Venice’s Secret Service: Organizing Intelligence In The Renaissance [1st Edition] 0198791313, 9780198791317

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Venice’s Secret Service: Organizing Intelligence In The Renaissance [1st Edition]
 0198791313,  9780198791317

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Table of contents :
Foreword......Page 6
Acknowledgements......Page 8
Contents......Page 12
List of Illustrations......Page 14
Introduction......Page 16
1 Venice and Venetian Intelligence in the European Panorama......Page 43
2 State Secrecy......Page 71
3 Renaissance Venice’s Intelligence Organization......Page 97
4 Venice’s Department of Cryptology......Page 144
5 Venice’s Secret Agents......Page 173
6 Extraordinary Measures......Page 205
Epilogue......Page 230
Bibliography......Page 244
Index......Page 272

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Venice’s Secret Service

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Venice’s Secret Service Organizing Intelligence in the Renaissance IOANNA IORDANOU

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Ioanna Iordanou 2019 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2019 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2019950430 ISBN 978–0–19–879131–7 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198791317.001.0001 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

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Foreword Christopher Andrew

Emeritus Professor of Modern and Contemporary History, University of Cambridge Author of The Secret World: A History of Intelligence

Each year, more than 1.3 million tourists visit the Doge’s Palace in Venice, perhaps the greatest surviving masterpiece of Gothic secular architecture. Very few visitors, however, are aware that during the Renaissance the Palace housed, in addition to the Doge and the Council of Ten, what was then the world’s leading intelligence headquarters. The room of the three State Inquisitors (Inquisitori sopra li segreti), appointed by the Council of Ten from among their number, has on its ceiling a magnificent painting by Domenico Tintoretto of the return of the Prodigal Son. Tintoretto’s masterpiece (probably the greatest ever produced for the offices of intelligence or security chiefs) epitomized the inquisitors’ self-image of returning deviant Venetians to the path of civic virtue and respect for official secrecy. There are still some visible traces in twenty-first-century Venice of the culture of clandestine denunciation promoted by the Council of Ten and the State Inquisitors. Among the most striking are the lion’s-mouth (bocca di leone) letterboxes in which citizens were encouraged to post the names of those who subverted the authority of the state. Two survive on the walls of the Doge’s Palace: one lion’s mouth for unspecified denunciations and a second (with the head of a bad-tempered bureaucrat instead of a lion) intended specifically for ‘secret denunciations’ of officials who accepted secret bribes and favours. The interrogation/torture chamber in the Doge’s Palace still contains the strappado sometimes used by the Inquisitors on recalcitrant prodigal sons. The victim was hoisted off the ground by his hands, usually tied behind his back, with a rope on a pulley which was then allowed to drop with a jerk, sometimes wrenching joints from sockets. The greatest innovation in sixteenth-century European intelligence collection was what is now called signals intelligence (SIGINT)—a field in which it retained for several centuries a major lead over other continents. As well as having probably Europe’s best-informed ambassadors and the leading agent network in Constantinople, the Council of Ten also established the first European

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codebreaking (SIGINT) agency in cramped rooms, ignored by most tourists, on the upper floors of the Doge’s Palace. Though few historians have noticed it, beginning in Venice, the Renaissance marked a major turning point in the history of intelligence. For the first time, especially in SIGINT, Europe established a global intelligence lead which went unchallenged until the American Declaration of Independence. Ioanna Iordanou’s bold and brilliantly researched interpretation of Venice’s Secret Service during the Renaissance thus has a significance which extends well beyond Venice. SIGINT, in particular, remains almost a missing dimension in the history of early modern international relations. The path-breaking achievements of the great Venetian codebreaker Giovanni Soro were to be equalled in northern Europe during the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In Elizabethan England, Thomas Phelippes’s success in breaking the ciphers of both Mary, Queen of Scots, and Philip II of Spain, won him warm congratulations and a pension from Elizabeth I. Her intelligence chief, Sir Francis Walsingham, told Phelippes that he would ‘not believe in how good part [the queen] accepteth of your service’. Richelieu’s chief codebreaker, Antoine Rossignol, was so well rewarded that he was able to buy the chateau of Juvisy, where he was paid the extraordinary honour of royal visits by both Louis XIII and Louis XIV. Ioanna Iordanou’s remarkable book, Venice’s Secret Service: Organizing Intelligence in the Renaissance, is thus both a major contribution to the history of Venice and an inspiration to similar exciting and demanding research in other parts of early modern Europe.

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Acknowledgements I thoroughly enjoyed researching and writing this book, but it would not have come to fruition had it not been for the valuable contribution of several individuals and institutions who shared my passion, enthusiasm, and zeal for Renaissance Venice’s spies, spymasters, and central intelligence organization. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them, because, while mostly a solitary experience, the realization of a book of this kind is the outcome of their help and support. First and foremost, I would like to acknowledge my scholarly home, Oxford Brookes Business School. This is primarily an Oxford Brookes book and, indeed, it would not have been possible without the invaluable support—both financial and moral—I have received from the school. I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Simonetta Manfredi and Professor Juliette Koning for their ceaseless encouragement throughout the research and writing process of this book. Jenny Heaton, Matty Mathe, and Sharon Kemp have been unsparing with their time and effort throughout my research and writing journey, and for their ceaseless assistance I am extremely grateful. My most humble thanks are due to my colleagues in the International Centre for Coaching and Mentoring Studies—Tatiana Bachkirova, Elaine Cox, Claudia Filsinger-Mohun, Judie Gannon, Peter Jackson, and Adrian Myers—for their unwavering support and for always being exceptionally accommodating to the nuances of my academic work. Aside from my institution, this book would not have been completed in a timely manner without a priceless and memorable three-month fellowship at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS KNAW) in the spring of 2018. I am extremely indebted to Dr Djoeke Van Netten for recommending me for the fellowship and to Professor Fokko Jan Dijksterhuis and Professor Wijnand Mijnhardt for inviting me to be a part of the Descartes Theme-Group ‘Borders and the Transfer of Knowledge’. The NIAS fellowship furnished the time desperately needed to write a substantial part of the manuscript. Importantly, it provided an unparalleled intellectual setting that fostered vigorous dialogue and constructive feedback from outstanding colleagues and scholars, whose views helped shape some of the arguments posed in this book, though they they bear no responsibility for any errors of fact or interpretation in this work. Indeed, it was during my NIAS fellowship that the conceptual framework for the book was devised. I particularly wish to express my most sincere gratitude to Dr Andreea Badea, Professor Renate Dürr, Professor Renate Pieper, Iris Van Den Linden, and Professor Irene Van Renswoude for making this such a cosy and, frankly, unforgettable experience. Additionally, I would like to thank

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Professor Harold Cook and Professor Werner Thomas for their invaluable input on several aspects of this work. Special thanks are also due to the NIAS director, Professor Jan Willem Duyvendak, and the Institute manager at the time, Dr Angelie Sens, as well as the wonderful support staff, including Anja de Haas-Gruijs, Petry Kievit-Tyson, Kahliya Ronde, Yvonne Stommel, and Trinette Zecevic-Boulogne. Particular mention is due to the wonderful Astrid Schulein and Dindy van Maanen for making NIAS feel like home. One of the most exhilarating aspects of the historian’s craft is the paper chase in archives and libraries. I have always treasured this aspect of research, which would not have been possible without the work of several archivists, librarians, and other support staff working in these repositories. I would, thus, like to express my sincere gratitude to the staff of the following institutions, whose assistance has been instrumental in the creation of this book: the Archivio di Stato di Venezia (Venice), with special thanks to my good friend Michele Scarpa for all his help; the Archivio Segreto Vaticano (Rome); the Archivo General de Simancas (Valladolid); the National Archives (London); the archives of the National Maritime Museum (London), with special thanks to Mike Brevan; the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana (Venice); the Biblioteca Museo Correr (Venice); the library of the Centro Vittore Branca-Fondazione Giorgio Cini (Venice); and the Bodleian Library (Oxford). I would also like to thank the institutions that granted me permission to reproduce images of paintings that are part of their collections. These include: the Fondazione Querini Stampalia (Venice); the Scuola Grande di San Rocco (Venice); the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam); and Hatfield House (Hatfield), as well as the Venetian State Archives. Aside from the inestimable NIAS Fellowship, the completion of this work would not have been possible without a variety of grants and fellowships that enabled numerous pilgrimages to archives and libraries in Italy, Spain, and the UK. Several small grants from Oxford Brookes Business School enabled a substantial part of the Venice-based archival research needed for this book. An injection of funds through the British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant scheme allowed me to expand my archival investigation by consulting the Vatican Secret Archives in Rome and the Spanish Archives in Simancas, aside from supporting further archival research in Venice. A Bursary for Business History Research from the Business Archives Council and the Association of Business Historians supported further archival research in the National Archives, and for this I am indebted to Dr Mike Anson and Professor Peter Scott. Finally, I benefitted immensely from a scholarship at the Vittore Branca Centre for the Study of Italian Culture (Venice). Indeed, this book would have been a poor shadow of itself had it not been for the financial support I received from the above benefactors, to who I am greatful. My reflections and understanding of Renaissance Venice’s central intelligence organization in particular and early modern intelligence and espionage practices

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in general have developed in dialogue with many friends and colleagues who generously shared their views and opinions with me. Even though it is impossible for me to thank them all, I feel obligated to mention a handful of standout individuals. Firstly, I am greatly indebted to Professor Christopher Andrew, who kindly invited me to present my research, when it was still in its infancy, at the ‘Intelligence in World History, c.1450–1918 Symposium’ held at the German Historical Institute (London) in 2014. It was the warm reception I received from the symposium participants, coupled with Professor Andrew’s enthusiasm and encouragement for my research, that ignited the spark for the creation of this book. My great friend and mentor, the late Grier Palmer, enthusiastically embraced this project from its inception. Standing by my side and supporting me unreservedly during my initial steps as an early career researcher and academic, he was the epitome of the most caring and compassionate mentor, guide, and teacher. Even though he did not live to see this book in print, his belief in me has made this journey possible, and I will always be grateful for his friendship and support. Additionally, I would like to thank Dr Nadine Akkerman, Professor Richard Aldrich, Christophe Austruy, Dr Alex Bamji, Dr Joseph Bento da Silva, Dr Andrea Bernardi, Dr Mauro Bondioli, Professor Jana Costas, Professor Filippo De Vivo, Dr Anna Gialdini, Dr Pauline Guena, Professor Chris Grey, Dr Guy Huber, Dr Katherine Kikuchi, Dr Simone Lonardi, Ioannis Markouris, Valandis Papadamou, Dr Jola Pellumbi, Dr Rosa Salzberg, Dr Umberto Signori, Dr Jane Stevens Crawshaw, and Dr Mark Stout for the invaluable advice and assistance they have offered me throughout the research and writing process. Importantly, Professor Maria Fusaro, Dr Christopher Moran, and Dr Emrah Safa Gürkan were kind enough to offer constructive feedback on the whole manuscript, and I am indebted to them beyond words for their dedicated time and effort. I must reiterate here that any factual errors in this book are my own doing and none of the above-mentioned colleagues is responsible for those. Additionally, I wish to thank my doctoral supervisor, Professor Luca Molà, for his unwavering encouragement through the years. Finally, special thanks are due to Dr Alexis Albion and Anna Slafer, who showed keen interest in my research and invited me to share my insights for the benefit of an exhibition at the new International Spy Museum at L’Enfant Plaza in Washington DC. At OUP, I wish to thank Terka Akton, Stephanie Ireland, Kavya Ramu, Donald Watt, and, importantly, Cathryn Steele, my lovely commissioning editor, who embraced this project from its inception and offered invaluable support and encouragement throughout the writing process. Her kindness, compassion, and understanding provided the driving force for the completion of this project. Special thanks are also due to Dr William Rupp for his invaluable contribution in creating the book’s index. Last but not least, I would like to thank those closest to me who bore the delights and, importantly, the challenges of this journey with admirable

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equanimity. My friends Amr, Anastasia, Charoula, Dimitar, Eleni, Elina, Joerg, Johny, Justine, Lefteris, Letizia, Matina, Richard, and Theo, my family away from home, have been incredibly liberal in their friendship, support, and constant encouragement, despite the fact that my work for this book has kept me away from them more often than not. I also wish to express my gratitude to Jacqui, Janet, Jo, Linda, Margaret-Mary, Marianna, Marianne, and Pat, my wonderful book-group companions, for helping me maintain my sanity through our monthly discussions of books, politics, and life. While I did not always have the time to to read the monthly allocated book, due to the intense demands of completing my own monograph, our gatherings have provided a familial and intellectual oasis. My parents and sister have been a ceaseless source of love, wisdom, and inspiration in ways that words can simply not express. This book would not have been what it is without their unflagging support. I also wish to thank my uncle, Lakis Karabas, who supplied me with out-of-print manuals vital to the completion of this book. Finally, my purest gratitude goes to Chris, for encouraging me to rediscover my love of history when I thought that it was lost, for his unconditional love and support throughout this journey, and for all those days, weeks, and months that he spent alone, giving me the time and space I needed to fulfil my dream of seeing this work into print. Venice’s Secret Service would simply not have been written had he not dreamed it into existence.

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Contents List of Illustrations

Introduction The Council of Ten and the Inquisitors of the State Why Venice? Methodology and Sources Archival Records Note on Dates, Currency, Translations, and Abbreviations 1. Venice and Venetian Intelligence in the European Panorama Renaissance Venice’s Politico-Economic Landscape Venice as an Information Centre in Early Modern Europe Sixteenth-Century Europe and the Rise of Secret Services Italian City States Imperial Spain Tudor England Bourbon France The Ottoman Empire

Conclusion

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1 9 15 20 25 27 28 31 34 37 38 42 47 50 52

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2. State Secrecy: A Venetian Virtue The Ten’s Regulations on Secrecy The Illusion of State Secrecy Masks, Lions’ Mouths, and Secret Denunciations Secrecy as an Enabler of Knowledge Exchange Conclusion

56 59 65 71 76 80

3. Renaissance Venice’s Intelligence Organization Organizing and Managing Venice’s Secret Service Correspondence as a Tool of Management and Organization of Work

82 87 95

Encrypted Correspondence: Cryptography and its Regulation Venice’s Ducal Chancery and the Cancelleria Secreta The Secret Archive as Storehouse of Collective Memory Organizational Secrecy Venice’s Central Intelligence Organization Conclusion

4. Venice’s Department of Cryptology A Brief Historical Overview of Cryptology The Diplomatic Use of Ciphers in the Renaissance Venice’s Cryptology Department

100 107 114 119 122 127

129 133 137 139

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 Professional Training and Development Recruitment and Promotion in Venice’s Cryptology Department Organizational Control and State Regulation

The Professionalization of Cryptology in Sixteenth-Century Venice Conclusion

5. Venice’s Secret Agents Spie, Confidenti, Exploratori Venice’s Secret Agents Venice’s Professional Informants Amateur Informers: Merchants and Tradesmen within and beyond the Dominion Venice’s Voluntary Informers and Mercenary Spies

Spying in Early Modern Venice: A Profession? Conclusion

6. Extraordinary Measures Venetian Counter-Intelligence The Terrors of the Ten Interrogations, Tortures, and Assassinations Chemical Warfare

Other Tricks and Tactics Letter Interceptions Bribes and Gifts The Normalization of Extreme Measures Conclusion

Epilogue: Intelligence Organization in Renaissance Venice: An Evaluation Intelligence Organization, Commodification, and the Myth of Venice Venice’s Secret Service: Key Takeaways Bibliography Index

141 144 148

152 156

158 162 164 165 171 179

187 189

190 191 196 196 201

204 204 208 212 214

215 218 223

229 257

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List of Illustrations 0.1. La Sala del Consiglio dei Dieci, Gabriele Bella. Reproduced with permission of the Fondazione Querini Stampalia Onlus, Venice

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2.1. The Entry of the French Ambassador in Venice in 1706, Luca Carlevarijs. Reproduced with permission of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

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2.2. Il Broglio e la Prima Vestizione della Toga, Gabriele Bella. Reproduced with permission of the Fondazione Querini Stampalia Onlus, Venice

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3.1. La Sala dei Tre Capi del Consiglio dei Dieci, Gabriele Bella. Reproduced with permission of the Fondazione Querini Stampalia Onlus, Venice

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4.1. Charles V Cryptogram, Agostino Amadi © Archivio di Stato di Venezia

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4.2. Lettere Diaboliche and other alphabets, Agostino Amadi © Archivio di Stato di Venezia

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4.3. Pietro Partenio’s First Cipher © Archivio di Stato di Venezia

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4.4. Pietro Partenio’s Second Cipher © Archivio di Stato di Venezia

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5.1. The Spy or Curiosity, Francesco Pianta. Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice. © Cameraphoto Arte

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5.2. Spy, Cesare Ripa

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5.3. The Rainbow Portrait, Isaac Oliver or Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger. Reproduced with permission of the Marquess of Salisbury Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, UK/Bridgeman Images

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6.1. Tribunale Supremo, Gabriele Bella. Reproduced with permission of the Fondazione Querini Stampalia Onlus, Venice

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Introduction On the eve of the fourth Ottoman-Venetian War (1570–3), a man claiming to be a fugitive slave on the run from the Ottomans travelled to Venice to inform the authorities of some alarming news. He had discovered that the Turkish armada was stocking up on munitions and disgorging large warfare reserves in Anamur, a fortress on the southern coast of Turkey. It was feared that these ostensibly military preparations were intended for an attack on Cyprus, a Venetian colony a short sail away on the opposite shore. Anxious to make ‘appropriate provisions for the defence of the island’, then one of Venice’s most prized possessions in the Mediterranean, the Council of Ten—the governmental committee responsible for the security of Venice and its sprawling dominion—took the following actions: with great urgency, they posted the informant’s written declaration to the governor of Cyprus, ordering him to verify the written claims by sending out spies to confirm the presence of a military build-up in Anamur. They also demanded that the governor report back, in secret, through letters sent by both land and sea.¹ Then, they contacted the Venetian envoy in Constantinople known as the bailo² asking him to conduct a parallel secret investigation. In particular, they were keen to know whether the informant could be trusted. To ascertain this, they instructed the bailo to identify and interview other slaves in the Ottoman capital. Moreover, the bailo was entrusted with the sensitive detail that the Venetian ambassador to the Holy Roman Emperor had also learned, through his own sources, of an imminent Ottoman invasion of Cyprus.³ As a result of this

¹ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, c. 33r. (21 Oct. 1569). ² On the Venetian Bailo in Constantinople, see Vincenzo Lazari, ‘Cenni intorno alle legazioni venete alla porta ottomana nel secolo XVI’, in Eugenio Albèri (ed.), Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti al Senato, Series III, Vol. III (Florence: Società Editrice Fiorentina, 1855), pp. xiii–xx; Tommaso Bertelè, Il palazzo degli ambasciatori di Costantinopoli a Venezia (Bologna: Apollo, 1932); Paolo Preto, ‘Le relazioni dei baili a Constantinopoli’, Il Veltro 23 (1979), pp. 125–30; Carla Coco and Flora Manzonetto, Baili veneziani alla Sublime Porta: Storia e caratteristiche dell’ambasciata veneta a Constantinopoli (Venice: Stamperia di Venezia, 1985); Eric R. Dursteler, ‘The Bailo in Constantinople: Crisis and Career in Venice’s Early Modern Diplomatic Corps’, Mediterranean Historical Review 16, no 2 (2001), pp. 1–30; Stefan Hanß, ‘Baili and Ambassadors’, in Maria Pia Pedani (ed.), Il Palazzo di Venezia a Istanbul e i suoi antichi abitanti/İstanbul’daki Venedik Sarayı ve Eski Yaşayanları (Venice: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, 2013), pp. 35–52; Emrah Safa Gürkan, ‘Laying Hands on Arcana Imperii: Venetian Baili as Spymasters in Sixteenth-Century Istanbul’, in Paul Maddrell, Christopher Moran, Ioanna Iordanou, and Mark Stout (eds.), Spy Chiefs Volume II: Intelligence Leaders in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2018), pp. 67–96. ³ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, c. 33r./v. (21 Oct. 1569).

Venice’s Secret Service: Organizing Intelligence in the Renaissance. Ioanna Iordanou, Oxford University Press (2019). © Ioanna Iordanou. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198791317.001.0001

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2  ’    intricate web of intelligence collection and exchange, the Ten’s worst fears were soon corroborated. Shortly after, the bailo sent a letter to the Ten confirming the gruesome news that the Ottomans were, indeed, feverishly preparing to invade Cyprus. Now on a war footing, the Ten contacted their ambassador in Spain, to solicit support from the powerful re catholico, Phillip II.⁴ This episode is redolent of two significant concepts that are central to Renaissance Venice’s economic, political, and social conduct and to this book: intelligence and organization. In terms of the first concept, it is representative of ways in which sensitive information—primarily of military and political value—was communicated secretly between the Venetian authorities and their formal state representatives stationed overseas. But to what extent is this type of ‘sensitive’ information and its clandestine communication indicative of intelligence, its practice and craft, in the Renaissance? This question encapsulates the fundamental issues associated with the study of early modern intelligence, which are, in fact, more complicated than a scholar of modern intelligence might envisage. As will become apparent throughout this book, defining intelligence as a historical phenomenon is problematic. Indeed, what exactly constitutes intelligence throughout history? Is it a state affair or a private initiative? A professional service or a civic duty? An act of institutional loyalty or of financial need? In the early modern period, intelligence was a multivalent term, entailing all of the above. For Venetians, the word intelligentia meant ‘communication’ or ‘understanding’ between a minimum of two people, sometimes in secret. Within the context of state security, it indicated any kind of information of political, economic, social, or even cultural value that was worthy of secrecy, evaluation, and potential covert (at times even overt) action by the government in the name of state security.⁵ In essence, then, there were two aspects to the term ‘intelligence’. The first denoted the systematic process of secretly collecting, analysing, and disseminating information. The second related to a ‘ “police and security” dimension’, which could manifest both offensively and defensively.⁶ These definitions of ‘intelligence’ will be used throughout this book in an effort to explore the meaning and purpose of this word for different actors in that period. But how was such information disseminated to its intended recipients in the early modern era? This leads us to the second central concept of this book, organization. As the Anamur episode demonstrates, in early modern Venice, the systematic organization of the collection, communication, and evaluation of sensitive information was administered by the Council of Ten, the governmental committee overseeing the security of the Venetian state. As Venice’s spy chiefs, in an exemplary display ⁴ Ibid., c. 37r./v. (26 Oct. 1569). ⁵ In his study of the Stuart regime in early modern England, Alan Marshall offers a similar definition. See Alan Marshall, Intelligence and Espionage in the Reign of Charles II, 1660–1685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 3. ⁶ Ibid.

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of political and organizational maturity, the Council of Ten developed and administered an elaborate system of information flow with and between their informants and other underlings. To achieve this, they oversaw and managed a far-flung, yet interconnected network of private informants and public servants whose role was to supply them with vital intelligence for the political and, by extension, economic conduct of the Venetian Republic.⁷ In fact, while in most Italian and European states intelligence operations were organized by powerful individuals in their efforts to secure and consolidate political power and control,⁸ the Venetian Council of Ten created and systematized one of the world’s earliest centrally organized state intelligence services. This proto-modern organization resembled a public sector body that operated with remarkable corporate-like complexity and maturity, serving prominent intelligence functions such as operations (intelligence and covert action), analysis, cryptography and steganography, cryptanalysis, and even the development of lethal substances such as poison. To this day, no systematic attempt has been made to analyse the organization of Venice’s secret service. Paolo Preto’s work on Venice’s spies and secret agents and Jonathan Walker’s graphic account of one of her most infamous spymasters are amongst the few scholarly outputs on Venice’s intelligence and espionage pursuits.⁹ Comprising a remarkable abundance of archival evidence and anecdotal nuance, Preto’s work is composed of a systematic list of case studies presented in basic thematic categories. Produced in this format, a thorough analysis and evaluation of Renaissance Venice’s intelligence organization and its role in the Republic’s politics, economy, and society seem to be beyond the scope of Preto’s work. Walker’s study provides a creative account of one of Venice’s most infamous spymasters, Gerolamo Vano. In a spirited narrative that earned the book the characterization of ‘the first true work of “punk history” ’,¹⁰ the author takes the reader on an enthralling journey through Venice’s alleyways and circuitous calli, relating Vano’s garish feats and peccadilloes. Yet, while the book uncovers the surreptitious underworld of espionage in seventeenth-century Venice, larger ⁷ Ioanna Iordanou, ‘The Spy Chiefs of Renaissance Venice: Intelligence Leadership in the Early Modern World’, in Maddrell et al., Spy Chiefs Volume II, pp. 43–66; See also Iordanou, ‘What News on the Rialto? The Trade of Information and Early Modern Venice’s Centralized Intelligence Organization’, Intelligence and National Security 31, no 3 (2016), pp. 305–26. ⁸ On the Italian states in general, see the essays in Daniela Frigo (ed.) Politics and Diplomacy in Early Modern Italy: The Structure of Diplomatic Practice, 1450–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). On examples of European states, see, amongst others, Marshall, Intelligence and Espionage; Carlos J. Carnicer García and Javier Marcos Rivas, Espías de Felipe II: Los servicios secretos del Imperio Español (Madrid: La esfera de los libros, 2005); Jacob Soll, The Information Master: Jean Baptiste Colbert’s State Intelligence System (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2009); John P. D. Cooper, The Queen’s Agent: Francis Walsingham and the Court of Elizabeth I (London: Faber and Faber, 2011). ⁹ Paolo Preto, I servizi segreti di Venezia: Spionaggio e controspionaggio ai tempi della Serenissima (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1994); Jonathan Walker, Pistols! Treason! Murder! The Rise and Fall of a Master Spy (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2007). ¹⁰ Walker, Pistols! Treason! Murder!, front cover endorsement by Ian Mc Calman.

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4  ’    questions pertaining to the role that systematized intelligence played in the city’s internal and external security remain unasked. In short, while impressive in archival detail and narrative richness, both these works expose specific intelligence operations and secret agents but fall short of a broader analysis of Venice’s intelligence organization and its wider impact on the Venetian state’s internal and external security. As a result, Renaissance Venice’s secret service still lingers in the shadows of historiography. This is not accidental, considering that, according to conventional wisdom, systematized intelligence and espionage are ‘modern’ phenomena that span largely from the eve of the Great War to the present.¹¹ This does not mean that historians have not made worthwhile endeavours to explore the largely uncharted territory of the early modern era.¹² Indeed, some significant scholarly effort has been expended on the diplomatic and, by extension, the intelligence operations of early modern states like England (and later Britain),¹³ France,¹⁴ the Dutch Republic,¹⁵ the Ottoman and Habsburg empires,¹⁶ Portugal,¹⁷ Spain,¹⁸ and several prominent Italian states,¹⁹ even though some of these works are premised on ¹¹ The bibliography on this topic is vast. For an overview, see Philip Knightley, The Second Oldest Profession: Spies and Spying in the Twentieth Century (London: Deutsch, 1987). ¹² In fact, a fresh scholarly trend has started to explore the development of intelligence from ancient times. For a sweeping historical overview, see Christopher Andrew, The Secret World: A History of Intelligence (London: Penguin, 2018). ¹³ Mildred G. Richings, The Story of the Secret Service of the English Crown (London: Hutchinson, 1935); Peter Fraser, The Intelligence of the Secretaries of State and their Monopoly of Licensed News (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956); Paul S. Fritz, ‘The Anti-Jacobite Intelligence System of the English Ministers, 1715–1745’, Historical Journal 16, no (1973), pp. 265–89; Richard Deacon, A History of the British Secret Service (London: Panther Books, 1990), esp. pp. 16–22; Marshall, Intelligence and Espionage; Patrick H. Martin, Elizabethan Espionage: Plotters and Spies in the Struggle between Catholicism and the Crown (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company); Marshall, ‘ “Secret Wheeles”: Clandestine Information, Espionage, and European Intelligence’, in Jeroen F. J. Duindam, Maurits A. Ebben, and Louis Sicking (eds.), Beyond Ambassadors: Missionaries, Consuls and Spies in Pre-Modern Diplomacy (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming). ¹⁴ Lucien Bély, Espions et ambassadeurs au temps de Louis XIV (Paris: Fayard, 1990). ¹⁵ Karl De Leeuw, ‘The Black Chamber in the Dutch Republic during the War of the Spanish Succession and its Aftermath, 1707–1715’, Historical Journal 42, no 1 (1999), pp. 133–56. ¹⁶ Emrah Safa Gürkan, ‘Espionage in the 16th Century Mediterranean: Secrecy, Diplomacy, Mediterranean Go-Betweens and the Ottoman Habsburg Rivalry’, Unpublished PhD thesis (Georgetown University, 2012); Gürkan, Sultanın Casusları: 16. Yüzyılda İstihbarat, Sabotaj ve Rüşvet Ağları (Istanbul: Kronik Kitap, 2017). ¹⁷ Fernando Cortés Cortés, Espionagem e Contra-Espionagem numa Guerra Peninsular 1640–1668 (Lisbon: Livros Horizonte, 1989). ¹⁸ Carnicer García and Marcos Rivas, Espías de Felipe II; Geoffrey Parker, The Grand Strategy of Philip II (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998). For an overview of the literature on Spanish intelligence, see Christopher Storrs, ‘Intelligence and the Formulation of Policy and Strategy in Early Modern Europe: The Spanish Monarchy in the Reign of Charles II (1665–1700)’, Intelligence and National Security 21, no 4 (2006), pp. 493–519. ¹⁹ On Venice, see Preto, I servizi segreti; Iordanou, ‘What News on the Rialto?’. On Venice and Genoa, see Romano Canosa, Alle origini delle polizie politiche: Gli Inquisitori di Stato a Venezia e a Genova (Milan: Sugarco, 1989). On Savoy, see Christopher Storrs, War, Diplomacy and the Rise of Savoy, 1690–1720 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). On Milan, see Francesco Senatore, ‘Uno mundo de carta’: forme e strutture della diplomazia sforzesca (Naples: Liguori, 1998). On the Italian states in general, see the relevant essays in Frigo, Politics and Diplomacy.

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the regurgitation of old myths rather than the reality behind them.²⁰ Nevertheless, limited effort has been invested in expounding how systematized intelligence influenced an early modern state’s security and, by extension, political decisionmaking, economic vigour, and even social conduct. This is astonishing, as, contrary to the methodological impediments to the access of contemporary sources,²¹ archival records of the early modern period can yield a wealth of evidence about ‘the dark underbelly’ of early modern politics.²² Aiming to rectify this issue, this book attempts three feats. Firstly, challenging the widely accepted view that systematized intelligence and state-organized security are characteristic of the modern state, developed to serve military-political purposes,²³ the book argues that organized intelligence already existed in the early modern era, and, in the case of a commercial power like Venice, it also undergirded economic-commercial interests. Undeniably, early modern intelligence was not as technologically astute as in the twentieth century. Through a systematic analysis of the function and instrumentality of Renaissance Venice’s intelligence pursuits, however, the book reveals the indisputable impact of centrally organized intelligence on an early modern state’s political, economic, and social security and prosperity. For this reason, Venice’s Secret Service moves beyond simplistic narrative accounts of secret agents and operations, casting the focus, not on the revelatory value of clandestine communication and missions but on the social processes that generated them. In consequence, Venice’s central intelligence apparatus is explored and analysed as an organization, rather than as the capricious intelligence enterprise of a group of state dignitaries. Secondly, the book postulates the core claim that Renaissance Venice was one of the earliest early modern states to have created a centrally organized state intelligence organization. This comprised specialist expertise on a single site—the imposing Doge’s Palace overlooking the Venetian lagoon—and under the direction of specific governmental committees, primarily the Council of Ten, who oversaw and administered interwoven ways of working within and beyond the palace’s walls. Just like the Venetian diplomatic corpus, Venice’s intelligence organization was a ‘branch of the civil service’, a distinct annex of a broad and structured bureaucratic apparatus that formed part of a rather inglorious area of

²⁰ See, for example, Deacon, A History of the British Secret Service. ²¹ For a detailed discussion on the difficulties imposed by archival sources, or even the claim that secret activities were allegedly excluded from historical records, see the essays in Christopher Andrew and David Dilks (eds.), The Missing Dimension: Governments and Intelligence Communities in the Twentieth Century (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1984). ²² Marshall, Intelligence and Espionage, p. 2. ²³ See, amongst others, Bernard Porter, Plots and Paranoia: A History of Political Espionage in Britain, 1790–1988 (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989); Henry A. Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994); Richard C. Thurlow, The Secret State: British Internal Security in the Twentieth Century (London: Wiley, 1994); William O. Walker III, National Security and Core Values in American History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

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6  ’    government within the panorama of international diplomacy.²⁴ To examine how this organization was structured, the book describes and analyses the various departments that comprised it, as well as the composite system of managerial delegation that was developed to manage its far-reaching grip across Europe, the Near East, and even Northern Africa. Particular emphasis is placed on the two distinct types of workforce engaged by this organization: the formally appointed diplomats and state servants and the casually and—more often than not—selfappointed recruits. Thirdly, the book explores the development of systematic intelligence not only through a political lens but also through a socio-economic one. Most intelligence studies to date are conducted with an overwhelming emphasis on military, political, and diplomatic history and international relations. Venice’s Secret Service particularly focuses on the Venetian Republic’s commercial and business acumen and explores the hypothesis that this was one of the main drivers behind its systematic organization of diplomacy, bureaucracy, and, ultimately, intelligence. For this purpose, the book not only reveals and analyses Venice’s clandestine missions to protect cities of prime economic significance against the predatory proclivities of enemies (especially the Ottomans), but showcases several instances of Venetian merchants stationed in or traversing the Mediterranean who undergirded Venice’s intelligence operations in order to protect the Republic’s and, by extension, their own economic interests. For, as Hans Kissling aptly noted, ‘in the eyes of the mercantile state, it was obvious that Venetian subjects felt the need to serve it at all times, especially while abroad’.²⁵ Moreover, the book shows how the Council of Ten commodified intelligence and state security operations. It did so by incentivizing ordinary Venetians, who were categorically excluded from political participation, to partake in politicized acts of state surveillance and espionage as a symbol of dutiful contribution to the Venetian society. Through this lens, early modern intelligence emerges as both a rigid top-down and a variable bottom-up practice. The book’s ultimate purpose is to examine the time-specific meaning and functions of intelligence in a society and for a state that are decisively different from those in which modern intelligence operates. For this reason, intelligence is examined as a flexible activity made up of a conglomeration of social processes that determined what was shared with whom, who was excluded, and how the secret communication of knowledge was controlled and regulated. Consequently, the book focuses on the paradoxical nature of secret communication that, on the

²⁴ Andrea Zannini, ‘Economic and Social Aspects of the Crisis of Venetian Diplomacy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, in Frigo, Politics and Diplomacy, pp. 109–46 (here p. 110). ²⁵ Hans J. Kissling, ‘Venezia come centro di informazioni sui Turchi’, in Hans G. Beck, Manoussos Manoussakas, and Agostino Pertusi (eds.), Venezia centro di mediazione tra Oriente e Occidente (Secoli XV–XVI). Aspetti e problemi (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1977), pp. 97–109 (here p. 99).

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one hand, erects barriers between those in the know and those in the dark²⁶ and, on the other, demolishes barriers that would otherwise have to exist if knowledge transfer was not concealed and protected through secrecy. From this perspective, secrecy, as the ongoing practice of intentional concealment, is explored as an enabling knowledge-transfer process contingent upon social interactions that formed identities, alliances, and divisions. Stemming from the above, Venice’s Secret Service serves several purposes. Specifically, it is: • a book about early modern intelligence: As it will be made clear in the following pages, the early modern period played a decisive role in the evolution of organized intelligence. Lacking the technological advances of the twentieth century, Renaissance Venice was emblematic in the creation of a robust, centrally organized state intelligence apparatus that played a pivotal role in the defence of the Venetian empire. Official informants and amateur spies were shipped across Europe, Anatolia, and Northern Africa, conducting Venice’s manifold intelligence operations. While revealing a plethora of secrets, their keepers, and their seekers, the book will explore the social and managerial processes that enabled their existence and furnished the foundation for the creation of one of the world’s earliest centrally organized state intelligence services. • a book about pre-industrial organization and managerial practices: Employing a transdisciplinary perspective, the book will show that organizational entities and managerial practices existed long before contemporary terminology was coined to describe them. Combining the narrative construction of theoretical concepts from the disciplines of sociology, management, and organization studies with archival records and secondary historical sources, Renaissance Venice’s secret service is analysed as a proto-modern organization with distinct managerial structures that enabled the coordination of uniform patterns of working across long distances. As will become apparent in the following chapters, the Venetian intelligence organization, made up of geographically dispersed state representatives and state officials, men of the military and the navy, in-house and expatriate white-collar state functionaries, as well as casually salaried spies and informers, all headed by the Council of Ten, was, ultimately, a social structure held together through commonly accepted rules and regulations—the purest form of organization according to Max Weber,²⁷ the ‘father of organization science’ and one of the foundational ²⁶ On an authoritative sociological theorization of secrecy, see Georg Simmel, ‘The Sociology of Secrecy and Secret Societies’, American Journal of Sociology 11, no 4 (1906), pp. 441–98, transl. Albion Small. ²⁷ Max Weber, Economy and Society: Outline of Interpretive Sociology, Vol. 1, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978), p. 51.

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8  ’    thinkers in management studies.²⁸ More specifically, the commonly accepted patterns of working within this organization were based on traditional authority—the Council of Ten—and the allocation of human resources through legal-traditional administration—a string of formal decrees that authorized the Ten’s power of command. Consequently, through the lens of early theories of organization and management, Venice’s secret service emerges as a primordial intelligence organization whose governance structure does not diverge greatly from contemporary organizational entities. • a book about the Venetian empire in the sixteenth century: Much as the focal point of the book is the central organization of Renaissance Venice’s secret service, an endeavour is made to abstain from focusing disproportionately on an inward-looking representation of the Dominante, which has perpetuated the predominant historiographical interpretation of Venice as ‘a great city’, an ‘enduring republic’, ‘an expansive empire’, and ‘an imposing regional state’.²⁹ Instead, a systematic attempt is made to redress the balance in Venetian historiography by exploring the Ten’s operations both within the city and, importantly, in the geographically dispersed territories of the Terraferma—Venice’s possessions on the Italian mainland—and the Stato da Mar—the Venetian overseas empire. On the whole, as Venice’s systematized intelligence pursuits crossed borders, traversing the European continent and the Levant and even the shores of Northern Africa, the book will endeavour to present a quasi-global history of Venice’s secret service. • a book about the Venetian Council of Ten: As we shall see in the following section, the Council of Ten was an authoritative committee responsible for the security of the Venetian state. As one of the most powerful instruments of government in Renaissance Venice, the Ten have been the object of substantial study within the wider context of Venice’s political history.³⁰ This book broadens and deepens the historical understanding of the Council of Ten by revealing and analysing their concerted efforts to clay-model and spearhead Venice’s secret service as the Republic’s spy chiefs. Casting aside normative representations of the Ten as a fear-inducing governmental committee, the

²⁸ Stephen Cummings, Todd Bridgman, John Hassard, and Michael Rowlinson, A New History of Management (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), p. 119. For a well-rounded review of the significance of Max Weber’s work on organization and management studies, see Stephen Cummings and Todd Bridgman, ‘The Relevant Past: Why the History of Management Should Be Critical for our Future’, Academy of Management Learning & Education 10, no 1 (2011), pp. 77–93; Cummings, Bridgman, Hassard, and Rowlinson, A New History of Management, esp. Chapter 4. ²⁹ John Martin and Dennis Romano, ‘Reconsidering Venice’, in John Martin and Dennis Romano (eds.), Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297–1797 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), pp. 1–35 (here p. 1). On a critique of Anglophone historians’ propensity to pay disproportionate attention to Venice compared to its colonies, see Martin and Romano, Venice Reconsidered, pp. xi, 6, 7, 27. ³⁰ On the Council of Ten, see Mauro Macchi, Istoria del Consiglio dei Dieci (Turin: Fontana, 1848); Robert Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice (London: Ernst Benn, 1980).

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book will present a fresh image of them as a group of intelligence leaders deeply wedded to the security of the Venetian state, its subjects, and its secret operatives.³¹ • a book on people’s history: As it will become apparent in the ensuing chapters, Venetian citizens and subjects of all walks of life were invited to contribute to Renaissance Venice’s state security undertakings by participating in risky operations. A variety of incentives were offered for such endeavours, of which monetary sums, the opportunity to reduce political sentences, and income deriving from state services were the most prevalent. Numerous such instances related in this book demonstrate that, in the early modern era, systematized intelligence was not an outcome of a rigid top-down process of authority and control. On the contrary, bottom-up contributions of lay individuals are suggestive of intelligence ‘from below’ that is fundamental for our understanding of early modern intelligence. Seen in this way, the study of early modern intelligence is as much a people’s history, as it is a history of elites. On the whole, Venice’s Secret Service investigates and evaluates the function of Venice’s state intelligence apparatus from a political, socio-economic, and organizational perspective. Accordingly, it is a book of political, economic, and social history as much as it is a book of intelligence and organizational history. Ultimately, the book offers a fresh vista on systematized intelligence in the long Renaissance, adding the concept of ‘organization’ to the study of early modern politics, economy, and society. At the top of this organization sat the Council of Ten and their subsidiary, the Inquisitors of the State.

The Council of Ten and the Inquisitors of the State Venice’s central intelligence organization was engineered by the Council of Ten (Consiglio dei Dieci: see Fig. 0.1). Established in 1310, in the aftermath of Baiamonte Tiepolo’s failed attempt to overthrow the reigning Doge, Piero Gradenigo, the Council of Ten was the exclusive committee responsible for the security of the Venetian empire. The council was actually made up of seventeen men, including ten ordinary members who served annual terms, the Doge’s six ducal counsellors, ³¹ For an analysis of the Council of Ten’s leadership endeavours as the heads of Venice’s intelligence and state security operations, see Iordanou, ‘The Spy Chiefs of Renaissance Venice’. For a general overview of the function of leadership in Intelligence, see Paul Maddrell, ‘What is Intelligence Leadership? Three Historical Trends’, in Maddrell et al., Spy Chiefs Volume II, pp. 5–42; Christopher Moran, Ioanna Iordanou, and Mark Stout, ‘Introduction: Spy Chiefs: Power, Secrecy and Leadership’, in Christopher Moran, Mark Stout, Ioanna Iordanou, and Paul Maddrell (eds.), Spy Chiefs Volume I: Intelligence Leaders in the United States and the United Kingdom (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2018), pp. 1–20.

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Fig. 0.1. La Sala del Consiglio dei Dieci, Gabriele Bella. Reproduced with permission of the Fondazione Querini Stampalia Onlus, Venice.

who did not have voting rights, and the Doge as the ceremonial figurehead.³² Every month three ordinary members took turns at heading the Ten’s operations. They were called Capi, the Heads of the Ten.³³ Initially, the Ten were tasked with protecting the government from overthrow or corruption. Progressively, however, their political and judicial powers extended to such a degree that, by the midfifteenth century, they encompassed diplomatic and military operations, control over secret affairs, public order, domestic and foreign policy.³⁴ By the first decade of the sixteenth century, the power of the Council of Ten had increased to such a degree that the committee assumed the dimensions of a ‘crypto-oligarchy’.³⁵ Crucially, much of the Ten’s supremacy was premised on their organization and systematic control of the Venetian intelligence apparatus that operated within the city, across, and beyond the Venetian dominion. ³² Gaetano Cozzi, ‘Authority and the Law’, in John R. Hale (ed.), Renaissance Venice (London: Faber & Faber, 1973), pp. 293–345 (here p. 308). ³³ Macchi, Istoria del Consiglio dei Dieci. ³⁴ Gaetano Cozzi, ‘La difesa degli imputati nei processi celebrati col rito del Consiglio dei Dieci’, in Luigi Berlinguer and Floriana Colao (eds.) Crimine, giustizia e società veneta in età moderna (Milan: Giuffrè, 1989), pp. 1–87; Berlinguer and Colao, ‘Venezia nello scenario europeo’, in Gaetano Cozzi, Michael Knapton, and Giovanni Scarabello (eds.), La Repubblica di Venezia nell’età moderna. Dal 1517 alla fine della Repubblica (Turin: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, 1992), pp. 3–200. ³⁵ Alfredo Viggiano, ‘Politics and Constitution’, in Eric R. Dursteler (ed.), A Companion to Venetian History, 1400–1797 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2013), pp. 47–84 (here p. 56). On the increase of the Council of Ten’s responsibilities and jurisdiction following Venice’s territorial expansion, see Michael Knapton, ‘Il Consiglio dei X nel governo della Terraferma: Un’ipotesi interpretativa per il secondo Quattrocento’, in Amelio Tagliaferri (ed.), Atti del Convegno Venezia e la Terraferma attraverso le relazioni dei Rettori (Milan: Giuffrè, 1981), pp. 235–60.

