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Politics and History in the Diary of Marino Sanuto

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Robert Finlay
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Extract

A visitor to Venice in 1513 wanted to see the galleys of the Arsenal, the treasury of San Marco, and the library of Marino Sanuto (1466-1536), thus nicely paying respect to the maritime, religious, and literary aspects of the city. In April 1530, Ferrante Sanseverino, the prince of Salerno and reportedly "a studious man," expressed a desire to meet three Venetians: Pietro Bembo, famous for his poetry; Giovanni Soro, the state secretary in charge of ciphers; and Sanuto, because, claims the diarist, "of the fame I have as a historian."

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , Winter 1980 , pp. 585 - 598
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1980

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References

1 Sanuto, Marino, I diarii di Marino Sanuto, ed. Fulin, Rinaldo and others, 58 vols. (Venice, 1879-1903), VI, 517 Google Scholar; cf. XIII, 293 (henceforth cited as “Sanuto“).

2 Sanuto, LIII, 173.

3 Bembo's statement is in his letter of August 7, 1531, to Doge Andrea Gritti, reproduced by Guglielmo Berchet in his preface to Sanuto, I, 94-95.

4 Berchet's preface, Sanuto, I, 96.

5 Sanuto, VI, 5; XXX, 5; cf. Berchet's preface, Sanuto, I, 116-117.

6 Sanuto, XVII, 527; Andrea da Mosto, L'Archivio di Stato di Venezia, 2 vols. (Rome, 1937), I, 24, 64, 220.

7 Sanuto, XXII, 172; Berchet's preface, Sanuto, I, 104, 108; Wagner, K., “Sulla sorte di alcuni codici manoscritti appartenuti a Marin Sanudo,” La Bibliojilia, 73 (1971), 247–262 Google Scholar and “Altre notizie sulla sorte dei libri di Marin Sanudo,” La Bibliojilia, 74 (1972), 185-190.

8 Sanuto, XIX, 425; Lowry, Martin, The World of Aldus Manutius: Business and Scholarship in Renaissance Venice (Ithaca, N.Y., 1979), pp. 95 Google Scholar, 146-147.

9 Baron, Hans, “Early Renaissance Venetian Chronicles: Their History and a Manuscript in the Newberry Library,” From Petrarch to Leonardo Bruni: Studies in Humanistic and Political Literature (Chicago and London, 1968), p. 191 Google Scholar.

10 For an examination of Sanuto's political career, as well as further discussion of his Diary, see Finlay, Robert, Politics in Renaissance Venice (New Brunswick, N.J., 1980), pp. 10–13, 251-278Google Scholar; see also, Berchet's preface, Sanuto, I, 7-136; Brown, Rawdon, Ragguagii sulla vita e sulle opere di Marin Sanuto, 3 vols., Venice, 1837 Google Scholar; Brunetti, Mario, “Marin Sanudo,” L'Ateneo Veneto, 46 (1923), 3–19 Google Scholar; de Leva, G., “Marino Sanuto,” Archivio Veneto, 36 (1888), 109–126 Google Scholar; Cozzi, Gaetano, “Marin Sanudo il Giovane: Dalla cronaca alia storia (nel V centenario della sua nascita),” Aspetti delta storiografia veneziana fino al secolo XVI, ed. Pertussi, Agostino (Florence, 1970), pp. 333–358 Google Scholar.

11 Berchet's preface, Sanuto, I, 137, n. 1.

12 Chambers, D. S., “Marin Sanudo, Camerlengo of Verona, 1501-1502,” Archivio Veneto, 109 (1977), 38.Google Scholar

13 Cf. Yang Lien-Sheng, “The Organisation of Chinese Official Historiography: Principles and Methods of the Standard Histories from the Thang through the Ming Dynasty,” Historians of China and Japan, ed. W. G. Beasley and E. G. Pulleybank, London, 1961.

14 Works which have made extensive use of the Diary include Brown, Ragguagli sulla vita; Giorgio Martino Thomas, Martin Luther und die Reformations Bewegung in Deutschland vom Jahre 1520-1532 in Ausziigen aus Marino Sanuto's Diarien, Ansbach, 1883; Babinger, F., “Marin Sanuto's Tagebticher als Quelle zur Geschichte der Safawijja,” A Volume of Oriental Studies, ed. Browne, E. G. (Cambridge, 1922), pp. 28–50 Google Scholar; Nallino, M., “L'Egitto dalla morte di Qa'it Bay all'averno avvento di Qansuh al-Guri (1496-1501) neiDian'i di Marino Sanuto,” Atti Accademia nazionaledeiLincei, 20 (1965), 414–453 Google Scholar; Padoan, G., “La ‘Mandragola’ del Machiavelli nella Veneziana cinquecentesca,” Lettere Italiane, 22 (1970), 161–186 Google Scholar; Pullan, Brian, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice: The Social Institutions of a Catholic State, to 1620, Oxford, England, 1971 Google Scholar; and essays in Frederic C. Lane's Venice and History, Baltimore, 1966.

