The Invisible Fisherman: The Economy of Water Knowledge in Early-modern Venice

In this essay, I address the question of the link between erudition and fishermen’s practical knowledge in the Renaissance, with Italy and Venice as my main areas of inquiry. I begin with some remarks on the importance of practice in connection to nomenclature, on the basis of evidence drawn from the most reputed authors who wrote on ichthyology in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Secondly, I point to some important aspects of fishermen’s water expertise in Venice by resorting to historical documents on fishing legislation and water management. My aim is to shift the focus from the culture of the elites to that of water laborers. Eventually, I look at one specific fish species, the gobius (which was and is still called ‘go’ in Venice), as an object of inquiry from a variety of epistemological and social perspectives. This fish, as the sources tell us, constituted an important ingredient in people’s diet in the area of Venice area from antiquity to early modernity.