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Intrepid and imperious, from early on the Ten displayed an indomitable political appetite for systematizing Venice’s intelligence operations, which materialized in a distinct and relatively continuous funding line, and, importantly, in an efficient administrative system that enabled the Venetian state’s central intelligence organization. Such weighty responsibilities, so pivotal to the city’s governance, merited a prominent position in the city’s topography. The Ten, therefore, were housed in one of the most impressive state intelligence headquarters of the early modern (and, admittedly, even the modern) world, the Palazzo Ducale, overlooking the Venetian lagoon in Saint Mark’s Square. Therein the Ten organized and administered one of the world’s earliest centrally organized state intelligence services. As we shall see, this resembled a kind of proto-modern public sector organization that operated with remarkable complexity and maturity. This service was also supported by several other state institutions, including the Senate (the Venetian government’s debating committee and primary legislative organ, especially up until the mid-sixteenth century), the Collegio (the Senate’s steering committee), and the office of state attorneys (Avogaria di Comun), as well as the local authorities of the Venetian territories in Italy, the Adriatic, and the Mediterranean.³⁶ An attempt to restraint the Ten’s prominent role in the government of the Venetian state took place in 1582, when a reform (correzione) imposed by the Maggior Consiglio (Great Council)—the assembly of the entire body of male Venetian patricians³⁷—attempted to reduce their power and make them more accountable to the Collegio.³⁸ The autocratic way in which the Ten wielded their power tarnished their reputation and enveloped them in an aura of fear-inducing authority, at times even tyrannical superciliousness.³⁹ Their infamous eruptions were committed to ink by several contemporaneous chroniclers, such as the inveterate diarist Marino Sanudo (1466–1536).⁴⁰ ‘This Council imposes banishment and ³⁶ On a synthesis of the inner workings of the Venetian political system, especially in the sixteenth century, see Viggiano, ‘Politics and Constitution’. ³⁷ On the Maggior Consiglio, especially the requirements for admission and its prerogatives, see Giuseppe Maranini, La costituzione di Venezia dopo la serrata del Maggior Consiglio (Venice: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1931), esp. pp. 41–6 and 78–102. ³⁸ On differing interpretations of the correzione of the Council of Ten, see Aldo Stella, ‘La regolazione delle pubbliche entrate e la crisi politica veneziana del 1582’, in Miscellanea in onore di Roberto Cessi, Vol. II (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1958), pp. 157–71; Gaetano Cozzi, Il doge Nicolò Contarini. Ricerche sul patriziato veneziano agli inizi del seicento (Venice and Rome: Istituto per la collaborazione culturale, 1958), pp. 2–51; Martin Lowry, ‘The Reform of the Council of Ten in 1582–3: An Unsettled Problem?’, Studi Veneziani 13 (1971), pp. 275–310; Giacomo Fassina, ‘Factiousness, Fractiousness or Unity? The Reform of the Council of Ten in 1582–1583’, Studi veneziani, n.s. 54 (2007), pp. 89–118. ³⁹ Focusing on Venice’s ‘anti-myth’, nineteenth-century historiography, influenced by Pierre Daru’s Histoire de la République de Venise, presented Venice as a hotbed of moral corruption and unrestrained aristocratic supremacy overseen by the ubiquitous Council of Ten. For a nuanced discussion of the ‘anti-myth’ and nineteenth-century historiography on Venice, see Claudio Povolo, ‘The Creation of Venetian Historiography’, in Martin and Romano, Venice Reconsidered, pp. 491–519. ⁴⁰ On Venetian diarists and their use of correspondence, see Christiane Neerfeld, ‘Historia per forma di diaria’. La chronachistica veneziana contemporanea a cavallo tra il Quattro e il Cinquecento (Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienzie, Lettere ed Arti, 2006); Mario Infelise, ‘From Merchants’ Letters to

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exile upon nobles, and has others burnt or hanged if they deserve it, and has authority to dismiss the Prince, even to do other things to him if he so deserves’, he once wrote in his account of Venice’s quotidian existence.⁴¹ The Ten’s unbending authority stemmed from respect for two fundamental Venetian virtues: order that was achieved by secrecy and maturity that was guaranteed by gerontocracy. Both these virtues were deemed paramount for state security.⁴² It is not a coincidence, therefore, that the Ten’s stringent regulations did not exclude the Council’s own members. As the governing body responsible for state security, failure to act speedily on issues that imperilled it could render them liable to a 1,000-ducat fine,⁴³ a hefty sum, considering that a Venetian patrician serving as an ambassador in the sixteenth century earned 2,400 to 7,200 ducats annually.⁴⁴ In a way, the Ten seemed to espouse Machiavelli’s maxim that a ruler ‘must not worry if he incurs reproach for his cruelty, so long as he keeps his subjects united and loyal. By making an example or two, he will prove more compassionate than those who, being too compassionate, allow disorders which lead to murder and rapine’.⁴⁵ Nevertheless, what emerges from the Ten’s secret registers is the image of an unabashed, yet dignified committee that, at times, went to great lengths to ensure the safety and welfare of those in their employ and those directly affected by their policies. Such actions included ordering the protection of an imperilled Venetian courier,⁴⁶ providing financial support to the family of a deceased covert operative who fell in service of the Republic,⁴⁷ and releasing erroneously arrested detainees and restoring their confiscated possessions.⁴⁸ In other words, the study of the covert and clandestine operations of the Council of Ten reveals that, while imperious and authoritative, it had a propensity to act in a just and even benevolent manner ‘for the dignity of our Signory and the preservation of public trust’.⁴⁹ Despite the Council of Ten’s gradually assuming considerable power of the Venetian government in the sixteenth century, its autocratic proclivities were not left uncontrolled. The extraordinary maturity of the Venetian political system

Handwritten Political Avvisi: Notes on the Origins of Public Information’, in Francisco Bethencourt and Florike Egmond (eds.), Correspondence and Cultural Exchange in Europe, 1400–1700, Vol. 3 of Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe, ed. Robert Muchembled and William Monter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 33–52. ⁴¹ David Chambers and Brian Pullan (eds.), Venice: A Documentary History (London: Blackwell, 1992), p. 55. ⁴² Finlay, Politics, p. 189. ⁴³ Samuele Romanin, Storia documentata di Venezia, Vol. VI (Venice: Pietro Naratovich, 1857), p. 530. ⁴⁴ Zannini, ‘Economic and Social Aspects’, p. 127. ⁴⁵ Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, transl. George Bull (London: Penguin, 1999), p. 53. ⁴⁶ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 14, c. 60v. (21 March 1601). ⁴⁷ Ibid., Reg. 9, c. 198v. (15 Dec. 1571). ⁴⁸ Ibid., Reg. 7, c. 9r. (2 Oct. 1559). ⁴⁹ Ibid., Reg. 9, c. 198v. (15 Dec. 1571).

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endeavoured to contain any potential autocracy, at least in principle. The institution of the zonta (the Venetian linguistic variation of aggiunta or addizione, meaning ‘addition’) was the mechanism put in place for this purpose. The zonta was an adjunct commission of initially twenty men—reduced to fifteen after 1529, even though this number varied depending on the circumstances⁵⁰—who participated in all important assemblies of the Council of Ten.⁵¹ Either elected or co-opted, they played the role of an impartial referee whose duty was to recognize and combat occurrences of nepotism and cronyism. It was usually made up of patricians who had not secured election to the other governing bodies. The zonta, therefore, was a ‘constitutional shortcut’ for those noblemen who wished to actively participate in the Venetian oligarchy but had not achieved the necessary backing.⁵² By the beginning of the sixteenth century, several pivotal state affairs, such as continuous wars with the Ottomans and the spectre of the new Portuguese spice route, rendered the protection of state secrets a matter of urgency. As a result, in 1539, the Council of Ten—with the blessing of the Senate and the Great Council— decided to establish a counter-intelligence magistracy.⁵³ This took shape in the institution of the Inquisitors of the State (Inquisitori di Stato), a distinct committee that should not be confused with the Santo Ufficio, the Venetian Inquisition.⁵⁴ Initially entitled ‘Inquisitors against the Disclosures of Secrets’, the Inquisitori were a special tribunal made up of three men, two from the ranks of the Ten and one of the Doge’s ducal counsellors.⁵⁵ They held an annual tenure, upon completion of which they could seek re-election.⁵⁶ Their role stemmed from a medieval judicial tradition that enabled both the Church and the State to initiate secret investigations and trials ex officio, ‘making guilt easier to prove and evidence less open to discussion’.⁵⁷ While the Inquisitori were primarily responsible for counter-intelligence and the protection of state secrets, gradually their activity encompassed all aspects of state security, including conspiracies, betrayals, public ⁵⁰ Ibid., Reg. 2, c. 5r./v. (18 May 1527). ⁵¹ Canosa, Alle origini, p. 23. ⁵² Finlay, Politics, pp. 185–90. ⁵³ Following the tradition charted by eminent historians of early modern intelligence, I have taken the liberty of using modern terms, such as ‘counter-intelligence’, ‘secret service’, and ‘intelligence organization’. See, Bély, Espions; Cortés Cortés, Espionagem e Contra-Espionagem; Preto, I servizi segreti; Carnicer García and Marcos Rivas, Espías de Felipe II; Gürkan, ‘Espionage in the 16th Century Mediterranean’; Gürkan, ‘The Efficacy of Ottoman Counter-Intelligence in the 16th Century’, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 65, no 1 (2012), pp. 1–38. ⁵⁴ On the Inquisitors of the State, see Samuele Romanin, Gli Inquisitori di Stato di Venezia (Venice: Pietro Naratovich, 1858); Canosa, Alle origini, esp. pp. 19–85; Preto, I servizi segreti, pp. 55–74; and Simone Lonardi, ‘L’anima dei governi. Politica, spionaggio e segreto di stato a Venezia nel secondo Seicento (1645–1699)’, Unpublished PhD Thesis (University of Padua, 2015). On the relevant founding decrees, see Romanin, Storia documentata, Vol. VI, pp. 122–4. ⁵⁵ Romanin, Gli Inquisitori di Stato, p. 16; Romanin, Storia documentata, Vol. VI, pp. 78–80 (Deliberation of 20 Sep. 1539). ⁵⁶ Romanin, Storia documentata, Vol. VI, p. 78. ⁵⁷ Filippo De Vivo, Information and Communication in Venice: Rethinking Early Modern Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 34.

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order, and espionage.⁵⁸ All these were expected to be concealed under a thick mantle of secrecy but, unquestionably, ought to be communicated to the Ten. Beyond its organization and management of Venice’s intelligence infrastructure, it is also worth pointing out that the Council of Ten was more broadly responsible for military preparedness and defence, both within and beyond the city of Saint Mark.⁵⁹ This involved building, reinforcing, and occasionally repairing the dominion’s city walls and fortifications in order to render Venice and its possessions impregnable to assault. For example, in 1583, following intelligence of an imminent Ottoman attack, the Ten ordered the construction of a wall around the Venetian town of Novigrad, plus cavalry reinforcements, for the ‘maximum security of the inhabitants’.⁶⁰ They were also anxious to ensure that the gates of Venetian strongholds, especially in the Terraferma, were constantly guarded, so that the local authorities could monitor those entering and exiting the urban terrain.⁶¹ A particular security concern was the Arsenale, the production site for the renowned Venetian galleys that contributed to the Republic’s commercial and military might.⁶² As the nucleus of Venetian navigation, the Arsenale was of geostrategic significance to Venice. For this reason, the Ten took its maintenance incredibly seriously. When, in the run up to the third Ottoman-Venetian War, for instance, it came to their attention that Venetian merchants were trading hemp—a vital raw material for shipbuilding and navigation, whose production within the Venetian dominion was dwindling⁶³—they urgently ordered their naval chiefs to bring back to the Arsenale any hemp discovered on commercial galleys traversing the Adriatic, even compensating the merchants for their loss.⁶⁴ Periodic inspections of the state shipyards, delegated to the Provveditori all’Arsenale, were also part of the measures employed by the Ten to maintain the security of the Venetian state.⁶⁵ Alas, the large number of measures they introduced did ⁵⁸ See Lonardi, ‘L’anima dei governi’. ⁵⁹ On the military preparations of the Venetians for the War of Cyprus, see Michael Mallett and John R. Hale, The Military Organization of a Renaissance State: Venice c.1400 to 1617 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 233–41. ⁶⁰ ASV, CCX, Lettere dei Rettori e di Altre Cariche, b. 284 (2 Feb. 1583). ⁶¹ On city gates as sites of urban power, exclusion and inclusion, see Daniel Jütte, The Straight Gate: Thresholds and Power in Western History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015), esp. Chapter 5. ⁶² The bibliography on the Venetian Arsenal is substantial. Some notable works include Mario Nani Mocenigo, L’Arsenale di Venezia (Rome: Arti Grafiche Ugo Pinnarò, 1927); Frederic C. Lane, Venetian Ships and Shipbuilders of the Renaissance (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1934); Robert C. Davis, Shipbuilders of the Venetian Arsenal: Workers and Workplace in the Preindustrial City (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991); Ioanna Iordanou, ‘Maritime Communities in Late Renaissance Venice: The Arsenalotti and the Greeks’, Unpublished PhD Thesis (The University of Warwick, 2008), esp. Chapter 2. ⁶³ On the significance of hemp for the Venetian Republic, see Frederic C. Lane, ‘The Rope Factory and Hemp Trade of Venice in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’, Journal of Economics and Business History IV, supplement (1932), pp. 830–47; Ruggiero Romano, ‘Economic Aspects of the Construction of Warships in Venice in the Sixteenth Century’, in Brian Pullan (ed.), Crisis and Change in the Venetian Economy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London: Methuen and Co., 1968), pp. 59–87. ⁶⁴ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 4, cc. 32v.–33r. (14 July 1534). ⁶⁵ Ibid., Reg. 6, c. 51v. (26 Aug. 1550).

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not prevent a devastating fire that whipped through the Arsenale and obliterated the stockpile of munitions, together with several galleys of the Republic’s reserve fleet, on the night of 10 September 1569. Arson or accident, rumours raged for days that the culprit was either Joseph Nasi, an adviser to Sultan Selim II,⁶⁶ or a Turkish saboteur.⁶⁷ Under similarly suspicious circumstances, perhaps in retaliation, two weeks later a fire engulfed the Arsenal in Constantinople, wrecking the Jewish quarter of the Ottoman capital.⁶⁸ Scholarship has explored the Council of Ten as an oligarchic governmental committee with a composite mixture of exclusive judicial and political prerogatives that intensified in the course of the sixteenth century.⁶⁹ The Ten’s subsidiary, the Inquisitors of the State, have received considerably less attention from contemporary scholars, with the exception of a recent study focusing on their activity in the 1600s, primarily due to the surviving documentation, which is scarce for the sixteenth century but plentiful for the seventeenth.⁷⁰ Considering that both committees’ jurisdictive authorities were contingent upon their organization and systematic control of the Venetian intelligence apparatus that branched out across Europe, Anatolia, and even Northern Africa, where Venice had diplomatic and commercial representation, an analysis and evaluation of their intelligence organization is long overdue. In view of the meteoric rise in historiography of contemporary intelligence and espionage, especially in the Anglosphere, over the last thirty years,⁷¹ such a scholarly endeavour could not be more timely.

Why Venice? In her pioneering book entitled Political Economies of Empire, Maria Fusaro postulated the bold, yet apt proposition that ‘it is time to start considering the Venetian state in its entirety—terra and mar—blending together different historiographical strands and traditions, aiming at a holistic approach to the topic of ⁶⁶ Gürkan, ‘Espionage in the 16th Century Mediterranean’, pp. 287, 378. ⁶⁷ Kenneth M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1204–1571), Vol IV: The Sixteenth Century from Julius III to Pius V (Philadelphia, PA: The American Philosophical Society, 1976), p. 944; see also Benjamin Arbel, Trading Nations: Jews and Venetians in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Leiden: Brill, 1999), pp. 55–63. On Joseph Nasi in general, see Cecil Roth, The House of Nasi: The Duke of Naxos (New York: Greenwood Press, 1948); On Nasi as a spymaster and instigator of the 1570–3 OttomanVenetian war, see Gürkan, ‘Espionage in the 16th Century Mediterranean’, pp. 377–84. ⁶⁸ Ibid. ⁶⁹ Macchi, Istoria del Consiglio dei Dieci; Cozzi, ‘Authority and the Law’; Cozzi, ‘La politica del diritto nella repubblica di Venezia’, in Gaetano Cozzi (ed.), Stato, società e giudizia nella Repubblica Veneta (sec. XV–XVIII) (Rome: Jouvence, 1981), pp. 15–151; Cozzi, Repubblica di Venezia e stati italiani: Politica e giustizia dal secolo XVI al secolo XVIII (Turin: Einaudi, 1982). ⁷⁰ Preto, I servizi segreti, pp. 55–74; Lonardi, ‘L’ anima dei governi’. ⁷¹ For Britain, see Christopher R. Moran, ‘The Pursuit of Intelligence History: Methods, Sources, and Trajectories in the United Kingdom’, Studies in Intelligence 55, no 2 (2011), pp. 33–55. For the USA, see Kaeten Mistry, ‘Narrating Covert Action: The CIA, Historiography, and the Cold War’, in Christopher R. Moran and Christopher J. Murphy (eds.), Intelligence Studies in Britain and the US: Historiography since 1945 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), pp. 111–28.

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statecraft and political economy’.⁷² Fusaro’s call to scholarly arms holds great merit, especially in relation to the study of early modern diplomacy and, by extension, intelligence activities that linked inextricably Venice with early modern Europe, the Near East, and Northern Africa. Such a link was the consequence of the high level of bureaucratization and institutionalization—even in Weberian terms, as we shall see in Chapter 3—that led to the ‘rise of information-fed bureaucracies’ in the early modern era.⁷³ This information-fed bureaucratization of Renaissance Venice spawned both its intelligence organization and the vast paper trail that enabled the conception and materialization of this book. Accordingly, the surviving documentation furnishes an abundance of information on the intelligence organization of both the Venetian motherland and its periphery, rendering Venice an appealing case study through which we can explore the Dominante, its dominion, and the former’s diplomatic reach beyond the latter. The relationship between Venice and its dominion in the Terraferma and the Stato da Mar was quite diverse, with overarching similarities in the way territories were governed but also important differences.⁷⁴ Venice was the ruling power, responsible for the defence of its provinces and its subjects. As part of the Venetian defence organization, members of the patriciate were sent to govern territories of both the mainland and overseas Venetian holdings and were expected to cooperate with local elites and institutions in order to fulfil their duties.⁷⁵ In the Ionian Islands, in particular, local elites, whose grasp of the native Greek language provided a considerable advantage, played the role of the intermediary between the motherland and the local populations.⁷⁶ These elites were, thus, responsible for the overall governance of those territories and they reported to the Senate and to the Heads of the Council of Ten, who, from the 1480s onwards, increasingly assumed a growing influence over the affairs of Venice’s maritime dominion.⁷⁷ Venice’s mainland and maritime possessions were governed in a rather ‘light touch’ manner, through the appointment of Venetian officials occupying key ⁷² Maria Fusaro, Political Economies of Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean: The Decline of Venice and the Rise of England, 1450–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), p. 22. ⁷³ Kenneth J. Banks, Chasing Empire across the Sea: Communications and the State in the French Atlantic, 1713–1763 (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 2003), p. 10. ⁷⁴ On the Terraferma and its main urban governorships, see Michael Knapton, ‘Venice and the Terraferma’, in Andrea Gamberini and Isabella Lazzarini (eds.), The Italian Renaissance State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 132–55; on smaller cities of the Terrafera, see Anna Bellavitis, ‘Quasi-città e terre murane in area veneta. Un bilancio per l’età moderna’, in Elena Svalduz (ed.), L’ambizione di essere città. Piccoli, grandi centri nell’ Italia rinascimentale (Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 2004), pp. 97–114; on the military structure of the Terraferma, see Giulio Ongaro, Peasants and Soldiers: The Management of the Venetian Military Structure in the Mainland Dominion between the 16th and 17th Centuries (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017); on the Venetian colonies of the Stato da Mar, see Benjamin Arbel, ‘Venice’s Maritime Empire in the Early Modern Period’, in Dursteler, A Companion to Venetian History, pp. 125–253. ⁷⁵ Knapton, ‘Venice and the Terraferma’, p. 152. ⁷⁶ Fusaro, Political Economies, pp. 14–15. ⁷⁷ Arbel, ‘Venice’s Maritime Empire’, p. 154.

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posts in the Venetian cursus honorum.⁷⁸ These included one or two civil governors (called rettori or even podestà); a military governor (called capitano); and, more often than not, one or two treasurers or financial administrators (camerlenghi).⁷⁹ As we shall see in the following pages, Venetian elites overseeing the Republic’s territorial possessions were expected to perform a variety of public services, from administering the recruitment of servicemen to orchestrating daring espionage missions. Tenure was brief, usually two years in duration, a time period that was deemed sufficient to establish one’s authority without being entrenched in local affairs and interests to such a degree that could lead to corruption.⁸⁰ Yet such temporal restrictions could not guarantee the elimination of debauchery, and critics of the system voiced concerns that two years was not an adequate time frame to enable a governor to gain a thorough understanding of local idiosyncrasies and needs.⁸¹ While local legislation was respected and preserved, in a territorial state like Venice the administration of justice was left to the motherland as ‘the principal expression of the Dominante’s dominion’.⁸² As a result, all judicial appeals of the Stato da Mar were sent to Venice.⁸³ This imperial-like organization of the colonies, alongside her economic and political rise and fall on the international scene between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, induced Venice to create a vast and robust diplomatic network. By the second half of the sixteenth century, Venice’s diplomatic structures had assumed such gargantuan proportions that historians such as Stefano Andretta referred to an ‘elephantiasis of its diplomatic apparatus’.⁸⁴ This exponential growth in Venice’s diplomatic activities coincided with an era when her foreign policy focused on the ‘outright defence of her domains’.⁸⁵ This period culminated in a thunderous confrontation with the Ottomans in 1571 that cost the Venetians the island of Cyprus, a Venetian stronghold of immense economic and geopolitical significance in the Mediterranean,⁸⁶ as we saw at the start of this Introduction. It was during that period that the Republic’s intelligence pursuits, subtly but steadily undergirding her diplomatic regime, intensified to such a degree that ⁷⁸ See Angelo Ventura, Nobiltà e popolo nella società veneta del Quattrocento e Cinquecento (Milan: Unicopli, 1993). ⁷⁹ Knapton, ‘Venice and the Terraferma’, pp. 150–1. ⁸⁰ Arbel, ‘Venice’s Maritime Empire’, pp. 146–51. ⁸¹ Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, Vol. IV, p. 927. ⁸² Arbel, ‘Venice’s Maritime Empire’, p. 139. ⁸³ On the policy of imposing Venetian criminal law as a symbol of sovereignty over the Venetian dominion, see Cozzi, Stato, società e giustizia. In contrast, in the Terraferma, criminal justice remained in the hands of local judges, undermining Venetian authority. See Ventura, Nobiltà e popolo, pp. 440–6; Arbel, ‘Venice’s Maritime Empire’, p. 156. ⁸⁴ Stefano Andretta, ‘ “Rivolutioni e commotioni”, “cabale e arcani”. La crisi della “simmetria d’Europa” nei resoconti diplomatici veneti in Francia durante la fronda parlamentare’, Dimensioni e Problemi della Ricerca Storica 1 (1989), pp. 263–311 (here p. 265). ⁸⁵ Zannini, ‘Economic and Social Aspects’, p. 111. ⁸⁶ On the loss of Cyprus, see Michael Knapton, ‘Tra dominante e dominio (1517–1630)’, in Cozzi, Knapton, and Scarabello, La Repubblica di Venezia nell’età moderna, pp. 201–549 (here pp. 222–3).

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the authorities were willing to risk placing the most unexceptional men in the most exceptional circumstances, in an effort to achieve the defence of the Republic at any cost. These unexceptional men were Venice’s amateur spies and informers.⁸⁷ According to Tommaso Garzoni’s late sixteenth-century treatise on ‘all professions in the world’, spies in that period were ‘the sort of people that, in secret, follow armies and enter cities, exploring the affairs of enemies, and reporting them back to their own people’.⁸⁸ This definition differs from sociological conceptualizations of a professional service as the outcome of ‘cognitive specialization’,⁸⁹ which is premised upon a common educational process, a shared professional identity, and even an emerging professional ethos and philosophy.⁹⁰ In short, contrary to established professions such as those of the chancery secretary or the cryptologist, as we shall see in the following chapters, the métier of the spy had still not transmogrified into a stand-alone valid profession in the early modern era. Consequently, Renaissance Venice deployed spying rather than spies.⁹¹ It is rather surprising that a territorial state like Venice that braved the creation of a vast and systematic intelligence apparatus did not make provisions for the professional development of specialist spies. Epochal political events in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, namely four disastrous Ottoman-Venetian wars between 1463 and 1573, rife with lacerating polemics and the devastating defeat of the Venetians by the League of Cambrai at Agnadello in 1509, led to an aggressive ‘realpolitik policy of neutrality, a balancing act between the French, the Habsburgs, and most importantly, the Ottomans’.⁹² As a result, Venice focused its attentions on the art of defence, in order to preserve its gradually dwindling

⁸⁷ In the early modern period, due to lack of professionalization, the distinction between a spy—an individual actively recruited, authorized, and instructed to obtain information for intelligence purposes—and an informer (or intelligencer)—someone who voluntarily initiated the informationgathering process, aspiring to a reward and, potentially, to a formal appointment by the government— is blurred. Similarly hazy is the term ‘informant’, which denotes someone who reports to the authorities information they are privy to, primarily out of a sense of duty. These are the definitions used in this book to refer to these terms. For the semantic challenges posed by these terms in the early modern period, see Marshall, Intelligence and Espionage, pp. 4–5. ⁸⁸ Tommasso Garzoni, La piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo (Venice: Gio. Battista Somasco 1587), p. 705. ⁸⁹ Magali S. Larson, The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977), p. 3. ⁹⁰ This definition is more akin to early modern ‘learned’ professions. Generally, on ‘learned professions’ and professionalization in the early modern period, see Rosemary O’Day, The Professions in Early Modern England, 1450–1800 (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2000); On ‘learned’ professions in Renaissance Italy, see Douglas Biow, Doctors, Ambassadors, Secretaries: Humanism and Professions in Renaissance Italy (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2002). ⁹¹ See also Peter Burke, ‘Early Modern Venice as a Center of Information and Communication’, in Martin and Romano, Venice Reconsidered, pp. 389–419. ⁹² Eric R. Dursteller, ‘Power and Information: The Venetian Postal System in the Early Modern Eastern Mediterranean’, in Diogo R. Curt, Eric R. Dursteler, Julius Kirshner, and Francesca Trivellato (eds.), From Florence to the Mediterranean: Studies in Honour of Anthony Molho (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2009), pp. 601–23 (here p. 616).

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maritime possessions, resorting to military action only when necessary.⁹³ For the Venetian outposts in the eastern Mediterranean this entailed maintaining a robust network of fortifications and garrisons to protect them.⁹⁴ In consequence, Venice’s foreign policy became increasingly concerned with ‘disarming’ her enemies by keeping up appearances, while maintaining secrecy and, eventually, even manipulating information.⁹⁵ To maintain this stance of neutrality, sending bona fide spies to foreign territories, especially those of perennial enemies such as the Ottomans, could prove provocative and, ultimately, counterproductive. Sending amateur ones, in the hope that they would pass unnoticed, was deemed more prudent. As will become evident in Chapter 5, this is the strategy the Council of Ten employed. Accordingly, Venice’s defensive stance led to an increase in the number of amateur spies, in addition to a proliferation of formal legates and their entourages sent overseas, especially those dispatched to the Ottoman capital.⁹⁶ Venetian ambassadors and governors were expected to collect and disseminate information as part of their diplomatic repertoire, while the stealthy business of espionage was left to unabashed dilettantes who were willing to risk their life for a moderate compensation. Through their espionage activities, these individuals were granted a certain degree of political agency and contributed to an emerging political culture of information-gathering that still lurks in the margins of historical scholarship. Overall, then, Venice furnishes a rich case study for the exploration and analysis of intelligence organization in the long Renaissance. This is due to three reasons. Firstly, the vast paper trail stemming from the intense bureaucratization process that the Venetian government underwent in that period has left a surplus of extant documents that include the correspondence between the Ten, the State Inquisitors, and their delegates; registers and notes of secret deliberations and decrees stemming from them; Venetian citizens’ and subjects’ anonymous denunciations; and several other enciphered and deciphered documents pertaining to Venice’s intelligence pursuits—a scholar’s feast, indeed. Secondly, Venice’s territorial expansion as a vast maritime empire with diverse geopolitical, cultural, linguistic, and even religious traits advanced the need for the systematization of the Dominante’s central intelligence organization. And thirdly, Venice’s stance of defence and neutrality, as part of its broader foreign policy, produced a mixture of professional informants and amateur spies whose feats and peccadilloes form part of the wider social interactions between the government and the governed that merit further scholarly exploration and analysis. ⁹³ Arbel, ‘Venice’s Maritime Empire’, p. 142. ⁹⁴ Mallet and Hale, The Military Organization, pp. 429–60. ⁹⁵ The strategic manipulation of information intensified after the Thirty Years War. See Richard Mackenney, ‘ “A Plot Discover’d?” Myth, Legend and the “Spanish” Conspiracy against Venice in 1618’, in Martin and Romano, Venice Reconsidered, pp. 185–216. ⁹⁶ For Constantinople specifically, see Dursteler, ‘The Bailo in Constantinople’.

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Methodology and Sources In terms of chronology, the book deals with the time span between 1500 and 1630, a period when the Council of Ten played a pivotal role in creating and consolidating Venice’s secret service. This is the primary reason for the choice of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries as the book’s main chronological focus. Moreover, this is an era of some momentous events in the history of both Venice and Europe, which coincided with the economic and political rise and fall of the Venetian Republic, in addition to its geographical expansion and contraction. The book explores how such events contributed to the Republic’s economic and political security and prosperity, both domestically and internationally. From a more practical perspective, as the principal unit of historical analysis is the Council of Ten, their ‘secret’ deliberations and letters are of primary significance. Dating from 1525, these archival records exist in abundance and offer a wealth of information on Venice’s central intelligence organization. It was, therefore, deemed prudent to make use of these sources, some of which remain untapped to this day. By the close of the sixteenth century and the start of the seventeenth, the Ten’s administrative power slowly started to diminish, as the onus for issues of state security gradually fell upon the Senate and the Collegio,⁹⁷ and the State Inquisitors took over the role of administering Venice’s intelligence and espionage activities. This gradual deterioration of the Ten’s authority coincided with the progressive decline of Venice’s supremacy on the international scene. Consequently, the 1630s were considered an apt end point for the book. A large proportion of the archival material used in this book was produced in the early modern period, especially in the years between 1550 and 1630, with great emphasis put on the last thirty years of the sixteenth century, when the imminent threat of the loss of Cyprus intensified the use of intelligence and espionage. The time span between 1550 and 1630, in particular, is a period that the historian William Bouwsma has styled the ‘waning of the Renaissance’.⁹⁸ In this book, the word ‘Renaissance’ is deliberately used to combine Chabod’s 1950s model of the ‘Renaissance state’, made up of late medieval and early modern officials and institutions that produced an ‘Italian way’ of ‘modern’ statecraft,⁹⁹ with Mattingly’s pioneering, yet outdated representation of Renaissance diplomacy, premised upon the grand narrative of the birth of resident embassies, which were ⁹⁷ See, for example, documents stored in ASV, Materie Miste Notabili, bb. 66–67, where both the Senate and the Collegio order Venetian men of power in the Venetian colonies to report to those institutions, rather than to the Ten, on several issues of state security in the area of their jurisdiction. ⁹⁸ William J. Bouwsma, The Waning of the Renaissance 1550–1640 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000). ⁹⁹ Federico Chabod, ‘Y a-t-il un État de la Renaissance?’ (1956), in Federico Chabod, Scritti sul Rinascimento (Turin: Einaudi, 1967), pp. 603–23. This debate was developed further by Giorgio Chittolini, Anthony Mohlo, and Pierangelo Schiera (eds.), Origini dello stato: Processi di formazione statale in Italia fra Medioevo ed Età Moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1994).

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pioneered primarily by Italian city states.¹⁰⁰ More importantly, Renaissance intelligence organization here is coterminous with the revisionist representation of Renaissance diplomacy, stripped of the classic dichotomy between medieval and early modern, as a flexible, ‘all-consuming’ political activity based on negotiation, information gathering, and representation.¹⁰¹ In consequence, systematized intelligence is discussed and examined as an essential component of the broader landscape of early modern diplomacy, as it evolved in the period of the long Renaissance to entail a Europe-wide ‘common language of interaction’ with diverse ‘traditions and styles’.¹⁰² It is for this reason that the terms ‘early modern’ and ‘Renaissance’ are used interchangeably in this book. In terms of conceptual framing, this is a book about intelligence organization. More specifically, the book ventures one of the first scholarly attempts to explore a complex proto-modern organization that, as will become more evident in Chapter 3, was premised upon structured managerial practices. Accordingly, Venice’s secret service is presented as an exemplar primordial organization in two senses of the word, organization as an entity and organization as a process.¹⁰³ The book argues that the phenomenon of organization—perceived here as a network of people sharing interwoven ways of working and common professional values, knowledge, even technology extending beyond the legal boundary of a firm¹⁰⁴—was conceived and given meaning in the era of the long Renaissance, which hosted the gradual systemization of diplomatic practices that went hand in hand with the development of state bureaucracies. This argument contests conventional wisdom that has traditionally presented organization as a natural by-product of the rationality, industrialization, and technological advancements that emanated from the Industrial Revolution.¹⁰⁵ Based on the quintessential modern ¹⁰⁰ Garett Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (London: Jonathan Cape, 1955); See also Vincent Illardi, Studies in Italian Renaissance Diplomatic History (London: Variorum Reprints, 1986). Partially revising this grand narrative, Queller highlighted the medieval roots of this process. See Donald E. Queller, Early Venetian Legislation on Ambassadors (Geneva: Droz, 1966). On the development of the ambassadorial practice in late Renaissance Italy, see also Riccardo Fubini, ‘La figura politica dell’ambasciatore negli sviluppi dei regimini oligarchici quattrocenteschi’, in Forme e tecniche del potere della città (secoli 14–17) (Perugia: Annali della facoltà di scienze politiche, Materiali di Storia 4, 1979–80), pp. 33–59. ¹⁰¹ See, primarily, Isabella Lazzarini, Communication and Conflict: Italian Diplomacy in the Early Renaissance, 1350–1520 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 6; and the essays in Gamberini and Lazzarini, The Italian Renaissance State. ¹⁰² Lazzarini, Communication and Conflict, p. 47. ¹⁰³ On organization both as an entity and a process, see Karl E. Weick, The Social Psychology of Organizing, 2nd edn (New York: McGraw Hill, 1979); Torre Bakken and Tor Hernes, ‘Organizing is both a Verb and a Noun: Weick Meets Whitehead’, Organization Studies 27, no 11 (2006), pp. 1599–616. ¹⁰⁴ Kenneth Lipartito, ‘Reassembling the Economic: New Departures in Historical Materialism’, American Historical Review 121, no. 1 (February 2016), pp. 101–39 (here 137). ¹⁰⁵ Alfred D. Chandler, Jr, Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the American Industrial Enterprise (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962); Chandler, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977); Louis Galambos, ‘The Emerging Organizational Synthesis in Modern American History’, Business

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corporation as it emerged in the United States,¹⁰⁶ this established view stemmed from a misleading scholarly association of the progressive mechanization of production in the post-industrial era with increased productivity and, by extension, national wealth.¹⁰⁷ The normative depiction of organization as the modern corporation inevitably excludes early modern administrative bodies from systematic historical analyses of organizational entities. Early modern organizations such as Venice’s secret service, however, were premised on a form of governance that is not widely dissimilar to contemporary managerial structures. As this book unfolds, it will become apparent that this distortion is not simply due to the lack of industrialization, the primitive form of technology, and the relatively less complex market conditions in which pre-industrial organizations operated, and which, allegedly, make for a rather ‘thin’ conceptual contribution.¹⁰⁸ Instead, there are other, more practical reasons why both historians and organization studies scholars who engage in historical study overwhelmingly overlook pre-industrial organizations in their scholarship. These reasons are linguistic, methodological, and epistemological in nature.¹⁰⁹ The main linguistic impediment to the (historical) study of History Review 44, no 3 (1970), pp. 279–90; Galambos, ‘Technology, Political Economy and Professionalization: Central Themes of the Organizational Synthesis’, Business History Review 57, no 4 (1983), pp. 471–93; Galambos, ‘Recasting the Organizational Synthesis: Structure and Process in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries’, Business History Review 79, no 1 (2005), pp. 1–38. ¹⁰⁶ The bibliography on this topic is vast and premised on a scholarly tradition that presented the US corporation as the normative model of managerial enterprise. For emblematic works, see Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, transl. Talcott Parsons (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1930); Chandler, Strategy and Structure; Chandler, ‘The Railroads: Pioneers in Modern Corporate Management’ Business History Review 39, no 1 (1965), pp. 16–40; Chandler, The Visible Hand; Galambos, ‘The Emerging Organizational Synthesis’. For a revisionist view of these debates, see Jose Bento da Silva and Ioanna Iordanou, ‘The Origins of Organizing in the Sixteenth Century’, in Tuomo Peltonen, Hugo Gaggiotti, and Peter Case (eds.), Origins of Organizing (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2018), pp. 127–46. ¹⁰⁷ Eric L. Jones, The European Miracle: Environments, Economies and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Alfred D. Chandler Jr., Franco Amatori, and Takashi Hikino (eds.), Big Business and the Wealth of Nations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); William Lazonick, Business Organization and the Myth of the Market Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O’Rourke, Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007). ¹⁰⁸ Ann Langley, ‘Strategies for Theorizing from Process Data’, Academy of Management Review 24, no 4 (1999), pp. 691–710 (here 697). ¹⁰⁹ On methodological and epistemological issues that sociologists and organizational theorists have raised with regard to historical data collection and analysis, see, Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Presentation (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987); Michael Rowlinson and John Hassard, ‘The Invention of Corporate Culture: A History of the Histories of Cadbury’, Human Relations 46, no 3 (1993), pp. 299–326; Langley, ‘Strategies for Theorizing’; Antonio Strati, Theory and Method in Organization Studies (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2000); Simon Down, ‘The Use of History in Business and Management, and Some Implications for Management Learning’, Management Learning 32, no 3 (2001), pp. 393–410; Peter Clark and Michael Rowlinson, “The Treatment of History in Organization Studies: Towards an ‘Historic Turn’?”, Business History 46, no 3 (2004), pp. 331–52; Fabio Rojas, ‘Power through

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organizational and managerial practices is the necessity to borrow terms from the discipline of organizational analysis that had neither been conceived nor used by actors in the distant past. Such terms are either unknown or irrelevant to historians.¹¹⁰ From a methodological perspective, the farther back we go into the past, the more we rely on archival records that, more often than not, are incomplete or partial towards organizational elites rather than other actors.¹¹¹ Consequently, the historian has to rely heavily on reconstruction and what philosophers of history have termed ‘impositionalist’ objection, the distorted sense of structure that the reconstruction and narration of facts imposes.¹¹² This leads to the main epistemological hindrance to the historical examination of primordial organizations: an abiding disagreement between historians and social scientists in relation to the value of archival records. While, for the historian, archives offer evidence that is regarded as primary data, organization theorists perceive the archive as a repository for ‘anecdote and chronology’ that can only provide ‘background information’ on the history of organizations.¹¹³ In other words, according to organizational theorists, archival sources alone cannot make a genuine contribution to our historical understanding of organizations in the early modern era.¹¹⁴ In an effort to rectify these issues, adding to Maria Fusaro’s call for a ‘holistic approach to the topic of statecraft and political economy’ through ‘different historiographical strands and traditions’,¹¹⁵ this book makes a case for the need to employ a transdisciplinary perspective to historical analysis. Adopting this approach, the book combines the narrative construction of established theoretical concepts deriving from the disciplines of sociology, organization studies, and management—such as ‘secrecy’, ‘organizational secrecy’, ‘professionalization’, ‘professional identity’, ‘management’, and ‘accounting’—with the critical examination

Institutional Work: Acquiring Academic Authority in the 1968 Third World Strike’, Academy of Management Journal 53, no 6 (2010), pp. 1263–80; Michael Rowlinson, John Hassard, and Stephanie Decker, ‘Research Strategies for Organizational History: A Dialogue between Historical Theory and Organization Theory’, Academy of Management Review 39, no 3 (2014), pp. 250–74. ¹¹⁰ Rowlinson, Hassard, and Decker, ‘Research Strategies’, p. 2. ¹¹¹ Rojas, ‘Power through Institutional Work’, p. 1268; Stephanie Decker, ‘The Silence of the Archives: Business History, Postcolonialism and Archival Ethnography’, Management & Organization History 8, no 2 (2013), pp. 155–73. ¹¹² See, for example, David Carr, ‘Narrative and the Real World: An Argument for Continuity’, History and Theory 25, no 2 (1986), pp. 117–31; Andrew P. Norman, ‘Telling it like it Was: Historical Narratives on their Own Terms’, History and Theory 30, no 20 (1991), pp. 119–35; Alex Callinikos, Theories and Narratives: Reflections on the Philosophy of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). ¹¹³ Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd edn (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1970), p. 1; Strati, Theory and Method, p. 158. ¹¹⁴ Rojas, ‘Power through Institutional Work’; Rowlinson, Hassard, and Decker, ‘Research Strategies’; Paul C. Godfrey, John Hassard, Ellen O’Connor, Michael Rowlinson, and Martin Ruef, ‘What is Organizational History? Toward a Creative Synthesis of History and Organization Studies’, Academy of Management Review 4, no 4 (2016), pp. 590–608 (here 593). ¹¹⁵ Fusaro, Political Economies, p. 22.

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of an exhaustive body of pertinent archival material and relevant literature. This approach enables a methodological plurality, which allows for more holistic historical explorations and analyses. It also provides the groundwork for a conceptual framework which, based on the foundational work of towering figures in the discipline of sociology, such as Max Webber and Georg Simmel, furnishes the book with a solid theoretical underpinning. In consequence, while this is first and foremost a book of historical scholarship, methodologically it strays from welltrodden paths in historiography, in the sense that the study of archival records— some freshly discovered, others freshly interpreted—is complemented by concepts and theories stemming from a constellation of adjacent disciplines.¹¹⁶ The aim is to produce new questions that might generate fresh, yet plausible accounts and interpretations of the social processes that brought about intelligence organization and management in the pre-industrial world. On the whole, it is hoped that a tried and tested approach of transdisciplinarity, here combining the historian’s narrative construction with the social scientist’s predilection for theoretical constructs, generates both factual richness and methodological rigour, which can alleviate some of the linguistic, methodological, and even epistemological challenges involved in the historical study of pre-industrial organizational entities such as Venice’s secret service. As such, this approach purports to enable a balanced and situated analysis of pre-industrial organizational life that moves beyond the conventional, overly empiricist narrative approaches to (business) history, while discarding the overly technicist and abstract discussions of organizational theories that favour methodological rigour at the expense of historical reconstruction. Instead, this study will endeavour to retain the epistemological status of historical events by interpreting evidence stemming from the archive through sociological and organizational theories, attempting, thus, to restore the ‘qualities of evidential and interpretative fidelity’

¹¹⁶ Actually, a transdisciplinary approach to the historical study of phenomena is not new. In the early 1970s, the emergence of economic history as one of the most stimulating fields in the historical profession was premised on the amalgamation of historical analysis with constructs from economic theory. Some of the most notable works of this scholarly tradition are Simon Kuznets, Modern Economic Growth: Rate, Structure, and Spread (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966); Robert W. Fogel, Enid M. Fogel, Nathaniel Grotte, and Mark Guglielmo, Political Arithmetic: Simon Kuznets and the Empirical Tradition in Economics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2013); Jeremy Adelman, Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013); Angus Maddison, Contours of the World Economy, 1–2030 : Essays in Macro-Economic History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Moreover, consorting with sociology, anthropology, and geography, economic historians such as Fernard Braudel in Europe, Erik Hobsbawm, E. P. Thompson and others in Britain investigated the history of society and capitalism, in what paved the way for the advancement of social history. See Fernard Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century, 3 vols., transl. Siân Reynolds (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982–4); Jonathan Dewald, ‘Crisis, Chronology, and the Shape of European Social History’, American Historical Review 113, no 4 (October 2008), pp. 1031–52; E. J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848 (Cleveland, OH: World Publishing Company, 1962); Hobsbawm, Labouring Men: Studies in the History of Labour (New York: Basic Books, 1965); E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Pantheon Books, 1964); Christopher Hill, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (New York: Schocken Books, 1964).

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in the historical study of organizations.¹¹⁷ In this respect, archival records have played the leading role in the book’s narrative construction, supplemented by some simple sociological theorizations.

Archival Records As this book aims to explore the way Venice’s intelligence organization, originating in the Doge’s palace, expanded across Europe, the Mediterranean, Anatolia, and even Northern Africa, the paperchase for this book has been transnational and multilingual. The bulk of the research was conducted in the Venetian state archives, focusing on the voluminous repository of the Council of Ten’s and State Inquisitors’ ‘secret’ documents. These included the exhaustive correspondence between these two institutions and their formal diplomatic representatives, such as Venetian ambassadors, governors, consuls, as well as men—alas, in nearly all cases, they were men—in positions of power, whose responsibilities were intrinsically interlinked with the security of the Venetian state (lettere secrete, lettere dei rettori e di altre cariche; dispacci ambasciatori) and the Ten’s ‘secret’ deliberations (deliberazioni secrete). Since it was imperative to understand how other key players on the political and diplomatic scene of early modern Europe saw Venice’s intelligence pursuits, archival research in Venice was supplemented by documentary explorations conducted in Spain’s imperial archives (Simancas), particularly focusing on the archival series papeles de estado, which contain the communication between the ambassadors of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire to Venice and their monarchs, especially Charles V and Philip II. Similarly, consultation of the archival series segreteria di stato in the Archivio Segreto Vaticano in Rome, which comprises the correspondence between the papal representative in Venice (the nuncio) and the Holy See, provided a fresh vista on how the Catholic Church perceived the systematic organization of Venice’s secret service. The repository of State Papers relating to Venice stored in London’s National Archives (Kew) also furnished meaningful supplementary material on Venice’s intelligence pursuits. Importantly, documentation from non-Italian archives not only shed light on how Venice’s intelligence operations were viewed by key actors in the European diplomacy, but also offered invaluable descriptions of the wider political, economic, and diplomatic landscape in which Venice’s intelligence operations evolved in the sixteenth century, at a time of political, economic, and religious turbulence in Europe. For this reason, documents from different European archives are utilized in a comparative manner, rather than in isolation, as historiography has hitherto tended to do. The book analyses Venice’s systematic pursuits in

¹¹⁷ Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), p. 14; Christopher Grey, Decoding Organization: Bletchley Park, Codebreaking and Organization Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 6.

