Pietro Gradenigo

Pietro Gradenigo's coat of arms

Pietro Gradenigo (* late 1250 / early 1251 in Venice ; † 13 August 1311 there ) was the 49th Doge of Venice . He ruled from 1289 to 1311.

Gradenigo vigorously reformed the city's political system. The serrata , the closure of the great council, was decided and the council of ten, as a judicial control body, which in its beginnings can be compared with a court of appeal , was set up and remained in function until the end of the republic under Napoleon. The arsenal was also expanded.

family

The Gradenigo were among the most important and oldest, the so-called apostolic families of Venice. Pietro Gradenigo was the first doge from the family. It was followed by Bartolomeo Gradenigo (1339–1342) and Giovanni Gradenigo (1355–1356). Ludovica Gradenigo was married to the Doge Marino Faliero .

Life

Gradenigo was married to Tommasina Morosini, a close relative of the Queen of Hungary. The couple had two sons and five daughters. Although he was a galley commander five times and ambassador several times, he had not yet held a high political office. At the time of his election he was Podestà of Capodistria .

The Doge's Office

Pietro Gradenigo was elected Doge in absentia at the age of 38. The reception he was given on his arrival in Venice was cool, since popular opinion favored Baiamonte Tiepolo , the grandson of Doge Jacopo Tiepolo . However, this had rejected the election and withdrew from politics. He wanted to avoid a civil war between the people who supported him and who would have liked to have elected him Doge by acclamation , and the majority of the aristocracy, who suspected Tiepolo of seeking sole rule in Venice.

politics

As a result, Venice was embroiled in a series of skirmishes and wars in foreign policy. Acre , Tire , Sidon and Tartus in the Holy Land were the Egyptian Mamluk - Sultan recaptured to military conflicts occurred with Konstantin Opel , Padua and Ferrara and - particularly disastrous - with the rival for supremacy in the Mediterranean - the Maritime Republic of Genoa .

After a series of raids by both parties on the opposing bases, a sea battle broke out on September 8, 1298 between the fleets of Venice and Genoa near the Dalmatian island of Korčula . The Venetian fleet under the command of Andrea Dandolo was defeated by the Genoese under Lamba Doria , who was able to decide the battle in his favor with a surprise maneuver. Venice lost 84 of 95 galleys . Among the prisoners were Andrea Dandolo, who escaped the shame of captivity by suicide, and Marco Polo , who wrote his travelogue (“ Il Milione ”) while in captivity . Genoa's losses in ships and soldiers were no less severe. In Venice, the defeat was felt as shame and humiliation.

The political consequences were less dramatic, however. In the Peace of Milan on May 25, 1299, which was mediated by Matteo Visconti , Charles II of Naples and Pope Boniface VIII , the Serenissima managed to retain control of the Adriatic and the trading rights in the Black Sea (see economic history the Republic of Venice ).
In addition, a trade agreement was concluded with the Sultan of Egypt.

economy

In 1291 all glassblowing workshops were relocated to the island of Murano because of the fire hazard posed by the kilns for the city . Glass production became one of the city's most important and profitable industries . The glassblowers were considered to be the keepers of secrets, and any passing on of technological knowledge was punishable by death. The glass industry was state-of-the-art, as eyeglasses could be made as early as the early 13th century and the first large window panes were made in Venice.

The Venetian boat building was just as outstanding. Under Gradenigo the arsenal was expanded, a hemp store was built with a rope factory for the ship's ropes , which also made the tendons for the crossbows .

Foreign artisans who wanted to settle permanently in the city with their families were able to obtain citizenship after just two years, which was otherwise extremely difficult and only attained after years of waiting. Silk weavers who had been expelled from Lucca were allowed to settle in Venice. Silk weaving became a second, lucrative branch of luxury goods production for which Venice became famous.

