Decoding Debate in the Venetian Senate

It has been rarely remarked how seldom a competitive spirit comes into play in the relations among these [Renaissance Florentine] merchants. The vast correspondence of Datini and of the Medici themselves (the largest collections of business letters to survive before the sixteenth century) yields hardly a hint of competition. . . . However individualistic the Florentine world appears in contrast with the tight corporate structures elsewhere—the Venetian senate, the Hanseatic league, the south-German cartels, the London regulated companies—it was still permeated with something of the spirit of medieval corporatism. This is what the fiducia Florentine business historians make so much of really comes down to—that sense of trust in one another that in a way also kept everyone in line.1

Previous articleNext article No AccessVenice, Its Senate, and Its Plot in Otway's "Venice Preserv'd"David BywatersDavid Bywaters Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Modern Philology Volume 80, Number 3Feb., 1983 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/391220 Views: 2Total views on this site Copyright 1983 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

This article reconsiders the role of Palladio9s friend and patron the Venetian Senator Marc9Antonio Barbaro in the design of the church of the Redentore in Venice, commissioned after the great plague of 1575-76. It examines the circumstances surrounding Barbaro9s unsuccessful support of the centrally planned design in light of his recent return from a five-year period as consul in Constantinople. The religious and political issues informing the debate are investigated in detail, in order to amplify the motives behind the final choice of plan. The architectural dialogue between Venice and Milan, two cities seeking to build votive churches after the plague, forms one axis of the debate, but Venice characteristically looked east as well as west. The article suggests that Palladio9s subtle range of allusions may have included not only the lessons of antiquity and issues of church reform, but also ideas drawn from the recent work of the great Ottoman architect Sinan. Significantly, Barbaro9s dispatches from Constantinople had transmitted enthusiastic descriptions of new Ottoman buildings to the heart of the Venetian Senate.

The purpose of the study is to consider the problem of the existence of the Venetian and Genoese trading stations in Tana within the territory of the Golden Horde city of Azak during the internecine war in the Golden Horde between the sons of Toktamysh and Idegei. Through an analysis of sources, an effort is made to determine the circumstances of the attacks of the Golden Horde khans and the level of damage that arose from them. Research materials: Unpublished documents of the State Archives of Venice (Italy), as well as Venetian chronicles and historical works of the 15th–16th centuries. Results and scientific uniqueness: The study of Venetian sources showed that during the second period of turmoil in the Golden Horde which erupted after the defeat of Toktamysh by Tamerlane, Tana trading stations underwent extremely difficult times during the period of the domination of beklerbek Idegei. The point of disagreement between the Tatar khans and the Venetians was the non-payment of a tax for renting land, called terraticum, by the Venetian merchants who traded at the mouth of the Don. The Venetians tried to maneuver between the sons of Toktamysh and the henchmen of Idegei, but since power in the Horde often changed hands at the time, Tana became a hostage in this internecine struggle. In 1410, Tana suffered from an unexpected night raid by Timur Khan and was captured. The damage amounted to between 100,000 and 120,000 ducats. Many Venetian sources tell us about these events, but with great discrepancies in details. Thanks to the inclusion of an important commerce-related source – the protocol of the Venetian judges on petitions – we can determine the exact date of the attack, the name of the khan, and the amount of damage. In 1418, there was an even more devastating second attack on Tana by Khan Kerim-birdi. After that, the Venetian Senate, having comprehensively studied the situation, decided to surround Tana with stone walls and repair its fortifications. Thanks to the erection of strong fortifications at Tana, it was possible for the town to hold out until the Ottoman Turkish conquest in 1475.

Cassandra Fedele (b. 1465–d. 1558) was the most renowned female scholar of Latin and Greek in Europe by 1500. On her death she left a book of 121 Latin letters and three orations, published posthumously in 1636. She was born to citizen-class parents Angelo Fedele and Barara Leoni in Venice, neither of them scholars. Her father hired a Servite friar, Gasparino Borro, to teach her Latin and Greek. She delivered her first public oration in Latin at the University of Padua in 1487: published in Modena in 1487, Nuremberg in 1488, and Venice in 1489. Fedele delivered her second Latin oration before the doge Agostino Barbarigo and the Venetian senate in 1487. After her marriage to the physician Gian-Maria Mappelli, she disappeared from the public arena until 1556 when she delivered an oration in honor of Queen Bona Sforza of Poland on her arrival in Venice. The biographical tradition attests to her having written poetry and a book titled Ordo scientiarum (The order of the sciences) but no trace of this work survives.