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her effort to maintain her commercial-maritime and technological-industrial primacy within this competitive international context. The archival series consulted for this book are the following: Archivio di Stato, Florence Pratica Segreta Archivio di Stato, Venice Archivio Grimani Barbarigo, buste Capi del Consiglio di Dieci: Dispacci Ambasciatori Lettere dei Rettori e di Altre Cariche Lettere Secrete Licenze per visitare ambasciatori e personaggi esteri Miscellania Racordi Cinque Savi alla Mercanzia, Nuova Serie, buste Consiglio di Dieci Deliberazioni Comuni, Registri Deliberazioni Criminali, Registri Deliberazioni Miste, Registri Deliberazioni Secrete, Filze Deliberazioni Secrete, Registri Deliberazioni Secretissime, Registri Inquisitori di Stato Materie Miste e Notabili Notarile Atti Quarantia Criminal Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Rome Segreteria di Stato, Venezia Archivo General, Simancas Papeles de Estado Biblioteca Museo Correr, Venice Manoscritti Donà delle Rose Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice Manoscritti Italiani (Classe VII) National Archives, London State Papers (TNA, SP) 9 (Williamson Collection) State Papers (TNA, SP) 97 (Turkey) State Papers (TNA, SP) 99 (Venice) National Maritime Museum, London Admiralty Collection, Navy Board, In-letters and orders

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Note on Dates, Currency, Translations, and Abbreviations Unless otherwise stated, all the dates used in this book have been modified to follow the Gregorian calendar, with the calendar year commencing on 1 January, rather than on 1 March, as it was customary for Renaissance Venice (the Venetian dating system is known as more veneto). In this respect, a document dated 1 February 1580 has been adjusted to the Gregorian calendar as 1 February 1581. In cases when a page number has not been provided in archival records, the date furnishes the main indicator of the document’s archival classification. Unless specified, all ‘ducats’ mentioned are those of ‘account’, made up of 6 lire and 4 soldi. Each lira was equal to 20 soldi. Hence, 1 ducat was equivalent to 124 soldi. Similarly, unless indicated, all translations are mine. In the footnotes and bibliography, the following abbreviations have been used:

AGS ASF ASV CCX CX IS ASVat BMCV BMV Mss. It cl. CSPVen NMM ADM TNA SP B. bb. c. cc. f. Fasc. fol. fols. Ms. m.v. n. nn. n.d. n.s. Reg.

Archivo General, Simancas Archivio di Stato, Florence Archivio di Stato, Venice Capi del Consiglio di Dieci Consiglio di Dieci Inquisitori di Stato Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Rome Biblioteca del Museo Correr, Venice Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice Manoscritti italiani Classe Calendar of State Papers, Venetian National Maritime Museum, London Admiralty Collection The National Archives, London State Papers Busta Buste Carta Carte Filza Fascicolo Folio Folios Manuscript more Veneto Footnote/Endnote Footnotes/Endnotes no date new series Registro

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1 Venice and Venetian Intelligence in the European Panorama It’s only a matter of luck where you wash up in history. What was once Babylon is now Baghdad.¹ Unlike most early modern European states, Venice was a water-locked metropolis, confined and protected by a lagoon. Yet, already by the thirteenth century, Venice had started to expand her territory, both inland, on the Italian mainland, and— more strategically for its commercial conduct—overseas, in the Adriatic and the Mediterranean seas.² Venice’s Mediterranean expansion, in particular, ensued from the Fourth Crusade (1204), which culminated in the sacking of Constantinople and the distribution of the Byzantine territories to the Crusade’s participants. For Venice, this marked the start of ‘a process of substantial territorial acquisition in the Eastern Mediterranean’ that was conducive to the development and consolidation of the Venetian ‘empire’.³ During this process, Venice annexed to its dominion a string of territories that were situated on strategic routes, at the crossroads of the commercial arteries between the East and the West. This annexation process started with the acquisition of Coron (1207–1500) and Modon (1207–1500), ‘the two eyes of the Republic’ in the Greek Morea.⁴ Gradually, Venice took over Negroponte (a name used both for the city of Chalcis and the island of Euboea, of which it is the capital) (1209–1470), the islands of ¹ Polly Coles, The Politics of Washing: Real Life in Venice (London: Hale, 2013), p. 174. ² The bibliography on the territorial expansion of Venice is vast. For an overview, see Frederic C. Lane, Venice: A Maritime Republic (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973). ³ Fusaro, Political Economies, p. 7. Historiography has gradually started to incorporate Venice into larger comparative debates on the nature of early modern empires. One of the most forthright discussions on the subject is ventured by Fusaro, who claims that the Venetian Republic’s political economy strategies and policies were empire-like: see Fusaro, Political Economies, esp. pp. 1–23. Noel Malcolm also explains the territorial expansion of Venice as a process of ‘empire-formation’: see Noel Malcolm, Agents of Empire: Knights, Corsairs, Jesuits and Spies in the Sixteenth-Century Mediterranean World (London: Allen Lane, 2015), pp. 16–22. For more tangential uses of the term ‘empire’, see also Monique O’Connell and Eric R. Dursteler, The Mediterranean World: From the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Napoleon (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), esp. Chapter 9; Monique O’Connell, Men of Empire: Power and Negotiation in Venice’s Maritime State (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009); E. Natalie Rothman, Brokering Empire: Trans-Imperial Subjects between Venice and Istanbul (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011); Mario Infelise and Anastasia Sturaiti (eds.), Venezia e la guerra di Morea. Guerra, politica e cultura alla fine del ’600 (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2005). ⁴ Lane, Venice, p. 43.

Venice’s Secret Service: Organizing Intelligence in the Renaissance. Ioanna Iordanou, Oxford University Press (2019). © Ioanna Iordanou. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198791317.001.0001

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Crete (1211–1669), Corfu (1386–1797), Zante (1485–1797), and Cephalonia (1500–1797), the towns of Nauplion (1388–1540) and Malvasia (modern day Monemvasia) (1462–1540) in the Peloponnese, and the island of Cyprus (1489–1571) in the Mediterranean.⁵ In the Adriatic Sea, Venice seized significant strongholds including Durazzo (modern day Durres) (1392–1501), Zara (contemporary Zadar) (1409–1797), and Spalato (Split) (1420–1797).⁶ In this respect, Venice created a maritime empire composed of some colonies that had inimitable economic significance—such as the islands of the Levant—and some others which, while offering no economic or military benefits, served as vital ‘information relay stations’, where the movement of ships and political developments in nearby territories could be monitored.⁷ As part of this intense annexation process, by the mid-sixteenth century, the Republic of Venice had managed to acquire vast parts of northern Italy and the Balkan peninsula, in addition to several islands of the Levant. This territorial supremacy enabled her to assume commercial hegemony over the most strategic Mediterranean and European trade routes, dominating the commerce of luxury items like silk and spices from India and Egypt, and controlling their distribution to the rest of Europe.⁸ Inevitably, commerce became Venice’s lifeblood, and her gradual commercial sovereignty became contingent upon the effective administration of both long-distance trade and her overseas possessions.⁹ Consequently, holding ‘the gorgeous East in fee’, as the great Romantic poet William Wordsworth once wrote,¹⁰ became both a commercial and political feat, and mercantile and territorial supremacy became blurrily intertwined for the sprawling Venetian empire. Empires, however, as history has repeatedly shown, are inexorably destined to rise and fall, and Venice was not immune to a natural decline. Its first major territorial loss befell her with the fall of Negroponte during the first OttomanVenetian war (1463–79). More specifically, in the summer of 1470, the forces of Sultan Mehmet II managed to curb Venice’s rule over the city of Negroponte, marking the start of a series of territorial losses to Venice’s perennial enemy, the

⁵ Arbel, ‘Venice’s Maritime Empire’, pp. 134–6; Fusaro, Political Economies, p. 15. ⁶ For a list of Venetian strongholds in the Mediterranean and the Adriatic, see Arbel, ‘Venice’s Maritime Empire’, pp. 132–6. For an extensive synopsis of the Venetian colonies in the Adriatic and the Mediterranean, see Benjamin Arbel, ‘Colonie d’Oltremare’, in Alberto Tenenti and Ugo Tucci (eds.), Storia di Venezia, Vol. V: Il Rinascimento: società ed economia (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1996), pp. 947–85; and O’Connell, Men of Empire, pp. 17–38. ⁷ Arbel, ‘Venice’s Maritime Empire’, pp. 138–9. ⁸ On the economy of early modern Venice, see Gino Luzzatto, Storia economica di Venezia dall’XI al XVI secolo (Venice: Centro Internazionale delle Arti e del Costume, 1961); Lane, Venice; Paola Lanaro (ed.), At the Centre of the Old World: Trade and Manufacturing in Venice and on the Venetian Mainland (1400–1800) (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2006). ⁹ Fusaro, Political Economies, p. 23. ¹⁰ William Wordsworth, ‘On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic’, in The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III (London: Edward Moxon, 1837), p. 180.

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Ottoman Empire. Subsequently, during the second Ottoman-Venetian war (1499–1503), Venice forfeited several of her possessions in the Aegean Sea and the Peloponnese, the culmination being the fall of Modon and Coron in 1500.¹¹ Venice’s initial territorial losses were offset by the acquisition of significant outposts in the Ionian Sea, in particular the islands of Zante and Cephalonia, which were the gateway to the Mediterranean from the Adriatic and which, by the 1540s, played a pivotal role in the lucrative currant trade.¹² In 1509 a large antiVenetian alliance formed by the Pope, the king of France, the Holy Roman Emperor, the Duke of Savoy, and several other European rulers shook the foundations of the Venetian empire, and had significant repercussions for Venice’s control over the Levantine trade.¹³ One of the darkest pages in Venice’s colonial history, however, was written in 1571, when the beleaguered Venetian navy, despite the military support of other Western powers and the fateful victory at the battle of Lepanto, succumbed to the military whims of the Ottomans and forfeited Cyprus, the crown jewel of the Venetian Mediterranean possessions.¹⁴ As several historians have argued, the fall of Cyprus to the Ottomans caused major structural transformations, both in Venice and in the Mediterranean, signalling the decline of the Republic’s economic and political influence in the European continent.¹⁵ This chapter discusses the politico-economic and sociocultural landscape in which Venice’s secret service evolved and developed in the sixteenth century. It also provides a general overview of the intelligence pursuits of some of the most significant players—politically and economically—in early modern Europe, including major Italian city states—such as Milan, Florence, Genoa, and Rome— Spain, England, France, and the Ottoman Empire. The chapter analyses the gradual emergence of systematized intelligence in sixteenth-century Europe, as it was instigated by momentous political, economic, social, and religious events. Through this historical analysis, Venice’s state intelligence apparatus emerges as a ¹¹ Arbel, ‘Venice’s Maritime Empire’. ¹² Fusaro, Political Economies, pp. 43–8. For an analysis of the economic significance of Zante and Cephalonia for the Venetian state, see Fusaro, Uva passa: una guerra commerciale tra Venezia e l’Inghilterra, 1540–1640 (Venice: Il Cardo, 1997). ¹³ Lane, Venice, pp. 242–5. ¹⁴ On the battle of Lepanto, see Andrew C. Hess, ‘The Battle of Lepanto and its Place in Mediterranean History’, Past & Present 57, no 1 (1972), pp. 53–73; John F. Guilmartin Jr, Gunpowder and Galleys: Changing Technology and Mediterranean Warfare at Sea in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), pp. 221–52. On the enormous maritime significance of the island of Cyprus for Venice, see Benjamin Arbel, ‘The Economy of Cyprus during the Venetian Period (1473–1571)’, in Vassos Karageorghis and Dimitris Michaelides (eds.), The Development of the Cypriot Economy from the Prehistoric Period to the Present Day (Nicosia: Lithographica, 1996), pp. 185–92. ¹⁵ See Gaetano Cozzi, ‘Venezia regina’, Studi Veneziani 17 (1989), pp. 15–25; Giorgio Denores, A Discourse on the Island of Cyprus and on the Reasons for the True Succession in that Kingdom, ed. Paschalis M. Kitromilides (Venice: Hellenic Institute of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Studies, 2006); Vera Costantini, Il sultano e l’isola contesa: Cipro tra eredità veneziana e potere ottomano (Turin: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, 2009).

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centrally administered organization, setting the scene for its nuanced examination in the ensuing chapters.

Renaissance Venice’s Politico-Economic Landscape For a maritime empire built on commercial transactions, trade was a principal matter of domestic and foreign security in Renaissance Venice. For this reason, the protection of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Adriatic was of primary importance to the Venetian authorities. This was one of the reasons why, throughout the sixteenth century, the Venetian Republic concentrated its maritime trade activities on that part of the European continent. Consequently, the shores of Western Europe played second fiddle to the Eastern coast of the Levant.¹⁶ By then, while the Portuguese had established a direct maritime route to Asia, transforming, thus, the landscape of Eurasian trade,¹⁷ the English, French, and Ottomans joined in the competition for territorial expansion and, by extension, commercial domination. At the same time, wars of religion for Catholic or Protestant dominance amplified this highly competitive international environment.¹⁸ While Venice managed to temporarily maintain control, anxiety over the potential risks of losing the title of the commercial broker between the Levant, Asia, and Europe led the Venetian government to proceed to a profound restructuring of two interrelated practices: its foreign policy and, by extension, its economy. The period between the 1470s and the 1570s has been characterized as an ‘iron century’, due to Venice’s overreliance on military action for the defence of her colonies in the Stato da Mar.¹⁹ The gradual decrease of the Republic’s maritime dominion instigated a more defensive attitude towards its foreign policy, as even coeval observers of Venetian politics remarked.²⁰ This defensive stance resulted in the need for continuous military protection and—more often than not—action, which had political repercussions for the Republic’s diplomatic conduct and

¹⁶ Alberto Tenenti, ‘La navigazione veneziana nel Seicento’, in Gino Benzoni (ed.), Il Mediterraneo nella seconda metà del ’500 alla luce di Lepanto (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1974), pp. 533–67. See also Fusaro, Political Economies, esp. Chapter 2. ¹⁷ Eliyahu Ashtor, ‘The Venetian Supremacy in Levantine Trade: Monopoly or Pre-Colonialism?’, Journal of European Economic History 3 (1974), pp. 5–53. ¹⁸ For an overview of the wars of religion in England, see the essays in Charles W. A. Prior and Glenn Burgess (eds.), England’s Wars of Religion, Revisited (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011); Similarly, for France, see Mack P. Holt, The French Wars of Religion, 1562–1629, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). For an overview for Germany, see the classic work by C. Scott Dixon, The Reformation in Germany (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002). ¹⁹ Arbel, ‘Venice’s Maritime Empire’, p. 142. ²⁰ See, for example, how the nuncio in Venice reported on the Venetians’ defensive stance towards the Ottomans in a letter to Cardinal Alessandrino in ASVat, Segreteria di Stato, Venezia, b. 8 c. 100r./v. (16 Dec. 1570).

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public funds, respectively.²¹ Of particular significance were a slew of initiatives to reinforce naval patrols in the Eastern Mediterranean and to refortify the Venetian Levantine possessions, especially after Venice suffered further territorial losses during the third Ottoman-Venetian war (1537–40).²² The Venetian strongholds of Corfu, Crete, and Cyprus, in particular, acted as bases for Venetian galleys under the direction of the Capitano Generale da Mar, the commander-in-chief of the Venetian fleet.²³ Intent on also policing ‘the Gulf ’, as the Adriatic Sea was known amongst the Venetians, Venice performed off-the-cuff controls on foreign armed vessels traversing it. In 1562, for instance, a Venetian commander seized an armed galiot hailing from Ragusa (contemporary Dubrovnik)—a major trading rival of Venice—warning the Ragusan authorities that, if they persisted in their dogged efforts to arm more vessels, he would be forced to obliterate them.²⁴ Similarly, during the War of Cyprus, the Venetians arrested the crew of a ship that was carrying weapons sent on behalf of Greek merchants to Coron, which at the time was under Ottoman control. The reason for the arrest was to interrogate the crew and captain about their cargo and mission.²⁵ The Venetians’ policing role in the Adriatic was also accepted by the Ottomans, who saw it as part of the wider web of reciprocal rights and duties that supported the idiosyncratic politicoeconomic relationship between the two empires.²⁶ The use of the word ‘politico-economic’ is not fortuitous here, since the Venetians could not see a clear-cut distinction between politics and commerce, as political affairs could affect one’s business and livelihood, and commercial pursuits could have political repercussions and, by extension, diplomatic implications. This is one of the reasons why, as will become increasingly apparent throughout this book, the Venetians became crafty adversaries of the Ottomans, aiming to please and placate them by supplying them with intelligence on European affairs and offering them a panoply of lavish gifts, especially during the politically tempestuous sixteenth century.²⁷ Ensuring that the Sultan would not impose impeding ²¹ Arbel, ‘Venice’s Maritime Empire’, p. 142; Fusaro, Political Economies, p. 12. On the cost of defending the Venetian Stato da Mar, see Luciano Pezzolo, ‘La finanza pubblica’, in Gaetano Cozzi and Paolo Prodi (eds.), Storia di Venezia dalle origini alla caduta della Serenissma, Vol. VI, Dal Rinascimento al Barocco (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1994), pp. 713–73. ²² Alberto Tenenti, ‘La congiuntura veneto-ungherese tra la fine del Quattrocento e gli inizi del Cinquecento’, in Vittore Branca (ed.), Venezia e Ungheria nel Rinascimento (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1973), pp. 135–43; Arbel, ‘Venice’s Maritime Empire’, pp. 206–13; Fusaro, Political Economies, p. 68. ²³ The Capitano Generale da Mar was elected when there was an imminent prospect of war. While in office, he was also the supreme governor of Venice’s territories in the Stato da Mar. See Arbel, ‘Venice’s Maritime Empire’, p. 212. ²⁴ Malcolm, Agents of Empire, pp. 18–19. ²⁵ AGS, Estado, Legajo 1502, fol. 147 (13 Oct. 1571). ²⁶ Malcolm, Agents Empire, p. 19. ²⁷ See, for instance, ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 1, cc. 7r.–8r. (19 April 1525), on the Ten offering gifts to the Sultan, and their scheming over whether to inform secretly Ottoman grandees about developments of the Italian War of 1521–6 via the bailo. On the exchange of gifts as part of the diplomatic relations between Venice and the Ottoman Empire, see Antonio Fabris, ‘Artisanat et culture: recherches sur la production vénitienne et le marché ottoman au XVIe siècle’, Arab Historical Review for Ottoman Studies 3–4 (1991), pp. 51–60; Deborah Howard, ‘Cultural

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commercial restrictions on Venice was one of the major politico-economic objectives of the Venetian government. It is for this reason that Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador to Venice between 1539 and 1546, grumbled that the Venetians preferred to safeguard their economic interests in the Levant to challenging the Ottomans in that region.²⁸ As he graphically reported in a missive to Charles V, ‘of all the world powers, the Venetians feared only Charles and the Turks, respected only Charles, and wished everyone else ill’.²⁹ Indeed, while the Ottoman Empire posed an unremitting threat to the Venetian state’s Levantine possessions, it was simultaneously one of Venice’s primary trading partners, absorbing large quantities of Venice’s silk and wool, and, by extension, securing the employment of tens of thousands of craftsmen who formed part of the Venetian textile industries, especially in the second half of the sixteenth century.³⁰ This interdependent relationship that Venice had developed with the Ottoman Empire meant that the Venetians were amongst the first to receive news reaching the Mediterranean from the East, to the dismay of the Spanish, who looked at the peculiar relationship between the Venetian and Ottoman empires with a jaundiced eye.³¹ Passing through the Dominante’s possessions in the Aegean and Ionian seas, which were used ‘as observatories and relays for the transmission of maritime news’, and also via the Venetian strongholds across the Balkans and the Adriatic, information arrived in Venice before it reached other parts of the European continent.³² Consequently, Venice became the central terrain of encounters

Transfer between Venice and the Ottomans in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’, in Herman Roodenburg (ed.), Forging European Identities, 1400–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 138–77; Julian Raby, ‘The Serenissima and the Sublime Porte: Art in the Art of Diplomacy, 1453–1600’, in Stefano Carboni (ed.), Venice and the Islamic World, 828–1797 (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press and Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2007), pp. 90–119; Maria Pia Pedani, Venezia porta d’Oriente (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010), pp. 100–9; Luca Molà, ‘Material Diplomacy: Venetian Luxury Gifts for the Ottoman Empire in the Late Renaissance’, in Zoltán Biedermann, Anne Gerritsen, and Giorgio Riello (eds.), Global Gifts: The Material Culture of Diplomacy in Early Modern Eurasia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 56–87. The Venetians’ use of diplomatic gifts in exchange for political favours will be discussed, in detail, in Chapter 6. ²⁸ Michael J. Levin, Agents of Empire: Spanish Ambassadors in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), p. 157. ²⁹ Ibid. ³⁰ On the Venetian wool and silk industries and their contribution to the city’s economy, see Domenico Sella, Commerci e industrie a Venezia nel secolo XVII (Venice and Rome: Istituto per la Collaborazione Culturale, 1961), pp. 1–15; Sella, ‘L’economia’, in Cozzi and Prodi, Storia di Venezia, pp. 666–9.’ Ugo Tucci, ‘Venezia nel Cinquecento: una città industriale?’, in Vittore Branca and Carlo Ossola (eds.), Crisi e rinnovamenti nell’autunno del Rinascimento a Venezia (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1991), pp. 61–83; Luca Molà, The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000). ³¹ See Giovanni K. Hassiotis, ‘Venezia e i domini veneziani tramite di informazioni sui turchi per gli spagnoli nel secolo XVI’, in Beck, Manoussakas, and Pertusi, Venezia centro di mediazione, pp. 117–36. ³² Johann Petitjean, ‘The Papal Network: How the Roman Curia Was Informed about SouthEastern Europe, the Ottoman Empire and the Mediterranean (1645–1669)’, in Joad Raymond and

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between foreign emissaries hungry for news.³³ The social and diplomatic whirl that ensued from the frenzy of daily updates reaching the lagoon turned Venice into a boisterous information centre where news became as purchasable a commodity as silk and spices.³⁴

Venice as an Information Centre in Early Modern Europe The fifteenth century saw the revolution of printing and publishing.³⁵ Rapidly, Renaissance Europe became obsessed with news that arrived from all corners of the globe and fed avaricious curiosity about momentous events, such as the impending Ottoman advance towards European terrains, the naval expeditions to the New World, the developments of the Reformation and CounterReformation, and the prices of spices and all the other advances of rapidly evolving early modern economies.³⁶ Venice’s strategic geographic position midway between the Ottoman Levant and Habsburg Spain placed her at the crossroads of information networks and, in consequence, at the forefront of the advancement and sophistication of news. Gradually, Saint Mark’s protégée became one of the most significant agencies of news in the early modern world.³⁷ So, when Solanio opened the third scene of The Merchant of Venice with the line ‘Now, what news on the Rialto?’ his contemporary Venetians were well aware of the economic and political weight of this question. William Shakespeare’s deployment of the fabled Venetian landmark is not fortuitous, as the Rialto market was the economic and commercial hub of Venice. Noah Moxham (eds.), News Networks in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 178–92 (here pp. 181–2). ³³ De Vivo, Information and Communication, pp. 70–1. ³⁴ On information as a commodity in Venice, see Iordanou, ‘What News on the Rialto?’ ³⁵ On the evolution of printing, the bibliography is vast. For a general overview, see Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, L’apparition du livre (Paris: Albin Michel, 1958); Elizabeth Einstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Andrew Pettegree, The Book in the Renaissance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010). On the interconnection between the social and entrepreneurial aspects of early modern printing, see Brian Richardson, Printing, Writers and Readers in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). On how ‘unrevolutionary’ the printing revolution was, see David McKitterick, Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order, 1450–1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). I am grateful to Anna Gialdini for sharing her expertise on the history of the book with me. ³⁶ On news in early modern Europe, see the essays in Brendan Dooley (ed.), The Dissemination of News and the Emergence of Contemporaneity in Early Modern Europe (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010); Andrew Pettegree, The Invention of News: How the World Came to Know about Itself (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014), esp. pp. 17–248; Raymond and Moxham, News Networks. ³⁷ On news in early modern Venice, see Pierre Sardella, Nouvelles et spéculations à Venise au début du XVIe Siècle (Paris: A. Colin, 1948). On Venice as an information centre, see Burke, ‘Early Modern Venice’; Mario Infelise, ‘Professione reportista: Copisti e gazzettieri nella Venezia del Seicento’, in Stefano Gaspari, Giovanni Levi, and Pierandrea Moro (eds.), Venezia. Itinerari per la storia della città (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997), pp. 193–219.

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News of the impact of harvests, wars, epidemics, and shipwrecks reaching the Venetian market affected the price of foodstuffs, which, in turn, determined public debt investment, maritime insurance premiums, and foreign currency.³⁸ The news of the Portuguese’s new spice route to India through the Cape of Good Hope in 1501, for instance, sky-rocketed the price of spices such as pepper, ginger, and cloves in Venice within four days.³⁹ Reports of the seizure of Venetian galleys by the Turkish admiral and corsair Kemal Reis in the same year caused maritime insurance rates to shoot up from 1.5 to 10 per cent.⁴⁰ So, for Venetians of all ranks who were either producing or trading in commodities, news meant profit or loss. With the passing of time, while news was turning into a craze in Europe, in Renaissance Venice it was becoming business as usual. This is because already from medieval times, the Venetian government’s avid protectionism of commerce had spawned a deeply rooted international network of merchants, brokers, and agents.⁴¹ Recognizing the vitality of the systematic diffusion of information for commercial advancement and prosperity, as early as the thirteenth century, the Venetians had developed a postal system that served the epistolary needs of the Republic.⁴² This service branched out into two distinct provisions, one for diplomatic purposes and one exclusively for mercantile matters, even though it is not clear whether Venetian merchants made use of the official Venetian couriers for their private affairs.⁴³ Eventually, by the 1290s, the distinct functions of the Venetian postal system were merged into one service administered by nine officials.⁴⁴ While this service was initially rudimentary in nature, by 1489 the Venetian couriers had organized themselves into the Compagnia dei Corrieri Veneti,⁴⁵ which, by the sixteenth century, provided the main reliable postal service between Europe and the Ottoman Empire.⁴⁶ Roving merchants were amongst the customary newsdealers in Venice, and frequently agreed to deliver letters, at times in secret.⁴⁷ It has even been argued ³⁸ Sardella, Nouvelles, pp. 19–43, 72–82. ³⁹ Marino Sanudo, I diarii, ed. Rinaldo Fulin, Federico Stefani, Nicolò Barozzi, Guglielmo Berchet, Marco Allegri (Venice: F. Visentini, 1879–1903), Vol. VI, p. 87; Sardella, Nouvelles, pp. 33–4. ⁴⁰ Sardella, Nouvelles, p. 42. ⁴¹ Pettegree, The Invention of News, pp. 51–4. ⁴² On the Venetian postal service, see Adriano Cattani, Storia dei servizi postali nella Repubblica di Venezia e catalogo dei timbri postali (Venice: Tip. Commerciale, 1969); Cattani, ‘I servizi postali nei territori lombardi della Reppublica di Venezia con particolare riguardo nella città di Crema’, Insula Fulcheria IX–X (1970–1), pp. 101–13; Cattani, ‘Storia delle comunicazioni postali veneziane’, in Bollettino prefilatelico e storico-postale, fasc. 33/34 (1983), pp. 130–8; Francesco Giannetto, ‘Il servizio di posta veneziano nella Roma di Paolo IV secondo i dispacci di Bernardo Navagero (1555–1558)’, Clio 26 (1990), pp. 123–38; Bruno Caizzi, Dalla posta dei rei alla posta dei tutti (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1993), pp. 211–62. Marco Pozza, ‘Lettere pubbliche e servizio postale di stato a Venezia nei secoli XII–XIV’, in Gaspari, Levi, and Moro, Venezia, pp. 113–30. For a general history of the Italian postal system between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, see Caizzi, Dalla posta dei rei alla posta dei tutti. ⁴³ Pozza, ‘Lettere pubbliche’, pp. 119–20. ⁴⁴ Ibid. ⁴⁵ Ibid., pp. 117–18. ⁴⁶ Dursteler, ‘Power and Information’, p. 602. ⁴⁷ See, for example, ASVat, Segreteria di Stato, Venezia, b. 21, fols. 23–4 (16 Jan. 1580) on Venetian merchants reporting news from Syria, and ibid., fol. 290 (28 May 1580) on merchant news from the

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that Venetian merchants, due to their social standing, were occasionally deemed more trustworthy for the transportation of important governmental letters than official couriers.⁴⁸ As seasoned travellers and correspondents, Venetian merchants turned into skilled reporters for the Republic, and their letters produced a kind of pre-modern ‘data bank’.⁴⁹ Their written reportage was taken into serious consideration not only by the locals, but also by foreign diplomats, who, in turn, communicated it to their superiors.⁵⁰ So important was their coverage that in a letter to Charles V the imperial ambassador in Venice reiterated that no news about the Turks had arrived from Venetian merchants in Constantinople,⁵¹ the city that housed an established colony of Venetian traders with a permanent formal representative, the bailo. The systematic correspondence between the Venetian authorities and the bailo was spiced with information of political and economic weight.⁵² Incessantly reporting on the crucial Ottoman-Venetian relations,⁵³ this communication never went unnoticed or unsuspected by the Turks, and rightly so. In 1492 for instance, the bailo Girolamo Marcello was expelled from Constantinople, accused of spying. Indeed, according to the senator Domenico Malipiero, he was.⁵⁴ The fast-growing significance of information on the politico-economic conduct of the Venetian empire rendered intelligence of any nature a determining factor in the city’s commercial and territorial pre-eminence, so much so that the Venetians eventually turned intelligence into a commodity, a kind of ‘vernacular commerce’,

Iberian peninsula. For examples of Venetian merchants transporting letters, see ASVat, Segreteria di Stato, Venezia, b. 1, c. 76r. (16 Dec. 1532). The Spanish ambassador in Venice also frequently commented on the overreliance of the Venetians on travelling merchants for obtaining news about current affairs in the Mediterranean, especially about the Ottoman capture of Cyprus. See, for example, AGS, Estado, Legajo 1328, fol. 115 (5 July 1571); ibid., Legajo 1329, fols. 5, 9 (13 Jan. and 2 Feb. 1571). ⁴⁸ Pozza, ‘Lettere pubbliche’, p. 122. ⁴⁹ Burke, ‘Early Modern Venice’, p. 391. On merchants and the circulation of information, see Giorgio Doria, ‘Conoscenza del mercato e sistema informativo: Il know-how dei mercanti finanzieri genovesi nei secoli XVI e XVII’, in Aldo De Maddalena and Herman Kellenbenz (eds.), La repubblica internazionale del denaro tra XV e XVII secolo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1986), pp. 57–115. Specifically on merchants’ contribution to the diffusion of commercial and financial information in the early modern period, see Francesca Trivellato, ‘Merchants’ Letters across Geographical and Social Boundaries’, in Bethencourt and Egmond, Correspondence and Cultural Exchange, pp. 80–103. ⁵⁰ See, for example, ASVat, Segreteria di Stato, Venezia, b. 8, c. 144r./v. (21 Feb. 1571); ibid., b. 16, c. 49r. (12 March 1574). ⁵¹ AGS, Estado, Legajo 1308, fol. 186 (5 May 1531). ⁵² See, for instance, ASV, IS, bb. 148 and 433 for letters directed to the bailo; and ibid., bb. 416–28 for letters sent by the bailo. See also the archival series ASV, Senato, Deliberazioni, Costantinopoli; ASV, Senato, Dispacci degli ambasciatori e residenti, Costantinopoli; and ASV, CCX, Dispacci Ambasciatori, bb. 4–5. ⁵³ On Venetians gathering information on the Ottomans, see Kissling, ‘Venezia come centro di informazioni’. ⁵⁴ Francesco Longo, Annali Veneti dall’anno 1457 al 1500 del Senatore Domenico Malipiero, Vol. I. (Florence: Gio. Pietro Vieusseux, 1843), pp. 141–2. I am greatful to Emrah Safa Gürkan for bringing this source to my attention.

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as Richard Mackenney pertinently styled it.⁵⁵ More specifically, from the second half of the sixteenth century, a handwritten news-sheet started to circulate in Venice (as in other Italian cities), called gazeta dela novità. The gazeta dela novità was a small monthly news publication named after the gazzetta, the small copper coin disbursed to purchase it.⁵⁶ It was, quite literally, a ‘halfpennyworth of news’.⁵⁷ Yet its informational value was significantly higher, since through its pages Venetians could be apprised of economic, political, and social affairs as they were unravelling elsewhere on the European continent.

Sixteenth-Century Europe and the Rise of Secret Services Following the grand naval expeditions for new passageways to the East launched by the crowned heads of the Iberian Peninsula, the rivalry for competitive advantage between European states intensified. By the mid-sixteenth century, Venice was struggling—and gradually failing—to hold sway over the major Levantine trade routes, and eventually lost its prominent position as the commercial broker between the Ottoman Empire and Europe. France was amongst the first states to rid itself of Venetian mediation by signing a treaty with Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in 1539.⁵⁸ The Dutch tiptoed in that direction in the late sixteenth century, intensifying their predatory stance in the seventeenth.⁵⁹ Yet it was the English who employed a more aggressive approach, having devised ‘a general strategy to give England a larger role in European politics and economy’,⁶⁰ that was felt keenly by Venetian merchants, who complained vehemently about Queen Elizabeth I’s ill-treatment and rapacious economic policies.⁶¹ This intracontinental competition eastwards, in combination with the felix culpa of the discovery of America westwards, and the ensuing economic opportunities, spurred further rivalries for territorial expansion within and beyond Europe’s confines.⁶² ⁵⁵ Richard Mackenney, ‘Letters from the Venetian Archive’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 72, no 3 (1999), pp. 133–44 (here p. 143). ⁵⁶ On the coin, see ‘Gazzetta’ in Salvatore Battaglia (ed.), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, Vol. 6 (Turin: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, 1990), p. 624. On the origins of the gazeta dela novità, see Infelise, ‘From Merchants’ Letters’; Infelise, ‘The History of a Word: Gazzetta/Gazette’, in Raymond and Moxham, News Networks, pp. 243–61. ⁵⁷ Julia Cresswell, The Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 186. ⁵⁸ Sella, Commerci e industrie, p. 5. ⁵⁹ Marie-Christine Engels, Merchants, Interlopers, Seamen and Corsairs: The ‘Flemish’ Community in Livorno and Genoa (1615–1635) (Hilversum: Verloren, 1997); Mehmet Bulut, Ottoman-Dutch Economic Relations in the Early Modern Period, 1571–1699 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2001). ⁶⁰ Fusaro, Political Economies, pp. 75–6. ⁶¹ ASV, Materie Miste e Notabili, b. 67, cc. 92r.–98v. (8 July 1607). ⁶² Cf. Alberto Tenenti, Piracy and the Decline of Venice, 1580–1615, transl. Janet and Brian Pullan (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1967).

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In the political arena, the sixteenth century ushered in an era of continuous wars that comprised conflicts instigated by the Reformation and the CounterReformation, including the religious wars in France, the English Reformation and the consolidation of Protestantism in England, the Dutch wars of independence, as well as the aggressive advance of the Ottomans in south-eastern Europe. The political uncertainty that ensued induced European governments to pursue somewhat similar domestic and foreign policies. For the majority of European states, these included a number of common characteristics: firstly, the consolidation of centralized governments premised upon some kind of central administration, which entailed permanent diplomatic representations overseas; secondly, the active defence of a variety of sovereign, dynastic, and commercial interests through diplomatic and military action; and thirdly, direct or indirect involvement with the advances of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation.⁶³ These are some of the primary reasons that compelled most European states to create exclusive systems for obtaining intelligence on enemies within and beyond their territorial jurisdiction. Gradually, within this cut-throat competitive environment, an inestimable number of spies and informers infiltrated foreign lands in order to source sensitive information on behalf of several European magnates, including powerful potentates, their noble acolytes, and their rival foes, who aspired to further personal advancement and prosperity. Consequently, European states entered a phase of mounting information acquisition that was quasianalogous to their size.⁶⁴ Amongst them, some prominent Italian city states, in combination with Philip II’s Spain, Elizabeth I’s England, Louis XIII’s France, and the Ottoman Empire made unequivocal efforts to develop robust intelligence networks. These will be discussed below.

Italian City States The Italian city states gradually developed their own bureaucratic structures, which included nascent diplomatic representations.⁶⁵ As part of those, already from medieval times, Italian princes had created rudimentary secret services. Paolo Preto, for instance, mentions the existence of an ‘ufficiale sopra le spie’ in Pisa, already from 1297.⁶⁶ Our knowledge of the Italian city states’ secret services is limited, primarily emanating from scholarship on diplomatic and cultural history that explores the information and news networks of princes and their formal envoys.⁶⁷ In consequence, historians and readers are faced with ‘the ⁶³ Carnicer García and Marcos Rivas, Espías de Felipe II, pp. 14–16. ⁶⁴ Soll, The Information Master, p. 19. ⁶⁵ See Lazzarini, Communication and Conflict. ⁶⁶ Preto, I servizi segreti, p. 25. ⁶⁷ For examples, see, the essays in Frigo, Politics and Diplomacy; and the essays in Raymond and Moxham, News Networks.

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perennial problem of those engaged in espionage—how to sift the useful intelligence from the international chatter of news and rumour, propaganda and gossip’.⁶⁸ Ultimately, however, rumour, propaganda, and gossip were integral constituents of early modern intelligence. The duchy of Milan was one of the best-informed city states in the late medieval period.⁶⁹ Especially under Francesco Sforza (1401–66), “the ‘signore di novelle’ par excellence,”⁷⁰ Milan developed an efficient network of diplomats and intelligence gatherers aspiring to make Francesco the ‘maestro’ of news.⁷¹ A cerebral man and a bona fide condottiere, Szorza had assimilated the value of maintaining a robust network of informers, whom he installed in the principal Italian cities, in order to receive intelligence vital to his domestic and foreign policies.⁷² Additionally, from early on, Sforza dispatched ambassadors to all major Italian states—including Naples, Rome, Florence, and Venice, with a few interruptions during wars and other diplomatic ruptures.⁷³ Antonio Simonetta (c.1390–c.1460), for example, was the Sforza ambassador in Venice between 1444 and 1449, while Milanese legates had been serving in Rome since 1450, in Naples since 1455, and in Savoy since 1463, in addition to those serving overseas in the late 1490s.⁷⁴ Compared to the more rigid diplomatic systems of other Italian city states, Milanese envoys operated with a substantial degree of flexibility.⁷⁵ Their primary responsibility was the collection of information that would help ‘defend the authority and honour of the duke’.⁷⁶ For this reason, one of their priorities, when they assumed their diplomatic mission in foreign courts, was to consort with ‘friends’ who would supply them with well-founded intelligence. The friends’ reimbursement was in the form of gifts and favours conferred by the duke.⁷⁷ Francesco Sforza was also responsible for the development of a meticulous secret chancery that was headed by Cicco Simonetta, a long-serving Secretary of State and one of the first professional cryptologists to be employed in a state administration.⁷⁸ Probably under his direction not only Milan did pioneer the systematic use of clandestine modes of communication, but the numerous ciphers of the Milanese secret chancery were methodically ordered and classified for the benefit of Sforza diplomats and military governors.⁷⁹ After the death of Francesco II

⁶⁸ Cooper, The Queen’s Agent, p. 169. ⁶⁹ On the Milanese information network in the early modern period, see Senatore, ‘Uno mundo de carta’. ⁷⁰ Lazzarini, Communication and Conflict, p. 47. ⁷¹ Ibid, p. 72. ⁷² Senatore, ‘Uno mundo de carta’, p. 285. ⁷³ On the Milanese diplomatic network, see Lydia Cerioni, La diplomazia sforzesca nella seconda metà del Quattrocento e i suoi cifrari segreti. 2 vols, Work no 7 of Fondi e Studi del Corpus Membranarum Italicarum (Rome: Il Centro di Ricerca, 1970). ⁷⁴ Ibid., Vol 1., p. xxxiii; Senatore, ‘Uno mundo de carta’, p. 35. ⁷⁵ Ibid., pp. 46–7, 53. ⁷⁶ Ibid., p. 55. ⁷⁷ Ibid, pp. 282–4. ⁷⁸ On Simonetta and cryptologists of the Milanese chancery, see Cerioni, La diplomazia sforzesca. ⁷⁹ Ibid., Vol. 1, pp. ix–xx.

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Sforza (1508–35), the duchy of Milan reverted to the Holy Roman Emperor’s feudal overlordship. Florence’s intelligence and espionage network was systematically developed by Cosimo I (1519–74), the founder of the grand ducal dynasty of Tuscany, when, as a 17-year-old, he was handpicked by Charles V to succeed the assassinated Alessandro de’ Medici to the ducal throne of Florence.⁸⁰ Paolo Preto has argued that late Renaissance Florence’s intelligence network resembled greatly that of Venice and other larger European states.⁸¹ Lack of systematic research on Florence’s intelligence pursuits, however, does not permit corroboration of this claim. Scattered information emanating from contemporaneous reports points to the fact that Florence was enveloped in a pervasive aura of espionage due to the astonishing number of mercenary spies and informers whose role was to notify the duke of anything that could pose a threat to his power. How their work was overseen and managed is still unknown. What we know from Cosimo’s coevals is the astonishing sums of money he spent on information-gathering and espionage. Specifically, in his relazione (end-of-service report) to the Senate in 1561, Vicenzo Fedeli, the Venetian ambassador to Florence, reported that Cosimo disbursed an annual sum of 40,000 ducats on spies, spreading fear amongst the inhabitants of the Tuscan capital, who had to be extremely vigilant of how they spoke about the duke.⁸² The Italian humanist Benedetto Varchi corroborated this claim, asserting that Cosimo’s paid informants infiltrated the most possible and impossible of places, where, hobnobbing with the locals, they hoped to stumble upon Cosimo’s vituperative foes.⁸³ Aside from paid informers, the Florentine intelligence apparatus relied heavily on the use of avvisi—or newsletters—that enabled Florentine ambassadors to keep abreast of international affairs.⁸⁴

⁸⁰ On Cosimo I, see Gregory Murry, The Medicean Succession: Monarchy and Sacral Politics in Duke Cosimo dei Medici’s Florence (I Tatti Studies in Italian Renaissance History) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014); On Alessandro de’ Medici, see Catherine Fletcher, The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de’ Medici (London: Bodley Head, 2016); On the aftermath of Alessandro de’ Medici’s assassination, see Stefano Dall’Aglio, The Duke’s Assassin: Exile and Death of Lorenzino de’ Medici, transl. Donald Weinstein (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2015). ⁸¹ Preto, I servizi segreti, p. 25. ⁸² ‘Relazione di messer Vincenzo Fedeli secretario dell’ Illustrissima signoria di Venezia tornato dal duca di Fiorenza nel 1561’, in Angelo Ventura (ed.), Relazioni di ambasciatori veneti al Senato, Vol. II (Bari: Laterza, 1976), pp. 237–7. ⁸³ Preto, I servizi segreti, p. 26. ⁸⁴ On the use of avvisi by the Medicean grand dukes, see Sheila Barker, ‘“Secret and Uncertain”: A History of Avvisi at the Court of the Medici Grand Dukes’, in Raymond and Moxham, News Networks, pp. 716–38; Generally on the history and uses of avvisi in early modern Italy, see Mario Infelise, Prima dei giornali: Alle origini della pubblica informazione (Bari: Laterza, 2002); Infelise, ‘Roman Avvisi: Information and Politics in the Seventeenth Century’, in Gianvittorio Signorotto and Maria Antonietta Visceglia (eds.), Court and Politics in Papal Rome, 1492–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 212–28; Infelise, ‘News Networks between Italy and Europe’, in Dooley, The Dissemination of News, pp. 51–67.

