24 years (1879-1903), represents a work of immense and generally reliable scholarship and is the main source for the materials quoted in this paper. Any doubtful passages from this edition have been checked against the manuscript copy in the Biblio- teca Nazionale Marciana, Ms. Ital. cl. VII, 228-86 (=9213-273). Fulin and his collaborators Tuscanized the spelling of Sanudos name which we have preferred to leave in its Venetian form. 2. In the following outline of the Venetian wedding process, it must be stated that Sa- nudo’s Venetian vocabulary is not always consistent, and it is often unclear. The standard Dizionario del dialetto veneziano by Giuseppe Boerio, based on Venetian dialect of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, is only partially useful for this period. The authors are indebted to Angela Caracciolo Aricb, Phyllis Pray Bober, and Doretta Davanzo Poli for their helpful advice on Venetian terminology, and to Patricia Fortini Brown and James S. Grubb, consultants for the entire Sanudo translation project, who have contributed their insights to this essay as well. Stanley Chojnacki’s comments and suggestions at several stages of this work have refined our understanding of the vocabulary and widened our Venetian perspectives. Our special thanks go also to Christiane Klapisch-Zuber for her consultation and articles, especially “Zacharias, or the Ousted Father: Nuptial Rites in Tuscany between Giotto and the Council of Trent.” The Tuscan marital terminology, however, is at some variance with the Venetian, with the same terms being used for different parts of the wedding process. A contemporary commentary on Roman customs may be found in Marco Antonio Altieri, Li nuptiali (see Narducci’s edition of 1873), summarized by Brandileone, 294ff., and discussed by Klapisch-Zuber, “An ethnology of marriage in the age of humanism,” 247-60. Anthony Molho provides a valuable survey of contemporary practices and attitudes in Florence. 3. “Percioche dovendo ella accrescer con la generatione quella famiglia nella quale s’innesta, ella si mostra in casa, et fuori alia citta, quasi come a tanti testimoni del matrimonio contratto.” Sansovino, 401 (accents conformed to modern usage). 4. “Et le persone all’incontro vanno alia ceremonia, quasi che si allegrino di cosa propria, poich^ per l’ordine del governo, sono incorporati insieme perpetuamente, come se tutti fossero d’una stessa famiglia ’ (401), italics added. The use of the term “family” in this essay indicates the extended family, including its immediate marital associations. 5. Sansovino, 402. After 1501, this custom gave way to the registration with the Avoga- dor (or State Attorney) of any dowry over 1000 ducats. Here the physical public testimonial cedes to bureaucratic (but more certifiable) records, and the doge’s personal role was, as in so many Venetian laws, downgraded. Brandileone, 118, attributes the contraction of the doge’s role in patrician weddings to the increased press of governmental business, while Ambrosini views it as removing an opportunity for patricians seeking special favors from the doge (518, n. 93). The previous doge, Agostino Barbarigo (14861501), was charged after his death with having abused his ducal powers (Diarii, 4:181-83). 372
6. For the background and development of the states concern for dowry limitation, see Chojnacki 1998, 132ff., especially 144-45. 7. See the many articles by Stanley Chojnacki on gender relations and patrician marriages in Venice. A recent survey of the literature about marriage in the Veneto, including references to marital customs in Venice, may be found in Grubb, 1-33. Particularly relevant for this essay are also Ambrosini 498-500, Finlay, 81-96, King, 33, 47-50, and Muir 1981, 124-25, I40ff., 174. 8. Povoledo, 623. 9. Sanudo wrote in the last volume of his Diaries that he had known of 34 Companies (58:184-85). On the Companies, see Venturi, Muir 1981, 167ff., and Muraro. Muraro (320-22) found in various sources a total 43 different companies which existed from 1441 to 1564. Sixteen was the maximum number of years recorded for a company, and many lasted only from one to eight years. 10. The saying may be found in Priuli, 4:115. 11. 26 February 1498; 1:885-86. It should be noted that Sanudo’s volumes usually ended on the last day of February, the end of the Venetian year. All dates have been normalized to our calendar. The size of the dowries which Sanudo cites can be appreciated by comparison with the doges annual salary, estimated by one historian as 3000 ducats. See Sardella, 52-53. 12. 14 October 1507; 7:161. Momarie such as this one about Jason and the golden fleece were masked allegorical performances, for the most part in pantomime, which may have originated with wedding celebrations and were frequently presented by one of the Compagnie della Calza. See Muraro, 328ff. Sanudo always notes the hour with reference to the hour of sunset, at this season about 6:00 p.m. That he could do so was due to an elaborate system of different bells rung from the campanile of San Marco. See the note, signed B[artolomeo] C[ecchetti], 379-80. 