Venice, A History by John Davis

Author:John Davis [John Davis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History/Europe/Italy
ISBN: 9781640190672
Publisher: New Word City, Inc.
Published: 2017-05-10T16:00:00+00:00

As the Venetian ship of state sailed into the seventeenth century - cannons loaded, banners flying, as proud and seemingly triumphant as ever - three enemies lay waiting in its path: the papacy, Spain, and the Ottoman Turks. All three were sighted by the officers in charge, but they failed to detect a fourth enemy, one that lurked like a dormant cancer among the officers themselves. That foe was a new softness of resolve, a growing reluctance to fight that would prove the most formidable threat of all.

The sea upon which Venice sailed - Italy in the seventeenth century - has been called the Age of the Baroque. The term baroque, first used to describe certain tendencies in the arts, later became associated with such specific social and political conditions as absolute monarchy, aristocratic privilege, church censorship, and the regimentation and bureaucratization of daily life - all of which were present in seventeenth-century Italy. During the Age of the Baroque, Europe’s absolute monarchs - in league with the Spanish viceroys in Milan and Naples, and the Spanish puppet in Florence - managed to eliminate all rivals, suppress all political activity that challenged their authority, and reign without significant opposition. The Spanish viceroy of Naples ruled southern Italy as representative of the Spanish king, and virtually all state power was centered in his hands. The pope, meanwhile, ruled the Papal States as an absolute monarch. All opposition to his temporal authority was discouraged by the presence of a Spanish regiment whose dual role was to protect the pope from his potential enemies and assure his obedience to the will of Spain. To the north, the Medici reigned in an enlarged Tuscany, where opposition to their rule was thwarted by a Spanish garrison that was stationed in Fort Belvedere, not far from Pitti Palace. In Milan, a Spanish viceroy with headquarters in the Castello Sforzesco ruled the duchy as a virtual dictator.

As the bureaucratic organization of these small but powerful states tightened, Italy became enmeshed in a web of strict administrative controls: Economic activities were rigidly regulated, and the laissez-faire economy of the Renaissance gradually disappeared. Price controls were established, a complicated system of commercial licensing was instituted, and heavy taxes were imposed upon the population. Behind these controls stood the omnipresent Spanish garrisons, ready to enforce them if necessary.

Equally rigid and oppressive was the Counter-Reform church, which cracked down on the peninsula’s intellectual and artistic life through the Index and the Inquisition, establishing canons of literary and artistic taste. Behind these regulations also stood the Spanish garrisons, ready to enforce the church’s dictates. This new regimentation of thought was exemplified by the Society of Jesus, which had been founded in 1540 by the Spanish nobleman Ignatius Loyola to combat Protestantism and reform the intellectual and moral life of the church. The Jesuit order was organized like an army, and its soldiers of Jesus were to be found in every school, university, library, courtroom, church, and ducal palace in Italy. Rigidly disciplined,

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