Friendship and Conversation in Seventeenth-Century Venice

Honorable mention: Barbara B. Diefendorf, "Give Us Back Our Children:Patriarchal Authority and Parental Consent to Religious Vocations in EarlyCounter-Reformation France," June 1996.

7995Sarah Maza, "Luxury, Morality, and Social Change: Why There Was No

Middle-Class Consciousness in Prerevolutionary France," June 1997.Honorable mention: Ruth Harris, "Possession on the Borders: The 'Mai de

Morzine' in Nineteenth-Century France," September 1997.

Friendship and Conversation in Seventeenth-CenturyVenice*

Peter N. MillerUniversity of Maryland at College Park

The warsin Italy in the first half of the sixteenthcentury, thedescentof Franceand the Low Countries into near anarchy in the second half of the century, thecollapse of the Empire in the beginning of the seventeenth century, and theEnglish Civil War in its middle decades produced a fascinating reconceptual-ization of political life that has, in turn, inspired a rich scholarly literature.1New ideas about the state and sovereignty, obligation and freedom were theharvest of the unhappy upset of the traditional balance between estates andkings, regions and the center, church and crown. How did the ideal of goodmembership in the political community that is bound up with the word "citizen" change with the changing notion of political community? How did contemporaries themselves describe this change? That is one problem to whichthis article is addressed.

Scholars interested in the development of public life sought as early as 1933to search out the beginnings of the sociability that had come to seem a constitutive feature of modern times. Erich Auerbach located it in the Paris of LouisXIV; Rene* Pintard saw a precursorof it in the Paris of Louis XIII, but foundthat it was killed off rather than encouraged by the new absolutism; and, afterthe Second World War, Reinhard Koselleck saw it in the Republic of Lettersand Jiirgen Habermas in the coffeeculture of Restoration London.2 More re-

* I wish to thank William Bouwsma, Anthony Grafton, Joan-Pau Rubies, and ananonymous referee for reading an earlier version of this article; Marino Berengo andGaetano Cozzi fortheirhospitality and courtesy inVenice some years ago; thelibrariansof the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana and the Biblioteca of the Museo Civico Corerfor their patient assistance; and theGladys Krieble Delmas Foundation forsupportingthe research that went into this project.

1Indeed, the most influentialwork in the history of political thought in recentdecadeshas focused on precisely this period. Forexample: J. G. A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution andtheFeudal Law: A Study of English Historical Thought intheSeventeenthCentury (Cambridge, 1957); Julian Franklin, Jean Bodin and the Sixteenth-CenturyRevolution in the Methodology of Law and History (New York, 1963); Donald R.Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship (New York, 1970); QuentinSkinner, The Foundations of Modern Historical Thought, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1978);and Richard Tuck, Philosophy andGovernment 1572-1651 (Cambridge, 1993).

2The landmarks in what is now a substantial literature are Erich Auerbach, Dasfran-

[TheJournal of Modern History 73 (March 2001): 1-31]© 2001 by The University of Chicago. 0022-2801/2001/7301-0001 $02.00All rights reserved.

2 Miller

cently, scholars have pointed to the importance of the Spectator and the Tatlerand the clubs of London and Edinburgh.3 These have proved compelling histories of the beginnings ofcivil society. But with all this attention to what issometimes called the "modern republic" or"commercial society," we still understand only very imprecisely how contemporaries forged the concepts thatunderpinned this new language of community and new ideal ofcomportmentout of the older republican inheritance. For the power ofthe concept "citizen,"however loosely used to denote the subjects of monarchs and princes, wasderived from the literature and experience of antiquity's city-republics. Howthis, in turn, was adapted for the new extended forms ofcommunity that characterized modern Europe is a second question pursued in this article.

The link between these two lines of inquiry is friendship. It occupied aprominent place in contemporary discussions and served as a model for thecitizen in political debates while also providing a set ofsocial practices for theworld that was not political—for Assembly Rooms and clubhouses rather thanassemblies and council houses. Scholarship on aristocratic society and theRepublic ofLetters has made us aware ofthe role offriendship in this periodbeyond the already famous declarations ofmen like Michel de Montaigne ("Ifyou press me to say why I loved him, I feel that itcannot be expressed exceptby replying: 'Because itwas him: because itwas me'").4 The political role offriendship has been explored in at least one context: in the Catholic League itserved asa standard of solidarity.5 Butthe most acute presentation of thework

zosische Puhlikum des 17'Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1933); Rene* Pintard, Lelibertinageerudit dans la premiere moitie du XVII' siecle (1943; reprint, Geneva, 1983); ReinhardKoselleck, Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis ofModern Society(Cambridge, Mass., 1988 [1959]); and Jiirgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation ofthe Public Sphere (Cambridge, Mass., 1991 [1962]). For a useful survey ofthese interpretations with discussion oftheir impact on the historiography ofthe eighteenth century, see Anthony J. La Vopa, "Conceiving a Public: Ideas and Society inEighteenth-Century Europe," Journal ofModem History 64 (1992): 79-116.

JSee, e.g., J. G. A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History (Cambridge, 1985);Lawrence E. Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse andCultural Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1994); NicholasPhillipson, "The Scottish Enlightenment," in The Enlightenment in National Context,ed. R. Porter and M. Teich (Cambridge, 1981); and the essays in Istvan Hont andMichael Ignatieff, eds., Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping ofPolitical Economy in theScottish Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1983).

4Michel de Montaigne, "On Affectionate Relationships," in Tlie Complete Essays,trans. M. A. Screech (Harmondsworth, 1991), p. 205; Ulrich Langer, Perfect Friendship: Studies in Literature and Moral Philosophyfrom Boccaccio to Corneille (Geneva,1994); Anne Goldgar, Impolite Learning: Conduct and Community in the Republic ofLetters, 1680-1750 (New Haven,Conn., and London, 1995).

5Christopher W. Stocker, "Exclusion and Union: The Associative Impulse in theCatholic League," inAequitas, Aequalitas, Auctoritas: Raison theorique et legitimationde Vautoriti dans le XVI' siecle euwpien, ed. Daniele Letocha (Paris, 1992), pp. 278-88.

Friendship and Conversation in Seventeenth-Century Venice 3

of friendship—its ability to redefine a public identity, that of the "citizen," inthe name of a private one, the "friend," and by so doing to create a third domainthat came to be called "civil society"—is less well known. Yet it is here, inStefano Guazzo's La Civile Conversatione (1574, rev. 1579), that we can seeclearly how friendship made possible this way of thinking about social life byredefining the political ideal of the citizen in the light of a new political reality.

In his book, which was translated almost immediately into French, English,Latin, and German, Guazzo set out to describe the complex network of tiesbetween the unrelated, unconstrained, unequal members of modern society."How to behave our selves towardes others, according to the difference ofestates, for that it is our hap to come in companie, sometime with the young,sometime with the olde, as soone with Gentlemen, as soone with the basersorte, now and then with Princes, now and then with private persons, one whilewith the learned, another while with the ignorant, now with our owne Coun-triemen, then with straungers, now with the religious, now with the secular,now with men, then with women."6 All of this was the realm of "conversation."7 What was striking and, perhaps, even revolutionary, in Guazzo's presentation was his effort to turn the meaning of "civil" on its head: it referredno longer to political action but to the social relations an individual wove

6 Stefano Guazzo, The Civile Conversation, intro. Sir Edward Sullivan (London,1581; reprint. New York and London, 1925), p. 168. These themes are addressed byGiorgio Patrizi, "Una retorica del molteplice: forme di vita e forme del sapere nella'civil conversatione,'" in Stefano Guazzo e la Civile Conversatione, ed. Giorgio Patrizi(Rome, 1990), pp. 52-53; Emilio Speciale, "Discorso del gentiluomo," in Patrizi, ed.,pp. 28, 33, 40; Emilio Bonfatti,"Vir Aulicus, Vir Eruditus," in ResPublico Litteraria:Die Institutionen der Gelehrsamkeit in der friihen Neuzeit, ed. Sebastian Neumeistcrand Conrad Widemann, 2 vols. (Wiesbaden, 1987), 1:179-82. The use of Guazzo asa guide to modern politics—proofof this identification of civil societywith politics—is clearest in Germany. See Giorgio Patrizi, "La CivilConversatione Libro Europeo,"in Patrizi, ed., p. 13; and, more generally, Emilio Bonfatti,La 'Civil Conversatione' inGermania: Letteratura del comportamento da Stefano Guazzoa AdolphKnigge, 1574-1788 (Udine, 1979),chap. 2; and Richard Auernheimer, Gemeinschaft undGesprdch:Stefano Guazzos Begriffder "Conversatione Civile" (Munich, 1973). For the contrastbetween courtier and the citizen, see John Leon Lievesay, Stefano Guazzo and theEnglish Renaissance (Chapel Hill,N.C., 1961), pp.44-46; andDaniel Jelavitch, "RivalArts of Conduct in Elizabethan England: Guazzo's Civile Conversation and Casti-glione's Courtier," Yearbook of Italian Studies 1 (1971): 178-97.

7For the most important treatments of conversation in early modem Europe, seeMarc Fumaroli, "La Conversation," in Les lieux de memoire, vol. 3, Les France, pt. 2,Traditions, ed. Pierre Nora (Paris, 1992), pp. 679-743, "La Republique des Lettres(III): Conversation et soctet6s de conversation a Paris au XVIC siecle," in Rhetoriqueet sociiti en Europe (XVI'-XVIP siecles), Annuaire de la College de France (1989-90), pp. 461-77, and "L'art de la conversation, ou le Forum du royaume," in Ladiplomatic de Vesprit: De Montaigne a La Fontaine (Paris, 1994), pp. 283-321; andElizabeth C. Goldsmith, "Exclusive Conversations": The Art of Interaction in Seventeenth-Century France (Philadelphia, 1988).

4 Miller

around himself. "To live civillie," Guazzo argued through the dialogue, "is notsayd in respect of the Cittie, but of the qualities of the mindc." "So Iunderstandcivile conversation," he continued, "not having relation to the Citie, butconsideration to the manners and conditions which make it civile."8

But what kind of "manners and conditions" made a city civil? And what,for that matter, did Guazzo intend by "city"? Academies, like the one in Casalein northern Italy to which Guazzo belonged, and which provided the settingof his dialogue, were made up ofthose who, "agreeing in like studies, and likeaffections, they cannot but take pleasure in one another, and reduce themselves,from the number of many as it were indeed to one united bodie."9 Cities, bycontrast, were populated by men ofdifferent backgrounds living in the sameplace for different reasons and having no predisposition to agree. If friendship,the relation that bound men of equal commitment to virtue, embodied theclassical ideal ofthe city as articulated by Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics,the modem reality ofthe city, inhabited by people with such different interestsand ambitions, demanded a new definition. "Where at this daic," Guazzoasked, "are these true friendships tobefound?" Inthe city, hecontinued, "thosewith whom we arc conversant [arc] rather well willers than true friends."10

In this brief discussion, in the midst of a sprawling dialogue whose greatappeal lay in its encyclopedic pretensions, Guazzo suggested that the conditions of modern lifehad altered fundamentally the relations between membersofsociety as well as the very purpose of their association. For Guazzo, thisshift was embodied by the unstable meaning of friendship. Perfect friendship,ofthe sort identified by Aristotle with the practice ofcitizenship in a republic,was no longer to be expected in contemporary cities. It had been displaced by"civil conversation," and in this lay the latter's political importance and thatof Guazzo's book.

The incisiveness of Guazzo's presentation can help us recognize preciselywhat was at stake inanobscure Venetian political debate of the 1630s. BecauseVenice was a republic, its writers were alive to the historical resonances of"citizen," and the conceptual link between "citizen" and friend was of morethan purely metaphorical force. This is important: it means that however farthese writers move in redefining citizenship we know that they start from anintimate familiarity with the view ofpolitical sociability we call "republican."Not only does this enable us to bring into a single frame both Renaissance

"Guazzo, The Civile Conversation, p. 51; "*L vivcrc civilmentc non dipende dallaCitta. ma dalle qualita dcH'animo. Cosi intendo la conversatione civile, non per rispettosolo della Citta. ma in considerazione de' costumi, et dcllc maniere, che la rendonocivile" {La civil conversazione, ed. Amedeo Quondam. 2 vols. [Fcrrara, 1993], 1:41).