13. 4 October 1506; 6:437, where the feast is described as “meza festa.” 14. The Collegio had three branches of savi (or wise men): five for the terra or terra- ferma, five for matters da mar or ai ordini, generally concerning the overseas dominion and its control, and six savi grandi who had the most prestige and power. The Collegio prepared business for the Senate and that is probably why its convening on this otherwise festive day was necessary. For a concise summary of Venetian governmental bodies, see Grendler, 37ff. Sanudo himself provides a description of the Collegio in his De origine, 93-95. 15. The most serene prince was the doge. The use of this title, Serenissimo Principe, set the doge above other dukes such as those of Milan or Ferrara. The bride is described as neza which can be either a niece (the meaning chosen by some historians in this case) or granddaughter. For the identification of this young woman as the daughter of Doge Lore- dan’s daughter who married Zuan Venier, and therefore the doge’s granddaughter, see Finlay, 82, and Sanudo, Diarii, 4:143. Patronymics, which Sanudo always gives, have generally been omitted in these translations, and Sanudo’s somewhat variable spelling of patrician family names is normalized to the spelling used in the indices of the published edition. 16. The permission to use silver refers to sumptuary laws which, among other strictures, sought to control the expense of wedding celebrations. See below for specific examples. 17. The Spanish ambassador may have been displeased with the Venetian government for their diverting France from forming an alliance with Spain and the Empire by making its own treaty with France at Blois on 23 March, less than six weeks earlier (see below, note 24). Thirteen days later, this same Spanish ambassador would excuse himself from the ceremonial investiture of Venice’s Captain General, Bartolomeo d’Alviano, although he had previously — as on the earlier occasion — accepted the invitation to attend (15 May 1513; 16:251). See Romanin, 282-83. 18. Honorific titles and offices such as “king” and “councillor” were bestowed by the companies upon their members, often just for specific occasions. The tunic, caxacha, was a long garment which, unlike the Venetian official robe, was open in front. For this and other Venetian costumes in this period, see Newton and Vitali. 19. The color of the vestments was described as “ruosa secha,” a newly fashionable old- rose color which, a decade later, Andrea Gritti would adopt for some of his ducal vestments (Newton, 30). It was also used by his granddaughter for her wedding gown in 1525 (see below). Pope Calixtus II had, in 1122, given the Venetians a papal banner, vexillum beati Petri, to carry in a crusade, so this was a well-chosen reference to convey Venice’s desire for an optimal relationship with the new pope, Leo X, who had only two months earlier, on 19 March, been elected to the papal throne. 20. It is worth commenting on this portion of the commedia. Otto was the son of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and, according to the Venetian legend, had persuaded his father to accept the doge’s offer to make 373
his peace with Pope Alexander III, a Venetian ally, in 1177. This was the famous pax veneta and the reference to Otto here would remind the Venetian audience of that most glorious occasion and the acquisition, from a grateful pope, of their most prized regalia: an umbrella to be carried over the doge as a sign of regal authority; a lit candle to carry in processions as a sign of devotion and nobility; the use of a lead seal with images of St. Mark and the doge (as the papal seal carries the image of St. Peter); a sword for the doge’s faithful defense of the Church against the Emperor; and most importantly for the ritual life of the city, the privilege of wedding the Adriatic Sea in the annual ceremony of the Sensa, the “sposalizio del mare.” See Padoan Urban, 291-353. That symbolic wedding now joins the associations provoked by this sixteenth-century nuptial feast. 21. The presentation of a scepter (which implies imperium) to the Venetian “king” by the German “ambassador” must have been understood by the audience as guaranteeing Venetian jurisdiction over the imperial lands which, in 1513, included imperial territories in northern Italy which had been conquered by Venice in the fifteenth century, then lost in the earlier years of the War of the League of Cambrai, and which now, by 1513, were being regained. Venice had recently been negotiating with Maximilian for the investiture of these lands. See Romanin, 280. 22. Mamluk here refers to a member of a politically powerful military class in Egypt. 