Under the Republic these collections of State papers were not known as archives, but as chancelleries. The collections of highest interest, the papers to which the student is most likely to turn his attention, are those relating to the ceremony, to the home, and to the foreign policy of Venice. These three groups are contained in the Ducal, the Secret, and the Inferior Chancelleries. The three chancelleries were committed to the charge of the Grand Chancellor and his staff of secretaries, who received, arranged, and registered the official papers as they issued from the various Councils of State. The Grand Chancellor was not a patrician; he was chosen from that upper class of commoners known as cittadini originarii, an inferior order of nobility, ranking below the governing caste, but bearing coat armour. The office of Grand Chancellor was of great dignity and antiquity, and was held for life. The Chancellor was head and representative of the people, as the Doge was head and representative of the patricians; and, when the nobility began to exclude the people from all share in the government, the Grand Chancellor was allowed to be present at all sessions of the Great Council and of the Senate as the silent witness of the people, confirming the acts of the Government, and bridging, though by the finest thread, the gulf that otherwise separated the governed from the governing. The part which the Grand Chancellor took in the business of the Maggior Consiglio and of the Senate was a constant and an active part. It was his duty to superintend the arrangements for every election, to direct the secretaries in attendance, to announce the names of the candidates for office, and to proclaim the successful competitor. His seat in the Great Council Hall was on the left-hand of the Doge's daïs, and his secretaries sat below him. But the custody of the State papers was by far the most important function which the Grand Chancellor had to perform. To assist him in these labours he was placed at the head of a large College of Secretaries, trained in a school especially established to fit them for their duties. In the year 1443 a decree of the Great Council required the Doge and the Signoria to elect each year twelve lads to be taught Latin, rhetoric and philosophy, and the number of the pupils was gradually increased. From this school they passed out by examination, and became first extra-ordinaries and ordinaries, called Notaries Ducal, then secretaries to the Senate, and finally secretaries to the Ten. The post of secretary was one which required much diligence and discretion. The secretaries were in constant attendance on the various Councils of State, and thus became intimately acquainted with all the secret affairs of the Republic. They were frequently sent on delicate missions. It was a secretary of the Ten who brought Carmagnola to Venice to stand his trial; and, as we shall presently relate, it was a secretary of the Senate who announced to Thomas Killigrew, the English Minister, his dismissal from Venice. The secretaries were sometimes accredited as Residents to foreign Courts, though they were not eligible for the post of Ambassador. Inside the Chancellery the secretaries were entirely at the disposal of the Grand Chancellor, and their duties were to study, to invent, and to read cipher; to transcribe the registers and rubrics; to keep the annals of the Council of Ten, and to enter the laws in the statute book.
We may now turn our attention to the principal series of State papers which issued from the five great members of the Constitution, the Maggior Consiglio, the Senate, the Ten, the College, and the Doge, and show how these papers were arranged under the three Chancelleries of which we have spoken.
The Cancelleria Inferiore was preserved in one large room near the head of the Giants' Staircase in the Ducal Palace, and was entrusted to the care of the Notaries Ducal, the lowest order of secretaries. The documents in this Chancellery related chiefly to the Doge; his rights, his official possessions, his restrictions, and his state. Among these papers, accordingly, we find the coronation oaths, the Reports of the Commissioners appointed to examine those oaths, and the Reports of the Commissioners appointed to review the life of each Doge deceased. This series is valuable as revealing the steps by which the aristocracy slowly curtailed the personal authority of the Doge, and bound his office about with iron fetters, and crushed his power. In addition to these papers the Inferior Chancellery contained the documents relating to the dignitaries of St. Mark's in its capacity as Ducal Chapel; the order and ceremony of the Ducal household; the expenditure of the Civil List; and the archives of the Procurators of Saint Mark, which contained the will, trusts, and bequests of private citizens.
