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An Exemplary Maritime Republic

AN EXEMPLARY MARITIME REPUBLIC:

VENICE AT THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES

Bernard Doumerc

IN VENICE, ‘the sea was all that mattered’. Truly, this was the founding prin-
ciple that marked the history of this celebrated city.1 For a very long time his-
torians made the Serenissima a model of success, wealth, and opulence,
sometimes asserting that the Venetians ‘had a monopoly of the transit trade in
spices from the Orient’ and ‘that they were the masters of the Mediterranean’.2
Such accounts, flattering to the pride of the inhabitants of the lagoons,
emphasised the prestige of Venetian navies and the patriotism of its noble lovers
of liberty, united to defend the city against the adversities of nature and of men.
All this is entirely misleading.
The Venetians were not the only ones who used the maritime routes of the
Mediterranean Sea, an area that they were forced to share with great rivals.3
Beginning in the eleventh century, the Venetian government, determined to take
a place in international affairs, intervened vigorously against the Normans who
had recently installed themselves in southern Italy and Sicily. At that time all of
the Christian West, not only the Venetians, was excited by the success of the
crusaders, and tried to find advantage in these unsettled commercial conditions.
So it was that the drive to establish a trading presence on the southern shores of
the Mediterranean, from Ceuta in Morocco to Lajazzo in Cilicia, began with
violence. The Middle Ages were a time of war in which periods of peace were
extremely brief. Governments knew how to manage unpredictable economies
that were continually buffeted by the repeated conflicts of the age. The Vene-
tians were not the masters in the western basin of the Mediterranean. There the
Genoese and the Catalans reigned. In the East they were forced to share the
wealth of the Byzantine Empire, the Armenian kingdom and caliphates with
their competitors, the Pisans, the Amalfitans, and the Genoese. Though faced

1 F. C. Lane, Venise, une république maritime (Paris, 1985), 96, and in ‘Venetian Shipping
during the Commercial Revolution’, in The Collected Papers of F. C. Lane (Baltimore, 1966),
3–24.
2 F. Braudel, La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’époque de Philippe II , 2 vols
(Paris, 1982), I, 493.
3 J. H. Pryor, ‘The Naval Battles of Roger of Lauria’, Journal of Medieval History, 9 (1983),
179–216, and also in his Geography, Technology, and War. Studies in the Maritime History of
the Mediterranean (649–1571) (Cambridge, 1988).

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152 Bernard Doumerc

with fierce opposition from the other Italian cities, little by little, the tenacity
and the communal spirit of the Venetians succeeded in lifting the Serenissima to
dominance. They knew how to build the foundations of their maritime power.
From the eleventh century onward, the successive governments of the city
wanted above all to take control of navigation in the narrow Adriatic Sea, from
the Po Valley with its populous and prosperous cities, and reaching out toward
distant lands. It is the Adriatic problem that gave the first impetus to Venetian
imperialism. Later, the peace that Venice concluded in 1177 with the emperor
Frederick I established the Republic’s ‘Lordship of the Gulf’, which it alone
would dominate until the middle of the sixteenth century.4 For some Italian
maritime cities the first Crusades in the Near East provided an opportunity for
conquest, but the Venetians would wait until the Fourth Crusade when, in 1204,
they finally dismembered the Byzantine Empire for their own gain. Their naval
power rested upon constantly growing trade, closely following a considerable
growth in the demand for maritime transport between the two shores of the
Mediterranean. These conditions allowed the creation of an overseas colonial
empire, the stato da mar. Radiating outward from major islands such as Euboea
and Crete, and from bases at strategic points along the coast, such as Coron and
Modon in the Peloponnese or, in the Aegean Sea, from the many islets of the
Duchy of Naxos, the enterprise of Venetian colonists and tradesmen grew
unceasingly. Great successes, as much in battle as in the marketplace, are the
mark of a powerful state. Without a doubt these successes rested on three critical
and all-important determining elements. First was the creation of that unique
institution, the Arsenal, by the communal authorities. Second was the imple-
mentation of vigorous oversight of the Republic’s naval potential as is clearly
demonstrated in the establishment of convoys of merchant galleys. Finally, there
was the continuing concern for associating the defence of economic interests
with preoccupations of territorial expansion aimed at the founding of a colonial
empire. These, it seems, were the reasons why Venice became a great maritime
power.
There was a technological solution to the new equation that determined the
relation between time and distance. This ‘world economy’, as defined by
Fernand Braudel, saw new kinds of sailing craft brought into use. In Venice,
even as the traditional role of sailors was called into question, the galley
remained the preferred vessel. Venetians saw no reason to force cargo ships to
evolve in a different way from warships when the galley could fill both these
functions that were intimately bound together in medieval deep-sea navigation.5
If the numerous crew of a galley was expensive, it was much less so than the loss
of the vessel and its cargo. The galley was the favourite weapon of the Venetians
and all means were employed to optimise its capabilities within the parameters

4 G. Cracco, Un altro mondo, Venezia nel medioevo dal secolo XI al secolo XIV (Turin,
1986), 52.
5 F. Melis, I trasporti e le comunicazioni nel medioevo, ed. L. Frangioni (Florence, 1984),
111.

