Information and Communication in Venice: Rethinking Early Modern Politics 9780199227068, 0199227063

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I N F O R M AT I O N A N D C O M M U N I C AT I O N IN VENICE

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Information and Communication in Venice Rethinking Early Modern Politics FILIPPO DE VIVO

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1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York  Filippo de Vivo 2007

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Vivo, Filippo de. Information and communication in Venice : rethinking early modern politics / Filippo de Vivo. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–19–922706–8 (alk. paper) 1. Communication in politics—Italy—Venice—History. 2. Communication—Political aspects—Italy—Venice—History. 3. Venice (Italy)—Politics and government—1508–1797. I. Title. JA85.2.I8V58 2007 320.945’31014—dc22 2007021411 Typeset by Laserwords Private Limited, Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 978–0–19–922706–8 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

For my parents

Contents Acknowledgements Note on citations and abbreviations

viii x

Introduction: Wars of Words

1

1. Government 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4

Eloquence Debating in the councils Comunicazione between councils Secrecy and the myth of Venice

2. Political arena 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4

The archive’s preservation, use, and dispersal The politics and economics of leaking: the case of relazioni Diplomacy: between official and unofficial communication Professionals of intelligence

19 25 32 40 46 48 57 70 74 86

3. City 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4

18

News on the Rialto Before the coffeehouse Politics’ possible publics The words of women

89 98 106 112

4. Communicative transactions

120

4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4

The interaction of orality and literacy Necessary encounters: official publication Posted words, political messages: Venice’s pasquinades Reason of state in the barbershop

5. The system challenged: the Interdict of 1606–7 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4

Fighting over communication Enforcing security, representing order The circulation of manuscripts The explosion of communication

121 127 136 142 157 160 170 176 187

Contents 6. Propaganda? Print in context 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4

From manuscript to print The scale of the offensive Fabricating consensus, encouraging criticism Beyond intentions

vii 200 203 215 227 238

Epilogue

249

Bibliography Index

259 301

Acknowledgements I would like to thank several institutions for supporting me while working on this book. Trinity College, Cambridge first sponsored me to study in France (where this project was conceived), then granted me a graduate studentship, and finally elected me to a splendid Research Fellowship. The Arts and Humanities Research Board covered the fees of the Ph.D. which was the first incarnation of this work. After that the School of History, Classics, and Archaeology at Birkbeck College, University of London, provided the most congenial working environment. The last crucial months of writing were undertaken in Paris, at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, and I wish to thank the Institut d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine for welcoming me there. I have had the good fortune, and the privilege, to benefit from the help of formidable historians, and it is far more than a formality to thank them now. In Paris, Christian Jouhaud was a stimulating first teacher and a great source of inspiration. Back in Cambridge Peter Burke supervised my doctoral research with unfailing optimism from the start and always encouraged me to broaden my perspective. It was an honour to work with him. Mario Infelise first drew me to Venice, the history of the book, and Paolo Sarpi, and later followed my work with attention and in friendship; I can only hope that he has no regrets. I owe a special debt to Nicholas Davidson, who commented in detail on early drafts of my thesis and other works and (not unimportantly) has been a very supportive referee. I wish to thank Corrado Pin for the generosity with which he shared his unparalleled knowledge of Sarpi’s work with me; and Conor Fahy for all the time he kindly spent in the Rare Books Room of Cambridge University Library teaching me that bibliographic precision can be as enjoyable as it is important. For their encouragement and suggestions, I must also thank my Ph.D. examiners, David Wootton and Carlo Ginzburg. The latter has stimulated my work ever since, combining obscure bibliographical references with thought-provoking ideas. He has been an extraordinary model of intellectual vision, at once rigorous and unconventional. In Cambridge, I was fortunate to benefit from numerous conversations with Melissa Calaresu, Mary Laven, Ulinka Rublack, William St. Clair, and Jonathan Walker. At Birkbeck, my colleagues have created the ideal working environment, offering encouragement and intellectual respect. I would like to single out John Arnold, Barry Coward, Caroline Goodson, John Henderson, Jan Rüger, and Julian Swann for helping at difficult times. In Venice, Federico Barbierato, Giuseppe Del Torre, Piero Lucchi, Vittorio Mandelli, Federica Ruspio, and Alfredo Viggiano gave me invaluable help both in the archive and elsewhere. Other people have provided me with crucial information, and I would like to thank in particular

Acknowledgements

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Gian Luigi Betti, Maria Sofia Fusaro, Pasquale Guaragnella, Liz Horodowich, Claire Judde de Larivière, Filippo Maria Palladini, Dennis Rhodes, Simone Testa, and Giuseppe Trebbi, and Evelyn Welch. John Arnold, Carlo Ginzburg, and Mary Laven read drafts of the whole manuscript and gave invaluable suggestions. Giancarlo de Vivo, Mario Infelise, Claire Judde de Larivière, Jim Shaw, Jake Soll, and Jon Walker read various sections, offered helpful comments, and corrected many mistakes. Many more remain, of course, and they are entirely my responsibility. I would like to thank the staff of the Archivio di Stato, Biblioteca Marciana, and Biblioteca del Museo Correr in Venice; the British Library, the Warburg Library, and the Public Record Office, in London; the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, and the Archivio Segreto Vaticano, in Rome; the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris; the University Library and the Wren Library, in Cambridge. I would also like to thank Christopher Wheeler at Oxford University Press for believing in this book, and Kim Allen and Angela Anstey-Holroyd for improving it in the process. In its various forms, this book has taken many years to conceive and write. My gratefulness now goes to all the numerous friends who have made my research easier and my life more pleasurable than they could possibly have been without them. For their generosity, ideas, hospitality, and ever-smiling support, I thank: Nadja Aksamija, Giulia Albanese, Oded Asherie, Philippe Audegean, Bruno Besana, Déborah Blocker, Niels Buch-Jepsen, Caroline Callard, Nina Cannizzaro, Chiara Cappelletto, Giotto Castelli, Leonardo Chesi, Tony and Una D’Elia, Ila Fazzio, Terri and Enrico Finzi, Daniela Hacke, Ombretta Ingrascì, Cindy Klestinec, Francesca Levorato, Antoine Lilti, Catherine Lister, Marco Margheri, the late Raul Merzario, Peter Meyers, Eric Nelson, Berta PanésGoday, Valentina Pisanty, Carlo Ratti, Marion Ross, Marco Santambrogio, Jason Scott-Warren, Anya Serota, Giovanna Silva, and Mark and Mania Spalding. I do hope that each of them realizes how much they have given me. Ilaria Favretto has been a peerless companion in life, a model in thinking, and a beacon of good humour. My debt to her is enormous. Last but definitely not least, I should like to thank my marvellous, large, and supportive family for helping me throughout long years of work and for reminding me that there is always a world beyond. My parents both know how much I owe them, and to them this book is dedicated.

Note on citations and abbreviations Unless otherwise stated, more veneto dates have been adapted to the modern style, that is with the year beginning on 1 January rather than 1 March. All translations are my own unless otherwise specified. In footnotes, printed sources are referred by author and year of publication (anonymous works are referred by short title). For ease of reference, pamphlets concerning the Interdict controversy (all published in 1606–7) are referred by short title and marked with an asterisk. The bibliography at the end of the book gives full references, including the printer’s name for works published before 1800 (when known). In the footnotes and bibliographies, I have used the following abbreviations.

Archives and Libraries ASM AV ASPV ASV AC CCX CL Coll. Cons. iure CX ES GP IS MADM QC RSP Sen. SU ASVat FB NF NV SS BAV Barb. Lat. Urb. Lat.

Archivio di Stato, Modena Cancelleria estense, Ambasciatori Venezia Archivio storico del Patriarcato, Venice Archivio di Stato, Venice Avogaria di Comun Capi del Consiglio di Dieci Compilazione delle leggi Collegio Consultori in iure Consiglio di Dieci Esecutori contro la bestemmia Giudici di Petizion Inquisitori di Stato Miscellanea di atti diversi manoscritti Quarantia criminale Riformatori dello Studio di Padova Senato Sant’Uffizio Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Rome Fondo Borghese Nunziatura di Francia Nunziatura di Venezia Segreteria di Stato Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Rome Codice Barberiniano Latino Codice Urbinate Latino

Abbreviations BL Add. Ms. BMV Cod. Ital. Cod. Lat. BNF BNM MCV Ms. Donà NA SP ULC

xi

British Library, London Additional Manuscript Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice Codice Italiano Codice Latino Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid Biblioteca del Museo Correr, Venice Manoscritti Donà delle Rose National Archives (Public Record Office), London State Papers University Library, Cambridge

Printed Publications DBI CSPVen

Dizionario biografico degli Italiani (Roma: 1960– ) Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts Relating to English Affairs Existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice, and in other Libraries of Northern Italy, 38 vols., ed. H. R. Brown and A. B. Hinds (London: 1864–1940)

Other Abbreviations b./bb. c./cc. - c.n./cc.nn. f./ff. fasc. Ms./Mss. n. pseud. q. r./rr. sig./sig.s s.v. v./vols.

Busta/Buste Leaf/ves; unnumbered leaf/ves Filza/Filze Fascicolo Manuscript/s Note Pseudonymous Quondam (son of, mostly of patricians) Registro/Registri Signature/signatures Sub voce Volume/volumes

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Introduction Wars of Words After the Venetian Republic’s crushing defeat at the hands of the League of Cambrai in 1509, Niccolò Machiavelli sarcastically observed that in the few cities which the Venetians had regained, they changed their emblems making the lion hold a sword rather than the usual book. ‘From this’, he remarked, ‘it would seem that they have realized at their own expense that books and studies are not sufficient to hold States.’¹ It was a joke, but also a firm belief, repeated in verse and later reformulated in a famous chapter of the Prince where, reflecting on Savonarola’s shortlived rule, Machiavelli wrote despisingly of ‘unarmed prophets’ who based their power on persuading the people without realizing that ‘the people are fickle; it is easy to persuade them about something, but difficult to keep them persuaded.’ As he concluded, ‘when they no longer believe in you, you must be able to force them to believe.’² In this view, force mattered rather than persuasiveness, swords rather than words. Writing in Venice a century after Cambrai and in the wake of a renewed political crisis, the Republic’s legal and theological advisor Paolo Sarpi disagreed. As he put it, in a brief recommending strong government control over press censorship, ‘the substance of books might appear unimportant since it is only words. But from those words come the opinions of the world, giving rise to factions, seditions and ultimately to war. They are words, true enough, but in their train they bring armed hosts.’³ To Sarpi, words and opinions were considerable, even dangerous, elements of political life. In turn, he also thought that writings could help governments win political conflicts. During the Interdict crisis, which broke out in 1606–7 between Venice and the papacy over the jurisdictional status of ecclesiastics and ecclesiastical properties, he engaged in ‘a kind of war by writing’ (as he later put it), ‘handled on both parts with very much heat, and which served greatly to the confrontation’s resolution.’⁴ In Sarpi’s evocative images, and contrary to Machiavelli, communication was force. ¹ Machiavelli 1964, v. 3: 1202. ² Translation (adapted on the basis of the original) in Machiavelli 1988a: 21. The verses against Venice are in Machiavelli 1965: 324. ³ ‘Sopra l’officio dell’inquisizione’ (1613), in Sarpi 1958: 190; the translation is taken from Sarpi 1639: 69. ⁴ Sarpi 1968: 284; the translation is adapted from Sarpi 1626: 194.

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Information and Communication in Venice

That of words engaged in wars—papers fired like bullets, tongues sharp as blades, pens mightier than swords—is one of the most recurrent metaphors in Western culture. Drawn from the classical rhetoric of ancient times, it was common in scholastic treatises and Renaissance academic controversies, and even inspired musical themes.⁵ In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it described large conflicts from the Reformation to the French wars of religion, the Fronde and the English civil war.⁶ During the Venetian Interdict, and from the opposite side to Sarpi’s, the procurator general of the Jesuits in Rome described armies and pamphlets as two ‘knives’, either of which was to be used in case the other should fail.⁷ There is no doubt that the image pleased authors as well as rhetoricians, who liked to see their own status and their work’s consequence elevated from the realm of letters to that of political action. However, other than accompanying the military and political confrontation, the role which words really played in those encounters is unclear. Surely what mattered were real weapons rather than the wishful thinking of scholars. Did Machiavelli not have a point? This book investigates the reality behind the metaphor, the political uses of verbal communication—oral, manuscript, and printed: from council debates to manuscript reports, pamphlets, rumours, and graffiti—in Venice in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, roughly the period between Machiavelli’s and Sarpi’s remarks.⁸ Today, in an age of spin-doctoring and media politics, we take it for granted that communication and power mutually influence each other. What, however, was the use of communication for government in an age when those in power recognized no political role for their ‘fickle’ people? And on the other hand, what access to political information did those excluded from the political process have in an age when government was ruled by arcana imperii, a form of high knowledge which, like others, was forbidden to those below?⁹ Or was politics really extending, as the author of a reason-of-state treatise lamented in 1621, to ‘barbers and the humblest artisans in their workshop’?¹⁰ Ordinary men and women were supposed to suffer the government’s decisions in silence, were denied any institutional political role and, in Venice’s proverbially pacific history, mostly abstained from extra-institutional collective activities like rioting. Is it possible to say that, barred from political action, they participated in political communication? Was communication, in fact, itself a form of political action? And, if so, what impact did that have on the world of formal politics? This book uses the expression ‘political communication’ in a broad sense, as the circulation of information and ideas concerning political institutions and events. As I explain below, it is a use which contemporaries would have recognized. I ⁵ Some examples in Benzoni 1980, Prandi 1989, and Nestola 2001: 282; cf. also de Vivo 2001a. ⁶ Cf. Jouhaud 2006: 732 and Raymond 2003: 53. ⁷ Letter dated 28.10.1606 in Pirri 1959: 253; cf. Prosperi 1994. ⁸ Communication is defined as verbal only; on printed images, cf. now Wilson 2005, a book that otherwise has many parallels with this one. ⁹ Ginzburg 1976. ¹⁰ Zuccolo 1930: 25.

Introduction

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stress communication as well as the information which was its content, so as to include media as well as messages, the activity as well as the object of exchange, and the people it involved as producers, receivers, or intermediaries. At the heart of my inquiry are the social and political interactions which information exchanges involved and contributed to shaping, as well as the tensions which they caused. This brings me to consider not just patricians engaged in decision making, but also their secretaries and clients, foreign ambassadors and their own agents and, beyond the professionally educated and committed to politics, the vast and varied world of men and women who populated Venice’s streets, from notaries to artisans, from barbers to prostitutes. In turn, drawing on the insights of historians of written and printed culture, I emphasize the importance of the material means of communication, from orality to manuscript to print.¹¹ Finally, I consider the role of the settings in which communication took place, from secretive council halls to taverns and pharmacies around the Rialto, public places of sociability, conviviality, or competition, where conversation and arguments easily moved between private gossip and public affairs. By placing my work deliberately at the intersection between different fields of historical inquiry—the history of reading and the book, urban history, social and cultural history—I hope to problematize our understanding of early modern politics by enlarging the context in which we situate it and by breaking down the barriers which we use to constrain it. Political history has undergone mixed fortunes in recent decades and political events are no longer, as they used to be, the sole object of mainstream history. However, on the whole, political historians still concentrate on high politics, while ‘history from below’ is the territory of social historians. The revisionist turn which insisted on day-to-day factional intrigues and institutions, accentuated this divide. For its part, cultural history, while successfully reconstructing and deconstructing political representations, has largely failed to engage with political agency. It is time to bridge the gap between these different fields.¹² When we say (as we always do) ‘Venice moved to the conquest of the mainland’ or ‘The Republic opposed the papacy’, we of course use rhetorical figures of our own—synecdoches, single words which overshadow large groups and numerous people. Behind the actions described in those statements lay complex processes, which began with the decision-making machinery inside the government, involved outsiders as well as insiders, and led to the never easy effort to implement those decisions in collaboration, or contrast, with wider sections of the population. Each of those actors, at each of those stages, worked through constant communication with the others—from dialogue to confrontation.¹³ Rather than viewing history from the upper windows of government buildings, or else turning ¹¹ McKenzie 1986 and the essays collected in Chartier 1998. ¹² Cf. Griffiths, Fox and Hindle 1996, but also the earlier Le Goff 1971. ¹³ I take the idea of ‘dialogue of power’ from Najemy 1991.

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Information and Communication in Venice

the lens to look at history from below, then, this book hopes to show that even the most secretive oligarchs, ensconced in the secrecy of the Ducal Palace’s most restricted councils, were constantly preoccupied by the voices of their subjects in the squares below.

Why Venice As both a city and the capital of a large state, Venice offers a rich terrain for this inquiry. Government was ruled by deliberative councils where large numbers of patricians constantly engaged in debating and decisions were taken on the basis of voting. It was a political system which made eloquence and command of information crucial tools of statecraft—communication as the ‘nerves of government’, in Karl Deutsch’s words.¹⁴ Comunicazione had a technical meaning in Venetian governance, referring to the transfer of information from one governing council to another, a mechanism leading to the constitution of a continuous track of records in the government’s archive. Comunicazioni were highly regulated and often subject to careful censorship, an instrument of power at the inner core of government.¹⁵ In the government’s desires, then, communication was very different from limitless publication—although we shall see that in practice one often led to the other, whether through intentional leaks or accidents. In this connotation, communication implied its opposite, secrecy, a feature for which the Republic was famous. As an exasperated papal nuncio wrote in the 1530s, ‘it is easier to obtain a secret from heaven than from them’.¹⁶ The patricians after all ruled as a caste defined by birth and allowed for no power sharing with others. For the same reason, they accepted no scrutiny from outsiders and tried to preserve all knowledge of politics for themselves. In investigating communication, this book offers an interpretation of information control as a functional element of Venetian governance, a system unique for its large ruling class but also for the strict boundaries which defined it. In practice, secrecy was an obsession rather than a reality—arguably, it was an obsession because it was so difficult to preserve in reality. In spite of its image of most serene concord, a further interest of Venice is that the ruling patriciate was ridden with personal and factional conflicts as well as temporary disagreements, making unlawful communication an element of informal and extra-consiliar political activity. Patricians were surrounded by a host of servants and agents, many of them drawn from the second-class elite of the cittadini, allowed by birth to serve in the administration of the state. Venice also hosted a large constituency of people with a professional interest in political information—diplomats and their agents, authors and newswriters, groups living at the margins of early modern politics.¹⁷ These professionals of information spoke of ‘ricevere’ or ¹⁴ Deutsch 1963. ¹⁵ See section 1.3 below. ¹⁶ Preto 1994a: 56; see section 1.4 below. ¹⁷ See section 2.4 below.

Introduction

5

‘dare comunicazione’ whenever exchanging special intelligence outside the formal channels of government communication. In 1539, the government’s desire to stop this unlawful communication led to the creation of the Inquisitors of State, a special magistracy charged with counter-intelligence and the punishment of disclosures, and initially known as Inquisitori sopra li segreti.¹⁸ In the early seventeenth century, at a time of mounting international pressure, the Inquisitors established an increasing number of moles following foreign agents or placed at key locations in the city, an important development signalling the government’s heightening awareness of the importance of information control. In turn, as will be explained in greater detail below, this move makes this book possible, by furnishing much of the evidence on which it is based. Beyond both formal government and the informal political system, political action and knowledge were barred to the third and largest group in which Venice’s population was divided, the popolani (to distinguish them from patrizi and cittadini). To Venice’s rulers, the people were no legitimate constituency—so much so that, in a remarkable semantic shift, Gasparo Contarini described the patrician Great Council as the democratic, popolare, element of Venice’s mixed constitution.¹⁹ Popolani is a vague tag, including both tradesmen and traders, artisans and manual labourers, men and women who differed socially as well as economically. What united them was political exclusion, and Venice differed from other medieval and early modern city states, because it gave no role in government to trade guilds, and instead closely supervised confraternities so as to prevent excessive power building.²⁰ And yet, in practice, means of information and opportunities for political communication abounded. In a densely populated city, and a capital without a court, different social groups had a rich variety of social and business interactions.²¹ One of Europe’s great urban centres, with around 150,000 inhabitants at the end of the sixteenth century, Venice had literacy rates amongst the highest in Italy.²² Like other early modern capitals, it constantly attracted large numbers of migrants and visitors, some of whom stayed only as temporary workers while others remained as stable residents.²³ For them and for many other people in different trades, information was a crucial aspect of daily life, a means of survival, or an instrument of professional success. As both a commercial and a political capital, Venice was at the intersection of vast regional and international information networks, one of the time’s most cosmopolitan metropolises.²⁴ It was at the heart of an extended but tightly knit and urbanized region where more than 20 per cent of the population lived in relatively large cities of more than 10,000 inhabitants, each of them with ¹⁸ Romanin 1857–61, v. 6: 122–3. ¹⁹ Contarini 1591: 15. ²⁰ Mackenney 1987. ²¹ Romano 1987 and 1996, Chojnacka 2001, Cowan 1999. ²² Beltrami 1954: 38, and cf. Zannini 1993b. On literacy, cf. the discussion below, section 4.1. ²³ Their numbers are evident in demographic studies showing that deaths consistently outnumbered births, Beltrami 1954: 101–92. Cf. Roche 1987. ²⁴ Cf. Burke 2000.

6

Information and Communication in Venice

its own centres and means of information.²⁵ As we shall see, the exchanges were continuous and systematic. Moreover, as Fernand Braudel noted, Venice was conveniently situated midway between East and West, and so was an ideal place for international information exchanges.²⁶ If the government was at the forefront in developing diplomatic and consular representations, merchants and other lowlier professional figures had their own means of both long-distance and local information. From gossip in squares, to whispered news in the Rialto marketplaces, to disputes in the city’s countless barbershops, the city acted as a vast resonating box, attracting news and multiplying it into a thousand rumours. Distant events rebounded in discussions at all social levels, as I have shown with a case drawn from the time of the French wars of religion.²⁷ Although it never coalesced into large collective actions such as riots, recent historiography has highlighted the pervasive unrest in Venetian society, which expressed itself for example in such collective encounters as the fist-fights opposing different neighbourhoods and parts of the city.²⁸ This book contributes to that inquiry by emphasizing the political element in the diverse cultures of the city’s population. The period under consideration was marked by two moments of deep crisis. Between 1509 and 1513, the Republic suffered a series of disastrous military defeats which halted a long phase of territorial expansion. That crisis led to important institutional adaptations in the first half of the sixteenth century, giving shape to a long-lasting and distinctive constitutional framework.²⁹ Pace Machiavelli, Venice’s recovery was self-consciously intertwined with books, because institutional restructuring coincided with, and inspired, a large political literature celebrating a republican ideal of stability, timelessness, and harmoniously mixed government. It was a ‘myth’, but as Frederic Lane suggested, it ‘contributed to the solidarity of the state’ and ‘strengthened the Republic’.³⁰ This book assesses how that could be so in practice by analysing the ‘myth’ in terms of political communication. The myth was not just a body of Aristotelian-inspired theories; its success rested in its ability to permeate the state through a range of media, from Contarini’s treatises to Sansovino’s popularizations to non-textual communication.³¹ On the other hand, the perspective of communication allows me to offer a novel interpretation of the ‘myth’ by emphasizing the contradictions which its publicity occasioned in a political system otherwise dominated by secrecy. To whom was the message of serenity directed? What was the reception of the myth? Did everyone believe Venice’s fac¸ade of serenity?³² As we shall see, ²⁵ Beltrami 1954: 69–70, and Knapton 1992: 204–8. ²⁶ Sardella 1947, Crouzet Pavan 1994, and Doumerc 1994. ²⁷ Section 4.4. ²⁸ R. C. Davis 1994, cf. the comments in Davidson 1997. ²⁹ Gilbert 1973, Del Torre 1986, and Cozzi’s works cited below, n. 36. ³⁰ Lane 1973: 88–9. On the ‘myth’, both in Venice and abroad, see: Gaeta 1961 and 1981, Gilmore 1973, Bouwsma 1973, Pocock 1975: 272–330, Haitsma Mulier 1980, Benzoni 1991. ³¹ Muir 1981. ³² Cf. de Vivo 2003.

Introduction

7

the myth was far from a unifying set of cultural norms moulding the entire city into a single community.³³ In the early seventeenth century, then, for reasons which will be analysed below, the Republic’s stability was again put to a serious test when Paul V excommunicated the Senate and declared an interdict over divine services in the entire state (Venice had last suffered such a censure precisely during the Cambrai defeat of 1509).³⁴ Unlike the previous time, in 1606 the conflict quickly entered the public domain, resulting in a great mass of pamphlets. In early modern Italy, this amounted to an unprecedented moment of both manuscript and printed publications concerning current affairs, and thereby provides us with the opportunity of testing the war of writings metaphor by showing the different weapons with which the fight was conducted—sermons, rituals, and manuscripts as well as pamphlets. Thus, the Interdict controversy will be discussed at the end of the book both as a case study testing the importance of political communication, and as a special moment in which the normal functioning of communication broke down under unprecedented pressure. It was a moment when the government had to fight for things which it normally took for granted, a brief time in which political and religious events turned the people into a public, recognized as such by the conflict’s protagonists, patricians, and foreign diplomats. In turn, by focusing on political communication, the Interdict case will help us to see political events and diplomatic negotiations in the light not of high politics alone, but of the greater world with which politics interacted. Beyond the Interdict and the other events discussed in this book, I hope to contribute to the history of Venice’s political system by offering a novel interpretation axed on communication. On the one hand, at the system’s centre, I draw from the analysis of the government’s functioning and distribution of power, as discussed for example by Robert Finlay but neglected in recent years.³⁵ By considering the precise ways in which individual patricians and groups dominated information, I show the ways in which control over information secured influence and defined power hierarchies. On the other hand, on the level of contacts between centre, subjects, and peripheries, communication was crucial to the administration of both the city and its dominions. In the interpretation of Gaetano Cozzi and others, the state manifested its authority by exerting its control over the domain of the law—most deliberative councils doubling into juridical courts and constantly sending out judges into the provinces.³⁶ Law enforcement, however, itself rested on communication. As shown in Chapter 4, for example, the publication of laws was a carefully regulated communicative act ³³ This assumption provides the basis of Kallendorf 1999 otherwise highly original study of Renaissance readership and reception. ³⁴ See Ch. 5. ³⁵ Finlay 1980; on the constitutional history of Venice, cf. the summaries in Cozzi 1986 and 1992. ³⁶ See esp. Cozzi 1973 and 1982 and the essays in Cozzi, ed. 1981–85.

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which was necessary to the laws’ validity. In fact, as they were meant to reach out to even the humblest subjects, proclamations may have constituted the most important way in which the overwhelming majority of people knew about their government. At the same time, as we shall see, official publication was also a terrain fraught with tensions and difficulties. In such ways, communication was not just a means of governance; it was one of the practical limits of the state’s authority, an object of negotiation rather than a top-down imposition.³⁷ As recent historians agree, the Republic of Venice lacked a full monopoly of force and effective authority.³⁸ That it also lacked one over political communication was part of the same problem, both in the day-to-day affirmation of power and at the time of challenges such as the Interdict, when competing authorities like the Roman curia effectively undermined the government’s legitimacy.

Sources and methods This book draws from a wide variety of sources, both manuscript and printed, reflecting the plurality of ways in which political information could be communicated in early modern Venice. The printing press has long absorbed the attention of historians of Europe, and is one of the most studied aspects of Venice’s culture and economy. My research too began with print, namely the printed pamphlets published at the time of the Interdict controversy of 1606–7, of which I have assembled a large bibliography nearly doubling the amount of publications we know to nearly 300 separate editions.³⁹ Pamphlets remain an important object of my argument, combining methods drawn from textual analysis, material bibliography, and archival research to study the production, circulation, and impact of printed political literature. My aim is to show how those engaged in the political process envisaged large-scale and deliberate publicity through print as a political act meant to cause further actions—pamphleteering as ‘literature of action’, in Christian Jouhaud’s definition.⁴⁰ This will bring me to study the meaning of texts as well as the intentions of their authors, something which, as we know thanks to the work of Quentin Skinner, can only be done properly as part of a dialogue, a larger discursive context. Indeed, moments of controversy provide the ideal ground for testing such methods.⁴¹ The point, however, is how to define that context.⁴² Printed texts cannot satisfactorily be the only object of our inquiry because they interacted with, and were constantly surrounded by, other forms of communication. In this book, only at the end do I turn to pamphlets because I realized while studying the Interdict ³⁷ Raggio 1990. ³⁸ Povolo 1981 and 1997, Grubb 1988, Viggiano 1993, Corazzol 1997. ³⁹ For editorial reasons, this bibliography will be the subject of a separate publication. ⁴⁰ Jouhaud 1985 and 2006, and cf. Marin 1989. ⁴¹ Skinner 1969 and 1976 and cf. Skinner 1972 on a specific controversy. Tully 1988 described Skinner’s concern with the relations between words and actions with the pen–sword metaphor. ⁴² Cf. Ginzburg 2003.

Introduction

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that they constituted only a fraction of the ways in which political actors opposed each other. When Sarpi described the Interdict as a ‘war of writings’, he used a deliberately broad term, scritture, which a contemporary bi-lingual dictionary translated as ‘any kind of writing, writ, indenture, evidence, scedule, note, bill or handwriting . . . Records, Evidences, Writings’.⁴³ In particular, a large part of this book is devoted to manuscripts, apt instruments of political communication because they ensured a degree of flexibility and swiftness impossible to printed texts. As Harold Love showed, manuscript was a form of publication involving authors, copyists, and further readers, and I have tried to demonstrate the same for Venice.⁴⁴ But I have also included other means of textual diffusion, from posted proclamations to manuscript newssheets, from ceremonial inscriptions to graffiti, as well as instances of reading aloud, a practice which historians of culture know but which they rarely connect with political documents of the kind discussed in this book.⁴⁵ The maximization of written sources requires a concentration of chronological span, and accordingly, most of the archival evidence described in this book comes from the first two decades of the seventeenth century.⁴⁶ I have tried to turn this constraint into an opportunity, however, by showing how specific events were reflected, elaborated, and publicized in countless texts and other communication acts.⁴⁷ This perspective does not only allow me to enlarge the corpus of sources. It entails a significant novelty in the understanding of those sources. While political historians generally see archival documents as descriptive records, I have studied them as themselves means of communication. They were so in a very specific sense because records which we tend to think of as secret were in fact the object of deliberate diffusion, occasionally written with an eye to publicity. The study of disclosures—a recurrent phenomenon, as we shall see—is a powerful corrective to the insistence on high politics, because in Venice it shows that the governmental archive was not separated from the rest of society, but rather it was open to contact with a variety of agents, all of them closely integrated in the urban world.⁴⁸ It may be noted that amongst other materials I venture to use some of the most famous sources in Venice’s history (indeed, in the history of early-modern Europe, in the case of the ambassadorial relazioni which made Ranke’s reputation). This is deliberate. They are so well known that we tend to take them for granted, forgetting the extraordinary fact that the copies we consult in various libararies ought not to be there at all.⁴⁹ I hope to have formulated a convincing hypothesis on the nature of this evidence as aimed at persuasion rather than information, moulded ⁴³ ⁴⁴ ⁴⁵ ⁴⁶ ⁴⁷ ⁴⁸

Florio 1611: s.v. ‘scrittura’. Love 1993, and cf. Woudhuysen 1996; on Italy, Richardson 2000 and 2004a. Chartier 1992 and Coleman 1996; on Italy, Richardson 2004b. A detailed case study from 1591 is also included, section 4.4. Once again, the same can be applied to printed images, cf. Wilson 2005: 133–85. Cf. de Vivo 2002c. ⁴⁹ See section 2.2 below.

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by polemical as well as descriptive aims. This, incidentally, is not about taking a sceptical epistemological approach: it is precisely in order to underline the difference between truth and lie that the study of a document’s manipulation in the political struggle is important. Beyond documents produced by an elite, I have focused on evidence of textual production meant for large circulation in the city—a short lampoon, a posted text, a graffiti scribbled on a wall and then retranscribed on paper. Whenever possible, thanks to enquiries held by the Council of Ten and Inquisitors of State (and to a lesser extent, by the Holy Office), I have tried to piece together the passages which a text went through in going from one person to another. As will become apparent, those records never allow us to recontruct anything other than a fraction of textual circulation, but even that fraction is often revealing of that circulation’s large extent. This leads me to combine the study of the production of political texts with that of their reception: the uses of communication not only for authors and patrons, but also for the many more who read, discussed, heard about, or repeated texts. If texts were acts of communication meant to prompt precise effects, the effects produced by all communication always escaped the control of those who originate it. In early modern Venice as elsewhere, political statements multiplied and changed innumerable times in the processes of reception and further circulation, and invariably transcended the intentions of the political actors who first made those statements. In order to trace the impact and uses of texts, we must turn to a more informal and largely oral sphere of communication. Traces of the latter are elusive by definition, but they are not insignificant. At the centre of power, a high degree of record keeping ensures that in Venice we have transcripts of diplomatic audiences (esposizioni) as well as substantial legislation concerning the handling of debates in government councils. In so far as the wider political arena is concerned, more can be found in the manuals of behaviour addressed to patricians and diplomats, as well as in the private libraries of both: letters, leaked documents, diaries, and transcripts of speeches were all elements nourishing communication. Of course, the study of the wider urban sphere of communication is more difficult. In order to reconstruct a sense of the spaces, and contents of that communication, I have relied on a variety of sources. Travellers’ accounts consistently refer to the pervasive public sociability of Venice. In the early seventeenth century, the English traveller Thomas Coryat described meeting locals as well as foreigners at San Marco, at the churches of the Redentore and of the Greek community, in the Ghetto as well as on water, while riding in the English ambassador’s gondola.⁵⁰ In a city which was also a large marketplace, merchants’ letters describe the impact of news on commercial transactions at Rialto, and the diaries of Girolamo Priuli and Marin Sanudo constantly record practices of communication and information in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries—in turn, as we ⁵⁰ Coryat 1905, v. 1: 329, 367, 369, 374 and 332. Cf. Burke 1987: 15–24.

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shall see, their record keeping was itself a form of political communication.⁵¹ Unfortunately Priuli and Sanudo are unmatched by later diarists, but I have made use of some detailed chronicles which we have in manuscript.⁵² One of the sources I have used most extensively is constituted by the reports of informers posted in and around foreign embassies or charged to follow prominent outsiders. The reports become particularly rich in the early seventeenth century, mostly due to intensifying international pressure and other reasons connected with the narrative of this book and analysed in further chapters.⁵³ The informers’ intention was to target elite intelligence exchanges, but in the process of compiling their records, they revealed much of that elite’s systematic interaction with other people. These records have the advantage of being written by eyewitnesses rather than with hindsight (as travellers’ accounts or chronicles). Furthermore, generally (although not always) their authors had themselves little education or literary aspirations which would hinder the reliability of their reports for historians interested in the reports’ objects. Of course, such sources also involve problems. Like authors, spies too wished to sell their services, and we always risk taking groundless calumnies at face value. A critical eye, however, is necessary for all sources, and I can make at least two points in favour of mine. First, even the most unjust calumny made to spite an enemy or obtain an advantage must be phrased in credible terms, and thus can be used as evidence of the manner in which some contemporaries thought that, for example, conspiratorial talk could be framed.⁵⁴ The specific accusations informers made may be occasionally unreliable; but they do nevertheless reveal a widespread interest in current affairs and distant news. The mosaic worker who accused a lawyer of extolling Spain and criticizing Venice may well have been lying. But when he said that the matter arose while they were speaking together about ‘the things of the World’ (le cose del Mondo), there is no reason to doubt his words.⁵⁵ Secondly, accusations relating to political rumours are themselves instances of political communication. When Rocco, shoemaker at the sign of the Fortune, reported having heard another shoemaker conspire to help the viceroy of Naples conquer Corfu, he may have made all that up, but he still showed some awareness as to the geography and military balance of the time.⁵⁶ Accusers knew this conundrum well, and most tried to justify having obtained their knowledge as if ⁵¹ Sanudo 1879–1903 and Priuli 1912–41; see below p. 56 on Sanudo. ⁵² I have made large use in particular of the chronicle of Gian Carlo Sivos, a doctor and prominent member of the Scuola Grande della Carità, BMV, Cod. Ital. VII. 1818 (9436) and VII.122 (8863) (respectively on the years 1595–1615 and 1615–21). ⁵³ See section 2.4 below. ⁵⁴ As far as possible, of course, I have tried to ascertain the truth in the accusations I mention by following the authorities’ inquiries and searching for further evidence in records from the following years. Whenever I believe an accusation to be groundless, I say so. ⁵⁵ ASV, IS, b. 1213, file 31, cc. nn., deposition of Alvise Gaetano, 13.3.1618; see below, p. 92. ⁵⁶ Deposition of 13.3.1606, in ASV, CX, Deliberazioni secrete, f. 28, cc. nn.

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by accident, assuring the authorities that they had no dealings with people who discussed political business. As a spice trader denouncing a pigment seller told the Inquisitors of State, ‘I mind my own business and give no attention to such things in detail’.⁵⁷ However, minding his own business—what the authorities wanted him and his like to do—was the one thing he certainly was not doing.

Politics and communication The study of political information in early modern Italy has expanded remarkably over the last decades, largely building on the basis of the related field of the history of the book.⁵⁸ Printed periodicals and the occasionals preceding them have been the object of several studies.⁵⁹ Partly drawing from Italy’s strong palaeographical tradition, but in line with developments elsewhere, historians have also recently drawn attention to manuscript as an important means of information well into the age of the printing press, and particularly to the role of professional newswriters.⁶⁰ Numerous other objects of study can be added to the list, from astrological prognostications and almanacs of large circulation, to more specific information for smaller elites, from financial news to written records regarding the court, postal services, epigraphy, posters, and graffiti.⁶¹ Above all, perhaps, historians of Italy have been at the forefront in bridging the gap separating production from consumption, and have thus opened the way towards a serious history of communication, by studying the uses of literacy, the question of readership, and the nature of reading and its impact on popular culture.⁶² Thanks to these studies, we now know much more than we used to about the ways of early modern information. This book wishes to build on these findings and methods in two ways which invite comparison beyond Venice. First, by concentrating on a single city, I intend to combine those studies’ different objects so as to show that means of communication constantly worked in interaction, either complementing, or conflicting with, each other in one ‘information society’.⁶³ What matters is not to evaluate the strength of orality vs. manuscript vs. print, but to see the ways in which each functioned by connecting to the others. As Robert Darnton and Donald McKenzie ⁵⁷ Deposition by Matteo Riva, 6.1.1619, in ASV, IS, b. 522, cc. nn. ⁵⁸ Recent syntheses on early modern Italy include Braida 2000, Nuovo 2003, and Richardson 1999. On the history of the book, cf. Darnton 1983 and Rose 1998. ⁵⁹ Castronovo 1976; cf. Bertone Pannain, Bulgarelli, and Mazzoli 1979. ⁶⁰ Infelise 2002a, Dooley 1999a and 1999b; cf. Petrucci 1982 and Love 1993. ⁶¹ Braida 1989; Barbierato 2002 and 2003; Tucci 1993; Raines 1991; Dooley 2002; Caizzi 1993, Petrucci 1986. ⁶² Ginzburg 1980, Petrucci 1977, Seidel Menchi 1987, Zardin 1992, Cavallo and Chartier 1999; Kallendorf 1999. Cf. Darnton 1991. ⁶³ Robert Darnton has employed the notion of ‘information society’ in his studies of eighteenthcentury France as a way of moving away from the history of the book to the history of communication, see especially Darnton 1993 and 2000; on the interaction of media in a ‘system’, Briggs and Burke 2000.

Introduction

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showed, the same can be said of other societies.⁶⁴ As I highlight at various points in the following chapters, Venice’s system of political communication shared many features with other urban societies and polities. In turn, by setting Venice in the light of other societies, it is possible to retrieve important aspects of its culture and political system which have otherwise escaped historians—one example being the professionalization of information intermediaries, whose systematic political function has been emphasized in England and France.⁶⁵ The differences are equally important, and they will be highlighted in the course of the analysis, from the absence of a court to the downplaying of political factions and the political exclusion of guilds. But it is above all by offering a novel approach to the interplay between communication and politics at different social and cultural levels that this book hopes to offer matters for comparison. At the heart of my analysis is not just a communicative process of interaction between different media, but the political relevance of that interaction: the extent to which political authorities and their agents manipulated information and shaped communication, and in turn the ways in which information and communication affected the conduct of politics. On this aspect, it seems to me that histories of information have been less satisfactory. Broadly speaking, they have fallen into two very different patterns of interpretation, deriving respectively from the opposed points of view of the authorities and of individuals, and engendering sets of binary oppositions: control and liberation, propaganda and public opinion. On the one hand, the history of information has long been associated with the rise of political freedom. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, liberal historians drew inspiration from David Hume’s dictum that the liberty of the press and that of the people ‘must stand or fall together’.⁶⁶ Closer to us, this view has gained new popularity thanks to the work of Jürgen Habermas who connected the constitution of a ‘public sphere’ of political criticism with the proliferation of the periodical press and of places for discussion such as coffeehouses and salons from the late seventeenth century onwards.⁶⁷ This model has been extremely successful amongst historians of early modern Europe, no doubt because it allows greater specificity than the more ambiguous notion of public opinion. Most historians have concentrated on discussing Habermas’ chronology or geographical priorities, either predating or moving the emergence of the public sphere.⁶⁸ This book too includes ample evidence showing that sixteenth-century Venice already hosted numerous spaces where public political discussion was possible. If anything, they included a wider cross-section of ⁶⁴ Darnton 2000 and McKenzie 2002. ⁶⁵ Cf. Jardine and Sherman 1994, Jouhaud 2000 and Raymond 2005. ⁶⁶ e.g. Muddiman 1908. ⁶⁷ Habermas 1989 (first published 1962, translated into Italian 1971). ⁶⁸ e.g. Van Horn Melton 2001; on Italy, cf. Dooley 2001, Infelise 2002a, and also Civile 2000. A critical survey is Raymond 1999.

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society than the polite bourgeoisie on which Habermas concentrated. However, the Venetian case allows us not just to predate or enlarge the ‘public sphere’ model, but also to engage critically with some of its characteristics. The point is to study how those spaces functioned and how they interacted with people’s other social preoccupations, professional and economic activities, and material culture. These aspects are absent from Habermas’ account, based on a famously idealized notion of communication.⁶⁹ A second problem of his model derives from the fact that it describes the public sphere as essentially separate from, and opposed to, the state—a distinction drawn from the sociological opposition of Staat and Gesellschaft. This leads to underestimating the influence of political institutions and agents over publicly circulating information. As has been noted, it contributes to a teleology of liberalism which often rests on taking at face value partisan descriptions drawn by authors for their own agenda or that of their political masters.⁷⁰ As we shall see, the power games of government authorities and faction leaders manifested themselves also by disseminating and manipulating information in ways which Habermasian historians mistake as evidence of political criticism. The same goes for those instances—and pamphlets constituted one—where educated authors assumed a mask as ‘representatives of the people’.⁷¹ Public opinion is a difficult historical object because it was a powerful political fiction. The other approach to the political uses of information privileges the notion of propaganda. Its historiographical origins are equally distinguished and can be traced to Jakob Burckhardt’s idea of the state as ‘a work of art’, capable of coordinating its entire population through the command of all fields of culture—an account generally referred to princely rule, but one where republican Venice too scored highly: ‘No state has ever exercised a greater moral influence over its subjects’.⁷² Historians in the twentieth century—understandably preoccupied with hegemony and totalitarianism—have identified this theme with the rise of early modern states in the age of the baroque, while others, particularly in Italy, have concentrated on the Church.⁷³ Although occasionally raising some doubts as to the term ‘propaganda’, historians return to it time and again as a useful tag for many different media and genres, from historiography to poetry to the visual arts, whenever they detect a communication instrumental to obtaining effects on a generally large public in favour of an institution or a group.⁷⁴ The problem is not whether the term ‘propaganda’ existed. A congregation De propaganda fide was founded in Rome in 1622, but its title referred to ⁶⁹ See below, end of Ch. 3. ⁷⁰ See Roche 1996, Lilti 2005, Ellis 2004. On Habermas’ notion of the public, Chartier 1990: 32–52. ⁷¹ See section 6.3 below. ⁷² Burckhardt 1990: 61. ⁷³ Cf. Villari 1998: x–xi, Meylan 1957 and Rotondò 1991; others have pre-dated the concept, eg. Cammarosano 1994 and Miethke 2002. ⁷⁴ On historiography, cf. Moeglin 1985 and Ianziti 1988. For historians’ reflections on the history of propaganda, cf. Elliott 1985, Burke 1992: 1–37, Scribner 1994: xiii–xix, and cf. Ellul 1967.

Introduction

15

propagation rather than persuasion. Above all, its object was religious faith, not political conviction. The Counter-Reformation Church was equipped to resort to public communication in ways which secular rulers could hardly conceive. While seminaries taught priests how to address their flock, the rhetorical prowess of political rulers only had to do with convincing small elites. As some historians have suggested, the Church’s unparallelled strategies of indoctrination for the simplices made it remarkably more ‘modern’ than secular rulers.⁷⁵ It might be said that the very separation between religion and politics is an anachronism, but this does not detract from the secular authorities’ insistence on secrecy. The religious legitimation of rule worked by inspiring awe through mystery, to turn politics, as Ernst Kantorowicz suggested, into a form of mysticism.⁷⁶ The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw an increase in the governmental machinery at the service of celebrating the sovereign, especially in France, where rulers were told that they should ‘lead the subjects by their nose’ (as Gabriel Naudé counselled Mazarin).⁷⁷ This picture is more problematic in Italy and does not apply to Venice. In the late sixteenth century, the literature of reason of state continued the medieval tradition of arcana imperii.⁷⁸ True, ‘reputation’ was a central preoccupation for those authors but, as stated in Botero’s founding Della ragion di stato (1589), the best means for upholding it consisted in dissimulating weaknesses rather than celebrating strength.⁷⁹ ‘Secrecy is of great importance to a prince, because it makes him similar to God, so that men, ignorant of his thoughts, are kept in great suspense about his schemes’.⁸⁰ Venetian rulers too opted for censoring rather than diffusing information. By evoking a large machinery and the systematic will to use it, the notion of propaganda presupposes that the authorities were determined to win the opinion of a public and move it to action. But the Republic’s governmental practice—and above all its behaviour during the exceptional moment of the Interdict—was one of hesitation before public communication. Ultimately, patricians regarded their subjects as incapable of opinion, and generally distrusted their possible actions. Subjects were supposed to be silent spectators rather than actors. To sum up, then, on the one hand the public opinion approach leads to downplaying the agency of powerful political actors in an idealized view of communication as invariably liberating, as empowerment from the bottom. On the other hand, the analysis of communication in terms of propaganda exaggerates the extent of top-down impositions. In their different ways, both ⁷⁵ Ginzburg 1972: 650–9, Prosperi 1981: 162, and cf. Prosperi 1996. ⁷⁶ Kantorowicz 1955. ⁷⁷ Naudé’s Considérations politiques sur les coups d’Etat of 1639, quoted in Jouhaud 2000: 265; cf. Burke 1992. ⁷⁸ The equation of ‘reason of state’ with ‘arcana imperii’ was common place, e.g. Zuccolo 1930: 35. Cf. Stolleis 1980 and Villari 1987. On reason of state, I have relied on Meinecke 1957, De Mattei 1979, Burke 1991, Viroli 1992, and Baldini 1999. ⁷⁹ Botero 1606: 73. ⁸⁰ Botero 1606: 77.

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approaches have a common weakness: they interpret political communication in an ultimately a-political way, as if it were abstracted from the political struggle which subjected all forms of authority to negotiation from all sides. As the government’s continuous and continuously frustrated insistence on secrecy shows, early modern Venice’s means of information were the object of mutual contests by different political actors and escaped the control of any one of them. This book suggests that communication was politics, and not in the vaguely postmodern sense that everything is communication, but in the very real sense that political communication was itself the terrain of both conflict and compromise, possibilities and difficulties. An influential critique has denounced the rise of communication theories in the twentieth century as a utopia papering over the underlying political conflicts, the social and economic interests bending the means of communication.⁸¹ However, the real utopia consists in the idea that politics can ever be totally and utterly devoid of conflict.⁸² In so far as conflicts did exist, this book studies how their protagonists confronted each other by using different means of communication. By so doing, they undermined the secrecy which governments would have preferred and thereby, ultimately, they created opportunities for further political conflict. On the basis of the Venetian experience at least, this book shows that we should think of early modern political communication not as an opposition between abstract categories (power vs. the public; propaganda vs. public opinion) but as a tense, at times creative, interaction between multiple actors engaged in political conflict. It is possible to locate them in three partly overlapping spheres: the government and its representatives; a political arena dominated by individuals and factions, and thick with the professional informers at their service; and finally the majority of the population, who had no personal connection with the authorities. While it was the government’s business to control information, information was the business of professionals in the political arena; meanwhile, both operated in a context full of people who were supposed to have no interest for politics and yet may have discovered that information was their business too. The next three chapters consider each of those three spheres in turn. In the subsequent three chapters, we shall move on to the interaction between those spheres: from structures to the communicative events which animated those structures both in peace and at times of crisis. As we shall see, messages produced in the governing councils were re-elaborated and appropriated across the city’s social structure, occasionally in direct opposition to the government; proclamations turned into objects of defiling, and factional attacks into radically anti-authoritarian texts. The final part of the book, chapters five and six, is ⁸¹ Breton 1992; cf. Sfez 1988. ⁸² Enlightening remarks, on a different social and political context, in Elias 1983: 146–213 and 276–83.

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especially concerned with an event, the Interdict controversy, which is perhaps the most famous in Venice’s early modern history. By analysing it from the point of view of policies and communication, I propose a new interpretation of that event as a moment of massive politicization, when the government had to confront its subjects in ways which it would have thought inconceivable at other times. In turn, to join politics and history in the analysis of that political event will allow us to see that the very notion of high politics was alien to early modern political practice. Political history cannot be studied in separation from the society of which it was part, because high and low, elite and ordinary people, patricians and barbers, constantly interacted to determine the outcome of policies and events. Because I systematically focus on the political uses of words, it might be thought that I exaggerate the extent to which power shaped communication, and that I neglect the importance of other, non-manipulative aspects of human expression. It might be thought, in short, that in spite of my caveats I project back modern preoccupations with propaganda. I do believe that if we look closely enough, we shall find motives concerning political and social relations behind many seemingly innocent statements; that we must keep in mind the dynamics of power when analysing communicative acts of all kinds. This is true; but I also hope to show that there is an in-built liberating mechanism in the use of communication by those in power. As the historian of seventeenth-century French literature, Louis Marin, wrote, every narrative contains a trap.⁸³ All attempts to persuade subjects or glorify rulers imply the need to confront outsiders, to respond to challenges, and to submit to risks; words carry the weight of responsibility and the likelihood of consequences. Manipulating information may serve a precise cause, but in so far as it involves public communication it also renounces control over that information. Ultimately, all representations or misrepresentations—and especially those which are most forcefully and pervasively made—create expectations which may one day be turned against those who made them. However minimal, here lies a fissure through which the powerless can empower themselves. ⁸³ Marin 1978.

1 Government Venetian government by council bears no comparison with the representative assemblies of early modern Europe’s larger states. In France, the Parlements were mainly judicial bodies with no sovereignty of their own and the Estates General were rare occasions, never summoned between 1614 and 1789. By financing the crown, both the Spanish Cortes and the English Parliament influenced, but never determined, policy, which strictly speaking remained outside their remit. And although, of course, things changed in England in the mid-seventeenth century, before then Parliament only met temporarily and without regularity.¹ By contrast, Venetian councils were permanent institutions, with members meeting on fixed days every week to engage in a continuous process of deliberation and voting on both home and foreign affairs, considering the minutest aspects of state administration. They are better compared with the urban assemblies of the German imperial area, although the latter only ran small cities and their outlying territories, while Venetian councils ruled over a large empire, stretching from the Po valley to the Eastern Mediterranean.² Council debating—political communication at its highest level—was therefore a prominent feature of Venice’s political life, taking up a remarkable amount of the patricians’ time and energy. By and large this is an untold story, in contrast for example with England, where constitutional historians have studied parliamentary debates in detail. The dearth of sources partly explains this historiographical bias. In Venice, the most official and primary form of political communication was also the most ephemeral. The audiences of foreign ambassadors were faithfully recorded, as well as the replies the latter received from various patricians. However, no record was kept of the speeches or arguments voiced inside deliberative councils. The legislative process was meant to leave no trace other than its eventual outcome, duly recorded by specially appointed secretaries. The rationale of these arrangements was essentially political, to preserve a consistent image of unity in the ruling class. Although, in line with classical republican culture, Venetians described eloquence as a central element of civil life, they were equally preoccupied that it might turn into a cause of disorder. If communication was power, it was also a dangerous sort of power. Debating was to be locked behind closed doors and disagreements hidden inside the government. The people outside were to learn about the government’s ¹ Cf. Myers 1975; on England, cf. Hirst 1986: 36. ² Friedrichs 1995: 43–60 and 2000: 11–24.

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decisions as the uncontroversial outcome of the patriciate’s unanimous will. What made Venice exceptional in the eyes of early modern observers, to whom discussion was synonymous with disorder, was not that it was a Republic ruled by council; Venice’s most extraordinary feat was the fact that it was a peaceful Republic, stable in spite of the fact that it was ruled by council. Venetians were proud of their serenity, a trait which they made into their state’s defining feature, Serenissima. As Marin Sanudo proclaimed in the 1490s, this feat had echoes of the miraculous: ‘this holy Republic governs itself with such order that it is astonishing; it has no popular uprising or discord amongst the nobles, but all are unanimous in making it greater, so that . . . it will last forever.’³ Unanimity, ‘the convergence of a multitude of wants and aspirations into a single will’, was a central value in the ruling class’s culture and a pillar of the latter’s celebration of Venice.⁴ Foreign observers agreed when they extolled a constitution allowing Venice to be ruled (as they said) by reason rather than passion, laws rather than men. This chapter suggests that stability largely depended on the government’s management of communication. On the one hand, debating and information transfer in council debates were regulated through principles of rhetorical restraint as well as controlled procedural mechanisms known as comunicazione. Their aim was to prevent disagremeent from degenerating into open confrontation. On the other hand, Venice’s government was extremely proud of its ability to retrieve information from the most distant parts of the world, thanks to an impressive network of outposts and ambassadors. As an Ottoman minister told the Venetian ambassador in Constantinople in 1533, ‘you know that which the fish do at the bottom of the sea’. It was an ability, however, which had to be guarded jealously, and the Republic was equally renowned for its secretiveness. In fact, the minister’s compliment hid the complaint that the bailo only gave him that news ‘which in any case cannot be of damage to [Venice]’.⁵ As we shall see, secrecy was essential to the Republic’s constitution and image.

1 . 1 E LO QU E N C E When Sarpi said that books ‘in their train bring armed hosts’, he applied to writings a shared assumption about speaking at its politically most influential level, the conduct of deliberation inside Venice’s governing councils. More than a century earlier, the humanist Filippo Morandi similarly wrote that patrician eloquence dictated deliberations and therefore ‘arouse[d] the very armies and camps.’⁶ Celebrative treatises echoed this point, often boasting that a phrase ³ Sanudo 1980: 39. ⁴ King 1986: 92. ⁵ Sanudo 1879–1903, v. 58: 304–5. ⁶ King 1986: 48 and 406–7; Sarpi’s quotation above, p. 1. On rhetoric in Venetian governance, see Del Negro 1977 and 1984: 424–30; Doglio 1983; King 1986: 37–49; Cox 2003; and cf. Folena 1977.

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spoken by a Venetian patrician was a mighty weapon.⁷ These were classical commonplaces drawn from a long tradition of rhetorical treatises, but in Venice they also referred to the real effects of council oratory. Throughout Renaissance Europe, speaking well was a sign of distinction, the subject of lengthy sections in manuals on the good behaviour of the elites, from Castiglione’s Cortegiano (1528) to Della Casa’s Galateo (1558), as well as numerous rhetorical treatises.⁸ In Venice too, eloquence was coupled with status. In 1603 the French ambassador remarked of a patrician that he was ‘one of the most splendid lords and of the best conversation of Venice’.⁹ However, there was more to it. For Venetian patricians eloquence was part of political life, not just politeness, and success depended on the ability to speak well and convincingly. The patricians’ most important public activities were essentially rhetorical, whether they debated in the Senate, represented the Republic as ambassadors, or acted as lawyers and prosecutors in the city’s various courts (especially as Venice’s legal system privileged oral argument over written legislation).¹⁰ Thus, it is not surprising that patricians’ recommendations to their juniors insisted on acquiring a proper training in rhetoric, as in a set of instructions to a nephew written in the 1570s by Agostino Valier, himself a senator who taught at the public school of Rialto before beginning a remarkable ecclesiastical career.¹¹ Other works on patrician education concurred.¹² Sixteenth-century Venice had an abundance of means to satisfy the demand for rhetorical training. We know little of the earliest tuition which some patricians received at home until a certain age, but can guess that formal rhetoric was important. In the early sixteenth century, the Trevisan family built a miniature model of the Senate’s speaker’s stand for their son to practise at home in front of his friends.¹³ Outside the privacy of home, groups of children were taught grammar and rhetoric for a fee in several private schools of humanities, often housed in parish churches.¹⁴ Public schools, first experimented in the fifteenth century and boosted from the mid-sixteenth century, also devoted great importance to rhetoric. At the School of San Marco, founded in 1443, young ⁷ Colluraffi 1623: 15–16. ⁸ Cf. Burke 1993: 96–102; on the reception of Castiglione in Venice, cf. Burke 1995: 40–4, 48–52. ⁹ Canaye 1636, v. 2: 10. ¹⁰ On patrician lawyers, cf. Trebbi 1996: 491–508, and see [Sansovino] 1554: 14 (a list of famous patrician lawyers), and Memmo 1563: 157 (on legal work as training for senatorial duties). ¹¹ Valier 1803: 45–8; cf. Cozzi 1963: 40–51. ¹² Sansovino 1566: 9–10v, Manuzio 1584: 35–44, Meduna 1588: 23, Olcinio 1610: sig. a3, Colluraffi 1623: ch. 3. ¹³ [Sansovino] 1554: 15v. The richest patricians educated their children at home, cf. [Freschot] 1709: 260, and Burke 1994: 86–8. Colluraffi was a tutor in patrician households, see DBI, s.v. ¹⁴ Cf. Nardi 1971: 77–9 (on Stefano Plazon from Asola), P. Grendler 1989: 337n. (on Lodovico Carbone, author of several rhetorical treatises), and Micanzio 1974: 1276 (on the parish school attended by Sarpi as well as noble children in the 1560s).

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noblemen and cittadini trained to become chancery servants and were taught ‘grammaticam, rethoricam et alias scientias’. From 1460 the school hosted a special chair in rhetoric. When in 1551 the government began funding public schools in each sestiere, it insisted on classical as well as modern orators being part of the curriculum.¹⁵ At the schools, pupils were asked to make declamations, and in the 1520s Sanudo described classes of patrician teenagers engaged in making orations and counter-orations.¹⁶ Copies of the young patricians’ exercises still survive.¹⁷ Ultimately, it may have been because of Venice’s ample provision that the University of Padua focused little on rhetoric.¹⁸ Venice’s vibrant publishing industry was quick to translate the attention for rhetoric into a vast printed literature, celebrated eloquence as a mark of freedom and promised to guide readers through its mysteries.¹⁹ Many treatises specifically addressed young patricians, pledging to train them for the Republic’s councils and particularly for the Senate. To this end, they abridged, paraphrased, digested, and defined centuries of rhetorical culture into pocket books.²⁰ Such was the appropriately titled Del parlar senatorio, written before 1588 by Cornelio Frangipane, a Friulan jurist frequently employed on official business, reproduced scribally first and then published posthumously in 1619. The editor, Girolamo Canini, was a professional author who also possibly worked as a private tutor in patrician households.²¹ It is a true handbook, ‘for the benefit of the most generous patrician youth, born to govern’, divided into sections and subsections, and followed by a large table summarizing the training, skills, and tropes required for addressing the Senate on various subject matters, each with its favoured figures of speech and common arguments.²² Actual orations were published alongside rhetorical treatises, in florilegia, commented editions or collections ‘where one can learn all precepts useful and necessary for any good orator, especially those [speaking] in the Palace, following the use of modern times’.²³ The most famous of the poligrafi (writers who also worked as editors, translators, and publishers), Francesco Sansovino, was especially active in that field and in 1543 planned to publish a collection of rhetorical works in twenty-three volumes. Having begun his career as a lawyer pleading in civil courts, Sansovino embodied the close connection between the ¹⁵ On the school of San Marco, cf. Segarizzi 1915–16: 640–5, 650–2 and Nardi 1971: 3–43. On sestiere schools, see P. Grendler 1989: 61–70, and on education in general, Ross 1976 and Benzoni 1996: 805–15. ¹⁶ Quoted in Nardi 1971: 76–8, 82n., 93; later evidence in [Sansovino] 1554: 12v. ¹⁷ e.g. BMV, Cod. Ital. VII.1200 (8821), cc. 1–9. ¹⁸ P. Grendler 2002: 23, 225, 232–4. ¹⁹ Particularly powerful vindications of rhetoric can be found in: Antonio Brucioli’s preface in Cicero 1542: 4, Manuzio 1584: 35, Canini 1619: 37, Colluraffi 1623: 20–1. ²⁰ Cf. Plazon 1526 (and undated abridgment), Sansovino 1546 (republished in 1569 and 1575), Denores 1574, Frangipane 1619, Simoneschi 1667. ²¹ Frangipane 1619, followed by the editor’s annotations, Canini 1619. On Frangipane—not to be confused with his similarly named nephew (cf. p. 54 below)—see Antonini 1881–82; on Canini, DBI, s.v. ²² Frangipane 1619: sig. *2 and Canini 1619: 4–7. ²³ Mascher 1560.

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printing press and Venice’s requirements for eloquence.²⁴ In special cases, some of the speeches actually delivered in councils—known as renghe— were also published, especially when they played a celebratory function, as was the case of panegyrics addressed to newly elected doges by representatives of subject towns. When delivered on similar ceremonial occasions, the speeches of some patricians were also published, although this was less common.²⁵ Perhaps the culmination of this production came in 1672 with a collection of phrases attributed to past patricians, arranged by subject matter and nature (facetious, prudent, wise, eloquent, etc.), and published with an index for easier consultation.²⁶ As is to be expected of works addressed to a republican audience, in spite of the inroads of generations of humanists influenced by Quintilian, most treatises priviledged a Ciceronian notion of rhetoric as a practical instrument of political life.²⁷ For the same reason, they favoured experience over formal learning. As Ermolao Barbaro put it in 1489 praising the eloquence of Bernardo Giustiniani, ‘I have learned more from him in the Senate than from six hundred volumes of rhetoricians in the schools.’ A sophisticated humanist himself, Barbaro’s criticism may have been directed at a particular school rather than all schools, but his words were bound to sound convincing to his pragmatically-minded contemporaries.²⁸ Most treatises insisted that it was only by paying attention to the practice of eloquence that patricians could learn its secrets, whether in person or indirectly, by reading transcripts of speeches by past senators.²⁹ Common wisdom dictated that noble practitioners were better than salaried teachers or their theory books. Here, however, lay a problem. Young noblemen were unlikely to enter the councils where most debating took place (the Senate in particular, as we shall see), and it was forbidden to disclose speeches made in those councils. The authorities welcomed the publication of celebratory texts, but forbade even the recording of speeches relating to government business. While Sansovino praised above all deliberative rhetoric, the majority of the orations he published were epideictic.³⁰ And yet Sansovino’s collections show that the practice of publicizing speeches did exist, presumably deriving from their authors’ desire to advertise their rhetorical prowess and powerful connections. In 1542 Cornelio Frangipane recorded in his diary transcribing a congratulatory speech he had delivered in the Collegio because many patricians wanted to see it. Within three days, he boasted, ²⁴ Sansovino 1543: 453; cf. Sansovino 1561, 1562, 1569, and Bonora 1994: 49–50. On the poligrafi see di Filippo Bareggi 1988, and Richardson 1994. ²⁵ Sansovino 1562 was a collection of such orations, republished at least four times by 1584. During the Interdict, ambassadorial addresses were printed in great number, see below, p. 230. ²⁶ Fiorelli 1672. ²⁷ For example, Frangipane 1619 dealt with the deliberative genre only; cf. Cox 2003. ²⁸ Quoted in King 1986: 39; cf. Cox 2003. ²⁹ Canini 1619: 37–8; Frangipane 1619: 11, 16, cf. [Sansovino] 1554: 15–16. Memmo 1545, and Valier 1803: 48 also recommended the reading of histories. ³⁰ Folena 1957; cf. Vickers 1994: 84–5.

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the copies multiplied to ‘fill Venice’.³¹ As we shall see in more detail in the next chapter, personal motives combined with economic reasons to originate a substantial circulation of reserved political manuscripts, and the same applied to transcripts of orations which had once been part of the decision-making process.³² Thus, the individual patricians’ learning needs won over their collective desire to preserve a fac¸ade of unity. The pragmatic understanding of rhetoric had an impact on style. All treatises in the sixteenth century insisted on plain and unadorned rhetoric, reviving the classical distinction between Atticist and Asianist rhetoric inherited from the Greeks through Cicero. In the 1570s Agostino Valier explicitly referred to this debate when he described senatorial rhetoric and compared Venetian with Atticist style as ‘very brief, simple, and alien from ostentation’.³³ Frangipane warned against employing overly ‘adorned speaking’ (parlare ornato), and maintained that brevity and moderation were, more than stylistic features, moral qualities revealing honesty.³⁴ Colluraffi stressed that eloquence must be distinguished from loquacity, which he described as licentious and hurtful.³⁵ Practising patricians voiced the same principles. For example Leonardo Donà, an ambassador and future doge, wrote that ‘both in the Great Council and the Senate, one should speak with charity and truth, not with beauty of words, which are useless’.³⁶ Such positions were part of a debate extending well beyond Venice and having to do not just with intellectual trends but with political preoccupations concerning the implications of rhetoric and debating in the collective exercise of power. As Marc Fumaroli has shown, the French Parlements revived the classical dislike for the Asianist style in the sixteenth century.³⁷ Likewise, in Venice patricians knew by experience that rhetoric was an instrument of both collaboration and division, common good and private interest. As the jurist Giuseppe Matteacci put it, eloquence was a double-edged sword, ‘when well used, it can bring about the greatest goods, ruling the masses, clarifying what is obscure, defending justice and honesty; but, when badly used, it becomes an instrument of serious crimes, sowing the spirit of discord amongst the people, oppressing the good, and exhalting what is false under an appearance of truth.’³⁸ The republican attitude to rhetoric is essentially ambivalent, exalting freedom of speech as a condition of civil life, but also fearing the orators’ manipulation of their fellow citizens. As Frangipane put it, a senator deceiving other senators ³¹ Antonini 1881–2, v. 8: 50. ³² See below, sections 2.1 and 2.2. Fiorelli 1672: sig. A4a claimed to draw his anthology both from printed histories and word of mouth. ³³ Valier 1803: 46. Valier’s earlier Senator Venetus also warned against the Asianist style, ibid.: 46–7n. ³⁴ Frangipane 1619: 17, 18–19. ³⁵ Colluraffi 1623: 23. He maintained that Plato’s Republic banished loquacity rather than eloquence. ³⁶ Quoted in Brunetti 1933: 135. ³⁷ Fumaroli 1980: 427–75; cf. also Sozzini 1981. ³⁸ Matteacci 1613: 67 and cf. 87.

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really deceived himself.³⁹ Thus, the emphasis on simplicity—very often taken at face value by later historians—stems less from the patricians’ style than from their collective ideology.⁴⁰ Thus, a common line of political attack consisted in describing someone as making excessive use of rhetoric, a criticism raised in the early seventeenth century against figures as diverse as Leonardo Donà and Renier Zen.⁴¹ At the time of the Interdict, observers thought the loquella of the doge to be the force inciting resistance to the pope, and in perfect republican fashion critics attacked him as a new Pericles enslaving free people through rhetoric.⁴² In 1609, the papal nuncio naturally connected eloquence with leadership when criticizing the group of those ‘who dominate and have [good] tongue’.⁴³ When treatises advised patricians to address the Senate as if they were speaking spontaneously, without preparation—‘hiding as much as they can their technique and preparation, and in fact showing their speech to be without previous consideration and without apparel’—they were not just applying the ideal of sprezzatura to rhetoric. They were making a political point: speakers must above all steer clear of the accusation of studiously applying themselves to cultivating charisma through force of speech.⁴⁴ So far as the sources allow us to determine, the point was taken to heart by patricians, many of whom began their speeches by apologizing about their decision to speak.⁴⁵ Language itself was supposed to reflect the plainness and therefore honesty of Venetians. Written sources are notoriously misleading concerning spoken language, and we have contradictory references to the language ordinarily used in council halls. The results of debates, laws, and decrees were recorded first in Latin and, roughly from the later fourteenth century, in Italian; most transcripts of speeches I have found are in Italian; legal courts used Venetian, and Marin Sanudo’s diaries (at length referring to council debates) are a mixture.⁴⁶ Whatever the actual nature of the language used in Venetian councils, all treatises agreed in extolling it as particularly ‘pure’: a sort of a ‘beautiful and purged language’, ‘common and popular, neither affected Tuscan nor ancient Venetian’, as Frangipane put it; almost ‘a new kind of language’, ‘Venetum dicendi genus’, Valier wrote.⁴⁷ Perhaps, these phrases referred to the ‘language question’, which ³⁹ Frangipane 1619: 18–19. ⁴⁰ Cf. Baschet 1870: 376–7. ⁴¹ Cf. the nuncio’s opinions in Zanelli 1930: 4 and Cozzi 1958: 237. ⁴² Dispatch of the ambassador of Mantua dated 20.5.1606, in Putelli 1911, v. 22: 55, and anonymous ms. speech in MCV, Ms. Donà 486, fasc. 16, cc. nn. ⁴³ Quoted in Savio 1936–42, v. 10: 59. ⁴⁴ Memmo 1545: 26r –v and cf. Manuzio 1584: 41. On the influence of Castiglione’s sprezzatura in speaking, cf. Burke 1993: 98–102. ⁴⁵ e.g. Sanudo 1879–1903 v. 24: 327–8. ⁴⁶ Cf. A. L. Lepschy 1993 (on Sanudo) and Vianello 1957 (on legal courts). Both Besta 1899: 220 and Maranini 1931: 235 quote the scathing remarks about senators only understanding dialect from Amelot 1676, preface. ⁴⁷ Frangipane 1619: 17; Valier 1803: 46, 47n. The same point was later made in Olmo 1628: 20, and in Accademico Imperfetto 1674: 75. There is no mention of a specifically Venetian position in Vitale 1984—as is known, the Venetian Pietro Bembo favoured literary Tuscan.

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in the sixteenth century put Tuscan literary traditionalists in opposition to pragmatic innovators. But, beyond their connection with a specific geographical origin, they embodied an idealized notion of political language as based on clarity and conducive to honesty.

1 . 2 D E B AT I N G I N T H E C O U N C I L S The ambivalence concerning eloquence has a parallel in the attitude towards debating in councils. In all communities, speech is at once a means of cohesion and an instrument of disagreement, but in Venice the danger was greater, because debating threatened unity at the very heart of the state. The conservative oligarchy’s natural uneasiness about this can be seen clearly in Gasparo Contarini’s image of a dissonant voice raised above the others as a metaphor of discord destroying Venice’s mixed constitution.⁴⁸ Venetian patricians tried to restrain council debating not only through rhetorical recommendations, but also by means of strict legal prescriptions developed over the centuries to regulate the conduct of governing assemblies. This was especially true of the two largest assemblies, the Great Council and the Senate.

The banishment of discussion from voting: the Great Council Debating was not just regulated but kept to a minimum when it touched on voting, the main activity of the Great Council which gathered the entire body of adult male patricians, about 2,000 men in the late sixteenth century, of whom around 70 per cent regularly assembled in Sanudo’s time and between 53 and 67 per cent a century and a half later.⁴⁹ The Great Council assembled ordinarily every Sunday to discuss constitutional matters—over which it retained the ultimate say, in the form of a right to veto laws passed by other councils—and above all to elect the host of smaller councils temporarily charged with the running of both judiciary business (such as the Quarantie courts), and government (the Senate, the Council of Ten, the Signoria). In the Great Council, speeches were delivered only on very special occasions, and the law avoided discussion as much as possible. This may have been the result of a trend. In the early sixteenth century a relatively minor politician, Marin Sanudo, claimed to have been a frequent speaker in the Great Council, while by 1677 as influential a politician as Battista Nani said that he had never addressed ⁴⁸ Contarini 1591: 51; conversely, panegyrics commonly referred to musical harmony, Doglio 1983: 168. ⁴⁹ A minimum of 600 attendants was required; cf. J.C. Davis 1962: 137, Finlay 1980: 174, and Hunecke 1997: 417. On Great Council admission requirements and prerogatives, Maranini 1931: 41–6 and 78–102.

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a speech to that assembly.⁵⁰ Procedural regulations confined communication to a minimum: no discussion preceded the elections, and patricians were required to cast their ballot in the urns without speaking, ‘con grandissimo silentio’, as some contemporaries remarked with respect.⁵¹ Gasparo Contarini contrasted the silence of voting in the Venetian Senate with the Roman practice of speaking one’s vote.⁵² The emphasis on silence was such that the round wax ballots were substituted with cloth ones in both the Senate and the Great Council, because cloth would make no sound when thrown into one of the three boxes.⁵³ By preserving secrecy, silence ensured independence of choice. The Censori magistrates, created in 1517, invigilated over sessions and on the whole secured orderly procedures.⁵⁴ All sorts of unlawful electoral deals took place informally outside the Great Council and those patricians selling their vote even had a name (‘Sguizari’, like the Swiss mercenaries).⁵⁵ Inside the Council, however, the secrecy of ballots was on the whole preserved, making it almost impossible to know the candidate for whom any patrician voted. Secrecy ultimately protected everyone’s freedom. Whatever their actual implementation, these procedural arrangements reveal an important mentality, at once moral and political. For the overwhelming majority of patricians, voting was the only form in which they exercised their sovereign power, and secrecy was supposed to ensure that they could do so free from outside pressures. In turn, given the equality of status of all patricians, these rules attempted to make it possible to elect on the basis of individual merits alone. Thus the constitution sought to eliminate individual passions from the pursuit of the common good, and this at the very moment of choosing the Republic’s rulers—as a sonnet in the 1599 English translation of Contarini’s De magistratibus put it, where all corrupt means to aspire are curbed, And Officers for virtues worth elected.⁵⁶

If, as Gasparo Contarini said, Venice saw the rule of laws not of men, then reason rather than speech was to rule government.⁵⁷ The Repulic was quick to capitalize on this arrangement, turning the Great Council into a visible symbol of good government and harmony. Important ⁵⁰ Nani quoted in Del Negro 1984: 427; Sanudo in Finlay 1980: 251–80. ⁵¹ Maranini 1931: 122; a description in Sanudo 1980: 146–52; the quotation from Priuli 1912–41, v. 1: 332. ⁵² Contarini 1591: 57. ⁵³ Voters put a hand in each box to hide where they let the ballot fall, Maranini 1931: 116 and 255. ⁵⁴ The Censori were first created in 1517, to aid the Avogaria di Comun, see Tiepolo 1994: 921–3. ⁵⁵ Megna 1997: 175. For episodes of squabbling in the Great Council, see Queller 1986: 92 and 240–5, but cf. Finlay 1980: 197, 220. ⁵⁶ Quoted in Lane 1973: 258. ⁵⁷ Contarini 1591: 10–11; see also Sanudo 1980 quoted above, p. 19.

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foreign visitors were invited to attend the voting operations, as if the latter were a ceremonial moment designed to impress as much as a working part of the constitutional machinery. In fact if Venice was a ‘theatre state’, as has been suggested, then the constitutional assemblies at its heart provided one of its rituals’ most important stages.⁵⁸ A poem composed in the fifteenth century spoke of the Great Council as a ‘spectacle of majesty’, where solemnity equated with tranquillity and the absence of altercation—in a word, silence allowing reason to triumph.⁵⁹ Reporting to his king at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Spanish ambassador was very impressed at the ‘admirable order’ with which 1,500 patricians all dressed in their black robes voted without a word.⁶⁰ The same point was amply publicized in countless engravings and travel accounts. This message was also elaborated into a constituent part of republican theories in Venice and elsewhere. Historians have emphasized the importance of Venetian electoral procedures in European political thought, a model of ‘mechanized virtue’ (as John Pocock put it), enabling the common good to triumph by constitutional mechanisms rather than individual effort.⁶¹ In principle, however, machines require no speech, and it seems fair to say that the Venetian regulation of debating played an equally central role in the history of political ideas. Thus James Harrington, who visited Venice in the early 1630s, described with admiration the silence in which elections took place. As the protagonist of Oceana remarked, Venice ‘is of all others the most quiet, so the most equal commonwealth’, ‘ow[ing] a great if not the greatest part of her steadiness unto the same principle; the Great Council . . . never speaking a word. Nor shall any commonwealth where the people in their political capacity is talkative ever see half the days of one of these . . . being carried away by vainglorious men.’ To Harrington, Venice was a model because it managed to silence disagreement in a way which the English Commonwealth failed to do.⁶² A century later, Rousseau too, otherwise a critic of Venice, may have appreciated the voting procedures which he observed while living there. In the Social Contract he certainly affirmed that communication between voters ought to be avoided in order for the general will to triumph over factions.⁶³ Some modern constitutions (including Italy’s) are similarly concerned with the effects of rhetoric on freedom of choice, ordering that campaigning must stop some time before elections begin. ⁵⁸ Casini 1996: 294 and Fortini Brown 1988: 51. Testimonies in: Sanudo 1980: 62 and 147 (1490s); Schickhardt 2002: 209 (1599–1600); Coryat 1905, v. 1: 419; Somerset 1993: 250 (1610–11); Amelot 1676: sig. ev (1660s). On Venice as a theatre state, Muir 1989: 31. ⁵⁹ Francesco Arrigoni’s Poema de omni Venetorum excellentia, in Queller 1986: 338n. ⁶⁰ Italian translation of the report by Francisco de Vera (1603), in BMV, Cod. Ital. VII.1589 (7975), cc. nn. ⁶¹ See Pocock 1975: 284–5; cf. Haitsma Mulier 1980, Bouwsma 1973, Wootton 1994. ⁶² Harrington 1992: 114, 149–50; cf. Scott 1996: 105–10. ⁶³ Rousseau amply referred to Venice (for once, in a positive light) when speaking ‘Of elections’; Rousseau 1997: 126. However, he of course recommended adequate information prior to voting, ibid.: 60.

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The regulation of debates: the Senate Venice was not just a republic; it was a conservative oligarchy. Even more than a republican concern with the free exercise of reason in decision making, the restraint of debating stemmed from the fear that arguments could unsettle the order of government. This is evident in the norms regulating debates in the Senate, the assembly where speech making was a daily activity, and hence the principal arena of rhetorical prowess—not for nothing many treatises defined deliberative rhetoric as ‘genere senatorio’.⁶⁴ The executive body of the Republic—as Sanudo defined it in 1493, ‘the council which governs the state’—the Senate also was its central deliberative assembly, normally meeting two or three times a week to discuss and vote on the most important policies concerning both home and foreign affairs.⁶⁵ The assembly gathered between 180 and 280 patricians (many of them not senators in their own right, but holders of offices which gave access to debating). They were divided into different groups by complex rules aiming to bring order to the process of deliberation: some both proposed and voted policies; others could either vote or propose; and others still only attended the proceedings.⁶⁶ Senators were Venice’s most prominent and experienced politicians, ‘everybody who was anybody politically’ as Frederic Lane summed up.⁶⁷ Unlike the members of most other councils, they could be confirmed year after year, in order to allow a degree of continuity. Their participation in the discussion of governmental business was taken to be a guarantee of success, because (as the nuncio’s secretary complained in 1646) it was inevitable that 200 men thought better than one.⁶⁸ As Giovanni Botero wrote, the advantages which the Republic derived from Senate debates were two-sided: on one hand, in ensuring the quality of the decisions; on the other in offering an arena for the elaboration and containment of disagreement. The contrast with royal councils, divided by personal enmities, could not be greater.⁶⁹ Thus, freedom of speech was supposed to be the rule in the Senate. Marin Sanudo for example stressed that ‘every senator has the liberty of speaking his opinion in the speaker’s stand, be it against the doge’.⁷⁰ Even critics who tended on the whole to stress the authoritarian aspects of Venice’s constitution, conceded that senators spoke freely.⁷¹ Strict laws were passed to ensure that speakers were respected, because, as a law of 1507 recited, ‘nothing is more convenient to a well instituted Republic . . . than ⁶⁴ Frangipane 1619: 1, and cf. also Sansovino 1546: 40v. ⁶⁵ Sanudo 1980: 100. On the Senate’s powers, see Maranini 1931: 192–225; Besta 1899: ch. 3; Cracco 1997. ⁶⁶ Maranini 1931: 151–62 and Besta 1899: 108–10. Attendance depended on the subject of discussion. ⁶⁷ Lane 1973: 254. ⁶⁸ Discorso a Monsignor d’Elci: 212; cf. also Olcinio 1610: sig. a3. ⁶⁹ Botero 1605: 95. ⁷⁰ Sanudo 1980: 102. Sanudo at one point supported a proposal for making compulsory Senate discussion of all decisions involving expenditures, Cozzi 1968: 107. ⁷¹ e.g. Thesoro politico 1593: 70v and Discorso a Monsignor d’Elci: 212 (1646).

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that those who are in charge of its government may deliberate with a peaceful mind, free from all external passions, in order to find that which is conducive to the Republic’s safety, honour, and need.’⁷² To this effect, speakers were reserved a special position in the Senate’s hall, a bench close to the doge known as arengo or renga.⁷³ Some speakers’ ability naturally commanded respect—as Marin Sanudo boasted, no one dared spitting while he spoke,⁷⁴—but everyone was protected by law. A number of superior magistrates (the Heads of the Ten, the Avogadori, and the Censori) punished anyone interrupting the speaker with words or in other manners, including murmurs (from 1509) and the motion of hands or feet (from 1604).⁷⁵ A sign that these laws were not always respected, the Council of Ten repeatedly passed new and graver ones, in 1549 threatening transgressors with temporary exclusion from the Senate, in 1659 raising the punishment to exile, and in 1697 equating the crime to lèse-majesté.⁷⁶ For greater effectiveness, all these laws were also inserted in a capitolare to be read in the Senate twice every year.⁷⁷ In fact, however, freedom of speech was limited in a number of ways. First, senators were not allowed to speak about matters concerning their own or their families’ private interest. The famous fifteenth-century law excluding patricians with relatives in the Church (known as papalisti) from governmental debates of matters concerning Rome, responded to a general principle.⁷⁸ Thus, in 1613 one of the period’s leading politicians was made to leave the renga after he had begun speaking, because it was realized that he was going to touch upon his nephews’ interest.⁷⁹ Secondly, insults were naturally forbidden, whether directed to colleagues, or even more (in an adjustment typical of the sixteenthcentury oligarchic involution) to the doge, the Signoria, or to the ‘dignity of the Senate’.⁸⁰ If insults bring dishonour and disagreement to any community, in the halls of government they strengthened dangerous divisions and posed a threat to collective honour. Hence, laws, rhetorical treatises, and individuals all agreed that senatorial debates required ‘modesty’.⁸¹

⁷² Law of 20.11.1507, in ASV, CL, b. 348, c. 551. ⁷³ Montar in renga was synonymous to delivering a speech, and renga indicated both the speech and its transcript; cf. Maranini 1931: 232. By extension, the term was used for the orator himself, e.g. Del Negro 1984: 430n. ⁷⁴ Quoted in Besta 1899: 228. ⁷⁵ Parti of the Ten dated 5.11.1509 28.6.1604, in ASV, CL, b. 348, c. 557 and c. 668. ⁷⁶ Parti of the Ten, dated 10.10.1549 (ibid., c. 614), 1.4.1659 (ibid., c. 714), and 10.1.1697 (in Besta 1899: 225). ⁷⁷ e.g. ASV, CL, b. 348, c. 620 (9.12.1548). ⁷⁸ Maranini 1931: 240–1 and Del Torre 1998, and cf. Queller 1986: 184. ⁷⁹ Parte dated 12.10.1613, in ASV, CL, b. 348, c. 676 (cf. ASV, CX, Parti segrete, f. 30, cc. nn., 27.6.1612), referring to Girolamo Giustinian, 11 times savio del collegio in 12 years (see below section 1.3), who represented Venice at the 1618 peace talks with the Habsburgs together with future doge Nicolò Contarini (Cozzi 1958: 168–9). ⁸⁰ ASV, CL, b. 348, c. 549, and IS, b. 924, cc. nn., dated 15.12.1599. ⁸¹ Parte of the Ten, dated 31.3.1659, in ASV, CL, b. 348, c. 712. Sanudo frequently described his own speeches as spoken with ‘gran modestia’, e.g. Sanudo 1879–1903, v. 3: 619.

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In practice, many preserved transcripts of senatorial speeches mix a high style full of rhetorical figures and classical citations, with remarks meant to cause laughter. When countering a colleague’s argument about the danger of a particular proposal, a patrician and future doge remarked ironically that ‘he did not know of a place where there existed no danger, apart from paradise, and that was where those who wanted to avoid all dangers should go.’⁸² Thus, just as attitude to rhetoric was ambivalent, so practice in the delivery of speeches was a mixture of spontaneity and restraint. Perhaps this was typical of a class born to rule but also destined to fear its own excesses. Finally, and most importantly, not all propositions were open for discussion, and speakers were forbidden from addressing issues extra materiam.⁸³ This meant that, before every meeting of the Senate, the debate’s range was limited by the Collegio, a smaller council charged with setting the agenda. The importance of this norm cannot be exaggerated, and I shall return to it in the next section.⁸⁴ The Collegio determined the object of debates, which it then dominated thanks to detailed norms regulating the speakers’ precedence. In Sanudo’s words, senators acceeded the speaker’s bench ‘gradatim’, not so much ‘by step’ as ‘by precedence’, according to their rank (‘gradus’).⁸⁵ First, the Collegio made a proposal and its members, known as savi, spoke in its favour in order of seniority. Then it was the turn of savi speaking against the proposal, also in order of seniority. Only afterwards did the other senators have the right to speak. The savi had the right to respond to any criticism, and no vote was to be taken before the savi were satisfied that they had sufficently spoken. Thus, the savi, who as we shall see included Venice’s most powerful men, controlled the conduct of communication in the Senate. The following example, taken from rare records of an actual debate, shows the intended effects of the procedural hierarchy. In November 1610, senators were called to decide whether to move the quarantine of fleets from Venice to Spalato. First the savi who put forward the proposal spoke in its favour. Then Nicolò Donà, the brother of the doge, though no savio himself, spoke against it. The reply came from Ottaviano Bon, one of the proposing savi, but Donà again objected to the reply. At this point, seeing that such an influential opposition had to be countered appropriately, Antonio Priuli (he too a savio, a Procurator of St Mark as well as a future doge), spoke conclusively in favour of the proposal, which passed. No room was made in the debate for the younger savi agli ordini, in spite of the fact that they were supposed to be in charge of maritime matters.⁸⁶ ⁸² Antonio Priuli replying to Nicolò Donà, BMV, Cod. Ital. VII.2507 (12186), c. 35v, see below, n. 86. ⁸³ Parti of the Ten, dated 20.11.1507, in ASV, CL, b. 348, c. 549; also, a law of 1659, quoted in Besta 1899: 225. ⁸⁴ On procedures in the Senate, see Maranini 1931: 226–47, and Besta 1899: 210–14. ⁸⁵ Sanudo 1980: 101–2. The treatises mentioned in the previous section confirm this procedure, e.g. Frangipane 1619: 8; Canini 1619: 3. ⁸⁶ Information reconstructed on the basis of the 1609 anonymous diary of Tommaso Contarini, in BMV, Cod. Ital. VII.2507 (12186), cc. 34v –35v (the author’s identity can be established

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In other words, as is often the case, who spoke mattered more than what they said—what is elsewhere an unspoken social assumption, was in the Senate a legally binding procedure. The spatial disposition of debating in both the Great Council and the Senate reinforced this sense of hierarchy, as special places were assigned to certain categories to mirror their authority—as Richard Sennett reminded us, in considering civic interaction it is wrong to separate the ideal of speech from its physicality.⁸⁷ There was no fixed seating for the majority of patricians, because they were nominally equal. However, a number of important officers (including Council of Ten and Collegio members) sat in a higher position.⁸⁸ This arrangement symbolized the greater authority of some who, unlike the others, did not have to move to the renga in order to address their peers. Such arrangements tended to limit the freedom of the majority of senators. Thus in 1715 the Council of Ten repealed a law it had passed in 1604 forcing senators to move to the renga even when they wished to make short ‘suggerimenti’ (which until then they could make from their seats); the Ten admitted that this law discouraged senators from speaking.⁸⁹ Time combined with space to favour the inner core’s influence. Anyone who has glanced at the paperwork produced during Senate meetings may reasonably wonder at the amount of business on a senator’s agenda. The Senate’s gatherings could last a very long time, although the audience seemed to have the custom of interrupting the speaker with loud noises whenever a speech became too long,.⁹⁰ As Sanudo wrote in 1493, ‘most of the times, when the matter is important for the state, senators remain [in the Senate] almost all night long, because many wish to speak, so that candles are lit, and only the most elderly are excused and go home’.⁹¹ When kept waiting for a reply in 1495, the French ambassador lamented that conducting negotiations with the Republic was always a lengthy affair, because, he said, ‘so many old men cannot find an agreement in little time’.⁹² As in modern parliamentary filibustering, debating procedures gave savi the power to obstruct the discussion of certain business by proposing a large number of affairs for deliberation, or by speaking at great length so as to steal time from possible opponents. Girolamo Priuli once confessed himself ‘dazed at the quantity of matters’ in a long session of five hours.⁹³ through a personal reference c. 34v). Nicolò Donà, brother of Leonardo, was considered an expert in maritime matters (see DBI, s.v.). The parte was passed on 7.12.1609, with a majority of 129 out of 158, see ASV, Sen., Mar, r. 69, cc. 24–5. ⁸⁷ Sennett 1994: cf. 65–6. ⁸⁸ Sanudo 1980: 147–8. Cf. Besta 1899: 198–203, Maranini 1931: 231, 235, and Cozzi 1986: 106. ⁸⁹ Parti of the Ten dated 28.6.1604 and 7.6.1715, in ASV, CL, b. 348, cc. 668 and 734. ⁹⁰ Maranini 1931: 249–50. There was no time limit to Senate gatherings; the Great Council adjourned at sunset. ⁹¹ Sanudo 1980: 102. ⁹² Commynes 1901–3, v. 2: 217. ⁹³ Quoted in Besta 1899: 210n., cf. 223.

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Given these arrangements, it was almost impossible to voice discord or inform a substantial alternative to the proposed line in the Senate or, to an even lesser extent, in the Great Council. Opposition could only take shape in a negative, and silent way, with the ‘muted’ act of voting against.⁹⁴ Thus, the constitution enabled speakers from the inner core of the Collegio to turn the regulations protecting freedom of speech right against the freedom of their lesser colleagues.

1 . 3 COMUNICAZIONE B E T W E E N C O U N C I L S Beyond the fact that decisions were taken in deliberative councils, a further way in which communication mattered in Venice’s political structure had to do with the number of such councils and other offices. A certain amount of information continually flowed between them. Specific government bodies collected specific kinds of information, in response to which others elaborated policy proposals, which they would in turn bring to others for voting. As a general rule, all large assemblies included smaller bodies which processed data to make proposals for discussion. The Great Council had the Signoria, which put forward laws for approval, and the Senate, which selected some of the candidates for elections. As we have seen, the Senate had the Collegio; and the Collegio, the Consulta, while the Council of Ten had its Heads (as did the Forty). The communication between constitutional bodies was a specific aspect of government business which contemporaries described with the name comunicazione. In general, the term indicated the disclosure of knowledge to people who were not initially supposed to receive it and who were henceforward supposed to preserve secrecy.⁹⁵ More specifically, it indicated the transfer of data from the Ten to the Collegio and then, if need be, to the Senate. As a result, a continuous and independent series of Comunicate files was constituted running from 1582 to 1796. That this series is in the Collegio’s archive is a sign of the latter’s key role in screening and redistributing information (something previously unnoticed, because the series was erroneously attributed to the Senate).⁹⁶ The control over information and proposal making was not just necessary for the management of business in large assemblies. It also gave smaller councils—dominated as we shall see by a core of powerful patricians—the power to curb the potential for disruption in larger ones. Thus, the notion of communication provides a valid criteria for reassessing Venice’s constitutional structure. This ⁹⁴ Cf. Finlay 1980: 63, 67–8. ⁹⁵ By extension, it also included the lawful revelation of information to outsiders, see below, p. 180. ⁹⁶ ASV, Collegio, Communicate, attributed to the Senate for example in the English CSPVen and in Baschet 1870: 367–9; cf. Tiepolo 1994: 891.

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is traditionally visualized as a pyramid, with sovereignty residing at the bottom, in the Great Council which elected the members of the other councils, most executive magistracies, and, notably, the doge.⁹⁷ When we move from nominal authority to control over comunicazione, however, the pyramid must be turned on its head. The flow of information proceeded from the Ten to the Collegio to the other councils, diminishing as it trickled down from the smaller to the larger ones, and rarely ever reaching the Great Council (at least lawfully, since much information circulated against the government’s prescriptions, as the next chapter will show). Similarly, access to debating gave patricians more power than the prerogatives to which their office entitled them. The example of the doge is revealing. Contemporaries and historians alike have found it hard to pinpoint the extent of his power.⁹⁸ The nominal head of the state but severely confined in his every movement and choice, the doge derived an undeniable influence over policy making from his unique right to make proposals and deliver speeches in all assemblies and to do so with all the trappings of authority. As a contemporary remarked, the doge’s power could be great, should he have been ‘bel parlatore’.⁹⁹ Freedom of speech, which was in theory the prerogative of all patricians, was on the whole reserved to the smaller assemblies, where few or no rules regulated debates. In turn, the smallest of all assemblies, the Collegio and the Ten, were called to control debating in the larger ones—it was the Ten which formulated most of the procedural laws analysed in this and the previous section.¹⁰⁰

Retrieving and guarding information: Council of Ten and Inquisitors of State While debate was primarily a feature of the Senate, the retrieval of sensitive political information was the prerogative of the Council of Ten. Originally established in the aftermath of Baiamonte Tiepolo’s famous conspiracy of 1310, the Ten was the organ in charge of the state’s security. As Gaetano Cozzi showed, the Ten’s power was an inextricable mixture of judicial and political prerogatives developed over the course of centuries, occasionally in competition with the Senate (for example in difficult international circumstances, as during the war on Cyprus in the 1570s, when the Ten went as far as conducting a separate foreign policy). ¹⁰¹ Crucially, much of the Ten’s power derived from their control over the Republic’s information machinery both in Venice and on the mainland: ⁹⁷ Cf. Maranini 1931: table pp. nn.; Lane 1973: 96 and 429; and Finlay 1980: 39. ⁹⁸ Brunetti 1917; Maranini 1927: 172–206 and 1931: 273–96; and Finlay 1980: 109–24. ⁹⁹ Discorso a Monsignor d’Elci: 213. ¹⁰⁰ I found only one law restricting Collegio debates, passed by Ten on 28.12.1498; ASV, CL, b. 137, c. 375. ¹⁰¹ Cozzi 1973, 1981, 1982, and 1989. The Ten’s sphere of action included both home and foreign politics, as reflected in the multiple divisions of their records; cf. Cozzi 1992: 175–82.