9Guazzo. The Civile Conversation, p. 224.'"Ibid., p. 167.


republican and post-Renaissance, "commercial," views of civil life, but it alsooffers a new perspective on the reality of early modern republicanism.

In the years between 1625 and 1630 Im Serenissima was wracked by adivisive clash between poorer and richer nobles over the meaning of citizenship: whether, as in the theory of republicanism, all were to be held equallycapable of ruling and being ruled in turn, or, as in its practice, only those ofsufficient wealth were to be given power. At the same time, the city was thescene of an extraordinary celebration of Montaigne-style "perfect" friendshipbetween two aristocrats—one rich, one poor, and both socially marginalized.Those who supported a reform of the Venetian constitution to bring it backinto line with the mythical equality of the old Republic saw in the idea ofperfect friendship a support for their vision, while those who defended theoligarchical status quo were compelled to invent a new argument to support aconcept of friendship that had no classical pedigree. In these discussions wccan hear contemporaries thrashing out what it meant to "live civillie." AsGuazzo had suggested in his great book, this turned on redefining friendshipto suit a world rather of "well willers than true friends."

In what follows we will try to distinguish the different layers of this Venetiandebate and then explore them in turn: first, the political confrontation of 1628;then, the celebration of "heroic friendship"; and, finally, the sophisticated analyses of political community in terms of friendship that followed these eventsand sought to make sense of them. It is in the light of this examination thatwe can, in conclusion, assess the implications of this Venetian episode forexisting narratives of the origins of "civil society."

Rcnicr Zeno, who had gained some European notoriety for his confrontational behavior toward the Pope when accredited as the Venetian ambassadorto the Holy See, played on the feeling that Venice had become a republic oftwo classes, the great families and everyone else. The political movement thathe catalyzed brought this sense of disenfranchisement out into the open. Hisstory canbetold because a young, middling Venetian nobleman, Zuan AntonioVenier, whoaligned himself with the Sarpian party and, in thebeginning, withZeno, decided to write the history of this failed movement. His Storia dellerivoluzioni seguite nel governo dellaRepublica di Venezia etdellainstituzionedell'Ecc.mo Consiglio dei X sino alia sua regolazione del 1628cast the storyof Zcno's movement as an episode in the history—and breakdown—of theVenetian mixed constitution. It was never published, but it survives in manymanuscript versions."

"The modern histories of Rcnicr Zcno's movement are by Gaetano Cozzi—"II

6 Miller

Venier placed Zeno's bid for power in the broader context of debates aboutthe reorganization of the Venetian mixed constitution that began in 1582. Inthat year agroup of young and politically activist nobles—the so-called gio-vani—sought constitutional redress for the progressive ^enfranchisement ofpoor nobles that had already been underway for a few decades. Their partialsuccess—the jumping-off point for William Bouwsma's classic Venice and theDefense of Republican Liberty—marked the politicization of this issue. Theswing back toward oligarchy after the Interdict Crisis was the "first cause" ofZeno's attempt to reform the Council ofTen.12 In March 1625 Zeno spoke outin favor of debt forgiveness for poor nobles and adopted such intemperatelanguage in criticizing his colleagues that he was banned for ten years. Thatthe children ofDoge Giovanni Cornaro were allowed to accept ecclesiasticalbenefices while another, lesser noble was condemned to exile for doing sohardened opinion against the great families. Zeno's ban was lifted in June 1626,but it was not until the late summer of 1627 that he returned to politics withhis election asone of the three chairs of the Council ofTen, La Serenissima'smost supreme body. Using the same authority that he had earlier attacked,Zeno opened up to public scrutiny the council's earlier decision in favor ofthe Cornaro children. He charged the doge with working on behalf ofhis ownfamily and trying to insinuate himself as first citizen, "contrary to the publicgood and the conservation, concord, and universal tranquillity of our republic."'1 The English ambassador, Isaac Wake, described the situation in termsfamiliar from contemporary English political thought. On October 26/Novem-

movimento di Rcnicr Zeno e la correzionc del Consiglio dci died" is thesixth chapterof Cozzi's // doge Nicold Contarini: Ricerche sul patriziato veneziano agli inizi delSeicento (Venice and Rome, 1958), now reprinted in Venezia barocca: Conflitti diuomini e idee nella crisi delSeicento veneziano (Venice, 1995)—and Charles J. Rose,"Marc Antonio Venier, Renier Zeno and "flic Myth of Venice,'" The Historian 36(1974): 479-97. For an account ofthe different manuscript versions ofVenier's history,sec Cozzi, // doge Nicold Contarini, reprinted in Venezia barocca, chap. 8, p. 165, n.1; and Rose, p. 485, n. 19. I cite from the copy cataloged in Leopold von RankeManuscripts ofSyracuse University (Syracuse, N.Y., n.d.), p. 105, as Ranke Manuscript#63. Venier died in 1631 at the age of thirty-five in the same outbreak ofplague thatled to the building of the Church of Santa Maria della Salute.

12 On the social crisis of the nobility, sec Alexander Cowan, "Richand Pooramongthe Patriciate in Early Modern Venice," Studi Vencziani, n.s., 6 (1982): 147-60; MarioScczzoso, "Nobilita senatoria e nobilita minore a Venezia trasei e settecento," NuovaRivista Storica 69 (1985): 503-30; and James Cushman Davis, The Decline of theVenetian Nobility as a Ruling Class (Baltimore, 1962), p. 107.

13 Zuan Antonio Venier, Storia della rivoluzioni seguite nelgovemo della Republicadi Venezia, Venice, Biblioteca Museo Civico Corer, MS 3762, 152. See also Ranke MS63, 135. 105, 109-10, 114, 111.

Friendshipand Conversation in Seventeenth-Century Venice 1

ber 5, 1627, he wrote to Lord Conway in London that Zeno accused Cornaroof having breached "the fundamentall Lawes of this State."14

Zeno's shaming of the dogal family was not left unpunished; as he left thecouncil chamber late one December night an attempt was made on his life.The astounding fact of an attempted political assassination in what until thenhad been perceived as Europe's most stable regime startled someof the mostsophisticated political observers; we know that the Dupuy brothers in Parisand Fabri de Pcircsc in Aix-cn-Provence discussed its implications.1'1 The English ambassador in Venice, for his part, added that "My Lord Carlcton's oldfriend Sigre. Zen hath put all this town in an uproarc and is in danger to losehis Life or his Liberty" for having spoken against the doge.16

After Zeno's recovery he was again elected to the Council of Ten in July1628. He proceeded to complain that it had become a "star chamber" despitethe fact that its entire authority had come from the Maggior Consiglio, whichremained the "Patron" of the republic and whose role was "to moderate andrein in the otherwise immoderate desire to dominate" and so to maintain publicliberty.17 The creeping extension of theTen's mandate threatened to upset thisbalance.18 Zeno likened its several attempts to have him legally muzzled to the

" Wake to Conway, October26/November 5, Public Record Office [P.R.O.l, Sp. 99.28, fol. 194r.

IS A letter from Francois-Auguste de Thou, son of the late, great historian Jacques-Auguste, dated "6 January 1628 a Mr Dupuy" and labeled on the overleaf "affaire deRcnicr Zen," is found in a volume of letters to Pcircsc (Paris Bibliotheque Nationale[B.N.], MS. Nouvcllcs acquisitions francaises 5173, fols. 40-41). Ithad obviously beenforwarded from Dupuy. Another copy is in Aix-en-Provcncc, Bibliotheque Mcjancs.MS 212 (1030), 423-24. It is printed along with other letters from de Thou to thebrothers Dupuy in Revue Retrospective, 2d ser., 3 (1835): 340. Peiresc received, independently, another account of this "accident extraord.'0" in a letter from de la Laneof January 26, 1628 (Paris B.N. MS Dupuy 705, fol. 61v). He possessed a "Relationedes diffcrents de RENIER ZENO et ZORZI CORNER" (Carpcntras, Bibliotheque In-guimbertine, MS 1798, fols. 378-79), which seems to be referred to in his letter to thebrothers Dupuy of February 5, 1628 (Lettres de Peiresc, ed. Philippe Tamizey de Lar-roque, 7 vols. (Paris, 1888-98), 1:510). A week later he explained that "ce que dietM' de Thou de 1'affairede ce Renier Zeno et de la procedure de ce pauvrc dogge deVenize est excellent a mon gre et bien digne de n'estrc pas ignore et qui debvoit pasestreobmis en la relation quejc vous en envoyay la semaine passe" (Peiresc to Dupuy.February 12, 1628, Lettres de Peiresc, 1:531).

'« Wake to Carlcton, July 10/20, 1628, P.R.O., Sp. 99, 30, fol. 42r.17 Ranke MS 63, 181, 192.18 "L'amplificationc deH'auttorita del Consiglio di Dieci per loro intcressi, e fanno

che gF Amici, c Parcnti, quando sono in esso, non sono piu Amici, nc Parcnii. . . poichequando uno cntra nel Consiglio di Dieci, 16 imbevono di concetti falsi, c catlivi conpersuadenti, chc alhora sono veramente Signor della Republica, chc non sono obligatia Lcgge alcuna, e che quando si tratta dell'auttorita del Consiglio di Dieci, non si deveconoscere alcuno . . . e che queste sono le instruttioni, per le quali si pretende haver

8 Miller

practices of those contemporary masters of reason of state, Richelieu, Olivares,and Buckingham.1"

Zeno singled out the Ten's permanent secretaries as prime instruments ofthis kind of institutionalized corruption. Secretaries had gained positions ofprominence across Europe because the complexity of politics, finance, and warmade the maintenance ofa professional bureaucracy necessary.20 As acreatureofthe court and a conduit for official business, the secretary had to cultivatesecrecy and dissimulation, making him an ideal figure of ragion di stato anda brilliant target for its critics. Educated observers of European politics, likethe papal secretary Panfilo Persico, thought Venice progressive precisely forhaving established a permanent secretaryship.21 It was this very group thatZeno attacked as a threat to established constitutional norms and liberties.Whereas members of the Council ofTen were elected for a specified term ofmonths, its unclcctcd secretaries were permanent and so could substitute theirinterests for the common good and also use their confidential information tooperate independently of the Great Council.22 The secretaries were the oneswho claimed that the Council ofTen and not the Maggior Consiglio was the"vero Padrone della Republica"—"a thought," observed Zeno, "very far fromthe truth and even further from the intentions of those who created it." In theTen, he argued, "the Secretaries are the cause ofevery evil, the origin ofeverytumult." doing in Venice what favorites like the mareschal d'Ancre and theduke ofLcrma did in France and Spain.23 Zeno challenged the council to decideif they or he best deserved the name of "buon Cittadino."24

auttorita di rcgolar. et aniiullar lc Parti del Maggior Consiglio" (anonimo, "Relatione,"Venice. Biblioteca Museo Civico Corer MS Cod. Ciccogna 1495, 168).

"'Ranke MS 63. 183. . .2n Sec Salvatorc S. Nigro, "The Secretary," Baroque Personae, ed. Rosano Villan

(Chicago, 1995), pp. 82-99; Lina Bolzoni. "II Secrctario Neoplatonico (F. Patrizi, A.Qucrcnglii. V. Gramina)." in La Corte eil "Cortegiano." II. Un modelio europeo, ed.Adriano Prosper! (Rome, 1980), pp. 133-69; Kenneth R. Bartlett, "Italian Theory andEnglish Practice in the Tudor State," in Lctocha, ed. (n. 5 above), pp. 109-26. OnVenetian secretaries, in particular, sec Maltco Casini, "Rcalta c simboli del cancellergrande Veneziano in eta moderna (XVI-XVII)," Studi Veneziani, n.s., 22 (1991): 195-251, esp. 217.

21 Panfilo Persico. // Segretario (Venice, 1629), p. 80. See also Gabnele Zmano, //Segretario . . . dove si dimostra I'arte di maneggiar ttitti i negotii, sr di Stato, come ditutti f>li altri affari (Venice. 1625). That he published this alongside a book entitled //Consiglier ,. .dove si /nostra con qual'arte &accortezza debba procedere in tuttiConsi'gli per ben Pubblico d'ogni stato (Venice, 1625) and another entitled Della Ra-gione di Stato (Venice, 1626) makes clear just where the secretary belonged in thecontemporary political landscape.

