Intro
The story of Bianca Cappello, as told in the two previous episodes, mostly unfolded in Tuscany, but there are some interesting interactions with the Republic of Venice. She was, after all, a Venetian noblewoman, and her actions had legal and diplomatic repercussions in Venice.
Links
The Bianca Cappello episodes are:
About the Venetian institutions on History Walks Venice:
Transcript
The story of Bianca Cappello, as recounted in the previous two episodes, touches on some important institutions of the Republic of Venice, and in this episode I’d like to go a bit deeper into the history of a few of these offices.
In particular, we’ll discuss the three institutions which at various times handled the Bianca Cappello affair. They are, at the time of her elopement, the Consiglio dei Dieci — the Council of Ten; later, the Signoria, which handled diplomatic relations to the Duchy of Tuscany; and the Pregadi or Senate, which handled the legislative side of things, such as the formal adoption of Bianca as a “Daughter of the Republic.”
As an aside, few of these institutions were ‘founded’ in any modern sense of the word. The Republic of Venice never had a real constitution — it was based on a series of traditions and customs, not always written down, and definitely not set in stone — and the three bodies discussed here were all created to solve some very specific problems of their time. They then stuck around because they continued to serve some function, whether it was the same as originally conceived or not.
The Council of Ten
When Bianca Cappello ran off with her lover Piero Bonaventuri on the night of November 28th, 1563, how was that perceived in Venice?
First and foremost, Piero had committed the crime of ‘seduction’ of a noblewoman.
Venice was as patriarchal a society as the next, and Bianca ‘belonged’ to her father, Bartolomeo Cappello. It was his prerogative to decide what life Bianca would have, and Piero Bonaventuri had ‘stolen’ that right.
So, the crime was one of ‘seduction’. The culprit was Piero Bonaventuri. The victim was Bartolomeo Cappello. The object of the crime was Bianca Cappello.
That is why the fear of the couple was that Piero would get killed, but Bianca spend her life in a monastery. She would get a ‘lighter’ punishment because as a woman, she was not perceived to have the same agency as him.
Therefore, when Bartolomeo Cappello discovered what had happened, he went to denounce the crime committed against him — that is, the theft of his only daughter — to the Council of Ten.
At that time, one of the charges of the Council of Ten was to handle criminal matters which involved the nobility. A criminal case where either the perpetrator or the victim were nobles, would not be heard by the same tribunals as cases between commoners, or involving foreigners.
As a class society, the Republic of Venice therefore had many tribunals and courts, but the Council of Ten always stood out.
Origin of the Council of Ten
We have a document trail for the creation of the Council of Ten because it was instituted for a very specific purpose, and rather later in Venetian history.
In 1310, a conspiracy to overthrow the legal government of the Republic was discovered, often called the Baiamonte Tiepolo conspiracy, or the Tiepolo-Querini conspiracy.
Many of the conspirators were killed immediately, some in or close to St Mark’s Square, or apprehended and executed soon after, but some fled the city, including the leader Baiamonte Tiepolo.
Faced with such a direct threat to the safety of the state, furthermore from within the ruling aristocracy, the Greater Council appointed a temporary group of ten noblemen to catch the fugitives, and make sure it wouldn’t happen again.
Initially appointed for a few months, repeated renewals lead to annual appointments. Such annual appointments to a temporary office continued on an ad hoc basis, until a decree by the Greater Council made the Council of Ten a permanent body in 1455.
One of the most powerful offices of the Republic of Venice was formally a temporary body for almost a century and a half. This is symptomatic of how the Venetian Republic operated. Everything was ad hoc and temporary for ages, and only time created permanent offices.
Another such example of protracted temporariness (is that a word?) is the Magistrato alla Sanità — the Magistracy of Health. It was appointed on and off since the arrival of the Black Plague in 1347 or 1348, had in practice been a continuous and permanent office for all the 1400s, but was only formalised in 1485. That’s also close to a century and a half, for realising that “we actually need this office.”
Back to the Council of Ten.
