The People’s Prince: Popular Politics in Early Modern Venice

Abstract

On Friday, April 7, 1595, a solemn procession accompanied the body of Pasquale Cicogna, the eighty-sixth doge of the Venetian Republic, to his final resting place. 1 Ducal funerary processions traditionally involved more than a thousand participants, including Venetian magistrates, ecclesiastics, representatives of the confraternities, and foreign diplomats; many thousands of spectators looked on. 2 A guard of Arsenalotti, workers from the state shipyard, carried Doge Cicogna's bier out of the Ducal Palace and into Piazza San Marco, the political and religious heart of the city and as such the central space for governmental ritual. 3 Ducal funeral ceremonies were supposed to be a formal celebration of republican values, underlining the durability of the Venetian state despite the mortality of its doges. But the moment Cicogna's body left the palace the procession was interrupted. In the palace courtyard, in front of the members of the Signoria, the republic's highest executive council, 4 "all the boys and common people shouted 'Viva, viva, Marino Grimani!'" in a show of enthusiasm for one of Cicogna's

Street politics

“…He makes this point especially in the part of the book dedicated to deciphering the symbolic meanings of the rituals and ceremonies connected to the public life of the doge, the Venetian elected head of state, although there are indications that Venetian ritual at times was conflictual. 18 In later work on early modern ritual in Europe, Muir further expanded his ideas of the importance of rituals. Processions often celebrated an ideal of communitas, the notion of the urban society as not just one political, but also one religious body: this idea of unity was expressed by using the same routes, thus creating a processional urban infrastructure.…”

Protest in the Piazza

“…While the patrician electoral college deliberated inside the Ducal Palace, large crowds of ordinary Venetians-who had no official vote in ducal elections-gathered outside, shouting their support for Grimani and their disapproval of his competitors. 9 The ducal vacancy had started on 7 April and lasted nearly four weeks, during which the crowd actions and protests escalated. On 25 April, groups of armed men threatened to attack the Ducal Palace; the very next day, the electors appointed Grimani in order to avoid more tumult.…”

Introduction

“…48 A recent article by Maartje van Gelder has shown that, despite being officially excluded from formal politics, popolani could and did influence Venetian decision-making, even at the highest level. 49 That politics from below has a place within Venetian history was demonstrated by Judde de Larivière's reconstruction of a revolt-like incident on the island of Murano in the early sixteenth century. 50 These studies complement the rich historiography on the Venetian Terraferma and Stato da Mar, which have shown the fragile balance between the centralized power exercised by patricians and local forms of government and resistance.…”