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An Exemplary Maritime Republic 153

dictated by necessity. From a very early time Venice had several shipyards, the
well-known squeri, within the city itself. Perhaps from the beginning of the
twelfth century – some have suggested that it was as early as 1104 – the ruling
elite decided to provide the city with a shipbuilding establishment controlled by
the government.6 Archival documentation from 1206 confirms the existence of
such a state-controlled naval shipyard and also attests that the construction of
ships for the Commune was to be confined to this facility. In 1223, the first
evidence appears for the existence of the patroni arsenatus, directors of the
Arsenal, elected from among the nobles of the Great Council and salaried by the
Commune. Their task was clearly defined: to provide necessary raw materials to
the craftsmen, especially wood for ships’ frames, hemp for sails, and cordage,
and to see to the timely delivery of sound and robust ships. The details of Doge
Enrico Dandolo’s direct intervention in the preparation for the attack on the
capital of the Byzantine Empire during the Fourth Crusade of 1204 are well
known. This intrusion of the public authority into the management of naval
construction would continue until the end of the Republic. In 1258, the
capitulares illorum de arsena defined the role of the directors. From 1277, after
some hesitation, the state attempted to retain its skilled labour force by forbid-
ding craftsmen from emigrating. Within two years, between 1269 and 1271, the
government decided to codify the regulations that governed the craft guilds in
the Arsenal. The statutes of the caulkers’, shipwrights’, and rope-makers’ guilds
also date from this period. By 1265, the districts that produced wood and hemp
for the Arsenal were managed by public administrators. Then, in 1276, the
government required that at least one squadron should always be prepared to put
to sea at a moment’s notice, which required the continual presence of craftsmen
at the Arsenal. Finally, in 1278, an arms manufactory completed the comple-
ment of activities sheltered within the protecting walls of the shipyard.7
In 1302, the Venetian government implemented a revision of ‘the corrections
and additions’ to the Arsenal regulations.8 This action was necessary to
encourage the full development of the technological revolution that would maxi-
mise the Republic’s naval potential. A short time later, between 1304 and 1307,
the Arsenale Novo was created.9 By 1325 every sector of maritime activity had
been reformed. The speed with which the authorities decided, the promotion of
utilitas favourable to the public good, and a real will to innovate gave expression
to a powerful movement toward a goal of dominating the sea. In 1301, the
Senate declared that it was necessary to arm a permanent squadron for the
protection of ‘the Gulf ’ (the Adriatic Sea). The cramped port facilities in the

6 E. Concina, La casa dell’Arsenale, in Storia di Venezia, Temi, Il Mare (Rome, 1991),

147–210.
7 G. Luzzato, Studi di storia economica veneziana (Padua, 1954), 6.
8 F. Melis, I mercanti italiani nell’Europa medievale e rinascimentale , ed. L. Frangioni
(Florence, 1990), 9.
9 E. Concina, L’Arsenale della Repubblica di Venezia (Venice, 1984), 26 ff.

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154 Bernard Doumerc

lagoon led to a natural expansion with new basins in the Arsenale Novo.10 This
expansion of facilities was completed by the creation of naval bases at Pola and
Pore? in Istria. Until the final phase of renovation at the end of the fifteenth
century, this naval establishment was the pride of Venice’s oligarchy. In 1435,
the Senate declared, ‘our Arsenal is the best in the world’ and encouraged visits
by the famous and powerful as they journeyed toward Jerusalem. This evocation
of the labour, ingenuity, and efficiency of the seamen of Venice resounded all
across Europe and flattered the pride of the subjects of the Serenissima. The
myth of Venice, forged by the political powers around the Arsenal, helped to
elicit respect, fear, and effective administration.11
It is necessary to pause for a moment to consider this assertion of a clever
political will that quickly adapted to circumstances. In looking at the overall
situation in the Mediterranean basin it is clear that by the late thirteenth century
the Venetian position had weakened. In 1261, a Byzantine–Genoese coalition
took control of Constantinople and a part of Romania that, up until that time,
had been controlled by the Franks and Venetians. Meanwhile, the Republic
relentlessly defended Crete, the coastal bases of the Peloponnese, and the
important islands of the Aegean Sea.12 In 1291 the fall of Acre marked the final
defeat of the Crusaders in the Latin States of the Levant. It appears that the
Venetians had already begun a withdrawal toward the west when, in 1274, Doge
Lorenzo Tiepolo prohibited investment in agricultural estates on Terra Ferma
‘to oblige the Venetians to take an interest in naval affairs’. A little later, in
1298, their perpetual rivals, the Genoese, entered the Adriatic to support the
Hungarians with an attack on Venetian possessions in Dalmatia.13 Naval war
within the confined spaces of the Adriatic forced the government to undertake a
major reform effort to confront this threat from the enemies of the Republic.
This was more than a territorial conflict. It was also an economic war that
engulfed the entire Mediterranean basin. The desire to capture commerce and to
dominate distribution networks for goods placed great importance on the ability
to keep fleets at sea. The last phase in the creation of Venice’s magnificent
Arsenal took place between about 1473 and 1475. After the fall of Constanti-
nople in 1453, fear seized the Venetians who dreaded a naval assault on their
colonial possessions. The defence of the stato da mar was undertaken by rein-
forcing the defences of the system of naval bases. First, Negroponte and

