Learning outcomes

1. To provide the main coordinates of the history of the city and of territories subject to it between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. 2. To insert the history of the Republic within the international political, diplomatic and economic developments. 3. Focus on some issues relating to the cultural dimension (learned and popular), including the role of Venice as a centre for the elaboration of religious dissent. 4. Emphasize the political peculiarities of the Venetian experience in a comparative perspective with other Italian and European contexts
Prerequisites: knowledge, at high school level, the main features of medieval and early modern history.

Program

Course Content:

• The political and administrative organization of the Venetian state
• The patriciate (structure and composition, social role)
• The economy (markets and merchants, the economy of city and of the mainland, the merchant fleet)
• The administration of justice in Venice and in the territories of the State
• Society and ways of life (daily life, consumption, food, diseases and cures, beliefs etc.)
• Venice in the international context
• Religion (the ecclesiastical organization and folk religion. The inquisition and heresy).
• Publishing and book trade
• Public opinion and its control (newspapers and journals, ridotti and coffee-houses, ambassadors, State Inquisitors, forbidden books etc.)
• Culture (the arts and sciences, academies, the printing press, popular culture)
• Spaces and times of daily life
• Myth and anti-myth of Venice

Reference books:

a) General part
• FC Lane, Storia di Venezia, Einaudi, Turin 2005
• G. Ortalli, G. Scarabello, Breve storia di Venezia, Pacini, Pisa 1998.

b) In addition, a text chosen from the following

• G. Corazzol, Cineografo di banditi su sfondo di monti. Feltre 1634-1642, Unicopli, Milano 1997
• G. Corazzol, Piani particolareggiati. (Venezia 1580-Mel 1659), DBS, Feltre 2016
• F. Barbierato, Politici e ateisti. Percorsi della miscredenza a Venezia fra Sei e Settecento, Unicopli, Milano 2006
• F. De Vivo, Patrizi, informatori, barbieri. Politica e comunicazione a Venezia, Feltrinelli, Milano 2012.
• L. Carnelos, «Con libri alla mano». L'editoria di larga diffusione a Venezia tra Sei e Settecento, Unicopli, Milano 2013
• M. Melchiorre, A un cenno del suo ditto. Fra Bernardino da Feltre (1439-1494) e gli ebrei, Unicopli, Milano 2013
• L. Pezzolo, L'oro dello stato. Società, finanza e fisco nella Repubblica veneta del secondo '500, Il Cardo, Venezia 1990
• A. Viggiano, Lo specchio della Repubblica. Venezia e le isole Ionie nel '700, Cierre, Verona 1998
• W. Panciera, La Repubblica di Venezia nel Settecento, Viella, Roma 2014
• C. Povolo, L’intrigo dell’Onore. Poteri e istituzioni nella Repubblica di Venezia tra Cinque e Seicento, Cierre edizioni, Verona 1997
• R. Bragaggia, Confini litigiosi. I governi del territorio nella terraferma veneta del Seicento, Cierre, Verona 2012
• S. Minuzzi, Sul filo dei segreti. Farmacopea, libri e pratiche terapeutiche a Venezia in età moderna, Unicopli, Milano 2016
• E. Valseriati, Tra Venezia e l'Impero. Dissenso e conflitto politico a Brescia nell'età di Carlo V, FrancoAngeli, Milano 2016
• F. Veronese, L'Inquisizione nel secolo dei Lumi. Il Sant'Uffizio e la Repubblica di Venezia, NDF, Palermo, 2017
• J.G. Sperling, Convents and the body politic in late Renaissance Venice, Chicago University Press, Chicago 2000
• J.M. Ferraro, Nefarious Crimes, Contested Justice: Illicit Sex and Infanticide in the Republic of Venice, 1557-1789, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 2008

Examination Methods

The examination will take place in oral form. Students must demonstrate that they have understood the structures of Venetian history, that they are able to correctly place problems and events, and that they know the most relevant themes of the historiographic debate. The evaluation shall be assigned in 30/30. The examination test will be the same for attending and not attending students.