Venetian State Inquisition

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The Venetian State Inquisition was a jurisdiction of the Republic of Venice that was responsible for state crimes such as high treason , espionage , betrayal of secrets , sabotage , counterfeiting or conspiracy of any kind. It was therefore separated from the ecclesiastical inquisition , the jurisdiction over faith.

The term inquisitor was used at different times for judges in very different areas. In general, it points to evidence-based criminal proceedings conducted by the state - in contrast to civil proceedings, which required a claim by an injured party and, until modern times, relied mainly on statements from those involved.

history

In the 9th century the Doge was assigned two iudices as supreme court lords . The plácito or placitum , probably based on the Franconian model at the end of the 9th century, advising and presumably electing the Doge , could constitute itself as a court of justice ( curia ). A relatively independent administration of justice was introduced with the Quarantia between 1207 and 1222 . This body, consisting of 40 men, was originally a committee of the Grand Council, first mentioned in a charter on December 22, 1223. In addition, there had been courts of justice in Dogado since the 12th century , whose judges were elected annually by the Grand Council from among its own ranks. In the 14th century, the Quarantia was divided into a Quarantia Civil (civil court), whose proceedings were public, and a Quarantia Criminal for non-political criminal cases.

The judiciary in Venice was generally - and this also applied to the church and state inquisition processes conducted there - in comparison with the usual in Europe mild and surprisingly modern: There was basically an equality of all before the law, the priority of documentary evidence testimony, a right of the accused to a defense including the provision of prison attorneys for the poor at the expense of the state, there were appellate bodies and since 1584 a kind of leniency program for proceedings of the state inquisition . False accusations were severely punished. For example, on March 27, 1610 , the Council of Ten sentenced an informer to life imprisonment for falsely accusing a Jew of “unusual contact” with his wife and daughter.

Inquisitors

For the political cases, after the suppression of the revolt of Baiamonte Tiepolo on July 10, 1310, a committee of ten men was set up for the first time, which later became the so-called Council of Ten and which had considerably more members. The Council of Ten appointed special investigators ( Inquisitori del Consiglio de Dieci ) on January 3, 1313 to take action against public enemies. Their violence was initially very limited. In 1335 they became a permanent institution. By 1539, the Inquisitori, initially only used on a case-by-case basis, became the magistrate of the three State Inquisitors , which consisted of two members of the Council of Ten and a Doge Advisor. By resolution of the Council of Ten on September 20, 1539, the inquisitors were first elected on October 25, 1539 for a period of one year. You could be re-elected without a break in office. Since the work of the State Inquisition, it was believed, should never rest, a substitute ( Inquisitore di rispetto ) was elected in addition to the three inquisitors on March 23, 1601 . The areas over which they were supposed to oversee were expanded further and further, whereby they always remained the executive organ of the Council of Ten and were bound by its instructions.

Originally, the inquisitors, as an investigative body, only prepared decisions for the Council of Ten . It was not until 1432 that they were given the right to impose penalties themselves, namely exile or imprisonment against their own peers. Since 1587 they could impose corporal punishment instead of exile , from 1605 the death penalty . On March 15, 1591, the State Inquisitors in the attic of the Doge's Palace were assigned the so-called lead chambers ( Carceri sotto i piombi ) for the state prisoners .

In 1539 this magistrate was renamed Inquisitori contra i propalatori de secreti , on September 2, 1592 in Inquisitori di stato and finally in 1669 in Tribunale supremo . His jurisdiction was eventually extended to the discovery and punishment of all traitors - not just those among the Venetian nobili - and to other areas such as morality and luxury, supervision of the monasteries. However, monitoring their own peers always remained the main task of the Venetian State Inquisition, because after all, unlike the common people, all Venetian nobili had extensive insights into state affairs and the offices that were always temporarily assigned to them largely freedom of action. "The state knew that through the vigilance and determination of the State Inquisitors, it had often escaped dangers from which entire armed forces could not have freed it; and every single citizen regarded them as a defense against the oppression of the ruling nobility, and wished their preservation . "

