Liturgies of Violence: Social Control and Power Relationships in the Republic of Venice between the 16th and 18th Centuries

The essay is a general view on the political and anthropological problem of social control in the Republic of Venice in early modern age. Law and justice administration are examined in their transformations. A moral and ancient tradition centered on feud and honor pervaded the culture of violence and the criminal trial, but at the end of XVIth century a new punitive justice directly controlled by the Venetian Counsel of ten weakened the feud and the traditional judiciary trial. Banditry and aristocratic crimes were the most visible effects of the new Venetian political action. The transformations proceeded by a strong demand of security and stillnesses which originated in many social and economic contexts and which couldn't be insured anymore by the justice and the legal system of the numerous towns of the Venetian mainland.