The functions of the Council of Ten
The charges of the Council of Ten were many and varied, but they were broadly focused on state security, in particular against internal threats.
The Council of Ten was the only institution of the Republic of Venice which could directly contest the actions of the Doge.
Since the most dangerous internal threats against the state were from within the ruling elite — the nobility itself — the Council of Ten was also tasked with ensuring proper discipline within the nobility.
This is an expression of another characteristic of the Republic of Venice. All adult, male members of the recognised noble families partook directly in government affairs through their membership of the Greater Council, with very few exceptions.
The republic and the nobility were therefore practically synonymous. The state was the nobility, and the nobility was the state.
In such a system, if members of the aristocracy could flaunt the laws with impunity due to their class and status, it would undermine the credibility of the republic as such, as they were the ones making and upholding the laws.
The nobility had to show a good example, and the task of enforcing that was handed to the Council of Ten.
Consequently, the Council of Ten also became the tribunal where cases involving the nobility were heard, which is why Bartolomeo Cappello went there to denounce the ‘seduction’ of his daughter.
The composition of the Council of Ten
The Council of Ten was made up of — surprise — ten noblemen elected annually by the Greater Council from the members of the Senate. They had to be ‘virtuous’, not related to each other, and at least forty years of age.
They convened weekly in the Doge’s Palace, where they had their offices, like most other important state institutions.
Unlike most other state institutions, however, the Council of Ten had its own treasury, and its own armoury, all within the Doge’s Palace. If, one day, there should be a last stand of the Republic against insurgents, revolutionaries, or conspirators, as it had almost happened in 1310, it was expected to be in or around the palace.
Today, a series of rooms on the last floor of the Doge’s Palace house an exhibition of historic arms. That was where the armoury of the Council of Ten was.
For day-to-day affairs, three members of the council were elected “Heads of the Council of Ten” for a period of one month. They would meet three times a week, read all communications and handle urgent business. They had wide powers in all matters of state security.
They could — and they did — disappear persons who, for one reason or the other, were deemed dangerous to the established order. Often such decisions were taken in secret, and capital sentences executed, before the Heads of the Council of Ten would deliver an oral report to the Greater Council.
Consequently, the Heads of the Council of Ten were much feared by the citizens of Venice. For the common people, they had terrifying powers.
The members of the Council of Ten had to dress in a purple toga at all times, as a sign of the power invested in them. The three Heads of the Council of Ten furthermore wore a red stole over the toga.
The colour combination of purple and red — and probably a solid dose of fear of these individuals — lead the common people to jokingly refer to the Heads of the Council of Ten as canocie col coral, which probably requires an explanation.
Canocie is the Venetian name for the mantis shrimp, which is found in the lagoon. The mantis shrimp is a ferocious predator, which can break open the shells of other animals with powerful punches. They were — and are — common on Venetian dinner tables. They are pink or purple.
Coral means the eggs of a sea creature. The mantis shrimp carries its eggs under its belly, and the eggs — which also end up on Venetian dinner tables — are bright red.
Hence, the canocie col coral and the feared Heads of the Council of Ten wore the same colours.
When the Council of Ten sat as a tribunal in criminal cases, it had seventeen members.
The room in the Doge’s Palace, where the tribunal met, is still there, and it is on the normal route of a visit to the palace. There are seventeen seats for the seventeen members.
It was a general rule in the Republic of Venice, that the councils and colleges appointed by the Greater Council, were presided by the Doge and his six councillors — the Signoria.
The Signoria
When the ambassador from the Duchy of Tuscany arrived in Venice in on June 12th, 1579, he followed the normal procedure for such a formal visit.
He didn’t enter the city immediately, but stopped somewhere decent outside the city gates, and sent a messenger to announce his presence, so he could be allowed in and welcomed as it was proper.
Now, Venice never had city walls and gates, so the Tuscan ambassador went to the island Santa Maria della Grazia, just behind the Giudecca island, which was a common station for travellers to and from Venice. That was, figuratively, the inn outside the city gate.
His messenger went to the Doge’s Palace to announce his master’s arrival to the Signoria.
