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