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Information and Communication in Venice

from the appointment of external legal counsellors, to the control of legitimate claims to patricians’ status (alongside the Avogaria), to the supervision of the archive.¹⁰² The Ten also conducted special trials with a specially inquisitive and secretive legal procedure (rito), and from 1624 prosecuted all crimes involving other patricians and their private lives. As a result, there was little they could not find out.¹⁰³ In 1539, at a charged political time when some patricians tried to enhance the government’s oligarchic nature, the Ten created a special tribunal of Inquisitors of State, They were chosen from amongst the Ten and are best understood as one of their branches.¹⁰⁴ The term ‘inquisitors’ refers to a medieval judicial tradition shared by both Church and state including the authority to start investigations ex officio, to investigate and then try the accused secretly, making guilt easier to prove and evidence less open to discussion. The parallel with the Roman Congregation of the Inquisition, founded only three years later, is striking.¹⁰⁵ In Venice, the Inquisitors’ remit was spelled out by their initial title as ‘inquisitors on the disclosers of secrets’ or simply, ‘inquisitors on secrets’. As we shall see in the next chapter, by extension, they came to supervise any instance of political communication outside government, which by definition raised suspicions as a potential threat of conspiracy. Thus, while the activities of the Ten and the Inquisitors took place under the strictest cover of secrecy, nothing could in principle be kept secret to them. The Ten, defenders of the oligarchy’s collective security, became the guardians of the inner core’s power over the rest of the patriciate. This led to occasional clashes with other assemblies, as in 1582, when the Great Council abolished some of the Ten’s power (indirectly, by refusing to elect a ‘zonta’ of 35 additional members who added power to the already powerful Ten). After that correzione (as the reform was called), conservative oligarchs such as the patriach of Aquileia Francesco Barbaro lamented the passing of an age in which the most important affairs—and notably the negotiations with the Holy See—were ‘buried in the profound secret of the Council of Ten’ rather than discussed in the Senate.¹⁰⁶ Yet even after 1582, the Great Council left it to the Ten to oversee those subjects considered ‘secretissimo’ before deciding whether to bring them to the Senate for deliberation.¹⁰⁷ Similarly, by the early seventeenth century, the Inquisitors too ¹⁰² On the archive, see below, section 2.1. ¹⁰³ The Ten were in charge of crimes of sodomy, Davidson 1994. ¹⁰⁴ On the Inquisitors of State, see Preto 1994a: 55–74, and cf. the wording of the founding decrees in Romanin 1857–61, v. 6: 122–3. On the attempted oligarchic coup of 1539, see Ventura 1976: xlix–li. ¹⁰⁵ In addition other inquisitori were charged with overseeing disputed jurisdictional areas, or with investigating allegations of corruption amongst officials both in Venice and on the Mainland—but none had the same strength as the Inquisitors of State. ¹⁰⁶ Trebbi 1984: 343n. Sarpi unmasked Barbaro’s position as an attempt to maintain supremacy thanks to the Republic’s refusal to take public position, Sarpi 1985: 219–20 ¹⁰⁷ Cf. Stella 1958a and Lowry 1971.

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extended their functions from prosecution to politics. For example, they began issuing official commissions in their own name, something which would have been unthinkable earlier.¹⁰⁸ Finally, these two bodies’ control over information extended to the collection of secret denunciations and, as shall be seen in the next chapter, to the supervision of an expanding system of intelligence and counter-intelligence.¹⁰⁹ The Senate, the Ten, and the Inquisitors were all in direct and continuous correspondence with government representatives outside Venice (whether ambassadors abroad or governors of subject territories), but they received different information. Each representative wrote not one, but three series of dispatches: one to the Senate (known as ‘lettere pubbliche’); and the others to the smaller bodies.¹¹⁰ It is difficult to distinguish clearly between the subjects of the Ten’s and Inquisitors’ correspondences, but they clearly differed from that of the Senate. As I have found no explicit legislation, the following are not absolute rules.¹¹¹ The Inquisitors dealt with matters concerning disclosures, while the Ten worked on the prevention of conspiracies and on ‘delicate’ political affairs, such as those involving important foreign figures (for example requests of favours, which it was thought appropriate not to reveal to the Senate). The Inquisitors passed some of their letters to the Heads of the Ten, who then took on themselves the related affair (or vice versa). For example, when in late 1607 the ambassador in France wrote to the Inquisitors of State with intelligence concerning an alleged conspiracy against Venice, the Inquisitors passed his letter to the Heads, who then replied to the ambassador. Yet the ambassador kept writing to the Inquisitors. (And the entire set of information was only communicated to the Collegio months later.)¹¹² At times ambassadors were themselves unsure about the body to which they should write, and left it to one or the other to decide.¹¹³ Thus, between them, the Ten and the Inquisitors gathered a vast body of information which it was then their duty to guard and their right to keep for themselves—they had no need to pass information onto the Senate unless they needed the latter’s agreement for further action. When they did pass some ¹⁰⁸ See for example the commission to Roberto Lio for his mission to the Duke of Mantua, dated 18.7.1621, in ASV, IS, b. 157, cc. nn. ¹⁰⁹ ASV, CCX, Raccordi e denunzie (starting in 1603); cf. Preto 2003. On intelligence, see below, section 2.4. ¹¹⁰ On dispatches to the Senate (formally addressed to the Doge), see the introduction to Morozzo della Rocca 1959 and Carbone 1974. The other dispatches are kept in the Ten’s and Inquisitors’s fondi (CCX, Dispacci, and IS). ¹¹¹ Having consulted in detail all the dispatches to the Ten and the Inquisitors of State in the early seventeenth century, I found no obvious rule. The problem is further complicated by the fact that many of the dispatches addressed to one body are now kept in the files of the other. ¹¹² ASV, IS, b. 436, cc. nn.; Coll., Comunicate del CX, f. 3; CX, Parti segrete, r. 15, and f. 29. ¹¹³ e.g., dispatch of the ambassador in Spain to the State Inquisitors, in ASV, IS, b. 483, cc. nn. (16.11.1610).

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information, they were likely to censor it (something which it is possible to discover today by juxtaposing the Council of Ten’s records with the censored documents passed to Collegio and Senate, each preserved in a different archive). Sometimes, this was a means of covering the source of intelligence, as it may have been when, in 1618, a Venetian commander wrote to the Ten about his informants in the enemy camp at Gradisca. The Ten had the dispatch especially copied for communication to the Senate, but all the informants’ names were substituted by dissembling definitions: thus Baron Wallenstein became ‘an important figure, of the greatest influence with Ferdinand’, and the commoner Nadal Obizzi, ‘sogetto confidente’.¹¹⁴ At other times the Ten made no communication at all, because they feared the Senate’s propensity to leaks. Such is the case of a piece of confidential information the Ten received from the ambassador in Savoy just before the declaration of war against the Habsburgs in 1615, which they decided to hide from the Senate given ‘the damage which publication would cause’.¹¹⁵ This phrase points to the difference between comunicazione, controlled and only meant for a limited public, and pubblicazione, potentially boundless and likely to escape the control of the government bodies originating it. It is clear that, so long as the choice was open, the Venetian government was always in favour of the former over the latter. As we shall see, in 1606–7 the government similarly tried to maintain the controversy with the pope within the limited boundaries of comunicazione, and was only forced to defend itself publicly because the interdict’s promulgation brought the confrontation into the public domain. Selective comunicazione could be put to political use as a means of internal propaganda, not just in order to minimize contentious matters but also to pressurize the Senate in particular ways by disclosing shocking pieces of information. For example, at a time of renewed constitutional crisis in 1628, when a majority in the Senate headed by Renier Zen was trying to curb the Ten’s prerogatives, the latter communicated to the Senate various anonymous letters as evidence of impending riots and sedition in mainland cities and in Venice. Interestingly, this time the Ten did not let the Collegio decide whether or not to communicate the matter to the Senate, but ordered to do so at once. As a result of this ‘strategy of tension’, even Nicolò Contarini—who initially sided with Zen—spoke in favour of the Ten. As a contemporary commentator reported, he ‘exaggerated the Republic’s difficulties, so that the Great Council stopped in its excessive reforming attempt of the Ten’.¹¹⁶ Thus, Venice’s wars of words started inside the government itself. ¹¹⁴ The original dispatch dated 29.1.1618 is in ASV, CX, Parti segrete, f. 32, cc. nn.; the censored comunicazione (dated 1.2.1618), in ASV, Coll., Comunicate del CX, f. 8, cc. 288–91. On the word confidente, cf. below, p. 74. ¹¹⁵ Dispatch to the ambassador in Savoy, dated 20.7.1615, in ASV, CX, Parti segrete, r. 15, c. 172. ¹¹⁶ Cozzi 1958: 276; cf. Cozzi 1992: 180–1.

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Managing information: the Collegio Whenever the Ten or the Inquisitors of State wished to pass information to the Senate, they had to do so through the Collegio, leaving it to decide whether or not to pass the information, and when to do so (only occasionally did they request the Collegio not to inform the Senate). Collegio members screened all the information which eventually reached the Senate; they read and summarized the Senate’s correspondence, and also drafted the replies which senators were then asked to approve.¹¹⁷ They could stop all information originally meant for the Senate, or even reverse the order of communication, passing information first sent to the Senate to the Ten or to the Inquisitors instead. For example, a dispatch addressed by an ambassador to the Senate relating to his counter-intelligence in Spain, although opened by the Collegio, is in the Inquisitors’ file with a note scribbled by a secretary of the Collegio explaining that ‘this letter was read only in the Collegio and by its order handed over to the Inquisitors of State, to whose authority it properly belongs’.¹¹⁸ Thus, the Collegio was the central mechanism in the transmission of information inside the political system. It included the Signoria (the doge and his six counsellors, all elected by the Great Council), and a Consulta of 16 savi (‘wise men’, senators elected by the Senate), who divided into subgroups (known as mani) to oversee all sorts of affairs which the Collegio then brought to the Senate for approval.¹¹⁹ They made it possible for the Senate to process business which would otherwise have been unmanageable, and unsurprisingly, the Collegio was a busy council, the sole one in Venice to meet daily (apart from Mondays).¹²⁰ The Collegio was also the body in charge of dealing with foreign diplomats as well as representatives from the subject territories, and it collected precise records of all their audiences.¹²¹ It was to the Collegio that governmental envoys reported after their return and ambassadors delivered their famous relazioni, and the copies are still preserved in the Collegio’s archive.¹²² Thus, we can consider the Collegio as the Republic’s mouthpiece, ‘the only prince that foreign representatives encounter’, as a nuncio’s secretary wrote in 1646.¹²³ It was the most important ¹¹⁷ All letters to the Senate were available to be read in full whenever it was felt necessary (thus in 1610 Alvise Venier enjoined his colleagues to read a recent dispatch from France before taking a decision on the Collegio’s proposal, BMV, Cod. Ital. VII.1908 (9045), cc. 124v-140, c. 126v). ¹¹⁸ Dispatch dated 6.6.1611, in ASV, IS, b. 483, cc. nn. The Inquisitors reprimanded the ambassador for writing to the Senate concerning intelligence (see Priuli’s reply of 28.8.1611, ibid.). ¹¹⁹ Besta 1899: 177–94, Maranini 1931: 325–44, and Cozzi 1986: 109–10. ¹²⁰ Cf. the description in Sanudo 1980: 96. ¹²¹ ASV, Coll., Esposizioni, divided in Roma (for audiences of the nuncio or otherwise relating to Rome) and Principi (for all other ambassadors). ¹²² ASV, Coll., Relazioni; only few bear the manuscript annotation ‘recitata al Senato’. Relazioni’s mistaken attributions to the Senate date back to the classic editions Albéri 1839–63 and Barozzi and Berchet 1856–78. More on relazioni in section 2.2 below. ¹²³ Discorso a Monsignor d’Elci: 213.

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element in official communication and, as is to be expected in a government preoccupied with communication, strict rules regulated audiences. While kings elsewhere stated their mind in personal audiences, the patriciate had to express its collective will with one voice. In particular, no one could interrupt the doge, but the latter was not allowed to improvise beyond the most general terms; instead he would assure foreign ambassadors that the Collegio would prepare a reply.¹²⁴ Just as orderly silence was meant to impress foreigners watching the Great Council, so the Collegio was designed as Venice’s apotheosis, further reinforced by the allegorical paintings on its walls, representing prudence and harmony. Foreign diplomats were advised to behave there ‘as if they were in the presence of a great king’.¹²⁵ After the ambassadors’ audiences the Collegio reported to the Senate, which voted on the appropriate responses. Ambassadors therefore described the former as the antechamber to the latter (which it physically was, being the room next to the Senate, opening onto it through a door), or, more imaginatively, as ‘the stomach of the Republic, where all things are first digested’.¹²⁶ Nominally, the Collegio had little authority of its own. By law, it could take no decision involving expenditures of more than 25 ducats.¹²⁷ However, it derived unparallelled indirect power from the constitutional mechanism determining that the Senate could vote no proposition which had not previously been discussed in the Collegio.¹²⁸ This mechanism was crucial in avoiding conflict, as contentious issues would normally be resolved into agreed compromises before reaching a large constituency. Once more, regulated communication was essential to the balance of the constitution. As Contarini affirmed, the Collegio’s function was to moderate the potential for discord in the Senate: if all the senators could make their proposals, he argued, there would be ‘always the greatest troubles’ (grandissimi rumori).¹²⁹ In 1578, when a jurisdictional encroachment regarding a prelate’s prosecution was about to lead to open confrontation with Rome, the patricians who favoured the Holy See, and who dominated the Collegio, managed to prevent the formation of an antipapal consensus by framing the proposal in such terms that the Senate could only agree. The parallels with the 1606 Interdict are many, and it is likely that, had the Collegio been similarly compact then, things would have turned out differently. In 1578 communication remained in the smaller councils, whereas in 1606 the Interdict’s proclamation swept away its normal mechanisms and made the Senate’s intervention necessary. In 1578 Leonardo Donà—later the Interdict’s doge—realized this when he warned the nuncio that ‘by the love of God, one ought to beware of [excommunication and interdict], because the effects would be such that those who cause them would have reason to regret them’.¹³⁰ ¹²⁴ ¹²⁵ ¹²⁷ ¹²⁸ ¹²⁹

Besta 1899: 190 (law of 1577) and Queller 1977: 70–1 (law of 1485); cf. Mallett 1994. Thesoro politico 1593: 310. ¹²⁶ Wotton 1907, v. 1: 53; cf. Amelot 1676: 7. Parte of the Great Council dated 25.10.1441, in ASV, CL, b. 137, c. 143. Parte dated 8.11.1431, in ASV, CL, b. 137, c. 165; cf. Maranini 1931: 348–9. Contarini 1591: 53. ¹³⁰ The quotations in Stella 1964: 27 and 25.

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The Collegio’s control over communication minimized the Senate’s freedom to formulate an autonomous line, because it presented the latter with an already agreed policy, or with at most two contrasting proposals (and even then, as seen above, the savi dominated discussion).¹³¹ In a speech probably delivered in 1610, senator Alvise Venier complained that it was hard to speak out against the proposal of the savi, who secured their victories by formulating proposals very late. In this way senators had no information about the matters at hand and no time to formulate alternative policies. Consequently, Venier invoked a law allowing senators to be informed well in advance of the proposals to be made.¹³² There is no evidence that his request was granted. In turn, this explains why it is relatively rare to find a proposal sent to the Senate and rejected, unless the Collegio was itself divided. As the nuncio was told by his secretary in 1646, favour in the Collegio brought command of the Senate, because the former passed the latter’s proposals five times out of six.¹³³ As a result of the Collegio’s power, the most ambitious politicians consistently sought election to the office of savio. This is revealed by studying the identity of those elected savi di consiglio (or savi grandi), the most prestigious and powerful of the Consulta’s three subgroups, dressed in different robes and, unlike the others, carrying the right to propose motions to the Senate concerning all sorts of affairs.¹³⁴ A statistical analysis of those elected to this position over a chronological sample of 13 years (1606–18) shows that the office was monopolized by a very small group of patricians.¹³⁵ Over this period, 213 different elections were made, divided amongst a group of 62 patricians.¹³⁶ In theory, then, everyone had the chance of being elected three or four times; but in practice Table 1.1 shows Table 1.1. Elections to the post of savio di consiglio, 1606–1618. Number of times elected

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

Total

Number of patricians elected

21

16

4

4

3

2

4

1

2

4

1

62

Total

21

32

12

16

15

12

28

8

18

40

11

213

Subtotals (times/patricians)

65/41

79/12

69/7

213/62

¹³¹ See above, pp. 30–1. ¹³² Draft speech in BMV, Cod. Ital. VII.1908 (9045), c. 124v, see above n. 117. ¹³³ Discorso a Monsignor d’Elci: 212. ¹³⁴ Cf. the descriptions in Sanudo 1980: 93 and Vecellio 1598: 80. ¹³⁵ I wish to thank Dott. Vittorio Mandelli for generously providing me with this list, which he has reconstructed from the records of elections in ASV, Segretario alle voci, Senato, rr. 1–5 and from the consegi in MCV. I began with the first election of 1606, and ended with the last of 1618. For a similar statistical attempt on both Collegio, Signoria, and Council of Ten, see P. Grendler 1990. ¹³⁶ Elections were held four times a year, for three savi everytime. They were to serve for six months, thus coinciding with three colleagues for the first half of their term, and three different ones for the second half. Savi often changed mid-term, which explains the high number of elections.

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that seven patricians were elected between nine and eleven times each, while the majority were elected less than three times. This meant that a restricted group of politicians was in the almost permanent position of proposing their will to the Senate.¹³⁷ Venetian patricians were aware that, if they wished to see their ideas approved (or at least discussed) in the Senate, it was vital to be a member of the Collegio.¹³⁸ For this reason, because one could not be elected to the same position twice in a row, patricians were prepared to downgrade to the inferior charge of savi di terraferma.¹³⁹ Thus the Collegio was the means of the inner core’s domination over the rest of the political community. Political communication, which was nominally the prerogative of all patricians, really was restricted to a small group amongst them. 1.4 SECRECY AND THE MYTH OF VENICE In the late summer of 1607, the Council of Ten caught wind of a testament in which a recently deceased nobleman stipulated that his daughter would forfeit her inheritance unless she married a patrician ‘di casa nuova’. The distinction between ‘old’ and ‘new’ lineages (admitted into the patriciate respectively, before and after the formal closing of 1297), had been in use for centuries. But what was common in informal language was unacceptable to the government. The Ten were appalled and condemned these words as not only ‘unwise’ but also ‘seditious’. They ordered a secretary to fetch the testament from the notary and erase those words ‘as if they had never been written’, because ‘this unheard-of distinction cannot be tolerated, and must be forever cancelled from everyone’s mind’. Their intransigence went even further, and they recommended that no copy of their own decision be seen outside their council.¹⁴⁰ This is a striking measure, a government body seizing a private document to manipulate the will of a deceased man and then wishing to leave no trace of the words it condemned even in its own records. On the one hand, it shows the power of the authorities. On the other, however, it reveals the central problem at the heart of the ruling class as well as the ultimate purpose of communication control. Because of their number—with some 2,000 men all competing for promotion and influence—the patriciate was naturally divided in all sorts of ways ¹³⁷ The savio elected eleven times was Girolamo Giustinian (see above, n. 79); those elected ten times: Nicolò Donà, Andrea Morosini, Agostino Nani, Antonio Priuli (three of them procurators, and two future doges). ¹³⁸ The saviato (Consiglio and Terraferma, but not Ordini) also gave the right to join the Senate for a year after the elapsing of the office; see Sanudo 1980: 93–4. ¹³⁹ During the Interdict, similar actions raised several eyebrows, cf. a dispatch by the ambassador of Savoy in de Magistris 1906: 284; cf. also the Mantuan ambassador in Putelli 1911, 22: 77. On officeholders’ periods of ineligibility, cf. P. Grendler 1990: 46. ¹⁴⁰ Parte of 20.9.1607, in ASV, CX, Deliberazioni segrete Roma, r. 4, cc. 65r –v.

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around lineages, personal sympathies, wealth and economic interests, patronage and kin ties, as well as ideological tendencies. The fact that the ideal was not consistent with reality explains why the control of language was attempted with such desperate force. More generally, hiding divisions was the ultimate purpose of the secretiveness for which the Venetian government was so renowned. Foreign diplomats remarked time and again about this. In the 1490s Philippe de Commynes wrote that ‘no other people in the world are as suspicious and keep their councils so secret’.¹⁴¹ Thirty years later, an exasperated papal nuncio commented that it was ‘easier to obtain a secret from heaven than from them’.¹⁴² In practice, however, as the next chapter shows in greater detail, a large governing class made disclosures an everyday fact, and this was why, ultimately, such governnment magistrates as the Inquisitors of State constantly guarded the preservation of secrecy.¹⁴³ The point of the government’s insistence on secrecy was not just functional but also symbolic: to maintain a degree of confidentiality over sensitive business, but also to project an image of harmony over a reality of disagreement. This allowed the remarkable achievement that a government unique for its large power sharing and complex deliberative process was renowned above all for its secrecy and harmony. Most historians have dismissed examples of governmental secrecy, particularly the Council of Ten’s special rito, as signs of Venice’s oligarchic decline.¹⁴⁴ But secrecy was in fact inherent in Venice’s republican ideology. The manipulation of communication helped secure harmony in the ruling councils. More importantly, it made disagreement unspeakable, in the hope of cancelling it from official and private language and so of erasing it from people’s mind—as if it had never existed. Accordingly, many, even amongst those who championed broad power sharing inside the patriciate, praised the arrangements limiting debating and information sharing. Marin Sanudo, who consistently spoke for patrician equality and freedom of speech inside the councils, nonetheless also repeatedly exalted secrecy in his description of the constitution. In particular, when it came to hiding the flaws of the highest authorities, he too favoured hiding information from as large an assembly as the Great Council. Otherwise, he wrote in 1501, ‘everybody would be made aware of the entire affair, including those involved in material crafts, to the shame of the State.’¹⁴⁵ To him, secrecy was a matter of collective honour. Similarly, during the 1582 correzione which diminished the Council of Ten’s prerogatives, even those in favour of reform favoured secrecy. No less than ¹⁴¹ Commynes 1901–3, v. 2:225. ¹⁴² Quoted above, p. 4, and cf. Preto 1994a: 55–74. ¹⁴³ See above, p. 34. ¹⁴⁴ See the works quoted above, n. 101; an assessment of the rito’s working in practice in Povolo 1997. ¹⁴⁵ Quoted in Cozzi 1992: 112, and cf. Sanudo 1980: 99, 101, 145. On Sanudo’s political opinions see Cozzi 1968 and Finlay 1980: 251–80.

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Leonardo Donà, a prominent leader of the reform movement, lamented that open talk of dissensions damaged the Republic’s policies and reputation.¹⁴⁶ Thus he favoured both power-sharing amongst government councils and secrecy outside the government. The Ten were initially stripped of control over the secret chancery, but eventually regained it; and the power of the Inquisitors of State was not questioned.¹⁴⁷ In fact, the real winner in 1582 was neither the Senate nor the Great Council, but the Collegio. While the Ten were compelled to communicate more matters to the Collegio, the latter retained the right to keep those matters to itself, without informing the Senate—a move which was at the origin of the archival series of comunicate discussed above.¹⁴⁸ Constitutional laws and literature alike confirm that, far from being opposed, secrecy and republican liberty converged in the patricians’ minds. A law confirming the power of the Inquisitors of State barely a year after the 1582 correzione, affirmed that ‘buon governo’ required ‘secretezza’.¹⁴⁹ The same language recurred in Gasparo Contarini’ De Magistratibus, a pillar of Venice’s self-perceived republican myth written in the 1520s. There, knowledge is at once a sign of status, a mark of office, and an instrument of authority.¹⁵⁰ The treatise ends with a revealing variation on the classical metaphor of the body politic, describing the body’s direction as stemming not from head or heart (as was customary), but from the eyes. In the same manner as the human body only sees through the eyes, so in the Republic, only patricians can see the affairs pertaining to government. Not for nothing are they called the ‘eyes of the city’.¹⁵¹ Venetian lawmakers thought that the skill which gave power was sight, because it was through knowledge that opinions were formed and decisions taken. But they also knew that knowledge must be restricted. Mixing an egalitarian notion of the patriciate with support for an oligarchical distribution of power within it, Contarini stressed that knowledge of secrets pertained to the Council of Ten.¹⁵² It was on this basis that other patricians applied the metaphor of the eyes not to the entire patriciate but to the Council of Ten alone.¹⁵³ Nearly a century later, writing in a different literary genre and for a different audience, Traiano Boccalini firmly placed secrecy at the heart of the myth of Venice. His Ragguagli include a dispute in Parnassus over the reasons for Venice’s ¹⁴⁶ See his letters in Brunetti 1933: esp. 133–7. ¹⁴⁷ Trebbi 1980: 117; see also below, section 2.1. ¹⁴⁸ Cf. Besta 1899: 210–11. Differing accounts of this reform’s significance in Cozzi 1958: 2–51, Stella 1958a, and Lowry 1971. On the comunicate, see above, p. 32. ¹⁴⁹ Law of 19.4.1583, in Romanin 1857–61, v. 6: 130. ¹⁵⁰ For example, he associated knowledge with honour when discussing the condition of the cittadini, excluded from office but admitted to all the records of the Republic, Contarini 1591: 102–3. ¹⁵¹ Contarini 1591: 106. On variations of the body politic metaphor, see Le Goff 1990, Najemy 1995, and Sperling 1999a. ¹⁵² Contarini 1591: 60. On Contarini’s preference for oligarchical authority, see Gleason 1988. ¹⁵³ For example in a famous speech of 1677 by Battista Nani, cf. Cozzi 1995a: 11.

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greatness, presided over by no less than Lady Venetian Liberty herself. The various opinions recapitulated the myth’s various elements as formulated ever since Contarini: constitutional stability; excellence of the city’s site; prudence of the ruling class; harmony between nobility and ordinary citizens; fairness of justice. Yet none of these explanations satisfied Lady Liberty, until a fictional Ermolao Barbaro—a famous Venetian statesman and diplomat as well as a humanist—pointed to secrecy. This at last was the correct answer, she said, because secrecy was vital to good government.¹⁵⁴ Secrecy was tantamount to serenity. The greatest secret of all did not concern the subject matter of council debates, but the fact that there were debates at all. In this way, the government maintained unanimity, if not in the eyes of the wider patrician assemblies, at least of the people outside and of foreign observers. The law prohibited mention of any conflict inside the ruling councils, to divulge what was under discussion or that anything was discussed. Since 1556, for example, papalisti, who left whenever ecclesiastical affairs were discussed, had to swear not to reveal that they had left at all.¹⁵⁵ This prohibition was strengthened at particularly charged times, such as during the Interdict, when it was extended to all those excluded from deliberations for whatever reason, and also forbade other patricians relating that any governmental council had taken any special such precaution.¹⁵⁶ When outside, even the physical behaviour of insiders was supposed to include no sign that there had been a contrast inside: ‘everyone should come out of the Senate happy as if nothing was with them’.¹⁵⁷ At times of particular tension, the public was supposed to ignore even the fact that an assembly met at all. For example during Cambrai, the Senate suspended the ringing of bells summoning senators to the gatherings, lest people grow too anxious at the continuous meetings.¹⁵⁸ In a way, secrecy compensated for the lack of divine right legitimacy. Where decisions are taken through compromise, they must be made to seem principled and unanimous, the result of consensus rather than confrontation. The secretive rituals surrounding the scrutinio ducale, the election of the doge, together with its complicated mechanisms, were meant to shroud the actual politicking leading to the election and thus to turn a contested choice into a representative authority.¹⁵⁹ The same applied (and still applies) to Europe’s only theocracy at the precise moment when it briefly becomes elective during the conclave. In Venice, secrecy was instrumental in projecting as well as maintaining unanimity, an element of the myth as well as a tool maintaining the reality underpinning that myth. The control ¹⁵⁴ Boccalini 1910–48, v. 1: 31; cf. also ibid.: 78–81. ¹⁵⁵ Parte of the Ten dated 28.12.1556, in ASV, CL, b. 14, c. 266; Besta 1899: 107 wrongly dates this law at 1605. ¹⁵⁶ Parte of the CX of 28.11.1605, in Romanin 1857–61, v. 6: 138. ¹⁵⁷ Quoted in Maranini 1931: 248. A similar preoccupation in Philip II’s Spanish monarchy, Parker 1998: 33. ¹⁵⁸ Besta 1899: 198n. ¹⁵⁹ On the ducal election, see Maranini 1927: 184–92 and 1931: 290–1, and Lane 1973: 111.

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of communication allowed a public image of unity to triumph over the sphere of private interests and disagreements. The contrast with Genoa is striking, a republic so dominated by kingroups and factions that private interest dominated all public discourse.¹⁶⁰ There were divisions in Venice too, of course, and we shall see in the next chapter that their leaks continually frustrated the government’s secrecy. However on the whole, factions found it impossible to voice their disagreements with sufficient strength to break the apparent harmony of the system. The control over communication fortified the power of the patriciate over the state. The law not only regulated political communication inside the government, but absolutely prohibited it outside. Government was based on the systematic exclusion of all non-patricians, with the exception of a carefully restricted group of cittadini admitted to public employment as secretaries or clerks, an elite order within Venice’s second order.¹⁶¹ Outside this group, no discussion of politics was to be allowed. Unlike the imperial cities with which some of Venice’s constitutional mechanisms can be compared, Venice made no political room for guilds and their representatives. Scuole grandi and piccole, confraternities and guilds, all performed valued services for the state, from charity to the provision of manpower for the fleet or for civic occasions. But they were denied any possibility of meddling with the administration of either city or state. Special laws barred patricians from joining scuole —so as to prevent any mutual influence—but all secular and religious lay associations were subject to the control of the authorities, and particularly of the Council of Ten.¹⁶² In Venice’s vast celebrative literature, outsiders could read a celebration of their own exclusion as the key to the Republic’s stability, at once a vindication of the aristocracy’s elitism and the sign of its success. The most important authors in that tradition all affirmed that Venice prospered by preventing the populace from laying claim to power, unlike ancient Rome and Renaissance Florence.¹⁶³ The same point was repeated in countless lesser known works. One of them, a Comparison of Republics Ancient and Modern (1627), praised the absence of popular participation as a mark of Venice’s superiority: ‘As heaven is without matter or objects which can oppose resistance, so this republic is without people, and nothing can unsettle its conduct.’¹⁶⁴ The simile made Venice part of the cosmos, superior to earthly affairs, incorruptible, and never-ending. To uphold this idea, it was crucial to prevent outsiders not just from seizing power, but even from laying their eyes on the human beings who happened to hold it. In our society, we consider political secrecy as an aberration. Elsewhere, however, it plays a more complex role. For example, on the basis of her investigation of ¹⁶⁰ Cf. Grendi 1987 and 1993, Burke 1997: 111–23. ¹⁶¹ See below, pp. 50–1. ¹⁶² Pullan 1971: 44. For the background, see ibid.: Part One, and Mackenney 1987: 1–28. ¹⁶³ Contarini 1591: 14, Giannotti 1850: 29–31, Paruta 1852, v. 1: 397, and v. 2: 103, Memmo 1563: 92, 98–106, 121. ¹⁶⁴ Caimo 1627: 186.

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the secret Poro communities of sub-Saharian Africa, the anthropologist Beryl Bellman showed that secrecy can work as social cement.¹⁶⁵ The same could be said of Venice, where secrecy provided group cohesiveness. This is not to say that the manipulation and subtraction of information were commendable. They were meant to disinherit most patricians of their birthright in favour of an inner core and in turn to foster oligarchic rule upon a whole population. What cemented some people’s relations, also built walls which other people could not penetrate. However, rather than engaging in a moral critique of secrecy, the point is to show the ways in which it played an essentially functional role in government and, if anything, the ways in which it occasionally became dysfunctional. Thus, for example, by stubbornly adhering to a policy of censorship, the Republic found it hard to formulate any positive public statement in the face of increasingly aggressive challenges during the crisis of 1606–7. More generally, secrecy was always bound to run into major difficulties, which was why it was sought with such desperate force. The government’s attempt to obliterate all signs of internal dissension reveals an impossible, almost utopian desire: as if silencing disagreements were the same as engendering unity, as if politics could be turned into an ideal world away from earthly divisions. But ultimately, politics cannot be depoliticized. As the next chapter shows, banned by the constitution, conflict was bound to surface in other ways. ¹⁶⁵ Bellman 1984.

2 Political arena In the previous chapter we have seen that secrecy was an overriding principle of Venetian governance. Here we shall see that it may well have been so because, in practice, it was so hard to maintain. The control over political communication could hardly be complete in a ruling class where information was at the disposal of hundreds of patricians, each one surrounded by an often large household, as well as non-patrician servants, clients, and friends. As one patrician put it, secrecy was structurally unrealistic in Venice: ‘the form of our government does not allow for this to be done in secret’.¹ In the early sixteenth century, both Priuli and Sanudo admitted that the secrets of the Senate were well known in Rome.² Breaches of secrecy were a normal feature of the system. Traiano Boccalini’s literary celebration of secrecy should be taken with a pinch of salt, given that he was thought by some to have been active himself as an informer in the same years as he wrote his Ragguagli.³ If secrecy was part of the myth of Venice, by the early seventeenth century it began to be seen as precisely that: a delusion of the past, as a Spanish ambassador put it (and he must have known, since he was regularly updated about the Senate’s secrets.)⁴ Information circulated beyond the institutional boundaries of government into a large and loosely defined political arena of informal interaction between insiders and outsiders. The former included members of the most powerful councils as well as their friends, canvassing support for a particular policy or election. Insiders also included patricians temporarily excluded from councils, who tried to regain power by seizing and manipulating information to which they had no right. Alongside patricians was a host of outsiders, a composite group defying definitions and straddling social boundaries. They included the illegitimate offspring of patricians, noble or rich foreigners, well-connected men of letters and ecclesiastics, as well as shadier and socially humbler figures, professionals of information whom, for lack of a better word, we describe as spies, but whose role was more ubiquitous than this word suggests. They may be compared with today’s ‘chattering classes’. Their common traits consisted not in wealth or status, but ¹ Piero Gritti, referring to the bribing of foreign ministers (1620), in Firpo 1975–96, v. 9: 544. ² Quoted in Besta 1899: 106; cf. Del Torre 1998. ³ Cf. Cozzi 1956a, corrected in Luigi Firpo’s entry in DBI, s.v.; on writers as professional informers, see below, p. 79. ⁴ De Vera 1620: 67; on De Vera’s intelligence activities in Venice, cf. Preto 1994a: 123–8.

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in education and connections, the ability to access, elaborate, and redistribute, reserved information. To the patricians amongst them, politics was a privilege of birth, but to all it was an over-riding, professional or quasi-professional, concern, crucial to fortifying social status or ensuring livelihood. Arguably, all early modern political systems included a political arena alongside government, and thus entailed a contradiction between the principle of exclusion and the practice of inclusion. Insiders could not do without the services of outsiders such as secretaries, scholars, or servants. In Venice, the political arena was particularly important. First, this had to do with both the size of the ruling class and its definition along kin ties. The latter furthered social exclusion but undermined the distinction between public and private. For example, as Stanely Chojnacki has shown, patrician women were excluded by gender from the exercise of government but played a crucial role in providing their male relatives with horizontal bonds to other lineages in the same class.⁵ These bonds cut across the patriciate. Political divisions were certainly less prominent in Venice than in early modern Italy’s other republics, and faction is not a word that is frequently used in analysing the Serenissima’s politics. However, this may well be a consequence of the systematic elision of traces of discord from the records. Although we should not think of close ideological units, let alone of organized parties, there is no doubt that in Venice too personal ambitions interacted with kin ties, personal preferences, and business relations, the amici e parenti who, as Sarpi recognized, divided Venice like the consorterie did other Italian cities.⁶ Secondly, regulated debates could not realistically provide the sole avenue of political discussion. Barred from voicing excessive opposition inside governing councils, patricians handled their disagreements outside them. In Venice politicking enjoyed specially dedicated, extra-constitutional spaces, where council members discussed business, arranged alliances, and planned strategy. This was the world of broglio and ridotti, the former a square just outside the Ducal Palace’s main gates where patricians met daily before or after council sessions, the latter private occasions for more or less select socialization. The broglio hosted, and gave its name to electioneering and canvassing, a crucial moment of the patricians’ political activities. It was regulated by special rules of politeness, the ‘civill and courteous gestures’ which impressed an English traveller in the 1600s.⁷ As one spelled out, the point was to cultivate one’s network, not just to ‘spend the morning there speaking to two others only’.⁸ Ridotto, the Venetian equivalent ⁵ Chojnacki 2000a; more on this below, section 3.4; and cf. Mackenney 1998. ⁶ Pin 1975: 266. The contrasting accounts of political divisions in Venice are Cozzi 1958 (for the ideological opposition of groups), Lowry 1971, and Finlay 1980 (for shifting, mainly interest-driven, alliances). Cf. on Genoa above, Ch. 1, n. 160. ⁷ Coryat 1905, v. 1: 399, and cf. the suggestions for behaviour in Manuzio 1584: 46, and Accademico Imperfetto 1674: 51–7. On the broglio, see Queller 1986: 57–75 and 95–101 (with full references to previous bibliography), Everett and Queller 1993, and Queller and Swietek 1977. ⁸ Accademico Imperfetto 1674: 57.

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of the French salon, was a loose term indicating both an exclusive social occasion and the room hosting it inside private households.⁹ Occasionally they acted as informal foci of competition with formal government. In the 1570s and 1580s, for example, the ridotto in the Morosini palace at San Luca helped in constituting the movement against the Council of Ten which led to the correzione of 1582. Martin Lowry convincingly disputed the interpretation which, beginning with Ranke, insisted on the ridotto’s role in cementing a culturally and politically cohesive opposition.¹⁰ By placing the ridotto in the political arena, however, we can understand its importance in providing an avenue for informal political communication for different viewpoints. Whatever their potential for political association, broglio and ridotti were inescapable elements of political success. A 1623 treatise on patrician education reminded its readers that neglecting the broglio ‘would give the impression of disregarding public affairs’.¹¹ However informally defined, broglio and ridotti were institutions of Venice’s political system, enabling patricians to interact more freely than in the controlled framework of governing councils, and as such they helped to resolve disputes and preserve that system.¹² But, as this chapter shows, they also posed a threat to the system, because they were open to a number of outsiders, commoners as well as foreigners, such as ambassadors and authors. In the Venetian Republic, the political arena was particularly porous and prone to disclosures. Unlike monarchical capitals, Venice had no court. A court would separate the business of insiders from the participation of outsiders, or at least establish degrees of exclusion. A court would have made it possible to contain political communication in well-defined spaces. There, secrets whispered by courtiers may well have echoed powerfully through grand halls, but they would have done so far from undesired ears.¹³ By contrast, in Venice information revealed just outside the Ducal Palace quickly travelled around the entire city.

2 . 1 T H E A RC H I V E ’ S P R E S E RVAT I O N , U S E , A N D D I S PE R S A L The inquiry into the breaches of political secrecy must begin where political secrets were kept. This takes us back to the Ducal Palace, which did not just host governmental activity, but also the archive holding the latter’s records. From ⁹ The contemporary English translation was appropriately inclusive: ‘a home or retiring place. Also a gaming house, an ordinary or tabling house or other place where good company doeth meete. Also a company, a crue assembly of good fellowes met together’, Florio 1611: s.v.; cf. Boerio 1829: s.v. ¹⁰ Lowry 1971, and cf. Trebbi 1993: 77–96. ¹¹ Colluraffi 1623: 201; the same point was made in Manuzio 1584: 49. ¹² Cf. the discussion of a passage from Priuli’s diary in Chambers and Pullan 1992: 77. ¹³ Cf. Ago 1997 and the essays in Signorotto and Visceglia 2002.

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1402, it was known as the Cancelleria secreta, or, quite simply, the Secreta.¹⁴ It was an institution of great importance in the minds of patricians. The Council of Ten described it in mid-fifteenth century as the ‘heart’ of the state (cor status nostri), and in the 1620s a legal counsellor called it a ‘treasure’, to be guarded with the utmost attention.¹⁵ Official laws and printed treatises (including a pioneering De Archiviis, published in 1632) equally described the proper preservation of archives as an element of good government.¹⁶ Venetians pioneered the collection and systematic storing of information, created a ducal chancery as early as the thirteenth century and soon set it apart from the repository of private, notarial records (known as Cancelleria inferiore). The Secreta came under the control of the Ten in the fifteenth century, thereby making the guardian of current political secrets also the guardian of the secrecy of past records. Venetian patricians were required to deposit all their official papers in the state archive before and more systematically than the ministers of monarchies, a sign of the impersonal nature of Venetian governance. Finally, in 1601 the Secreta acquired added importance in the collective image of the ruling class, when its supervisors doubled as official historians, pioneering the use of governmental records in the writing of history.¹⁷ The constitution of the Secreta reveals the government’s desire both to preserve and to use information. However, in spite of all precautions, it was a less secure treasure, and open to more uses, than the government wished. Secrecy failed at the very centre of the political system.

The permeability of the archive Repeated measures show the government’s anxiety over the preservation of the Secreta’s order, especially following the bureaucratic growth of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. As the mass of documentary material grew, correctly storing it became increasingly difficult. In 1518 the Council of Ten was concerned about the number of papers that had gone missing during the wars of the previous years.¹⁸ In 1604 a secretary was put in charge of reordering the files, for a yearly salary of 40 ducats.¹⁹ In December 1612, weeks after the prosecution of very serious disclosures, the Collegio promised a generous reward to two clerks who could bring order to a large quantity of unfiled letters from representatives abroad, which were believed to amount to 75 years worth of documents.²⁰ In ¹⁴ Most of the historiography concerning the constitution of the Secreta dates from the ninteenth century: cf. Baschet 1857 and 1870, Cecchetti 1865 and 1873, R. Brown 1865 and H. Brown 1907; more recently, Trebbi 1980 (summarised in Pozza 1995 and 1997). ¹⁵ Trebbi 1980: 115; Micanzio 1974: 1375. ¹⁶ Cecchetti 1865: 21 and Bonifacio 1632. ¹⁷ Benzoni 1982: xxxiii, cf. Zorzi 1987: 96–7. ¹⁸ Parte dated 30.6.1518, in Romanin 1857–61, v. 6: 120. ¹⁹ ASV, CCX, Notatorio, r. 33, c. 24 (the secretary was Valerio Antelmi). ²⁰ Parte dated 17.12.1612, with attached list of the ‘calendars in progress of the letters sent to ambassadors in foreign courts’, in ASV, CX, Parti segrete, f. 30, cc. nn. For the prosecutions

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the following years the ordering attempts increased to engage a growing number of specially appointed secretaries.²¹ As the newly elected Secreta supervisor reported in 1601, the trouble was that the archive’s disorder facilitated the dispersal of documents.²² Thirty years later, another report complained that the lack or rules (poca regola) in the files’ maintenance enabled thieves to steal without difficulty, to the extent that some of the documents ended up in the most unthinkable places—including the shops of food-sellers, where they were presumably used for wrapping.²³ In the same years, the antiquarian Fortunato Olmo, charged with ordering the archive of the Procurators of St. Mark, marvelled at finding some of the most interesting documents in the ‘rubbish’.²⁴ That similar complaints occurred elsewhere in Italy, is a sign of the difficulties of storage in a society whose graphic obsession led to the amassing of huge quantities of paper.²⁵ It also shows the looseness of the boundaries distinguishing precious from non-precious documents. To prevent dispersal, rigid rules regulated the Secreta’s accessibility. At first it was restricted only to senators, then only to those amongst senators with a certifiable reason for consultation. Copying was subject to strict scrutiny.²⁶ Only the Inquisitors of State had unrestricted access to all archives.²⁷ However, the frequent repetition of these prohibitions indicates that they were often breached. In 1605 the Ten lamented that some patricians took originals out of the Secreta, ‘and those things which they take out never get back there’.²⁸ In 1619, again, they tried to prevent the ‘scandal and danger’ originating from the fact that ‘many dare enter the secret chancery, even those who are not senators, and some who are in fact subjects and foreigners’.²⁹ In parallel, as part of the bureaucratization resulting from fifteenth-century territorial enlargement, the Republic devised a complicated examination process for the selection and advancement of the chancery personnel. In 1478 the Council of Ten restricted its posts to cittadini, a group that was itself, at the time, undergoing a process of definition and separation from the rest of Venetian society. The qualifications for eligibility to public employment were made stricter over the course of the sixteenth century, thereby creating an elite group of families within the citizen order.³⁰ Within that elite, in turn, those working in the Secreta were at the top. In 1589, they were recognized as the apex of the civil service’s hierarchy, of November 1612, see below, pp. 73–4. In the same years, the archive of the Esecutori contro la Bestemmia was in a similar mess, cf. Derosas 1981: 512–13, 515–16. ²¹ See for example the parte of 19.4.1617, in ASV, CX, Parti segrete, r. 16, c. 96v. ²² Report by Andrea Morosini, in Baschet 1870: 170–3. Morosini was elected on 17.9.1601, the first official historian to be given supervision of the Secreta; see Zorzi 1987: 96, 105. ²³ Report dated 1632, in Cecchetti 1865: 21. ²⁴ Pozza 1995: 364; further evidence in Cecchetti 1873: 37–44. ²⁵ Cecchini 1976. ²⁶ Baschet 1870: 181–2; Cecchetti 1865: 25–6. ASV, IS, b. 924, cc. nn., contains a list of the senators who accessed the Secreta in the years 1698–99 with the items they consulted. ²⁷ Romanin 1857–61, v. 6: 133 and 142–4. ²⁸ Cornet 1873, v. 5: 124–6n. ²⁹ Zannini 1993a: 126. ³⁰ Grubb 2000.

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as the Ten’s secretary Antonio Milledonne proudly boasted. In 1633, then, the government explicitly privileged the recruitment of sons of past employees. Thus, having closed on themselves as a caste, patricians also helped their civil servants distinguish themselves from the rest of the populace in the attempt to limit access to governmental business as much as possible.³¹ In a system of quickly rotating offices, secretaries had a particularly important position, with even greater access to information than the patricians themselves. Although exalted in numerous treatises, ‘like the angels closest to God’, as faithful guardians of the government’s secrets, they could prove major sources of disclosures.³² In 1564 Sansovino built on a hallowed tradition in saying ‘secretaries derive their name from secrecy’, but a counter-image also existed on the basis of which a century later a literary-minded anonymous denunciation punned that segretari really ought to have been called palesari from the word for ‘disclosing’.³³ Like the Spain of Philip II and Antonio Peres, Venice too had its spectacular cases of secretaries defecting and selling their masters’ secrets, for example in 1542, when two secretaries of the Ten were hanged for selling information concerning the peace negotiations with the Turks.³⁴ Partly, disclosures were inescapable in a large bureaucracy of 80–100 permanent secretaries; in 1633 the Ten tried to reduce the number of employees.³⁵ Secretaries were the natural object of bribes by all those who wanted information, some of it necessary to the simple running of politics, such as records of elections.³⁶ Lower down in the government’s employment scale, both the guards of the Cinque savi alla mercanzia and the doorkeepers of the Collegio sold reserved information; as early as 1583, the Esecutori alla bestemmia took the keys of their archive away from their guards.³⁷ In parallel with other branches of the executive, the management of the archives was often in the hands of people ready to supplement their income by conniving with outsiders in exchange for information.³⁸ Not for nothing was it ancient custom to choose illiterate men as custodians of the Secreta, lest they copied and sold secret documents (the same measure was also recommended to ambassadors for their own archives). However, neglect for this rule ran so high that it was the subject of jokes—one contemporary ³¹ Trebbi 1980 and 1986a, Neff 1986, and Zannini 1993a. On the parallelism of patrician and cittadino processes of social closure, cf. Chojnacki 1994, 2000b, and Grubb 2000. ³² Sansovino 1564: 1; Contarini equally emphasized the secretaries’ honour (above p. 42). Cf. Nigro 1998. ³³ Sansovino 1564: 1v; the 1672 denunciation is quoted in Barbierato 2003: 723. ³⁴ Preto 1994a: 75–6 ³⁵ Baschet 1870: 184–6. By the late sixteenth century the various employees of the chancery amounted to 80–100 secretaries, although of course fewer were charged with the secreta, Trebbi 1980: 82–3; for 1631 Zannini has a total number of 88, 26 of whom had access to the secret records, Zannini 1993a: 131. ³⁶ Raines 1991 and p. 57 below. ³⁷ Molà 2000: 293 and Derosas 1981: 511, 517–24. On the lower offices in the government’s bureaucracy, see Zannini 1993a: 183–246 and 1996: 449–55. ³⁸ Cf. Derosas 1981, Povolo 1981, Shaw 2004.

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joke went: A custodian caught in the archive scribbling on a piece of paper was challenged ‘So you can write!’, replied ‘No, Your Excellency, I am drawing’.³⁹ Government personnel constituted only one link in a longer chain of people involved in managing reserved documents. At its simplest, the physical transfer of documents by means of couriers endangered secrecy, as Fernand Braudel first showed.⁴⁰ The Venetian government knew the importance of keeping foreign couriers under control and often obtained through them information about competitors.⁴¹ Couriers were after all by definition people who lived between different states, foreigners in the country they served (as a Venetian governor complained).⁴² The postal service necessarily entailed a risk of dispersal. In Venice, the government pioneered the professionalization of postal services and, unlike other governments, tended to make use of the same Compagnia dei corrieri that also served private customers.⁴³ Couriers incurred accidents and ambushes. In 1635 the Compagnia petitioned the government for greater protection, and throughout this period the cases of robbed postal parcels are innumerable.⁴⁴ The robbing of Zorzi Telco, postiglione charged with carrying German letters across the northern territories of the Republic in 1612, is similar to a hundred more. Two men assaulted him in a small village, tied him with a rope, and then opened his parcel, from which they read ‘at leisure’ before leaving him there.⁴⁵ In some cases, ambushes may have been organized by the intelligence services, as the Spanish ambassador, marquis of Bedmar, was reported fearing in 1612.⁴⁶ The use of couriers meant relying on the services of outsiders supposedly barred from political information for the transportation of that information. In 1607 Fausto Verdelli, a man who as we shall see had a lot of experience in the ways and hazards of intelligence, sent a Venetian governor a letter on the safe manner of capturing a Spanish fortress. For us, the most interesting aspect of Verdelli’s message lies in the medium rather than the content. The servant he sent carried a generic letter di complimento, but also, unknowingly, a secret message sewed in his coat by Verdelli. The governor got hold of the message while the servant was asleep, and hid his reply in the same manner.⁴⁷ This example shows ³⁹ Baschet 1870: 176 and Cavalli 1935: 80 on ambassadors. ⁴⁰ Braudel 1949: 310, and cf. Delumeau 1957–59: 37–79. ⁴¹ e.g. in Sardella 1947: 15. ⁴² Quoted in De Zanche 2000: 33. ⁴³ Pozza 1998, Caizzi 1993: 211–62. ⁴⁴ Caizzi 1993: 31–2. Many such cases were reported in this period’s weekly newsletters, e.g. ASVat, SS, Avvisi, b. 3, c. 47v (10.3.1607, courier from Milan); ASV, IS, b. 704, fasc. 3, cc. nn. (1.8.1615, Spanish courier at the border between France and Genoa); ibid. (30.12.1617, courier from Milan); BAV, Urb. Lat. 1086, c. 401 (13.10.1618, courier from Milan). ⁴⁵ Dispatch dated 12.12.1612, in ASV, Coll., Comunicate del CX, f. 5, c. 408. ⁴⁶ Report dated 17.11.1612, in ASV, IS, b. 607, fasc. 3. A few years later the Duke of Savoy was suspected to have organized the robbing in Antibes of the courier from Spain, avviso dated 24.7.1615, in ASV, IS, b. 704, fasc. 3, cc. nn. The Spanish ambassador to Venice in 1607–18 was Alonso de la Cueva, marquis Bedmar from 1614. He recurs frequently in the following pages, always under the latter title; cf. Magdaleno 1976: 157. ⁴⁷ Letter by Marco Bragadin, Provveditore in Terraferma, dated 28.2.1607, in ASV, CX, Parti segrete, f. 29, cc. nn.

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one way in which ordinary people became tangled in the net of the political elite’s exchanges. At other times, however, they no doubt skilfully exploited the material frailty of the system which they were meant to serve. The author of a 1585 encyclopaedia of professions emphasized that couriers ‘are not without fault either’: he described one who, on discovering an important seal amongst the letters in his bag, opened the letter only then to pretend that he had been robbed on the way.⁴⁸ So many were these cases, that in the seventeenth century they gave origin to both political pamphlets pretending to disclose secret documents, and to literary works predating the genre of the epistolary novel, such as Ferrante Pallavicino’s appropriately titled Corriero svaligiato (1641).

The private use of public documents Before becoming the object of historians’ inquiry, archives were tools of government, consulted for the everyday conduct of political affairs. Use, however, was bound to involve dispersal. Time and again, for example, the controversies of the early seventeenth century forced the government to open the Secreta to outside advisors in search of supporting evidence of the Republic’s claims over the Adriatic, the patriarchy of Aquileia, as well as the Interdict.⁴⁹ Not for nothing, in this period, did the Collegio pass special measures for the archive’s ordering, because, as the Secreta’s supervisor pointed out, ordering the files was particularly important ‘especially now given the affairs which we are dealing with’.⁵⁰ The government also then institutionalized the occasional recruiting of legal consultori. They were given special access to the Secreta, a fact extolled as extremely useful by Paolo Sarpi, legal and theological consultore between 1606 and 1623.⁵¹ And yet, his own eminent example shows that, however beneficial, their work undermined the archive’s secrecy. Sarpi had unqualified access to the Secreta, which he knew so well that his biographer Fulgenzio Micanzio wrote that his mind resembled it.⁵² Many historians have taken this as a sign of his complete identification with the state.⁵³ However, Sarpi used the sources he found not only to write on behalf of the Republic, but also for his personal use, to ground his own works, such as the History of the Council of Trent.⁵⁴ He also took many volumes of documents to his convent cell (after his death, they had to be brought back to the Secreta), ⁴⁸ Garzoni 1996: 724–5. Note that couriers often supplemented their income with smuggling, Caizzi 1993: 48. ⁴⁹ Cf. de Vivo 2003. ⁵⁰ Morosini’s report dated 19.4.1617, in ASV, CX, Parti segrete, f. 32, cc. nn., on the basis of which the Ten allocated special funds for the archive’s ordering, ASV, CX, Parti segrete, r. 16, cc. 96v and 126v. ⁵¹ e.g. in Pin 1975: 254; cf. Barzazi 1986. ⁵² Micanzio 1974: 1375. ⁵³ e.g. Frajese 1994: 16–17. ⁵⁴ Several of Sarpi’s files (now in the ASV Cons. in iure series) are full of historical notes drawn from the records of the Secreta, which may contribute to clarifying the controversial problem of

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and he may have shared the knowledge he acquired with friends—as Micanzio commented, conversing with Sarpi was like reading the archive’s documents.⁵⁵ No doubt Sarpi thought he was advancing the Republic’s good, but many in the patriciate disagreed—really, he was furthering his own and his friends’ view of that good. In the same years, another consultore, Claudio Cornelio Frangipane (1553–1643), was repeatedly condemned for subtracting secret material from the Secreta. Eventually, he handed over a long list of official records which he claimed not to have ‘stolen’, but ‘taken out by public order’. Still, he transcribed many in his personal zibaldone diary-cum-common-place-book, thus showing how easy it was to move from the lawful use of secret information to its illicit appropriation.⁵⁶ The new limitations on access to the Secreta issued in 1611, should not only be seen as an attack on Sarpi, but also as part of the government’s broader realization that archival use must be reconciled with the preservation of secrecy (as the nuncio, no friend of Sarpi’s, stressed at the time).⁵⁷ These cases show that from use came familiarity and from that, ultimately, appropriation. Even more than their civil servants, patricians felt they had a right to keep those documents which they constantly used but which properly belonged to the Secreta. The same records which the government regarded as official, many patricians tended to see as belonging to themselves. In this sense, control over information was part of a larger tension between competing definitions of political institutions, part of a larger confusion between private and public which was true of other late medieval and early modern states, but was greater in a republic such as Venice, where one social group identified with the state.⁵⁸ While (as we have seen) the government laid claim to such private documents as testaments, patricians were in turn prepared to seize the official documents they accessed while on public duty. The papers taken by ambassadors on their travels provide an apt illustration. Before their departure, ambassadors were allowed into the Secreta, where they read their predecessors’ dispatches and other relevant records. They could also Sarpi’s sources in writing the history of the Council of Trent, cf. Vivanti 1974: lxxii–lxxxvii, and Asor Rosa 1993: 848–51. ⁵⁵ Micanzio 1974: 1375. In 1623, the secretary making an inventory of the documents in Sarpi’s cell found many which were unrelated to his charge, see Pin 1978: 316. In turn, Sarpi’s official and supposedly secret writings circulated in Venice and beyond, cf. Pin 2001: 123–55. Copies of Sarpi’s letters also had a vast circulation, extending to Europe’s ‘republic of letters’, cf. Ulianich 1961, Del Corno 1964, and Miller 2000: 87 and 169n. ⁵⁶ Frangipane’s supplica of 1628 addressed to the Ten, in MCV, Ms. Cicogna, 2505/IV, cc. nn. The list includes several feudal privileges, original papal bulls, political treatises, and extracts from histories of Venice (including some which ‘are not communicated either than with the Council of Ten’s consent’). Frangipane’s two volume ms. Zibaldone in BMV, Cod. Lat. XIII.73–4 (3918–3919). Cf. DBI, s.v. ⁵⁷ Parti of 14.10.1611, in ASV, Sen., Terra, r. 81, c. 130v, and 30.1.1612, in Cecchetti 1865: 17–18; nuncio’s dispatch dated 22.10.1611, in Savio 1936–42, v. 10: 43 n. Cf. Frajese 1994: 185–7. ⁵⁸ Cf. Romano 1996 and Chittolini 1996.

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make copies to take on their mission, occasionally bound in small manuscript volumes.⁵⁹ Such copies were put to numerous uses, as well as abuses. In 1605, for example, the recently appointed ambassador to France asked for a number of useful transcripts from the Secreta, including several dispatches and a report composed by previous ambassadors. Meanwhile, he also asked his immediate predecessor, Angelo Badoer, still serving in France, to leave him the documents he had himself taken from Venice. Badoer’s reply pointed to the dangers involved in copying documents. He wrote to the Inquisitors that he had no such documents, which he preferred to learn by heart, ‘because it is very dangerous to bring them around the world in such a way that they are handed from one to the other’. Badoer’s own example, however, confirmed that official documents often remained in the ambassadors’ households; his father, he told the Inquisitors, had entire ‘bagfuls of letters and writings which he left in [our home] for the instruction of his children’. Badoer handed his father’s papers to the Ten, ‘regardless [as he revealingly added] of what others did’.⁶⁰ Time and again, the government tried to halt this practice, beginning in 1401 when ambassadors were ordered to deposit their papers within fifteen days of their return ‘that they not come into the hands of others’.⁶¹ In the sixteenth century the effort became more widespread, and turned to past as well as present records. In 1558 the Ten asked all living former ambassadors to swear that they had presented their entire archives, and in 1596 called upon their heirs to hand over all ‘public documents’ preserved in their homes. A register was to be kept with the names of all the families who complied, followed by a list of the ‘official documents’ they presented.⁶² The government also repeatedly prohibited ambassadors to refer to their public missions in their private letters.⁶³ The frequency with which the prohibitions repeated themselves suggests that they were hardly effective. Breaches included law-abiding patricians such as Leonardo Donà, who as ambassador in Rome frequently discussed both home and foreign politics in letters to his brother.⁶⁴ Other ambassadors in Rome and Paris entertained long correspondences with Sarpi and his successors and, when occasionally intercepted by foreign agents, these letters caused serious embarassment in Venice.⁶⁵ ⁵⁹ Cf. secretary Andrea Suriano’s ‘Extract of various documents from the Secreta’, transcribed on behalf of the ambassador in Constantinople and bound in two quires, in ASV, CX, Parti segrete, f. 29, cc. nn. (30.4.1608). ⁶⁰ De Vivo 2001a: 191–4. Angelo’s father Alberto had been one of Venice’s most important patricians and ambassadors, see P. Grendler 1990: 76. On Angelo’s later vicissitudes, see below: p. 104. ⁶¹ Aspetti e momenti: 22; the same order was reissued in 1518, Romanin 1857–61, v. 6: 119–20. ⁶² Ibid. 127–8, 134–6. ⁶³ Laws of 1437 (in Queller 1977: 40), 1464 (Queller 1966: 44–7, Aspetti e momenti: 24), and 1510 (ASV, CL, b. 14, c. 108). ⁶⁴ Brunetti 1933. ⁶⁵ Cf. Sarpi 1892 and Secchi 1969; in 1622–24 the ambassador in England regularly corresponded with Fulgenzio Micanzio, Dal Pino 1957–58: 148.

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The confusion between private and public documents makes it crucial for historians to integrate the state’s archive with collections of manuscripts formerly belonging to patrician families.⁶⁶ Perhaps the single most widely used source for the history of Renaissance Venice, Marin Sanudo’s diaries, are a monument to that confusion. They included not only his personal views, but also, on almost every page, accurate transcripts of secret information, from Senate debates to ambassadors’ dispatches. Furthermore, Sanudo collected more than 6,000 files, setting alongside private and official documents, Lutheran texts, poems, and pasquinades.⁶⁷ Sanudo claimed to have collected information thanks to his patrician status and as an old man listed all the times he sat in council—eight in the Collegio, five in the Senate. There, he boasted, ‘I have seen and heard the truth not just about this city, but about the whole world’.⁶⁸ For much of his life, however, Sanudo was out of office.⁶⁹ His means of collecting information included accessing the archive possibly by cultivating its keepers, asking relatives who were in office, or drawing information by frequenting ‘the piazze’.⁷⁰ Often, he admitted relying on copies which others had previously made of a secret document, and when once absent from Venice for a long period, he perused the diary kept by another patrician, a friend of his father.⁷¹ Clearly, collecting supposedly secret information was a habit Sanudo shared with others, a social practice rather than an individual obsession. All patricians had good reason to imitate Sanudo’s collecting, although on a less systematic scale. One may quote the example of transcripts of speeches made in the governing councils, the renghe. As we have seen, it was forbidden to record those speeches, but many circulated in manuscript form, and countless copies are preserved in the libraries put together by patrician families, bundled together according to subject matter, author, or without any apparent criteria, given out in writing by the speaker, or transcribed on the basis of hearing.⁷² Active politicians collected them as a record of their activities and families as a monument to their collective public role, and they also had a pedagogic function in training young patricians. Presumably, when inserting senators’ speeches in their histories, official historians used precisely these documents (although some may have invented ⁶⁶ Cf. Aspetti e momenti: 92–4, and now Raines 2006b. Nineteenth-century archivists created the series Archivi propri degli ambasciatori by putting together papers once in patrician families’ private archives. ⁶⁷ On Sanudo’s diaries, see Cozzi 1968, Gaeta 1980: 81–5, and Chambers 1998. A description of Sanudo’s library in Berchet 1902: 55 ff. Cozzi 1968: 104 compares some originals with Sanudo’s transcripts and finds the latter reliable. ⁶⁸ Berchet 1902: 96. ⁶⁹ Finlay 1980: 251–80. ⁷⁰ Gaeta 1980: 85. ⁷¹ Sambin 1944–45, and cf. Chambers 1998: 11–13. ⁷² A list is in Baschet 1870: 374–5; and cf. early seventeenth-century bound miscellanies in ASV, MADM, b. 3, cc. nn. (arranged by subject, the Uskoks) and BMV, Cod. Ital. VII.1235 (7459) (by author, Tommaso Contarini). Many renghe in MCV, Mss. Donà 39, 210, 216, 228, transcribed and put together by Nicolò Donà, brother of doge Leonardo. As I will show below (pp. 58–9), the Donà collection also contained other illicitly transcribed documents. Parliamentary speeches similarly circulated in England, Love 1993: 9–22.

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speeches in humanist fashion, such as Pietro Bembo, who proudly affirmed that his history reported finer speeches than those actually delivered in the Senate.)⁷³ Like renghe, other reserved documents circulated because they were useful. In the process of voting or canvassing, patricians required wide-ranging knowledge, from lists of magistracies to summaries of the electoral procedures and records of past candidatures and appointments. Government secretaries collected such information and reproduced it in pocket format for commercial circulation amongst the political elite.⁷⁴ Secret information enjoyed a kind of select publication by means of manuscript which, as the next section shows, was typical of the political arena. The government’s attempt to ban it was bound to run into difficulties because it clashed with the patricians’ exercise of their political activity outside the governing halls—something which no patrician could afford to renounce. 2.2 THE POLITICS AND ECONOMICS OF LEAKING: T H E C A S E O F RELAZIONI We can gain greater understanding of the mechanisms in the diffusion of supposedly reserved information by considering a staggering case of the systematic circulation of secret documents. Amongst the best known sources in European history, the relazioni of Venetian ambassadors have had almost iconic status ever since Leopold von Ranke used them to ground his ‘historiographical revolution’.⁷⁵ They are the end-of-mission reports which ambassadors and other government representatives presented both orally and in writing from (probably) 1268. The point of relazioni, as all ambassadors boasted, was to bring useful knowledge of the world to the government. Crucially, then, that knowledge had to be locked away from the eyes of outsiders, not least because relazioni often supplied sensitive information concerning allies or enemies. Therefore, in 1425 the Council of Ten instituted a special section in the Secreta for the reports’ preservation.⁷⁶ Despite such precautions, however, relazioni circulated in Venice and elsewhere to such an extent that those held today in Venice’s state archive are a small fraction of the existing copies. On visiting the university library at Oxford following an ⁷³ On the practice of inserting speeches in official histories, see Cozzi 1963, Gaeta 1980, and Finlay 1999. ⁷⁴ Raines 1991 stressed the role of the ballotini and of professional writers located near the Ducal Palace’s main gate; also Netto 1995. On patrician archives, see Raines 1996 and 1998. ⁷⁵ Relazione defines any sort of report. This section deals above all with those written by ambassadors, but all government representatives also composed relazioni. The bibliography on relazioni is vast, but cf. Andreas 1943, Benzoni 1990, Contini 2001, Del Negro 1984, Queller 1972 and 1973, Ventura 1976 and 1981. ⁷⁶ The extant series runs over 88 miscellaneous volumes, from the 1520s to the 1790s. Ventura 1976: xi–xii and Aspetti e momenti: 21, 23. In 1524 the obligation to present reports was extended to all government representatives, ibid.: 84.

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audience with the king in 1616, the representative in England was astonished to find there ‘a large volume in manuscript’ containing fourteen relazioni by Venetian ambassadors.⁷⁷ Similar cases abound.⁷⁸ Ranke himself first perused a large collection which he found in the Royal Library in Berlin and then went on to build a rich collection himself.⁷⁹ Nonetheless, neither he nor the historians following in his steps have engaged with the mechanisms of and reasons for relazioni circulation. What mattered to Ranke was that secrecy allowed Venetian ambassadors to be objective. In his and successive interpretations, relazioni are ‘the classical expression of diplomatic activity’ and the Venetian ambassador, the Republic’s faceless representative.⁸⁰ What is missing in these interpretations is the uses to which ambassadors and others put relazioni. As acts of communication, relazioni began inside the government. However, for ambassadors trying to gain personal prestige or assert a factional line, it was important to reach peers in the wider political arena through leaking. Others, patricians and non-patricians alike, then turned relazioni into objects of further exchange, whether for partisan, economic, or professional reasons. It was a form of scribal publication which was common well into the age of the printing press, and this is why we have to speak of both the politics and the economics of leaking.⁸¹

The publication of relazioni To understand how relazioni circulated we must turn from the modern editions to the palaeographic analysis of manuscripts carrying material traces of circulation. They show that all modes of manuscript publication identified by Harold Love in seventeenth-century London—authorial, entrepreneurial, and personal reproduction—already applied to sixteenth-century Venice.⁸² The large collection owned by the Donà family, for example, is mostly constituted by separates: independently tied documents, written by different people and at some later point bound together in aggregations according to subject matter.⁸³ This is in contrast with most of the volumes in foreign ⁷⁷ Dispatch dated 26.8.1616, in ASV, IS, b. 442, cc. nn., cf. CSPVen, v. 14: 285. ⁷⁸ Cf. R. Brown 1865: 111–15, Benzoni 1999: 143 (referring to 1722), Aspetti e momenti: 92 (1789). ⁷⁹ Tucci 1990, Muir 1983. Tucci does not attempt to trace the document market much before Ranke’s time, but Foscarini 1752: 461 already mentioned the relazioni’s ‘infinite number of copies’. Arnaldo Segarizzi began collecting a list of extant copies, which is now held in the Biblioteca Querini Stampalia of Venice, cf. Tiepolo 1994: 890n. ⁸⁰ Morandi 1935: liii. ⁸¹ Love 1993 and Woudhuysen 1996, and on Italy, Richardson 2000 and 2004a. ⁸² I draw from the terminology used in Love 1993: 9–22 and 46–83. ⁸³ The following information is drawn from seven miscellanies: MCV, Mss. Donà 41 (miscellaneous), 47 (reports from France), 51 and 52 (from Switzerland), 146 (Constantinople), 216 (Rome), 219 (various Italian states). Patrician libraries generally contained relazioni, cf. Raines 1996.

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libraries which, like the one found by the Venetian agent in Oxford, generally (although not always) consisted of continuous compilations by one hand only. The difference indicates a different kind of composition and circulation. The Venetian separate was closer to the time of the relazione’s first delivery, and perhaps originated from the author himself or his associates. The other was made later for a collector, in Venice or elsewhere, and generally by a paid copyist (although some collectors would transcribe compilations for their own use). The quality of the handwriting is also important. A good hand indicates a professional scrivener—either a commercial entrepreneur or a secretary—while rougher writing is generally that of the relazione’s owner, a case of ‘user publication’. One mode does not exclude the other. For example, Leonardo Donà owned a copy of Piero Duodo’s 1592 relazione about Poland written in elegant italic; but attached to that, we also find a short summary of the report in Donà’s own writing, dating from the day Duodo delivered his report in the Senate. Donà clearly took notes of the report, then acquired (or was given) a copy.⁸⁴ The frequent presence of marginal annotations in Donà’s hand or his brother’s is further evidence of the combination of different uses. The nature of relazioni helps to explain the modes of their publication. The first, and in theory the only mode of a relazione’s publication, was its oral delivery before the Senate or the Collegio. In either case, the ambassador was then under the obligation of depositing a written copy of his report in the archive. The Council of Ten worried that ambassadors could either ‘show’ or ‘even give out copies’ of their reports, and for that reason set increasingly strict time limits for presentation.⁸⁵ Those who listened to delivery were of course prohibited from divulging what they heard. But we know from Sanudo and the Donà brothers that it was possible at least to take mental notes which they then transcribed in their diaries—often no more than two-line summaries.⁸⁶ Frequently, Sanudo added that he would later fill in the gap on a specific relazione, a promise which he did not always maintain. This suggests that he expected to obtain further information concerning that relazione. This brings us to a second mode of relazioni publication, the circulation of short summaries prepared either by members of the audience or by the ambassadors themselves (perhaps on the basis of notes made for delivery).⁸⁷ Examples abound in Sanudo’s ⁸⁴ MCV, Ms. Donà 41, c. 168; Duodo’s relazione is cc. 168–81. A similar case is in Ms. Donà 146, cc. nn. ⁸⁵ Parte dated 27.1.1558 in Romanin 1857–61, v. 6: 127–8. Laws were passed on the subject again in 1596 (ibid.: 134), 1620 (ASV, CL, b. 14, c. 597), and 1634 (ibid., c. 709). ⁸⁶ e.g. Sanudo 1879–1903, v. 35: 226 summarized Antonio Surian’s 1523 report from England in a few lines. An incomplete list of relazioni summarized or transcribed by Sanudo is in Baschet 1870: 340; cf. Also Antonibon 1939. ⁸⁷ e.g. Sanudo 1879–1903, v. 28: 15, referring to Sebastiano Giustiniani’s 1519 report about England; a summary, once in a private patrician library and now in BMV, in Firpo 1975–96, v. 8: 167–89.

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diaries, even when he was not in the Senate, which indicates that he was working on the basis of documents received from others. Comparing the summary written by an ambassador and the version transcribed by Sanudo shows that they enjoyed different channels of distribution.⁸⁸ A third mode of publication consisted in the circulation of a complete relazione, either the same as the one which was deposited in the Secreta or different versions. Whatever its first source, once a relazione was available, only some paper and a few writing tools were necessary for circulating it further. The flexibility of the manuscript medium made for continuous variations. In 1532, for example, Sanudo transcribed a very long relazione in full by the ambassador returning from the imperial court. His text largely coincided with one held in a private Florentine library, but while Sanudo’s version is heavily influenced by Venetian, the Florentine text is in polished Tuscan. Sanudo’s also contains more detailed factual information.⁸⁹ This indicates a multiplication of uses as well as users. What was important information in Venice at the time of delivery, later became an object of literary interest in Florence. Finally, user-reproduction interacted with the work of professional scribes working either as private secretaries or public scriveners or both, a thriving industry offering its services to a diverse clientele.⁹⁰ For example, the Inquisitors of State received a report about Cesare Prata, ‘who used to work as scrittore’ and in 1613 was denounced for ‘making a profession of ambassadorial relazioni’.⁹¹ Other cases show that the boundaries between commercial information and intelligence were not clear-cut. In the same period Giovan Francesco both worked as a public scrivener and supplemented his income by copying and selling relazioni. He briefly turned to the sole service of the Duke of Urbino’s agent, but when the arrest of a spy made things too dangerous, he set up again a public stall (un boteghino di scrittore) in the parish of San Moisé, where most scriveners dwelled.⁹² Relazioni nourished a veritable market. While serving as ambassador in Rome, Leonardo Donà compiled a long two-page double-columned list of ‘relazioni which can be bought in Rome’.⁹³ Evidence of price is scant, although it would be very interesting to trace variations over time. In 1609 the duke of Mantua’s representative in Venice wrote to his master offering to buy the recent relazione from England for ten ducats, a high price but certainly one ⁸⁸ e.g., compare Sanudo’s summary (sumario) of a 1527 relazione on the Habsburg court of Vienna (Sanudo 1879–1903, v. 44: 383–4), with the official version, published in Firpo 1975–96, v. 9: 165–8. ⁸⁹ 1532 report by Nicolò Tiepolo, ambassador to Charles V, the full text (from Florence, Codici Capponi) is published in Firpo 1975–96, v. 9: 173–284; Sanudo’s version in Sanudo 1879–1903, v. 56: 320–56. ⁹⁰ More on scrittori below, pp. 123–5. ⁹¹ Report dated 26.2.1613, in ASV, IS, b. 607, fasc. 4, cc. nn. ⁹² Report dated 14.3.1613, in ASV, IS, b. 607, fasc. 5, cc. nn. On San Moisé, see below, p. 81. ⁹³ Undated list, including six relazioni about France, five about Rome, five about the Empire, and eight about Constantinople; MCV, Ms. Donà 216, cc. 259–60v.

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that his master could afford.⁹⁴ In 1692, the agent of the Duke of Modena in Venice offered to broker the large sale of an entire collection, including ancient chronicles, political treatises, as well as relazioni, for a hundred ducats.⁹⁵ Possibly, political currency drove price, recent texts costing more than older ones. Of course, this was an elite market, but it was a market nonetheless, accommodating a larger public than Sanudo’s retrieval of copies through acquaintances did at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Moreover, the step to print was short. In the decades between 1589 and 1618, several printed collections appeared, most (but not all) outside the Venetian state or under the cover of false imprints, and without the names of the relazioni’s authors. They were appropriately titled ‘Tesori Politici’, containing ‘relazioni, instructions, treatises and speeches of various ambassadors, apt to the perfect knowledge and intelligence of the states, interests and dependencies of the world’s greatest princes’.⁹⁶ Such and later collections, generally in small formats so as to ensure greater diffusion, consistently boasted their authenticity—for example, ‘on the basis of an Italian Manuscript which had never seen the light before’.⁹⁷ Some relazioni also appeared shortly after being delivered.⁹⁸ And such was the demand for relazioni that forgeries appeared too.⁹⁹ The movement between manuscript and print went both ways. For example, the Donà collection, as we have already seen, included several reports about France transcribed from the Thesori.¹⁰⁰ Finally, many published historical works summarized or excerpted entire passages of relazioni, which became veritable classics by the eighteenth century, regarded as ‘one of the most solid foundations of historians’, as the erudite historian and future doge Marco Foscarini put it.¹⁰¹ As already implied by a nineteenth-century expert of Venice’s archives such as Rawdon Brown, Ranke walked in well-trodden steps.¹⁰² To speak of publication in general must not make us forget that we are talking of people, each with their different motivation for seeking, disclosing, or mediating the circulation of, relazioni. Some were minor nobles, real or self-styled. Cavalier Giulio Cesare Muzio repeatedly sold relazioni which he drew ⁹⁴ Baschet 1870: 353n. Further evidence in Baschet 1862: 51. On the information market in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Rome, see Seidler 1996 and Signorotto and Visceglia 2002. ⁹⁵ Infelise 2002a: 62. ⁹⁶ Tesoro politico (1589). A bibliography of Tesori politici is in Bozza 1949: 68–71; cf. J. Balsamo 1995, Baldini 2000, and Testa 2001 and 2002. ⁹⁷ Recueil de diverses relations (1681); another collection is Lettere memorabili (Naples, 1693–7). ⁹⁸ The originals of the relazioni in [Sagredo] 1670 and Zane 1672 dated respectively from 1665 and 1659. ⁹⁹ A fake relazione was printed in French in 1663 under the name of Angelo Correr, cf. Antonibon 1939: 104 (and cf. 123). A relazione presented under the name of Tommaso Contarini, who died while serving in Rome and thus never presented his report, was a pastiche of earlier reports containing several factual mistakes; cf. Antonibon 1939: 123. ¹⁰⁰ MCV, Ms. Donà 47, cc. 128–206. ¹⁰¹ Foscarini 1752: 460; cf. Testa 2002: 684; Morel-Fatio 1913: 152; and Andretta 2000: 83–4. ¹⁰² R. Brown 1865: 116–17; cf. Burke 1990 and Grafton 1997.

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from his high-placed connections.¹⁰³ Secretaries and servants of patricians also acted as moles. A copy of ambassador Girolamo Lando’s report on England bears the signature of Lando’s maestro di camera, who obviously prepared the copy (with or without his master’s approval).¹⁰⁴ Francesco Paisio, who had served as a secretary for the patriarch as well as for the governor of the fortress at Palma, was accused of having ‘disseminated many relazioni of ambassadors from England, France, Spain and elsewhere, descriptions of the Arsenal, expenditures and income of the Republic and every business of land and sea, including [a description of] all the fortresses of this state, indicating the number of soldiers on land and sea.’¹⁰⁵ Even more than supply, it was demand that drove this market. The Inquisitors’ informers tell us above all about ambassadors—the people they were interested in. The Spanish ambassador, for example, was reported to be on the look out for any relazione; most of all, he desired those concerning Spain and in 1612 was prepared to pay dear (una buona mano di cechini) for the most recent one.¹⁰⁶ But beyond ambassadors, relazioni appealed to many other people. Like renghe, relazioni had a recognized educational value inside the ruling class.¹⁰⁷ Outside, they were known as repositories of information and political maxims. As Gabriel Naudé’s celebrated bibliography of political texts shows, Venetian relazioni were an irrenounceable item in the personal libraries of the politically informed throughout Europe, collectors, antiquarians, and travellers.¹⁰⁸ People whose birth excluded them from direct involvement in Venetian politics, but who constructed their status over the intelligence which they offered to their more powerful contemporaries, all sought relazioni. One example was Giovan Vincenzo Pinelli, not a patrician like Sanudo, but the owner of a comparably large manuscript and printed library including both relazioni and other official documents which ought to have been locked in the Secreta. At his death in 1601, the Ten seized fourteen boxes of manuscripts for inspection and eventually confiscated two thick files of documents dated from 1380 to 1594. They contain none of Pinelli’s relazioni, perhaps because the Ten realized that such texts circulated anyway as, indeed, they continued to do.¹⁰⁹ ¹⁰³ Granzino’s deposition dated 1.11.1612, is in ASV, IS, b. 607, fasc. 3, cc. nn. See also his report dated 7.6.1612, in ASV, IS, b. 607, fasc. 1, cc. nn. ¹⁰⁴ Relatione del viaggio di Girolamo Lando in Inghilterra, in BMV, Cod. Ital. VII.984 (7510), cc. 48–93. ¹⁰⁵ Letter by Granzino dated 24.5.1618, in ASV, IS, b. 609, fasc. 7, cc. nn. Further information about Paisio is in the reports dated 2.1, 4.1, 24.5, 20.6.1618, ibid. ¹⁰⁶ Granzino’s reports dated 7.10.1612 (ASV, IS, b. 607 fasc. 1, cc. nn.); cf. also ibid., b. 609, fasc. 1, cc. nn., the reports dated 17 and 29.3.1614, referring to the relazione by the governor of Bergamo, which Bedmar passed to the Spanish governor of Milan (delivered on 17.12.1613, now in Tagliaferri 1973–79, v. 12: 323–30); cf. similar cases in Baschet 1870: 348–50. ¹⁰⁷ Cf. Discorso a Monsignor d’Elci: 216 and Accademico Imperfetto 1674: 74. ¹⁰⁸ Naudé 1961: 84–5. ¹⁰⁹ Tiepolo 1994: 914; on the further dispersal of Pinelli’s library, see M. Grendler 1981 and Hobson 1971; Rivolta 1933: 60, 74, 75 lists some of Pinelli’s relazioni, now in the Ambrosiana library.

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At a time when information largely depended on status, owning a relazione was a sign of wisdom and insight which one would boast in public, as some were said to do even in Venice.¹¹⁰ Finally, we should not underestimate the sheer pleasure which less important people derived from reading reports of distant lands. That was no doubt the case of a report of the Ottoman serraglio written by ambassador Ottaviano Bon. Thanks to the sultan’s temporary absence, the author reached as far as the sultan’s private bedchamber. The eye-witness description of the most intimate space of a famously mysterious empire and of a court renowned for its exotic harem must have caused some kind of voyeuristic frisson at once political and sexual. It circulated widely in manuscript before being printed in London in 1650, where it quickly went through three editions.¹¹¹ Working back from texts to people, we can conclude that between the sixteenth and the seventeenth century, Venice saw a definite widening in the educated public interested in political information concerning foreign states. As the next paragraph shows, home affairs could equally become exposed.

The leak of Ottaviano Bon’s relazione (1619) For some people, the exchange of relazioni was an occasion for gaining favour; for others it was a commercial transaction. We shall come back at the end of this chapter to these professionals of information, for whom information was valuable literally as well as metaphorically. For the patrician insiders of Venice’s politics, however, relazioni had a primarily political value; unlike Ranke, the ambassadors who authored relazioni cared for publicity rather than secrecy. Indeed, if Sanudo and others like him obtained the documents they were interested in, it was only because others had an interest in leaking those documents. The circulation of reserved information originates from an act of disclosure whereby an individual unlawfully makes that information available to others—an act which a governing structure strictly regulating access to information made all the more precious. In a political system based on voting, those who, thanks to their position, had access to secret information, turned its unlawful circulation into a weapon of advancement. Then much as now, leaks could gain merit or deflect guilt, expose enemies and unite friends; in the last analysis they were meant to exert influence on government through the wider political arena. As we shall see, at times of political confrontation such as the Interdict, leaking was repeatedly used on all sides.¹¹² The trouble is that it is not easy to spot a leak centuries after it has taken place. How can we establish whether a piece of information circulated lawfully or otherwise, when all we have is the document at the heart of the leak itself? In order to shed ¹¹⁰ Granzino’s report of 14.10.1613, in ASV, IS, b. 608, fasc. 4, cc. nn. ¹¹¹ It is still in print as ‘an intimate portrait of life at the Ottoman court’, Bon 1996, 2002; for one reader’s pleasure, cf. Lollino 1854: 9–15. ¹¹² See below, pp. 179–83.

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light on the politics of leaking, I wish to concentrate on one case study about which we do know a good deal because it led to a trial whose records have been preserved. The leak involved another of Ottaviano Bon’s relazioni. As ambassador extraordinary to France, he conducted the negotiations which in 1617 ended a two-year war with the Habsburg Archdukes of Gratz. Because the peace treaty included concessions openly violating the ambassadors’ commission, the Senate impeached Bon and Vincenzo Gussoni, the ordinary ambassador in Paris.¹¹³ On their return, their relazioni naturally acquired special importance as a means to vindicate the ambassador’s conduct in the government’s highest spheres. At the end of February 1618, Gussoni, a younger patrician and in a less prominent position than Bon, presented his relazione. He protested his innocence and blamed Bon for prevaricating his authority in order to constrain them both to accept the peace proposal.¹¹⁴ He described his report as a reply to his critics, and perhaps tried to halt the circulation of allegations in the political arena through a formal communication inside the government (both he and Bon spoke to the Senate rather than the more customary Collegio).¹¹⁵ However, if Gussoni was hoping to put an end to communication, he failed. A few days later, it was Bon’s turn to reply by delivering his own report; when he then circulated it—a year and a half later—he brought the debate back from the government to the political arena.¹¹⁶ Leaking shows that it would be pointless to set clear boundaries inside the political system, because those involved in politics were always active on more than one level. Bon’s relazione effectively accepted Gussoni’s account and proclaimed his full responsibility for the treaty. But in order to justify his seemingly harsh choice, he offered a grave denunciation of the Republic’s policies—and this is why his text’s leak stirred the Collegio’s angry reaction. According to Bon, Venice had been unwise in beginning the war and inefficient in conducting it; above all, the government had misjudged the developments on the European scene (particularly the rapprochement between Marie de Medici’s France and the Habsburgs, effectively isolating Venice). In this situation, insisting on the original negotiation commissions was suicidal and, in fact, Bon deserved praise for realistically solving the difficulties on the basis of his wisdom and experience.¹¹⁷ Moving the argument from contingency to principle, Bon insisted that a good ¹¹³ ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni segrete, r. 109, c. 22v (16.9.1617). On the peace of Paris, cf. Cozzi 1958: 165–7, and the editorial notes in Sarpi 1969: 1020–4. ¹¹⁴ Relazione published in Firpo 1975–96, v. 6: 579–94. Gussoni was born in 1588, Bon in 1552, see DBI : s.v. ¹¹⁵ Firpo 1975–96, v.6: 593. ¹¹⁶ Bon’s relazione is published ibid.: 597–645. This is the report that Bon circulated, and we have no means of knowing how far it coincided with the one he delivered in front of the Senate; the version which circulated was probably written in late 1618 or early 1619, after the so-called Spanish conspiracy of May 1618, to which there is a vague reference (p. 632), and before the election of Ferdinand of Habsburg to the Imperial throne, to which there ought to have been one (p. 630). Gussoni presented his report shortly before 24.2.1618, and Bon before 3.3. 1618, cf. BAV, Urb. Lat. 1086, cc. 68, 79. ¹¹⁷ Firpo 1975–96, v. 6: 615–16, 630, 623, 632–3, 638–9, 642–3.

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aim justified disobedience and that more than law mattered reason of state, ‘according to which all sovereigns nowadays act’ (as a good republican, he claimed that there was no contradiction between reason of state and Cicero’s teaching).¹¹⁸ Bon’s defence ran contrary to the Republic’s official position in ways which epitomize the divergence between the political arena and the government in both principle and media. The government wanted to maintain unity and blame the peace as a diplomat’s mistake, whereas Bon was prepared to raise opposition and defend his conduct as a more sensible strategy than the government’s. The Senate invoked the sanctity of the law, whereas Bon exhalted the preeminence of his own sense of reason of state. Above all, the Republic wanted to silence the matter, whereas Bon wished to publish his defence in order to turn a personal matter into a political cause where he would obtain the support of a group. For that reason, he offered his relazione as a lasting testimony of his ‘conscience and honour’ and called for a special inquiry.¹¹⁹ Then, in 1619, he set out to bypass the government, anonymously leaking his text and arranging its circulation. This, however, was one step too many. Denounced to the Collegio, the leak was investigated by the Inquisitors of State, and Bon eventually came before a Senate-appointed criminal commission.¹²⁰ The government in full prosecuted the return of communication to the political arena—although in the end, there was little it could do about it. Piero Gritti, the man who had been ambassador to Spain at the time of the peace, denounced the report’s disclosure because he felt the report to be offensive against both his own role in the negotiations, and in general against the Republic. Gritti claimed not to know the report’s author, and explained that it had come into his possession through his son, who himself received it from another patrician.¹²¹ The case was referred to the Inquisitors of State, who soon traced the text to Bon. They interrogated several witnesses, first some of those whom Gritti mentioned had seen the relazione, then others whom the first witnesses mentioned in their turn. Their inquiry, together with the special commission’s later findings, reveal a large network of people who either read, transcribed, or discussed the relazione. The pattern of this diffusion is represented in Figure 2.1.¹²² However, it is important to stress that we can only guess the full extent of that network, because the Inquisitors did not interrogate ¹¹⁸ Ibid.: 645. ¹¹⁹ Ibid.: 600–1n. Gussoni too called for a public prosecution, ibid.: 579–80. ¹²⁰ After the Inquisitors’ first inquiries, the Senate set up a special commission on 30.11.1619; ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni segrete, f. 106, cc. nn. The entire trial’s records are held in ASV, QC, b. 137, fasc. 1, trial numbered 228; unless otherwise specified, all following records refer to interrogation records in this file. ¹²¹ Deposition before the Collegio on 14.11.1619 (cc. 17r –v). ¹²² The interrogations were conducted 15–16 November 1619 (cc. 18–23v); more witnesses were interrogated by the specially appointed Senate committee between 5 and 7 March 1620 (cc. 53–61).

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Information and Communication in Venice Ottaviano Bon

Nicolò Contarini Giulio Contarini Zuanne Tiepolo

Filippo Bon

Alessandro Bon

Girolamo Boldù Agostino Bembo Zorzi Corner

Silvestro Morosini

Lorenzo Valier

Silvestro Valier

Andrea Valier

Simone Contarini

Marco Trevisan Marcant. Gritti Girolamo Priuli

Nicolò Barbarigo

Andrea da Leze

Piero Gritti

Agostino Nani Sebastiano Venier

Paolo Sarpi*

Collegio

Domenico Molin

Zorzi Contarini

Inquisitors of State

Alvise Donà

Alvise Biscacciante

Vincenzo Grimani Francesco Pisani

Senate Copy lent

Alvise Mocenigo o Bold: person interrogated

* Sarpi was asked to write a report, Report discussed but we do not have the text of his deposition Copy read

Lunardo Mocenigo Zorzi Contarini

Figure 2.1. Diffusion pattern of Ottaviano Bon’s relazione (October–November 1619)

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all those who came into contact with the report. They were only interested in discovering who had originated the leak; once they established that, they stopped the interrogations. The relazione’s first disclosure and manuscript reproduction took place under Bon’s control. A sign of the superposition of family with political ties, Bon first gave his report to relatives.¹²³ While a young nephew made copies, Bon’s brother Filippo passed them on to both relatives and acquaintances.¹²⁴ Later, the relazione moved from author- to user-publication, as readers turned into further distributors by actively making copies for themselves, and subsequently lending them to others who would then make their own. In this way textual circulation played a double role, both in passing information and in defining a group, a manuscript community who would also associate with Bon’s political ideas.¹²⁵ It was an extremely unstable community, however, escaping the control of author or users. Thus, Filippo Bon gave Marco Trevisan a copy which Trevisan then passed to Andrea Da Lezze; when Bon asked Lezze to pass it on to Domenico Molin, however, he found that Lezze had already lent it to Zorzi Contarini and could not now have it back. In fact, Lezze said that he thought that Contarini still had it because he ‘had heard so from others who have seen it’. This circulation was both in, and against, Bon’s interest. Lezze said that he felt justified in showing the relazione, because he was sure that Bon wanted it to circulate, but he also showed it to Sarpi, who in turn then suggested that Gritti denounce Bon.¹²⁶ Finally, in addition to the exchange of written texts was a thick web of oral communication, a third mode of diffusion. Many people who may not have copied or even read the report knew about it and discussed it, in turn originating further diffusion. As one witness said, he asked for a copy ‘out of curiosity, because I heard rumours that this text circulated in the piazze’.¹²⁷ Only once the scandal broke out, was a patrician refused the report; yet so normal was the circulation that he found the refusal offensive.¹²⁸ The diffusion of the report took place as part of social events. As the physician Alvise Biscacciante told the Inquisitors, he mentioned the report at a dinner party he gave, when (presumably after eating) ‘the women began playing and we began reading this text’. Several of his guests, all of them patricians, said that they had already seen the report. As Biscacciante’s case shows, the report’s circulation inevitably involved outsiders too; he had obtained it when on a professional visit to Bon’s household, and ¹²³ Interrogation of 22.11.1619, c. 26v and again 26.2.1620: c. 49r –v. ¹²⁴ Ottaviano Bon’s interrogation of 28.2.1620, c. 52v; Zorzi Corner’s, Silvestro’s, and Lorenzo Valier’s interrogations, 5–7.3.1620: cc. 54–61v. ¹²⁵ They all belonged to papalista families and were likely to be supporters of appeasement with Spain; on manuscript communities, cf. Scott-Warren 2000. ¹²⁶ Andrea Da Lezze’s deposition, 15.11.1619: c. 18. ¹²⁷ Agostino Bembo’s deposition, 5.3.1620: c. 55v. ¹²⁸ Nicolò Contarini (q. Giovan Battista, not the future doge) was upset by Filippo Bon’s refusal to give him a copy, interrogation of 5.3.1620: cc. 54r –v.

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later himself lent it to other patients.¹²⁹ Circulation exposed the fragility of governmental secrets to outsiders’ appropriation; as Lezze told the Inquisitors, Trevisan’s servant brought the report to his home and there clumsily left it lying on a table.¹³⁰ The spatial diffusion of the report is stunning. Filippo Bon approached two patricians in Rialto and another one in San Marco; Andrea da Lezze said he heard about the relazione in the Great Council hall, then seen it while at Rialto; Domenico Molin read it in Lezze’s house, but then also talked about it while conversing in San Marco; Biscacciante read it while on the boat taking him back from Padua, and then made it the object of a dinner conversation at home.¹³¹ Numerous copies circulated from household to household, and from there to both public places and the Ducal Palace—as the Inquisitors charged, ‘publicly in the Great Council, in the piazze, and everywhere’.¹³² Thus, Bon’s relazione aroused discussions and disagreement in the very councils where, according to the constitution, harmony should have reigned supreme. When first interrogated and before he realized how much the Inquisitors knew about his leak, Bon blamed the circulation of his relazione on people’s curiosity for that genre: ‘what occurred to me is that which occurs in all cases of relazioni, because they are curious and desired things.’¹³³ It was a lie, but one which, as we have seen, he could reasonably expect his interrogators to believe. Once leaked, his relazione benefited from the same diffusion channels as other relazioni, as shown by material traces on the numerous extant exemplars. Even if it was never printed, Bon’s relazione was apparently very common in the eighteenth century.¹³⁴ Most are in the neat handwriting of copies made for circulation and (possibly) sale. The titles varied.¹³⁵ Rather than as a section in a compilation, it is commonly found as a separate, originally circulating independently, at times with its own apparatus of indexes and summary.¹³⁶ Some carry scathing remarks by readers who thereby professed their disapproval (but still kept the relazione rather than destroying it as ordered by the Senate).¹³⁷ Thanks to the flexibility of manuscript reproduction, all copies contain more or less slight variations, whether mistaken or intentional, both in style and ¹²⁹ Alvise Biscacciante, 16.11.1619: cc. 23r –v; the Inquisitors were incensed that commoners had access to the relazione, c. 26v. ¹³⁰ Andrea Da Lezze’s deposition, 15.11.1619: cc. 18–19. ¹³¹ Cc. 18v –19, 21, 21v, 23r –v. ¹³² The Inquisitors of State to Ottaviano Bon, 22.11.1619, c. 26v. ¹³³ Ottaviano Bon’s interrogation, 22.11.1611: c. 27. ¹³⁴ Foscarini 1752: 463–4. Andrea da Lezze estimated the relazione’ s circulation at 25 copies, 15.11.1619 (c. 19v). I have found seventeenth-century exemplars in: ASV (3 copies), MCV (Mss. Donà, Cicogna, Correr: 4 copies), BMV (Cod. Ital.: 2 copies), BAV (Mss. Barb. Lat.: 2 copies). ¹³⁵ MCV, Ms. Correr 1147, cc. nn. carries the title ‘Manifesto’; MCV, Ms. Cicogna 1124, cc. 83–146v, ‘Giustificatione’; BMV, Cod. Ital. VI.296 (5846), cc. 133–48: ‘Scrittura [. . .] in scarico’; ibid., cc. 168–204: ‘Scrittura di Escolpatione’; BAV, Barb. Lat. 5308: ‘Scrittura [. . .] per giustificarsi’. ¹³⁶ e.g. BAV, Barb. Lat. 5196. ¹³⁷ e.g., MCV, Ms. Donà 450, fasc. 15.

