The year 1203 marks a new epoch in the history of Ragusa. In this year the Rector of the Republic, Damiano Juda, endeavoured to prolong his government beyond the year for which he had been elected. By the help of the popular party he succeeded in retaining the supreme authority for two years, and became so obnoxious to the nobles, that considering the suzerainty of a foreign state to be preferable to the tyranny of a fellow-citizen, they held a secret conclave in which it was decided to invoke the aid of Venice. The Venetians, whose power from the recent conquest of Constantinople was then at its zenith, accepted the overtures of the Ragusan nobles. Damiano was decoyed on board a Venetian ship, where, on finding himself a prisoner, he committed suicide; and Lorenzo Quirini, the nominee of Venice, was introduced as Count of the Republic. But Ragusa never sank like Zara or Spalato, and the other Dalmatian cities, under Venetian domination. Quirini had only been received on condition that Ragusa should preserve her ancient liberties. When the Ragusans began to perceive an intention on the part of the Venetian Count to violate this agreement they turned him out; and though they once more received a nominee of Venice in 1232, the relation of the Ragusans to Venice was rather that of a free ally than that of a dependent. It was indeed stipulated that the Doge and a majority of the Venetian Senate should nominate the Count of Ragusa, that her archbishop should be born on Venetian territory, and that her citizens should swear fealty to the Doge; but Ragusa retained the right of conducting her own affairs by means of her Senate, of which the Count was only president; she was still governed by her own laws; her own flag floated from her walls, and she struck her own coins with the effigy of St. Blasius. The treaty stipulates that both states are to have the same friends and foes; but towards Venetian expeditions beyond the Adriatic, Ragusa was only to contribute one thirtieth. So free indeed was Ragusa, that in fact she never accepted Venetian archbishops; and in 1346 the Venetian Conte was forced to look on and see the republic transfer its suzerainty to the new Serbian empire of Czar Dūshan.
Thus it was that Ragusa, though for a while under Venetian overlordship, never, like the other Dalmatian cities, saw her native institutions swept away by Venice. At the present day, at Cattaro or Spalato, along the Dalmatian coast-land on each side of Ragusa, you hear the Venetian dialect; at Ragusa the language is pure Tuscan. St. Blasius, and not the lion of St. Mark, adorns the mediæval walls and gates of Ragusa. On the other hand, in costume, manners, and the form of government, the Venetian influence here has been very perceptible.
It is about the time of the Venetian suzerainty that the government becomes finally fixed.
Ragusa had doubtless originally inherited her aristocratic-republican institutions[332] from the municipales of ancient Epidaurus. Her Senate, which we hear of in very early days, is doubtless, like the Senates of Arles, Nismes, Vienne, and the other great cities of Languedoc and Provence, but a continuation of the Roman Curia, of whose existence in Epidaurus we have both historic and epigraphic proof. Her patricians could no doubt trace back their ancestry to the late Roman Honorati; they were twitted, indeed, with tracing it back to Jupiter!
From the time of the Venetian suzerainty onwards, the government is vested in three councils, and the city divided into three orders: the Nobili or Patrizj, the Cittadini, divided into the two Confraternite of S. Antonio and S. Lazzaro; lastly the Artigiani, who appear to have stood to the Cittadini much as our craft-guilds to the merchant-guilds. The government was entirely aristocratic; the Cittadini could indeed fill some public offices,[333] but the appointments were reserved for the Senate.
The body in which the sovereignty ultimately rested was the Gran Consiglio,[334] including all the members of the nobility who had reached the legal age of eighteen, and whose names were registered in the Specchio di Maggior Consiglio, a Ragusan Libro d’Oro. This body elected, every month, the Rector of the Republic, and, annually, all the great magistrates, imposed the customs and ordinary taxes, confirmed or abolished laws, and possessed the power of pardoning and passing sentence of death.
The more ordinary functions of government were in the hands of two smaller bodies. The Senate, or Consiglio de’ Pregati, composed of forty-five members, drew up the laws and imposed extraordinary and indirect taxes, appointed ambassadors and consuls, decided on peace or war, treated of important state affairs, and acted as a court of appeal. The Senate met four times a week, and on occasions of emergency. The members were elected for life from its body by the Gran Consiglio, but were confirmed in their office every year by this greater council, and sometimes a Senator was suspended by it from his functions.
Lastly, the Minor Consiglio, consisting of seven senators and the Rettore of the Republic, acted as the executive of the greater council, exercised judicial authority on greater cases, received ambassadors, and treated with foreign Powers.[335] The Rettore of the Republic, who presided over this body, held office only a month, during which time he was bound to reside perpetually in the Palazzo Rettorale, only leaving it on public occasions.[336] He was clad in a long red robe, with a black stole over his shoulders as a sign of supreme authority, kept the keys of the city, the archives of the Republic, and convoked the Gran Consiglio and Senate. As a further constitutional precaution, thoroughly Venetian, three magistrates, called Provveditori della Repubblica, were chosen, who were superior to all but the Senate and Greater Council, and who possessed the right of suspending laws and decrees, and their execution till the Senate had re-examined them.[337]
Truly, from a constitutional point of view, Ragusa deserved her title of Piccola Venezia! But the aristocratic government at Ragusa worked with even greater smoothness than at Venice. Though the rule of the Ragusan patricians had endured for nigh seven centuries before the time of Damiano Juda, and was prolonged for over five centuries after his date, it was only broken by this solitary revolution.[338] Take into consideration the small size of the city, and the stability of the Ragusan constitution becomes the more remarkable. Here there was no room for feudal lords living on their own domains, amidst their own retainers, protected and secluded by moats and castle walls. The nobles of Ragusa elbowed their fellow-citizens in the same narrow streets; and these fellow-citizens, far from being ignorant serfs, were often their equals in education and their superiors in wealth. Yet the Cittadini and Artigiani of Ragusa were content to leave the reins of government in the hands of an aristocratic caste, and that caste was so exclusive that during eight hundred years there is no single instance recorded of a mésalliance with the bourgeoisie.
The secret lies in the sober genius of both the nobles and people of Ragusa, and in that elevated conception of patriotism which linked it with their religion. A judicial gravity presides over the whole constitutional history of Ragusa. The governing classes looked on their authority, not as a mere prize of birth, but as a sacred trust. The prayer for the magistrates of the Republic, which opens the Ragusan Libro d’Oro, breathes that exalted spirit which animated all classes of Ragusan citizens from first to last. ‘O Lord, Father Almighty, who hast chosen this Commonwealth to Thy service, choose, we beseech Thee, our governors according to Thy will and our necessity; that so, fearing Thee and keeping Thy holy commandments, they may cherish and direct us in true charity. Amen.’[339]