22 Ranke MS 63 (n. 11 above), 156, 198-99.21 Ibid., p. 196. On the "favorite," see Francesco Benigno, L'Ombra del Re: Mimstri

e lotta politico nella Spagna delSeicento (Venice, 1992).* Ranke MS 63, 144-45.


At the end of August, the Great Council voted to "correct" abuses by stripping the Council of Ten of someof its powers and making it lessautonomous.September 1628 was devoted to debating six corrections. The Venetian crisisturned on the relationship between the two councils. Wake's lettersof September 1628describethecrisis of sovereignty in which theyconfronted each other."Our civil warrcs in this Towne" continue, wrote Wake on September 5/15,fueled by the division between the Great Council and Council of Ten. "TheGran Consiglio doth now take his [Zeno's] protection, & as they arc at thisinstant in hand with regulating the transcendent power of the Cons, di dieci[Council of Ten]." Wake believed that the "body of this state & governmentis so much fallen from the athlctical constitution which it hath long enjoyed"that, without the discipline imposed by fear of their hostile neighbors, theRepublic would collapse of its own accord.25 In the next letter, Wake reportedthat the "intestine & civil warres have suppressed this wcekc all discourse ofthe publique." The Council of Ten had been forced to revoke its order banishing Zeno. In an address to the Maggior Consiglio, Zeno had "rcmonstrate[d|the wrong donne unto the Councel & the whole state by the inobscrvation offundamental! Lawes, which were troden under foote by the usurped authorityof the Counccll of Ten." Zeno succeeded in establishing a commission of fivecorrectors to whomhad been"delegateda powerof regulating the transcendentauthority of the Council of Ten."26 But who could regulate a "transcendentauthority"? However "athlctical" the constitution, sovereignty had to residesomewhere, and Zcno's bid was to reestablish it in the socially more inclusivebody where he believed it had always lain. The struggle between the MaggiorConsiglio and the Ten, like those between rulers elsewhere in Europe—England in this year of the Petition of Right being a notable example—had todo with fixing the location of supreme authority in a structure designed tobalance rather than concentrate power.27

In this climactic debate Zeno displayed his wealth of oratorical energy—and his limited ideas. The day was carried by the great patricians who implicitly rejected the principle that all citizens were equal by explicitly rejecting theprinciple of equal access ofall citizens to all offices. They accused Zeno oftrying "tocause confusion and destruction ofevery rule ofgood government,"called his followers "desperate individuals wishing to change their luck," anddenounced as monstrous their support of a particular person rather than theCouncil of Ten, "on which depended the salvation of everyone."28 Any dcro-

25 Wake to Conway, September 5/15, 1628, P.R.O., Sp. 99, 30, fol. I56r.2f-Wake to Conway, September 12/22, 1628, P.R.O., Sp. 99. 30, fol. 166r-v.27 Ranke MS 63, 147.28 "Che Renier Zen . . . tcntando di concitar Fanimo di ogn'uno per causar confu-

sione, e distnizione di ogni rcgola di buon governo, con pcricolo di peggiori consc-guenze ... col fine appunto della tranquillita, e conservazion della libcrta della Patria"

10 Miller

gation from its authority would precipitate "an infinity of atrocities and athousand subversions on a daily basis." But "above all, subjects ofminor statuscould not be permitted to enter the council so as not to jeopardize its prestige "29 The oligarchs' strategy was laid out some years before mthe famousOpinion on "How the Republic of Venice Ought to be Governed Internallyand Externally," originally ascribed to Sarpi and written, according to GaetanoCozzi, between 1615 and 1625, though not published until late in the century.This breviary on Venetian politics from apatrician point of view emphasizedthe need for the Council of Ten to retain all real power "in hidden and secretways not to be discovered."30 Attempts to limit the authority of the Ten wereto be blocked as they could only result in "a constant annihilation of theirDecrees, amanifest depression of the great Nobility and an Exaltation of thelesser."31

Toward the end of the crisis the English ambassador commented, "Neverwas wise man soe foolishly lost, nor a good cause soe ill handled."32 Thehistorian Venier drew aclearer lesson from the story: better to have the supportof the few but great than the many but weak.33 The Council of Ten triumphed

(Ranke MS 63 149). "Questi contra esso Zeno inveivano con ogni maggior maldicenza,chiamandolo u'omo fazionario, e sediziose, e dicendo, che non aderivano a lui se nonpersone disperate, evolgiose di procurare di mutar fortuna; Che era cosa mostruosa ilvoler far maggior conto d'un particolare, che di un Cons." di tanta importanza, dal qualedipendeva la salvezza di ogn'uno" (156). , ,

» "Infinita di casi atroci, e mille sovversioni, sicche gli uomim non sanano sicunnelle proprie Casse; Che per6 bisognava mantener ilC.X. in somma venerazione ...Ma sopra il tutto non doversi permettere, che entrino in esso soggetti di minor condi-zione accio non perdi la stima presso dei sudditi" (Ranke MS 63, 156).

3° Opinione falsamente ascritta al Padre Paolo Servita, come debba governarstin-ternamente &esternamente la Republica Venetiana, per haver ilperpetuo Dominio(Venice 1685), p. 17: "ma con modo nascosto, esegreto, eche non si scopra. Cozzi,"Una vicenda della Venezia barocca: Marco Trevisano e la sua *eroica amiciziaBollettino dell'lstituto di storia della societa edello stato veneziano 3(1960): 61-134,101 n 55; now reprinted in Venezia barocca (n. 11 above), pp. 326-409.

3- The Opinion of Padre Paolo ... (London, 1689), p. 34. "Impedire con tuttol'animo, econ tutte le forze, non risparmiando ogni mezzo, che possa cooperare, che1' Avogador non ardisca di portar la censura de' decreti del Consiglio de Dieci, edelSenato ad altro consiglio; ma se questi meritassero censura, quella mano che gli nastabilito, quella stessa si modifichi, attrimente sempre restaranno distretti con cotaldepressione de' grandi, emanifesta esaltazione degl' infini" {Opinione di Fra Paolo[London, 1788], p. 40).

32 Wake to Conway, August 4, 1628, P.R.O., Sp. 99, 30, 53r.33 Ranke MS 63 (n. 11 above), 223: "Cosl l'esperienza fece conoscer, esser molto

saldo appoggio quello, che si fonda nella grazia di pochi Grandi, che quello, che sifonda nelPUniversale: poiche questo ha poca memoria delle cose, e cessato un certoprimo ardore, si scorda affatto di quelle. Ma quegli altri sono sempre fermi in unvolere."


because it had the support of "all the adherents of the Doge and the enemiesof Zeno ... in a word, all the Grandi." "Thus," Venier continued, "the citybegan to divide in an ugly fashion into two factions which were termed theZenisti and the Cornaristi but which were, in effect, those of the rich and thepoor, of the more important and the more inferior, factions of which nonecould be more dangerous in republics."34 Abolished were the old family alliances thathadalways served to moderate debate. Even a majority intheCouncil of Ten could not hide the presence of a large and dissatisfied minority, thepresence of which threatened the very operation of government.35

The institutionalization of this division, according to Venier, was the legacyof the movement. Zeno was defeated "because almost all the Grandi were hisenemies" and they intimidated potential supporters into staying away. TheCornari, in the meantime, "persisted more than ever in their transgressions,having no more regard for the laws and calm of the republic but only for thesatisfaction of their own ease and interest."36 The poor nobles were appeasedbytheaffirmation oftheir status asnobles and bythe establishment ofseparatelegal institutions for them and for noncitizens. In thelight of this resolution itis easy to seewhy theMaggior Consiglio blocked a proposal to sell theprivilege of citizenship to raise money during the war over Crete (ca. 1645). Thebare title of "citizen" was all that separated poor nobles from mere subjects,and its further dilution risked depriving them of even this last claim to distinction.37 And although there were to be subsequent attempts to correct theimbalance of power within the mixed state (in 1655, 1667, 1671, and 1677),the grip of the oligarchs was neverto be broken.38

34 Ibid., pp. 157-58: "Perche tutti liaderenti al Doge, i nemici del Zeno, equelli delC.X. [Council ofTen] dell'anno presente, che inuna parole vuol dir tutti i Grandi, sierano maravigliosamente accordati di fare ogni loro sforzo possibile, perche il C.X.passasse prevedendo molti di quelli, che succedendo altrimenti, riceveriano essi ungran colpo nella riputazione ... ecost laCitta incominciava bruttamente adividersi indue Fazioni, chesi chiamavano di Zenisti, e di Cornaristi ma eran ineffetto de ricchi,e dei poveri, de piu importanti, e di piu inferiori; Fazioni, delle quali non soglionotrovarsi nelle Republiche le piu perniziose."

35Ibid., pp. 158-59.36 Ibid., p. 226: "Parendo che i Cornari perseverassero piu che mai nelle loro tras-

gressioni, ne avessero alcun riguardo alle leggi ed alia quiete della Repub", purchesodisfacessero al loro comodo, et interesse."

37 Gaetano Cozzi, "Venezia, una repubblica di principi?" Studi Veneziani, n.s., 11(1986): 139-57; Dork Raines, "Pouvoir ou privileges nobiliares: Le dilemme du patriciatVemtien face aux agregations du XVIIe siecle," Annates E.S.C. (1991), pp. 827-74.

38 Marco Zanetto, "Mito di Venezia" ed "antimito" negli scrittidel seicento veneziano (Venice, 1991); for echoes of precisely this same debate in the Venetian terra-ferma, see Joanne Ferraro, "Oligarchs, Protesters, and the Republic of Venice: The'Revolution of the Discontents' in Brescia, 1644-1645," Journal of Modern History

12 Miller

Zeno's attempted "constitutional coup" of 1628, like the failed conspiracyof Giulio Cesare Vacchero in Genoa that same year, gave the most dramaticpossible expression to the long-simmering tension that had been affecting Venetian politics since the partial reform ofthe Council ofTen in 1582. In Genoa,too, the tension could be traced back to the most recent round ofconstitutionalreform in 1576. It is no coincidence that the climax of Zeno's campaign topreserve the old republican idea of equal citizenship regardless ofinequalitiesof wealth coincided with the high point of the campaign in celebration of"perfect," or "heroic," friendship. The place ofthis bizarre episode in the widercontext ofVenetian history has been brilliantly unraveled by Cozzi.39 Thestory,in brief, is as follows. In 1618 the older, wealthier Niccolo Barbarigo was thevictim of a whispering campaign that led to his exclusion from fashionablecircles. The younger, poorer, impetuous Marco Trevisano stood up for him,was ostracized by society, and then moved in with the older man's family.They soon pledged mutual fidelity and took the unusual step, in 1625, ofpublishing their wills in which each made the other the caretaker ofhis worldlyg()0tis_no small matter since Barbarigo had substantial possessions, as wellas a wife and children.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—as, indeed, earlier—friendshipwas a much-discussed social relationship.'"' The world of provincial nobilitydescribed by Jonathan Dewald, Sharon Kettering, James Amelang, ChristopherW. Stocker, David Halsted, Otto Brunncr, Antonio Manuel Hespanha, Barto-lomc" Clavero, and, for the earlier period, Richard Trcxler not only took forgranted the ethical and social meanings of friendship but also recognized itspolitical value.41 Venice was no different. Adebate about citizenship (Zeno's

60 (1988): 627-53; for the European "anti-myth" literature, see David Wootton, "Ulysses Bound? Venice and the Idea of Liberty from Howell to Hume," in Republicanismand Commercial Society, 1600-1776, ed. David Wootton (Stanford, Calif., 1994), pp.341-67.

19 Cozzi, "Una vicenda della Venezia barocca: Marco Trevisano e la sua 'eroicaamicizia,"' reprinted in Venezia barocca.

40 For friendship in antiquity, see Luigi Pizzolato, L'idea di amicizia nel mondoclassic/) e cristiano (Turin, 1993); and David Konstan, Friendship in the ClassicalWorld (Cambridge, 1997); and for the Middle Ages, sec Brian Patrick McGuire, Friendship and Community: The Monastic Experience, 350-1250 (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1988).For a study ofthe politics of friendship, sec Hoist Hulter, Politics as Friendship: TheOrigins ofClassical Notions ofPolitics in the Theory and Practice ofFriendship (Waterloo, Ontario, 1978); for a survey ofearly modem ideas ofonesort of friendship, seeLanger (n. 4 above).