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occasionally in contents. For example, a passage attacking another ambassador, Antonio Donà, is not contained in all copies, and notably not in the one which reached Piero Gritti (who was politically close to Donà). Revealingly, when the Inquisitors showed Bon a copy, he admitted that the text was his, but warned that he could not be sure whether it coincided ad verbum (word for word) unless he read it all.¹³⁸ Scribal publication turned Bon’s relazione, essentially, into a polemical pamphlet, a ‘writing published to the world’, as his prosecutors charged him, ‘with a demonstrative and apologetic aim’.¹³⁹ Indeed, the leak served Bon well. With successively close ballots, a divided Senate eventually decided to drop all charges, and soon later elected him podestà of Padua.¹⁴⁰ Bon was unlikely to be interested only in personal advancement, however, which he could have obtained in other ways. The heir of one of Venice’s richest families, in 1619 he also donated large sums to the Giudecca college for poor patricians (newswriters were quick to make the connection with Bon’s trial).¹⁴¹ He was not just settling personal scores with his past; he had a political aim in the present. As he repeatedly affirmed during the trial, his report was really written in the public interest.¹⁴² Bon’s strategy becomes clear if we set his leak in the context of political events in 1619, two years after the embassy’s end. At this time the Senate was called to deliberate on a difficult and rapidly evolving international situation at the beginning of what was going to become the Thirty Years’ War. With the Habsburgs on a renewed aggressive course—Ferdinand, the enemy of 1615–17, had seized the imperial crown, and Olivares was bringing Madrid towards war—the Senate faced difficult questions. Having arduously finalized an alliance with Savoy, in November senators split on a similar proposal with the United Provinces. Meanwhile, the impeachment of Antonio Donà, formerly ambassador to Savoy and the nephew of the Interdict’s doge, harmed the anti-Habsburg cause.¹⁴³ Inside the Senate, Sarpi’s friend Sebastiano Venier pleaded for that cause.¹⁴⁴ Outside it, Bon, excluded from politics since his return to Venice, used his relazione to rally support for neutralism. As he argued, Venice was marred by ineffective and costly troops, divided generals, and international isolation; he ¹³⁸ Bon’s interrogation, 22.11.1619, c. 25v. In February, he claimed that the text which circulated differed from his version concerning significant details of the military confrontation (26.2.1620, c. 48v). ¹³⁹ Bon’s interrogation, 22.11.1619: c. 33v. ¹⁴⁰ Bon was elected podestà on 1 March 1620; on 29 April the Senate voted Bon’s sentence, and after two very close ballots (–61–65–19, and –64–71–11) absolved him (c. 61). ¹⁴¹ The school was to host forty young patricians from poor families, cf. Zenoni 1916 and (on Bon’s role) Cozzi 1995a: 53, 56; avvisi dated 4 and 9.12.1619, in BAV, Urb. Lat. 1087, cc. 696 and 704v. ¹⁴² Bon’s interrogation of 22.11.1619, cc. 28, 30v. ¹⁴³ On Venice’s international position in these months, see Cozzi 1992: 103–9. ¹⁴⁴ Nani 1720: 198–201.

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appealed to the patricians’ self-interest by insisting that war depleted the treasury, forcing them to heavy taxation.¹⁴⁵ He also criticized the policy of drawing troops from distant countries—which was precisely the point of the proposed Dutch deal. Finally, he extensively drew on the traditional discourse of Venetian and republican pacificism embodied in the writings of another great ambassador, Paolo Paruta. Bon’s relazione was the political manifesto of an entire group. Bon’s relazione illustrates the confrontation between the patricians’ group interests and those of the government as a representative of all patricians. Read and transcribed in spite of the Senate’s ban, his report’s circulation shows that the government had very limited control over political communication in the political arena. As this was a political conflict, others made a point of responding. Against Bon, Sarpi wrote a consulto directed to the government and also composed (in the same months as Bon’s report circulated) a history of the recent war meant to convince patricians to fight on.¹⁴⁶ Sarpi’s text was never published, however, perhaps because the government preferred to keep the controversy as much as possible inside the political arena only. In a pattern which, as we shall see, matched that of the Interdict controversy, individual politicians stood to gain from leaking as a tool of politics, while the government hesitated before public communication. Meanwhile, leaking was meant to rally support inside a well-defined group but it also involved a potential for further publicity amongst outsiders, making the government’s claim of unanimity little more than a mockery.

2 . 3 D I P LO M AC Y: B E T W E E N O F F I C I A L A N D U N O F F I C I A L C O M M U N I C AT I O N The political arena in which patricians operated extended beyond the government to include outsiders whom the government had to bar from sensitive information, but whom it made sense for patricians to associate themselves with. Such is the case of foreign diplomats and other agents. In the sixteenth century, all European states escalated the intensity of diplomacy and created stable representations. A well-established tradition of consul–merchant cooperation put Venice at the forefront of diplomacy’s development.¹⁴⁷ Moreover, the government’s independence, coupled with the city’s position midway between the Ottoman and the Spanish Empires, made Venice the territory for the encounter of emissaries interested in information on behalf of a range of foreign ¹⁴⁵ Firpo 1975–96, v. 6: 642–3. ¹⁴⁶ Sarpi’s consulto is dated 20.11.1619 (after the interrogation of most witnesses, and before the interrogation of Bon), see Sarpi 1969: 1023, 1059–70; on the Trattato, see below, p. 254. ¹⁴⁷ Mattingly 1955; on Venice: Aspetti e momenti, Queller 1967, Ventura 1976: xi–xxii, Zannini 1999.

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powers. Thus, alongside an official system of information there developed an unofficial and largely unlawful one, where information was the trade of competing professionals. Foreign representatives in Venice constituted a large group, including not only ambassadors of crowned sovereigns, but also envoys of minor Mediterranean powers (such as Ragusa), of the major religious orders, as well as representatives of cities in the Venetian dominions (like foreign diplomats, they were known as oratori or nunzi —a reminder that the capital regarded its dependencies largely as foreign). From the early sixteenth century the presence of these figures in the city became increasingly permanent.¹⁴⁸ As potential actors in information exchanges, we must add to all official representatives their smaller or larger retinues as well as a score of minor figures who acted as unofficial agents, some of them on secret missions, others with self-appointed charges. In 1606, for example, Fausto Verdelli arrived in Venice on behalf, as he claimed, of the Duke of Lorraine. The Republic refused to recognize him as an ambassador because, as other diplomats remarked, Verdelli was only a ‘private person’. He was, however, received as a personal representative of the Duke’s son, a foreign condottiero in the Republic’s service.¹⁴⁹ The diplomatic world of early modern Europe was less formally sealed from the rest of society than we now perhaps think. As a growing body of treatises on diplomacy all stressed in this period, ambassadors were a vital means of political communication, ‘the organ which communicates distant thoughts and intentions’.¹⁵⁰ Ambassadors were ‘golden channels for public knowledge’, a Venetian ambassador agreed.¹⁵¹ In theory, as we have seen, all diplomatic communication was supposed to take place through formal audiences in the Collegio.¹⁵² One function of this arrangement was to limit all unofficial contact between power’s inner sphere and the outside world. Patricians were forbidden to entertain any contact (however occasional) with foreign diplomats, a prohibition extending from 1542 to all nobles, regardless of whether or not they held governmental office.¹⁵³ Forbidden from mingling as they would in other capitals with their social equals, foreign ambassadors to Venice complained about their missions, comparing them to ‘confinements’ where (as England’s Dudley Carleton put it), they were forbidden from exchanging ‘almost a word with any man of merit unless it be with a public minister (whose conversation consists only of compliments) or a straggling traveller’.¹⁵⁴ ¹⁴⁸ Morpurgo 1877, Fasolo 1935, Queller 1977: 66–7 and 84–5, Grubb 1988: 151, Viggiano 1993: 30–1. ¹⁴⁹ ASV, Sen., Terra, r. 76, c. 39v., and dispatches of 15.4 and 6.5.1606, in ASM, AV, b. 84, cc. nn., and in Putelli 1911, v. 22: 552. ¹⁵⁰ De Vera 1649: 22; cf. Bazzoli 2002. ¹⁵¹ Benzoni 1999: 140. ¹⁵² See above, p. 37. ¹⁵³ The punishment for contravention was reinforced in 1612, then again 1659, 1662, 1664, 1717; in 1790 the law was extended to noblewomen. Cf. Molmenti 1919: 25–63, Queller 1966 and 1977, Preto 1994a: 61. ¹⁵⁴ Carleton 1972: 15, and cf. [Freschot] 1709: 334.

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It is likely that such complaints referred to formal occasions, however, because ambassadors had a number of informal ways of communicating and associating with ‘men of merit’ (Carleton himself entertained assiduous contacts with no less than Sarpi).¹⁵⁵ Together, the repetition of prohibitions and the Inquisitors of State’s reports show that foreign diplomats and patricians met recurrently, ‘in private homes, in churches, squares, and street-corners’ (as a law complained in 1480).¹⁵⁶ In practice, it proved impossible to stop informal communication. For example, in 1591—at a particularly charged time to which we shall return—Giulio Michiel reported to the Collegio how it had proved impossible to prevent the Spanish ambassador from sitting in the stall next to him while he was hearing mass in San Giovanni e Paolo. Michiel was sorry but could not have stopped the ambassador on account of ‘good manners’—politeness regulated but also called for such encounters. As Michiel then recounted, the ambassador ‘began talking to me about different subjects, such as civil and criminal justice, and about Spanish procedure in these matters, and about the privileges which Spanish nobles enjoy and the different opinions of Spanish nobles concerning that. And then he asked me, ‘‘What does vostra Signoria think of the Duke of Savoy’s latest move?’’ ’ This is a rare glimpse in the conversation of high ranking politicians, ranging from legal to social questions, and from that to current affairs. Perhaps, the former were mere pretexts for the latter, but they still show these people’s readiness to compare and evaluate distant cultures and societies.¹⁵⁷ Ambassadors—including Venetian ones—knew the importance of cultivating the political elite of the state where they resided. A late seventeenth-century manuscript which was certainly read (and perhaps written) in Venice pointed to sociability as the best way of ‘skilfully and tactfully’ discovering ‘the affairs of the court, the news of the world, and the important business of other princes’. ‘You will succeed easily with generous table and grateful hospitality, by making a habit of welcoming those people who may give you such information; and your ear must be ready to listen as your tongue must be ready to blandish.’ While referring to commendable norms of social conduct (hospitality, generosity), this text clarifies the real nature of the transactions by recommending that ambassadors keep their informers’ names secret, ‘because otherwise you will lose their trust and damage your friends’.¹⁵⁸ Both aspects went together in fact, because sociability enabled diplomats to obtain information and to justify the manner in which they did so. As education and social pride united elites across national borders, prominent Venetians and foreign diplomats must have regarded associating with each other as useful, pleasurable, and somehow natural—politics was a birthright ¹⁵⁵ See the letters in Sarpi 1969: 643–719. ¹⁵⁶ Molmenti 1919: 47. ¹⁵⁷ Report dated 9.4.1591, in ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Principi, f. 7, cc. nn.; more on this exchange below, section 4.4. ¹⁵⁸ Ricordi per li ambasciatori, MCV, Ms. Cicogna 3271/III, cc. nn. A different version of this text, evidence of its manuscript fortune, in BMV, Cod. Ital. VI.187 (6039), cc. 245–64. On this document see Queller 1972, disputed in Ventura 1976: lxx.

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for both, after all. For diplomats, Venetian patricians were precious sources of information, and the latter felt the same about the former. A sixteenth-century text of advice for young patricians, recommended conversation with them as a way of ‘growing skilled in affairs of state’. The author (himself an experienced ambassador) explained: ‘although the law prevents us from visiting the houses of foreigners, it is not forbidden to converse with them every now and then, with discernment, in public’.¹⁵⁹ Discernment is the key word here—although in practice, it was hardly respected. An example concerns the ridotti where ambassadors, foreigners, and patricians socialized while gambling. As we shall see later, playing cards for money was a favourite pastime across different social groups. Moral treatises and legislation both frowned upon it when it involved patricians, because it posed a threat to the wealth of ruling families. From 1539 gambling came under the control of the Esecutori alla bestemmia and, when it also involved foreigners, of the Inquisitors of State.¹⁶⁰ In the 1610s the Inquisitors discovered that one of the Spanish ambassador’s most prominent agents, Antonio Meschita, prepared cards which the nobles used in the Spanish embassy; the ambassador also salaried another man to run the games.¹⁶¹ In 1612 an inmate who had been a servant in the embassy, likened it to a ‘public tavern’, where ‘people play cards and dice, bring women, and eat and drink’.¹⁶² The point was that economic loss also meant political danger, because losing made patricians vulnerable to outside influences. When the winner was a foreign ambassador, losing threatened not just personal independence, but collective sovereignty. As gambling shows, there were convivial reasons for associating with foreign ambassadors. Other reasons were less innocent. Ambassador Bedmar’s careful evaluation of the conditions of the poorest nobles was a preliminary recognition made to assess opportunities for corruption.¹⁶³ The nuncio was approached by patricians seeking ecclesiastical benefices in Rome; no doubt, he expected a quid pro quo.¹⁶⁴ Anzolo Badoer, who was condemned for his contacts with foreign ambassadors (including the nuncio), was suspected of entertaining similar hopes.¹⁶⁵ Unlike other Italian nobles, Venetian patricians were forbidden from receiving foreign patronage or pensions; yet it is clear that practice was far from principle.¹⁶⁶ Furthermore, as well as personal greed, some contacts reflected conscious political strategies by entire groups. In 1612, some patricians with traceable links to prominent pro-Habsburg leaders in the Senate were prosecuted ¹⁵⁹ Suriano 1856: 12–13. ¹⁶⁰ Derosas 1981: 446. ¹⁶¹ Deposition of Francesco Alborante, 6.11.1612, in ASV, IS, b. 1213, fasc. 11, cc. nn.; cf. also the report dated 14.3.1613, in ASV, IS, b. 607, fasc. 5, cc. nn. ¹⁶² Deposition of Francesco Alborante, 4.11.1612, in ASV, IS, b. 1213, fasc. 11. ¹⁶³ ‘Relatione delle cose di Venetia’ (1618), in BL, Sloane Ms. 1834, cc. 16v –18v. ¹⁶⁴ Dispatch of the nuncio dated 14.7.1607, in ASVat, SS, NV, r. 38, cc. 18v–19. ¹⁶⁵ Cozzi 1958: 124–7, Preto 1994a: 79–82 and Fulin 1868: 1–61. ¹⁶⁶ Lane 1973: 227–8 and Queller 1986: 185–9; for comparison, cf. Spagnoletti 1996: 51–128.

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for frequently attending the Spanish embassy.¹⁶⁷ In the same years, the nuncio frequently referred to the nobles who visited him as sympathetic to the Holy See, and conversely described those who attended the English embassy as being close to Sarpi.¹⁶⁸ In these cases, contacts involved mutual benefits for both ambassadors seeking to obtain information, and for patricians trying to gain influence for their political line. They did not necessarily lead to treason, however. In fact, most patricians involved in those illicit contacts would see themselves as trying to steer the government’s policies towards what they perceived as their country’s good. However illicit, informal contacts with foreign ambassadors constituted a common aspect of patrician social life as well as one of the ways in which patricians conducted their political activities. Once again, then, those who set down the law in Venice also knew that actual reality escaped the letter of that law, and the political arena occupied the gap in between. Through that gap, information potentially leaked further, as we will now see by turning from the select circles of patricians and ambassadors, to the wider and more varied social world which thrived at their margins. 2 . 4 P RO F E S S I O N A L S O F I N T E L L I G E N C E As well as bonding with patricians, ambassadors also surrounded themselves with a more heterogeneous host of intermediaries, people who were not fully part of formal politics but who networked their way into the secrets of the powerful through favours, personal friendship or money. These often shady characters’ sensational adventures have been made the object of numerous romantic stories, generally under the tag of spies.¹⁶⁹ ‘Spy’ was a derogatory term in the seventeenth century, used to refer to one’s enemy’s informers, whereas one referred to one’s own as confidenti, a term implying a more acceptable human relationship.¹⁷⁰ With its connotations of exceptionality, the word spy imperfectly renders the systematic role of people who shaped their social and professional success around their ability to mediate between those who sought, and those who held, intelligence. The notion of spying also suggests an alien element deviously penetrating into a community. But, however unlawful their activities, information professionals were part of the political system, helping communication between different members of the political arena. Patricians, for example, did not always author their relazioni, some of which were penned by their educated secretaries under their masters’ names (an occurrence which ¹⁶⁷ The condemned patricians included Alvise Battaglia, Domenico Bollani, Alvise Gabriel, Domenico Moro; cf. Preto 1994a: 123–8. ¹⁶⁸ e.g. dispatch dated 14.7.1607, in ASVat, NV, r. 38, c. 22v; the nuncio’s complaints in ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Roma, r. 15, c. 214 (11.8.1607), and r. 16, c. 12v (28.3.1608). Cozzi 1958 mentions many instances from the nuncio’s correspondence. ¹⁶⁹ Cf. Infelise 2002b and Preto 1994a: 597–603. ¹⁷⁰ Cf. Preto 1994b.

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should be studied in greater depth).¹⁷¹ As historians of early modern England and France have suggested, this period saw the increasing professionalization of ‘intelligencers’ providing their patrons with foreign news, historical insight, and texts on statecraft or classical scholarship.¹⁷² In Venice they included a wide range of professionals, from servants and secretaries to newswriters and authors, people of different social status who extended political communication beyond the political caste.

A nest of informers Commenting on the arrest of an agent of the Venetian ambassador in Turin in 1591, the Spanish ambassador said that he could not blame his Venetian counterpart there, ‘because these are things which ambassadors habitually make use of.’¹⁷³ Diplomacy and illicit intelligence differed in acceptability and lawfulness, but were mutually necessary activities, and the growth of the former entailed an increase in the latter.¹⁷⁴ This is why the establishment of permanent embassies was initially perceived as creating hostile cells at the heart of a state’s capital—the French Philippe de Commynes recommended that, for every ambassador his king received, he should retaliate by sending back two.¹⁷⁵ As we have seen, Venice tried to limit all contacts between the inner sphere of power and the outside world. For that reason, embassies were located not in the city’s centre, but—surprisingly perhaps to us—confined to the peripheral area of Cannaregio, not far from the Jewish Ghetto, and crucially distant from San Marco’s seat of power.¹⁷⁶ Although impossible to quantify, it is important to stress the pervasiveness of intelligence activities in the city. Thanks to its ties with East and West, Venice was prized by foreign powers as a centre of information. As summed up by Juan Antonio de Vera, who himself served as Spanish ambassador in Venice in the 1630s, ‘sometimes one can learn more about French business in Spain by means of the ambassador based in Venice, or Rome, than by means of the ambassador in Paris’.¹⁷⁷ The government’s attempt to monopolize political communication and control political knowledge was frustrated by the unrelenting spying of Spain, France, and England, as well as the Church and the Turks.¹⁷⁸ Locked between opposite blocks—Bourbons and Habsburgs, Catholics and Protestants, Christians and Turks—Venice became an arena for espionage not wholly unlike central European capitals during the Cold War. ¹⁷¹ e.g. Fassina 1992: 297–313; MCV, Ms. Cicogna 2989, file 1. ¹⁷² Jardine and Sherman 1994 and cf. Raymond 2005; on France, cf. Viala 1985, Jouhaud 1991, 1995, 2000. ¹⁷³ Report dated 9.4.1591, in ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Principi, f. 7, cc. nn. ¹⁷⁴ Preto 1998; cf. Bély 1990. ¹⁷⁵ Queller 1977: 53; cf. Gentili 1585: I.xv. ¹⁷⁶ Cf. Coryat 1905, v. 1: 379; on Cannaregio, cf. Braunstein 1998. ¹⁷⁷ De Vera 1649: 306; cf. the essays in Beck, Manoussacas, and Pertusi 1977. ¹⁷⁸ Preto 1994a: 87–146.

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In the course of the sixteenth century, the Republic stepped up its own network of spies abroad. By the early seventeenth century, no doubt preoccupied by mounting pressure in the international arena, the Inquisitors of State also began operating a system of counter-intelligence in Venice itself. Mainly they posted moles in or around foreign embassies, or after key figures. The Interdict acted as a turning point in heightening the government’s distrust of its neighbours. A few weeks after the resumption of diplomatic relations with the Holy See, perhaps in response to Sarpi’s attempted assassination (which some blamed on papal agents), the Inquisitors of State ordered unnamed ‘people’ ‘to observe those who enter and exit the house of the Lord Nuncio, and follow them either by water . . . or land’.¹⁷⁹ As they secured the collaboration of the nuncio’s oarsman and waiter, they knew both about the places the nuncio visited and the people who attended his table. The nuncio himself complained about ‘the exquisite diligence of spies posted around my house’.¹⁸⁰ In the following years, the Ten employed guards to keep foreign diplomats under control, and the Inquisitors secured the cooperation of a man who worked in the Spanish embassy itself, Alessandro Granzino, a confidente to whom we shall return, as he also sold his services to other masters.¹⁸¹ By definition, secret informers tried to leave as little evidence as possible, and their masters often preferred to omit their names from written records. However, the Inquisitors of State’s records help to sketch an idea of the rich variety of agents passing secrets from the patriciate to foreign ambassadors and vice versa. They can be usefully analysed according to the double criterion of informers’ attitude to the trade and closeness to the insiders of Venice’s power. We can start from those closest to the centre. Some illegitimate children of patricians are known to have sold information to foreigners. Granzino for example reported several visits to the Spanish embassy by one ‘bastardo’ of a senator of the Giustinian family.¹⁸² Others were mainland nobles, who must have often had occasion to reside in Venice.¹⁸³ There, they had frequent contacts with political insiders. Cornelio Frangipane, the Friuli nobleman who authored a rhetorical treatise we have already seen, recommended such contacts, in particular with Venetian patricians. The latter, he said, were ‘civilised and delightful in ¹⁷⁹ Parte dated 5.10.1607, in ASV, CX, Deliberazioni segrete Roma, r. 4, c. 67 (the same day as Sarpi’s attempted murder). The reports are in ASV, IS, bb. 644–50; they begin in 1608 and continue until 1619. It is likely that many of the following files have gone missing. ¹⁸⁰ Dispatch dated 21.4.1612, in BAV, Barb. Lat. 7628, c. 236v; the nuncio again lamented spie one week later, ibid., c. 251. ¹⁸¹ e.g. ASV, IS, b. 638, cc. nn. (on the representative of the Duke of Urbino); ibid., b. 606, file 9 (on the Spanish ambassador). On Granzino see DBI, s.v., and Chiarelli 1925, Spini 1949–50, v. 107: 20–9, and Preto 1994a: 124–5. His reports are scattered in five large files in ASV, IS, bb. 606–10, covering the period 1612–20 and 1628–33. ¹⁸² Undated report (in a file mostly from 1620), ASV, IS, b. 610, cc. nn. On the patricians’ illegitimate children, see: Zannini 1993a: 108–18; Megna 1997: 166–7; and Cowan 2003. ¹⁸³ In 1579, for example, eighteen nobles from Vicenza alone resided in Venice, Fasolo 1935: 154.

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conversation’, because ‘they have visited many countries for trade, on embassies and out of the desire to know different peoples and customs.’¹⁸⁴ Social status endowed illegitimate children of patricians and non-Venetian nobles, equally excluded by birth from power, with familiarity with those in government. Rather than working as paid spies, they reinforced that status through their ability to retrieve and mediate reserved information. For example, the Vicenza count Giuseppe Porto and his son Paolo wrote regular letters to French ministers between at least 1606 and 1623.¹⁸⁵ Giuseppe also collaborated with the French ambassador in Venice and occasionally acted as an intermediary for business which the ambassador did not wish to deal with personally. It was him, for example, who delivered the letter concerning Protestant advances in Venice to the Inquisitors of State, probably because the French ambassador did not wish to discuss it formally in the Collegio.¹⁸⁶ The connection established and reinforced family identity. The Portos had longstanding ties with France since at least the time of Luigi Porto (1485–1529), briefly an officer in the French army, and one of Giuseppe’s brothers served in France at the time of the Wars of Religion. Giuseppe repeatedly pressed for, and eventually obtained, a pension from the French crown.¹⁸⁷ He seemed to see no clash of allegiances with Venice. As he affirmed, he informed the French ‘in the interest of my prince, whom I hope to see raised above all other princes of the world together with his Majesty’. At the same time, Giuseppe also appreciated the dangers involved in his information activity. He repeatedly asked for reservation and used a cipher.¹⁸⁸ Other people, with greater contacts than family fortunes, turned information into a source of revenue. For them, profit was more important than loyalty. A man we have already encountered, Fausto Verdelli, provides an interesting example. In 1606 he was the agent of minor foreign potentates and briefly provided intelligence to the Venetians.¹⁸⁹ A native of Crema, he later moved to Venice but also switched sides. In October 1613 he was denounced in strong terms for publicly despising the Republic, ‘continually chatting with every kind of people, having a lot to do with the agents of foreign princes, proving always extremely curious, meddling with everyone in a scandalous way’.¹⁹⁰ The guard whom the Inquisitors ordered to follow him discovered that Verdelli was ‘one of those so-called honoured spies’, in the multiple pay of the dukes of Savoy, Parma, and Lorraine, and of course of the Spanish ambassador. He wrote newsletters ¹⁸⁴ Quoted in Antonini 1881–82, v. 9: 53. ¹⁸⁵ The letters are scattered amongst others in miscellaneous papers relating to Italian affairs addressed to the French court, in BNF, Ms. Français 16082–16087. ¹⁸⁶ Document dated 10.9.1609, in ASV, IS, b. 1213, fasc. 3, cc. nn. ¹⁸⁷ Canaye 1636, v. 3: 41. ¹⁸⁸ Letter dated 6.9.1606, in BNF, Ms. Français 16082, c. 9; also ibid.: c. 14, 15.9.1606. ¹⁸⁹ Preto 1994a: 127, Putelli 1911, v. 22: 552 and passim; cf. also above, p. 52. ¹⁹⁰ Anonymous denunciation dated 10.10.1613 in ASV, IS, b. 608, fasc. 4, cc. nn. The secretary of the English ambassador also pointed the Inquisitors to Verdelli, 15.12.1615, ibid.

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to each, as well as to correspondents as far away as Flanders.¹⁹¹ Verdelli’s network was impressive. In his home, he entertained Bedmar’s secretary, the representative of Malta, various patricians, and others who figured prominently in the Inquisitors’ files; for a time he ran a whole workshop for the distribution of newsletters.¹⁹² Clearly what aroused the attention, and no doubt the envy, of those who denounced Verdelli was the fact that he thrived without a trade: ‘no one knows what Verdelli does here, and yet he remains here’.¹⁹³ As the Ten’s guard reported, Verdelli used to wear rags and live in rented lodging, ‘but now is dressed in the haughtiest way, and has plenty of money . . . he has no trade or profession whatsoever’.¹⁹⁴ In effect, his profession was information. If some people made intelligence into their sole profession, others coupled it with other trades. Clearly, political informers also included more common figures than the spy’s popular image would suggest. Many people whose names recur in the Inquisitors of State’s reports, for example, worked in the large world of early modern Venice’s legal professions.¹⁹⁵ They would avail themselves of their profession to gain useful information because, as one boasted to the Inquisitors in 1616, ‘Lawyers have the occasion of hearing many of their clients’ private affairs, and when a gentleman hears something concerning the interest of the state, he must at all costs let your Excellencies know about it.’¹⁹⁶ This lawyer made a point of his patrician loyalty to Venice, but we can only guess what his colleagues did. Before becoming a professional informer, Verdelli briefly worked as a solecitator di Palazzo, a minor lawyer following a client’s legal suit.¹⁹⁷ Others combined the two activities, such as Fabrizio Tessera, who (according to one of the Ten’s guards) ‘deals bravely (alla galiarda) with matters of state . . . under cover of being a Palace solicitor’, or Vincenzo Tucci, whose soliciting provided him with ‘ample contacts with important nobles’.¹⁹⁸ Lawyers did not only inform the Spanish ambassador; in 1617 they served the French one, and, as the next chapter shows, their social networks extended to much of the city.¹⁹⁹ Similarly, physicians were particularly well placed to provide connections and information. According to Granzino, Bedmar employed a Portuguese doctor, who ‘serves in important matters having frequent contacts with various nobles, to whose homes he has ease of access because of his medical profession.’²⁰⁰ As he later added,

¹⁹¹ Undated note attached to report dated 2.6.1614, in ASV, IS, b. 608, fasc. 4, cc. nn. ¹⁹² Deposition of Lodovico Parisan dated 20.12.1615, in ASV, IS, b. 1213, fasc. 20, cc. nn. ¹⁹³ Anonymous denunciation dated 10.10.1613 in ASV, IS, b. 608, fasc. 4, cc. nn. ¹⁹⁴ Report dated 6.8.1614, ibid. ¹⁹⁵ Cf. Cozzi 1982: 7 and Trebbi 1996. ¹⁹⁶ Deposition of Marco Molin, 17.8.1616, in ASV, IS, b. 1213, fasc. 26, cc. nn. ¹⁹⁷ Report dated 6.8.1614, in ASV, IS, b. 608, fasc. 4, cc. nn. ¹⁹⁸ Reports dated 19.3.1615, in ASV, IS, b. 609, fasc. 2, cc. nn., and 5.7.1615, ibid., fasc. 3, cc. nn.; on Tucci see also below, p. 92. More lawyers are mentioned in a report dated 30.3.1613, in ASV, IS, b. 607, fasc. 5, cc. nn. ¹⁹⁹ Report dated 9.5.1617, in ASV, IS, b. 609, fasc. 6, cc. nn. ²⁰⁰ Report dated 26.2.1613, in ASV, IS, b. 607, fasc. 4, cc. nn.

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those patricians may not have wanted to reveal any information, but people like the Portuguese doctor knew how to obtain the information they sought.²⁰¹ According to Granzino, another informer in the Spanish ambassador’s pay was Giovanni Mendoza. ‘He professes to be a learned writer, but is really a spy because with the excuse of his learning he goes to many of the principal houses and then reports all [he sees] to the ambassador’.²⁰² This leads us to the final point that many professional informers also doubled as actors in Venice’s thriving publishing industry, authors, but also editors, scholars, and literary hacks. Major writers of baroque literature were also minor figures of the same period’s politics, a fact which is often overlooked in literary histories. No less than Francisco de Quevedo, for example, was a client of the Spanish viceroy of Naples and in that function also wrote against Venice.²⁰³ We tend to associate these authors with courtly capitals, but they also prospered in republican Venice at least since the fourteenth-century humanists’ cooperation with patricians.²⁰⁴ In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, numerous academies provided authors and patricians with avenues for encounters, and other informal channels also existed.²⁰⁵ As sociologists of literature have shown, at a time when writing was no self-sustaining professional activity, most writers drew a living from the patronage of powerful members of the political arena, whom they served as full time secretaries, government clerks, private tutors, or simple collaborators.²⁰⁶ The exchange of information was at the heart of the deal. The authors’ connections allowed them to access reserved information and in turn their education enabled them to elaborate that information for the benefit of their patrons. Both stood to gain from their contacts, whether in material or symbolic terms. Giovan Battista Leoni (1542–1613) is a typical example. He published numerous works of contemporary and historical interest (including a commentary on Guicciardini’s History of Italy in defence of Venice’s dominion of the Adriatic).²⁰⁷ Under a pseudonym, he also published some extremely successful fiction.²⁰⁸ During the Interdict, Leoni authored both printed pamphlets and confidential manuscript reports: he published the former anonymously, and offered the latter in person to the government.²⁰⁹ No doubt he expected ²⁰¹ Report dated 12.3.1613, in ASV, IS, b. 607, fasc. 5, cc. nn. Other physicians are mentioned Preto 1994a: 65. ²⁰² Report dated 5.8.1614, in ASV, IS, b. 608, fasc. 3, cc. nn. ²⁰³ Fernandez Guerra 1897. ²⁰⁴ King 1986: ch. 1. ²⁰⁵ Benzoni 1978. ²⁰⁶ This phenomenon has received greater attention in England and France: see above n. 172, but cf. also Dionisotti 1967 and Vivanti. ed. 1981 (especially the essays by Prosperi, Perini, and Barberis). For secretaries doubling as authors of political tracts, see Testa 2005 and Brunelli 2001. ²⁰⁷ Leoni 1583, which became standard reference during the 1610s controversies on the dominion of Adriatic, see Roiter [pseud.?] 1616: 39v –40 and Cirillo Mechele [pseud.?] 1618: sig. A3v. ²⁰⁸ Leoni 1607 (reprinted at least seven times); surprisingly, there is no mention of Leoni in the multi-volume Arnaldi and Pastore-Stocchi 1976–86 or in the DBI. ²⁰⁹ ∗ [Leoni], 1606 Dve discorsi, according to Micanzio, Leoni also collaborated with Sarpi in writing the first draft of the latter’s Considerationi, Micanzio 1974: 1334–5. Several unpublished

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some reward, which he duly received when—to the Inquisitor’s anger—he was appointed censor of imported books.²¹⁰ Leoni coupled his literary activity with service for statesmen. In the 1570s he worked as a secretary to Venetian ambassadors—and in this function also authored a relazione. His published letters show that he cultivated, and cherished, a vast network of connections with patricians.²¹¹ Later he supplied newsletters to the Tuscan grand dukes (for which he was briefly arrested in 1600), and in 1606 he acted as the Duke of Urbino’s representative. The two sides of Leoni’s activity supplemented each other. It is likely, for example, that Leoni eased his way into Urbino’s service by publishing a celebratory biography of the duke’s father.²¹² Professional information shaped the social position of authors such as Leoni. For us, this is important because it points to the potential for further diffusion of political communication. Moving easily between the antichambers of the powerful and the workshops of printers, authors multiplied a political leader’s capacity for publicity. As we shall see at the time of the Interdict, authors and publishers relished controversies—to them, paper wars were more than a pleasing metaphor; they were a precious occasion for advancement and profit. Through print, authors made the information which they obtained through their contacts available to a wider public—a public which exceeded the political arena, because it was defined by the ability to afford books rather than by birth or connections.

The newswriting industry When the governor of Bergamo transmitted an intelligence offer from an unnamed Spanish confidente based in Milan in 1618, the Ten warned the governor that he should ensure that the offer involved serious revelations and not ‘public avvisi, which everybody knows’.²¹³ They referred to the weekly or bi-weekly manuscript newssheets distributed by professionals to subscribers for a fee and known as avvisi. Previously little known, this trade has recently been the object of several studies which have corrected the common assumption that periodical information developed late in Italy, a generation after the printed corantos which began to be published in the Netherlands and England in 1618.²¹⁴ texts attributed to Leoni are preserved in: ASV, MADM, b. 74–8, cc. nn. (two writings, both untitled); BMV, Cod. Ital. VII. 1689 (7757) (‘Discorso sopra le Censure fulminate da Paolo V Sommo Pontefice contro la Serenissima Republica di Venetia’). ²¹⁰ ASV, RSP, b. 64, cc. nn. (record 24.4.1608); cf. Spampanato 1924: 347, 353. ²¹¹ Leoni 1592–96. ²¹² Leoni 1605; Leoni took up his post towards the end of the interdict, cf. de Rubertis 1938: 252. Preto 1994a: 64; the 1579 relazione (in Fassina 1992: 297–313) circulated anonymously, although its authorship was known at least to Leonardo Donà (note in his copy, in MCV, Ms. Donà 216, c. 259). ²¹³ Dispatch dated 10.2.1618, in ASV, CX, Parti segrete, r. 16, cc. 109v–110. ²¹⁴ The first Italian printed periodical is the subject of some debate, cf. Bongi 1869 and Castronovo 1976; on corantos see Dahl 1946 and 1952; on the Gazette de France, Feyel 2000.

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This view was based on the study of printed periodicals alone, whereas we now know that manuscript newssheets already circulated on a regular basis in the sixteenth century. Indeed, Venice’s avvisi provided much of the news which foreign printed periodicals were likely to reproduce. The earliest recorded Dutch coranto in fact began with a piece of news from Venice, and each following issue similarly resembled avvisi in both contents and textual arrangement, with successive paragraphs relating to different cities.²¹⁵ Until the 1660s, Venetian avvisi were the second most important source for the information which was then printed in Théophraste Renaudot’s Gazette de France (after Paris and before London, Rome and Vienna).²¹⁶ As shown by Brendan Dooley and Mario Infelise, if Venice did not witness an early revolution in printed news, it is because it had already pioneered one in manuscript.²¹⁷ This is not surprising, given Italy’s large urban and literate population as well as substantial commercial economy. Probably drawing from the medieval merchants’ habit of collecting regular information from their agents, in the second half of the sixteenth century new professional figures emerged in Venice and Rome, known (respectively) as reportisti or menanti.²¹⁸ They often employed several scribes to make multiple copies of their avvisi which they then sold ‘by the sheet’ to paying customers abroad for an advance fee. Thus, they commercialized the exchange of information to make it a commodity available for a price to all those who could afford it. Not for nothing, in 1568 did the pope describe newswriters as a ‘new guild’.²¹⁹ The timing of their appearance suggests that curiosity caused demand for information. In the same way as the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War was to boost the periodical press in Northern Europe in 1618–19, so did the French wars of religion for manuscript periodicals in Italy half a century earlier. Later, avvisi continued to thrive because their format allowed customization: newswriters catered for the different interests and political inclinations of their different subscribers. To procure foreign news, newswriters themselves subscribed to avvisi from which they collated selected items. For home news, newswriters concentrated in the areas where they were most likely to obtain interesting leaks or gossip: in Rome, in the Banchi quarter between the Vatican and popular Piazza Navona; in Venice, in the parish of San Moisé, midway between the main postal office and the centre of government at San Marco.²²⁰ The Inquisitors of State’s records confirm that newswriters were often to be seen in the city’s gathering places at Rialto and San Marco. The English ambassador’s secretary thought that there newswriters found much of their information: ‘the avvisi which go to foreign courts are written on the basis of discussions’ ‘at that corner in Rialto where all foreign ²¹⁵ Dahl 1946: 1. ²¹⁶ Haffemayer 1997, referring to the period 1647–63. ²¹⁷ See especially Infelise 2002a; and cf. Delumeau 1957–59: 25–36. ²¹⁸ On medieval mercantile information, see Doumerc 1994, Sardella 1947, Tucci 1993; and cf. Reyerson 1999. ²¹⁹ Infelise 2002a: 10, 42. ²²⁰ Infelise 2002a: 25 ff.

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ambassadors and others meet every morning to discuss the affairs of the world’.²²¹ Avvisi too frequently described their source as oral communication, ‘no end of whispering amongst the curious’, ‘arguments of our curious friends’, ‘rumours in the square’.²²² In Rome, they referred to the ‘news’ (or, alternatively ‘prattle’,) ‘of the Banchi’.²²³ Of course such descriptions cannot all be taken at face value; often they would have been set phrases disguising the real provenance of particular pieces of intelligence which newswriters obtained from unnamed insiders of the political elite. As the next chapter will show, however, the oral circulation of political information in public places was a true part of the city’s life. Avvisi point to the urban pervasiveness of political communication. We can throw some light on the organization of the newswriting business by considering an inquiry conducted in 1616 on the activities of Antonio Meschita, who was, according to the Inquisitors’ records, one of the Spanish ambassador’s most important informers throughout the 1610s. Alberto Lana, a professional scrivener originally from Bologna (although he said that he had lived in Venice for more than 30 years), denounced Meschita to the Inquisitors. He told them that for a few months he had been working every week, from Thursday to Saturday, in the house of Meschita. The latter, together with his associate Francesco Gelmini, composed a newsletter containing information from Constantinople, Paris, Savoy, and England and, as they said ‘all the parts of the world’. They drew their information from letters which they received from abroad, and to that they added a paragraph or more concerning Venice itself. Meschita then gave Lana the text ‘which served as the mother’, and Lana made ten copies out of it; to them, Meschita occasionally added a further paragraph—probably consisting of news which he did not want Lana to know about. Meschita then sent the ten copies to subscribers in the Venetian mainland (Padua and Vicenza), and abroad (including the dominions of the archdukes of Austria, then at war with Venice).²²⁴ Thus, once again, scribal publication combined entrepreneurial organization with authorial intervention to constitute a successful means of information. In terms of the political uses of communication, it is important to stress the close connections between newswriters and the political elites. This is shown by the economics of the newswriting business. According to Lana, Meschita, received up to 30 ducats a year from each of his ten subscribers. From this total revenue we must subtract the costs. Evidence from later in the century suggests that newswriters needed to reinvest about half of their income into the business itself—mainly on subscriptions to other newsletters and on the ²²¹ Report by Tommaso Contarini dated 29.8.1611, in ASV, IS, b. 1213, fasc. 4, cc. nn. ²²² Avvisi dated 22.3.1606, in ASVat, SS, Avvisi, b. 2, cc. 77r –v, and 24.6.1606, in ASV, IS, b. 704, fasc. 2, cc. nn. ²²³ Infelise 2002a: 31. ²²⁴ Interrogation of Alberto Lana, 18.8.1616, in ASV, IS, b. 1213, fasc. 26; cf. Infelise 2002a: 51–2.

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scriveners’ salaries.²²⁵ If we apply the same ratio to Meschita’s figures, his net income would be reduced to 150 ducats, to be shared between him and his associate Gelmini (they would also have to pay Lana, of course, although the latter glossed over that). This was hardly a fortune, considering that in the same period a minor guard of the Council of Ten—perhaps including the moles charged with spying on Meschita himself—earned 60 ducats a year, a figure likely to increase as a result of supplementary forms of revenues connected to all charges in the state administration.²²⁶ Similarly, the newswriter Ottavio Tedeschi was known to his neighbours for receiving money from abroad; he lodged in a rented room, however, and another neighbour, the woman who was in charge of cleaning the building, knew that Ottavio’s business was less remunerative than he liked to boast. As she recounted, he had debts and ‘had it been only for his newsletters, he would have starved himself, but he worked as a translator from French into Italian, and in that way he earned a lot.’²²⁷ It is likely that Meschita, Tedeschi and most newswriters drew money not just from their customers but from patrons—the former, no doubt, from the Spanish ambassador himself (the Inquisitors discovered that the ambassador paid for the house in which Meschita lived).²²⁸ This is confirmed by the Inquisitors of State’s records, which show that several of the Spanish ambassador’s informers also doubled as avvisi-writers.²²⁹ This is a crucial point. Before the late seventeenthcentury boom of the press, the newswriters’ livelihood depended not on the market, but on high-placed patrons for whom they acted as intermediaries. The relationship was not just economic. Information also flowed from one to the other, because newswriters furnished political insiders with foreign news—ambassadors’ dispatches regularly included avvisi —and in turn the latter were in the best position for giving reserved information to the former.²³⁰ Thus, newswriters must be understood not as instruments of the public sphere, as they occasionally are, but rather as agents of the political arena (which is why they are discussed in this chapter rather than the next).²³¹ Being loyal to political masters rather than public opinion, newswriters consistently slanted the news they reported in their masters’ favour. Meschita’s ties with Spain, for example, affected his newsletters, which always put news in a light that was negative for Venice. As Lana related, ‘when [Meschita] writes ²²⁵ See Infelise 1998 and 2002a: 37–9. ²²⁶ Entry dated 2.6.1606, in ASV, Camerlengo del CX, Notatorio, r. 5, cc. nn.; for more comparisons, see below pp 223, 226. ²²⁷ Interrogations of Domenico Cattani and Polonia Artusi, 24.10.1618, in ASV, IS, b. 609, fasc. 8, cc. nn. ²²⁸ Deposition of Marco Molin, 17.8.1616, in ASV, IS, b. 1213, fasc. 26, cc. nn. ²²⁹ e.g. report dated 19.4.1611, in ASV, IS, b. 606, fasc. 9, cc. nn. Granzino himself regularly sent avvisi to at least six cardinals in Rome, dispatch dated 17.3.1618, in ASV, IS, b. 471, cc. nn. ²³⁰ In early seventeenth-century Venice, this was true of the nuncio, the representative of the duke of Modena, and the English ambassador. ²³¹ Cf. Dooley 1999a: 27–8 and Ettinghausen 2001.

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about Venice, he always detracts and speaks ill’; for example, ‘he goes to the piazza, and when he sees that companies of soldiers are being sent to the field, he takes some notes, and then writes, ‘‘Five hundred Albanian soldiers have been embarked, incapable of fighting, but very capable of looting’’.’²³² Then as today, the boundary between news and spin was easily blurred by the partisan professionals of news. In turn, this means that prominent political patrons relied on newswriters not only to obtain, but also to disseminate information. The Venetian ambassador in Rome in the 1580s, reported that a conventicula of newswriters met in the household of the French Ligueur cardinal de Sens to ‘invent and fabricate newssheets every time couriers arrive to Rome, according to that which they find expedient to make [people] believe.’²³³ When the viceroy of Naples wrote a letter to the pope regarding a controversy with Venice in 1617, Sarpi noted that ‘at the same time as he sent it to His Holiness, he sent copies to his correspondents in Rome, who published it and put it into the hands of all newswriters, for distribution not only in that city but everywhere.’²³⁴ Sarpi commented that the outcome of Osuna’s dissemination was that ‘idle and partisan people turned the letter into a matter of discussions’.²³⁵ Although newswriters worked for the political arena, their news eventually reverberated outside that arena—the popes lamented that newswriters made secrets of state known in Rome’s humblest quarters.²³⁶ Perhaps for this reason, the authorities soon tried to prohibit avvisi. In 1571 the Council of Ten ordered severe punishments ‘let no one dare to write news of any kind, be it those which are discussed in the piazze’.²³⁷ But complete prohibition was unrealistic. As Pope Gregory XIII had lamented in 1572 ‘old vices keep returning in spite of severe punishments’.²³⁸ Afterall, newswriting was necessary to the authorities themselves as well as to the elites forming them. At the same time as condemning the production and distribution of avvisi in their own countries, statesmen made use of those coming from abroad—including the Venetian ambassadors who summarized newssheets in their dispatches, thus feeding back to the government itself.²³⁹ In Venice the failure of prohibition made the government move from an initial stance of absolute repression to one of discerning censorship and manipulation—but we shall come back to this later, when discussing the Interdict controversy, because it was one of the consequences of that political crisis. In this chapter we have moved from the secret archive at the heart of the state to the professional diffusion of documents which ought to have been locked there; from the patricians’ leaking of information for their factional aims, to the ²³² Interrogation of Alberto Lana, 18.8.1616, in ASV, IS, b. 1213, fasc. 26, cc. nn. ²³³ Seneca 1959: 190. ²³⁴ Sarpi 1965: 203. ²³⁵ Ibid.: 204. ²³⁶ Infelise 2002a: 154. ²³⁷ Text in Romanin 1857–61, v. 6: 129–30 and 132. ²³⁸ Bellettini 2000: 69. ²³⁹ Evidence from 1620 shows that the government added copies of avvisi to its dispatches to ambassadors abroad; record dated 16.3.1620, in ASV, IS, b. 522, cc. nn.

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professional outsiders’ skill in obtaining and commercially redistributing that information. The material traces left by those exchanges—Bon’s leak, relazioni, avvisi, spies’ reports—enable us to trace the extent of the political arena, a sphere of politics which included both insiders and outsiders, patricians and ambassadors as well as humbler professionals, people for whom securing and redistributing information was a business or an essential aspect of their profession. Their activities regularly frustrated the government’s attempted control over information. Of course, this does not mean that we are dealing here with a free and independent public, because all those in the political arena had a closer relation to power than the overwhelming majority of their contemporaries. The success of information professionals was determined not by the ability to judge power from the outside, but by the knowledge of someone inside who would provide them with information, a world of patron–client relations rather than service to the public. Furthermore, those professionals sold their information back to other insiders, once they manipulated it to suit their interests or those of their masters. Even so, however, the operations of these privileged groups—whether driven by personal or factional interest, social ambition, or economic greed—opened fissures into governmental secrecy through which others could gain a view of political affairs. It is to that wider world that we now turn.

3 City The members of the political arena constituted a political, if not a social, elite, defined by connections, education, and specialization, if not necessarily by status. Those social exceptions, however, never operated in a social vacuum. They often met in public or semi-public spaces, where little shielded their words from the ears of ordinary bystanders, a church, the shops around Rialto or, as I will show below, a pharmacy near the Arsenal in the peripheral sestiere of Castello. Similarly, Bon’s relazione was discussed ‘in piazza’ as well as patrician houses. Those involved in the government—and even more their servants, clerks, lawyers—all participated in a host of social interactions in a city that was overwhelmingly populated by people with no direct tie to the world of power. No less than Antonio Meschita, whom we have seen in action as one of the Spanish ambassador’s most important informers, made business, quarrelled over letters of exchange, and acted as a witness in partners’ deals, moving in and out of widely different social spheres.¹ This chapter moves to the city’s wider world of mostly oral communication to assess the impact of political information on the life and minds of ordinary Venetians and, in turn, to explore the role which the greater population played in the circulation of information. The sources have already been discussed in the introduction together with their special difficulties.² Here an additional warning should be made. ‘Ordinary people’ is a tag hiding a wide variety of different individuals, divided by wealth and education, social status and profession, geographical origin or neighbourhood of residence. As Natalie Zemon Davis insisted long ago, it is crucial to define specific milieus rather than generically refer to ‘the people’.³ As far as possible, I try to avoid simplifications by picking out the faces in the crowd, emphasizing rather than obliterating the differences between the people mentioned in the sources. Furthermore, the people discussed in this chapter shared two features which in turn clearly set them apart from the political arena described before. First, all the different people we shall see engaging in political communication—apothecaries, notaries, merchants, barbers, weavers, scriveners, mercers, as ¹ Transactions recorded in 1602 and 1611, in ASV, Notarile Atti, Luca e Giulio Gabrieli, b. 6549, cc. 244v –245r , and b. 6556, cc. 61v –62v ; cf. also Spini 1949–50, v. 108: 165. I am grateful to Dr Federica Ruspio for pointing me to this evidence. ² See above, pp. 11–12. ³ N.Z. Davis 1975: 192–3.

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well as their apprentices—worked for their living in ways that were not directly related to the business of politics or of information (although, as we shall see, many were interested in political information for reasons related to their own trade). I do not stress this distinction in the attempt to divide Venetian society into classes—this book’s intention is to trace communication between different social groups as well as amongst peers. However, it is crucial to distinguish the professionals of the political arena from those who may occasionally have been their social equals but always lacked their connections. The point is to identify those at the shorter end of disadvantageous power relations; in other words, to distinguish the barber from the spy who kept him under control. The danger of ignoring the difference between the political arena and the wider population consists in mistaking as historical testimonies of ‘public opinion’ the claims of a minority to control, and speak on behalf of, the entire population. It was a mistake which no contemporary would have made. The second feature shared by those discussed in this chapter, was that they were not meant to have any interest in politics. Politics was the preserve of patricians to the exclusion of all those outside that caste. This was true in a deeper sense than the institutional barring of guilds from the conduct of government.⁴ Apart from the cittadini in public employment, non-patricians were neither allowed to be political actors nor recognized as a legitimate political public. It was as if commoners were foreigners—and it was a commonplace that in Venice ‘most of the people are foreigners’.⁵ The historical justification of this idea, widely accepted in Venice’s classical literature, was that only patricians descended from those who built the city, while the commoners’ ancestors moved there later in order to profit from its wealth. For that reason, therefore, only the former and not the latter had an interest in state matters. This fiction drew not just on historical certitudes; it resulted from an entrenched sociological bias at the heart of patrician mentality assigning precise functions to social groups. While patricians were in charge of public affairs, non-patricians could only concentrate on private activities. As Contarini put it, commoners were good at making profit not politics, which was the preserve of people who often ruined their fortunes out of public-mindedness.⁶ In earlier generations the distinction was likely to have been one of commerce vs. mechanic arts. But in the course of the sixteenth century, as patricians increasingly turned to landed property and aristocratic trappings, they developed a new ideology where profit and politics could not go together (of course, they were prepared to make exceptions for themselves, but not for those whom they ruled). Even more so, lower down the social scale, all people could desire was the ⁴ See above, p. 44. ⁵ Commynes 1901–3, v. 2: 213; cf. Giannotti 1850: 28–35, and the patrician Girolamo Priuli in 1509, quoted in Cozzi 1986: 148. ⁶ Contarini 1591: 14.

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satisfaction of their basic needs. As a governor of Candia put it in 1619, the populace was ‘all stomach and no head’; all they wanted was ‘to be fed’, ‘they have no ears to listen to arguments or explanations, but always cry out ‘‘bread wine and oil’’.’⁷ The legitimation of oligarchy passed through a particular notion of ‘aristocracy’ where merit coincided with aptitude to politics and the latter presupposed independence from private needs. The patricians saw themselves as exercising their birthright for the good of the entire population. Largely, for one thing, they did cater for all those in need through an attentive social policy of charity and food-provisions, one of the two pillars of Venice’s remarkable stability.⁸ But the majority were not to be asked whether they thought their good well-served by the minority. The other pillar was the systematic exclusion of all non-patricians from the realm of politics. In practice, however, the distinction between private and public concerns, economy and politics, patricians and traders, was always going to raise a problem in a city that prided itself on commercial success, bringing together diverse people interested in exchanging news as well as goods. The symbol of that world was Rialto, causing travellers to marvel at ‘that famous concourse and meeting of so many distinct and sundry nations. . . . There you may see many Polonians, Slavonians, Persians, Grecians, Turks, Jewes, Christians of all the famousest regions of Christendome, and each nation distinguished from another by their proper and peculiar habits.’⁹ Venice itself was celebrated as ‘the magnet of travellers’ or ‘the theatre of the world’.¹⁰ Yet, behind such civic pride was a subtle anxiety. It can be seen, precisely, in Francesco Sansovino’s description of Rialto of 1581. Although he boasted that Rialto was ‘famous as one of the first piazze of the Universe’, he was keen to describe patricians and foreign merchants as gathering at opposite ends of the square, and stressed that patricians gathered there ‘for no reason other than to strengthen their mutual knowledge by conversing with each other, in order to preserve unity and concord’.¹¹ When set in the conflictual political arena described in the last chapter, Sansovino’s insistence reveals that, while commercial affluence was a matter for celebration, the communication which was inextricably tied with commerce was a cause of fear. In reality, Sansovino’s peaceful framework, with insiders united in harmony and physically separate from outsiders, had to do with the ideal rather than the reality. As in social transactions, in the political system distinctions become more important when contamination is more probable.¹² ⁷ 1619 report by Donato Morosini, quoted in Benzoni 1984: 68; similar examples in Benzoni 1978: 36–7. The English ambassador in Venice similarly described ‘the plebeyity, whose supreme object is bread’, Wotton 1907, v. 2: 139. ⁸ Pullan 1971. ⁹ Coryat 1905, v. 1: 318. ¹⁰ Zuniga 1694 and cf. Wilson 2005. ¹¹ Sansovino 1663: 363 (when referred to Rialto, the term piazza probably meant ‘commercial entrepôt’); cf. also the description of noble gatherings at San Marco, ibid.: 451. ¹² Cf. Douglas 1966.

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3 . 1 N EW S O N T H E R I A LTO The political communication described in the last two chapters centred formally in the Ducal Palace and the broglio, and informally in private and restricted spaces such as patrician homes or foreign embassies. Venice, however, was of course larger than that. As the government’s informers discovered, the professionals of the political arena regularly frequented urban spaces of public gatherings. For months in 1614, for example, the Inquisitors’ moles spied Antonio Meschita going daily not just (as one would expect) to the broglio, but also to Rialto, and visiting various shops on the way. The following report was rather typical of Meschita’s days: In the morning, he came late to San Marco, because he first went to the Spanish ambassador’s house. He then went to the Court [of the Ducal Palace], where he spent a good deal of time talking to the Florentine representative and with Verdelli. He then left and went to Rialto on his own, and there he remained in the Calle della Sicurtà, talking to the newswriters there. . . . And when he left, he went to the stall of Signor Francesco Zordan, the notary, and there wrote a letter; and then he left, and went to San Cassian, to a barbershop where he spent a good deal of time; and then he left to go home.¹³

True, Meschita may simply have been busy with his errands—one day the guards certainly saw him buy some groceries (far spese) at the meat market at Rialto.¹⁴ However, as the Inquisitors knew, the regularity of his visits showed that Meschita was interested not just in the goods he could buy at the city’s markets, but in the services which the latter performed as centres of information. In the Calle della Sicurtà, for example, Meschita would find the stalls of insurance brokers as well as, no doubt, precious news on maritime commerce and naval operations. The movements of the political arena’s professionals help us draw a map of the places where one would go when seeking for information in sixteenthand seventeenth-century Venice.

Information in the marketplace The large market at the city’s commercial centre thrived not just with goods but with news of all kinds, a world epitomized by The Merchant of Venice’s famous question, ‘What news on the Rialto?’ Shakespeare’s contemporaries would know that phrase to be commonplace, and their answer would include political information. In 1611, the English ambassador’s secretary advised the Inquisitors of State to put ‘a trusted person’ on permanence ‘at that corner in Rialto’ where, ‘as is known,’ ‘all the ambassadors of foreign princes ¹³ Report dated 4.11.1614, in ASV, IS, b. 606, fasc. 10, cc. nn. ¹⁴ Report dated 22.11.1614, ibid.

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meet every morning with other people to discuss the affairs of the world and the interests of princes’.¹⁵ A few years later a Polish Jew had less connected conversations in mind when he similarly advised that the best way of gaining information from the town of Triest was to send someone dressed in rags to beg in the main market square and taverns ‘in order to find out about those people’s thoughts, because in such places they speak freely of the affairs of their government.’¹⁶ At Rialto, many people required information for their own private or professional reasons. In the same way as patricians were supposed to know the ways of the broglio, so merchants and humbler traders were supposed to know the news of Rialto. In the mid-fifteenth century, Benedetto Cotrugli instructed fellow merchants about the importance of receiving prompt information, both local and from abroad: ‘make sure that you find out about everyone’s affairs and their plans, and to have news from everywhere, or you will be harmed.’¹⁷ While in the Middle East on trade, the merchants Andrea Barbarigo in the 1440s and Andrea Berengo in the 1550s, practised what Cotrugli preached, constantly asking by letter for news from Venice. It is likely that while Barbarigo had relatives in the Ducal Palace, Berengo (a citizen, although he boasted patrician origins) profited more from the glove-maker’s shop he owned at Rialto in obtaining news.¹⁸ Pierre Sardella showed in a pioneering study nearly sixty years ago, that in Venice news meant profit or loss. Shipwrecks, epidemics, or harvest yelds affected the price of commodities such as spices or cereal and in Rialto’s sophisticated market, they informed speculation in primary material, public debt investment, insurance premiums, and foreign currencies.¹⁹ The same has been shown for other commercial communities.²⁰ Writing at a time when economic historians disregarded political history, Sardella concentrated on the economic aspects of information. But traders at Rialto would find it hard to distinguish between commerce and politics, because they knew that, from however far, policies and events affected their lives and business. To them, the patricians’ separation between private and public affairs was likely to make no sense. Furthermore, the circulation between private and political channels of information was great. When, famously, news of the Portuguese new spice route around Africa reached Venice in 1501, it did so first through the government’s diplomatic network because the ambassador in Spain sent home a letter he had ¹⁵ Deposition of 29.8.1611, in ASV, IS, b. 1213, fasc. 4, cc. nn., quoted above, pp. 81–2. On Rialto cf. Cessi and Annibale 1934: 231–3 and 258–62. ¹⁶ Deposition of Giacob Levi, enclosed in dispatch dated 14.1.1617, in ASV, Coll., Lettere segrete, f. 48, cc. nn. ¹⁷ Cotrugli 1990: 164 (written in 1458, first published in 1573). ¹⁸ Lane 1944: 120–1, and Tucci 1957; there is sadly no mention of information in Tucci 1973. ¹⁹ Sardella 1947: 19–43, and cf. the observations in Braudel 1981: 410–12 and Doumerc 1994. ²⁰ Cf. the Genoese merchants’ attention for information ranging from foreign fashions to wars, Doria 1986.

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received from his agent in Lisbon. Only later did the news spread to provoke panic amongst the merchants at Rialto.²¹ In this case, communication worked in full circle. The Rialto merchants prompted the government to send an expedition to Lisbon to find out about the actual extent of the trade. In turn, if merchants were interested in governmentsupplied news, they also had their own means of supplying information to the government or powerful members of the political arena, either thanks to agents located in distant places (in the case of important traders), or as grass-roots informers (in the case of humbler tradesmen). A century later, Girolamo Corner, an important patrician who served as a general on the western frontier, was regularly updated by one Antonio Dal Bello, a Venetian subject who had an iron monger’s shop in Milan.²² Sarpi also knew merchants and relied on some of them to obtain the news which he then channelled in his letters.²³ In other cases, however, one imagines less collaboration than rivalry in obtaining news, with the government interested in censoring news so as to avoid shocks to the market, and individual traders competing to secure the earliest reports. As the English ambassador realized in 1608, the same news could be received in very different ways at Rialto depending on whether one had a mainly commercial or political bias: ‘this piazza is full of noise touching the arrival of the Indian fleet in Spain, the merchants glad, the politiques troubled therewith’.²⁴ Once at Rialto, news provoked further communication. Girolamo Priuli’s early sixteenth-century diary, for example, reported how the news of the Portuguese direct spice route to the East occasioned disbelief, then disagreement, and eventually despair. It seemed incredible . . . and the talks varied about the actual amount, some said more, others less, . . . and this was bad news for Venetian merchants . . . and so for this news they made the greatest celebrations in Lisbon and throughout Spain, and by contrast in Venice there was the greatest melancholy and distress. . . . And the price of all spices and other goods fell in Venice, putting the merchants in a bad state and in great doubt.²⁵

Only a few years later, in 1509 the Venetian army’s defeats and the enemy’s advances—closer events, and more immediately affecting a greater number of people—made for anxious rumours and contradictory reports. Then, while the official channels broke down, refugees, travellers, and fugitives became the carriers of news. In Venice, one could hear the enemy’s artillery pound Padua, while fishermen returning with the night’s catch reported what they saw from the lagoon, bringing ‘panic and disturbance to the whole city’, and likewise ‘peasants coming from the area of Padua continually arrived to Venice [as refugees] and related the actions of the enemy, although they also lied a lot and spoke without substance.’²⁶ ²¹ ²² ²³ ²⁵

Sanudo 1879–1903, v. 4: 87 (26.6.1501). Dispatch dated 1.8.1616, in ASV, CX, Parti segrete, f. 31, cc. nn. De Vivo 2005. ²⁴ Letter dated 21.11.1608, in Wotton 1907, v. 1: 439–40. Priuli 1912–41, v. 2: 305–6. ²⁶ Ibid.: v. 4: 334–5.

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A century later, we have no diaries like Priuli’s or Sanudo’s, but we can use the Inquisitors’ reports and other sources to trace the impact and habits of public communication. The Inquisitors’ guards constantly reported on members of the political arena joining groups of people gathering in conversation at San Marco and Rialto, discussing the latest newssheet or the capture of a merchantship.²⁷ They described those groups as bozzoli, a word also meaning the silkworm’s cocoon and the urn used for casting votes in the Republic’s councils—perhaps a half-ironic reference to the political self-importance which people boasted in bozzoli, although ‘cocoon’ also aptly describes a small group of people gathering in a circle to shelter their conversation, as much as possible, from surrounding noises (and we probably ought to imagine public space in early modern Venice as extremely noisy). John Florio’s contemporary translation contains an indication of size: ‘a knot or crue of men or good fellowes, so that it be not under foure and exceede not the number of sixe’.²⁸ Two early seventeenth-century English visitors similarly saw people ‘meet[ing] together in great troupes’ in San Marco at particular ‘walking times’, ‘every where in clumps and clusters’.²⁹ The word also applied to groups gathering in conversation elsewhere, including the Ghetto, where a Jew lamented that, following a trial in the 1630s, ‘they hold me for excommunicated, so that I cannot attend any bozzolo, nor converse’.³⁰ The Inquisitors’ reports also show how information fuelled gregarious or confrontational discussion in bozzoli. In the course of an investigation on the professional informer Vincenzo Tucci in 1617, the Inquisitors of State interrogated the mosaic craftsman Alvise Gaetano, then working at the basilica of San Marco. He reported about the various bozzoli which gathered in the square, ‘where—as he said—one has often the occasion of chatting with friends’. Although, as Gaetano hastened to add, he had no prattica of those who spoke ill of his fatherland, he heard others insult the Republic, ‘laughing of all its actions, making fun of everything, saying that [the Venetians] are good-for-nothings’.³¹ For this reason, two lawyers once had a fight; one sided for Spain, the other was known as ‘half French’ (mezzo gallo).³² Here we have rich evidence of factionalism well outside the political elites, a combination of personal sympathies, social loyalties, and professional rivalries. ²⁷ e.g. reports about Meschita dated 15 and 19.11.1614, in ASV, IS, b. 606, fasc. 10, cc. nn.; report on Verdelli dated 29.8.1614, ibid., b. 608, fasc. 4, cc. nn.; report about Cerutti dated 4.12.1611, ibid., fasc. 10, cc. nn. ²⁸ Florio 1611: s.v. Use of the term is amply documented for the late seventeenth century, cf. Infelise 2002a: 148. A nineteenth-century dictionary of Venetian dialect translated bozzolo as a circle of people talking together, Boerio 1829: s.v. ²⁹ Coryat 1905, v. 1: 318, and William Bedell in Shuckburgh 1902: 236–7. ³⁰ Cozzi 1995a: 43. ³¹ Deposition of Alvise Gaetano, 3.5.1617, ASV, IS, b. 1213, file 31, cc. nn. Niccoli 1991 describes sixteenth-century mosaic craftsmen at San Marco engaging in heterodox religious discussions. ³² Deposition of Alvise Gaetano, 3.5.1617, ASV, IS, b. 1213, file 31, cc. nn.

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At a time of tension with Spain, it is no wonder that the Inquisitors’ reports contain denunciations of Spanish sympathizers. But even when exaggerated or outright false, those denunciations point to actual practices. In June 1618, for example, an anonymous denunciation accused Gasparo Casati, a merchant in the campo of Rialto Novo nicknamed il Spagnolo, of having violently argued with people who defended Venice’s foreign policy. The person making the denunciation concluded that Casati must have been involved in the aborted conspiracy which had been discovered a few weeks earlier.³³ But another witness, a notary in the brokers’ office near Casati’s shop, pointed out that, although Casati’s talked in Spain’s favour, he was no ‘rebel’. It was normal for ‘a young and light-spirited man, [to] follow the facts of war as young people do’; Casati was a ‘chatterer who blabbers a lot’. The rest of the notary’s deposition points to the pervasiveness of factionalism in Venice’s streets. He explained that it was normal to hear discussions concerning foreign politics, but one should beware of jumping to conclusions: ‘when people debate things, one has one opinion, and the other another one, some speak in a way, and others in another; and from their words, people jump to conclusions, and say ‘‘he’s on that side, and he’s on that other side’’.’³⁴ The exchange of political information in bozzoli was also a form of entertainment, more so than we can imagine today, when information reaches us mostly in privatized contexts and media. The scrivener Ottavio Carnevale for example convinced the Inquisitors that he was no spy by pointing out that he only had a leisurely interest for general ‘things of the world’, which he liked to discuss while walking near the canal at the Misericordia with a compatriot before going home for supper: ‘every now and then we meet up and walk at length along the fondamente, as we in fact did last night, and so we speak about what crosses our mind concerning the things of the world’.³⁵ Two years later a priest wishing to appease the Inquisitors’ suspicions told them that he had no other pratica than the usual ‘evening conversation in the piazze’ with other priests.³⁶ Not unlike in the squares of Morocco’s Fez or Brazil’s Olinda today, early seventeenth-century descriptions of San Marco show people fascinated by the street actors, charlatans, and mountebanks, and others busy talking with each other, engrossed in their discussions.³⁷ Political communication interacted tightly with those urban forms of entertainment. In 1618 an exchange broker (sensale di cambi) recounted a discussion ‘about the affairs of the world’ which he had had around four years earlier; the first thing he remembered was that it took place in a campo during ³³ Anonymous denunciation dated 26.6.1618, in ASV, IS, b. 522, cc. nn. ³⁴ Interrogation of Giacomo Beni, 5.7.1618, ibid.; the Inquisitors of State dropped the case. ³⁵ Interrogation of Ottavio Carnevale, 30.12.1617, in ASV, IS, b. 1213, fasc. 42, cc. nn.; cf. Infelise 2002a: 29. ³⁶ Interrogation of Francesco Fabri, 27.8.1619, in ASV, IS, b. 1053, file ‘Padre Francesco Fabri da Pesaro’, cc. nn. ³⁷ Cf. the engraving in Franco 1609.

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a bullfight.³⁸ As we shall see when discussing a late-sixteenth century text, the coincidence of politics and entertainment also affected the contents of political communication.³⁹

Information centres Bozzoli gathered in public because Venice offered little enclosed and sheltered space for sociability other than the shade of a porch or the occasional gaps in the close sequence of houses bordering onto its narrow streets. In the city, commercial transactions too unfolded in semi-public conditions, at the entrances to shops and professionals’ studios which were too small for many people to enter. Some business ventures, larger shops and warehouses, offered more welcoming spaces to people who not only wished to conduct business but who also gathered there to discuss news of all kinds. In such places members of the political elite met with traders and tradesmen, and private enterprises turned into places for the discussion of public issues. It would be difficult to establish precise social or cultural distinctions between these establishments, but clearly they did differ. Some addressed themselves to refined clienteles, to whom they offered not just welcoming spaces for sociability, but also protection from the inconveniences of the public street, and from its socially demeaning characters. Others were open to a wider range of people. Printers’ workshops and bookshops—cramming educated editors and correctors alongside humble workers—recur in the Inquisitors’ reports as well as references to authors, many of whom were themselves members of the political arena. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, for example, some of Sarpi’s friends were known to gather in the bookshop of Roberto Meietti, the most productive publisher of Venetian pamphlets during the Interdict. One implied that it was a matter of course that he could be found there.⁴⁰ The Spanish ambassador was also reported as frequenting bookshops in the same years.⁴¹ On reaching Venice, the philosopher Giordano Bruno and the poet Giovan Battista Marino both tried to make useful contacts in Giovanni Battista Ciotti’s bookshop in the 1590s. A discussion there they hoped, would result in a first launch into Venetian society which they would later crown with an invitation to a patrician household or an academy.⁴² In turn, there is no doubt that Ciotti himself, an enterprising businessman, hoped to profit from such occasions to build the reputation of a well-connected intellectual entrepreneur.⁴³ Bookshops welcomed ³⁸ Interrogation of Zuanne Castelli, 16.3.1618, in ASV, IS, b. 1213, file 31, cc. nn. ³⁹ See below, pp. 152, 155. ⁴⁰ Deposition of Giovanni Marsilio, 5.7.1607, in ASV, CX, Parti segrete, f. 29, cc. nn.; Sarpi 1931, v. 2: 46, 58, and cf. Masetti Zannini 1970: 185–6. On Meietti, see below, pp. 220–1. ⁴¹ Interrogation of Zuanne Castelli, 16.3.1618, in ASV, IS, b. 1213, fasc. 31, cc. nn. ⁴² Spampanato 1933: 61, 69–73, 128–31; Infelise 1997; Nuovo 2003: 262. ⁴³ On Ciotti’s career, DBI, s.v., L. Balsamo 1991, and Rhodes 1991.

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not just customers but also people who were interested in conversation more than in book-buying. As Goethe’s father found in Padua in the 1730s, people ‘visited bookshops more in order to study and browse books, than to buy them . . . to the point that when I went there, I saw nothing but reading and talking.’⁴⁴ On the whole, however, attracting people to one’s bookshop was an effective boost to sales, as Aldo Manuzio discovered nearly two and a half centuries earlier. By boastfully describing the gatherings in his shop as a scholars’ academy, he hoped that cultural recognition would turn into publicity for the further sales of his classics.⁴⁵ Unlike public gatherings, the conversation hosted in enclosed spaces was described as ridotti in the records of both the Holy Office, which feared that shops sheltered religious discussions, and the Inquisitors of State, who were more concerned with political issues. As we have already seen, this word applied to polite gatherings in noble homes; but clearly it also had a more socially inclusive sense, which a law of 1606 equated to ‘taverns’.⁴⁶ In the 1590s, for example, Paolo Sarpi paid frequent visits not just to the noble Ridotto Morosini, but also to Alvise Secchini’s mercers’ shop at the Golden Ship in the Mercerie. As Sarpi’s biographer recounted encomiastically, in that shop ‘a group of virtuous and honest gentlemen gathered together to recount the news . . . as well as many foreign merchants who travelled throughout Europe, the East and West Indies . . . to hear those who had been there give faithful reports about the places, the people, their customs and religions’.⁴⁷ Twenty years later, Giovanni Marsilio, one of the Interdict’s most prolific authors, stated that he was ‘used to’ frequenting that shop, implying that gathering there for conversation was a social habit which had little to do with the shop’s primary function.⁴⁸ Similarly, Bartolomeo Bontempelli’s shop at the Chalice—not far from the Golden Ship—also hosted discussions (ragionamenti) including the nuncio’s and the Spanish ambassador’s employees, as well as numerous patricians and various clergy.⁴⁹ It would be wrong to assign exclusive political or religious leanings to such gatherings—as the witness quoted above put it, one should not ‘jump to conclusions’. The nuncio, for example, denounced the Golden Ship as the nest of a heretical conventicola.⁵⁰ He may well have been right, of course. But the doge refused the accusation and stated that the shop’s customers discussed current ⁴⁴ Nuovo 2003: 260–1. ⁴⁵ Lowry 1979: 193–9. ⁴⁶ ASV, CX, Parti comuni, r. 55, cc. 181v –182; the term also had a specific usage indicating gambling dens, see Derosas 1981. ⁴⁷ Micanzio 1974: 1306–7; most later works refer to this passage, but more references can be found in Sarpi’s letters, e.g. Sarpi 1931, v. 1: 5. ⁴⁸ Deposition of Giovanni Marsilio, 5.7.1607, in ASV, CX, Parti segrete, f. 29, cc. nn. ⁴⁹ The earliest report on this shop is dated 9.1.1609, in ASV, IS, b. 644, cc. nn., but several more can be found ibid. b. 606, fasc. 7 (and reports 21.5–5.6.1612), and in b. 1213, fasc. 20 (20.12.1615). ⁵⁰ Audience of 11.8.1607, in ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Roma, r. 15, cc. 214v–215. In his dispatches, the nuncio lamented at length the gatherings in that shop, e.g. dispatch dated 21.7.1607, in ASV at, SS, NV, r. 38, c. 37v, and Savio 1936–42, v. 10: 30 and 36. Witness quoted above, p. 93.

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affairs only; more significantly, he indicated that such discussions were a common form of sociability: ‘when people meet in one shop or another or other places, they do so for their own entertainment and to speak about the things of the world, and not to speak about religion’.⁵¹ Crucially, the presence of Sarpi’s associates did not prevent others of the opposite political allegiance from visiting the Golden Ship, including many informers in the Spanish ambassador’s pay.⁵² Bontempelli’s shop also hosted many in the Spanish and papal retinues, even though he was a strong supporter of Venice’s anti-papal stance during the Interdict (and pledged money for a war against Rome).⁵³ Bontempelli and Secchini were rich men. The former had interests ranging from commerce to mining and at his death was worth more than 100,000 ducats; the latter we know through a portrait by Palma il Giovane, showing him surrounded by a collection of classical statues. It is likely that in their cases, high-flying connections were both expressions of political culture that also helped business. Other less affluent establishments were specifically devoted to the entertainment of a large range of people. Accommodation and nourishment of locals and visitors was an important aspect of the urban economy, which in 1624 was said to employ a quarter of household heads in widely different activities, from tavern-keeper to cook, cellar-keeper and handiman (canever and sfadigante).⁵⁴ Establishments varied substantially, from the more distinguished osterie (the best were located in the area between San Marco and Rialto), to smaller and cheaper locande, albergarie, and semi-public fondaci. In principle only three taverns were allowed to accommodate foreigners, but in practice the prohibition was not enforced and, especially in the poorer ones, the opportunity for social transactions was very good. Easily identifiable by their signs, these places would be the first point of call for all the many strangers who arrived in Venice. Gathering people of different origins and confessions, recent arrivals as well as local go-betweens, they turned into natural places for the exchange of information. As an oste offering his services to the Council of Ten proudly said, ‘as a tavern-keeper I have the true way of hearing, dealing, and reporting . . . because every quality of people come to my place, and I can make them familiarize with me’.⁵⁵ The structures for the accommodation of foreigners came under the control not just of the authorities charged with the city’s commercial economy, such as the Giustizia Nuova, but also of magistrates such as the Esecutori alla bestemmia (from 1583), to whom landlords had to register all passing visitors.⁵⁶ Clearly, these places raised moral as well as political concerns. ⁵¹ 25.8.1607, ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Roma, r. 15, c. 222v. ⁵² Reports dated 27.1.1611 in ASV, IS, b. 606, fasc. 9, cc. nn., and 27.11.1614, ibid., b. 606, fasc. 10, cc. nn., and 7.8 and 3.9.1612 in ASV, IS, b. 201, c. 98 and 108v . ⁵³ Mackenney 1987: 110–11 and DBI, s.v. ⁵⁴ Beltrami 1954: 208–9. On taverns, cf. Costantini 1996 and Ortalli 1993; for comparisons, cf. Brennan 1988, and Kümin and Tlusty 2002. ⁵⁵ ASV, CX, Parti segrete, f. 31, cc. nn. (4.5.1616). ⁵⁶ Derosas 1981: 446.

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Sometimes, hostels came under the eyes of the Inquisitors of State, whether in coincidence with particularly troubled times, such as immediately after the failed conspiracy of 1618, or as part of routine checks.⁵⁷ In 1615, one of the Inquisitors’ guards followed three Grisons who had recently arrived advertising their services as soldiers in the war then raging in Friuli. The guard followed them to the Hosteria della Luna in San Marco (one which was not, in theory, licensed for the accommodation of foreigners), and there found that it was frequented by other foreign soldiers, including some Frenchmen, a Corsican, and one from the Romagna; there, the Grisons repeatedly met with compatriots resident in the city, unnamed Venetian patricians (recognized by their clothing), as well as commoners, including a milkman (pestriner), a weaver, and a porter.⁵⁸ A couple of years later, an apothecary told the Inquisitors about a heated discussion he witnessed while having his Sunday lunch in a tavern at the Lido. The information professional Ferdinando Tassis—the master of the German post and by family a client of the Habsburgs—harangued in French and German foreign soldiers in Venice’s pay. The little the apothecary understood was that the soldiers were lamenting their poor salary. In the heat of the discussion one of the soldiers turned to Spinelli’s table ‘telling us that we should go and relate [their complaints] to the doge, but we did not reply and left.’⁵⁹ At a time of war, the Inquisitors of State justly investigated the loyalty of the Republic’s mercenaries; but while doing that, they also uncovered evidence of cross-class conversation and argument. The witnesses indicated by the apothecary included two commercial brokers, the son of an oarsman, as well as his own garzone.⁶⁰ Concerned about the danger posed by professional informers, the Inquisitors of State at one point felt it necessary to compile a list of all the public and semi-public places which the latter frequented. They included bookshops and textile stores, taverns, and the premises of mercers and shoemakers, as well as numerous barbers and apothecaries (to which we shall turn in a moment).⁶¹ The Inquisitors were not interested in the growth of public opinion. Instead, they wanted to track recurrences so as to trace possible collaborators, traitors, or spies. They did find many recurrent examples of places patronized time and again by people who discussed political information, but amongst all those shops, they only intervened in one or two cases. For all the Inquisitors’ fears, their records help us sense not so much the disclosure of specific pieces of secret information, but the pervasiveness of political communication beyond the political arena: the politicization of urban space. ⁵⁷ On investigation of hostelries lodging foreigners in 1618, see CSPVen, v. 15: 411–12 and 472–3. ⁵⁸ ASV, IS, b. 606, fasc. 4, cc. nn. 14, 20.2.1615. ⁵⁹ Interrogation of Piero Spinelli, 27.4.1617, ASV, IS, b. 1213, file 30, cc. nn. ⁶⁰ Interrogations of Piero Spinelli and Giacomo Salice, 27.4.1617, ibid. ⁶¹ ASV, IS, b. 201: cc. 87–8 (undated but probably 1612).

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Information and Communication in Venice 3.2 BEFORE THE COFFEEHOUSE

Following Jürgen Habermas’ work, most historians agree in emphasizing the importance of London coffeehouses in the emergence of the public sphere.⁶² Coffeehouses only developed in Venice in the last decades of the seventeenth century and thus evade the limits of this book. But, as we have just seen, a century earlier different commercial enterprises already provided customers with welcoming spaces for gathering in conversation about political information. A striking example concerns two establishments of the early modern city’s diverse medical marketplace, pharmacies and the shops of barbers (or barber-surgeons: the difference was meaningless in early modern Venice). The iconography of pharmacies confirms this, showing people gathering in conversation occasionally intent on reading documents.⁶³ On a less polite level, barbershops were the stereotype gossip centres, as summed up in Leonardo Fioravanti’s 1564 encyclopaedic Dello Specchio di Scienza Universale: in barber-shops one can hear all the news and the facts of private people, because sailors talk about their travels, the great fortunes they had, and the costumes of the many lands they saw; soldiers narrate their battles and their victories; husbands recount how they married, and how they do with their wives; young lovers, how they got in love, and how they follow their beloved ones; and one can hear a thousand jokes.⁶⁴

In 1621 Ludovico Zuccolo gave political relevance to the stereotype when he complained about ‘barbers and the humblest artisans’ who ‘in their shops and gatherings discuss and question the reason of the state.’⁶⁵ As we shall see, it was a largely accurate statement. The authorities knew that this was more than a literary stereotype. Throughout the sixteenth century, the Inquisition tried apothecaries and barbers for hosting gatherings of heretics as well as magical activities.⁶⁶ The government suspected that those gatherings could verge on political as well as supernatural events. In 1606, for example, the governors of Vicenza turned to the city’s pharmacies to inquire about the state of their subjects’ loyalty during the Interdict. They had been prompted by no specific denunciation, and simply guessed that people met in pharmacies to discuss current events. As their inquiry showed, they were right.⁶⁷ In the 1610s, pharmacies and barbershops recur with unmatched frequency in the ⁶² Cf. Pincus 1995, Van Horn Melton 2001: 240–51, and Ellis 2004. ⁶³ The examples include a fifteenth-century Hebrew translation of Avicenna’s Canon (in Calabi 1991: 207), and Pietro Longhi’s 1752 Speziale, now at the Accademia. ⁶⁴ Fioravanti 1572: 74v. Other writers included Garzoni 1996: 1294 and 1374–7, and Buoni 1604–06, v. 2: 18–19 and 324–5. ⁶⁵ Zuccolo 1930: 25. ⁶⁶ J. Martin 1993: 244–7; Barbierato 2002: 124n.; Platania 1988: 32; Milani 1989: 163–8. ⁶⁷ ASV, Cons. iure, b. 3, fasc. 13, cc. nn., see below, p. 190.

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Inquisitors’ reports. In 1612, the representative of the Duke of Urbino regularly went to a unnamed pharmacy near Rialto, to the one of the Two Moors and that at the Ponte de Baloni in San Marco; for about three consecutive months, he also paid almost daily visits to a tooth-extractor to whom we shall return (dental surgery was one of the barbers’ expertises).⁶⁸ Two years later, Meschita visited several pharmacies almost daily, including the Golden Head and the Angel in the parish of San Bartolomeo, the Anchor in Santi Apostoli, the pharmacy near the bridge at the Frari, as well as one in San Polo and one in San Trovaso. He was particularly loyal to the still extant pharmacy of the Hercules at Santa Fosca, where he occasionally went with the English ambassador’s secretary and two men whose dress defined as senators. He also visited barbers regularly, particularly one in the parish of San Cassian near Rialto.⁶⁹ As can be seen in the map in Figure 3.1, the medical shops mentioned by the Inquisitors of State were scattered all around the city, not just in Rialto’s commercial centre but also in Castello, Dorsoduro, and Cannaregio (close to many of the embassies in the seventeenth century). Why were medical shops so high amongst the professional informers’ favourite places? Did Meschita really need the services of apothecaries and barbers daily? Or was he after something else? To answer, we must turn to the social connections and diverse professional activities of barbers and apothecaries as competitors in early modern Venice’s medical marketplace. Apothecaries prepared and sold medicines and traded other goods such as spices, sugar, and candles. Most of their goods were on the expensive side of the market, and on the whole they catered for a distinguished clientele.⁷⁰ They were themselves part of a social elite, although one that was partly tainted by the intermediate position between trading and craftsmanship (higher in any case than a ‘mechanical art’).⁷¹ Apothecaries were educated, versed in Latin and classical authors; they did not have to attend university, but their education was otherwise not that different from that of physicians (although the latter liked to think the opposite).⁷² Many apothecaries were often both wealthy and well-connected, as some of their wills show.⁷³ Social status gave apothecaries ample opportunities for retrieving political information. Amongst their regular visitors and customers, for ⁶⁸ ASV, IS, b. 638, fasc. ‘Residente di Urbino’ (1612). ⁶⁹ Unnamed guards’ reports dating from October–December 1614, in ASV, IS, b. 606, fasc. 10, cc. nn. In the same period, Antonio Calbo too repeatedly visited the pharmacies of the Golden Head and of the cariega in St. Mark’s, ASV, IS, b. 606, fasc. 6, cc. nn., reports from May–June 1614. ⁷⁰ Other spezierie specialized in non-medical goods and were known as da grosso, but they are never distinguished in the Inquisitors’ files, cf. Mackenney 1987: 89. ⁷¹ On pharmacies see Palmer 1985 and the bibliography in Ait 1996: 27. ⁷² Palmer 1985: 104 and Zannini 1993a: 71–2; cf. Gentilcore 1998: 78–81 and Ait 1996: 94–100. ⁷³ In 1616 Domenico Marieni, apothecary at The Two Anchors, left his nephews the large sum of 22,000 ducats; ASV, GP, r. 316, cc. nn. (entry dated 13.4.1627). In 1612 Pietro Amadio, apothecary at The Peace, left a 27-page long inventory, including jewels, furniture, and archives,

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SANTA CROCE Arsenal

Rialto SAN

CASTELLO

POLO

SAN MARCO

San Marco

DORSODURO

Figure 3.1. Approximate locations of pharmacies and barbershops mentioned in the text

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CANNAREGIO

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example, they counted patricians as well as physicians who had ample opportunities for contact with the patrician homes. Such contacts could result in political exchanges too. In the 1550s the Accademia Veneziana’s members included one apothecary as well as three physicians. In 1619 (as we saw) Alvise Biscacciante obtained a copy of Bon’s relazione while visiting him professionally, and then further publicized it at a dinner he gave for an impressive number of patricians. We do not know whether he also read it at one of the pharmacies he would have visited.⁷⁴ Although professional informers frequented both pharmacies and barbershops, they were unlikely to meet the same people or join in the same conversations in both. Barbers occupied a lower position in both the medical and the social hierarchy. Although much more work is needed before we can ascertain their clientele, it is likely that they catered for less distinguished customers than apothecaries.⁷⁵ A sixteenth-century description of the profession made clear that it needed little initial investment: a few cheap tools only.⁷⁶ This is confirmed by some rare inventories. For example in 1621 the possessions of Andrea Borsetto, barber in campo San Maurizio, consisted only of ‘stuff of little value’ (some towels, a copper bucket, and of course, razors and scissors). His belongings were so few that they fitted in a wooden chest.⁷⁷ The Inquisitors’ reports confirm the distinction between the two trades, because they show that patricians frequently visited pharmacies but not barbershops. Things were to change later, however, perhaps in connection with the barbers’ provision in wigs. In 1683 an informer reported that in the city’s barbershops ‘gentlemen gather with different ranks of people, sitting as if in a private council, each reporting what he has heard and seen during the day, speaking until dark about kingdoms, wars, and treatises’.⁷⁸ Like apothecaries, barbers had various channels for obtaining information. They too mediated between private households and the marketplace. As assessors of injuries in legal cases they had occasional contacts with the authorities, including those in charge of intelligence and counter-intelligence. In 1614, for example, Lorenzo Barbier, tended to the prisoners of the Council of Ten and for that reason received money from Bartolomeo Comino, the Inquisitors of State’s principal secretary.⁷⁹ It was an ancient fear, that barbers were dangerously ASV, GP, f. 345, inventories 7 and 8. Cf. also the inventories numbered 77, 78, 82 in ASV, GP, b. 350. ⁷⁴ See above, pp. 67–8; late-medieval evidence of physician-patrician contacts in Ruggiero 1981 and King 1986: 58–63. On the members of the Accademia della Fama, see Pellegrini 1808, v. 23: 62. ⁷⁵ I have found very little information on barbers, but cf. Palmer 1979. ⁷⁶ Fioravanti 1572: 74. ⁷⁷ Inventory of Andrea Borsetto, ASV, GP, b. 350, inventory 22. I have found only four barbers’ inventories in the GP series for the period 1580–1640. ⁷⁸ Infelise 2002a: 149; a year later, the same informer duly offered a whole list of those ‘barbershops hosting popular gatherings’, Dolcetti 1903: 44n. ⁷⁹ Entries dated 22.4.1614, in ASV, CX, Parti comuni, f. 295, cc. nn., and 27.11.1623 in IS 714, cc. nn.

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close to the rulers’ voices as well as their throats, a story handed down from classical times by Ovid and Plutarch, whose tales of treasons by barbers were often recounted in the sixteenth century.⁸⁰ The fear could be well grounded. A Roman newswriter wrote that the pope’s barber was fired during the Interdict, because ‘his breath stunk: that is, he related what he saw and heard in the [pope’s] chamber’.⁸¹ Aware of this status, a 1626 treatise on the barbers’ art written by a practitioner recommended faithfulness, modesty, and discernment in talking.⁸² The early modern factotums by definition, some barbers also engaged in the accommodation and entertainment businesses, for example renting out cheap rooms or doubling as gambling dens, thus entering into proximity with foreigners.⁸³ Moreover, gambling easily led to exchanging government-related information, because many of the bets concerned the outcomes of elections.⁸⁴ Apothecaries and barbers did not only have the means of obtaining information. Crucially, they were also likely to be interested in redistributing some of that information as a way of attracting customers. Behind the circulation of political information was, once again, an economic reason, in this case to do with the tight medical marketplace of early modern cities. Recent scholarship has shown that this was dominated by a fiercely competitive offer. In Venice the number of pharmacies grew from 71 in 1565, when the Collegio degli speziali was created, to 85 only four years later, to 91 in 1614, to about 100 in 1617; such was the competition that an often ignored law sought to prevent shops from opening within a hundred yards of each other.⁸⁵ How was one to succeed in this market? Crucially, as the price of medicines was imposed by the state, apothecaries had to differentiate in other ways, by providing a variety of additional services, including mail exchange and printing, gambling tables, and premises for notarial activity.⁸⁶ The opportunities for such services’ fruition were all the greater, because customers spent a good deal of time in pharmacies and barbershops, either while having their hair cut (or washed, as most of the evidence suggests), or while waiting for their medicines to be prepared—pre-packaging was a later development. ⁸⁰ Ovid’s story is recounted in Garzoni 1996: 1377; Plutarch’s De Garrulitate is reported in Ammirato 1640: 315 ⁸¹ Avviso dated 14.6.1606, in BAV, Urb. Lat. 1074, cc. 304v –305. More cases dating from the Interdict are mentioned below, pp. 190–1 and 239. ⁸² Malfi 1626: chs. 10 and 11. ⁸³ Cf. Dolcetti 1903: 43–58 and 201–11; in 1606–7 two barbers were condemned for gambling, ASV, ES, b. 61, cc. 113 and 126; on lodging, ASV, ES, b. 75, cc. nn. (a long list of foreigners residing in Venice in 1607–8), and dispatch dated 5.12.1615, in ASV, CX, Parti segrete, f. 31, cc. nn. ⁸⁴ Walker 1999. ⁸⁵ Palmer 1985: 103, Mackenney 1987: 88–90, and entry dated 9.12.1614, in ASV, Giustizia vecchia, b. 211, file 260, cc. nn. All these apothecaries dealt in medicines; in 1585 there were a further 122 spezieri da grosso (see above, n. 70). On the competition of pharmacies, cf. Eamon 2003. ⁸⁶ On mail: dispatch dated 25.5.1620, in ASV, IS, b. 357, cc. nn. On gambling: report dated 25.11.1614, in ASV, IS, b. 606, fasc. 10, and Walker 1999: 53. In 1588 the Venetian printer Camillo Zanelli operated in a pharmacy, Pesenti 1956: 28. On the price of medicines Palmer 1985: 105, and cf. Kolega 1998: 316 on Rome.

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For this reason, apothecaries especially competed in beautifying their shops so as to render them more attractive for their customers. Many pharmacies were decorated with paintings and sculptures, some of them boasting curiosities such as a long narvalus’ horn, or decorations such as sculptures and paintings. As the extant examples show, pharmacies were comfortable and inviting places, provided not just with shelves of beautiful porcelain vases, but also with long benches where customers could sit at leisure. Moreover, pharmacies were likely to be much cleaner than the majority of other shops—an aspect of material culture which an idealized Habermasian account of the public sphere would ignore, but which no doubt was crucial in making communication both possible and pleasurable.⁸⁷ The barbers’ and apothecaries’ provision of information was an additional perk to attract customers, a deliberate commercial strategy which brought medical shops at the centre of the information exchange. Just as Restoration London coffeehouses provided their customers with printed gazettes, for example, an enterprising barber of Bologna subscribed to manuscript avvisi in 1596 and asked for a licence to have them publicly read in his shop. He also offered to have the texts censored, probably appreciating the authorities’ concern.⁸⁸ In Venice too the owners of medical shops must have seen a use in providing their customers with information. Thus people who, unlike merchants, had no personal stake in political events, turned the news into a instrument of their professional activity. As we shall see in a moment, their customers happily took advantage of these opportunities. Occasionally, some medical shops seemed to the Inquisitors to acquire such importance in the illicit trade of information, that their guards did not just follow members of the political arena to their premises, but actually kept the shops themselves under control. In this way, the Inquisitors turned their attention from individual professionals to the information channels which the latter shared with other people, and thus provide us with evidence not just about the political arena but extend it to shops which were fully part of Venice’s economy. Two cases can be mentioned from the 1610s. The first was the Pharmacy of the Sun, in the Campo di Do Pozzi, a key location in the peripheral sestiere of Castello, between the nuncio’s palace and the Arsenal.⁸⁹ Several guards saw the apothecary, Anzolo Cerutti, talk with foreign informers such as Antonio Meschita. In October 1611, one explicitly denounced Cerutti for supplying information to the Spanish ambassador (whom ⁸⁷ Cf. Boni 1884; Palmer 1985: 107–8; Fahy 1993; Welch 2005: 151–8. Early seventeenthcentury inventories confirm this picture (e.g. Agnus Dei and Orso pharmacies, 1626, ASV, GP, b. 345, number 33, and b. 350, number 77). ⁸⁸ Bellettini 2000. ⁸⁹ At the time, the Arsenal was still open on to the campo delle Gatte, just nearby, Sansovino 1663: 368. Garzoni 1996: 1065 listed the Sun as a typical name for pharmacies. In 1610, a pharmacy of the Sun was recorded under the name of Vincenzo De Bachi, ASV, Giustizia vecchia, b. 117, r. 161, c. 116v.