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Genoa, Venice’s perennial commercial rival in the Italian peninsula, emulated the Venetian model of the Inquisitors of the State to create a sort of secret police. The Genoese Inquisitori di Stato—a committee of six citizens and one senator— were established nearly one century after their Venetian counterparts, in 1628, following a failed conspiracy orchestrated by Giulio Cesare Vachero to overthrow Genoa’s oligarchy.⁸⁵ Their primary intention was to safeguard the security of the Genoese Republic against its potential arch-enemies.⁸⁶ Rapidly, Genoa turned into a surveillance state, where omnipresent spies and informers kept watch for anything suspicious. To mitigate the danger of overthrow, citizens were banned from frequenting the residences of foreign envoys in the city, a rule that, as we shall see in the following chapter, had been initiated by the Venetians.⁸⁷ Yet the lack of an institution such as the Council of Ten, the ‘vero “padrone” ’ of the Venetian Republic, was the object of several debates in Genoa and,⁸⁸ in a way, superseded all the similarities between the Genoese and the Venetian intelligence systems. As the Italian city states entered a phase of gradual decline in the late sixteenth century, the Vatican started gaining momentum as the pinnacle of bureaucratic and state innovation.⁸⁹ This is not accidental, since the Catholic Church has been strongly associated with the rise of the information state,⁹⁰ and eventually created a composite civil service and one of the early modern world’s most structured information systems.⁹¹ Yet, despite its robust bureaucracy, papal Rome did not create a centrally organized intelligence apparatus. Its sprawling geographical reach played a pivotal role in this lacuna, as managing intelligence operations that spanned the Far East and the New World, where there was substantial pontifical influence, was extremely challenging for the period. The absence of a systematized papal intelligence service, however, was alleviated by the surplus of informants who stemmed, primarily, from the ranks of religious missionaries and papal delegates who were scattered around the early modern world. More specifically, the plethora of religious missions charged with spreading the Catholic rite in all corners of the globe spawned a surplus of informers gathering

⁸⁵ Canosa, Alle origini, p. 112. ⁸⁶ On the Genoese state inquisitors, see ibid. ⁸⁷ Preto, I servizi segreti, p. 28. ⁸⁸ Canosa, Alle origini, pp. 123–4. ⁸⁹ Soll, The information Master, p. 21. ⁹⁰ Michael T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England, 1066–1307 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979); Peter Burke, A Social History of Knowledge from Gutenberg to Diderot (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), pp. 120–3; Burke, ‘Sacred Rulers, Royal Priests: Rituals of the Early Modern Popes’, in Burke, The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy: Essays on Perception and Communication (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 168–82. ⁹¹ On the papal civil service, see Peter Partner, The Pope’s Men: The Papal Civil Service in the Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990). On Rome as an information centre, see Peter Burke, ‘Rome as a Centre of Information and Communication’, in Pamela Jones and Thomas Worcester (eds.), From Rome to Eternity (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 253–69; Jones and Worcester, The Social History of Knowledge, pp. 120–3. See also, Armand Baschet, Les Archives de Venise (Paris: Henri Plon, 1870), pp. 178–81.

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intelligence for the Pope.⁹² The most systematically organized amongst them, the Jesuits, had even developed their own ciphers for the protection of their written communications.⁹³ Moreover, just as in other early modern states, Vatican grandees, such as bishops and ambassadors, would keep themselves apprised of current and secret affairs through their own—at times paid—informers,⁹⁴ such as Baron Taxis, the Holy Roman Emperor’s postmaster.⁹⁵ Amongst them, the nuncio in Venice was considered to be one of the Pope’s most hallowed informants. The nuncio not only employed his own spies who supplied him with vital intelligence,⁹⁶ but also was ordered to keep his eyes open for spies ‘against Christianity’, of whom, as he once reported to the Vatican, there was an infinite number in Venice, especially stemming from four ‘founts’—the Germans, the Greeks, the Jews, and the Turks, who ‘cannot produce anything but cloudy water’.⁹⁷ Overall, the composite pontifical information network, which extended beyond conventional diplomatic frameworks, was expected to keep a close watch on Italian and European affairs and the military manoeuvres of the Ottoman Empire.⁹⁸ For this reason, diplomatic relations with the Venetian Republic became the mainstay of the papal information service, and the apostolic nunciature of Venice turned into a prime information centre for the Vatican.⁹⁹ The Holy See, however, was not the only early modern power that relied on the Republic of Saint Mark for monitoring the information flow between the East and the West. With an analogously far-reaching geographical grip and parallel intelligence interests, Philip II’s tightly controlled and centrally administered espionage network contrasted with the ‘organic’ Papal intelligence-gathering system, where ecclesiastical delegates exercised substantial authority over the spy webs they created.¹⁰⁰

Imperial Spain Of all the European states that developed intelligence networks in the early modern period, Spain deserves special mention for two reasons: firstly, because Spanish diplomacy was deeply entangled with Italian affairs, hatching botched plans to advance Habsburg control over the Pope’s terrain in central Italy and

⁹² The scholarly work on ecclesiastical missionaries across the globe is substantial. For examples and further bibliography, see Dauril Alden, The Making of an Enterprise: The Society of Jesus in Portugal, its Empire, and Beyond, 1540–1750 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996); Liam M. Brockey, The Visitor: André Palmeiro and the Jesuits in Asia (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014). I am grateful to Jose Bento da Silva for his helpful insights on the literature on ecclesiastical missions, especially in Asia. ⁹³ Preto, I servizi segreti, p. 28. ⁹⁴ Ibid. ⁹⁵ Petitjean, ‘The Papal Network’, pp. 183–4. ⁹⁶ See, for instance, ASVat, Segreteria di Stato, Venezia, b. 14, c. 63r. (1 May 1573). ⁹⁷ Ibid., c. 128v. (27 Nov. 1574). ⁹⁸ See Petitjean, ‘The Papal Network’, esp. p. 180. ⁹⁹ Ibid. ¹⁰⁰ Preto, I servizi segreti, p. 28.

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Saint Mark’s territories in the north; and secondly, because, especially during the reign of Philip II, Charles V’s successor, Spain developed a centrally administered intelligence apparatus, which, ostensibly, resembled that of the Venetians. A brief examination of its structure, however, will reveal the fundamental differences between Spain, Rome, and Venice, the three major ‘information states’ of the early modern period.¹⁰¹ Both Charles and Philip tussled to establish their hegemony over Italian territories, a prerequisite for the preservation of the Spanish empire.¹⁰² The treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559) between Valois France and Habsburg Spain, paved the way for the Habsburgs’ expansionist designs eastwards, as the French Crown formally renounced all dynastic claims over Italy. So great was the Spanish triumph that Fernard Braudel, ‘the great chronicler of the age of Philip II’,¹⁰³ termed the century and a half that followed the treaty a period of ‘pax hispanica’ in the Italian peninsula.¹⁰⁴ Consequently, several scholars subscribed to the contention that a prolonged and unchallenged Spanish sovereignty over large parts of Italy ensued from the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis.¹⁰⁵ Yet, as the systematic study of the diplomatic correspondence between Spanish ambassadors in Italian city states and the Spanish Crown reveals, Spanish sovereignty was anything but taken as a given in the Italian peninsula. Instead, the rather bumptious self-perceived superiority of Habsburg Spain,¹⁰⁶ in essence, operated as a facade that masked the inability of the Habsburgs to consolidate Spanish imperialism in Italy, primarily due to their failure to control Venice and Rome.¹⁰⁷ It was, therefore, through their extended diplomatic service that the Spanish tried to maintain a certain degree of control over Italian affairs. The foundations for the expansion of the Spanish diplomatic service were laid by King Ferdinand II of Aragon (1452–1516). In his effort to secure the diplomatic encirclement of France during the last two decades of the fifteenth century, Ferdinand founded the first Spanish resident embassies in Rome, Venice, London, Brussels, and the court of the Holy Roman Emperor.¹⁰⁸ These diplomatic stations played a pivotal role in Spain’s ensuing foreign policy. Ferdinand’s successor, Charles V, expanded his predecessor’s ambassadorial network by adding

¹⁰¹ Soll, The Information Master, p. 19. ¹⁰² Parker, The Grand Strategy, pp. 80–3. ¹⁰³ Levin, Agents of Empire, p. 2. ¹⁰⁴ Fernand Braudel, ‘L’Italia fuori d’Italia: Due secoli e tre Italie’, in Ruggiero Romano and Corrado Vivanti (eds.), Storia d’Italia, Vol II: Dalla caduta dell’Impero Romano al secolo XVIII (Turin: Einaudi Editore, 1974), pp. 2092–248 (here pp. 2156–7); see also, Parker, The Grand Strategy, p. 89. ¹⁰⁵ See, Eric Cochrane, Italy 1530–1630, ed. Julius Kirshner (London: Longman, 1988); Thomas J. Dandelet, Spanish Rome 1500–1700 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001); Henry Kamen, Philip of Spain (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997). ¹⁰⁶ Parker refers to this attitude as ‘messianic imperialism’. See Geoffrey Parker, ‘The Place of Tudor England in the Messianic Vision of Philip II of Spain’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 12 (2002), pp. 167–221 (here p. 172). ¹⁰⁷ Levin, Agents of Empire, p. 3. ¹⁰⁸ John H. Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469–1716 (London: Edward Arnold, 1963), p. 122.

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Genoa and the duchy of Savoy to the string of Spanish embassies in the Italian peninsula.¹⁰⁹ By the time Philip II assumed the reins of power in the mid-sixteenth century, imperial Spain’s embassies in Italy, alongside the Spanish strongholds of Naples and Milan, played a pivotal role in the preservation of the Spanish empire. Of particular significance were the embassies of Venice and Rome, as the Crown looked to them for backing in its predatory quest for Spanish control over and beyond Italy.¹¹⁰ Spanish sovereign interests, however, which clashed with France’s encroaching proclivities, were something of a spent force, as Venice and papal Rome protected their independence with fervent zeal. Venice, in particular, while figuring prominently in Spain’s imperial ambitions, never succumbed to Spanish hegemony and only partnered with Spain when it was deemed necessary by the Venetian authorities.¹¹¹ This geopolitical landscape, in combination with the immensity of the Spanish state, created the need for centrally administered intelligence operations. An instrumental role in the centralization of Spain’s intelligence pursuits was played by Philip II, whose vast empire on the European continent spanned parts of Italy, the Iberian peninsula, the imperial states of the Habsburg Netherlands, and even England and Ireland, during his brief marriage to Queen Mary I, between 1554–8. Consequently, Philip ventured the creation of a centrally administered intelligence service that focused, primarily, on the king as the head and monomaniacal controller of Spain’s intelligence pursuits. Philip’s secret service was administered by him and the Consejo de Estado (the Council of State), a governmental office responsible for foreign policy, including matters of secret diplomacy and intelligence.¹¹² The council was made up of the Secretary of the Consejo and a circle of trusted officials. Philip, who insisted on presiding over meetings, exerted an allconsuming influence over decisions relating to issues of intelligence and espionage.¹¹³ The council was also supported by the Secretaría de Estado, which was made up of a large number of state functionaries who set in motion Spain’s state bureaucracy. These included the secretario de la cifra, the state expert cryptanalyst.¹¹⁴ According to Venetian envoys in Spain, the odd characteristic of the Spanish secretaría, and the one that rendered it so inefficient compared to its Venetian equivalent, was the working culture, as Spanish secretaries were not stationed in the palace, but worked in their own homes. This led to work

¹⁰⁹ The Savoy embassy was expelled when the French invaded the city in 1536, and was reestablished in 1570. See Levin, Agents of Empire, p. 7. ¹¹⁰ Ibid. ¹¹¹ Ibid., p. 8. ¹¹² Carnicer García and Marcos Rivas, Espías de Felipe II, p. 92. On the administrative role of the Council of State, see ibid., pp. 92–101. ¹¹³ Ibid, pp. 79–80. ¹¹⁴ On the Spanish state secretaries, see José Antonio Escudero, Los secretarios de Estado y del Despacho, 1474–1724, Vol. 2 (Madrid: Istituto de Estudios Administrativos, 1969); Carnicer García and Marcos Rivas, Espías de Felipe II, pp. 101–19, 231–49 (here pp. 102–3).

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disorganization, the occasional—if not frequent—loss of important documents, and, more often than not, corruption.¹¹⁵ The key figurehead of the Secretaría de Estado was the Secretary of State, the monarch’s most important minister. The Secretary of State played a pivotal role in the Spanish intelligence network. Under the king’s supervision, he was responsible for organizing covert operations and the analysis of intelligence that emanated from them, playing the role of the intermediary between the monarch and his military commanders.¹¹⁶ In effect, the Secretary of State was the ‘nominal head’ of the Spanish secret service, but always under the granite shadow of Philip II,¹¹⁷ who, ultimately, proposed and granted approval of espionage missions, accepted or rejected the recruitment of spies, authorized payments, controlled the distribution of secret expenses, dictated the rules of the use and change of official ciphers, coordinated the information flow between state officials, and regulated the security measures of intelligence activities.¹¹⁸ In imperial Spain, intelligence was supplied by a variety of informers, including ambassadors and other formal representatives of the Crown who comprised viceroys, governors, and military leaders executing missions in the Mediterranean.¹¹⁹ Spanish ambassadors, in particular, were ‘the point men in the Crown’s campaign to establish hegemony in Italy’.¹²⁰ For this reason, they acted ‘as political analysts or outright spies’, and Philip persistently reminded them of their obligation to obtain any information crucial to Spanish affairs.¹²¹ ‘You must be cautious in order to know and obtain news from all routes, and in all manners and forms’, he once instructed Diego Guzmán de Silva, his ambassador to Venice between 1571 and 1576.¹²² Indeed, due to its geographical position, the Spanish embassy in Venice was ‘a command center for espionage in the Mediterranean’, with particular interests in the French and Ottoman affairs.¹²³ Spanish ambassadors, viceroys, and governors maintained their own network of spies, which was, to be sure, overseen by Philip. In practice, when a spy proffered his services to a Spanish dignitary, the latter had to solicit Philip’s permission for recruitment and authorization for the spy’s reimbursement. Aspiring spies were offered employment either on account of their extensive network of connections—on this occasion, even without an impending formal mission—or on an ad hoc basis, recruited when imminent need for intelligence arose. In such cases, individuals in positions of power were ordered to supervise and protect the novice spy.¹²⁴ Undeniably, Philip’s network of spies comprised numerous amateur

¹¹⁵ Carnicer García and Marcos Rivas, Espías de Felipe II, p. 103. ¹¹⁶ Ibid. ¹¹⁷ Ibid. ¹¹⁸ Ibid., pp. 80–1. ¹¹⁹ Ibid., p. 18. ¹²⁰ Levin, Agents of Empire, p. vii. ¹²¹ Ibid., p. 154. ¹²² AGS, Estado, Legajo 1326, fol. 268 (14 Sep. 1569). See also Carnicer García and Marcos Rivas, Espías de Felipe II, p. 80. ¹²³ Levin, Agents of Empire, p. 173. ¹²⁴ Carnicer García and Marcos Rivas, Espías de Felipe II, p. 81.

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informers who were routinely used to obtain information from a variety of sources. Francesco Vendramin, for instance, the Venetian ambassador to Spain, once reported back to Venice that court jesters acted as the king’s spies, as and when needed.¹²⁵ If spies did not perform according to royal expectations, the king had no qualms in withholding their pay.¹²⁶ For Philip, secrecy was a vital constituent of effective government. Consequently, he developed an obsession with managing all secret information personally,¹²⁷ extending his autocratic grip over Spain’s boundless bureaucracy. Making a fetish of both secrecy and obsessive control, he voraciously hoarded, read, and replied to astonishing volumes of documents,¹²⁸ a large quantity of which is currently stored in Spain’s imperial archives in the castle of Simancas.¹²⁹ So omnivorous was his appetite for the consumption, production, and stringent protection of state records that he once lamented the existence of over 100,000 documents awaiting to be processed on his desk.¹³⁰ It is not accidental, then, that posterity assigned him the sobriquet el rey papelero, or, as Fernand Braudel put it, ‘the bureaucratic king’.¹³¹ Due to his penchant for secrecy, the reign of Philip II has been rhapsodized as the ‘Golden Age’ of Spanish cryptography.¹³² This is because Philip obsessed over the need to conceal and protect sensitive information that had to be shared between the monarch, his Secretary of State, ambassadors, governors, viceroys, and other agents. A seasoned cryptographer himself, he headed the Spanish cryptographic service, ordering the creation of Spanish ciphers and the change of their keys. Amongst them, the cifra general was used for correspondence between Spanish ambassadors and state ministers, while the cifra particular was reserved for direct communication with the monarch.¹³³ Due to its significance, ¹²⁵ Ibid., p. 70. ¹²⁶ Ibid., p. 85. ¹²⁷ Ibid., pp. 70–1. ¹²⁸ Parker, The Grand Strategy, p. 21. ¹²⁹ Philip also maintained royal archives in Barcelona, Seville, and even Rome, according to Parker, The Grand Strategy, p. 66. On Spain’s royal archives, see ibid., pp. 21–66; On the origins and organization of the Simancas archives, see José Luis Rodríguez de Diego and Francisco Javier Álvarez Pinedo, Los archivos de Simancas (Madrid: Lunwerg Editores, 1993); José Luis Rodríguez de Diego (ed.), Instrucción para el gobierno del archivo de Simancas (año 1588) (Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura, Dirección General de Bellas Artes y Archivos, 1989). ¹³⁰ Richard L. Kagan, ‘Arcana Imperii: Mapas, ciencia y poder en la corte de Felipe IV’, in Felipe Pereda and Fernando Marías (eds.), El atlas del rey planeta: La “Descripción” de España y de las costas y puertos de sus reinos de Pedro Texeira (1634) (Hondarribia: Nerea, 2002), pp. 49–70 (here p. 49). ¹³¹ Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, Vol. I, transl. Siân Reynolds (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995), p. 372. ¹³² Carnicer García and Marcos Rivas, Espías de Felipe II, p. 233. ¹³³ Dejanirah Couto, ‘Spying in the Ottoman Empire: Sixteenth-Century Encrypted Correspondence’, in Bethencourt and Egmond, Correspondence and Cultural Exchange, pp. 274–312. (here pp. 297–8); On Philip II’s ciphers, see Jérôme P. Devos, Les chiffres de Philippe II: 1555–1598, et du “Despacho universal” durant le 17e siècle (Brussels: Académie Royale de Belgique, 1950); On Spanish ciphered correspondence, see Bernard Allaire, ‘Le Décodage de la correspondance chiffrée des diplomates espagnols au XVIe siècle’, in Pierre Albert (ed.), Correspondre jadis et naguère (Paris: Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques—CTHS, 1997), pp. 207–18; Carnicer García and Marcos Rivas, Espías de Felipe II, pp. 86–91.

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the cifra general changed, on average, every four to five years.¹³⁴ While a small army of state secretaries enciphered and deciphered important documents for Spanish grandees, governmental elites, such as the Secretary of State, were expected to be well-versed in both cryptography and cryptanalysis. Overall, however, Spanish dignitaries relied both on the secretarios de la cifra and on other white-collar functionaries for the encryption and decryption of significant information.¹³⁵ On the whole, Philip II was notorious amongst his coevals as the best-informed monarch of his time, allegedly deriving unabashed pleasure from showing off his unmatched knowledge of current affairs to foreign envoys frequenting his court, just to get a glimpse of their astonished reaction.¹³⁶ As the ‘director de los servicios secretos’, Philip oversaw the operations of his intelligence machinery with absolutist zeal, maniacally controlling every minute detail of Spain’s intelligence operations, from the recruitment and reimbursement of spies to the formulation of intelligence strategy.¹³⁷ This was a remarkable feat and, simultaneously, a herculean challenge for a monarch ruling over an empire that lacked spatial, social, cultural and religious cohesion, and even spanned different continents. His aversion to delegation and, by extension, his inability to fully entrust his ministers with exercising initiative and control over the Spanish intelligence operations within their jurisdiction are amongst the reasons why, unlike Venice, sixteenth-century Spain failed to create a systematized intelligence organization premised upon managerial structures that determined and controlled the ways in which people worked and interacted with each other. Without a doubt, Philip’s intelligence service was extremely well organized. Ultimately, however, it was a composite spy network, operating, like his government, as a ‘ “panopticon”, in which only a person at the centre can see everything’.¹³⁸ It was, thus, hermetically controlled by a monarch whose ministers played only a supporting role in his absolutist running of Spain’s intelligence pursuits. A similar case, albeit on a significantly smaller scale, was that of Tudor England’s web of spies.

Tudor England The end of the Wars of the Roses in 1485 marked the consolidation of a new political settlement under the Tudor dynasty that marshalled a period of effervescent internal stability. This brought about economic growth, which started

¹³⁴ Parker, The Grand Strategy, p. 215. Historians disagree on a specific periodization of the change of Spanish ciphers. See, Devos, Les chiffres de Philippe II, pp. 82–3. ¹³⁵ Carnicer García and Marcos Rivas, Espías de Felipe II, pp. 241–2. ¹³⁶ Ibid., p. 80. ¹³⁷ Ibid., p. 87. ¹³⁸ Parker, The Grand Strategy, p. 37.

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feeding avaricious fantasies about commercial expansion on a global scale.¹³⁹ In consequence, English merchants and entrepreneurs gradually started to increase their commercial activity beyond their much-travelled mercantile routes across the Baltic and North Sea towards continental Europe and, gradually, towards the rest of the world.¹⁴⁰ In particular, England’s commercial advance eastwards to the Levantine shores played a vital role in her global expansion,¹⁴¹ and is indicative of the ‘seemingly inexorable’ nexus between maritime and commercial domination.¹⁴² Even though her initial attempts to set up colonial outposts had mixed results, England progressively managed to position herself on a ‘path towards global assertion’,¹⁴³ seizing the opportunity to avail herself of—and eventually to cash in on—Venice’s gradual ‘loss of leadership’, especially in maritime and commercial terms.¹⁴⁴ In fact, during the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, England played a pivotal role in Venice’s gradual fall from grace as the commercial middleman between Europe and Asia.¹⁴⁵ England’s progressive commercial and maritime ascendancy was accompanied by significant threats that had implications for the state’s surveillance policies. The two most imminent risks were the external hazard of overseas invasion and, more pressingly, the internal menace of a Catholic fifth column.¹⁴⁶ The grave matter of Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon, which led to the Protestant Reformation, transmuted Catholicism into a multi-headed hydra that called for multiple sources of state surveillance. To protect Henry’s interests, his chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, created a network of spies and intelligence gatherers that he managed from his own home.¹⁴⁷ From that point on, the thoughts, words, and deeds of ordinary individuals came under the ubiquitous scrutiny of the state.¹⁴⁸ It was Francis Walsingham, however, Elizabeth I’s principal secretary ¹³⁹ See Steven Gunn, ‘Politic History, New Monarchy and State Formation: Henry VII in European Perspective’, Historical Research 82, no 217 (2009), pp. 380–92, and the bibliography cited therein. ¹⁴⁰ Fusaro, Political Economies, p. ix. ¹⁴¹ Richard T. Rapp, ‘The Unmaking of the Mediterranean Trade Hegemony: International Trade Rivalry and the Commercial Revolution’, Journal of Economic History 35, no 3 (1975), pp. 499–525; Fusaro, Political Economies. Similar claims have been made for the commercial advancement of the Dutch Republic, especially in the seventeenth century. See, for example, David Ormrod, The Rise of Commercial Empires: England and the Netherlands in the Age of Mercantilism, 1650–1770 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Maartje van Gelder, Trading Places: The Netherlandish Merchants in Early Modern Venice (Leiden: Brill, 2009). ¹⁴² Fusaro, Political Economies, p. 16. ¹⁴³ Ibid., p. ix. ¹⁴⁴ I agree with David Landes and Maria Fusaro, who posit the argument that Venice, ultimately, did not undergo a straightforward economic decline, but a historically natural ‘loss of leadership’. See, David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are so Rich and Some So Poor (London: Abacus, 1999), especially the chapter ‘Loss of Leadership’, pp. 442–64; See also, Fusaro, Political Economies, p. x. ¹⁴⁵ For a nuanced account of the reversal of commercial domination between Venice and England, see Fusaro, Political Economies. ¹⁴⁶ Cooper, The Queen’s Agent, p. 163. ¹⁴⁷ Ibid., p. 164. ¹⁴⁸ For Thomas Cromwell’s surveillance practices, see, for example, the classic work by Geoffrey R. Elton, Policy and Police: The Enforcement of the Reformation at the Time of Thomas Cromwell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972).

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and spymaster, who masterminded one of early modern England’s most robust spy networks. Francis Walsingham’s secret service was created with intricate care. Headquartered in Walsingham’s own residence in London’s Seething Lane, it was ‘less a formal structure than a web of relationships’.¹⁴⁹ In other words, Walsingham’s espionage network was far from a systematized intelligence organization premised on state administration and complex bureaucratic processes. Just like Cromwell’s informers, Walsingham’s spies were recruited from the ranks of his own servants or clients and operated autonomously for him, rather than forming part of a larger, state-controlled intelligence machine.¹⁵⁰ They reported directly to him, and they were reimbursed not by the royal treasury, but from his own purse, even though the Crown conferred a discrete allowance for this purpose.¹⁵¹ In the words of his biographer Sidney Lee, Walsingham’s secret service worked ‘with Machiavellian precision at home and abroad’.¹⁵² Aside from a few official ambassadors and semi-official envoys frequenting princely courts, the flow of intelligence reaching Seething Lane came from a variety of channels.¹⁵³ Walsingham’s spies comprised a wide array of individuals, from young elites who offered their services on account of their propaganda-induced duty to the Protestant state¹⁵⁴ to unabashed social climbers in pursuit of patronage or profit or simply to cashstrapped ‘jailbirds and petty criminals of the Elizabethan underworld’,¹⁵⁵ who sealed the occasional ‘cash-for-secret’ deal with the spymaster.¹⁵⁶ Walsingham’s intelligence network also included travellers and itinerant merchants, who, like their Venetian counterparts, had become deft intelligence gatherers and information dealers,¹⁵⁷ and thus acted as informers for the English Crown, producing letters that overflowed with news about foreign courts and markets.¹⁵⁸ Finally, amongst the English spymaster’s intelligence gatherers were ‘second-rank’ figures in the

¹⁴⁹ Cooper, The Queen’s Agent, pp. 163, 167. ¹⁵⁰ On Francis Walsingham’s spies, see Stephen Alford, ‘Some Elizabethan Spies in the Office of Francis Walsingham’, in Robyn Adams and Rosanna Cox (eds.), Diplomacy and Early Modern Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 46–62. ¹⁵¹ Cooper, The Queen’s Agent, p. 175. ¹⁵² Sidney Lee, ‘Francis Walsingham’, in Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. 59 (London: Smith, Elder & Company, 1899), p. 234. ¹⁵³ Amongst Walsingham’s informers were ambassadors in two main cities, Edinburgh and Paris. Cooper, The Queen’s Agent, pp. 170–1. ¹⁵⁴ Ibid., pp. 163–4. On propaganda campaigns to foster allegiance to the Reformation state, see John P. D. Cooper, Propaganda and the Tudor State: Political Culture in the Westcountry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), and the bibliography therein. ¹⁵⁵ Cooper, The Queen’s Agent, p. 178. ¹⁵⁶ Ibid., pp. 174, 182. ¹⁵⁷ Elizabeth Williamson, ‘ “Fishing after News” and the Ars Apodemica: The Intelligencing Role of the Educational Traveller in the Late Sixteenth Century’, in Raymond and Moxham, News Networks, pp. 542–62. ¹⁵⁸ For examples, see Cooper, The Queen’s Agent, pp. 175–6.

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Elizabethan administration,¹⁵⁹ primarily servile state functionaries, and a number of unsung, yet rather astute cryptanalysts.¹⁶⁰ It is important to underscore that in early modern England information management was not monopolized by one single authority in the service of the Crown.¹⁶¹ Secret information, in particular, reached the monarch from a plethora of sources, including the Cabinet, the Privy Council, and the disparate spy networks of eminent spymasters such as Francis Walsingham. The idiosyncrasy of early modern England lay in the consuming competition between Parliament and the Crown over comprehensive secret information that, at times, had to be concealed from various agents of power and the public.¹⁶² This can partly account for the relative lack of state archives in that period.¹⁶³ Yet, as John Cooper has aptly argued, it was this absence of bureaucracy that renders the intelligence pursuits of spy chiefs like Walsingham remarkable.¹⁶⁴

Bourbon France Sixteenth-century England was not the only early modern state lacking the centralized administrative institutions that were so prevalent in Italy and Spain. Sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century France was in a similar, yet more idiosyncratic predicament. This is because, even during the absolutist statebuilding efforts of Louis XIV (1638–1715) and his highly skilled minister and statesman Jean Baptiste Colbert (1619–83), Bourbon France struggled to produce a state bureaucracy in the Weberian sense. Moreover, the absence of central administrative processes meant that state papers belonged to the individual office holder, such as parliamentarians and ecclesiastics, rather than the state.¹⁶⁵ This idiosyncrasy stemmed from the multiple traditions upon which the French monarchy had been built, which included the ‘deep soil of feudalism, the ancient constitutions of Germanic kingship, the organization of the Catholic Church, and administrative traditions from northern Italy and Spain.’¹⁶⁶

¹⁵⁹ Robyn Adams, ‘A Spy on the Payroll? William Herle and the mid Elizabethan Polity’, Historical Research 83, no 220 (2009), pp. 266–80. ¹⁶⁰ Parker, The Grand Strategy, p. 216. ¹⁶¹ Peter Fraser, The Intelligence of the Secretaries of State and the Monopoly of Licensed News, 1660–1668 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956), p. 10. ¹⁶² Jonathan M. Elukin, ‘Keeping Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern English Government’, in Gisela Engel, Brita Rang, Klaus Reichert, Heide Wunder, and Jonathan Elukin (eds.), Das Geheimnis am Beginn der europäischen Moderne (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2002), pp. 109–29 (here pp. 124–5). ¹⁶³ Soll, The Information Master, p. 7, n. 37. ¹⁶⁴ Cooper, The Queen’s Agent, p. 163. ¹⁶⁵ Soll, The Information Master, pp. 28–9. ¹⁶⁶ Ibid., p. 13. On the multiple traditions upon which the French monarchy was built, see James B. Collins, The State in Early Modern France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

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By all outward appearances, then, early modern French administration was ‘remarkably diffuse and personal’.¹⁶⁷ Undeniably, French secretaries had been serving monarchs and handling their secret correspondence since the Middle Ages. It was by the sixteenth and seventieth centuries, however, that the French administration started to expand, and the office of the secretary of state emerged. Secretaries were expected to handle state secrets and safeguard secret correspondence, but their duties were hindered by the French nobles, who, accustomed to controlling state administration, persisted in keeping royal paperwork away from the ministries they served.¹⁶⁸ It was only by the late seventeenth century, under the direction of Louis XIV, that France gradually started to create an absolutist central administration that comprised a functional state information—rather than state intelligence—system.¹⁶⁹ To be sure, France had already established a rudimentary, yet widely diffused spy network, put together by the cunning Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642), King Louis XIII’s foreign minister and the initial architect of French absolutism.¹⁷⁰ Richelieu created a large network of spies both in France and beyond its borders, operating in all political arenas where France had a footing. This spy network, which, incidentally, still awaits scholarly exploration and analysis, was headed by François Leclerc du Tremblay, commonly known as Père Joseph (Father Joseph) (1577–1638), a French Capuchin friar.¹⁷¹ Conversely, Louis XIV’s extensive network of spies and informants has been exposed and analysed in the monumental 900-page-long study conducted by French historian Lucien Bély. In his voluminous examination of the Sun King’s espionage activity, Bély enumerates several types of French spies, which can be summed up in five major categories: peripatetic agents sent to immediate war zones, amateur ‘gadflies’ operating at court or in major urban centres,¹⁷² professional spies—who in contemporary parlance would be styled ‘moles’—working alongside French diplomats and hidden behind noms de guerre, foreign diplomats who provided intelligence-gathering services for the Sun King, and spymasters who created their own spy networks, competing to serve the rights of the king.¹⁷³ The Sun King’s informers were placed in pivotal locations across Europe, from Marseilles and Venice in the Mediterranean to Copenhagen and Danzig on the Baltic and Hamburg and Amsterdam on the North Sea.¹⁷⁴

¹⁶⁷ Soll, The Information Master, p. 30. ¹⁶⁸ Ibid., p. 29. ¹⁶⁹ On early modern France’s central administration, see ibid. ¹⁷⁰ On Richelieu, see, for example, Joseph Bergin, Cardinal Richelieu: Power and the Pursuit of Wealth (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990). ¹⁷¹ On François Leclerc du Tremblay, see Gustave Fragniez, Le Père Joseph et Richelieu (1577–1638), 2 vols. (Paris: Hachette, 1894). ¹⁷² John C. Rule, ‘Review Article: Gathering Intelligence in the Age of Louis XIV’, The International History Review 14, no 4 (1992), pp. 732–52 (here p. 737). ¹⁷³ Lucien Bély, Espions et ambassadeurs au temps de Louis XIV (Paris: Fayard, 1990), pp. 107–8. ¹⁷⁴ Ibid., p. 95.

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Aside from Louis XIV’s far-reaching web of spies, another robust network took centre stage in the rapidly expanding administration of the Sun King’s absolutist state. This was his corps of internal ‘bureaucratic’ informers, the state intendants.¹⁷⁵ Micromanaged by Jean Baptiste Colbert, whose absolutist control of information management resembled Louis’s style of government, state intendants acted both as governors of the thirty-two districts of France, as they had been divided by Richelieu, and as information masters. In the latter capacity, they were tasked with retrieving information and producing reports on several state matters such as population size, the state’s architectural, industrial and natural resources, the status of political and religious institutions, and the financial and even legal affairs of the French nobility.¹⁷⁶ The institution of the state intendants, who informed both for money and out of a sense of duty, was established to assert royal authority over both the French nobility and the parlements.¹⁷⁷ On the whole, early modern France’s intelligence network seems to have operated with a more inward-looking focus. This proclivity reflected France’s internal politics, which was geared towards the all-consuming Wars of Religion and the fruitless efforts of the four Valois monarchs who succeeded Francis I (1494–1547) to deal with ongoing religious conflict and the ensuing strife of a state ‘divided by law, customs, languages and tradition’.¹⁷⁸ The treaty of CateauCambrésis in 1559, which halted France’s expansionist attempts towards Italian turf and ended the rivalry between Henry II (1519–59) of France and Philip II of Spain over assuming hegemony of Italian territories, cast the focus of French politics on the gradual building of an absolutist nation state. This concentration on internal affairs reflected Cardinal Richelieu’s systematic endeavours to enhance the French monarch’s authority and to make France one of the most powerful European states in the seventeenth century.¹⁷⁹

The Ottoman Empire Compared to other European states, and despite playing a prominent role in European affairs and dominating Mediterranean politics in the second half of the sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire chose a diplomatic course that was markedly distinct from other early modern states. The fundamentally unique Ottoman trait was the staunch resistance of the Sublime Porte—a metonym for the Ottoman government referring to the gate of Topkapı Palace, where sultans and their administration were headquartered—against creating resident embassies ¹⁷⁵ On Louis XIV’s intendants, see Soll, The Information Master, esp. pp. 67–83. ¹⁷⁶ Ibid., pp. 68–81. ¹⁷⁷ Ibid., p. 80. ¹⁷⁸ John Merriman, A History of Modern Europe: From the Renaissance to the Age of Napoleon, 2nd edn (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004), pp. 136–7. ¹⁷⁹ Ibid., p. 155.

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overseas up until the eighteenth century,¹⁸⁰ for two reasons: firstly, a supercilious sense of Ottoman superiority, signifying that it was European powers’ responsibility to solicit the Sultan’s approbation and, hence, install their legates in the Ottoman capital; and secondly, the lack of an established state bureaucracy with a central chancery in the service of the state. Both these traits meant that ambassadorial duties were assigned to state officials such as dragomans (interpreters), private individuals, and other ‘go-betweens’, who,¹⁸¹ more often than not, lacked the training and the social decorum needed for effective diplomatic representation in state and royal households.¹⁸² Emulating its somewhat insouciant attitude to diplomatic delegations, the Ottoman Empire deployed a similarly decentralized approach to its intelligence pursuits. This meant that formal intelligence operations were the responsibility of pashas and other Ottoman grandees, who were expected to organize and oversee their individual spy networks, which, more often than not, served the interests of their masters rather than the imminent needs of the state.¹⁸³ This decentralized approach to information-gathering was a product of the ‘patrimonial’ character of the Ottoman Empire, whereby local authorities had overall jurisdiction over their allocated territories, and funds disbursed from the Sultan’s treasury were expected to cover all relevant costs, including the office holders’ salaries and their intelligence operations.¹⁸⁴ The Ottoman government’s delegation of intelligence-gathering to its grandees, on the one hand, and the lack of an established state bureaucracy, on the other, rendered the requirement to maintain detailed records of spies and other informers in the Ottoman employ obsolete. The over-reliance of the Ottomans on oral, rather than written communication—which, incidentally, justifies their sparse use of cryptography and steganography¹⁸⁵—accentuated the lack of detailed recordkeeping. Consequently, most of these individuals were casually styled casus (the Ottoman word for ‘spy’), with no other relevant information that could help historians establish their identity.¹⁸⁶ Overall, the Ottomans used a variety of spies and informants, such as corsairs, the private spy networks of Ottoman dignitaries, as well as members of foreign communities, such as Jews and the Moriscos in the Iberian peninsula.¹⁸⁷ Their common denominator was their tendency to casually bestow their loyalty upon different masters, depending on the reimbursement they received for their services.¹⁸⁸ ¹⁸⁰ Preto, I servizi segreti, p. 33. ¹⁸¹ On the various ‘go-betweens’ operating in the Ottoman Empire, see Emrah Safa Gürkan, ‘Mediating Boundaries: Mediterranean Go-Betweens and Cross-Confessional Diplomacy in Constantinople, 1560–1600’, Journal of Early Modern History 19, no 2–3 (2015), pp. 107–28. ¹⁸² Gürkan, ‘Espionage in the 16th Century Mediterranean’, pp. 396–7. ¹⁸³ Ibid., pp. 3–4; See also Gürkan, Sultanın Casusları. ¹⁸⁴ Gürkan, ‘Espionage in the 16th Century Mediterranean’, pp. 362–4. ¹⁸⁵ Ibid., p. 437. ¹⁸⁶ Ibid., p. 354. ¹⁸⁷ Ibid., pp. 356–8, 368–95. ¹⁸⁸ Ibid., pp. 367–8.

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On the whole, the Ottoman Empire deployed a pragmatic approach to the delegation of its intelligence pursuits,¹⁸⁹ allowing governors and governorgenerals—primarily those serving in frontier territories—more freedom in taking prompt decisions about military matters, especially when threats or opportunities arose.¹⁹⁰ Consequently, the Ottoman course of action entailed allowing state dignitaries to decide whether they considered themselves capable of dealing with any situation that arose, or whether there was imminent need for the dispatch of a courier to the Porte for further consultation, an initiative that was costly, in terms of both time and cash.¹⁹¹ Ultimately, as the historian Emrah Safa Gürkan has aptly argued, by ‘distributing the responsibility within the Ottoman hierarchy, the Ottomans reacted swiftly on the one hand and took the weight off the back of the central government on the other’.¹⁹² Despite its seemingly unsystematic structure, the Ottoman Empire’s intelligence networks, which spanned the length of the European continent,¹⁹³ were surprisingly efficient in supplying Ottoman grandees and their superiors with vital information on the affairs of European states. It was this hybridity and fluidity of intelligence-gathering pursuits that enabled the Ottoman Empire to effectively compare and contrast information that reached the Sublime Porte from various destinations.¹⁹⁴ Yet what vitiated the Ottomans’ intelligence pursuits is their aversion to establishing their own direct diplomatic channels through resident embassies, and the lack of an established corps of diplomatic personnel responsible for the collection of information on a foreign state’s cultural, religious, and linguistic traits.¹⁹⁵ This, however, did not deter the Ottomans from installing spies wherever they deemed it advantageous for their expansionist pursuits, to the dismay of Venice, which, as we shall see, was constantly put out by their defiant panache and unfettered propensity for infiltrating her territories.

Conclusion The sixteenth century was a time of momentous events that shook the foundations of political, economic, social, and cultural institutions in and beyond the European continent. In response to some of the climacteric incidents that ensued, several early modern European states sought to enhance their intelligence-gathering and protection pursuits through espionage and counter-intelligence activities. Some of them, primarily Spain, responded to these needs by creating centralized intelligence apparatuses. Others, such as England, France, several Italian city states, and ¹⁸⁹ Ágoston, Gábor, ‘A Flexible Empire: Authority and its Limits on the Ottoman Frontiers’, International Journal of Turkish Studies 9, no 1–2 (2003), pp. 15–31. ¹⁹⁰ Gürkan, ‘Espionage in the 16th Century Mediterranean’, pp. 349–50. ¹⁹¹ Ibid., pp. 350–1. ¹⁹² Ibid., p. 352. ¹⁹³ Preto, I servizi segreti, p. 33. ¹⁹⁴ Gürkan, ‘Espionage in the 16th Century Mediterranean’, pp. 414–15. ¹⁹⁵ Ibid., p. 438.

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the Ottoman Empire, relied on the idiosyncratic espionage networks of potentates and their dignitaries. It was only Venice that, as we shall see in the following chapters, was emblematic in its creation of a centrally administered state intelligence service, supported by a robust and well-trained diplomatic corps, several state departments well-stocked with expert officials serving in them, as well as sprouting complex bureaucratic processes premised on managerial structures. Most importantly, Venice’s diplomatic and centralized intelligence pursuits were buttressed by a burgeoning state bureaucracy, which, through the formalized documentation and protection of knowledge, accentuated the central role secrecy played in Venice’s state intelligence organization. While a scholarly tradition in the history of the public sphere of information, as chartered by the German scholars Reinhard Koselleck and Jürgen Habermas, has flourished in the last two decades,¹⁹⁶ and the study of early modern state knowledge culture is gradually growing,¹⁹⁷ historical analyses of secrecy as a means of negotiating the conditions of knowledge transfer in the early modern period are still in an embryonic state.¹⁹⁸ This is astonishing, taking into consideration the implacable fascination of the early modern world with secrecy and its cultural, intellectual, and political by-products.¹⁹⁹ For the Republic of Saint Mark, secrecy was one of the most potent virtues promulgated by the authorities. In the following chapter, we shall explore the particular role official state secrecy played in the political make-up of Renaissance Venice and its constantly evolving state bureaucracy. The ensuing discussion will aptly set the scene for the analysis of Renaissance Venice’s intelligence organization in Chapter 3.

¹⁹⁶ The concept of the public sphere is explained in Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into the Category of Bourgeois Society, transl. Thomas Burger and Frederic Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), esp. pp. 51–6. The bibliography on the early modern public sphere is substantial. For an overview, see the essays in Brendan Dooley and Sabrina A. Baron (eds.), The Politics of Information in Early Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 2012); See also the essays in Rospocher, Massimo (ed.), Beyond the Public Sphere: Opinions, Publics, Spaces in Early Modern Europe (Bologna/Berlin: Il Mulino/Duncker & Humbolt, 2012). On the sixteenth century, in particular, see Brendan Dooley, A Social History of Scepticism: Experience and Doubt in Early Modern Culture (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). On the public sphere in early modern Venice, see De Vivo, Information and Communication. ¹⁹⁷ Some emblematic studies on early modern state knowledge culture are James E. King, Science and Rationalism in the Government of Louis XIV, 1661–1683 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1949); Kevin Sharpe, History and Politics in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979); Parker, The Grand Strategy; and Soll, The Information Master. On Venice, particularly pertinent is De Vivo, Information and Communication, as well as two recently completed doctoral theses: Lonardi, ‘L’anima dei governi’; and Fabio Antonini, ‘Historical Uses of the Secret Chancery in Early Modern Venice: Archiving, Researching and Presenting the Records of State’, Unpublished PhD Thesis (Birkbeck College, University of London, 2016). ¹⁹⁸ With the exception of Daniel Jütte, The Age of Secrecy: Jews, Christians, and the Economy of Secrets, 1400–1800, transl. Jeremiah Riemer (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015). ¹⁹⁹ Ibid.

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2 State Secrecy A Venetian Virtue

Nothing is more pernicious or can cause more damage and ruin to our state affairs than the revelation of the secrets discussed in our Councils.¹ In the summer of 1565, the bailo of Corfu received comprehensive orders from the Council of Ten on a peculiar clandestine mission.² The Ten had been informed that the bailo in Constantinople had forwarded to his counterpart in Corfu letters intended by the Grand Vizier—the Sultan’s prime minister—for Mustafa Pasha, an Ottoman general who had played a leading role in the Siege of Malta (1565) and whose fleet was still assumed to be on that island. The Ten were anxious to conceal from other Christian powers the intermediary role Venetians were playing at the time in transporting letters between Ottoman grandees. For this reason, they ordered the bailo in Corfu to find a trusted and loyal local mariner, seasoned in navigation and accustomed to the waters in that part of the Mediterranean, who, after receiving instructions only orally, would sail to Malta on a ‘well-stocked boat with our own faithful [subjects]’ to deliver secretly the letters to Mustafa. If, upon his arrival in Malta, the Ottoman armada had left the island, the mariner was to return the letters to the bailo, unless he fortuitously encountered the Turkish fleet during his return to Corfu. For the purpose of utmost secrecy, the boat had to steer away from any ships of the Christian Alliance against the Ottomans and, if he happened to come across such vessels, the captain ought to hide the letters and justify his sailing through those waters as part of a mission to liberate and repatriate slaves. Importantly, no one, not even the mariner’s crew, ought to be privy to the nature and purpose of the mission or who it was commissioned by. Accordingly, any emblem of Saint Mark had to be removed from the boat’s flags and arms.³ ¹ ‘Niuna cosa è piu perniciosa, nè apporta maggior detrimento e ruina alle cose del stado nostro, che il revellar de secreti che si trattono nelli consigli nostri’. Inquisitori di Stato in ASV, CX, Deliberazini Criminali, Reg. 5, c. 163r./v. (17 Aug. 1542). ² Like the Venetian envoy in Constantinople, the governor of Corfu was granted the title of bailo: see Arbel, ‘Venice’s Maritime Empire’, p. 147. On the institution of the bailo of Corfu, see Gerassimos D. Pagratis (ed.), Οι εκθέσεις των Βενετών Βαΐλων και προνοητών της Κέρκυρας (16ος αιώνας) (Athens: National Hellenic Research Foundation, 2008). ³ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 8, cc. 38v.–40r. (14 Aug. 1565).