23. This was a lynx fur piece, much prized as an accessory. See Bistort, 386, and Boerio, s.v.. Newton (167) describes sable fur pieces with jewelled collars which could be hung from the waist and were like toys (cf. n. 49). The lynx was traditionally considered a sharp-sighted animal, far-seeing and percipient, an apt metaphor for Venetian diplomatic acumen in dealing with their Turkish neighbor to the east, sometimes as an enemy and sometimes as an ally. 24. The dog was a symbol of fidelity, a reference to the renewed alliance of Venice and France represented by the Treaty of Blois, signed on 23 March 1513, only 40 days before this occasion. Allegiance to France was dominant in much of Venetian diplomacy during this period, as were French modes of fashion. 25. For the “two men from Africa” the text reads “do di Ginea”, and in an entry of 14 August this same year (16:622), Sanudo records a letter from Pope Leo X to Manuel of Portugal which addresses him as “rex Portugalliae et Algarbiorum citra et ultraque mare in Africa, dominus Guineae et conquistae navigationis ac commertii Ethiopiae, Arabiae, Persiae atque Indiae.” The vocabulary of these exotic lands was well known to the Venetians. 26. The Spanish ambassador had left early, but the papal envoy and Hungarian ambassador were still there to witness their counterparts enacting these ceremonial courtesies to a Venetian “king” for the evening. Venice’s alliance with Hungary formed a key part of her defensive policy toward the Turks. 27. The pygmy courier rode “uno cavalo marian picolo” which was a prop horse probably made of wood and moved by the actor (Muraro, 331, n. 64). The gift of a crane could have symbolized the vigilance and loyalty of the Venetians. See Ferguson, s.v. 28. “A tempo in 4.” Our thanks to Ellen Rosand for her suggested translation of this phrase. 29. Sanudo was keenly aware, as were his contemporaries, of the casade morte, the “dead houses” of certain patrician families. See his De origine, pp. 68-70, 178-79, 206, and Diarii, 6:117-18. The “Libro d’Oro” which contained the names of the current patricians old enough to take their place in the Maggior Consiglio and occupy governmental positions had come into existence in August of 1506, only seven years before this wedding celebration and after a century of gradually increasing awareness of those families that were extant and those that had become extinct. See Chojnacki 1996, 341-58. The “reincarnation” of three extinct families here from a century earlier is suggestive, as is the fact that these “ambassadors” came from Doge Michele Steno whose reign from 1400-1413 occurred just at the beginning of the increasing focus on family lineage. 30. The “silver ship” could have been a little silver model such as a sixteenth-century thurible of hammered and engraved silver, partially gilded, which may be seen in the Treasury of the Basilica of St. Anthony in Padua. Pendant earrings in the form of a ship were also popular in fifteenth-century Venice, according to Pazzi, 104. We owe both these references to Doretta Davanzo Poli. Phyllis Pray Bober has suggested the silver ship might be a “nef,” a container (usually of silver or gold) in the form of a ship for salt or spices. See, for example, the January miniature in the Tres Riches Heures of the Due de Berry. Zuan Polo Liompardi was a well-known actor-producer who appears in many of the performances of this period. See Ambrosini, 494. 31. 2 May 1513: 16:206-07. Povoledo (628) entitles this “commedia” the Demonstration del Re Pancrazio and describes it as a long, fragmentary itinerant action during which the earthly powers send, through their ambassadors, gifts not to the young couple but to the Eterni and every gift corresponded to a symbolic act concerning the accoutrements, or the vestizione, of the “king.” Ambrosini (493) suggests that this momaria was 374
a subtle form of self-praise by the Compagnia della Calza for their role in consolidating the good relations between the Venetian government and foreign dignitaries visiting the city. 32. Muraro, 328. 33. 26 June 1514; 18:299-300: “Tamen fu di honor al Stado.” Italics added. 34. 20 January 1517; 23:499, and 29 January 1517; 23:540. The requirements of a proper wedding were surely good for a number of Venetian trades, from cobblers to cooks, from drapers to costume designers. It was entirely logical that Sanudo should identify a splendid wedding with a recovering economy. 35. The descriptions of this wedding run from entries made from 14 January through 25 January 1525; 37:440, 445, 447, 470-75. Doge Andrea Gritti s program to renew the city through an intensification of its rituals of self-glorification, part of his “renovatio ur- bis,” included the pomp of this family wedding. 