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Cerutti met every day, ‘after the Senate gatherings, the same evening or early the next morning’).⁹⁰ The Inquisitors charged several moles both to follow Cerutti and to keep his pharmacy under constant observation. He was daily reported hanging around the busiest places in Venice, where he might find out about the latest news, the Rialto area and the piazza of San Marco, and he also regularly visited the Spanish embassy and the nuncio’s palace.⁹¹ His pharmacy, in turn, was a favourite meeting place for patricians and commoners as well as foreigners. Customers came to gamble and to watch others gambling (zogar and veder zogar).⁹² The pharmacy was a favourite place for the exchange of written newssheets, as Cerutti welcomed both newswriters and people interested in reading the newswriters’ sheets.⁹³ In April 1612, suspected of liaising with the exiled patrician Anzolo Badoer, Cerutti was finally arrested.⁹⁴ Although they were prepared to act in extreme cases, the Inquisitors found it difficult to prevent pharmacies from turning into shelters for informal sociability and information exchange. Soon after being released, Cerutti again resumed his information activities, as if they were completely normal: he was expelled from Venice a few months later.⁹⁵ But clearly the information business was too important to give up, and the pharmacy’s fortunes did not end with Cerutti’s exile. As a separate set of intelligence reports shows, by 1614 the shop had been taken over by a professional informer whom we have already encountered, Fausto Verdelli.⁹⁶ Interestingly, while Cerutti was an apothecary, Verdelli was only interested in the shop’s value as a news centre; as another report put it, he procured information for Bedmar ‘pretending to be his apothecary’.⁹⁷ Verdelli devoted the pharmacy’s premises to the composition (not just the reading) of newsletters, which he reportedly sent to Savoy, Lorraine, and Flanders.⁹⁸ In his activity, he was aided by Cerutti’s old apprentice Valerio, by a Milanese priest, and for a time by one Piero who had worked as a courier for Cerutti.⁹⁹ In spite ⁹⁰ Denunciation dated 29.10.1611, in ASV, IS, b. 638, cc. nn. fasc. and reports dated 30.1.1611, in ASV, IS, b. 606, fasc. 9, cc. nn.; 28.11.1611, ASV, IS, b. 606, fasc. 3, cc. nn. ⁹¹ Reports dated 22 and 26.11 and 4 and 5.12.1611, in ASV, IS, b. 608, fasc. 10, cc. nn. A spy planted in the nunciatura reported that Bedmar’s secretary often came from Cerutti’s pharmacy, report dated 28.11.1611, ASV, IS, b. 606, fasc. 2, cc. nn. ⁹² Report dated 4.1.1612, in ASV, IS, b. 608, fasc. 10, cc. nn. ⁹³ Reports dated 24 and 31.12.1611, ibid.; more mentions of newswriters and avvisi in reports dated 22.11, 8.12, and 11.12.12.1611, and 28.1, and 17.3.1612. ⁹⁴ No record of his interrogation is extant, but there is a lengthy note in the diary of Dudley Carleton, then English ambassador in Venice, entry dated 12.4.1612, BL, Harley Ms. 4298, c. 28v. The same link between Badoer and Cerutti is mentioned in the entry dated 3.4.1612 in Gerolamo Priuli’s chronicle, quoted in Cozzi 1958: 127n. On Badoer cf. Preto 1994a: 79–82 and 123–5. ⁹⁵ Report dated 5.6.1612, in ASV, IS, b. 607, fasc. 1, cc. nn. See parte of 8.11.1612, in ASV, CX, Parti criminali, r. 29, c. 123v. ⁹⁶ Reports running from 2.6 to 4.9.1614, in ASV, IS, b. 608, fasc. 4, cc. nn. ⁹⁷ Report dated 13.5.1612 by Granzino, in ASV, IS, b. 607, fasc. 1, cc. nn. ⁹⁸ Anonymous denunciation dated 15.4.1614, in ASV, IS, b. 608, fasc. 4, cc. nn. ⁹⁹ Report dated 6.8.1614 and anonymous denunciation dated 26.8.1614, in ASV, IS, b. 608, fasc. 4, cc. nn.

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of all they learned from their informers, however, the Inquisitors did not again bother the pharmacy. Clearly, they thought it part of normal, and acceptable, communication networks. The other case of a medical shop kept under observation was that of the dental surgeon (cavadenti) Alessandro, strategically located near the clock tower in San Marco. Noticing his contacts with the resident of Urbino, the Inquisitors had one of their guards follow Alessandro himself for several months in 1612.¹⁰⁰ The Inquisitors’ mole reported that his shop ‘is of little importance because you never see any customer going there to buy anything or to have a tooth taken out’. Another mole lamented (perhaps grudgingly) that Alessandro never did any work.¹⁰¹ Clearly, Alessandro had different priorities, although he was still enough of a professional to be known to his neighbours by the name of cavadenti. He possibly provided the representative of Urbino with consegi, the forbidden records of elections, which they were seen discussing at length and, crucially, in public, before the eyes of many shopkeepers and others with whom Alessandro had frequent contacts.¹⁰² At other times, people gathered in Alessandro’s shop while he was out—his dental services were clearly not so important to his customers either and they too may have especially cared for news. Alessandro also had a good knowledge of Venice’s political structure and of its most prominent figures. One day, while observing a procession in the Piazza, with his neighbours he named all those who passed by, together with their status and office.¹⁰³ The barber opposite Alessandro laid a table for people to play cards; Alessandro himself would often stop to play. The card games were both a form of entertainment and an occasion for socialization—once, Alessandro sat on a bench next to a foreign priest and began talking to him while enjoying other people’s games.¹⁰⁴ To conclude, as well as medical treatment and personal grooming, pharmacies and barbershops provided comfortable, enclosed spaces for socialization at different levels of the social hierarchy, as well as a means for the retrieval and discussion of information of different kinds. And they did not do so occasionally, but as part of a daily routine. By considering the number and success of pharmacies and barbershops, we can understand the otherwise puzzling fact that other places for sociability such as coffeehouses took so long to develop in Venice, in spite of the fact that Venice was closer to both the Eastern Mediterranean culture and supply of coffee than most other European cities. Coffeehouses did take hold ¹⁰⁰ There exist two series of reports on the cavadenti, partly overlapping, beginning in July 1612, a few months after those on the representative of Urbino; ASV, IS, b. 201, cc. 93–115, and b. 638, cc. nn. In 1613, one Alessandro Cavadenti rented both shop and lodging by the Procuratia, at 25 ducats for the former and 56 for the latter annually; ASV, Procuratia de supra, Serie Chiesa, r. 7, cc. nn. (15.3.1613). ¹⁰¹ ‘Mai non lavora’, ASV, IS, b. 638, 11.9.1612, cc. nn. and b. 201, 7.8.1612, c. 97v ¹⁰² Reports dated 7.8.1612, in ASV, IS, b. 201, c. 98, and 5, 6 and 11.9.1612, ibid., b. 638, cc. nn. ¹⁰³ Report dated 6.8.1612, in ASV, IS, b. 201, c. 97. ¹⁰⁴ Report dated 8.8.1612, in ASV, IS, b. 201, c. 98v .

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and then mushroom in Venice in the second half of the seventeenth century. One was first recorded in 1683, under the galleries of the Procuratie Nuove in St Mark’s, where the city’s most famous establishments can still be found and not far from Alessandro Cavadenti’s much humbler tooth-surgery.¹⁰⁵ The continuities could be explored further. Perhaps some apothecaries offered drinkable coffee too, since they certainly sold it as an expensive medicine and knew that it could be drunk. In London too, barbers were associated with, and spatially close to, the earliest coffeehouses.¹⁰⁶ The differences are equally important. Unlike coffeehouses, pharmacies and barbershops were not exclusively devoted to leisure; the conversation there must have been less comfortable, perhaps quicker because they were generally held while standing. Furthermore, although less convivial, medical shops welcomed a more socially inclusive public than the coffeehouses which only paying customers could access. Carlo Goldoni’s Bottega del Caffé (1750) set middle-class and patrician characters in a coffeehouse, but when the popular characters of his Baruffe chiozzotte (1774) accompanied a relative to the Ducal Palace, they found it natural to wait in a barbershop nearby.¹⁰⁷

3.3 POLITICS’ POSSIBLE PUBLICS One of the advantages of studying the location of communication is that it helps to identify the actual people who took part in that communication more precisely than the undefined notion of public opinion can do. The Inquisitors’ moles posted outside the Pharmacy of the Sun reported the recurrent visits of patricians as well as ambassadors’ secretaries, newswriters, but also of minor clerks from the Ducal Palace, a sailor, an oarsman, and a chandler from the nearby Arsenal, as well as a painter, Pietro Malombra, perhaps visiting the pharmacy on his way to the nearby church of San Pietro di Castello, where in the same years he was working on a patriarch’s commission for a side altar.¹⁰⁸ Further down the social scale, the records concerning Alessandro Cavadenti mostly mention other traders and artisans, including two barbers, the shoemaker at the Madonna and that at the Puglia, the tavern-keeper at the Hat, the mercer at the Golden Tree, and a tailor who had no workshop but only a stall near Alessandro’s shop.¹⁰⁹ The Inquisitors’ records are biased towards members of the political arena (who were the objects of the Inquisitors’ concern); but they also show the latter’s interaction with humbler people. The resulting picture includes an exceptionally wide cross-section of society, confirming the impression of foreign travellers who ¹⁰⁵ Cecchetti 1883 and Reato 1991. ¹⁰⁶ e.g. Ellis 2004: 38, 42 and illustration 6. ¹⁰⁷ Goldoni 1994 and Goldoni 1993: 171–2, 179. ¹⁰⁸ Reports, 22.12.1611, 2 and 4.1.1612, in ASV, IS, 608, fasc. 10, cc. nn.; Venetian apothecaries also sold pigments, Matthew 2002: 686. ¹⁰⁹ See above, p. 105.

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described with amazement the frequency with which gentlemen mixed with the populace in Venice’s various markets (San Marco, the fishmarket, Rialto).¹¹⁰ We have already seen that the patriciate had good reasons for gathering outside the Ducal Palace as part of their political life (rather than out of meanness, as foreigners thought). But in those public meetings, patricians were likely to encounter a variety of people engaged in continuous communication, outsiders far exceeding the professionals of politics, but like them cultivating an interest for politics and no doubt regarding conversation and information as a means of success as well as entertainment. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature frequently dwelled on the figure of the curioso or novellista. Tommaso Garzoni’s 1585 encyclopaedia of professions devoted a whole chapter—between those about thieves and bandits— to the vicious and detestable profession of the piazza’s idle, who do the job of Michael: eating and drinking and walking aimlessly [gli oziosi, che fanno il mestiero di Michelazzo, che consiste in mangiar, bere, e andar al solazzo]. They spend their life in the public square, between the public house and the market, walk around the government palace and the stalls of charlatans, and do nothing else all day . . . sometimes they tell false news in barbershops, other times they read newssheets at the stalls.¹¹¹

Oziosi were not a socially specified category, but they meddled with lowly people and their activities. Being both curious and idle, they were doubly vicious; and they were detestable, because they wasted not just their own, but other people’s time. Of course, such descriptions should be taken with a pinch of salt. Their authors were often themselves members of the political arena, keen to distinguish their own curiosity from that of outsiders and their discussions from those of competitors. By contrast with these accounts, as we have seen in the case of barbers and apothecaries, seeking information was no idle leisure, but had to do with people’s economic activity or social position. We have already seen that, as Sardella showed, news drove speculations and therefore interested merchants. His study concentrated on important longdistance traders, but it is clear that there were many more, and less affluent, categories for whom secure information concerning foreign events was a crucial element of business. Apothecaries themselves, who constituted one link in the long chain of the international spice trade, would have considered information useful in itself (as well as indirectly, because it attracted customers to their shops). In 1617 an abbot told the Inquisitors of State that he regularly discussed Venice’s military achievements while ‘in the pharmacy at the Madonna in the campo San Bartolomeo [near Rialto], with several others who are used to going there’. Amongst the latter, he listed several apothecaries, a physician and his father, as ¹¹⁰ Cf. Moryson 1907–8, v. 4: 96; v. 1: 185, 189, 190–1; Coryat 1905, v. 1: 312; Somerset 1993: 249. ¹¹¹ Garzoni 1996: 1294; cf. also Fioravanti 1572: 74v.

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well as a wholesale broker of spices: a professional group tied by a similar object of trade and engaged in strengthening their mutual relations through habitual conversation on political affairs.¹¹² For many people, it was important to establish connections with those who held information and to build a reputation for worldly experience. A mid-sixteenthcentury text on the legal professions stated that a measure of a lawyer’s success was his acquaintance with people and their business, and therefore counselled young practitioners to make a point of showing themselves publicly talking with people, as if they knew everyone.¹¹³ Another legal profession thriving on mediating information as well as written culture, were notaries. Historians have long been familiar with their records, but have only begun studying notaries as social actors in their own right. In sixteenth-century Venice, notaries went through a process of professional definition as a distinct professione civile et honorata admitted through special exams into a Collegio of 66 fixed members.¹¹⁴ A varying number of other notaries had no official recognition but informally provided the same services.¹¹⁵ Their premises, known as cancelli, regularly hosted merchants as well as professional informers and Venetian patricians, particularly (as we have seen), those clustered in the Calle della Sicurtà, where the notaries specializing in the field of naval insurance concentrated.¹¹⁶ The same news which interested members of the political arena—a battle lost or won, a tempest or a pirate incursion—also meant business for insurers. The cancello of Zuanne Barozzi, a clerk of notaio Spinelli in Calle della Sicurtà, hosted both wool-merchants and weavers; there, in the summer of 1617, some merchants from Lucca were heard discussing the movements of the Venetian and Spanish fleets (the merchants owned some goods on a ship which had been seized by the vessels of the Viceroy of Naples).¹¹⁷ Later in the century, the notary Alessandro Pariglia offered his clients the news which he was said to draw from his acquaintances in the patriciate as well as foreign embassies.¹¹⁸ Through notaries, information spread even further, not last because some of their clerks doubled as public scriveners.¹¹⁹ Many actors of Venice’s urban economy may have had no specific interest in long-distance information, but did have an interest in obtaining local information, because as successful service dealers they had to know people and events so as to match possible clients and deals. A good example is that of sanseri (known elsewhere in Italy as sensali), brokers who professionally helped mediate business ¹¹² Interrogation of Alvise Sagredo, 27.4.1617, in ASV, IS, b. 1213, file 30, cc. nn.; on that pharmacy, cf. Boni 1884. ¹¹³ [Sansovino] 1554: 8. ¹¹⁴ Trebbi 1996: 508–16; and cf. Petrucci 1958 and Nussdorfer 1993 (on Rome). ¹¹⁵ For example in 1591 there were 71 notaries in Venice, Corazzol 1986: 13. ¹¹⁶ Cf. Tenenti 1959, and Tucci 1972. Meschita visited Calle della Sicurtà four times within less than ten days, in October 1614, ASV, IS, b. 606, fasc. 10, cc. nn. In the same year, Fausto Verdelli also went there repeatedly between August and September, ASV, IS, b. 608, fasc. 4. ¹¹⁷ ASV, IS, b. 1213, fasc. 36, august 1617; on Andrea Spinelli, cf. Tenenti 1959. ¹¹⁸ Infelise 2002a: 26–7. ¹¹⁹ See below, p. 124.

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in different fields of mostly wholesale trading. They needed vast networks of acquaintances, and were in excellent positions for acting as intermediaries in passing information.¹²⁰ In 1612 Bedmar apparently tried to get a sanser at Cannaregio to cooperate in getting letters delivered to the recently banned Angelo Badoer; but a patrician chanced to discover this through a series of other brokers (with whom he did business), and denounced the sanser to the Inquisitors.¹²¹ Thanks to their contacts, brokers turned into disseminators of reserved information. In 1613, an anonymous denunciation accused one sanser di cambi of sending a Roman aristocrat weekly letters containing reserved information from the Republic’s secret councils; the broker was aided in his business by his son, who had conveniently married a patrician’s illegitimate daughter.¹²² If this broker helped send information from Venice to Rome, it is likely that others acted as intermediaries in conveying information from other countries to the city. Their business engagements extended to communities with distant origins, who often had to rely on the assistance of locals—there were, for example, between 15 and 20 sanseri de Turchi, Armeni, & simili nationi in the 1580s.¹²³ Beyond the world of rich merchants trading wholesale, humbler brokers also helped mediate retail transactions, offering themselves as experts in bargaining or as shopping intermediaries.¹²⁴ The ways of commerce in early modern cities, and therefore the means of livelihood for a great many people, lay in acquaintances and network: knowing what everyone was up to, finding out as fast as possible about newcomers and their desires, knowing what each one looked for or had to offer so as to connect potential customers with potential suppliers. This brings us to poorer sections of the urban society. Pharmacies welcomed servants sent by patricians to fetch medicines and employed beggars to beat the ingredients for the preparation of their medicines. Where the records allow us to know, as in late sixteenth-century Rome, we discover that apothecaries also served illiterate customers and occasionally acted as scriveners on the latter’s behalf (a crucial mediating role to which we shall return).¹²⁵ When investigating pharmacies during the Interdict crisis, the governors of Vicenza were told by one apothecary that he hosted every day ‘every kind of people, both nobles and not, customarily every day and at every time’.¹²⁶ Although he then mentioned mainly nobles and rich merchants, this may have been a way of reassuring the governors. In fact, ‘every kind of people’ it was, as the governors discovered when they interrogated ¹²⁰ Boccato 1974 and Tenenti 1991: 677–81; and cf. Vigiano 2000 on Palermo. ¹²¹ Deposition of Andrea Minotto on 8.8.1612, in ASV, IS, b. 1213, fasc. 8, cc. nn. ¹²² Denunciation against Tommaso and Nicolò Ferlini, dated 8.5.1613, in ASV, IS, b. 638, cc. nn. ¹²³ Vercellin 1979: 245 and Vercellin 1980. ¹²⁴ For example Garzoni distinguished mercanti from humbler negociatori, Garzoni 1996: 874–86 and 899–902. On shopping intermediaries, cf. Welch 2005: 212–43. ¹²⁵ Petrucci 1989: 480; on literacy intermediaries, see below, section 4.1. ¹²⁶ Interrogation of Lepido Barbaran, 25.9.1606, in ASV, Cons. iure, b. 3, fasc. 13, cc. nn.

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the pharmacy’s garzone. He began by assuring them that he had neither curiosity nor time for the news—‘apart from the fact that I find no pleasure in the news, I am too busy attending to the shop’s chores’—but then betrayed his interest by adding that all he had heard recently was the pope’s election of new cardinals, a very recent piece of information publicized in the latest newssheets.¹²⁷ In Venice’s narrow public and semi-public spaces for social interaction, ordinary people were constant observers of the political communication of their better-connected social superiors. For example, the witnesses interrogated during an inquiry on a merchant’s contacts (pratica) with the Spanish ambassador, included a notary, an apothecary, several unspecified shopkeepers, as well as the apothecary’s garzone and seven more men with typical Venetian names, whose professions were so inconspicuous that they were not specified.¹²⁸ The factionalism of professional informers can be explained with their direct connections with patricians or foreign diplomats, but partisan views clearly went beyond the politically connected elites. For many people, they could be a matter of personal or group identity. A silk-broker accused Anzolo Giosi, a seller of pigments, as a renowned Spagnolo; in turn he said that Giosi would treat him as a Franzese: ‘when he told me that I was French, I replied that he depended on Spain and that he wished ill to this fatherland’. According to the silk broker, Giosi was ‘used to converse’ with others, including a dyer as well as a silk merchant.¹²⁹ Further down on the social ladder, in 1616 an oarsman recounted in dialect how he and his friends had insulted Bartolo, a colleague who worked for the Spanish ambassador. They met him while drinking in a tavern and shouted ‘Get out of here, you smell like a Spaniard!’ Bartolo—who a year later was to denounce the ambassador’s dealings to a nobleman he used to work for—knew the insulting tag, and rejected it: ‘Me a Spaniard? Had I the Spaniards in my body, I would drown myself so as to drown them all!’¹³⁰ As a commercial harbour of primary importance, Venice hosted continuously fluctuating communities of traders and travellers. People of different languages and religions took residence in the city, some for an extended period of time and others, only temporarily. Pilgrims until the early sixteenth century, and other travellers later, sailors and mercenary soldiers, all interacted with the diffusion of information both because they carried distant information and because they sought local information. At the high time of pilgrimages to the Holy Land, a professional figure developed in Venice to cater for travellers. Known as the tolomazo—possibly the phonetic version of the German Dolmetscher (translator)—he sold his services to travellers looking for accommodation, currency exchange, or guidance through the city’s churches and relics. Tolomazi ¹²⁷ Interrogation of Iseppo Berti, 25.9.1606, ibid.; the list of newly elected cardinals was first reported in the Venetian avviso of 16.9.1606, in ASV, IS, b. 704, fasc. 2, cc. nn. ¹²⁸ Trial interrogations running from 26.6 to 5.7.1618, in ASV, IS, b. 522, cc. nn. ¹²⁹ Deposition by Matteo Riva, dated 6.1.1619, in ASV, IS, b. 522, cc. nn. ¹³⁰ Deposition of Daniele from Verona, dated 24.7.1616, in ASV, IS, b. 522, cc. nn.

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were enrolled in a list recognized by a governmental magistracy, but clearly faced the competition of many unofficial guides. With the demise of pilgrimages to the Holy Land—in the 1590s Fynes Morison was disappointed at seeing none leaving—such professional translators, at once linguistic and cultural, did not disappear, although their role is less known.¹³¹ Contemporaries generally looked with suspicion at the information provided by such intermediaries. Writing for fellow merchants in the 1450s, Benedetto Cotrugli warned against giving credit to the reports of ‘sailors’ and ‘travellers’ who exaggerated out of drunkenness.¹³² Similarly, in a dialogue published in 1563, a patrician remembered the warnings of his merchant grandfather against ‘the services of interpreters . . . who are mostly men of the lowest and most perfidious nature.’¹³³ For our purposes, however, the reliability of the information exchanged matters less than the experience of exchanging it. Imagine meeting someone like Christian from Lorraine, nicknamed ‘the Pilgrim’ because he always travelled with a long stick to defend himself from robbers. An impoverished travelling tradesman of jewels, forced to wearing old rags, he liaised between French mercenaries, carrying letters from their officers abroad. In 1619 he was denounced by another jeweller, to whom he had confided that those letters contained ‘many things which were not good and which could harm me and whomever carries them.’¹³⁴ As both of them realized, information was at once dangerous and exciting, whatever its truthfulness. Stable foreign communities, with strong ties with distant countries, also acted as information centres occasionally extending to entire neighbourhoods, be it the Germans and Flemish at Rialto, the Greeks in Western Castello, or the Turks near San Zan Degola (whose presence peaked in the years 1573–1645). The still extant Fondaco dei Tedeschi was only the largest of a hugely diversified range of places, sometimes no more than a small building with few sleeping and storage rooms. The government tried to contain alien minorities into such confined spaces, but it did not always succeed. As early as 1516 Turkish merchants were reported in hostels and private residences as well as a prostitute’s house.¹³⁵ Although difficult to quantify, there was a large number of people who provided valuable means of information from distant regions into the urban network of Venice, constantly bartering and talking with local traders, retailers, brokers, and the many other dwellers of this vast multi-cultural metropolis. Furthermore, as in all early modern capitals, large numbers of people moved to Venice permanently or semi-permanently, in search of fortune or simply livelihood.¹³⁶ Long-distance commerce also worked through migrants, but most ¹³¹ Tucci 1985: 63–4. Sanudo 1879–1903, v. 25: 20 noted a school of Arabic in the Mercerie. ¹³² Cotrugli 1990: 158. ¹³³ Memmo 1563: 168. ¹³⁴ Deposition of Gilberto Bodù, 17.12.1620, in ASV, IS, b. 1053, cc. nn. ¹³⁵ Preto 1975: 127 and Kafadar 1986; for an introduction to non-Venetian communities in Venice, cf. Calabi and Lanaro 1998, and Molà and Mueller 1994. ¹³⁶ Beltrami 1954: 139–54; cf. Roche 1987: 21–31; and Bottin and Calabi 1999.

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people became exposed to that trade through humble pedlars, some of whom could only sign with a cross on the books recording their transactions.¹³⁷ All these people needed information in order to cope with the new environment. Finally, beyond their specific clientele, it is also important that Venice’s centres of information had an impact on the wider population. Medical shops, for example, were likely to be important centres in their neighbourhoods, as is to be expected of places where private lives could be saved. Indirect evidence of this can be found in the numerous streets named after the apothecary who once operated there (there are four calli dello spezier today, and in the nineteenth century there were seven). Deriving from a time when there was no state planning of toponyms, those names indicate familiarity—pharmacies were so well known that they identified and defined space.¹³⁸ Information centres were all surrounded by a world full of people who lived close by and knew each other. We can only guess what the people living in the densely inhabited workingclass neighbourhood around the campo di Do Pozzi said about the arrest of the Pharmacy of the Sun’s owner in 1612, or what the zavater (shoemaker) thought, in whose shop facing that pharmacy occasionally stood one of the Ten’ guards.¹³⁹ Rumours must have spread quickly, each time occasioning further discussion. Only a few years later, when a woman dwelling in the campo was denounced to the Holy Office, the many witnesses—including shipchandlers and unskilled workers of the Arsenal, their wives, washerwomen, and a hatmaker’s widow—all knew about the trial’s course before being interrogated.¹⁴⁰ Politics was of course only one aspect of the ceaseless communication taking place in the city. Halfway between personal calumny and collective sanction, for example, gossip followed some of the same patterns discussed here, as Inquisition trials document. In turn, the constant exercise of gossip, as James C. Scott has argued, may have created infra-political channels for the expression of radical political ideas.¹⁴¹ 3 . 4 T H E WO R D S O F WO M E N So far, only men have been considered as engaging in political communication. And yet the Holy Office records—mentioned above—offer evidence of a large number of women engaging in communication whether as witnesses, accusers, or defendants in trials over crimes which themselves involved communication, from heresy and magic to slander.¹⁴² By contrast, the State ¹³⁷ Vercellin 1979: 253; cf. Fontaine 1996. ¹³⁸ Cf. de Vivo 2007. ¹³⁹ Reports dated 25.11 and 22.12.1611, in ASV, IS, 608, fasc. 10, cc. nn.; on the Arsenal neighbourhood, see R. C. Davis 1991, and Chojnacka 2001: 21. ¹⁴⁰ ASV, SU, b. 71, fasc. ‘Pierina Zatta’, 1616. ¹⁴¹ Horodowich 2005 and cf. J. C. Scott 1990. ¹⁴² J. Martin 1985, Ambrosini 1999, 2000a, and Horodowich 2003.

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Inquisitors’ reports concerning public centres of information almost exclusively mention men. The explanation lies in the fact that women’s possibilities for frequenting public spaces were inversely proportional to their social status. The Inquisitors’ agents were interested in discovering leaks coming from inside the political elite, whereas it was almost exclusively women who worked for a living who would let themselves be seen in Rialto and San Marco. Moreover, whatever their private behaviour, prominent members of the elite rarely showed themselves publicly engaging in cross-gender transactions which may have tainted their honour. This does not mean that women were excluded from political communication, but that they were less likely than men to participate in the communication taking place in the spaces described so far. The high degree of social mixing in Venice’s public space was largely barred to noble and wealthy women. They went to San Marco on special ceremonial occasions, but then remained on the balconies of the Ducal Palace, removed from the scene of action.¹⁴³ On the whole, elite women tended to confine themselves to the privacy of the home or the convent. Even when they left those enclosed spaces, they did so in covered boats, away from the dirt, but also away from the information exchange, of the public street. Refined women of course needed the services of apothecaries, who sold cosmetics as well as medicines, but it is likely that those who could afford such products bought by means of servants.¹⁴⁴ And of course, women were unlikely to enter the physically compromising environment of the barbershop. Instead, those who could afford it, washed their hair at home, famously letting it dry while sitting on their terraces, away from the public gaze. True, patrician women entertained social relations outside the family, but, important as they are, they originated from the private sphere of domestic life (for example with servants), or the circumscribed area of the neighbourhood (for example in the form of godmotherhood), away from the city’s centres of information.¹⁴⁵ Venetian noblewomen were effectively more constrained than their social equals in other capitals, where courts offered regulated spaces for cross-gender sociability and informed communication. Venice’s constitution denied women even the dynastic whims which elsewhere might have taken them to the throne, and Venetian ambassadors who observed foreign queens came back unconvinced: ‘to govern states is not the business of women’.¹⁴⁶ Nor could patrician women seriously aspire to the role of patronesses of artists which they had elsewhere. The exception of Caterina Cornaro’s personal court at Asolo confirms the rule, both because it was removed from the city, and because she was allowed to build her court there only by divesting herself of her political rights in favour of a male-dominated political order, giving up her reign to her fatherland by means ¹⁴³ Cf. Wilson 1999. ¹⁴⁴ Coryat 1905: 404, cf. Welch 2005: 216–19. ¹⁴⁵ Romano 1989, 1994, R. C. Davis 1998, Laven 2002. ¹⁴⁶ Ambrosini 1984: 36, referring to Mary Tudor.

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of her brother.¹⁴⁷ Manuals of good conduct taught gentlewomen about the virtue of silence amongst strangers; and husbands and fathers were instructed to value their women’s discretion in the same way as they safeguarded their family’s honour. Some authors, especially female, made room for women in dialogues and even imagined wholly female dialogues, but described them as domestica conversatione, confined to the privacy of a garden or a home, away from the communication raging in public or semi-public spaces. And no women feature in the classic dialogues of Venice’s political literature.¹⁴⁸ Of course, reality escaped principles. Women drew political influence by helping their men’s success, because mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters provided their male relatives with crucial horizontal bonds to other patricians.¹⁴⁹ This was crucial in an elective patriarchy, where politics was exclusively masculine but political success was ensured by kinship ties which also included women. As a consequence, the parlours of noble palaces and female convents could turn into arenas for discussing political alliances. Recent works on Venetian convents shows that they coupled this informal political function with a strong consciousness of their symbolic role in the polity.¹⁵⁰ Communication was likely to bring governmental information to women who had no rights on government. In all patriarchal societies, female members of ruling families were thought to be potential sources of disclosures, a motive of anxiety already in republican Rome, as Scipione Ammirato recounted in the late sixteenth century.¹⁵¹ In 1472, Elisabetta Zeno was exiled for passing some of the information she derived from social and family occasions in her home to her brother, Pope Paul II.¹⁵² Once in the convent and outside their families’ control, patrician women also threatened governmental secrecy by entertaining contacts with both men and women outside the patriciate. In 1604 the Council of Ten intervened together with the magistracy in charge of guarding the convents’ purity, to try some nuns of San Daniele who were found to have had affairs with the secretary of the Ten, the nuncio, and a bishop; the Grand Chancellor’s sons were also reported to have been frequent visitors.¹⁵³ Most of these elite women’s communication was confined to the political arena, however, rather than the urban scenario of political communication. Lower down the social scale, women’s many different activities took place in a range of public and semi-public spaces, including central areas such as Rialto and San Marco, whether as recognized guild members in different trades, or occupied mid-way between private and public, from renting rooms to tavern-keeping and prostitution.¹⁵⁴ As a result they were more likely than their social superiors to come into contact with the centres of information discussed ¹⁴⁷ King 1991: 162–3. ¹⁴⁸ e.g. Fonte 1605: 11; cf. Cox 2000. ¹⁴⁹ Chojnacki 2000a. ¹⁵⁰ Sperling 1999b and Lowe 2003; on conversation in parlours, see Laven 2002: 114–31. ¹⁵¹ Ammirato 1640: 326–7. ¹⁵² Queller 1986: 213–14; cf. Preto 1994a: 479–81. ¹⁵³ Leggi e memorie: 307–39. Because it was politically suspicious, this inquiry was handled by the Council of Ten together with the Provveditori sopra Monasteri. ¹⁵⁴ Chojnacka 2001: 50–80 and 103–20, Bellavitis 2001, Groppi 1996, Scarabello 2004.

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in this chapter, although it may be that, once there, gender coupled with social status to exclude them from the conversation. Some evidence suggests that women visited pharmacies, for example; unlike in Rome, Venetian women were allowed to practise the trade—in 1569, five out of 85 registered apothecaries were women.¹⁵⁵ Many more worked as medical practitioners, and one worked parttime in Alessandro Cavadenti’s shop (a rare mention in the moles’ reports).¹⁵⁶ Some women may have followed their male counterparts in diversifying activities into the professional provision of centres for sociability—in January 1606, for example, Claudia, the widow of a barber, was imprisoned for turning her shop into a ‘commercial ridotto for card players’.¹⁵⁷ Finally, as testified by the countless laws which tried to prohibit this custom, prostitutes frequented many of the city’s taverns, and some also hosted gambling in their homes.¹⁵⁸ Like men, women also had networks of connections, both with other women and with men, which they forged and cultivated in convent schools, parish charity, or scuole piccole guild life.¹⁵⁹ In fact, women were thought to cultivate closer bonds of communication than men. In 1620, a man from Burano disparagingly said of his island’s women that ‘if one says it, everyone says it’.¹⁶⁰ Women too had the equivalent of brokers, the ruffiane, who helped familes arrange suitable marriages for their children. Like commercial brokers, they needed a wealth of information on their potential clients’ circumstances, and in turn acted as further distributors of that information, often against the wishes of those involved. Not for nothing the figure of the ruffiana, a central element of many early modern plays, was often coupled with pettegola, the gossip.¹⁶¹ In effect, women constituted a vocal presence on the urban stage, not least because Venice pioneered both female opera singing and professional acting.¹⁶² In the early seventeenth century, Thomas Coryat had no doubts in describing ‘conversation’ as a principal skill of courtesans, some of whom he described as ‘good rhetoricians’. Of course, he used the term negatively, a reminder of the corrupting power of communication, because he meant that courtesans seduced men with their words as much as their beauty.¹⁶³ While the exercise of communication in public was not gendered, its imagery largely was.¹⁶⁴ Although the Inquisitors of State’s records rarely mention women in connection with public centres of information such as taverns or pharmacies, they do so more ¹⁵⁵ Mackenney 1987: 88 and Dian 1900: 167; cf. Kolega 1998: 318 on Rome. ¹⁵⁶ Ruggiero 1981: 170–7, Burke 1987: 38, and report dated 7.8.1612, in ASV, IS, b. 201, c. 97. ¹⁵⁷ Entry dated 26.1.1606, in ASV, ES, b. 61, cc. 113v –114. ¹⁵⁸ Costantini 1996: 892, 898–90 and Zdekauer 1884: 138. On prostitution, see Scarabello 2004 and cf. E. S. Cohen 1991. ¹⁵⁹ Romano 1987: 131–40; on women in scuole piccole, Mackenney 1994: 393–4; on noble and commoner women mixing in convent schools, Schickhardt 2002: 212. ¹⁶⁰ Chojnacka 2001: 50–80, 61. ¹⁶¹ Horodowich 2005: 27. ¹⁶² Glixon 1995, Heller 2003, Macneil 2003. ¹⁶³ Coryat 1905: 401, 405, and cf. Rosenthal 1992. ¹⁶⁴ Cf. Wickham 1998: 15, and Horodowich 2005.

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frequently when referring to the private lives of members of the political arena. Women had occasions for entering stable or occasional relationships with the many male patricians who for family reasons were denied the possibility of married sex and affections, either as companions, lovers, or prostitutes—a distinction which is not always clearly made in the sources.¹⁶⁵ In such cases, women did raise the Inquisitors’ concern. As one of the Spanish ambassador’s informers boasted, he obtained the secrets of the Senate by seducing the wife of one of its secretaries.¹⁶⁶ In 1630, the entire cipher used in diplomatic correspondence had to be replaced because the secretary of the ambassador in Spain vanished with it, ‘out of his love of an evil woman’.¹⁶⁷ Courtesans provided links between insiders of the political arena as well as between insiders and outsiders. For example, the noble Francesco Falier heard while in prison (as he recounted) that general Giovanni de Medici had a whore (putana) named Livia in Venice to whom he wrote with news from the battlefield. The representative of Florence also frequented Livia’s house and through her, heard about news which he then related to the Spanish ambassador. This was worrying enough, but Livia herself was also friend with one perfume maker, named Flavio the comedian (a name which indicates some neighbourhood reputation), and he in turn revealed this news to others, both nobles and commoners.¹⁶⁸ In Venice’s tight urban world, where strangers lived in constant physical proximity, women were likely to incur transactions of political information also in the spaces which they most frequented, neighbourhoods and even single buildings. For example, Ottavio Tedeschi, an impecunious newswriter we have already encountered, rented a room near San Moisé and there occasionally read out some of his newssheets to the other residents of the building, including two women: an unspecified Caterina (who later eloped with him) and one Polonia Artusi, a widow in charge of the building’s cleaning. When Ottavio moved to Rome, Polonia corresponded with him—which is why we encounter her, because the Inquisitors also intercepted Ottavio’s letters to informers in the Spanish embassy, and so interrogated her.¹⁶⁹ In most cases, women aroused suspicion only in so far as they had connections with insiders of the political arena. A case in point is that of a woman working in the household of Bedmar’s chief informer Antonio Meschita. In January 1611, she went to the Ducal Palace’s court, ‘in a moment of rage’ (as reported by the officer with whom she spoke); she complained about Meschita’s treatment ‘harming her master with her words’ and went on to denounce his illicit information trade. Although she made important political revelations, it is interesting that the officer who collected her report focused on her personal motives, as if unwilling to believe the woman capable of making a political statement.¹⁷⁰ ¹⁶⁵ ¹⁶⁶ ¹⁶⁸ ¹⁶⁹ ¹⁷⁰

J. C. Davis 1962: 62–74, Chojnacki 2000a: 244–56. Report dated 5.7.1615, in ASV, IS, b. 609, cc. nn. ¹⁶⁷ Zannini 1993a: 124n. Denunciation by Francesco Falier, dated 31.7.1616, in ASV, IS, b. 522, cc. nn. Interrogation of Polonia Artusi, 24.10.1618, in ASV, IS, b. 609, fasc. 8, cc. nn.; cf. above p. 83. Report dated 30.1.1611, in ASV, IS, b. 606, fasc. 9, cc. nn.

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In sixteenth-century Venice, women were not just known to engage in communication, they were thought to embody ceaseless gossip, as reflected in popular proverbs such as ‘Words are female, and facts male’. But that communication was only thought to be ruled by gullibility and vanity. As the proverb’s printed explanation recited in 1604, women could neither take the sword to defend the fatherland, nor engage in the discussion of ‘acts which benefit the public’.¹⁷¹ Women’s gossip was the subject of countless literary satires, such as Giulio Cesare Croce’s Il battibecco overo cicalamento e chiacharamento, which made women’s talk onomatopoeically similar to the verses of animals. Other cheap texts meant for large diffusion described women moving from quarrelling—over some food, or a common lover—into physical violence, including ‘punches, beatings, breaking of backs, arms, heads, and bones’. Thus, women’s communication became a stereotyped drive to disorder.¹⁷² But even when they were represented as actively taking the initiative to reverse gendered priorities (for example, according to Giulio Lepschy, in the Veniexiana’s description of courtship), their acts were not on the whole considered likely to impact the political system.¹⁷³ Thus, we can conclude by drawing a comparison with medieval Tuscany as discussed by Chris Wickham. He noted the absence of women from most judicial records of rumours constructing the publica fama of a community’s sense of its own identity.¹⁷⁴ Similarly, early modern Venetian women were considered incapable of political communication relating to public issues. Just as workers were thought to care only for their personal needs, so women of all status were ideally confined to the privacy of the household. Public affairs were men’s affairs. As far as public communication was concerned, gender defined women while status did men. It was no doubt because he thought he would raise fewer suspicions that in 1608 a Neapolitan nobleman working as an informer wrote to a Venetian general under a woman’s name.¹⁷⁵ Whether wittingly or unwittingly, many people beyond the political elites became exposed to, or participated in, constant and effervescent discussions relating to a world of which they were supposed to have no knowledge. The sources discussed in this chapter show representatives of different social groups joining in the conversation out of a widespread interest for the cose del mondo. The streets of Venice were full of people talking about current affairs, distant events and home policies, boasting their knowledge of political secrets in order to assert their status before an audience. Sometimes, as far as the documents tell us, they united as communities of common opinion. For example, the noble abbot Sagredo told the Inquisitors that those ‘dependent on the Spanish faction’ ‘who ¹⁷¹ ¹⁷² ¹⁷³ ¹⁷⁵

Buoni 1604–6, v. 1: 340. Il grandissimo contrasto (1613); cf. Croce s.d., and Gherardi 1627. G. Lepschy 2002. ¹⁷⁴ Wickham 1998: 15–16. Entry dated 11.1.1608, in ASV, CX, Parti segrete, f. 29, cc. nn.

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have no affection for the Republic’ always gathered in a particular pharmacy, the Ercole in campo Santa Maria Formosa.¹⁷⁶ Other times, inside one group, people split over disagreements or opposed loyalties, just like the factions and groups in the political arena. Single instances of communication also presented a wide social variety, some gathering only peers or colleagues, others straddling social and professional boundaries. Of course, there are always limitations in the sources. Just as women are under-represented, so other groups—the poor, the vagabonds—rarely make an appearance. Rather than a unified public opinion—whatever that may be—it is best to see political communication amongst ordinary people in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Venice as constituting a plurality of continuously interacting publics. To conclude this chapter, it is possible to compare our evidence with the model of public sphere put forward by Habermas. There is no doubt that, a century earlier than he thought, a city like Venice offered public and semi-public spaces, from squares and taverns to barbershops, where ordinary people could discuss issues of public concern. Some differences are important, however. First, it is only because Venice’s public communication regularly included members of the political arena that we know something about that communication—because government authorities were interested in tracking elite intelligence. This combination is in contrast to Habermas’ account of the public sphere as arising in opposition to, and autonomy from, the government. By contrast, political communication developed in Venice by interacting with the world of formal and informal politics, in line with recent studies of French salons as places of encounter with, not in opposition to, the world of the court.¹⁷⁷ Furthermore, political communication was shaped by the material culture of the spaces in which it occurred in richer ways than one can derive from Habermas’ abstract model of the public sphere. By contrast, the evidence shows that political communication arose out of a combination of social, mundane, and material interests mostly to do with Venice’s urban economy, because professional and semi-professional concerns informed the ways in which people exchanged information and determined the places where they did so. As a result, political communication always mixed private and public and if anything, its study shows the difficulty of disentangling the two.¹⁷⁸ This meant that Venice’s public communication was not a unified public sphere, because as the example of barbershops and pharmacies shows, different places gathered different people, some attracting more, others less, wealthy visitors.¹⁷⁹ But in turn more people participated in political communication than the emergent middle class who enjoyed their leisure in Habermas’ entertainment ¹⁷⁶ Interrogation of Alvise Sagredo, 27.4.1617, in ASV, IS, b. 1213, file 30, cc. nn. ¹⁷⁷ Roche 1996 and now Lilti 2005. ¹⁷⁸ Mackenney 1998. ¹⁷⁹ A similar point has been made for both coffeehouses and salons, Ellis 2004: 150–1 and cf. Lilti 2005: ch. 4.

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establishments. Coffeehouse customers paid a fee (as well as their drinks); salon buffs were invited to soirées. By contrast, one needed little money and no connections to enter barbershops or pharmacies, and neither was required to linger at Rialto. The early modern city—Venice, but also Paris in the work of for example Arlette Farge—hosted popular political communication amongst people who worked for their living.¹⁸⁰ Furthermore, the polite conversation imagined by Habermas, often on the basis of normative literature by writers keen on reforming manners, pales in comparison with the moods and reactions that political information clearly provoked, a subject of passionate feelings, leading to fights as much as rational discourse. Our evidence does not show whether such discussions were egalitarian in ethos, as Habermas thought, and personally I find that possibility unrealistic.¹⁸¹No doubt, social status, personal ties, and individual authority affected those groups as they do all social transactions. What made them politically significant was not equality but the potential for social mixing, something for which we do have abundant evidence. ¹⁸⁰ Farge 1994. ¹⁸¹ For a criticism of Habermas’ egalitarian model, cf. Fraser 1992 and Eley 1992.

4 Communicative transactions So far, we have seen how information animated both action and discussion on different levels within separate, though interconnecting, spheres of communication and groups of people: the government, the professionals of the political arena, and the political outsiders meeting in Venice’s public and semi-public places. Each group, however, needed to communicate with the others in order to function fully, as the example of the publication of laws will show—for all its secrecy, the government’s authority rested on its capacity to reach out to the entirety of its subjects. For this reason, we now move from the spheres of communication to the communicative actions which held those spheres in a state of constant interaction. Whether by accident or on purpose, information constantly spilled out from the government to move from the centre to the periphery of Venice, from the council halls inside the Ducal Palace to a pharmacy at the gates of the Arsenal. It would be wrong to conceive this communication as only trickling down from insiders to outsiders. True, much political communication arose out of disclosures originating in the political arena. In leaking information for their own purposes, political leaders and their agents caused a multiplication of available information, whether intentionally or not. But we should not see them as intermediaries. Factions and political groups tried to capture the government by influencing the political arena, not the city. And even those professional informers who originated from, and lived close to, humble social groups served an elite rather than the public. If the government tried to maintain secrecy, information professionals also realized the value of political knowledge and were far from wishing to disclose it indiscriminately to others. Communication caused conflicts between as well as within each of the spheres analysed so far. Each message prompted opposed reactions, each of which constituted further messages. The government imparted commands, for example, but the information which it published in the process could then become the object of defiance and trigger further communication of a radically opposite kind. Political factions also disclosed information which continued to circulate beyond the immediate circumstances in which those factions had hoped to use it—a posted challenge to an adversary could eventually become a radical pasquinade. Unintended usages engendered disagreements, and the consequences

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of communication were always hard to predict. As illustrated in the discussion of the French wars of religion at the end of this chapter, even distant events prompted political communication at all social levels. Different people may have had different degrees of information, but as we shall see they employed similar intellectual arguments to process that information, with often contrary results. It would be hopelessly reductive to describe all this as a one-way diffusion of communication. In Venice one would have heard neither the harmonious single voice which the state wished to impose, nor the opposed statements of political leaders nor the whispered propositions of their spies, because all of them merged with, and were submerged by, a loud ‘polyphony’ of contrasting claims to public expression, a cacophony perhaps of political voices, each trying to reach over the others.¹

4 . 1 T H E I N T E R AC T I O N O F O R A L I T Y A N D L I T E R AC Y Literacy was a prime factor determining contacts between the three spheres of political communication. Much of the communication we saw in the last chapter was oral, but it constantly interacted with literacy as conversations began with, or revolved around, written information. Information originating from the political arena filtered through to the city in written formats as well as in face-to-face encounters. The professionals’ unlawful diffusion of secret documents traced in Chapter 2 constantly involved ordinary people without political connections, whether intentionally or (more often) by accident. After Vincenzo Pinelli’s death, for example, some servants stole several old and recent manuscripts from his precious library, including many Venetian relazioni; other documents were taken to Naples to be sold at auction, but were lost during a shipwreck and eventually used (as a witness said) to seal the windows of fishermen’s houses.² What else the fishermen could have done with those documents depended on their access to literacy.

Literacy as social transaction Literacy was a minority phenomenon throughout early modern Italy, although it was more widespread in Venice than in most other cities or the countryside. Around one-third of Venetian boys and a little more than one-tenth of girls were taught to read and write in the last quarter of the sixteenth century.³ The decades at the turn of the century also saw an increase in the provision of basic literacy ¹ The reference to Bakhtin is intentional, as will become apparent below. ² Rivolta 1933: lxx, from a 1607 letter by Paolo Gualdo. On Pinelli’s collection, see above, p. 62. ³ P. Grendler 1982, 1989: 42–70.

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as part of the Council of Trent’s effort to bring Catholic doctrine to everybody (including women as much as men).⁴ Furthermore, there were different degrees of literacy. It is likely that elementary literacy, of a practical kind which was functional to basic work, extended to more people than those who were taught in schools. Richard Mackenney’s research on artisans and small shopkeepers suggests that there were few amongst either group who were completely illiterate. Zuangiacomo, a swordsmith who read the Bible to a shoemaker, told the Inquisition that he was not literate but only managed ‘to put a few things together’. Some of his equals and apprentices felt able to read Boccaccio and Ariosto.⁵ Thus, although socially and economically determined, literacy was not confined to the elite. Above all, absolute figures are better read as indications of a relation between the literate and the rest of the population. The salient feature of literacy is not its extent, but its incidence, or relative availability, and in urban society there would have been at least one literate person in most communities. By reading to others, he (or she) mediated written information for larger audiences in the family, the workshop, or the neighbourhood (perhaps in the local barbershop).⁶ Contemporaries knew that the written word circulated in different ways to benefit more people than its readers. Renaissance poets designed their lyrics not just for readers, but for audiences, whether literate or illiterate, who enjoyed oral performances.⁷ The religious authorities in charge of heresy were particularly aware of the manifold ways of textual circulation. In 1598 the Inquisition condemned not just those who read, but also those who ‘compose, transcribe, print, sell, buy, carry, give as a gift, lend, borrow, have, hide, read and listen to the reading of, heretical books or writings’. The point was that heresy could develop at each of those stages.⁸ Political authorities shared their religious counterparts’ concern. In 1621, for example, Paolo Sarpi explained in detail a text’s circulation and its effects by relating them to a heavy exchange between literacy and orality. Slanderous writings, he affirmed ‘do not limit their evil effects only to their readers, but worse still, they cause others to speak and give arguments to those who have some reason for discontent or partisanship, and they in turn easily speak to the ears of simple people, insinuating seductions and impressing ideas which ultimately cause dangerous effects.’⁹ Early modern authorities were already aware that, as historians such as Robert Darnton have recently insisted, printed books were part of a wider system of textual communication.¹⁰ ⁴ Petrucci 1982: 9–10, P. Grendler 1988, 1989: 333–62. ⁵ Mackenney 1987: 183–6 and 193–4; P. Grendler 1989: 47; and Jacobson-Schutte 1986. Cf. also Petrucci 1978 and Burke 1987: 110–31, and, for a survey, Richardson 1999: 107–12. ⁶ Cf. Levi 1985: 82. ⁷ Richardson 2004b. ⁸ Fragnito 1997: 42; in 1614 the nuncio in Venice expressed similar concerns, ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Roma, r. 18, c. 53v. ⁹ ‘Del confutar scritture malediche’, in Sarpi 1969: 1170; cf. de Vivo 2005: 45. ¹⁰ Darnton 1996, 2000.

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Sarpi’s words reveal that the limited extent of literacy—which could, and in many cases no doubt did, act as a factor of exclusion—was also the cause of socially mixed contacts. As Joyce Coleman argued with regard to medieval England, it is less important to distinguish between literacy and orality, than to insist on the interaction between the two, an interaction which was defined by, and in turn itself defined, a social event.¹¹ The urban spaces of communication analysed in this chapter show a largely unexplored variety of possible settings for those transactions. The Inquisitors’ reports repeatedly describe people engaged in communal reading of unidentified documents, occasionally newssheets: people reading together in bozzoli at San Marco and the broglio; in the court of the Ducal Palace; in the pharmacy of the Sun; one showing a piece of paper to the others, then commenting on it as if with some authority; three friars reading together on the way out of the Spanish embassy, then laughing while walking along the fondamenta.¹² Literacy interacted with orality to permeate the entirety of the city’s space, making for a form of publication independent of the text’s format (printed or manuscript). As the Ten’s captain recognized, reading aloud a manuscript was a way of ‘publishing’ it, thus pointing to the ‘freer conception of publication as a social activity’ which according to Harold Love was common in early modern English society too.¹³ Some people offered themselves as intermediaries in literacy. Their reasons for doing so had to do with friendship or reciprocity (reading or writing in exchange for other services), but the sixteenth century also saw the professionalization of literacy agents such as public scriveners and teachers (both men and women) who offered their services to strangers for a fee. Although little studied in Venice, they seem to have punctuated the city’s central areas.¹⁴ Professional scriveners helped bring not just literacy but also political information to a larger public. Most were socially humble figures (theirs was a ‘half-penny profession’, Garzoni wrote in 1585).¹⁵ But this does not rule out access to the more elite world of the political arena, which scriveners often served in various ways. The two activities were not contradictory. As the scrivener Alberto Lana told the Inquisitors, he agreed to work for Meschita ‘because I was poor and had no other writing employment, either in the courts or elsewhere’.¹⁶ We have already seen that many scriveners worked as copyists for newswriters and other members of the political arena, and they recur frequently in the records of the Inquisitors of State ¹¹ Coleman 1996. ¹² Reports dated 16.5.1611, in ASV, IS, b. 606, fasc. 9, cc. nn., and 15.11.1614., ibid., fasc. 10, cc. nn. ¹³ Report dated 4.9.1614, in ASV, IS, b. 608, fasc. 4; Love 1993: 39. ¹⁴ Moryson 1907–8, v. 1: 179, and Del Negro 2003 (on Padua). On scriveners elsewhere, see Petrucci 1983, 1989, Bouza Álvarez 2001: ch. 2, Hébrard 1995, and Métayer 2000. On female teachers, see Ambrosini 2000b: 434 and Roggero 2001. ¹⁵ Garzoni 1996: 414. ¹⁶ Interrogation of Alberto Lana, 18.8.1616, in ASV, IS, b. 1213, fasc. 26, cc. nn., cf. above, pp. 82–3.

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in the early seventeenth century.¹⁷ The resident of Urbino relied frequently on the services of a scrivener named Agostino, near San Marco; together they also read newsletters, which the resident then showed to his fellow diplomats.¹⁸ Other such intermediaries included notaries and above all their clerks, people connected by business to the exchange of sensitive political information, but also fully integrated into the city’s ordinary life.¹⁹ The scriveners’ ties with different cultural and social worlds can be sensed in the following interrogation dating from 1617. A secretary of the ambassador of Savoy denounced the scrivener Ottavio Carnevale for writing newsletters. According to the secretary, Carnevale obtained his news as a tutor in patrician households, ‘teaching how to write’—a potential treason on the part of patricians. When interrogated, Carnevale explained that he taught in private homes only ‘after supper’, while in daytime he kept a stall for ‘lowly people’ near a woolmercer at Rialto. He denied obtaining secret news from his patrician clients—instead, he pointed to oral information protesting that he had a general interest in the ‘things of the world’, ‘whatever is said in the piazze’. At this point, the Inquisitors turned the interrogation to his writing habits. They asked him: ‘do you take any notes about the things you hear?’ and when he again denied, they retorted—as if it were a matter of fact—‘and yet, those who work as scriveners are used to make some money either by copying documents or by writing things for the service or the curiosity of some people. Who gives you things to copy and rewards you for your writing?’ ‘Nobody on earth,’ Carnevale replied, ‘and I wish someone did, because I would lead a better life’.²⁰ He apparently convinced the Inquisitors (the interrogation ended there, although we do not know whether the inquiry continued later). To both interrogators and interrogated, it clearly seemed common for public scriveners serving a wide public to serve also as copyists of potentially sensitive material for politically connected patrons. If newswriters catered for an elite in exchange for a fee, they also mediated a shade of that information to reach a larger variety of people. One of Carnevale’s points to the Inquisitors, for example, was that he obtained his information by conversing with newswriters. As he explained, whenever he wished to hear news from his home country, he went to the stalls where newswriters wrote their avvisi: ‘and so sometimes I ask them, what news from Piedmont? And they tell me there is this news and that.’²¹ Like Carnevale, other people must have known where to go when looking for information; in other cases, information reached their homes. We have already seen, for example, that the newswriter and ¹⁷ Cf. Infelise 2002a: chs. 2 and 4. ¹⁸ Report dated 20.9.1612, in ASV, IS, b. 638, cc. nn. ¹⁹ In 1616 one Nicolo Alessandri was described as ‘notaio e scriba’, ASV, SU, b. 71, file ‘Corona Darmano’. ²⁰ Denunciation by Giovan Pietro Sovigo and following interrogation of Ottavio Carnevale, 30.12.1617, in ASV, IS, b. 1213, fasc. 42, cc. nn. ²¹ Interrogation of Carnevale, ibid.; on this case, cf. Infelise 2002a: 29.

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scrivener Ottavio Tedeschi read some of his newssheets aloud to his neighbours; perhaps he also discussed the news with another friend, a second-hand clothseller who generally worked standing at San Marco.²² Thus if only a minority could afford a newswriter’s services, others spread the news further. No doubt, information varied in the course of these exchanges—newswriters after all would not have shared for free the same information which they also sold. But whatever information they supplied, it invariably made for further discussion.

The meaning of literacy The access to written political information had of course different meanings for different people at different social levels. For the professionals of politics and the informers serving them, it was a normal feature of everyday life. We have already seen that patricians happily kept reserved governmental documents in their homes together with a host of other political writings. On seizing a trunk of documents belonging to Antonio Calbo, a patrician imprisoned for treason, the Inquisitors found no incriminating evidence, apart from a written renga prepared by Calbo to be read out by a friend (a prohibited action). There, they also found a wealth of ‘in quarto manuscripts, some bound some unbound, which dealt with secrets and medicines’. This, together with an earlier denunciation indicating Calbo as one of the patricians who read magical and astrological treatises, shows the fascination which esoteric knowledge, whether political or medicinal, had amongst those involved in the information exchange—a further indication of the contacts between medical and political knowledge.²³ Outside the political arena, merchants constantly resorted to writing for the long-distance exchange as well as the storage of precious information.²⁴ Some also offered their communication services to professionals of politics. For example, unable to have his History of the Council of Trent published in Venice, Paolo Sarpi wished to send it to England. To do so, he asked some Flemish merchants to send the text to their agents in London in successive instalments which they and Sarpi described as ‘songs’ (canzoni).²⁵ Written communication worked not just over long-distance, but within the city as a means of socially diverse diffusion. When, for example, Marcantonio De Dominis had his manifesto printed on his way to defecting to England in 1616, he sent several copies from Germany to his friend Giovanni Bartoli, a lawyer in Venice. He asked Bartoli to distribute the copies to: a nephew who worked as a mirror-maker, another lawyer, a physician, and finally the owner of the Golden Ship, a shop which we have already encountered as a centre of sociability for Sarpi’s acquaintances (to whom De Dominis was close).²⁶ ²² Interrogation of Polonia Artusi, 24.10.1618, in ASV, IS, b. 609, fasc. 8, cc. nn. ²³ List dated 24.9.1614, in ASV, IS, b. 201, cc. nn. Calbo was denounced for reading prohibited books in 1609, see Savio 1936–42, v. 10: 26–35. ²⁴ Doumerc 1994. ²⁵ Cozzi 1956b. ²⁶ Ljubic 1870: 170, and cf. above pp. 95–6.

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These two examples show protagonists of the political arena resorting for their own ends to individuals whom the government would never have acknowledged as legitimate political actors. For other people, access to written political information was not an aspect of economic activity, but a cause of pride, perhaps an instrument of social success. The perfume-maker Gian Giacomo Garzoni seems to have derived a reputation from showing to acquaintances the many supposedly reserved documents he owned, including relazioni and other scritture, and letters of the emperor. He once produced a piece of paper and drew maps to show how he would lay siege to the fortress of Palma: ‘here I would put a colombina gun, here another weapon and here another one’.²⁷ Clearly, Garzoni used writing and written documents to substantiate his boast of knowledge, no doubt hoping to impress other people, a behaviour that reveals the effectiveness of information in building a reputation in a society where information was meant to be reserved to particular groups. Lower down the social scale, we find less confidence—chance encounters with political documents caused fear as well as frisson. But even in such cases, the result was further communication. When for example the barber Antonio Pasinello found a letter addressed by an important Dominican prelate to an unknown foreign ambassador, he hesitated about handing it to the Inquisitors but talked about it to two acquaintances in his shop, one a carpenter (whom Antonio was shaving), and the other a worker from the hospital of the Condannati. Although the letter contained little of importance apart from a vague reference to some business ‘which it was better not to put in writing’, it provoked Antonio’s suspicions. He said he had no doubt that the letter contained some matter of public relevance, and said that the whole thing reminded him of the Jesuits, who were banned from Venice as enemies of the state following the Interdict; he ventured the guess that the letter was addressed to the Spanish ambassador—with whom he clearly and not unreasonably thought the Jesuits to have some contacts.²⁸ The carpenter suggested that Antonio should burn the letter (‘I would burn the letter, and end the matter there’); instead, the nurse—‘a man who like myself carries St Mark in his heart’—suggested that Antonio take it to the Inquisitors. Antonio said he was afraid that they might have asked him why he opened a letter which did not belong to him, and the nurse thought that Antonio should reply that ‘were the letter not open, I would not know what it contained’.²⁹ In the end, the nurse had to denounce Antonio to the Inquisitors, as a friendly way of ensuring he handed over the letter.³⁰ Midway between fear and daring, such exchanges show the kind of suppositions which might be prompted by discussing a mere letter in a barbershop, reflections ²⁷ Report dated 3.12.1614, in ASV, IS, b. 609, fasc. 2, cc. nn.; also ibid., reports dated 27.11, 1.12, and 9.12.1614. ²⁸ Interrogation of Antonio Pasinello, 19.1.1617, in ASV, IS, b. 1213, fasc. 27, cc. nn. ²⁹ Ibid. ³⁰ Interrogation of Valerio Cadena, 10.1.1617, ibid.

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nourished by vague notions of national politics and international affairs. Antonio’s attitude reveals the mixed feelings which a piece of supposedly secret information could prompt in humble people, but also their astonishing familiarity with the world of politics and with its tangible signs. Before taking it to the Inquisitors, he left the letter lying around his home, where his children seized it and made drawings all over it, including a smoking cannon on wheels. Indirectly, this indicates that the instruments for writing were available inside a barber’s home, that they were in fact thought to be common enough to be kept in the reach of children, and that children knew how to handle them for drawing, if not writing. In turn, the drawings are also precious evidence in themselves. Many children play at war, dreaming of soldiers and weapons; but at times of real war, their games may reflect their relatives’ or other friends’ talk about real political events.

4 . 2 N E C E S S A RY E N C O U N T E R S : O F F I C I A L P U B L I C AT I O N Not all information moved from the government’s to the public sphere by accident. For all their insistence on secrecy, the authorities needed to publish some information, namely those commands which they wished their subjects not merely to know, but to observe. The official publication of laws, judgements, and other forms of injunctions was, in theory at least, the only medium of public political communication, the only way in which ordinary people became exposed to issues of public concern. Indeed, in sixteenth-century usage, the very term pubblicazione generally referred not to the printing of books, but to the act of making laws publicly known through oral proclamations and posted sheets. The popular Calepino and the first Crusca dictionaries (first published, respectively, in 1502 and 1612) both equated pubblicazione to the Latin promulgatio which Roman jurisprudence defined precisely as the act of publicly issuing laws.³¹ Official publication was a special kind of communication. Carefully regulated and ritualized, it was—at least in principle—the government’s ideal channel for releasing information in a controlled, one-way fashion: not a dialogue, but a monologue contemplating no reply other than obedience. In reality, however, official publications occasioned responses coming from many sections of society and ranging from disregard to open contestation. As all acts of communication, the publication of laws implied a moment of contact between those who produced the message and those to whom the message was addressed, in this case, between the government and its subjects. It was an encounter which made for tension and easily unsettled the government’s grand assertions. ³¹ Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca 1612: 663, Calepino 1592: s.v. ‘promulgare’; cf. de Vivo 2002a.

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The mechanisms of official publication Official publications included laws, special decrees, and other forms of injunctions, as well as a variety of decisions of public interest, from judicial sentences to declarations of war and the announcement of public festivities. Throughout early modern Europe, it was a form of communication regulated by procedural rules and reinforced by long custom and ritual repetition, which consisted in reading aloud decrees in specific locations, often introduced by trumpets, and generally followed by posting the texts in conspicuous places and by print circulation.³² In fact, if one takes ritual to be a public form of communication, based on the stereotyped use of commonly intelligible symbols, official publication was arguably the paradigm ritual enacted by the state. Most importantly, stereotyping was functional to the commands’ intelligibility, because it was crucial to make people aware that it was a law that they were confronted with. Official publications are performative, but as with all performative statements, the conditions of performativity include tools making clear the nature of the statement.³³ Although systematized in Roman times, official publication was used in Venice too, where Roman law did not apply. There, it was a prerogative of the doge, and Gasparo Contarini had no doubts in listing amongst the latter’s ‘royal’ attributes that decrees were published in his name. Those in charge of material proclamations, generally known as comandatori, were directly responsible to the doge and appeared in ceremonial processions close to the Signoria, just after the ducal banners. They wore a long turquoise cloak and a red cap with a golden lion of St Mark. A drawing in Cesare Vecellio’s Habiti antichi et moderni (1590), shows one holding a book, perhaps a bundle of decrees.³⁴ They were of course literate, at least sufficiently so that they could read their decrees; but the notes which they scribbled on the papers carrying those decrees on completing their task, shows that their reading was better than their writing.³⁵ As Tommaso Garzoni described them in his 1585 encyclopaedia, they were common people whose main skill was a powerful voice, enough to ‘rebound in every corner of the city’.³⁶ Not for nothing, a few years earlier Giovanni Della Casa’s Galateo warned that ‘it is bad manners to shout like a towncrier’.³⁷ Loudness befitted those who were the main intermediaries between government and subjects. The main task of comandatori was to read aloud decrees (they also took convocations to tribunals, served as public auctioneers, and proclaimed the resolutions of different magistracies, each of which availed itself of a set team). ³² Fogel 1989 (on France) is the only historical monograph I know concerning this procedure. On Italy, cf. Bellettini et al. 2000, and Cirinei 1997; some information on the Republic of Venice is given in Molmenti 1927–29, v. 2: 39–40, Frasson 1981, and Gianesini 1999. ³³ Cf. Austin 1962. ³⁴ Contarini 1591: 33–4; Vecellio 1598: 92. ³⁵ In ASV, ES, f. 74, see below, n. 41. ³⁶ Garzoni 1996: 1273. ³⁷ Della Casa 1975: 54 (translation in Della Casa 1986: 78).

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As Natalie Zemon Davis once remarked for France, towncriers were likely to be the most widely-reaching readers of early modern towns.³⁸ In their business, comandatori could make use of trumpets, although I have found less evidence of this practice in Venice than in other cities on the Venetian mainland (where they were known as trombetti).³⁹ According to Garzoni, it was that instrument which called people’s attention, ‘awakening all the women, who go to their housedoors, while shokeepers jump out of their shops’.⁴⁰ The comandatori’s actions were part of a repetitive procedure combining different media, as shown in a surviving bundle of proclamations where the comandatori daily recorded their duty’s completion.⁴¹ Comandatori carried manuscript or printed copies of decrees, which they read out in specific places in the city, as well as large printed broadsheets, which they posted at key visible points. Orality and literacy interacted, as shown by notes in which the comandatore affirmed having read aloud the decree ‘in the middle of the campo’ and having then posted it ‘on the church’s door, that it may be seen’.⁴² Indeed, adorned with all the symbols of power, the posted text was as much a visual reminder of the government’s authority as a textual expression of its particular will. The very term which defined the object of publication, the proclama, also referred to its medium, the actual sheet with the decree’s text (also known as lettere con San Marco, from the sign which they bore). As well as read out, the text could be posted, painted on walls or, in particularly important cases, sculpted in stone, ‘to place it into the wall for perpetual memory.’⁴³ Finally, further publication was often, although not always, secured through printing. This was the duty of the official, ‘ducal’, printers, important professional intermediaries between the government and the publishing industry which ought to be studied in greater detail.⁴⁴ They printed small copies of the decrees, either as small booklets, in groups, or in longer bound collections; it was also common to print sommari, compilations of different decrees relating to the same subject. Official publications were the only printed publications which did not require the prior approval of the censorship machinery—a way of preventing the ecclesiastical supervision of governmental acts.⁴⁵ The physical location of an official publication shows that the authorities were aware of the spaces where people gathered throughout the city. The dedicated places for official publication coincided with Venice’s political and commercial ³⁸ Cf. N. Z. Davis 1975: 194. ³⁹ Garzoni 1996: 1272 called them comandatori, piazzari o trombetti; on auctions, see Welch 2005: 187. ⁴⁰ Garzoni 1996: 1273. ⁴¹ I did this with ASV, ES, f. 74 (a file of ‘proclamations against games and noises’). ⁴² Proclamation in Sant’Angelo, 3.4.1621, ibid. ⁴³ Proclamation at the Carmini, 1.5.1609, ibid. While the marble plaques have remained in great number (cf. a list dating from 1606–33 in Zdekauer 1884: 142–6), the painted writings which were also used have disappeared (Ferro 1778–81, v. 1: 189 and v. 9: 44–5). ⁴⁴ There is no specific study of stampatori ducali either as a group or as individuals in Venice. ⁴⁵ The nuncio complained on this point in a letter dated 17.11.1607, in ASVat, FB, I.857, c. 152.

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centres. All decrees customarily ended with the order ‘to be published on the stairs of San Marco and at Rialto’. In mainland cities too official publication defined certain places (they were often simply described as ‘the usual location’).⁴⁶ Such places were provided with fitting platforms for publication—at Rialto, comandatori climbed on a stone that was held by a sculpted hunchback known as the Gobbo, to which we shall return in the next section because it was also the physical support of different, and unofficial, publications.⁴⁷ Rialto and San Marco had a symbolic significance, but also a practical importance because they ensured the publications’ publicity. The authorities wished publications to be carried out before a large public: ‘in the presence of many people’, ‘in the presence of many viewers and listeners’, ‘at the presence of a great number of people’ (alla presentia de molte persone, alla presenza di molti astanti, et audienti, presente gran numero di persone.’)⁴⁸ For the same reason, beyond these institutional places, it is possible to reconstruct a whole topography of key locations of official publication—a map which effectively reveals where people habitually met. It included ferries (traghetti)—‘where foreigners pass through to come [to Venice]; and let it be known that ferry-masters must inform their passengers’⁴⁹—churches, and campi as well as other important passageways; every parish had its focus for publication, be it a campo, a bridge, a porch, the public warehouse or the local oven.⁵⁰ Each decree had its form and location, because official publication had to reach those to whom the decree was addressed in a logic which Michèle Fogel has described as ‘content-driven’.⁵¹ Thus the comandatori in charge of communicating court acts to parties in a trial, reported the ways in which they tried to locate addressees, ‘at home’, ‘early in the morning or later’, and for several successive days (other times, comandatori tried ‘in public’ or ‘at Rialto’).⁵² When they concerned nobles, whether or not they were posted in public, the decrees were also read out in the Great Council—even such restricted communication was defined as ‘publication’.⁵³ If need be, proclamations were made aboard galleys.⁵⁴ And, when they had to do with the life of friars, decrees were published inside ⁴⁶ Proclamations dated 29.4.1606, in ASV, Cons. iure, f. 3, fasc. nn. [1], c. 17v, and 19.12.1608, in ASV, Coll., Comunicate del CX, f. 4, c. 276v. ⁴⁷ The stone in Rialto is described in Moschetti 1893: 5–6; for San Marco see Sansovino 1663: 320. ⁴⁸ Proclamation in San Pantalon, 8.8.1615, in ASV, ES, f. 74; ASV, Cons. iure, f. 3, fasc. nn. [1], c. 17v (29.4.1606); Proclamation dated 19.12.1608, in ASV, Coll., Comunicate del CX, f. 4, c. 276v. Cf. Fogel 1989: 40–50. ⁴⁹ Parte dated 15.1.1540 in ASV, CL, b. 14, c. 205. ⁵⁰ Proclamation in San Giovanni Bragora, 24.12.1615, in ASV, ES, f. 74; cf. also a 1502 list of proclamations in thirty parishes, in Leggi e memorie: 92. ⁵¹ Fogel 1989: 41. ⁵² ‘Citationi ai Consigli 1614–1621’, in ASV, AC, b. 608, cc. nn. The Avogadori di Comun used their own fanti rather than the doge’s comandatori. ⁵³ Handwritten note on the bando against the patrician Piero Valier q. Giulio, printed with the date 22.6.1597, in ASV, CX, Proclami a stampa, f. 1, cc. nn. ⁵⁴ As spelled out in the commission of the fleet’s commander dated 14.3.1615, in ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni segrete, r. 105, c. 10.

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convents, and left there for the friars’ greater knowledge, ‘posted in our refectory and there in that way published’, as one recounted in 1620.⁵⁵ Publication was also aided by clergymen, whom the authorities occasionally instructed to publish certain laws in their churches when there was the greatest gathering of faithful. In the face of multiplying means and places of official publication, it is difficult not to agree with Armando Petrucci, who spoke of the authorities’ thorough ‘graphic occupation’ of early modern urban space. As he showed, large public inscription, a legacy of classical times, were also put to new uses in Italy and elsewhere at the height of the struggle by both church and states to assert their presence during the Counter Reformation. In Rome the practice reached its height after the pontificate of Sixtus V and, in the same years of the Interdict, Paul V had the basilica of St Peter covered with the largest public inscriptions ever seen, spelling out the continuity of papal power inside the dome, and the dominance of the Borghese family on the façade—as Sarpi said, such was the prominence of the pope’s name that one would have thought the church dedicated to St Paul.⁵⁶ In Venice the authorities similarly inscribed the city with symbols of their power—the lion of St Mark in all its possible shapes, andante, in moeca, holding a sword, an open or a closed book, and so on. At the same time, in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they systematically tried to erase all marks of the existence of competing political agents in subject cities and territories, such as the arms of local dynasties on the mainland, or Turkish epigraphy in Mediterranean towns.⁵⁷ Through official publication—with trumpets as well as on paper, in print as well as on stone—the government wished its own voice to rise above, and possibly to silence, all other voices.

The paradox of official publication Not everything, however, worked out as smoothly as the authorities wished. Throughout early modern Europe, the publication of laws was a contested act. In France, for example, the king’s official publications encountered resistance on a variety of levels, from the refusal to record edicts by the Parlements, to the gunshots welcoming officers charged with proclaiming new taxes. As Michèle Fogel wrote, before we can speak about governmental propaganda, we must understand the limits of the government’s most basic form of communication.⁵⁸ Although there have been no studies of this phenomenon in Italy, Garzoni similarly deplored the fate of comandatori incurring violence of all sorts, from beatings with sticks and roast-spits to punches and insults. As he said, often ⁵⁵ Deposition of Girolamo Locatelli, 19.6.1620, in ASV, IS, b. 1213, fasc. 56, cc. nn. ⁵⁶ Petrucci 1986; the quotation is from Petrucci 1996: vii. ⁵⁷ See Gianesini 1999: 13–36, Rizzi 1991–92 and 1997, Benucci 2001 and cf. Viggiano 1993: 10, 23–4. ⁵⁸ Fogel 1989: 15–16; cf. the German case cited in Rublack 1999: 1.

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they went back bruised to the government office which had charged them with their task.⁵⁹ In the Republic of Venice too, official proclamations gave daily occasion of confrontation between the rulers’ claim to authority on the one hand, and the subjects’ resistance on the other. The difficulties of official publication stemmed not just from episodic clashes, but were part of the routine struggle by the government to affirm its authority at the local level, where minor officials encountered all sorts of obstructions. Recent historiography has shown, in contrast with earlier assumptions, that discussion of the rise of the modern state ought to take account of the structural limitations of governmental action.⁶⁰ The troubles of official publication—a mechanism which was essential to the effectiveness of state commands—are part of the same picture, further proof that communication is a crucial aspect of political history. Plentiful evidence confirms Garzoni’s literary account of physical and symbolic violence on both the human agents and the material supports of official publication. In 1534, for example, Sanudo criticized those who made a mockery of comandatori in a carnival masquerade—but what a well-thinking patrician such as him lamented, others obviously enjoyed.⁶¹ Later, a decree threatened punishment on those who dared ‘molest and insult our officers, throwing cloths, oranges and other things on their head’.⁶² The ripping down, tearing apart, and smearing of proclamations, often accompanied by crude expressions, gave a very literal meaning to the well-known proverb that ‘Venetian decrees last but a week’ (parte veneziana dura una settimana).⁶³ In 1605, one of the clergymen whose imprisonment contributed to the quarrel between Venice and the pope, was accused precisely of publicly destroying several proclamations, which some patricians regarded as lèse-majesté (‘colpa d’offesa maestà’).⁶⁴ In 1619, when a new tax on milling occasioned a riot in Ceneda, the governor reported that the rioters spat on the tax-decree, tore it off the column on which it had been posted, ripped it to pieces and then splattered fresh dung over both the paper and the column.⁶⁵ Such cases of spectacular vandalism were frequent, and their meaning deserves to be investigated further. Rage is rarely just rage. More often, it conveys ideas and expresses them in forms which are recognizable to others, while its conflagration is in turn always shaped by a whole culture, as well as by the status, personal inclinations, and material circumstances of those involved. The citizens of Ceneda knew their town to be the object of a jurisdictional dispute between the Republic ⁵⁹ Garzoni 1996: 1274. ⁶⁰ Cf. above, p. 8, and in particular Ruggiero 1980: 132–5 and 140–6; Povolo 1981: 207–16; Corazzol 1997: 71–123. ⁶¹ Sanudo 1879–1903, v. 57: 548. ⁶² Bistort 1912: 29. ⁶³ The sources for this proverb are given by Finlay 1980: 37. ⁶⁴ Cornet 1859: 266; ∗ Querini, Avviso: 697. ⁶⁵ Dispatch of the podestà of Serravalle dated 2.9.1619, in ASV, QC, b. 137, n. 231, ‘Simone Barlò e Compagni’, cc. nn.

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and the Holy See; hence, while spitting on the proclamations ‘bearing Saint Mark’ (as the governor complained), they cried out ‘viva il Papa, viva il Papa’.⁶⁶ Disrespect for the law was by no means confined to social margins. In the 1610s and 1620s, mainland noblemen in Feltre were said to have made smerdar proclami —literally, shitting on proclamations—into a favoured pastime (whether physically or metaphorically, it is not clear).⁶⁷ Venetian patricians too challenged the law’s symbols repeatedly. In 1606 Nicolò Dolfin shouted that he ‘had justice in his arse, and those who ruled were in his arse too’; a year later, in a provincial town Giovanni Giustinian perhaps thought he was affirming his patrician superiority to minor local officials when he violentemente ripped an order from the officer who was reading it out.⁶⁸ The language these patricians used paralleled the acts of shaming aimed at affirming one’s own honour; for them, defiance of official proclamations was a means of pitching their private status against the state’s authority. The educated also realized that the lower orders could express contempt for official publication in similarly crude ways. The author Matteo Bandello for example imagined a prostitute wiping her bottom with the official summons for debt issued by her city’s governor.⁶⁹ In Venice, there is practical as well as literary evidence of similar insults. A late seventeenth-century denunciation accused a priest of saying that he had a tax request ‘in his arse’ (he apparently added that, instead of taxing people, patricians should spend less on their whores).⁷⁰ As Garzoni’s description implies, such behaviour constituted the sudden outburst of a consistent and endemic disregard for official publications, ‘things which everybody regards as of no importance’.⁷¹ Smerdar proclami was likely to imply more than mere violence; it was a political act in so far as it voiced a different notion of politics from that which the government asserted. If the government imposed the law as uncontroversial, those who were supposed to obey it knew how to contest it. Their methods were meant to win delay and opportunities for private freedom, but they also signalled defiance in public. Preventing the publication of a law was an effective means of undermining governmental action, revealing legal awareness of how to justify disobedience. As those who denounced the ripping of proclamations made clear, such acts made it impossible to turn the government’s mind into action (esseguir la mente publica).⁷² From a legal point of view, the failed publication of decrees and injunctions resulted in their temporary invalidity. Nobles frequently resorted to this argument, ⁶⁶ Ibid. ⁶⁷ Corazzol 1997: 75. ⁶⁸ Entry dated 15.11.1606, in ASV, CX, Parti comuni, f. 258, cc. nn.; and a similar case 24.3.1607, ibid., Parti segrete, f. 29, cc. nn.. Numerous cases of patricians’ disrespect for state authority in the provinces in Viggiano 1994 and Corazzol 1997. ⁶⁹ Burke 1987: 98. ⁷⁰ Undated report by Alvise Gozzi, in ASV, IS, b. 605, cc. nn. ⁷¹ Garzoni 1996: 1273. ⁷² Dispatch of the podestà of Serravalle dated 2.9.1619, in ASV, QC, b. 137, n. 231, ‘Simone Barlò e Compagni’, cc. nn. Those who denounced Giustinian similarly lamented that his act stopped the order’s execution (‘impedendo l’esecutione’).

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affirming for example that they had not received orders which they then argued they were not legally bound to obey. In 1612 Giovan Giacomo Pisani refused to listen to the comandatore who tried to notify him of a writ of summons; instead, he loudly called all bystanders to witness that he had received no notification (sentite, et siate testimoni). In this way, he competed with the authorities on the terrain of public communication, loudly setting his own voice against the written record of the authorities. When Pisani again claimed during his trial that he had received no notification, what is striking is not so much his argument, as the fact that the court found it convincing and opened a file against the comandatore.⁷³ People lower down the social scale and with presumably smaller legal education were nonetheless aware of the legal consequences of their acts.⁷⁴ For example, in 1616 the printer Antonio Belsamini was arrested for unlawfully printing a papal edict without the government’s licence. The interrogation by the then Riformatore dello studio Nicolò Contarini is revealing. Asked whether he knew that he needed the Riformatori’s licence to print the edict, Belsamini replied ‘I don’t know, because I have no knowledge of such things’, and added that he had received an order by the inquisitor, which he thought to be sufficient. He also claimed ignorance, believing the licence was only necessary for large volumes. Contarini angrily challenged the printer: did he not know who ruled in Venice? Contarini accused the printer of pretending ignorance (‘you play the ignorant, but that won’t help you’), and showed that he understood the trick the printer was using: ‘you may not excuse yourself on the grounds of ignorance of the law, because you are obliged to know those laws which regulate your profession’. Still, Belsamini did play on the fact that he had not seen the law and also, with a degree of honesty, claimed that he was confused by the censorship law’s complexity and ambiguous dependence on both ecclesiastical and secular authorities.⁷⁵ This case represents a reversal in the priorities of the different spheres of political communication. Rather than preserving secrecy, the government representative insisted on communication, while it was his subject who insisted on ignorance as a way of resisting the government’s action. The government was aware that, unless a law was properly published, subjects were ready to claim ignorance as an excuse for disobedience, and it instructed local governors to make public proclamations ‘lest someone excused himself by pretending ignorance’.⁷⁶ Not for nothing the government put great efforts into publishing bi-lingual decrees in all territories where Italian would not ⁷³ Entry dated 30.7.1612, in ASV, AC, f. 3011, fasc. 3., cc. nn. ⁷⁴ I have been able to find no research on the legal knowledge (or lack thereof ) of Venetian people. In 1558 Lazio, the villagers of Monte Rotondo, refused to register the injunction sent from Rome as a way of delaying the order’s execution, see T. V. Cohen 1991. This theme has received greater attention in England thanks to the influence of the seminal Thompson 1971; cf. for similar cases, Walter 1980: 82–4. ⁷⁵ Interrogation of Antonio Belsamini, 15.7.1616, in ASV, RSP, b. 420, cc. nn. ⁷⁶ Dispatch to local governors dated 26.3.1610, in ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni segrete, r. 100, c. 125.

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be understood.⁷⁷ The Republic itself consciously exploited this mechanism in resisting the Church’s competing authorities—for example, it periodically prevented the publication of the bull In Cœna domini, and as we shall see employed precisely this strategy in responding to the Interdict of 1606. Publication is and was an indispensable feature of the law, which is valid only in so far as the authority emanating it grants sufficient publicity to make it known to those who must obey it.⁷⁸ It would be misleading to think of this feature of the law as specific to modern democracies. If anything, official publication was more difficult, and therefore necessary, at a time of bureaucratic shortcomings, local resistances, and jurisdictional autonomies.⁷⁹ The great attention devoted to the ritually accurate publication of decrees were by no means merely symbolic, but served to underpin a practical function with important juridical effects. Legal texts in Venice and elsewhere emphasized the necessity of publication.⁸⁰ The publication of the law, which is today a right of citizens, was in the old regime a necessity for sovereigns and, if anything, an opportunity for subjects. As Jacques Necker was to recognize in eighteenth-century France, the smaller the publicity surrounding the legislative process, the greater the necessity of making public its eventual outcome—a point which has been hailed as part of the triumph of public opinion in the age of the Enlightenment, but which above all shows the absolutist state’s need to engage with the public through ritually institutionalized channels which French administrators recognized long before Necker.⁸¹ In fact, at the other end of the spectrum, among the staunchest supporters of the sovereign’s absolute power, no less a commentator than Thomas Hobbes already understood that official publication involved a paradox. On the one hand, in pure absolutist fashion, he asserted ‘that the Law is a Command, and a Command consisteth in a declaration, or manifestation of the will of him that commandeth’. On the other, he recognized that commands had to be conveyed effectively, ‘by voice, writing, or some other sufficient argument of the same’, so that ‘the Command of the Commonwealth, is Law onely to those, that have means to take notice of it.’ As he summed up, ‘law made, if not also made known, is no law’.⁸² In Venice, contemporary political writers were perfectly aware of the importance of official publication. In particular, although he has been seen as a staunch believer in the state’s absolute authority, Sarpi also recognized the need to communicate the law and appreciated the difficulties which that communication entailed.⁸³ Commenting in 1622 on the recurrent jurisdictional encroachments ⁷⁷ Cf. Frasson 1981 and Simunkovic 1990–91. ⁷⁸ Cf. Cordero 1978: 917, 955–9. ⁷⁹ On jurisdictional ‘islands’ inside the Republic, see Zamperetti 1991. ⁸⁰ Cf. Priori 1622: 98–9, Ferro 1778–81, v. 9: 44–5; and for France, Fogel 1989: 25–6. ⁸¹ See Baker 1993: 248–9 and the discussion in Lilti 2005: 374–7, and cf. Louis XIV’s procurer’s statement of 1705 quoted in Fogel 1989: 25. ⁸² Hobbes 1991: 187–8. ⁸³ On Sarpi’s ‘absolutism’, cf. Frajese 1994: 129–33 and Benzoni 2004: 153.

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between ecclesiastical and secular authorities, Paolo Sarpi wrote ‘should a public minister make a proclamation and another authority publish against it, that magistracy, and consequently the Prince, would be left without authority, so that the nerves of government would be cut.’⁸⁴ Thus—as all these writers recognized—public communication was a condition of political action, and this was true for that very institution, the government, which wished to minimize all forms of political communication in the name of secrecy. In turn, when obviously disregarded, the means of public communication with which the government wished to advertise its power, only publicized the government’s inability to act. As in Alessandro Manzoni’s satirical description, the baroquely phrased decrees endlessly and ineffectively repeating themselves in seventeenth-century Milan, amounted to self-inflicted ridicule on the part of the authorities.⁸⁵

4 . 3 P O S T E D WO R D S , P O L I T I C A L M E S S AG E S : V E N I C E ’ S PA S QU I N A D E S Normative messages never completely dominated the city. Official publication had to compete with alternative forms of public communication, originating from political factions or private individuals rather than the government. Covered with the tangible traces of official and unofficial communication, from proclamations to the traces left by those defying proclamations, buildings turned into a large palimpsest, where competing claims to authority coexisted and undermined each other while continually increasing the total amount of available and contradictory information.⁸⁶ The results, in the same spaces which hosted the promiscuous public sociability described in the last chapter, were unforeseeable. For example, the government tried to protect the places and media of official publication by inscribing key urban locations as well as public documents with religious signs: crosses, images of the saints and of the Virgin Mary, symbols of St Mark. This practice was frequent in late medieval and early modern Italy, part of what Richard Trexler described as the sacralization of civic space. The intention was to enhance the authority of secular institutions through a number of religious symbols aimed at inspiring reverence.⁸⁷ However, as Edward Muir suggested, the unintended result was an inflation of symbols hardly guaranteeing appropriate behaviour.⁸⁸ On the contrary, religious symbols could turn out to be self-defeating by attracting iconoclastic vandalism of the kind just discussed. The cases are countless, in Venice and elsewhere.⁸⁹ In November 1606, some ‘evil ⁸⁴ ⁸⁵ ⁸⁷ ⁸⁸ ⁸⁹

Consulto dated 2.4.1622, in Biblioteca Braidense, Milan, AG.X.IV, cc. 298v –299. Manzoni 1997: 9–12. ⁸⁶ Cf. Henkin 1998: 3. Trexler 1980: 1–8, and more examples: 10, 47–8, 60–3; cf. Muir and Weissman 1989. Muir 1989: 26, and cf. Trexler 1980: 45–84 and 118–28. Cf. Ginzburg and Ferrari 1978.

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unknown persons’ wrecked the crucifix at the street corner where decrees were read out in Orzinuovi, and disfigured the saints painted on the wall.⁹⁰ In the same years, in Venice an anonymous note denounced those ‘people so perverse and full of disrespect for the majesty of our Lord and His Saints’ who threw dung and rubbish over the religious images painted under the porticos near the Gobbo at Rialto.⁹¹ In this way, measures taken to put a limit to the offence only occasioned further offence. The public competition between different claims to authority was conspicuous in Venice both physically and metaphorically. The same statue which public comandatori climbed to proclaim the Republic’s orders at Rialto, the Gobbo, also served to hang anonymous writings, and offered a pseudonym for publicly circulating texts, both printed and manuscript.⁹² The statue (sculpted by Pietro da Salò in 1541) was the Venetian equivalent of the Roman Pasquino where student goliards posted short texts in verse or prose, beginning in the early sixteenth century. Known as pasquinades because Pasquino was their fictional author, they were in great vogue amongst mixed circles of courtiers and literary men at the Roman curia, including the authors Pietro Aretino and Nicolò Franco. Pasquinades constitute a large mass of texts of varying length—the most comprehensive edition collects more than 700 for the period 1509–66—each one imitated and adapted several times and belonging to a variety of genres, from satires to obscene poetry, dialogues, and invectives.⁹³ In Venice too, and possibly drawing from common oral usage, the name Gobbo (hunchback) was put to a text in print at least as early as 1553, when it figured as the author of a translation of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso in Bergamasco dialect (as a character, Gobbo was frequently said to originate from that area).⁹⁴ Several texts were published under that pseudonym, and many more circulated in manuscript, often with Gobbo dialoguing with its Roman counterpart Pasquino. During the Interdict, the name was used to lambast the Roman cardinals Baronio and Bellarmino, and in the second half of the century it became a favourite pseudonym for Gregorio Leti’s fierce satires against the popes.⁹⁵ The Gobbo’s real and metaphorical usage as a mouth-piece gave symbolic power to political, religious, or personal polemic, because it put the public medium used by the authorities at the service of private individuals. The practice of posting satirical texts known as cartelli existed long before the statue’s erection, as Sanudo ⁹⁰ Dispatch of the governor of Orzinuovi, dated 29.11.1606, in ASV, CX, Parti comuni, f. 258, cc. nn. ⁹¹ Undated denunciation (between 1606 and 1627), in ASV, ES, b. 74, fasc. 2, cc. nn. ⁹² Moschetti 1893 and 1896; Marzo, ed. 1990; cf. also Silenzi 1932. ⁹³ Marucci et al. 1983; cf. Marucci 1988. Other Italian cities also had their equivalent: Naples had a statue of Jove known as ‘the Giant’; Florence, a bronze boar known as the ‘piglet’. ⁹⁴ Ariosto 1553 and Vna piacevole lettera (1555); in 1550 Vasari already described the statue as the Gobbo di Rialto, Vasari 1963, v. 4: 229. ⁹⁵ ∗ Risposta di Maestro Pasqvino; [Leti] 1671a and 1671b. Manuscript texts are quoted in Merlini 1894: 44n., Infelise 2002a: 43, 78; Marzo 1990.

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shows. The examples he gave were directed against public figures belonging to the government and to other aspects of urban public life: courtesans, authors, and lecturers in the schools.⁹⁶ Several survive, some of them still showing traces of the wet flour which was used to glue them onto hard surfaces (an easy device). They are no doubt a small percentage of an extremely perishable, larger production.⁹⁷ The examples collected by the government—we ignore where or when, because the papers were disassembled during the nineteenth-century reorganization of the archive—include attacks on ‘bad government’ (malgoverno), lamentations about the high price of bread, as well as satyres against individuals or families (one describes the Dolfins as ‘poppies’, perhaps an allusion to their vanity). A particularly imaginative one (dated 1601) savaged the corruption of the judicial system in rhymes: ‘Money and connections/I stick in the arse of Justice/Justice and those who praise it/I mean the one of Venice’. Diaries, chronicles, and prosecution records mentioned many more.⁹⁸ It was difficult to stop people from posting texts or to identify authors. For example, a piece of paper with few lines and a coloured image of Venice, St Mark, the virgin Mary, and the doge Leonardo Loredan, was found pasted onto a column in San Giacomo di Rialto in 1505. The text (which we have in partial transcriptions by both Sanudo and Girolamo Priuli) attacked the doge’s corruption in short verses of imperfect meter and made a comparison between Loredan and Marin Falier. The Ten at first arrested a bookbinder, probably a wrong attribution given that another text appeared while he was in prison.⁹⁹ From anonymity, historians used to conclude that Pasquino and Gobbo were the faceless expression of public opinion.¹⁰⁰ However, recent scholarship has convincingly insisted on the learned features of pasquinades, and on their relations with the factions at the papal court.¹⁰¹ As Massimo Firpo argued, the pasquinades trace precise divisions amongst the curia’s factions.¹⁰² The same can be said of Venice. For example, Sanudo deplored the pasquinades of 1532 but praised the author of the 1505 cartello (‘great courage, great mind, excellent writer, and good poet’), probably because he shared its author’s political line. Priuli, whose inclination at the time conflicted with Sanudo’s, had the opposite reaction in 1505.¹⁰³ Equally misleading is the popular tone of pasquinades, or Gobbo’s characterization as a humble Bergamasco immigrant, a fishmarket porter who prefers living amongst Rialto’s ‘shrimps and sardines’ than in Rome’s literary circles.¹⁰⁴ This is of course fiction, an elite view of popular imagery used by educated authors against educated rivals or factions.¹⁰⁵ ⁹⁶ ⁹⁷ ⁹⁸ ⁹⁹ ¹⁰¹ ¹⁰³ ¹⁰⁵

Sanudo 1879–1903, v. 57: 288 (1532). Examples in ASV, IS, b. 920, fasc. 2, and MADM, b. 91. ASV, IS, b. 920, fasc. 2, cc. nn.; more examples in Berengo 1974: 59. Brunetti 1917: 353. ¹⁰⁰ e.g. Medin 1904: ix –x. Aquilecchia 1983: xi; but cf. also Spini 1950: 172 ff. ¹⁰² Firpo 1984: 612. Brunetti 1917 and cf. Sanudo 1879–1903, v. 6: 259. ¹⁰⁴ Marzo 1990: 193–203. Some suggestions on popular pseudonyms in pamphlets during the Interdict below, p. 230.

