Salve Venetia, gleanings from Venetian history; vol. I

by F. Marion Crawford

It will not be necessary to recapitulate the attempts and experiments of the first fugitives after they reached the islands. I need only recall to my reader the ‘University of the Tribunes,’ by which the different tribes were represented and were respectively governed, the first doges, the short return to the system of tribunes, and the second and final establishment of a doge as head of the Republic. At this point in history two main facts stand out at once: on the one hand, the unlimited power of the doges, whose authority was not restrained by any positive law, still less by any body of men in the shape of senate or council, whose chief aim was generally to make their dignity hereditary, and who were to all intents and purposes the absolute masters of their country’s destiny while they lived; on the other hand, we find an assembly of the clergy and people, generally very far from exacting as to the doge’s conduct, but ready and able to wrest the sovereignty from him if he pushed his absolutism too far for their taste. In those days a great simplicity prevailed. The chosen chief used his position unhesitatingly for his own advantage; the clergy were simple-minded; the people were very busy with their own affairs.

When these reactions led to bloodshed, it was usually because one or more of the great families had interests at stake and aimed at the supreme power; and one of the most common causes of discord was removed when the Doge Domenico Flabianico caused the popular assembly to pass a law forbidding the doges to associate any one with them in the sovereignty. This reform checked the tendency of the government to turn into an hereditary monarchy, and another law passed at the same time gave the Doge two permanent counsellors, with power to add to their numbers others, chosen from the prominent citizens, when any very important matter presented itself. The latter measures had no practical result, for the Doge was left free to call in these ‘notabili pregadi,’ or ‘invited notables,’ or not to do so at his pleasure, and he invariably forgot their existence. As for the two counsellors, they might as well not have existed for any mention of them that is to be found in the documents of the twelfth century.

It gradually became clear that the rights and powers of the Doge must be more exactly defined, and that some means must be found for subjecting him to the will of the people without constantly calling together a general assembly, which was not a slight matter. This need seems to have found expression for the first time about the year 1172.

Six months were spent in deliberations before an institution was agreed upon which should represent the nation. The general assembly then determined upon the election of a certain number of councillors, who were to serve only for one year, and were to have the management of all affairs of state. They were to be eighty in number for each of the six ‘sestieri’ of the city, and therefore in all four hundred and eighty.

1172.

This was the origin of the ‘Great Council,’ of which the duties were to distribute the offices of government amongst those who were best able to fill them honourably and to the advantage of the state; to frame laws, which were submitted to the approval of the General Assembly; and to examine all proposals that came from the Pregadi, with the consent and collaboration of the Doge and the six counsellors whose assistance, or guidance, was now imposed upon him without consulting his wishes.

Rom. ii. 137.

In order to lighten the labours of the Great Council, another assembly of forty citizens was created, whose business it was to prepare the material for the Council’s sessions. Little by little this assembly acquired more and more importance, till it shared with the Pregadi an authority which weighed perceptibly upon the decisions of the Great Council. The Pregadi, who became the Senate, and the Quarantine, or Council of Forty, were two similar and parallel powers, which it might have been to the advantage of the Republic to turn into one.

The position of the Doge was now clearly defined. Under no circumstances could he any longer exercise absolute authority; and if he desired any reform, or had any law to propose, he was constrained to obtain, before acting, the approbation of his counsellors and of the Pregadi in the first place, and afterwards to get his measure accepted by the Forty, which then had to obtain the sanction of the Great Council, which, in its turn, if the matter were important, was bound to bring the bill before the General Assembly, to be voted on by the clergy and the people.

In time the custom was introduced according to which the Doge took an oath before the people on