36. The Signoria consisted of the doge plus his six ducal councillors plus the sixteen members of the three branches of the Savi. It represented the government of Venice. The details of costume are significant here. The purple, crimson, and violet colors (paonazo, cremexin, violato) were all varieties of the aristocratic porpora worn by particular magistrates on special occasions, and their mention here is an acknowledgment of the importance of the occasion and the status of the participants. The bridegroom and his brother wore black because they were still in mourning for their relative, Antonio Contarini, Patriarch of Venice from 1508 to 1524, who had died a few months earlier (7 October 1524; 37:17). The “ducal sleeves” of the bridegroom’s brother were wide and open, and his wearing them indicated social privilege. This young man had become engaged shortly before to a young woman of the Pesaro family, but the engagement was kept secret so as not to upstage the ducal event (37:441). See below where the fiancee is included in the bridal procession. 37. See Bistort, 100, where the role of the dancing master as master of the nuptial ceremonies is cited, and Molmenti, 2:332. 38. Weddings did not require the clergy’s participation until after the Council of Trent in the middle of the sixteenth century. But the Church did assert its influence on the time of the year in which weddings were allowed through its penitential calendar. That is why so many weddings occurred during the long Carnival season (St. Stephen’s day through Mardi Gras) when the feasts and sexual unions were permitted. See Grubb, 13-15. 39. The day is described as punto di Stella. According to Veneto tradition, St. Paul’s Day (celebrating his conversion) closes the calends of the new year, and the weather that prevails on that day will prevail for the rest of the year (Coltro, 65). It is significant that this same day began a festival which had been celebrated between the mid-twelfth century and 1379, the “Festival of the Twelve Marys,” and was still alluded to in contemporary rituals. A large part of this festival had involved charitable donations to the dowries of worthy but poor young girls, and the feast as a whole in its Marian focus celebrated the purity of Venetian women (Muir 1981, 149). 40. The term torzi is used to indicate either several candles bundled together or a single large candle torch. 41. Fantin Corner belonged to the Piscopia branch of the family, which had extensive business dealings in Cyprus and to which the last king of Cyprus had been heavily indebted (Campolieti, 47). 42. These latter officials, while important, were not at the level of the others. See Gren- dler, 39. 43. The translations for these Venetian foods are not always easily found. Cat di late here translated as a whipped cream dessert is elsewhere in Sanudo called capi di late (6:173) and in Veneroni translated as crime ipaisse, thick cream. The sweetmeats, confeti, were all sorts of preserved goodies to complete digestion and sweeten the breath, spices to nibble such as anise seeds, cardamon, candied ginger, thin slices of fennel moistened with bitter-orange juice. This definition was kindly supplied by Phyllis Pray Bober. 44. This forestier or foreigner was probably a pilgrim en route to or from the Holy Land, for which Venice was the major port, invited, as were the six “popular” guests, for symbolic reasons of including the larger community of Venice in the festa. 45. The colari in sbara are described in Vitali, s.v., and Bistort, 186, n. 1. These were ornate chains starting at a diagonal waistline and reaching nearly to the floor. The rich attire and jewels of the women attending this quasi-public ceremony were, as in all officially public ceremonies, identified with the republic’s prosperity. See Brown 1990, 145. 46. The parish of S. Nicolb dei Mendicoli had a particular relationship with the doge. Populated by fishermen, the parish annually elected a doge of the Nicolotti who was honored by the patrician doge in a formal ceremony. See Muir 1981, 99-101. 47. Compari are sometimes referred to as compari deU’anello or ring-sponsors, the term used here. Sansovino (402) describes the role of the compari'. “Et nella festa si toglie uno o piii compari chiamati delTanello. I quali 375
in questo caso, rappresentano quasi un Maestro delle cerimonie, perch£ a lui tocca la cura de i Musici, e di molte altre cose appartenenti alia festa. Et la mattina susseguente al banchetto, presenta a gli sposi, donativi di zuccheri, di confettioni, e d’altri simili restorativi, et esso all’incontro b presentato da loro.” 48. These fur pieces usually had an embalmed head with a jewelled collar or the head was reproduced in gold and gems to complement ornaments hung from the belt. See, for examples, Titian’s Portrait of Isabella d’Este (Vienna, Kunsthistorischer Museum) and his Portrait of Eleonora Gonzaga (Florence, Palazzo Pitti). 49. This was a tradition in which the orator did not so much praise the newlyweds as the virtues and illustrious actions of their ancestors, as a further reminder to his audience of exemplary dedication to their patria, situating the marriage in historical space as a complement to its situation in civic space. See Morelli, 15. The use of a classical rhetorical genre here should be seen in the general context of Venetian classicizing themes. 50. 