Venice’s Secret Service: Organizing Intelligence in the Renaissance. Ioanna Iordanou, Oxford University Press (2019). © Ioanna Iordanou. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198791317.001.0001

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This was not the first time the Venetians had smuggled secret intelligence to the Ottomans. In the winter of 1533, the formal Venetian envoys to the court of Suleiman the Magnificent were ordered to request a top-secret audience with the Sultan or, in the Sultan’s absence, with his prime minister, to communicate intelligence they had received on a plan that had been hatched to attack the Ottoman town of Scutari (contemporary Shkodër) in northern Albania. While the Ten did not reveal who was planning the attack, they beseeched their envoys to communicate this piece of intelligence to the Ottoman grandees swiftly for the sake of the ‘perfect peace’ they maintained with the Ottoman Empire and their ‘benevolence’ towards the Sultan.⁴ In practice, such attempts to communicate intelligence to the Ottomans not only aimed at political (and by extension military) calm that safeguarded the preservation of Venetian strongholds of prime commercial significance in the Mediterranean; ventured primarily during times of peace, at intermissions between the ongoing Ottoman-Venetian wars, these endeavours were also a means of securing the smooth continuation of Venetian trade in the Levant. The above-mentioned episodes are testament to the ‘economy of secrets’, that is, ‘all activities that involve trading, offering, negotiating, delivering, exchanging, and buying secrets’,⁵ that was so pervasive in the political, economic, social, and cultural fabric of the early modern world. Indeed, the early modern world had an unyielding fascination with secrets, which is evident in the cultural, intellectual, and even political byways that secrecy produced. The literary genre of the secreta that dealt with secrets and their disclosure was one of them.⁶ This flourished in tandem with the distinct métier of the professori dei secreti, the professors of secrets, who dedicated their time and toil in search of secrets of nature (arcana naturae),⁷ despite the fact that secrecy still remained on the periphery of scientia in that period.⁸ The profession of the professore dei secreti was epitomized by the nobleman, natural historian, and self-proclaimed magus Giovanni Battista Della Porta (1535–1615), a man of protean talent, who, in 1560, founded an Academy of Secrets (Italian: Academia dei Secreti; Latin: Academia Secretorum Naturae) in his home town of Naples. This was an informal salon of erudite men who were fascinated by the lure of secret knowledge.⁹ Within this intellectual context, secrets

⁴ Ibid., Reg. 4, c. 23r. (12 Nov. 1533). ⁵ Jütte, The Age of Secrecy, p. 16. ⁶ For an overview of this type of literature, see John Ferguson, Bibliographical Notes on Histories of Inventions and Books of Secrets (Glasgow: Glasgow University Press, 1883). ⁷ On the professori dei secreti, see William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); Jütte, The Age of Secrecy. ⁸ Ibid., p. 12. ⁹ Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature, p. 137. On Gianbattista Della Porta, see Luisa Murano, Giambattista Della Porta mago e scienzato (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1982); On Della Porta’s Academia, see Mario Gliozzi, ‘Sulla Natura dell’ “Academia de’ Secreti” di Giovan Battista Porta’, in Archives internationales d’histoire des sciences 3 (1950), pp. 536–41.

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were not perceived merely as untapped knowledge to be revealed and explored, but as epistemic and cosmological categories worthy of exhaustive study.¹⁰ One of the most distinguished manifestations of secrecy in that period was its formal elevation to statecraft. Niccolò Machiavelli’s (1469–1527) doctrines, which centred on the ideal of raison d’état—the political justification of state action— emphasized the impossible necessity of secrecy in state affairs.¹¹ The term arcana imperii (‘secrets of the empire’ or, more broadly, ‘state secrets’), quarried from the writings of the Roman historian and senator Tacitus (c.56 —c.120 ), was sanctioned by Machiavelli and, through political thinkers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, turned into a catchphrase and a creed in the political discourse of the period, so much so that it eventually became the fulcrum of early modern politics. In consequence, nearly all European states underwent a process of ‘arcanization’, whereby secrecy strictures were endorsed, the acquisition of secret knowledge was systematized, and secret measures were deployed to ensure security, stability, even supremacy.¹² Consequently, within the context of state security, secrecy became morally justified as a legitimate instrument of statecraft, a powerful tool that afforded crowned heads of state a unique vantage point from which to ponder important issues and take strategic decisions. In a sense, then, secrecy became linked to political control.¹³ Before exploring Renaissance Venice’s state intelligence organization, it is important to analyse the institutional context in which it developed and functioned. Understandably, this context was steeped in secrecy. This chapter will explore the culture of secrecy that the Council of Ten distilled within and beyond the walls of the Doge’s Palace. This culture was perpetuated through a slew of formal regulations on the instrumentality of secrecy, especially official state secrecy, for the affairs and, by extension, the security of the Venetian state. The demand for secrecy spread across the dominion and permeated all echelons of Venetian society. Using social theorizations, the chapter will show how secrecy, as the ongoing process of intentional concealment, enabled social interactions amongst individuals of diverse social standing who, without the shield of ¹⁰ On secrets as epistemic and cosmological categories of knowledge, see Jütte, The Age of Secrecy, esp. Chapter 1. ¹¹ Peter Pesic, ‘Secrets, Symbols, and Systems: Parallels between Cryptanalysis and Algebra, 1580–1700’, Isis 88, no 4 (1997), pp. 674–92 (here p. 675); Jütte, The Age of Secrecy, pp. 19–20, 56–7. ¹² Jütte, The Age of Secrecy, p. 19. ¹³ While a comprehensive political history of early modern secrecy is yet to be written, the link between secrecy and power has an established foothold in the sociological literature. Particularly focusing on dictatorships, the Bulgarian-born polymath Elias Canetti argued that ‘secrecy lies at the very core of power’. See Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power, transl. Carol Stuart (New York: Continuum, 1981), p. 290. I am grateful to Professor Jana Costas for introducing me to Elias Canetti’s work. Discussing democratic systems, the American sociologist Charles Wright Mills also concurred that secrecy served to hide the powerful elite from the public eye and, in consequence, shielded their decision-making manoeuvres. See Charles Wright Mills, The Power Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956). These views echo Max Weber’s ruminations on the ‘pure power interests’ in the motivation to conceal knowledge. See Weber, Economy and Society, Vol. 1, p. 225.

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concealment, would not have been able to interact. More specifically, while erecting barriers between those privy to and those unaware of a secret, secrecy simultaneously forestalled the breakdown in communication that would have ensued, had there been no way of concealing privileged knowledge that had to be protected in order to be transferred. In this respect, secrecy functioned as a vehicle of knowledge exchange, creating a dynamic and enduring relationship between the government and the governed. First and foremost, official state secrecy was a vital tool of statecraft and political control for the Council of Ten.

The Ten’s Regulations on Secrecy In 1521, Girolamo Alberti, the secretary of the nobleman and future doge Andrea Gritti, was captured by the Duke of Mantua. To protect the secrecy of the public letters and the ciphers he was carrying with him, he swiftly acted upon the strict instructions he had received, burning them before they fell into unwanted hands.¹⁴ A few years later, Andrea Gritti’s son, Alvise, who was supporting the Venetians’ diplomatic pursuits in the Ottoman capital due to his friendship with Pargalı Ibrahim Pasha, the Grand Vizier of Suleiman the Magnificent, requested and was immediately granted a scribe who would pen his numerous letters to the Ten, as secrecy in the communication between Gritti and the Ten dictated the use of a trusted functionary rather than an unknown forestier.¹⁵ The Venetians were notorious for their obsession with secrecy and routinely went to great lengths to conceal news reaching the lagoon from overseas— especially from the Ottoman Empire—in order to process it at their own pace. Unimpressed and irritated, the papal nuncio once wrote back to Rome that while the Venetians tried to present freshly arrived letters from Constantinople as old, he remained unconvinced and suspected that the dispatches actually contained fresh news, especially as they had arrived a few days before the Ottomans invaded Cyprus in 1571.¹⁶ Two weeks later, his suspicion ripened into certainty, as he confirmed that the latest correspondence from the Ottoman capital was kept ‘under incredible silence’,¹⁷ while the letters that reached the Doge’s Palace ten days later were not even read in the Senate, since the Ten did not want anyone to know of their existence.¹⁸

¹⁴ Luigi Pasini, ‘Delle scritture in zifra usate dalla Repubblica di Venezia’, in Il Regio Archivio Generale di Venezia (Venice: Pietro Naratovich, 1873), p. 321. The order to burn letters immediately after they had been read by their intended recipients was issued routinely by the Council of Ten. For examples, see ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 4, c. 23r. (12 Nov. 1533); ibid., Reg. 5, c. 167r. (10 Nov. 1546). ¹⁵ Ibid., Reg. 3, cc. 37v.–38r. (23 July 1529). ¹⁶ ASVat, Segreteria di Stato, Venezia, b. 9, c. 52r. (23 June 1571). ¹⁷ Ibid., c. 59v. (7 July 1571). ¹⁸ Ibid., c. 63r./v. (18 July 1571).

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The above-mentioned incidents are demonstrative of the pervasive aura of secrecy surrounding the affairs of the Council of Ten and the Venetian government as a whole. Such manifestations of state secrecy were not mere capricious exercises in the intentional concealment of privileged knowledge that only a selected few amongst the government (and at times the governed) should be privy to: they were the outcome of copious policies deriving from the Ten’s formal regulations on state secrecy, which, as we shall see, intensified during times of political tension, military conflict, or diplomatic overtures. ‘Everyone in this Council . . . knows how necessary secrecy is . . . , since without it our State cannot be governed effectively’, they argued once, introducing a slew of deliberations institutionalizing secrecy as a vital instrument of statecraft.¹⁹ This is because, as the historian Filippo De Vivo has aptly shown, for the Venetian government, and especially for the Council of Ten, secrecy ensured confidentiality and embodied harmony and civic concord. It was primarily for both these ‘functional’ and ‘symbolic’ purposes that secrecy was ‘inherent in Venice’s Republican ideology’, and, in consequence, was glorified as one of the government’s most potent virtues.²⁰ The government’s obsession with secrecy intensified in the fifteenth century, when a string of regulations—that is, legally binding directives or decrees—was issued to potentiate and, ultimately, institutionalize it. These regulations involved the encounters of patricians with foreign princes and their emissaries, the dealings of governmental bodies with secret matters of state, and the safeguarding of the formal correspondence and other relevant documentation of Venetian envoys serving within and beyond the Dominante.²¹ The Ten were particularly concerned about leaks of state secrets ensuing from personal encounters between members of Venetian councils and foreign dignitaries. For this reason, in July 1481 an official decree forbade Venetians serving in principal governmental committees such as the Senate, the Collegio, and the Council of Ten from discussing state matters when consorting with foreign emissaries, on penalty of a fine of 1,000 ducats and a two-year exile.²² This was a matter of grave significance for the authorities, for which the Maggior Consiglio had already passed on a relevant law in 1403.²³ In an effort to reinforce this regulation, in 1576 the Ten reiterated their erstwhile decree, maintaining the 1,000-ducat fine and substituting the two-year exile with the expulsion from statecraft for a decade, a harsh penalty that could strip Venetian patricians of political prerogatives inextricably linked to their elevated social status. The policing of this rule was entrusted to the Inquisitori di Stato, who could impose minor punishments, while major disciplinary procedures were ¹⁹ Deliberation of the Council of Ten dated 19 April 1583, in Romanin, Storia documentata, Vol. VI, p. 130. ²⁰ De Vivo, Information and Communication, p. 41. ²¹ Lonardi, ‘L’anima dei governi’, p. 209. ²² Romanin, Storia documentata, Vol. VI, pp. 116–17. ²³ Lonardi, ‘L’anima dei governi’, p. 209, n. 577.

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reserved for the Council of Ten. It was also agreed that reminders of this rule would be published every October.²⁴ To minimize contact with foreign emissaries and their entourages and to ensure that all diplomatic communication took place only through formally approved channels, embassies in Venice were located on the periphery of the city,²⁵ although grandstanding ministers of powerful European states had more flexibility in choosing lodgings in the centre, rather than the city’s margins, where Italian representatives were compelled to reside.²⁶ When Venetian patricians wished to visit foreign dignitaries in the city, they were legally required to apply for special permission.²⁷ In 1569, for instance, when an imminent visit by the Archduke of Austria to Venice was rumoured, both Stefano Querini and Girolamo Lippomano, who had served as Venetian ambassadors to the archduke’s court two years earlier, rushed to obtain a licence from the Heads of the Ten to call on the Austrian visitor.²⁸ To monitor the frequency of such encounters, a separate licence had to be obtained for every intended visit, under the penalty of a 500-ducat fine.²⁹ Similar restrictions applied to any formal contact Venetian noblemen wished to have with foreign grandees. For this reason, in 1589, the patrician Daniele Sanudo asked for and was granted permission to contact Ferdinando de’ Medici (1549–1609), the Grand Duke of Tuscany, in a bid to request exclusive rights for the publication of his forthcoming book in Florence and its territories.³⁰ While harsh in nature, such regulations were intended to minimize Venetian noblemen’s contact with foreign emissaries, their entourages, and, importantly, other foreign personages who frequented the residences of foreign diplomats in the city. Eventually, even foreign ambassadors were bound by such restrictions, which Dudley Carleton, the English envoy in Venice, sardonically styled ‘the privileges of an ambassador’s house, no conversations with foreign ministers’,³¹ grumbling about the peculiar policy that barred him from communicating with any ‘man of merit’ except the occasional ‘public minister’ or ‘straggling traveller’.³² Diego Guzmán de Silva, the Spanish ambassador to Venice, also complained about the difficulty of soliciting verbal communication, especially from Venetian patricians. In a dispatch to Philip II he lamented that secrecy was so engrained within the Venetian nobility that the norm of keeping silent was practised not only

²⁴ ²⁵ ²⁶ ²⁷ ²⁸ ²⁹ ³⁰ ³¹ ³²

ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 11, c. 91r./v. (30 March 1576). De Vivo, Information and Communication, p. 75. Lonardi, ‘L’anima dei governi’, pp. 212–13. ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, c. 213r. (8 Feb. 1572). ASV, CCX, Licenze per visitare ambasciatori e personali esteri (4 and 16 May 1569). ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, c. 213r. (8 Feb. 1572). ASV, CCX, Licenze per visitare ambasciatori e personali esteri (23 Feb. 1589). TNA, SP 9/244A/11, c. 109r./v., Dudley Carleton (1612–1613). De Vivo, Information and Communication, p. 71.

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by governmental representatives but also by noblemen who did not take part in statecraft.³³ The papal nuncio felt so restrained by the Venetians’ obsession with secrecy that he even felt compelled to formally inform the members of the Collegio that he was neither interested in nor actively attempting to uncover their secret affairs,³⁴ despite the fact that he had ample proof that the Venetians were wilfully withholding information, especially intelligence pertaining to their dealings with the Ottomans,³⁵ as we have already seen. Secrecy within the Doge’s Palace was, according to the pontiff ’s legate, so stringent that not even his own informants, selectively hand-picked from the Venetian patriciate, could supply him with any noteworthy piece of news.³⁶ This practice of diplomatic isolation was not an exclusive Venetian whim. The Ottomans were also notorious for such procedures and, in the case of a Venetian bailo, they even barricaded his windows, as we shall see in the following chapter.³⁷ Nevertheless, despite the Venetian authorities’ concerted efforts to sequester foreign diplomats, the city’s urban morphology and density of population rendered such forbidden encounters almost inevitable. Notably, while one Ottoman diplomat was billeted on the island of the Giudecca, a boat ride away from Venice’s political nucleus, to minimize contact with Venetian patricians, his entourage informed him of everything worth recounting, as they were able to freely roam the city and the lagoon.³⁸ In fact, some Venetian noblemen regarded such encounters highly educational for Venice’s young patricians who were destined to take over the reins of government one day.³⁹ Consequently, the Ten’s strictures persisted and even intensified in the seventeen century, in continual attempts to monitor and regulate such contacts.⁴⁰ The Ten’s unyielding preoccupation with limiting Venetian patricians’ encounters with foreign grandees and dignitaries went hand in hand with their stouthearted resolve to minimize disclosures ensuing from governmental assemblies. For this reason, in 1533 they decreed that it was strictly forbidden to communicate any matter discussed in the Senate or other deliberative bodies, either orally or in writing, to any outsider, under penalty of a fine of 1,000 ducats and, in extreme cases, even death.⁴¹ No one, not even senior magistrates, were exempt from these directives. For this reason, upon taking up their role, the members of the Council of Ten took a formal oath to maintain the secrecy of the council’s affairs on pain of ³³ AGS, Estado, Legajo 1329, fol. 64 (14 June 1571). ³⁴ ASVat, Segreteria di Stato, Venezia, b. 14, c. 70r. (5 June 1574); ibid., b. 16, c. 90r. (5 June 1574). ³⁵ Ibid., b. 9, c. 52r. (23 June 1571); ibid., b. 264, c. 21r./v. (21 Feb. 1573). ³⁶ Ibid., b. 10, fols. 64–9 (29 Aug. 1570). ³⁷ On the Ottoman practices of isolating foreign diplomats, see Gürkan, ‘The Efficacy of Ottoman Counter-Intelligence’. ³⁸ Gürkan, Sultanın Casusları, pp. 135–6; Gürkan, ‘The Efficacy of Ottoman Counter-Intelligence’, p. 18, n. 43. ³⁹ De Vivo, Information and Communication, p. 73. ⁴⁰ See Lonardi, ‘L’anima dei governi’, esp. Chapter 4. ⁴¹ Romanin, Storia documentata, Vol. VI, pp. 121–2 (the deliberation is dated 12 Feb. 1532 m.v.).

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forfeiting their official rights as members of one of the government’s most exclusive committees for a decade.⁴² The restrictions imposed upon the Heads of the Ten were even sterner. According to a 1611 decree, under oath to the Doge, the Capi were not allowed to frequent public places where the nobility congregated, such as Saint Mark’s Square, the Rialto bridge, or the city’s shops, during the first day of their monthly service as Capi. Due to the gravity of this restriction, formal reminders were to be issued on a monthly basis.⁴³ Governmental disputes and debates were a particularly thorny issue for the Ten, for both practical and, importantly, symbolic reasons. In consequence, the patricians who took part in governmental councils were forbidden by law from revealing the content of any debates or instances of conflict and discord that arose during assemblies. Disobedience was punishable by death and the subsequent confiscation of all personal possessions.⁴⁴ As if concealing disputes from oral dissemination were not enough, state secretaries minuting these meetings were also strictly instructed to keep no record of conciliar debates and censor any instances of dissent in the final transcript of committee deliberations.⁴⁵ The primary purpose of these strictures was to erase from posterity any written trace of internal conflict, in order to preserve the halcyon image of communal serenity triumphing over private interests and discrepancies that conferred on Venice the title La Serenissima, the most serene of states.⁴⁶ Yet, as De Vivo has shown, some of these sedentary operatives flouted the norms of tactfulness and resorted to a ‘graphic commentary of official acts, in ambivalent if not openly critical ways’, by means of doodling pertinent words and images on the margins of official registers out of frustration.⁴⁷ Such discursive reactions to the regulation of state secrecy deviated from, and even contravened, formal restrictions, indicating state officials’ exasperated responses to the tedium of rules and regulations inundating their work, in combination with other kinds of discontent deriving from it.⁴⁸ When it came to the protection of state secrets, one of the Ten’s top priorities was the epistolary communication between Venetian diplomats serving overseas and the Venetian authorities stationed in the Doge’s Palace. In an era when written correspondence was the most prevalent method of long-distance communication,⁴⁹ letters and dispatches became the cornerstone of political and ⁴² Ibid., pp. 523–34 (Capitolare of the Ten dated 22 Dec. 1578). ⁴³ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 15, cc. 57v.–58r. (3 Oct. 1611). ⁴⁴ Ibid., Reg. 14, cc. 129v.–130r. (28 Nov. 1605). See also Romanin, Storia documentata, Vol. VI, p. 138; De Vivo, Information and Communication, p. 43. ⁴⁵ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Comuni, f. 351 (30 May 1624). ⁴⁶ Filippo De Vivo, ‘Cœur de l’État, lieu de tension: le tournant archivistique vu de Venise (XVe–XVIIe siècle)’, Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 68, no 3 (2013), pp. 699–728 (here p. 716). ⁴⁷ Ibid, pp. 724–5. ⁴⁸ Ibid. ⁴⁹ On correspondence and epistolary exchange in the early modern period, see Gary Schneider, The Culture of Epistolarity: Vernacular Letters and Letter Writing in Early Modern England, 1500–1700 (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2005); and the essays in Bethencourt and Egmond, Correspondence and Cultural Exchange.

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diplomatic exchanges.⁵⁰ Due to their popularity, they were also sought by a plethora of inquisitive individuals and, consequently, they had to be protected. For this reason, already from the fifteenth century, the Ten had issued a series of regulations to safeguard the secrecy of these communications, forbidding formal Venetian representatives serving within and beyond the Dominante from sharing information relating to their mission or to matters of state in their correspondence with relatives, friends, or other acquaintances.⁵¹ In order to consolidate secrecy, the Ten also insisted on the systematic use of cryptography, as we shall see in the following chapter. During the third Ottoman-Venetian war, for example, the Ten ordered the bailo in Constantinople to correspond with them in cipher, insisting that the letters exchanged be written solely by the bailo’s secretary and their own formal clerks.⁵² Similarly, when Venice’s diplomatic legations were run by distinguished state secretaries, who were called Residenti, rather than ambassadors, as in the case of Milan and Florence, they were strictly ordered to pen their missives personally, under penalty of losing their diplomatic prerogatives and other public benefits.⁵³ These regulations stemmed from the Ten’s fixation on protecting the official documents of Venetian representatives serving in the Serenissima’s territories beyond the motherland or overseas. Already from 1518, the Ten had decreed that all formal registers, letters, and other state papers relating to secret matters of state that were in the possession of Venetian officials stationed overseas (such as captain generals, ambassadors, governors, and their secretaries) ought to be returned to the Capi instantly after the officials’ repatriation, upon completion of their diplomatic mission. The papers were then to be formally catalogued and deposited in a secret location. Failure to obey this regulation could result in the loss of office and other political rights.⁵⁴ Similarly, the descendants of deceased officials were granted eight days to return their relative’s documents to the Ten, under penalty of being censured by the government.⁵⁵ Nonetheless, despite the severity of these sanctions, this regulation had limited effect, as state servants could not see a clear-cut distinction between public and private life. In consequence, they kept possession of these documents, which, more often than not, ⁵⁰ On epistolarity as a political tool in early modern Italy, see Jean Boutier, Sandro Landi, and Olivier Rouchon, La Politique par correspondance: les usages politiques de la lettre en Italie (XIVe–XVIIIe siècle) (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2009). On the role of diplomatic correspondence and reportage in early modern Italy generally, see John Kenneth Hyde, ‘The Role of Diplomatic Correspondence and Reporting’, in Daniel Philip Waley (ed.), Literacy and its Uses: Studies on Late Medieval Italy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), pp. 217–59. ⁵¹ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Miste, Reg. 16, c. 120v. (23 May 1464). ⁵² ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 4, c. 34r. (25 Sep. 1539). ⁵³ See, for example, ibid., Reg. 19, cc. 85r.–86r. (11 July 1641). On the Venetian Residenti, see Zannini, ‘Economic and Social Aspects’, esp. pp. 112, 133. ⁵⁴ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Miste, Reg. 42, cc. 60v.–61r. (18 June 1518). ⁵⁵ Romanin, Storia documentata, Vol. VI, pp. 134–6 (the deliberations are dated 29 July and 20 Sep. 1596).

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ended up in the wrong hands and turned into profitable commodities.⁵⁶ For this reason, the Ten kept reiterating this regulation, enhancing it with more restrictions that prohibited Venetian representatives from producing or distributing copies of their state papers.⁵⁷ In the 1570s, the Ten even formally legislated against the sale of such documents, under the threat of severe sanctions, including five years of enchained galley service, or ten years of banishment from all Venetian territories.⁵⁸ Such decrees, however, were never entirely effective, following a pattern whereby the greater the number of pernickety regulations on state secrecy imposed by the Ten, the less impact they seemed to have on their officials, who were seasoned in distinguishing which ones they could ignore and which ones they ought to adhere to. In consequence, the Venetian glorification of state secrecy seemed to ensue less from its partial effectiveness and more from the illusion of its triumph.

The Illusion of State Secrecy Venice’s urban morphology played a significant role in both the glorification and the illusion of state secrecy’s accomplishment. Unlike most early modern European states, Venice was a small water-locked metropolis surrounded by a lagoon. By the mid-sixteenth century, Venice had sprouted and budded into one of the largest cities in early modern Europe, boasting a population of around 150,000 inhabitants.⁵⁹ While 90 per cent of the population were homespun islanders employed in the city’s ample industries, they were not overall unlettered. On the contrary, with one of the highest literacy rates in Renaissance Italy—nearly 30 per cent of boys were literate at the close of the sixteenth century—and an unquenchable thirst for news and gossip, Venetians feasted on the rumours and fabrications that were passed in a maze of directions within and beyond the city’s canals and labyrinthine streets.⁶⁰ Similarly in the political arena, the lack of established degrees of exclusion, as at a royal court, meant that information could

⁵⁶ On the wide circulation of such documents, see De Vivo, Information and Communication; De Vivo, Patrizi, informatori, barbieri: politica e comunicazione a Venezia nella prima età moderna (Milan: Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore, 2012). ⁵⁷ On reiterations of the 1518 regulation, see Romanin, Storia documentata, Vol. VI, pp. 127–8, 134–6 (the renewed deliberations are dated 17 Jan. 1558 m.v.; 29 July and 20 Sep. 1596). ⁵⁸ Romanin, Storia documentata, Vol. VI, p. 129 (deliberation dated 8 Feb. 1571 m.v.). ⁵⁹ On the population of Venice, see Andrea Zannini, ‘Un censimento del primo seicento e la crisi demografica ed economica di Venezia’, Studi Veneziani 26 (1993), pp. 87–116. ⁶⁰ For an examination of the practice of gossip in early modern Venice, see Elizabeth Horodowich, ‘The Gossiping Tongue: Oral Networks, Public Life and Political Culture in Early Modern Venice’, Renaissance Studies 19, no. 1 (2005), pp. 22–45. On literacy in Renaissance Venice, see Paul F. Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300–1600 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), esp. Chapter 2; Grendler, ‘Education in the Republic of Venice’, in Dursteler, A Companion to Venetian History, pp. 675–99 (esp. p. 683).

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escape the Doge’s Palace and snake through the echoing calli with the same remarkable speed that it could reach it.⁶¹ Information, therefore, especially the type that was precarious for the security of the state, ought to be concealed at all costs.⁶² In practice, this was hardly possible. When state secrecy failed, the consequences could be catastrophic. A fierce political and diplomatic scandal that broke in 1542 as a result of illicit disclosures of state secrets is a case in point. The scandal was ignited when it was revealed that Venetian officials had systematically leaked state secrets to the French ambassador, Guillaume Pellicier, a diplomat who was notorious for his attempts to lure Venetian turncoats into stealthy revelations for the benefit of the French king. The leaked information pertained to the ‘disgraceful’ peace treaty that the nobleman Alvise Badoer had secured on behalf of Venice two years earlier, which saw the surrender of Napoli di Romania (modern day Nauplion) and Malvasia (Monemvasia), two towns of prime economic significance for Venice in the Greek Morea,⁶³ to the Ottoman Sultan.⁶⁴ As it eventually transpired, Badoer had stumbled upon a string of botched diplomatic overtures with the Ottomans, not due to a commonly perceived lack of competence that ultimately cost him his career, but because of the treachery of two high-ranking functionaries of the Venetian state bureaucracy, Costantin Cavazza, a secretary of the Council of Ten, and Nicolò Cavazza, a secretary of the Senate. More specifically, through the mediation of a certain Agustin Abondio and the nobleman Giovanni Francesco Valier, and in exchange for gifts from the French king, Costantin and Nicolò managed to leak the classified instructions on the negotiation of the treaty, issued to Badoer by the Senate and the Council of Ten, to the French ambassador in Venice (see Fig. 2.1), who, via his counterpart in the Sublime Porte, passed them on to the Sultan.⁶⁵ According to these directives, Badoer was initially advised to offer hefty sums of money to the Ottomans so that the Venetians would not have to forfeit Napoli di Romania and Malvasia. When it was obvious that the Sultan would not budge, Badoer received secret orders from the Ten to offer Malvasia first and, only if there was unswerving Ottoman persistence, to surrender both cities to them. As it emrged two years later, after the scandal became known, the Sultan was able to crush all Venetian demands because he had been privy to the Venetian government’s top-secret strategy, and thus, held all the cards on the negotiating table.⁶⁶

⁶¹ De Vivo, Information and Communication, p. 48. ⁶² Ibid., p. 43. ⁶³ Napoli di Romania, in particular, was a major producer of salt, arguably the most important product imported from the Stato da Mar: see Arbel, ‘Venice’s Maritime Empire’, pp. 220–2. ⁶⁴ On Alvise Badoer’s biography and his diplomatic negotiations, see Angelo Ventura, ‘Badoer, Alvise’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Vol. 5 (1963), pp. 93–6; Preto, I servizi segreti, p. 75; Romanin, Storia documentata, Vol. VI, pp. 57–8. ⁶⁵ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 5, cc. 28v.–29v. (19 Jan. 1540). See also Ventura, ‘Badoer, Alvise’. ⁶⁶ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Criminali, Reg. 5, c. 163r./v. (17 Aug. 1542); Romanin, Storia documentata, Vol. VI, p. 59.

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Fig. 2.1. The Entry of the French Ambassador in Venice in 1706, Luca Carlevarijs. Reproduced with permission of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

So powerful was the shock of the treachery that the Ten and the Inquisitori di Stato were forced to take prompt and unequivocal action. Having suspected the perfidy on account of an anonymous letter that had been handed to the nobleman Ferigo Badoer, Alvise’s son, they publicly proclaimed an abundance of rewards to the person who would turn in the turncoats.⁶⁷ Within hours, Girolamo Martolosso, a man who was having an affair with Abondio’s wife and, consequently, had inside knowledge of the matter, gave them away.⁶⁸ In a matter of days, while Abondio took refuge in the French embassy, Costantin escaped and was eventually proclaimed banished,⁶⁹ while Nicolò and other noblemen who were deemed complicit in the crime were arrested and tortured by the Inquisitori.⁷⁰ Things, however, took a turn for the worse when a governmental delegation called at the French ambassador’s residence, demanding that Abondio be handed over to them. Rather than receiving them cordially, as diplomatic etiquette dictated, the ambassador’s men violently assaulted the Venetian officials. This improper treatment was enough to open the floodgates of civic disorder. News travelled swiftly through the city’s calli and the incident became a cause célèbre within hours, with vociferous crowds taking to the streets shouting and menacingly marching towards the French embassy. To placate them and to forestall widespread outbreaks of violence, the authorities were forced to surround the area with 600 armed guards for two days. Letters were sent to the Venetian envoys in ⁶⁷ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Criminali, Reg. 5, c. 163r./v. (17 Aug. 1542). ⁶⁸ Romanin, Storia documentata, Vol. VI, pp. 59–60. ⁶⁹ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Criminali, Reg. 5, cc. 166r., 169r./v. (22 Aug., 4 Sep. 1542); ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 5, cc. 77r.–78r. (26 Sep. 1542). ⁷⁰ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Criminali, Reg. 5, c. 164r./v. (19, 21 Aug. 1542).

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France and Constantinople requesting that Costantin be found and punished.⁷¹ More poignantly, the Venetian legate in France was asked to petition the King for a new ambassador, one that was ‘more dexterous in negotiation’.⁷² Eventually, to avoid a potential schism between the two states, the French ambassador was forced to surrender Abondio, who was ushered to the Ten’s prison by boat, to avoid lynching by the howling crowds in the streets.⁷³ In the meantime, Costantin remained banished and his son, who at the time was serving as the secretary of the Venetian ambassador in France, was instantly dismissed,⁷⁴ while Nicolò Cavazza, Abondio, and Valier were hanged publicly, for everyone to see the egregious consequences of breaching state secrecy.⁷⁵ This incident, which occurred just under three years after the establishment of Venice’s counter-intelligence committee, the Inquisitori di Stato, was amongst ‘the most dramatic cases of treason’ in the history of the institution of the Inquisitori.⁷⁶ The thunderous proportions it eventually assumed were due to the fact that the populace lost faith in the government’s ability to protect official secrets and, by extension, the security of the Venetian state. So deep was the breach of the Venetians’ trust in the authorities that there were even those who erroneously assumed that the government had succumbed to the French king’s capricious whims and put the city up for sale.⁷⁷ In response, the Ten were prompt in taking drastic action—from employing hundreds of men to guard the French embassy to arresting and executing the culprits—in order to ‘appease the mayhem of the public’.⁷⁸ Doing so and showing that ordinary Venetians were an indispensable part of a state apparatus that operated for their welfare and benefit were, at least on paper, their primary concern. It was on account of this acrimonious incident that the 1518 law that prohibited Venetian patricians in office from consorting with foreign envoys was amended to include all Venetian noblemen, regardless of whether they held office or not.⁷⁹ Indeed, this was the regulation that had Diego Guzmán de Silva grumbling to his royal master, as we saw above. The aforementioned incident substantiates the claim that state secrecy was far from a continuously accomplished process of concealment in Renaissance Venice. On the contrary, despite the Ten’s unbending intolerance of breaches of secrecy, sensitive information could leak from a variety of cracks in the system. The overwhelmingly large participation in Venice’s governmental committees posed ⁷¹ Ibid., Reg. 5, cc. 164r.–166r. (21, 22 Aug. 1542); ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 5, cc. 73r.–76r. (22, 25 Aug. 1542). ⁷² ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 5, cc. 75r.–76r. (25 Aug. 1542). ⁷³ Romanin, Storia documentata, Vol. VI, p. 62. ⁷⁴ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 5, c. 74r./v. (22 Aug. 1542). ⁷⁵ Ibid., c. 79r. (2 Oct. 1542); ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Criminali, Reg. 5, c. 174r. (20 Sep. 1542). ⁷⁶ Preto, I servizi segreti, p. 75. ⁷⁷ For an account of the reaction of the Venetian populace, see Romanin, Storia documentata, Vol. VI, pp. 62–3. ⁷⁸ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 5, cc. 73r.–74r., 75r.–76r. (22, 25 Aug. 1542). ⁷⁹ De Vivo, Information and Communication, p. 71.

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the first risk. As the Senate and the Great Council involved about 300 and nearly 2,000 men respectively, maintaining secrecy posed a unique challenge.⁸⁰ Aside from extended family networks, most of these men had an entourage of servants and gondoliers accompanying them to the palace on a daily basis, the majority of whom were, more often than not, eager for news and gossip.⁸¹ Despite the Ten’s mid-fifteenth century formal decree on the restriction of a patrician’s entourage in the palace and access to formal assemblies,⁸² information could inevitably be overheard or directly communicated by an inestimable number of people. The illegitimate scions of the patriciate were particularly prone to disclosures, provided they furnished them with privileges that their political marginalization, due to their illegitimate status, had deprived them of.⁸³ To stop leaks, all patricians who took part in Venice’s governing bodies were legally required to keep quiet about discussions and debates taking place during formal assemblies.⁸⁴ This stringent legislation made up for the lack of a royal court, where sensitive information could be confined and safeguarded.⁸⁵ In practice, however, there were discernible lags between intent and reality, legislation and its implementation. Venetian ambassadors constituted another vehicle through which confidential information circulated within and beyond the watery confines of the city. Before their departure for a diplomatic mission, Venetian diplomats were granted access to the official archive of state secrets, the Secreta, which will be discussed in detail in the following chapter. There, they read their predecessors’ dispatches and any other relevant records that would assist them in their diplomatic mission. They were also allowed to copy official documents that were deemed necessary for their overseas assignment, which, as we have already seen, routinely remained in their possession even after the completion of their mission and, invariably, found their way to different outlets leading to the public sphere.⁸⁶ Upon their repatriation, ambassadors (and other government representatives) had to deliver their relazione, their end-of-service report, and deposit it in the Secreta.⁸⁷ The relazioni contained classified information on enemies and allies, and, for this reason, patricians who were present during their delivery were strictly

⁸⁰ Ibid., p. 25; Lane, Venice, pp. 273–4. ⁸¹ Jonathan Walker, Filippo De Vivo, and James Shaw, ‘A Dialogue on Spying in 17th-Century Venice’, Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice 10, no 33 (2006), pp. 323–44 (here p. 325). ⁸² ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Miste, Reg. 15, c. 188 (26 Sep. 1456). ⁸³ De Vivo, Information and Communication, pp. 46, 76–7. ⁸⁴ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 3, c. 2r./v. (31 March 1529); ibid., Reg. 14, cc. 129v.–130r. (28 Nov. 1605). ⁸⁵ De Vivo, Information and Communication, p. 48. ⁸⁶ Ibid., pp. 54–5. ⁸⁷ Romanin, Storia documentata, Vol. VI, pp. 127–8. On Venetian relazioni, see Donald E. Queller, ‘The Development of Ambassadorial Relazioni’, in Hale, Renaissance Venice, pp. 174–96. On the different uses of the relazioni, see De Vivo, Information and Communication, pp. 57–63.

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forbidden from discussing their content beyond the assembly’s walls.⁸⁸ Yet, due to the aura of mystery and intrigue shrouding them, the relazioni were highly sought after by foreign ambassadors and local patricians alike. Consequently, their authors would leak them for a variety of motives, including prestige, political currency, monetary gains, and, ultimately, for publicity purposes.⁸⁹ It is for this reason that confidence in the secret process of the formal delivery of a relazione was, at times, shaken. When the above-mentioned Alvise Badoer returned from his diplomatic mission to Constantinople amidst an atmosphere of indignation, on account of his perceived poor negotiating skills, he sought formal assurances from the Ten that whatever he was to report during his relazione would remain secretissimo et sepolto (most secret and buried).⁹⁰ Another avenue for the breach of state secrecy was the institution of the broglio (see Fig. 2.2), the patricians’ public networking gathering.⁹¹ The broglio was situated in a square just outside the gates of the Palazzo Ducale. There, on a

Fig. 2.2. Il Broglio e la Prima Vestizione della Toga, Gabriele Bella. Reproduced with permission of the Fondazione Querini Stampalia Onlus, Venice. ⁸⁸ De Vivo, Information and Communication, p. 59. ⁸⁹ Ibid., pp. 58–62. ⁹⁰ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 5, c. 65r./v. (26 May 1547). ⁹¹ On the broglio, see Finlay, Politics, pp. 27–8; Donald E. Queller, The Venetian Patriciate: Reality versus Myth (Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1986), pp. 57–75, 95–101, and the bibliography therein; De Vivo, Information and Communication, pp. 47–8.

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daily basis patricians exchanged news, arranged strategic alliances, and negotiated political deals. Utilized primarily for ‘electioneering’ and ‘canvassing’, the broglio was regulated by codes of amity and courtesy that resembled the exaggerated etiquette and obfuscated formalism of European princely courts.⁹² Unlike other such gatherings in courtly settings, however, the broglio was a public, informal, and rather unstructured institution. As a result, it was open to a variety of outsiders, such as commoners and foreign visitors in the city.⁹³ In fact, the broglio made up for the stringent legislation barring foreign emissaries in Venice from consorting with the local nobility beyond formal contact avenues. Consequently, it furnished foreign diplomats with an unmatched opportunity for rubbing shoulders with Venetian patricians in their avid quest for valuable intelligence. For this reason, the broglio was considered precarious for state security and became the target of close surveillance by the authorities.⁹⁴ On the whole, in a city so frenzied with news, gossip roamed through the maze of Venice’s circuitous calli and canals at a great speed. As a result, disclosures were almost impossible to prevent. Whether on account of its urban morphology, which was conducive to the effortless circulation of information, or the overcrowdedness of Venice’s political headquarters, or whether due to patricians’ cavalier treatment of their official documents and their relazioni, or the porous institution of the broglio, the accomplishment of state secrecy remained in the realm of virtue rather than that of reality in Renaissance Venice. It was primarily for this reason that state secrecy was gradually elevated to an Olympian-like sphere of intricate deliberations and dignified discourse so persistent and pervasive that it encompassed all echelons of Venetian society.

Masks, Lions’ Mouths, and Secret Denunciations Your excellences must know that my ill-born brother, whose name will shortly be revealed to you, is a traitor to our motherland; he reveals the most important secrets of the negotiations of our councils to Zuane Pecchi, who lives in calle Sporca in the neighbourhood of San Luca, on the bank of the Grand Canal, and then he [Pecchi] communicates them to his compatriot, who is the servant of the Holy Roman Emperor’s ambassador, who uses the servant in order to be accurately informed of what is discussed in the Senate. Unless your excellences want rumours to spread in the Republic, you should act upon this notice.⁹⁵

⁹² Ibid., p. 47. ⁹³ Ibid., p. 48. ⁹⁴ Walker, De Vivo, and Shaw, ‘A Dialogue on Spying’, pp. 324–5. ⁹⁵ ASV, IS, b. 643 (non-dated anonymous denunciation).

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This is the content of a secret denunciation, as it was reported to the Heads of the Council of Ten by an anonymous resident of the city. Flouting social conventions that dictate a stance of discretion in the misbehaviour of close family members, the denunciator saw it as incumbent upon himself or herself to assist the Venetian state in halting treacherous revelations of state secrets to those who should not be privy to them. Ironically, while in the realm of state secrecy the Venetian ruling class was ordered to keep quiet, Venetians ruled by them were urged to speak up. For this reason, gathering and divulging information that related to the security of the Venetian state was considered, as we shall see, an act of good citizenship. The communication of such information could be done via written denunciations.⁹⁶ Denunciations pertaining to the revelation of state secrets were of the utmost significance and were thus treated with supreme solemnity by the Venetian counter-intelligence magistracy, the State Inquisitors, and their political ‘patron’, the Council of Ten.⁹⁷ This is evident in the vertiginous sums the authorities were willing to disburse for such revelations. At the close of the sixteenth century, for instance, when it transpired that the Spanish ambassador had well-placed informants in the Doge’s Palace who furnished him with intelligence on secret affairs discussed in the Senate, two men, Giovanni Alvise Zaffardo and Giovanni Dolce, offered to reveal the offenders to the State Inquisitors. Their professed source was Dolce’s father-in-law, Juan de Cornoça, the Spanish consul based in Venice, who, allegedly, had inside information on the infiltrators’ identity. With unstinting panache, the aspiring denuntiati requested extraordinary compensation for their pending disclosure. Zaffardo asked for more refined apparel, which, he hoped, would grant him a modicum of social cachet and even elevate him to a higher social plateau, the immediate payment of his numerous debts, and a small boat that would enable him to sail through the city’s canals in order to snoop on unsuspecting dwellers. More supercilious in his demands, as he brashly aspired to be raised above the mass of Venetian commoners, Dolce demanded formal elevation to nobility.⁹⁸ Following a series of letters to the Inquisitori and a formal debate in the Council of Ten, the State Inquisitors eventually considered a reward of 4,000 ducats in instalments,⁹⁹ an astronomical reimbursement, taking into account that the compensation of a mercenary spy was between 100 and 150 ducats for extremely risky missions,¹⁰⁰ while the salary of a Venetian cryptanalyst fluctuated between 48 and 120 ducats annually, as we shall see in the ensuing chapters.¹⁰¹ Eventually, however, it became blatantly ⁹⁶ On the Venetians’ system of secret denunciations, see Paolo Preto, Persona per ora secreta: Accusa e delazione nella Repubblica di Venezia (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 2003). ⁹⁷ Canosa, Alle Origini, p. 52. ⁹⁸ ASV, IS, b. 638 (27 March 1590). ⁹⁹ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 13, cc. 97r.–98v. (11 Aug. 1592). ¹⁰⁰ See, for instance, ibid., Reg. 9, c. 108r./v. (3 Dec. 1570); ibid., cc. 113v.–114r. (22 Dec. 1570). ¹⁰¹ Ibid., f. 15 (23 Nov., 30 Dec. 1571); ibid., Reg. 19, c. 18r./v. (14 July 1636).

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obvious that the two aspiring parvenus could offer nothing but thin air to the Inquisitori, wasting, thus, their time and effort. Initially arrested for their tinfoil-hat speculations, they were eventually released upon swearing a formal oath to keep their official dealings with the Venetian counter-intelligence authorities strictly confidential.¹⁰² The above episodes are emblematic of the proclivity of ordinary Venetians to inform the authorities of any perceived threats to state security, especially those pertaining to breaches of official secrecy. This proclivity reflected a longestablished open-door stance maintained by the Council of Ten, which invited Venetian commoners to denounce, in secret, anyone or anything that could pose a potential threat to the stability of the state. More specifically, already from the fourteenth century, Venetians were encouraged to leave anonymous or eponymous denunciations in any public place, including churches, the stairs of state buildings, even the doorsteps of government officials. These denunciations concerned matters relating to the stability and security of the Venetian state, including assassinations, thefts, blasphemy, gambling, tax evasion, public health, espionage, the leaking of state secrets, as well as the safety of state officials.¹⁰³ In January 1597, for example, an anonymous letter handed to the secretary of the Council of Ten, Bonifatio Antelmi, included the name of an individual who was planning his assassination.¹⁰⁴ At the time, Antelmi was living in constant fear for his life, due to a series of death threats targeted at him, despite ‘having always lived in peace and without offending anyone’, as the Council of Ten lamented. It seems that the first denunciation did not have any effect, as two months later the authorities increased the value of the monetary reward and pledged secrecy to anyone who would reveal the firebrand, provided that the individual making the revelation was not the actual offender.¹⁰⁵ Within the context of state security, then, secret denunciations served as a conduit of communication between the government and the governed.¹⁰⁶ Viewed in this light, secret denunciations were both a tool of judicial intervention on the part of the government and an act of sociopolitical expression on the part of the governed. For this reason, already by 1442, the Council of Ten had created a formal register where secret denunciations were recorded.¹⁰⁷ The Ten guaranteed the utmost secrecy in dealing with them, since revealing the denunciator’s

¹⁰² Ibid., Reg. 13, cc. 98v.–99r. (2 Sep. 1592). ¹⁰³ For several instances of secret denunciations, see Preto, Persona per ora secreta. ¹⁰⁴ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 14, c. 12r. (23 Jan. 1597). ¹⁰⁵ Ibid., c. 15r./v. (14 March 1597). ¹⁰⁶ While such denunciations bear a vague resemblance to what in contemporary parlance would be called ‘whistle-blowing’, it is important to distinguish between an early modern citizen informing their government on issues of state security and the contemporary act of ‘passing crucial information from lower levels of organizations to higher level officials’. On the latter, see Michael M. Ting, ‘Whistleblowing’, American Political Science Review 102, no 2 (2008), pp. 249–67 (here p. 249). ¹⁰⁷ Preto, Persona per ora secreta, p. 47.