15 The Diary is sprinkled with the odd, if superfluous, facts that fascinated Sanuto. For example, he reveals that in August 1525 five of the nine men on the Signoria, the ducal council, had the given name “Andrea” (XXXIX, 357).

16 Sanuto, Marino, La spedizione di Carlo VIII in Italia, ed. Fulin, Rinaldo (Venice, 1883), pp. 331–332 Google Scholar; “Cronica Sanuda,” Bibl. Naz. Marciana, MS. It. CI. VII, 125 (7460), fol. 339v.

17 Cf. Cozzi, “Marin Sanudo il Giovane,” p. 349; Berchet's preface, Sanuto, I, 35; Oliver Logan, Culture and Society in Venice (London, 1972), p. 117.

18 Berchet's preface, Sanuto, I, 96.

19 Sanuto, XXIII, 488-495-

20 On the various communities of foreigners in Venice, see Fedalto, Giorgio, Ricerche storiche sulla posizione giuridica ed ecdesiastica dei Greci a Venezia nei secoli XV e XVI, Florence, 1967 Google Scholar; Brulez, Wilfred, Marchands Flamands à Venise, 1568-1605, Brussels, 1965 Google Scholar; Braudel, Fernand, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, 2 vols., trans. Reynolds, Sian (New York, 1972), I, 209 Google Scholar; Brian Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice, pp. 476-482; Preto, Paolo, Venezia e i Turchi (Florence, 1975), pp. 126–137 Google Scholar.

21 Sanuto, XXX, 259; cf. XXII, 98.

22 Sanuto, XXX, 34, 38-40, 57-58, 77-89, 100-103, 109-110, 132, 137, 141, 143, 149, 152, 175, 194-195, 199, 201-204, 208-209, 216-217, 221-222, 249-251, 262.

23 Sanuto, LVI, 308-875.

24 Sanuto, XLV, 86-189.

25 Sanuto, I, 305-307; XXIV, 348-353; XXVII, 430-432; XXX, 73, 487-490; XXXII, 384-385.

26 Sanuto, vol. XXIII: October 1516 to February 1517.

27 Berchet's preface. Sanuto, I, 96.

28 Sanuto, VI, 5; XX, 532; XXI, 485; Berchet's preface. Sanuto, I, 96.

29 Priuli begins his diary with a lament about the political chaos Charles VIII brought into Italy: Idiariidi Girolamo Priuli, 3 vols., ed. Arturo Segre and Roberto Cessi, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, vol. XXIV, part III (Bologna, 1912-28), I, 4.

30 The quotation is from Il Principe (Il Principe e Discorsi, ed. Sergio Bertelli [Milan, 1960], p. 57). On Guicciardini, Machiavelli, and 1494, see Gilbert, Felix, Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth-century Florence (Princeton, 1965), pp. 198, 257-262, 296Google Scholar; cf. Cozzi, “Marin Sanudo il Giovane,” pp. 350-351. On contemporary perception of the 1494 invasion as beginning a new age, see Denis, Anne, Charles VIII et les Italiens: Histoire et Mythe (Geneva, 1979), pp. 15–16, 143-158Google Scholar.

31 Sanuto, I, 5-6.

32 Sanuto, IV, 329; V, 109.

33 Sanuto, VI, 5.

34 Sanuto, V, 89; VI, 132; Berchet's preface, Sanuto, I, 50-51.

35 Sanuto, VIII, 5. In fact, Florence was not a signatory to the League.

36 Guicciardini, Franceco, Storia d'ltalia, 3 vols., ed. Silvana Seidel Menchi (Turin, 1971), II, 745–749 Google Scholar; Ercole, Francesco, Da Carlo VIIIa Carlo V: La crisidella liberta italiana (Florence, 1932), pp. 99–105 Google Scholar; Finlay, Robert, “Venice, the Po Expedition, and the End of the League of Cambrai, 1509-1510,” Studies in Modem European History and Culture, 2 (1976), 38–41 Google Scholar.