25 January 1525; 37:470-75. The foods are listed as “storti, buzolai, fugacine, cestelle de confetti.” 51. It has recently been suggested that dowry figures were set as much by conventions of honor and status as by a competitive market for eligible grooms (Queller and Madden, 704; cf. Davis, 106). 52. The following “cautionary tale” tides have been supplied by Labalme and White. 53. The companies had their own statues and fines for their infringement. Some of their rules concerned the obligation to entertain in style. Morelli, 30-31, cites this rule from the 1541 statutes of the Sempiterni: “che ogni Compagno maritandosi sia obbligato fare due pasti a trombe e piffari, una in casa della sposa, Paltro nella di lui casa: e dopo il secondo lo sposo deva fare una Festa, Commedia, ower Momaria, nella quale spenda da ducati trenta in su, oltre al pasto; sotto pena di ducati cinquanta per ciascuna volta ch’ei contraffacesse.” 54. The Eterni are described as wearing “vesta da contor.” Bistort, 355, cites the use of this phrase in a sumptuary law of 17 November 1476 and Molmenti (2:478-79) lists among an “Estratto dalTinventario di Francesco Bon (15 ottobre 1520) . . . una vesta de contor de pano negro fodrk volpe grossa trista.” A variant spelling appears in Sanudo s Diarii, 12:15, in a reference to an important Friulan noble: “Vidi, in chiesia di San Marco, domino Jacomo da Castello, dotor, uno di primi di la Patria, solito venir qui per orator di Udene, in vesta di cantor ... fuzito de 11.” On Giacomo da Castello, see Muir 1993, 17778. The form “cantor” here appears to be a linguistic slip for “contor.” Colussi’s Glossario, 3.3 s.v. “conte,” lists “contor” as a medieval variant of “conte,” influenced by the French. See also the meaning of “governatore veneziano delle cittk dalmate” given by Alberto Li- mentani for “conte” in the “Glossario” of Martino da Canal, s.v. cuens’ (382). 55. Domenico Taiacalze was another well-known buffoon, whom Molmenti (2:384) pairs with Stefano Taiacalze. But the manuscript has “pre’ Stefano” and is possibly a reference to Frate Giovanni Armonio Marso from the monastery of the Crosechieri which was at that time a venue for a number of commedie. Armonio was the author of a Latin commedia called Stephanium which had been recited, probably in 1502, at the convent of the Eremiti at San Stefano. See Mancini, 34, and Padoan Urban, 387-88. 56. January 1508; 7:256. The Campana was an inn in which Sanudo held shares and from which he derived a tidy income (Sanudo, De origine, 29). Although the silver bowls were taken from the bride’s father’s house, the dinner had been the grooms responsibility, so the cost of redeeming the bowls would have been his. KlapischZuber has pointed out some similarities to a variety of the Italian mattinata (itself a version of the charivari), where friends of a widower at his remarriage exacted a “ransom” from him and then celebrated his marriage with joyful music if he had been generous or rambunctious noise if he had not. See her essay on “The Medieval Italian Mattinata,” especially 265-66. 57. 31 January 1526; 40:751-52. Venetian sumptuary laws went back to the fourteenth century and their enforcement was entrusted to various magistracies until 8 February 1514, when the Magistrato alle Pompe was established. See Killerby, 109. 58. 40:752. Francolins were a mountain bird similar to a partridge; in Venezia e le sue lagune, 2:215, they are described as “galo salvadego rarissimo .... Sono uccelli riservati per le tavole signorili.” Gilded foods, that is, actually decorated with gold, were not uncommon at very important feasts. Molmenti reports that they were considered not only ornamental but beneficial to the heart (2:390). See also Bistort (209) where the description of a wedding banquet in Ferrara included 27,629 pieces of gold used to gild various confections. The term dorade might also be applied to those foods (usually fowl as above) with a “golden” battered crust, made from a mixture of egg yolk, flour, and fat or liquid such as wine. According to Phyllis Pray Bober, the credenzieri or stewards of the sideboard served courses which were cold from imposing credenzas which might display the rich table-ware of the household, alternating these courses with hot (and perhaps “gilded”) courses served from the kitchen. The use of luxurious Turkish carpets as table coverings is documented in contemporary paintings such as Lorenzo Lottos Family Group and The Protonotary Apostolic Giovanni Giulino, both in the National 376