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credentials, especially in the early stages of ensuing investigations, could have serious repercussions for both the individual and the case being investigated.¹⁰⁸ If proven legitimate, secret denunciations could earn their proponents weighty compensations, including, as we have already seen, exorbitant sums of money, as well as the right to liberate banished individuals, a common governmental concession for services rendered to the state at the time.¹⁰⁹ For this reason, the Ten proposed several ways in which denuncianti could reveal their identity to the authorities, including nominating a designated third person whom the Ten could approach in order to offer the warranted compensation, or disclosing their real name on a separate piece of paper enclosed with their denunciation letter.¹¹⁰ To ensure that secret denunciations were not lost or did not fall into the wrong hands when casually left in public places, by the second half of the sixteenth century, the authorities started to install wooden postboxes in prominent locations about the city and its territories in the Veneto, where Venetians could deposit them.¹¹¹ During the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as the praxis of denuncia secreta was rapidly gaining momentum, the plain wooden facades of the boxes were replaced with stone carvings in the shape of masked faces or, more commonly, lions’ mouths, the infamous bocche di leone. Most probably symbolizing Venice’s iconic emblem, the Lion of Saint Mark, the bocche di leone provided a communication link between the government and the governed through the mouth of the mask or the lion, which provided the orifice in which denunciations could be deposited. An inscription on the facade of the stone indicated the authorized issue accepted in that box and the state authority that was to deal with it.¹¹² In a way, these postboxes were the forerunner par excellence of contemporary surveillance cameras, turning the city and its periphery into an object of continuous observation for the prying and the curious. On the whole, Venetians took to this governmental concession with unfaltering zeal, fancying themselves as self-proclaimed spies, penetrating all social circles and reporting on anyone and anything that could pose a threat, from compulsive gamblers and suspicious outsiders to alleged heretics and foreign ambassadors.¹¹³ So fixated were Venetians on their denunciations that they even paid for the services of professional scribes, as some of the documents’ immaculate penmanship reveals.¹¹⁴ This fervour had tragicomic implications, since inveterate informers could not see a distinction between major and minor threats. As a result, a blizzard of worthless reports flooded the Doge’s Palace on a daily basis. To contain their frequency, in 1542 the government passed on a law whereby, to be valid, all ¹⁰⁸ ¹⁰⁹ ¹¹⁰ ¹¹¹ ¹¹² ¹¹⁴

Ibid, pp. 38, 48–9. ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Criminali, f. 30 (3 April 1598); Preto, Persona per ora secreta, pp. 38, 44. Preto, Persona per ora secreta, p. 55. For the different areas of the Veneto where denunciation boxes still exist, see ibid., pp. 77–86. Ibid., pp. 55–6. ¹¹³ Ibid., pp. 144–5. See, for instance, ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 10 (3 July 1583).

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anonymous denunciations had to be signed by three witnesses.¹¹⁵ This impediment, however, did not have the intended effect and the craze for this tale-telling pastime assumed immeasurable proportions, surviving until the fall of the Venetian Republic in 1797.¹¹⁶ The over-obsession with spying and reporting on others, or even the mere understanding that this option was available to the ordinary Venetian, is demonstrative of the fact that more than being a tool for judicial intervention for the government and a practice of sociopolitical expression for the governed, secret denunciations were an instrument of civic control on the part of both. A wellknown victim of this excessive zeal for formally denouncing what could be deemed as hazardous and risky for the security of the state was the infamous Venetian womanizer Giacomo Casanova. While Casanova’s story unravelled in a more advanced era than the one dealt with in this book, it is worth a quick reference, because it encapsulates so aptly the overtone of civic control surrounding the institution of secret denunciations through the centuries. In 1755, aged 30, Casanova was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment in the Ducal Palace’s piombi, the notorious prisons of the Ten situated directly under the Ducal Palace’s roof and reserved for political criminals. His conviction was the outcome of numerous denunciations by aggrieved husbands, zealous religious devotees, and upright citydwellers, exasperated by Casanova’s licentious behaviour.¹¹⁷ His crimes can be summed up as insatiable promiscuity, sensationalist religious sophistries, and a libertine lifestyle, all of which were eventually deemed threatening to civic order and state security. Ironically, Casanova’s impish disposition and indomitable spirit, which led to his spectacular escape from the piombi just over a year after his imprisonment, compelled the Inquisitori to headhunt and recruit him as one of their crafty secret agents.¹¹⁸ The interested reader can seek out his Histoire de ma fuite (Story of my Flight) for the enthralling details of this story.¹¹⁹ Back to the sixteenth century, exposing some of the multitude of cases where ordinary Venetians rushed to denounce propalatori of state secrets,¹²⁰ regardless of the motivation fuelling the act, suggests the superlative significance of state secrecy that the Ten had managed to distil not only in their formal representatives and operatives who supported statecraft but amongst the wider populace beyond the sale of the Palazzo Ducale. In this respect, state secrecy, as a ubiquitous ¹¹⁵ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Communi, Reg. 15, c. 54v. (30 Aug. 1542). ¹¹⁶ Paolo Preto, ‘Giacomo Casanova and the Venetian Inquisitors: A Domestic Espionage System in Eighteenth-Century Europe’, in Daniel Szechi (ed.), The Dangerous Trade: Spies, Spymasters and the Making of Europe (Dundee: Dundee University Press, 2010), pp. 139–56. ¹¹⁷ Ibid., pp. 146–7. ¹¹⁸ See ibid. ¹¹⁹ Casanova first published his Histoire de ma fuite des prisons de la République de Venise qu’on appelle les Plombs in 1788 in Prague, according to Charles Klopp, Sentences: The Memoirs and Letters of Italian Political Prisoners from Benvenuto Cellini to Aldo Moro (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), p. 29. ¹²⁰ The Venetians used the term propalatori contro pubblici secreti to indicate those who illicitly disclosed secrets of the Venetian state. See, for example, Romanin, Storia documentata, Vol. VI, p. 154.

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governmental scheme, provided the impetus for communication between the Ten and the wider public, reflecting an emerging tradition ‘wherein the relationship between the public and political news was beginning to affect the behaviour and actions of princes when dealing with their subjects’.¹²¹ Accordingly, secrecy as an ongoing process of concealment that manifested itself in the guaranteed confidentiality with which secret denunciations were treated became the enabler of the exchange of information between the government and the governed. This social aspect of secrecy, which enables the circulation and exchange of knowledge by protecting it from the prying eyes of outsiders, has been overwhelmingly neglected by historians of the early modern period and is, therefore, worthy of further analysis and discussion.¹²²

Secrecy as an Enabler of Knowledge Exchange Trying to delineate the concept of secrecy in the early modern era is, as Daniel Jütte has astutely remarked, ‘an elusive task’.¹²³ Before attempting to delve further into the meaning and implications of secrecy in that period, it is important to establish a common understanding of this term. The philosopher and sociologist Sissela Bok defined secrecy as ‘intentional concealment’, echoing the sociologist Georg Simmel’s interpretation of the concept as ‘consciously willed concealment’.¹²⁴ In both these interpretations, the use of the terms ‘intentional’ and ‘consciously willed’ places the emphasis on the social process of concealing rather than the content of the information to be concealed. In fact, Bok saw concealment as ‘the defining trait of secrecy’, a characteristic that ‘presupposes a separation, a setting apart of the secret from the “non-secret”’.¹²⁵ Yet defining secrecy in terms of concealment, or even in terms of who remains excluded from privileged knowledge or confidential information, offers the historian limited ground for analysis. This is because, while secrets (and their keepers) might furnish a certain degree of allure and arresting research topics to boot, the very nature of a secret is inadequate for

¹²¹ Infelise, ‘From Merchants’ Letters to Handwritten Political avvisi’, p. 52. ¹²² An exception here is the phenomenon of secret groups and societies, especially in the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. See, for example, Richard van Dülmen, Der Geheimbund der Illuminaten: Darstellung, Analyse, Dokumentation (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Fromann, 1975) on the Enlightenmentminded secret order of Illumitati; Reinhart Koselleck, Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988) on eighteenth-century freemasonry; Paul C. Johnson, ‘Secretism and the Apotheosis of Duvalier’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 74, no 2 (2006), pp. 420–45; and also Johnson, Secrets, Gossip, and Gods: The Transformation of Brazilian Candomblé (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002) for insightful discussions on the notion of ‘secretism’ in twentieth-century South America. ¹²³ Jütte, The Age of Secrecy, p. 98. ¹²⁴ Sissela Bok, Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation (New York: Vintage, 1989), p. 5; Simmel, ‘The Sociology of Secrecy’, p. 449. ¹²⁵ Bok, Secrets, p. 6.

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offering rich historical insights. On the other hand, the ongoing social interactions that secrecy creates and necessitates, that is, secrecy as a ‘communicative event’,¹²⁶ seems to offer fertile ground for generating more well-rounded understandings of past events. Renaissance Venice, where, at least within the realm of politics, secrecy penetrated all echelons of society and expressed itself in characteristic, culturally habituated forms ranging from formal decrees to informal anonymous denunciations, is a case in point. To be more specific, the Council of Ten’s formal decrees on state secrecy demarcated the behaviours and actions of their formal representatives and other functionaries. Additionally the institution of secret denunciations invited ordinary Venetians to denounce those who disclosed state secrets, amongst other offences. Both processes are indicative not only of how endemic secrecy was in Venatian society but, more importantly, of the social interactions that secrecy enabled and nurtured. Borrowing from social theorizations of secrecy might help elaborate on this contention further. Secrecy, as a process, enables the creation of social boundaries between two separate entities, those in the know and those in the dark. The exclusivity of being in the know can boost the sense of distinctive inclusiveness in a group and, by extension, cement one’s identification with it.¹²⁷ In the case of the Ten’s formal deliberations and ensuing decrees on state secrecy, as will become more apparent in the following chapters, this is evident not only in the mere inclusion of state representatives and officials in the ‘circle of secrecy’, but in the ‘strongly accentuated exclusion’ of everyone else who should not be privy to the privileged knowledge shared by the members of that ‘circle’.¹²⁸ In this light, secrecy became a legitimate method of handling concealed knowledge and organizing its diffusion.¹²⁹ While instances of breach of secrecy were inevitable, the conscious awareness of being the designated custodians of state secrets and the sense of specialness in being entrusted with official, privileged knowledge pertaining to state affairs may have reinforced those officials’ inclination towards ongoing intentional concealment. Sustaining this intentional concealment served a twofold purpose. Firstly, from a practical and moral perspective, it helped maintain the patricians’ social standing and the state secretaries’ professional status, as both groups were threatened with enforced withdrawal from their duties in cases of deliberate breaches of secrecy. Secondly, from a social perspective, it rendered them members of a privileged inner circle, potentially enhancing their sense of distinctive inclusiveness in it and, by extension, cementing their identification with it.¹³⁰ Especially within the sphere of contemporary official state secrecy, the intelligence historian

¹²⁶ ¹²⁷ ¹²⁸ ¹³⁰

Beryl L. Bellman, ‘The Paradox of Secrecy’, Human Studies 4 (1981), pp. 1–24 (here p. 2). On social theorizations of secrecy, see Simmel, ‘The Sociology of Secrecy’. Ibid., p. 464. ¹²⁹ Bellman, ‘The Paradox of Secrecy’, p. 8. On the social link between secrecy and group identity, see ibid.

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Michael Herman went as far as to argue that the ‘mystique’ of secret knowledge can have ‘therapeutic functions due to the group bonding it provides’ and can even generate a ‘wry professional pride in secrecy’.¹³¹ While this claim is unseemly for the early modern period, not least due to the lack of self-narratives of the custodians of state secrets, secrecy created a dynamic and enduring relationship between the Venetian government, its formal representatives, and the state functionaries supporting them. Moreover, it became both the condition and the consequence of the construction of professional identities, a contention that will be expounded upon further in Chapters 3 and 4. In the case of the wider Venetian populace, the social interactions that secrecy enables and nurtures become even more pronounced. This is because, by entrusting people of all ranks, including the ordinary commoners who were categorically excluded from political participation in that era,¹³² with unofficial, yet politically imbued acts of denunciations, the authorities encouraged the subtle involvement of those outside the ‘inner circle’ with certain state secrets—or information that could, potentially, assume the status of a ‘secret’—for the state’s benefit. This ‘open-door’ policy granted the popolani, as the commoners were known in Venice, a kind of ‘backdoor’ admittance to statecraft. While not exactly a clarion call on the part of the Ten, the invitation for this subtle, yet quasi-direct participation of ordinary Venetians in political statecraft enabled the former to control public behaviour, place the populace on their side, and ensure the smooth functioning of the state.¹³³ Alfredo Viggiano referred to such acts as ‘a secularization of the political sphere through the formation of a still very rudimentary “public opinion”’.¹³⁴ Paradoxically, then, by erecting barriers between those privy to official secret knowledge and those excluded from it, secrecy functioned as a vehicle for knowledge exchange, enabling information to cross both mental and societal borders.¹³⁵ Consequently, secrecy was, indeed, an emblem of harmony and civil concord, as Filippo De Vivo aptly argued, but not merely because it was expected to conceal debates and disputes arising during governmental assemblies;¹³⁶ it also operated as a type of social adhesive, temporarily placing people of diverse social standing on a level footing—not in terms of social equality but in respect

¹³¹ Michael Herman, Intelligence Power in Peace and War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 329–30. ¹³² On the sociopolitical standing of the popular classes in Renaissance Venice, see Dennis Romano, Patricians and Popolani: The Social Foundations of the Venetian Renaissance State (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987). For a revisionist perspective on the role of the popular classes in Venetian society and economy, see Ioanna Iordanou, ‘Pestilence, Poverty, and Provision: Re-evaluating the Role of the Popolani in Early Modern Venice’, The Economic History Review 69, no 3 (2016), pp. 801–22. ¹³³ Horodowich, ‘The Gossiping Tongue’, p. 25. ¹³⁴ Viggiano, ‘Politics and Constitution’, p. 50. ¹³⁵ For an anthropological analysis of this paradoxical function of secrecy, see Bellman, ‘The Paradox of Secrecy’. ¹³⁶ De Vivo, Information and Communication, pp. 43–4.

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of access to certain (secret) political terrains—for the purpose of civic order and state protection. In other words, the boundaries between state and individual action, the private and the public sphere were, indeed, blurred.¹³⁷ This rather rhapsodized portrayal of the Ten’s secrecy is not devoid of pragmatic overtones. These are manifest in the compensation would-be denuntianti could expect for legitimate revelations. To ensure their collaboration, the authorities turned the demand for both intelligence and secrecy into a mutually beneficial transaction for both parties.¹³⁸ Viewed in this light, secrecy is, as Simmel described it, ‘a form of commerce, without which, in view of our social environment, certain purposes could not be attained’.¹³⁹ ‘Not so evident’, Simmel continued, ‘are the charms and the values which it possesses over and above its significance as a means’ which engender a ‘feeling of personal possession’.¹⁴⁰ The ‘charms and values’ of secrecy were most certainly sought by the denuntianti, who, aside from state protection and other material rewards, also derived a hefty dose of pride in their heightened sense of civic loyalty. At times, this outstripped potential material gains, at least on paper. In the winter of 1580, for instance, an anonymous denunciator who disclosed the murderer of a father and his son signed his letter as a ‘secret person who intends no benefit from the present denunciation but wishes that everything goes to the benefit of the prince’.¹⁴¹ To be sure, the overtone of overzealous devotion may have been intended to cloak the denunciator’s desire to conceal his identity. On the whole, official state secrecy served several purposes in Renaissance Venice. Firstly, it enabled the concealment of the keeper or denunciator of secrets, the sources and methods used to obtain the secret, and the privileged knowledge of the secret, especially in situations of conflict and competition. Secondly, underpinned by Tacitus’s notion of arcana imperii, it helped preserve governmental power. Importantly, as will become apparent in the following chapter, secrecy enabled the Ten to shape and stage-manage working relationships within Venice’s secret service. This relationship-building aspect of secrecy has been superbly analysed by the Nobel laureate Elias Canetti, who showed how rulers mobilize secrecy to mould their relationship with subordinates and relations between subordinates by creating a system of secrets and quietly observing and controlling information flows and the institutional loyalty that may ensue. Through the use of secrecy, he argued, rulers construct an aura of mystery around themselves as the sole possessors of panoramic views of knowledge that afford them the opportunity to make decisions.¹⁴² While he was writing within the ¹³⁷ See ibid. ¹³⁸ Iordanou, ‘What News on the Rialto?’ ¹³⁹ Simmel, ‘The Sociology of Secrecy’, p. 464. ¹⁴⁰ Ibid. ¹⁴¹ Referenced in Preto, Persona per ora secreta, p. 71. ¹⁴² Canetti, Crowds and Power, pp. 290–7. See also Jana Costas and Christopher Grey, Secrecy at Work: The Hidden Architecture of Organizational Life (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016), pp. 21–2.

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context of dictatorships, Canetti’s ruminations have great purchase in the case of Venice’s secret service. This is because in Venice’s intelligence organization secrecy became ‘an ongoing accomplishment of social interactions’¹⁴³ and created a space, ostensibly concealed from the public’s eyes, to debate, to strategize, and to take decisions for the benefit of the Venetian state.¹⁴⁴ It is this social aspect of secret communication that renders Renaissance Venice’s official state secrecy pursuits such a fascinating object of historical study and analysis. As evidenced in the above-mentioned instances, this is due to the paradox of secret communication that lay, on the one hand, in erecting mental barriers between those in the know and those in the dark and, on the other hand, in demolishing barriers that would be needed if no means existed to conceal and protect the exchange of privileged knowledge. During this demolition process, social barriers were also temporarily taken down, as privileged information was shared between individuals of diverse social status. Put another way, secrets became ‘specific modes of knowledge exchange and social action’ that mobilized idiosyncratic ways of communication and interaction between the government and the governed, primarily due to the possibility for intentional concealment.¹⁴⁵ Viewed from this sociological perspective, despite the enduring challenge of maintaining it, secrecy was not merely an elusive concept demarcating virtuous civic behaviour, but a performative and social praxis that transcended the static nature of a secret’s content to enable social interactions amongst individuals who, without the shield of concealment, would not have been able to interact. Ill-fated Alvise Badoer’s fervent request to keep his end-of-mission report ‘most secret and buried’ substantiates this contention.¹⁴⁶

Conclusion The German sociologist and philosopher Georg Simmel put forward the authoritative argument that secrecy is ‘one of the greatest accomplishments of humanity’, a ‘universal sociological form’ that transcends the moral valuations of its contents.¹⁴⁷ This is because the accomplishment of secrecy, that is, the ongoing process of intentional concealment through positive or negative means, presupposes social conditions and consequences that can be found in any social system.¹⁴⁸ It is for this reason that examining secrecy—especially official state

¹⁴³ Costas and Grey, Secrecy at Work, p. 7. ¹⁴⁴ In his classic study, The Power Elite, p. 294, Charles Wright Mills argued that, in modern democracies, secrecy offers a protected terrain for high-level decision-makers to manoeuvre and strategize behind closed doors. ¹⁴⁵ Jütte, The Age of Secrecy, p. 10. ¹⁴⁶ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 5, c. 65r./v. (26 May 1547). ¹⁴⁷ Simmel, ‘The Sociology of Secrecy’, pp. 462–3. ¹⁴⁸ Ibid., p. 463.

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secrecy—merely as a strategy of withholding knowledge or information, while partially useful, is insufficient to explain the social dynamics and interactions that it creates in the process of concealing the exchange of knowledge that ought to be protected. This is particularly pertinent for the study of early modern state secrecy, where a secret in isolation, divorced from the social interactions it generates, is inadequate for producinng a thorough historical understanding of the process of secrecy. It is, therefore, astonishing that historical studies of early modern (and even modern) secrecy have overwhelmingly neglected the social dynamics of secret communication, resulting in the relatively slender theorizations of early modern secrecy in the relevant literature.¹⁴⁹ This oversight is even more astonishing in the case of Renaissance Venice, the republic of secrets par excellence. The analysis of the state secrecy perpetrated by the Council of Ten and their subsidiary, the Inquisitors of the State, offers a refreshing departure from the monotonous focus on the content and revelatory nature of secrets, enabling the historian to examine the social interactions that secrecy created. These interactions helped transcend mental and even societal barriers for the purpose of communicating privileged knowledge to exclusive inner circles. Put another way, through the protective barriers that it created, secrecy made concessions that other forms of open knowledge could not proffer. Both by means of formal regulations imposed upon Venetian state representatives and officials and through the formal avenue of secret denunciations, the social function of secrecy transcended the realm of intentional concealment to create interfaces for social and professional groups who, premised upon their mutual secret knowledge, shared ‘reciprocal relations’.¹⁵⁰ These groups included the grandstanding patricians who formed part of Venice’s governmental assemblies, the official Venetian representatives stationed overseas, the distinct workforce of Venice’s ducal chancery, including the sedentary geniuses who comprised Venice’s famed cryptology department, as well as the mixed variety of casual spies and informants whom the Venetians employed in their intelligence pursuits. How the work of all these different agents of secret communication was organized and managed by the Council of Ten will be the object of analysis of the following chapter.

¹⁴⁹ Some notable scholarly exceptions that advance historical analysis beyond the content and revelatory value of secrets are the following: Karel Davids (ed.), ‘Openness and Secrecy in Early Modern Science’, Special Issue, Early Science and Medicine 10, no 3 (2005), pp. 341–434; De Vivo, Information and Communication; Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature; Jütte, The Age of Secrecy; Hans G. Kippemberg and Guy G. Stroumsa (eds.), Secrecy and Concealment: Studies in the History of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Religions (Leiden: Brill, 1995); Pamela Long, Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). ¹⁵⁰ Simmel, ‘The Sociology of Secrecy’, esp. p. 470.

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3 Renaissance Venice’s Intelligence Organization Just as love and good intelligence beget the conservation of our affairs, discontent and disagreements imperil everything.¹ In November 1597, the Venetian Residente in Milan received a letter from the Council of Ten instructing him to locate at once a cleric called Apollinare Calderini in order to interrogate him on his reasons for being in Milan, whom he associated with, and what his future plans were. In his effort to detain him, the secretary was ordered to collaborate with all the other rectors of neighbouring Venetian cities, as Calderini was notoriousfor roving from town to town, preaching defamatory diatribes against Venice.² On the same day, another dispatch was sent to the Venetian governor in Brescia, with the instruction to arrest the monk, were he to enter the city’s territory, and, upon verification of his identity, to have him strangled or executed in any other ‘secret’ way that would leave no trace of malicious intent. Due to the urgency of the situation, the customary interrogation prior to being charged with any crime was to be overridden. Identical witten instructions were sent to the Venetian representatives in Bergamo, Crema, and Verona, urging them to keep the affair strictly confidential, and to report on the ensuing progress in writing.³ Apollinare Calderini was wanted because he had published twenty-six discourses on Giovanni Botero’s Della Ragion di Stato, a controversial book that advocated a more open relationship between a ruler and his subjects.⁴ Unsparing in his censure of the Venetian Republic, in his publication Calderini feverishly charged the Venetian ruling class with the vices of anger, ambition, imprudence, and the inability to engage men of the military, letters, and the Church with the Republic’s virtues. This was a damning indictment of a Venetian government that

¹ ‘ . . . come dall’amore et buona intelligentia nasce la conservatione delle cose nostre, così dalla disumore et dispareri si messe in pericolo tutto’. Council of Ten to the governor of Corfu, ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 11, c. 64v. (10 Nov. 1575). ² Ibid., Reg. 14, cc. 22v.–23r. (13 Nov. 1597). ³ Ibid., c. 23r./v. (13 Nov. 1597). ⁴ Apollinare Calderini, Discorsi sopra la Ragione di Stato del Signor Giovanni Botero (Milan: Pietro Martire Locarno, 1597).

Venice’s Secret Service: Organizing Intelligence in the Renaissance. Ioanna Iordanou, Oxford University Press (2019). © Ioanna Iordanou. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198791317.001.0001

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was so preoccupied with propagating an image of Venice as the most serene Republic.⁵ As ten days passed with no news of Calderini’s whereabouts, the Ten grew restless. Fresh orders for his immediate arrest and extermination were dispatched to the envoy in Milan, reproaching him for his tardiness in successfully completing the unpalatable undertaking.⁶ Moreover, to increase their chances of capturing the firebrand, the Ten decided to deploy spies and issue a public proclamation of his death, promising the man who discovered and executed him a monetary reward and the opportunity to liberate a bandit of his choice, a common governmental concession at the time for services rendered to the state.⁷ In a similar vein, a few years later, the Ten were anxious to deport from the Venetian dominion the Englishman ‘Antonio Sciarles’, the infamous ‘aristocratadventurer’ Sir Anthony Sherley.⁸ During his three-year sojourn in Venice, between 1601 and 1604, Sherley tried unsuccessfully to pass as a wealthy merchant, getting into trouble with the Venetian authorities on account of his crooked business deals, unsettled debts, and bogus promissory notes, which led to his incarceration and subsequent release in the spring of 1603,⁹ after the intervention of James I of England and Scotland (as James VI).¹⁰ Over a year later, however, the Council of Ten ordered his expulsion from the Republic as an important ‘public’ matter, with no details on the sentence’s underlying motivation recorded. The Ten’s brevity in the information they revealed in their written communication to those under their command is not fortuitous. The need for secrecy, especially as letters could get intercepted and read by inimical, prying eyes,¹¹ compelled them to develop a flawless artistry in the act of political ventriloquism, communicating only the most vital aspects of an issue while simultaneously sealing their lips. For this reason, they would customarily issue a direct order, rarely revealing any details about why a specific course of action was required. Consequently, the Ten’s delegates were expected to execute orders with as little information as possible. On this occasion, the Venetian authorities were convinced that Sherley was acting as a spy for the Holy Roman Emperor, smuggling to Prague intelligence reaching the Venetian shores from the Ottoman Empire.¹² In consequence, they ⁵ Preto, I servizi segreti, p. 433. ⁶ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 14, cc. 23v.–24r. (24 Nov. 1597). ⁷ Ibid., c. 24v. (24 Nov. 1597). ⁸ Fusaro, Political Economies, p. 204. On Anthony Sherley, see Anthony Sherley, The Three Brothers; Travels and Adventures of Sir Anthony, Sir Robert and Sir Thomas Sherley in Persia, Russia, Turkey and Spain (London: Hurst, Robinson, & Co., 1825). On Sherley’s sojourn in Venice, see D. W. Davies, Elizabethans Errant: The Strange Fortunes of Sir Thomas Sherley and his Three Sons, as well in the Dutch Wars as in Muscovy, Morocco, Persia, Spain and the Indies (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967), pp. 141–65. I am grateful to Maria Fusaro for bringing the case of Anthony Sherley to my attention. ⁹ Fusaro, Political Economies, pp. 204–5; Keneth R. Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering: English Privateering during the Spanish War, 1585–1603 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), p. 65. ¹⁰ Davies, Elizabethans Errant, p. 162. ¹¹ Lazzarini, Communication and Conflict, p. 74. ¹² Davies, Elizabethans Errant, pp. 162–4. In fact, during his first two years in Venice, Sherley was a double agent for the Spanish and the Scots: see ibid., pp. 141–2.

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granted him two days to leave Venice and four days to exit the dominion. Failing to obey, he was to be arrested and conducted to the piombi, the Ten’s chilling cells. To that end, instructions were sent to the Venetian representatives in both the Terraferma and the Stato da Mar, including those in Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Brescia, Bergamo, Crema, Treviso, Udine, Crete, Zante, Cephalonia, Corfu, Zadar, and the Prevveditori Generali in Dalmatia and in Palmanova, ordering the Englishman’s arrest, were he to enter any of those territories. The Venetian ambassadors in Rome, the Holy Roman Empire, France, Spain, and England were also informed about the affair, most probably in case they were asked to offer further explanations to the rulers of the courts they served in.¹³ Indeed, a month later a missive was sent to the Ten by the Provveditore Generale in Dalmatia, claiming that the said ‘Schiarles’ had been spotted on the Dalmatian coast and, having refused to leave within the requested four days, the Provveditore was keen to arrest him and ship him over to the Ten.¹⁴ Nevertheless, it is probable that the arrest did not materialize, as a few months later Sherley was in Prague on formal business for Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II.¹⁵ These episodes demonstrate the ways in which information of a sensitive nature handled by Venice’s secret service was channelled from the Ten to their formal representatives within and beyond the dominion and returned back to the Venetian intelligence ‘headquarters’ in the Doge’s Palace. This entailed a process of administrative coordination of complex operations, involving a composite, yet meticulous network of intelligence-gathering and communication, centrally administered by the Council of Ten. As we shall see in Chapter 5, this network branched out into three distinct communication channels. The most systematically organized and managed was composed of diplomats and state officials, including Venetian ambassadors, governors in the Terraferma and the Stato da Mar (such as provveditori and rettori), chief magistrates (podestà), as well as Venetian representatives in other Mediterranean regions where there was notable Venetian merchant presence but no formal diplomatic representation (such as consuls). The majority of these individuals emanated from the Venetian patriciate. The second channel of communication was composed of Venetian merchants stationed in commercial hubs of strategic significance, such as the territories of the Levant, or travelling seamen who were commissioned to transport correspondence and individuals that, in one way or another, were involved in Venice’s intelligence operations. On several occasions, for instance, ship captains rendered services to the Ten by transporting potential offenders, such as criminals or enemies’ spies, on board their ships and consigning them to

¹³ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 14, c. 113v. (1 Dec. 1604). ¹⁴ ASV, CCX, Lettere dei Rettori e di Altre Cariche, b. 302 (1 Jan. 1605). ¹⁵ Davies, Elizabethans Errant, p. 164.

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the authorities.¹⁶ Finally, the third communication channel was made up of amateur intelligencers who took it upon themselves to gather and disclose information pertaining to the security of the state, more often than not expecting some kind of compensation for their daring missions.¹⁷ Alongside those professional or amateur intelligencers, who in most cases were geographically dispersed beyond the Venetian lagoon, Venice’s secret service was supported by a large corps of state secretaries who formed part of its composite public administration.¹⁸ Following a decree of the Senate in 1478, these functionaries were exclusively recruited from the social class of the cittadini originarii, the Venetian citizens.¹⁹ The cittadini originarii were those non-patricians who could demonstrate three generations of legitimate birth in the city and abstention from manual labour. They were a ‘socio-professional group both prestigious and privileged’, placed immediately under the patriciate in the Venetian social hierarchy.²⁰ As members of this social order, the Venetian secretaries were a distinct workforce of state functionaries whose appointment depended on skills and ancestral entitlement and whose socio-economic raison d’être was service and commitment to the state. When stationed in the Doge’s Palace, their main responsibility was to copy, catalogue, and index state records, which, for a growing bureaucracy assuming imperial proportions, were produced in an interminable flow. When appointed to support Venice’s diplomatic missions overseas, they were expected either to render similar services to the diplomats they accompanied or even to deputize for outgoing or incoming patricians, performing less significant functions of negotiation and representation. Contrary to other renowned bureaucratic institutions, such as Louis XIV’s expansive diplomatic service,²¹ Venetian secretaries serving ambassadors overseas did not directly report to them but, already from the mid-fifteenth century, were ¹⁶ See, for instance, ASV, CCX, Lettere dei Rettori e di Altre Cariche, b. 286 (29 July 1592). This aspect of Venetian merchants’ and seamen’s duties to the Serenissima still awaits scholarly exploration and analysis. ¹⁷ On the Council of Ten’s communication channels, see Iordanou, ‘What News on the Rialto?’ ¹⁸ On Venetian state secretaries, see Giuseppe Trebbi, ‘Il segretario veneziano’, Archivio Storico Italiano 144 (1986), pp. 35–73; Mary F. Neff, ‘Chancery Secretaries in Venetian Politics and Societies, 1480–1533’, Unpublished PhD Thesis (University of California, Los Angeles, 1986); Andrea Zannini, Burocrazia e burocrati a Venezia in età moderna: I cittadini originari (sec. XVI–XVIII) (Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 1993); Massimo Galtarossa, Mandarini veneziani: La cancelleria ducale del Settecento (Rome: Aracne, 2009). ¹⁹ Giuseppe Trebbi, ‘La cancelleria veneta nei secoli XVI e XVII’, Annali della Fondazione Luigi Einaudi 14 (1980), pp. 65–125 (here pp. 69–70); Zannini, ‘Economic and Social Aspects’, p. 132. On Venetian citizens, see Romano, Patricians and Popolani; Zannini, Burocrazia e burocrati, esp. pp. 61–118; James S. Grubb, ‘Elite Citizens’, in Martin and Romano, Venice Reconsidered, pp. 339–364; Anna Bellavitis, Identité, marriage, mobilité sociale. Citoyennes et citoyens à Venise au XVIe siècle (Rome: École française de Rome, 2001); Bellavitis, ‘Donne, cittadinanza e corporazione tra medioevo ed età moderna: ricerche in corso’, in Nadia Maria Filippini, Tiziana Plebani, and Anna Scattigno, (eds.), Corpi e storia. Donne e uomini dal mondo antico all’età contemporanea (Rome: Viella, 2002), pp. 87–104. ²⁰ Viggiano, ‘Politics and Constitution’, p. 65. ²¹ On Louis XIV’s diplomatic corps, see Soll, The Information Master.

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managed and remunerated by Venice’s governmental committees such as the Senate and, of course, the Council of Ten.²² This is testament to the ‘absolutely peculiar way’ in which contemporaneous managerial activities were shared ‘between “professionals”—that is employees and salaried managerial staff—and political bodies’ in Venice.²³ The most prestigious of overseas secretarial duties involved running diplomatic legations of lesser significance, such as those of Milan or Florence. In such cases, state secretaries assumed the role of the formal diplomatic representative and were called Residenti, as we saw in the previous chapter.²⁴ On the whole, whether they rendered their services to the Venetian Republic as legates, paid informants, or state secretaries, they formed part of the wider bureaucratic apparatus that supported the Venetian government’s political, diplomatic, and intelligence pursuits in the international arena. Andrea Zannini aptly classified them into two distinct categories: ‘a “government diplomacy”, which recruited from the ranks of the nobility and a “service diplomacy”, which instead employed members of the secretarial corps’.²⁵ Within the broader context of Venice’s intelligence organization, these ‘professionals of politics, of diplomacy, and of written communication’ inhabited specific positions in the organizational hierarchy of Venice’s secret service.²⁶ The top of the pyramid was occupied by the Council of Ten and other governmental committees that supported the Republic’s intelligence operations, including the State Inquisitors, the Senate, and the Collegio. The appointed ambassadors and governors, coming from the ranks of the Venetian nobility, populated the second tier of the pyramid. Their work was buttressed by professional secretaries, who inhabited the third layer of the organizational hierarchy. Finally, at the very bottom lay the plethora of official and unofficial spies and informants, who emanated from all echelons of Venetian society but, primarily, from the social class of the popolani, as we will see in Chapter 5. These were paid from a discreet budget, reserved by the government for ‘secret expenses’,²⁷ as the end-of-service reports submitted by returning Venetian representatives to the authorities reveal.²⁸ The ‘secret expenses’ budget was distinct from the regular ambassadorial emoluments that included the legate’s monthly stipend, general expenses ‘to set oneself in order’ (per mettersi in ordine) when appointed to a new post, a special gift (donativo), and other extraordinary expenses.²⁹ All these different outlays are characteristic of

²² Zannini, ‘Economic and Social Aspects’, p. 132. ²³ Luca Zan and Keith W. Hoskin, ‘Il “discorso del maneggio”. Lo sviluppo del discorso manageriale e contabile all’Arsenale di Venezia, 1580–1650’, Ateneo Veneto 36 (1998), pp. 7–62 (here p. 26, n. 13). ²⁴ Ibid., pp. 112, 133. ²⁵ Ibid., p. 111. ²⁶ Lazzarini, Communication and Conflict, p. 101. ²⁷ See, for instance, ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 14, cc. 1v., 22r., 25v. (22 March 1596, 5 Sep., and 16 Dec. 1597). ²⁸ See, for example, ASV, CCX, Lettere dei Rettori e di Altre Cariche, b. 296, fol. 54 (19 March 1552); ibid., b. 255, fols. 5–6 (3 Jan. 1585). ²⁹ Zannini, ‘Economic and Social Aspects’, p. 125.

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an emerging ‘budgeting logic’ that formed part of the ‘Venetian method’ of accountability, that is ‘giving account . . . through the widespread use of reports on operations and managing issues’.³⁰ In consequence, what gradually emerges from these accounts is a systematic organization of professional duties that was dependent upon rigid hierarchical structures, which, in turn, were premised on nascent administrative practices. This chapter will analyse the organizational structure of Venice’s secret service, as it was headed by the Council of Ten and composed of geographically dispersed state representatives and their state officials, men of the military and the navy, in-house and expatriate white-collar state functionaries, as well as casually salaried spies and informants, even though the last will be discussed in detail in Chapter 5. Moreover, the chapter will review the organizational layout of Venice’s state intelligence apparatus, which encompassed, aside from formally appointed diplomats and state officials, a large part of the Venetian state bureaucracy, including the secret chancery, the storehouse of both ‘classified’ state records and the Venetian Republic’s historical memory. There will be a particular focus on correspondence, including encrypted correspondence, as a vital tool of managing human action and performance at a distance, enabling the administration of large-scale, geographically dispersed organization of work. Using early conceptualizations of management, the chapter will show how Venice’s intelligence organization was sanctioned through a string of regulations that not only determined uniform professional operations and relationships but, importantly, legitimized the Ten’s power of command as Venice’s spy chiefs.

Organizing and Managing Venice’s Secret Service As the home to one of the largest proto-modern organizations, the Venetian Arsenal, Venice had developed a managerial discourse already from the sixteenth century.³¹ This discourse was exemplary in the distinctive form of managerialism that had been fostered in organizations of that period, which, while not operating on the market as firms, were directly or indirectly involved in the state’s economic activities.³² State-run services such as the Venetian secret

³⁰ Luca Zan, ‘Accounting and Management Discourse in Proto-Industrial Settings: The Venice Arsenal in the Turn of the 16th Century’, Accounting and Business Research 32, no 2 (2004), pp. 145–75 (here p. 146). Zan noted similar administrative processes being prevalent in the management of the Venetian Arsenal. ³¹ For a detailed analysis of the managerial discourse on the Venetian Arsenal in the sixteenth century, see Zan and Hoskin, ‘Il “discorso del maneggio” ’; Zan, ‘Accounting and Management Discourse’. ³² See ibid. On the provenance of managerialism, see Keith W. Hoskin and Richard H. Macve, ‘The Genesis of Accountability: The West Point Connections’, Accounting, Organizations and Society 13, no. 1 (1988), pp. 37–73; Hoskin and Macve, ‘Reappraising the Genesis of Managerialism:

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service—and, undoubtedly, the Arsenal—were emblematic of such forms of organization. Indeed, the Venetian intelligence apparatus was organized and run in a ‘clearly established system of super- and subordination’ that resembled a corporate-like distribution and management of duties.³³ As we have already seen, at the top of the organizational hierarchy sat the Council of Ten, who, assuming the position of the executive committee, took all executive decisions and were responsible for the success or failure of Venice’s intelligence operations. Everyone else positioned below the Ten was under their command—one can say they acted as their subordinates or underlings, in contemporary managerial parlance—and were expected to execute their orders. In doing so, underlings were duly praised on a job well done and sullenly castigated on poorly executed duties. ‘We enthusiastically praise the prudence . . . , caution, and diligence you exercise in the protection of that land’, they wrote once to the podestà of Crema, an affluent Venetian town tucked between Milan and Brescia in Lombardy.³⁴ ‘We applaud the manner in which you bought off the soul of Feridun Agà,³⁵ as a person who can advance our interests in that Porte’, they communicated to the bailo in Constantinople, when he succeeded in wooing an Ottoman grandee into supplying the Venetians with vital intelligence coming from the Topkapı Palace.³⁶ Conversely, the governors of Verona once received a scorching letter condemning them for their imprudent behaviour: ‘In future’, the Ten admonished them, ‘you shall write to us with more prudence and respect, as is expected when writing to this Council and its Heads’. ‘If you act otherwise’, they chillingly warned, ‘we shall be compelled to act in ways that shall safeguard our dignity as a Council’.³⁷ The Venetian Council of Ten had pioneered an efficient system of managerial delegation and accounting whereby they would assign a task or mission to the appropriate authority, expecting execution and a detailed report upon its completion. In February 1560, for instance, the Ten dispatched to their formal representatives in Cyprus a copy of a letter they had received, suggesting that a few Venetian subjects who resided on the island had defected to Constantinople, plotting to assist the Sultan in steadily hatching designs to seize Cyprus. Furnishing the governors with the names of the turncoats, the Ten ordered them to A Re-Examination of the Role of Accounting at the Springfield Armory, 1815–1845’, Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal 7, no 2 (1994), pp. 4–29. ³³ Max Weber, Economy and Society: Outline of Interpretive Sociology, Vol. 2, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978), p. 957. ³⁴ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 6, c. 6v. (22 June 1547). ³⁵ This was most probably Feridun Ahmed Beg, Ottoman chancellor, state secretary, and long-time confidant and personal secretary to the Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, an important personage to coax through bribes, indeed. I am grateful to Emrah Safa Gürkan for bringing this piece of information to my attention. ³⁶ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 11, c. 45r./v. (26 Jan. 1575). ³⁷ Ibid., Reg. 8, c. 85r. (23 Apr. 1567).

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evaluate this piece of intelligence by verifying that the named individuals had, indeed, abandoned the island for the Ottoman capital. In short, the governors were required to investigate and corroborate the Ten’s intelligence so that the latter could make a calculated decision on the most appropriate action to pursue. The mission was to be treated with utmost secrecy to avoid raising suspicions, and a written report was expected by the Ten upon its completion.³⁸ Additionally, in the summer of 1574, the rectors of Verona received orders to arrest and question three Veronese men as a result of a serious accusation. A French alchemist residing in Verona warned the French king in writing that the three men, sponsored by Huguenots, had allegedly produced a lethal poison for the purpose of assassinating him. Undeniably, a potential assassination of the most Christian of kings by Venetian subjects could cause a major diplomatic incident. The Ten, therefore, who had been furnished with a copy of the alchemist’s letter by the French monarch, wrote to their rectors, supplying them with the names of the three potential offenders and ordering them to arrest them and have their homes searched for suspicious documents, chemicals, and anything that could indicate a criminal offence. After two days of investigations that yielded no incriminating evidence the rectors reported to the Ten that there was no reason to suspect those ‘men of good nature’, but would not free them without direct orders from Venice. Following the examination of the report, the French alchemist’s letter was considered a hoax and the authorities shelved the incident, requesting no further action for the time being.³⁹ Accordingly, the Ten’s system of coordinated written communication is indicative of a proto-modern form of organization, where a novel process of accounting—which goes beyond the practice of bookkeeping to indicate giving account to a higher authority—was deployed ‘to engineer administrative co-ordination’ in order to manage human activity.⁴⁰ The Venetian system of managerial delegation was more complex than simply issuing an order to a subordinate; it entailed orchestrating the information flow between every authority which ought to be informed of a specific event. For this reason, subordinates were expected to share information between themselves. In December 1596, for instance, the Residente in Milan contacted the Ten twice, informing them that a Portuguese man named Fernando Goes Laurerio had approached him with intelligence about imminent dangers that could compromise the security of the Venetian city of Brescia. In their reply to the Residente, dispatched to him via the rectors of Brescia, so that they were also apprised of the case, the Ten praised him for his handling of the affair, and asked him to ³⁸ Ibid., Reg. 7, c. 41r. (12 Feb. 1561). ³⁹ ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 9 (27 July 1574). ⁴⁰ Zan, ‘Accounting and Management Discourse’, p. 146; Zan and Hoskin, ‘Il “discorso del maneggio” ’, p. 18. In essence, what is described here is the concept of ‘human accounting’. On ‘human accounting’ in the pre-industrial era, see John R. Edwards and Edmund Newell, ‘The Development of Industrial Cost and Management Accounting before 1850: A Survey of the Evidence’, Business History 33, no 1 (1991), pp. 35–57.

