The Politics of Mythmaking

The Venetian turn to the mainland during the fifteenth century signified a greatdeal more than territorial expansion: annexation of the towns to the west openedup new cultural horizons in letters, science, and the visual arts. Previouslythe Mediterranean basin, Asia, and the Gothic north greatly influencedVenice’s cultural and intellectual developments. From the fifteenthcentury, however, the history, literature, and artistic traditions of theItalian peninsula took on new meaning. Greco-Latin and Arabic foundations werethus added to traditions the Venetians had encountered on their tradingventures. The internationally renowned university at Padua offered significantadvancements in anatomy, medicine, the mechanical sciences, botany, andagronomy. It also endowed Venice with an auspicious circle of humanists whoimmortalized Aristotelian philosophy and physical contact with Romanarchaeological remains that were scattered throughout the territories. Thefamous poet Petrarch had given Venice humanism in the mid-fourteenth century,but the fifteenth-century contact with the Italian mainland was heavilyresponsible for the development of Renaissance culture in the two centuries thatfollowed.

The generation of Venetian patricians growing up after 1430, when mainlandexpansion was complete, both broadened their spectrum of knowledge and used itto their political advantage. Political writers embellished Venetian culturewith Aristotelian ideas and Catholic orthodoxy. Moreover, they sharpened imagesof the so-called myth of Venice that surfaced in writing around 1380 with claimsthat the city was encapsulated in timeless stability. They developed anelaborate panegyric and iconography to justify this belief. To begin, it wasalleged that the entire community of ered unquestioned loyalty to the city, anassertion that recalled the ideals of the Greek polis, where even family dynastybut certainly individual interests were sacrificed for the good of the whole. Inaddition to the devotion of the people, humanists wrote, Venice also enjoyedspecial favors: from God and from Saint Mark, whose relics protected the cityand whose images adorned churches and civic monuments. Still further, theyreiterated that Venice was blessed with excellent rulers and superiorinstitutions, including a citizen navy. Venetian nobles were, according to thehumanist Lauro Quirini, the direct descendants of the Romans who establishedpolitical institutions modeled on the revered Roman Republic. This idealnobility was immune to factionalism and pure of blood. Venice’s great familydynasts were especially born to govern, and they brought only harmony andliberty to their peoples.