The six Savii Grandi, who came above the Savii di Terra ferma, superintended the actions of the two boards below them, and, if necessary, issued orders which would override those of the other ministers. They were, in fact, the responsible directors of the State. The Savii Grandi were required to prepare all business to be laid before the College, where it was first discussed and arranged before being submitted to the Senate for approval. To facilitate this labour of preparation, each of the Savii Grandi took a week in turn, and the Savio of the week was, in fact, Prime Minister of Venice. It was he who read dispatches, granted audiences to ambassadors, and prepared official replies. The Doge presided in the College, it is true, but it was the Savio of the week who opened the business, and suggested the various measures to be adopted.
Besides these boards of Savii, the College included the Ducal Councillors, and the three chiefs of the Court of Appeal. We shall speak of these latter when we come to the judicial department of the constitution. The office of Ducal Councillor was, perhaps, the most venerable in Venice. These six men held, as it were, the Ducal honours and functions in commission; they embodied the authority of the Doge to such an extent, that without their presence he could not act; he became a nonentity unless supported by four at least of his council; while, on the other hand, the absence of the Doge in no way diminished the authority of the Ducal Councillors. For example, the Doge without his council could not preside, neither in the Maggior Consiglio, nor in the Senate, nor in the College, but four Ducal Councillors had the power to preside without the Doge. The Doge might not open dispatches except in the presence of his council, but his council might open dispatches in the absence of the Doge. Yet, great as were the external honours of the Ducal Councillors, the office was rather ornamental than important. It was the Savii Grandi who were the directing spirit through all the multitudinous affairs of the College. As we have seen, those affairs embraced the whole field of government, except the field of Justice. The College had no judicial functions, nor did it legislate. As the Maggior Consiglio was the elective member, and the Senate the legislative, so the College was the initiative and executive member of the State. The College proposed measures which became law in the Senate; and the execution of those laws was entrusted to the College which had the machinery of State at its disposal. It is this right of initiating which distinguishes the College; and it is just upon this point that the Ducal Councillors appear to have a slight pre-eminence; for the Doge, his council, and the Savii alone, had the right to initiate in the Senate; the Doge, his council, and the chiefs of the Ten alone, had the right to initiate in the Council of Ten; the Doge and his council alone had the right to initiate in the Maggior Consiglio. The Doge and his council alone move through all departments of government, presiding and initiating, embodying the spirit of the Republic; and yet in no case is their power great; for the Savii had more influence in the Senate, the Chiefs of the Ten in the Council of Ten; and the Great Council, where the Doge and his councillors had the field to themselves, was of little importance in the direction of affairs.
At the apex of the constitutional pyramid we find the Doge. The Doge also had his distinctive functions in the State; his duties were ornamental rather than administrative. Though all the acts of the Government were executed in his name, laws passed, dispatches sent, treaties made, and war declared, yet it is not in these departments that the Doge stands pre-eminent; it is throughout the pomp and display of the Republic that he is supreme; and the archive wherein his glory shows most brightly is the Ceremoniali.
The Doge was elected for life. When a Doge died, the eldest Ducal Councillor filled the office of Vice-Doge until the election of the new Prince. The remains of the deceased Doge were laid out in the Chamber of the Pioveghi, on the first floor of the Ducal Palace, dressed in robes of State, the mantle of cloth of gold and the ducal beretta. Twenty Venetian noblemen were appointed to attend in the chapelle ardente. On the third day the Doge was buried; and the Great Council on the same day elected the officers who were to revise the coronation oath, and to render its provisions more stringent if the conduct of the deceased had revealed any point where a future Doge could exercise even the smallest independence in constitutional matters. At the same time the Council elected another body of officers, who were required to examine the conduct of the late Doge, and, if he had violated his coronation oath, his heirs paid the penalty by a fine. Immediately after the appointment of these officers, the Maggior Consiglio proceeded to create the forty-one electors to the dukedom. The process of election was long and intricate, and occupied five days at the least; for there was a quintuple series of ballots and votings to be concluded before the forty-one were finally chosen. When the forty-one noblemen had been appointed they were taken to a chamber specially prepared for them, where, as in the case of a papal election, they were obliged to stay until they had determined upon the new Doge. They were bound by oath never to reveal what took place inside this election chamber. But this oath was not always observed in the spirit; and memoranda of the proceedings of the forty-one are still preserved in the private archives of the Marcello family. The first step was to elect three priors, or presidents, and two secretaries. The presidents took their seats at a table on which stood a ballot-box and an urn. The secretaries gave to every elector a slip of paper, upon which each one wrote the name of the man whom he proposed as Doge. The forty-one slips of paper were then placed in the urn, and one was drawn out at hazard. If the noble, whose name was written upon the slip, chanced to be an elector, he was required to withdraw. Then each of the electors was at liberty to attack the candidate, to point out defects and recal misdeeds. These hostile criticisms, which covered the whole of a candidate's private life, his physical qualities and his public conduct, were written down by the secretaries, and the candidate was recalled. The objections urged against him were read over to the aspirant, without the names of the urgers appearing, and he was invited to defend himself. Attack and defence continued till no further criticisms were offered, and then the name of the candidate was balloted before the priors. If it received twenty-five favourable votes, its owner was declared Doge; if less than twenty-five, a fresh name was drawn from the urn, and the whole process was repeated until some candidate secured the necessary five-and-twenty votes. As soon as this issue was reached, the Signoria was informed of the result, and the new Doge, attended by the electors, descended to Saint Mark's, where, from the pulpit on the left side of the choir, the Prince was shown to the people, and where, before the high altar, he took the coronation oath and received the standard of Saint Mark. The great doors of the Basilica were then thrown open, and the Doge passed in procession round the Piazza and returned to the Porta della Carta. At the top of the Giants' Stair the eldest Ducal Councillor placed the beretta on his head, and he was brought to the Sala dei Pioveghi, where the late Doge had lain in state, and where he too would one day come. Then the Doge retired to his private apartments, and the ceremony of election closed.