The Ducal Chancellery, which the Council of Ten once called 'cor nostri status,' was preserved on the upper floor of the palace, and was reached by the Scala d'oro. The papers were arranged in a number of cupboards surmounted by the arms of the various Grand Chancellors who had presided in that office. The documents of the Ducal Chancellery are of far higher importance than those contained in the Cancelleria Inferiore; they consist of political papers which it was not necessary to keep secret. Among the many interesting series of documents which fell to the Ducal Chancellery, the most valuable are the 'Compilazione delle Leggi,' or statute-books distinguished by the various colours of their bindings—gold, roan, and green—to mark the statutes which relate to the Maggior Consiglio, the Senate, and the College respectively; the Secretario alle voci, or record of all elections in the Great Council; the Libri gratiarum, or special privileges. But most important of all is the great series of documents which include the whole legislation of the State relating to Venetian affairs on sea and land. Of this vast series those marked Terra contain 3128 volumes of files, 411 volumes of registers, and 7 volumes of rubrics; those marked Mar number 1286 volumes of files, 247 volumes of registers, and 7 volumes of rubrics. It will easily be seen how important the Ducal Chancellery is both for the verification of dates, and also as displaying so large a tract of the Venetian home administration.
But important as the Ducal Chancellery undoubtedly is, it cannot vie in interest with the Cancelleria Secreta, which might, with every justice, have been called 'cor nostri status', for it is in the papers of that Chancellery that the long history of the growth, splendour, and decline of the Republic is to be traced in all its manifold details and complicated relations. The Secret Chancellery was established by a decree of the Great Council in the year 1402. Its object was to preserve those papers of the highest State importance, from the publicity to which the Ducal Chancellery was exposed. The regulation of the Secret Chancellery was undertaken by the Council of Ten, and the rigorous orders which they issued from time to time abundantly prove the difficulty they experienced in securing the secrecy which they desired. The Secret Chancellery became the depository of all State papers of great moment; and if we take the chief members of the constitution in order, and note the documents issuing from them which fell to the custody of the Secreta, we shall see how the great flow of Venetian history is to be followed here rather than in any other department of the archives.
To begin with the Maggior Consiglio, we have the long series of registers containing the deliberations of the Council from the year 1232 down to the fall of the Republic in 1797, occupying forty-two volumes, and distinguished, at first, by such capricious names as Capricornus, Philosus, Presbiter, and Fronesis; and later on by the names of the secretaries who prepared them, Ottobonus primus, Ottobonus filius, Busenellus, and Vianolus. In the special archive of the Avogadori di Commun a contemporary series of registers is to be found; it covers from 1232 to 1547, and should be consulted together with the first series, for it is more voluminous and minute. The first reference to England that occurs in the Venetian archives is in the volume Fronesis (1318-1385). This, and all other documents relating to Great Britain, have been collected and rendered accessible in the splendid and monumental series of the 'Calendar of State Papers,' edited with such diligence and care by the late Mr. Rawdon Brown. Mr. Brown's published work goes down to the year 1552; and it is only after that date that any work relating to England remains to be done. That work, however, is voluminous, for the regular and unbroken series of dispatches from England does not begin till the reign of James I. Little more respecting England is to be expected from the papers of the Great Council, however; for at the date where Mr. Brown's work ends, the Maggior Consiglio had ceased to occupy a high position in the direction of Venetian foreign policy; its functions were chiefly confined to the election of magistrates.
The Senate supplied a far larger number of papers to the Secret Chancellery than that yielded by the Great Council. This was to be expected, owing to the central position of the Senate in the constitution, and its prominent place in the management of Venetian policy, home and foreign. The oldest documents in the archives of Venice belong to the Senate. They are contained among the volumes of Pacts or treaties, seven in number, without including the volume Albus, which is devoted to treaties between the Republic and the Eastern Empire, nor the volume Blancus, which contains the treaties between Venice and the Emperors of the West. The thirty-three volumes of Commemoriali formed a sort of commonplace book for the use of statesmen; in them were registered briefly the most important events and abstracts of principal documents which passed through the hands of the Government. The Commemoriali cover the years 1293 to 1797; but after the middle of the sixteenth century they were neglected, and they are chiefly valuable down to that date only. After the Patti and Commemoriali we begin the record of the regular proceedings in the Senate. This series contains papers relating to home government, foreign policy, the dominions of Venice on the mainland, in Dalmatia and the Levant, ecclesiastical matters, relations with Rome, instructions to ambassadors and reports from governors. So widely spread and so varied were the attributes of the Senate, that the analysis of a single day's proceedings in that house would prove most instructive to the student of the Venetian constitution, and would, in all probability, bring him into contact with a large number of the leading magistracies of the Republic. The series of senatorial papers proceeds in almost unbroken completeness from the year 1293 down to the close of the Republic; and counting files, registers and rubrics, numbers 1599 volumes. This main series is known by different names at different periods, and shows signs of that tendency to subdivision which characterizes all Venetian Government offices. The volumes which run from the year 1293 to 1440 were known as Registri misti; those covering from 1491 to 1630, and overlapping the first Misti, were called Registri secreti. After the year 1630 the papers of the Senate are divided into those known as Corti, relating to foreign Powers; and those known as Rettori, relating to the government of the Venetian dominion.