The Signoria — which can be translated as Lordship — was the closest the Republic of Venice had to an executive in the modern sense, but it is an approximation because the Venetian Republic wasn’t a modern state.
The origin of the Signoria
Unlike the Council of Ten, for the Signoria we have scarce and contradictory sources for its creation.
In the earliest centuries of the Venetian state, the doge almost had the powers of an elected king. This soon proved problematic, as almost all the early doges tried to make the position hereditary, by appointing a son as co-doge, effectively turning the state into a monarchy.
This led to much violence, as the rest of the elite resisted such power grabs.
Either in 1033, following the creation of doge Domenico Flabanico, or in 1172 for Sebastiano Ziani, or in 1178 for Orio Mastropiero, the assembly which chose the doge, also imposed on the new doge two councillors to keep check on his power.
These councillors could veto any decision of the doge, and could, in his absence, conduct affairs of state on his behalf. They were elected for a term of one year, couldn’t be re-elected, and couldn’t be related to the doge in any way whatsoever.
In practice, the role of executive, which had been the prerogative of the doge, then resided in this small college of three persons: the doge, serving for life, and two councillors, each serving one year.
Later, and again the timing is unknown, the two councillors were made six, to match the six sestieri of Venice. This way, all the different communities, which made up early Venice, were represented in government.
Initially referred to as the Minor Consiglio — the Minor Council or the Smaller Council, as opposed to the Greater Council — it was later called the Serenissima Signoria.
The functions of the Signoria
The Signoria was present almost everywhere within the Republic of Venice.
The Signoria presided over all other councils and colleges of the republic, including the Pregadi (Senate) and the Greater Council itself, and as we have already seen, the Council of Ten.
Therefore, the seven individuals forming the Signoria were physically present in the room for practically all government business, where they could make proposals, speak their mind, and vote. That alone made the council very powerful.
When a doge died, all the formal powers of the doge were invested in the Signoria until a new doge could be created. The six councillors were effectively head of state for such a period.
Another function, the Signoria inherited from the early doges, was foreign policy and diplomatic relations. All diplomatic dispatches would be opened and read by the Signoria, and all ambassadors received by them.
The messenger of the Tuscan ambassador went to the Signoria to announce his arrival. The Signoria decided that he was welcome, and could enter the city.
The next day, the ambassador transferred with his entourage to the Palazzo Trevisan, which Bianca Cappello had bought for her father and brother some years earlier. It was conveniently located near the Doge’s Palace.
The following day, he was formally received by the same Signoria in their room in the Doge’s Palace.
The councillors heard the ambassador, and read the letters, which he had brought from the Grand Duke of Tuscany and from Bianca Cappello.
In there, were the news of the wedding between Bianca Cappello and Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici, and the request for the Republic of Venice to adopt Bianca as a “Daughter of the Republic.”
The Signoria did not, however, take any immediate decision. The ambassador was made to wait some days because the actual decision didn’t belong to the Signoria. It belonged to the Senate.
Luckily, one of the prerogatives of the Signoria was to convene the Senate, and to set the agenda, so the issues were discussed in the Senate the next day.
The Pregadi or Senate
The Senate — originally called the Pregadi or the Rogati — was a central part of the Republic of Venice since the 1200s at least.
It was where most of the important decisions were taken.
When the Signoria had heard the Tuscan ambassador, and read the letters from Tuscany, it was clear that laws and decrees were needed to bestow titles and elect ambassadors, and that went beyond the remit of the Signoria.
The Signoria therefore convened the Senate, which very conveniently met in the neighbouring room of the Doge’s Palace.
The origins of the Senate
The constitutional backbone of the Venetian Republic was the Greater Council, where all noblemen, aged 25 or more, were members. As such, the Greater Council was not an elected body. It was an assembly of the entire electorate.
The Greater Council had up to two thousand members. Debates and votes were therefore slow and cumbersome affairs, surrounded by ceremonial and procedures.
The purpose of the Senate — which was created and elected by the Greater Council — was to exercise some of the powers of the Greater Council in a faster and more agile way.