As we have already observed, the position of the Doge in the Republic of Venice was almost purely ornamental. The Doge presided, either in person or by commission through his councillors, at every Council of State; he presided, however, not as a guiding and deliberating chief, but as a symbol of the Majesty of Venice. He is there not as an individual, a personality, but as the outward and visible sign of an idea, the idea of the Venetian oligarchy. The history of the personal authority of the Doge falls into three periods. A period of great vigour and almost despotic power dates from the foundation of the Dukedom, in the year 697, down to the reign of Pietro Ziani in 1172. During this first period, the Ducal authority showed a tendency to become concentrated, and almost hereditary in the hands of one or two powerful families. For example, we have seen Doges of the Partecipazio house, five Doges of the Candiani, and three of the Orseoli. But the rivalry and balanced power of these great families eventually exhausted one another, and preserved the Dukedom of Venice from ever becoming a kingdom. A second period extends from the year 1172 down to 1457, and is marked by the emergence of the great commercial houses, and the development of the oligarchy upon the basis of a Great Council. The aristocracy during this period were engaged in excluding the people from any share in the government, and in curbing and finally crushing the authority of the Doge. The steps in this process are indicated by the closing of the Great Council, the revolution of Tiepolo, the trials of Marino Faliero, Lorenzo Celsi, and the Foscari. The third period covers what remains of the Republic, from 1457 down to 1797. During this period the Doge was little other than the figurehead of the Republic; the point of least weight and greatest splendour; the brilliant apex to the pyramid of the Venetian constitution.
So far, then, we have examined the four tiers in the original structure of the constitution, the Doge, the College, the Senate, and the Great Council; and we have seen that, broadly speaking these were, respectively, ornamental, initiative and executive, legislative, and elective. But this pyramid of the constitution was not perfectly symmetrical; its edges were broken. This interruption of outline was caused by the Council of Ten. The exact position in the Venetian constitution occupied by this famous Council, and its relations to the other members of the government, have proved a constant source of difficulty and error to students of Venetian history. Leaving aside the obscure problem of the origin of the Ten, it is still possible for us to indicate the constitutional necessity which called that Council into existence. As we have pointed out, the College could not act on its own responsibility without the Senate; the Senate could not initiate without the College, for the preparation of all affairs passed through the hands of the College. To establish connection between these two branches of the administration was a process that required some time; it could not be done swiftly and secretly. In all crises of political importance, whether home or foreign, some instrument, more expeditious than the Senate, was required to sanction the propositions of the College. That instrument, acting swiftly and secretly, with a speed and secrecy impossible in so large a body as the Senate, was created with the Council of Ten. The Ten were an extraordinary magistracy, devised to meet unexpected pressure upon the ordinary machine of government. The emergence of the Ten proves this view. Without determining whether the Council existed previous to the year 1310, we may take that year as the date of its first appearance as a potent element in the State. The rebellion of Tiepolo and Querini, an aristocratic revolt against the growing power of the new commercial nobility, paralysed the ordinary machinery of State, and revealed the danger inherent in a large and slow-moving body of rulers. The Ten were called to power, just as the Romans created the Dictatorship, in order to save the State in a dangerous crisis.
