Description
Book SynopsisSelected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic TitleOriginally published in 1988. In the decades after 1404, traditionally maritime Venice extended its control over much of northern Italy. Citizens of Vicenza, the first city to come under Venetian rule, proclaimed their city firstborn of Venice and a model for the Venetian Republic's dominions on the terraferma. In Firstborn of Venice James Grubb tests commonplace attributes of the Renaissance state through a rich case study of society and politics in fifteenth-century Vicenza. Looking at relations between Venetian and local governments and at the location of power in Vicentine society, Grubb reveals the structural limitations of Venetian authority and the mechanisms by which local patricians deflected the claims of the capital. Firstborn of Venice explores issues that are political in the broadest sense: legal institutions and administrative practices, fiscal politics, the consolidation of elites, ecclesiastical management,
Trade ReviewGrubb's book brings great clarity to the legal and institutional history of Veneto, which has been cluttered with contending models about how such an apparently confused regime functioned.
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SpeculumTable of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
Part I. The Making of the Composite State
Chapter 1. Creating the Territorial State
Chapter 2. Definitions of State
Chapter 3. Dominion and Law
Chapter 4. Dominion and Empire
Part II. Privileged Commune, Commune of the Privileged
Chapter 5. Commune and Governor
Chapter 6. Commune and countryside
Chapter 7. Affirmation of the Patriciate
Chapter 8. Consolidation of the Patriciate
Part III. Center and Periphery
Chapter 9. Pacification and Security
Chapter 10. Fisc and Army
Chapter 11. Piety and Morals
Chapter 12. Appeals and Their Limits
Chapter 13. Reconstructing Local Prerogatives
Part IV. The Renaissance Venetian State
Chapter 14. Unity and Particularism
Epilogue
Abbreviations
Notes
Index