Notarial archives in the early-modern Alpine region were managed according to an extreme variety of styles. This paper presents the case of a community of the central Italian Alps, set at the north-western borders of the Republic of Venice. Focusing on the local response to a law promulgated by the venetian Senate in 1612, notarial archives and their preservation become, in an “institutional perspective”, a political weapon in defending local autonomies against the centripetal force exercised by urban cities.

CHEMISTRYhas often been portrayed as having evolved from alchemy. The works of Robert Boyle in the last part of the seventeenth century and those of Joseph Black, Joseph Priestley, Henry Cavendish, and Antoine Lavoisier in the eighteenth century are usually cited as being significant in turning the minds of men from alchemy as an art to chemistry as a science. Not always mentioned by historians of chemistry is the fact that already in the sixteenth century there existed a considerable body of chemical knowledge relating to a number of metals and allied compounds. There also existed during that century a small coterie of metallurgists who denounced the practices and frauds of the alchemists. Both groups were interested in the metals, the alchemists being particularly interested in gold and silver. During that century a considerable number of publications concerning the metals appeared. One group of important works by the sixteenth-century metallurgists is characterized by the clarity of expression, while the writings of the alchemists are shrouded in obscurity. The first metallurgist of note was Vannoccio Biringuccio (I48o-I539), who was born in Sienna and probably died in Rome. His life is closely associated with the Petrucci family of Sienna. He spent his last year or two in Rome as head of the Papal foundry and munitions. Little is known of his education, but during his lifetime he travelled widely in Italy and Germany visiting many kinds of mining operations and installations. His fame rests on the publication of the first complete metallurgical book based on careful observation of practice and experimentation. The book, De la Pirotechnia, commonly called the Pirotechnia, was published in I540 a year after the author's death by Curtio Navo under the auspices of the Pope, the Emperor, and the Venetian Senate. The Pirotechnia appeared three years before De Revolutionibus Orbium Celestium of Nicholas Copernicus and De Humani Corporis Fabrica of Andreas Vesalius and 60 years before the publication of De M agnete of William Gilbert, three well~known classics leading to the study of modern science. During the years, a number of editions of the Pirotechnia appeared in Italian, French, English, and finally in German. The English editions, however, were not satisfactory until the translation of Cyril Stanley Smith and Martha Teach Gnudi appeared in I942. This work was published by the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers. Because of the limited number of copies printed, the edition was soon very scarce and was reprinted in I959 by Basic Books in its collectors series in science, thus making the Pirotechnia available to all English-speaking scholars.

This paper aims to aid our understanding of the emergence of accounting as a control instrument in complex proto-industrial settings, through its perceived capacity of mirroring the production process. The paper starts off from an archival document, the 1586 deliberation by the Venetian Senate, which imposed on the Arsenal a stocktaking to be conducted every three years, and ad hoc galley production accounts to be kept in double entry format, where the passage of materials and work-in-process between units were recorded both in physical quantity and value. In this deliberation the Venetian Senate was clearly posing explicitly the problem of costing and the efficient use of resources within the Arsenal. Until then, the Senate controlled this organisation only by limiting the funds allocated to activities (wages, oars, ‘stuffs’) without entering into the substance of the operations. Two interrelated investigations are carried out. First, a content analysis of the 1586 document is made. Second, the question of its ‘impact’ on the Arsenal's actual accounting practices is addressed. In a 1633 Report by Alvise Molin, a magistrate of the Republic, some elements of the 1586 deliberation seem to surface, insofar as a quite sophisticated calculation of the production costs of galleys is provided. In this sense it might well be that the notion of cost emerged as a sort of ‘accidental by-product’ of the Senate's efforts aimed at introducing tighter forms of control on the Arsenal.

This chapter summarises an impassioned debate held in the Venetian Senate in 1498. The issue was a potential alliance with the next king of France, Charles' successor Louis XII. As an Orléans, Louis had claimed rights to the Duchy of Milan. In order to second his ambitions, the new French king needed the support of Venice, in exchange for which he was ready to cede a part of the Duchy to her. Thus, Venice had a fair opportunity to expand her dominion significantly, at the cost, though, of finding herself with a far more powerful prince than the Duke as a neighbour.

