Legitimate Subversion? Domenico Morosini and the Culture of Venetian Political Commentary

• In Event: Legitimation and Subversion: Humanism and Renaissance Statebuilding II

Abstract

One of the distinguishing features of Venetian humanist culture is what Margaret King referred to as its unanimitas, or the ability of elite patrician humanists to articulate a shared vision of Venetian identity and values across the fifteenth century. Venetian humanists used collectively developed ideas about the benevolence of Venetian rule and the purity of its nobility to defend their city and repeated them more or less unchanged in a stream of letters, orations, treatises, and histories. Domenico Morosini’s De Bene Insitituta Re Publica is perhaps the best known example of a small set of texts that indirectly critique Venetian policies, and this paper examines the tradition of subtle and private dissent among Venetian patrician humanists. What were the correlations between political career, humanist honor, and persuasive rhetoric on policy matters? How do moments of disagreement, if not outright subversion, fit within broader Venetian communicative practices of persuasion and legitimation?

Author

• Monique O'Connell, Wake Forest University