Gallery in London, and his Portrait of a Married Couple in The State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. Turkish rugs appear in somewhat later canvases such as Veroneses Wedding at Cana (Paris, Louvre) and the Last Supper, now Feast in the House of Levi (Venice, Accademia). We are grateful to Patricia Fortini Brown and David Rosand for these references. 59. These prohibited food stuffs are listed as “grosse pignocade, pistachi, calisoni, fongi de Savonia, trazie, oldani et confecti senza corpo, spongade figure, fructe de zucaro, et ogni altra sorte confection grossa che far et imaginar si possa” (40:732). Pignocade were a popular pre-prandial snack, made of sugar and egg whites beaten up with a little bit of flour and a generous portion of pine-nuts, then dropped by spoonfuls to bake in a not very hot oven, sometimes with cut-up orange or lemon flowers added as well; calisoni are filled pastries either fried or baked (the filling usually marzipan in a dough that included sugar and rose-water); “confecti senza corpo” are sweetmeats in some soft or jellied form (these definitions were supplied by Phyllis Pray Bober). Fongi de Savonia were sweetmeats of sugar, starch and rose water and spongade were sweets molded into various shapes: castles, ships, nymphs, animals, coats of arms. See Ambrosini, 496. 60. Sanudo, De origine, 250. 61. It is interesting that there were laws attempting to control the dowry, the number of guests invited, the types of food served, the decor, and the gifts, but very litde was said about the bride s dress. Cloth-of-gold might be prohibited, but other luxurious fabrics seem to have been permitted and might raise the cost of the dress to as much as 300-500 ducats. Mueller (650) gives this figure for elegant dresses in the fifteenth century, and they would undoubtedly have cost more later. 62. 11 April 1526; 41:166. San Zuan on Torcello was a special monastery for the convertite, that is, those women who had turned away from a life of prostitution. As such, it was an appropriate place for this wedding. The amount of the dowry was left blank in the diarists text. Sanudo often omitted figures which he intended to supply later. This was clearly a respectable dowry for a bride considered less than respectable, although as a “vedoa meretrice somptuosa et bellissima,” Grifo had a certain standing within her profession. The “shame” cast on the patriciate to which Sanudo refers may have led to the debates and legislation, within the following fortnight, concerning the preservation of the nobilitys “purity and status” through marital registration with the State Attorneys {Dia- riiy 41: 201, 203). See Chojnacki 1998, 142. 63. This Court of Forty for Criminal Affairs was the highest criminal court in Venice. 64. Diarii, 56:95-96. For the sequel, see in the Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Avogadori di Comun, Raspe 3667, fol. 20 v (numero antico), 28 May 1532. 65. 13 May 1500; 3:314-15. The exclamation points, lacking in the original, were added by the more rhetorically-minded nineteenth-century editors. The original flat statements argue for the veracity of the reporting. 66. 29 May 1530; 53:234. The case is also mentioned in 53:214, 217, 223. The judicial group in charge was the Consiglio semplice (the Council of Ten) meeting with the doge and his six councillors, but without its additional “Zonta” of fifteen. It was this more restricted group which had first taken cognizance of the case on 17 May 1530 (53:214), and it was hoped that the narrower body (“congregato col prefato numero di 17") would be less exposed to pressure from relatives eager to have the exiled culprits pardoned than would be an enlarged Council. See Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Council of Ten, Criminali, Filza 6, 17 and 28 May 1530, for the proposed penalties and the votes taken to punish a crime described as “heedless,” “arrogant,” and “offensive.” 67. 23 April, 28 April, 18 May, 21 May, 1518; 25:363, 368, 417, 420. Vettor Martinengo, the father of Camillo, is described as “zentilhomo nostro,” indicating that he had received honorary patrician status in Venice and was probably well-connected there (25:368). On the Venetian concern to control the rivalries of Brescian elite families, often at odds over the patrimony of aristocratic heiresses, see Ferraro, 134ff. 68. 21 and 25 June, 1518; 25:493 and 495-96. The child’s fate is described in this way: “La puta veramente sia restituita et reposta nel luogo proprio dove la fix rapita, et remagni in quel stato, esser et rason nel qual la era avanti la fusse rapita.” 69. 25:420. On Altobello Averoldi, see the article by Gaeta, 399-400. The papal legate was well-known to Sanudo. 70. 5 July 1518; 25:522. 71. Andrea was the grandson of Doge Giovanni Mocenigo, 1478-1485. 72. 8 March 1519; 27:30-31. Note that the last part of this entry was written after Easter, which was on 24 April that year, a good deal later than the Mardi Gras and Lenten events described. But there is no indication in the manuscript that only the last sentence as added later, a clue to Sanudo’s actual composition of the Diaries from 377
notes kept and records transcribed, sometimes daily, sometimes over a few days, sometimes over a period of weeks before being entered into the serial pages of the Diaries. 73. 25 April 1519; 27:209. 74. See his expression of this intention on 1 March 1523; 34:5.
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