37 Sanuto, VIII, 5.

38 Sanuto, XXV, 84.

39 Sanuto, XXI, 485; XXX, 5; XXXVIII, 7; Berchet's preface, Sanuto, I, 98. On the official historiographer, see Gaetano Cozzi, “Cultura politica e religione nella ‘pubblica storiografia’ veneziana del ‘500,” Bollettino di Storia della Societd e dello Stato Veneziano, 5-6 (1963-1964), 215-296; Bouwsma, William J., Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty: Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter Reformation (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1968), pp. 88–93 Google Scholar, 136—143; Pertusi, Agostino, “Gli inizi della storiografia umanistica nel Quattrocento,” Aspetti della storiografia veneziana fino al secolo XVI, ed. Pertusi, Agostino (Florence, 1970), pp. 269–332 Google Scholar; Gilbert, Felix, “Biondo, Sabellico, and the Beginnings of Venetian Official Historiography,” Florilegium Historiale: Essays Presented to Wallace K. Ferguson, ed. Rowe, J. G. and Stockdale, W. H. (Toronto, 1971), pp. 275–293 Google Scholar.

40 Sanuto, XXV, 269.

41 Sanuto, XXVII, 5.

42 Sanuto, XXIX, 255; XXX, 5-6.

43 Sanuto, XXX, 480; XXXI, 7. The urging by Lorenzo Loredan and Antonio Grimani that Sanuto continue his work indicates that some of his friends may have regarded the Diary as a sort of extension or supplement of his Vite dei dogi, a history begun in 1493 and not finished until 1530.

44 Sanuto, XXXIII, 5-6.

45 Sanuto, XXXIV, 6-7.

46 Sanuto, XXXIV, 7.

47 Sanuto, XXXVIII, 5-7.

48 On Bembo, Sanuto, and the Diary, see the documents in Berchet's preface, Sanuto, I, 95-99; see also, Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini, pp. 225-226; Lagomaggiore, Carlo, “L'Istoria viniziana di M. Pietro Bembo,” Nuovo Archivio Veneto, 7 (1904), 5–50, 334-372Google Scholar; 8 (1904), 162-180, 317-346; 9 (1905), 33-113- On Sanuto's prayer, see Sanuto, LIV, 600. On Sanuto as a “public historian,” see Sanuto, LV, 211; cf. 103, 655; Berchet's preface, Sanuto, I, no.

49 Berchet's preface, Sanuto, I. 96.

50 Berchet's preface, Sanuto, I, 96; XXIX, 255; cf. XXVI, 52; Cozzi, “Marin Sanudo il Giovane,” p. 349.

51 Quoted in Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty, p. 139.

52 Sanuto also mentions Livy, who drew upon ancient Roman chronicles for his Decades; Bernardo Corio, the fifteenth-century Milanese historian-diarist; and Bernardo Giustiniani, the fifteenth-century humanist historian of Venice (Berchet's preface, Sanuto, I, 96).

53 The quotation is from Phillips, Mark, “Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and the Tradition of Vernacular Historiography in Florence,” The American Historical Review, 84 (1979), 101 Google Scholar.

54 Cf. Phillips, “Machiavelli,” p. 101; Green, Louis, Chronicle into History: An Essay on the Interpretation of History in Florentine Fourteenth-Century Chronicles (Cambridge, England, 1972), pp. 41–42.Google Scholar

55 Green, Chronicle into History, pp. 42, 114.

56 This is not to deny that Sanuto was a deeply religious person who, along with his contemporaries, shared the view that God's hand could be seen in mundane events, especially disasters. But in Sanuto's historical works, the role of providence is not a unifying or dominant theme; and in the Diary, references to divine intervention and to signs from heaven are conventional in tone and, most often, reports on the views of others (see, for example, Sanuto, IV, 201-202; VIII, 216, 236-237, 326; XII, 80, 84-85; XVII, 462; XXII, 35; XLV, 387).

57 Quoted in Wilcox, Donald J., The Development of Florentine Humanist Historiography in the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), p. 22.Google Scholar

58 Wilcox, p. 22.

59 For a similarly positive assessment of the Diary, see Cozzi, “Marin Sanudo il Giovane,” pp. 352-355; Oliver Logan, Culture and Society in Venice, pp. 116-117.

60 Sanuto, I, 806-807.

61 The quotation is from Braudel, Mediterranean, I, 14. A study relevant to Sanuto and this theme is Alberto Tenenti's “The Sense of Space and Time in the Venetian World of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries,” Renaissance Venice, ed. J. R. Hale (Totowa, N.J., 1973), pp. 17-46.

62 Gertrude Himmelfarb, Lord Acton: A Study in Conscience and Politics (Chicago and London, 1952), p. 132; David Mathew, Lord Acton and His Times (University, Alabama, 1968), p. 99.

63 The evaluation of Bembo's history is from Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty, p. 137.

64 Sanuto, XXX, 5.

65 Berchet's preface, Sanuto, I, 96.