41 Jonathan Dewald, Aristocratic Experience and the Origins of Modern Culture:France, 1570-1714 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1993), csp. pp. 104-8; James Ame-

Friendship one) Conversation in Seventeenth-Century Venice 13

with thegrandi) could also be conducted as a debate about friendship (Trcvi-sano's with the grandi). Zeno insisted on the restoration of a society of equalsand evoked the old republican dogma that individuals could only be excellentif their education included ruling and being ruled in turn. Trevisano, in turn,praised the "perfect" friendship that was able toestablish social equality in theface of the inequalities created by wealth. The grandi agreed that excellencecould be displayed through friendship. But then they redefined it soas to shiftthe meaning away from the equal friendship celebrated byTrevisano and hissupporters, which bore too close a resemblance to the presumed equality ofrepublican citizens who ruled and were ruled in turn—a privilege that couldno longer be permitted to poor nobles.

The story affords us a glimpse into the workings of a small aristocraticsociety of the sort found all across early modern Europe. What isextraordinaryis the self-consciousness with which friendship was celebrated in verse andprose, dialogue and declamation. The literature is a treasure trove for thoseinterested in understanding the social work of friendship in early modern Europe.42 A brief word about the contributors to this extraordinary project is inorder. They are mostly drawn from the ranks of local aristocratic writers andpoets, occasionally supplemented by someone from the terraferma or slightlyfurther afield such as Bologna. Few names were of more than minuscule im-

lang, Honored Citizens of Barcelona: Patrician Culture and Class Relations, 1490-1714 (Princeton, N.J., 1986); Jonathan Brown, Images and Ideas in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Painting (Princeton, N.J., 1978); Sharon Kctlering, Patrons, Brokers, andClients in Seventeenth-Century France (New York, 1986); Stocker (n. 5 above), pp.276-77; David G. Halsted, Poetry andPolitics in the Silcsian Baroque: Neo-Stoicismin the Work ofChristophorus Colerus and His Circle (Wiesbaden, 1996); Otto Brunncr,Adeliges Landleben und Ettropdischer Geist (Salzburg, 1949); Antonio M. Hespanha,"La economfa de lagracia," in La Gracia del Derecho: Economia de la cultura en laEdad Modema, trans. Ana Canellas Haurie (Madrid, 1993), pp. 151-76; BartolomeClavero, La grace du don: Anthropologic catholique de I'economie moderne (Paris.1996 [19911); Richard C. Trcxler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (Ithaca, N.Y..1980), chap. 4, "The Friendshipof Citizens."

42 Thereare three collections of letters, poems, andcelebratory epigrams: L'Amicitiaincomparabile dcgl' illustrissi. signori Nicolo Barbarigo e Marco Trivisano . . . celebrate con diverse maniere di poesie et altre compositioni volgari e latine da moldeccellenti ingegni del nostro secolo (Venice, 1627); Francesco Pona, ed., // Sccolodell'Oro rinasccnte nella amicitia fra Nicold Barbarigo e Marco Trivisano descrittoda Ludovico Zuccolo, which includes several of thesenotices; andFrancesco Pona, ed.,Ipreludi delle glorie degl'illustrissimi signori Nicolo Barbarigo et Marco Trivisano(Venice, 1630), which is the most extensive collection, running to422 pages and containing poems and texts by at least 98 individuals. The contributors include notablemembers of Venetian academic life, such as Giovanni Francesco Lorcdano, Pictro Mi-chiele, Francesco Belli, and Giovanni Francesco Busenello, all of the Academiadegl'Incogniti.

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portance at the time and none now trip off the tongue. And yet, their poems,plays, and short essays are typical works of the age, offering us aglimpse intoa lostworld of aristocratic conventions and pretensions.

The Aristotelian preference for friendship as a relation ofequality was atouchstone for the defenders of Trevisano, who believed the eroica amiciziato be an example ofideal republican citizenship.43 Luigi Manzini, in the mainnarrative of the friendship, relied on the argument in Nichomachean Ethics,book 8, for his definition offriendship as "apractice that inclines the soul ofa friend to love and to do things for the other with manifest reciprocity offeelings."44 The friendship of Barbargio and Trevisano, he declared, was aliving example of Aristotle's definition; the famed ancient friendships ofPy-lades and Orestes and of Damon and Pythias were cited repeatedly.

Montaigne's famous essay played an important role in this Venetian story.For his tale of unconditional love was copied out by Fulgenzio Micanzio atSarpi's request and given as a gift to Trevisano, who at the same time hadtaken to paying Sarpi regular visits. In his Life ofSarpi, Micanzio paused tocomment on the heroic friendship and hailed it as "one of the glories of ourcity and century."45 Others described this friendship in Montaigne's terms asan illustration of themaxim, "What is thefriend? Another self [Amicus quid?alter ego].46 Still others attempted to reduce friendship to a series of rules.Agostino Superbi promulgated four and Francesco Pona an astonishingthirty!47

Praise for Barbarigo's wife, Cecilia, elucidates another aspect ofideal friendship: it was not love.4" In its constancy and fidelity—and occasionally even

41 In his guidebook for gentlemen, Antonio Colluraffi (who also contributed poemsand essays in praise ofthe eroica amicizia) singled out similarity as the foundation oflasting friendship: Video del Gentil 'huomo di republica nel governo politico, ethicoedeconomico: over II nobile Veneto, 2d ed. (Venice, 1633). This is a workthatbelongsto the same European genre as Henry Peacham's Complete Gentleman (1634).

44 "L'Amicitia e un Habito, che inclina Panimo d'un amico all'amoree farbeneficioaH'altro con manifesta scambievolezza d'affetti" (Luigi Manzini, Lettera diRaguaglio,in Pona, ed., I preludi, p. 170). For more on Manzini, see Gian Luigi Betti, "LuigiManzini a Venezia tragli Incogniti," Ateneo Veneto, n.s., 26(1988): 169-79.

45 Montaigne (n. 4 above), p. 212; for the relationship between Trevisano and Sarpi,see Fulgenzio Micanzio, Vita del Padre Paolo, in Paolo Sarpi, lstoria del ConcilioTridentino, ed. Corrado Vivanti (Turin, 1974), pp. 1392-96.

46 Guido Casoni, "Ode" in Pona, ed., Ipreludi p. 81;Manzini, Lettera di Raguaglio,p. 200.

47 Agostino Superbi, Discorso dell'incomparabile eteroica amicitia, sig. A4r; Francesco Pona, Le Leggi dell'amicitia Tratte dal Dialogo di Cicerone, in Pona, ed., /preludi, pp. 267-68.

48 Alessandro Terzi, // Trionfo dell'amicitia, in Pona, ed., I preludi, p. 65; also Antonio Colluraffi, Panegirico ... sopra I'incomparabile Amicitia de gl'illustrissimi Signori NB et MT, in Pona, ed., / preludi, p. 243.


equality—marriage provided a much better model. "Friendship in itself,"wrote Pona, himself known to posterity as the author of a notorious pornographic novel, La Lucerna (1628, 2d ed.), "is nothing buta marriage of souls,excluding injuries, discord, deceptions, and those other wickednesses thatarepunishable by law Friendship aspires to unity, which is the most perfectof all things both created and uncreated."49 The idealization of marriage incontemporary European drama and literature reflects this widespread belief—theplays ofCorneille, to take oneexample, arefull of wives who demonstratetheir constantia in devotion to their beleaguered partners.

Buthow could perfect Aristotelian friendship like thatdescribed so lyricallybyMontaigne, which isa relation between two persons only, serve as the basisfor a wider social order? This was the chief difficulty for the Trevisano camp,which wanted to promote heroic friendship as a panacea for Venice's politicalills. Though stressing theideal—"He whosaysFriend, saysloyalty; whosaysFriend, says charity; who says Friend, says whole and incorruptible goodness"50—even Trevisano's defenders had to argue for the coupling of friendship with beneficence, widening the sphere of sodality beyond the pair offriends." Like Seneca, and many early modern theorists, Giulio Strozzi wrotethat friendship had always been cultivated through "reciprocal offices," andManzini added that the exchange was of not only "duties, but also benefitstoward the friend."52 Pona even turned the story of the friendship into a closet

49 "L'Amicitia in se medesima, che altro non e, che un Matrimonio de gli animi,esclude le ingiurie, le discordie, i furti, e tutte quelle sceleratezze, chesogliono esseredalle leggi punite ... L'Amicitia aspira alia unita, ch'e la piu perfetta di tutte lecose,cosl create, come increate" (Franceso Pona, Panegirico ... scritto all III.' GlorioseSignora, Cecilia Dandola Barbarigo, p. 178). Guidobaldo Benamati also dedicated //Trivisano. Poema Herocivico (Frankfurt, 1630) to Barbarigo's wife.

50 "Che dice Amico, dice fedelta, che dice Amico, dice carita;che dice Amico, diceintegerrima &incorruttibile bonta" (Bersabita [Castellani], preface to Las Casas, lstoriao brevissima relatione della distruttione dell'Indie Occidentali, in Pona, ed., I preludi,p. 257). Barbarigo and Trevisano are explicitly mentioned in a passage that contraststhe security of one civil society with the destruction of another.

51 Giulio Strozzi, // Barbarigo overv Vamico sollevato (Venice, 1628), fol. 4r;Torsi,Lettera, p. 225; Superbi, Discorso, sig. a3r. While Barbarigo and Trevisano werepraised in very general terms, certain virtues were given special emphasis: for Barbarigo, magnificence, gratitude, and confidence; for Trevisano, prudence and, especially,constancy. See Manzini, Lettera diRaguaglio, p. 208; Colluraffi, Panegirico, pp. 242,245. The constancy of the friendship was frequently singled out in the celebratoryliterature. See, e.g., Colluraffi, Lettera ...in risposta alSig. Girolamo Gabarozzi, Che 7Amicitia di Theseo, e Pirito, di Pilade, ed Oreste, di Pitia e Damone e senza paragoneinferiore a quella delBarbarigo e del Trevisano, p. 237; Benamati, Trivisano, pp. 75,167, 169, 172, 367; and Manzini, Lettera di Raguaglio, p. 191.

52 "Officii, ma beneficii ancora verso I'amico" (Strozzi, sig. ar); see also Manzini,Letteradi Raguaglio, p. 209; Superbi, Discorso, sig. a4r.

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drama, whose grand conclusion featured the two heroes on either side of afigure ofamicizia and themselves positioned between virtue and honor, emblems of the republican and courtly worlds.53

Trevisano sought, as much as possible, to link the eroica amicizia to themost recent glorious moment in Venetian history. In his published will, beneficiaries included Sarpi's follower Micanzio; Alvise Secchini, whose ridottoat the sign of the Nave d'oro was the center of intellectual discussion in thegood old days at the turn of the century; and Venier, soon to be Zeno's historian. Venier also received the dedication of Strozzi's // Barbarigo (1630),while Trevisano, later in life, praised Zeno in print.54

Was this dedication mere coincidence? Can anything more be said of thewider significance ofthe links between the movements led by Zeno and Trevisano? A series of manuscripts authored by Trevisano and his sympathizerssuggest an answer.55 Reflecting at a later date on his denunciation in 1631 ofthe powerful senator and international humanist patron Domenico Molino,Trevisano provides an account of the crisis of Venetian republicanism thatexplicitly connects the story ofZeno's failure with his own high-profile campaign in praise ofamicizia. Before becoming Trevisano's leading antagonist,Molino had been one of Zeno's opponents in the struggle to "correct" theCouncil of Ten. Hehadbeena protege" of Sarpibut then wentoverto thepartyofthe grandi, whose leader hesoon became.56 His prominence inboth episodesis an indication that Zeno and Trevisano at least shared the same opponents.

Trevisano defended his own actions in the most classically patriotic terms.He explained that it was asa "zealot" for the glorious liberty ofthe Republic,"persuaded by the arguments and authority ofpolitical writers who teach thatliberty isdefended by public accusation" and "excited by the example ofthemost esteemed citizens," that he had declared Molino to posses"an excess ofdangerous authority that far surpassed the limits of equality and civil mod-

53 Francesco Pona, La Immortalita Decretata nel parlamento degli Dei. A Contem-platione dell'Amicitia .... 2d ed. (Venice, 1662). Trevisano dedicated this secondedition to two Venetian nobles. Other dramatizations of the friendship include Man-cini's Gli Amici Heroi,favola tragicomica boscareccia (Venice, 1628); and Terzi.