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The reasons for employing popular images, however, derive from reality rather than fiction—Venice’s statue was indeed close to the fishmarket, while Pasquino was close to the university. The interpretive pendulum has perhaps swung too far towards the literary nature of pasquinades, while little has been done to distinguish long from short texts, poems from prose, and above all elite circulation from public posting. The point of literary effects was to serve a cause in the political arena by means of a publication which went beyond it. The historians who have insisted on the learned production of pasquinades by educated authors, have ended up depoliticizing texts which were meant to play a role in the political struggle.¹⁰⁶ To gain a sense of the uses and meanings of publicly posted texts it is important to understand the kind of communication which they were meant to operate: to defy government insiders by embarrassing them in public. The pasquinades’ effectiveness was proportional to their capacity to reach outsiders, not just courtiers or educated information professionals. For example, one morning in November 1602, the patricians who gathered at the broglio to discuss the day’s business found a cartello against Filippo Pasqualigo, who had recently returned from his governorship in Dalmatia and was that day to deliver his report. The cartello was pasted on one of the Ducal Palace’s columns, as Pasqualigo related, ‘in public sight at the time of the nobles’ thickest gathering’. As he added in his report, ‘the mildest adjectives’ the cartello reserved for him were ‘thief and murderer’. In this case we have a confrontation between different media as well as messages: Pasqualigo’s relazione inside the government, official and authoritative; and the cartello outside it, informal and crude. Pasqualigo dismissed the insults attributing them to those criminals whom he prosecuted as governor in Dalmatia. However, he also called for draconian punishments and denounced the gravity of the practice in general: ‘if in this city of ours we permit cartelli and pasquinades to be made against public representatives because they have exercised justice . . . those who in the future will have the same offices, will abandon the service of God and the fatherland in order to escape those injuries, and therefore allow things to be turned upside down.’¹⁰⁷ Although admittedly overemphatic, Pasqualigo’s analysis appropriately pointed to the cartelli’s potential damage to governmental action based on attacking private reputation in order to undermine public service (that, at least, is what he wanted his audience to believe). The pasquinades’ appearance in highly visible places is crucial. Pasqualigo’s cartello may have been intended only for nobles in the broglio, but it was bound to reach others. Unlike leaks such as Bon’s relazione —which circulated amongst patricians and members of the political arena to exert pressure on the government—posted texts were meant to play a role inside the political arena by ¹⁰⁶ Marucci 1988, and cf. Firpo 1984. ¹⁰⁷ ASV, Coll., Relazioni, b. 66, fasc. 34, cc. 26v –27. Subsequent discussion of the cartello is reconstructed in Walker 1998a: 41.

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way of publication outside it, by raising a ‘public scandal’ (as critics consistently realized). The combination of pictures and texts shows that authors wished to have a strong and immediate impact amongst a varied public. The language and references used were also of common domain, as can be seen by considering the cartelli’s precise timing. For example, the 1505 cartello showing Mary betrayed by the doge appeared on 21 November—as Priuli (and no doubt others) remarked, the day of the presentation of the Virgin.¹⁰⁸ Thus, the cartello called public attention to factional rivalries, a dysfunction inside the political system, through symbols shared by the majority of the population. The very practice of posting texts in public was far from being confined to the elites. In effect, when writing and then secretly affixing cartelli of the kind mentioned by Sanudo, insiders of the political arena applied to their political confrontations a medium which they drew from non-political customs, to do with the language of insults (interestingly, ‘gobbo’ was also a common form of insult, so much so that it was cited in a 1622 legal texts definining verbal injuries).¹⁰⁹ The word cartello or cartello infamante was also used to describe private insults, combining both writing and pictures and affixed in public, often on the target’s door. It was a crime, prosecuted by law.¹¹⁰ Although more studied in Rome and other European cities, this practice is amply documented in early modern Venice too. One of the clergymen, whose arrest contributed to the Interdict’s conflict in 1606, was precisely accused of defiling the door of a noble family in Vicenza with a cartello against one of their women.¹¹¹ For private reasons, cartelli undermined someone’s honour publicly, where it was most vulnerable. This was not far from the defiling of official proclamations discussed in the previous section, because the door is to the private individual what the location of official publications is to the state—the point where privacy and secrecy enter into contact with the public. Filippo Pasqualigo recognized exactly this when he described the cartello at the broglio as a ‘slanderous libel’, libello infamatorio.¹¹² Once again, inserting the means of political communication into the urban context enriches our understanding of the multiple meanings of the messages they carried. Engraved with a nail, or scribbled with a piece of charcoal, graffiti were even easier to execute than cartelli, a form of communication so ephemeral that it almost completely escapes us. Numerous graffiti are preserved inside the Prigioni Nuove cells, but open-air examples can only be remembered through mentions in ¹⁰⁸ Priuli 1912–41, v. 2: 394. ¹⁰⁹ Priori 1738: 180; ‘gobbo’ was also reported as a minor form of swearing in a trial of 1616, ASV, SU, b. 71, fasc. ‘Giovanni Sega’, cc. nn. ¹¹⁰ In some cases, rich individuals could have a cartello printed so as to multiply the impact of their acts. Both uses are documented in Priori 1622: 179. There is reference to pictures in Ferro 1778–81, v. 5: 210. ¹¹¹ The original letter dated 3.10.1605 is in ASV, CCX, Dispacci rettori, b. 226, c. 121. For comparisons, cf. Petrucci 1982, Burke 1987: 95–109, and Bouza Álvarez 2001: 113–25. ¹¹² ASV, Coll., Relazioni, b. 66, fasc. 34, c. 26v.

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diaries and chronicles, as well as pictorial evidence (one, in praise of the doge, can be seen on a column in Pietro Longhi’s 1756 Fortune-Teller).¹¹³ In Padua, students’ graffiti attacking the Jesuits sparked a crisis which led to the closing of that order’s college in 1591.¹¹⁴ The practice was so common that it was stigmatized in the proverb (included in a list printed in 1604) ‘white walls are like paper for mad people’. As the list’s commentator explained, location affected the impact of graffiti, because ‘infamous words’ were appropriate to a jail but ‘most shameful’ when scribbled elsewhere to the scandal of passers-by.¹¹⁵ In Venice, Marin Faliero’s conspiracy was commonly said to have been started by the doge’s rage at graffiti which young nobles (according to some), or fishermen (according to others) scribbled ‘in a corner inside the Palace’.¹¹⁶ At particularly charged political times, as we shall see when discussing the Interdict, cartelli and graffiti could turn into desacrating weapons of dissent which the government found particularly bothersome.¹¹⁷ The different levels on which public writings operated—in the government, amongst professionals of the political arena, and amongst ordinary people—brings us to the question of their multiple reception.¹¹⁸ Whatever their immediate intended public, pasquinades circulated far beyond it in ways which it would be difficult to circumscribe precisely. In all cases, they evaded the sphere of the texts’ production. Their original mode of publication, to be seen and read by passers-by in thickly frequented spots, ensured oral repetition which allowed many people to hear about these texts, perhaps even (as we shall see in the next section) to learn some of their lines. Finally, pasquinades circulated in writing too (manuscript or print), either as copies of those originally posted on the statue or as more refined versions. For example, while most of the Gobbo’s manuscript texts are written in dialect, indicating local use, most of the texts which were eventually printed are in Italian. Once written, pasquinades could then be put to further uses, far from the original circumstances which had occasioned them and totally independent from the intention of the person who wrote them. To conclude, the importance of these texts in terms of political communication, rests not in their learned authorship, but in the variety of meanings which they could acquire in different contexts for different readers (or listeners, or viewers). Uses and meanings are difficult to retrieve centuries later, but the case discussed next can give us some clues because, taking place at a particularly charged time, it caused a small scandal and an inquiry on the part of the Council of Ten. As we shall see, pasquinades circulated in the city as widely as Ottaviano Bon’s report did in the political arena, involving not just patricians, but priests, barbers, and sailors. ¹¹³ Cf. Pignatti 1969: picture 166. ¹¹⁴ Favaro 1878: 32. ¹¹⁵ Buoni 1604–06: 225–6; the 1591 document in Favaro 1878: 78 also mentions taverns and brothels. ¹¹⁶ Cf. Lazzarini 1963: 135–54 and Cracco 1987: 137. ¹¹⁷ See below, pp. 194–7 and now Benucci 2006. ¹¹⁸ Cf. Jouhaud 1993.

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Information and Communication in Venice 4 . 4 R E A S O N O F S TAT E I N T H E B A R B E R S H O P

In 1591, at the height of the French wars of religion, all of Venice seemed to vibrate with discussions concerning contemporary events. Nearly two years after the assassination of his predecessor, the then still Protestant, and still excommunicated, Henri IV was struggling to assert his authority in a bloody civil war against the Spanish-supported Catholic League. The outcome would decide not only the future of France, but the balance of power throughout Europe, and consequently was the central preoccupation of Italy’s educated and politically informed.¹¹⁹ The Republic of Venice, forever concerned by the closing stranglehold of Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs, was the only Catholic power to have uncompromisingly recognized Henri’s succession. Naturally, government councils were divided, having to balance religion with realpolitik and the potential friendship of France with the actual threat of Spanish hostility.¹²⁰ The divisions reverberated in the city’s elite, amongst both patricians and others. In 1591, for example, the inquisitor of Verona accused the government of supporting French heretics, and while trying Giordano Bruno his Venetian colleague discovered, a few months later, that visitors to the noble ridotto Morosini (which Bruno also frequented) talked at length about France.¹²¹ In the same year, an anonymous author and insightful information professional—perhaps one of two we have already encountered, Traiano Boccalini and Giovan Battista Leoni—wrote an analysis of the French conflict condemning Spain and the League as ‘fox-like’, hiding political interests under the cover of religion.¹²² According to some, the discussions spread publicly outside the elite to involve all sorts of people. Early in April, the Spanish ambassador complained to savio Giulio Michiel about the number of those who spoke against Spain. A few days earlier, for example, a group of young nobles insulted a painter who had exhibited a portrait of Philip II. Michiel’s reply tried to play down the incident and above all to divest it of any official significance: they were ‘trifles which circulate in the chatter of private people’. Furthermore, he reminded the ambassador that the city was full of divergent opinions: ‘if you hear someone speak in favour of Navarre, you also know that, as far as one hears in the squares, there are many people who speak against him, and it is only your bad luck that the former and not the latter came to your ears.’¹²³ A month later, when the ambassador again complained that ¹¹⁹ Cf. Baldini 1995. ¹²⁰ On the background of Venice’s politics regarding the French succession, see Raulich 1892, Fasoli 1949, and Seneca 1959: 172–91. ¹²¹ Spampanato 1933: 685, 734–5; on the Verona inquisitor, P. Grendler 1977: 216–18. ¹²² Anonymous ‘Discorso di un Gentiluomo italiano all’Italia’ of 1591, first published in 1614 (Boccalini 1910–48, v. 3: 297, 294); cf. Firpo’s note, 1984: 560–1 and his correction in DBI : s.v. ‘Boccalini’. ¹²³ Giulio Michiel’s report, 9.4.1591, in ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Principi, f. 7, cc. nn.,

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it was commonly said that Venice sided with Navarre, another savio reported that they were mere ‘rumours, contradicted by facts’, because the Republic ‘showed its right intentions with most prudent and religious actions, and made it known to everyone which really was the reason of state of which it approved.’¹²⁴ These exchanges mention all three spheres of communication. The savi’s statements to the Spanish ambassador—themselves examples of the political arena’s discussions—tried to vindicate the government as the only authoritative platform of politics. The ambassador’s complaints merely concerned ‘rumours of the populace and of evil people’, as the doge formally told him few days later. Thus, the government wished to assert its monopoly over politics by dismissing the ambassador’s allegations as insignificant because they arose from people who had no say in politics.¹²⁵ The patricians’ use of the expression ‘reason of state’ alerts us to a striking parallel between their position and that of the authors of a political discourse which was then beginning to gain ground throughout Europe. Only two years earlier, Giovanni Botero had begun his treatise expressing ‘astonishment’ at the Machiavellian propositions which he heard ‘all day long’ from the mouths of people on both sides of the Alps. His aim was to dismiss those talks, which subtracted religion from politics, and to counter them with a religiously orthodox theory of reason of state.¹²⁶ A generation later, Ludovico Zuccolo was to enrich this strategy with the same social theme used by Venetian patricians in 1591, when he dismissed the mistaken reason of state as common amongst ‘barbers and the humblest artisans’, who ‘delude themselves that they know what is done for reason of state and what is not’.¹²⁷ Botero and Zuccolo justified and advertised their work by distinguishing it from the ideas of their contemporaries, by implying that the latter had no notion of reason of state. In the same way, the Venetian government contrasted the Republic’s own official defence of religion by dismissing all rumours about Venice’s politique foreign policy as belonging to the ‘populace’. The patricians’ allusions to the city’s politicization, then, were part of a rhetorical strategy. And yet these exchanges contain more than fiction, just as Zuccolo’s description did—as we now know. This is confirmed by a formal inquiry opened by the Ten a few weeks later, following a specific accusation by the ambassador’s secretary and by the Spanish consul.¹²⁸ They told the Ten about the insults received by a barber from Spain in his shop at San Luca—not far from Rialto and, as it happens, close to the Morosini ridotto where the elite met to discuss the wars of France. ¹²⁴ Francesco Vendramin’s report, 9.5.1591, in ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Principi, f. 7, cc. nn.. ¹²⁵ Audience of 19.4.1591, ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Principi, f. 7, cc. nn. ¹²⁶ Introduction to the first edition of Botero’s Ragion di stato (1589), cf. De Mattei 1979: 24. ¹²⁷ Zuccolo 1930: 25. ¹²⁸ The accusation is summarized in the final report made by the Ten on 7.6.1591, in ASV, CX, Parti segrete, r. 13, cc. 85v –86; all interrogations were held on 5.6.1591, and the records can be found in ASV, CX, Parti segrete, f. 25, cc. nn. Unless otherwise specified, all the following records refer to this file. I would like to thank Dr Federica Ruspio for first pointing me to this record, which she found in the course of her research about the Portuguese community in Venice.

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There a priest read out a poem which the consul briefly described as ‘a paternoster in verse disgracing the Spanish nation and the King’.¹²⁹ The copy which the consul handed over was, as we shall see, one of many versions of a widely-known text, a fairly typical sixteenth-century pasquinade which sheds much light on that genre’s multiple meanings. Before discussing the text, however, it is worth considering the records of the Ten’s inquiry, because they illustrate the manifold means of that genre’s oral and literate circulation. All the witnesses confirmed the Spanish consul’s account, most of them speaking in heavily Venetianized Italian (as the Ten’s secretary recorded it). Piero Bortolotto, an unestablished priest at the church of Santi Apostoli, met the piovano (parish priest) of San Giovanni di Rialto while the latter was on his way to have his hair cut. They decided to go together to the barbershop—given the intense socialization which took place in barbershops, they may have found the occasion entertaining (and indeed, another priest also joined them from San Luca). The piovano later recounted that, ‘as soon as we entered the barbershop, [Bortolotto] told me suddenly ‘‘I wish to make you hear a paternoster against the Spaniards’’,’ and so, having asked the barber whether he was Spanish, proceeded to read the verses.¹³⁰ In this case, the question referred to the barber’s actual origin, but we have already seen that it was common for ordinary people in Venice to divide along sympathies for different foreign potentates, just as their social superiors did.¹³¹ Both the barber and Bortolotto himself confirmed this account, but also made it clear that the priests had been talking in the barbershop for a while before Bortolotto read his text. After reading it, on the request of the barber, Bortolotto made a copy, and it was this which the Spanish consul, himself a habitual customer, then seized from the barber and gave to the Ten. We have here a rare glimpse inside a barbershop, one that confirms our assumptions about these places’ importance in Venice’s political communication, both oral and written. The fact that Bortolotto transcribed his text for the barber is interesting, indicating that the many tools (quill, paper, and ink) then necessary for writing were readily available in the barbershop. Similarly, it is interesting that the barber asked for a copy. As incensed as he presumably was, he said he wanted it because ‘I felt like reading it’ (although, having thought twice, he quickly assured the Ten ‘but I didn’t read it’.)¹³² As the Ten discovered, however, the barbershop itself was only one step in the Paternoster’s much wider circulation, covering—as Figure 4.1 shows—a vast area of the city. Orality and literacy intertwined in furthering the Paternoster’s diffusion, in line with the argument put forward at the beginning of this chapter. Bortolotto recounted first hearing the poem about a year earlier, in the church of Santi ¹²⁹ Deposition of the Spanish consul. On the location of the Morosini ridotto see Favaro 1893: 206. ¹³⁰ Interrogation of the parish priest of San Zuanne di Rialto. ¹³¹ See above, p. 110. ¹³² Interrogation of barber Domenico Perera.

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Street-musician near Perugia, c.1550

Bartolomeo di Patti, mercer

Nadalin Bergonzi, zago

Others Fabrizio Maltusello, parish priest at S. Apostoli

Francesco Vespa, chaplain

Palazzo Michiel Zuan Paolo Nus, priest

Piero Bortolotto, priest at S. Apostoli Servant in the English embassy Parish priest of San Giovanni di Rialto Francesco, priest at San Luca

Organist at Santi Apostoli Barber in the parish of San Giovanni

Domenico Pereira, barber at the San Francesco, parish of San Luca BARBERSHOP AT THE SIGN OF SAN FRANCESCO, RIALTO Spanish consul

Text read Text lent or copied

Council of Ten Bold

Person interrogated

Figure 4.1. Diffusion pattern of the Paternoster degli Spagnoli

Apostoli, where the parish priest Maltusello recited a few lines. He remembered them from his youth, when he heard the Paternoster sung by a viol-player in a small town on lake Trasimeno, near Perugia. This was enough to tickle Bortolotto’s curiosity. He asked around until he secured a written copy. He then lent it to others, both in his church (to the organ player), and elsewhere, including a servant in the English embassy and another barber (whom the Inquisitors

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did not interrogate, or we would have known about the people likely to have heard or copied the text in his shop too).¹³³ The man who gave Bortolotto his copy, Francesco Vespa, explained that they talked about it while walking together one day in the Mercerie. A chaplain with the noble Michiel family, Vespa himself had received the text at the Madonna della Fava church, from Nadalin Bergonzi, himself a minor clergyman (zago) and the son of a nearby mercer. They read the text together with other people, and then Vespa took his copy to the Michiel palazzo.¹³⁴ Bergonzi confirmed this account, and said that he had received the text from a wine merchant who traded with England and apparently had obtained the text from some Englishmen travelling on one of his ships—sailors or traders, we are not told.¹³⁵ Clearly, it was normal to carry around such texts in order to show them when the occasion arose—Bortolotto himself ‘took it out of his pocket’ while in the barbershop.¹³⁶ At this point, the Ten were satisfied. They reported to the Spanish diplomats that they had put ‘every effort’ into discovering the text’s source, and could safely say that it lay outside Venice (incidentally, they stressed the poem’s Umbrian, rather than English, provenance, no doubt wishing to gloss over the Protestant influence in the city). The Ten lamented the poem’s circulation but dismissed the text as a remnant of the past, unconnected with the Republic’s politics. In fact, they pointed out, the Spanish barber himself deserved punishment, because he caused ‘scandal, renewing the memory of so old a text’ by asking for a copy. The Ten also offered to make a public proclamation threatening the harshest punishments on those who read or held copies of the poem. But official communication would in this case only serve to underline anti-Spanish feelings in the city, so the diplomats courteously declined.¹³⁷ As with Ottaviano Bon’s relazione, the Ten were interested in establishing responsibility rather than in discovering the real extent of textual circulation. Here too, they failed to interrogate people whom they knew to have copied and read the verses. We can only guess how many further passages they might have discovered had they not stopped their inquiries.

The Paternoster and its tradition However fragmentary, the Ten’s discoveries point to mixed literate and oral communication cutting across a representative cross-section of Venice’s society, ¹³³ Interrogation of Piero Bortolotto. There was no English embassy in 1591, and it is likely that this term was used by the witnesses to indicate a commercial agent, perhaps the consul of the English merchants. ¹³⁴ Interrogation of Francesco Vespa. ¹³⁵ Interrogation of Natalin Bergonzi; his father’s mercer’s shop is mentioned in Mackenney 1987: 93. On singing amongst sailors, see Burke 1978: 43–6. ¹³⁶ Interrogation of the parish priest of San Zuanne di Rialto. ¹³⁷ Council of Ten’s address to the Spanish consul, 8.6.1591.

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including merchants and sailors, artisans, servants, and barbers as well as many secular clergymen (crucial intermediaries throughout early modern Italy’s parishes).¹³⁸ Some of the witnesses borrowed written exemplars to make their own copies, which they then lent to other people; others heard the Paternoster read and then asked for a copy; many never perceived the text’s written dimension, and only heard it in songs or snippets recited by heart. And yet, this circulation was itself part of something larger, the proverbial tip of a much bigger iceberg. We can appreciate its extent by turning from the evidence gathered in Venice in 1591, to the text itself. This will allow us to turn from a case study to the resilient and widespread textual culture to which it belonged, and which expanded over time and space well beyond late sixteenth-century Venice. The copy made in the barbershop and handed over to the Ten, covers three pages of a single sheet and consists of 22 triplets of endecasyllables in Italian (with insertions in Spanish [7, 13, 17]), each ending with one or more successive words from the Latin Paternoster.¹³⁹ As shown in Table 4.1, the latter occupy the right-hand section of the page, so that it is possible to read the prayer from top to bottom as if on a separate column. The text is essentially a narrative of the robbings and violence perpetrated by Spanish soldiers, spoken in the first person plural by the victims, and framed by invocations of God’s mercy and deliverance: ‘ . . . Libera nos’ [21]. The Spanish enter people’s homes under the pretence of friendship and piety [3], only to steal their hosts’ goods and food, ‘panem nostrum’, with which they feed their animals, thus adding ‘shame’ to injury [11]. Their greed is so inexhaustible that ‘they would not be content with . . . regnum tuum’ [6]; and what is more, ‘to satisfy their desires/they wish to sleep with our wives . . . sicut et nos’ [16]. A mixture of different languages and levels, combining sacred with profane references, the Paternoster may seem strange to us. In fact, however, it was part of an old and well-known genre, which may be why all the witnesses knew what they were talking about in 1591 even though the document at the centre of the Ten’s inquiry bore no title.¹⁴⁰ Their discoveries showed that the Paternoster was no original text, but one that could be traced to at least two independent routes (central Italy in mid-century, and a ship coming from England, more recently). As the Ten may have known, tracing the Paternoster’s precise origins was pointless because the text was merely one of countless versions of the same theme. The nineteenth-century philologist Francesco Novati showed the persistence of the sacred parody in medieval and Renaissance literature, deriving from ¹³⁸ Davidson 1984 and Chojnacka 2001: 60, and compare Allegra 1981. ¹³⁹ In the following discussion, the triplets will be referred to by their number in square brackets; unless otherwise stated they refer to the text reproduced in Table 4.1. Table 4.2 illustrates how the text changed over time by supplying a version printed in the 1550s. ¹⁴⁰ All witnesses agreed in describing it as ‘un paternoster’; the Ten’s secretary filed the records under the title ‘Verbi Paternoster’.

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Table 4.1. Manuscript Paternoster degli Spagnoli presented to the Council of Ten, 1591 (from ASV, CX, Parti segrete, f. 25, cc. nn.) [1] Pietà pietà ch’ogni speranza è morta porgi rimedio ai miseri cristiani acciò non sian stracciati da marani . . . Pater noster [2] Questi sono quei che su la dura croce Sin alla morte sempre ti fer guerra E peggio ti faria se fosti in terra . . . Qui es in celis [3] Quando son li spagnoli in casa entrati Con le corone in man humanamente Ne vano honesti et paion certamente . . . Sanctificetur [4] Ma da una sera in su si fan patroni Ne pensar d’accostarti a lor intorno Perché riniegan mille volte il giorno . . . Nomen tuum [5] La prima cosa che fa lo spagnolo Per tutti i latti della casa guarda E quando vede cosa che l’aggrada . . . Adveniat [6] Dicendo al suo patron venga venga Col petto gonfio et col viso altiero Ch’a lor non basterebbe tutto intiero . . . Regnum tuum [7] ‘Traes a chi los puoles y las gallinas Se non chiero a mattar con lo cochiglio’ A tal che bisogna dir con basso ciglio . . . Fiat [8] E credo per li nostri gran peccati Sottoposti noi siam a tal genia E certamente ognun crede che sia . . . Voluntas tua [9] Discaccia o Dio d’Italia questi ladri Nemici del tuo nome e d’Italiani E fa che non ne sia tra nostri pianti . . . Sicut in caelo [10] Signor ti prego per la tua bontade Che questi che non credon nel vangello Maledetti da te sian sempre in ciello . . . Et in terra [11] Non basta lo stracciar e tuor la robba Per doppio scorno di tutti i tuoi vasalli Dando in cambio di biada ai lor cavalli . . . Panem nostrum

[12] Scampaci ti preghiam da questi cani Che puoi pensar s’ognun di noi sta afflito Quando voglion per lor il nostro vitto . . . Quotidianum [13] Se cosa buona havemmo da manggiare Che servar la vogliam per l’altro giorno Gridan Riniego Dios sempre d’intorno . . . Da nobis hodie [14] Et non bastando questo voglion anco Ch’andian inanti ad essi peccatori Et li diciamo per li lor errori . . . Dimite nobis [15] E se di carne a mensa gli poniamo Avanti a tutti per la sua parte un piato Barbotando che noi non habian fatto . . . Debita nostra [16] Appresso a questo ogn’altro mal è poco Per voler contentar tutte lor voglie Vogliono anco dormir con nostre moglie . . . Sicut et nos [17] Essi parlano con putti ‘bon puto perrò Nodo a dios per dar de cavigliadas’ Et noi per non tocar de bastonadas . . . Dimitimus [18] Non basta perder la robba et l’honore Vedi se son ribaldi iniqui e avari Voglion anco riscoter li dinari . . . Debitoribus nostris [19] Signor ti prego per la tua clementia Che far ci vogli gratia che giamai Per le lor crude mani in pene o guai . . . Ne nos inducas [20] Questi son perigliosi anco parlando Che li santi farian scandalizare E forsi li farian anco intrare . . . In tentationem [21] Piglia pur qual tu vuoi di tramontani Che tra tutti i peggior son li spagnoli Diremo adunque insieme con figlioli . . . Sed libera nos a malo [22] Reduci o Dio l’Italia in unione Accio da questi can sian liberati E pigli l’arme ciascadun barone Acciò ch’à pezzo à pezzo sian tagliati . . . Amen

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Table 4.2. Printed Paternoster, from Lo alphabeto delli villani con il Paternostro published in Venice by Matteo Pagan (1550s).

Pater noster [2] Avdi el supplitio de noi poueri vilani che da Francesi spagnoli & alemani siamo crudelmente stratiati Deh non guardare a li nostri peccati. Qui es in celis [3] Quando lor vengono in le case nostri tanti pietosi & honesti si fanno Che paieno con suoi officii e pater nostri. Sanctificetur [4] Dapo che in casa nostra sono intrati pareno leoni et orsi scatenati biastemando come fanno i renegati. Nomen tuum. [5] Poi subito incominciano a gridare baia sa le chiaue del granaro e quella de la casa del celaro. Adueniat. [6] Et fanno de nostri ben tal massaria questa crudele & perfida gente che in tre giorni gli consumaria Regnum tuum. [7] Se alcuna cosa hanno a comandare se del bastone non vogliamo prouare dir ne bisogna come fa il marinare. Fiat. [8] Se la cagion loro fusse adimandata perche cagion gli mondi hebbin a passare risponden lor & dicono esser stata. Voluntas tua. [9] Et poi dicono che si troua scritto che per lor l’Imperador esser diritto e questo affermano esser stabilito. Sicut in celo. [10] Sommergili Signor de passione si come sommergesti Pharaone & dagli in cielo la maleditione Et in terra. [11] Et non gli basta anchora fare tanti falli che loro ne vccidano tutti li animali ma danno anchora a gli lor caualli. Panem nostrum.

[12] Molti affanni passano ad momento & ogni male se sanna a qualche tempo ma lo nostro male e un tormento. Quotidianum. [13] Se noi habbiam capon ouer galline & uolessino saluare per la mattina cominciano a gridare con gran ruina. Da nobis hodie. [14] Et quando in lo cellaro sono intrati & hanno gli boni vini gia trouati gridano come cani arrabiati. Dimitte nobis. [15] Pur chi volesse vsare discretione come fanno gli gentil & bone persone che pagare volessero con ragione. Debita nostra. [16] Et se habbiamo mogliere ouer donzelle li uoleno per loro le piu belle, ne li letti volen dormir con quelle, Sicut & nos. [17] Per non recipere de li derate che ci minacciano di bon cortellate & anche per schiffare gli bastonate. Dimittimus. [18] Pensa se questi son crudel dolori che loro si fanno nostri procuratori & vogliono riscotere da gran signori. Debitoribus nostris. [19] Signore Dio tutti ingenocchione noi ti pregamo con deuotione che da noi discacci questa maleditione. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem. [20] Liberaci signor giusto & clemente da questa falita & disperata gente che ne consuma & guardaci al presente. Amalo Amen.

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classical models, especially Lucian.¹⁴¹ In medieval Italy, regular clergy and lay students adapted Bacchic songs to sacred meter for recitation in festive occasions. In 1483, the genre gained literary dignity when Luigi Pulci included a Saracen’s parody of the Credo in his Morgante, itself a burlesque parody of French chivalric romances. Throughout the sixteenth century, Protestant polemicists especially turned parodies into iconoclastic weapons of religious controversy. The practice was also known in the Venetian Republic, and as late as 1624 the Inquisition of Bergamo prosecuted a mercenary soldier who distorted the Virgin’s prayer with the words ‘Sancte Calvine, ora pro nobis’.¹⁴² Meanwhile, parodying was a social custom as well as a textual genre. The practical mockery of both the liturgy and the law is amply recorded throughout Italy, as are parodies of testaments, medical recepies, and sermons.¹⁴³ In Venice too, a nobleman and a lawyer were prosecuted in 1571 for dressing as priests and ‘screaming the litany with the most evil and dishonest words’.¹⁴⁴ The parody’s pervasiveness as both genre and practice, and the familiarity which many people had with it, made it easy to turn it into a means for commenting on contemporary events. The first recorded version of our Paternoster, copied out in the early sixteenth-century chronicle of a notary of Cremona, dates from a time of troubled literature and feverish prophecies following the French invasion of 1494. That version attacked the French rather than the Spanish, but otherwise followed a very similar scheme.¹⁴⁵ In the following decades, several more versions circulated, each time referring to different invaders—French, Germans, Spanish—and thus reflecting Italy’s deteriorating military history.¹⁴⁶ Several were printed in the 1550s (like the version reproduced in Table 4.2) at the time of the conflict between France and Spain before the peace of Cateau-Cambresis, when Maltusello first heard the Paternoster sung near Perugia.¹⁴⁷ Local events may also have triggered regional adaptations, including one in Venice at the time of the war of the league of Cambrai, and a later one in Paduan dialect against the Turks.¹⁴⁸ Other versions made no mention of foreign nationality, a lamentation against unspeficied soldiers, or an example of the theme of the peasants’ lament against the city dwellers’ exploitations.¹⁴⁹ Hybrid versions also exist reflecting an extremely flexible textual tradition. Such is the case of an undated Paternoster in Northern dialect—printed together with a calendrical song on Peasant labours over the twelve months —which begins by lamenting the invasion of ‘Spagnaruoli Toeschi, ¹⁴¹ Novati 1889; cf. Lehmann 1922 and Gorni and Longhi 1986. ¹⁴² Spampanato 1924: 381. ¹⁴³ Merlini 1894: 56–8n., Putelli 1911, v. 22: 46, Sarri 1925: 64–5n., and cf. Bakhtin 1979: 175–6. ¹⁴⁴ Ruggiero 1993: 10. ¹⁴⁵ Novati 1879. ¹⁴⁶ Novati 1889: 213–28; cf. also Niccoli 1990: 27. ¹⁴⁷ Il priegho d’Italia; Lo alphabeto delli villani (see Table 4.2). Cf. also Segarizzi 1913: n◦ 271. ¹⁴⁸ Text beginning ‘El gran dolor del popul venetiano’, Novati 1889: 223–5, Medin 1904: 258. ¹⁴⁹ A ‘Pater noster de contadin che se lamentano degli soldati’ in Novati 1889: 305–7, and Lo alphabeto delli villani.

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e Francesi’, but ends blaming citaini, city dwellers.¹⁵⁰ Finally, we have records of at least two versions which were posted on Pasquino in sixteenth-century Rome.¹⁵¹ All these versions differ almost word by word, but the concepts coincide triplet after triplet: invocation to the Lord [1–2], initial deception [3], volteface and robberies [4–5], and so on. ‘The words change, but the contents are the same’, one of the 1591 witnesses pointed out, having recited a different version from that which the Ten showed him.¹⁵² There are as many Paternosters as there survive copies. This is because, like many other pasquinades, the text was the product of both tradition and innovation, a continually evolving record of past themes which could be adapted to present events. And every time variations ensued, because different people reworked the text as they passed it on, orally or in writing, thereby engendering a creative circulation between consumption and production. The Council of Ten’s inquiry provides rare evidence of how those texts circulated in practice, each time stimulating oral exchanges, courteous or brusque, as well as longer conversations now irretrievably lost. More than a case study, then, it is a fairly typical example of a text’s multiple uses. As the Ten realized, it is impossible to ascribe the Paternosters to a particular author or group. This does not mean that we can simply describe the Paternosters as ‘popular culture’, whatever that may be. In terms of language, they become more literary as time goes on. The earlier versions show a strong dialect influence; the 1591 text is more elevated in style, with fewer examples of colloquialisms. Although rhymes are approximate throughout, the meter shows increasing accuracy and a tendency to move from eight syllables in the earlier version—typical of popular songs—to more literary hendecasyllables. The meter’s change may reflect the increasingly literate nature of the text’s circulation—afterall, in 1591 one witness could recite parts of the version he heard as a young man, but most preferred to rely on written copies. But the Paternosters were no learned works either. Wording and meter show that they were primarily meant for oral performance—for example, the Latin insertions which complete the text, either semantically (‘we must humbly say . . . fiat’: let it be [7]) or phonetically (‘they certainly look like . . . sancti [ficetur]’: saints [3]), make for poor silent reading. In other words, this was no appropriation of a written text by uneducated people—the Paternosters were meant to be available orally. They also lent themselves easily to musical adaptation, as confirmed by the 1591 witness who recounted having heard the Paternoster sung accompanied by viol music. The juxtaposition of vulgar triplets with Latin phrases facilitated singing, with a choir rythmically responding to a singer’s lead, perhaps a street imitation of the polyphonic style typical of ¹⁵⁰ Stente che fa i contadini. ¹⁵¹ They are entitled ‘Pater noster sopra li Spagnoli’, and ‘Pater nostro degli Italiani’ (the latter is the closest to the 1591 text), in Marucci et al. 1983: 569–75 and 871–4; another similar composition, ibid.: 820–3. Cf. also a French prerevolutionary version in Darnton 1996: p. 166. ¹⁵² Interrogation of Fabrizio Maltusello.

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sacred liturgy.¹⁵³ Finally, the succession of words from the Our Father no doubt aided memorization—a similar device was used in primary schools to teach the alphabet, and indeed a witness remembered various triplets forty years after first hearing them.¹⁵⁴ Those who remembered the Paternoster performed more than mechanical repetition, however—they did not reproduce the prayer, but appropriated and re-adapted it to suit evolving preoccupations, a use which reveals both proximity and distance from the Christian message as it was taught in church.¹⁵⁵ The Paternosters follow the tradition of oral culture in both structure and potential for communal performance, and they have many points in common with such aspects of that culture as the canterini’s story-telling and the popular Commedia dell’Arte street-theatre: endless variations on basic themes making use of fixed formulae and scenarios, and combining improvization, memorization and modular composition, so as to make room for audience intervention.¹⁵⁶ In this way, the Paternosters match the combination of entertainment and political communication which may have been normal in the streets of early modern Venice.¹⁵⁷ Resisting all attributions, the Paternosters show how simplistic it is to separate popular from educated culture when analysing texts of large diffusion.¹⁵⁸ Their interest lies precisely in their complex nature: both sacred and profane, both literate and illiterate, both urban and rural (Rialto, but also a lakeside village in Umbria). Through them, abuses perpetrated in the countryside found an echo in the bustling urban world of Venice. In the process, the texts acquired different meanings: a subject for discussion, a reason for anger, a pretext for entertainment, or a means of abusing foreigners at a time of charged international tensions. The Ten’s inquiry of 1591 allows us to imagine not just the cultural impact of the Paternoster, but the means of diffusion and reappropriation of countless other texts like it, such as the hundreds of pasquinades seen above and some of the numerous short printed pamphlets which were published during the Interdict.¹⁵⁹

The parody of politics It would be hard to exaggerate the importance of the Paternoster as evidence of the contents of communication in centres of information such as barbershops. We shall never be able to retrieve all the opinions which we know were voiced in those places. But the point, to us, is not whether the entire city or its humblest inhabitants were ranged against Spain (although there were many who obviously were), but the fact that they were clearly capable of understanding and radically criticizing the political world which they were meant to endure in silence. Of ¹⁵³ Burke 1978: 59. ¹⁵⁴ Lucchi 1978 and Toscani 1994. ¹⁵⁵ The readaptation of the Our Father could also take on clearly magical or anti-Christian connotations, as with a Greek prostitute who in 1623 was accused to say the prayer from end to beginning, Barbierato 2002: 88 (also 131, an anti-Christian parody of the Credo). ¹⁵⁶ Cf. Lord 1960 and Burke 1978: 83, and, on Commedia dell’Arte, Andrews 1991. ¹⁵⁷ See above, p. 93. ¹⁵⁸ Cf. Chartier 1987. ¹⁵⁹ See section 6.2 below.

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course, for all its different versions, the Paternoster does not contain all the possible aspects of that culture. No text ever does, and furthermore it would be reductive to try to reconstruct the entire spectrum of people’s opinions, even if it were possible to do so on the basis of written sources alone. However, by analysing the Paternosters in the light of their wide circulation, we can uncover some of the political attitudes which were possible, and probably common, in an inclusive social milieu—we can gain a sense of some of the ways in which people received, processed, and reacted to, the information which they obtained or found themselves exposed to. Although the text contains no reference to specific events, it records some of the ways in which events impacted on ordinary people’s ideas and, in turn, the ways in which people made sense of those events. Behind the Paternosters is a long experience of violent invasions, a shared oral memory of oppression and deprivation which could be applied to constantly evolving political situations: first the French, then the German and finally, the Spanish invasions. It may well be possible to trace the echos of these traumas back through the centuries. According to some witnesses, Charles VIII’s invasion of Italy in 1494 made many people think that history repeated itself, a concept which recurred both amongst the educated and ‘the plebs’ who compared the French armies to the ancient hordes of Huns, Goths, and Vandals.¹⁶⁰ The meaning of the text varied according to the people who read, recited, or heard it, and to the place where they did this. To some it constituted a complaint against foreign invaders, to others it was more likely to refer specifically to the invaders’ billeted armies. Some must have seen the poem as involving all perceived relations of injustice. To a peasant audience, for example, the references to depredations of the best part of a farm’s products may well have pointed to the rapaciousness of landlords whose rents grew in the later sixteenth century and were increasingly exacting in nature.¹⁶¹ In this view, poverty and deprivation—but also violence and rape—constituted the fate reserved by the powerful for the powerless. The vocabulary describing the invaders’ abuses reveals suffering in graphic and almost onomatopaeic ways (mattar, stracciar, tuor, scorno, bastonate, supplitio, gridare, bastone, uccidere, tormento, male, coltellate, bastonate, maleditione). As the 1550s printed version reproduced in Table 4.2 summed up: ‘most sorrows go away in a moment, and every evil is resolved in a little time, but our evil is a torment . . . quotidianum.’[12]¹⁶² Ordinary people did not just suffer the events taking place in the world around them. Through oral repetition, texts such as the Paternosters helped them to make sense of facts which would otherwise be dominated by sheer incomprehensible force, to speak up against the harsh violence which they were supposed to endure in silence. The meaning of that protest changed according to the situation. In 1591 Venice, there was no invasion to record. To some, then, the Paternoster was ¹⁶⁰ Giannotti 1850: 12–13.

¹⁶¹ Corazzol 1979.

¹⁶² Lo alphabeto delli villani.

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a means of commenting on local communities (‘Are you Spanish?’, Bortolotto asked the barber). To others it may have been a reference to events far away, and certainly Spanish diplomats thought it to refer to the conflict in France. To others still, the poem may have served as a charged political message at a time of hardship. The years 1590–92 saw serious harvest failures causing, as the Senate lamented, impoverished people to move from rural areas to the city, where several reportedly ‘drop[ped] on the public square, some of them dead’.¹⁶³ Like the latter, most sources only record the poor’s passive plight, never their voices. The Paternosters show the kind of phrases which they would hear and repeat, in full or in part, in a square or a church, to explain hardship by allocating responsibility. This in itself would be sufficient evidence of a reflecting political culture, however well-grounded its judgements. But the Paternosters include more than a list of self-pitying expressions of grief. They formulate a moral condemnation of the invaders’ duplicity, as one realizes by considering the place of religion in this parody of a religious prayer. It would be wrong to think that the Paternosters mock a prayer; rather, they turn that prayer into a weapon of radical protest. As the texts laments, it is the invaders who act against religious commandments by misusing the name of God, murdering, committing adultery, and stealing. The Paternosters’ parody denounces a greater one, the parody which invaders make of religion by hiding their earthly greed under the hypocrisy of sanctimoniousness, complete with religious symbols and prayers: ‘when they enter our homes, they pretend to be pious and honest with service-books and our fathers, to the extent that they look . . . sanctificetur.’ [3]¹⁶⁴ ‘But once they have entered, they look like bears and horses who have broken their chains, and like renegade dogs they blaspheme . . . nomen tuum.’ [4]¹⁶⁵ In the Paternosters, the ruled may be unable to resist the actions of rulers, but can at least unmask the rulers’ hypocritical narrative of those actions. In sixteenth-century Europe, belying the doublespeak of violence was Tacitus’ famous message—Traiano Boccalini mused that Tacitus’s works should be forbidden because they provided ‘lenses’ which made it possible to see through the dissimulation of princes.¹⁶⁶ In Agricola, the German chief Calgacus denounced the Romans: ‘they plunder, they butcher, they ravish, and call it by the lying name of ‘‘empire’’. They make a desert and call it peace.’¹⁶⁷ The Paternosters made the same point. Like the Romans, the Spanish—in the 1591 version, but other invaders beforehand—pretend to be saints defending religion, but are only interested in domination; they pretend to treat locals with humanity, but in fact spread destruction. It is hard to say whether all those who recited the Paternosters also read Tacitus’ frequently reprinted works (although some ¹⁶³ Quoted in Tucci 1995: 133; more on these years of impoverishment in: Pullan 1971: 243, 358 and 1978: 994; Mackenney 1987: 221–3; and Corazzol 1986. A striking indication of the inflation in the price of wheat, which doubled in 1591, in Corazzol 1979: 111. ¹⁶⁴ Lo alphabeto delli villani. ¹⁶⁵ Novati 1879: 148. ¹⁶⁶ Boccalini 1910–48, v. 1: 9999. ¹⁶⁷ Tacitus 1999: 22.

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probably did).¹⁶⁸ But the same point recurred in other contexts—for example an early seventeenth-century proverb, ‘Those who cannot simulate, cannot rule’.¹⁶⁹ In the same years, the same ideas nourished the discussions of bozzoli. For example, while discussing ‘the affairs of the world’ during a bullfight, the Flemish exchange-broker Zuanne Castelli mentioned ‘the frauds and lies of the Spaniards under cover of friendship, as I have often seen them do in Flanders’.¹⁷⁰ Finally, the Paternosters did not only express moral outrage. They fought back by ridiculing those who inflicted violence: at their heart is a message of resistance, because laughter—however bitter—liberates from fear by turning tragedy into farce.¹⁷¹ Once again, the texts’ parodical nature is crucial. The mixture of sacred and profane parallels the combination of tragic subject with comic style, elements belonging to different spheres and different cultural levels. The juxtaposition of high and low, liturgical and bodily terms belonging to semantically as well as culturally opposed vocabularies, was a well-known device for obtaining laughter. Likewise, by portraying the rulers or invaders as men who act like animals (lions, bears, dogs, boars), the Paternosters poured ridicule onto rule, even vexatorious rule. Like animals, foreign invaders could not even speak properly, as the Paternosters showed by reproducing and mocking examples of the rulers’ language (French in 1520 [5], and Spanish in 1591 [7, 17]). When performed orally, the comic effect of mixing languages while mocking foreign ones, must have been guaranteed—possibly a recurrent theme of practical jokes in a cosmopolitan city such as Venice.¹⁷² In urban contexts which, we must not forget, were likely to be convivial, the very use of Hispanic assonances may have evoked the Spanish Captain, one of the Commedia dell’Arte staple characters. A few years later, the physician Giancarlo Sivos also described in his diary the duke of Osuna, Spanish viceroy of Naples, as acting like a ‘great actor, who says words like the Spanish Captain which in the comedies says he wishes to take Venice and keep it for himself without giving it to his king, and all this in little time.’¹⁷³ The association made all the more sense in so far as the Spanish Captain caused laughter through empty boasts, just like the Paternosters’ invaders were ridiculed as sanctimonious and phony. There is no doubt that politics was the object of communication on all levels of Venetian society, in 1591 as at other times: in the government, where the Republic ¹⁶⁸ Tacitus’ works were frequently reprinted in Venice at the turn of the century; on Tacitus’ fortune, see Luce and Woodman 1993. ¹⁶⁹ Buoni 1604–6, v. 1: 279–80. ¹⁷⁰ Interrogation of Zuanne Castelli, 16.3.1618, in ASV, IS, b. 1213, file 31, cc. nn.; on him, see Brulez and Devos 1986, ad indicem. ¹⁷¹ Cf. Bakhtin 1979: 55, 102–8; and cf. 94–100 on parody. ¹⁷² On the comic effect of plurilinguism, cf. Cortelazzo 1980 and G. Lepschy 2002. A practical joke involving some Veronese gentlemen mocking the gondoliers’ Venetian in 1603, in Fasolo 1935: 176. ¹⁷³ Gian Carlo Sivos’ chronicle, BMV, Cod. Ital. VII.122 (8863), c. 39v. As the chronicle’s copyist recognized in his marginal annotation, the allusion referred to the Spagnolata.

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had to balance the opposed pressures of international engagements; in the political arena, where patricians and foreign ambassadors contrasted each other in frequent informal encounters; and amongst ordinary people who clearly had the means of establishing the connection between distant events and their own lives. When discussing popular communication, it is easy to describe it as consisting of gossip, hopelessly individualistic talk by people who could not see beyond the sphere of private affairs. And yet, this is precisely what texts like the Paternosters helped them do. The analysis of that text allows us to dismiss the notion of an uncontroversial trickling down of information from insiders to outsiders. The urban poliphony was regulated by continuous conflicts of interpretation and meaning. The government tried to impose its messages, but ordinary Venetians opposed those messages with their own words. The government tried to dismiss popular rumours while it also downplayed the discussions of the political arena. Meanwhile, reason of state authors and Venetian patricians agreed in dismissing the populace as incapable of comprehending politics—like animals, intent only on satisfying their stomachs.¹⁷⁴ For their part, ordinary people turned the stereotype against their superiors. In the Paternosters, it was the rulers who were interested only in satisfying their basest physical greed, like animals. Language and ideas circulated throughout the city and at all levels were appropriated with opposite meanings. The same applies to the very notion of reason of state. Ludovico Zuccolo was not far from the truth when he wrote that barbers and artisans discussed ‘what is done for reason of state and what is not’, although he meant to ridicule such talk for his own purposes.¹⁷⁵ He and Botero condemned the notion that rulers acted out of sheer interest, disregarding religion, as evil and Machiavellian. The same idea was voiced in texts such as the Paternosters, however but before and independently from Machiavelli. The earliest Paternosters unmasked the rulers’ proclaimed ideals in exactly the terms which Zuccolo abhorred: ‘If one asked them the reason/ why they have entered Italy/ they would answer that it was . . . voluntas tua’.¹⁷⁶ The real ‘reason’, the Paternosters showed, was not piety but greed and desire of power. Whatever their opinions on specific events, barbershop customers had the intellectual tools for distinguishing divine justice from political motive, rhetorical legitimation from reason of state. If the previous chapters provided abundant evidence that political outsiders sought and discussed political information, we now know that they could do so in very critical ways. ¹⁷⁴ See above, pp. 87–8. ¹⁷⁵ Zuccolo 1930: 25. ¹⁷⁶ Lo alphabeto delli villani: [8], note the difference with the 1591 version, which is more fatalistic.

5 The System Challenged: The Interdict of 1606–7 Most of the time, Venice’s system of communication worked in balance—the conflict remained at the level of interpretations rather than actions. Patricians debated policies inside the government, while they and other members of the political arena exchanged information in the hope of influencing those debates. Meanwhile, outsiders pondered or ridiculed the information they received, but their opinions remained irrelevant to policy making because neither the government nor the political arena recognized them as those of a viable political public. The communication between different spheres was constant, but not intentional. In 1606 a major crisis unsettled that separation when the pope excommunicated the doge and the Senate and proclaimed a general interdict on divine services in the Republic’s territories.¹ Paolo Sarpi—who was appointed juridical and theological advisor to the government at the beginning of the crisis—explained that ‘the pope excommunicates the Senate so that the latter backs down to free itself from excommunication . . . but he proclaims the interdict so that the people move to make the Senate back down’.² As Sarpi realized, the interdict turned the subjects into a public, and thus into a protagonist of the political struggle. A preamble is necessary in order to understand the gravity of the Interdict’s conflict and its impact on political communication. The confrontation arose out of long-standing jurisdictional disputes.³ In particular, Paul V objected to several recent laws restricting the clergy’s right to acquire land, a crucial issue for the Venetian elite at a time when ecclesiastical properties were growing and commercial investments shrinking.⁴ The pope also refused the Republic’s jurisdiction over the clergy, which the government recently affirmed by arresting two clergymen on criminal charges. Both the Republic and the papacy claimed to be within ¹ For the vast literature on the interdict controversy, cf. Sarpi 1969: 1321–5 and Sarpi 1997: 1387–96. In July 2001 I put a large bibliography online at http://venus.unive.it/riccdst/sdv/stru menti/bibliografie/interdetto.htm ² ‘Come metter fine al monitorio’, in Sarpi 2001: 453. He repeated the same analysis in his history of the Interdict, Sarpi 1968: 227–8. ³ The Duke of Savoy wrote that ‘tutti li potentati d’Italia’ had similar problems with the pope, letter dated 2.1.1606, published in de Magistris 1906: 14. ⁴ Stella 1958b, Woolf 1968.

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their rights, each accusing the other of introducing unlawful innovations. Each was right, in part. The government had long legislated on ecclesiastical properties in Venice, for example, and now wished to extend that authority over the rest of the state. The problem was that centuries of encroachments made it difficult to define the limits of ecclesiastical and temporal jurisdiction. Disagreement was the rule throughout Italy, including the domains of the Catholic Majesty of Spain. The sixteenth-century ecclesiastical reforms complicated things by both affirming local pastoral engagement and strengthening Rome’s hold over dioceses.⁵ True, the government jealously guarded its prerogatives in ecclesiastical affairs, but Venice was in no sense verging on schism. It was the Interdict that transformed an unexceptional divergence into a serious public crisis of legitimacy for the Republic. As Paul V’s supporters pointed out, excommunication had worked in the past to bend emperors and kings. Even worse, the interdicts (in their general version) struck all the population, which they deprived not just of regular masses but of such crucial sacraments as baptism and marriage. The pope’s supporters described the consequences in frightening terms: ‘let it be known to everybody’ a broadsheet warned, ‘that marriages are void, and that as a consequence children born in this state are to be considered illegitimate’.⁶ Whatever its actual effects, the interdict was meant to inspire fear by disintegrating social order in this world and undermining hope of salvation in the next. Whether or not the pope seriously expected the people to rebel, as Sarpi thought, he certainly hoped that the possibility of rebellion would seem serious enough.⁷ In 1591 Venetians had been faraway observers of France’s religious wars, but in 1606 violence threatened to erupt at home. No less than the French ambassador—a Calvinist who had recently converted to Catholicism—cautioned the doge: ‘I wish this could end, because from my experience of our kingdom’s similar troubles, I know the great scandals which broke out every day, when good people entered churches, and invariably came out holding weapons and fire’.⁸ Like excommunication, from which it derived, the interdict was no new ecclesiastical censure. First codified at the time of Innocent III’s clash with France and England, it was—as Richard Trexler’s study of interdicts in latemedieval Florence showed—an instrument of devastating impact in the Church’s clash with the state.⁹ Today historians rightly emphasize the extent to which secular and ecclesiastical institutions collaborated, each drawing on the other’s factual or symbolic power. Arguably, however, when they did fall out, the results were disastrous precisely because that collaboration vanished. Interdicts had ⁵ Prodi 1973, Stella 1964, Wright 1978, and cf. Bizzocchi 1996. ⁶ ∗ Instruttioni a i popoli. On excommunication, cf. Vodola 1986: ch. 3 and Brambilla 2000; on interdict, Trexler 1974: 6–20, Clarke 1999, Vodola 1985. ⁷ Pro-papal statesmen and pamphleteers alike expressed the hope that Venice’s people would rebel, cf. cardinal Spinola 18.4.1606, in Savio 1936–42, v. 10: 5–7, and ∗ Venturi, Della maiestà: 157. ⁸ Audience of 13.5.1606, in ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Roma, r. 13: 70v. ⁹ Trexler 1974.

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already bowed Venice into obedience twice, in 1483 and 1509. The Counter Reformation made the 1606 Interdict particularly noxious because it gave the pope greater authority over an efficiently reorganized ecclesiastical structure. Meanwhile, the Republic had seen its medieval hold over religious symbols and institutions substantially eroded.¹⁰ Unlike both previous occasions, Venice did not appeal to the council, perhaps appreciating the papacy’s new hold over that institution. Instead (as in 1509), the government concentrated on preventing the interdict’s actual implementation by ordering the clergy to continue their services under pain of death. But more than mere force proved necessary. The new conflict’s greatest novelty was the degree of publicity it acquired. In 1483 and 1509 even the appeal to the council was secret.¹¹ By contrast, in 1606 both sides massively publicized the conflict through countless proclamations, manuscripts, and sermons, and eventually by resorting to an unprecedented pamphlet campaign—in Sarpi’s words ‘a kind of war by writing’ (una sorte di guerra fatta con scritture).¹² In describing the Republic’s response to the pope’s challenge, most historians have insisted on printed pamphlets as the carriers of the state’s ideological resistance against the Church, Renaissance against Counter Reformation, Giovani against conservatives, and (more recently) scepticism against dogmatism.¹³ There is no doubt that the interdict produced a serious ideological confrontation, although its precise contours are less clear-cut than any of those binary oppositions would suggest. But, far from being a natural choice, or the Republic’s spontaneous expression, the pamphlets at length encountered the government’s opposition. Sarpi’s passage on the war by writing only occurs in book four (out of seven) of his History of the Interdict, relating to the events of August 1606, four months after the interdict’s proclamation and eight after the quarrel’s beginning.¹⁴ What were the means of communication which the authorities did employ and to whom were they directed? What role did information play in the political struggle? And if the government was so keen on secrecy, why and how did the controversy acquire such publicity? In answering these questions, this chapter will first highlight the government’s desperate efforts to prevent discussion of the controversy, true to a mentality excluding the majority of the population from public affairs. It will then elaborate on the picture pieced together earlier in the book, by analysing the importance of the means and agents of communication in undermining the government’s censorship. The Interdict’s interest is that it was not just about ecclesiastical jurisdiction, it was an all-out battle over political communication. ¹⁰ Del Torre 1989 and 1992–93. ¹¹ Neither appellation was printed, cf. Dalla Santa 1899 and Sanudo 1879–1903, v. 8: 169, 187. ¹² Sarpi 1968: 284. ¹³ I refer to, respectively, the interpretations of: Cecchetti 1874 and Chabod 1962; Bouwsma 1968; Cozzi 1958 and Benzoni 1970; Wootton 1983 and Frajese 1994. ¹⁴ Sarpi’s timing is dismissed in a footnote in Bouwsma 1968: 280 (but cf. Cozzi 1959: 72–80).

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Everything began with an act of publication. To ‘thunder’ his interdict (as the expression went) Paul V issued a monitorio, literally an ‘admonition’, formally addressed to the clergy but printed and posted in public to target all subjects of Venice and, by extension, all faithful. The interdict prompted an equally public response on the part of the Republic, yet this initially took the form of censorship, prohibiting the publication of the monitorio. Thus, in a way, the controversy was not just about the justice of Venice’s policies or the sanctity of the Church’s liberty—for the first few months, the government was far from discussing either. It was about the lawful extent of political communication, which the pope fought to enlarge and Venice strove to keep within its normal boundaries. The oligarchy at the heart of power concentrated on secret diplomatic negotiations with Rome and, when the interdict brought diplomacy to a halt, tried to limit all publicity to the controlled medium of official publication. This made for interesting communication acts, designed to prohibit something (the interdict) which the Republic did not intend to recognize. The point was not to refute the pope’s reasons, but to refuse his challenge. Despite the historians’ emphasis on Venice’s republicanism during the Interdict, at first the government’s line strikingly coincided with the Counter Reformation attitude towards heresy: an error which, as Carlo Ginzburg wrote, the faithful must ‘reject without knowing’.¹⁵

From secret negotiations to official publications In order to appreciate the Interdict’s break in political communication we have to step back to the time which preceded it. In Venice as elsewhere, the relations between the papacy and secular governments included many unresolved questions, from the prosecution of clergy, to that of heretics, from taxation to press censorship. A state of tension was normal, but no serious clash lasted very long. Normally, above all, resolution lay not in an appeal to the public, but in the secret negotiations of professional diplomats working behind closed doors, and for this reason the Holy See pioneered the establishment of permanent diplomatic representatives.¹⁶ The Interdict of 1606 was to change all this. On the eve of the conflict, the ambassador returning from Rome warned the Collegio that ‘for reason of good government it always proves of great service, reputation and security, to have [the pope’s] friendship and affection.’¹⁷ He referred to an axiom of both Venetian diplomatic practice and reason of state ¹⁵ Ginzburg 1972: 651. ¹⁶ Mattingly 1955, Blet 1998, and for Venice Gaeta 1957–58. ¹⁷ Relazione delivered 25.1.1606, in Barozzi and Berchet 1856–78, series 3, v. 1: 65; on Molin, see Trebbi 1984: 389n, 396.

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political theory. As Giovanni Botero put it, princes should never quarrel with the Church, not just because the Church was generally right, but because they would always look wrong.¹⁸ The problem was not so much one of intrinsic spiritual consideration, but one of publicity and appearances. For all its ecclesiastical autonomy, Venice’s government was not just reluctant to enter an open conflict with Rome; it did not want to be seen entering such a conflict, because it could never be sure of the subjects’ reactions. In fact, initially the inner core made skilful use of the comunicazione mechanisms to hide the extent of the pope’s grievances from the larger governmental assemblies. The ambassador in Rome availed himself of the different correspondences we have already seen to inform the Council of Ten rather than the Senate. The former only reported the two clergymen’s arrest to the latter several months after the pope’s first protests.¹⁹ Throughout the controversy, the Ten and the Collegio censored the information which they passed to the Senate in order to prevent the spreading of news which they considered disruptive or potentially divisive. When, for example, after the Interdict’s proclamation, the Roman Inquisition began putting together a trial against the doge, the news was not communicated to the Senate.²⁰ Inevitable as the conflict has come to look to historians ever since, it took a long time before many patricians knew anything about it, let alone the rest of the population. A first move away from secrecy came in December, when Paul V directed two briefs to the Senate employing strong language to condemn Venice’s laws as leading to damnation. The pope meant to pressurize the Venetian negotiators and for the first time also threatened to proclaim an interdict unless the laws were repealed.²¹ The nuncio, who postponed the briefs’ formal presentation, used them as a bargaining tool in his own negotiations.²² But the pope was also ready to publicize his warning to the Republic. Manuscript copies of the briefs circulated beyond the government to which they were addressed, a kind of publication which was to become common throughout the controversy.²³ The pope also instructed all nuncios to inform foreign rulers ‘in detail’ and asked prelates to inform the clergy in their dioceses.²⁴ The potential for further ¹⁸ Botero 1606: 60. Paolo Paruta, Molin’s eminent predecessor in Rome, put forward a very similar point in Albéri 1839–63, series 2, v. 4: 364 ff; cf. Cozzi 1961. ¹⁹ On 26.10.1606, see ASV, Coll., Comunicate del CX, f. 3, c. 700; the pope first raised the case in June 1605, cf. Cornet 1859: 1–3. On comunicazione and the ambassadors’ correspondence, see section 1.3. ²⁰ The Collegio seized a libel accusing Donà of heresy intercepted by the rettori of Padua and burnt it without passing it to the Senate; ASV, Sen., Dispacci Padova, f. 3, cc. nn., enclosed in dispatch dated 2.6.1606. ²¹ The briefs, dated 10.12.1605, were sent to the nuncio for presentation to the Collegio, Cornet 1859: 12n. ²² See esposizione of 15.12.1605 and the remarks in Cornet 1859: 13n. and 17n. ²³ The briefs can be found in two pocket brochures of folded leaves written by the same hand, in ASV, MADM, b. 51, fasc. 1; another manuscript copy in BL 175.f. 2. ²⁴ De Magistris 1906: 3–8.

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involvement was great. For example, the Jesuits received an order to preach to their flock against Venice’s laws ‘with clarity’ if also ‘with modesty’.²⁵ Later both parties would drop all such formalities. By threatening an interdict, the briefs gave sharper edge to a simple jurisdictional dispute. In Venice, the smaller councils sought to share responsibility and so passed the matter to the Senate. This was a first crucial difference to the 1509 Interdict, when the Ten maintained control over the conflict.²⁶ The Senate’s authority strengthened Venice’s stance, but its size and internal divisions also eventually helped the controversy spill into the public domain.²⁷ However, the government wanted to maintain the dispute at the level of high politics. The Ten at least tried to retain some control over the affair by envisaging a clause specifying that they handed the prisoners over to the Senate in gratificatione of the pope. Although the clause failed to pass, events might have taken a different course had the Ten been more united.²⁸ The Collegio sought to gain time before formally receiving the briefs and then refused at length to bring them to the Senate.²⁹ The Senate resorted to diplomacy’s usual means and in conciliatory mood sent an extraordinary embassy to Rome.³⁰ Finally, the Senate also informed ambassadors abroad to counteract the Roman offensive in foreign courts. That was the earliest instance when the Republic thought it necessary to explain the quarrel; but the Senate’s dispatch affirmed that it was ‘not obliged to account for the conduct of temporal government’, and of course the explanation was meant for foreign rulers alone.³¹ Once again, the point of communication was to influence the negotiations rather than publicize the controversy.³² Paul V’s briefs also caused the government to upgrade its legal strategy. Initially, the Ten formulated their responses on the basis of in-house searches for precedents in the Republic’s secret archives—an antiquarian practice which was in line with the Venetian custom of justifying action by stressing tradition.³³ In January, however, the Senate sought advice from professional experts, including ²⁵ Letter dated 17.12.1605, in Pirri 1959: 63. ²⁶ Cf. Sanudo 1879–1903, v. 8: 169 ff. and Priuli 1912–41, v. 2: 128. ²⁷ On 14.12.1606 the Ten relinquished control over the clergymen’s prosecution to the Senate, ASV, Coll., Comunicate del CX, f. 3, c. 686, and henceforth the quarrel was discussed in Senate correspondence with ambassadors and governors. ²⁸ Entry dated 12.12.1605, in Cornet 1873, v. 5: 44–7, 50. ²⁹ The nuncio delivered the pope’s briefs on 25.12.1605, but they were not opened on the grounds of the ducal vacancy (Grimani died on the 26th); Cornet 1859: 17. This was an excuse, because the Savi were entitled to summon Senate meetings on exceptional authority granted by the Great Council (although to gain this authority, they of course had to inform the latter). ³⁰ See Cornet 1859: 13–14n. ³¹ Ibid. 16. ³² For example, the ambassador in France was to inform secretary of State Villeroy so he would ask his son (the then French ambassador in Rome) to favour Venice; dispatch dated 28.2.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Francia, f. 34, cc. 377v –378. ³³ Parte of 23.11.1605, in Cornet 1873, v. 5: 44; and cf. an order to mainland governors to look for legal precedents of Venice’s claims, dated 28.1.1606, in ASV, CCX, Dispacci Bergamo, b. 3, cc. 148–51. After the proclamation of the interdict, the Ten commissioned further research, 26.4.1606, Cornet 1873, v. 5: 60.

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not just the official consultori in iure but other jurists at the university of Padua and elsewhere—a move which (we shall see) increased the likelihood of leaks.³⁴ At this point the government also appointed Paolo Sarpi to a new post as consultore not just in canon law, but also in theology, ‘for any occasion which might arise’. This decision signalled Venice’s commitment to resistance against the papacy, and on the same day the Senate also issued a first formal reply to the pope’s briefs, partly on the basis of Sarpi’s advice.³⁵ It was a sign of how much Sarpi was to influence the controversy, and his appointment has been described as a ‘fateful step’.³⁶ However, for the time being his work consisted in counselling the government rather than justifying the Republic’s position publicly. Perhaps, the patricians behind Sarpi’s election regarded it as above all valuable in influencing the Senate, an internal tool of comunicazione and factional politics.³⁷ The controversy was to remain a matter for secret negotiations, managed in a conventional framework of governmental, rather than public, communication. Accordingly, the extraordinary embassy which reached Rome in March, was welcomed by a benign pope.³⁸ Soon, however, diplomacy lost momentum over an impossible compromise. Finding himself unable to bend the government directly, the pope tried to do so indirectly by proclaiming an interdict on 17 April. This move shifted the weight from diplomatic to public communication and took the conflict into the public domain.³⁹ While all previous moves attempted to put pressure on the Republic’s negotiators, the interdict ended all negotiations. Indeed, soon after, both Venetian ambassadors and papal nuncio were recalled. As a newswriter commented, there was no time to negotiate, ‘it is necessary to obey first, or else to set fire to the whole of Italy’.⁴⁰ The move towards publicity is clear in the Monitorio, the document proclaiming an interdict (which was to acquire full strength in three weeks, a time granted in the hope of repentance). The Monitorio differed from the December briefs, which addressed the doge employing a mild paternalist language. Now, by contrast, the pope severed communication with Venice’s patricians—indeed, he ex-communicated them, and did so publicly by addressing himself to the Republic’s clergy, whose many constituent bodies were spelled out at the Monitorio’s beginning.⁴¹ Unlike some of his predecessors, Paul V did not address the laity directly, perhaps a reflection of the Counter ³⁴ 14.1.1606, Cornet 1859: 23. In March the Senate called three Paduan jurists to reside in Venice rewarding them with a hundred scudi each, and also sought legal counsel in Milan; see ASV, Sen., Dispacci Padova, f. 3, cc. nn. (4.3.1606), and Coll., Lettere segrete, f. 43, cc. nn. (11 and 20.3.1606). On consultori in iure, see Barzazi 1986. ³⁵ 28.1.1606, Cornet 1859: 27; on Sarpi’s nomination, see Pin 2001: 23–5, 37–9. ³⁶ Bouwsma 1968: 358; cf. Cozzi 1959: 85–6. ³⁷ Cf. Pin 2001: 37–8 and ASV, Cons. iure, f. 537, c. 2v. ³⁸ Cornet 1859: 39. ³⁹ The diplomatic audiences are in Cornet 1859: 39–40; in Venice, between March and April, the nuncio only visited the Collegio three times; see ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Roma, r. 13. ⁴⁰ Avviso from Rome dated 3.5.1606, in BAV, Urb. Lat. 1074, c. 233. ⁴¹ ∗ Breve di censvre et interdetto. The December briefs were addressed ai miei diletti figlioli.

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Reformation insistence on the superiority of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, or a sign of the reluctance of authorities on both sides of the fence to involve the population directly in politics.⁴² However, by way of the clergy the interdict was supposed to reach, and enflame, the faithful. For that reason the Monitorio contained detailed instructions for publication ‘so that it may come to the knowledge of all’: ‘each of you must publish [the Monitorio] solemnly in your churches, when there is the greatest attendance of people gathered to hear the divine services, and make it known to all Christian faithful; and then you must post it, and keep it posted to your churches’ doors.’ At the end of the Monitorio, a self-assured statement affirmed that the text had been successfully published in Rome—at St Peter’s, the Apostolic Chancery, and Campo de’ Fiori, ‘as is the custom’.⁴³ A publication which was easily accomplished in Rome, however, was not so in Venice. In the following few months, the means of communication available to both the pope and the Republic became an object of, as much as a tool in, the conflict. Communication, in other words, became the terrain of battle.

The strategy of denial The pope insisted on publication because his strategy rested on publicity. Much like international sanctions today, interdicts were attempts to curb governments by harming their innocent people. The Monitorio condemned Venice’s rulers, not their subjects, but encouraged the latter to blame the former for the spiritual harm which the interdict inflicted to all. Thus, the people were the interdict’s public as well as its victims. Unlike economic sanctions, however, the interdict needed publicity in order to be effective. In both theory and practice, ex-communicatio can only take place in so far as a community is informed of the exclusion of one of its members. How are they to be excluded otherwise? The same went for interdicts. Ideally, if the faithful had been kept unaware of the Senate’s excommunication, if churches had remained open, and divine services had continued without interruption, the pope’s attack would have been powerless. For this reason, far from publicly attacking Paul V with printed pamphlets, the Republic at first concentrated on undermining his challenge by preventing the interdict’s publication. This policy was the governmental equivalent of the subjects’ resistance to the law through the claim of ignorance.⁴⁴ It also built on precedents; but in previous interdicts the government had limited itself to symbolic prohibition—preventing publication at the gates of San Marco—whereas in 1606 it moved to actual and complete censorship.⁴⁵ In mid-April, suspecting that the pope was close to proclaiming an interdict, the ⁴² Cf. Gregory VII’s appeal to clericis et laicis, maioribus et minoribus, in Cowdrey, ed. 1972: 22. ⁴³ ∗ Breve di censvre et interdetto. ⁴⁴ See section 4.2. ⁴⁵ Cf. Cozzi 1986: 69–70 and 237, and Dalla Santa 1899.

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Senate ordered all clergy to hand over unopened all letters from Rome; in case anything slipped by, guards were to ensure that no document was posted on churches.⁴⁶ The orders were repeated at the beginning of May, this time on pain of death, and were judged to have been effectively implemented.⁴⁷ This created serious problems in Rome, where a prelate lamented that, for all his resoluteness, the pope ‘paid no attention to the practical details of execution’.⁴⁸ Political confrontation made a means of communication which the papacy had hitherto taken for granted, into a source of preoccupations. Censorship, however, also posed a problem for Venice’s government. To avoid public acts which would alarm the population, the Council of Ten conveyed their orders to the clergy orally, through guards who warned them that they were to keep the orders to themselves.⁴⁹ The Collegio instructed governors on the mainland similarly to make the order ‘in voice’, and later recommended that any copy of the order must be retrieved and destroyed, ‘because we do not want it to appear in writing’.⁵⁰ When a secretary related the Senate’s order to the Jesuits, the latter asked for a written copy, but the secretary refused and, when the Jesuits said they would not remember the contents without one, he replied ‘that he would read it again so that they remembered it, and if need be, he would do nothing but read it all day’.⁵¹ Clearly, the government did not wish its most clamorous act of involvement in spiritual affairs to go on record. Confirmation of the interdict’s proclamation made the government change tack in Venice. The Senate ordered all rettori to ‘communicate’ the Republic’s position to their towns’ assemblies, the first time that the government thought it necessary to reach out to the population (or at least, to the elites who sat in the assemblies).⁵² As may be expected in a text designed to persuade subjects, the letter justified the decision to continue divine services by appealing to ‘reason’ alongside historical precedent and divine right, stressing the positive effects of Venetian rule, frequently referring to the subjects’ good, and emphasizing that the policies which the Republic defended were all meant to preserve the subjects’ ‘goods, lives, and honour’. ‘The subjects’ tranquillity and security depended’ on the sovereign’s right to judge criminals, and the same applied to the laws concerning ecclesiastical properties. The Senate especially defended these laws ⁴⁶ Parte dated 17.4.1606, in ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni Roma ordinaria, r. 15, cc. 13v –14r. ⁴⁷ Parti dated 5 and 8.5.1606 (respectively, for the city of Venice and the mainland), in ASV, Coll., Lettere segrete, f. 43 (1606), cc. nn. The prohibitions were deemed effective by the ambassadors of Tuscany (De Rubertis 1933: 37n.), France (Canaye 1636, v. 3: 29–30), and Modena (ASM, AV, b. 84, cc. nn.) ⁴⁸ Undated anonymous letter enclosed in report of 23.5.1606, in ASV, Coll., Comunicate del CX, f. 3, cc. 513–514 (cf. Cornet 1873 v. 5: 78). ⁴⁹ Dispatch of 18.4.1606, in Cornet 1873, v. 5: 55–6. ⁵⁰ Dispatch of 24.4.1606, in ASV, Coll., Lettere segrete, f. 43, cc. nn. ⁵¹ Report by the preposito Bernardino Castorio, in Pirri 1959: 104. ⁵² Parte dated 20.4.1606, in ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni Roma ordinaria, r. 15, cc. 19–20v and Cornet 1859: 61.

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with arguments meant to appeal to the mainland landed elites: ‘if we were to allow lay goods to be transferred to ecclesiastical owners, there is no doubt that in few years, all those goods would be transferred, and everyone knows that so many have been already’.⁵³ And yet, for all its appeal to the subjects’ reason, this document shows the difficulties of public self-defence for a sovereign recognizing no superior other than God. The Senate described its communication as a fatherly address, made to comfort the subjects rather than justify the government, so as to ‘communicate that which happens, as the father does with his children’.⁵⁴ This points to the patricians’ restricted understanding of politics, which is further revealed by their use of the term ‘communication’ as a highly controlled transfer of information.⁵⁵ This was practically true, as the Senate again refused to give out copies of its letter, and instructed governors to read it out instead in the assemblies and to prohibit any written transcript from being made (the prohibition was highly ineffective, as we shall see).⁵⁶ The government’s first true publication came only a few days before the Interdict was due to formally begin. On 6 May the Senate almost unanimously approved a document known as Protesto, penned by Sarpi and carrying the name of the doge.⁵⁷ In the preamble, the Senate described it as necessary to uphold ‘the dignity of our Republic and the justice of our cause’.⁵⁸ Like the letter to the town assemblies, the Protesto stressed divine right, good government and the subjects’ well-being. Unlike that letter, however, it made no reference to the disputed policies, let alone trying to defend them. In fact, although Sarpi’s initial draft included a first and long paragraph discussing Paul V’s objections, the final version dropped it entirely.⁵⁹ Instead, the Protesto stated that the ambassadors had ‘again and again’ raised ‘most valid and insoluble reasons’ before the pope, who stubbornly chose to ignore them. Thus, in a move towards publicity, the Senate turned secret negotiations into public information, to be waved before the public as evidence against the pope’s unreasonable attitude. Like all previous orders, the Protesto prohibited the publication of the Interdict, but was published officially with all the means which it denied to the Monitorio. In fact, they were two incompatible injunctions, excluding each other with a ⁵³ ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni Roma ordinaria, r. 15, cc. 19–20v. ⁵⁴ Ibid. ⁵⁵ Sarpi’s history of the Interdict also stated that the Senate ordered the letters to be communicate to the town councils, Sarpi 1968: 215. ⁵⁶ ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni Roma ordinaria, r. 15, cc. 20r –v. On the manuscript circulation of versions of this letter, see below, pp. 198–9. ⁵⁷ The text is in Cornet 1859: 71–3 (from which all subsequent quotations are drawn); on its composition see Sarpi 2001: 418–19; a corrected draft with the signatures of all the Republic’s consultori, in ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni Roma ordinaria, f. 28, cc. nn. ⁵⁸ Text in ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni Roma ordinaria, f. 28, cc. nn., and cf. Sarpi’s mention of ‘honour’ in the same context in Sarpi 2001: 367. ⁵⁹ Draft with autograph corrections in ASV, Cons. iure, f. 136, cc. 122–22v; cf. Sarpi 2001: 418–19.

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strength which is difficult to appreciate fully when relying on the modern editions setting them side by side.⁶⁰ By definition, neither was to be published in the place of the other. As in a dialogue of the deaf, the pope and the doge did not address each other, but a public, indeed the same public: the Venetian prelates and clergy, and through them the whole body of subjects and the faithful. Whereas in 1483 and 1509, the government focused on bringing its protestation to the pope and his court in Rome, the 1606 Protesto was meant for a large public.⁶¹ As for the pope, publicity was crucial for the Republic. Like the Monitorio, the Protesto was meant to reach the entire population through the clergy: With these public letters of ours we protest before the Lord God and the entire world. . . . We want this decree posted in public places of this city and of all other cities of our dominions, to the knowledge of all; and we are certain that such a manifest publication will reach the ears of all [including] his Sanctity, who (we pray God) may be inspired to see the nullity of his brief and . . . the justice of our cause.

The Senate put a great deal of effort into obtaining the widest publicity. The Protesto was printed in both Latin and Italian, in large posters as well as small folders, for distribution in Venice and on the mainland, including posting on the very churches which the pope had wished to close.⁶² All governors ordered the Protesto to be published ‘in the most conspicuous places’; and some of them had local printers issue new editions.⁶³ Unlike the earlier orders, the Protesto made no reference to punishments. It did not try to force obedience and instead proclaimed consensus: the clergy’s, the subjects’, ‘nay of the entire world’. Each time it was published, it boasted the unity of the entire state in defiance of the pope’s onslaught.

Important ambiguities The government wanted no controversy: to refuse, not to refute, the interdict. The Protesto was no polemical text, but a juridical document invalidating the pope’s censures, and doing so with the same language which the Senate customarily used when repealing old laws: ‘not only unjust and undue, but also null, of no value and therefore invalid, unlawfully proclaimed with no respect ⁶⁰ The only combined editions appeared outside the borders of both states; eg. ∗ Bvlle du pape, and the miscellaneous ∗ Raccolta printed in Geneva: 3–9. ⁶¹ See above, p. 159. ⁶² ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni Roma ordinaria, r. 15, c. 28v. On posting in churches, cf the contemporary diary in ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Principi, f. 16, cc. nn. I have found editions of the Protesto in at least three different formats as well as manuscript copies. ⁶³ Identically worded dispatches dated 10.5.1606 by the rettori of Padua and Verona, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Padova, f. 3, cc. nn., and Dispacci Verona, f. nn. (1606), cc. nn. The governors of Vicenza had the local printers print a new edition, dispatch dated 9.5.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Vicenza, f. 4, cc. nn.

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for the order of the law’.⁶⁴ Indeed, this was the function of Protesti as defined by legal experts.⁶⁵ The English ambassador—who lamented being confined to his bed by toothache ‘in a time which yeldeth such entertainment’⁶⁶—rightly understood the Protesto when he wrote that it touched the ‘nullitie’ rather than the ‘uniustenesse’ of the Interdict, ‘betweene which two termes the State doth precisely distinguish: professing that if the interdict were only uniuste they would appeale from it to a Council, but being nulle & invalide they will appeale to theire owne tribunal.’⁶⁷ And yet, public communication trapped the government in a contradiction. It is one of the paradoxes of secrecy that the very act of prohibiting information requires some of that information to be spelled out. The government denied the Interdict but, as cardinal Bellarmino later pointed out, ‘in the act of prohibiting [the Interdict], the doge also published it’.⁶⁸ As Bellarmino knew, the same problem applied to the condemnation of heresy, because the Inquisition potentially advertised the condemned doctrine in the act of condemning it.⁶⁹ Like the Counter Reformation Church, then, the Venetian Republic wished to have Paul V’s offensive rejected before it was even known. For this reason, Venice’s official publications were studiously ambiguous when referring to the Interdict. The Protesto prohibited the Monitorio without even acknowledging its contents. Sarpi’s draft shows that he chose his words carefully, substituting the word Monitorio with the more generic ‘a supposed brief . . . of which we have heard’.⁷⁰ The letter to the town assemblies similarly mentioned no interdict, and the governors were instructed by the accompanying dispatch to refer to it ‘with an appropriate choice of words’.⁷¹ When the Senate first prohibited the Monitorio, the English ambassador excitedly wrote home that ‘within this hour hath been published in the chief places of this town, by sound of trumpet, a proclamation’ against the ‘Papal Interdict’.⁷² Strictly speaking, however, this was incorrect, a reflection of the differing degrees of knowledge in the city at the moment. As a prominent member of Venice’s political arena, the ambassador knew that an interdict had been issued. But when it came to the greater public, the Republic was careful to prevent the spread of knowledge about the nature of the document it prohibited. The decree referred to by the ⁶⁴ Cf. ASV, Compilazione delle leggi, b. 348 (‘Senato’), c. 664: ‘sia ipso facto nullo, et di niuno valore’. ⁶⁵ Cf. the definition in Ferro 1778–81, v. 2: 551. ⁶⁶ Dispatch of 28.4.1606, in Wotton 1907, v. 1: 345–6. ⁶⁷ Dispatch of 26.5.1606, in NA, SP 99/3, c. 86; Wotton added that at first he had not grasped this point. ⁶⁸ ∗ Bellarmino, Risposta al Trattato: 11. On ‘paradoxes of secrecy’, cf. Bellman 1984: 144. ⁶⁹ Cf. the remarks about heretics’ public recantations in Ginzburg 1983: 14 and n. 34. ⁷⁰ A draft with autograph corrections in ASV, Cons. iure, f. 136, cc. 122–22v; cf. Sarpi 2001: 418–19. ⁷¹ See above, note 52. ⁷² Dispatch to the Earl of Salisbury dated 28.4.1606, in Wotton 1907, v. 1: 345–6.

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ambassador only vaguely mentioned ‘some printed bulls’ issued by an unspecified authority in Rome.⁷³ As a Jesuit reported from Venice, ‘no one mentions either Bulls or Briefs, but only scritture’.⁷⁴ The public was to be left in the dark about just what those bulls entailed. This attitude contrasted with the Republic’s official protestations against the earlier interdicts of 1483 and 1509. On those occasions the government could afford to speak clearly because it did so within the restricted framework of diplomatic negotiations.⁷⁵ In 1606, by contrast, publicity imposed constraints. Forced to abandon the secrecy of high politics, the government tried to minimize information through deliberate circumlocutions in the hope of minimizing the potential for public conflict. At first glance, one might think that we are dealing with empty formalities, of value only to few diplomats.⁷⁶ However, the strategy of denial hindered rather than helped the negotiations.⁷⁷ Denial had to do not with diplomatic form, but with the government’s pragmatic engagement with the public outside the political arena, because it provided the clergy with a legal umbrella for remaining loyal. As the governors of Vicenza explained, ‘most clergymen believe that they may celebrate and administer the sacraments in the same way as they did before, under the pretext that they have no true and certain information of an interdict binding them against doing so’.⁷⁸ The government knew that commands can only be valid once they are published, and knew that its subjects knew that too. This argument was forcefully embraced by Venice’s supporters. The Protesto affirmed that the interdict was void because it was ‘thundered with no respect for the order of the law’.⁷⁹ One of Sarpi’s pamphlets later echoed the same point, explaining that ‘the interdict is not lawfully published, and . . . the ecclesiastics are not bound to execute it.’⁸⁰ The argument rested on a double notion of publication. First, the Interdict was not sufficiently known: ‘the clergy do not have to obey the interdict, because they cannot be sufficiently sure that Venice and its territories are subjected to it’.⁸¹ One of Sarpi’s friends ridiculed those who worried about the Interdict: ‘what has the pope commanded you? did you talk to his Sanctity or did he write you a letter?’⁸² Secondly, and more precisely, ⁷³ The Senate’s proclamation in 27.4.1606, in ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni Roma ordinaria, r. 15, c. 25. Cf. also the similarly-worded decrees ibid., cc. 13v –14r and in Cornet 1873, v. 5: 55–6. ⁷⁴ Letter dated 24.4.1606, in Pirri 1959: 70. ⁷⁵ In 1483 the document admitted that the doge received the pope’s monitory, and in 1509 the document actually referred to the pope’s interdict, see Dalla Santa 1899: 238, 241. ⁷⁶ Cf. Bouwsma 1968: 374, and Pullapilly 1975: 123. ⁷⁷ Cf. the doge’s tangle at foreign offers to negotiate the Interdict’s repeal on 13.7.1606, in ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Roma, r. 13, cc. 153v –157v. Further complications arose at the final settlement, see below pp. 246–8. ⁷⁸ Dispatch dated 1.7.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Vicenza, f. 4, cc. nn. ⁷⁹ See above, note 57. ⁸⁰ ∗ Sarpi et al., Trattato: 5. ⁸¹ Ibid.: 4. ⁸² Pseudonymous letter by Giovan Francesco Sagredo (alias Cecilia Contarini) to the Jesuit Antonio Barisoni in Ferrara, dated 12.4.1608, in BMV, Cod. Ital. X.188 (7216), c. 8v. On these letters, see Cozzi 1979a: 175–9.

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the interdict was not valid because the Monitorio lacked the features of official publication discussed in the last chapter: ‘the interdict has not been published’ in the Republic ‘because it has not been read out in the churches or other public places, nor has it been posted to be seen by the people or by those who are supposed to observe it’.⁸³ Later, Sarpi’s pamphlets focused on the Interdict’s injustice, but for the practical opposition to the pope’s onslaught, he realized that communication mattered more than contents: ‘we have a remedy . . . excellent and sufficient’, ‘that is to refuse receiving and obeying the pope’s censures, and to prevent their publication and execution.’⁸⁴ This argument might seem specious to us, but it was strong because it rested on deeply rooted legal assumptions. In making it, Sarpi appealed to the authority of Thomas Aquinas, not of radical anti-papal theorists.⁸⁵ The pope and his defenders were aware of the danger posed by this loophole because they shared its premisses; indeed, as we shall see, they concentrated on finding other loopholes.⁸⁶ The addressees of the denial strategy, the Republic’s clergy—and especially the lower ones who had most reason to fear the pope’s reprisals—would have seen it as valid legal sanctuary whether or not they found it morally convincing. Training in canon law and casuistry no doubt helped. According to the English ambassador, the Republic’s prohibitions to receive letters from Rome meant to furnish ‘the fryars that remayne heere after the interdict . . . with an excuse because they can not have knowledge from their generals of the popes will.’⁸⁷ As he also reported, for example, the Benedictines had all letters from Rome put in a chest, unopened, ‘to save their consciences by the way of ignorance.’ Wotton could well sneer at the hypocrisy of Catholics who ‘delude the Pope’s authority, not yet daring to deny it’, but there is no doubt that denial was a successful legal strategy.⁸⁸ However, it was a defensive strategy. It presupposed, but did not build, loyalty. And of course, it rested on the flimsy assumption that the authorities could really monopolize information, as if official publication were the only means of political communication outside the government. As we know, this could never be anything other than a delusion.

5 . 2 E N F O RC I N G S E C U R I T Y, R E P R E S E N T I N G O R D E R The government’s publications were aimed primarily at the clergy, and only indirectly at the rest of the population. Winning over the clergy was crucial in ⁸³ ∗ Sarpi et al., Trattato: 5. ⁸⁴ Sarpi 2001: 241. ⁸⁵ ∗ Sarpi et al., Trattato: 5. ⁸⁶ Dispatch of the ambassador in Savoy dated 1.7.1606, in de Magistris 1906: 117. Cf. the pamphlets published later in Rome: ∗ Bellarmino, Risposta al Trattato: 7; ∗ Ugolino, Responsiones: 9–10; ∗ Comitoli, Confvtatione: 10, 15–16. ⁸⁷ Dispatch dated 23.6.1606, in NA, SP 99/3, c. 109. ⁸⁸ Dispatch dated 26.5.1606, in Wotton 1907, v. 1: 350. Even amongst the Jesuits, some in Verona initially refused to obey their superiors’ orders on similar grounds, Pirri 1959: 173.

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order to resist the interdict, and that was the purpose of the Republic’s legal quibbling. To this the government added the weight of severe threats. All those who refused to say mass were to be punished by death.⁸⁹ It may seem here that we are dealing with pure force, but once again the communication of force was crucial. Indeed, in securing obedience, threatening the punishment may have been more important than the punishment itself, which was never actually carried out. Like ignorance of the interdict, the possibility of capital punishment could turn into legal sanctuary, because, as any clergymen knew, it was a principle of canon law that certain danger of death excused from obedience.⁹⁰ As a Jesuit reported, the doge was very explicit, telling him and his brethren that ‘we had a good excuse for our consciences, . . . to obey the orders . . . because they had been proclaimed under pain of death, and that this was so rigorous not because [the government] wanted our blood . . . but only so that the clergy could use it as a reason for being loyal’.⁹¹ But the threat of death must have seemed real enough to many; indeed, in order for the legal trick to work, the threat had to seem real. For all the ambiguities of the government’s publications, the patrician in charge of the convent of San Sebastiano certainly did not lack for words when, surrounded by guards, he threatened some disobedient friars that a couple of them would be ‘closed into a sack and thrown into the lagoon’.⁹² In the same days the Senate also made it clear that those who remained faithful would enjoy the Republic’s protection ‘in any event’.⁹³ Thus, the government implied, the clergy had no reason to fear the pope’s vengeance, but plenty to fear from the Republic. With regards to the greater population, the government no doubt preferred force to argument. If the Interdict intended to stir unrest, the Republic made sure that all unrest would be punished. On the basis of precedents passed at times of emergency, the Ten and the Senate almost unanimously voted a number of strong measures for the preservation of order.⁹⁴ In Venice, three ‘Proveditors over quiet and peaceful life’ took charge of the city’s security, with a special force of 300 men ready to intervene at the key points of the Arsenal and San Marco. In addition, in a systematic attempt at extending control to the most local level, the Senate nominated one patrician and one commoner to supervise each of the city’s parishes (Venice’s smallest administrative units). They received ⁸⁹ Decree of 27.4.1606, in ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni Roma ordinaria, r. 15, c. 25. ⁹⁰ See Pullan 1971: 58–9. ⁹¹ Report in Pirri 1959: 109. ⁹² Report by Zuanne Pasqualigo dated 11.6.1606, in ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Roma, r. 13, c. 115v. ⁹³ Dispatch of 29.4.1606, in ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni Roma ordinaria, r. 15, c. 26v. The urgency of such assurances can be seen in their repetition: on 5 May the Collegio again ordered that such declarations be made to the regular clergy, and then repeated the order on 8 May (dispatches in ASV, Coll., Lettere segrete, f. 43, cc. nn.). ⁹⁴ The special laws were based on a precedent dating back to 1569 and ostensibly connected with the threat of fire; 10.5.1606, ASV, Sen., Terra, r. 76, cc. 45v –47v. The move had originally been prompted by the Ten on 21.4.1606, in ASV, CX, Parti segrete, r. 14, c. 135.

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arms to distribute to fifty parishioners of their choice, to be summoned at the ringing of bells. These measures contrast with the prohibition at all other times to bear arms inside Venice, from which only guards and foreign diplomats were formally exempt. Distressed at the possibility of unrest, during the Interdict the authorities had to trust a good deal of their subjects to maintain order, with the consequent risk of further disorder. Five years later, 1,000 arquebuses were still missing.⁹⁵ If in Venice the authorities felt they could on the whole rely on their subjects—they stressed that the chosen parishioners should all be ‘born in this city or born subjects’—the government was far less confident in the Republic’s mainland territories. The Senate nominated new generals of the fleet and of the mainland forces, exceptional posts which allowed the military effort to be coordinated in case of attack, but also no doubt, as some foreign ambassadors suggested, to repress potential internal unrest.⁹⁶ For the same reasons, the Senate instructed all local governors to augment the provisions in their territories’ fortresses and also recruited 3,000 additional mercenary footsoldiers, soon to grow by a further 12,000.⁹⁷ Once again, however, although force needed communication, communication problematized the use of force. Although the Senate made great displays of Venice’s military strength when aimed against foreign enemies—parades, trumpeted musters, and so on—the Senate also decreed that no copy of the measures for the preservation of order inside the Republic’s territories was to circulate.⁹⁸ True to its name, the Serenissima must appear to be serene by nature, not by heavy policing. And yet, at a time of storm, serenity must also be shown in some way. The interest of the 1606–7 crisis is that it made it crucial for the government to engineer actively that which it normally expected most people to take for granted. If the government wished to be successful in denying the interdict, it was not sufficient to prohibit the latter’s publication. It was also necessary to pretend that all went on as usual, and particularly that divine services continued without interruption. Thus, the clergy were not only to side with the Republic; they were to do so conspicuously, collaborating with the authorities in publicly displaying Venice’s orthodoxy. To this end, the government resorted to a wide and well-experimented set of public ceremonies.⁹⁹ A symbolic capital accumulated through centuries of civic religion and secular supervision of ecclesiastical affairs enabled the Republic to turn rituals into means of upholding the sacrality of the state, and this at a time when the highest religious authority challenged the state’s orthodoxy. Of course, the government also carefully enhanced the value ⁹⁵ Hale and Mallett 1984: 219. ⁹⁶ Dispatch of 22.4.1606, in ASM, AV, b. 84, cc. nn. ⁹⁷ 20.4 and 10.5.1606, ASV, Sen., Terra, r. 76, cc. 38v–39 and 45; on the provision of troops in this period, see Hale and Mallett 1984: 218 and 326–7. ⁹⁸ Parte of 10.5.1606, ASV, Sen., Terra, r. 76, c. 45v; on the military displays, De Rubertis 1938: 253. ⁹⁹ The literature on Venetian ritual is vast, cf. especially Muir 1981 and Casini 1996.

