Venice’s Doge Is Religious and Governmental Leader

Today’s installment concludes How Medieval Venice Was Governed,
our selection from History of the Venetian Republic by William C. Hazlitt published in 1860.

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Previously in How Medieval Venice Was Governed.

Time: 697
Place: Venice

The Venetians, in constructing by degrees, and even somewhat at random, a constitutional fabric, very naturally followed the precedents and models which they found in the regions which bordered on them, and from which their forefathers had emigrated. The Lombard system, which was of far longer duration than its predecessors on the same soil, borrowed as much as possible from that which the invaders saw in use and favor among the conquered; and the earliest institutions of the only community not subjugated by their arms were counterparts either of the Lombard, the Roman, or the Greek customary law. The doge, in some respects, enjoyed an authority similar to that which the Romans had vested in their ancient kings; but, while he was clothed with full ecclesiastical jurisdiction, he did not personally discharge the sacerdotal functions or assume a sacerdotal title. The Latins had had their magistri populi; and in the Middle Ages they recognized at Naples and at Amalfi a master of the soldiers; at Lucca, Verona, and elsewhere, a captain of the people. But all these magistrates were in possession of the supreme power, were kings in everything save the name; and the interesting suggestion presents itself that in the case of Venice the master of the soldiers had been part of the tribunitial organization, if not of the consular one, and that one of the tribunes officiated by rotation, bearing to the republic the same sort of relationship as the bretwalda bore to the other Anglo-Saxon reguli. There can be no doubt that Venice kept in view the prototypes transmitted by Rome, and learned at last to draw a comparison between the two empires; and down to the fifteenth century the odor of the Conscript Fathers lingered in the Venetian fancy.

Subsequently to the entrance of the dux, duke, or doge on the scene, and the shrinkage of the tribunitial power to more departmental or municipal proportions, the master of the soldiers, whatever he may have been before, became a subordinate element in the administration. His duties must have certainly embraced the management of the militia and the maintenance of the doge’s peace within the always widening pale of the ducal abode. He was next in rank to the crown or throne.

Thus we perceive that, after a series of trials, the Venetians eventually reverted to the form of government which appeared to be most agreeable, on the whole, to their conditions and genius.

The consular triumviri, not perhaps quite independent of external influences, were originally adopted as a temporary expedient. The tribunes, who next succeeded, had a duration of two hundred and fifty years. Their common fasti are scanty and obscure; and we gain only occasional glimpses of a barbarous federal administration, which barely sufficed to fulfil the most elementary wants of a rising society of traders. They were alike, more or less, a machinery of primitive type, deficient in central force, and without any safeguards against the abuse of authority, without any definite theory of legislation and police. The century and a half which intervened between the abrogation of monarchy in the person of a tribune, and its revival in the person of a doge (574-697), beheld the republic laboring under the feeble and enervating sway of rival aristocratic houses, on which the sole check was the urban body subsequently to emerge into importance and value as the militia of the six wards, and its commandant, the master of the soldiers.

But while the institution of the dogeship brought with it a certain measure of equilibrium and security, it left the political framework in almost every other respect untouched. The work of reform and consolidation had merely commenced. The first stone only had been laid of a great and enduring edifice. The first permanent step had been taken toward the unification of a group of insular clanships into a homogeneous society, with a sense of common interests.

The late tribunitial ministry has transmitted to us as its monument little beyond the disclosure of a chronic disposition to tyranny and periodical fluctuations of preponderance. The so-called chair of Attila at Torcello is supposed to have been the seat where the officer presiding over that district long held his court sub dio.

The doge Anafesto appears to have pacified, by his energy and tact, the intestine discord by which his country had suffered so much and so long, and the Equilese, especially — who had risen in open revolt, and had refused to pay their proportion of tithes — were persuaded, after some fierce struggles in the pineto or pine woods, which still covered much of the soil, to return to obedience. The civil war which had lately broken out between Equilo and Heraclia was terminated by the influential mediation of one of the tribunes, and the Lombards now condescended to ratify a treaty assigning to the Venetians the whole of the territory lying between the greater and lesser Piave, empowering the republic to erect boundary lines, and prohibiting either of the contracting parties from building a stronghold within ten miles of those lines. A settlement of confines between two such close neighbors was of the highest importance and utility. But a still more momentous principle was here involved.

The republic had exercised a clear act of sovereign independence. It had made its first Italian treaty. This was a proud step and a quotable precedent.

This ends our series of passages on How Medieval Venice Was Governed by William C. Hazlitt from his book History of the Venetian Republic published in 1860. This blog features short and lengthy pieces on all aspects of our shared past. Here are selections from the great historians who may be forgotten (and whose work have fallen into public domain) as well as links to the most up-to-date developments in the field of history and of course, original material from yours truly, Jack Le Moine. – A little bit of everything historical is here.

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