54 Marco Trevisano, L'inunortalitd di Gio. Battista Ballarino (Venice, 1671), p. 55.55 They are found in Venice, Biblioteca Museo Civico Corer MS Cicogna 3424/1 in

a folder labeled "Molino, Domenico" bound consecutively in the samequire and include Cagione dell 'accusa contro SMI1"" Sig. Dorn" Molino data dame Marco Trevisanosuo concittadino. Et insolitii artificii da lui usati per impedire d'esser chiamato arenderne conto (fols. 1-8); Accuse (fols. 1-17); and Estratto dell'azioni Insigni mossedel Sig. Marco Trevisano I'Amico Eroe (fols. 17-20). The first is dated 1631 and thesecond is not dated, though reference to Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector indicatesa terminus a quo of 1653.

56 Gino Benzoni, "La Fortuna, La Vita, L'Operadi Enrico Caterino Davila," StudiVeneziani 16 (1974): 279-442, 373.


esty."57 In a fascinating example of the social power of books, Trevisano tookthe praise lavished upon Molino by his scholarly clients—something that onewould besurprised not to find—as evidence for Molino's unrepublican self-aggrandizement. Trevisano censured the dedications to Molino ofworks written by the Paduan antiquaries Baldassare Bonifacio and Lorenzo Pignoria. Norepublic, he alleged, could permit any citizen to be so shamelessly elevatedabove his peers in terms reeking ofprincely aspirations; that Molino had risenso far showed the extent of his too-great influence.58 One of the accusationsagainst Molino, as ifitproved his disloyalty to Venice, was his correspondencewith Protestants. These were, however, erudites like Isaac Casaubon, whoseedition ofPolybius's History had been urged by Sarpi asa service to the causeof liberty and certainly cannot be judged as treasonous.59 In the event, Trevisano succeeded only in goading Molino into arranging his exile, which wasaccomplished through the corruption and manipulation of Trevisano's ownbrother. All that he did, Trevisano kept repeating, was what any good citizen

57 "Commosso io MarcoTrevisano da honore, da debito, c come zelante della bcllae non mai interrotta Liberta della gloriosa nostra Vencziana Rcpub.\ cosl pervaso daragioni etautorita de Scrittori Politici che insegnano, quanto siano Paccuse neccssariaper mantenimento di quella, ete che Respublicae mutantur quandoque per vim quan-doque per dolum, e finalmente eccitato da esssempi de Cittadini piu reputatti, havendoiocon Sicurezza osservato, e parendomi, che ilSig.' Dom.° Molino nostra Concittadinohavesse con soverchia sagacita, e con eccesso dipericolosa autorita dimolto trapassatoi termini dell'ugualita, e modestia Civile" (Cagione, fol. lr).

58 In a volume published in 1628 (Musarum Uber XXV Urania), Bonifacio proclaimed Molino "Scudo, Torre, Spada, Basse dall'Imperio, Colonna della Patria.L'Oracolo, e L'Apollo del Senato Venetiano ... come quello che sostenta lipesi dellapatria, o pure perche con un Virtu governo lo Stato, et in un altro Luogo lo chiamaPadre della Patria" (in Trevisano, Cagione, fols. lv-2r). Pignoria's comparison ofMolino with Lorenzo the Magnificent in the Lettere Simboliche (1628) explicitly raisedthis issue. Trevisano cited as proof Pierre Mathieu's argument in the History ofFrancethat Lorenzo was to Florence what Pericles was to Athens: a tyrant in the guise ofrepublican leader (Cagione, fol. 2r). In the Accuse, Pignoria was described as "uomodi molta erudizion, e di acuto ingegno" (fol. 2v). Other authors and texts cited byTrevisano include Francesco Pona's dedication of his translation of Barclay's Argenis(Venice, 1629), which compared Molino to the king ofFrance, and Sigismondo Bal-don's dedication of his Storia delle cose della Citta di Lodi (Venice, 1629) to Molinoas "ruler" of Venice (Cagione, fols. 2v-3r).

59 William J. Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense ofRepublican Liberty (Berkeley andLos Angeles, 1968), p. 525. Hearing ofMolino's death, Peiresc—certainly no friendoftyrants—who had met him in Padua but communicated with him only indirectlythrough the letters sent to their mutual contact, Pignoria, exclaimed that so great washis pain that he would regret itas long as he lived (Peiresc to Diodati, March 31, 1636,quoted in Cecilia Rizza, Peiresc eI'ltalia [Turin, 1965], p. 181). Peiresc judged Molinoas "such a worthy patron of the men of letters of his century" and a true successor tothe great Pinelli (Peiresc to Naud6, January 31, 1636, Peiresc: Lettres a Naudi, ed.Philippe Wolfe [Paris, Seattle, and Tubingen, 19831, p. 73).

18 Miller

ought to do, in the hope of being an example for his fellows.60 Trevisanowrapped himselfin the mantle of Aristides. "I bore it [exile]," he wrote, "witha calm and tranquil spirit, knowing that it derived from nothing other thanillegitimate pretexts invented in order to have me removed from good citizenship."61

The text that follows this first-person account is a commentary on key wordsin the previous discourse. The "hero," as in Trevisano's virtu eroica, is definedas "one who knows how to rid himself of human sentiments and passions"—making a general acknowledgment of the contemporary European fashion forconstantia.62 It explained that citizens always had to guard their liberty in orderto avoid being deceived by pretended virtue. Tyrants always worked stealthily,moving under the cloak of deception, "pian piano," to subvert the laws sincemore rapid motion would alert people to their intentions.63 "Zeal" was whatwas demanded of the good citizen to protect the republic against such insidioussubversion and without it one was unworthy of the name of citizen.64

Trevisano was presented as an example of the ideal republican who put hishonor and service at the disposal of the patria and "whose fame penetratedevery corner of the world, and made so great the glory of the friendship thatKings themselves demanded his portrait from the Senate."65Trevisano's identification of the behavior of the friend and the citizen is less strange when seenagainst the backdrop of Zeno's contemporary social movement. The perfectfriend, like the "Gran Cittadino," was one who "abandoned his own interests"to seek those of the city. And just as friendship was a relationship governedby reason, citizens also had to possess a stoic self-control: "but where thesenses are preoccupied and, not to say sated, by blind passion they remaintotally insensible to this matter."66 The power of the citizen was to work for

60 "Io pretendevo di haver fatto quello il che ogni buon Cittadino era tenuto, e conlodatissimo Essempio allri miei Concittadini, e Senatori, che fosse per men gravi ca-gioni altre volte si mossero" (Trevisano, Cagione, fol. 5v).

61 Ibid., fol. 8v. "Che quanto ai torti procuratomi, e qui non tutti accenati, le supportocon animo riposato e tranquillo, sapendosi non d'altro derivare, che da illegitimi pretesi,inventati per essermi diportato di buon Cittadino, per parer mio evidentissimi, ines-cusabili e gravi, come concernenti Materia di Stato."

62 Trevisano, Accuse, fol. Iv. For general introductions to neostoicism, see MarkMorford, Stoics and Neostoics: Rubens and the Circle of Lipsius (Princeton, N.J.,1991); Richard Tuck, Philosophy and Government, 1572-1651 (Cambridge, 1993).

63 Trevisano, Accuse, fol. 3r-v.64 Ibid., fol. 3v.65 "La cui fama era penetrata in ogni parte del Mondo, e fatta cosl eminente de la

gloria dell'amicizia, che i Regni stessi ne avevano addimand" Peffegie al medesimoSenato di adornare la Galerie" (ibid., fol. 4r).

66 "Gran cittadino e quello che abbandona i proprii interessi d'andar espondere la


thewell-being of therepublic. "From this," added theglossator, "wasborn themaxim, to order the Republic for the equality of the citizens." Without it, asrecent history witnessed, there would be no way of maintaining a just constitution.67

Another undated piece of apologetica, Estratto dell'azioni Insigni mosse delSig. Marco Trevisano I'Amico Eroe, claimed that Trevisano displayed his valorin 1628 by promoting reform ofthe Council ofTen.68 This isthe most decisiveevidence that we ought to see Trevisano's campaign on behalfof perfect, orheroic, friendship in the light of Zeno's attempt to rally support for the oldconception of the equal republic. We learn here that when Trevisano rose toaddress the Maggior Consiglio after fifteen years of silence, in that crucialdebate of September 1628, it was to defend it as the "Supreme Patron of theRepublic." He received an attentive hearing, though largely as a curiosity. Hisfellows believedhim to be talkingabout himself, "being rather fixed in thesethoughts" that the reform of the Republic demanded "heroic virtue." In practice, hesuported the appointment ofcorrectors not bound by existing laws butrequired to report back to theGreat Council.69

Thealmost casual presentation ofTrevisano asa Zenist inthese manuscriptsshows how the two positions were complementary.70 Zeno argued that theVenetian constitutionwas threatened by the unbalanced accumulation of powerin the hands of a few. Friendship offered a model of equality that was a counterweight to this splintering effect ofeconomic stratification. While the exclusivity ofthe eroica amicizia mitigated its political usefulness, it offered a verypowerful symbol of aristocratic equality, and, thus, the most powerful argument for reform in an aristocratic republic. The "costanza di Trevisano" wasmeant to illustrate behavior appropriate for the friend and thecitizen.7' Does

vita in servigio della Patria ... ma dove lisensi sono preoccupati &non dir instoliditoda cieca passione restano appunta insensati a questa materie" (ibid., fol. 7v).

67 Ibid., fol. 5v.6B "Nel 1628 si mostra valoroso guadand con larghezze devoci laregolanza dei abuse

del C.X." (Estratto dell'azioni Insigni [n. 55 above], fol. 17r).69 Ranke MS 63 (n. 11 above), 167. The text in the unpublished Estratto dell'azioni

Insigni is taken word for word from Venier's history.70 Padre Agostino Superbi, for example, in his contribution to the literature praising

theeroica amicizia, devoted a discourse to "heroic friendship" and alsohailed Zeno as"mostcelebrated and learned in Laws, Philosophy, Politico and matters of state (cosedi stato)" (Trionfo Glorioso d'heroi illustri eteminenti dell'inclita &maravigliosi Cittadi Venetia [1627; dedicated in three parts dated 1628 and 1629], p.94).

71 Estratto dell'azioni Insigni, fol. 18v. He was still glorifying this political identityin 1667 when hepublished Le Pompe FunebrU Celebrata da Marco Trivisano L'AmicoHeme/ Alii suoi cari, e Gloriosi Concittadini mortifine/a quest'hora nella presenteGuerra contro il Turco per la Fede, per la Patria e per la Christianitd tuta (Venice,1667).

20 Miller

this mean that Trevisano had read Lipsius and was referring to particular philosophical arguments? No—though we know that in Genoa a translation ofDeConstantia was taken up by Ansaldo Ceba and Andrea Spinola, political reformers with a social agenda similar to that of Zeno and Trevisano.72 But itshows us how in politics, as in drama and opera, Lipsius's formulation hadsucceeded in becoming so recognized that it could be used as a rallying cry.

The backward-looking reform movements led by Zeno and Trevisano provoked an extraordinary—and, for this period in European history, unprecedented—discussion of how an explicitly unequal society of self-interestedindividuals could be held together.73 Their demand for a reform of citizenship,conducted in the name of friendship, provoked a fascinating response. Threewriters, only one of whom is even barely known, articulated different aspectsof the oligarchs' position, and their work amounts to a reinterpretation offriendship from a political point of view. Lodovico Zuccolo put his emphasison the role of conversation and beneficence; Tomaso Roccabella emphasizedreciprocity rather than perfection; and Vincenzo Sgualdi explained that reciprocity was no more than self-interested exchange and that it was this thatactually held together a society of fundamentally self-interested people.

Zuccolo, the Bolognese political thinker who spent many years-in Venice,had begun writing about friendship in the new world of ragion di stato longbefore Trevisano began his campaign.74 In the sixty-second of his Consider-ationi Politiche (1621) he had raised the question of whether friendship waspossible only between equals or also between unequals.75 In the dialogue entitled Delia cittafelice Zuccolo returned to the danger caused by extremes ofwealth and poverty. "Inequality between citizens," he wrote, "is the beginning

72 Carlo Bitossi, "Andrea Spinola: L'elaborazione di un 'Manuale' per la classe di-rigente," Miscellanea Storica Ligure ("Dibattito politico e problemi di governo a Ge-nova nella prima meta del Seicento") 7 (1975): 116.