The place of the Ten in the constitutional structure is below the College and parallel with the Senate. Below the College the administration bifurcates, the ordinary course of business flows through the Senate, the extraordinary through the Ten. The Ten possessed an authority equal to that of the Senate; the choice of which instrument should be used, rested with the College. The Ten appear to be of more importance than the Senate, solely because they were used upon more critical and dramatic occasions. Wherever the machinery of the College and Senate moves too slowly, we find the swifter machinery of the College and the Ten in motion. And so not only in political affairs, home and foreign, but also in affairs financial and judicial, the Council of Ten takes its part. The Ten, as being the readier instrument to the hands of the College, gradually absorbed more and more of the functions which originally belonged to the Senate. This process of absorption, and the extension of the province of the Ten, is marked by the establishment of its sub-commissions, that took their place in every department side by side with the delegations of the Senate and the ordinary magistrates. In politics and foreign affairs there is the famous office of the Three Inquisitors of State. In the region of Justice all cases of treason and coining, and certain cases of outrage on public morals, came before the Ten; and it was always open to the College to remove a case from the ordinary courts to the Ten, when State reasons rendered it expedient to do so. In the Police department the Esecutori contro la Bestemmia, and in Finance the Camerlenghi, were officers of that Council. In the War Office the artillery was under their control; and in the arsenal certain galleys, marked C.X., were always at their disposal.
These five great members of the State, four regular and one irregular, formed the political and legislative departments of the Venetian Government. It would require too many details to give a similar account of the Judicial, Educational, and Religious machinery.
One of the most remarkable features in the Venetian constitution is the infinite subdivision of government, and the number of offices to be filled. Nobles alone were eligible for the majority of these offices, and if we consider how small a body the Great Council really was, it is clear that the larger number of Venetian noblemen must have been employed in the service of the State at some time in their lives. The great political and administrative activity which reigned inside the comparatively small body that formed the ruling caste, as compared with the absolute stagnation and quiet which marked the life of the ordinary citizen, is one of the most noteworthy points in the history of Venice. Every noble above the age of twenty-five was a member of the Maggior Consiglio; every week that council had to fill up some office of State, had some new candidate before it. The tenure of all offices, except the Dukedom and the Procuratorship of St. Mark, was so brief, rarely exceeding a year, or sixteen months, that the fret and activity of elections must have been nearly incessant. This constant unrest bore its fruit in perpetual intrigues, and the censors were appointed to check the rampant canvassing and bribery. But the main point which is impressed upon us is the universality of political training to which all the nobles of Venice were subjected. No matter how frivolous a young patrician might be, he would be obliged to sit in the Great Council; he would be called upon to assist in electing the Ten, whose omniscience and severity he had every reason to dread; he might even find himself named to fill some minor post. It was impossible, under these circumstances, that he should fail to be educated politically, or that he should ever lose the keenest interest in every movement of the State. It is to this political activity that we may possibly look for one of the reasons which conduced to that extraordinary longevity which the constitution of Venice displayed.
Each of the Government offices, many as they were, possessed its own collection of papers. These are either still in loose sheets, just as they left the office, or bound in volumes. They are indicated by the name of the Government department, the subject dealt with, and the date. The pages are of three kinds; first, there are the files or filze, the original minutes of the Board, written down in actual Council by the secretaries, and with the filze are the dispatches or other documents upon which the Council took measures. In many of the more important departments, such as the Senate, the Ten, or the College, these filze were epitomized; the substance of each day's business was written out in large volumes known as Registri; each entry was signed by the secretary who had made the digest, and was accepted as authentic for all purposes of reference. These registers are, in many cases, of the greatest value where the files have been destroyed or lost. They were more constantly in use, and therefore more carefully preserved; and now they frequently form our sole authority for certain periods. As a rule the registers are very full and good; they contain all that is of importance in the files; but in making research upon any point it is never safe to ignore the files where they exist. In some cases the secretaries made a further digest of the registers in volumes known as Rubrics, which contain in brief the headings of all materials to be found in the registers. As the registers sometimes supply the place of lost files, so the rubrics are occasionally our only authority where registers and files are both missing. The rubrics are often of the highest value. As an instance, we may cite the twenty volumes of rubrics to the dispatches from England between the years 1603 and 1748. The method of research, therefore, where all three kinds of documents exists is this, to examine first the rubrics, then the registers, and then the files. But the infinite subdivisions of the Government offices in Venice render the task of research somewhat bewildering; and a student cannot be certain that he has exhausted all the information on his subject, until he has examined a large number of these minor offices. He will probably find some notice of the point he is examining in the papers of the Senate or of the Ten, and, if it be a matter of home affairs, he can trace it thence through the various magistracies under whose cognizance it would come; or if it be a matter of foreign policy, he will find further information in the papers of the College.