Bertuccio Valier

Bertuccio Valier

Bertuccio Valier (born July 1, 1596 in Venice ; † March 29, 1658 ibid) was the 102nd Doge of Venice . He ruled from 1656 to 1658.

family

Bertuccio was the first doge of the Valier , who believed themselves to be one of the oldest families in Venice and traced their origins back to the Romans. He was the only son of Silvestro Valier. On his mother's side he was descended from the Priuli , although not from the branch of the family that had provided two doges one after the other in the mid-16th century. His only son Silvestro succeeded him as the 109th Doge of Venice in 1688 on the Doge's throne.

Life

Valier had had a brilliant political and military career. Before his election he had been Podestà of various cities on the Terraferma and ambassador to the Vatican under Alexander VII .

The Doge's Office

Valier was elected Doge in the first ballot against his strongest rival Leonardo Foscolo, who was extremely popular as a Venetian naval hero with the people and who was loudly supported by an armed Dalmatian troop in the city. As with his predecessor and his successor, his government was under the threat of the Ottoman Empire . First of all, the Venetian fleet had succeeded in pushing the Turkish fleet back into the Black Sea and building a blockade against the Turkish troops in Crete. In a counterattack by the Turks, the Venetian commander Lorenzo Marcello was fatally wounded, like the captain general Lazzaro Mocenigo a few months later in the battle of the Dardanelles . The Venetian fleet was now pilotless. Bertuccio Valier represented the party on the Council of Ten that advocated accepting a peace offer from the Turkish Grand Vizier Mohammed Köprülü on the Crete question. Like many patricians, he was of the opinion that Crete should be abandoned. He considered the fight against the Turks to be hopeless, but could not prevail against the war party, to which his successor Giovanni Pesaro belonged. Although his opinion was inferior, he subsidized the Venetian war chest with 100,000 ducats from his private fortune. This grant and the special payments made by various patricians were not enough to finance the fleet. Venice was forced to buy the financial help offered by the Vatican with the re-admission of the Jesuits in the republic.

Valier died on March 29, 1658 and was buried in the Church of San Giobbe .

Tomb

His son Silvestro had a monumental tomb built for himself, his father and his wife in San Zanipolo , where the remains of Bertuccio Valier were finally transferred. It is the last of the great doge tombs in Venice.

• 

  Monument to the Valier family.

• 

  The statue of Bertuccio Valiero

literature

• Andrea Da Mosto : I Dogi di Venezia. Florence 1983.
• Helmut Dumler : Venice and the Doges. Düsseldorf 2001.

predecessor	Office	successor
Francesco Cornaro	Doge of Venice 1656–1658	Giovanni Pesaro