71 To be sure, Trevisano's position implied that Venice ought to return to its pristineways as an equal republic, but this was only to acknowledge that it no longer was one.

74 On Zuccolo, see Convegno di studi in onore di Lodovico Zuccolo nel quarto cen-tenario della nascitd: Faenza 15-16 Marzo 1969 (Faenza, 1969); Paolo Pissavino,"Bolero e Zuccolo: Un Raffronto Metodologico," in Botero e la Ragion di Stato: Attidel Convegno in Memoria di Luigi Firpo (Torino 8-10 Marzo 1990), ed. A. EnzoBaldini (Florence, 1992), pp. 319-32. Also the articles of Rodolfo de Mattei collectedin 11 problema della ragion di stato nell'eta della Controriforma (Milan, 1979), and //pensiero politico italiano nell'eta della Controriforma, 2 vols. (Milan and Naples,1982).

75 Lodovico Zuccolo, "Se piu nasca la discordia tra i pari, 6 tra i dispari," in Consideration! politiche (1621; Venice, 1625) pp. 252-55. He also discussed friendship inthe forty-third and seventieth considerations.


and source of all the seditions and revolutions in a republic; equality, by contrast, is the source of union and of love."76

Zuccolo tackled the main theme, the preservation of a city through friendship, in the immediately following dialogue, entitled "Of Reciprocal Friendship among Citizens" [Della amicitia scambievole fra' cittadini].77 The discussion began with thefamiliar question of whether friendship was more likelyto be found among similar or dissimilar individuals but quickly turned toexamine the proposition thatthere existed twosorts of friendship, onebetweenequals and the other between unequals. Conversation linked the former, andbeneficence the latter. This fine distinction was one that Guazzo, the chieftheorist of "civil conversation," and his continuators did not make. "For theunion and tranquillity of citizens both types of friendship serve, but more thesecond [beneficence]," because while the bonds of conversation created independent relationships—Zuccolo wrote that they made "many cities out ofone city"—beneficence united many independent bodies into one, and thiswas what politics demanded.78

The "reciprocal benevolence of citizens" [benevolenza scambievole de' Cittadini], in Zuccolo's gloss of Aristotle, made for a contented society. In a cityruled only by laws the slightest slippage would result in corruption becausethere were no other restraints on action. "But where reciprocal love bindstogether the hearts of citizens, being without laws they will abstain from injuries and will be ready to give benefits."79 What manners did for Machiavelliand, later, patriotism did for Bolingbroke and honor for Montesquieu, friendship did for Zuccolo and his contemporaries, providing the glue that was believed a necessary supplement to written law.

'Thus," noted Zuccolo, linking his preliminary, didactic exposition to thedramatic dialogue that followed, "discoursed some years ago in Venice in asalon of nobles and great minds, the most prudent and learned Senator Domenico Molino." At the end of his lecture all assembled were silent, exceptTrevisano—of all people!—who asked, with Aristotle's definition of friend-

76 "Ladisugaglianza tra i Cittadini e principio, e fonte di tutte le seditioni, e rivo-lutioni nella Republica: 1'uguaglianza percontrario e causa di unione, e di amore; tantopiu, che Puguaglianza nella Citta non pu6 ne manco ben darsi, senon tra' mediocri"(Lodovico Zuccolo, "II Belluzzi, overo della Citta felice," in Dialoghi ne'quali convarita di eruditione si scoprono nuovi, e vaghi pensieri Filosofici, Morale, e Politico[Venice, 1625], p. 166). The question is also thetheme of thedialogue "Se piu nascela discordiatra i pari, 6 tra i dispari," pp. 252-53.

77 In the preface Ad Lectorem Zuccolo had explained that his preferred style was toput forward his own views first, soas to leave no room for readers tomisunderstand,and then recast theargument as a dialogue between characters (Dialoghi, sig. b2r).

78 Zuccolo, Dialoghi, p. 175.79 "Ma dove reciproco amore tenge insieme avvinnti i cuori de' Cittadini, etiando

senza leggi si asteranno dalle ingiurie, e saranno pronti a i beneficii" (ibid., p. 183).

22 Miller

ship ringing in his ears, why, if friendship were the necessary prerequisite forjustice, was so much moreattention devoted to legislating than to promotingfriendships? The responsibility of the legislator,Molino answered gravely,wasnot to give laws to those already friends "but to order the city well, in itsfashion, and to arrange the interests of the citizens in such a way that theyhavegood will toward each other." This argument for the harnessing of self-interest would receive fuller treatment at the hands of Sgualdi. Where perfectfriendship arose from the free will of friends, the task of law was to create theconditions in which fellow feeling could arise among individuals already welldisposed to one another.80 Politics and sodality were not to be confused, andthe burden of legislation, precisely because it applied generally and not to acarefullyselected community, could not be dispensed with. When Trevisanostill refused to concede, Molino concluded by proclaiming that friendship wasall well and good for people who were well and good, but "because of theimperfection of man, who, drawn after his passions," cannot remain on theright path, the "reins of justice" were necessary to control him.81

How appropriate for Zuccolo to have made Molino, later one of Zeno'senemies and eventually doge, the spokesman for political friendship foundedon inequality and Trevisano the defender of perfect friendship as the solutionto a republic's social schism. The dialogue does not appear in the 1621 edition,perhaps because Trevisano's identity as the "heroic friend" had not yet beenestablished. But even in 1625, only a clairvoyant could have foreseen that lifewould follow art and this debate become a matter of state, or that Molinowould be the one to condemn Trevisano to exile six years later. In the decadesthat followed, elsewhere in Europe, Molino's claim that the natural imperfection of man vitiated Trevisano's Utopian nostalgia would be developed into acompelling portrait of society by Pascal, Nicole, and La Rochefoucauld.

In a Discorso dello Amore verso la Patria (1625) Zuccolo returned to theimpact of social inequality on the maintenance of constitutional equality. Heinsisted that the more a city was divided by class, the more important it wasthat there exist an "amore scambievole fra Cittadini" that was created by beneficence and conversation. "Reciprocal friendship among citizens," he wrote,"must be esteemed the foundation of a city's greatness." Among the immediate

80 "II Leggislatore, tomb a respondere il Molino, non da egli le leggi da osservarsifra gli amici, ma ordina ben di modo la Citta, e dispone in si fatta guisa gli interesside' Cittadini, che si habbiano a volere bene insieme: ma le operationi della giustitiaastringe si per leggi a farle" (ibid., p. 184).

81 "Basta bene, che l'amicitia si scopra di sua natura piu habile a preservare in buonoessere le Citta, che non fa la giustitia; perche, quantunque riuscisse poi il contrario infatti, dovcra la causa alia imperfettione dell'huomo, il quale, tirato a traverso dagliaffetti, non pud essere rimesso sul diritto sentiero delle buone operationi, mentre colfreno della giustitia non gli si usi forza per tirarvelo" (ibid., p. 185).


benefits were not only "love of country" but also "free commerce, abundanceof goods, and secure life."82

Zuccolo's Secolo dell'Oro is his last andmost thorough examination of themeanings of friendship.83 Inspired by the eroica amicizia that occasioned itsappearance, Zuccolo here devotes most of his attention to praising perfectfriendship, despite his recognition ofits limited political application.84 At thispoint, we can only speculate as to his motives. In his commitment to the praiseof equal friendship, Zuccolo focused closely on conversation, for "withoutconversation," hewrote, "friendship is never bound."85 Just as liberal acts ledto thevirtue of liberality, and temperate acts created thevirtue of temperance,Zuccolo argued that "to converse and communicate thoughts, counsels, andaffairs ... creates friendship among men whose proper manifestation is, yetagain, conversation." Without conversation friendship would simply witheraway "like alamp deprived ofoil or ariver ofits source."86 Zuccolo concluded"that conversation is the real andcharacteristic outward expression of friendship."87 The political implications ofZuccolo's philosophical representation ofTrevisano's position would have been clear to Persico, who wrote in 1629 that"the republic is a friendship, or civil conversation, that binds the souls ofeveryone to work together for the public good and happiness." Courts, by

82 Lodovico Zuccolo, Discorso dello Amore verso la Patria (1625; Venice, 1629),pp. 67-68. Trevisano dedicated this reprinting ofZuccolo's discourse to Nicolo Bembo,an avvogador di comune. This office traditionally represented the lower patriciate andwas constitutionally positioned so as to provide some check on the activities of theCouncil ofTen. Emphasizing the "porpora Avvogaresca," as did Zeno, Trevisano described its responsibility as "establishing through deliberation the most irreproachabledecrees" (sig. A2r).

83 Pona, "Dedication," in // Secolo dell'Oro (n. 42 above), sig. A2v. Zuccolo, Secolodell'Oro, p. 169. Pona's dedication was to Nicold Contarini, the great statesman whosedecision to include the story of the friendship in his history ofVenice was cited byZuccolo and others. Contarini offered a bridge back to Sarpi and linked the praise offriendship to the great days of the Republic, agenealogical tactic encouraged by bothTrevisano and Zeno.

84 Although Zuccolo acknowledged that apure friendship like that ofTrevisano andBarbarigo defied extension through an entire populace, he believed that it could provideaworthy exemplar. Even attenuated friendship was capable of keeping acity peacefuland far from sedition (Zuccolo, Secolo dell'Oro, pp. 175-76).

85 Ibid., pp. 70-71. Zuccolo's definition follows, and is a commentary on, thoseprovided by Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. Although his preferred definition of friendshipmade no mention of conversation, heargued that it was implied in reciprocity: "unoamore scambievole fra due, opiu homini sempre pronti del pari al beneficio, &al gustol'uno dell'altro in attioni lodevoli." .

86 "Cosl dal conversare, e dal communicare insieme i pensieri, i consigli, e gli affan... si crea tra gli huomini l'Amichia, la cui propria operatione e pur di nuovo ilconversare" (ibid., p. 82).

87 Ibid., pp. 83-84.

22 Miller

ship ringing in his ears, why, iffriendship were the necessary prerequisite forjustice, was so much more attention devoted to legislating than to promotingfriendships? The responsibility ofthe legislator, Molino answered gravely, wasnot to give laws to those already friends "but to order the city well, in itsfashion, and to arrange the interests of the citizens in such a way that theyhave good will toward each other." This argument for the harnessing ofself-interest would receive fuller treatment at the hands of Sgualdi.Where perfectfriendship arose from the free will of friends, the task oflaw was tocreate theconditions in which fellow feeling could arise among individuals already welldisposed to one another.80 Politics and sodality were not to be confused, andthe burden of legislation, precisely because it applied generally and not to acarefully selected community, could not be dispensed with. When Trevisanostill refused to concede, Molinoconcluded by proclaiming that friendship wasall well and good for people who were well and good, but "because of theimperfection of man, who, drawn after his passions," cannot remain on theright path, the "reins of justice" were necessary to control him.81

How appropriate for Zuccolo to have made Molino, later one of Zeno'senemies and eventually doge, the spokesman for political friendship foundedon inequality and Trevisano the defender of perfect friendship as thesolutiontoa republic's social schism. The dialogue does not appear inthe 1621 edition,perhaps because Trevisano's identity as the "heroic friend" had not yet beenestablished. But even in 1625, onlya clairvoyant could have foreseen that lifewould follow art and this debate become a matter of state, or that Molinowould be the one to condemn Trevisano to exile six years later. In the decadesthat followed, elsewhere in Europe, Molino'sclaim that the natural imperfection of man vitiated Trevisano's Utopian nostalgia would be developed into acompelling portrait of society by Pascal, Nicole, and LaRochefoucauld.

In a Discorso dello Amore verso la Patria (1625) Zuccolo returned to theimpact of social inequality on the maintenance of constitutional equality. Heinsisted that the more a city wasdivided by class, the more important it wasthat there exist an "amore scambievole fra Cittadini" that was created by beneficence andconversation. "Reciprocal friendship amongcitizens,"he wrote,"must be esteemed the foundation of a city's greatness." Among the immediate

80 "II Leggislatore, torn6 a respondere il Molino, non da egli le leggi da osservarsifra gli amici, ma ordina ben di modo la Citta, e dispone in si fatta guisa gli interesside' Cittadini, che si habbiano a volere bene insieme: ma le operationi della giustitiaastringe si per leggi a farle" (ibid.,p. 184).