Bocca di leone (mailbox) at the Doge's Palace

The inquisitors have relied on their numerous paid informers ( spirri , confidenti ) since 1583, on torture and on the so-called snapdragons since 1584 , which were letter slots for anonymous advertisements that had already been set up in 1387. It was soon recognized that the latter was problematic, and a quorum was introduced to this end : in order to initiate proceedings at all, a 4/5 majority of the Council of Ten was required as the authority superior to the State Inquisitors, and judgments had to be voted five times. All denunciations for which there were not at least two witnesses were burned.

Mailboxes for accepting anonymous reports were not only available from the Council of Ten, but also from other authorities, in order to notify violations of their guidelines, but also inadequacies in the work of the authorities themselves, and suggestions for improving work could also be thrown in. Since the various mailboxes had different “areas of responsibility”, explanations were necessary. This was indicated by inscriptions and symbols. Almost all the stone letter slots with their associated symbols and inscription panels were destroyed by iconoclasts in 1797. The fact that, of all things, the snapdragon of the Council of Ten in the Doge's Palace, including the inscription, was preserved, is also part of the one-sided history of those who destroyed the Republic of Mark in 1797.

The Venetian State Inquisition mainly looked after Nobili , i.e. their own peers, monitored the Nobili's contacts with diplomats, stays abroad and marriages. “The relentlessness and extreme severity of the toe men made everyone tremble as soon as he received the summons; Indeed, often a great unbearable part of the punishment consisted in repeatedly having to stand at the 'Bussola' in the anteroom of the X. (meaning the Sala della Bussola in the Doge's Palace) and wait until the end of the session without making a decision To experience the future. By such means, however, the toe men achieved their goal that the inner calm was not disturbed by political agitations or religious rifts. If you consider the uncertainty caused by the degenerate knighthood and the misery later brought about by the religious battles in other countries ... Mayer says about this in 1795: 'As despotic and terrible as the power of this tribunal is, it is necessary for the preservation and constitution of the State ... If the citizen or craftsman complains about demonstrable oppression, unjust, violent treatment or withholding of his own, he receives quick satisfaction if it concerns one of the most distinguished and respected noblemen, even an inquisitor ... '"Of course, the" state- Inquisitors and the council of the X, at that time the highest degree of their activity when the republic was embroiled in a foreign war ... In the eighteenth century, when the republic adopted the system of neutrality, the severity of the tribunal waned. It is after Cicogna historical fact that during the last (18th) Then only fourteen state criminals were sentenced to death. "

According to the last State Inquisitor, Giuseppe Gradenigo , a total of 1,273 trials took place before the State Inquisition Tribunal from 1553 to 1775, i.e. 6 to 7 per year.

Reception in literature and historiography

The Venetian State Inquisition, which often acted in secret, was not only feared, but was also considered a bloodthirsty regime of terror.

French propaganda took advantage of this, and later it was also regarded as the epitome of state arbitrariness and machinations, a notion that historians occasionally followed: “Nourished by the polemics of the Enlightenment before the fall of the Republic of Venice and then by French propaganda this legend with the help of the imagination of novelists and poets from James Fenimore Cooper and Michele Zévacco (1860−1918) to Giovanni Battista Niccolini (1782−1861), Lord Byron , even to Alessandro Manzoni, widespread; not even the composers stood behind, from Ponchielli to Donizetti and Giuseppe Verdi . The romantic predilection for the uncanny also seems to have infected some historians. "

There are contemporary reports of the arbitrariness of the Council of Ten ( Consiglio dei Dieci ) and its body, the State Inquisitors, but: "It is controversial whether the Consiglio dei Dieci actually disregarded existing law in arbitrary and constitutionally endangering despotism or whether it defied its bad reputation in the case of his noble contemporaries, on the contrary, he owed his incorruptible supervision of the constitution and the conduct of the nobili. "

The Venetian writer and adventurer Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) reports in his autobiographical work “ History of my Escape ” (original title: Histoire de ma fuite des prisons de la République de Venise qu'on appelle les Plombs ) in the form of an adventure novel , his escape from the so-called lead chambers . The book was published in 1788.