10 Ibid., 28, and E. Concina, ‘Dal tempio del mercante al piazzale dell’Impero: l’Arsenale di
Venezia’, in Progetto Venezia (Venice, n.d.), 57–106. Originally the ‘gulf ’ or ‘Gulf of Venice’
referred to that part of the Adriatic north of a line between Pola and Ravenna. As Venetian
control of the Adriatic expanded, so did their definition of ‘the Gulf ’. See F. C. Lane, Venice:
A Maritime Republic (Baltimore, 1973), 24.
11 E. Crouzet-Pavan, Venise triomphante, les horizons d’un mythe (Paris, 1999), 122.
12 B. Doumerc, La difesa dell’impero, in Storia di Venezia, dalle origini alla caduta della
Serenissima, vol. II, La formazione dello stato patrizio , ed. G. Arnaldi, G. Cracco and A.
Tenenti (Rome, 1997), 237–50.
13 B. Krekic, Venezia e l’Adriatico, in Storia di Venezia, III, 51–81 and P. Cabanes, Histoire
de l’Adriatique (Paris, 2000), 191.

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An Exemplary Maritime Republic 155

Nauplia, and then, the Arsenal of Candia, an important strong point on Crete,
were completely renovated between 1467 and 1470. At home, in Venice,
momentous changes in circumstances created a need to augment the Republic’s
naval forces. Henceforth, fierce naval war against admirals in the pay of the
Ottomans brought unaccustomed reverses. In this context, the senate asked
Giacomo Morosini (called el zio, ‘Uncle’) to prepare plans for an extension of
the Arsenal in 1473. With an additional eight hectares added to its area, it
became the greatest shipyard in Europe and ‘the essential foundation of the
state’.14
By demonstrating its undeniable concern for optimising the financial and
technical resources devoted to naval construction, the government showed the
way for the whole people. The authorities obtained indispensable support from
all those social groups whose destiny was tied to the vigour of the city’s mari-
time activity. At the same time, the desires of those groups corresponded to the
announced public policy of giving priority to the naval forces. It is not true that a
permanent and effective naval force did not appear until the sixteenth century.15
A navy existed in Venice from the fourteenth century. As described above, the
patrol squadron charged with policing the Adriatic was at the heart of that force,
but there were other available units. First among them were the galleys armed by
the port cities that had gradually come to be included in the stato da mar. In the
event of conflict these Dalmatian, Albanian, Greek, and Cretan cities were
required, by the terms of their submission to Venice, to provide one or more
galleys for the naval draft due to the metropolis. There are many instances of
these drafts. One example is sufficient to indicate their nature.16 During the
conflict against the Turks during the 1470s, the Arsenal could not quickly
provide the thirty galleys demanded by the Senate. All the subject cities of the
Empire were required to contribute to the fleet. Crete provided eleven galleys,
four came from the occupied ports of Puglia, two from Corfu, eleven from
Dalmatia (three from Zara, two from Sebenico, one each from Cattaro, Lesina,
Split, Pago, Arba, and Trau). Cadres of loyal ‘patriots’ known to Venetian
administrators leavened the crews gathered from these various ports. Neither the
ardour of these fighters from ‘overseas’ nor their fidelity to St Mark was taken
for granted. The Senate did reward loyal commanders such as Alessandro de
Gotti of Corfu, Francesco Chachuni of Brindisi, and Jacopo Barsi of Lesina.
The second Venetian trump card was the initiation of an unprecedented
system for the administration of sea-borne trade. This system provided a formi-
dable tool, designed to respond to the needs of la ventura, of commerce, laying a

14 Archivio di Stato, Venice, senato, mar, reg. 15, fol. 14 for example, and S. Karpov, La
navigazione veneziana nel mar Nero (XIII–XV sec.) (Ravenna, 2000), 12.
15 J. Meyer, ‘Des liens de causalité en histoire: politiques maritimes et société’, Revue
historique, 614 (2000), 12.
16 A. Ducellier and B. Doumerc, ‘Les Chemins de l’exil, bouleversements de l’Est européen
et migrations vers l’Ouest à la fin du Moyen Âge’ (Paris, 1992), 163; Archivio di Stato,
Venice, senato, mar, reg. 15, fol. 161.