81 "Bastabene,che 1'amicitia si scopradi sua naturapiu habilea preservare in buonoessere le Citta, che non fa la giustitia; perche, quantunque riuscisse poi il contrario infatti, dovera la causa alia imperfettione dell'huomo, il quale, tirato a traverso dagliaffetti, non pu6 essere rimesso suldiritto sentiero delle buone operationi, mentre colfreno dellagiustitia non gli si usi forza per tirarvelo" (ibid., p. 185).

Friendship andConversation in Seventeenth-Century Venice 23

benefits were notonly"loveof country" but also"freecommerce, abundanceof goods, and secure life."82

Zuccolo's Secolo dell'Oro is his last and most thorough examination of themeanings of friendship.83 Inspired by the eroica amicizia that occasioned itsappearance, Zuccolo here devotes most of his attention to praising perfectfriendship, despite his recognition of its limited political application.84 Atthispoint, we can only speculate as to his motives. In his commitment to the praiseof equal friendship, Zuccolo focused closely on conversation, for "withoutconversation," he wrote, "friendship is never bound."85 Just as liberal acts ledto the virtue of liberality, and temperate actscreated thevirtue of temperance,Zuccolo argued that "to converse and communicate thoughts, counsels, andaffairs ... creates friendship among men whose proper manifestation is, yetagain, conversation." Without conversation friendship would simply witheraway "like a lamp deprived ofoil ora river ofits source."86 Zuccolo concluded"that conversation is the real and characteristic outward expression of friendship."87 The political implications ofZuccolo's philosophical representation ofTrevisano's position would have been clear to Persico, who wrote in 1629 that"the republic is a friendship, or civil conversation, that binds the souls ofeveryone to work together for the public good and happiness." Courts, by

82 Lodovico Zuccolo, Discorso dello Amore verso la Patria (1625; Venice, 1629),pp. 67-68. Trevisano dedicated this reprinting ofZuccolo's discourse to Nicolo Bcmbo,an avvogador di comune. This office traditionally represented the lower patriciate andwas constitutionally positioned so as to provide some check on the activities of theCouncil ofTen. Emphasizing the "porpora Avvogaresca," as did Zeno, Trevisano described its responsibility as "establishing through deliberation the most irreproachabledecrees" (sig. A2r).

83 Pona, "Dedication," in // Secolo dell'Oro (n. 42above), sig. A2v. Zuccolo, Secolodell'Oro, p. 169. Pona's dedication was to Nicold Contarini, the great statesman whosedecision to include the story of the friendship in his history of Venice was cited byZuccolo and others. Contarini offered a bridge back to Sarpi and linked the praise offriendship to the great days ofthe Republic, a genealogical tactic encouraged by bothTrevisano and Zeno.

84 Although Zuccolo acknowledged that a pure friendship like that ofTrevisano andBarbarigo defied extension through an entire populace, he believed that itcould providea worthy exemplar. Even attenuated friendship was capable ofkeeping a city peacefuland far from sedition (Zuccolo, Secolodell'Oro, pp. 175-76).

85 Ibid., pp. 70-71. Zuccolo's definition follows, and is a commentary on, thoseprovided by Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. Although his preferred definition offriendshipmade no mention of conversation, he argued that it was implied in reciprocity: "unoamore scambievole fra due, o piu homini sempre pronti del pari albeneficio, &algustol'uno dell'altro in attioni lodevoli."

86 "Cosl dalconversare, e dalcommunicare insieme i pensieri, i consigli, e gli affari... si crea tra gli huomini 1'Amicitia, la cui propria operatione e pur di nuovo ilconversare" (ibid., p. 82).

87 Ibid., pp. 83-84.

24 Miller

contrast, were collections of private interests and wills that were conciliatedonlyin theirpursuitof a singleend.88 Wewill returnto this formulation below.

As something of an aside, Zuccolo acknowledged that because friendshipsprung from emotion, none of the famous Old Stoics like Phocion or the twoCatos could have had any friends. Their severe virtue precluded them frombeing moved to benevolence and their acquired emotional self-sufficiencyoverrode any natural inclination to sociability. It was the imperfection of natural man when compared to the emotional autarky of the stoic sage that actually made friendship necessary and society possible.89 But if the "best man"had no need for society and the one most capable of perfect friendship wasthe one who sought it the least, then friendship only could describe relationsbetween imperfect and unlike individuals.

Zuccolo's explanation for the general decline in the quality of life—the"age of iron" that was arrested by "heroic friendship" and transmuted intogold—is striking. The influx of Peruvian silver had fired the graspingness ofordinary mortals and made European societies competitive and nasty.90 Hencethe praise of Trevisano and Barbarigo that was included in Giacomo Castel-lani's dedication of Las Casas's lstoria o brevissima relatione della distruttione

dell 'Indie Occidentali.91 The same process that destroyed the Indies was, byimplication, the specter haunting Europe, and only more "heroic friendships"could restore social solidarity in the face of a widening gulf between rich andpoor.

By contrast, Roccabella and Sgualdi—two minor, otherwise unknown figures—offer explicit defenses of the political thought of the grandi. They notonly saw no need for "perfect" friendship but even rehabilitated the imperfectform condemned in the strongest terms ever since Aristotle: that based onutility. Roccabella's // Prencipe Deliberante was published in the tumultuousyear of 1628 and dedicated to Molino with an epitome by Nicol6 Contarini,placing the book under the aegis of two powerful politicians and implacable

88 "Ma la Republica e una amicitia, 6 conversatione civile, che collega gli animi ditutt'insieme, e gli fa cospirar nel publico commodo e felicita. La Corte veramente eun' amicitia conciliata dal privato interesse di molti, che tenendo a un medesimo finehanno fra lor divise le volunta" (Persico [n. 21 above], p. 45).

89 Zuccolo, Secolo dell'Oro, pp. 52, 86.90 Ibid., pp. 6-7.91 It was the "origine della pace, riconciliatrice de gli animi, tranquilatrice delle menti,

madre dell mansuetudine, fonte della benignita e della misericordia, puoi riparare atanti e cosl fatti danni" (1preludi [n. 42 above], p. 252). Cozzi has noted that, althoughthis preface appeared in 1626 and in the second edition of 1630, it was removed andreplaced with a different dedication in the 1643 edition (Cozzi, "Una vicenda dellaVenezia barroca" [n. 30 above], p. 95 n. 51).

s

Friendship ana* Conversation in Seventeenth-Century Venice 25

foes of Zeno and Trevisano, whom they both perceived as fomenters of disorder.92

Roccabella began by describing the power of the prince asgodly and caricatured the people as a hydra. The prince sought the public welfare independent of human assistance, though within the law.93 The republic, by contrast,was "a body with many heads and an indivisible soul. In its authority, ends,and manner ofgoverning it is no different from that ofother absolute princes."It differed only in its dependence on "the reciprocity of authoritative opinions."94 This is the hardheaded tone of the pseudo-Sarpian Opinion and substantiates Cozzi's attribution of it to the circle of Molino. Any pretence thatrepublics like Venice were different from ragion di stato-wielding monarchieswasabandoned. "Justice," itsauthor wrote, is "all thatcontributes to themaintaining of the state."95

What characterized a republic was not its form of government nor its constitution but a "reciprocity of authoritative appearances and of many soulsunited inonecharacter born to authority."96 Reciprocal actions created a singlecommunity that could then be subject to unitary rule.97 The challenge was togenerate this reciprocity. Friendship, a relation that existed in the exchangesbetween individuals, suggested toRoccabella a model for this "union ofwills,"

92 Interestingly, Pona had also dedicated to Contarini his edition of Zuccolo's //Secolo dell'Oro, awork in praise ofthe eroica amicizia, illustrating that some ambiguityexisted. Cozzi notes that initially, at least, Contarini was also sympathetic to Zeno'sdemands. Nearly twenty years later two other works by Tomaso Roccabella were published, // Prencipe Morale (1645, in two long parts) and // Prencipe Prattico (1645).This substantial oeuvre bestrides the genres ofrhetorical handbook, mirror for princes,and reason ofstate. While ostensibly guiding rulers through aseries ofpractical thicketsand basic political definitions, itisalso very much acomment oncontemporary matters.

93 Tomaso Roccabella, // Prencipe Deliberante (1628), pp. 1-2.94 Ibid., p. 4.95 Opinionefalsamente ascritta al Padre Paolo Servita (n. 30 above), p. 4. The pref

ace ofthe English translator emphasized this Machiavellian understanding ofrepublics.He argued, no doubt against contemporary republican enemies of mixed monarchy,that "the World imagines, that a Popular Government is all sweetness and liberty,precarious, and depending upon their Votes, free from oppression and slavery, andconstant toknown methods: but all this isa very wrong Conception; they are investedwith Sovereign Power, and must and do use itfor their own preservation, as absolutelyas any Sovereign Prince in the World" (The Opinione ofPadre Paolo [n. 31 above],sig. AlOv). . .

96 "Dependente nella scambievolezza de' paren autorevoh, e de piu animi conun'istesso carrattere nati al comando" (Roccabella, Prencipe Deliberante, p. 9).

97 Ibid., p. 9.

26 Miller

and conversation, "the second life of man," the means. The challenge was todescribe the kind of friendship and, by extension, the style of conversation,that was possible betweendifferentand unequal individuals.98

Sgualdi's Repubblica di Lesbo overo Delia Ragione di Stato inun DominioAristocratico (1640) was a very thinly veiled allegory of contemporary Venetian government and examined the mechanics of the reciprocity referred tobyRoccabella. The book was inspired bytheproblem thatwas only sharpenedin the increasingly commercial societies of seventeenth-century Europe: thereconciling and uniting of "two potent and extreme enemies, immense wealthand immense poverty." Sgualdi made no pretense of vaunting theoutstandingliberty thatfueled earlier celebrations of theexemplarity of Venice. Accordingto him, La Serenissima's miracle was, rather, to have found a way to holdtogether a community of unequal individuals through the reciprocal exchangeof benefits: the "reason of state in an aristocratic regime" referred to in thetitle.99

Sgualdi focused on thewayin which theexchange of benefits made asocietyout of its haphazardly assembled individual ingredients. The common interestthat beneficence could create among imperfect human beings was to be distinguished from the "ideal" friendship whose essencerequired a rational self-control that was "rarely or never" to be found in mixed, political society.100The perfect friend was Juvenal's rara avis and, like the perfect orator, wasmore easily imagined than heard or seen. In what appears a fairly clear reference to Trevisano and the eroica amicizia, Sgualdi wrote that, while manyin republics boasted of the perfection of friendship, nonehad yet attained thatdescribed by Seneca in his letters to Lucilius. The reassessment of friendshipwascentral to Sgualdi's attack on the ideal of an equal republic.

98 Roccabella, Prencipe Morale, pp. 94-95. "II conversare e la seconda vitadell'huomo, e fra gli amici il piu bramato diletto, perche la virtucon la virtu s'affina,e la communicazione con I'uso familiare piu agevolmente si essercita, e percheniunhuomo ha le purita deldiamante 6 ne' costumi, 6 negli affetti dell'ammo, pero Pamicohonesto ha da tolerare1'amicoco i suoi difetti, e quando questi non superanole qualitaamabili di quello, dee con la sofferenza medicare I'imperfezzione, e farsi genitore dimaggior virtu in se stesso, e di nuova virtu nellapersona, che ama" (p. 104).

99 Vincenzo Sgualdi, Repubblica di Lesbo overo Della Ragione di Stato in un Dominio Aristocratico (Venice, 1640), sig. A4v: "Ammiro in una grandissimadisaggua-glianza di ricchezze, e di parentadi, una grandissima agguaglianza di forze, e dipotenzaper salir a' gradi della republica. Considero, che'n Venetia tra tanta moltitudine dinobili, stanno in pace due potenti nemici, e veggonsi uniti insieme due pericolosiestremi, immense ricchezze, ed immensa poverta." See also pp. 222, 224, 206. In thepreface Sgualdi notes that thecento style ofLipsius's Politico washisinspiration (C3v).Forthecontemporary viewthat Venetian accommodation of rich and poornobility wasa miracle, see Claudio Donati, L'idea di nobilta in Italia secoli XTV-XVIII (Rome andBari, 1988), p. 127.