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corroborate the Portuguese’s claims.⁴¹ Having grown suspicious of the foreigner’s ostensibly altruistic motives to render his services to the Venetian Republic, even though the Ten had authorized their Residente to promise the Portuguese lavish gifts if his allegations were proven legitimate, on the same day the Ten dispatched a second missive to their Residente. On that occasion, they urged him to keep a watchful eye on the Portuguese and, in case the latter attempted to leave Milan in order to enter the Venetian dominion, to inform the rector of Brescia, who would promptly arrest him.⁴² A third letter was sent to the podestà of Brescia, beseeching him to be extra vigilant of the city’s security and to change systematically the posts that guards occupied across the city walls, so that they would have no prior knowledge of their shift’s actual location, in case someone tried to bribe them in order to sneak into the city’s territory illicitly.⁴³ Much as the Ten’s secret registers remain mute as to the reasons for suspecting the Portuguese for misconduct, we can infer from the outcome of the investigation that he was believed to be implicated in espionage against and plans for revolt in the city of Brescia. This becomes apparent from the fact that the ongoing investigations identified a certain Pietro Tadini as a potential instigator of the alleged uprising,⁴⁴ while Laurerio’s letters, which the Ten had in their possession, were eventually deposited in the Venetian counter-intelligence committee’s secret coffer, indicating involvement in espionage activities.⁴⁵ Throughout the investigation process, which lasted for nearly six months, the Residente was asked to keep the rectors of Brescia notified of anything worth reporting about Laurerio.⁴⁶ Eventually arrested in the Venetian town of Bergamo,⁴⁷ he was taken to Venice and imprisoned in the Ten’s piombi. In the meantime, the rectors of Brescia and the Residente in Milan were carrying out formal investigations that eventually led to his acquittal and release in June 1597, as no tangible evidence was found to suggest his culpability.⁴⁸ Consequently, Laurerio was granted 30 ducats in order to leave the city immediately,⁴⁹ and the Residente in Milan was strictly ordered to change the subject of discussion every time anyone tried to strike up a conversation about the incident, effectively, acting as if it never happened.⁵⁰ The ongoing written communications between the Ten and their formal representatives, seamlessly orchestrated by the former, are illustrative of their efficient managerial delegation, whereby representatives were asked to act in order to supply the government with the information needed for it to decide upon the most appropriate course of action.⁵¹ The Ten’s system of delegation spiralled down the hierarchy, enabling their underlings, in turn, to delegate tasks to other ⁴¹ ⁴³ ⁴⁵ ⁴⁷ ⁴⁹ ⁵¹

ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 14, c. 9r./v. (29 Dec. 1596). ⁴² Ibid. Ibid., c. 10r. (29 Dec. 1596). ⁴⁴ Ibid., c. 17r. (17 March 1597). Ibid., c. 20r. (12 May 1597). ⁴⁶ Ibid., c. 9r./v. (29 Dec. 1596). Ibid., c. 10v. (27 Jan., 5 Feb. 1597). ⁴⁸ Ibid., c. 20r. (2 June 1597); ibid. c. 20v. (6 June 1597). Ibid., c. 21v. (6 June 1597). ⁵⁰ Ibid., cc. 20v.–21r. (6 June 1597). Ibid., cc. 11r.–12v. (7 Feb. 1597); ibid., c. 16r./v. (14 March 1597); ibid., c. 18v. (9 April 1597).

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Fig. 3.1. La Sala dei Tre Capi del Consiglio dei Dieci, Gabriele Bella. Reproduced with permission of the Fondazione Querini Stampalia Onlus, Venice.

individuals, who either reported to them or were expected to support their work. In November 1567, for example, the Venetian ambassador in Rome wrote to the Heads of the Ten (i Capi del Consiglio dei Dieci: see Fig. 3.1) in order to convey, in secret, a request on behalf of the Pope. According to the letter, the pontiff demanded the apprehension of a certain Giacomo da Seravalle from Treviso, who was rumoured to be serving a prison sentence in the Venetian stronghold of Crema. Seravalle was wanted by the Roman Inquisition for multiple heresy offences. Consequently, his Holiness wished him transported to Venice, where he could be handed over to the papal nuncio, who would have received instructions as to how to deal with him. As representatives of a Catholic state, the Ten could not ignore a papal request. For this reason, within a few days, written orders were sent to their representatives in Verona, Vicenza, and Padua, instructing them to coordinate their operations in order to accompany the prisoner to Venice. The search for the culprit was to be delegated to the towns’ constables. As a result of the constables’ coordinated efforts, within three weeks, Seravalle was taken from Crema to Verona, then to Vicenza, and from there to Padua en route to Venice, where he was handed over to the nuncio.⁵² ⁵² ASV, CCX, Dispacci Ambasciatori, b. 25 (1 June 1567).

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Between gathering and communicating intelligence to the appropriate authorities lay the fundamental process of evaluating information. The above episodes are redolent of how intelligence was processed and evaluated by the Council of Ten and those supporting their intelligence operations. In effect, any piece of vital information was sent to the appropriate individual, who was asked to conduct a preliminary investigation in order to confirm or controvert the intelligence provided. Once, suspicious of having received a counterfeit letter, the Ten sent it to the relevant authorities, the rectors of Brescia, asking them to investigate and, if they corroborated the forgery, to apprehend the felons at once.⁵³ Routinely, multiple copies of the same letter were sent to a variety of relevant officials, either to keep everyone informed or for the purposes of corroboration and collaboration. At times, a letter was sent to one authority with the instruction to forward it to another, creating thus a complex, yet smoothly managed communication network upon which Venice’s intelligence apparatus relied heavily. In the spring of 1601, for example, the Heads of the Ten forwarded to the Provveditore Generale da Mar in Golfo—the supreme commander of the Venetian fleet in peacetime and the highest authority in the Ionian islands in the first half of the Cinquecento⁵⁴—a copy of a letter that the Venetian ambassador to the Holy Roman Emperor had sent to them relating the indiscretions of a certain Cavalier Bertucci. The Capi charged the Provveditore with communicating the content of the letter to all Venetian governors in Dalmatia and Albania, ordering them to capture Bertucci, dead or alive, if he attempted to enter Venetian land or waters in the Balkan peninsula.⁵⁵ It increasingly becomes apparent, then, that intelligence was acquired and evaluated through a combination of formal bureaucratic practices and composite communication networks that were overseen by the Council of Ten, Venice’s spy chiefs. Undeniably, disentangling rumours and fabrications from hard facts was not an easy task. Yet, paradoxically, the complex web of these communication channels and networks enabled the systematic evaluation of information through a process of comparing and contrasting. Within this organizational framework, the Ten did not, on the whole, micromanage their underlings. They delegated responsibilities and expected execution and detailed post-task reports, trusting that those under their command would see to successfully carrying out the job. As the executive committee of Renaissance Venice’s secret service, the Ten also oversaw and orchestrated the effective communication of significant incidents and developments to all their delegates who could benefit from the information. Formally appointed Venetian officials overseas had overall responsibility for the

⁵³ ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 9 (21 Oct. 1575). ⁵⁴ Arbel, ‘Venice’s Maritime Empire’, p. 152. See also BMCV, Manoscritti Donà dalle Rose, no 79, c. 11r./v. ⁵⁵ ASV, IS, b. 399 (16 April 1601).

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area of their jurisdiction and were expected to follow and execute orders. Amongst them, the bailo in Constantinople deserves special mention, as his case is the most idiosyncratic. This is partly due to the distinctive relationship between Venice and the Ottoman Empire and partly because of the peculiar nature of the bailo’s role, which included both gubernatorial and diplomatic responsibilities. Aside from being the formal diplomatic representative for the Venetian Republic in the Ottoman Empire, the bailo oversaw the populous Venetian merchant community in Constantinople and acted as the head for all Venetian consuls in the Levant. It is for this reason that, especially at the outset of his mission, he was granted permission to open letters sent from the Ottoman capital to the Senate or the Ten for his perusal, before he resealed and forwarded them to their addressees.⁵⁶ His famiglia—as his employees and assistants were known—comprised one formal secretary, various dragomans, servants, and footmen, and a number of minor functionaries.⁵⁷ The bailo also controlled a cadre of diplomatic couriers, used by all Western states in the seventeenth century, and directed the Scuola dei giovani di lingua, which was founded in the mid-sixteenth century to provide instruction in the Turkish language for officials and interpreters supporting his operations.⁵⁸ Formal instruction in Turskish for some of these functionaries was paid for by the Venetian state.⁵⁹ The bailo’s prominent position in the international diplomatic arena in general and the Ottoman political scene in particular rendered necessary the maintenance of an ostentatious residential palazzo that was financed partly by the cottimo— revenues collected from tolls levied on ships flying the flag of Saint Mark that sought anchorage in the Ottoman capital—and partly by his extraordinary expenses provided for by the government, which were rarely audited by the Venetian authorities.⁶⁰ In this respect, the bailato was the only diplomatic post that could confer financial benefits on its holder. Yet it also necessitated lavish expenditure on gifts to members of the enormous Ottoman court and bribes to lesser dignitaries and functionaries of the Sultan, as we shall see in Chapter 6. As an initial example, at the start of his diplomatic mission as the new bailo in Constantinople, the nobleman Alvise Renier was granted 5,000 ducats in cash and 400 ducats’ worth of silk to gift to Ottoman grandees and other dignitaries in order to advance Venetian interests in the Sublime Porte.⁶¹ Due to the political and economic weight Veneto-Ottoman diplomatic relations carried, the bailo’s secretary was amongst those state officials who frequently

⁵⁶ See, for example, ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 8, c. 92r. (10 Oct. 1567). ⁵⁷ In the seventeenth century, the bailo appointed on average fifteen servants. See Zannini, ‘Economic and Social Aspects’, p. 128; Lazari, ‘Cenni intorno alle legazioni’, p. xviii. ⁵⁸ Zannini, ‘Economic and Social Aspects’, p. 128. ⁵⁹ ASV, CCX, Dispacci Ambasciatori, b. 5, fol. 156 (20 Aug. 1580). ⁶⁰ Zannini, ‘Economic and Social Aspects’, p. 128. ⁶¹ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 6, c. 7v. (30 June 1547).

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received secret instructions from the Ten. In March 1580, Gabriel Cavazza, the secretary of the recently deceased bailo Nicolò Barbarigo, had been left alone in Constantinople, waiting for Barbarigo’s successor, Paolo Contarini. Consequently, the responsibility for effective diplomatic relations with Turkish dignitaries and foreign diplomats in the Ottoman capital fell upon him. As his written communication to the Ten reveals, his good relations with the Milanese Giovanni Margliani, Philip II’s ambassador to the Porte, were deemed diplomatically precarious by the Ten, because Cavazza discussed with Margliani issues relating to Jacques de Germigny, the French ambassador to the Porte, who loathed Margliani, and also due to an egregious altrecation between the latter and the Grand Vizier.⁶² When the Ten found out, they sent him a secret letter, assuring him of their trust in his diplomatic work but reminding him of his highly responsible and sensitive position. Accordingly, they admonished him to be as courteous and affable as possible to all the legates of foreign princes and not single out specific ones, communicating the Venetian government’s ‘affection’ to their rulers, so as to be in a more favourable position to extract as much information as possible from them. After he had absorbed the written instructions, Cavazza was ordered to torch the Ten’s missive and any copies of letters he had sent to them regarding this affair, and to remove any mention of it from his registers.⁶³ On the whole, the Council of Ten effectively administered Venice’s secret service by managing their delegates, including not only their formally appointed ambassadors and governors but also the secretaries who served them. Some of these individuals were billeted in the Doge’s Palace, while several others were geographically dispersed across Europe and the Near East. Praising or castigating them, ordering or instructing them, trusting or dismissing them, the Ten engaged in managerial practices that materialized in a variety of ways that resemble contemporary manifestations of management in its various forms: in its technical form, whereby management helped solve functional problems of large-scale organization; in its elite form, which centred on the interests and prerogatives of a particular group, namely the managers; and in the political sense, focusing on the control and even discipline of subordinates.⁶⁴ These manifestations of management will become more apparent as this chapter unfolds. Ultimately, the Ten’s corporate-like delegation of duties, infused with qualities of trust, acknowledgement, even rebuke, was an expression of their ongoing accomplishment of power ⁶² See, for example, the lengthy enciphered letter relating a bitter altercation between the Grand Vizier Şemsi Ahmet Paşa and Giovanni Margliani that induced the former to threaten to throw the latter into the sea and put him under strict surveillance. Terrified of the potential consequences, Margliani considered sending all his documents to the Venetian embassy, knowling he could trust Cavazza to look after them. The letter can be found in ASV, CCX, Dispacci Ambasciatori, b. 5, fols. 133–6 (9 Feb. 1580). ⁶³ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 12, c. 35v. (2 March 1580). ⁶⁴ Christopher Grey, ‘ “We Are All Managers Now”; “We Always Were”: On the Development and Demise of Management’, Journal of Management Studies 36, no 5 (1999), pp. 561–85.

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that materialized through their right to coordinate and manage the activities of those reporting to them. The way in which the Ten’s power was attained, especially amongst those geographically dispersed delegates, is worthy of further examination. For this reason, we must now turn to the written correspondence between them.

Correspondence as a Tool of Management and Organization of Work Correspondence, the writing and exchange of letters, was the predominant means of communication across large distances in the early modern era.⁶⁵ That period, characterized by geographical expansion beyond the confines of the European continent, the rise of high finance, the intensification of trade links between individuals and states, and the proliferation of cultural and political exchanges, paved the way for the first age of globalization.⁶⁶ Hence, correspondence, as the primary tool of communication between merchants, their agents, and their clients, became the cornerstone of these interactions,⁶⁷ as did the exchange of letters for political and diplomatic purposes.⁶⁸ Importantly, correspondence provided the principal enabler of the organization of work amongst professionals who were dispersed in different parts of the world. More specifically, it was through the writing and exchange of letters that those higher in an organizational hierarchy, in our case, the Council of Ten, were able to administer effectively their human, financial, even natural resources within and, more pertinently, beyond the walls of the Palazzo Ducale. Consequently, amongst its other uses, correspondence became the fundamental tool of long-distance management, a basic epistolary trait of the early modern period that historians have overwhelmingly overlooked.⁶⁹ For Renaissance Venice, correspondence laid the foundation for its centralized intelligence organization; hence, it was methodically planned. To begin with, ⁶⁵ For a general introduction to correspondence and epistolary exchange in the early modern period, see Schneider, The Culture of Epistolarity; and the essays in Bethencourt and Egmond, Correspondence and Cultural Exchange. ⁶⁶ On the first age of globalization, see Antony G. Hopkins (ed.), Globalization in World History (London: Pimlico, 2002); Christopher A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914 (London: Wiley, 2002). ⁶⁷ For examples of correspondence as a medium of communication between merchants and their agents, see Frederic C. Lane, Andrea Barbarigo: Merchant of Venice, 1418–1449 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1944); Ugo Tucci (ed.), Lettres d’un marchand vénitien Andrea Berengo (1553–1556) (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1957); Iris Origo, The Merchant of Prato: Daily Life in a Medieval Italian City (London: Penguin, 1992); Infelise, ‘From Merchants’ Letters to Handwritten Political Avvisi’; Trivellato, ‘Merchants’ Letters’. ⁶⁸ See, for example, the essays in Paul M. Dover (ed.), Secretaries and Statecraft in the Early Modern World (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016). ⁶⁹ Correspondence as a tool of organizing and managing in the early modern period still awaits scholarly analysis. A notable exception is Bento da Silva and Iordanou, ‘The Origins of Organizing’.

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copies of the same letter produced in the Doge’s Palace by the Council of Ten or the State Inquisitors and penned by their secretaries were dispatched to all stakeholders who were directly or indirectly involved with the facts and events communicated in the letters. In the summer of 1593, for example, the governors of Corfu, Cephalonia, and Zante, the bailo in Constantinople, and the Provveditore contro gli Uscocchi (the official responsible for patrolling the Adriatic against Uskok pirates)⁷⁰ received copies of an enciphered letter informing them of a certain German merchant, who, at the time, was on his way to Constantinople from Venice. The merchant, a sexagenarian of small stature, according to the Ten’s intelligence, had previously been in the service of Charles V and Philip II, and was suspected of espionage against the Republic. For this reason, the recipients of the letter were ordered to arrest the man when the ship anchored in a bay that was under their territorial jurisdiction, seize his merchandise, and dispatch him to Venice.⁷¹ As correspondence fuelled the flow of communication between the Ten and their delegates, the multitude of risks involved in the dispatch, transportation, and delivery of letters had to be foreseen and forestalled. For this reason duplicates of a letter were sent by several routes to ensure that at least one copy would safely reach its intended recipient. The innumerable missives reaching the Venetian embassy in Constantinople, for example, were usually sent by two main routes, one directly to the bailo and one via the Venetian governor in Corfu.⁷² In the above-mentioned case of the German merchant, copies of the letters were sent overland, via the Venetian envoy in Naples, and by sea, via the Capitano del Golfo (a senior naval commander of the Venetian fleet). The sea-route letter took about four days to reach Corfu, and another seven days to be forwarded from the local Provveditore to his counterpart in Zante, via Cephalonia. Upon receiving the letter, the governor of Zante informed the Capi that the German merchant had, indeed, had a brief sojourn on the island, hosted by an English merchant residing there, but, alas, the ship on which he was travelling to Constantinople had already set sail from Zante before the governor had received

⁷⁰ On Uskok pirates plundering and causing damage to both Ottomans and Venetians in the Adriatic, see Gunther E. Rothenberg, ‘Venice and the Uskoks of Senj: 1537–1618’, Journal of Modern History 33, no 2 (1961), pp. 148–56; Alberto Tenenti, Piracy and the Decline of Venice, 1580–1615 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1967), pp. 3–15; Catherine W. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj: Piracy, Banditry, and Holy War in the Sixteenth-Century Adriatic (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press: 1992); Edigi Ivetic, ‘Gli uscocchi fra mito e storiografia’, in Mauro Gaddi and Andrea Zannini (eds.), ‘Venezia non è da guerra’: L’Isontino, la società friulana e la Serenissima nella guerra di Gradisca (1615–1617) (Udine: Forum, 2008), pp. 389–97. ⁷¹ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 13, cc. 108v.–110v. (18 June 1593). ⁷² See, for instance, ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 8 (7 June, 19 July 1572). On the various postal routes between Constantinople and Venice, see Luciano De Zanche, ‘I vettori dei dispacci diplomatici veneziani tra e per Constantinopoli’, Archivio per la storia postale, comunicazioni e società 1, no 2 (1999), pp. 19–43; De Zanche, Tra Costantinopoli e Venezia: Dispacci di Stato e lettere di mercanti dal basso Medioevo alla caduta della Serenissima (Prato: Istituto di Studi Storici Postali, 2000).

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the Ten’s instructions.⁷³ Eventually, the German merchant managed to reach the Ottoman capital, where, after a formal audience with the bailo, he was allowed to proceed to Syria. It is evident that the Venetian authorities were unable to find adequate incriminating evidence to arrest him or secretly execute him, as was the fateful ending of several enemy spies,⁷⁴ a commonplace setback in the stealthy world of espionage. Instead, most probably trying to forestall a diplomatic rapture with Spain, they mothballed the incident, instructing the bailo to keep a watchful eye on his overall dealings in the Levant.⁷⁵ The historical value of this episode lies less in its palpable narrative appeal and more in its aptness in evidencing how the Ten’s continuous multidirectional instructions intended to help coordinate the successful execution of a particular task were seamlessly communicated via the medium of correspondence. Correspondence, therefore, had a managerial function within Venice’s central intelligence organization, serving not only as a tool for communicating orders and directives, but also as a briefing and accounting instrument utilized by managers and those managed by them in order to inform and be informed. Subsequently, Venice’s formal representatives serving beyond the watery confines of the lagoon city were expected to correspond regularly with three key governmental magistracies: the Senate, the Council of Ten, and the State Inquisitors, producing three distinct types of report, one to the Senate, known as lettere pubbliche, and the others, containing more sensitive information, intended for the Ten and the Inquisitori.⁷⁶ The successful organization of the circulation of correspondence necessitated patience and persistence, since connecting individuals operating across vast distances was a time-consuming endeavour. A letter sent to Corfu entailed a four-day cross-country journey, reaching, firstly, the ambassador in Rome,⁷⁷ who would then forward it to the Venetian envoy in Naples, with the instruction to then post it to Corfu.⁷⁸ Across larger distances, say, between Europe and India, such procedures could take up to two years, considering the high probability of inclement weather along the way.⁷⁹ As the distance between Anatolia and Europe was shorter, dispatches from Constantinople to Venice (and the reverse route), which were sent every other week, took approximately one month to reach

⁷³ ASV, CCX, Lettere dei Rettori e di Altre Cariche, b. 296, fols 104–5 (5 July 1593). ⁷⁴ Secret executions of enemy spies will be discussed in detail in Chapter 6. ⁷⁵ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 13, c. 112r./v. (25 Aug. 1593). ⁷⁶ De Vivo, Information and Communication, p. 35. On the lettere pubbliche to the Senate, see Raimondo Morozzo della Rocca (ed.), Archivio di Stato di Venezia. Dispacci degli ambasciatori al senato. Indice (Rome: Ministero dell’Interno, 1959), pp. v–xiii; Salvatore Carbone, Note introduttive ai dispacci al Senato dei rappresentanti diplomatici veneti. Serie: Costantinopoli, Firenze, Inghilterra, Pietroburgo (Rome: Arti grafiche fratelli Palombi, 1974). ⁷⁷ ASV, Cinque Savi alla Mercanzia, Nuova Serie, b. 47, fasc. 184 (8 Jan. 1628). ⁷⁸ ASV, CCX, Dispacci Ambasciatori, b. 25 (29 Nov. 1567). ⁷⁹ John W. O’Malley, The First Jesuits (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 62–3.

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their destination.⁸⁰ The route involved a roughly two-week overland journey from Constantinople to Cattaro (contemporary Kotor on the Adriatic coast of Montenegro), and from there an approximately two-week sea voyage to the Venetian lagoon.⁸¹ Overall, then, from sending a letter to receiving a response between Venice and Constantinople, the correspondent was faced with a waiting time of about two months in duration, provided the letters were not caught up in long, storm-tossed journeys. On the whole, letter exchange became the backbone of the Ten’s management of geographically dispersed delegates and, by extension, their central intelligence organization. To safeguard the secure transportation of correspondence, aside from multiple copies of letters, occasionally the Ten interfered with detailed instructions about their delivery. In the summer of 1556, for instance, the Capi ordered the podestà of Crema to appoint a trusted dispatch rider who would personally deliver their letters to the Venetian Residente in Milan.⁸² Similarly, in March 1579 the Residente obtained letters from the Ten with the instruction to forward them with a dispatch rider to the Venetian consul in Genoa. The latter was subsequently ordered to forward the enclosed letters to the ambassador in Spain at once, formally reporting on the execution of his assignment to the Ten.⁸³ Conversely, two years later, the Residente in Milan was warned not to use the courier from Lyons when forwarding the Ten’s letters to the Venetian ambassador in Madrid, as duplicates had already been delivered to him.⁸⁴ The above-mentioned episodes are emblematic of the crucial role an efficiently organized postal service played in the circulation of correspondence. In this domain Venice had the upper hand, at least in the Mediterranean region, where, between the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, the Republic attained ‘a near monopoly over the transportation of communications between Europe and the Ottoman Empire’.⁸⁵ This monopoly undergirded her initially firm and eventually dwindling grip on political—and to a lesser extent economic—influence in both the East and West. This was due to Venice’s provision of the only regular and reliable postal service between the Levantine shores and Europe,⁸⁶ rendering most contemporary rulers, diplomats, and merchants reliant upon it for their epistolary

⁸⁰ Sardella, Nouvelles, p. 56. ⁸¹ De Zanche, Tra Costantinopoli e Venezia; Braudel, The Mediterranean, Vol. I, p. 362; Dursteler, ‘Power and Information’, pp. 605–7. ⁸² ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 5 (31 July 1556). ⁸³ Ibid., f. 10 (27 March 1579). ⁸⁴ Ibid., (19 May 1581). ⁸⁵ Dursteler, ‘Power and Information’ p. 602. ⁸⁶ Ibid. On Venice’s courier service to Constantinople, see also De Zanche, Tra Costantinopoli e Venezia. For relevant literature on the Venetian postal service, see Chapter 1, p. 36, n. 42. On the history of the postal system in the early modern period generally, see Caizzi, Dalla posta dei rei; E. John B. Allen, Post and Courier Service in the Diplomacy of Early Modern Europe (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1973); Pettegree, The Invention of News, pp. 167–81.

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needs to and from the Ottoman capital.⁸⁷ This meant that letters departing from or reaching Constantinople would pass from the Venetian bailate. Venetian baili took advantage of this hegemony, routinely opening and reading letters. They also manipulated the flow of correspondence, usually delaying it, in order to steal a march on the delivery of news from the Levant to the European world, advancing, thus, Venetian supremacy in that terrain.⁸⁸ It was due to these crafty manipulations that contemporary scholars conferred on the bailo the title of ‘the bestinformed European in the Ottoman capital’.⁸⁹ The effective manner in which the Council of Ten administered the production and flow of correspondence between their formal representatives is indicative of two distinct organizational traits: firstly, their adeptness at coordinating and administering complex systematic processes of organizing across large distances; and secondly, the great significance they placed on correspondence, not only as the primary means of information exchange, but, importantly, as a fundamental tool of management that enabled them to administer and choreograph their underlings’ actions. Both these organizational traits are evident not only in the Ten’s orchestration of the production, transportation, and distribution of letters but in their managerial concern for the safety and security of the personnel directly or indirectly involved in their courier service. In March 1601, for example, the Ten wrote to their governor in Friuli, informing him that one of their couriers who transported letters to and from them was in imminent danger. They, thus, ordered him to take all measures possible to forestall any hazard that could befall him.⁹⁰ Faithful to their penchant for secrecy, the Ten did not disclose details about the nature of the impending danger threatening their courier, although we can infer that they implied the prospect of ambush, the most common danger couriers faced at the time. This focus on the instructions conveyed by a letter rather than the narrative contained in it further supports the argument that, at least within the realm of intelligence organization, official correspondence was less a means of information exchange and more a vital tool of management, involving complex processes of issuing, sending, receiving, executing, and reporting on written instructions. This ongoing dialogue between written instructions and secrecy is nowhere else more evident than in the extensive use of encrypted communication within Venice’s secret service. ⁸⁷ On the other side of the European continent, in Spain, the Venetians (and the French), did not enjoy similar postal control, and were heavily dependent on Philip II’s network of couriers, which was managed by the Taxis family. See Parker, The Grand Strategy, pp. 48–50; Allen, Post and Courier Service, pp. 38, 87. On the postal activity of the Taxis family, see Wolfgang Behringer, Thurn und Taxis. Die Geschichte ihrer Post und ihrer Unternehmen (Munich: Piper, 1990); Behringer, Im Zeichen des Merkur. Reichspost und Kommunikationsrevolution in der frühen Neuzeit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993). A summary of Behringer’s arguments in English, is presented in Behringer, ‘Communications Revolutions: A Historiographical Concept’, German History 24, no 3 (2006), pp. 333–74. ⁸⁸ Dursteler, ‘Power and Information’, pp. 620–2. ⁸⁹ Hassiotis, ‘Venezia e i domini veneziani’, p. 122. ⁹⁰ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 14, c. 60v. (21 March 1601).

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Encrypted Correspondence: Cryptography and its Regulation As a vital tool of management, especially when handling long-distance interactions and assignments within the realm of diplomacy and state security, official correspondence between the Venetian authorities and their formally appointed legates within and beyond the Venetian dominion had to be kept strictly confidential. For this reason, methods of encryption, primarily in the form of cryptography (writing in cipher) and, to a lesser extent, steganography (e.g., the use of invisible ink), played a vital role, not only in the preservation of communication between the Council of Ten, their representatives, and other underlings but, importantly, in the execution of orders issued by the Venetian spy chiefs. In the late 1560s, for instance, the bailo in Constantinople was instructed to desist from the ‘very dangerous’ practice of using ‘lemon juice’ (that is, invisible ink) when relating ‘the secret matters that take place daily’ in the Ottoman capital. The Venetian diplomat was politely admonished to revert to the widely accepted use of the designated cipher, because the Sultan’s envoy in Venice, Ibrahim Bey, had grown increasingly suspicious of the bailo’s clandestine method of correspondence.⁹¹ This appeal followed a formal entreaty by the Sultan, via Ibrahim Bey, for the bailo to stop using ciphers in his communications with Venice or to offer the cipher keys to the Sultan, a request that the Venetians courteously turned down, arguing that letter interception and the widespread use of ciphers as a diplomatic practice precluded such a concession.⁹² So averse was the Sultan to Venetian cryptography that he demanded a clause in the capitulations of the peace treaty with Venice, forbidding the use of methods of encryption. The Venetians retorted, however, that without the use of ciphers, they would not be able to do favours to his majesty, transporting his messages across the Mediterranean, as they had previously done, when his predecessor needed to communicate with his dignitary in Malta, as we saw in the previous chapter.⁹³ It is evident, from the above, that cryptography, which was the endorsed method of encryption in the diplomatic, political, and military circles of the early modern world, perhaps because it lent itself to the prospect of cryptanalysis using the established and sophisticated scientia of mathematics—rather than other, more obscure encryption techniques, such as invisible ink, that bordered on the arcane⁹⁴—had not yet been mastered by the Ottomans.⁹⁵ Cryptography was deeply embedded in the Ten’s organization of their secret service and this was manifest in two distinct features: firstly, in their systematic ⁹¹ Ibid., Reg. 8, c. 82v. (3 April 1567). ⁹² Ibid., cc. 76v.–77r. (27 Jan. 1567). ⁹³ Ibid., cc. 78v.–80r. (18 Feb. 1567). ⁹⁴ For a comprehensive account of the evolution of invisible ink through the centuries, see Kristie Macrakis, Prisoners, Lovers, & Spies: The Story of Invisible Ink from Herodotus to Al-Qaeda (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014). ⁹⁵ Gürkan, ‘Espionage in the 16th Century Mediterranean’, p. 87.

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development of a professional department of cryptology, housed in the Palazzo Ducale, and occupying some of the most renowned cryptologists of the period. Due to its fundamentality in Venice’s organized intelligence pursuits, the Venetian state cryptology office will be discussed in detail in the following chapter. Secondly, cryptography was an indispensable aspect of the Ten’s managerial interactions with their legates, as a significant portion of their correspondence with their ambassadors, governors, and military commanders had to be produced in cipher. For this reason, the Ten issued a slew of regulations on the provision, use, classification and disposal of ciphers. The first string of regulations the Ten deliberated upon involved the provision of enciphering and deciphering facilities for the representatives of the Serenissima. First and foremost, all secretaries of the Senate, including the secretaries of Venetian ambassadors, were required to have basic enciphering and deciphering skills, in order to fulfil their administrative responsibilities. In practice, they had to be able to use the designated formal ciphers in order to encipher and decipher official letters. In consequence, the systematic study and development of a working knowledge of ciphers was an essential aspect of their job,⁹⁶ especially when they were obliged to assume diplomatic duties overseas.⁹⁷ Moreover, as Venetian ambassadors, governors, and military chiefs were required to communicate in cipher frequently, they were expected to be conversant with methods of encryption or to employ secretaries adept at cryptography and cryptanalysis. This was particularly important for high-ranking naval commanders such as the Capitano Generale da Mar, who frequently communicated information to the Ten that would nowadays be deemed ‘classified’. For this reason, in 1577 the Ten unanimously decreed that navy chiefs should be provided with a secretary tasked with enciphering and deciphering responsibilities for a monthly salary of six ducats, to be provided from the commander’s financial reserves, and a one-off gift of 100 ducats for the secretary’s relocation expenses in Corfu, where naval commanders were based.⁹⁸ By 1590 the six-ducat monthly salary was deemed insufficient to cover the rising costs of specialist secretaries. Consequently, the Ten decreed a salary increase to the annual sum of 100 ducats, in addition to the 100-ducat relocation settlement.⁹⁹ Aside from the provision of enciphering and deciphering support, the Ten issued several decrees on the actual use of ciphers. A 1547 directive dictated that all major diplomats had to be granted a distinct cipher for their direct communication with the Ten. For security purposes, that cipher differed from other ciphers provided for communication between Venetian diplomats. The same ⁹⁶ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Miste, Reg. 35, c. 114r./v. (14 July 1512); ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Comuni, Reg. 30, c. 130r./v. (4 Aug. 1572). ⁹⁷ Trebbi, ‘La cancelleria veneta’, pp. 101–2. ⁹⁸ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 11, c. 135r. (3 July 1577). ⁹⁹ Ibid., Reg. 13, c. 77r. (14 Aug. 1590).

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regulation was reiterated in 1589, clearly stating that Venetian envoys had to be furnished with two ciphers, a separate one for their written interactions with the Ten and a joint one for their communication with the Ten’s underlings.¹⁰⁰ The time it took for instructions to evolve into habitual practice was fraught with inevitable misunderstandings and mistakes. A year after the 1589 decree, for example, Ambassador Mocenigo in France was forced to defend his secretary’s failure to use the designated cipher for matters of high importance by attributing it to his own ignorance of the Ten’s directives.¹⁰¹ For this reason, reminders of the relevant instructions were circulated when deemed necessary.¹⁰² At times of political uncertainty and impending danger, the Ten increased security measures for encrypted writing. In the summer of 1590, they instructed the Venetian ambassador in Savoy to combine two major ciphers in composing different parts of his letters, in order to bolster their inaccessibility.¹⁰³ This request ensued from a 1578 regulation, according to which all Venetian ambassadors, governors, supreme commanders, and captains, as well as all state secretaries in those dignitaries’ employ were to use a pioneering new cipher developed by the cryptologist Girolamo Franceschi that had been deemed unbreakable by the authorities, for at least a portion of their written communications.¹⁰⁴ So groundbreaking was Franceschi’s cipher that eventually all secretaries serving in diplomatic missions had to sit a formal examination in order to prove fluency in it and the ability to use it in conjunction with other ciphers, on pain of the loss of a year’s salary.¹⁰⁵ As this was a high-security cipher, it was reserved exclusively for communication with the Council of Ten. All diplomats serving overseas were granted a different cipher for interactions between themselves. When, within a decade, Franceschi’s cipher had been broken, the Ten ordered the use of a new cipher for communicating matters of extraordinary importance. This was created by another Venetian prodigy, Pietro Pellegrini.¹⁰⁶ On the whole, in line with their unswerving obsession with secrecy, the Ten were extremely nuanced in their directives to their delegates. This is because, as letter interception was widespread in that period, letters opened by the enemy were not expected to cause surprise;¹⁰⁷ letters opened by an ally, however, could occasion embarrassment and regret. When an ally on paper was an enemy in practice, the ramifications of flouting diplomatic conventions regarding secret correspondence had to be avoided at all costs. Under such circumstances, the Ten ¹⁰⁰ Ibid., cc. 57r.–58r. (18 April 1589). ¹⁰¹ ASV, CCX, Dispacci Ambasciatori, b. 11, fol. 174 (7 June 1590). ¹⁰² See, for example, ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 9 (29 March and 6 July 1574). ¹⁰³ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 13, c. 73v. (19 June 1590). ¹⁰⁴ Ibid., Reg. 11, cc. 166r.–167r. (18 Aug. 1578). ¹⁰⁵ Ibid., Reg. 13, cc. 57r.–58r. (18 April 1589). ¹⁰⁶ ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 11 (30 Aug. 1596). Both Franceschi and Pellegrini will be discussed in detail in the following chapter. ¹⁰⁷ Lazzarini, Communication and Conflict, p. 74.

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could resort to micromanaging their legates. In the late 1560s, for instance, the bailo in Constantinople inadvertently became a firebrand when he ignored the Ten’s repeated orders to be exceptionally economical in his use of ciphers.¹⁰⁸ Accordingly, when the Ten received a copy of an enciphered letter sent by the bailo to the Venetian ambassador to the Holy Roman Emperor, they became alarmed. Unaware of the anguish he had caused, the Venetian ambassador to the imperial court had forwarded the bailo’s missive to the Ten’s secretaries with a request to decipher it for him, as he could not recognize the bailo’s ciphertext.¹⁰⁹ Since preserving the neutrality of Ottoman-Venetian relations was paramount at that point in time, the Ten immediately wrote to the bailo, reiterating their implacable wish that he exercise thrift in his enciphered communications with other Venetian legates.¹¹⁰ They also beseeched their ambassador in the Habsburg court not to correspond with the bailo in cipher or, even better, not to correspond with him at all.¹¹¹ The remarkable finesse with which the Ten handled that and other similar matters was not to be taken light-heartedly as a sign of lenience towards such misdemeanours. Their absorbing preoccupation with the potential hazards of using or not using encrypted correspondence is evident in several letters of reproof sent to those attempting to ignore their rules. Underlings who did not obey were severely scolded and chastized. The Venetian Residente in Milan, in particular, who was a frequent recipient of scorching criticism from the Ten, was reprimanded for ignoring orders to write in cipher, especially when names of important personages were mentioned in a letter.¹¹² Secretaries who misused or abused the cipher were threatened with a raft of punishments, including the loss of one year’s salary or even their job. In November 1577, a secretary in the employ of the Duke of Candia lost both as a result of mishandling the designated cipher and compromising, thus, the security of the Venetian state.¹¹³ Like Philip II’s cifra general and cifra particular, as we saw in Chapter 1, the Venetian system of encrypted communication distinguished between two types of cipher: the zifra grande, which was reserved for communication between the Ten, their ambassadors, their governors, and their Provveditori Generali, and the zifra piccola, which was allocated to lesser representatives, such as the consuls and their capitani.¹¹⁴ The zifra grande was usually granted to senior Venetian representatives or their secretaries upon departure for their diplomatic missions. The zifra piccola reached its users in a variety of ways. In the Stato da Mar, copies of the cipher were distributed by the Provveditore Generale dell’ Armata, through the ¹⁰⁸ ¹⁰⁹ ¹¹¹ ¹¹² ¹¹³ ¹¹⁴

ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 8, cc. 76v.–77r. (23 Jan. 1567). Ibid., cc. 137v.–138r. (5 Jan. 1569). ¹¹⁰ Ibid. ASV, CCX, Dispacci Ambasciatori, b. 13 (20 Jan. 1569). ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 3 (1 Aug. 1543). ASV, CCX, Lettere dei Rettori e di Altre Cariche, b. 286 (20 Nov. 1577). ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 14, cc. 126r.–127r. (31 Aug. 1605).

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post, directly dispatched by the Ten, or via the Capitano del Golfo.¹¹⁵ In 1575, for instance, the Capitano del Golfo was instructed by the Ten to depart for the Venetian stronghold of Zara in order to provide the local rectors with the key to the cipher which the bailo in Constantinople used, as they were unable to read his letters.¹¹⁶ As a customary practice, the governors of one or two strongholds would receive the cipher key and they were then expected to pass it on to their neighbouring counterparts, together with instructions on how to use it, written, undoubtedly, in cipher.¹¹⁷ In larger strongholds where there were Venetian dignitaries in post, the highest authority, such as the Provveditore Generale di Cipro or the Duke of Crete, were expected to distribute the cipher key to the governors of smaller towns.¹¹⁸ The coordination of the distribution of the appropriate cipher was a straightforward process, at least on paper. According to the Ten’s directives, every time a fresh cipher was introduced, it was sent to the relevant dignitaries, who were expected to start using it at once, while safely returning the old one to the Council of Ten, as we shall see below. In January 1591, for example, the Provveditore Generale in Dalmatia was sent the key to a new cipher, with the instruction to consign the old one to any Venetian representative on his way to Venice via the Dalmatian coast, ensuring that a formal receipt of consignment was produced.¹¹⁹ At the close of the sixteenth century, Iseppo Gregolin, the secretary of the Provveditore Generale da Mar, wrote to the state cryptographer Ferigo Marin confirming that he had received the newly allocated cipher. In his letter, he proposed to return the outdated one in person, in order to avoid the risks involved in sending it by post.¹²⁰ In a sprawling territorial state like Venice that deployed several permanent embassies and ruled over a large number of geographically dispersed strongholds, the coordination of the distribution of the designated cipher did not go according to plan every time. On the contrary, the dispatched ciphers did not always match and this caused confusion and delays in communication. In 1605, the governor of Zante informed the Capi that his cipher was different from the one used by his counterpart in Cerigo (the contemporary Greek island of Cythera in south-eastern Peloponnese), causing a communication breakdown between the two islands.¹²¹ A year later, Roberto Lio, the Residente in Florence wrote to the secretary of the Council of Ten in a bewildered state, imploring him to ‘deliver me from my ignorance’ by instructing him which of all the ciphers he had received was the one

¹¹⁵ ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 3 (11 July 1533); See, for example, ASV, CCX, Lettere dei Rettori e di Altre Cariche, b. 291, fol. 106 (12 Feb. 1527); ibid., b. 296 (16 May 1591). ¹¹⁶ ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 9 (21 May 1575). ¹¹⁷ Ibid. ¹¹⁸ Ibid., f. 7 (7 Aug. 1567). ¹¹⁹ Ibid., f. 11 (21 Jan. 1591). ¹²⁰ ASV, IS, b. 399 (14 Dec. 1599). ¹²¹ ASV, CCX, Lettere dei Rettori e di Altre Cariche, b. 296, fol. 130 (28 May 1605).

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that was formally in use at the time.¹²² The Provveditore Generale dell’ Armata took it a step further, requesting not only the correct cipher, but also a secretary who would release him from the burden of having to produce an inestimable number of enciphered epistles, a task so time-consuming that it held him back from attending to all his other duties.¹²³ The main cause of these discrepancies was the regular update of ciphers that occurred when the Ten had confirmation or even suspicion that a cipher had been broken. In such cases, they ordered the urgent halt of the use of the designated cipher and its immediate substitution with a fresh one.¹²⁴ Detailed instructions for such updates were sent to formal cipher users, and reminders were communicated when it was deemed necessary. In the summer of 1583, for example, the Capi reminded the bailo in Constantinople that he should desist from using a cipher already deemed outdated by the Ten. The Ten became aware of the bailo’s gaffe when the Provveditore Generale di Candia contacted them to inform them that they were not able to read enciphered letters sent to him by the Venetian diplomat in Constantinople, as they were no longer in possession of the out-of-date key. To rectify the problem, the Ten supplied the bailo with the new cipher and updated the Provveditore in Crete on this final development, in order to restore secret communication between the two officials.¹²⁵ Responsibility for obtaining updated ciphers and their keys fell, primarily, on the secretaries of the Venetian legates or governors, who received them prior to their departure for their diplomatic service overseas. Travel route permitting, the secretary was expected to deliver updated keys to other Venetian representatives on his way. In 1630, on his way to serve in the Venetian embassy in Rome, the secretary Andrea Rosso was instructed to deliver new cipher keys in person to the Venetian Residente in Florence and by post to his counterpart in Naples. If the postal route was not deemed safe, Rosso was advised to wait until the new Residente of Naples would retrieve it in Rome, on his way to assume his new diplomatic post.¹²⁶ Similarly, Alberto Franceschi, the outgoing secretary of Ambassador Alvise Contarini in the Netherlands, was granted not only his own cipher key, but two more keys to be consigned to Ambassador Vicenzo Vussoni in England. The latter was expected to keep one for his own use, while granting the second to Ambassador Giovanni Soranzo in France.¹²⁷ If the designated cipher was in use during a time of role succession, it was passed on from predecessor to

¹²² ASV, IS, b. 434 (7 Oct. 1606). ¹²³ ASV, CCX, Lettere dei Rettori e di Altre Cariche, b. 305 (3 May 1611). ¹²⁴ See, for example, ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 13, cc. 52v.–53v. (13 July 1584); ibid., c. 85r. (3 Apr. 1591); ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 11 (29, 30 March 1591). ¹²⁵ ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 10 (25 June 1583). ¹²⁶ ASV, IS, b. 483 (6 April 1630). ¹²⁷ Ibid., (9 Nov. 1631).

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successor through an oath of acceptance.¹²⁸ Once again, lack of coordination could cause problems. In the summer of 1578, for example, Alvise Balbi, the Venetian captain who fought against Uskok pirates in the Adriatic, appealed to the Capi for a cipher just like the one his predecessor had, because, for lack of it, he was obliged to travel to Zara in order to use the one in possession of the governor of that city.¹²⁹ Choreographing the coordination of the updated cipher provision to all their representatives across Italy and the Levant was a herculean feat beyond the worldly capabilities of the Venetian authorities. In consequence, confusion and disarray did not only cause communication gridlocks but, more gravely, delays in the execution of tasks. Paradoxically, however, such hold-ups powerfully demonstrate the Ten’s remarkable intelligence organization, as their underlings appealed to one another in order to decipher and execute written instructions. In 1578, for instance, the governor of Chania bemoaned the delay in executing the Capi’s written orders, as lack of the cipher key forced him to turn to the Duke of Candia for assistance.¹³⁰ Similarly, in 1591 the governor of Zante wrote to the Capi twice, lamenting that he had been sent the wrong cipher key and, therefore, could not decipher the encrypted letters he received from the Serenissima. To rectify the problem, he was planning on soliciting the assistance of the secretary of the Provveditore Generale da Mar, who happened to be nearby at the time. When the latter was unable to assist, the returning governor of Candia, who stopped in Zante on his way to Venice, came to the rescue with the appropriate key.¹³¹ The great speed with which ciphers were updated necessitated a third string of regulations pertaining to their cataloguing and, importantly, their disposal when they were no longer in use. Already by 1578 ducal secretaries had been ordered to produce lists of all those who received cipher keys, making a note of the proposed manner in which the keys would be returned after their use.¹³² As the number of ciphers gradually proliferated, by the first decade of the seventeenth century, official state cryptographers were asked to register all ciphers and their keys in two formal books, one for the Venetian colonies in the Mediterranean and one for the Venetian strongholds on the Italian mainland, taking a note of the date and the person to whom they were consigned, as well as the proposed return date. They were also ordered to create two copies of these books, to be stored in secret locations. Finally, since outdated keys caused great confusion amongst the users of state-produced ciphers, the Ten also decreed that older keys no longer in use were

¹²⁸ See, for example, ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 11 (24 Nov. 1597); ASV, CCX, Lettere dei Rettori e di Altre Cariche, b. 296, fol. 107 (22 Feb. 1600). ¹²⁹ ASV, CCX, Lettere dei Rettori e di Altre Cariche, b. 306 (5 July 1578). ¹³⁰ Ibid., b. 286 (8 Oct. 1578). ¹³¹ Ibid., b. 296, fols. 101, 103 (23, 26 June 1591). ¹³² ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 11, cc. 166r.–167r. (18 Aug. 1578).