The study analyzes the Moldavian diplomatic mission carried out between 1505-1506 to Venice, one of the few non-political missions from the early period of Bogdan III’s reign. Sent in the context of preparations for the marriage with Elizabeth, daughter of the King of Poland, the mission reflects the prince’s personal concerns rather than strategic objectives. The delegation included Ieremia the treasurer, Gheorghe the cupbearer and Bernardus the castellan, the latter dying on the route between Buda and Venice. Venetian sources, especially Marino Sanudo’s accounts, provide details about the audience of the envoys at the Venetian Senate, about the gifts brought to the doge and about their participation in official ceremonies and carnival festivities. The prolonged presence of the Moldavian envoys in the lagoon indicates their integration into the Venetian diplomatic protocol and contact with representatives of other European powers. The mission, although personally motivated, illustrates the complexity of the Moldovan diplomatic apparatus, the professionalism of the boyar elite and the major risks of diplomatic activity at the beginning of the 16th century, transforming into a significant episode in the history of Moldova’s international relations.

Venice offered an ideal center for the printing of books. It boasted the best and most advanced distribution system in the world. The first book was not printed in Venice until 1469 when a German immigrant named Johannes de Spira obtained a five-year monopoly from the Venetian Senate. Printing became a boom industry, in which many competed but few survived. One of them, the Frenchman Nicolas Jenson, became the most celebrated publisher in Venice during this period. Jenson and Johannes de Spira's firm, now headed by Johannes's brother Wendelin and by Johannes de Colonia, formed two syndicates that dominated the industry.

In this paper, the issues arising from the robbery of a caravan that departed from Istanbul towards Split in 1611 and passed through the Split transshipment port are analysed. Since a Muslim merchant was killed during this event, and several Venetian merchants suffered financial losses, it left a significant mark in historical records. At the same time, several issues were raised: the restitution of goods, legacy of the deceased merchant, protection of trade routes, and customs duties. Furthermore, there were justified concerns that the event could jeopardise the Split transshipment port. To resolve everything, the Venetian Senate, the count and the captain of Split, bailo and provveditore generale were involved in correspondence, negotiations, and decision-making on the one side, while the Bosnian pasha, the sanjak-bey of Klis, the voivode of Duvno, the kadi of Sarajevo and the sultan were on the other side. All the letters, decrees, and decisions made in respect of this case represent an important depiction of the Venetian-Ottoman cooperation and efforts to preserve the continuity of trade relations.

Patent policy gained institutional framework during the middle ages with the growth of technology and trade. The first patent code by the Venetian Senate in 1474 laid the foundation for modern patent laws. The theoretical underpinning in economics developed later with the concept of marginalism. This chapter surveys benefits and costs of patent policy in incentivizing innovation and underscores that there is no straightforward answer, as the net impact of the patent protection on innovation is conditioned by different factors. Lastly, it points at the possible future direction for empirical research.

Astronomy is a very ancient science. All civilizations have applied it to practical life necessities, such as predicting the appropriate sowing season, the outbreak of epidemics, the right time for the administration of medicines or starting business, and to forecast bad or good years. All those eventualities were thought to be subject to the influence of celestial bodies. Galileo Galilei, physician and astronomer, in the foundations of his Nuova Scienza ratified the heliocentric system. On the 26th of August, 1609, he demonstrated his astronomical telescope to the Venetian Senate in the Piazza San Marco. Using this instrument he performed remarkable calculations of star positions. The International Year of Astronomy 2009 has been proclaimed to commemorate the 400 years of his invention of the telescope.

Pietro Bicherano was born into a wealthy but plebeian Venetian family in the late 1370s. During his life, he would play many roles. Through his trade and ambassadorial activities, he connected Venice with Nuremberg, Wrocław, and Cracow. He worked as an agent for the famous Kress and Rummel companies of Nuremberg and had extensive dealings with the Medici bank. While he traded in dye, cloth, and silver, his primary occupation in Poland was the management of the Cracow salt mines. He was also called upon to act as ambassador to the king of Poland by both the Florentine Republic and the Venetian Senate. Yet, for all his success Pietro's life holds a number of oddities. After voyaging abroad, he appears never to have returned back home, thus leaving behind a wife and four children. He lived the next 20 years of his life in Kraków yet resided always in rented rooms, never took up burgher citizen status, remaining always only and ever, Venetian. Pietro Bicherano was assuredly an exceptional individual, yet his life shows the growing connections between East Central Europe and Italy at the turn of the fifteenth century and much can be learned by following its course.