100 Sgualdi, Repubblica di Lesbo, pp. 279-80.

Friendship and ^Conversation in Seventeenth-Century Venice 27

Because almost everyone was"contaminated" byself-interest, thefriendshipbased on utility that Cicero called "amicitia suffragatoria" was a much morelikely foundation for a society of inevitably interested and imperfect individuals.101 Sgualdi surveyed some ofthe different categories ofpolitical friendshipfound in ancientRometo show howinappropriate was the modern fascinationwith the Aristotelian model. There were friends who were clients (salutatoriiamici), those who wanted legal help (deductorii amici), and others who attached themselves as familiars (sectatores amici). The same types of friendships and friends, he added, could be found in the modern republics. "Theyhave abandoned the title, but retained the office. Of these we say that they arecalled friends not from love, but from interest."102

Sgualdi followed with a series ofclassical examples toshow that in politicsfriendship ought tobebased oninterest rather than ontruth orequality. Rulerswould bewise to follow theinjunction ofJustinian that"friendship iscultivatedby utility, not loyalty."103 Sgualdi averred that there was no bond so tight orso dear that "the dagger of interest could not separate it," norany desire thatcould not be overcome by "ties of interest."'04 Crossing the RiverLethe wassaid to deprive men of their memories; in a republic, wrote Sgualdi, the realLethe was interest, which drowned all memoriesof previous loyalty, grievance,and obligation.105

Sgualdi's cold reassessment of the social role of interest led him todismissthe distinction drawn between publicand private interest. Those who wept fora public calamity, hewrote, echoing Lipsius in De Constantia, actually weptfor its impact on them. "Private interest," he declared, "is the real and ines-

,0' Ibid., pp. 280-81.102 Ibid., pp. 282-83. For more on Greek and Roman friendship, see Hutter (n. 40

above), pp. 35,138; and Pizzolato (n. 40 above), pp. 87-90. The late antique friendshipnetworks described by Peter Brown bear a much closer resemblance tothose found inthe early modem world ofcivil conversation and republic ofletters than these politicallycharged categories (Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire [Madison, Wis., 1992], pp.45-47).

103 "Amicitia utilitate, non fide colere" (Sgualdi, Republica di Lesbo, p. 283). Hefollows with a series of historical examples of friendships based on utility. The samecritique offriendship lay at the heart ofthe argument for an unsocial sociability presented byTimon ofAthens, one ofthe characters inSimone Luzzatto's Socrates ovverodell'ignoranza humana (Venice, 1652), p. 298. Timon's speech, which brings the booktoitsconclusion, develops this critique into the claim that societies were held togethermore by the passions and desires ofmen than by their virtues and reason (pp. 299-305). Recalling that it was Timon whom Cesare Ripa held up as the enemy of Conversazione helps us recognize the extent of the revolution required to remake conversation into an activity appropriate for unsociable beings.

104 Sgualdi, Republica di Lesbo, p. 286.105 Ibid., p. 287. Sgualdi cited Cato of Utica's comment that "se due linee parallele

fossero capaci disentir' interesse, senza malagevolezza s'unirebbono insieme" (p. 286).

28 Miller

capable storm for all those who navigate the sea of republics." Talk of thepublic was simply a mask for private interest.'06 The task of the ruler was todemonstrate that all these private interests demanded attention to the whole."Your interest, Ocitizen (and ifyou don't know it,I will tell you) isthe interestofthe republic. Private interest and public interest are correlative. The one isthe essence of the other." Citing an unnamed Greek source, Sgualdi continued,"public utility is not separate from the private. On the contrary, what is usefulfor individuals is a part ofwhat is useful for the public, and the part isservedin the whole—as in living things, so in cities."107

It was Roccabella who, in 1645, named the institution that served as themetaphor par excellence for the medium that made a society out ofself-interestedindividuals. "The lifeof man,"he wrote, "is a market, wheremanymakemerchandise of themselves—some of their abilities, and others of their servitude and affections. It is necessary, however, to know how to manage theexchange with order, measure, and weight, since he isalways unjust who doesnot render what is owed or who usurps what is not his."108 The market mechanism served to create one public out of many private desires. Roccabellarejected as a possible model for political society the popular neo-Stoic idealof men pursuing intellectual perfection through social life. While some individuals might join together for this purpose, the large numbers and mixedquality ofthose who happened tobe in a particular land and formed its politicalsociety demanded a much lower common denominator. This was thedifferencebetween the academy and the city.

The more familiar metaphor to express the challenge of accommodatingdifference was musical. This, too, allowed for dissimilar elements to be accommodated in the sameway thatharmony worked in practice. But the imageof the market was very different. It denied that self-interest could somehowbe transformed into a public interest and instead claimed that unbridled self-interest actually brought about the good of the whole. This was a "civil equality," not some collective pursuit of intellectual improvement or judiciously

106 "L'interesse privato e la vera, e 1'immutabile tramontana di tutti coloro, chena-vigano il mare delle republiche" (ibid., p. 288).

107 "II tuo interesse, 6 cittadino (gia, che nol sai, dirotelo io) e l'interesse della republica. Sono correlativi, interese privato, & interesse publico. L'uno e d'essenzadell'altro.Ha il tutto tal congiungimento colle parti, che, ne quelloda queste,ne questedaquello ponno scpararsi; utilitas publico (attendi alia sapienza d'un Greco) non estseparata a privatis; immo singulorum utile, in public continetur, &partes in toto ser-vantur, ut in animalibus, sic in civitatibus" (ibid., p. 291).

108 "E la vita humana un mercato, onde molti fan mercanzia di se stessi, alcuni delleloro operazioni, e d'altri della servitu, e de gli affetti, e pero bisogna di saper benmaneggiar lacommutativa con ordine, con misura, econ peso, essendo sempre ingiustochenon rende quel chedee, chi usurpa quale chenon e suo"(Prencipe Morale [n.92above], p. 86).

Friendship andConversation in Seventeenth-Century Venice 29

plotted redistribution to each according to his needs. The governing metaphorwas commercial, the realm of human endeavor that was driven by the passingfashions and appearances that the neo-Stoics had denounced asinimical tothepursuit of the good life. Roccabella denied that the modern, Christian stoicideal of excellence—the one that animated so much of the discussion of civillife from Guazzo onward—could be extended to political society. An ideal offriendship that emphasized virtue, reason, and self-control might work in aselect community of the like-minded, but it was beyond the grasp of the ordinary people who constituted the governed ina political society. It was onlyby acknowledging the imperfect reality ofhuman motivation and behavior—and this is why Augustine was such an important social theorist for the seventeenth century—that legitimate governments could exist.

In the early seventeenth century, Italy's surviving republics, Genoa, Lucca,and Venice, were allshaken bypolitical reform movements thatwere animatedby social crises.109 But only in Venice were the conceptual foundations of therepublic, as it was viewed on both sides ofthe debate, laid sobare. This hard-headed discussion of the meaning of citizenship in themodern age—andonlyin republics could "citizen" still evoke its full range ofmeanings, from politicalactorto bestof men—is important foranyone interested in thehistory of earlymodern republicanism.

But that a debate about the antinomies of citizenship was conducted in termsofthe concept offriendship also makes this episode acrucial piece ofevidencefor thehistorian of civil society. ForTrevisano and Zeno, like other later andbetter-known figures such as the Third Earl of Shaftesbury, who sought areform ofpolitical citizenship from aStoic point ofview, perceived an identitybetween theworlds ofcivil conversation andthecity. They sawinthepremisesofaristocratic equality the inspiration for a return torepublican first principles.

109 For the Genoese parallel to Venetian events, seeDonati, pp. 205-14; the essayscollected in "Dibattito politico e problemi di governo a Genova nella prima meta delSeicento" and published as a special issue ofthe journal Miscellanea Storica Ligure 7(1975)—I thank Osvaldo Raggio for not only bringing this rather rare piece to myattention but also actually bringing ittome!; Giorgio Doria and Rodolfo Savelli, '"Cittadini di Governo' a Genova: Ricchezza e Potere traCinque e Seicento," in Materialiper una storia della cultura giuridica 10 (1980): 277-355; Rodolfo Savelli, La Repubblica Oligarchica: Legislazione, istituzioni eceti aGenova nel Cinquecento (Milan,1981); A. Petracchi, "Norma e prassi costituzionale nella Serenissima Repubblica diGenoa," Nuova rivista storica 64 (1980): 41-80, 526-64; 66 (1982): 282-318; 68(1984): 297-322. For Lucca, which has been much less studied, see Rita Mazzei, Lasocieta lucchese nel Seicento (Lucca, 1977), pp. 39-48; and my "Stoics Who Sing:Lessons inCitizenship from Early Modem Lucca," Historical Journal 44 (2001).

30 Miller

This very thing was denied by Zuccolo, Roccabella, and Sgualdi, as it wouldbe later by Shaftesbury's antagonist, Bernard Mandeville. Without rejectingthe political value of friendship and conversation, these thinkers all denied thatthe rich, concentrated version ofMontaigne was the one most suitable to politics. They saw political communities as aggregations of unequal, self-interestedindividuals who were held together by the exchange relations created by theirvery differences. In the face of areality they chose no longer to deny—perhapsfor self-serving, venial reasons, but this is irrelevant—they instead set abouttrying to determine what a community of "well willers" rather than friendswould actually look like. But in rejecting the neo-Stoic's aristocratic philosophy of excellence, Roccabella and Mandeville articulated an alternative formen who could not qualify as excellent under that other definition.

At the end of the twentieth century, the concept of "civil society" has attained a kind of talismanic status: among the wider public, as in the scholarlycommunity, it has come lo stand for the singular achievement ofmodern Western political thought. What is usually meant by "civil society" is the exchangeof ideas, sentiments, and services occurring in the intermediate space betweenthe domains ofgovernment and family. It is recognition ofthe importance ofthis category today that explains the fascination with its origins. But ifwe goback beyond the Scottish Enlightenment and Hegel, who used the term toidentify aparticular stage in the evolution ofmodern society that was reached,so they thought, some time at the end ofthe seventeenth century, we will befrustrated. For the process they discerned and named, and the particular post-republican—"Modern" as opposed to "Ancient"—meaning they gave it, cameafter the fact. (This is even more true for explicit neologisms like "publicsphere" as well as for the more complex notion of "public") When earlymodern Europeans sought a term that embraced the practice and meanings ofsocial life in the sphere that was neither government nor household, they referred to "civil conversation."

Civil, as Guazzo explained, referred not "in respect of the Cittie, but ofthequalities of the minde." The author ofacontemporary Italian treatise on civilityspecified that his work was not addressed to rulers but concerned only "thecivil life ofprivate men." That book's English translator emphasized this focuson individuals intheir capacity associal creatures by explaining that its contentbelonged lo the "ethical" rather than the "political" part ofmoral philosophy."0

'"•Guazzo. The Civile Conversation (n. 6 above), p. 51: G. B Cintio. DialoguesPhilosophiqucs et trrs-utilcs Italicns-FraJicois. touchanl la vie Civile. Contenans lanourriturf du premier age: /'instruction dc la Icunessc. t£ de Thommc propre a segouvcrner soy mesme. trans. Gabriel Cliappuis (Paris. 1583). fols. 60v-6lr; LudovicoBryskctt, ADiscourse ofCivill Life: Containing the Ethike part ofMorall Philosophic.Fitfor the instructing ofa Gentleman in the course ofa vertuous life (London, 1606),sig. A4v. A treatise on the "Politikc part of Morall Philosophie" was to follow.


If the reciprocal activity ofspeech constituted the medium ofexchange in thisborderland between household and government, friendship described the relation of its inhabitants—neither members of a family nor totally disconnectedindividuals—to one another. Probing the meaning of friendship was the seventeenth-century Venetian's way ofredefining citizenship in terms ofthe practices ofcivil, as opposed to political, society. In this obscure debate, in a citywhose political and economic importance for the rest of Europe was alreadyin steep decline, was forged aset ofconcepts that would soon reorient politicalthought across the Continent and, later, the world. If this development stillseems important more than three centuries later, further attention ought to bepaid to its conceptual building blocks: "friendship" and "civil conversation."

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Friendship and Conversation in Seventeenth-Century Venice