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of its cultural capital with material means, in the form of extraordinary financial contributions to churches.¹⁰⁰ The Interdict conflict also became a battle around ritual—showing that ceremonies which we regard as by definition timeless in fact changed to follow the contingency of politics. With a timing which may well have been chosen for its disruptiveness, the Monitorio appeared at the culmination of the most important period in the Christian calendar, between Easter and Corpus Christi.¹⁰¹ But the Venetian church had its own special understanding of that calendar, punctuated by ritual occasions affirming the state’s unity in the form of ducal processions. Soon after the monitory’s publication, the procession on St Mark’s day (25 April) celebrated the Republic’s special relationship with its patron saint. Later, San Vio (15 June) and the Assumption (15 August) triumphantly commemorated the Republic’s victory over internal and external dangers (respectively, Marin Falier’s conspiracy and Frederick Barbarossa’s attack). In 1606, the Assumption ceremonial became even richer as a new gilded barge for the doge was launched at great expense.¹⁰² Newly elected doge in January, at a time when open conflict with the papacy still seemed remote, Leonardo Donà made little effort when organizing his coronation ceremony, perhaps, as has been suggested, because of his and the Giovani’s dislike for ceremonial pomp. Certainly, he threw little money at the crowd in San Marco square, which caused him to incur some people’s criticism and, given the season, other people’s snowballs.¹⁰³ However, Donà’s behaviour during the crisis shows that he saw the importance of ritual. In open defiance of the Interdict, he made a point of repeatedly appearing at religious services surrounded by foreign ambassadors.¹⁰⁴ The nuncio himself was said to have fallen in disgrace with the pope because in Venice he let himself be seen together with the doge on St Mark’s day. Apparently, the nuncio was reproached precisely because his appearance endorsed before the eyes of the people, and especially (as it was said) the ignoranti, the Republic’s double strategy of interdict denial and of public display of orthodoxy.¹⁰⁵ With few exceptions, diplomatic etiquette and perhaps the foreign ambassadors’ desire for a quiet life worked in the interests of the Republic. ¹⁰⁰ The Senate decreed an extraordinary contribution of 500 ducats to each ecclesiastical institution of Venice and the surrounding Dogado as early as 20.4.1606, ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni Roma ordinaria, f. 28, cc. nn. ¹⁰¹ In 1606 Easter fell on 25 March, so that the Interdict, meant to start on 12 May, was due to interrupt Eastertide just before the festival of Corpus Christi. ¹⁰² Padoan Urban 1967. ¹⁰³ Avviso of 14.1.1606, in BAV, Urb. Lat. 1113, c. 253; Gian Carlo Sivos’ chronicle, in BMV, Cod. Ital. VII.1818 (9436), cc. 87r –v (on this occasion Sivos, who otherwise showed himself favourable to Donà, criticized him). On the Giovani and ceremonial, see Cozzi 1958: 35–6, and Casini 1996: 45–6. ¹⁰⁴ ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Roma, r. 13, cc. 44 (4.5), 91v (26.5), 119v (16.6), 130 (26.6); and Cerimoniali, r. 3, c. 20v (5.5). ¹⁰⁵ Avviso dated 10.5.1606, in BAV, Urb. Lat. 1074, c. 246v; the ambassador of Modena noted the nuncio’s behaviour on 6.5.1606, in ASM, AV, b. 84, cc. nn.

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The government’s focus on ritual was particularly clear at Corpus Christi, which in Venice involved not one, but two processions; one centering on San Marco itself, the other going as far as the eponymous church in the distant parish of Cannaregio, thus binding the whole city together.¹⁰⁶ A powerful symbol of the state’s piety and of the unity of the social body with its head, the eucharist also turned into a sign of defiance to the Interdict. According to medieval statutes, excommunicates were forbidden from even standing outside the church when the host was elevated.¹⁰⁷ Now, the government ordered the host paraded through each of the Republic’s cities, organized the processions with particular solemnity, and went as far as to instruct government representatives to march close to the sacrament.¹⁰⁸ All sources agree in describing the 1606 processions as exceptionally sumptious, ‘the most solemn’ in more than twenty years according to the ambassador of Modena.¹⁰⁹ Should the message not have been sufficiently clear, the pageants elaborated on Venice’s resistance. The anonymous diarist we have already seen recorded, ‘the day of Corpus Christi there was the [usual] procession in San Marco, but with unusual and very large pageants, silvers, and relics, so much that it surpassed memory of all other processions ever carried out on that day.’ As he added, ‘the regular orders and the (secular) clergy took part, though the regulars in no great numbers; the scuole grandi in particular made many beautiful pageants’: what the regular orders lacked, Venice’s lay confraternities supplied with a vengeance. In particular, the diarist recounted several of the scuole’s ‘representations alluding to the reasons of the Republic with the pope’: one showing Christ surrounded by Pharisees, adorned with the meaningful banner Date Caesari quae Caesaris et Deo quae Dei; another representing a falling church being held up by the doge.¹¹⁰ Thus ritual turned into a consistent policy of communication. The Republic’s authorities were very explicit about the message their ceremonies should convey. For example, when attending a sung mass with the French ambassador, the doge lamented the injustice of excluding from the Church’s communion ‘such grand worship of God, so solemn and pious, and attended by so many people’.¹¹¹ As an act of communication, ritual addressed all bystanders, locals and foreigners alike, popular and elite; but through them, it meant to impress political elites and rulers abroad, including the pope. As the emperor’s ambassador told the doge, he wished the pope could see the solemnities, adding ‘and then I would like to see if he would still be prepared to deny that the Most Serene Republic is most ¹⁰⁶ On the significance of ceremonial itineraries, see Trexler 1980. On Corpus Christi in Venice see Muir 1981: 223–30, and Casini 1996: 150–3, 286–7. ¹⁰⁷ Vodola 1986: 55 and 59. ¹⁰⁸ Dispatch to the mainland rettori dated 23.5.1606, in ASV, Coll., Lettere segrete, f. 43, cc. nn. ¹⁰⁹ Dispatch of 22.5.1606, in ASM, AV, b. 84, cc. nn. ¹¹⁰ ASV, Cons. iure, f. 537, cc. 23v –24; cf. Cozzi 1959: 153–4 and Muir 1981: 228–30. ¹¹¹ Report of 4.5.1606, in ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Roma, r. 13, c. 44v.

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religious’.¹¹² Ritual also coupled with other media, prolonging and widening the effects of the ritual message. In reporting to their customers outside Venice, for example, newswriters ensured the long-distance communication which the emperor’s ambassador wished.¹¹³ In terms of communication, ritual was similar to official publication. Both were one-way forms of communication, not meant to make politics the subject of public debate, but to represent a certain idea of the political order for the sake of an audience whose participation the authorities neither asked nor expected. Rituals and official proclamations were not only aimed at responding to the adversary’s challenges, but also at controlling communication as a whole, preventing any other party from speaking their mind. Together, they constituted a communicative act which it would be appropriate to describe as ‘performative’. They affirmed that all went on as usual and that there was no interdict–not an accurate description, but a statement meant to shape reality and to become accurate in the act of being made.¹¹⁴ This, at least, was the government’s hope. In reality, however, like all acts of communication, rituals and official publications occasioned dissent and misunderstanding as well as agreement. The government’s performative statements could not succeed because the government could never hope to control Venice’s aggressive information world.¹¹⁵ Despite the government’s hopes, the Interdict made rituals into a terrain of tension rather than a façade of order. Opponents of the government appropriated ritual forms for their own ends, such as the Jesuits, who tried to turn their forced departure into an occasion for publicly displaying their obedience to the pope. As Galileo Galilei reported, they marched out at night ‘each of them with a cross hanging from their neck and a lit candle in the hand’.¹¹⁶ It is no wonder that, after a brief attempt to prevent the other orders’ departure, the Senate concentrated on taking steps to prevent such occasions from being turned into public means of impressing the faithful. Thus, when ordering the expulsion of disobedient clergy, the Collegio stressed that they should depart without making any fuss (senza strepito) and without staging processions.¹¹⁷ Thus, the government’s claim over ritual collided with the opposite claim of those faithful to the pope. As we shall see, in turn, both claims clashed with the determination of third parties to ¹¹² Audience of 26.5.1606, in ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Roma, r. 13, c. 91v. Some of the other diplomats made much the same comments, e.g. ibid., c. 93v. ¹¹³ Newswriters reported the ceremonies in Venice and Rome throughout the Interdict, see Avvisi of 31.5, 21.6, 2.9 and 11.10.1606, in ASVat, SS, Avvisi, b. 2; and 17.2, 31.3 and 28.4.1607, ibid., b. 3. ¹¹⁴ Austin 1962. ¹¹⁵ Bourdieu 1982. ¹¹⁶ Letter dated 11.5.1606, in Galilei 1964–65, v. 10: 158. ∗ Comitoli, Confvtatione: 11 later pointed out that the clergy’s forced departure was in itself a means of publishing the Interdict. ¹¹⁷ Parte of 12.5.1606, in ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni Roma ordinaria, r. 15, cc. 40 and 45 and dispatch of 15.5.1606, in ASV, Coll., Lettere segrete, f. 43, cc. nn.

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see through the use of rituals—the Jesuits’ departure from Venice, for example, caused some people to cry but others to cheer.¹¹⁸

5 . 3 T H E C I RC U L AT I O N O F M A N U S C R I P TS Far from diminishing the importance of information, Venice’s denial strategy augmented it. Barred from the institutional channels of official publication, the pope’s supporters turned to informal means of communication, insisting that simple knowledge, notitia, of the Interdict was legally binding whether or not the monitory had been officially published.¹¹⁹ The pope himself was said to have argued ‘against those who on the basis of the law maintain that no interdict applies unless it has been posted and published’, that sufficit fama: fame, publicly circulating knowledge was sufficient.¹²⁰ The emphasis on notitia or fama shifted the offensive against Venice from official to unofficial, from institutional publication to informal communication. Eventually, this brought the conflict away from the control of both the Venetian government and the Holy See, into a world of multiple and competing information agents whom the authorities could hope to influence, but never fully to control. Attacked from outside, Venice’s denial strategy was also exposed from the inside by countless leaks making the Republic’s tasks impossible: barring information from entering the state with one hand, preventing it from leaking out of the government with the other; claiming superiority in the face of external challenge, yet finding it difficult even to hide internal divisions. This section concentrates on the written circulation of information—we will move to orality in the next. As the Interdict controversy shows, manuscript was an exceptionally swift and wide-reaching medium, much more so than historians used to think.¹²¹

Between private and public: the circulation of letters Manuscript enabled the pope’s supporters to divulge the Interdict with great effectiveness. As Bellarmino stated, letters by eyewitnesses of the Monitorio’s publication constituted evidence not dubbia, but certissima & chiarissima.¹²² A nun of the convent of San Silvestro in Vicenza was said to have persuaded her fellow nuns ¹¹⁸ Cf. the different reports in: ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Roma, r. 13, c. 65v; Pirri 1959: 156, 185–6; and Signorelli 1994: 348–9. Sarpi later recounted that the Jesuits departed amongst hostile shouts of ‘the people who in Venetian shouted: ‘‘get lost’’ (andé in malora)’, Sarpi 1968: 224. More on the reception of ritual below, pp. 243–4. ¹¹⁹ ∗ Seta, Difesa: 282. This point was made in many Roman pamphlets, e.g.: ∗ Ugolino, Responsiones: 11; ∗ Bellarmino, Risposta al Trattato: 8–11; ∗ Comitoli, Confvtatione: 11; ∗ Guevara, Propugnaculum: 223. ¹²⁰ Avviso of 14.6.1606, in BAV, Urb. Lat. 1074, cc. 305r –v. ¹²¹ Cf. above p. 12. ¹²² ∗ Bellarmino, Risposta al trattato: 11.

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to observe the Interdict by showing them a letter by Cardinal Baronio.¹²³ At the beginning of May, the Jesuit convents of the mainland received letters enjoining them to observe the Interdict and leave the Venetian state; they in turn circulated further copies of those letters ‘transcribed ad verbum’.¹²⁴ In this way, orders formulated in Rome travelled over long distances. The general of the Jesuits transcribed the pope’s instructions in a letter ‘expressly, that there be no interpretations or distinctions’; the letter reached Verona and then continued its travel to Brescia hidden, as it happened, in the hat of a friar sent by the Verona Jesuits.¹²⁵ Before the printing of pamphlets, manuscripts acted as means of select publication, somewhere in between the publicity of commercially traded texts and the privacy of personal papers. There is no doubt that letters were meant to circulate beyond their addressees. The Jesuit Antonio Possevino directed a barrage of letters to patricians, theologians, and various diplomats in Venice and elsewhere, but also forwarded copies to fellow Jesuits, who in turn showed them to small groups of brethren in their convents.¹²⁶ As one of them wrote to Possevino from Ferrara, ‘I read [your letter] with great pleasure, as have all the others who saw it—though not many, because it seemed to me that the matter was not to be published to just anyone.’¹²⁷ These words indicate a form of exclusive and controllable communication, which the pope’s supporters may well have preferred at this stage. Thus, the pope initially considered printing the Jesuits’ accounts of their expulsion, but eventually considered manuscript diffusion sufficient.¹²⁸ Other addressees came from less select social groups, however, including some builders who worked on the Jesuits’ church in Verona, to whom the Jesuits wrote ‘with threatening words’, that ‘soon a different flag would fly’ in that city.¹²⁹ Manuscript interacted with orality as soon as the letters reached the Republic’s urban centres of information. For example, the Vicentino nobleman Emilio Gualdo took a letter by his more famous brother Paolo (then living in Rome) to a pharmacy where it was read by physicians and gentlemen. Reading was deliberately collective; a witness who entered the pharmacy when several people were in the middle of reading the letter, reported that they started again, so that he could hear it all.¹³⁰ And Gualdo also lent his letter to people outside the pharmacy, including the local inquisitor, who then read it to other friars in ¹²³ The letter was dated 31.10.1606, and was forwarded to the Senate by the governors of Vicenza with their dispatch of 22.11.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Vicenza, f. 4, cc. nn. ¹²⁴ Pirri 1959: 112, 154–6 and 168–87. ¹²⁵ Ibid.: 180. ¹²⁶ The letters to Antonio Querini and Piero Duodo are published ibid.: 273–8. Possevino also wrote various letters to the French ambassador Canaye, see the latter’s dispatch to ambassador d’Alincourt in Rome dated 29.4.1606, in Canaye 1636, v. 3: 20–1. A copy of a letter to the doge in ASM, AV, b. 84, cc. nn. (5.8.1606). ¹²⁷ Pirri 1959: 278. Further examples for other orders in Dal Pino 1957–58: 147. ¹²⁸ The Jesuits’ reports are published in Pirri 1959: 89–204; the pope’s intention is recorded in avviso dated 24.5.1606, in BAV, Urb. Lat. 1074, c. 273v. ¹²⁹ Dispatch dated 2.10.1606, in ASV, CX, Deliberazioni criminali, f. 35, cc. nn. ¹³⁰ Interrogation of Claudio Capella, 26.9.1606, in ASV, Cons. iure, b. 3, fasc. 14, cc. nn. On this pharmacy, see also below, p. 190.

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his convent.¹³¹ Publicity made the letters’ specific circumstances, authors and addressees, largely irrelevant. Some of those who heard Gualdo’s letter missed the author’s name and instead ventured their own guess. To this elite public the letter constituted a piece of news like others (in both print and writing) which they also discussed in the pharmacy. Crucially, however, their communication extended beyond the elite, including the other customers of the pharmacy whom the inquiry does not mention. Once written and copied out, letters could be found and read anywhere by almost anybody. In Vicenza, a ragman (strazzarolo) presented to the governors a letter which he claimed to have found lying in a street, and which was addressed to the papal vice-legate of Ferrara.¹³² Similarly, an anonymous text to which we shall return, addressed Ai principi d’Italia, was found in Verona by a humble guard in a street, and also in the city council hall by the man charged with cleaning it. He said that the manuscript had been thrown in through a window which he left open because of the summer heat.¹³³ Large-scale reproduction was also possible, in line with the ‘scribal publication’ practices which we have already seen for relazioni.¹³⁴ Such cases abound during the Interdict, such as a letter found in Vicenza in four identical copies ‘tied together with a string’, addressed to the guardians of four of the city’s convents.¹³⁵ At times the letters’ authors employed the professional assistance of secretaries to multiply copies, which they then signed individually.¹³⁶ Such diffusion makes it difficult to distinguish securely between personal letters and public libels, as with an anonymous letter written from Ancona to an unnamed citizen of Vicenza which was found in many exemplars throughout that city.¹³⁷ Conversely, perhaps inevitably, some letters which initially circulated in manuscript later appeared as printed pamphlets. While this partly fitted in a classic polemical genre, some printed letters bore authentic signs of their manuscript origin (such as the coexistence of different versions—like the Paternoster degli Spagnoli).¹³⁸ Another pamphlet consisted in a letter by the possibly fictional abbot Gregorio Buonaiuti to a Venetian abbess worried about the Interdict.¹³⁹ In this case, fiction was a means of appealing to a real ¹³¹ Interrogation of Valerio Barbaran, 26.9.1606, ibid. ¹³² Denunciation by Francesco Rossi, 16.8.1606, enclosed in the trial of August 1606, in ASV, Cons. iure, b. 3, fasc. nn. (26), cc. nn. ¹³³ Deposition of Antonio Bozza, 6.7.1606, in ASV, Cons. iure, f. 3, fasc. 19, cc. nn.; on this cf. below, p. 197. ¹³⁴ See above, section 2.2. ¹³⁵ Interrogation of Sebastian Tovaia, 12.11.1606, in ASV, Cons. iure, b. 3, fasc. nn. (12) cc. nn. Similar instances in Padua and Vicenza (where the governors found five identical copies of a letter sent from Milan to the Dominicans of their city), in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Padova, f. 3, cc. nn. (30.4.1606), and Sen., Dispacci Vicenza, f. 4, cc. nn. (23.6.1606). ¹³⁶ The governors of Padua seized three such letters, dispatch of 28.5.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Padova, f. 3, cc. nn. ¹³⁷ Original letter enclosed in the trial of August 1606, in ASV, Cons. iure, b. 3, cc. nn. ¹³⁸ This is the case of ∗ G. A. Bovio, Lettera, addressed to the Carmelite prior of Milan: a different version was addressed to the prior of Crema (Possanzini 1970: 115–17). ¹³⁹ ∗ Buonaiuti [pseud.?], Lettera.

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public, as the governors of Brescia discovered that Buonaiuti’s letter was indeed read in one of the convents of that city. In turn, the letter insisted on the publicity of its message, describing itself in the title as useful not just to the abbess but to all clergy ‘if they want to be saved’.¹⁴⁰ Aware of this strategy, the government tried to censor all mail coming from Rome. The Collegio issued decrees for this purpose to the various middlemen involved in the mail delivery that they should hand letters over to government representatives, without opening them.¹⁴¹ Mail censorship, however, was hardly effective. True, by July the patriarch of Aquileia systematically handed over to the authorities all the letters he received from Cardinal Borghese; but he received them nonetheless.¹⁴² In September, an anonymous denunciation warned that hostile letters still reached Vicenza from Rome ‘with every post’, and the podestà of Chioggia (the last post before Venice) still repeatedly intercepted letters throughout the autumn.¹⁴³ The rettori of Vicenza discovered the practical difficulties of mail censorship when trying some of the town’s postmen. A postman, accused of having delivered forbidden letters, defended himself saying that he had presented one of the letters to the rettori’s control, but could not have guessed that in the same parcel lay disguised four more of different contents: ‘I had no fancy of that, could not imagine it, it was a mistake’.¹⁴⁴ As a courier explained, the economics of the mail system also made the authorities’ control difficult. Since postage was paid at delivery as well as posting, postmen refused to pay the couriers coming from Rome, because they were uncertain whether they would be able to deliver the letters. For the governors, the embarassing result was that they had to pay for the letters they intended to confiscate.¹⁴⁵ For everyone else (as another courier returning from Rome explained), it simply meant turning to non-Venetian couriers, unlikely to abide with the government’s regulations.¹⁴⁶

Leaks: secret documents or public texts? The government’s effort at maintaining secrecy clashed with the nature of the political system, where different elements worked inside the government but ¹⁴⁰ Dispatch dated 28.2.1607, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Brescia, f. 5, cc. nn. ¹⁴¹ Dispatch of 16.6 and proclamation of 26.6.1606, in ASV, Coll., Lettere segrete, f. 43, cc. nn. ¹⁴² Trebbi 1984: 421 and Trebbi 1986b. ¹⁴³ Denunciation enclosed in the parte of 23.9.1606, in ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni Roma ordinaria, f. 29, cc. nn. For Chioggia, see dispatch dated 18.9.1606, in ASV, Coll., Lettere segrete, f. 43, cc. nn., and Preto 1994a: 296–7. ¹⁴⁴ Interrogation of Sebastian Tovaia, 12.11.1606, in ASV, Cons. iure, b. 3, fasc. nn. (12) cc. nn. A young friar arrested for bringing letters to the convent of San Francesco in Padua claimed to be illiterate and therefore incapable of knowing the contents of his delivery, see dispatch dated 30.4.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Padova, f. 3, cc. nn. ¹⁴⁵ Interrogation of Bastian Turco (agent of the portalettere Donà Veraldo), 19.5.1606, in the trial against the ‘portalettere’, in ASV, Cons. iure, b. 3, fasc. nn. (20), cc. nn. On the post’s payment mechanisms, Caizzi 1993: 57–9. ¹⁴⁶ Report dated 31.5.1606, in ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Roma, r. 13, c. 105.

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also nourished ties outside it. To organize its defence, the Republic too involved outsiders as informers or counsellors, at first unofficially. Sarpi himself can be quoted as an example. No professional politician, he was famous for his scholarship and had numerous acquaintances in the patriciate; as his biographer recounted, it was on that basis that ‘some leading senators who had for some time been familiar with him, began to speak to him about this controversy’. Only later, did Sarpi’s informal network turn into a formal connection, as his patrician friends got the government to accost Sarpi through ‘public communication’.¹⁴⁷ Once again, Micanzio’s use of the word comunicazione is technical, indicating the official and restricted transfer of information. Yet, the manner of Sarpi’s hiring shows how frail the boundaries surrounding governmental communication were. Inevitably, the involvement of external advisors, each with their own networks of contacts, resulted in the further dispersal of information—as the government realized when it repeatedly forbade counsellors from circulating copies of their writings.¹⁴⁸ Sarpi was approached by a correspondent asking for a copy of his secret briefs. Although he refused, his reply reveals that he had himself in the past benefited from that person’s provision of manuscript texts.¹⁴⁹ And we know that other official advisors were less careful.¹⁵⁰ Above all, divisions inside the government occasioned disclosures. There is no doubt that debate ran high inside the patriciate, although Venetian histories of the controversy obliterated almost all traces of internal disagreements.¹⁵¹ All other accounts described the patriciate as divided between those who opposed compromise, those who were ready to make concessions, and those who were openly favourable to the pope. The pro-papal Giuseppe Malatesta substantiated his claim with lengthy transcripts of conflicting speeches delivered in the Senate.¹⁵² Like him, all the foreign diplomats who reported divisions in the governing councils (including shifts in voting majorities), based their accounts on evidence disclosed at the time of the controversy itself.¹⁵³ We have already seen that patricians frequently leaked information discussed behind closed doors as part of their political activity. The conflict made the circulation of renghe even likelier, and also more significant to outsiders; many transcripts and summaries ¹⁴⁷ Micanzio 1974: 1329–30. Sarpi was close to many in the ‘Giovani’ well before the Interdict, see Cozzi 1958: 56–7 and 1959: 83–5. On Sarpi’s early life see Amerio 1950, Cozzi in Sarpi 1969: 3–37, Frajese 1994: chs. 2–4; on his early renown, Ulianich 1961: xiii–xviii, and Cozzi 1979a: 235–50. ¹⁴⁸ Dispatch of 20.3.1606, in ASV, Coll., Lettere segrete, f. 43, cc. nn. Only in September were these consulti eventually printed, together with the other pamphlets, see below, p. 213. ¹⁴⁹ ASV, Cons. iure, f. 136, c. 144, cf. de Vivo 2005: 40. ¹⁵⁰ See below, p. 190. ¹⁵¹ Cf. Cozzi 1958: 106–7n. Morosini’s official history mentioned only two short speeches dating from the beginning of 1607, by Leonardo Donà and Giovanni Bembo, Morosini 1719–20, v. 3: 372–3. ¹⁵² BNM, Ms. 9629, c. 20. ¹⁵³ Dispatches of the ambassador of Savoy (2.5.1606, in de Magistris 1906: 50), Mantua (20.5.1606, in Putelli 1911, v. 22: 55 and n.), Modena (15 and 22.4, and 10.6.1606, in ASM, AV, b. 84, cc. nn.), and France (14.6.1606, in Canaye 1636, v. 3: 72.)

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found their way to newswriters and later to historians such as Malatesta.¹⁵⁴ Some, both authentic and false, were eventually printed anonymously or under pseudonyms.¹⁵⁵ The transcripts of Roman cardinals’ speeches also circulated, in particular those held in the consistory where the interdict was first announced.¹⁵⁶ On both sides, speeches originally meant to canvas support in government, had unforeseeable consequences when attaining a greater public; like other forms of publication, they could turn against the person or group from which they originated.¹⁵⁷ But the leaks harmed Venice above all. On the one hand, they were likely to discourage supporters by making a mockery of the Republic’s strategy of denial. On the other, they boosted opponents by disproving the supposed unity of the patriciate and signalling the existence of a group favourable to the pope.¹⁵⁸ In the end, Venice’s republican rhetoric of harmony was the first to suffer. While for example the doge pleaded for resistance to the pope as a matter of ‘public liberty’, a widely circulating speech by senator Angelo Badoer responded that it was as bad to have questo nome di libertà too often on one’s lips as even the best food in one’s mouth. Instead, he reminded his colleagues that Venice had little actual military strength.¹⁵⁹ At times, one of the actors in the conflict actively engineered a leak to put pressure on the others. Then as today, governments needed indirect means of communication for information which they preferred not to publish officially. At the time, this amounted to reversing the relation between secrecy and publicity. What was initially kept secret in order not to upset the public, was made public in order to influence the conduct of negotiators who were supposed to work in secret. As in the case of supposedly private letters, many documents which we now regard as official and secret were meant for public use in the first place. In fact, the frequency of leaks means that the very distinction between secret and public is at least partly misconceived. An apt example during the Interdict crisis involved two letters by no less than the king of Spain to the pope. The Spanish ambassador in Rome delivered ¹⁵⁴ e.g. ‘Sententia di un Clarissimo Senatore esposta in Pregadi sopra le contentioni prese contra la Chiesa’, to be found in many copies both in Venice and elsewhere (e.g.: ASV, MADM, b. 74–78, cc. nn.; ASVat, FB, I.924, cc. 4–10; BMV, Cod. Ital. VII.2632 (12817); BNF, Ms. Français 16073, cc. 330–2; BNM, Ms. 2156 (i–107), cc. 39v –48v). The ‘Sententia’ was also advertised in the avviso of 21.6.1606, in ASVat, SS, Avvisi, b. 2, c. 166. ¹⁵⁵ ∗ Opinions et raisons d’Estat; ∗ [Possevino], Risposta di Paolo Anafesto. ¹⁵⁶ ‘Votum illustrissimi Cardinalis Veronae habitum in Concistorio die 25 Aprilis 1606’, ASV, MADM, b. 51, fasc. 2. Other copies of the consistory in ASV, Cons. iure, f. 6, cc. nn. (amongst Sarpi’s papers), and a different version in Romanin 1857–61, v. 7: 561–8. ¹⁵⁷ See for example below, p. 228, Baronio’s leaked Votum. ¹⁵⁸ This was the meaning which the nuncio in France attached to the leaked renghe, dispatch dated 27.6.1606, in ASVat, SS, NF, b. 50, c. 139. ¹⁵⁹ Entry dated 3.7.1606, chronological register in ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Principi, f. 16, cc. nn. Angelo Badoer’s reply in de Magistris 1941: 326 and 331–2. A different version in ASV, MADM, b. 41, fasc. 9.

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the originals, but several information professionals circulated copies both in the original Spanish and in specially made translations. Philip III’s first letter, written in April just before the Interdict’s thundering, skilfully evaded Paul V’s request that Spain support the papacy against the Venetians; the second instead promised total support in case of war at the height of the hostilities. The letters’ contents is poor evidence of an evolution in foreign policy—their importance can be gauged by concentrating on their disclosure. The leaking of the first letter to the Council of Ten by an anonymous member of the Spanish ambassador’s household, was perhaps intended to stimulate sympathy in the government at a time when Spanish diplomats were working towards a compromise.¹⁶⁰ Having failed there, the second letter may have been meant to put pressure on Venice by publicizing the king’s intention to support the pope—a way of acting on the government by means of the political arena.¹⁶¹ In turn, those who materially leaked the letter had different motives. A Neapolitan aristocrat who assured the Venetians that the second letter was empty boast, may have tried to obtain favour from Venice or else was inspired by the Viceroy.¹⁶² By contrast, a Venetian general warned that the Spanish were serious, perhaps in order to obtain a better contract for himself.¹⁶³ Finally, bishop Bollani passed a copy of the letter to the Collegio in concert with the pro-papal Giacomo Corner in order to lend support to the patricians favourable to peace.¹⁶⁴ In the highly literate world described in previous chapters, leaked documents circulated freely whatever their immediate source, in summaries or slightly different versions alongside a variety of other texts. A Benedictine friar arrested in Chioggia on his way back from Palermo (where he said he studied), carried a copy of the king’s letter in his bag, together with some devotional books as well as books of chemical secrets. He said that he had been given the letter by a clerk of the Venetian representation in Naples, but added that ‘similar to these there were countless other copies’.¹⁶⁵ A weekly newsletter reported in full a version of the king’s second letter in Spanish; the sense was the same, but the words were not.¹⁶⁶ So leaks worked as a mode of publication, but were more adaptable to evolving negotiations than official statements, not least because they could be disavowed when necessary. When later in the controversy Spain tried to regain a ¹⁶⁰ Comunicazione of 2.6.1606, in ASV, Coll., Comunicate del CX, f. 3, c. 499. ¹⁶¹ Spanish text in ASV, Coll., Comunicate del CX, f. 3, c. 464; an Italian version in Cornet 1859: 285. ¹⁶² Dispatch of the Venetian agent in Naples dated 18.7.1606, in ASV, CCX, Dispacci ambasciatori e residenti, b. 19, cc. nn. Another copy was presented by Fabrizio de Sangro duke of Vietri, cf. audience of 13.11.1606, in ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Roma, r. 14, cc. 72v –76v. ¹⁶³ Dispatch by Proveditor General Benetto Moro of 14.7.1606, ASV, Coll., Comunicate del CX, f. 3, cc. 474–6. ¹⁶⁴ ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Roma, r. 13, c. 151 (12.7.1606); on Bollani, see DBI, s.v. and above, p. 74, n. 167. ¹⁶⁵ Interrogation of Innocenzo Carnevali, 7.8.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Chioggia, f. 1, cc. nn. ¹⁶⁶ Avviso of 8.7.1606, in BAV, Urb. Lat. 1074, c. 349; news of this letter were given also in the avviso of 5.7.1606, in ASVat, SS, Avvisi, b. 2, cc. 179v –181.

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mediating role, word was conveniently spread that the text of the king’s letters had been manipulated so as to look more forceful than the king had intended.¹⁶⁷ Leaks show the sophistication of early modern politics. The modern notion of ‘pseudo-events’ can be useful: ‘information planted for the immediate purpose of being reported’, reports meant to occasion events rather than events followed by reports.¹⁶⁸ Experienced members of the political arena knew that a degree of ‘show’ was part of foreign policy itself, an instrument to be employed in the resolution of conflict. At the beginning of the Interdict, when the troops bound North towards Flanders were due to pass through Milan, cardinal Borghese asked that the Spanish governor there pretend that they were about to turn towards the Venetian borders, in order to put pressure on the Republic.¹⁶⁹ For the opposite reason, the duke of Savoy instructed his ambassador in Madrid to ask the Spanish secretary of state not to show ‘openly’ (alla scoperta) support for the pope—support there might be, but it ought to be hidden or it would draw other countries to turn to Venice’s side.¹⁷⁰ Whatever the ‘show’ involved in planting pseudo-information, however, that information caused real events. The Venetian general passing Philip III’s letter to his superiors perhaps only wanted a higher salary, but he prompted the Republic’s commander in chief to move his troops onto the borders with Milan.¹⁷¹

Manuscript newssheets: information, censorship, and spin Attacked by the pope’s supporters and exposed by internal disclosures, the Republic’s secretiveness over the interdict also collided with the skill of Venice’s professional newswriters.¹⁷² They and the elites who could afford their newssheets must have thought the strategy of denial was a deluded fantasy. All Roman avvisi unhesitatingly publicized the interdict, describing in great detail the publication of the Monitorio and going out of their way to summarize it and explain the behaviour that the faithful must adopt in the circumstances.¹⁷³ One went as far as to say that the Monitorio had been successfully published in the Republic’s territories.¹⁷⁴ Thus, different levels of political communication blurred, as informal manuscript information fused together with official publication to Venice’s disadvantage. ¹⁶⁷ This was the doge’s position when the English ambassador tried to persuade him to disregard Spain’s diplomatic overtures, audience of 16.10.1606, ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Roma, r. 14, c. 47. ¹⁶⁸ Boorstin 1963: 22–5 and (on leaks) 40–5. ¹⁶⁹ Letter dated 19.5.1606 to the papal nuncio in Spain, published in de Magistris 1941: 113–14. ¹⁷⁰ Letter dated 24.4.1606, published in de Magistris 1906: 34–6. ¹⁷¹ ASV, Coll., Comunicate del CX, f. 3, c. 476 (see above, n. 163). ¹⁷² See section 2.4 above. ¹⁷³ Roman avvisi dated 19.4.1606, in BAV, Urb. Lat. 1074, c. 209v and ASVat, SS, Avvisi, b. 2, cc. 103v –104; 22.4.1606, in ASVat, SS, Avvisi, b. 2, cc. 105v –106; and 21.6.1606, ibid., c. 164. ¹⁷⁴ Avviso dated 29.4.1606, ibid., cc. 109v –110.

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There was little the newswriters did not comment upon, from the diplomatic negotiations to the Senate’s divisions—‘in two factions’, as one unhesitatingly put it.¹⁷⁵ Whatever the secretiveness of diplomacy, diplomats made the object of constant reports. At the end of March 1606 newswriters in Rome announced the long-overdue arrival of the Venetian ambassador extraordinary Piero Duodo as a sign that the conflict might after all be resolved.¹⁷⁶ To some extent, ambassadors themselves sought this kind of publicity through conspicuous public acts; for example, Duodo went to the pope’s audience with a large retinue of almost fifty carriages, no doubt in an attempt to make a point of his mission’s resoluteness.¹⁷⁷ However, the reports were not all positive. Whatever ambassadors hoped, one newswriter noted, they left the pope’s audience ‘all red and vexed’.¹⁷⁸ Analysis of different series of newsletters during the controversy shows that they varied substantially in both slant and content.¹⁷⁹ During the negotiations, for example, a Roman newswriter dismissed Venice’s ‘little games’ (arcigogoli et inventioni), and added that the Republic should submit to the pope’s injunctions.¹⁸⁰ Another one made a sneer at Venice’s ‘follies’ (pazzie).¹⁸¹ Venetian newswriters, in contrast, thought it was the pope who must make some concession in order to ‘find a balanced agreement to the Republic’s satisfaction’.¹⁸² Like the authorities in their respective countries, newswriters in Venice and Rome placed responsibility at the door of the adversary. Later, when war became a realistic threat, avvisi on both sides reported on the movement of troops, but again, in different ways. In Rome, for example, one levelled the Venetian armies down to the arrogance of bravi, the arrogant louts brandished as an embodiment of shame, only then to add that ‘they boast like bravi because they are afraid’.¹⁸³ Mostly, the newswriters’ polemical strategy consisted in drawing general criticisms from particular events, in often colourful ways. According to several Roman newswriters, for example, the ageing Venetian cardinal of Verona died of a broken heart because of the ‘madness of his motherland’.¹⁸⁴ Another ¹⁷⁵ Avviso dated 12.4.1606, in ASVat, SS, Avvisi, b. 2, c. 98; also avvisi of 31.5 and 5.7.1606, in BAV, Urb. Lat. 1074, cc. 282v and 343v. ¹⁷⁶ Avvisi dated 22 and 29.3.1606, in ASVat, SS, Avvisi, b. 2, cc. 77v and 84r –v, and in BAV, Urb. Lat. 1074, c. 176v. Similar news in the Venetian avviso dated 1.4.1606, in ASV, IS, b. 704, fasc. 2, cc. nn. ¹⁷⁷ Avviso in ASVat, SS, Avvisi, b. 2, c. 84. ¹⁷⁸ Avviso of 1.4.1606, in BAV, Urb. Lat. 1074, c. 179, and also 29.3.1606, ibid., c. 176. ¹⁷⁹ I have analysed three different collections of avvisi written between January 1606 and May 1607, originating from different newswriters and meant for customers on both sides of the controversy: the Roman chancery (ASVat, SS, Avvisi, bb. 2 and 3); the duke of Urbino (BAV, Urb. Lat. 1074 and 1075); and the Venetian Inquisitors of State (separate file in ASV, IS, b. 704, fasc. 2; cf. below, pp. 185–6). ¹⁸⁰ Avviso dated 29.3.1606, in BAV, Urb. Lat. 1074, c. 177. ¹⁸¹ Avviso dated 22.4.1606, ibid., c. 213. ¹⁸² Avviso dated 8.4.1606, in ASV, IS, b. 704, fasc. 2, cc. nn. ¹⁸³ Avviso dated 19.7.1606, in BAV, Urb. Lat. 1074, cc. 343v –44; also avviso dated 22.7.1606, in ASV, IS, b. 704, fasc. 2, cc. nn. On bravi and shame, see Walker 1998b. ¹⁸⁴ Avvisi dated 24.5.1606, in ASVat, SS, Avvisi, b. 2, c. 136 and BAV, Urb. Lat. 1074, c. 276.

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one reported that, on hearing news of the Jesuits’ departure from the Republic, a member of the powerful Martinengo family had been struck dead.¹⁸⁵ By contrast, according to an avviso in the personal papers of the doge, it was the pope who feared for his life: his symptoms were described at length to indicate that he had lost health over the matter.¹⁸⁶ The fact that different series of avvisi regularly contradicted each other in partisan ways confirms that—as we saw in Chapter 2—they cannot be seen purely as a means of information. They were instruments in the conflict and, like pamphlets, were meant to impress readers and insult adversaries. The contents of printed pamphlets and avvisi occasionally coincided. When, later in the controversy, pamphlets appeared, avvisi summarized their contents much like book reviews today: ‘a small volume [in] response to two anonymous pamphlets of evil doctrine against the pope’s excommunication’;¹⁸⁷ ‘a work as appreciated as it was expected . . . full of the doctrine of the Father, canons, and councils, rendered in the most beautiful style, marvellous order, and singular disposition’.¹⁸⁸ By contrast, no Venetian avvisi mentioned pamphlets, perhaps a reflection of the government’s distance from printed publication. Such coincidences suggests that one cannot simply speak of the ‘amplification’ from manuscript into print; the other way round was equally possible, making it better to focus on the creative interactions between different media.¹⁸⁹ Like printed texts, avvisi underwent a degree of censorship, to which newswriters referred explicitly on both sides. As one put it in Venice, he had to limit himself to the ‘substance of things that can lawfully be put in writing’.¹⁹⁰ In Venice the Interdict controversy may well have been a turning point in the government’s supervision of manuscript information. If, as we have seen, the authorities tried to prohibit newswriting in the late sixteenth century, later they may have realized that they had to curb what they could not suppress. The Inquisitors of State began collecting avvisi in 1606, a sign that the conflict heightened their attention. Furthermore, the file relating to Venetian avvisi in their archive is unique in being a compilation by the same hand (probably one of the Inquisitors’ secretaries), rather than an aggregate of different sheets.¹⁹¹ ¹⁸⁵ Avviso dated 24.5.1606 in ASVat, SS, Avvisi, b. 2, c. 135. ¹⁸⁶ Avviso dated 19.5.1606, in MCV, Ms. Donà 216, cc. 99r –v. ¹⁸⁷ Avviso dated 26.7.1606, in ASVat, SS, Avvisi, b. 2, c. 202, referring to ∗ Bellarmino, Risposta a dve libretti. ¹⁸⁸ Avviso dated 23.8.1606, ibid., c. 219, referring to ∗ Colonna, Sententia. More in avvisi of 19, 22, 26.7, 9, 26, 23.8, and 23.9.1606 in ASVat, SS, Avvisi, b. 2; and 22 and 29.7, and 19.8 in BAV, Urb. Lat. 1074. ¹⁸⁹ Cf. Darnton 1996: 188–91. ¹⁹⁰ Avviso dated 29.4.1606, in ASV, IS, b. 704, fasc. 2, cc. nn. In Rome too several avvisi contained references to censorship regarding the controversy, e.g. avviso dated 9.8.1606, in ASVat, SS, Avvisi, b. 2, c. 215. ¹⁹¹ ASV, IS, b. 704, fasc. 2.

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Clearly, the government was exceptionally interested in the newssheets’ contents both in Venice and on the mainland.¹⁹² Further evidence comes from an undated order (which it is possible to date to these years from other documents in the same file), commanding newswriters that ‘every week they must bring to the tribunal a copy of the avvisi which they are to send, which are to be transcribed in two copies, but only once read and if necessary corrected: one copy to be handed back to the person who has presented the avviso, the other retained by the tribunal; and none of these writers may add anything to the text of these copies’.¹⁹³ Indirect evidence of the Inquisitors’ power over avvisi, comes from an anonymous informer who contacted them in 1606. He had no doubt that they could have any piece of news inserted in the avvisi and suggested that, were the Inquisitors to accept his offer, they signal it by having newswriters include a special line in their sheets (as it happens, concerning a visit by the duke of Norfolk to Venice).¹⁹⁴ Thus, sixty years before English government officials operated a manuscript news service for a privileged audience of government representatives and foreign diplomats, the Venetian government moved towards the informal provision of news.¹⁹⁵ Censorship, however, could hardly be complete. Although it could and did result in much disinformation, it could never stop all information. Venice’s Inquisitors of State only ever controlled those newswriters whom they knew about, and obviously all the Venetian avvisi now in Roman collections escaped them. For these newswriters allegiance to customers who often coincided with social patrons, was greater than fear of the censors. In this situation, the government’s denial strategy was doomed to failure. Soon after the publication of the Monitorio in Rome, a newswriter favourable to Venice seemed to point out just that to the Inquisitors of State. It is clear that to be silent and to pretend ignorance of the Alterations of Rome would be a way of showing oneself inexperienced of the court and the squares (la Corte et le Piazze); however it is also clear that to give detailed information about them would be misunderstood and badly received. So, to avoid both dangers, we shall refer to the public voice and knowledge.¹⁹⁶

This avviso, submitted to the Inquisitors, confined itself to the ambiguous line they exacted. However, the newswriter also made it clear that ignorance was not an option for those who had any experience of la Corte et le Piazze, the world of informal political communication both inside and outside the circles of power. By insisting on censorship and refusing to embrace a positive line of defence ¹⁹² Mainland governors intercepted newssheets and sent them to the Inquisitors, e.g. dispatch from Bergamo of 30.8.1606, in ASV, IS, b. 216, c. 9. ¹⁹³ Undated parte in ASV, IS, b. 522, cc. nn., partly quoted in Infelise 2002a: 157–9. Some newswriters were tried in this period, but we lack the enquiries’ records (mentioned in ASV, IS, b. 201, fasc. 1, cc. nn., records 11.5.1604, 30.1 and 21.11.1609). ¹⁹⁴ Anonymous letter dated 28.8.1606, in ASV, Coll., Comunicate CX, f. 3 (1604–07), c. 442. ¹⁹⁵ Cf. Muddiman 1923. ¹⁹⁶ Avviso dated 22.4.1606, in ASV, IS, b. 704, fasc. 2, cc. nn.

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against the pope, Venice’s government was making a mistake which no newswriter or worldly curioso would make.

5 . 4 T H E E X P LO S I O N O F C O M M U N I C AT I O N As newswriters knew, orality dominated la corte e le piazze, to escape all forms of control. Given the rich possibilities for political communication in Venice, the diffusion of controversial information by whatever means was bound to prompt a great deal of discussion. In spite of the Republic’s secrecy, all witnesses were struck by the amount of talking concerning the conflict both ‘in private circles’ and ‘in the piazze’, as senator Antonio Querini later recounted underlining the enlargement of communication to the political arena and the rest of the city.¹⁹⁷ Two letters by the English ambassador illustrate that enlargement. Before the interdict he wrote home about the speculations of restricted ‘kinds of men’, not necessarily all patricians, but cognoscenti (‘politiques’, ‘canonists’, and ‘divines’). Four months later, however, he said that all the city was ‘full of noyse’.¹⁹⁸ The Tuscan ambassador similarly despaired at ‘the strange rumours which it is common to hear about the conflict with the pope from every kind of people.’¹⁹⁹ As the controversy progressed, more and more people expressed their views, not just in private but in public, through a host of different means, some as volatile as rumours, others more graphically shocking as graffiti or posted cartelli. Before becoming a war of printed pamphlets, the Interdict was a war of words, both written and spoken.

Sermons Naturally, the clergy favourable to the Interdict turned to sermons as longresearched weapons of persuasion, mixing politics and religion in a way which was common to the pulpits of the time.²⁰⁰ At times of open confrontation between the secular authorities and the Church, the results could be inflammatory, as the wars of religion proved—a parallel which the Venetian authorities soon drew.²⁰¹ In January a friar in Feltre was denounced for preaching about the impending quarrel with Rome: ‘may God send a war to Italy, so that Padua, Vicenza and Verona would rebel, because they have enough of living under the tyranny of these lords, they cannot bear it anymore’.²⁰² In June ¹⁹⁷ Querini, ‘Historia dell’escomunica’, in de Magistris 1941: 263, 280, 293. ¹⁹⁸ Letters dated 17.2.1606, in Wotton 1907, v. 1: 341, and 16.6.1606, in NA, SP 99/3, c. 98. ¹⁹⁹ Letter dated 6.5.1606, in De Rubertis 1933: 38n. ²⁰⁰ On preaching, see Rusconi 1981 and Niccoli 1979. ²⁰¹ Audience of 13.5.1606, in ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Roma, r. 13, cc. 71–2. ²⁰² Dispatch of the podestà of Feltre dated 25.1.1606, in ASV, Coll., Comunicate del CX, f. 3, cc. 651–2.

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a priest near Verona was said to have told his flock that the doge was a Calvinist heretic and, somewhat paradoxically, that Venice sought ‘a Greek pope’.²⁰³ A month later, a priest near Padua was accused of preaching that God would destroy the Republic.²⁰⁴ Even further outside Venice’s territories, the government feared that priests would ‘preach the crusade around the world’.²⁰⁵ The pope’s supporters coupled formal sermons with semi-private addresses to reach as many people as possible. A priest who, in compliance with the government, regularly said mass in his church, was said to speak frequently in favour of the pope outside it.²⁰⁶ Before leaving Venice, the Jesuits went about the Merceria area ‘two by two’, urging bystanders to observe the interdict and obey the pope. Those whom they persuaded then apparently turned to the persuasion of others.²⁰⁷ Conversely, a Jesuit lamented in August about a friar of Brescia who preached against the pope both on the pulpit and in shops.²⁰⁸ The conflict clearly evaded both council halls and churches to permeate urban space. The Republic tried to halt unfavourable sermons as early as January 1606, when the Ten prohibited preachers to ‘say even a word touching the interest of our state and the government of the Republic’.²⁰⁹ At the end of May the Senate elected lay supervisors of convents to ensure that no friar ‘scandalise simple people’ ‘whether with words or acts’.²¹⁰ Later—at the same time as it began licensing pamphlets—the government also tried to implement a proactive strategy, aware that, as in an anonymous piece of advice preserved amongst the doge’s personal papers, sermons were a means of keeping the people ‘obedient and well-behaved’.²¹¹ In September governors chose ‘devoted’ preachers and instructed them explicitly to ‘educate people not only concerning the Gospel and the Holy Catholic Doctrine, but also about their obligation to obey the commands of their sovereign, and about the justice of the cause which [the Republic] has entered into for the people’s own benefit’. The Senate devoted special funds for ²⁰³ Denunciation enclosed in dispatch of 30.5.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Verona, f. nn. (1606), cc. nn. ²⁰⁴ Denunciation by Pellegrino Schiaousal against father Nicolò Lippi of Castelbaldo, enclosed in dispatch dated 28.7.1606, in ASV, Coll., Lettere segrete, f. 43, cc. nn. ²⁰⁵ Anonymous diary in ASV, Cons. iure, f. 537, c. 6v, and the doge’s complaint in audience of 2.6.1606, in ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Roma, r. 13, cc. 110–11; cf. Putelli 1911, v. 22: 145–8 and 153–63. ²⁰⁶ Denunciation dated 18.1.1607, in ASV, Cons. iure, b. 3, fasc. 3, cc. nn. ²⁰⁷ Report presented on 10.5.1606, in ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Roma, r. 13, c. 65v, and anonymous diarist in ASV, Cons. iure, f. 537, c. 7v. ²⁰⁸ Letter dated 12.8.1606, in Pirri 1959: 280. Other cases of pro-Venetian preaching are quoted ibid.: 223, and in de Magistris 1906: 180. ²⁰⁹ Parte dated 23.1.1606, in Cornet 1873, v. 5: 51. ²¹⁰ Parte dated 24.5.1606, in ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni Roma ordinaria, r. 15, c. 49. ²¹¹ Anonymous ‘Aviso di stato per unione de Regolari nella Provintia di Venetia’, in MCV, Ms. Donà 216, c. 299.

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the preachers’ reward, drawn from the Jesuits’ seized properties; for the rest of the controversy, loyal preachers offered their services and were rewarded accordingly.²¹² The impact of preachers trained to exert a strong emotional appeal must have been great. A denunciation against a Dominican friar gives some sense of his sermons’ rhetorical accuracy, cleverly mixing simple repetitions and tangible signs. ‘Venice—the friar was said to have declaimed—humble yourself: humble yourself! for if you don’t, you will see: you will see soon enough the great scourge that is to come upon you’. Then, pointing to the bad weather hitting the mainland, he continued: ‘you see such tempest, such storms on Vicenza’s lands, Verona’s, Brescia’s: they are signs of the wrath of God’. Evoked in this way, divine punishment was not a latent threat, but was made to feel immediate, ready to descend on the audience. Unsurprisingly, the preacher was said to have ‘frightened everyone’.²¹³ Other people, however, were far from convinced. In Brescia, a contemporary diary recorded acts of derision at local preachers favourable to the Republic: somebody fired woodsticks in church to disturb the sermon, while two puppets resembling the preacher were found made out of mud and dung.²¹⁴ In Venice, in February 1607, a parish priest was arrested for criticizing ‘in the public street’ a friar’s sermon in favour of Venice; he was said to have caused a riot.²¹⁵ Just as they were meant to provoke strong emotions, sermons also prompted further discussions which they could not then control. We can only guess the bewilderment likely to arise at the contradictory statements of opposed preachers speaking from their pulpits and yet all ideally bringing God’s word to their flocks. In effect, while the parties wished to monopolize communication, all they could do was to occasion further communication. Few sources tell us about the audiences of preachers, yet it is vital to remember that there was no sermon without an audience, and that the reception of those as of other words was always unforeseeable.

News and rumours In the spatially tight and socially mixed urban context described earlier in this book, the talk of insiders easily spilled to outsiders at all social levels. The French ambassador complained that some patricians spoke against the pope in public, en pleine place.²¹⁶ At a time of controversial and divisive events, many places turned ²¹² Dispatch dated 9.9.1606, in ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni Roma ordinaria, r. 15, c. 127; evidence of the preachers’ compliance and subsequent reward in: dispatch dated 9.9.1606, in ASV, Coll., Lettere segrete, f. 43, cc. nn.; document dated 11.12.1606 in Cornet 1873, v. 5: 280; dispatch of 16.6.1607 in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Padova, f. 4, cc. nn. ²¹³ Undated denunciation by Giovanni Marsilio, in ASV, Cons. iure, f. 5, fasc. 4, cc. nn. ²¹⁴ G. Bianchi’s chronicle, in Guerrini 1930: 68. ²¹⁵ Parte dated 5.3.1607, in ASV, CX, Deliberazioni criminali, f. 36, cc. nn. ²¹⁶ Dispatch dated 19.4.1606, in Canaye 1636, v. 3: 8.

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into arenas for discussion. During their lectures in Padua, for example, two jurists who wrote secret briefs for the Republic orally expounded their arguments in spite of the fact that, as a colleague remarked, ‘the matter was for princes not for lecture-halls’. The point is not just that the jurists disregarded their duty of secrecy; but that their disclosures occasioned further communication. As was natural in an institution where disputation was part of the curriculum, one of the students stood up during the lecture to criticize the professor’s opinions as heretical. Fuelled by ideological disputes as much as academic jealousies, the university may well have been systematically turned into a stage for vocally discussing the controversy.²¹⁷ The same applied to the cloisters of convents, structured communities where personal disputes coupled with factional loyalties. In the convent of San Giuseppe in Brescia, when two friars fell out over the Interdict, one described the other as being a native of the Venetian town of Orzi ‘as for his nation, but a Spaniard as for his faction’.²¹⁸ A Franciscan of San Francesco della Vigna in Venice assured the Ten that his brethren discussed the interdict, and that he responded on the basis of the denial strategy, telling the others that he ‘did not know what they meant by speaking of the interdict, because he had never received any injunction concerning it’.²¹⁹ Discussions concerning the interdict extended outside enclosed spaces such as universities and convents, to the cities’ public and semi-public centres of communication, where they were likely to become more inclusive. Questioned by the city’s governors, an apothecary of Vicenza reported that his shop hosted ‘every kind of people, both nobles and not, customarily every day and at every time . . . people talk about the things of the world, the wars, and the present troubles’, ‘discussing the reasons of one side and those of the other’; he added that ‘the arguments vary, just as the opinions do’. On further interrogation, the governors discovered that discussions were nourished by reading manuscripts hostile to the Republic; even more worrying must have been the apothecary’s attempt to defend himself by insisting that many other pharmacies hosted similar discussions.²²⁰ Rumours naturally circulated further down the social scale. In Vicenza, the pharmacy’s garzone too participated in, or at least listened to, the discussion. In June, a barber and a shoemaker were arrested in Venice. We do not know what the barber’s charges were because his file (like so many others) is missing.²²¹ On his part, the shoemaker was indicted for relating orders concerning the Interdict ²¹⁷ Report by Ettore Gallo, 8.5.1606, ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Roma, r. 13, cc. 57v –58. Further cases are illustrated in an undated report by the professor of canon law Sebastiano Monticolo, ASV, RSP, b. 168, cc. nn. On university disputation culture, P. Grendler 2002: 152–7. ²¹⁸ Denunciation forwarded in a letter dated 9.9.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Brescia, f. 5, cc. nn. ²¹⁹ Report by Michelangelo Bonicelli, in Cornet 1873, v. 5: 266–70. ²²⁰ Interrogation of Lepido Barbaran, 25.9.1606, in ASV, Cons. iure, b. 3, fasc. 13, cc. nn. On this pharmacy, see above, p. 177. ²²¹ A brief reference to the trial of barber Simone Piemontese, 21.6.1606, in ASV, IS, b. 201, c. 14.

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to clergymen whom he met in the rented lodging of his uncle, a flower-seller in the parish of Santa Sofia.²²² Later, in a saddler’s shop in Vicenza, a friar was asked ‘what will be of the affairs of the world?’ He was arrested for replying that ‘one day Venice will sink, because those lords are excommunicated and do nothing but practice sodomy’. Although, of course, he denied the charge, the testimonies were so many that he was kept in jail until the end of the controversy.²²³ Finally, for once, the Interdict gave prominence to the words of women. Exceptionally, the authorities became concerned about their opinions, to the extent that both sides later published pamphlets specifically addressed to female readers.²²⁴ Perhaps the authorities realized that the prohibition of divine services touched on private life, which they considered the realm of women. For example, many of the pope’s supporters saw women, particularly noblewomen, as allies inside Venice’s homes. The bishop of Cremona was particularly explicit: ‘Venetian noblewomen harass their husbands due to the latter’s impious actions, and for that reason most noble houses are turned upside down’. As he hoped, women would influence a change of policy on Venice’s part.²²⁵ Exceptionally, then, a male protagonist of politics welcomed the reversal of society’s gendered order implied by female political communication. For months, the Republic also worried about several female convents. Perhaps trusting the independence and protection afforded by seclusion, many nuns insisted on obeying the interdict. Unable to enter convents, the government acted on the nuns’ relatives and, in one case, went as far as preventing nuns from receiving food from outside.²²⁶ Many in the government, including Sarpi, feared that women were likely to be manipulated by the clergy out of a mixture of superstition and gullibility.²²⁷ Partly, this belief stemmed from seeing many women go in tears to the Jesuits to be confessed on the eve of the latter’s expulsion.²²⁸ Much stemmed from sexist stereotypes, however. Of course just like men, not all women favoured the pope. If we know of nuns’ anti-Venetian opinions in Venice, this is because the government was especially concerned about those opinions. For the reverse reason, we also know that Venetian pamphlets later found favour in nunneries in Bologna.²²⁹ In fact, if women were the keenest to attend religious ceremonies (as the stereotype implied), they were the likeliest to object to the interdict. Thus, ²²² Dispatch of 18.6.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Vicenza, f. 4, cc. nn.; trial’s records in ASV, Cons. iure, b. 3, fasc. 4, cc. nn. ²²³ Interrogation dated 13.9.1606, in ASV, Cons. iure, b. 3, fasc. 7, cc. nn. ²²⁴ e.g. ∗ Buonaiuti [pseud.?], Lettera, and ∗ Landsberger, Mirabile rivelatione. ²²⁵ Letter dated 5.7.1606, in ASVat, FB, III.49.d, c. 33. On 21.12.1606, the ambassador of Savoy also described noblewomen as observing the Interdict, de Magistris 1906: 232. ²²⁶ Sperling 1999b: 206–35, and Cornet 1873, v. 5: 284–5 and v. 6: 83–100, 115–18. ²²⁷ Sarpi 1968: 251 and Andrea Morosini’s opinion in Trebbi 1993: 90. ²²⁸ Report by a secretary of the Collegio, dated 10.5.1606, in ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Roma, r. 13, cc. 66v –67; similar accounts in a letter in Galilei 1964–66, v. 10: 158, and in Sivos’ chronicle in BMV, Cod. Ital. VII.1818 (9436), cc. 96v –97. ²²⁹ See the documents in Betti 2006: 277 and 289–90.

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when the government punished clergymen for refusing sacraments to women, it was because the women demanding sacraments were bold enough to denounce those clergymen.²³⁰ Inside households, the Interdict was a time of empowerment for many women. In May, for example, Angela Andrusi wrote to her cittadino husband a letter in heavily Venetianized Italian criticizing disobedience to the pope. The letter is evidence of open political criticism; it also shows female political communication extend through social networks, including both women and men. Angela discussed the events with female friends as well as noblewomen; she also talked to her parish priest and conveyed the Jesuits’ departing message to her husband.²³¹ Further down the social scale, Orsetta, a noblewoman’s servant, discussed the interdict with male and female peasants near Padua and reproached them for going to church in spite of the pope’s prohibition.²³² Thus, the Interdict crisis encouraged many women to make public their beliefs and to dispute the actions of men. It was one of the aspects of the conflict which was likeliest to shock contemporaries. In repeating the celebrated commonplace of political discussion evading the boundaries of the elite, for example, the French ambassador did not only mention barbers—as the commonplace went—but also included washerwomen.²³³ It was the ultimate subversion, both social and gendered. Not all communication was empowerment, of course. Political actors were interested in manipulating information to spread rumours. Pro-papal newswriters diffused news of military actions to nourish expectations amongst Venice’s enemies and alarm inside the Republic, such as the report of a Spanish raid in Albania which was published in Rome by a printer who also issued many antiVenetian pamphlets.²³⁴ Some informers intentionally played on false rumours and misunderstandings. At the beginning of May, for example, following the arrest of a Roman prostitute named Brescia, a newswriter reported that ‘all Rome says’ that the identically named Venetian city had been captured.²³⁵ In commenting the news, an anonymous diarist was in no doubt that the rumour was an ‘artifice’ planted ‘to see the effect it would have amongst the populace in diminishing the Republic’s reputation’.²³⁶ News and false news alike fuelled widespread anxiety. Having heard some noise at night, the priest of a small village near Padua immediately thought of an enemy army; he rang the bell and ²³⁰ Report by Zuanne Pasqualigo of 11.6.1606, in ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Roma, r. 13, cc. 114–17. ²³¹ Letter by Angela Andrusi dated 15.5.1606, published in Cappelletti 1873: 94–5. ²³² Dispatch dated 27.6.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Padova, f. 3, cc. nn. ²³³ Letter dated 12.8.1606, in Canaye 1636, v. 3: 166. ²³⁴ Relatione del successo, and cf. avviso dated 19.7.1606, in ASV, IS, b. 216, cc. nn. More reports on the discussions occasioned by this event in a letter by Giuseppe Porto, 23.8.1606, in BNF, Ms. Français 16082, c. 6, and in an audience by the English ambassador, CSPVen, v. 10: 400 (9.9.1606). ²³⁵ Avviso dated 3.5.1606, ASVat, SS, Avvisi, b. 2, c. 117. ²³⁶ ASV, Cons. iure, f. 537, c. 7v.

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thereby occasioned further panic.²³⁷ When twelve children were reported dead, some people thought of an impending plague.²³⁸ Collective anxiety made people speculate about natural events as if they were ominous signs of divinely-inspired disasters. This may well have been a natural reaction, a way of making sense of political and religious traumas similar to that described by Priuli and Sanudo at the time of war a century earlier.²³⁹ During the Interdict, a series of unusually heavy summer storms prompted a great deal of talking. In mid-July, the governors of Padua reported that exceptionally bad weather was going to endanger the year’s harvest.²⁴⁰ Roman newswriters happily reported the news, adding that some people commented that ‘Heaven is taking arms against Venice’.²⁴¹ Newswriters may of course have made up such comments, but in the following days a priest near Padua was denounced for describing the approaching storm as ‘a messenger of Rome’.²⁴² Soon the reports grew to describe scores of houses destroyed, and even a whole carriage that had been flown and tossed around by the wind, together with horses and passengers.²⁴³ Once again, these rumours show that the manipulation of information did not merely result in top-down propaganda. Planted or spinned news tangled with spontaneous communication to escape those who first planted them. The oral culture feeding that circulation lay beyond the control of even the most consummate rumour-monger. Not long before the Interdict, for example, another Venetian subject, the miller Menocchio, also described thunder and lightning as the ‘artillery’ of spirits.²⁴⁴ As important as the political context of rumours was their timing, revealing the peasants’ preoccupations about the weather at the time of the harvest, or those of urban dwellers about price rises.²⁴⁵ As socio-psychologists have shown, moreover, rumours grow further from the original piece of information occasioning them with inverse proportionality to that information’s first clarity and strength of evidence.²⁴⁶ In a system where newswriters and information professionals were themselves largely forced to ²³⁷ Dispatch dated 4.5.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Padova, f. 3, cc. nn. ²³⁸ Avviso dated 9.9.1606, in ASVat, SS, Avvisi, b. 2, c. 235. ²³⁹ Niccoli 1990. On Venice during Cambrai, cf. Sanudo 1879–1903, v. 8: 326; for the earthquake of 1511, Dalla Santa 1916–17: 1601. ²⁴⁰ Dispatch dated 29.7.1606, in ASV, Coll., Lettere comuni, f. 111, cc. nn. A note detailing the damages was sent by the governors on 2.10.1606, in ASV, Sen., Terra, f. 180, cc. nn. ²⁴¹ Avviso dated 19.7.1606, in ASVat, SS, Avvisi, b. 2, c. 196v. ²⁴² Denunciation by Pellegrino Schiaousal of 28.7.1606, quoted above, note 204. ²⁴³ Avviso dated 26.7.1606, ibid., c. 205; and 29.7.1606, in BAV, Urb. Lat. 1074, c. 389v. An avviso dated 22.4.1606, ibid., c. 213r –v, mentioned more bad omens, including a ship which had taken fire in the harbour and a village which had been flooded by the nearby river. ²⁴⁴ Del Col 1996: 138. ²⁴⁵ An undated avviso of 1606 from Bergamo mentioned an increase in the price of wheat, ASVat, FB, III.131.c.2, c. 50. On the monthly trade and price fluctuations of cereal in Venice, cf. Aymard 1966: 114–15. ²⁴⁶ Allport and Postman 1965.

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guess, elliptical reporting must have created curiosity, distrust, and a corollary of unforeseeable speculations. As one newswriter put it, ‘this avviso will be expected with great curiosity . . . and yet we must all be patient, both those of us who write and those who read’.²⁴⁷

Cartelli and graffiti Opinions about the controversy found not just oral outlets, but also written expressions of more lasting impact in the form of graffiti and cartelli. As we have seen in the previous chapter, public writings were common ways of channelling factional challenges and personal rivalries; they were embarrassing for the government, but normally harmless. At times of crisis like the Interdict, however, they turned into public injury. Scribbled or posted in conspicuous places to attract everyone’s attention, public writings made a mockery of the government’s strategy of denial, and furthermore, did so with the same means of communication which the government used against the pope. Ironically, the government’s proclamations were crippled by ambiguities, while hostile anonymous posters did not hesitate to attack Venice in the simplest and crudest ways. Early in May the governors of Verona found the words ‘Long live the Pope’ written in charcoal on some houses’ walls.²⁴⁸ A few days later they ripped off a more imaginative cartello which rhymed insult at Venice’s military preparations: Arm yourself Venice, if you can But I have you in my arse: you and all yours.²⁴⁹

In Brescia several cartelli were found at once: one predicted that the pope would wrest the ducal horn from the doge; another was posted on the doors of a church to comment on the Republic’s perceived interference in the spiritual domain that ‘God is sold here’.²⁵⁰ In the same city, some official and semi-official publications favourable to the Republic were torn down or smeared, and others inscribed with notes denying their validity.²⁵¹ To add insult to injury, several cartelli simulated the form and language of official proclamations turning it into a joke at the expense of the authorities. For example mocking the Protesto, one began ‘by order of Leonardo Donato [the doge], most zealous pastor of goats . . . we order with this proclamation by virtue of devilish spirit . . . ’²⁵² As we have seen, the location of ²⁴⁷ Avviso from Rome of 8.4.1606, in ASVat, SS, Avvisi, b. 2, c. 91v. ²⁴⁸ Dispatch dated 2.5.1606, in Cornet 1873 v. 5: 60–1. ²⁴⁹ ‘Armati pur Venetia armati se puoi/Che mi ti ho in cul con tutti quanti i tuoi.’ Cartello included in a dispatch by the governors of Verona dated 17.5.1606, in ASV, CX, Parti criminali, f. 35, cc. nn. ²⁵⁰ Dispatch dated 30.8.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Brescia, f. 6, cc. nn. ²⁵¹ e.g. cartello posted on the doors of the church of San Faustino, dispatch dated 26.7.1606, ibid. ²⁵² Cartello enclosed in dispatch of 30.8.1606, ibid.

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graffiti and cartelli is a crucial indication of their intended effect. Churches, the object of the government’s claim to superiority in religious affairs, were the targets of many cartelli. Others were posted in key positions to show the Republic’s vulnerability, for example on the barracks at the gates of Palma—a key fortress in Venice’s defence system—where someone wrote with a piece of charcoal ‘long live Cremona [in Spanish territories] and the pope, and death to the Venetians’, as well as ‘other indecent words’.²⁵³ Other cartelli took over the very places customarily associated with official publication. In Padua a document was found attached to a column in the main square calling all clergy to rebellion.²⁵⁴ It is difficult to assign responsibility for these anonymous public writings. The governor of Brescia attributed the cartelli to the Jesuits, but the latter had already left and so must have had some local sympathizers physically put them up.²⁵⁵ The captain who found graffiti on the wall at Palma reported that, judging from the handwriting and the spelling, he believed the author to be uneducated (persona rozzissima).²⁵⁶ Some cartelli were indeed written in dialect and showed evidence of a ‘popular’ tone. In January, the guards in Brescia found two copies of a lampoon written in local dialect against the governor.²⁵⁷ However, educated authors of cartelli may have imitated that tone even to the point of making intentional mistakes, while betraying themselves through the use of such literary devices as rhyming, alliterations, and accurate metrics. A dialect cartello found in Brescia included abbreviations common in professional writing (such as a crossed ‘p’ for ‘per’, etc.).²⁵⁸ In this way, authors who may have been part of the political arena claimed to be speaking on behalf of the entire population, a strategy to which we shall return. Whoever their authors were, cartelli attained a large public and drew on a widespread culture. Many revealed a similar spirit to the Paternosters’ unmasking of the foreign conquerors’ hypocrisy, but turned it against the Republic’s legitimate power. As with the Paternoster the semantic inversions in the mocked language of the authorities—for example, promising hell rather than paradise—constituted a commentary on Venice’s sacrilegious policies. One, for example, carried the fake signature of the local governor together with the titles of bishop and inquisitor.²⁵⁹ Some employed visual means to the same effect, one of them portraying an ass dressed with a Venetian costume and wearing the episcopal mitre, a direct attack on the doge’s use of religious ²⁵³ Dispatch dated 4.6.1606, in ASV, CX, Parti criminali, f. 35, cc. nn. ²⁵⁴ Dispatch dated 20.10.1606, in ASV Sen., Dispacci Padova, f. 3, cc. nn. ²⁵⁵ Dispatch dated 16.8.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Brescia, f. 6, cc. nn. ²⁵⁶ Dispatch dated 4.6.1606, in ASV, CX, Parti criminali, f. 35, cc. nn. ²⁵⁷ ‘Caporal de tug i giot scomunicag, apostat, sismatig, heretig, forfang e compagn del diavol’, two slightly different copies of this cartello were found on the same day; dispatch dated 18.1.1607, in ASV, CX, Parti criminali, f. 35, cc. nn. ²⁵⁸ Cf. a case from 1633 in Cozzi 1995a: 31. ²⁵⁹ Cartello enclosed in dispatch of 30.8.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Brescia, f. 6, cc. nn.

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symbols.²⁶⁰ Thus, some of Venice’s subjects turned the government’s contention that the pope subjected religion to political interests against the government itself. And, like the Paternoster, they equated rulers to animals, one of them listing vipers, dogs, wolves, pigs, boars, and tigers.²⁶¹ Such graphically expressed dissent created serious problems for the Republic. The government denied that cartelli indicated real discontent, but was also careful not to draw too much attention to them. Governors were to hold inquiries in secret, ‘without any kind of proclamation’.²⁶² Thus, not only did critics of Venice secure publicity for themselves, but the government found it difficult even to punish their criticisms, and this partly because of its own line of denial. The governor who found offensive writings on the wall of Palma reported that he had chosen to make no public proclamation against the unknown writer ‘because it is better . . . to suppress such things than to publish them’.²⁶³ Mocking the tone of both cartelli and official proclamations, the three-page long manuscript ‘Letter of the city of Verona to the city of Brescia’ is an example of polemical text which purports to speak on behalf of a whole community.²⁶⁴ The ‘Letter’ reached Venice enclosed in newssheets and was sold at the stalls of newswriters; it circulated to the extent that government clerks discussed it while meeting at the Ducal Palace’ gates.²⁶⁵ The text struck at the heart of Venetian rule, comparing it to the Turkish yoke, but all the heavier because it was exercised by as many tyrants as there were patricians. It was a classical criticism, first voiced by some in the mainland nobility in 1509 and recurrent at times of contrast.²⁶⁶ During the Interdict, it so undermined the government’s claims of serenity that the Collegio thought a public response necessary and ordered the town council of Verona to publicly disavow it.²⁶⁷ Midway between an official proclamation and a pamphlet, and published both as a poster to be pinned onto the city’s walls and as a small brochure, the response was significantly entitled The city of Verona to all readers.²⁶⁸ It carried the arms of Verona, was signed by the town council and concluded by the usual authentications of the notary and the comandatore ²⁶⁰ Entry dated 17.12.1606 in G. Bianchi’s chronicle, in Guerrini 1930: 67. ²⁶¹ Cartello enclosed in dispatch dated 16.8.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Brescia, f. 6, cc. nn. ²⁶² Dispatch dated 17.5.1606, in ASV, CX, Deliberazioni criminali, f. 35, cc. nn.. ²⁶³ ‘Non ho giudicato bene poner queste cose nella bocca delle trombe, col mezo del proclama, essendo molto meglio, quando non si può haver il delinquente, veder di suprimerle, che publicarle’; dispatch of the Proveditor General in Palma, dated 4.6.1606, ASV, CX, Deliberazioni criminali, f. 35, cc. nn. The Ten praised his decision and authorized him to open proceedings for a secret inquiry. ²⁶⁴ ‘Scrittura finta di Verona a Bressa’, in BMV, Cod. Ital. VII.1689 (7757), cc. 191–3 and BNM, Ms. 2156, cc. 51v –56v. Some attributed it to Antonio Possevino. Cf. Povolo 1997: 178–80. ²⁶⁵ The circulation is traced in ASV, IS, b. 1213, fasc. 2, cc. nn. ²⁶⁶ Cervelli 1974: 47, and cf. Berengo 1974: 39. ²⁶⁷ Entry dated 2.8.1606, in ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Principi, f. 16, cc. nn. The disavowal was only published at the end of September, cf. dispatch of 28.9.1606, in ASV, Sen., Terra, r. 76, c. 115. ²⁶⁸ ∗ La città di Verona a i lettori, published both in a small quarto halfsheet as well as in large poster format.

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who proclaimed it. While claiming all marks of authority for itself, it disavowed Verona’s earlier manuscript letter as a forgery and a libello famoso, a libel; like a criminal ban, it also advertised a reward for denunciations. The problem for Venice, then, was the contrast between the proliferation of communication on the one hand—whatever its source—and the Republic’s official policy of secrecy on the other. Even cartelli which were meant to be favourable to Venice were a cause of embarrassment. The gravest such occasion came at the end of June, in a letter addressed ‘To the Princes of Italy’, found in several copies posted in public in Vicenza—one on the same column where the Republic’s Protesto had been posted, as the person who found it pointed out.²⁶⁹ It was a violently apocalyptic and heretical text declaring that the antichrist sat on Peter’s throne in Rome. The text attacked the pope, but also harmed Venice, which it tainted with heresy in the places associated with the Republic’s official acts. The government was anxious to dissociate itself, to the point of implying that the text may have been written in Rome itself ‘under the name of Venice as a way of harming us’.²⁷⁰ The reaction was, as it had to be, yet another proclamation, condemning the letter and advertising a ransom on the anonymous author.²⁷¹ The proliferation of such publications hardly silenced the controversy. As far as the authorities were concerned, it is clear that neither Rome nor Venice wished to start a public controversy. The pope wanted compliance rather than discussion, while the Republic refused to confront the interdict with anything other than denial. Neither was willing to turn the people into a legitimate political public. Paul V hoped to move Venice’s subjects against their rulers, but he only appealed to the laity by way of the clergy and, as we shall see, initially refused to allow the publication of printed pamphlets. Even more forcefully, the Venetian government focused on censorship so as to prevent the conflict from becoming public. Rituals and proclamations were the only means of publication the Republic happily embraced, prescriptive statements contemplating no reply other than obedience. The government’s use of communication at the beginning of the controversy reveals the narrowness with which it conceived of politics as excluding all but the patrician minority. The government did try to persuade the clergy with positive arguments, but as far as the subjects were concerned, it limited itself to authoritarian measures exacting outward conformity. Fearing dissent, the Republic forfeited the possibility of reaping consensus. The government’s strategy clashed with the unruly communication of other spheres. First came the struggles of Venice’s political arena. Insiders publicized ²⁶⁹ Text entitled ‘Ai Prencipi d’Italia’, enclosed in dispatch dated 26.6.1606, in ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni Roma ordinaria, f. 28, cc. nn. More information on the inquiry in ASV, Cons. iure, f. 3, fasc. 19, cc. nn. ²⁷⁰ Dispatch dated 29.7.1606, in ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni Roma ordinaria, r. 15, c. 97; also Cornet 1859: 112n. ²⁷¹ Dispatch dated 27.6.1606, in ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni Roma ordinaria, r. 15, c. 74v.

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information in the attempt to influence debate inside the government, and their contrasting messages belied the Republic’s proclaimed unity and ran contrary to the official assertions of business as usual. Secondly, beyond insiders, professional informers were simply too numerous, and their means of communication too diverse, for the government ever to be able to exert satisfactory control over information. As soon as the conflict between Venice and Rome broke out, an astonishing quantity of reserved knowledge originating in the elites reached wide social groups in Venice and other mainland towns. Finally, all information which reached the urban publics—in whatever way: official publications, rituals, manuscripts, sermons, and rumours—was likely to have unforeseeable consequences. If anything, in terms of effects, the multiplication of devious means of information blurred political communication making it hard to understand clearly the government’s own message. In such a situation, the government needed to formulate a clear and unambiguous position. Instead, the strategy of denial left a vacuum waiting to be filled by other people. The paradigm example of tangled communication is the government’s very first message to its subjects, which all governors delivered orally to their cities’ assemblies at the conflict’s beginning. Although, as we have seen, governors refused to give out written copies, spurious versions circulated, both summarizing and altering the Senate’s message. Unlike the government’s original text, the copies made no affirmation of orthodoxy, were much more violent in condemning the clergy’s crimes, and of course also recognized the interdict (in order to object to it).²⁷² Transcribing a copy into his chronicle, the physician Gian Carlo Sivos clearly mixed his own opinions with what he obviously saw as an official text, accusing the Church of expanding its power ‘under the cover of religion’—exactly the popular version of reason of state which Paternosters spread in barbershops.²⁷³ As Sarpi explained—in an early example of reception analysis—on hearing the Senate’s communication, some local assemblies’ members wrote down from memory a text which resembled ‘more what they thought they heard than what they did in fact hear’, enriching it with ‘vulgar’ wit.²⁷⁴ The spurious letter enjoyed a large circulation, both manuscript and printed, reported by foreign diplomats and newswriters, collected by observers such as Sivos, and condemned by the Inquisition as an example of the Republic’s drift towards heresy.²⁷⁵ Towards the end of the conflict, then, it became a real object of negotiation with Rome when the Senate refused to disavow it because, as ²⁷² ‘Lettera della Serenissima Republica & Senato di Venetia alle loro communità e sudditi’, in ASV, MADM, b. 74–8, cc. nn., which bears the manuscript note ‘et è finta’. The text was printed in both Italian and French in France, ∗ Lettera and ∗ Lettre. The oral communication to city assemblies, ordered by the Senate on 20.4.1606, is analysed above, p. 165–6. ²⁷³ BMV, Cod. Ital. VII.1818 (9436), c. 92. ²⁷⁴ Sarpi 1968: 286. ²⁷⁵ Gian Carlo Sivos’ chronicle, in BMV, Cod. Ital. VII.1818 (9436), cc. 91–3. Foreign diplomats all handled the letter as if it was an official statement, e.g. dispatch of the nuncio in Paris dated 14.6.1606, in ASVat, SS, NF, v. 50, cc. 119v –20; it also circulated in newssheets, e.g. avviso dated 17.5.1606, in ASVat, SS, Avvisi, b. 2, c. 129, and was condemned by the Inquisition on 27.6.1606,

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Sarpi later wrote, ‘the one which circulated was false, and it was inappropriate to reckon with it, being unworthy of princes to deal with false documents’.²⁷⁶ And yet contemporaries easily confused the true and false texts of the letter to local assemblies. As a result, the government found it hard not just to speak out its voice, but also to set it apart from that of an increasingly restless public. see below, p. 207. Later historians also held it as authentic, cf. Romanin 1857–61, v. 7: 45 and Bouwsma 1968: 388. ²⁷⁶ Audience of 21.4.1607, in ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Roma, r. 15, c. 108v, and Sarpi 1968: 415. The pope regarded the letter’s revocation as a condition for the negotiations, see Putelli 1911, v. 22: 87n.

6 Propaganda? Print in context In spite of the government’s best efforts, the vitality of Venice’s information world coupled with Venice’s adversaries’ aggressive communication campaigns to bring the conflict into the public domain. As we know, political outsiders were always used to knowing and discussing political events, but the exceptional circumstances of 1606–7 turned that ease of political communication into a serious challenge for the Republic. The government’s strategy of denial became untenable, its official documents solemnly prohibited by the Inquisition and ridiculed by anonymous vandals. Supported by the circulation of countless manuscripts, rumours of heresy trials hanging over the head of the doge, and leaked evidence of internal dissent exposed Venice’s sanctity and cherished harmony. It was at this point, during a summer of mounting international and domestic pressure, that the Senate reversed its position by passing measures in favour of print publication. This move definitively ended all attempts at keeping the controversy secret, as hundreds of pamphlets turned it into a focus of public debate. As the French ambassador observed, the pamphlets meant that the Interdict, ‘which was known only to a few curious people, will henceforth become the entertainment of barbers and washerwomen.’¹ For reasons analysed in this chapter, we are far from the numbers of pamphlets published during the English Civil War or the French Fronde in the 1640s. But it was an unprecedented publishing event in Italy and, given the government’s preference for political secrecy, an extraordinary moment in Venice. Venice’s successful publishing industry always reflected the political interests of readers. We have already considered the examples of manuals of rhetoric, guides to the broglio, and the case of such collections of supposedly reserved documents as the Tesori politici, and we have seen that a lively political tradition nourished the press with treatises debating reason of state. If necessary, the production could follow events quite closely. At the time of the French wars of religion, for example—when, as we have seen, the city thrived with political discussions—publishers issued several books to satisfy the curiosity of their customers, including two collections of official documents printed in Vicenza.² ¹ Dispatch dated 12.8.1606, in Canaye 1636, v. 3: 166. ² The collection Raccolta d’alcvne scrittvre was first edited in 1593 by Comin Ventura and enlarged the following year by Giorgio Greco. This was also of course, the time when the first Tesori politici were published, a connection highlighted in J. Balsamo 1995.

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Like other states, however, the Republic closely controlled book publication and prohibited books touching on sensitive political issues. Revealingly, Venice’s first censorship regulations, passed in 1527, emanated from the Council of Ten, the body charged with the security of the state. Later, negotiation with the Holy See ensured that pre-publication censorship included both the ecclesiastical inquisitor and secular elements, namely a secretary of the Senate and the Riformatori dello studio di Padova. In 1596, a concordat defined the limits of ecclesiastical censorship and confirmed control over book production to be a primary preoccupation of the government—in theory at least, licensed books were to contain nothing ‘against good customs, or verging on state or religion’.³ Sarpi doggedly defended the government’s censorship prerogatives from Roman encroachments—indeed, it was in that function that he reminded the Senate of the political danger of books, ‘giving rise to factions, seditions and ultimately to war.’⁴ Clearly—as in so many other aspects of Venetian politics and culture—there was a gap between theory and practice, and prohibited literature was available in the political arena, including Machiavelli’s political treatises, prohibited by both Church and state and condemned in countless other treatises.⁵ When censorship failed, however, money helped to limit the diffusion of books. Only the rich could afford political tracts whose price made them inaccessible to the majority of the population. By contrast, cheap literature almost exclusively included devotional titles or practical literature such as medicinal recipes, illustrated flysheets and apparently uncontroversial songs.⁶ As Carlo Ginzburg has shown in the case of the Friulan miller Menocchio, the readers’ reception of that literature could be far from uncontroversial, and we had further proof of that when analysing the Paternosters, which also circulated in apparently cheap prints in the sixteenth century.⁷ With few exceptions, however, that literature was not meant to stimulate political or religious debate and generally contained no information on current events other than the little contained in some almanacs. The Interdict controversy was to change all this, at least momentarily, through the large-scale—and cheap—publication of polemical pamphlets inviting readers to challenge either spiritual or secular authority. Of course, the pamphlets’ enlargement of political communication might be dismissed as mere propaganda. This is the way in which most historians have interpreted the Interdict pamphlets, whether they have described them as embodying the point of view of the Republic as a whole (as Bouwsma did), ³ Ulvioni 1975, P. Grendler 1977, and cf. Cozzi 1979b; most censorship legislation in H. Brown 1891: 205–34. ⁴ Sarpi 1958: 190, see above, p. 1. ⁵ See below, p. 235. ⁶ All the works listed at less than 10 soldi in a Venetian catalogue printed in 1600 belonged to these categories, Pollard and Ehrman 1965: fig. 37; and cf. also the Giolito’s catalogue of 1592, Bongi 1890–95, v. 2: 456–7; on cheap literature, see Richardson 1999: 115–16, P. Grendler 1977: 12–14, and 1993. ⁷ Ginzburg 1980.

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or of only part of the patriciate (as in the case of Cozzi).⁸ On the other side of the fence, confessional historians sympathetic to Rome similarly described the pamphlets as Venice’s attempt to substitute the moral leadership of the Church.⁹ I have already signalled my dissatisfaction with the notion of propaganda. As far as the Interdict pamphlets were concerned, that notion is doubly misleading. Far from being propaganda, pamphlet publication raised practical difficulties and caused internal disagreement. As we shall see, most pamphlets appeared despite the government’s wishes, something which had crucial and unexpected consequences in determining their impact. Furthermore, somewhat paradoxically, most historians who have described the pamphlets as propaganda have failed to engage with the ways in which the pamphlets were published and distributed, or otherwise reached their readers. Largely, this is because they have seen the fight against Rome as the stance of an educated elite surrounded by innately conservative and politically ignorant masses.¹⁰ In their view, the pamphlets were not just propaganda, whether positively or negatively judged—they were essentially flawed propaganda. The means of publication are irrelevant, because the overwhelming majority of the population was too ignorant to understand any argument, whether written or printed. Indeed, there is practically no mention of the pamphlets in the (scant) studies of the population’s reaction to the Interdict.¹¹ In line with this book’s analysis of political communication, my aim is, by situating the Interdict pamphlets in three interlocking contexts, to show the uses of publicity at its largest scale, print. First I ask how the pamphlets were meant to serve the interests of those engaged in the political conflict. Who engineered the move from manuscript to print, and how? What were the arguments in favour and against print? Secondly, I consider the prime agent of pamphlet production, Venice’s publishing industry, with its professional and economic constraints as well as political connections—two aspects which tend to be studied in isolation from each other.¹² In studying printed controversies it is easy to concentrate on the ideas of authors, and to forget that the impact of those ideas was primarily determined by the industry and commercial skills of publishers who produced pamphlets and planned their distribution.¹³ Finally, I try to assess the controversy’s impact in Venice’s mostly urban society which, as we now know, was far more politically informed and reactive than historians have assumed. What public, or publics, did those who commissioned, wrote, and printed pamphlets have in mind? Could barbers and washerwomen really ⁸ Bouwsma 1968 and Cozzi 1958. ⁹ Pastor 1891–1954, v. 25: 111–216 and Pirri 1959. ¹⁰ Cf. Cozzi 1958: 112–15 and 280–1, 1979a: 250–4, 1995b: 274–6, Benzoni 1978: 46–9, and cf. Folin and Zannini 2006: 70. ¹¹ Cf. Pin 1992–94, Sambo 1975–76, and the remarks in Cozzi 1979a: xii–xiii and Povolo 1997: 174–85. Older works include Bacchion 1934, Battistella 1923, and Odorici 1859. ¹² See Infelise 1992. ¹³ This has been shown convincingly in two recent works on seventeenth-century England, Raymond 2003 and Peacey 2004.

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have read or otherwise become exposed to pamphlets? As we shall see, in order to answer these questions it is crucial to consider the interaction between print and other communication acts to which, effectively, the pamphlets were meant to respond. The notion of propaganda would result in ignoring the ways in which pamphlets were received, their message appropriated in often unexpected ways. It is then perhaps best to describe pamphlets by going back to the warlike metaphor used by contemporaries, a metaphor which reminds us of the varieties of tactics, weapons, and terrains involved. As in early-modern armies, there were fewer conscripts than mercenaries, and regular troops were surrounded by a large array of auxiliaries, looting parties, and independent companies. To an extent, each fought its own war, with unforeseeable consequences.

6 . 1 F RO M M A N U S C R I P T TO P R I N T Amongst the supposedly secret documents, written for private purposes but disclosed for public effects at the beginning of the controversy, there circulated some which were written primarily for public polemical purposes. Contemporary reports referred to a great number of texts in both verse and prose. We have already seen some of these, but most have probably been lost.¹⁴ In the same days as the government published the Protesto, the English ambassador sent ‘an Epigrame or Pasquinata’ in Venetian dialect (the text is not preserved). A week later, he again reported that ‘the Poets have plentifully rayned showers of theire witt uppon the season’, and then again at the end of the month wrote that ‘new discourses . . . doe dayly appeare’.¹⁵ Most witnesses agreed in describing those texts as ‘Pasquinate’, a supposedly popular genre which they dismissed as ‘not worth reading’.¹⁶ Such scorn is disingenuous, however, as the same witnesses also copied and collected pasquinades which, as we know, constituted a polemical feature of the political arena. Extant collections confirm elite usage.¹⁷ Most of these texts were the products of professionals, people who, unlike the government, had an interest in publicizing information on the Interdict. Those who knew that world, realized that the recourse to the pen was inevitable as soon as the troubles started. As the ambassador of Mantua put it, in what amounts to a good commentary on this book, ‘in a city it is very difficult to stop people ¹⁴ See above, section 5.3. ¹⁵ Dispatches of 12, 19 and 26.5.1606, in NA, SP 99/3, cc. 76v, 80, 86; also letter of 3.5.1606, in Canaye 1636, v. 3: 26. ¹⁶ Dispatch of 20.5.1606, Canaye 1636, v. 3: 43; also an anonymous letter in the English ambassador’s papers, dated 5.5.1606, NA, SP 99/3, c. 68; dispatch of the representative of Mantua of 6.5.1606, in Putelli 1911, v. 22: 32n; and avviso of 27.5.1606, BAV, Urb. Lat. 1074, c. 278v. ¹⁷ For example, doge Leonardo Donà and his brother Nicolò owned a two-volume miscellany of around fifty manuscript texts, some of which are inscribed by other patricians, MCV, Ms. Donà 486 and 487. On Pasquinades see section, 4.3 above

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from speaking and writing’.¹⁸ As we shall see, the ties of professionals with the publishing industry, made the step to print extremely easy. While manuscripts continued to play an important role, during the summer they were increasingly overshadowed by printed pamphlets. This section analyses the manner in which print became the terrain of the Interdict conflict.

The earliest printed pamphlets In spite of the government’s claimed monopoly over political communication, the first pamphlet appeared on the same day as the Protesto. It was an edition of two short works by the fifteenth-century French conciliarist Jean Gerson, setting strict boundaries on the pope’s power to excommunicate and arguing that there was no obligation to observe a censure proclaimed outside those boundaries. An anonymous letter, fictitiously dated from Paris but in fact written in Venice by Sarpi, served as preface. It ingenuously made no mention of the interdict and instead proclaimed astonishment at the news—surely false—that the pope had excommunicated Venice on Christmas day (a reference to Paul V’s first briefs).¹⁹ In terms of communication, it is important that Sarpi’s motivation and intention in publishing the Interdict’s first pamphlet lay within the sphere of the political arena rather than the wider public. Sarpi probably arranged for his publication with the informal backing of some patricians, who encouraged him (as his biographer later recounted) ‘with their authority’.²⁰ What is more, his pamphlet was aimed at convincing other patricians. First designed to be published in Latin rather than Italian, unlike later pamphlets it dealt with excommunication (which struck the Senate alone) rather than interdict (which struck the entire state).²¹ Known as doctor christianissimus, Gerson provided a safe authority to draw moderate elements within the patriciate towards appealing to the council, a solution supported by Sarpi’s patrician friends, and concerning which Sarpi had already mentioned Gerson in a brief addressed to the Collegio.²² Gerson had also been chancellor of the University of Paris and one of the founding fathers of French Gallicanism, an association which suited anti-Spanish patricians at a time when they were working towards an alliance with France.²³ Finally Gerson wrote at a time of strife and conveyed an important message to Venice’s nobility: as there was no reason to fear unjust censures, the ¹⁸ Audience of 30.6.1606, in ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Roma, r. 13, c. 139v. As early as the end of April, Cardinal Borghese foresaw that the Venetians would recur to printed pamphlets, de Magistris 1906: 36. ¹⁹ ∗ Gerson, Trattato e ressolutione: 171–84. ²⁰ Micanzio 1974: 1334–5. ²¹ It has never been noticed that the Italian version of the preface is an abbreviated rendering of the Latin one, which probably appeared earlier, cf. ∗ Gerson, De Excommunicatione, sigg. A2r –v. ²² Consulto ‘Intorno all’appellazione o altro da farsi’, written in late April, in Sarpi 2001: 374–5. ²³ On the search for legal precedents connecting Venice with France, among other states, see de Vivo 2002b: 155–6.

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danger was disunity more than excommunication.²⁴ Sarpi’s pamphlet tried to rally patricians around the doge rather than their subjects around Venice—far from being the natural expression of Venice’s republicanism, pamphlets began in the factional competition which the republican principles condemned. As with other printed controversies at the time, the rationale of the Interdict pamphlets rested in the converging interests of professionals of the pen, political patrons, and publishing entrepreneurs.²⁵ The anonymous Reply of a Doctor of Theology to a Letter by a Clergyman Friend appeared two weeks after Sarpi’s pamphlet. It expounded the Republic’s legal challenge to the Interdict for the benefit of the clergy. Thus, even though it originated inside the patriciate, printed publication soon escaped it.²⁶ The author, Giovanni Marsilio, was the typical intelligencer connected to the political arena. An apostate Jesuit from Naples, he had recently arrived in Venice as a private tutor, was to author four more pamphlets, and spent the following years unsuccessfully seeking governmentsponsored positions, working as an informer for the English ambassador, and penning encomiastic prose for the doge and his family.²⁷ The last pamphlet published before the government clamped down on printing was, like Gerson’s, a translation of an earlier work with a polemical sting which clearly referred to current affairs.²⁸ St Bernard’s De consideratione was first written in 1150 to remind pope Eugenius III of the pre-eminence of his spiritual duties over his temporal powers and to warn him against the corruption of the Roman court. Whoever made the choice, it was a cleverly chosen publication, likely to push a wedge between different factions in Rome at a time when the papal court was reportedly divided.²⁹ In fact, as some in Venice no doubt knew, St Bernard’s letter had divided the Congregation of the Index only a few years earlier, when the strictest cardinals (including some active during the Interdict, such as Colonna and Bernieri) inserted it in the Index of 1593—an Index which was later repealed.³⁰ The relations between those pamphlets and the Venetian government are, at best, shady. Sarpi’s and Marsilio’s were anonymous publications which carried no licence and presented themselves as if they had been written outside Venice (a trick which did fool some readers).³¹ St Bernard’s De consideratione was the only pamphlet to advertise the name of the printer, but the latter’s licence referred to ²⁴ ∗ Gerson, Trattato e ressolutione: 179. ²⁵ Cf. Jouhaud 1997. ²⁶ ∗ [Marsilio], Risposta. ²⁷ Information drawn from a letter by cardinal Caetani of 28.6.1606, in ASVat, FB, III.131.c, c. 101v, and from ∗ [Possevino], Risposta di Teodoro Eugenio: 6 and Benzoni 1970: 83, cf. Marsilio 1609. ²⁸ ∗ St Bernard, Trattato. ²⁹ Putelli 1911, v. 22: 44. ³⁰ St Bernard’s text was published in Rome in 1594 by G. Facciotto, the same printer who published many Interdict pamphlets; De Bujanda et al. 1994: 319 and 422, and cf. Frajese 1986. ³¹ Camillo Abioso’s letters from Ravenna described Gerson’s pamphlet as ‘published in Paris’, 6 and 13.6.1606, in ASV, IS, b. 542, cc. nn. Also, dispatch dated 14.6.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Milano, f. 30, c. 71v.

