Francesco Calbo Crotta

Francesco Calbo or Francesco Calbo Crotta (born August 24, 1760 in Venice , † November 13, 1827 in Venice) was a Venetian author and politician when Venice was ruled by France and Austria. From 1818 until his death he was appointed mayor ( Podestà ) of Venice, Austria at the time. Domenico Morosini followed him in office.

Life

Francesco Calbo came from two noble families; his father was Giovanni Marco, his mother Lucrezia Crotta. Like most male members of the noble families of Venice, Calbo completed the offices reserved for this class. He was Savio agli Ordini from 1785 to 1790 and from September 1796 to March 1797. When the republic dissolved itself to anticipate the dissolution by Napoleon , he was still in office.

In 1797 Napoleon occupied Venice, which fell to Austria from 1798 to the end of 1805, and then returned to France until 1815. Like most noblemen, Calbo lost access to public office. The private fortunes were also used to finance the war, so that many became impoverished. The French dissolved the corporations, the number of parishes was reduced from 70 to 39, and most of the monasteries were dissolved. Prince Henry XV Reuss zu Greiz formally took over the city government for Austria on April 20, 1814, Heinrich was the first governor general of Venice until 1816 . After the end of Napoleonic rule, Mayor Gradenigo traveled to Vienna to show the emperor the devotion of the Venetians. His successor Marco Molin died in April 1818 after barely 14 months in office. Venice became a royal seat alongside Milan, but the viceroy, Archduke Rainer, who had ruled since 1818, described the city in gloomy features in 1819. From 1797 to 1820 700 of the 1100 patrician families sold their property on the mainland and their palace in Venice.

Like his brother Filippo, Calbo had stayed out of politics. In 1798 (or 1799), however, in his Memoria che può servire alla storia politica degli ultimi otto anni della Repubblica di Venezia, he attacked the writings of those aristocrats who had cooperated with the democratic governments in an almost nostalgic way. Above all, his criticism was directed against the line of Francesco Donà . While he is considered to be quite reliable on the factual and procedural level, his attempts at interpretation serve to justify and commend the Venetian constitution and the role of the part of the Signoria who insist on autonomy, especially the Senate. In contrast to other authors of his time, Calbo did not believe that it was the strict conservatism of the ruling noble families that had brought about the inability to adequately respond to the economic and political changes and, as a result, the end of the republic. He continued to believe in a perfect political system, the conservative side of which later made it easier for him to approach the Habsburg regiment after 1815.

His almost weekly correspondence with Giacomo Giustinian , but above all his annotazioni to the meetings of the Consiglio dei rogati , the Senate, show that the political upheavals had also changed his thinking. He wanted to show the daily work of the Senate between 1785 and 1797, following the internal discussions down to the finest nooks and crannies. Hence, his work is an important source of the mindset that prevailed in the leading groups of the Venetian nobility. In addition, he published the work of his uncle Sebastiano Crotta (1732-1817), his Memorie storico-civili sul governo della Repubblica di Venezia , a historically significant work because it is based on sources accessible only to him, but which only appeared after his death .

Only with the return of peace and order, which were essential for him, did he take on a public office again for the first time in 1816, namely that of Vice-President of the Commissione generale di beneficenza , the authority responsible for public welfare. In 1824 he sat on the council of the Konvikt of S. Caterina, two years later he became an honorary member of the Ateneo Veneto . In the meantime he had gained such a high reputation that the Austrian city government appointed him Podestà .

In his will from 1821, out of gratitude for the sponsorship, he bequeathed numerous manuscripts to the Seminary of the Patriarchate, or to the Patriarch Francesco Maria Milesi (1816–1819), who founded the institute. On his tombstone it read: "Francesco Calbo Crotta, uomo di prische abitudini, che moriva nel 1827, dopo essere stato Podestà di Venezia".

Works

• Roberto Cessi (Ed.): Verbali delle sedute della Municipalità provvisoria di Venezia 1767 . in the Appendice (appendix): Le "Annotazioni" di Francesco Calbo alle sedute dei Consigli dei Rogatti (1785-1797) , Bologna 1942, 2nd edition Forni Editore 1971.

literature

• Roberto Cessi : Il diario di Francesco Calbo , in: Atti e memorie della R. Accademia di scienze, lettere ed arti in Padova, ns, LIII (1936–37), pp. 159–165.
• Paolo Preto:  Calbo, Francesco. In: Alberto M. Ghisalberti (Ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 16:  Caccianiga-Caluso. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1973.

Remarks

1. ↑ Fabio Mutinelli: Annali delle province Venete dall'anno 1801 al 1840 , Venice 1843, p. 105.
2. ^ Piero del Negro: La mémoire des vaincus. Le patriciat vénitien et la chute de la république , in: Alessandro Fontana, Georges Saro (ed.): Venise 1297-1797: La République des castors , pp. 149–163, here: p. 163 note 47, presumed that Calbo more veneto , that is, according to the Venetian calendar, only published it in early 1799.
3. ^ Piero del Negro: La mémoire des vaincus. Le patriciat vénitien et la chute de la république , in: Alessandro Fontana, Georges Saro (ed.): Venise 1297-1797: La République des castors , pp. 149–163, here: p. 158.
4. ↑ LC Zamarski (Ed.): Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich, containing the life sketches of the memorable people who lived in the imperial state and in its crown lands from 1750 to 1850 , Vol. III, Vienna 1858, p. 33.
5. ^ Emmanuele Antonio Cicogna : Delle Inscrizioni Veneziane , Vol. 4, Venice 1834, p. 440.
6. ^ Giannantonio Moschini: La chiesa e il seminario di Sta. Maria della salute in Venezia , Venice 1842, p. 131f.
7. ↑ Fabio Mutinelli: Il cimiterio di Venezia, necrologie , Gondolier, Venice 1838, p. 9

predecessor	Office	successor
Marco Molin	Mayor of Venice 1818–1827	Domenico Morosini