The primitive machinery of the Venetian Republic consisted, as we have seen, of the General Assembly and the Doge. Very soon, however, under the pressure of business, two ducal Councillors were added to aid the Doge in the discharge of his ever-growing obligations. Further, it became customary though not necessary, that he should invite (pregare) some of the more prominent citizens to assist him with their advice upon grave occasions, and hence the name of what was eventually known as the Consiglio dei Pregadi, the Venetian Senate.
But constitutional machinery of so simple a nature could not prove adequate to the requirements of a State whose growth was as rapid as that of Venice. In 1172 the disastrous conclusion of the campaign against the Emperor Manuel, into which the Republic had rushed at the bidding of the Condone or General Assembly, called the attention of Venetians to their constitution and its defects. It seemed to them that reforms were required on two grounds: first, because the position of the Doge was too independent, considering his discretionary powers as to whether and as to whom he would ask for advice; secondly, because the people in their General Assembly had become too numerous, unruly and rash to allow of their being safely entrusted with the fortunes of their country. A deliberative assembly of manageable size was required; and its establishment implied a definition of the Doge’s authority on the one hand and of the popular rights on the other. The evolution of these two ideas forms the problem of Venetian constitutional history down to the year 1297, when that constitution became stereotyped as a close oligarchy after the famous “Closing of the Great Council.”
The reforms of the year 1172 were threefold:
(1) In order to create a manageable deliberative assembly each sestiere of the city was required to elect two representatives; and each couple in their turn nominated forty of the more prominent members of their district. Thus a body of four hundred and eighty members was created. They held office for one year and at the end of the first year the General Assembly itself named the two nominating representatives of each sestiere. The functions of this new Assembly were to appoint all officers of State and to prepare business to be submitted to the General Assembly. This is virtually the germ of the Maggior Consiglio (the Great Council), the basis of the Venetian oligarchical constitution. It had its origin in a double necessity: - that of limiting the electorate, and that of securing adequate deliberation and debate in a rapidly growing State. Its prime function of appointing to office belonged to it from the first. Its origin was democratic, for it sprang from election by the whole people; but an element of a close oligarchy was contained in the provision whereby the Assembly itself at the end of the first and of all subsequent years elected the twelve representatives of the six quarters of the city.
(2) The Doge continued to summon the Pregadi to assist him; but seeing that the newly created Council undertook election to office and many matters of internal policy, foreign affairs were chiefly reserved for the Senate; though that body did not become organised and permanent till the Tiepoline reforms of 1229-44.
(3) With a view to restricting the Doge’s authority, four Councillors were added to the two already existing. Their duty was to check any attempt at personal aggrandisement on the part of the Doge; and gradually the ducal authority was withdrawn from the chief of the State and placed as it were, in commission in his Council. The coronation oath or promissione of the Doge was subjected to constant modification in the direction of restricting his authority, till at last the Doge himself lost much of his original weight. As his supreme power was withdrawn from him, bit by bit, the pomp and ceremony surrounding him were steadily increased.
These reforms of 1172 display the inherent nature of the Venetian constitution. The ducal authority is gradually curtailed; the Council shows a tendency to become a close oligarchy; the people are removed from the centre of government, although the complete disfranchisement of the mass of the population was not effected at once. The newly appointed Council did indeed endeavour to elect a chief magistrate without any appeal to the people, and a riot ensued which was only quieted by the electors presenting the new Doge to the General Assembly with the words “This is your Doge, an it please you,”—a formula which deluded the people into a belief that they still retained some voice in the election of the Doge.
The tendency displayed in the reforms of 1172 continued to make itself felt during the next hundred years, until we come to the epoch of the Closing of the Great Council, whereby Venice established her constitution as a close oligarchy.
The growing wealth of the State, especially after the Fourth Crusade, served to increase the influence of those families into whose hands the larger share of Venetian commerce had already fallen. We find certain family names such as Contarini, Morosini, Foscari, recurring more and more frequently and preponderating in the Council which the law of ( 1) The Council of Forty, that is the Judges of the Supreme Court, are to put up to ballot the names of all who have, at any time during the last four years, had a seat in the Great Council. Those who receive twelve votes and upwards are to be included in the Great Council. (2) On return from absence abroad a fresh ballot is requisite. (3) Three members shall be appointed to submit names of new candidates for election. These electors are to hold office for one year. (4) The present law may not be revoked, except with the consent of five out of six ducal Councillors, twenty-five members of the Council of Forty, and two-thirds of the Great Council.
The result of these resolutions was to create a specially favoured class, those who had during the last four years sat in the Great Council. By the third resolution admission to that caste was still left open; but the action of the Committee of three soon completed the Serrata del Maggior Cormgtio, and rendered the oligarchy virtually a close caste; for they laid down for themselves the rule that no one was eligible to the Great Council unless he could prove that a paternal ancestor had sat in the Council subsequent to its creation in 1172. By this regulation all those-and they were the vast majority-who had neither sat themselves nor could prove that a paternal ancestor had sat in the Great Council, were virtually disfranchised, for that Council was the root of political life in the State, and exclusion from it meant political annihilation. In 1315 a list of all those who were eligible for election was compiled, and only legitimate children of parents belonging to the favoured class were allowed to appear in this register, known as the Golden Book. Thus the Venetian aristocracy was created, and was established as the sole power in the State.
The exclusion of so many Venetians from all share in the government of their State led to the only revolution which ever seriously endangered the Republic,—the Conspiracy of Bajamonte Tiepolo (1310). Thanks, however, to the decisive step then taken, this conspiracy was crushed and the constitution of Venice was never again in any grave peril. For it was at this moment of danger to the State that the constitution received its final touches by the creation of the Council of Ten. The accumulated difficulties and dangers brought about by the War of Ferrara, the Interdict, and the Tiepoline Conspiracy taught the Republic that the existing machinery of the State was too cumbersome, too slow, too public, to meet and deal successfully