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a deal secured earlier.³² The anti-Venetian ambassador of Savoy said that Sarpi’s Gerson was authorized by ‘these Lords’ (questi Signori); but he probably extended to the entire government that which had been the will of only a few patricians.³³ No doubt, some in the government, perhaps the doge himself, welcomed the move to print and assured the pamphlets’ authors that the censoring authorities would turn a blind eye to their publication. But the pamphlets had limited circulation and were sold under the counter; as the representative of Modena recounted, he had found it hard to buy them because booksellers were afraid of censorship.³⁴ While there is no evidence that the authorities encouraged pamphlet publication at this stage, we know that many in the government resented those pamphlets which were published.³⁵ At the end of May some authors close to the political elite (Sarpi himself, senator Antonio Querini, as well as the professional intelligencer Giovan Battista Leoni) did approach the Collegio with texts for publication; but they were all turned down and the Collegio refused to present their texts to the Senate—probably because it sensed that they would find no support there.³⁶ Instead the government turned to suppressing the diffusion of those pamphlets which had already been published, prohibiting the sale of Marsilio’s Risposta, preventing the others’ reprint, and possibly withdrawing copies from circulation.³⁷ Venetian patricians did not only disagree on the political line to take vis-à-vis the Interdict, but also on the degree of publicity to give to that line. In doubt, the government limited itself to the minimum, confining all discussion of the controversy to politics’ traditional framework. Querini’s text was refused publication and instead sent in manuscript form to ambassadors abroad.³⁸ Initially, the government devoted itself with great energy to censorship rather than publishing, a negative rather than positive use of the press. It prevented the publication of unfavourable books, induced publishers to censor famous theological texts (such as Francisco Suarez’ De Censuris), and intervened directly with authors to alter their texts. In fact the first—and indeed one of the very few—recorded evidence of a government payment for publication-related costs during the Interdict does not concern the publication, but the expurgation of a book, a receipt of money paid to a printer for inserting a cancel suppressing the section on ecclesiastical immunity from a work on Scholastics.³⁹ ³² Camerini 1962–63, v. 2: 487–521. ³³ Dispatch of 6.5.1606, in de Magistris 1906: 53. ³⁴ Letter dated 6.5.1606, in ASM, AV, b. 84, cc. nn.; cf. Cozzi 1959: 92. ³⁵ The anonymous author of a Collegio diary for example mentioned the pamphlets reproachingly, ASV, Cons. iure, f. 537, c. 19v (undated entry); cf. also below, p. 210. ³⁶ Undated entry (between 22.5 and 14.6.1606), in ASV, Cons. iure, f. 537, cc. 36v –38. No pamphlets are mentioned at this stage in the chronological diary of the Collegio in ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Principi, f. 16, cc. nn. ³⁷ Dispatches of 2 and 3.6.1606, in Canaye 1636, v. 3: 65, 68; cf. Cozzi 1959: 95. ³⁸ Dispatch of 14.6.1606, in ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni Roma ordinaria, r. 15, c. 67. ³⁹ This was the case of Alessandro Pesante’s Commentaria brevia on Aquinas, see de Vivo 2002b: 272–3.

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The Roman response Like the Venetian government, the pope also hesitated before using the printing press. He was said to have commissioned a text for publication, but then ruled it out.⁴⁰ Perhaps Paul V believed that the Republic would give in to his threats; or (just like Venice) he feared the consequences of enlarging the controversy. A report by the Tuscan ambassador points to the latter. According to him, some cardinals opposed printing because it would ‘cast doubts on what was certain and clear’; others because it would ‘open the opportunity for those who wished to write against’ Rome; others still warned that pamphlets would attract offensive replies, harming not just the Holy See but the pope himself and his family.⁴¹ Clearly, publicly engaging in a polemic was an embarrassing act for all authorities, and, as we have already seen, the pope chose to address the clergy rather than the entirety of the faithful.⁴² The publication of pamphlets in Venice, however, changed this attitude and attracted furious public responses in Rome. In June, the Inquisition issued the first of several prohibitions against the Republic’s texts, lumping together the official Protesto, the false letter Alle comunità e sudditi, and other unnamed texts, both printed and manuscript.⁴³ More condemnations were to follow soon.⁴⁴ The unconventional intervention of the Congregation of the Inquisition (rather than the Index), shows the Holy See’s desire to issue a strong message against Venice—it was the last time the Inquisition was to prohibit books autonomously.⁴⁵ Like the Monitorio, the Inquisition’s prohibitions were meant to reach a large public, officially proclaimed in the papal states, reported in newssheets, and then printed in thousands of copies of various formats to be disseminated elsewhere.⁴⁶ In Brescia, the governors’ guards pasted exemplars on the walls ‘in many public places’.⁴⁷ Paradoxically, the condemnation of printed publication helped the controversy to escape the political arena. The Venetian pamphlets also moved the pope’s defenders to publish responses, including some of the same prelates who also sat on the inquisitorial board prohibiting the Venetian works. No less than three cardinals took up the pen ⁴⁰ News reported in the Roman avviso of 24.5.1606, in BAV, Urb. Lat. 1074, c. 276. Some Roman authors also allegedly restrained themselves from publishing, such as Paolo Comitoli, who kept his text in manuscript for five consecutive months, ∗ Comitoli, Trattato: sig. +2r. ⁴¹ Dispatch dated 26.5.1606, in De Rubertis 1933: 95–6n. ⁴² See above, p. 164. ⁴³ Prohibition dated 27.6.1606, not included in later collections of decrees (Librorvm Post Indicem Clementis VIII prohibitorum Decreta Omnia of 1624 and Index Librorvm Prohibitorvm Alexandri VII of 1664), cf. Reusch 1883–85, v. 2: 321. ⁴⁴ On 20.9 and 30.10.1606, cf. Index Librorvm Prohibitorvm Alexandri VII : 299–300. ⁴⁵ Infelise 1999: 41. ⁴⁶ Evidence of immediate distribution to nuncios and inquisitors in Tedeschi 1991: 306, and de Magistris 1906: 144n. Condemnations were also reprinted outside Rome (e.g. in Milan, dispatch dated 30.8.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Milano, f. 30, c. 127), and were advertised in newssheets (e.g. avviso of 20.9.1606 in ASVat, SS, Avvisi, b. 2, c. 250). ⁴⁷ Dispatch of 11.10.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Brescia, f. 5, cc. nn.

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in the summer, two of them, Baronio and Bellarmino, renowned theologians.⁴⁸ Their pamphlets trumpeted the authority from which they emanated, boasting the titles and coat-of-arms of their authors on the title-page, and affirming at once the Holy See’s superior scholarly prestige and absolute power over spiritual and temporal matters. On the basis of this double authority they declared Venetians to be not just disobedient, but also heretics. A trained inquisitor, Bellarmino concentrated on showing the influence of a whole catalogue of condemned heretics on the Venetians: the editor of Gerson resembled Luther and Calvin; the author of the Risposta, Marsilio of Padua, the Hussites, and the English heretics who wished to subject the Church to temporal rulers; like the Waldensians, the Venetians wished to overturn the social order.⁴⁹ The cardinals’ pamphlets also shrewdly attempted to rally opposition inside the Venetian ruling class. Thus, Bellarmino pointed out that Marsilio’s Risposta exalted the power of the doge in Venice, undermining the liberty of other patricians. Above the doge was the Great Council, Bellarmino affirmed, perhaps hoping to give some comfort to the internal opposition to Donà (which he knew to exist but also to be weak). Not for nothing did he remind his readers of the ominous pride of another doge, Marin Faliero, whom the patricians executed in order to save the state.⁵⁰ With the same aim in mind, Baronio confessed himself amazed that the Protesto was published ‘in the name of all Senators’ whereas (as he claimed with some substance) everyone knew that the Senate was divided.⁵¹ It is significant that Baronio also called on the patricians to return to their piety in the name of prudence and old age, against a breed of young politicians leading Venice to damnation—no doubt an oblique attack on the group commonly described as the Giovani faction, who led the Interdict offensive.⁵² While targeting the elite, these pamphlets also evaded its confines, enjoying numerous editions in Italian and Latin, distributed by the highest Roman authorities and published in small format close to the Venetian borders for maximum circulation.⁵³ With the pamphlet war as with most wars, both parties accused each other of starting the hostilities. The question of precedence interests us too—not, of course, for the moral weight it carries, but because it shows the difficulties connected with publishing polemical texts, the constraints which publicity imposed on the agents of publication.⁵⁴ Suffice to say that Sarpi’s edition of ⁴⁸ We know that all these pamphlets were published between July and August because they were announced in the manuscript newsletters (see above, p. 185): ∗ Bellarmino, Risposta a dve libretti, avviso of 19.7, in ASVat, SS, Avvisi, b. 2, c. 199v; ∗ Baronio, Parænesis, 29.7, in BAV, Urb. Lat. 1074, c. 388; ∗ Colonna, Sententia, 19.8, in BAV, Urb. Lat. 1074, c. 424v. A fourth cardinal, Bonifacio Gaetani, joined the fight later. ⁴⁹ ∗ Bellarmino, Risposta a dve libretti: 64–6, 31–5, 53, 19. ⁵⁰ Ibid.: 45–6. ⁵¹ ∗ Baronio, Parænesis: 4. ⁵² Ibid.: 44–6. ⁵³ All three pamphlets were republished in Cremona in octavo. Borghese sent Baronio’s Parænesis to all nuncios on 5.8.1606, see dispatch in de Magistris 1906: 156n. ⁵⁴ The details of the beginning of the printed publication of pamphlets are in de Vivo 2006: 264–70.

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Gerson was the first pamphlet, although he then (almost) always denied it in public as well as secret writings, pointing the finger instead at a short broadsheet published in Milan.⁵⁵ Sarpi’s deflection of responsibility for the pamphlet with which he began the controversy—his first published writing—is an interesting sign of the pamphlets’ uneasy status. Sarpi published Gerson in spite of the government majority which opposed publishing and with only the unofficial backing of some patricians. To acknowledge his pamphlet would have meant sanctioning the political arena which the government wished to silence. Finally, Sarpi’s description of Venice’s pamphlets as legitimate defence shows that blaming the enemy’s responsibility for the polemic became a polemical weapon in itself.⁵⁶

The government enters the battlefield The Roman pamphlets raised the stakes of the confrontation. As long as the attack was carried in manuscript, the Venetian government could pretend to ignore it. At the beginning of June, for example, the Collegio ordered a pasquinade found by the governors of Padua to be burnt without even showing it to the Senate.⁵⁷ Once the Inquisition resorted to public condemnations and cardinals published pamphlets in thousands of copies, however, it became impossible to stop their circulation. Furthermore, in parallel with the Roman offensive, dissenting voices mounted within the Republic itself during the summer, including amongst mercenary troops who openly refused to serve against the pope.⁵⁸ It was at this point and on the background of a dramatically deteriorating international situation—as the king of Spain pledged his military backing to the pope and Genoese bankers offered him a substantial loan—that the government changed tack to approve the publication of pamphlets. To appreciate the reasons for printed publication we must move back briefly to political communication of the most reserved kind, an internal debate which divided the governing councils between July and August 1606. A shift in Senate majorities can be recorded at this time. In June, as we have seen, the government refused to publish Antonio Querini’s text; in mid-July, asked whether they wished to have it sent to all mainland governors, the senators again overwhelmingly rejected the proposal.⁵⁹ Only three weeks later, however, this position was again ⁵⁵ Sarpi 1968: 284–5, referring to ∗ Instruttioni; the only exception is discussed below, p. 232. ⁵⁶ The line blaming ∗ Instruttioni as beginning the controversy was developed later, e.g. parte dated 21.11.1606, in ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni Roma ordinaria, r. 15, c. 179, and audience of 24.11.1606 Coll., Esposizioni Roma, r. 14, c. 113. The same point was made in ∗ Marsilio, Seconda parte: 7 (published after November 1606), but not in his earlier ∗ Marsilio, Difesa; ∗ Sarpi, Apologia: 49, published in September, only mentioned the Instruttioni in passing. ⁵⁷ Dispatch of 2.6.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Padova, f. 3, cc. nn. ⁵⁸ Dispatch dated 8.8.1606, in ASV, Coll., Lettere comuni, f. 111, cc. nn. Querini later complained about the wavering loyalty of other mercenaries, de Magistris 1941: 268–9 and 282–3. ⁵⁹ Parte dated 15.7.1606, ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni Roma ordinaria, r. 15, c. 84v, with only 12 votes in favour and 119 against.

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overturned, and on 4 August the Senate allowed the printing of Querini’s and other pamphlets with a similarly large majority.⁶⁰ A sign of the tensions which it aroused, the shift to printed publication took time and, no doubt, a lot of arguing. The opposite positions are interesting to us, in so far as they show contrasting views not just about print and its possible political uses, but also more generally about the legitimate sphere of politics, with some arguing in favour, and others against, a direct engagement with the public. The Inquisition’s condemnations lent strength to internal criticism. It was one thing to defend Venice’s sovereignty, another to be likened to heretics. At the end of June, one of the Senate’s secretaries, Alvise Cherini, was arrested for voicing such concerns. He especially criticized Marsilio’s Reply, presumably a safer target than Sarpi.⁶¹ That a secretary felt he could publicly criticize the pamphlets proves that they were the expression of only one patrician group rather than the government. In turn, his arrest provoked a split inside the Ten and, publicized by newswriters, probably caused concern in the political arena.⁶² In the following weeks the opposition to publicity mounted. The most scathing were, of course, those papalisti patricians who favoured cooperation with the Holy See, such as the patriarch of Aquileia.⁶³ But their reasons went beyond attachment to Rome, as Anzolo Badoer, a leader of those in favour of reconciliation, explained in a speech to the Senate.⁶⁴ He did not just oppose the doge’s line, but generally objected to the controversy’s public dimension. As he stated, the problem was not Venice’s ‘justice’, but the fact that it had been ‘dealt with in too many writings, bold and unworthy of the religious purity which always accompanied our rule’, ‘mockeries which one hears and sees printed and sold’. Badoer went on to warn his colleagues against fostering public discussion of religious issues, as not just a Christian’s sin, but a statesman’s mistake, because it would lead to rebellion.⁶⁵ Thus, political considerations combined with spiritual preoccupations in separating medium and message; Badoer’s call for a halt to public communication was even more forceful than his bid for a change in policy. What was really dangerous for him was to allow the people into the political struggle. Beyond the patriciate, other members of the political elite had professional motives for resenting the publicity engendered by printed publication, notably the diplomats involved in the negotiations. In the same days as the Senate ⁶⁰ Parte dated 4.8.1606, ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni Roma ordinaria, r. 15, cc. 101v –102, with 112 votes in favour, 3 against and 17 non sinceri. ⁶¹ ASV, Cons. iure, f. 537, c. 47v. Cherini (d. 1653), owned a large library, and at one point sought a high-flying ecclesiastical post, cf. Cicogna 1824–53, v. 1: 163, and v. 4: 599, 631. ⁶² Parte dated 26.6.1606, in ASV, CX, Parti criminali, f. 35, cc. nn.; avviso dated 1.7.1606, in BAV, Urb. Lat. 1074, c. 337. ⁶³ Trebbi 1986b: 238–40. ⁶⁴ Badoer’s speech is undated but was first quoted on 30 June in Canaye 1636, v. 3: 103. In mid-June the ambassadors of England and Savoy described Badoer as one of the leaders of the opposition to Donà (NA, SP 99/3, c. 109 and de Magistris 1906: 104). ⁶⁵ De Magistris 1941: 328, 343.

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discussed publication, the Spanish ambassador tried to encourage opposition against it in the Collegio. He pointed out that while initially the Republic had done well to communicate its reasons through ambassadors, recently ‘things have changed shape, and are now in the nature of a quarrel’ so that, he complained, ‘with all the texts that circulate on this matter, I have become something of a theologian myself ’. He enjoined the Republic to work at ending, rather than discussing, the controversy.⁶⁶ Diplomats who opposed Spain shared the Spanish ambassador’s opposition to publicity. For example, the French ambassador thanked the Collegio for a summary of the controversy destined to his king, and praised this sort of communication, as opposed to publishing on a wider scale.⁶⁷ In the same days he also lamented the prospect of a pamphlet war, ‘more dangerous in my view than real war’.⁶⁸ The disapproval of pamphlets voiced by some patricians as well as foreign diplomats differed from the government’s desire for absolute secrecy. The former revealed an elitist understanding of political communication, one which did not oppose circulating reserved information within the political arena—in fact, Badoer did exactly that by disclosing his speech in order to further his political line. Rather, they objected to widening the conflict beyond the political elite. The French ambassador’s disdainful comment about ‘barbers and washerwomen’ summed up this view.⁶⁹ Print publication was at once socially vulgar and politically a mistake, subtracting the controversy from the educated professionals to whom it belonged—the only people who, as he thought, could resolve the conflict. Outside that sphere, as the ambassador’s words implied, was only subversion, both social and gendered. Against such opinions, opposite ones coalesced in the group of patricians close to Sarpi. From the beginning he recommended defending the Republic with juridical publications (de iure) as well as practical measures (de facto) because, as he affirmed, it was dishonourable to seem to have no positive arguments.⁷⁰ Sarpi’s associate and senator Antonio Querini, held a similar line. In May he unsuccessfully proposed a text for publication and in the version which was read out to the Senate, he included passages explicitly advocating printed publication. Having discussed the political and juridical aspects of the controversy, Querini expressed the wish that others might be allowed to expand on the religious ones. As he explained, support for the pope was not universal amongst Catholic theologians, many of whom would oppose him publicly if only ‘they were allowed to speak and write what they believe’.⁷¹ Although supposed to leave the Collegio ⁶⁶ Audience of 3.8.1606, in ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Roma, r. 13, c. 187v. ⁶⁷ Audience of 12.8.1606, in ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Roma, r. 13, cc. 195r –v. ⁶⁸ Letter dated 24.7.1606, in Canaye 1636, v. 3: 128. The agent of Modena similarly complained about pamphlets, e.g. dispatches of 19.8 and 2.9.1606, in ASM, AV, b. 84, cc. nn. ⁶⁹ See above, p. 200. ⁷⁰ Consulto written at the end of April in Sarpi 2001: 367. ⁷¹ ∗ Querini, Avviso: 657–8, 712 and 721; cf. Zanato 1980.

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at the end of June—precisely when internal opposition was coalescing around Badoer—Querini managed to be re-elected, although to an inferior position.⁷² And when pamphlet publication was once again on the agenda, he again spoke in its favour.⁷³ Another of Sarpi’s associates, ambassador Piero Priuli, also urged the government in favour of publication from his post in France. In July, he wrote to Venice about a renowned jurist who offered to write a text for publication in defence of Venice; Priuli unhesitatingly threw his weight behind the proposal, adding that he thought the jurist deserved a reward.⁷⁴ In fact, we know from the correspondence of the nuncio in Paris that Priuli contacted authors as early as May, thereby preparing a publication campaign of his own well before he felt that the Senate would accept it.⁷⁵ Faced with political arenas over which they had no authority, barred in some instances from religious services, ambassadors abroad were likely to feel the poverty of the denial strategy more clearly than patricians in Venice.⁷⁶ Deliberate ignorance of the Interdict was a luxury they knew they could not afford. Inside the Republic’s own territories, government representatives reached the same conclusion. As an anonymous letter informed the governors of Padua, many people ridiculed the Republic’s strategy of denial: ‘some say that, if [the Venetians] had such valid reasons, they would no doubt publish them, as Princes have always done.’⁷⁷ Mainland governors were directly exposed to the fragility of the subjects’ allegiance. When reporting rumours and graffiti throughout the summer, they implied that many people not only knew about the conflict, but voiced their opinions in very damaging ways.⁷⁸ Some advocated a change of line: from the prohibition of all public discussion of the Interdict to a proactive policy of printed publication to guide that discussion. To rally support for this shift, some resorted to their relazioni, important means (as we now know) of raising political attention. At the end of July, for example, the podestà of Verona’s report to the Senate lamented the ‘impression’ and ‘scruples’ caused amongst Venice’s subjects by the Jesuits’ letters. He affirmed that it was possible to exact the clergy to say mass, but difficult to force people to attend it. For this reason, he had tried to ‘play down’ dissent till ‘time and the strength of your Serenity’s most powerful ⁷² Putelli 1911, v. 22: 77. ⁷³ Cornet 1859: 288–94 published this speech but dated it 19 August. On the basis of different evidence I believe it was delivered around 2 August (Querini’s topic was a French proposal which was discussed on that date, cf. ASV, Coll., Esposizioni principi, f. 16, cc. nn.). ⁷⁴ Dispatch dated 18.7.1606, ASV, Sen., Dispacci Francia, f. 35, cc. 190r –v. ⁷⁵ Dispatches dated 30.5, 16.6, and 27.6.1606, in ASVat, SS, NF, v. 50, cc. 112v, 124, 138; on this nuncio, later pope Urban VIII, cf. Blet 1959. ⁷⁶ Dispatches dated 4.7.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Francia, f. 35, cc. 176, and 11.7.1606, in ASVat, SS, NF, v. 50, cc. 140r –v. ⁷⁷ Letter handed over by the episcopal vicar of Padua, and forwarded on 25.7.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Padova, f. 3, cc. nn. ⁷⁸ See above, section 5.4.

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reasons win over the mood of these people, who are either too simple or too clever.’⁷⁹ His words, originating out of the daily experience of government, show none of the confidence with which the constitution excluded ordinary people from political knowledge. Around the same time, other governors similarly expressed the need to go beyond mere denial.⁸⁰ Thus, the extraordinary situation created by the Interdict made those in charge of government realize that they had to engage with the opinions of those they governed. By early August the campaign in favour of publication reaped its fruits—partly itself an unintended consequence of Bellarmino and Baronio’s pamphlets, which reached Venice to many patricians’ ‘offence and alteration’.⁸¹ When the Great Council renewed part of the Senate’s posts in late July, most of those newly elected supported the hard line. As a newswriter commented on the failed re-election of a member of the important papalista Corner family, ‘it is difficult to remember anyone who ever received fewer ballots’.⁸² Then, on 4 August the Collegio put forward a proposal enabling the publication of pamphlets. ‘It is appropriate to allow the publication of those texts which have been written, or should in the future be written, concerning the most just reasons of our Republic in the current matters with the pope, so that the justice of our cause become all the clearer to the world.’ Never before had the government spelled out the necessity of confronting the public so clearly, but the proposal obtained the Senate’s overwhelming support, with only twenty unfavourable votes.⁸³ The outcome was a major change in the government’s strategy. The Senate praised Priuli and encouraged him to commission more pamphlets; it then ordered several texts to be published; and finally it instructed the consultori who had provided their legal advice in previous months to prepare their texts for publication.⁸⁴ When the Collegio sent out the first printed pamphlets, most governors responded enthusiastically.⁸⁵ Enthusiasts, however, were to be tempered. The very decree which first approved printed publication also provided for a special system of pre-publication censorship. The existing system, including the Roman-appointed Inquisitor, was ⁷⁹ Relazione delivered on 27.7.1606, in Tagliaferri 1973–79, v. 9: 172–3. ⁸⁰ Cf. Andrea Paruta’s relazione of Bergamo, 4.8.1606, ibid., v. 12: 299–300, and the entry dated 2.8.1606, in ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Principi, f. 16, cc. nn. ⁸¹ Dispatch dated 5.8.1606, in ASM, AV, b. 84, cc. nn. ⁸² Avviso dated 19.8.1606, in BAV, Urb. Lat. 1074, c. 425. Cf. dispatch of the ambassador of Savoy, 8.8.1606, in de Magistris 1906: 157. ⁸³ ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni Roma ordinaria, r. 15, c. 101, passed with 112 votes in favour, 3 against and 17 non sinceri. ⁸⁴ Parte of 10.8.1606, in ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni Roma ordinaria, r. 15, c. 104. Three pamphlets were immediately inspected for publication, cf. the reports written between 14 and 18.8 in ASV, CCX, Notatorio, f. 17, cc. nn. The Senate wrote to governors and representatives to contact the jurists who had already supplied legal briefs on 11.8.1606, ASV, Coll., Lettere segrete, f. 43, cc. nn. ⁸⁵ Dispatches of 12.9.1606, ASV, Sen., Dispacci Vicenza, f. 4, cc. nn.; 13.9.1606, Dispacci Brescia, f. 5, cc. nn.; 14.9.1606, Dispacci Verona, f. nn. (1606), cc. nn.

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bound to raise problems during the Interdict.⁸⁶ In response, the Senate could allow pamphlets simply to side-step the ecclesiastical screening, subjecting them only to the government-appointed censors. Instead, it specially elected not one but five theologians to replace the Inquisitor (later increased to seven)—a crucial provision to avoid the accusation of heresy, as the Senate spelt out on 4 August.⁸⁷ This measure also reveals the government’s uneasiness over the subject of print publication. When Alvise Venier, one of Sarpi’s associates, suggested that the Collegio and the Senate take command of the entire censorship process, his proposal was rejected with only seven favourable votes.⁸⁸ Thus, when the English ambassador hailed the new censorship measures as ‘hiding the seeds of a great good’—‘they have now by this decree incorporated the office of Inquisition into the state’—he was working under a misconception dictated by his own Anglican enthusiasm for state leadership in church matters.⁸⁹ Whatever Sarpi himself may have desired, the Venetian Republic welcomed no such development. This debate encapsulates the government’s attitude to print. As we have seen, the state valued censorship as much as the Church did. But, contrary to some historians’ assumption of an equal clash between the two, Venice’s government did not feel that it could intervene in that domain freely and on a par with the religious authorities.⁹⁰ Even at a time of open confrontation with Rome, the government was reluctant to part with an ecclesiastical element, and keen to limit its own direct involvement, in the censorship process. Unlike the eighteenthcentury reformers who undermined ecclesiastical censorship in order to gain public support against the Church, the Venetian Republic during the Interdict did not want to open a limitless public debate.⁹¹ The Interdict special censorship arrangements confirm that the government embraced printed publication only as a last resort and was unwilling to become associated directly with the pamphlets. The majority of patricians wanted control, but without responsibility; and even those who were prepared to seek the support of the public balked at the prospect of the free and unfettered communication of politics. Finally, this made for an important difference between the Interdict and other seventeenth-century controversies. While the English and French censorship system broke down in the 1640s, the Roman Inquisitor continued to do his job in Venice, and the government added its own religious controls. For this reason, we would look in vain for the authors’ and publishers’ free recourse to the printing press, which ⁸⁶ On press-censorship, see p. 201 above. As an official publication, the Protesto did not require the inquisitor’s prior approval for printing (above, p. 129). ⁸⁷ ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni Roma ordinaria, r. 15, c. 101v; note that the proposal envisaged five theologians, but in the end seven were elected. ∗ Offman [pseud.?], Avvertimento: 16 made the point that Venice had greater ecclesiastical censorship than Rome. ⁸⁸ The proposal only received 7 favourable votes, ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni Roma ordinaria, c. 102. On Venier, see Cozzi 1958: ad indicem. He also composed a treatise on the Interdict which was never printed, ‘Difesa della Serenissima Signoria di Venetia’, in ASV, MADM, b. 74–8, cc. nn. ⁸⁹ Dispatch of 11.8.1606, in NA, SP 99/3, cc. 157r –v. ⁹⁰ Ulvioni 1975 and P. Grendler 1977. ⁹¹ Cf. Landi 2000.

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is why printed literature never escalated to the same point in 1606–7. That it did escalate substantially, and how much, is the subject of the following section. 6.2 THE SCALE OF THE OFFENSIVE Printed publication led to a dramatic increase in the scale of publicity. Initially, Roman newswriters publicized each of the few pamphlets appearing in print; by the autumn they found it impossible to keep up. As one of them admitted, ‘so many writings have appeared . . . that it is a flood and it is redundant to mention each.’⁹² The Interdict pamphlets amount to a large and very diverse literary production, around 140 different works, varying widely in genre (letters, harangues, dialogues, treatises, and responses), length (from half a quarto sheet to several hundred pages), and language (Italian, Latin, French, English, Dutch). Some were original works, others adjusted older texts to the controversy; some travelled miles to be read as far as London and Cracow, others were written in a dialect which confined them to Venice and its region. This section analyses the production and intended circulation of this corpus on the basis of a bibliography which nearly doubles the total amount of pamphlets identified in the lists which have been put together ever since the Interdict.⁹³ Table 6.1 summarizes a number of figures drawn from that bibliography, to do with the pamphlets’ publication (authors, editions, licences), contents (language), and editorial aspect (format and length). Quantitative methods are uneasily applied to literary controversies, and there would be little point in counting arguments or textual recurrences.⁹⁴ However, the pamphlets’ material elements do lend themselves to quantitative analysis and so assist an understanding of both the varied array of those involved in their production and the actual impact which they were intended to have on readers, people (that is) who were exposed to that materiality first, and to ideas only secondarily. As William St Clair has recently shown, counting books and editions can illuminate a whole culture.⁹⁵ The pamphlets’ aggregate number is impressive. It is even more so if we take into account the many different editions published of each text—one had as many as fourteen, and the overall average was more than two.⁹⁶ The differences between editions are often minor and escape scholars compiling simple lists of titles. However, by producing different editions, publishers during the Interdict more than doubled the amount of available pamphlets. If we take the average print run for a quarto to be around a thousand copies, and anything between ⁹² Avviso dated 27.10.1606, BAV, Urb. Lat. 1074, c. 558. ⁹³ The largest bibliography so far listed 96 works published in 126 editions, Scaduto 1885. My bibliography, which I hope to publish soon, is based on the holdings of BL, BNF, ULC and on a collection of 62 miscellanies containing 374 pamphlets in BMV Rari Veneti 261–322. ⁹⁴ Cf. Denis Richet’s preface to Jouhaud 1985: 13 and Richet 1982. ⁹⁵ St Clair 2004. ⁹⁶ ∗ Bellarmino, Risposta a due libretti had fourteen editions, and ∗ Baronio, Parænesis, eleven.

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Table 6.1. Figures concerning Interdict-related pamphlets For Venice

For Rome

Total

69 143 (2.07) 32 (46.3%) 30 (2.3)

73 152 (2.08) 27 (36.9%) 51 (1.4)

142 295 59 81

Licensed works (% total)d Licensed editions (% total)d Anonymous or pseudonymous works (% total)e Anonymous or pseudonymous editions (%total)e Foreign editions (% total)f

26 (37.6%) 44 (30.7%) 34 (49.2%) 66 (46.1%) 46 (32.1%)

66 (90.4%) 137 (90.1%) 10 (13.7%) 20 (13.1%) 35 (23.0%)

92 181 44 86 81

Works in Latin (% total) Editions in Latin (% total) Works in Italian (% total) Editions in Italian (% total)

25 (36.2%) 45 (31.4%) 40 (57.9%) 67 (46.8%)

38 (52.0%) 58 (38.1%) 35 (47.9%) 80 (52.6%)

63 103 75 147

4◦ editions (% total) 8◦ editions and smaller (% total) Total small editions 4◦ Editions up to 1.5 leaves, or 12 pp. (% total) up to 3.5 leaves, or 32 pp. (% total) 8◦ Editions up to 1.5 leaves, or 24 pp. (% total)

91 (63.6%) 52 (36.3%) 84 (58.7%) 30 (20.9%) 30 (20.9%) 24 (16.7%)

108 (71.0%) 44 (28.7%) 31 (20.4%) 11 (7.2%) 9 (5.9%) 11 (7.2%)

199 96 115 41 39 35

Worksa Editionsb (ratio editions/works) Number of works with more than one edition Authorsc (ratio works/authors)

Notes: a. The figures refer to substantially different texts rather than different editions of the same text with more or less different titles. They include neither large one-sided broadsheets and other official publications (such as the pope’s Monitorio or Venice’s Protesto), nor pamphlets printed after the end of the Interdict. b. The figures refer to different editions of the works mentioned above (hence, they too exclude official publications). The do not include different states or emissions (cf. Fahy 1988). c. Attributions have been made on the basis of internal evidence, bibliographical and archival material, irrespective of the number of authors indicated by the pamphlets’ title pages. These figures are prone to change subject to further research. d. The figures include all works which bear a printing licence on the title page, whether or not I have found a document attesting it in the respective government’s files. Obviously fake licences are excluded. e. The figures also include anonymous editions of earlier texts and texts by deceased authors (e.g. Gerson’s pamphlets) f. ‘Foreign’ is taken to mean outside the borders of the Venetian Republic and the State of the Church.

one and two thousand for a smaller octavo, this means a mass of printed texts amounting to perhaps 350 thousand exemplars printed and sold over just eight months.⁹⁷ An avviso of late July, concerning Bellarmino’s first pamphlet, indicates the astonishing rate of some pamphlets’ production and diffusion: ‘certainly no work was ever printed which sold more quickly than Cardinal Bellarmino’s small book published on Monday. . . . By Saturday none remained of the thousand which had been printed [in quarto], and now a thousand more will be printed in ⁹⁷ On print runs, cf. P. Grendler 1977: 6–12, Lowry 1991: 173–206, Richardson 1999: 21–4, and Nuovo 2003: 41–3.

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octavo’.⁹⁸ In terms of titles and editions, Rome was slightly ahead. However, it is likely that the two sides roughly equalled each other in actual printing output, because Venice privileged small-format editions with greater print runs—a crucial point to which we shall have to return. The reasons for the differences in the production of the two sides, reside in the ways in which the authorities’ involvement affected the working conditions of those who produced pamphlets: authors and publishers. Rome’s substantial lead in the number of the former does not only indicate greater ideological commitment, but also points to the papacy’s richer patronage system. This made it easier to reward writers, a crucial advantage at a time when patron–client ties were vital to an author’s livelihood.⁹⁹ The Republic had more limited means, and some of the pamphlets’ authors spent the years following the Interdict competing with each other for government sponsorship.¹⁰⁰ Gasparo Lonigo’s pamphlet was praised by Sarpi, but Lonigo had to wait until 1623 to join the Republic’s service.¹⁰¹ There are two striking signs of the authors’ hesitations on Venice’s side: the far greater number of anonymous and pseudonymous works, and the almost complete lack of dedications. Dedications were an author’s principal means of acknowledging patronage, and nearly half of the Roman pamphlets were duly dedicated to powerful figures, including the pope himself, the cardinal nephew, and the king of Spain.¹⁰² Instead pro-Venetian authors feared the consequences of coming out publicly against Rome. The ambassador in Paris managed to find several sympathetic authors willing to write, but for all his promises of reward could not convince any to do so using his name; he conceded that anonymity was a condition for publication.¹⁰³ Clergymen, who were many on both sides, may have feared suspension or demotion; but laymen were no more courageous. The Milanese jurist Menocchio implored the Venetian representative not to publish his brief on the Republic’s behalf, ‘by the love of God . . . because it would ruin me with the World’.¹⁰⁴ Like their Roman counterparts, most Venetian authors were also interested in the possibility of reward. A sign of the political arena’s lead in print publication, reward mostly materialized itself via the channel of patron–client relations with ⁹⁸ Avviso dated 26.7.1606, in ASVat, SS, Avvisi, b. 2, c. 202. Further information on the printruns of Roberto Meietti’s Frankfurt pamphlets—the shipment back to Venice loaded three chariots—in P. Grendler 1978: 107 and Spampanato 1924: 246. ⁹⁹ See above, p. 79. ¹⁰⁰ For example, in 1608 Giovanni Marsilio competed with Ottavio Menini for the chair of rhetoric in the school of St Mark; neither of them obtained it, but as a result, Menini may have offered his recantation to the nuncio; see Cicogna 1824–53, v. 5: 548, and the documents in Savio 1936–42, v. 16: 18–19. Four years later, it was the turn of Girolamo Vendramin to compete with Menini for the same chair; see a supplica by Vendramin dated 25.12.1612, in ASV, RSP, b. 168, cc. nn. ¹⁰¹ See Barzazi 1985: 221–51. ¹⁰² Cf. cardinal Borghese’s letters accepting a dedication published in de Magistris 1941: 96. Venice’s only exceptions were: ∗ Lonigo, Consilivm and ∗ Severino, Sostegno. ¹⁰³ Dispatch dated 29.9.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Francia, f. 35, c. 359v. ¹⁰⁴ Dispatch dated 16.8.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Milano, f. 30, c. 118v.

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prominent patricians rather than direct government intervention. Amongst the pamphlets’ authors, we find several who had thriving ties with that world. Such was the case of Giovan Battista Leoni, who is the likely author of three pseudonymous pamphlets, or Nicolò Crasso, who authored three anonymous poems and, with his name and full titles, a response to Baronio.¹⁰⁵ Crasso was a lawyer and served with government commissioners in the Levant; but he was also a very active author who cultivated his patronage network through encomiastic writings.¹⁰⁶ It is likely that the aim of such figures consisted in cultural rather than material capital, a reward which would create new opportunities for writing and gaining favour.¹⁰⁷ Others, instead, may have aimed at obtaining specific favours, like the mainland notable Alessandro Lisca, whose pamphlet conveniently appeared during a thorny inheritance trial in which the government was to help him greatly.¹⁰⁸ The authors’ hesitations to openly take Venice’s side reflected the government’s own ambiguous line concerning print publication. This is confirmed by the data on print authorisations. While in Rome nine out of ten pamphlets had a formal licence, on the Venetian side only one in three did. This is a crucial sign of the government’s attitude towards the pamphlets. The figures hide an even more problematic picture, which arises when we turn from the licences mentioned on title pages to the archival records of the licensing body. Of twenty-four titles which boasted a licence, only eight are actually mentioned there.¹⁰⁹ It is more than likely that, in an early case of what later became known as permesso tacito, the authorities simply closed an eye, perhaps spurred by particular groups of patricians. If this points to a relaxation in the mood (if not in the actual system) of censorship, it also confirms the government’s caution. In the eighteenth century permessi taciti were at least recorded by the censoring body. By contrast the records’ silence during the Interdict shows the government’s unwillingness to take responsibility for pamphlet publication because, as Sarpi later argued, licences made ‘the world hold the books’ contents as official opinions’ of the government granting the licence.¹¹⁰ The government ¹⁰⁵ ∗ Crasso, Antiparænesis; the poems all bore the title ∗ [Crasso], Canzone nelle presenti turbationi di Stato; see also Medin 1904: 541. On Leoni, see above, pp. 79–80; his pamphlets were ∗ [Leoni], Dve discorsi and ∗ [Leoni], Condoglienza. He may also have been the author of ∗ Offman [pseud.?], Avvertimento; cf. the attributions in MCV, Ms. Donà 486, fasc. 20 and 22. ¹⁰⁶ Crasso also wrote a long commentary on the foundational texts of Venice’s constitution which he dedicated to the powerful Domenico Molin, cf. DBI, s.v. ¹⁰⁷ Cf. Viala 1985: 77. ¹⁰⁸ ∗ [Lisca], Ad illustrissimvm Baronivm, and parti dated 22.11.1606, in ASV, Sen., Terra, r. 76, cc. 163r –v, and 2.5.1607, ibid., r. 77, cc. 53v –54. ¹⁰⁹ ASV, CCX, Notatorio, r. 33 (stopping in February 1607, after which there is a gap in the records), and f. 17 (reaching the end of February 1606). ¹¹⁰ Sarpi 1969: 634; Sarpi returned to this point repeatedly (e.g. consulto dated 17.8.1615, in Sarpi 1958: 215). ‘Permessi taciti’ became very common in the eighteenth century, cf. Infelise 1989: 71–99, but were prohibited until that time, as spelled out in a law of 1566, in H. Brown 1891: 214–15.

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refused to be associated with most pamphlets and wished to distinguish those with which it was ready to identify from the rest. This resulted in important distinctions. In warlike terms, rather than as a united front, we ought to imagine pamphlets as ranged in a series of circles of varying proximity to the centre. Only three pamphlets can be taken to represent the Republic, carrying all the signs of official recognition, including a lion of St Mark and the full text of the Ten’s licence (a measure of their proclaimed authority). As we shall see, the government allocated funds to sponsor their publication both in Venice and elsewhere.¹¹¹ Another group of three pamphlets were written abroad at the bequest of Venetian ambassadors; they carry no licence and there is no evidence that the government distributed them back in Venice.¹¹² A third group, slightly further from the government, includes five pamphlets which were licensed or rewarded by the government and written by writers with an avowed connection with the Republic, such as Sarpi himself or the theologians employed in the censorship machinery. There is no trace, however, that the government helped publish or distribute any of them.¹¹³ The rest of the pamphlets—fifty-seven titles in total—had no direct traceable link with the Republic. They had no licence, were never mentioned in government records, and mostly carried the name of neither printer nor author. Many of them were not just unsolicited, but unwelcome, including a number of anti-Catholic texts published abroad. The high number of works written and published outside Venice’s territories—several of which were smuggled into Venice—originated mostly from Protestant authors and from the efficient presses on which the latter could rely in some regions of France and Germany, as well as England. That those authors were fighting their own battle rather than Venice’s is clear by their frequent evocation of millenarian arguments, which were bound to be divisive amongst Catholics; even a broad-minded reader such as Pierre de L’Estoile dismissed them as useless for Venice’s case.¹¹⁴ What Protestant authors of different strands welcomed as a happy coincidence of interests, many readers took as embarrassing for Venice—a sign of the printed controversy’s twisted effects.¹¹⁵ ¹¹¹ ∗ Querini, Avviso, ∗ Sarpi, Considerationi, and the collective ∗ Sarpi et al., Trattato; their licences—granted between 21 and 22.8.1606—are all recorded in ASV, CCX, Notatorio, r. 33 cc. 156r –v. Although theoretically required for all texts, the licence rarely appeared in full, cf. P. Grendler 1977: 274. ¹¹² They are all pseudonymous: ∗ [Casaubon], De libertate, ∗ [Leschassier], Consvltatio, and ∗ [Servin], Pro libertate. Leschassier’s pamphlet was also translated and published in Padua (∗ [Leschassier], Consvlta). ¹¹³ They all obtained a licence between early September and late December 1606, duly recorded in ASV, CCX, Notatorio, r. 33 as well as on the title page. ¹¹⁴ L’Estoile 1958–60, v. 2: 222–3 (23.1.1607). An example in ∗ Vignier, De Venetorvm: 5 and 45. ¹¹⁵ The French ambassador described Vignier’s anti-Catholic work as a worse blow to Venice than any anti-Venetian pamphlet, 3.11.1606 in Canaye 1636, v 3: 262–3.

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The role of publishers Clearly, although I have used the tags ‘for Rome’ or ‘for Venice’ for ease of reference, many pamphlets were ‘against’, rather than in favour of, one or the other. This leads us to the next point. While the government only sponsored a few of the pamphlets, their numbers rocketed because they were the products of a group of professionals—printers and publishers even more than authors—who on the whole worked for their own interests.¹¹⁶ In Rome the initiative for publishing rested with a combination of authorial self-promotion and patronage. By contrast in Venice, where the government only commissioned a few texts and authors were reluctant to offer their works, it was publishers who conducted the game. Only eight printers volunteered their names on their pamphlets’ title pages on the Republic’s side (and one is likely to be a pseudonym), most of them based in Venice (five printers, twenty-five editions), with few pamphlets published in Padua (two printers, nine editions) and other mainland centres such as Bergamo, Brescia, and Vicenza.¹¹⁷ By contrast, nineteen printers published against Venice. The difference can be explained by the more difficult conditions of production in Venice, where printers rightly feared the consequences of antagonizing the Roman Congregation of the Index (which had the power to prohibit the entirety of a printer’s production, as it did in the case of Venice’s Roberto Meietti).¹¹⁸ Once again, the authorities’ attitudes also played a role. While on the Roman side the official printers were very active (in Rome, Ferrara, Bologna), in Venice the ducal printer only issued two editions of the Protesto. Unlike Rome’s, Venice’s publishers were on the whole minor entrepreneurs. For example, the international Giunti firm issued three pamphlets in Florence against the Republic but none in Venice against the pope.¹¹⁹ The only publisher of importance on Venice’s side, Giovan Battista Ciotti, issued just one pamphlet.¹²⁰ Roberto Meietti, the publisher who was to involve himself most fully in the controversy, was a minor member of Venice’s guild.¹²¹ He was an enterprising businessman, however. He published in his own name ¹¹⁶ As is known, printers and publishers did not always coincide, but I have found no evidence of that distinction concerning Venetian Interdict pamphlets. For the sake of convenience, the two are taken to coincide. ¹¹⁷ Six pamphlets were published in Bergamo without the name of the printer (probably Comin Ventura, the only printer known in the city at the time), and at least three were said to have been published in Brescia, but I have not found them. One of the editions of ∗ Tomaselli, Mentite, was published in Vicenza. ¹¹⁸ Rotondò 1963: 184; Meietti’s books were publicly burnt in Rome long after the Interdict, ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni Roma ordinaria, r. 16, cc. 64v and 79. ¹¹⁹ ∗ Bertolotti, Filoprotropia, ∗ G.A. Bovio, Lettera, and ∗ [Possevino], Nuova risposta. ¹²⁰ In 1605 Ciotti stood for the election as head of the printers and booksellers’s guild twice (but failed both times); in 1606–7 he was councillor de respeto, see ASV, Arti, b. 163.2, cc. 60, 65, 67v, 68v. ¹²¹ Meietti rarely played any role in the guild (although he was elected councillor in 1607), and contributed relatively little to the guilds’ expenses, see ASV, Arti, b. 163.2, c. 68v.

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and printed for others, had a sustained network abroad, and frequently sent agents to the Frankfurt Fair—he even printed at least one special catalogue for the fair. He was a man ready to take risks and had already attracted the Holy Office’s attention in 1588 and 1598.¹²² During the Interdict, Meietti printed thirteen pamphlets under his name in Padua and Venice (three of them in two editions), as well as ten more without typographical marks or under a different imprint.¹²³ What is striking about Meietti’s work is that it included both official works, semi-official ones, pamphlets with no visible link to the government and—printed abroad—radical anti-papal tracts and lampoons. Thus, he overlapped all the groups discussed so far, showing that he acted for personal profit rather than allegiance to the government. Meietti acted on many levels at the same time, in line with the poligrafi’s grand tradition but also in the same way as all minor printers did. He printed not only texts authored by others, but also sought and adapted older ones, such as an extract from the Life of St Gertrud faithfully repeating an old edition, which Meietti rendered relevant through typographical alterations, by highlighting certain passages.¹²⁴ The Interdict was likely to constitute a precious occasion for minor but enterprising players in Venice’s competitive publishing industry. As Roger Chartier suggested in relation to early seventeenth-century France, pamphlets were a publisher’s ideal investment at a time of economic slowdown, because they required small funds and secured ready profits.¹²⁵ Printers produced pamphlets quickly and without halting much of the rest of a workshop’s production. A short pamphlet could take as little as one day to produce in a thousand copies, without employing much of the shop’s font (a major issue for small printers). Paper, a printer’s chief cost, was little, while sales were driven by political events. If (as we have seen) authors willing to challenge the Interdict were scarce in Venice, there were many publishers who saw the controversy as an unmissable business opportunity. However, publishers had their own aims in the battle, and those were likely to concern profit rather than a particular idea on the issues at stake. As happened consistently throughout Europe, even publishers with strong political or religious affiliations were prepared to produce and sell works from both sides. At the height of the Reformation, for example, the same Antwerp printer published both Lutheran and anti-Lutheran propaganda, and smuggled Protestant tracts to England before Henry VIII’s reformation and recusant ones afterwards.¹²⁶ In Venice too, the same publishers who printed anti-papal pamphlets during the Interdict also published perfectly orthodox works at other times. Comin Ventura, ¹²² Meietti 1602 and Serrai 1993: 33–4. Cf. also Rhodes 1960, 1971, and Grendler 1978: 106. ¹²³ Rhodes 1960 attributed six anonymous pamphlets to Meietti. Four more, published under the fictitious imprint ‘Nicolò Padovano’, can also be attributed to him: ∗ Crancius, Sententia; Fedeli, Anatomia; ∗ [Leschassier], Consvlta; ∗ Tomaselli, Mentite. ¹²⁴ e.g. ∗ Landsberger, Mirabile rivelatione. ¹²⁵ Chartier 1982. ¹²⁶ Waterschoot 2001: 237–8.

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the (anonymous) publisher of the Bergamo pamphlets, also published the Index expurgandorum; Giovanni Battista Ciotti, who signed one of the pamphlets and may have had a hand in publishing others, published orthodox works of Scholastics and closely collaborated with the prolific Jesuit Antonio Possevino (himself the author of several anti-Venetian pamphlets during the Interdict).¹²⁷ Indeed, after the Interdict, the Inquisition had to relax the prohibition of Meietti’s works, in order to allow the circulation of those which it welcomed.¹²⁸ Above all, the publishers’ aim was to sell their books, whatever the contents. A case in point is the anonymous anti-Venetian Letter of the Republic of Genoa to the Republic of Venice, which some attributed to Possevino. It first reached Venice in manuscript and was later printed there together with the response, a publication which favoured the Republic and may have been inspired by some of its powerful partisans. But the Letter was also published in Venice on its own, without the response, probably because it was in high demand.¹²⁹ As this case shows, the publishers’ strategy was to respond to market demand and, if anything, to encourage further demand by stimulating curiosity amongst readers. Curiosity is a characteristic of the mind which, as we shall see, Sarpi and other supporters of the Republic exploited in their political and religious controversy. However, as far as the businessmen of Venice’s publishing industry were concerned, curiosity constituted a primarily commercial, rather than intellectual, mechanism. That these two aspects coalesced at the time of the Interdict was the ultimate reason for Venice’s success.

Pamphlets for distribution, pamphlets for sale Printing did not just multiply polemical texts; it augmented the controversy’s impact by radically increasing the accessibility of those texts. On the one hand, this had to do with price, as a Roman newswriter offering various texts to a Venetian patrician recognized. ‘Manuscript writings are more expensive than printed ones, and buying them all will require a large purse’, he wrote; but once a work was in print, prices decreased as production costs were cut: ‘because in this case one buys the work rather than the writing.’¹³⁰ On the other hand, manuscripts were not necessarily expensive in themselves. Unlike print, manuscript requires no initial investment, and given the time, copying for oneself was the cheapest form of textual circulation. Accordingly, as we have seen, manuscript played a crucial role in Venice’s political communication. However, print drastically altered the conditions in which texts could be purchased. Manuscript reproduction presupposed a personal contact of some kind with the ¹²⁷ L. Balsamo 1991. ¹²⁸ Documents in Rotondò 1963: 184 and Betti 2002: 179. ¹²⁹ ∗ Dve lettere and ∗ Vna lettera. ¹³⁰ Avviso by Orazio Pelizza, 12.8.1606, in ASV, IS, b. 1213, fasc. 2, cc. nn.

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owner of another copy; by contrast, printed publication made texts available to outsiders with money but no contacts. And the money they needed was very little. The pamphlets’ price was determined by a variety of factors, a combination of governmental involvement, costs of production, and extent of demand. Initially, pamphlets were very expensive. According to a newswriter, the first edition of Bellarmino’s pamphlet sold at as much as one scudo, a very large sum and one sufficient to buy 23 pounds of beef in Rome in 1606.¹³¹ At the beginning of the controversy, high demand drove prices up, a remarkable sign of the interest raised by the Interdict, and one which it would be interesting to compare to the as yet largely unknown dynamics of the early modern publishing market.¹³² For the same reason, however, prices decreased in the course of the controversy, as swift replies outdated each other while publishers seized the opportunity to increase supply. Unsurprisingly, the Roman newswriter who recorded the high price of Bellarmino’s pamphlet added that a new edition appeared in a cheaper format. Similar evidence can be found in Venice’s territories. At the beginning of September the booksellers of Verona sold out their fifteen copies of Sarpi’s Considerationi in spite of the very expensive price of four lire (80 soldi). As the governors said, this was a ‘truly excessive price’, twice as much as an unskilled labourer earned in a day and 50 per cent more than his master did.¹³³ In a sellers’ market, it was normal for publishers to have the upper hand, and in this case Meietti wanted 68 soldi for every copy, a price which he justified by saying that the works were belli e curiosi: both beautifully produced and highly interesting.¹³⁴ But if at the beginning Meietti knew that he could exploit the market’s ‘curiosity’, in the following weeks the prices went down. By the end of the month, the governor of Brescia reported that Sarpi’s Apologia sold at 40 soldi. ¹³⁵ This was still a high price, but other factors were at play to determine further adjustments. First, the government was ready to bypass commercial channels in order to distribute those pamphlets which it officially supported (the first group, as described above). In September, the Collegio sent fifty copies each of the collective Trattato dell’interdetto, Querini’s Avviso, and Sarpi’s Considerationi, to every mainland governors for distribution to local notables and clergy.¹³⁶ The governors of Brescia demanded more copies to distribute to their cities’ ‘gentilhuomini’, while those of Verona went as far as asking for 500 copies of ¹³¹ Avviso dated 26.7.1606, in ASVat, SS, Avvisi, b. 2, c. 202; on the price of beef see Delumeau 1957–59: 656–58 and 702. ¹³² Cf. Lowry 1991: 188 and Nuovo 2003. ¹³³ In 1606–10 a master-builder earned on average a little more than 60 soldi a day, and an unskilled worker in the same trade, a little less than 40; Pullan 1964: 173–4; for comparisons, see Rapp 1974: 130–3 and R. C. Davis 1991: 59. ¹³⁴ Dispatch dated 3.9.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Verona, f. nn. (1606), cc. nn.; on producers-retailers relations, cf. Nuovo 2003: 118–19. ¹³⁵ Dispatch dated 23.9.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Brescia, f. 5, cc. nn. ¹³⁶ Dispatches dated 11.9.1606, in ASV, Coll., Lettere segrete, f. 43, cc. nn., and 23.9.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Brescia, f. 5, cc. nn.

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Sarpi’s pamphlets for free distribution amongst the local clergy.¹³⁷ In such cases, publishers could afford to keep prices high because they envisaged selling to the government rather than marketing their books. From the public’s point of view—or at least from the point of view of the specific audiences targeted by the government—prices were ultimately irrelevant so long as the government arranged for distribution. It is likely that the government also tried to subsidize publishers in order to contain prices. At the beginning of September, the Collegio ordered the printers of Sarpi’s pamphlets to ‘send out a good number at a price which we will ask them to limit, so that all those who wish to buy them can have them easily with reasonable expenditure’.¹³⁸ For this reason, the following day the Senate authorized the Collegio to spend as much as 500 ducats ‘for things relating to printing and writing’, an unspecified aim likely to refer to subsidies for printers.¹³⁹ On the same day, the Collegio also acted to invite competition in order to reduce prices, instructing local governors to contact printers who would locally re-issue the pamphlets ‘without mistakes and in correct form’.¹⁴⁰ To defend himself from competition, Meietti advertised copyrights (privilegi) on three of the pamphlets he published.¹⁴¹ It is possible that he obtained such copyrights in exchange for lowering his prices (if he really did obtain them, since there is no record in the archive).¹⁴² Naturally, however, governmental subsidies and distribution only concerned the few pamphlets with which the government was ready to be associated. All the others were to be subjected to the laws of demand and supply. After a first phase in which publishers were likely to profit from high prices, then, they had an interest in lowering prices to boost sales. For this reason, they may have pursued a double production: expensive governmental pamphlets and cheap unofficial ones. Publishers knew that to achieve the latter, they had to cutdown on paper, their primary cost, and so reduce the size of pamphlets.¹⁴³ The outcome can be seen by turning to the data on format and size in Table 6.1. 84 editions in favour of Venice (58%) were small, and 54 of them—more than a third of the total number, and including none of the government’s pamphlets—were shorter than one and a half leaf, about the same size as ¹³⁷ Dispatches dated 23.9.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Brescia, f. 5, cc. nn., and 3.9.1606, in Dispacci Verona, f. nn. (1606), cc. nn. ¹³⁸ Dispatch dated 5.9.1606, ASV, Coll., Lettere comuni, f. 112, cc. nn., referring to ∗ Sarpi, Considerazioni and ∗ Sarpi et al., Trattato ¹³⁹ Parte dated 6.9.1606, ASV, Sen., Terra, r. 76, c. 102v. ¹⁴⁰ Dispatch dated 5.9.1606, in ASV, Coll., Lettere comuni, f. 112, cc. nn. Instances of governors’ attempts to have local editions published in dispatches of 9.9.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Vicenza, f. 4, cc. nn., and 23.9.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Brescia, f. 5, cc. nn. ¹⁴¹ ∗ Sarpi, Apologia, ∗ Marsilio, Difesa, ∗ Lonigo, Consilivm. ¹⁴² The governors of Vicenza believed a deal involving a privilege to be both possible and useful; dispatch dated 3.9.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Verona, f. nn. (1606), cc. nn. ¹⁴³ The impact of paper on the overall costs of printers in the hand-press period is estimated at around 70 per cent in Gaskell 1972: 177, and Martin and Febvre 1984: 114.

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the broadsides sold by charlatans around the city’s squares. They were cheap to produce and easy to distribute, ideal for publishers who had to take costs seriously. In contrast, in Rome printers were likely to work for rich patrons whose funds enabled a great proportion of large editions, which small publishers could not afford. Thus, the dynamics of pamphlet production had a crucial effect in widening the impact of political communication. By transforming an economic constraint—the limitation of funds—into a business challenge—the containment of costs—Venice’s publishers seized an extraordinary opportunity for profit and in the process hugely increased the pamphlets’ accessibility. The two mechanisms of pamphlet circulation—distribution and sale—reveal the different publics targeted by the different agents in the controversy: the government and the publishers. The government focused on the ruling classes and the clergy, the same groups to which the Senate had already addressed, respectively, the letter to local assemblies and the Protesto. These groups’ consensus was crucial to the Republic’s defiance. The mainland local assemblies, in particular, had the power to pass or stop extraordinary contributions in case of war. Furthermore, beyond elected assemblies, Venice’s patrician government showed its broad sense of informal elite status by asking governors to distribute pamphlets also to ‘those other gentlemen whom you think more appropriate’.¹⁴⁴ The clergy included a wider social variety. In early September, for example, complaining about the high price of pamphlets, the governors of Vicenza requested 1,000 copies for free distribution amongst the ‘monasteries and other clergy . . . many of whom are poor and may easily decide not to spend that money.’¹⁴⁵ In the government’s mind, the clergy were to act as intermediaries in further publicizing the pamphlets’ message. In September, for example, the Senate instructed all governors to ensure that preachers inspired their sermons by reading the government’s pamphlets and it enclosed copies for that purpose.¹⁴⁶ This points to a systematic planning of oral publication, ultimately aiming at the widest possible public but only through the controlled intermediary of a smaller group’s guidance. While the government had specific groups in mind, it is likely that publishers aimed at a wider, and less easily controllable, public. The extent of that public can be guessed by considering six bound miscellanies held in the Biblioteca Marciana which contain contemporary indications of the price of fifty-five pamphlets. The average price of the thirty-seven pamphlets for Venice was 10.7 soldi, that of the eighteen others nearly 20.¹⁴⁷ We should adjust these prices upward, because the miscellanies may have been assembled after the controversy, once demand decreased. Still, by doubling the average Venetian price at 20 soldi, we ¹⁴⁴ Dispatch dated 11.9.1606, in ASV, Coll., Lettere segrete, f. 43, cc. nn. ¹⁴⁵ Dispatch dated 3.9.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Verona, f. nn. (1606), cc. nn. ¹⁴⁶ Dispatch dated 9.9.1606, in ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni Roma ordinaria, r. 15, cc. 126v –127. ¹⁴⁷ The prices are scribbled at the back of the miscellaneous volumes BMV Rari Veneti 261–4 and 266–7.

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obtain a figure which is comparable to the five sous which Pierre de L’Estoile considered appropriate for the Interdict pamphlets in Paris (he bought about fifty, and on average spent that amount).¹⁴⁸ That figure was half an unskilled builder’s daily wage and one-third that of his master. It was a considerable, but not an impossible price, which probably excluded salaried workers, but made pamphlets accessible to shop-owners and artisans. On the whole, then, the pamphlets were likely to reach a far greater group than that envisaged by the government. Most importantly, averages hide a striking qualification concerning the smallest, and cheapest, pamphlets. L’Estoile thought the price of the shortest pamphlets too insignificant to mention. But the Marciana miscellanies show that none of the seventeen smaller quartos (no more than 3.5 leaves) cost more than 6 soldi. Of these, the smallest pamphlets, ten quartos and octavos of up to one-and-a-half leaves, only cost 2 soldi, the same figure which the miller Menocchio spent some years earlier in Venice for his Fioretto della Bibbia.¹⁴⁹ Even if we again double the figure to 4 soldi, we would still have a very affordable price, a tenth of an unskilled labourer’s daily wage, not very different from the relative cost of books today (and certainly smaller than the cost of this one)—it was the same relative price which political pamphlets cost their readers in England in the same years.¹⁵⁰ In the 1600s, it was a sum which in Venice’s market could buy half a pound of beef, one fresh eel, or a melon.¹⁵¹ In contrast, none of the Roman pamphlets listed in the miscellanies cost so little. A final important point must be mentioned, which confirms the Venetian pamphlets’ greater opening to a wider public. There were considerably more pamphlets in Latin on the pope’s side than on Venice’s. Reliance on Latin may also have revealed the pope’s supporters’ preference for the ecumenical language of the Church—the language of the liturgy, a point of great importance to the Counter Reformation—as well as the authors’ boast of greater scholarly authority.¹⁵² What made sense for authors, however, was unsatisfactory for readers. Italian assured pamphlets a larger readership amongst the laity and the lower secular clergy. In effect, the number of editions show that Italian titles were more likely to be sold both in Rome and in Venice. It was not for nothing that the Roman authors with the greatest experience of proselytizing also wrote ¹⁴⁸ L’ Estoile 1958–60, v. 2 : 230 (6.3.1607); cf. ibid., 203, 214, 222, 228, 230, 243. ¹⁴⁹ Ginzburg 1980: 30. ¹⁵⁰ Raymond 2003: 82–3. The popular ‘twopenny’ and ‘threehalfpenny’ books cost about 1/6 of a building craftsman’s daily wage; Watt 1991: 261–3. ¹⁵¹ The beef and eel prices refer to 1608 (from ASV, Rason Vecchie 222, kindly supplied by Dr James Shaw) and the melon, to 1618 (from the account books of Andrea Chiocco, a physician in Verona who also happened to be a frequent reader of pamphlets during the Interdict, Fahy 1993: 92–7). ¹⁵² On Latin and the Church, cf. Fragnito 1997 and Waquet 1998: 56–100. De Dominis, bishop of Spalato and one of the Republic’s supporters, was strongly in favour of vernacular liturgy, Malcolm 1984: 23.

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in Italian and wished that the Latin pamphlets be translated so as to reap ‘the greatest fruit’.¹⁵³ Obviously, then, Venetian publishers designed many pamphlets to target a large market, minimizing size and costs, commissioning short texts written in easily accessible language, matching format and price to contents (and vice versa). Thus, on an occasion such as the Interdict, economic opportunity interacted with political contingency to make controversial polemical pamphlets as cheap as the cheapest popular literature.¹⁵⁴ The evidence presented in this section suggests the astonishing fact that, at least during the Interdict, controversial political and religious pamphlets, condemned by the ecclesiastical authorities as heretical, were as easily available as the cheapest devotional literature perhaps as cheap as the one-sheet broadsides sold by charlatans. We still ignore the effects pamphlets had on readers, but we do now know that they had a great many readers indeed. 6 . 3 FA B R I C AT I N G C O N S E N S U S , E N C O U R AG I N G CRITICISM If there is no doubt that pamphlets profited publishers, what did they do for the protagonists of the political struggle? Pamphlets were described as weapons in a war, but is it possible to speak of a strategy, intentional and systematic? This section assesses the extent to which pamphlets were designed to play a role in the conflict, not so much by looking at the ideas each expressed, but by analysing their interaction with the larger public which (as the evidence just seen shows) they so clearly targeted.¹⁵⁵ In this way, the Interdict controversy can now at last help us answer the question of the political use of communication with which we began. Different modes of communication performed different functions at different stages. When the government responded to the interdict with official publications, it envisaged the latter’s performative effects, undoing the interdict and affirming the Republic’s authority. The publicity of the pope’s counter-offensive fulfilled an equally clear role, namely to ensure that information circulated in order to make the interdict binding. This combined with the information exchange of a host of professionals and observers, who had their own interests in the controversy. To understand the function of printed publications we have ¹⁵³ Bellarmino and Possevino, both Jesuits with deep awareness of proselitizing’s difficulties, wrote in Italian, and the Jesuit Lorenzo Terzi wished Baronios’ pamphlet translated so as to reap ‘grandissimo frutto’; letter of 12.8.1606 in Pirri 1959: 280. ¹⁵⁴ Unlike much popular literature, pamphlets had no illustrations (apart from simple marks on the title page), a substantial item of the printers’ cost. ¹⁵⁵ Intellectual analyses of the pamphlets can be found in: Cozzi 1959: 99–108; Bouwsma 1968: 417–82; Gaeta 1984: 465–78; Prosperi 1994; Oakley 1996; Lavenia 2004: 366–70.

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to remember that it was the resulting combination of newssheets, sermons, and informal discussions, and not pamphlets, that made the controversy public in the first place. The government consented to pamphlet publication in order to counter the legitimation crisis which ensued. Through the pamphlets, it hoped to respond to the explosion of information, to influence what it could not stop, and raise its voice over the system of communication in a way which the official publications had clearly failed to do. Whatever Machiavelli’s scepticism about the usefulness of books to ‘hold states’, it was better to fight a ‘war of pamphlets’—ultimately subject to censorship and manipulation—than to allow a ‘war of words’ from raging without control. In the government’s intentions, the pamphlets were to be a medium which would overwhelm all others. This strategy had to do with the very nature of print. First, the press surpassed all other forms of political communication in quantity. Pamphlets enabled Venice’s supporters to out-produce the manuscripts infiltrating the Republic. For example, a pamphlet contained one of those letters together with a reply: a refutation which was meant to circulate in a thousand more exemplars than the original which prompted it.¹⁵⁶ The same could be said of Marsilio’s Reply, published in four editions, and of the response to the anti-Venetian manuscript Letter of the Republic of Genoa, which underwent two very cheap editions.¹⁵⁷ Publicity became a trap for Rome, as the example of Baronio’s violent speech to Paul V strikingly demonstrates. First pronounced in the consistory which inaugurated the interdict, it circulated in manuscript like other such speeches (known as vota), and soon underwent many editions to become one of the controversy’s most popular pamphlets. They were not printed in Rome, however, but in Venice and other countries against Rome, as evidence of excessive and ineffectual animosity.¹⁵⁸ The English ambassador himself suggested that the Republic should have Baronio’s text printed, because ‘anyway, it isn’t dangerous’.¹⁵⁹ The very act of polemical publication was in many ways a victory for Venice, because the public increase in polemic was bound to show the interdict’s ineffectiveness. The Roman pamphlets affirmed the Church’s authority, but the Venetian responses showed that authority to be disputed—which is why many observers commented that the cardinals’ pamphlets obtained the opposite effect of their authors’ wishes.¹⁶⁰ ¹⁵⁶ ∗ Capello, Lettera. ¹⁵⁷ ∗ Dve lettere. ¹⁵⁸ I have found more than ten editions of this text in various languages and with different titles (e.g. in ∗ [Guidoni et al.], Ad Paulum V ; ∗ Marsilio, Dvo vota; ∗ Risposta di Maestro Pasqvino; ∗ [Tilenus], Christianorvm; ∗ Vignier, De Venetorvm), accompanied by replies. ¹⁵⁹ Audience of 28.8.1606, in ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Roma, r. 13, c. 223v. ¹⁶⁰ Dispatch of ambassador of Savoy dated 8.8.1606, referring to Baronio’s Paraenesis, in de Magistris 1906: 156–7. Other diplomats agreed, e.g. the agent of the Duke of Mantua (dispatches of 5 and 18.8.1606, in Putelli 1911, v. 22: 207), and the French ambassador (dispatches dated 5 and 11.8.1606, in Canaye 1636, v. 3: 157 and 161).

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The representation of loyalty Print caused a qualitative as well as quantitative shift in the government’s public stance. Initially, during the strategy of denial, its arguments were mostly negative, consisting either in shows of force or legal quibbles meant to shelter those who were already willing to conform. Unlike official publications which imposed obedience by law, the pamphlets tried to win consensus by convincing readers—they moved from the interdict’s legal invalidity to its injustice.¹⁶¹ The government’s official pamphlets also all amplified the Senate’s original argument about the beneficial nature of Venice’s supervision over the clergy. Finally, against sweeping accusations of heresy, pro-Venetian pamphlets vindicated the Republic’s piety, historical role as a bulwark of Christianity, and long track of obedience to the Holy See.¹⁶² Thus, they left legal precedents to celebrate the Republic on the basis of its historical legacy. The force of conviction, however, could never be enough. Polemical pamphlets are a strange kind of genre. Even more than other texts, they are meant to prompt reactions; but as partisan statements made in polarized contexts, they are on the whole unlikely to convince unsympathetic readers. Perhaps aware of this, many pamphlets during the Interdict—and notably those closest to the government—opted for a different line: to proclaim, rather than seek, their readers’ consensus and that of all people beyond them. As Sarpi’s disciple boasted, there was no need to persuade readers, because ‘the People are already persuaded . . . and have no doubts or worries’.¹⁶³ To say that readers needed no persuading was no admission of redundancy on the part of the pamphlets’ authors. On the contrary, it gave them a specific role to play alongside the government’s other forms of communication. As we have seen, the Protesto affirmed the consensus of clergy and subjects, ‘nay of the entire world’.¹⁶⁴ In diplomatic communication, the government made the same point. When he last saw the nuncio on the eve of the interdict, the doge told him that ‘in this city and in all the others in our state, as in all the territories, towns and villages, everyone, of every status condition and sex, feels the same as we do.’¹⁶⁵ The problem with those boasts of unity was that the government had no means of proving them. In a secret brief, for example, Sarpi argued that it would have been useful to convene popular representative assemblies on the lines of the French States General; however, he recognized that Venice’s constitution contemplated no such institution.¹⁶⁶ In spite of Gasparo Contarini’s classic definition, the ¹⁶¹ For examples of this argument, see the texts quoted in Bouwsma 1968: 426–7. ¹⁶² e.g. ∗ Sarpi, Considerationi, in Sarpi 1969: 153, ∗ Tomaselli, Mentite: 5. ¹⁶³ ∗ Micanzio, Confirmatione: 449. ¹⁶⁴ Cornet 1859: 72. ¹⁶⁵ Audience of 4.5.1606, in ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Roma, r. 13, c. 46. The doge made a very similar point to the Jesuits, cf. Pirri 1959: 108. ¹⁶⁶ ‘Che cosa importi l’aggravatoria’, in Sarpi 2001: 475–6.

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Great Council was far from representing anyone other than the patriciate.¹⁶⁷ In their thousands, the pamphlets offered a fictional equivalent of those assemblies, a literary compensation for a political deficiency. For example, the many orations presented to the doge on his election by representatives of mainland communities appeared in print at the height of the Interdict, occasionally in several editions—a move from governmental to public communication.¹⁶⁸ By praising the government, and proclaiming the enthusiastic support of each of their communities, printed orations were meant to represent the entire state, united in agreement with the capital. The fact that none mentioned the interdict did not mean that the interdict was absent from their preoccupations; it was a statement on the interdict itself, a sign of disregard in line with the government’s message. On a fictional level, the use of pseudonyms played the same function. Carefully chosen pseudonyms were more than covers for their authors; they turned into symbols of the consensus of entire social categories, a strategy practised in other controversies in the same period.¹⁶⁹ A Polish student in Padua and a German one in Rome, a Parisian doctor and a Roman theologian, a Venetian hermit and an Albanian philosopher, a baker from Bologna and a fisherman from Burano—a colourful array of personae simulated socially widespread support.¹⁷⁰ Like Venice’s colourful but orderly ducal processions, pseudonymous pamphlets celebrated the civic unity of different parts of the social body. At the precise moment when the interdict excluded Venetians from the community of the Church, pamphlets wished to create a sense of community. Indeed, it is not impossible to compare the printed pamphlets’ strategy to that of the press studied by Benedict Anderson as creating feelings of national identity by imagining a large overarching community.¹⁷¹ But what kind of community did the pamphlets imagine? It is interesting that none of them resorted to a commonplace of other controversies at the time, the personification of the entire people supporting from below the reasons of the sovereign. Unlike the numerous ‘Soldat françois’, ‘Bon Gaulois’, and ‘Jacques Bonhomme’ supporting the French monarchy against Spain at exactly this time, there were few characters in Venice who could really symbolize the entirety of the Republic’s diverse populations.¹⁷² Likewise, the readership described in the official pamphlets was carefully selected so as to distinguish ¹⁶⁷ Contarini 1591: 15, see above, p. 5. ¹⁶⁸ Del Bene 1606: A4. Del Bene also wrote a pamphlet, which Sarpi recommended for publication, see Sarpi 2001: 497–505. Another oration insisted on the doge’s piety and orthodoxy, dalla Porta 1606: A3–A4. I have found twenty orations (three of them edited at least twice, and one three times), mostly printed by Rampazetto and Meietti. ¹⁶⁹ Cf. Sawyer 1990: 87, and Raymond 2003: 41. ¹⁷⁰ ∗ [Leoni?], Condoglienza; ∗ [Leoni], Avvertimento; [Leschassier], Consvlta; ∗ Lettera di Eulogio romano; ∗ Palmerio, Lettera; ∗ Tomaselli, Mentite; ∗ Litera cuiusdam pistoris; Copia d’vna lettera scritta da Pifanio di Pizzoni, in ∗ Raccolta, v. 1: 406–7. ¹⁷¹ Anderson 1991. ¹⁷² Sawyer 1990: 88–90, Mathorez 1913, Bitton and Mortensen 1994.

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it, both morally and socially, from the multitude. The patrician Querini was the clearest in circumscribing his public, by addressing himself ‘to those whom God has charged with the guidance of peoples’, ‘those most knowledgeable and prudent’ distinguished from ‘the simple’.¹⁷³ He also stressed the beneficial nature of Venice’s rule to the propertied classes especially, and particularly to nobles—precisely those categories to whom, as we have seen, the Senate sent his pamphlet.¹⁷⁴ By contrast, Venetian authors accused their adversaries of targeting the ‘simple’ and of inciting ‘commotion, upheaval, sedition and rumour in the people’, ‘the fire of sedition’.¹⁷⁵ If Rome condemned Venice for heresy, Venetian pamphlets accused their Roman counterparts of provoking ‘scandal’.¹⁷⁶ Popular political communication was a line which none of the Republic’s supporters claimed to take. At the same time as they affirmed the public’s agreement, pamphlets also played down the importance of that agreement. Despite their republican rhetoric, Venetian authors never described power as originating in the people, in contrast both with Marsilio of Padua (whom they were accused of following), and with theories which were common in other controversies of this period both in the Netherlands and in France.¹⁷⁷ Venetian authors maintained instead the divine right of rulers, while it was in fact the pope’s supporters who maintained the human origin of secular authority so as to undermine the latter.¹⁷⁸ In terms of political communication, governmental pamphlets suggested that the people had no role other than acclaiming government. As Querini wrote, ‘the laws of the prince have the same force which they would have if all the subjects came together to pass them each with his vote.’¹⁷⁹ The government intended pamphlets to reinforce the traditional framework of politics and thus, arguably, to play a function similar to rituals by celebrating a paternalist vision of society and publicly representing the people in a spectacle of loyalty. Indeed, this effort closely reflected ceremonies of the popular acclamation of rulers common in Venice and in smaller communities on the mainland as elsewhere in early modern Europe.¹⁸⁰ By substituting themselves for the public, the pamphlets acted as instruments of symbolic coercion, not empowerment. Ultimately, they attempted to reaffirm that which the explosion of political communication denied, the government’s monopoly over politics. ¹⁷³ ∗ Querini, Avviso: 657, 666, 687. ¹⁷⁴ Ibid.: 685, 687. ¹⁷⁵ ∗ Tomaselli, Mentite: 36, ∗ Marsilio, Essame: 32–3; also ∗ Capello, Delle controversie: 21, 148, ∗ Offman [pseud.?], Avvertimento: 9. ¹⁷⁶ Cf. ∗ Micanzio, Confirmatione: 15, 118, 120, 143, 201, 210, 252, 440, 445. ¹⁷⁷ Cf. van Gelderen 1992 and Sawyer 1990. ¹⁷⁸ e.g. ∗ Querini, Avviso: 667, 676, 687; ∗ Capello, Delle controversie: 34; ∗ Micanzio, Confirmatione: 169; ∗ Tomaselli, Mentite: 35–6. Cf. ∗ Bellarmino, Risposta a due libretti: 15. Cf. the discussion in Bouwsma 1968: 431–44. ¹⁷⁹ ∗ Querini, Avviso: 676–7. ¹⁸⁰ Cf. Maranini 1927: 192–4, Muir 1981: 285–6, Ventura 1997: 32–3, and Menniti Ippolito 1986.

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Unmasking the pope’s offensive And yet, the pamphlets were no triumph of an all-powerful propaganda either. As George Orwell showed, the success of propaganda entails the end rather than the control of language: not so much the creation of consensus, but the annihilation of opinion. Similarly the ambition of early modern Leviathans was to prevent all discussion of politics—the sovereign was to rule not through pamphlets but by imposing its voice over all others. As is known, Thomas Hobbes abhorred the proliferation of polemical literature. He objected to arguing against religious sects and ‘fabulous traditions’, and instead concluded that they should be ‘silenced by the Law’.¹⁸¹During the Interdict, the government’s initial strategy of denial through official publication was meant to practise the principles of absolutist communication which Hobbes so clearly expressed. That it failed signals the distance between the ideal and the real world of early modern politics. By resorting to pamphlets, the government conceded that political communication escaped its control. Whatever the authorities’ intended use of pamphlets, pamphlets constituted an exceptional means of publication, very much unlike regularly recurring rituals or official proclamations. Pamphlets may have tried to fabricate agreement, but were bound to stimulate further curiosity and thus to promote, rather than end, communication. As a means of information, pamphlets do not just state opinions; they pose questions and encourage criticism. During the Interdict, some authors consciously exploited that mechanism to pursue a daring strategy, offensive rather than defensive. In this way, the pamphlets as a whole had a double effect. They fictionally covered the reality of disagreement with a semblance of unity, while they also encouraged further political communication in order to turn it against Venice’s adversaries. These two contrasting strategies largely coincided with the aims of the different agents involved in the pamphlets’ publication, the government (which had an interest in unity), and the publishers (who had an interest in furthering curiosity). They embody the tension between political exclusion and inclusion at the heart of the political uses of communication. To understand this strategy, we must bear in mind the chronology of pamphlet publication. Thanks to Sarpi, who anonymously published the first pamphlet, Venice led the offensive. As we have seen, he took great care to deny his move, which amounted to a departure from the government’s line on public communication.¹⁸² Sarpi reversed the patricians’ reluctance to confront the public. At the end of his career, he was to vindicate his strategy in a consulto ‘on replying to slanderous writings’, which is his only recorded admission that the paper war started pre-emptively in Venice.¹⁸³ There he argued that whenever ¹⁸¹ Hobbes 1991: 474. ¹⁸² See above, pp. 208–9. ¹⁸³ ‘Del confutar scritture malediche’, in Sarpi 1969: 1170–80; this paragraph is based on de Vivo 2005: 44–8.

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censorship of information was impossible, it was best to respond to slander with a daring policy of publications aimed at exploiting the readers’ curiosity. He explained that mere defences were useless because no government was so perfect that it would escape criticism. Once again, he resorted to the paper war metaphor which he expected his contemporaries to understand. It was a commonplace of military strategies shared by both ‘good commanders’ and ‘good writers’, he stated, that ‘not only in armed battles, but also in literary ones there is no greater misery than to keep solely on the defensive’.¹⁸⁴ The best strategy was to attack the adversary showing his defects to be greater than one’s own, diminishing his reputation in a carefully planned strategy of aggressive publicity, which would blunt the edge of the adversary’s sword (rintuciarli il filo e levargli la forza).¹⁸⁵ It was the merit of Venice’s first pamphlets during the Interdict, Sarpi showed, that they had cornered the pope into defensive replies.¹⁸⁶ True to these principles, Sarpi and others amongst Venice’s defenders focused at length on the adversaries’ faults rather than the Republic’s policies. Thus, they discussed the crimes committed by the two arrested clergymen rather than the extent of secular jurisdiction over the clergy. Even a moderate like Querini tried to elicit shock amongst his readers by dwelling at length on those crimes, including adultery, incest, and murder (the abbot, Querini recounted, killed several people, even resorting to the fabrication of poison); and the other pamphlets—most notably, those originating from non-Catholic authors—were even more explicit.¹⁸⁷ Several pamphlets singled out the Jesuits as a target of shaming allegations, many of them drawn from the printed literature which had circulated in France since the wars of religion.¹⁸⁸ Many concentrated on exposing the Church’s wealth, which Querini denounced as ‘pure luxury’ causing ‘the faithful’s greatest scandal’.¹⁸⁹ He also tried to play the resentment of the poor secular clergy against the richer orders.¹⁹⁰ Sarpi equally charged that the wealth of the Church, originally granted for charitable aims, now only corrupted some in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.¹⁹¹ The point was repeated in one of the cheapest pamphlets, lamenting that the wealth originally bequeathed for the relief of the poor ended up enriching ‘the pomps and luxury of the Court of Rome’.¹⁹² As Sarpi explained, the offensive strategy helped displace the argument from possibly contentious subjects. Criticizing the Church’s enrichment, for example, had the advantage of deflecting attention from Venice’s own unequal distribution of land. No pamphlet addressed this subject, a possible source of tension between the patriciate and the mainland landholders because the former amassed huge ¹⁸⁴ Ibid.: 1172–3. ¹⁸⁵ Ibid.: 1174. ¹⁸⁶ Ibid.: 1175–6. ¹⁸⁷ ∗ Querini, Avviso: 702. Similarly, ∗ Palmerio, Lettera: 5. ¹⁸⁸ The most forceful was ∗ Tomaselli, Mentite; cf. also ∗ Z. T. Bovio, Copia d’vna Lettera: 4–5. On the diffusion of the Jesuit anti-myth during the Interdict, see Gui 1989: 67–73 and Frajese 1994: 185–249. ¹⁸⁹ ∗ Querini, Avviso: 673. ¹⁹⁰ Ibid.: 672. ¹⁹¹ ∗ Sarpi, Considerationi: 174–5. ¹⁹² ∗ Palmerio, Lettera: 3.

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properties throughout the sixteenth century, forcing out many of the latter by driving prices up.¹⁹³ While glossing over home facts, pamphlets publicized other, hitherto reserved, information. For example, they publicly recounted the secret negotiations which had been conducted by diplomats on both sides prior to the Interdict, naturally in a light favourable to Venice.¹⁹⁴ They also added more sensitive information. For example, Querini—a senator and therefore acquainted with the Republic’s secret archives—revealed figures drawn from governmental records concerning the Church’s possessions.¹⁹⁵ Thus, some authors were prepared to undermine the boundaries of political secrecy for polemical purposes. Their revelations reversed the initiative in publication. Whereas at the beginning of the conflict the Republic had criticized the pope’s readiness to appeal to the public, it now became the turn of the pope’s supporters to lament that Venetian pamphlets scandalously divulged facts which were better kept secret.¹⁹⁶ The indiscriminate attack on enemy individuals, groups, and institutions was no peculiarity of the Venetian Interdict. Scandalistic revelations were a staple of vicious controversies and, today, of the gossip press. At this particular juncture in Venice, however, criticism of the adversary may have served a liberating function at the same time as it played into the government’s hands. The interdict’s force rested in its capacity to inspire fear by threatening divine punishment, worldly confusion, and otherworldly damnation. As we have seen, this message found a powerful echo in countless means of communication during the controversy, from sermons to manuscript letters, inquisitorial condemnations, and printed broadsheets. The apocalyptic language of many Roman pamphlets built on the same point without mincing its words. As the cardinals warned, struck by the interdict, Venice would be abandoned by its allies, forsaken by other Christians, and eventually, like Babylon, destroyed by the wrath of God, its rulers eaten alive by dogs.¹⁹⁷ Pro-Venetian pamphlets responded to this offensive by comforting readers against fear. In some, the emphasis was on the consolatory mood, for example in the very cheap letter of the hermit Palmerio.¹⁹⁸ Others aimed at undermining the very basis of the Church-inspired fear in a more foundational way. As Sarpi informed the government, ‘not only is unjust excommunication no great punishment, it is no punishment at all’, because the pope had no means of executing it and so his Interdict showed not just his ‘injustice’ but also his ‘impotence’.¹⁹⁹ His pamphlets repeated the same point for a large audience. Since the censure is ‘unjust and null’, ‘there is no reason why it should ¹⁹³ Beltrami 1961, Berengo 1974. ¹⁹⁴ e.g. ∗ Sarpi, Considerationi: 157–61. ¹⁹⁵ ∗ Querini, Avviso: 671 ¹⁹⁶ For example, ∗ Gaetani, Avvertimenti: 36. ¹⁹⁷ ∗ Baronio, Parænesis: 8–11 and 23–4; ∗ Bellarmino, Risposta a dve libretti: 56. ¹⁹⁸ ∗ Palmerio, Lettera; cf. also ∗ Sarpi, Considerationi: 215. ¹⁹⁹ ‘Che cosa importi l’aggravatoria della scomunica e censure e che rimedii vi siino da opporre’, in Sarpi 2001: 463 and 470–1.

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be feared in any way, neither in conscience, nor in fact’.²⁰⁰ Several proVenetian pamphlets—including some which were very cheap—insisted on the immateriality of the pope’s threats.²⁰¹ According to Marsilio, the pope could not follow his words with actions, and the interdict itself was ultimately an empty threat: ‘like something written in water or in the air’.²⁰² Another author gave political currency to that idea when he pointed out that, should there have been war, it was likely that the pope’s armies would prove imaginary like his arguments.²⁰³ Only a fool, another pamphlet concluded, would be afraid of the pope.²⁰⁴ Sarpi showed the roots of his position in a reference to past excommunications. When Bellarmino mentioned Boniface VIII’s excommunication of Philip IV of France as an example of the popes’ indirect power over temporal rulers, Sarpi replied that in the end Boniface never managed to have Philip dethroned (quite the opposite, as everyone knew). Thus, the pope had neither direct nor indirect power: he had no power at all.²⁰⁵ Sarpi may well have drawn such ideas from Machiavelli, whose Florentine histories too dwelled on Boniface VIII to show that abuse of excommunication was ineffectual and ultimately counterproductive. ‘If [excommunication] harmed [the pope’s enemies],’ Machiavelli wrote, ‘it harmed the Church even more; for arms which had been used virtuously for the love of the faith, when used for his own ambition against Christians, began not to cut. Thus did too great a desire to vent their appetites cause the pontiffs little by little to disarm themselves.’²⁰⁶ Those words echoed in Venice’s political arena. Paul V’s predecessor, for example, accused some Venetian patricians of ‘thinking that the weapons of priests do not cut’, and at the height of the Interdict other patricians were thought to feel likewise.²⁰⁷ It is not surprising that the politically informed and educated elite read and knew Machiavelli, even though his works were formally prohibited by indexes approved by both the Republic and the Holy See. Patricians collected manuscript commonplaces drawn from his writings, which Venetian publishers printed in abridgements or in full under false titles.²⁰⁸ Shortly after the Interdict, many patricians were denounced to the Inquisition for reading Machiavelli, and the frequency of those and other such cases was such that it may be said that some patricians thought that Machiavelli’s ²⁰⁰ ∗ Sarpi, Considerationi: 214–15; cf. ∗ Gerson, Trattato e resoluzione: 174. ²⁰¹ ∗ Muti, Persuasione, sig. Av; ∗ [Marsilio], Risposta: 14; ∗ Tomaselli, Mentite: 35. ²⁰² ∗ [Marsilio], Risposta: 12; ∗ Gerson, Trattato e ressolutione: 182 made the same point. ²⁰³ ∗ Offman[pseud.?], Avvertimento: 13. ²⁰⁴ ∗ Capello, Delle controversie: 6–7: ‘sarebbe pazzo’. ²⁰⁵ ∗ Bellarmino, Risposta a due libretti: 60. The reply in ∗ Sarpi, Apologia: 62–3, 161; cf. Sarpi 2001: 470–1. ²⁰⁶ I have adapted the translation in Machiavelli 1988b: 36 on the basis of the original. ²⁰⁷ Quoted in Andretta 2000: 27; the phrase is attributed to the Venetians by cardinal Sforza in Giuseppe Malatesta’s Relatione historica in BNM, Ms. 9629, c. 78. ²⁰⁸ Bertelli and Innocenti 1979: xlix –lvi, Quaglio 1969, Richardson 1995, and Procacci 1995; on Machiavelli’s manuscript usage, cf. Scarpa 1984.

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political teachings constituted a form of esoteric knowledge, to be permitted to a restricted elite.²⁰⁹ By contrast during the Interdict, some of the cheapest pamphlets publicized Machiavelli’s dismissal of spiritual censures for the sake of a wide audience. Two, for example, described the pope’s unjust excommunication in exactly the same words, as a wooden knife ‘which does not cut’.²¹⁰ Other texts went so far as to translate Machiavelli’s line into dialect, as did two manuscripts which circulated widely in similar ways to the barbershop’s Paternoster —with subtly different versions copied into a doctor’s diary and collected in miscellanies by other readers (although they seem to have been printed only after the controversy, in Geneva).²¹¹ One of them carried the signature of Pifanio Pizzoni or Pizzocheri (the versions differ), a fictional character supposed to embody Venice’s most popular viewpoint, as suggested by his name (drawn from the vocabulary of Commedia dell’Arte and food), profession (a fisherman), and origin (the peripheral island of Burano). This text fictionally put the Machiavellian realism which ought to have been the preserve of a small elite, in the mouths of the humblest section of Venice’s population. ‘Pifanio’ translated Machiavelli’s ideas into the language shared by poor Venetians, denouncing ‘indulgences and sermons’ as ‘valueless currency’ (monea che no se spende) and warning the pope: ‘people say that you have no knife and if you do, that, it does not cut’ (I dise che no havè cortello, e se l’havè, che’l no tagia).²¹² Pifanio was a fictional character, the embodiment of Venice’s humble people; but the views he expressed were all but humble and, as we shall see in the next section, they were likely to be shared by many of his real contemporaries amongst the city’s lower orders. As this discussion shows, some of the pamphlets’ authors cultivated a radical critique of the very premisses of spiritual authority. This accords with the most recent interpretation of Sarpi as a sceptic who, like the libertines of his time, thought that society could sustain itself without fear of hell.²¹³ Some of that conviction may have played a role in his and other authors’ responses to the Interdict’s threat of eternal damnation. But there is a crucial difference between Venice’s pamphleteers and the libertines, which can only be highlighted by focusing on the extent of political communication. Sceptic libertines fundamentally posed themselves in opposition to the uncultured masses; in their mind, unmasking the imposture of religion was to be reserved for the educated (i.e. the libertines themselves) or the powerful (whom the libertines ²⁰⁹ Savio 1936–42, v. 10: 26–35; other cases are mentioned in P. Grendler 1977: 283–4. ²¹⁰ ∗ Landsberger, Mirabile rivelatione: 8, and ∗ Palmerio, Lettera: 6. ²¹¹ Copia d’vna lettera scritta da Pifanio di Pizzoni and Sermone di Venetia al papa, in ∗ Raccolta, v. 1: 406–7 and 408–10; cf. the versions of the former in Sivos’ chronicle, in BMV, Cod. Ital. VII.1818 (9436), cc. 101–4v and 118v –120. On the Geneva edition, see Bonnant 1969. ²¹² Copia d’vna lettera scritta da Pifanio di Pizzoni, in ∗ Raccolta, v. 1: 407. The same point was repeated in a different form in the Sermone di Venetia, ibid.: 408–10. ²¹³ Wootton 1983 and Frajese 1994.

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either served or hoped to serve). Scepticism was an elitist ideology, in contrast with the majority’s obligation to conformity.²¹⁴ By contrast, Sarpi and some other pamphleteers were prepared to turn scepticism into a public message for a wide audience, to unmask the political uses of religion not just in secret writings addressed to the powerful, but in widely published pamphlets as a polemical weapon against the papacy. In the pamphlets’ strategy, engagement with the public was crucial. No mere act of force would suffice to undermine fear of the Interdict. As Sarpi put it in a secret brief for the government, the pope’s power in secular matters rested on an unfounded arcano, a mixture of fear and inscrutable allegations which most people could not understand.²¹⁵ Sarpi’s radical implication was that examination would expose the arcano and dispel fear. He believed that individuals had the right to examine spiritual censures and reject unjust ones.²¹⁶ His and other pamphlets amplified the same point for a large public; they claimed for the public itself a greater right of judgement than the pope was prepared to allow.²¹⁷ Pamphlets encouraged readers to make themselves judges in the controversy, and their description of their own readership makes clear that they welcomed judgement.²¹⁸ Was not the capability of discriminating a natural feature distinguishing human beings from animals and preventing the former from committing sin, one Venetian author asked? The faithful, he argued, had both a right and a duty to judge the pope’s actions; in fact, because they were closer to the contested events than the pope, they were better judges than he.²¹⁹ The collective Trattato dell’interdetto was most explicit: ‘Christians must show no obedience to the commandment they receive (be that from the pontiff himself,) without first examining it and establishing whether it is convenient, legitimate, and obligatory; and he sins, who obeys blindly and without examination.’²²⁰ For all the government’s hesitations, some authors went so far as to invoke the assessment of a limitless ‘public’. As one of them boldly stated, the controversy made the world itself judge.²²¹ Thus, for the sake of state–Church polemics, but with a language prefiguring the eighteenth-century ‘tribunal of public opinion’, some of Venice’s supporters empowered the public, however ²¹⁴ See Spini 1950, and cf. Berti 1994, and the Gregory et al. 1981. ²¹⁵ ‘Qual sii la potestà data da Cristo nostro Signore alli prelati della Santa Chiesa e che cosa sii la potestà coattiva’ (1608), in Sarpi 2001: 624. Micanzio similarly wrote that religion was used by the clergy as a ‘Medusa’s head’, ‘to scare the fearful’, Micanzio 1974: 1387. ²¹⁶ ‘Sopra la forza e validità della scomunica giusta e ingiusta’, Sarpi 2001: 228. ²¹⁷ e.g. ∗ Tomaselli, Mentite: 35, and ∗ Micanzio, Confirmatione: 384. Cf. Bouwsma 1968: 425–31. ²¹⁸ ∗ Micanzio, Confirmatione: 159 and cf. 228, 392. Cf. ∗ Sarpi, Apologia: 105 and 172–3; ∗ Bernardino da Bergamo, Francesco Foresto, and Ippolito da Brescia, Essendo fatto notorio a noi. ²¹⁹ ∗ Capello, Delle controversie: 15 and cf. 14, 139. ²²⁰ ∗ Sarpi et al., Trattato: 21. Sarpi also referred to the Jesuits’ insistence on ‘blind obedience’, cf. Sarpi 1968: 225 and 291. ²²¹ ∗ Offman [pseud.?], Avvertimento: 15; cf. also ∗ Sarpi, Apologia: 3.

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fictionally and temporarily, to judge the Church’s highest authority.²²² The pamphlets’ force lay precisely in interacting with the public to foster criticism where there normally ought to have been none. As Sarpi said, they ‘gave matter of discussion to the world, and to each means of forming their own opinion, with diminution of papal authority’. Sarpi had no doubt that this amounted to a strategy, and a very successful one. As he explained, the ‘war of writings’ proved crucial in defeating the pope, ‘because the writings harmed the reputation of the court of Rome more than the papal censures harmed the Republic.’²²³

6 . 4 B EYO N D I N T E N T I O N S So far we have considered the intentions behind printed publication. But what about those who read, or otherwise heard about, pamphlets? Some pamphlets claimed to represent widespread public opinion. However, polemical pamphlets were not the expression of popular culture—as they have occasionally been interpreted by later historians—but the product of professionals and insiders of the political arena, driven by the prospect of profit, exceptional ideological commitment, or partisan loyalty.²²⁴ The question, then, is how pamphlets were received outside that arena, amongst the large variety of people gathering in bozzoli and barbershops. Contemporary observers and modern historians have offered largely contrasting answers, as we have seen. To many of the former, like the French ambassador, pamphlets politicized readers who should have been kept outside the controversy, including ‘barbers and washerwomen’.²²⁵ Modern historians disagree, describing Venice’s stance during the Interdict as the position of an educated minority, bound to be alien to overwhelmingly conservative masses. In this view, the pamphlets could ultimately have no influence, because—as even Gaetano Cozzi implied—an essentially a-political and ignorant people only cared for traditional religious ceremonies and institutions.²²⁶ For all their differences, both elite contemporary observers and modern historians describe the Interdict as an essentially top-down event—unsurprisingly perhaps, since that is the way in which the educated view most political events. In light of the socially widespread political communication described throughout this book, however, this is an extremely reductive account. During the Interdict ²²² A similar argument concerns the relations between competing French playwrights and their public in this period, cf. Merlin 1994. The pre-history of the notion of ‘public opinion’ has been traced with greater attention in France (cf. Gunn 1995 and Baker 1993) than in Italy; however, for the eighteenth-century, see Tortarolo 1990. ²²³ Sarpi 1968: 294, 285. ²²⁴ For two powerful statements of this interpretation, see Jouhaud 2006 and Scribner 1987. ²²⁵ Canaye 1636, v. 3: 166, cf. above, p. 200. ²²⁶ This is often taken for granted in Cozzi’s and Benzoni’s works, cf. above, p. 202.