The earlier names of the Senate give us some hints as to its possible origins.
The Rogati means those who were called or summoned to assist and counsel the doge in exercising his powers. The Pregadi means those who were asked or invited to do the same.
These names — which predate the use of the word ‘Senate’ — hint at the origin of the Senate as a kind of wider ad hoc council to advise and counsel the doge, besides the much smaller and permanent Signoria.
Whatever the earliest origins, it is documented that in 1229, the Greater Council started electing the members of the Senate from their own midst, to be presided by the doge and councillors, the Signoria.
Membership of the Senate
Initially, there were sixty members, so it was a much more compact body than the Greater Council. However, as the Greater Council entrusted more and more competences to the Senate, more were needed. In 1362, an addition of twenty members was made to the Senate. This was repeated in 1412 and in 1450, bringing the total number of the Senate to 120. These additional sixty became known as the Zonta which is Venetian for ‘adjunct’.
The Zonta was decided anew every year until it was finally made an ordinary and permanent part of the Senate in 1506. Just like we’ve seen with the Council of Ten and with the Magistracy of Health, it could take a century and a half for a temporary body to become a permanent institution.
Over time, as competences were delegated by the Greater Council to the Senate, the heads or the members of numerous other councils, courts, tribunals and magistracies joined the Senate, which in the later centuries could count between two and three hundred members of different kinds.
The direct members of the Senate, and the Zonta, were all elected for one year, with no re-election possible. They had to be thirty-five years of age, or thirty if they had served as ambassadors to crowned heads, or if they twice had served terms as governors over cities in the subject dominions.
Functions of the Senate
Some of the first charges of the Pregadi were economic, related to trade and navigation, which were the source of Venetian wealth and power in the Middle Ages.
Later, other competences related to war and peace, the navy, justice, food supply, public morality, and much more were entrusted to the Senate, and the members of the related institutions and offices became de facto members of the Senate too.
In the case of Bianca Cappello, the appointment of ambassadors to send to the wedding in Florence was a competence of the Senate.
The order of the Knights of San Marco was under the jurisdiction of the Senate, so the Senate made the appointment of Bartolomeo and Vettor Cappello as Cavalieri.
The adoption of Bianca Cappello as “Daughter of the Republic”, was a matter of foreign relations, so that decision too belonged to the Senate.
Speed of deliberation
Since the diplomatic and bureaucratic events around the wedding of Bianca Cappello to the Grand Duke of Tuscany are quite well documented, we can make a timeline and see how fast the Venetian system could act when something important happened.
The letters from Tuscany were dated June 10th in Pratolino, the grand countryside villa Francesco de’ Medici had built as a retreat for Bianca and himself.
The ambassador arrived in Venice on the 12th, so it took two days. It is a journey of some 260km by horse-drawn carriage, maybe a small baggage train, and probably some kind of security detail on horseback.
On the 13th, the ambassador was formally welcomed and installed in the Palazzo Trevisan in Venice.
The Signoria received him on the 14th, and read the letters.
The letters were read aloud in the Senate on the 15th, and a motion to make Bianca Cappello “Daughter of the Republic” passed.
Replies to the letters from Tuscany were drafted on the 16th, and read aloud to the Tuscan ambassador, who requested them in writing. Also on the 16th, the Senate chose two ambassadors to send to Florence for the wedding.
Then, on the 17th, the two legal decrees adopting Bianca Cappello as “Daughter of the Republic” and knighting her father and brother, were voted by the Senate.
The Tuscan ambassador and Vettor Cappello must have departed the day after, and likewise spent a couple of days on the road, as the replies from the court in Tuscany are dated June 21st.
So, a diplomatic round-trip Florence-Venice-Florence took about ten days. Four days at least were travelling time, physically getting persons and letters from one city to the other.
The procedures of the Republic of Venice took four days, from they received the letters with the news and requests, until they had formal replies ready, and had finalised all the necessary legal documents, which included passing two laws.
They also had time for some lavish banquets and celebrations in the ambassador’s honour.
I’m not sure a modern democracy or republic could have done that much faster.
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