Besides this great series of Deliberazioni, containing the general movement of business in the Senate, there is another voluminous series of documents, equally important, and even more interesting to the student of general history, the dispatches received from Venetian representatives in foreign Courts, and the Relazioni, or reports which ambassadors read before the Senate upon their return from abroad. Nothing can exceed the brilliancy of this series; and the value of the Relazioni at least has been fully recognized. Yet it should be borne in mind that the Relazioni are only a part of the series, and that, taken alone and isolated from the dispatches, they lose much of their value. For we must not forget that the Relazioni were drawn up on more or less conventional lines; the headings, under which the report was to fall, were indicated by the Government, and were invariable; and, further, the home-coming ambassador handed his report to his successor, who frequently used it as a basis in drawing up his own. The result is that, except in the descriptions of Court life, and in the sketches of prominent characters, the Relazioni are apt to repeat themselves. But, taken with the dispatches, which arrived almost daily, they form the most varied, brilliant, and minute gallery of national portraits that the world possesses. The reports and dispatches were made by men whose whole political training had rendered them the acutest of observers, and they were presented to critics who were filled with the keenest curiosity, and were accustomed to demand full and precise information. Not a detail is omitted as unimportant; the diurnal gossip of the Court, the daily movements of the sovereign and his favourites; are all recorded with impartial and unerring observation. The relation of the Dispacci to the Relazioni is the relation of the study to the picture. The Relazioni are the large canvas upon which the whole nation is broadly depicted, the Dispacci are the patient and minute studies upon which the excellence of the picture depends. The majority of the Venetian Relazioni between the years 1492 and 1699 have been published; the earlier part by Signor Alberi, and the later by Signori Barozzi and Berchet. The eighteenth century still remains to be worked out. In the series of Relazioni and Dispacci, Great Britain occupies a comparatively small space. While France, Germany, and Constantinople, each give five volumes of reports, England gives one only, dating from 1531 to 1763. Of dispatches from England there are 139 volumes in all; while from Constantinople we have 242, from France 276, from Milan, 230, and from Germany 202.
Previous to the year 1603, when the regular series of dispatches from England begins, there had been intermittent relations between the Republic and the English Court. Sebastian Giustiniani was Venetian ambassador in London in the reign of Henry VIII. (1515-1519); and in the reign of Mary, Giovanni Michiel represented the Republic for four years—from 1554 to 1558. The Protestant reign of Elizabeth caused a long break, during which the Republic received its information about the affairs of England from its ambassadors in France and Spain. Permanent relations were not resumed between the two Powers till the accession of James I., one of whose earliest acts was to send Sir Henry Wotton to Venice as his ambassador. The appointment of Sir Henry Wotton was a movement of gratitude on the part of the King; and the cause of it cannot be better told than in the words of Sir Henry's biographer, who thus describes this 'notable accident:'
'Immediately after Sir Henry Wotton's return from Rome to Florence—which was about a year before the death of Queen Elizabeth—Ferdinand, the Great Duke of Tuscany, had intercepted certain letters that discovered a design to take away the life of James, the then King of Scots. The Duke abhorring this fact, and resolving to endeavour a prevention of it, advised with his Secretary Vietta, by what means a caution might be best given to that King; and after consideration it was resolved to be done by Sir Henry Wotton, whom Vietta first commended to the Duke, and the Duke had noted and approved of above all the English that frequented his Court.