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too, all sorts of people beyond both government and the political arena already discussed, lamented, or ridiculed the conflict before the pamphlets appeared. There is simply no way of knowing what their opinions were, and it would be a mistake to assume that most were favourable to Rome. The few direct traces of orally expressed opinions we have, show individuals taking positions both for and against both Venice and the pope. It is in the nature of governmental sources to record only those dissenting opinions which raised the authorities’ preoccupations. There is no doubt that dissenting rumours abounded in Venice.²²⁷ But if the Venetian authorities prosecuted ordinary people who spoke against the Republic, Roman ones did prosecute those who sided in Venice’s favour. At the beginning of December, for example, the Milanese courier Giovan Paolo Profondavalle was arrested by the Inquisition in Pavia for ‘speaking in favour of the Venetians during a conversation concerning the present controversies’.²²⁸ The barber of the Venetian cardinal Dolfin was investigated in Rome for similar reasons, as were members of the regular orders in Bologna, both male and female.²²⁹ Pro-Venetian opinions of Venetian subjects were only recorded when expressed abroad, under papal rule. For example, in Modena two Venetian fishermen had an argument in a tavern with a priest. When he said that all Venetians were excommunicated, the fishermen took strong issue with him and claimed that they were better Christians than the pope’s subjects.²³⁰ It is far more difficult to find direct evidence of pro-Venetian opinions inside the Republic’s territories. For example, we only know that the priest Giacomo Benedetti of Asiago spoke against the pope’s Interdict because this surfaced later as part of a different suit before the Inquisition.²³¹ In 1609 some locals, who tried to have him removed, said that he swore ‘like a Turk’ and read Lutheran books.²³² Amongst other things, witnesses recounted that at the time of the Interdict Benedetti said that ‘he had nothing to do with the bishop or the pope, nor had to obey anybody other than his prince and the Most Serene Republic’.²³³ Apparently, he had claimed to be ‘prepared to quarrel with the pope himself ’, and added ‘what bishop? what do I have to do with him? I wish our prince could win’.²³⁴ Benedetti’s enemies accused him of rousing ‘scandal’, but he could hardly have been alone in his opinions. He spoke frequently in other people’s homes, in the sacristy, as well as out in the street and under the town’s porch, and did so with a variety of other people, including a physician, ²²⁷ See section 5.4. ²²⁸ Spampanato 1924: 246–7. ²²⁹ Report of 31.5.1606, in ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Roma, r. 13, c. 104v (text published in Cappelletti 1873: 75); on Bologna, cf. Betti 2002, 2006. ²³⁰ Cornet 1873, v. 6: 82–3. ²³¹ ASV, QC, b. 127, fasc. 184 ‘Giacomo Benedetti da Asiago per bestemmie’, April 1609. ²³² Deposition of Baldessar Stefani, 16.4.1609, ibid. ²³³ Accusation of Lorenzo dal Sasso, 12.4.1609, ibid. ²³⁴ Depositions of Bartolomeo, rector of San Matteo, 13.4.1609, and of Baldassarre Stefani, 16.4.1609, ibid.

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the mayor (sindaco), the bellman, a lawyer, the miller, and a baker.²³⁵ When the secular magistrates heard about the Inquisition proceedings against Benedetti, they seized the inquiry and had all the sections concerning the Interdict deleted from the witnesses’ depositions. By so doing, they upheld their subjects’ right to support the Republic, but their move contributed to hiding that support from subsequent historians. We only know about Benedetti’s arguments in favour of Venice because we can read through the deletion marks. Given the variety of people’s opinions, pamphlets were bound to prompt a whole gamut of different responses—adhesion, rejection, or indifference—and it would be impossible to reconstruct them all. Those whose education allowed them to leave traces of their thoughts recorded genuinely strong reactions. The patriarch of Aquileia affirmed that one of Rome’s pamphlets ‘moved many people to tears’, while a Roman newswriter wrote that the pope fell ill on reading some of Venice’s.²³⁶ Other reports extended to ordinary people. A merchant from Brescia told the bishop of Cremona (just beyond the border), that in his city the earliest pamphlets nourished heated discussions: the ‘mal affetti pretend they are theologians in favour of the Venetians’, while ‘those who are more knowledgeable laugh about it’. He also recounted that ‘while in a bookseller’s shop, three doctors showed up (as they are used to), and they began discussing and concluded that the Venetians were wrong.’²³⁷ Many agreed that pamphlets ‘give much to talk about’, but it would be hard to pinpoint the opinions voiced in those discussions other than by saying (as an observer did), that there were as many as there were ‘affections’ and ‘passions’.²³⁸ In fact, an anonymous observer writing in Venice with heavy regional inflexions affirmed that pamphlets failed to stop the populace from ‘murmuring’.²³⁹ As we have seen, pamphlets are best understood as elements in a dialogue rather than top-down injunctions. Donald McKenzie showed that seventeenthcentury printed texts reflected the communicative interchange between orality and literacy that was typical of the culture in which they were produced.²⁴⁰ The same can be said of many Interdict pamphlets. Some were (or pretended to be) transcripts of sermons or harangues; others addressed an audience; many contained easily sung rhymes or traces of spoken dialect. Moreover, some authors drew on elements common in popular oral culture as discussed in connection with the sixteenth-century Paternosters.²⁴¹ Against the pope’s inspired fear, pamphlets responded with ridicule, a desecrating mechanism of debasement through bodily ²³⁵ Deposition of Francesco Benedetti, 14.4.1609, ibid. ²³⁶ Letter dated 18.11.1606, in ASVat, FB, III.131.c.2, c. 63v. Avvisi enclosed in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Chioggia Malamocco Torcello Loreo Murano, f. 1, cc. nn., 6 and 20.9.1606; cf. Porto’s letter of 15.9.1606, in BNF, Ms. Français 16082, c. 14. ²³⁷ Letter dated 8.6.1606, in ASVat, FB, III.131.c, c. 131. ²³⁸ Letter dated 14.9.1606, in ASVat, FB, III.131.c, c. 18, and dispatch dated 21.5.1606, in de Magistris 1906: 71. ²³⁹ Anonymous letter dated 4.10.1606, in ASVat, FB, III.131.c.2, c. 178. ²⁴⁰ McKenzie 2002. ²⁴¹ See section 4.4 above.

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allusions. The pope’s threats made one author speak of stomacoso e ridicolo disprezzo: scorn that made one laugh until one stomach’s hurt.²⁴² Another one described the threats of divine punishments as not just ‘false’ but also ‘ridiculous prophecies’. He also recounted what he described as a common joke about the pope’s authority: Paul V wanted to be like God, but because he had only been elected recently, he was more like the little Jesus in the crib.²⁴³ As in the Paternosters, authors abounded in animal images which were meant to cause laughter by comparing the adversaries with beasts, bestialità.²⁴⁴ The pseudonymous fisherman Pifanio compared the Roman clergy to ‘crabs’.²⁴⁵ As two texts in Venetian dialect put it, the pope had been a fool when he thought that he could seriously frighten people.²⁴⁶ Unmasking the pope’s authority took the form of street ridicule more than learned sceptical philosophy. As with other texts, or perhaps to an even greater extent, when considering pamphlets it is best to speak of the circulation, rather than the trickling down, of ideas. That some authors voiced themes drawn from their readers’ oral culture does not mean that pamphlets faithfully reflected popular opinion. It means that authors and readers shared some language as well as images. After all, it is only natural that the former phrased their arguments in ways which the latter would recognize, and possibly sympathize with. In this way, pamphlets reinforced the circulation of ideas, because they drew strength from street language but also widened the potential for communication. Through print, jokes made in a street could reverberate miles away. As far as we know, oral discussions too made a mockery of the pope’s ineffective authority. Giacomo Benedetti, for example, pointed out that ‘he would never get his life back should the prince hang him; but should the pope excommunicate him, he could still be absolved.’²⁴⁷ A priest of Padua made the same point, in a bitter witticism to the governors’ guards who presented themselves at his church to make sure that he said mass. As he reportedly told them, it was ‘better to be excommunicated twelve years than hanged half an hour’.²⁴⁸ An anonymous letter sent to the Venetian governors of Padua at the beginning of the interdict elaborated on the same theme. No one should fear the interdict, the author affirmed, because it was similar to the verola, the bogeyman which ²⁴² ∗ Dve lettere: 6. ²⁴³ ∗ Offman [pseud.?], Avvertimento: 7, 15. A similar point in the ‘Sermone di Venetia a Papa Paolo V’, in ∗ Raccolta, v. 1: 408. ²⁴⁴ ∗ Dve lettere: 6. ²⁴⁵ ∗ Raccolta, v. 1: 406–7. ²⁴⁶ Copia d’vna lettera scritta da Pifanio di Pizzoni, Gian Carlo Sivos’ chronicle, in BMV, Cod. Ital. VII.1818 (9436), cc. 118v –120, and printed in ∗ Raccolta, v. 1: 406–7. On this collection, see above, n. 211. ²⁴⁷ Deposition of Giovan Domenico Molini, 24.4.1609, in ASV, QC, b. 127, fasc. 184 ‘Giacomo Benedetti da Asiago per bestemmie’. ²⁴⁸ The anecdote was reported in a French letter amongst the English ambassador’s papers, in NA, SP 99/3, c. 68, and was also known to Pierre de L’Estoile in Paris; cf. L’Estoile 1958–60, v. 3: 488.

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parents evoked to make children shut up; like the verola, the interdict was really an empty ‘mask’, a fiction of the imagination. The letter’s author implored the governors to consider his argument ‘even though it may seem ridiculous’.²⁴⁹ In few words, this letter both indicated an effective argument against observance of the interdict and drew from the language of everyday life to summarize the scepticism of those who downplayed the effectiveness of spiritual censures. Some pamphlets commented that such responses, formulated by people across the social spectrum, were the real cause of the interdict’s failure. This was the argument of a short pseudonymous work possibly authored by Giovan Battista Leoni. Excommunication, which used to be a terrorising weapon, is now utterly weakened; and I hear plebeian men who discuss it with substance and in conformity with their intelligence and capacity. . . . Everyone speaks and wants to understand what the authority of the pope really is. And many people understand that they used to live in obedience with their eyes closed, while now they dig up all texts, and reading them thoroughly find reasons for doubt and realize their poverty.²⁵⁰

This pamphlet argued that spiritual censures lost their value not just because secular rulers opposed them, but because they became the object of judgement, and ultimately disrespect, by common people who at last ‘opened their eyes’. In this account, political communication was both a result of the Interdict and its undoing. ‘The kittens have opened their eyes’ (i gattesini ha auerto i occhi): other texts repeated the image, including the fictional fisherman’s letter to the pope and a dialect canzon circulating in different versions, perhaps meant to be sung in groups.²⁵¹ Sarpi and his friends employed the same metaphor in private correspondence, but the notion was rooted in more widely spread culture.²⁵² In 1564 Leonardo Fioravanti, a doctor excluded from the circles of his more eminent colleagues, used it to describe the effects of the printing press in bringing medical knowledge to those without classical culture. Thanks to books, he concluded, ‘the kittens have opened their eyes.’²⁵³ Similar phrases occurred in the talk of real medical shops, pharmacies, and barbershops. Only a few years after the Interdict, Costantino Saccardino, a charlatan active in Venice as well as Bologna (where for a while he had a stall next to a pharmacy), was denounced for turning ²⁴⁹ Anonymous letter dated 21.4.1606 in ASV, Senato, Dispacci Padova, f. 3, cc. nn. ²⁵⁰ ∗ Offman [pseud.?], Avvertimento: 14. ‘Smidolare’ may refer to both ‘weakening’ and ‘dismembering’. ²⁵¹ Copia d’vna lettera scritta da Pifanio di Pizzoni; in ∗ Raccolta: 407, and Canzon venetiana, ibid.: 411 (a different version of the latter is published in Medin 1904: 296). The anonymous letter Ai principi d’Italia (above, p. 197) also called for readers to ‘open their eyes’. ²⁵² e.g., Sarpi’s letter to Groslot of 2.9.1608 in Sarpi 1931, v. 1: 31 (and cf. also 254); Sarpi’s Massime, in Sarpi 1996: 718; Micanzio’s letter to William Cavendish of 10.11.1617, in Micanzio 1987: 69. ²⁵³ Fioravanti 1572: 41, cf. Camporesi 1981: 87–8, and Eamon 1994: 168–93.

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the same metaphor into criticism of the authorities while speaking to artisans and butchers. Religion as a whole was an imposture, a means used by rulers for political ends, but now at last, he claimed, the ‘whole dovecote has opened its eyes’.²⁵⁴ It has been argued that people such as Saccardino were inspired by reading the texts of classical sceptics and learned libertines who in those years expressed the same ideas.²⁵⁵ Whether or not that is true, it is likely that they also read pamphlets like those circulating in much greater numbers and at cheaper prices during the Interdict. Above all, in the vibrant world of political communication described so far, it is hard to say whether pamphlets were feeding widespread discussions or, vice versa, they were echoing propositions put forward in those discussions. Contacts and parallels between printed, written, and spoken communication confirm that pamphlets should be understood as neither propaganda nor public opinion, but as elements of an inclusive cultural exchange. Readers appropriated the message of pamphlets which they then propagated in a multiplicity of different forms. But the appropriation did not just go one way, because pamphlets themselves utilized arguments which their authors recognized as common in the culture of their readers. After all, the pamphlets’ strength lay precisely in their ability and willingness to engage with a wide public. Authors and publishers certainly did believe that there was a large public of readers whose curiosity made them sceptical of religious authority. Their gamble was to turn that scepticism against the pope. By doing so, moreover, they showed themselves aware of the unexpected turns of communication. Some pamphlets described the interdict as a prime example of the law of unintended consequences—like the proverbial conti senza l’osto, as a dialect song put it, referring to a popular idiom meaning to calculate one’s bill without asking the tavern-keeper.²⁵⁶ The interdict was meant to inspire fear, but in the end only weakened the pope’s capacity to do so. By the same law of unintended consequences, scepticism could also turn against the Republic. The pamphlets’ authors accused the pope of putting religion at the service of temporal interests, but others used alternative means of communication to turn the accusation against Venice. This can be seen from the reception of religious rituals arranged by the government. An anonymous cartello which was found on the cathedral door in Brescia attacked the services held there as a fraud with ‘no other use than to mislead the poor brigade’.²⁵⁷ Seeing the Corpus Christi procession, the English ambassador reported at great length on what he obviously regarded as idolatrous practices, ‘which go farther than devotion . . . to contain the people still in good order with superstition the foolish band of obedience.’²⁵⁸ Wotton clearly believed himself to be alone in seeing through Catholic deceit. But others had similar thoughts. For a start, ²⁵⁴ Ginzburg and Ferrari 1978 and Ginzburg 1986. ²⁵⁵ Zambelli 1983. ²⁵⁶ Canzon venetiana, in ∗ Raccolta, v. 1: 411–12. ²⁵⁷ Copy enclosed in dispatch dated 26.7.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Brescia, f. 6, cc. nn. On cartelli, see above, pp. 194–7. ²⁵⁸ Dispatch dated 26.5.1606, in Wotton 1907, v. 1: 350.

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followers of the pope agreed with Wotton, for example one Jesuit who dismissed the procession as ‘a miserable spectacle’.²⁵⁹ Most explicit of all were the unfavourable comments made by a Roman newswriter when describing the sumptuous divine services in the Venetian embassy’s chapel. He reported that the host fell from the priest’s hands and commented that such occurrences punished those who turned religious rituals to their secular ends—although interestingly, he made this point through a classical anecdote to avoid discussion of Christianity’s political uses.²⁶⁰ It is likely, however, that the opposed authorities’ heavy use of rituals made many people believe that religion was an imposture, a notion which was gaining ground at the time and which, as has been shown recently, was to become extremely common in Venice across different social classes.²⁶¹ Civic processions counted on representing harmony as if on a stage, away from the audience; but in Venice not unlike in early modern theatres, the audience was a far from disciplined group and continually challenged the actors’ conduct of the play. The Republic’s and the pope’s opposed claims over ritual clashed with ordinary people’s aptitude to make independent use of ritual. For all its insistence on continuous religious services, for example, the government also had to forbid spontaneous processions in Brescia, where children and flagellants marched together chanting litanies centred on the local shrine.²⁶² Such unofficial acts of devotion signalled the population’s piety but also its fear of the interdict.²⁶³ Ultimately, they constituted an embarrassment for both the Republic and the Counter Reformation Church, which condemned all forms of communal devotion outside its control. On a private level too, some people devised means for protecting their beliefs from the authorities’ appropriation of religious services. Orsetta, the female servant who reproached some peasants for going to church in spite of the interdict, provides an interesting example. When one of the peasants retorted that she too had been at the services, she replied that, true, she had gone, but only on the special feast of Corpus Christi, and even then had closed her ears when the eucharist was administered.²⁶⁴ Orsetta’s behaviour—close to the Nicodemitic dissimulation but for once favourable to the Catholic Church—undid the ritual’s intended point and thereby proved the authorities’ powerlessness to mould beliefs by forcing outward conformity.²⁶⁵ Unintended receptions and contradictory appropriations were the norm in Venice’s system of political communication. At a time of crisis, however, the ²⁵⁹ Quoted in Muir 1981: 230. ²⁶⁰ Avviso dated 10.5.1606, in BAV, Urb. Lat. 1074, c. 245. ²⁶¹ Barbierato 2006, an important research which begins where this book stops; cf. Davidson 1992 and Dooley 1999a. ²⁶² Chronicle of G. Bianchi, in Guerrini 1930: 61–2 and Pirri 1959: 224. ²⁶³ Spontaneous processions also took place at other highly charged times, for example following the defeat of Agnadello in 1509, the earthquake of 1511, and the plague of 1576–77; see Dalla Santa 1916–17: 1553 and 1601; Cervelli 1974: 11–15 and 32; and Preto 1984: 76–89. ²⁶⁴ Dispatch dated 27.6.1606, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Padova, f. 3, cc. nn.; on her cf., p. 192. ²⁶⁵ Cf. Ginzburg 1970.

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clash of contrasting messages constituted a serious reason for disorder which the pamphlets ultimately contributed to nourishing rather than halting. It is likely that from the authorities’ point of view in both Venice and Rome, the situation became untenable as rumours escalated into violence. In the early months of 1607, while diplomats were trying to resolve the confrontation inside the Collegio, the tension mounted in the city outside. Members of the Spanish negotiators’ retinue became the object of threats, and the government had to pass special measures for their protection both in Venice and Padua.²⁶⁶ At the beginning of March, a riot broke out in the market area at San Lio when a parish priest and a pinseller spoke against the Republic, the latter apparently inspired by unspecified pamphlets.²⁶⁷ Meanwhile, various rumours began about a conspiracy to kill the doge, organized by some friars (as some said), or by undefined foreigners (as others did). Whether based on fabrications, whispered revelations, or sincerely felt fears, such rumours revealed a state of anxiety which they in turn contributed to aggravate. As Antonio Querini recounted, they ‘were sufficient to frighten the most intrepid’.²⁶⁸ The government feared that all communication was likely to increase tension, including that which was favourable to Venice. As the physician Gian Carlo Sivos noted, ‘by means of several guards, [the doge] made it known in various places, pharmacies and barbershops, that no one should dare to speak outside their due (straparlare) and insult the Spaniards’.²⁶⁹ Sivos’ detail on the location of the proclamations shows the widespread nature of the public which the government wished to silence. The authorities no doubt feared that violence would not just harm Venice’s enemies, but might also undermine public order. Certainly, several unknown and masked people disrupted the mass in two churches after Christmas.²⁷⁰ We do not know whether they meant to protest about a particular policy connected with the Interdict or whether they were revelling as part of the usual carnival festivities. It is likely that one intention informed the other, and that carnival gave political and religious tension a means of expressing itself outside the control of either the government or the Church. In an extreme response, the Ten prohibited all masks, bull races, and dancing ‘at home or anywhere in the streets’, at first only for a few weeks in January, but later for ²⁶⁶ The governor of Padua, for example, prohibited masks because he felt that they may have provided a cover for fighting against the Spaniards, dispatch of 18.1.1607, in ASV, Sen., Dispacci Padova, f. 3, cc. nn. Anti-Spanish violence was also mentioned in Venice in a letter dated 21.2.1607, in Canaye 1636, v. 3: 461. ²⁶⁷ Amongst other things, they reportedly said that it was sinful to attend mass and claimed that all senators were excommunicated, record of 5.3.1607, in ASV, CX, Criminali, f. 36, cc. nn.; cf. (on the priest only) Cornet 1873, v. 6: 110–11. ²⁶⁸ Querini, ‘Historia dell’escomunica’, in de Magistris 1941: 278. Similar rumours appear in a denunciation to the Ten in ASV, CX, Parti comuni, f. 259, cc. nn. (16.2.1607), and in a letter by the English ambassador of 22.9.1606, in Wotton 1907, v. 1: 364. ²⁶⁹ Gian Carlo Sivos’ chronicle, in BMV, Cod. Ital. VII.1818 (9436), c. 111v. ²⁷⁰ San Giovanni e Paolo and Santo Stefano, ASV, CX, Parti comuni, f. 259, cc. nn. (4.1.1607).

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the entire duration of carnival; eventually they allowed private balls—regulated elite occasions rather than public forms of revelry—for only the last three days of the season.²⁷¹ Meanwhile, in Rome too the authorities moved to restraining popular communication; for example, the pope had all street actors expelled on the grounds that ‘these were not times for such things, due to the Venetian troubles and the famine’.²⁷² Thus, it is no surprise that, after a year of confrontation, the conflict’s protagonists sought a compromise. French diplomats—who could not afford a division between the two powers Henri IV wished to rely upon in opposing the Habsburgs in Italy—worked especially hard to strike a deal between the pope and the Republic. Just as political communication concerning the Interdict was creating tensions in the public domain, the interest of princes channelled the controversy back into the realm of diplomacy. The controversy’s public dimension made finding an agreement imperative for the pope too, and in April 1607, Paul V at last lifted the interdict. Perhaps he realized that, as some pamphlets implied, it was better to compromise with an excommunicated government than to see his censure further defied. Certainly, the papacy learnt a lesson, and 1606 was the last time it proclaimed a general interdict on a sovereign state. As the inquisitor of Venice wrote to cardinal Borghese immediately after the conflict’s resolution, ‘may I point out in all humility that, whatever happens in dealing any kind of negotiations . . . it is not convenient to publish here any new censure as absolute [as the Interdict], because it would produce contrary effects, due to people’s lack of devotion, the clergy’s unfaithfulness, and the power of rulers.’²⁷³ By most accounts, then, the deal was a victory for Venice, which maintained its property legislation and its right to prosecute ecclesiastics. Although the two imprisoned clergymen were handed over to Rome (indirectly, via the French ambassador, who then relinquished them to the pope), in the following few months the government prosecuted more.²⁷⁴ And yet, in so far as public communication was concerned, the government largely failed to capitalize on its success, perhaps because the official position adhered to throughout the controversy made it difficult to turn a political victory into a narrative one. How could the Republic celebrate the end of a challenge whose very existence the government had never recognized? If peace making required communication, then that communication had to be as contained as possible. Coherently with the only mode of publication the Republic ever officially recognized, the government issued an official proclamation, which paralleled the ²⁷¹ Printed proclamation dated 4.1.1607, enclosed in ASV, CX, Parti comuni, f. 259, cc. nn. (30.1 and 16.2.1607). Measures to repress carnival are also mentioned in: avviso dated 5.1.1607, in NA, SP 101/82; dispatch of 9.1.1607, in de Magistris 1906: 284; and in ‘Croniche veneziane dall’origine della città sino al 1616’, BL, Add. Ms. 8581, cc. 226r –v. ²⁷² Avviso of 28.10.1606, in BAV, Urb. Lat. 1074, c. 561v. ²⁷³ Letter dated 29.4.1607, in ASVat, FB III.131.c, c. 304, and cf. Savio 1955: 56–7n. ²⁷⁴ Savio 1955 and Cozzi 1958: 123.

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Protesto in both formality and ambiguity. The text avoided all mention of the interdict and limited itself to proclaiming the doge’s contento—happiness or contentment?—at renewed good relations with the pope. In fact, it did not announce the end of the interdict, but the withdrawal of the Protesto. And like the Protesto, it was addressed to the clergy rather than the laity.²⁷⁵ In blatant contradiction to the reality of the controversy, and going back to the Republic’s initial line, it was as if the rest of the population were alien to the whole matter. As could be expected, Venice’s ambiguities angered the pope, who strongly protested with foreign diplomats.²⁷⁶ Moreover, that which irritated Rome, failed to clarify the situation for countless other people. Venice’s ambiguities made it difficult to impose a clear interpretation of the conflict, while professional informers circulated a large number of contrasting manuscript and printed accounts of the final agreement.²⁷⁷ The confusion only increased as many of these documents employed the formal language of diplomacy, as if they had been official records. One newswriter went so far as to claim that the Republic had temporarily recognized the interdict in order to receive absolution and make peace easier.²⁷⁸ In just one phrase, he undid the government’s entire position throughout the previous twelve months and claimed victory for the pope. No doubt, the circulation of contrasting written accounts provided substance for further communication. The government prohibited, but could never stop, the former, while it could only have countered the latter with a strong public statement, or with more pamphlets. Instead, as senators and diplomats exchanged their last words before securing the deal, the government turned from publicity back to the secretive realm of diplomacy where, according to many, the confrontation should always have remained. When the Spanish intermediary took leave from the doge, the latter reassured him that Venice wished to be a good Catholic state. ‘True, at times there arise matters of jurisdictional contention [with the pope]’, Don`a added mentioning examples from France, Spain, and Savoy, ‘but this must not move him to exceed in his rigour, and he should deal with sweetness and negotiations, and thereby resolve everything without the danger of stirring the world.’²⁷⁹ In the doge’s mentality, at once pragmatic and elitist, conflict was a fact of politics and as such should be kept hidden from the public. When the diplomats who negotiated the final agreement left the Ducal Palace, they were escorted not to the grand ‘Scala dei Giganti’ but to a back door—a symbolic move meant to downplay the event, but one which could ²⁷⁵ ∗ Leonardo Donato. Contrasting proposals were debated on 21.4.1607, see ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni Roma ordinaria, r. 16, cc. 28v –29. The Senate sent the proclamations to local governors, and reminded them that all forms of celebration were to be avoided, ibid., c. 29v. ²⁷⁶ Cf. de Vivo 2001b: 208–12. ²⁷⁷ Cf. Sarpi 1968: 423–4. e.g.: ∗ Neufville and Joyeuse, Instanza (both French and Italian, in a small 8◦ ), and ∗ Castro and Cardenas, Instance. ∗ Carrara, Reuer. come Fratello. ²⁷⁸ Avviso of Rome, 14.4.1607, in ASVat, SS, Avvisi, b. 3, c. 63v. ²⁷⁹ Audience of 26.4.1607, in ASV, Coll., Esposizioni Roma, r. 15, c. 118v.

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not unreasonably be exploited by Venice’s opponents as betraying the patricians’ fear at ‘the gathering of great crowds’.²⁸⁰ In similar fashion, in France the king wished to hail the agreement with fireworks and public rejoicing, but in Venice’s territories the Senate prohibited all celebrations, processions, masses, even the ringing of bells.²⁸¹ In contrast to military victories, there would be no ceremony of rejoicing or celebratory publication. It was as if, at last disentangling itself from the controversy, the Republic wished to silence all public communication. ²⁸⁰ Malatesta, Relatione historica, in de Magistris 1941: 294–5. ²⁸¹ The Senate even debated whether it was feasible to have the Te Deum sung in churches on the mainland, ASV, Sen., Deliberazioni Roma ordinaria, r. 16, c. 30 (21.4.1606); cf. Pin 1992–94: 145. Henri IV’s plans are discussed in the dispatch dated 25.4.1607, in ASV, Senato, Dispacci Francia, f. 37, c. 138.

Epilogue It is possible to build on the resolution of the Interdict conflict to reflect on the decades that followed. The end of the controversy may come as a disappointment, a return to political secrecy after a bold moment of public communication. Certainly, it has been described in precisely those terms by most historians of seventeenth-century Venice. In most accounts, the Interdict is the turning point of Venetian history, after which political decline began, an interpretation largely repeated in general works.¹ According to Bouwsma, the Interdict was the swansong of the Republic, after which Venice’s republicanism died only to gain new life elsewhere.² Moving from ideal to practical politics, Cozzi and Benzoni thought that the following years saw the fading of the Giovani’s influence and the rise of a self-interested, uninspiring ruling class dominated by conservatives and clerics, an age of decadence ‘not only economic, but also political, religious and moral’, ‘the world of the baroque’.³ It is unclear how so serious a fall could take place in so short a lapse of years, especially when we consider that the ups and downs typical of elective government continued to maintain patricians close to Sarpi in prominent positions, to the chagrin of the pope’s representatives in Venice.⁴ Although in the 1620s the philopapal Giovanni Corner was an influential doge, he was succeeded by the staunch anti-Roman Nicolò Contarini, and others of the same political inclination occupied positions of power throughout the 1630s. In spite of repeated attempts, the Jesuits, expelled during the Interdict, were only readmitted in 1657, and then only as a result of Venice’s need for international support during the war of Candia.⁵ Relations with Rome were regulated, as they had been before 1606, by continuous bargaining and compromises—in terms of policies, the Interdict was a temporary parenthesis rather than the climax of a long-term process.⁶ It is when we analyse political communication, however, that we realize just how important the Interdict’s temporary disruption was. One of the weaknesses of the decline interpretations derives from underestimating the radical break ¹ e.g. Lane 1973: 396–405; cf. also the chronology in Crouzet Pavan 2002: xxi. ² Bouwsma 1968. ³ Cozzi 1960 (the quotations from the reprint in Cozzi 1995b: 361); cf. Benzoni 1970 and 1991: 57, and Spini 1950. ⁴ Savio 1955, Seneca 1957; cf. the remarks in Grubb 1986: 58–9. ⁵ Cozzi 1992: 162. ⁶ Cf. Davidson 1997: 18.

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which the pamphlets caused in the Republic’s traditional line. The return to secret negotiations after the Interdict conformed to the government’s preferred policy before it—it was a moment of continuity, not the beginning of decline. More important than the ideals of the Giovani was the long-held aristocratic mentality excluding the majority from the sphere of government. The Senate waited at length before allowing printed publication, desperately attempted an alternative policy, and in the end contained as far as possible the number of texts which could be identified with the Republic. For a brief and unique time, then, and against strong internal opposition, a majority of senators allowed some of Venice’s supporters to turn to a policy of large-scale publication. But that was never the official line, which remained centred on the denial of the Monitorio and on the containment of the controversy. The government sponsored none of the small and cheap pamphlets, but continued to see the Protesto as its only official statement. It was the policy of third parties—authors and publishers—to produce pamphlets openly addressed to the many, and they were allowed to publish their works for a few months only. When the government at last managed to strike a deal with the papacy, it shifted away from printed publication and restored its control over political communication to the exclusion of outsiders. In the decades after the Interdict, the same effort at control was to manifest itself in other ways, with important consequences. In his classic history of censorship in Venice, Paul Grendler described the Interdict as the culmination of a long process of liberation of book production from inquisitorial encroachments. Cozzi criticized this view, pointing out the involution after the Interdict.⁷ In terms of sheer control—secular or ecclesiastical—in fact, we saw that the Interdict saw an increase rather than a relaxation of censorship, with the appointment of government-elected theologians. Then, in 1607 they forfeited their powers over preventive censorship, while the Inquisitor received his back, showing just how wrong the English ambassador had been when he enthusiastically saluted the Interdict special rules as the ‘the seeds of a great good’.⁸ Meanwhile, as Sarpi lamented, the Congregation of the Index bypassed the state’s police by approaching printers, booksellers, and readers through inquisitors, preachers, and confessors, insisting that books prohibited in Rome were to be avoided whether or not they were prohibited in Venice. As Sarpi complained in 1609, censorship was as strong in Venice as elsewhere in Italy.⁹ The government made it clear that it would defend readers of pro-Venetian pamphlets, but otherwise acquiesced with the Inquisition. In fact, although favouring the publication of works in defence of secular jurisdiction, Sarpi himself thought it inexpedient to object to the Inquisition’s prohibition of, for ⁷ P. Grendler 1977 and Cozzi 1979b. ⁸ See above, p. 214. ⁹ Letter dated 18.8.1609, in Sarpi 1931, v. 2: 46, and his remarks on the inquisitor’s devious means in Sarpi 1969: 593; cf. Ulvioni 1975. The same happened throughout the Venetian territories; e.g. letters to the mainland governors of 9 and 13.6.1607, in ASV, Coll., Lettere segrete, f. 44, cc. nn.

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example, Copernicus’ works ‘since it does not touch on the power of secular governments’.¹⁰ In terms of political publications too, however, negative controls increased more than positive statements. Sarpi’s point was the opposite of greater freedom: in 1615 he recommended that the secular censorship ought to be made more severe so as to prevent the publication of dangerous works.¹¹ This mentality had negative consequences on the public dimension of even potentially favourable political positions. For example, in 1609 James I of England sent all European rulers his Apologia pro iuramento fidelitatis, a book which was meant to establish a common cause against papal encroachments and made explicit reference to the Venetian resistance against the Interdict. The government in Venice failed to build on James I’s proposal. Instead, it accepted the Inquisition’s condemnation and ratified the book’s prohibition. In the attempt to salvage official diplomatic communication, the Collegio formally thanked the ambassador presenting the book, but the book itself was locked in the Secreta, away from the eyes of politics’ outsiders. Wider political communication concerning the matter was to be prevented.¹² This response represents a shift between secret and public attitudes. Something which could be talked about inside the government’s restricted sphere was to be strictly prohibited outside. It was a position which made it impossible for the Republic to build on the gains of the Interdict. The formal and informal authority of Sarpi and his friends in the patriciate continued after the Interdict. But the level at which Sarpi’s influence manifested itself also shifted away from the public domain. Thanks to his office, he continued to play an important role inside the government, and when he died, his friend and disciple Fulgenzio Micanzio was chosen as his successor. Sarpi’s own official writings were transcribed in large hard-bound volumes for consultation by future counsellors.¹³ Thus, it could be argued that the substance of Sarpi’s legacy was maintained as an official repository of wisdom—but this was to be so only in the secrecy of the archive. At the same time, initial plans for the erection of a public monument in the Servite church were dropped because the government found the issue too divisive and not worthy of an open confrontation with Rome.¹⁴ In effect, the Republic refrained from taking positive public positions on contentious political matters in general. The starkest sign of this change in attitude came some ten years after the Interdict, when Venice found itself again in the middle of a conflict which some contemporaries described as a ‘paper war’.¹⁵ ¹⁰ ‘Sopra un decreto della Congregazione in Roma in stampa’ (1616), in Sarpi 1969: 603–4. ¹¹ ‘Del vietare la stampa di libri perniciosi al buon governo’, in Sarpi 1958: 213–20. ¹² Cf. Frajese 1994: 347–59. ¹³ Pin 1986. ¹⁴ Micanzio 1974: 1411–12. ¹⁵ The expression ‘war of papers and legal reasons’ (guerra . . . di carte, ed allegazioni) is taken from Francesco Griselini’s eighteenth-century biography of Sarpi, Griselini 1750 in Sarpi 1763–68, v. 1: 106, but a variation of the metaphor was used at the time, for example by the jurist Claudio Cornelio Frangipane in a brief to the Senate: un’altra guerra, che le fanno i Dottori; brief dated 18.5.1616, in ASV, Coll., Comunicate del CX, f. 7, cc. 142r –v.

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In 1615–17, at the same time as a war raged against the Austrian Habsburgs in the Friuli, some twenty pamphlets were published in Italy concerning Venice’s policy, whether in defence or support. They included works by the same authors who had been active against Venice during the Interdict. In particular, some pamphlets mounted a legal challenge to the Republic’s jurisdictional claims over the Adriatic, at just the same time as the Uskock pirates’ and Spanish military pressure combined to expose painfully the weakness of Venice’s actual maritime power.¹⁶ The overall number of pamphlets pales with that of the Interdict, and that in a controversy which lasted twice as long. What is more important, very few of them were published in Venice, and none had the government’s backing. Thus, in the 1610s, the Republic’s position was the reverse of the Interdict. While in 1606 the government eventually allowed a war in writing but abstained from military action, now it entered the military fight but mostly shunned away from the literary battle. The government at last followed Machiavelli’s advice, which we saw at the beginning of the book: wielding the sword rather than the word. As the ambassador and prominent patrician Alvise Contarini was to put it in his relazione to the Senate in 1635, printing historical defences of the Adriatic jurisdiction was counterproductive. Venice was to defend her sea with ships, not books: ‘every occasion of discussing [the dominion of the sea] other than with the sword must be avoided’.¹⁷ And yet the Republic’s retreat into a haughty silence had far-reaching historical consequences to its own detriment. It was not under the walls of Gradisca, or in the victories and defeats on the Adriatic that the outcome of Venice’s reputation was determined, but in the verbal war which accompanied the political and military fighting. This period witnessed the development of a large negative literature, an anti-myth which reversed the image of the perfect Republic in mirror-like fashion.¹⁸ Instead of challenging the offenders, as it had done during the Interdict, the government now preferred to silence the polemic through censorship and secrecy. In this way, the government tried to reassert its dominance against the proliferation of polemical writing, yet also deprived itself of the means of upholding its own image. A case in point is the anti-Venetian pamphlet Squitinio della libertà veneta, published in at least three editions in 1612 and then again in 1619.¹⁹ A stern attack on Venice’s self-proclaimed republican ideals, the Squitinio followed famous theorists like Jean Bodin to challenge the notion that the Republic was a mixed state, but went one step further to argue that Venice’s oligarchy was both overly authoritarian and ineffectual. For all the talk of freedom in the Republic, neither the citizens nor the sovereign were free, especially because Venice was surrounded by stronger neighbours with greater claims to authority (like the Habsburg emperors). The Squitinio was to become the gravest indictment of the Venetian constitution, endlessly quoted by all the authors of the anti-myth ¹⁶ Cf. Battistella 1918, Camera 1937, de Vivo 2003. ¹⁷ Quoted in de Vivo 2003: 176. ¹⁸ Del Negro 1984: 407–24; cf. Zanetto 1991. ¹⁹ Squitinio.

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throughout the century.²⁰ To answer would have meant confronting some of the most contentious points in the structure of Venetian governance, and accordingly the Squitinio received no serious response in Venice.²¹ In contrast with the government’s retreat into silence, the period following the war saw an increase in the ebullience of the political arena. We have already seen an instance of this shift in ambassador Ottaviano Bon’s leak of his relazione in 1619, nourishing discussions and oppositional allegations as part of radical factional confrontations over the conduct of foreign policy.²² The peace negotiations gave reasons for fierce polemics in Venice and elsewhere. Newswriters referred to heated debates, disapproving rumours, and pasquinades ridiculing the Republic’s weakness.²³ Abroad, printed pamphlets described the treaty as a sell-out, a sign of Venice’s decline.²⁴ Even as Bon was writing his relazione, others resorted to the printing press. At the end of 1617 a bookseller was arrested for selling a short history of the wars which had just ended, published against the law under a false name and imprint—not unlike many of the Interdict pamphlets. By no means a pro-Spanish text, the short Guerre d’Italia criticized Venice’s weak conduct of both the military confrontations and the diplomatic negotiations.²⁵ As Sarpi remarked, it related facts which were true but better hidden, combining a generally positive account with a few very damaging details which ought to have been censored.²⁶ The inquiry traced the publication to a printer, Zuanne Alberti, and to a patrician, Alessandro Bondumier, who was likely the source of most of the reserved information contained in the book (including precise movements of troops, officers’ letters, and ambassadors’ dispatches).²⁷ The Council of Ten imprisoned and tortured both. The printer was to serve two years in jail. Bondumier was freed, but perhaps only because torture had punished him enough, especially given his weak physical state—he died soon after.²⁸ These are chilling details surrounding the government’s wish to stop all public communication concerning its policies. Rather than publishing its own line, the government busied itself preventing (unsuccessfully) the leaking of information. At first, Sarpi himself was asked to ²⁰ e.g. Amelot 1677. ²¹ Cf. Cozzi’s editorial remarks in Sarpi 1969: 614–22. ²² See section 2.2 above. ²³ Avvisi dated 19 and 26.8, 2 and 30.9 and 2.12.1617, in ASV, IS, b. 704, fasc. 4, cc. nn. An anonymous newsletter dated 26.8.1617 containing news of a pasquinade was communicated by the Ten to the Collegio on 31.8.1617, in ASV, Coll., Comunicate del CX, f. 8, cc. 180–4. ²⁴ e.g. Castellani 1619. ²⁵ Emigliani 1617: 76–86 and 91 (concerning the negotiations), 28–9, 37–8, 43, 49, and 53–4 (on the war’s conduct). According to Melzi 1848–9, v. 1: 355, it was also published in Latin. ²⁶ ‘Sommario di un libretto intitolato Guerre d’Italia’, in Sarpi 1969: 1056, 1058. ²⁷ Bondumier and the printers Zuanne and Oliviero Alberti were arrested respectively on 23.12.1617 and 22.1.1618, ASV, CX, Parti criminali, b. 44, cc. nn. The inquiry’s records are missing, but the information supplied here may help establish this text’s authorship, a task which has not been attempted until now. ²⁸ Entries 12 and 19.6.1618, ibid., b. 45, cc. nn. Bondumier’s bad physical condition is described ibid., b. 44, entries dated 14.2 and 23.2.1618.

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write a text to append to the publication of the 1617 treaty. It is a striking example of the ambiguities which publishing forced over sensitive information. As Sarpi explained there, ‘my aim has been to say the truth, but avoiding those details which are better covered by silence’. And yet, the government was so concerned about the possible effects of Sarpi’s text that the Senate sent it to ambassadors abroad in manuscript but left it unpublished in Venice.²⁹ In 1618, Sarpi published anonymously and without any publication data, a history of the events up to 1612 which was strongly critical of Venice’s enemies. Although the work successfully underwent several editions, the government never sponsored or licensed its publication, and Sarpi had to give up plans of taking the narrative to the most recent events (and notably to the peace negotiations).³⁰ It is no coincidence that when expressing the most forceful defence of the Venetian dominion over the Adriatic sea, Sarpi put it in the mouth of a lawyer from five decades previously as a speech given at the time of a past encounter with representatives of the Habsburgs. What Sarpi had to couch in such indirect terms—as an old document supposedly drawn from an archive rather than a current statement, official or otherwise—had a greater success abroad than at home, since extracts of his text were printed in English in the 1650s, obviously after being smuggled out of Venice in manuscript.³¹ In this situation, censorship over public news only augmented widespread curiosity for reserved information, hence the success of the pseudonymous history authored by Bondumier, and the swift circulation of Bon’s relazione. Other elements which we now regard as classic expressions of the anti-myth—from the Spanish ambassador’s report of 1618, to the Opinione falsely attributed to Sarpi—similarly at first circulated in manuscript as real or fictional leaks, and were printed only later.³² While the government favoured silence, the political arena thrived with a variety of contrasting allegations; while the government maintained a façade of unanimity, all of these texts pointed to disagreements inside the patriciate. The paradox of the government’s preoccupation with public communication was that the government halted publications directed to the subjects at large but could not prevent the political arena from expressing itself. A history of the anti-myth’s reception in Venice’s wider public still has to be written, but we can guess that people in pharmacies and barbershops could hardly be impressed. If after the Interdict the government was reluctant to express itself publicly concerning current political events, the same went for past ones. In the sixteenth ²⁹ ‘Scrittura per metter in publico la trattazione di pace’ (1617), in Sarpi 1969: 1051. Sarpi’s text was sent to ambassadors abroad and is filed amongst the letters sent by the Ten to ambassadors in France, under the date 26.9.1617, in ASV, CCX, Dispacci ambasciatori e residenti, b. 11, after c. 230. ³⁰ Cozzi 1964: 439–54 and Sarpi 1969: 439–52. ³¹ A translation of Sarpi 1965: 93–107 (from the Supplimento), in Selden 1652: 19–32. ³² On the former see Raulich 1898; on the latter Cozzi 1995b: 363–6, and now Raines 2006a.

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century, official historians had enabled the largely coherent constitution of a corpus of favourable historiography which was one of the pillars of Venice’s cherished image.³³ In the early seventeenth century and for a long time, this was no longer so. The exemplary case of the government’s reluctance to be associated with printed publications was the history of the Interdict controversy itself. As Sarpi saw it, once the publication of polemical pamphlets stopped, history was to play a major role in the confrontation. He began working on one immediately after the controversy drew to a close. As he wrote in 1608, ‘nothing is more necessary than manifesting to the world the truth of the past affair, because our enemies follow their ancestors’ example in fabricating false documents and publishing them whenever they think it useful.’³⁴ Some close to the government held similar beliefs. Notably, the ambassador returning from France, Piero Priuli, commissioned a relatively obscure Frenchman to write a ponderous history of Venice including a substantial last section about the Interdict.³⁵ Dedicated to the king of France it was published in January 1608, and the doge owned a manuscript translation of the Interdict section.³⁶ Sarpi offered to provide the famous French historian Jacques-Auguste de Thou with a detailed report on which the latter could base his account.³⁷ In the relazione he delivered on his return from France, Priuli defended the plan before the Senate.³⁸ Resistance to publication made it very difficult to turn the Interdict into a politically useful public memory. Sarpi never sent de Thou his report. This could not have been, as has been argued, because he disapproved of the latter’s rapprochement with the Jesuits since 1610, because a few years later Sarpi still thought of letting de Thou have the report.³⁹ As Sarpi himself explained, cauzione was necessary, because opposition from inside the government itself made publishing difficult, a point to which he was to return again in later years.⁴⁰ When he gave the report to his political ally Agostino Nani to bring to Paris, Sarpi recommended that the report be translated into French and published under a pseudonym and with maximum secrecy.⁴¹ Eventually, Nani abandoned the project, and Sarpi’s history was published only after his death, and ³³ On official historians, see Cozzi 1963, Gaeta 1980, and Benzoni 1982. ³⁴ Letter dated 27.5.1608 in Sarpi 1931, v. 1: 15; and cf. his letters of 2.5 and 6.6.1607 in Sarpi 1961: xxxiv –xxxv, 168. ³⁵ Priuli’s relazione in Barozzi and Berchet 1856–78, series 2, v. 1: 286–7. There is no trace of this commission in Priuli’s dispatches, perhaps because he wanted to present the Senate with a fait accompli. ³⁶ Fougasse 1608; evidence of the doge’s interest in this work is in an extract in MCV, Ms. Donà 453.5. ³⁷ Busnelli 1986: 3–30; and Ulianich 1961: ic–cvii. ³⁸ Priuli’s relazione in Barozzi and Berchet 1856–78, series 2, v. 1: 286. ³⁹ Busnelli 1986: 22–3; Ulianich 1961: civ–cvi. ⁴⁰ Letters to Groslot of 27.5.1608, 3.2 and 27.4.1610, in Sarpi 1931, v. 1: 14, 110 and 120; cf. Sarpi’s opinion in 1621 in Sarpi 1969: 1178. ⁴¹ Letter dated 8.6.1610, in Sarpi 1961: 169.

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outside Venice.⁴² When, Fulgenzio Micanzio, Sarpi’s successor, suggested that Sarpi’s history be published together with the official history written by Andrea Morosini, the government rejected that advice.⁴³ In the end, the relevant passages in Morosini’s work were to constitute the only history of the controversy ever to obtain the government’s licence. This version downplayed the Interdict as a momentary parenthesis in the otherwise good relations between Venice and the papacy, one which was better forgotten than remembered. It also of course criticized the pamphlets’ role in widening the conflict’s impact and public. There seems to be a connection between Morosini’s criticism of the pamphlets and his own disregard for reaching a wide readership. Unlike both his predecessors and successors, he wrote his own history in Latin.⁴⁴ When Morosini died, Nicolò Contarini succeeded him as official historian. A strong supporter of opposition to the papacy during the Interdict, he took the narrative back to 1597, perhaps partly because he wished to cover the conflict. He never reached it, however, having to interrupt his work at 1604, and in the end he abandoned the prospect of publishing his work. When Contarini’s heirs tried to publish the chapters which he had finished, the government censors, on the recommendation of two consultori in iure, prohibited publication and instead decreed that the work was to be deposited in the Council of Ten’s secret archive in exchange for a small reward.⁴⁵ The failure to publish Sarpi’s and Contarini’s histories is not just a reflection of their group’s decline. Clearly, there was in Venice a more general problem with the communication of recent political events in general. In spite of repeated attempts, no official history was published after Morosini’s until Giovambattista Nani’s of 1662. There, however, the narrative stopped at 1644, on the eve of the long and eventually lost war in Crete, another event which, for good reasons, it would have been difficult to recount.⁴⁶ The paradox was of course that, while the government retreated to its traditional policy of secrecy, the events of 1606–7 could not be forgotten. The Republic’s official position contrasted with the proliferation of political discussion both in the political arena and amongst ordinary people too. In 1622 the governor of Verona wrote a letter to the Inquisitors of State. He recounted being accosted frequently by a local clergyman, who promised to reveal important political secrets (raccordi di stato). The governor refused to pay him any attention. ‘In all his talk, he promises to make reports and revelations about important things, but in the event he slightly changes his words but always recounts the same story, namely that during the Interdict it was he who turned the pope’s soul to the Republic’s favour.’ According to the governor, the clergyman’s revelations proved both groundless and useless. As the governor commented, ‘the only secret I discovered is the confusion in his brain’, such that ⁴² Letter dated 25.9.1612, in Sarpi 1931, v. 1: 243. ⁴³ Cozzi 1958: 226n. ⁴⁴ On Morosini’s history, see Benzoni 1982: xxxv –xxxix and Trebbi 1993. ⁴⁵ Cozzi 1958: 197–227. ⁴⁶ Benzoni 1982: xliii.

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‘in short one can conclude that he is a virtuous lunatic’ (un matto virtuoso).⁴⁷ Some fifteen years after the end of the Interdict, memory of the events was clearly not extinguished but continued to nourish some people’s actions and talk, even though the government refused to listen to opinions which it dismissed as follies. If there was a gap between the authorities and the subjects, it was not necessarily the latter which found themselves closer to the pope, as many historians have imagined. The same conclusion can be drawn from other cases. Only a few years earlier, a patrician was accused of heresy before the Inquisition. Amongst other things, such as refusing to fast on Fridays, he had affirmed that ‘Roman pontiffs are pigherds and goatherds’—an insult which, as we have seen, an anonymous cartello had employed against the Republic’s governor during the Interdict—and that their excommunication ‘is nothing’.⁴⁸ When hearing the case, Agostino Nani, the secular magistrate who oversaw the Inquisition’s work hastened to defend his fellow patrician. There was no heretical intent in his words, he said, but only (again) some confusion in his brain, and he was known to be ‘not completely sane of mind’. Nani was, as it happens, a prominent patrician, ambassador to Rome at the beginning of the Interdict and one of those who had most fiercefully opposed appeasement with the pope. Ten years later, however, in order to rescue a peer, he was ready to abandon some of the Interdict’s ideal positions.⁴⁹ Similarly, a friar detained for apostasy was heard saying ‘keep your religion’ (Tioga la tua religione) and adding that, ‘were the pope to excommunicate him a thousand times, [the friar] would not obey him’. In line with the dynamics of communication we have seen throughout this book, the witnesses included some apothecaries and a shoemaker.⁵⁰ But the Republic was no longer willing to exploit the radical criticism of spiritual authorities. More than a decade after the Interdict, in February 1618 and once again at a time of carnival, the Senate received a report from the governors of Capodistria. In the small nearby village of Pinguente, a crowd of revellers had assailed a young deacon, known as il papa. ‘Having eaten and drunk more than is customary, with unashamed dance and clamours’, they had seized him from his house and, ‘making reference to this nickname as ‘‘the Pope’’,’ put him on a mock throne. They then paraded him to the parish church, accompanied by pipes and banging some large keys on a plate, all the time calling him ironicamente ‘Your Beatitude’, ‘Pope’. Finally, they gave the deacon the keys and an iron helmet ‘to signify the kingdom of the world’, put fake donkey’s ears on his head and sat him on a real donkey, bearing large posters inscribed ‘Paolo Quinto’ and ‘This is the pope’s ⁴⁷ Dispatch dated 26.1.1622, in ASV, IS, b. 357, cc. nn. ⁴⁸ Denunciation by Zan Nicolò Piccinin, 8.10.1616, in ASV, SU, b. 71, ‘Cristoforo Canal, per bestemmie’, cc. nn.; cf. above, p. 194. ⁴⁹ Entry dated 13.10.1616, ibid. ⁵⁰ Denunciation by Bartolomeo Frigerio, 3.1.1620, in ASV, SU, b. 75, ‘Fra Gregorio Nicolich’, cc. nn.

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horse’.⁵¹ Thus, in line with the law of unintended consequences which, as we have seen, dominated all forms of public political communication, a popular charivari was couched in the same terms as the Republic’s slogans during the Interdict controversy. Removed from the government’s official history, the memory of the Interdict remained alive in Venice’s unruly communication, an element nourishing discussions and no doubt contributing to widespread criticism of political certainties and ecclesiastical hierarchies. Words, as Sarpi knew, were powerful weapons indeed, but—as he also knew—‘weapons are easily taken up, but laid down only with difficulty, and wars begin in one place, but end up elsewhere’.⁵² ⁵¹ File in ASV, Coll., Comunicate del CX, f. 8: 324–27; also, descriptions in the dispatch of 24.2.1618, in Sen., Deliberazioni Roma ordinaria, f. 40, cc. nn.; and in the dispatches of 7 and 21.3.1618, in Sen., Dispacci Provveditori di terra e di mar, f. 340, cc. nn. ⁵² Sarpi 1965: 141.

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Index Abioso, Camillo 205 academies 79, 94, 95, 101 Adriatic, controveries over dominion of 53, 79 251–4 ambassadors, see diplomacy archives, governmental 48–54, 59, 251, 254, 256 establishment of 48–9 disorder of 49 use of, during 1606–7 Interdict 162–3 archives, private 54–7, 58–9 Agostino Valier 20, 23, 24 Alberti, Oliviero, printer 253 Alberti, Zuanne, printer 253 Alessandri, Nicolò, notary and scrivener 124 Amelot de La Houssaie, Abraham-Nicolas 27, 253 Ammirato, Scipione 114 Anderson, Benedict 230 Andrusi, Angela 192 apothecaries 97, 106, 107–8, 109, 257 see also pharmacies apprentices 97, 104, 110, 190 Aquinas, St Thomas 170, 206 Aretino, Pietro 137 Ariosto, Ludovico 137 Arrigoni, Francesco 27 arsenal 103 Artusi, Polonia 83, 116, 125 Asolo 113 Austin, John L. 175 avvisi, see newswriters and newswriting Avogadori di Comun 29, 34, 130 Badoer, Alberto 55 Badoer, Angelo 55, 73, 104, 109, 181, 210, 211, 212 bakers 230, 240 Bakhtin, Mikhail 121 Bandello, Matteo 133 Barbarano, Lepido, apothecary 190 Barbarano, Valerio, apothecary 178 Barbarigo, Andrea 90 Barbaro, Ermolao 22, 43 Barbaro, Francesco, patriarch of Aquileia 34, 179, 210, 240 Barberini, Maffeo, nuncio in France, see Urban VIII

barbers and barbershops 89, 98–106, 126, 143–6, 156, 190, 239, 245 Baronio, Cesare 137, 177, 208, 213, 215, 218, 228, 234 Bartoli, Giovanni, lawyer 125 Bartolo, oarsman 110 Battaglia, Alvise 74 Bedell, William 92 Bedmar, Alonso de la Cueva, Marquis of 52, 62, 73, 77, 78, 83, 94, 103–4, 109, 110, 116, 126, 254 beggars 109, 154 Bellarmino, Roberto 137, 168, 176, 208, 213, 215, 216, 223, 227, 234, 235 Bellman, Beryl 45 Belsamini, Antonio 134 Belsamini, Antonio, (printer) 134 Bembo, Giovanni 180 Bembo, Pietro 24, 57 Benedetti, Francesco, (priest) 240 Benedetti, Giacomo, (priest) 239, 240, 241 Beni, Giacomo, notary 93 Benzoni, Gino 202, 249 Berengo, Andrea 90 Bergamo 80, 150, 220, 222 Bergonzi, Nadalin, (priest) 146 Berlin 58 Bernard, St 205 Bernieri, Girolamo, (cardinal) 205 Biscacciante, Alvise, (physician) 67, 68, 101 blasphemy 136–7, 140, 154, 239 Boccalini, Traiano 42, 46, 142, 154 Bodin, Jean 252 Bodù, Gilberto, (jeweller) 111 Bollani, Domenico 74, 182 Bologna 82, 103, 191, 220, 230, 239, 242 Bon family 69 Bon, Alessandro 67 Bon, Filippo 67, 68 Bon, Ottaviano 30, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70, 85, 86, 101, 139, 141, 146, 253, 254 Bondumier, Alessandro 253, 254 Bonicelli, Michelangelo, (friar) 190 Boniface VIII, (Pope) 235 Bonifacio, Baldassarre 49 Bontempelli, Bartolomeo, (mercer) 95, 96 shop at the Chalice 95, 96 books of secrets 125, 182

302

Index

booksellers and bookshops 94–5, 97, 223, 240, 253 Boorstin, Daniel 183 Borghese, family 131 Borghese, Scipione, (cardinal) 179, 183, 204, 208, 217, 246 Borsetto, Andrea, (barber) 101 Bortolotto, Piero, (priest) 144, 145, 146, 154 Botero, Giovanni 15, 28, 143, 156, 161 Bouwsma, William J. 201, 249 Bozza, Antonio, (clerk of the Vicenza council) 178 bozzoli 92, 93, 123, 155 Braudel, Fernand 6, 52 Brescia 177, 189, 190, 196, 223 posted texts in 194–5, 207, 243 preaching in 188 printing in 220 processions in 244 reading of pamphlets in, during 1606–7 Interdict 179, 240 Brescia, (prostitute) 192 broglio 47, 48, 89, 90, 123, 139, 140, 200 brokers (senseri) 93, 96, 97, 108–9, 110 of spices 12 Brown, Rawdon 61 Bruno, Giordano 94, 142 Buoni, Tommaso 98 Burano 115, 230, 236 Burckhardt, Jakob 14 Cadena, Valerio, (nurse) 126 Caimo, Pompeo 44 Calbo, Antonio 99, 125 Canal, Cristoforo da 257 Canaye de Fresne, Philippe, (French ambassador) 20, 158, 174, 177, 189, 192, 200, 211, 219, 238, 246 Canini 21, 22 Capella, Claudio 177 Capello, Marcantonio 231, 237 Capodistria 257 Carbone, Lodovico, (teacher) 20 Cardenas, Inigo de, (Spanish ambassador) 211 Carleton, Sir Dudley, (English ambassador) 71, 72, 205 Carnevale, Ottavio, (newswriter and scrivener) 93, 124 Carnevali, Innocenzo, (benedictine friar) 182 carnival 132, 245–6, 257–58 carpenters 126 cartelli, see posted texts Casati, Gasparo, (merchant) 93 Castelli, Zuanne, (exchange broker) 94, 155 Castiglione 20, 24 Castorio, Bernardino, (jesuit) 165

Castro, Francisco de, (Spanish ambassador) 247 Cattani, Domenico, (swordmaker) 83 Cavadenti, Alessandro, (tooth-surgeon) 99, 105, 106, 115 Censori 26, 29 censorship of book imports 80 of comunicazione 33–6, 162–3 of manuscript newsletters 84, 103, 186, 185–7 of news 84, 251–4 of printed books 134, 200–1, 250–1, 256 of printed books, during 1606–7 Interdict 206, 213–15, 218–19 of private communication 40, 44, 164–5, 179, 245 of private letters 179 official publications excluded from 129 permessi taciti 218–19 see also Index of prohibited books, Index, Congregation of Cerutti, Angelo 92, 103, 104 chandlers 106, 112 charlatans 93, 107, 116, 242 Chartier, Roger 221 Cherini, Alvise, (secretary of the Senate) 210 Chiocco, Andrea, (physician of Verona) 226 Chioggia 179, 182 Christian from Lorraine, (pedlar) 111 Church-State relations 38, 157–9 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 22, 23, 65 Cinque savi alla mercanzia 51 Ciotti, Giovan Battista, (publisher and bookseller) 94, 220, 222 Città di Verona a i lettori, La 196–7 cittadini 4, 5, 21, 44, 50, 87, 90 civic ritual 27, 113, 173–6, 231 compared with pamphlets 230–1, 232 see also processions cleaners 83, 116, 178 government clerks 44, 51–2, 57, 106, 182, 196 see also guards coffeehouses 98, 105–6 Coleman, Joyce 123 Collegio 49, 51, 53, 56, 59, 64, 65, 72, 251 control over debates in the Senate 30–2 and comunicazione 33, 35, 36, 37–40 and 1606–7 Interdict 160, 161, 162, 165, 175, 179, 182, 191, 196, 204, 206, 209, 211, 213, 214, 223, 224, 245 diplomatic audiences in 10, 18, 22, 37–8, 71, 77 real winner of 1582 reform 42 Collurafi, Antonino 19, 23, 48

Index Colonna, Ascanio, (cardinal) 205, 208 comandatori, (towncriers) 128–31, 132, 134, 137, 196–7 Comino, Bartolomeo, (secretary of the Inquisitors of State) 101 Comitoli, Paolo 207 commedia dell’arte and street-theatre 152, 155, 236, 246 commoners excluded from government 44, 87–8 factionalism and partisanship amongst 92–3 participation in political communication 89–119 Commynes, Philippe de 31, 41, 75, 87 communication defined 2–3 history of 13–15 sources for the study of 8–12, 18, 24, 82, 85, 92, 112, 118, 152–5, 189, 239 see also debating in councils; laughter and ridicule; legal system as subject of discussion; manuscript circulation; official publication; posted texts; preaching and sermons; processions as subject of discussion; readers and reading; rumours; urban exchange of news; wars as subject of discussion comunicazione 4, 5, 19, 32, 33, 36, 180 during Interdict crisis of 1606–7 36, 38, 161–2, 163 confession 250 confidenti: see professionals of information confraternities 5, 44, 174 conspiracies 33, 34, 35, 141, 173, 245 conspiracy of 1618 93, 97 Constantinople 19, 63, 82 consultori in iure 53–4, 162–3, 180, 213, 256 Contarini, Alvise 252 Contarini, Gasparo 5, 25, 26, 38, 42, 44, 87, 128, 229 Contarini, Nicolò (q. Zan Gabriel) 29, 36, 134, 249, 256 Contarini, Nicolò (q. Giovan Battista) 67 Contarini, Zorzi 67 convents 53, 114, 131, 176–9, 188, 190, 191 Copernicus, Nicolaus 251 Corfu 11 Cornaro (Corner), Caterina 113 Corner family 213 Corner, Giacomo 182 Corner, Giovanni 249 Corner, Girolamo 91 Corner, Zorzi 67 Coryat, Thomas 10, 27, 47, 88, 92, 107, 115 Cotrugli, Benedetto 90, 111

303

Council of Ten 25, 31, 40, 44, 50, 83, 101, 114, 253 and 1606–7 Interdict 161, 162, 165, 182 and censorship 201, 253 and comunicazione 32, 37 and inquiry about 1591 Paternoster circulation 141, 143, 151 and regulation of council debates 29 and retrieval of information 33–7, 80, 96 and secrecy 41–2, 49, 57, 59, 84 reform of (1582) 32, 34, 41–2, 48 reform of (1628) 36 Council of Trent 122 couriers 52–3, 84, 104, 179, 239 courtesans 116, 133, 138 Cozzi, Gaetano 7, 33, 202, 238, 249, 250 Crasso, Nicolò 218 Crema 77, 178 Cremona 150, 191, 195, 240 Croce, Giulio Cesare 117 curiosity 67, 68, 81, 107, 110, 124, 144, 145, 194, 200, 222, 223, 232, 233, 243, 254 Da Lezze, Andrea 67, 68 Dal Bello, Antonio, (ironmonger) 91 Dal Sasso, Lorenzo 239 Daniele from Verona, (oarsman) 110 Darnton, Robert 12, 122, 185 Davis, Natalie Zemon 86, 129 debating in councils eloquence and 19–25 freedom of speech and 28–9 problems with sources 18–9, 22–3, 43–4 rarity of, in the Great Council 25–26 spatial disposition of 31 time constraints over 31 and voting procedures 25–6 see also Senate De Bachi, Vincenzo, (apothecary) 103 De Dominis, Marcantonio 125, 226 De Monti, Gregorio, (secretary of the English embassy) 81, 89 De Vera de la Roca, Juan Antonio, (Spanish ambassador) 46, 75 De Vera y Aragon, Francisco, (Spanish ambassador) 27, 72, 75, 142, 182 Del Bene, Agostino 230 Della Casa, Giovanni 20, 128 Denores, Giason 21 Deutsch, Karl 4 diplomacy Venetian network of 19, 35, 37, 51, 54–5, 57–8, 64, 162, 211–12, 219, 254 foreign ambassadors residing in Venice: 10, 18, 20, 27, 31, 38, 46, 60–2, 70–4,

304

Index

diplomacy (cont.) 75, 89–90, 99, 105, 123–4, 143–4, 173, 177, 203–4 other diplomatic representatives 71, 89, 143–4, 145–6, 230 and sociability 72–4 discussed in newsletters 184 see also relazioni, Collegio, diplomatic audiences in doge, doges 28, 29, 33, 37, 38, 128, 168, 205, 208, 230 eloquence of 24 election of 43 influence of 33 Dolfin family 138 Dolfin, Nicolò 133 Donà family 58, 59, 205 Donà, Antonio 69 Donà, Leonardo 38, 42, 55, 80, 255 accused of heresy 161, 188 accused of seeking excessive power 24, 208 and 1606–7 Interdict 157, 161, 171, 180, 181, 205, 206, 229, 247 and civic ritual 173–4 and rhetoric 23, 24 and secrecy 42 and urban exchange of news 95–6 as owner of manuscripts 58–60, 255, 185, 188 ridiculed in posted texts 194 Donà, Nicolò 30, 40, 203 Dooley, Brendan 81 Duodo, Piero 59, 177, 184 Dve lettere vna ... della Republica di Genova alla Repvblica di Venetia 222, 228 England and Venetian foreign policy 251 civil wars in 2, 200, 214 informers working in the service of 75, 205 Parliament in 18 price of cheap literature in 226 printed newsletters in 80–1 professionals of information in 13, 75 epigraphy 131 Esecutori alla bestemmia 51, 73, 96 Fabri, Francesco, chaplain 93 factionalism and partisanship 40 amongst friars 190 outside elites 92–3 popular 110, 117–18, 144 see also patricians, divisions amongst Falier, Francesco 116 Falier, Marino 138, 141, 173 false news 107, 183, 192–3, 204

see also pseudoevents Farge, Arlette 119 Feltre 133, 187 Ferdinand of Habsburg 64, 69 Ferrara 177, 178, 220 Finlay, Robert 7 Fioravanti, Leonardo 98, 101, 107, 242 Fioretto della Bibbia 226 Firpo, Massimo 138 fishermen 91, 121, 141, 230, 236, 239 Florence 44, 60, 116, 137, 158, 220 Florio, John 9, 48, 92 flowersellers 191 Fogel, Michèle 130, 131 Fonte, Moderata 114 forgeries of diplomatic documents 247 of relazioni 61 of senatorial speeches 56–7 Foscarini, Marco 61 Fougasse, Thomas 255 France and Venetian foreign policy 64–5, 204–5, 246, 248 anti-Spanish pamphleteering 1603–6 230 Fronde 2, 200, 214 informers in the service of 77, 78 Parlements 18 parliamentary polemics (1612–15) 230, 231 professionals of information in 13, 75 wars of religion 2, 6, 77, 81, 142, 158, 200, 233 Franco, Nicolò 137 Frangipane, Cornelio 21, 22, 23, 24, 28, 76 Frangipane, Claudio Cornelio 54, 251 Frankfurt bookfair 221 Frederick I Barbarossa, (emperor) 173 friars 123, 130, 170, 171, 178, 182, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 239, 245, 257 Frigerio, Bartolomeo, (friar) 257 Fumaroli, Marc 23 Gabriel, Alvise 74 Gaetani, Bonifacio, (cardinal) 208 Gaetano, Alvise, (mosaic craftsman) 11, 92 Galilei, Galileo 175, 191 Gallo, Ettore 190 gambling 73, 95, 102, 104, 115 Garzoni, Gian Giacomo 126 Garzoni, Tommaso 53, 98, 102, 103, 107, 109, 123, 128, 129, 131, 132, 133 Gelmini, Francesco, (scrivener and newswriter) 82, 83 Geneva 167, 236 Genoa 44, 47

Index Gerson, Jean 204, 205, 206, 208, 209 Gertrud, St 221 Gessi, Berlingerio, (papal nuncio in Venice), 24, 54, 73, 74, 76, 95 Giannotti, Donato 44, 87, 153 Ginzburg, Carlo 8, 15, 160, 201 Giolito publishers 201 Giosi, Angelo, pigment seller 110 Giovan Francesco, scrivener 60 Giovani 159, 173, 180, 208, 211–12, 249, 250 Giunti publishing firm 220 Giustinian, Bernardo see Giustiniani, Bernardo Giustinian, Giovanni 133 Giustinian, Girolamo 29 Giustiniani, Bernardo 22 Gobbo di Rialto 130, 137–41 Goldoni, Carlo 106 government structure, and communication 32–3 see Avogadori di Comun, Censori, censorship, Collegio, comunicazione, Council of Ten, debating in councils, Doge, Esecutori alla Bestemmia, Great Council, Riformatori dello Studio di Padova, Senate Gradisca 36, 252 graffiti 140–1, 194–5, 196 Granzino, Alessandro 62, 63, 76, 78, 79, 83, 104 Great Council 5, 33, 34, 36, 37 described as popular element of constitution 5 and comunicazione 32 and 1582 reform 32, 34, 41–2 and 1606–7 Interdict 162, 208, 213, 230 reading in 68, 130 rhetoric in 23, 25 as ritual stage 26–7 and debating 25–7, 31 Greco, Giorgio, (publisher in Vicenza) 200 Gregory XIII, (pope) 84 Grendler, Paul 250 Griselini, Francesco 251 Gritti, Piero 46, 65, 67, 69 Gualdo, Emilio 177 Gualdo, Paolo 121, 177–8 guards 51, 83, 97, 165, 171, 172, 178, 195, 241 guilds 5, 13, 44, 87, 114–15 of printers and booksellers 220–1 Gussoni, Vincenzo 64 Habermas, Jürgen 13, 14, 98, 103, 118, 119 Habsburg archdukes of Austria 36, 64, 82, 252

305

Harrington, James 27 Henri IV, king of France 142, 211, 246, 248 heresy 160, 161, 168, 190, 195, 197 accusations of, against the government 161, 188, 198, 200, 208, 227, 229, in the Venetian Republic 95, 98, 150, 239, 257 and books 122 Hobbes, Thomas 135, 232 Holy Office, Congregation of the 10, 34, 95, 98, 112, 122, 161, 168, 198, 207, 209, 210, 221, 222, 239, 251 in Venetian territories 80, 122, 134, 142, 150, 177, 201, 213–14, 235, 239, 246, 250, 257 hospital workers 126 Hume, David 13 illiteracy 51–2, 109, 112, 122, 179 Index of prohibited books 205, 207, 222, 235 Index of prohibited books, Congregation of the 205, 207, 220, 250 Infelise, Mario 81 information, see false news, leaking, leaks, newswriters and newswriting, professionals of information, secrecy Inquisition, see Holy Office, Congregation of the Inquisitors of State 5, 10, 12, 33, 34, 35, 37, 41, 42, 50, 55, 60, 65, 72, 73, 76, 77, 78, 81, 83, 89, 92, 95, 97, 99, 101, 107, 115, 123, 124, 185, 186, 256 planting of informers, 76 preoccupation with exchange of news in public, 97 problems with sources 11–12, 113 insurance brokers 89, 90 Interdict of 1606–7 24, 38, 40, 53, 102, 135, 137, 138, 140, 141, 152 and governmental secrecy 43, 76 causes 157–8 nature of 158, 164 interpretations of 159, 238–9, 249 compared with earlier interdicts 158–9, 163–4, 167, 169 initial negotiations 160–3 publication of bull of 163–4 Venice’s first response 164–70 legal strategies to counter 169–70, 171 measures for maintaining public order during 170–2, 245–6 role of ritual during 172–6 shift from formal to informal communication 176 rumours during 189–94 posted texts during 194–7

306

Index

Interdict of 1606–7 (cont.) earliest pamphlets 204–9 government’s decision to publish pamphlets 209–15 censorship arrangements during 213–15 role of publishers in 220–2 pamphlets’ production during 215–27 pamphlets’ role during 227–38 responses to, amongst population 96, 98, 126, 189–99, 238–46 conclusion of 246–8 memory of 256–9 see also archives, governmental, censorship, conunicazione, leaking, leaks, manuscript circulation, newswriters and newswriting, official publication, readers and reading, urban exchange of news, women interpreters 110–11 James I, (king of England) 251 Jesuits 2, 126, 141, 162, 165, 170, 175, 176, 177, 185, 188, 189, 191, 192, 195, 212, 229, 233, 249, 255 jewellers 111 Kantorowicz, Ernst 15 L’Estoile, Pierre de 219, 226, 241 Lana, Alberto, (scrivener) 82–3, 84, 123 Lando, Girolamo 62 Lane, Frederic 6, 28 laughter and ridicule in churches 189, 241, 245 in governmental debating 30 in pamphlets 235, 240–1 in public places 98, 155, 241 in the political arena 51–2, 169 see also carnival, parody lawyers 11, 20, 21, 78, 86, 92, 108, 125, 150, 240 leaking, leaks 120, 254 during 1606–7 Interdict 70, 162–3, 179–83, 228 of relazioni 58–70 proneness to 46–70 legal system 20, 130 as subject of discussion 72 Leoni, Giovan Battista 79, 80, 142, 206, 218, 242 Lepschy, Giulio 117 Leti, Gregorio 137 Lippi, Nicolò, priest 188 Lisbon 91 Lisca, Alessandro 218 literacy 5, 81, 121–7, 128

rates of 121 as social transaction 121–5 and access to political information 125–7 Locatelli, Girolamo, (friar) 131 London 58, 63, 81, 98, 103, 106, 125 Longhi, Pietro 98, 141 Lonigo, Gasparo 217 Loredan, Leonardo 138 Lorenzo, (barber) 101 Lorraine, Duke of 71 Love, Harold 9, 58, 123 Lowry, Martin 48 Lucca 108 Lucian of Samosata 150 Machiavelli, Niccolò 1, 2, 6, 156, 201, 228, 252 diffusion of his works in Venice 235–6 magic 125 Malatesta, Giuseppe 180, 181, 235 Malfi, Tiberio 102 Malombra, Pietro, (painter) 106 Maltusello, Fabrizio, (priest) 145 Mannucci, Aldo 24 manuscript circulation material analysis of 58–9, 68–9, 147, 151 during 1606–7 Interdict 161, 176–87, 203–4 lending of texts as part of 67–8, 144–6, 147 as a means of publication 58–61, 67–9 see also relazioni, renghe Manuzio, Aldo 95 Manzoni, Alessandro 136 Marin, Louis 17 Marino, Giovan Battista 94 Marsilio, Giovanni 94, 95, 189, 205, 206, 208, 210, 217, 228, 231, 235 Marsilius of Padua 208, 231 Martinengo family 185 Mary I, queen of England 113 Matteacci, Giuseppe 23 Mattei, Orazio, papal nuncio in Venice 161, 163, 173, 229 McKenzie, Donald F. 12, 240 Medici, Giovanni de 116 Medici, Marie de 64 Meietti, Roberto, printer 94, 217, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 230 Memmo, Giovanni Maria 22, 24, 44, 111 menanti, see newswriters and newswriting Mendoza, Giovanni 79 Menini, Ottavio 217 Menocchio, Domenico Scandella, known as 193, 201, 226

Index Menocchio, Giacomo 217 mercers 95–6, 97, 106, 146 merchants 70, 90–3, 108, 110, 111, 125, 146, 240 Meschita, Antonio 73, 82, 83, 86, 89, 92, 99, 103, 116, 123 Micanzio, Fulgenzio 49, 53, 54, 55, 79, 95, 180, 204, 229, 231, 237, 242, 251, 256 Michiel family 146 Michiel, Giulio 72, 142 Milan 178, 207 Milledonne, Antonio 51 millers 193, 201, 226, 240 Minotto, Andrea 109 Molin, Domenico 67, 68, 218 Molin, Francesco 160 Molin, Marco, (lawyer) 78 Molini, Giovan Domenico, (notary) 241 Monte Rotondo, village in Latium 134 Monticolo, Sebastiano 190 Morandi, Filippo 19 Moro, Benetto 182, 183 Moro, Domenico 74 Morosini, Andrea 40, 180, 191, 256 Morosini, Donato 88 Morosini ridotto 48, 95, 142, 143 Moryson, Fynes 107 Muir, Edward 27, 136 Muzio, Giulio Cesare 61 Nani, Agostino 40, 255, 257 Nani, Giovan Battista 25, 256 Naples 137 Naudé, Gabriel 15, 62 Necker, Jacques 135 Netherlands, Revolt of the 231 newswriters and newswriting 80–4, 89, 103, 116, 123–5, 183–7 dependence on patrons 83–4, 184–5 during 1606–7 Interdict 163, 175, 182, 183–7, 192–3, 207, 222, 244 discuss diplomatic negotiations 64, 69, 184, 253 discuss printed texts 185, 216–17, 222 economics of 82–3 see also censorship, of manuscript newsletters Norfolk, Duke of 186 notaries 3, 40, 86, 89, 93, 108, 110, 124, 150 Novati, Francesco 147 nuns 114, 176–7, 191, 239 oarsmen 97, 106, 110 Obizzi, Natale 36 official histories and historians 49, 56, 254–6 official publication 7–8, 127–36, 146

307

procedures 128–31, 135 resistance to 131–6, 194 legal necessity of 134–6, 169–70 use of, in Rome, during 1606–7 Interdict 163–4, 183, 207 use of, in Venice, during 1606–7 Interdict 166–8, 175, 194, 196–7, 227–9, 232, 246–7 mockery of 194–6 Olivares, Gaspar de Guzman, Count-Duke of 69 Olmo, Fortunato 50 orality, see legal system as subject of discussion, processions as subject of discussion, rumours, urban exchange of news, wars as subject of discussion Orsetta, servant 192, 244 Orwell, George 232 Orzinuovi 137, 190 Osuna, Pedro Giron, viceroy of Naples and duke of 11, 79, 84, 108, 155 Ottoman empire 70 Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) 102 Oxford 57, 59 Padua 68, 69, 91, 95, 123, 178, 179, 187, 188, 192, 193, 212, 219, 230, 241, 245 bookshops in 95 manuscript newsletters in 82 posted texts in 195, 209 printing in 220, 221 university of 21, 141, 163, 190, 213 Paisio, Francesco 62 Palermo 109, 182 Pallavicino, Ferrante 53 Palmanova 62, 126, 195, 196 pamphlets published during 1606–7 Interdict compared with civic rituals 230–1, 232 criticisms of 210–11 distribution and sale of 219, 222–7 diversity of 215–19 format of 196, 208, 216, 217, 224–7 interaction with other forms of communication 238–46 interpretations of 201–2 language of 204, 208, 215, 216, 226–7 numbers 215–17 originating in political arena 204–5, 217–18 places of publication of 220 polemical strategies of 204–5, 207–8, 227–38 publishers of 220–2, 223–7, 250 see also prices, readers and reading, Adriatic, controversy concerning dominion of

308

Index

papalisti 29, 43, 210 Pariglia, Alessandro, notary 108 Paris 55, 81, 82, 119, 198, 204, 212, 217, 226, 255 Paris, peace of (1617) 64, 253 parody 147–50, 154–5, 194–6 see also carnival; official publication, mockery of Paruta, Andrea 213 Paruta, Paolo 44, 70, 161 Pasinello, Antonio, barber 126 Pasqualigo, Filippo 139, 140 Pasqualigo, Zuanne 171, 192 pasquinades, 56, 137–9, 151–2, 203 see also posted texts patricians; divisions amongst 40–1, 46–8, 69–70, 73–4, 180–1, 208, 209–13, 214, 254, 255–6 education of 20–1, 22, 48, 62, 73 emphasis on unity of 19, 41–4, 181 kin ties 47 old and new houses 40 relations with foreign ambassadors 71–4 Paternoster degli Spagnoli (1591) 146–55, 178, 195, 196, 236 Paul II, pope 114 Paul V, pope 84, 166, 168, 176, 182, 185, 197, 199, 228, 235, 240 and epigraphy 131 reasons for proclaiming an interdict 157 sends briefs to Venice 161–2, 204 proclaims interdict 163–4 attitude of, to printed publication 207 subject of jokes 241 lifts the interdict 246–7 peasants 91, 150, 153, 192, 193, 244 pedlars 111–12, 125, 178 Peres, Antonio 51 perfume makers 116, 126 Pereira, Domenico, barber 143–4, 146 permessi taciti, see censorship Perugia 145 Pesante, Alessandro 206 pharmacies 98–105, 109–10, 177–8, 190, 242, 245 at the Anchor 99 at the Angel 99 at the Golden Head 99 at the Golden Hercules 99, 118 at the Sun 103 105, 112 at the Two Moors 99 in Vicenza 98–9, 109, 190 Philip II, king of Spain 51, 142 Philip III, king of Spain 181–3 Philip III, king of Spain 209 Philip IV, king of France 235

physicians 67, 78–9, 99–101, 107, 125, 155, 198, 226, 239, 245 Piccinin, Zan Nicolò, friar 257 Piero, courier 104 pigment sellers 12 Pimentel de Errera, Juan Alfonso, Viceroy of Naples 182 Pinelli, Giovan Vincenzo 62, 121 Pinguente, village in Istria 257 pinsellers 245 Pisani, Giovan Giacomo 134 Pius V, pope 81 Plazon, Stefano, teacher 20, 21 Plutarch (Mestrius Plutarchus) 102 Pocock, John 27 Poland 59 poligrafi 21, 221 political arena 46–85 defined 46–8 meeting places 86 porosity of 70–85 see also broglio, ridotti Porto, Giuseppe 77, 192 Porto, Luigi 77 Porto, Paolo 77 Possevino, Antonio 177, 181, 196, 222, 227 postal system 52–53, 179 see also couriers posted texts 136–41 attribution of 137–9, 195–6 during 1606–7 Interdict 194–7, 209, 243 reception of 140–1 see also Gobbo di Rialto; pasquinades Prata, Cesare, scrivener and informer 60 preaching and sermons 250 during 1606–7 Interdict 1606–7 162, 187–9 organized by Venetian government 188–9, 225 parodied 150 prices of foodstuffs 153, 193, 223, 226 of manuscript newsletters 82–3 of manuscript relazioni 60–1 of printed books 201, 226–7 of printed books, as compared with manuscript 222 of printed pamphlets 222–4, 225–7 priests 93, 104, 105, 133, 144, 145, 188, 189, 192, 193, 239, 241, 244, 245, 256 printed political literature 200–1, 253 collections of documents 61 in praise of Venice 6–7, 44 legal compilations 129 on ambassadors 71

Index

309

on rhetoric in government 21–3 on secretaries 51 see also Machiavelli, diffusion of his works in Venice; pamphlets published during the 1606–7 Interdict; reason of state printers 94, 134, 192, 206, 253 official 129, 220 see also Interdict of 1606–7; pamphlets published during the 1606–7 Interdict prisons 101, 116, 140 Priuli, Antonio 30, 40 Priuli, Girolamo 10, 31, 87, 91, 138, 193 Priuli, Piero 212, 255 processions 128, 243, 244, 248 as subject of discussion 105, 243–6 professionals of information 4, 46, 63, 74–84 in the service of foreign ambassadors 60–1, 75 in the service of Venice 76, 91 see also newswriters; writers Profondavalle, Giovan Paolo, courier 239 Prosperi, Adriano 15 prostitutes 111, 133, 192 pseudoevents 183 pseudonyms 79, 137–8, 169, 181, 217–18, 220, 230–1, 236, 254, 255 Pulci, Luigi 150

reportisti, see newswriters and newswriting rhetoric 20–5 amongst courtesans 115 Richet, Denis 215 ridotti; compared to French salons 47–8 term used to denote gatherings in shops 95 for gambling 73, 115 see also Morosini ridotto Riformatori dello Studio di Padova 134, 201 riots 36, 132, 189, 245 Rocco, shoemaker 11 Rome 14, 102, 108, 164, 165, 167, 184, 185, 223, 230, 239, 246 ancient 26, 44 epigraphy in 131 intelligence in 46, 60 newswriting in 81–2, 84, 184 apothecaries in 109, 115 cartelli and pasquinades in 137–8, 140, 151 printing in 192, 207–8, 218, 220, 225 factions in 205 Rossi, Francesco, pedlar 178 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 27 rumours dismissal of 142–3 see also urban exchange of news

Querini, Antonio 177, 187, 206, 209, 210, 211, 212, 223, 231, 233, 234, 245 Quevedo, Francisco de 79 Quintilian 22

Saccardino, Costantino 136, 242, 243 saddlers 191 Sagredo, Alvise 107, 117 Sagredo, Giovan Francesco 169 sailors 98, 106, 110, 111, 146 salaries 49, 83, 223, 226 see also prices Salò, Pietro da 137 Sansovino, Francesco 6, 21, 22, 28, 51, 88, 103, 108 Sanudo, Marino 10, 19, 21, 24, 25, 28, 29, 30, 31, 41, 46, 56, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 92, 132, 137, 138, 140, 193 Sardella, Pierre 90, 107 Sarpi, Paolo 1, 2, 9, 19, 34, 47, 53, 55, 72, 79, 96, 131, 166, 176, 181, 198, 208, 229, 242, 249, 253–4, 258 analyses communication 84, 122–3, 131, 157–8, 198 analyses official publication 135–6 analyses Venetian government and political system 47, 53 and censorship 201, 218, 250–1, 253 and Ottaviano Bon’s relazione 67, 69, 70 and urban exchange of news 91, 94, 95, 125 appointment of, as consultore 163, 180 as author of pamphlets during the 1606–7

Ragusa (Dubrovnik) 71 Rampazetto, Francesco, printer 230 Ranke, Leopold von 9, 48, 57–8, 61, 63 readers and reading 65–9, 235 reader’s response 63, 198, 201, 240, 241 in public 95, 98, 103, 105, 122–3, 124–5, 128–9, 144, 177–8 texts meant for reading in public 122, 151–2 of pamphlets published during 1606–7 Interdict 205, 215, 219, 222, 226, 229–30, 236–7, 238–44 reason of state 15, 64–5, 98, 143, 156, 160–1, 200 relazioni 37, 55, 57–70, 74, 80, 85, 121, 126, 178, 212 forgeries 61 price of 60–1 Renaudot, Théophraste 81 renghe 22, 30, 56–7, 62, 180–1 rented accommodation 78, 83, 102, 114, 116, 191

310

Index

Sarpi, Paolo (cont.) Interdict 169–70, 204–6, 219, 223–224, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237 assesses Interdict pamphlets 1, 9, 159, 217, 232–3, 238 attempted assassination of 76 composes Protesto 166 correspondence of 55, 242 failure to publish his writings 254, 256 falsely attributed Opinione 254 has access to Secreta 53 has ties with English embassy 74 his writings after the Interdict 252–5 influence after the Interdict 251 opinion of women’s allegiance, during 1606–7 Interdict 191 Savonarola, Girolamo 1 Savoy, Charles Emmanuel, duke of 183 scepticism 159, 236–7, 241, 243 Schiaousal, Pellegrino (priest) 188, 193 Schickhardt, Heinrich 27 schools and schooling 20, 21, 138, 152 Collegio dei nobili at the Giudecca 69 convent schools 115 school of Arabic in Mercerie 111 School of Rialto 20 School of San Marco 20, 21, 217 see also patricians, education of scriveners 108, 123–4 Secchini, Alvise, mercer 95, 96 shop at the Golden Ship 95, 125 secrecy 4, 22, 26, 34–5 and myth of Venice 40–5, 46 difficult to maintain 46–70 see also censorship Secreta: see archives Senate 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 33, 37, 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, 46, 60, 104, 154, 250, 252, 254, 255, 257 and comunicazione 34–40 and Interdict of 1606–7 157, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 171, 172, 175, 180, 184, 188, 200, 201, 204, 206, 208, 211, 212, 213, 214, 224, 225, 229, 231, 248 and prosecution of Ottaviano Bon 64, 65, 68, 69, 70 debating in 28–32, 57, 59, 209–10 propensity to leaks 36, 46, 60, 73–4, 116 Sennett, Richard 31 sensali, senseri, see brokers servants 4, 21, 46, 47, 51, 52, 62, 68, 73, 75, 76, 86, 109, 113, 121, 145, 192, 244 Sguizari 26 Shakespeare, William 89 shoemakers and shoemakers’ shops 11, 97, 106, 112, 190–1, 257

Simone Piemontese, (barber) 190 Simoneschi, Francesco 21 singing and music 115, 145, 146, 147, 150, 151, 174, 240, 242, 243, 248 Sivos, Gian Carlo 11, 155, 191, 198, 245 Sixtus V, pope 131 Skinner, Quentin 8 soldiers 62, 84, 97, 98, 110, 111, 127, 150, 153, 209 Somerset, Sir Charles, 27, 107 Spain Cortes 18 informers in the service of 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 82, 83, 86, 96, 103–4, 110, 116 Venetian intelligence against 37, 52 Spinelli, Piero, apothecary 97 Squitinio della libertà veneta 252–3 St Clair, William 215 Stefani, Baldassarre, (physician) 239 Stente che fa i contadini, con il Pater nostro 150–1 students 137, 141, 150, 190, 230 Suarez, Francisco 206 Surian, Michele 73 Tacitus, Gaius Cornelius 154 Tassis, Ferdinando 97 taverns and tavernkeepers 90, 95, 96–7, 106, 115, 141, 239, 243 taylors 106 teachers 123 Tedeschi, Ottavio, (newswriter and translator) 83, 116, 125 Telco, Zorzi, courier 52 Terzi, Lorenzo 227 Tesoro politico 28, 61, 200 textile stores 97 Thompson, Edward P. 134 Thou, Jacques-Auguste de 255 Tiepolo, Baiamonte 33 Tomaselli, Fulgenzio 231 Tovaia, Sebastiano, (courier) 178, 179 towncriers, see comandatori travellers to Venice 10, 27, 47, 62, 76, 88, 91, 92, 96–7, 98, 106–7, 110–11, 146 Trevisan family 20 Trevisan, Marco 67 Trexler, Richard 136, 158 Triest 90 Tucci, Vincenzo, (informer) 78, 92 Turco, Bastian, (courier) 179 unmasking of authorities’ motives 154–6, 195–6, 233–4

Index unmasking of spiritual authority 234–8, 240–3, 257 see also scepticism Urban VIII, (pope) 212 urban exchange of news as entertainment 93–4, 95–6 during 1606–7 Interdict 189–94, 239–40 for professional reasons 90 in marketplaces 89–90 indoors 94–106, 107, 109–10, 113–14, 116 outdoors 89–94, 112, 123, 124, 239–40 political and commercial news 90–1 see also barbers and barbershops; pharmacies; readers and reading, in public Uskocks 56, 252 Valerio, apothecary’s apprentice 104 Valier, Agostino 20, 22, 23, 24 Valier, Lorenzo 67 Valier, Piero 130 Valier, Silvestro 67 Vasari, Giorgio 137 Vecellio, Cesare 128 Vendramin, Francesco 143 Vendramin, Girolamo 217 Venice; Arsenal 62, 86, 103, 106, 112, 120, 171 Calle della Sicurtà 89, 108 Campo delle Gatte 103 Campo di Do Pozzi 103, 112 Campo San Bartolomeo 107 Cannaregio 75, 99, 109, 174 Castello 86, 99, 103, 106, 111 church of the Madonna della Fava 146 church of the Redentore 10 church of the Greeks 10 convent of the Frari 99 convent of San Sebastiano 171 Dorsoduro 99 Ducal Palace 47, 48, 68, 89, 90, 107, 113, 116, 120, 123, 139, 196, 247 Fondaco dei Tedeschi 111 Fondaco dei Turchi 111 Ghetto 10, 75, 92 markets 89, 107, 138–9, 245 Mercerie 95, 96, 111, 146 Rialto 3, 6, 10, 68, 81, 86–94, 99, 104, 107, 111, 113, 114, 119, 124, 130, 137, 138, 143, 144, 152 San Bartolomeo 99 San Cassian 89, 99 San Giovanni Bragora 130 San Lio 245

311

San Marco 10, 68, 75, 81, 88, 89, 92, 93, 97, 99, 104, 105, 107, 113, 114, 123, 124, 125, 130, 164, 171, 173, 174 San Maurizio 101 San Moisé 60, 81, 116 San Pantalon 130 San Polo 99 San Trovaso 99 Santa Fosca 99 Santi Apostoli 99, 144 Venier, Alvise 39, 214 Venier, Sebastiano 69 Veniexiana, La 117 Ventura, Comino, printer 200, 220 Veraldo, Donà, courier 179 Verdelli, Fausto, informer 52, 71, 77, 78, 89, 92, 104, 108 Verona 170, 177, 187, 188, 189, 197, 212, 213, 223, 226 posted texts in 178, 196 Inquisition in 142, 256 graffiti in 194 printing in 196 Vespa, Francesco, chaplain 146 Vicenza 77, 167, 169, 176, 178, 179, 187, 189, 225 manuscript newsletters in 82 pharmacies in 98, 109, 190–1 posted texts in 140, 197 printing in 200, 220 Vienna 81 Vietri, Fabrizio de Sangro, duke of 182 Villeroy, French secretary of State 162 Wallenstein, Albrecht von 36 war against Austrian Habsburgs (1615–7) 36, 64, 82, 97, 251–4 against League of Cambrai (1509) 1, 6, 7, 43, 91, 150, 193 as subject of discussion 93, 98, 101, 126–7, 142–3, 150–1, 187, 190 of 1510s 49 of Candia 249, 256 of Cyprus 33 risk of, in 1606–7 96, 181–83, 184, 225 Thirty Years War 69, 81 washerwomen 112, 192, 200 weather 189, 193 Wickham, Chris 117 winemerchants 146 women 112–17 as brokers of marriages 115 commoners 114–17

312

Index

women 112–17 (cont.) during 1606–7 Interdict 191–2 may join guilds 114 patrician 113–4 registered as apothecaries 115 teachers 123 see also washerwomen; servants woolmercers 124 Wotton, Sir Henry, English ambassador in Venice 91, 168, 170, 183, 187, 192, 203, 214, 228, 243, 250

writers 21, 79–80, 138 during Interdict 79–80, 95, 205, 217–18 writing in public 83–4, 144–5 writing tools 127, 144 Zen, Renier 24, 36 Zeno (Zen), Elisabetta 114 Zordan, Francesco, notary 89 Zuccolo, Ludovico 2, 98, 143, 156