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156 Bernard Doumerc

foundation for a dominating and expansionist people. These innovative proce-

dures put in place by the ruling oligarchy were developed to take advantage of
an exceptional organisation that would raise Venice into the first rank of
Mediterranean naval powers. During the first twenty years of the Trecento, there
was a period of maturation punctuated by different attempts to develop a system
of navigation that eventually evolved into the galley convoys known as mude.
Having achieved this objective with the consensus of all the participants in the
financial and business world, it was then necessary to create an efficient system
of management. Even if maritime trade was prosperous, it remained fragile and
subject to unforeseeable risks. It was always possible that a major conflict with
the Genoese or the Catalans, or even a brief outbreak of extreme violence due to
piracy, might place the whole economic structure of the Republic at risk.17
Meanwhile, in the city of Venice as well as in the small island market towns of
the lagoon, in the warehouses and in the tradesmen’s shops or the craftsmen’s
booths, men pursued gain, but they did so without an overall plan and without
looking for any really consistent method in their approach. Around the middle
of the fourteenth century Venetian patricians came to realise the necessity of
undertaking ambitious measures to surmount the major obstacles to a rational
exploitation of the merchant fleets by making major changes in their organisa-
tion. Perhaps the terrifying War of Chioggia (1379–81) accelerated the rapid
development of this concept. The patriciate instituted regulations providing for
general communal equipping of merchant fleets to offset the disadvantages of
the privately outfitted trading expeditions that had been paralysed during this
long conflict. It is clear that the implementation of this new system affected all
of the Republic’s economic and social structures. Progress toward fully imple-
menting this model for the unique and exemplary management of Venetian
maritime potential took place only slowly, but it was to dominate the Republic’s
actions at sea up to the middle of the sixteenth century.18
The founding act of this state-controlled regulation was the Ordo galearum
armatarum, decreed on 8 December 1321. It concerned both the galleys and
sailing cargo ships. The experimental phase lasted until the end of the Venetian–
Genoese war of 1379. The cooperation of several outfitters was needed for a
merchant convoy so the galleys received collective financing. This innovative
policy originated after the fall of Acre in 1291. The entrepreneurial merchants,
far from pulling back from risky undertakings, soon became involved in the
conquest of the Atlantic routes to Flanders and England. This rapid expansion
encouraged new initiatives, sometimes hesitant and disorganised during the first
half of the Trecento, then coordinated by the public authorities under the careful
supervision of the city’s aristocratic patriciate. Opening navigation routes

17 B. Doumerc, Il dominio del mare, in Storia di Venezia, IV, 11; A. Tenenti and U. Tucci,
eds, Rinascimento (Rome, 1996), 113–80.
18 D. Stöckly, Le Système des galées du marché à Venise (fin XIIIe–milieu XVe) (Leiden and
New York, 1995), 158; F. C. Lane, Navires et constructeurs à Venise pendant la Renaissance
(Paris, 1965).

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An Exemplary Maritime Republic 157

toward the west, along with intensification of maritime relations with the
Levant, placed the keys to international trade in Venetian hands after 1350.
They also profited from a remarkably favourable position in relation to the
Alpine passes leading to northern Europe. By this time the system of auctioning
the charters of galleys belonging to the Commune had been definitively estab-
lished. To avoid a destructive confrontation between the authorities and the
merchants (even though at Venice it is sometimes difficult to discern a differ-
ence between the two groups) the state asked that the Black Sea convoy be
managed according to this new principle. After some years it was adopted for all
navigation routes, to the general satisfaction of both groups. Besides the galley
convoys, there was also a whole sector of maritime endeavour involving sailing
round ships with high freeboard (naves). Sometimes their operation is described
as free outfitting, because it was subject to fewer regulatory constraints. These
naves transported necessary bulk products such as grain, all kinds of raw
materials of high volume, construction materials, salt, ashes, and so forth. The
primary purpose of the more strongly defended galleys was to transport costly
cargoes of spices, silks and precious cloths, metals, and weapons. In the middle
of the fourteenth century, when the Church lifted its prohibition of trade with
the Muslims, the Venetians had a fleet ready to open trade once again with the
Syrian and Egyptian ports of the Levant. In 1366, a sailing route involving both
galleys and naves established connections from the lagoons to Alexandria and
Beirut, beginning a promising trade. In the 1440s, nearly ninety naves and
fifty-five galleys sailed for the Near East, and about thirty for Constantinople.
The volume of the goods continued to increase, as did the pattern of massive
investment and fiscal returns for the treasury. The reform of maritime statutes
that had become obsolete, the creation of new work contracts that imposed a
minimum wage, improvements in living conditions on board ships and a mari-
ners’ residence in the city attracted a skilled labour force, mostly from Dalmatia,
Albania, and Greece. These immigrants, originating from its overseas colonies,
allowed the Republic to raise the banner of St Mark throughout the
Mediterranean.19 The Senate, the real architect of this system, far from putting
the system of private management in opposition to the one controlled by the
Commune, took the best of each of the two systems and combined them. For
that reason, some historians speak disparagingly about bureaucracy or state
control to describe the Venetian system of trade.
Henceforth, the state owned the merchant fleet, chartering galleys to
merchants who operated them. The operator was the highest bidder in the
auction for charters. Only nobles were allowed to participate in this auction, an
exclusive privilege that gave them control of the financial and commercial oper-
ations of the fleet, in return for which they were expected to respect rigorously
the specific terms and conditions of the charters. After 1420 all merchant

19 E. Ashtor, Levant Trade in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, 1981), 381; J. C. Hocquet,
Voiliers et commerce en Méditerranée, 1200–1650 (Lille, 1976), 442; B. Doumerc, Venise et
l’émirat hafside de Tunis (Paris, 1999), 172.

