著者

和栗 珠里

出版者

桃山学院大学

雑誌

桃山学院大学人間科学 (ISSN:09170227)

巻号頁・発行日

no.45, pp.123-150, 2014-03-28

---

For the Republic of Venice the16th century was a time of hardships and changes. Above all the so-called Italian Wars and the repeated attacks on her colonies by the Ottoman Empire exhausted La Serenissima politically, militarily, and economically. One of the measures she took in order to break the financial deadlock was auctioning of offices. It was an expedient way out, which has been thought to have corrupted the republican spirit and reinforced the oligarchic tendency in Venice. The most profitable was auctioning the prestigious posts of the Procuratori di San Marco (PSM). Normally their number was fixed at nine (three for each of three sections, namely de Supra, de Citra, and de Ultra). However, during the crucial years after the defeat in Agnadello, not only were the PSM posts put on `sale' (they were not really `sold', but who offered a larger loan to the government was likely to be elected), but also the numerical limitation was ignored. In this way, in the single year of1516five men were created PSM without predecessors and brought their patria from10,000 to14,000 ducats each. Such a measure was regarded as jeopardizing the republican tradition of Venice and was abolished as soon as she had accomplished the reconquest of lost territories. But in the course of the century Venice was to face other crises in which this dishonorable method was revived again and again. The problem about the PSM was that, unlike other government offices for nobles (with the one exception of that of Doge), they were lifetime posts. Ordinary or extraordinary, all the PSM remained in office until they died or got elected Doge. As a result, their number could increase cumulatively. Examining all the PSM of the16th century (149men in all) with their predecessors and successors (or without one or both of them) and their length of tenure, we can find out how each post was succeeded to (or was not) and the total number of the PSM in each year. In this way I made the following facts clear : 1) most of the PSM `by money' didn't have predecessors or successors ; 2) in the1520's and1530's the PSM posts were auctioned many times and in the late1530's their total number hit the peak (as many as29PSM at a time) ; 3) between the Battle of Preveza (1538) and the War of Cyprus (1570-73) no PSM post was auctioned and the total number decreased naturally until the original number was regained in the early1560's ; 4) after the War of Cyprus auctioning of the PSM posts was abolished again and the original number was regained by the early1600's. Conclusion : auctioning of government offices was not a permanent institution but an emergency measure and the mechanism of normalization worked constantly ; however, for the PSM, the aftermath of auctioning lingered much longer than with other offices because of the lifetime tenure, permitting wealthy nobles to stay in power.