The People and Politics

Communication and Popular Politics in C16th Venice

Rosa Salzberg

The Venetian State

• Patricians (nobili, patrizi) – monopoly on all government

offices; economic privileges

• Citizens (cittadini) – allowed some positions in the

bureaucracy; economic privileges

• “People” (popolani) – no official positions but do act as

heralds, policemen, wardens etc.

Matteo Pagan, Procession in St. Mark's Square on Palm Sunday, 1556–69

44

Jacopo de’ Barbari’s View of Venice (1500): an iconic depiction of La Serenissima - the most Serene Republic

• Filippo De Vivo, Information and Communication in Venice: Rethinking Early Modern Politics

• The city as a “great, reverberating box” of opinions

• Communication is politics

A Venetian diary, 1509

• “so many words, so many opinions, so many conversations ... were swirling around in recent days in the city of Venice”

• “among the nobles, as among the citizens and popolani”

• “through all the piazzas, under the loggias [porticoes], around Rialto, in the churches, the streets, the barbershops and the taverns”

Donato Rasciotti, The Marvellous Piazza San Marco in Venice, c. 1599

October 1509

• “In Venice in recent days there has been some

murmuring of the popolani against the nobles,

the former complaining that soon, because of the

war, they will have to pay [the nobles] many

more taxes ... without participating in any way in

the government of the State; because of this they

were saying that these nobles, since they take all

the honour and profit from the war, should pay

the costs of it”

“all over Italy there are charlatans (street performers) singing and reciting works about the war on the piazzas, and making a living out of this”

Text

The News about Brescia, with a Song in Praise of the King of France and of Saint Mark. Newly Printed. (Venice, ca. 1516)

1111

12

• vox populi - the “murmuring of the city” • “the plebs and the idle chatterers, who ...

shriek on the piazzas and want to govern the armies themselves, even though they know nothing, and these judgements are dangerous and ruinous and should not be heard”

• “these vulgar discussions on the Venetian piazzas ... were the major cause of the ruin of Venice”

12

“all over Italy there charlatans (street performers) singing and reciting works about the war on the piazzas, and making a living out of this”