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158 Bernard Doumerc

galleys were constructed on the same model according to the plan of the ‘galley
of Flanders’. This was a vessel of 250 tons burden, delivered as a bare hull (a
‘barebones charter’) for which the operator furnished all the necessary equip-
ment – sails, cordage, oars, and maintenance materials. The Commune thus
freed itself completely of the need to invest in those lesser items. On the other
hand, the merchant, knowing that the necessary capital for naval construction
was provided by the state, could keep most of his financial resources free for the
commercial transactions that were the goal of the expedition. In addition, the
winning bidder who took charge of the galley (called the patrono) got priority in
loading the most precious goods and a monopoly in the transportation of these
goods at fixed prices. These incentives earned the merchants’ approval because
they no longer dreaded aggravated competition amongst themselves, the law
was the same for everyone, the costs of transport were fixed and conditions on
board were identical for all galleys.
There is often a feeling of modernity about a state when its economic func-
tions predominate. This would make Venice of the Quattrocento a real labora-
tory of modernity.20 The economic stakes involved in these operations were very
high. In 1409 a muda to Flanders carried in its holds merchandise worth 460,000
ducats, equivalent to a tonne and half of gold! In the 1430s, cargoes of spices
and drugs loaded on galleys voyaging to Alexandria were often valued at more
than 150,000 ducats. Figures like these justify the care taken by the authorities
to supervise such transactions, which, after all, provided the bulk of the state’s
tax revenues.21 This was remarkable for the time since surely a patrician
merchant, following his own bankruptcy, would not have turned to the
communal authorities expecting financial assistance. On the contrary, it was to
improve competitiveness and to establish its supremacy that the government
accepted a transfer of power to merchants even while introducing a measure of
coercion into the process. The organisation of the maritime economy took on the
characteristics of a mixed economy, promoting private interests while safe-
guarding the public interest. This was the strength of the Venetian system.
Consider two examples of constraints freely accepted by the operators of
merchant galleys. The first concerns the financing of the expeditions. As was
mentioned above, it was necessary to invest a considerable amount of capital. At
the end of the fifteenth century, the cost to charter a merchant galley for one
voyage was 9200 ducats (33 kg of fine gold). Not only was it necessary to pay
for the charter of the galley but also the cost of operating the vessel during a
voyage of five to eleven months – depending on the destination – including vict-
ualling and salaries for a crew of a hundred and fifty rowers and some twenty
specialists and officers. The Commune required that a company be established
to manage the operation of the galley so that a complete bankruptcy caused by
insolvency of any of the partners might be avoided. A magistracy, the avogaria

20 B. Doumerc, Il dominio del mare, 123.

21 J. Day, ‘Les Instruments de gestion du monde’, in Venise 1500, la puissance, la novation et
la concorde: le triomphe du mythe (Paris, 1993), 142–56.

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An Exemplary Maritime Republic 159

di Comun, supervised all financial commitments proposed by the patrono. The

total amount of the estimated cost for the operation of the galley was divided
into twenty-four equal shares (carati) as was the case for the purchase of a ship.
The value of a share varied according to the actual length of the voyage, any
unforeseen expenses, and risks at sea. An adjustment was made when the
convoy returned to Venice allowing the distributed operating expenses to be
deducted from the profits of the voyage. Merchant literature is full of descrip-
tions of these temporary companies aimed at limiting each partner’s financial
risk, because the cost of operating a galley exceeded the investment potential of
a single entrepreneur. Such associations were indispensable, and since the objec-
tive was to verify financial investments and the quality of commercial transac-
tions, the patrono’s family played an essential role. In these cases, the family
enterprise was preferred above all other options, especially the fraterna , which
created a core of investors around the brothers of the patrono.22 Little by little
during the fifteenth century, the circle of the financial partners was limited to
the members of a single family. This cut down considerably on the number of
shareholders from an average of twelve in the 1450s to, in many cases, as few as
two by the beginning of the sixteenth century. Under these conditions the
prevailing commercial regulations benefited certain participants who were
henceforth free to set sale prices as they wished because they had the advantage
of a transportation monopoly. This perversion of the incanto system eventually
caused its demise and its being denounced by Marino Sanudo in his Diarii.
The second constraint imposed on merchants engaged in the state-controlled
sector concerns the presence of a capitanio, an agent of the government elected
by the members of the Great Council and paid by the Commune. The capitanio
of the galley convoy supervised the activities of the patroni of the individual
galleys, enforcing adherence to the terms of the charter to maintain regularity,
speed, and security during these long voyages.23 It was also the responsibility of
this state representative to decide, in accordance with the merchants, to change
course or to shorten a stay in port when circumstances warranted. As guarantor
of the common interest, he had to limit the ambitions of entrepreneurs who
would not hesitate to compromise the interests of their rivals if, by so doing,
they could increase their personal gain. Disagreements were numerous and liti-
gation frequent, but in the event of a serious breach of the rules of the incanto, a
patrono could be banned from participation for a period of several years.24 The
role of the capitanio was essential to the regulation of this complex mixed
management system and crucial to the smooth operation of the voyages. The
reports read in the Senate upon return of the muda were complicated because of

22 B. Doumerc, C. Judde de Larivière, ‘Le Rôle du patriciat dans la gestion des galères
marchandes à Venise au début du seizième siècle’, Studi veneziani, 36 (1998), 57–84.
23 B. Doumerc, D. Stöckly, ‘L’Evolution du capitalisme marchand à Venise au XVe siècle, le
financement des mude’, Annales H. S. C., 1 (1995), 133–57.
24 B. Doumerc, ‘La Crise structurelle de la marine vénitienne au XVe siècle: le problème du
retard des mude’, Annales E.S.C., 40 (1985), 605–25.

