Venetian nobility

Contrary to the feudal nobility, in fact, the patriciate in Venice based its power not on the possession of land, but on the wealth of trade with the East as the basis of the entire economy.

The patricians thus served themselves and the state as captains of galleys, merchants, ambassadors, governors, public officials, and in every other form of civil and military organisation of the Republic.

In the so-called "pseudo-Giustinian" Chronicle, drawn up at that time, the group is distinguished from the already substantial corpus of patricians of twenty-four (or, better,[clarification needed] twenty-five) families more powerful and constantly engaged in Venetian political life.

In the Chronicle these patrician houses are divided into two further groups: the first includes the families Badoer, Baseggio, Contarini, Corner, Dandolo, Falier, Giustinian, Gradenigo-Dolfin, Morosini, Michiel, Polani and Sanudo; the second includes the families Barozzi, Belegno (later Bragadin), Bembo, Gauli, Memmo, Querini, Soranzo, Tiepolo, Zane, Zeno, Ziani (later Salamon) and Zorzi.

Although imaginative, the information contained in the Chronicle served to distinguish an elitist nucleus from the large mass of families included after the Serrata, above all those New houses that during the fifteenth century would contend with the "longhi" for the ducal throne.

From it we learn that only the Barbarigo, the Marcello and the Moro had contributed to the foundation of Rialto by giving tribunes; Foscari, Gritti, Malipiero, Priuli, Trevisan, Tron and Venier are recognized as of non-Venetian origin; of the Donà, of the Grimani and of the Lando there is no information because they are only mentioned, while the Loredan are said to have originated from ancient Rome and were admitted to the Great Council under Doge Reniero Zeno (r. 1253–1268) or two centuries earlier, according to Jacopo Zabarella;[6] finally, the Mocenigo do not even appear.

It is difficult to establish on the basis of which criterion this choice was made: many of the rejected had participated in the war effort with conspicuous offers, conversely there were those who were admitted with a very modest contribution.

Having become almost inaccessible for centuries, the noble body resumed opening up to new families when, with the decline of Venetian power, the State began to "sell" the title (for 100,000 ducats) to fill the public coffers, no longer supported by profitable trade with the East.

Between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there were three openings to the aristocracy, with the aggregation of one hundred and thirty-four families such as the Medicis and the Gherardinis, (a not inconsiderable contribution, given that the nobility had been suffering from a serious demographic crisis for some time).

Some of these families had already been making history in the Venetian hinterland for centuries, and their titles sometimes dated back to the Holy Roman Empire (such as the Brandolini, the Martinengo, the Piovene, the Spineda, the Valmarana).

[11] They were a class of impoverished nobility whose name is derived from the fact that the group met and lived in the zone of the Campo San Barnaba (the area, being distant from the city centre, attracted lower rents).

[12] Towards the end of the Republic they often represented the tip of the balance between the political factions of the council, influencing it through the trading of their votes to which they were often dedicated, usually selling them in the Orchard of Saint Mark.

The aristocracy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was very numerous; a high birth rate among the nobility, combined with the mercantile (and merchant-entrepreneur) profession undertaken by a large part of this class, involved a broad aristocratic government with varied interests, in which the poor nobles were a minority.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the economic situation worsened, more and more after 1618, and the Venetian aristocracy was increasingly dependent on their properties in the mainland and in the colonies, as well as on public sinecures.

The wars against the Ottomans of the mid- and late-1600s decreased trade with the East for many years, as well as in the early 1700s, ruining other merchant families or those who had not been able to diversify their investments in land and real estate.

At the center of their proposals there was precisely the social and political recovery of the poorest parts of the Venetian nobility, done through the assignment of dowries to the young patricians, especially the poor ones, increase in the salaries of the Forty and other Colleges, granting of donations for some prestigious political positions (previously free and then monopolised by rich nobles), setting a uniform for the nobles in order to distinguish them from the commoners, etc.

Then there were some issues arising with the new Enlightenment ideas, such as opposition to internal espionage (which was very common in Venice), freedom of speech, defence and resumption of trade, etc.