The Closing of the
Great Council
LA SERRATA DEL MAGGIOR CONSIGLIO
The Closing of the Great Council was the pivotal moment in the history of the Venetian Republic,
transforming it into a closed oligarchy of rich merchant princes.
Venice arose as the product of two fundamentally antagonistic groups, the refugee Roman nobility and the simple fishermen of the lagoon. Between them, Venice was forged. But by the twelfth century a new group came into play: merchant seamen who had grown fabulously wealthy on the Mediterranean trade routes. These new patricians were not primarily from the “old houses,” who traced their roots to the Roman past. Desperate to hold onto their political power, the “old houses” allied themselves with the people, the Popular Assembly (Arengo) in opposition to the political program of the merchant princes.
“The constitutional history of Venice, from 1084 to the date of [Bajamonte] Tiepolo’s conspiracy in 1310, turns upon the progressive movement of the new commercial aristocracy and the various steps by which it made itself paramount.”
“The funeral of the Doge at the Church of Saints John and Paul,” by Gabriele Bella. The Senators wear red robes, the other nobles wear black.
The “new nobility” had three aims.
I.
Crush the power of the Doge.
“They succeeded. Before the close of the fourteenth century the dukedom was no longer the office of vital honor or of effective power that it had been. The ducal palace was too often merely a prison into which this cold and determined aristocracy could thrust any one of their own number who had the misfortune to incur their suspicion. The head of the state was deprived of almost all real weight and left with empty dignities alone.”
II.
Eliminate the common people from the political equation and reduce the numbers and influence of the “old houses.”
“So long as the people still retained their ancient right to share in the election of the doge, so long as the members of the more ancient families were still the successful candidates for the dukedom, the new party felt that it was not yet supreme, and nothing short of supremacy would satisfy it.”
III.
Consolidate itself and its hold on the government.
“While [the new aristocracy] desired to repress everything external to itself, it was continually remodeling, rebuilding, reforming, internally strengthening its own body, so that when the final struggle came, it was able to offer an impregnable front to the attack of its foes.”
The closing of the Great Council, limiting memebership to only those whose fathers or grandfathers had been on it, was the foundation upon which the new structure of the Republic was built. The Doge and the people at large were marginalized, blinded by the pomp and glitter of the Doge’s image to the theft of actual political power.
“While restricting the real power of their doge, the [new] aristocracy continued to augment the outward pomp attendant on him. This could be of no danger to themselves; it only added a splendor to the state and helped to flatter their own vanity. … [The Doge] never now left his palace without an escort of nobles and citizens. His person was declared sacrosanct. The ducal position was becoming defined— Doge in public, servant in private, and later on ... captive in the palace.”
“Procession in St. Mark’s Square,” Gentile Bellini, 1496.
“To be deprived of a seat in the Great Council was to be doomed for life to political silence in Venice. The way to all honors, to all activity, lay through that assembly; those who were excluded were, in fact, disenfranchised. The [new] aristocracy had effected their object; they had robbed a free people of their rights and converted them to their own sole use. …The new aristocracy triumphed.”