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160 Bernard Doumerc

the difficulties encountered by these agents of the government as they

confronted the representatives of capitalist enterprise. Despite it all, and this
was part of the miracle, the collusion of interests maximised profits for both
individuals and for the enterprise as whole.
This system of managing the merchant galleys hid a little-known aspect,
which was in fact the keystone of the success of the Venetian thalassocracy in
the Mediterranean during the closing centuries of the Middle Ages. Until now,
historians have placed the Venetian system of navigation only in a context of
maritime transport and trade. In fact, the political decision by the Senate to
manage maritime commercial expeditions of the merchant galleys directly by
organising them in convoys was exemplary and innovative in more ways than
one. First, the government avoided maintaining a naval patrol squadron outside
of the Gulf. It would have been a vain hope to eradicate the plague of piracy in
the waters extending from the Channel to the Aegean Sea. Instead, the captains
of the mude were ordered to intercept and to neutralise any pirates that they met
and sometimes to engage in hot pursuit, even if it meant diverting from their
planned course. However, the Republic did not supply letters of marque or of
reprisal to ships’ captains hoping to participate in the guerre de course. To
maintain control of these high-risk activities that might put the vital interests of
the state at risk, the Senate almost always preferred to entrust them to meticu-
lously organised expeditions, avoiding any improvisation with the attendant
possibility of dangerous and harmful consequences25 Often, the communal
galleys of the cities of the stato da mar participated in these operations to police
the seas but, on the whole, this tactic did not produce satisfactory results.
Second, another lesser-known aspect of Venetian policy must also be taken into
consideration: the requisition of merchant galleys. After having encouraged the
development of regular convoy routes, which may have seen as many as fifty
great galleys in service, the Venetian government in 1465, forced to react to an
unfavorable military situation, found that its fleet, as a whole, did not contain
enough warships.26 Social concerns regarding the employment of a large
number of seamen on board the ‘man-eating’ galleys, and fiscal considerations
resulting from the fixed pricing of the noli (charters) and the control of cargos
which this facilitated, concerns which were as important as worries about the
defence of merchant ships, led to the galley becoming a privileged instrument of
Venetian maritime expansion. The choice of the Venetian authorities in favour of
convoys of merchant galleys (mude), however, must have been somewhat detri-

25 A. Tenenti, ‘Venezia e la pirateria en Levante: 1300–1460’, in A. Pertusi, ed., Venezia e il

Levante fino al secolo XV. Atti del i convegno internazionale di storia della civilta veneziana ,
2 vols. (Florence, 1973–4), I, 705–71.
26 B. Doumerc, ‘Le Rôle ambigu de la muda vénitienne: convoi marchand ou unité de
combat’, in Histoire maritime: thalassocratie et période révolutionnaire, Actes des 114e et
115e Congrès Nationaux des Sociétés Savantes (Paris, 1989; Avignon, 1990; Paris, 1991),
139–54 and R. Cessi, Storia della Repubblica di Venezia (1968), 191.

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An Exemplary Maritime Republic 161

mental to the profitability of the unarmed naves that remained in private

operation.
The security of trade relations was the source of all profits, so an argument
was put forward that the companies of the wealthiest aristocrats should be
favoured by making them the only ones authorised to organise the profitable
mude. Over the years this point of view became a determining factor in the
evolution of the place of the galere da mercato in the complex whole of the
Venetian maritime economy, reviving the basic debate, which set in opposition
the objectives of the private managers of the voyages and the objectives of the
government. The great network of navigation routes favoured the noble entre-
preneurs who collaborated with the authorities within the system of the incanto.
Whenever an accident of circumstances threatened the regularity of the voyages,
the state encouraged the mude, sometimes forcing independently equipped and
operated ships to remain inactive in port. This transfer of activities worked to
the profit of the galleys as demonstrated by the creation of the route to Aigues
Mortes in 1415 and then to the Barbary Coast in 1436 in response to the
problem of maritime insecurity. Indeed, the senate announced that it was prefer-
able ‘in any case to fit out two galleys on the Aigues-Mortes route for one alone
does not seem safe’.27 Here is the heart of the debate: the Venetian muda was a
merchant unit but also a combat unit and it is necessary to consider that it made
a permanent contribution to the naval forces placed at the disposal of the
government’s military commanders. These galleys were armed ‘for war and for
trade’ and the terms of their charter agreed to after the auction provided that the
government could exercise its right of requisition at any time. During the
fifteenth century this procedure was often used. This was the third element of
Venetian maritime supremacy.
It is necessary to see the activities of the mude in another context as well. The
galleys provided the state with a very efficient naval potential for general tasks
aimed at preserving the supremacy of the Empire. From the beginning, the
Senate specified that the patroni of galleys had to accept some missions ‘in the
service of the Signoria’ in return for the numerous advantages from which they
benefited.28 What did this mean? A few examples make the Senate’s intention
clear. The least coercive of these requirements concerned the transportation of
officials designated by the government, baili and ambassadors, as well as colo-
nial administrators. These voyages were always made aboard communal galleys
protected by the flag of St Mark. Sometimes the captain of the merchant convoy
played the role of government representative in dealings with local authorities in
Tunis, Alexandria, or London. In 1438, the Senate asked the captain of the
Aigues Mortes convoy to agree to the request of the Grand Master of the Order
of St John of Jerusalem who wished to travel from the great Provençal port of