The serrata of the Great Council

In 1296, the Quarantia , the Council of Forty, who saw itself as a representative of the aristocracy, made a proposal to reform the electoral system and the Maggior Consiglio , the Grand Council. The events of the election of Tiepolo, in which the people had pushed through the election of the Doge, had caused deep concern among the aristocracy. The fear of the leading families that one of their own could seize the sole power through demagoguery and bribery, led to a sophisticated system of power balance, in which the doge lost more and more power until finally he only had one - but ostentatious - and glamorous - was a figurehead held like a prisoner in the golden cage of the Doge's Palace.

With the serrata , which is dated to the year 1297, the conditions for membership in the Grand Council, and thus the possibility of electing the doge or being elected as doge, were laid down for the next few centuries. With the so-called closing of the Great Rate ( serrata ), the established families of Venice excluded upstarts from government affairs, while adult men with legal capacity who could prove ancestry from old families and were registered in the Libro d'Oro , when they reached the appropriate age limit Member of the Grand Council. This enabled a balance of power between the aristocratic families and excluded the danger of power being usurped by an individual.

The new law was initially to be introduced on a trial basis for six months, but was de facto applied permanently from this point in time. The exclusion of a large part of the population from participating in power and the practical introduction of an oligarchy was a major reason for the unusual internal stability of the maritime republic, which was spared the usual struggles for the sole rule of a family, as in the Italian city republics .

The Baiamonte Tiepolo Conspiracy

Initially, however, the enforcement of the serrata led to domestic political unrest, less on the part of the newly rich, now excluded families, but rather on the part of aristocrats, who felt they had been left out in the last Doge election. The Doge's foreign policy failures, his anti-papal politics and his nepotism increased the dissatisfaction, so that the attempted coup led by Baiamonte Tiepolo, whose masterminds were the Querini and the Badoer , and in which Baiamonte was to be appointed as doge, finally came . However, the Doge learned of the plot early on. On June 15, 1310, he and his followers attacked the conspirators. Marco Querini and his son were stabbed and Badoero Badoer was hanged. However, Baiamonte managed to escape. The remaining conspirators were punished or banished by the Signoria , while 15 friends of the Doge were admitted to the Grand Council.

One month after the uprising, the Great Council elected the consiglio dei Dieci , the Council of Ten , which was initially given police and control functions and whose primary task was to prevent conspiracies. It gradually developed into the most important and powerful body in the city.

Tomb

Pietro Gradenigo died on August 13, 1311, according to popular rumors of poison. He was buried on Murano in the monastery church of San Cipriano, which was destroyed in 1837.

literature

• Claudio Rendina: I dogi. Storia e segreti. Rome 1984, ISBN 88-8289-656-0
• Helmut Dumler: Venice and the Doges. Düsseldorf 2001.

Web links

Commons : Pietro Gradenigo  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

1. ↑ The serrata was the result of a long development and was not essentially completed until the 14th century. In 1297 the number of members of the Grand Council was expanded considerably and lists of persons eligible for election to the Grand Council were initially drawn up, who initially by no means necessarily had to come from previous council members. On July 19, 1314 it was decided that everyone who wants to be elected to the Grand Council has to register in the lists kept by the Quarantia (Court of Justice). On January 8, 1317, a revision of these lists was decided and a heavy fine was set for unauthorized entries. It was not until September 16, 1323 that it was clarified that the Grand Council was admitted whose father or grandfather had sat on the Grand Council. It was not until August 31, 1506 that the children of families eligible for advice were entered into a birth register ( Libro d'oro di nascita ) and the Libro d'oro dei matrimonio has existed since April 26, 1526 , in which the marriages of members of the Great councils were recorded. These two handwritten lists - then referred to as the "Golden Book" ( Libro d'Oro ) - were not printed until the 18th century: Nomi, cognomi, età de 'veneti Patrizi viventi, e de' genitori loro defonti matrimoni, e figli d 'essei nel Libro d'oro registrati (1714 to 1758 in 19 editions), Protogiornale per l'anno ad uso della Serenissima Dominante Città di Venezia (from 1759), Nuovo Libro d'oro che contiene i nom, ie l'età de 'Veneti Patrizi (1797).

predecessor	Office	successor
Giovanni Dandolo	Doge of Venice 1289-1311	Marino Zorzi