Political Structures

Florence and Venice in the Renaissance HI320

• How does Venetian and Florentine government evolve in the period and why?

• What are the sources of power and who has it?

• How do you achieve stable government?

•C11-12 communal governments

•elected own leaders

•riven with conflict

Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Allegory of Justice, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena, C14th

The Venetian Commune

• general assembly elects dux (doge)

• no feudal nobility

• short terms of office

• Great Council (Maggior Consiglio)

The doge

Giovanni Bellini, Doge Leonardo Loredan (1501-2)

Serrata• late C13th:

limiting of guild power

• closing of the Great Council c. 1297

• hereditary status to nobles

• libro d’oroSala del Maggior Consilio, Ducal Palace

•cittadini class

•popolani excluded

Pyramid of Government

Doge: elected for life

Signoria: Doge + 6 councillors + 3 heads of the Forty (8 month term)

Pien Collegio: Signoria + 16 Savi

Senate (Pregadi): c. 300

(1 year term)Maggior

Consilio: all adult male patricians

Council of Ten

• created 1310 after Querini Tiepolo conspiracy

• state security

• by-pass bigger councils

• quick, secretive, summary justice Chamber of the Council of Ten, Doge’s

Palace

Florence’s Palazzo dei Priori (Palazzo Vecchio),

1290s

The Florentine Republic

•Signoria = 8 priors (6 month term)

•Gonfaloniere della giustizia

•12 Buonuomini + Gonfalonieri di compagnia + Signoria = Tre Maggiori

•scrutiny (scrutinio)

The Medici

• Giovanni di Bicci (c. 1360-1429) builds fortune

• banker to pope

• Cosimo di Giovanni (1389-1464) takes over 1420s

• 1433 exile

• 1434 triumphant return!

Medici power

• accoppiatori

• elections a mano

• use of balìa

• Cento council created 1458

• international network

• peasant army

• patronage: parenti, amici, viciniCosimo ‘il vecchio’ de’ Medici

Piero di Cosimo ‘the gouty’ (1416-70)

• takes over 1469

• charisma, international

support

• ‘Golden age’ of culture

• Pazzi conspiracy 1478

• Council of 70

Lorenzo di Piero ‘the Magnificent’ (1449-92)

Lorenzo de’ Medici’s death mask

• Lorenzo dies 1492

•1494 son Piero di

Lorenzo kicked out

• new Great Council

• influence of Savonarola

• 1502 Gonfaloniere a

vita Piero Soderini

Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici, later Pope Leo X

(r. 1513-21)

• 1512 Medici return

•1527 Florentine

Republic

• Clement VII (r. 1523-

34)

• 1532 Alessandro de’

Medici = ‘First Duke of

the Florentine Republic’

Duke Cosimo de’ Medici

(r. 1537-74)

Government

•contado vs. distretto

•bigger towns left to administer, judge, tax

•negotiation with individual communities

•resistance

•revolt of Pisa 1494-1509

Italy at the Peace of

Lodi, 1454

Lion of St. Mark, Verona

• Rule by consent

• Degree of autonomy

• Renegotiation of

statutes

• Venetian justice

• Elites could not join

Great Council

• Major ecclesiastical

positions for Venetians