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Venice As the Polity of Mercy
Guilds, Confraternities, and the Social Order, C. 1250-c. 1650
Richard MacKenny (Author)
9781442649682
Hardback, published 9 January 2019
496 pages
23.1 x 15.5 x 4.1 cm, 0.88 kg
"Mackenney certainly makes his case regarding the activity and agency of subordinate classes long treated as disenfranchised […] as the key to tracing […] inequality. The case is made stronger by his clear mastery of the archives." "This is an important book and repays an effort on the part of the reader. It not only provides much information about guilds and confraternities and other aspects of Venetian social and religious life at the often-neglected level of the popolani, but it also demonstrates that exclusion from political office did not prevent them from active engagement in autonomous activities in defense of their interests in the political, social, and religious spheres."
This study re-examines Venice’s political economy from the viewpoint of its ordinary people or popolani who, despite the commonly held view that they were excluded from political life by the nobility or nobili, actually organized and ran for themselves hundreds of corporations within the city-state. Mercy was central to this popolani’s Christian values and those who offered mercy to their fellow men and women in temporary hardship were investing in the expectation of reciprocity in their own time of need. Beginning by tracing a formative linking of religion, economy, and polity from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, Venice as the Polity of Mercy then chronicles the collapse of this triad during the struggles between church and state in the mid-sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, followed by a revitalizing reconnection of economy and polity within a different religious climate after the plague of 1630. As such, Richard Mackenney’s book offers up a revitalized image of Renaissance Venetian society as dynamic rather than static, as well as a new understanding of the city’s significance through a reconfiguration of its history and artwork.
List of Figures Introduction: Economy, Polity, and Religion, c. 1250–c. 1650 1 Venice as Mercantile System, c. 1250–c. 1300 2 Proliferation and Punctuation, c. 1300–c. 1500 3 Who Were the Venetians, c. 1500–c. 1600? 4 Officers and Office in the Mercers’ Guild, c. 1450–c. 1600 5 Monuments to Mercy, c. 1500–c. 1600 6 The Venetians and the Confessional State, c. 1550–c. 1600 Conclusion: A Final Realignment of Economy, Polity, and Religion? c. 1600–c. 1700 Maps
List of Tables and Appendices
Acknowledgments
The Venetian Popolo: Anonymous or Autonomous?
The Spectrum of Representation
The Sources and Their Scope
The Stones of Venice
Polity, 1297
Polity, 1268
Economy, 1271
Religion, 1247
The Confraternities of Venice
Before the Black Death, 1300–48
The Impact of the Plague
From the Black Death to the Bianchi, 1348–99
The Bianchi, 1399
The Franciscan Revival and Social Change, c. 1400–c. 1450
Plague and Patronage, c. 1450–c. 1500
The Vision of the Polity
Metropolis and Cosmopolis
Rooms at the Inns, 1530–1
L’arte dei fabbri
Strands of Identity
"Quel ramo del lago di Como"
The Tale of "Il Medeghino"
A Little Republic?
Arte dei marzeri and Scuola di San Teodoro
Officers and Members
Oligarchs or Plutocrats? A Test Case
Official Business
Arti and Scuole in the Sixteenth Century
The Scuole del Venerabile
The Sovvegni
The Scuole and the Stones of Venice
The Wider Network
The Autonomy of the Venetian Laity
The Agencies of the Confessional State
The Inquisition and the Venetian Laity
The Visitation of 1581
Venice and the Defence of Political Absolutism
Tintoretto and the Last Fight
Morbidity in an Age of Decline: The Suffragi
Family Ties
An Envoi: Decadence or Shift?
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index