27 Archivio di Stato, Venice, senato, misti, reg. 53, fol. 29, and Antonio Morosini, Annali,
extraits de la chronique de Morosini relatifs à l’histoire de France (Paris, 1898), I, 374.
28 B. Doumerc, ‘Les Flottes d’état, moyen de domination coloniale à Venise (XVe siècle)’, in
M. Balard and A. Ducellier, eds., Coloniser au Moyen Âge (Paris, 1995), 115–29.

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162 Bernard Doumerc

Marseilles to Rhodes. The clamour of protest from the expedition’s investors

had no effect on the Senate’s decision and for several weeks the galleys
remained far off their planned course. Another kind of requisition for peaceful
missions concerned the transportation of funds or strategic materials destined
for the administrators of the cities of the overseas empire. At the beginning of
the fifteenth century, the mude of the Levant carried a considerable quantity of
oars, yards, and cordage, as well as timber and cut stone in order to renovate the
arsenals of the Peloponnese and Crete. In the middle of the fifteenth century,
these requisitioned services were frequent because it was then necessary to add
the transportation of troops and the repatriation of refugees resulting from an
expansion of the area of hostilities.29 In addition, the capitanio was often
assigned to inspect the strongholds of the colonial domain to provide an objec-
tive report on the needs, genuine or not, put forward by the rectors ‘of our over-
seas possessions’. During the Venetian–Genoese war in the 1430s, and then
again during the one against the Turks in the 1460s, the mude participated in
naval actions under the orders of the Captain General of the Sea. The dramatic
break in ranks at the defeat of Zonchio in 1499 revealed the reluctance of the
crews and merchants to assume the task of national defence. Strikes broke out
among crews ‘who refused to fight so often’ and demanded a salary increase of
30 per cent. The investor’s mistrust was often in evidence, putting the effective-
ness of the government in peril.30
The only mission willingly accepted by the patroni of the galleys was to hunt
for corsairs. This service of policing the seas was profitable to their private
activities since they were all owners of cargo vessels operating in the unregu-
lated shipping sector. Be that as it may, the government had succeeded in
reducing unproductive investment in a permanent naval squadron. The evolution
of international political conditions among the countries along the coasts of the
Mediterranean requiring increasing participation by the merchant galleys ‘in the
service of the state’ had grave consequences for the peace of mind of the entre-
preneurs. Indeed, the threat of a requisition always hung over every departure
and the meagre and consistently tardy indemnities from the government
discouraged the sailors as much as the ship-owners.
By the beginning of the sixteenth century, the reconciliation of economic
policy with the constitution as well as with the defence of a colonial empire was
no longer appropriate. Then, it was said, ‘the whole navy is devoured by the
army’ and numerous voyages of merchant galleys cancelled at the last moment
or diverted from their course put an end to the trust of the Venetian merchant
partners.31 Henceforth, the fleet of the state, giving priority to the defence of
empire, could no longer play a leading role in trade. Venice remained the mari-
time power that it had always been, but was no longer a first-rank naval power.

29 Doumerc, ‘Le Rôle ambigu’, 152.

30 Marino Sanudo, I diarii (Bologna, 1969), vol. I, chapter 30.
31 Girolamo Priuli, Diarii (diario veneto), ed. A. Segre, in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores 24,
2nd edn (Citta di Castello, 1912–1941), 39.

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An Exemplary Maritime Republic 163