See also

literature

  • Karl Benrath : History of the Reformation in Venice, Halle 1886
  • Bartolomeo Cecchetti : La Repubblica di Venezia e la Corte di Roma nei rapporti della Religione , Venice 1874
  • Kurt Heller : Venice: Law, Culture and Life in the Republic 697−1797 , Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 1999
  • Karl Hopf : Venice, the council of ten and the state inquisition . In: Friedrich von Raumer (ed.): Historisches Taschenbuch , 6. Jg./4. Follow Leipzig 1865
  • Lars Cassio Karbe: Venice or the power of the imagination. The Serenissima - a model for Europe , Munich 1995
  • Heinrich Kretschmayr : History of Venice in 3 volumes, Gotha 1905, 1920, 1934, Darmstadt 1964, 2nd reprint of the Gotha 1920 Aalen 1986 edition, reprint of the 1st and 2nd volume oO o. J. (2010)
  • Stefan Oswald: The Inquisition, the living and the dead. Venice's German Protestants , Sigmaringen 1989
  • G. Mohnike: Attempt at the beginning of the seventeenth century to introduce the Reformation in Venice etc. , Königsberg 1832
  • Brian Pullan: The jews of Europe and the inquisition of Venice 1550-1670 , Oxford 1983
  • Leopold von Ranke : On the conspiracy against Venice, in 1618 , Berlin 1831, 2nd edition 1837
  • Jörg Reimann: Venice and Venetia 1450 to 1650. Politics, economy, population and culture: With two feet in the sea, the third on the flat land, the fourth in the mountains , Hamburg 2006
  • Gabriel Rein: Paolo Sarpi and the Protestants. A contribution to the history of the Reformation movement in Venice in the early seventeenth century . Helsingfors 1904, Reprint oOoJ (2010)
  • Samuele Romanin : Storia documentata di Venezia , Venice 1853–61
  • César Vichard de Saint-Réal : The Spanish conspiracy against Venice 1618 , published and translated by Peter Weiß, Vienna / Leipzig 1990
  • James E. Shaw: The Justice of Venice: Authorities and Liberties in the Urban Economy, 1550-1700 , Oxford University Press 2006
  • Johann Philipp Siebenkees : Attempting a History of the Venetian State Inquisition , Nuremberg 1791. Reprint o. O., o. J. [2010]

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ As far as you as a witness in documents of the 12./13. They are listed by Gerhard Rösch : The Venetian nobility up to the closure of the Great Council . Sigmaringen 1989, pp. 91-98.
  2. ^ Johann Philipp Siebenkees. Attempting a History of the Venetian State Inquisition . Nuremberg 1791. Reprint oOOJ (2009), p. 2.
  3. ^ Rainer Graf: The festivals of the Republic of Venice. Klagenfurt 1866, Reprint o. O. o. J. (2010) p. 27f
  4. ↑ Ibid. P. 29
  5. ↑ Helmut Dumler: Venice and the Doges . Düsseldorf / Zurich 2001 p. 30
  6. ^ Alvise Zorzi: Venice. The history of the lion republic. German by Sylvia Höfer. Düsseldorf 1985 p. 174f.
  7. ↑ Oliver Thomas Domzalski: Political careers and distribution of power in the Venetian nobility (1646-1797). Sigmaringen 1996, p. 64
  8. ↑ Jacques Casanova de Seingalt: Histoire de ma fuite des prisons de la République de Venise qu'on appelle les Plombs . Ecrite a Dux en Boheme l'année 1787 . Schönfeld, Leipzig 1788