Les généalogies vénitiennes (XVIe-XVIIIe siècle) : instrument politique, outil juridique

The paper explores the coexistence in Venice of two different facets of genealogical practice. Based on the official records held in the offices of the Venetian State in order to register those who had the right to belong to the governing elite, these two genealogical practices had pursued in the long run different ways and objectives. On the one hand, the genealogical culture stemmed from the verification process by the authorities of the right of a person to gain access to the Great Council, the sovereign body of the Venetian Republic, and acquire a noble status. On the other hand, the use of genealogy, cultivated as an autonomous domain, emerged later on. Its purpose was the elaboration of all useful data stored in the State registry into a comparative instrument which interconnected all family branches in order to delineate a social distinction map of the Venetian nobility. All the same these two facets shared a common goal: the formation of a more cohesive governing elite through the regulation of its network of marriage alliances. Yet, the detailed registration of all genealogical data became in the course of the eighteenth century a fertile ground for the use of genealogy by some families to claim ancient origins, and create a social gap between them and the others.