One after another the sailing routes closed at the turn of the sixteenth century:
the Barbary Coast, then Aigues Mortes, and finally Flanders.32 Only the Levant
routes continued to be active but even those suffered long interruptions in their
traffic. The disaster of 1484 was fresh in everyone’s mind; in that year, French
pirates had attacked the muda of Flanders. The consequences were dreadful.
The galleys had been captured after a hard fight. A hundred and thirty sailors
were killed, three hundred wounded, and, of course, their cargos had been
confiscated by King Charles VIII’s representative. A few months later, a major
incident provoked a panic around the Rialto, the financial centre of the city. To
save the last bit of the Languedoc spice import market, the Senate demanded
that the Aigues Mortes convoy depart, knowing that another interruption in
shipping would sound the death knell of any claim to trading in that region. It
took six auctions before one was successful, and the patroni were able to extract
important fiscal advantages from the government for the voyage including the
payment of a 3500-ducat subsidy for each patrono and a 30 per cent increase in
the charter rate. The voyage was an exceptionally long one because it included
stops along the Barbary Coast. This course full of pitfalls made martyrs of the
sailors and merchants. When they had returned, the accounts told the story. The
cost of stopping for forty-five days to defend Zara, which was besieged by the
Turks, was estimated at 10,000 ducats per galley, due to expenditures for the
supplementary purchase of victuals for the crews and the payment of higher
wages than had been foreseen. The patroni also asked for 8000 ducats for the
lack of profit on lost charters and unsold merchandise. All this added up to an
indemnity of 25,000 ducats for each patrono who had been forced to make this
voyage against his better judgement.33 The government faltered because, in a
backhanded way, the difference of opinion at the heart of the system of
managing the galley fleet was expressed virulently in debates at the meetings
about the accounts.
A census of the naval forces undertaken in 1496 by the Ministers of the
Marine (Savii ai Ordini) demonstrated the naval inferiority of the Republic
‘because there are too few armed ships at sea’. This explanation given by the
chronicler, Marino Sanudo, is astonishing because, he adds, ‘there are few ships
because, until now, we had no fear of the Turks’.34 The result was that the obliga-
tions imposed upon the captains of the mude increased continually. In 1496, for
example, the galleys of the Barbary Coast convoy participated in a massive
counter-attack, launched to limit the audacious actions of the Barbary pirates.
Two dramatic episodes permit an evaluation of the interventionist role of the
Venetian government in the management of the fleet. The first concerns the
conflict involving the kingdom of Naples during the Italian Wars. In 1495, a
league including Venice, the Duke of Milan, the Pope, and the king of Aragon,
wanted to oppose the plan of the French king, Charles VIII, to annex a part of

32 Sanudo, Diarii., I, column 302.

33 Priuli, Diarii, 273.
34 Sanudo, Diarii, I, column 30.

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164 Bernard Doumerc

southern Italy. The Senate issued a general requisition order ‘to retain all ships
and large merchant galleys’. The Captain General of the Sea, Marco Trevisan,
could, with great effort, assemble a war fleet of only about twenty galleys. That
is why the contribution of eleven merchant galleys was absolutely necessary, so
he waited for the arrival of galleys from the Dalmatian cities. The second
episode, with more tragic consequences, was that of the Battle of Zonchio in
1499. The animosity between Antonio Grimani, the Captain General and the
patroni of the merchant galleys led to a catastrophe in which the disheartened
crews’ weariness and the merchants’ rebellion caused a military disaster. Some
months later, outside the port of Modon, which was besieged by the Turks, the
patroni of the galere da mercato, by their unforgivable refusal to fight, caused
the loss of the city. Despite sensational court proceedings and some sentences
based on principle, the patroni were absolved since the state was willing to ac-
knowledge its share of the blame because of the incompetence of its representa-
tives in the battle.35 Naval battles in the following years offered further proof of
the problem. During the spring of 1500 off the island of Cephalonia Captain
General Marco Trevisan, warned by Grimani’s unhappy experience, considered
sending back the merchant galleys that he had received as reinforcements
because they seemed poorly equipped to fight, and the patroni were outspo-
kenly critical of their mission.36 The weariness of the demoralised crews and the
condemnation of the patroni of the merchant galleys, little involved as they were
in safeguarding the stato da mar, heralded the end of an exemplary system. The
redefinition of the specific role of the muda del mercato had not taken place
because of the lack of a clearly expressed political will. Contrary to what had
happened in the middle of the Trecento, this crisis of confidence in the
Cinquecento quickly turned into open opposition.
In this way it is possible to discern the main lines of power that lead the
Republic of Venice to dominate a large portion of the Mediterranean. The sena-
torial nobility, uniting the most important investors and committed merchants in
the maritime economy, patiently forged a tool without equal among the rival
nations and competitors: the system of regular navigation routes plied by
convoys of merchant galleys. The modest ship-owners, nobles or not, were
discouraged by the regulatory and fiscal obstacles that favoured the mude and
by the permanent insecurity of sea-borne commerce, but were powerless to
compete efficiently against the mixed private and public management of the
naval potential. This was all the more true when raison d’État generated an
indisputable argument for the use of these convoys, at times in the form of five
galleys with 1200 men in each crew ready to intervene quickly in any zone on
missions in the public interest. At the end of the fifteenth century and especially

35 Ibid., IV, columns 337, 360.

36 B. Doumerc, ‘De l’incompétence à la trahison: les commandants de galères vénitiens face
aux Turcs (1499–1500)’, in Félonie, trahison, reniements au Moyen Âge, Les Cahiers du
Crisima, 3 (Montpellier, 1997), 613–34, and F. C. Lane, ‘Naval Actions and Fleet Organiza-
tion (1499–1502)’, in J. R. Hale, ed., Renaissance Venice (London, 1973), 146–73.

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An Exemplary Maritime Republic 165

at the beginning of the following century, this senatorial nobility, united into the
‘Party of the Sea’, even after having gained considerable advantages, often in
violation of the law, was no longer able, considering the circumstances, to
protect their essential prerogatives. The nation, threatened by sea and by land,
no longer gave priority to this system which for two hundred years had given
glory and fortune to those who lived around the lagoon. This was the beginning
of the downfall of the Venetian colonial empire in the Mediterranean and, at the
same time, of this unique and long-effective system of operating the merchant
marine.

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