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to be burned from time to time, in order to forestall the potential for confusion amongst official cipher users, due to the backlog of outdated keys.¹³³ The regulations on the provision, use, classification and disposal of ciphers had two fundamental functions. Firstly, they served as commonly accepted patterns of conduct that demarcated the passages, obstacles, and boundaries of knowledge transmission. Such regulations determined who was included in or excluded from access to privileged knowledge or exclusive information. Secondly, they transcended the realm of mere instructions to assume a managerial overtone, even an outright managerial function. This becomes clearer if we consider the fundamental nature of management, which is premised upon regulations, knowledge of which represents ‘special technical expertise’ that creates a certain degree of uniformity in the way human action is organized.¹³⁴ Viewed in this light, directives and regulations on encrypted correspondence constituted ‘an administrative order’, serving as ‘rules which govern organized action’ by dictating some uniformity in the way methods of encryption were operated by their users.¹³⁵ Here, administrative order refers to ‘general rules and regulations which are more or less stable, more or less exhaustive, and which can be learned’,¹³⁶ in order to dictate the actions of not only administrative staff but anyone involved directly in the organization of work within Venice’s secret service.¹³⁷ In a way, rules and regulations functioned as techniques ‘to handle controversies by breaking them down into mundane technical details’.¹³⁸ By and large, in both their functions, regulations regarding encrypted communication acted as enablers in the dissemination of knowledge that had to be concealed and, hence, protected. In this respect, they formed part of a burgeoning public bureaucracy overseen by the ubiquitous Council of Ten. This was nowhere else more evident than in the creation of Venice’s ducal chancery.

Venice’s Ducal Chancery and the Cancelleria Secreta As we saw above, correspondence, including encrypted correspondence, became the means of managing human action and performance at a distance, enabling the administration of large-scale, geographically dispersed organization of work, a managerial innovation that has been misleadingly attributed to the nineteenth

¹³³ Ibid., Reg. 14, cc. 126r.–127r. (31 Aug. 1605). ¹³⁴ Weber, Economy and Society, Vol. 2, p. 958. ¹³⁵ Max Weber called this attribute ‘Verwaltungsordnung’. See Weber, Economy and Society, Vol. 1, p. 51. ¹³⁶ Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 958. ¹³⁷ Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 52. ¹³⁸ Martin Ruef and Alona Harness, ‘Agrarian Origins of Management Ideology: The Roman and Antebellum Cases’, Organization Studies 30, no 6 (2009), pp. 589–607 (here p. 604).

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century.¹³⁹ Accordingly, ruling over a vast landmass of northern Italy and a substantial portion of the Adriatic and the islands of the Levant, and entertaining diplomatic and commercial representations across Europe, Anatolia, and even Northern Africa entailed an enormous paper trail. This included countless diplomatic dispatches, the registers of governmental deliberations, and the voluminous draft notes of such deliberations. From the late thirteenth century onwards, these documents were stored in the Doge’s Palace, in what was initially called the Curia Maior and eventually the Cancelleria Ducale, Venice’s ducal chancery.¹⁴⁰ The ducal chancery was created to serve the Great Council and, to a lesser extent, the Senate,¹⁴¹ emulating similar administrative developments emerging elsewhere in Italy.¹⁴² The Cancelleria Inferiore, named after its location on the first floor, below the hall of the Senate in the palace, was the second part of the Venetian chancery. It contained notarial records distinct from the political and diplomatic documentation stored in the Cancelleria Ducale.¹⁴³ In 1402, the Great Council decreed that documents relating to extremely sensitive issues of Venice’s republican politics that should not be easily accessible to users of the ducal chancery should be physically isolated.¹⁴⁴ This decision led to the third denomination of the state chancery, the Cancelleria Secreta or simply Secreta—the Secret Chancery.¹⁴⁵ The Secreta was a distinct annex of Venice’s ducal chancery and served as the exclusive storehouse of state records pertaining to Venice’s domestic and foreign security. This repository contained the most secret state papers, which would nowadays be styled ‘classified’. These primarily comprised the deliberative and diplomatic papers of the Council of Ten and the ¹³⁹ See, for example, Keith W. Hoskin and Richard H. Macve, ‘Accounting and the Examination: A Genealogy of Disciplinary Power’, Accounting, Organizations and Society 11, no. 2 (1986), pp. 105–36; Hoskin and Macve, ‘The Genesis of Accountability’. For a revisionist response to these contentions, see Jose Bento da Silva, Nick Llewellyn, and Fiona Anderson-Gough, ‘Oral-Aural Accounting and the Management of the Jesuit Corpus’, Accounting, Organizations and Society 59 (2017), pp. 44–57; Bento da Silva and Iordanou, ‘The Origins of Organizing’. ¹⁴⁰ For historical accounts of the Ducal Chancery’s development, see Baschet, Les Archives de Venise; Bartolomeo Cecchetti, ‘Costituzione istorica degli archivi veneti antichi 1200–1872’, Atti del Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, Series 4, Vol. 2 (1872–1873); Trebbi, ‘ La cancelleria veneta’; Marco Pozza, ‘La cancelleria’, in Giorgio Gracco and Gherardo Ortalli (eds.), Storia di Venezia: Dalle origini alla caduta della Serenissima, Vol. II L’età del comune (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1995), pp. 349–69. On the organization of the secreta, see Marco Pozza, ‘La cancelleria’, in Girolamo Arnaldi, Giorgio Gracco, and Alberto Tenenti (eds.), Storia di Venezia: Dalle origini alla caduta della Serenissima, Vol. III La formazione dello stato patrizio (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1997), pp. 365–87; Filippo De Vivo, ‘Ordering the Archive in Early Modern Venice (1400–1650)’, Archival Science 10, no 3 (2010), pp. 231–48; De Vivo, ‘Cœur de l’État’. ¹⁴¹ Pozza, ‘La cancelleria’ (1995). ¹⁴² De Vivo, ‘Ordering the Archive’, p. 235. ¹⁴³ On the Cancelleria Inferiore, see Maria Pia Pedani Fabris, ‘ Veneta auctoritate notarius’. Storia del notariato veneziano (1514–1797) (Milan: Giuffrè, 1996) and the bibliography therein. ¹⁴⁴ Baschet, Les Archives de Venise, pp. 155–6; Umberto Franzoi, Itinerari segreti nel Palazzo Ducale di Venezia (Treviso: Canova, 1995), p. 68. ¹⁴⁵ For a detailed analysis of the historical function of Venice’s Secret Chancery, see Fabio Antonini, ‘Historical Uses’.

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Senate, including records of proposals and counter-proposals, the voting results of these committees’ assemblies, notes on collective decisions, and, of course, diplomatic dispatches.¹⁴⁶ An even more secretive repository within the Secreta was the exclusive archive of the Council of Ten, which was located within the Council’s chambers in the palace.¹⁴⁷ By the 1460s, the Secreta had been placed entirely under the control of the Ten, and it became the mainstay of their power and, importantly, their intelligence organization.¹⁴⁸ Paradoxically, while the Secreta was created to protect the state’s most sensitive records, it took the Ten nearly half a century to decree these documents’ segregation and relocation to a special location in the Doge’s Palace, where they would be kept away from the prying eyes of visitors and inquisitive secretaries. Before 1459, the Secreta records were kept together with all other archival documents, widely accessible to chancery staff.¹⁴⁹ Consequently, as Filippo De Vivo astutely argued in a revisionist examination of Venice’s secret archive, its establishment was not an isolated event but a lengthy process ‘defining the boundaries between secret and other records and so reflecting changing perceptions of political sensitivity in response to inside and outside events’.¹⁵⁰ In this respect, the ducal chancery—of which the Secreta was part—became emblematic of organization in two senses of the word, as a solid entity and as a systematic and progressive process of becoming.¹⁵¹ In the former sense, its function resembled a civil service organization staffed by eighty to one hundred professional state servants, who were responsible for transcribing, indexing, and archiving all documents stored therein.¹⁵² In the spring of 1593, for instance, the state secretary Carlo Berengo was ordered to index and catalogue ambassadorial dispatches that had been lying around in a state of disarray for over three years.¹⁵³ In the latter sense, then, Venice’s ducal chancery entailed ‘conditionally related processes’ of organizing,¹⁵⁴ indicating an organizational process of putting things in order. ¹⁴⁶ De Vivo, ‘Ordering the Archive’; De Vivo, ‘Cœur de l’État’. ¹⁴⁷ De Vivo, ‘Ordering the Archive’, p. 235. ¹⁴⁸ Trebbi, ‘La cancelleria veneta’, pp. 79–81. ¹⁴⁹ De Vivo, ‘Cœur de l’État’, p. 718. On the location and spatial arrangement of the ducal chancery, see Franzoi, Itinerari segreti, pp. 49–82; Claudia Salmini, ‘Buildings, Furnishings, Access and Use: Examples from the Archive of the Venetian Chancery, from Medieval to Modern Times’, in M. V. Roberts (ed.), Archives and the Metropolis (London: Guildhall Library Publications, in association with the Centre for Metropolitan History, 1998), pp. 92–108. ¹⁵⁰ De Vivo, ‘Cœur de l’État’, p. 718. ¹⁵¹ On organizational theorists’ debates of organization both as an entity and as a process, see Weick, The Social Psychology of Organizing; Haridimos Tsoukas and Robert Chia, ‘On Organizational Becoming: Rethinking Organizational Change’, Organization Science 13, no 5 (2002), pp. 567–82; Bakken and Hernes, ‘Organizing is both a Verb and a Noun’. ¹⁵² Zannini, ‘Economic and Social Aspects’, p. 134; De Vivo, ‘Ordering the Archive’, p. 235. ¹⁵³ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 13, cc. 107v.–108r. (28 April 1593). On Carlo Berengo’s career as a bureaucrat, see Giovanni Pillinini, ‘Berengo, Carlo’, in Dizionario Biografico di Italiani, Vol. 9 (Rome: Treccani, 1969), pp. 38–9. ¹⁵⁴ Daniel Wren, The History of Management Thought, 5th edn (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley, 2005), p. 91.

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Devoted to this process of systematic (re-)organization of the Secreta, at the close of the sixteenth century, the Ten formally assigned responsibility for assembling, cataloguing, and indexing the documents stored in it to one state secretary, who would be supervised and supported by two members of the Council of Ten.¹⁵⁵ It took nearly seven years for this assignment to be appropriately actioned, most probably because, aside from its gargantuan proportions, the appointee and his supervisors seemed to have conflicting priorities.¹⁵⁶ For this reason, in 1606, the Ten decreed that the two appointed councillors would be relieved of any other duties in order to help complete the mammoth task.¹⁵⁷ By the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Ten had installed four permanent secretaries in the secret chancery specifically for the purpose of registering and indexing records stored there, while two clerks were in charge of overseeing the readers who were granted access to the Secreta. Minor functionaries, such as guards, were, allegedly, expected to be illiterate, so that they would not be in a position to obtain and leak secret information.¹⁵⁸ The Venetian chancery was developed to serve the various needs of Venice’s highest patrician councils. For this reason, in theory, it was not to be seconded to a specific administrative unit nor placed under the jurisdiction of a governmental council. In practice, however, already from the fifteenth century, the Ten had extended their managerial grip on it.¹⁵⁹ Moreover, as a form of organization, the chancery was characterized by a hierarchical administration and high degrees of formalization. From 1261, it was headed by the Great Chancellor (Cancellier Grande), the highest-ranked non-patrician officer in the Venetian state bureaucracy.¹⁶⁰ The Cancellier Grande, who held his civil service post for life, oversaw and managed the work of the nearly one hundred mandarins who staffed the chancery. These were different from other public officers in a significant way: recruitment was subject to rigorous public examinations, formal training, and, more often than not, continuous professional development. Provided they successfully passed their probation, their appointment was permanent, and their career progression was contingent upon specific criteria.¹⁶¹ The entrance ¹⁵⁵ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 14, c. 34v. (15 March 1599); ibid., cc. 129r., 130v.–131r. (13 Oct. 1605, 10 Feb. 1606). ¹⁵⁶ Ibid., cc. 129r., 130v.–131r. (13 Oct. 1605; 10 Feb. 1606). ¹⁵⁷ Ibid., cc. 130v.–131r. (10 Feb. 1606). ¹⁵⁸ De Vivo, ‘Cœur de l’État’, pp. 718–22. ¹⁵⁹ Zannini, ‘Economic and Social Aspects’, p. 132. ¹⁶⁰ The bibliography on the office of the Great Chancellor is substantial. See, in particular, Trebbi, ‘La cancelleria veneta’; Trebbi, ‘Il segretario veneziano’; Mary F. Neff, ‘A Citizen in the Service of the Patrician State: The Career of Zaccaria de’ Freschi’, Studi veneziani, n.s., 5 (1981), pp. 33–61; Paola De Peppo, ‘ “Memorie di veneti cittadini.” Alvise Dardani, cancellier grande’, Studi veneziani, n.s. 8 (1984), pp. 413–53; Matteo Casini, ‘Realtà e simboli del Cancellier Grande veneziano in età moderna (sec. XVI–XVII)’, Studi veneziani, n.s. 22 (1991), pp. 195–251; Zannini, Burocrazia e burocrati, pp. 119–81; Antonio Milledone, Mandarini veneziani. La cancelleria ducale nel Settecento (Rome: Aracne, 2009). ¹⁶¹ See also Ioanna Iordanou, ‘The Professionalization of Cryptology in Sixteenth-Century Venice’, Enterprise and Society 19, no 4 (2018), pp. 979–1013.

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level post was that of notaio straordinario or extraordinario, a probationary position of five years, at the end of which the candidate had to pass a written examination in Latin and the vernacular, as well as separate assessments conducted by the Ten,¹⁶² in order to move to the next level in the organizational hierarchy, that of notaio ordinario. After five additional years of service or two secretarial missions abroad,¹⁶³ the employee could apply for a promotion to secretary of the Senate. Where the secretary had served an ambassador overseas, a letter of recommendation by the latter or a refusal to supply it could make or break a candidate’s aspiration to promotion.¹⁶⁴ A small number of the most distinguished state secretaries could eventually be elevated to the post of secretary of the Council of Ten, the highest-ranking secretarial position in the chancery.¹⁶⁵ Aside from the watchful eye of the Great Chancellor, the ducal chancery was overseen by the ubiquitous Ten.¹⁶⁶ The secrecy that permeated Venice’s secret service was nowhere else more evident than in the inner workings of the ducal chancery. As we already saw in the previous chapter, the Secreta was open to diplomats who would benefit from reading their predecessors’ reports. Authorized admission was granted to approved readers only, whose name and perused documents were recorded by a notary in a leather-bound booklet, the Alphabetum.¹⁶⁷ To gain access to the archive, readers also had to swear an oath of secrecy. In 1597, for example, when the outgoing ambassador to Savoy wanted to read erstwhile dispatches to the Ten by his predecessor ‘for his instruction’, he did so following an official oath of secrecy.¹⁶⁸ In 1600, a decree forbade copying documents or taking notes in the Secreta chamber. In 1611 a new directive charged secretaries with supervising visitors at all times, while in 1624 the Collegio declared that requests for copies of documents that in the past had been granted in voce must now be formally recorded.¹⁶⁹ Despite the reiterations of such decrees, however, admission controls in the Secreta were lax, and leaks and disclosures were inevitable, especially in a service that had a large number of employees¹⁷⁰ and dealt with thousands of

¹⁶² Trebbi, ‘La cancelleria veneta’, p. 89. As we shall see in Chapter 4, cipher secretaries, a distinct coterie of state secretaries, would sit a specialist examination in breaking a cipher without a key. ¹⁶³ Trebbi, ‘La cancelleria veneta’, p. 99; Zannini, Burocrazia e burocrati, p. 132; Zannini, ‘Economic and Social Aspects’, p. 135. ¹⁶⁴ For a case of refusal to supply a recommendation, see Sandra Secchi, Antonio Foscarini: Un patrizio veneziano del ’600 (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1969), p. 89. ¹⁶⁵ Trebbi, ‘La cancelleria veneta’, p. 87. For a special case of a state secretary who reached the ranks of secretary of the Council of Ten, see the discussion on Zuan Francesco Marin in Chapter 4. ¹⁶⁶ Trebbi, ‘La cancelleria veneta’, pp. 79–81. ¹⁶⁷ De Vivo, Information and Communication, p. 50. On the Alphabetum, see Antonini, ‘Historical Uses’, p. 95. ¹⁶⁸ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 14, c. 28v. (24 April 1598). ¹⁶⁹ Antonini, ‘Historical Uses’, p. 112. ¹⁷⁰ De Vivo, Information and Communication, pp. 49–51; De Vivo, ‘Cœur de l’État’, p. 719.

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documents scattered around, within, and eventually even beyond the halls of the Doge’s Palace.¹⁷¹ Aside from admission controls, the working culture in the Venetian chancery was also steeped in secrecy. To preserve and safeguard classified filed knowledge, not all chancery staff were granted access to all series of records stored in the palace. As a poster affixed in the ducal chancery reminded them, only secretaries of the Senate were permitted to access and record Senate proceedings.¹⁷² Secrecy was even more stringent in the Cancelleria Secreta, where any civil servant who attempted to delegate work to unauthorized staff could face legal sanctions.¹⁷³ Additionally, as we already saw in the previous chapter, chancery secretaries were strictly instructed to keep no record of conciliar debates and to censor any instances of dissent in the final transcript of committee deliberations.¹⁷⁴ The purpose of the censorship was to conceal from posterity any trace of internal conflict in order to preserve the halcyon image of communal serenity triumphing over private interests and discrepancies both within and beyond the walls of the Palazzo Ducale.¹⁷⁵ It is easy to imagine the chancery secretaries as beleaguered Dickensian clerks, clocking up hour after hour of tedious work, enmeshed in the systemic bureaucratic pathologies that were gradually emerging in Venice’s ducal chancery. Yet, by and large, they remained loyal to a system that showed its loyalty to them. More specifically, as we shall see in detail in the following chapter, the secretaries of the ducal chancery received preferential treatment, with certain civil service posts earmarked for them, their families, and their descendants.¹⁷⁶ Scholars have suggested several reasons for these prerogatives. Filippo De Vivo has proposed two plausible explanations. The first is purely financial. At a time when the Republic’s finances were depleted due to incessant military action and the secretaries’ salaries could not always be paid in full, the safeguarding of secretarial posts for family members was a means of compensation and staff retention.¹⁷⁷ The second reason is sociopolitical. As we already saw, Venetian state secretaries were recruited from the social class of the cittadini originarii, who were excluded from direct participation in politics. To compensate for this and, importantly, to secure their loyalty, the government reserved exclusive privileges for them, including eligibility for civil service posts.¹⁷⁸ In a similar vein, Emrah Safa Gürkan has argued that the Ten ¹⁷¹ Two disastrous fires that engulfed the Doge’s Palace in 1574 and 1577—‘a dramatic chapter in the history of the Segreta’ according to Armand Baschet—induced the Ten to transfer to and store some documents in the Terraferma. See Baschet, Les Archives de Venise, p. 161. ¹⁷² De Vivo, ‘Ordering the Archive’, p. 237. ¹⁷³ De Vivo, ‘Cœur de l’État’, p. 722. ¹⁷⁴ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Comuni, f. 351 (30 May 1624). See also De Vivo, ‘Cœur de l’État’, p. 716. ¹⁷⁵ De Vivo, ‘Cœur de l’État’, p. 716. ¹⁷⁶ See, for example, Tabele nominative e chronologiche dei Segretari della Cancelleria Ducale, BMV, Mss. It, cl. VII 1667 (8459), for family trees of generations of secretaries in the Venetian Chancery. ¹⁷⁷ De Vivo, ‘Cœur de l’État’, pp. 720–2. ¹⁷⁸ De Vivo, Information and Communication, p. 51, n. 31.

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saw it as incumbent upon themselves to provide for the family of deceased civil servants, hoping that their descendants would have inherited their skills and talents.¹⁷⁹ This type of nepotism, then, was linked to loyalty, skills, and knowledge transfer. While these soundly argued contentions are credible and merit serious consideration, another explanation for this pattern of nepotism ensues, if we consider the significance of secrecy in bureaucracy, and the instrumentality of secrecy in professional identity construction. Historically, secrecy has been deemed amongst the primary functional responsibilities of secretaries. It is not accidental that well into the eighteenth century secretaries were believed to be by definition keepers of secrets.¹⁸⁰ Accordingly, several scholars, erstwhile and contemporary, have regarded secrecy as one of the fundamental secretarial attributes. Francesco Sansovino, for instance, the versatile scholar and eulogist of Renaissance Venice, described secretaries as those who ‘have eyes and mind, but not a tongue outside of counsel’.¹⁸¹ For the sociologist Max Weber they were protectors of official secrets that are a ‘specific invention of bureaucracy’,¹⁸² while the historian Douglas Biow called them ‘deferential, tight-lipped servants’.¹⁸³ No scholar, however, seems to have endeavoured to explore why and how secrecy was inextricably linked to the development of those secretaries’ professional identity. To ponder this rumination further, we need to briefly revert to some established social theorizations of secrecy. As we saw in the previous chapter, by erecting mental and social barriers between those who are privy to a secret and those who are not, secrecy creates privileged inner circles. The exclusivity of being a member of the inner circle group can boost the sense of distinctive inclusiveness in it and, by extension, cement one’s identification with it.¹⁸⁴ Additionally, the social aspect of secrecy that requires and promotes the conscious awareness of that group, due to the intention of ongoing concealment, can enhance the process of group identity creation.¹⁸⁵ The sense of belonging that ensues can potentially augment the need to protect and perpetuate secrecy, so as to maintain the inner circle and, as a result, the special feeling of being a privileged member of it. Secrecy, therefore,

¹⁷⁹ Gürkan, ‘Espionage in the 16th Century Mediterranean’, p. 180. ¹⁸⁰ See Biow, Doctors, Ambassadors, Secretaries, esp. Chapter 6 for relevant bibliography. ¹⁸¹ Francesco Sansovino, L’avvocato e il segretario, ed. Piero Calamandrei (Florence: Le Monnier, 1942), p. 152. ¹⁸² Weber emphasized the advanced level of secrecy in private enterprises rather than state bureaucracies. See Weber, Economy and Society, Vol. 1, p. 225; ibid., Vol. 2, pp. 992–4. ¹⁸³ Biow, Doctors, Ambassadors, Secretaries, p. 22. ¹⁸⁴ Simmel, ‘The Sociology of Secrecy’, p. 497. On the social identification of groups, see Blake E. Ashforth and Fred Mael, ‘Social Identity Theory and the Organization’, Academy of Management Review 14, no. 1 (1989), pp. 20–39. ¹⁸⁵ Mats Alvesson, Karen L. Ashcraft, and Robyn Thomas, ‘Identity Matters: Reflections on the Constructions of Identity Scholarship in Organization Studies’, Organization 15, no. 1 (2008), pp. 5–28; Sierk Ybema, Tom Keenoy, Cliff Oswick, and Armin Beverungen, ‘Articulating Identities’, Human Relations 62, no. 3 (2009), pp. 299–322.

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creates a dynamic relationship between its agents and becomes not only the condition for the formation of group identity—since without it there is no group—but also the consequence of it—since identification with the group generates more secrecy.¹⁸⁶ By singling out these distinct professionals—the ‘ordo scribarum’, as the coeval Venetian diplomat Gasparo Contarini called them¹⁸⁷—as the designated custodians of state secrets and reinforcing the unique significance of their work with exclusive benefits, in a way the government managed to engineer their joint professional identity, which was premised on secrecy.¹⁸⁸ In essence, by reserving specific privileges, such as hereditary rights to the state bureaucracy, for these secretaries and their families in exchange for their secrecy, the authorities managed to maintain their loyalty and continuous service. In this respect, secrecy created an ongoing relationship between state secretaries and the government and became both the condition and the consequence of professional identity formation and, by extension, professional and civic loyalty.¹⁸⁹ Secrecy, however, played another significant role within Venice’s ducal chancery, aside from protecting privileged knowledge and propagating professional identity: as we shall see in the following section, it helped create a public image of both the Venetian government and the Venetian state as the instigator of organizational stability and, by extension, public harmony and concord.

The Secret Archive as Storehouse of Collective Memory Following its inception, the second poignant moment in the history of the Venetian chancery was marked by a group of reforms initiated by the Cancellier Grande Andrea de Franceschi (1473–1552, Great Chancellor since 1529) in the 1530s. Seemingly, this attempt was a much-needed reorganization of the archive in order to collect, classify, and index the documents that were lying loose in the archival depositories of the Doge’s Palace.¹⁹⁰ In essence, however, de Franceschi’s renovatio archivii emulated the wider renovatio urbis instigated by Doge Andrea ¹⁸⁶ Jana Costas and Christopher Grey, ‘Bringing Secrecy into the Open: Towards a Theorization of the Social Processes of Organizational Secrecy’, Organization Studies 35, no 10 (2014), pp. 1423–47; Costas and Grey, Secrecy at Work. See also Harold Behr, ‘Special Section: Secrecy and Confidentiality in Groups’, Group Analysis 39, no 3 (2006), pp. 356–65. ¹⁸⁷ Gasparo Contarini, De Magistratibus et Republica Venetorum libri quinque (Paris: Ex officina Michaelis Vascosani, 1543), p. 110. ¹⁸⁸ On the social construction of identity, see Kenneth J. Gergen and Keith E. Davis (eds.), The Social Construction of the Person (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1985). On the social construction of group identity, see Ashforth and Mael, ‘Social Identity Theory’. On professional identity in the Venetian chancery specifically, see Iordanou, ‘The Professionalization of Cryptology’. ¹⁸⁹ Costas and Grey, ‘Bringing Secrecy into the Open’; Costas and Grey, Secrecy at Work. ¹⁹⁰ On Andrea de Franceschi’s archival reforms, see De Vivo, ‘Ordering the Archive’, p. 242; Antonini, ‘Historical Uses’, pp. 56–7.

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Gritti (1523–38) in an effort to revamp the city’s shape and the Republic’s constitution.¹⁹¹ This followed a twenty-year period of continuous wars (between 1509 and 1529) that put an end to Venice’s expansionist tendencies and, by extension, aggressive foreign policy, marshalling in an era of deliberate and determined neutrality.¹⁹² The cornerstone of de Franceschi’s reforms was the transcription and ornamental indexing of all foreign policy treaties concluded by the Venetian Republic, so that ‘all the deeds of past times undertaken between our city and the other Princes may be more easily and swiftly understood . . . such that their knowledge shall be open and clear to all, for the honour and benefit of our Republic in every time and occasion’.¹⁹³ Accordingly, at a time when Venetian expansionism was brought to a halt, putting in motion the gradual setting of Venice’s imperial sun, the freshly organized index of historical treaties and negotiations did not simply constitute ‘Venice’s new weapons’;¹⁹⁴ it enabled the reconceptualization of the archive as a civic mnemonic tool, the ‘documentary embodiment of the Republic itself ’.¹⁹⁵ Viewed in this light, the process of archiving and preserving the state’s most sensitive records not only served the purpose of protecting and concealing the Republic’s most sacred filed knowledge, but became the fulcrum of committing past and present events and actions to collective memory. Put more simply, while the Secreta’s primary function was to house Venice’s archive of ‘classified’ records, it also served the purpose of providing a repository of documents that historians could tap into in order to produce the historical image of the Venetian Republic and, accordingly, the very institution that contributed to the creation of this image, the Venetian government, with the Council of Ten at the helm. Let us explore this contention further. Initially, restricted access to the Secreta served three purposes: firstly, the protection and preservation of sensitive state papers; secondly, their use for the instruction of the government on former deliberations and legal precedent; and thirdly, the supply of information to outgoing ambassadors on issues relating to their assigned posts in foreign courts.¹⁹⁶ In June 1515, however, an ‘unprecedented exception’ was made for the patrician Andrea Mocenigo, who was allowed to consult material stored in the secret chancery for the purpose of writing a history of Venice.¹⁹⁷ A couple of months later, Marino Sanudo, the inveterate chronicler of the Republic, was also admitted

¹⁹¹ Salmini, ‘Buildings, Frunrishings’, pp. 101–6; De Vivo, ‘Ordering the Archive’, p. 242; cf. Gaetano Cozzi, Repubblica di Venezia e stati italiani. Politica e giustizia dal secolo XVI al secolo XVIII (Torino: Einaudi, 1982), pp. 293–311. On Gritti’s renovatio urbis, see the essays in Manfredo Tafuri (ed.), ‘Renovatio urbis’: Venezia nell’età di Andrea Gritti (1523–1538) (Rome: Officina, 1984). ¹⁹² Lane, Venice, pp. 224–49. ¹⁹³ Antonini, ‘Historical Uses’, p. 56. ¹⁹⁴ De Vivo, ‘Ordering the Archive’, p. 242. ¹⁹⁵ Antonini, ‘Historical Uses’, p. 18. ¹⁹⁶ Ibid., pp. 82–3. ¹⁹⁷ Ibid., p. 83.

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to the archive,¹⁹⁸ while in January 1516 the diplomat Andrea Navagero was the first of a string of patricians who were granted access to the Secreta as an official state historian.¹⁹⁹ The admission of historians to the Venetian secret chancery was not fortuitous. It followed the climacteric year of 1509, when Venice suffered a shattering defeat at Agnadello against the League of Cambrai, an alliance between Pope Julius II, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, King Louis VII of France, and Ferdinand II of Aragon. During that lacerating conflict, Venice forfeited a significant portion of her mainland territories, losing not only ‘what it had taken them eight hundred years’ exertion to conquer’, as Niccolò Machiavelli observed in The Prince, but also face in the international political arena.²⁰⁰ It was paramount, therefore, that the Ten should commission a historical defence of the city that would restore the Republic’s image domestically and, more pressingly, internationally.²⁰¹ For this reason, from 1516 onwards, a series of patrician historiographers were granted unprecedented access to the ‘books, files and secret letters’ of the various governmental councils stored in the Secreta archive,²⁰² for the purpose of creating accounts of the Republic’s history for wider publication.²⁰³ In the name of secrecy, historians were not allowed access to records dating five or seven years prior to the start of the writing exercise and were forbidden from consulting archival material beyond the walls of the Secreta.²⁰⁴ State record-keeping, then, became directly interlinked with state historiography. Sanctioning the formal appointment of Navagero as an official state historian, the Council of Ten explained that it was the prerogative of every king, prince, or republican government to have a state’s reputation preserved ‘not by means of various vague and crude chronicles and annals, but with authentic, elegant, and elaborate histories’ without any alteration of the truth.²⁰⁵ In consequence, by the start of the sixteenth century, authorized access to Venice’s secret archive served a fourth purpose, that of informing the historical representation of the Venetian ¹⁹⁸ Rinaldo Fulin, ‘Documenti per servire alla storia della tipografia veneziana’, Archivio Veneto 23 (1882), pp. 84–212 (here p. 184). ¹⁹⁹ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Miste, Reg. 39, Part II, c. 39 r./v. (30 Jan. 1516). ²⁰⁰ Machiavelli, The Prince, p. 42. For a detailed account of the League of Cambrai conflict, see Felix Gilbert, ‘Venice in the Crisis of the League of Cambrai’, in Hale, Renaissance Venice, pp. 274–92. ²⁰¹ On the use of historiography for the creation of the Venetian historical image, see William J. Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty: Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter Reformation (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1968). ²⁰² ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 12, c. 37r./v. (21 March 1580). ²⁰³ For historiographical references to the Venetian authorities’ decision to open up the Secreta to state historiographers, see, for example, Gaetano Cozzi, ‘Cultura politica e religione nella “pubblica storiografia” veneziana del’500’, Bollettino dell’Istituto di Storia della Società e dello Stato Veneziano 5–6 (1963), pp. 215–94; Franco Gaeta, ‘Storiografia, coscienza nazionale e politica culturale nella Venezia del Rinascimento’, in Girolamo Arnaldi and Manilo Pastore Stocchi (eds.), Storia della cultura veneta, 3/1—Dal primo Quattrocento al Concilio di Trento (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1980), pp. 1–91 (here 80–1). ²⁰⁴ See, for example, ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 12, c. 37r./v. (21 March 1580); ibid., Reg. 11, c. 130r. (17 May 1577); ibid., Reg. 14, c. 41r. (12 Nov. 1599). ²⁰⁵ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Miste, Reg. 39, Part II, c. 39r./v. (30 Jan. 1516).

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Republic in collective memory. It becomes apparent, then, that already from that period, historiography had been intended to serve the underlying purpose of promoting historical image, civic identity, and historical propaganda.²⁰⁶ This contention is premised on erstwhile scholarship that examined the production of such official histories as a propagandistic tribute to Venice’s foreign policy, military achievements, and of course, domestic security and civic concord.²⁰⁷ Venice’s official historians were fully salaried public servants rather than private scholars operating under the aegis of a patron. The purpose of their work was the social construction of a desired historical image of the Republic and, by extension, the government that held its reins.²⁰⁸ For this reason, the official historians were required to subject the fruits of their work to review for final approval.²⁰⁹ Initially, the members of the Council of Ten were responsible for the revision and censorship of Venice’s official state histories. In later years, however, this responsibility was delegated to the Riformatori dello Studio di Padova, three senators appointed to the administration of the Republic’s neighbouring university.²¹⁰ Their corrections and amendments were, at times, lengthy, and, for purposes of quality and transparency, a state secretary was appointed to oversee the final editing process prior to publication.²¹¹ The reason for these concentrated efforts was to establish the archive as ‘the exclusive place of repose for a state’s historical memory’.²¹² The creation of the office of the official historian, therefore, provided the nexus between the processes of archiving, historiography, and strategic image creation and promotion within and beyond the state’s borders.²¹³ The inextricable link between archiving, historiography, and image creation was officially sanctioned in 1601, when the post of the supervisor (sopraintendente) of ²⁰⁶ Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty, esp. pp. 163–227, 556–623; Antonini, ‘Historical Uses’, pp. 14–15. ²⁰⁷ Cozzi, ‘Cultura politica e religione’; Alberto Tenenti, ‘The Sense of Space and Time in the Venetian World of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’, in Hale, Renaissance Venice, pp. 17–46. ²⁰⁸ Antonini, ‘Historical Uses’. ²⁰⁹ This censorship procedure is somewhat redolent of systematic censorship pursuits of contemporary intelligence agencies, such as the CIA’s Publications Review Board. For a detailed overview of the latter, see Christopher Moran, Company Confessions: Secrets, Memoirs and the CIA (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2016). ²¹⁰ Antonini, ‘Historical Uses’ p. 122; On the Riformatori di Padova, see Paul F. Grendler, The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540–1605 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977). ²¹¹ See, for example, ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 6, cc. 27r.–28v. (6–17 Sep. 1548). On the corrections with regard to the revelation of the Senate’s secret matters, see, in particular, ibid., cc. 27v., 34v., and 38v.–39r. (13 Sep. 1548, 27 Feb. and 25 Oct. 1549, respectively); ibid., f. 7 (25 Oct. 1549); and the misplaced document in ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 4 (21 Aug. 1550) on the corrections imposed on Pietro Bembo’s official history of Venice. On Pietro Bembo’s career, see Carol Kidwell, Pietro Bembo: Lover, Linguist, Cardinal (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004). On Bembo’s work as an official state historian in Venice, see Antonini, ‘Historical Uses’, pp. 87–96. ²¹² Viggiano, ‘Politics and Constitution’, p. 84. ²¹³ James S. Grubb, ‘Memory and Identity: Why Venetians Didn’t Keep Ricordanze’, Renaissance Studies 8, no 4 (1994), pp. 375–87.

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the Secreta was assigned to the official historian of the Venetian Republic. With an annual remuneration of 100 ducats, the superintendent was tasked with delegating, supervising, and reporting upon the work of state employees within the Secreta.²¹⁴ This appointment marked the first instance in the Venetian state’s history that a historian was placed in charge of a governmental organization, a practice that would become institutionalized in the years that followed.²¹⁵ In consequence, the superintendent of the state’s most closely guarded secrets became the custodian of the records that would provide the narrative for the construction of the historical image of the Republic. As, according to the Ten, the onus of preserving the reputation of a state fell upon the ruler or the government,²¹⁶ their relevant decree indicates that its members were not only interested in the restoration of the Republic’s image but also in the image they projected as a governmental unit. This becomes more evident in their concerted efforts to silence any voices that threatened to distort the government’s image, as in the aforementioned case of Calderini’s defamatory diatribes. Unauthorized histories of Venice could also risk creating a negative historical representation if they did not conform to the Ten’s standards. They thus had to be censored. In February 1573, beleaguered by an unauthorized history of Venice written by the scholar Emilo Maria Manolesso in Padua,²¹⁷ the Ten ordered the town’s podestà to locate the printing house that published the work, confiscate the manuscript, and burn the printing press in order to prevent the possibility of a reprint, and to remove any copies from any library in the city.²¹⁸ It is obvious that the Ten wished to conceal Manolesso’s work from posterity, ostensibly due to libellous revelations concerning several dignitaries and princes, even though, in essence, there might have been more ulterior motives.²¹⁹ Alas, they did not succeed, and Manolesso’s work, having stood the tests of time and censorship, still survives today.²²⁰ In light of the above discussion, it becomes apparent that the Ten were keen to draw from the pool of official state secrets in order to create and promote a healthy image of the Venetian government as the institution that oversaw the safety of the Republic. In this respect, the Secreta served as the storehouse of both historical and organizational memory, which induced the two legal consultants who produced an official report on the state of the secret chancery to assert that ‘Here resides the source of our history’.²²¹ Put differently, Venice’s secret archive

²¹⁴ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 14, cc. 74r.–75r. (17 Sep. 1601). ²¹⁵ De Vivo, ‘Ordering the Archive’, p. 243; Antonini, ‘Historical Uses’, p. 67. ²¹⁶ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Miste, Reg. 39, Part II, c. 39r. (30 Jan. 1516). ²¹⁷ On Manolesso, see Roberto Zago, ‘Manolesso, Emilio Maria (Emiliano), in Dizionario Biografico di Italiani, Vol. 69 (Rome: Istituto Treccani, 2007), pp. 140–2. ²¹⁸ ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 8 (28 Feb. 1573). ²¹⁹ Ibid. See also Zago ‘Manolesso’. ²²⁰ Emilio Maria Manolesso, Historia nova, nella quale si contengono tutti i successi della guerra turchesca (Padova: Lorenzo Pasquati, 1572). ²²¹ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, f. 40 (30 Aug. 1635).

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was not simply the repository of an institution’s sensitive records but a mnemonic tool in the process of institutionally controlled historicization. That process was contingent upon the creation of a desired future historical image of the past, an image that was both organizational—depicting the Venetian government with the Ten at the helm—and public—portraying the Venetian Republic.²²² On the whole, for a council that was maniacally fixated on constructing a socially accepted image of Venice as the most serene republic, it is not implausible to assume that it would also be preoccupied with how its actions, as the instigator of Venice’s domestic and foreign policy, would reverberate into the future. By entrusting, therefore, historians with the organization’s and, by extension, the state’s most closely guarded secrets, the Ten, as the organizational elites, were clearly concerned with how the past and present that they engineered and co-created would be represented in the future and committed to collective memory.²²³ Moreover, their resolution to conceal from posterity certain aspects of Venetian politics, such as conciliar debates and disagreements, ‘contributed consciously to the transmission of an image of the well-ordered republic’.²²⁴ These deliberate attempts at institutional silencing, even forgetting, were intended to create a specific organizational identity of the Venetian government that would endure in the collective memory as part of the greater historical image of the Venetian Republic.²²⁵ Such attempts, however, were not only targeted at outsiders. More often than not, it was other members of the Venetian government, outside the Council of Ten, who were intentionally excluded from privileged information. This intentional withholding of information from specific individuals by other individuals, so inherent in the process of organizing, is worthy of further exploration.

Organizational Secrecy In the winter of 1573, immediately after the War of Cyprus, the Spanish ambassador in Venice, Diego Guzmán de Silva, wrote to Philip II in cipher, communicating that the Ten had received news from Constantinople which they intentionally neglected to communicate to the Collegio. This intentional concealment, according to the

²²² Dennis A. Gioia and James B. Thomas, ‘Image, Identity and Issue Interpretation: Sensemaking during Strategic Change in Academia’, Administrative Science Quarterly 41, no 3 (1996), pp. 370–403. ²²³ For a thought-provoking analysis of how the past is constructed and recreated in historical discourse, see Ged Martin, Past Futures: The Impossible Necessity of History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), pp. 109–48. ²²⁴ Viggiano, ‘Politics and Constitution’, p. 59. ²²⁵ On collective memory in organizational contexts, see Michel Anteby and Virág Molnár, ‘Collective Memory Meets Organizational Identity: Remembering to Forget in a Firm’s Rhetorical History’, Academy of Management Journal 55, no 3 (2012), pp. 515–40.

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Spanish diplomat, was common practice for the Council of Ten.²²⁶ As a matter of fact, several foreign diplomats stationed in Venice had detected the Ten’s proclivity for withholding information from other governmental councils. Two years earlier, the papal nuncio in Venice communicated to Carlo Michele Bonelli (most commonly known as Cardinal Alessandrino), Pope Pius V’s favoured diplomat, that letters from Constantinople compelled the Ten to convene an urgent meeting which was kept secret from the Senate.²²⁷ This practice of intentional concealment of information by a specific group within the body of the Venetian government resembles a phenomenon that in the study of contemporary organizations has been termed ‘organizational secrecy’. Organizational secrecy has been defined as ‘the ongoing formal and informal social processes of intentional concealment of information from actors by actors in organizations’.²²⁸ In essence, organizational secrecy enables the intentional containment of information by specific organizational groups, a type of silo mentality that is endemic in contemporary organizations.²²⁹ In the case of Venice’s intelligence organization, the Ten were not obliged to share every minute detail of information with the Senate or other governmental departments. In fact, as we saw above, they frequently interfered with the content of the copied letters they were expected to pass on to the Senate by ordering their secretaries to withhold information that they wished to keep secret, especially details relating to the source of their intelligence about relevant individuals whose identity they wished to conceal.²³⁰ More specifically, the Council of Ten would frequently withhold items of information from other deliberative bodies when such concealment was deemed necessary, primarily for the purpose of evaluating and processing intelligence. This tendency was manifest in the common practice of reading out ambassadors’ letters during the assembly of the Senate so that senators would be informed of current affairs in the states where Venetian ambassadors were installed. If a piece of information was deemed worthy of secrecy, the Ten would routinely attempt to conceal it from other bodies. In 1561, for example, letters sent by the Venetian ambassador in Vienna contained information about an encounter between him and Maximilian II, the heir to the throne of the Holy Roman Empire. While revealing the content of the letter, the Ten had reasons to conceal the part that recounted the ambassador’s audience with Maximilian, on account of a matter relating to the Duke of Tuscany.²³¹ The redacted section of the letter has survived

²²⁶ ²²⁷ ²²⁸ ²²⁹ ²³⁰ ²³¹

AGS, Estado, Legajo 1332, fol. 117 (3 Dec. 1573). ASVat, Segreteria di Stato, Venezia, b. 8, c. 141v. (14 Feb. 1571). Costas and Grey, ‘Bringing Secrecy into the Open’, p. 1423. Costas and Grey, Secrecy at Work. For an example, see De Vivo, Information and Communication, pp. 35–6. ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 7, c. 48v. (19 June 1561).

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in the Ten’s draft notes of the deliberation (filze) and sheds light on the information concealed. According to the filza, Maximilian related to the Venetian ambassador his suspicion that the Pope was trying to implicate him in the rumoured conspiracy to seize Siena from the the Duke of Tuscany by indirectly encouraging the imperial scion to align himself with the king of Spain against the duke.²³² As this intelligence had to be evaluated and processed, the Ten decided to conceal it. Similarly, they chose to remove specific phrases from a letter sent by the Venetian ambassador in Spain when the letter was to be read out to the Senate. The information withheld usually involved the names of individuals whose identity ought to be concealed for investigatory purposes.²³³ As becomes apparent, then, organizational secrecy was inherent in the way Venice’s secret service was organized and managed by the Ten. When it was deemed necessary, the Ten would apprise their underlings of such decisions to conceal information. Once, for instance, they forwarded to the Provveditore Generale in Terraferma a copy of a letter that had been sent to them by the Residente in Milan, the content of which the Provveditore would find beneficial ‘for public service’. In their laconic instructions, the Ten informed their official about the redaction of names mentioned in the letter before it was read out to the Collegio and the Senate.²³⁴ Occasionally, they even altered words in a dispatch in order to change the meaning or place emphasis on a particular aspect of a sentence. When it was decided that letters sent by the Venetian ambassador in Rome would be read to the Senate, for instance, the Ten instructed the substitution of the original phrase ‘the fear of losing the dioceses will bear more fruit’ included in them to the amended ‘the fear of losing the dioceses will bear great fruit’.²³⁵ It is evident that for some reason that is not mentioned in the formal register the Ten wished to place emphasis on the positive outcome of what the ambassador was communicating. On several occasions, secretaries were instructed not to communicate sensitive information discussed in the Council of Ten to the other deliberative bodies of the Venetian government such as the Collegio and the Senate.²³⁶ In the interests of secrecy, the Ten even attempted to dictate the format of written communications between ambassadors and the Senate, when it was deemed necessary. In one instance, extant documents reveal a letter template that the Capi produced for the Venetian ambassador in Savoy when he was asked to report to the Senate.²³⁷ Minutes from formal meetings would also be subjected to organizational secrecy,

²³² Ibid., f. 10 (19 June 1561). ²³³ Ibid., Reg. 13, c. 31v. (21 April 1586); See also ibid., c. 85r./v. (3 May 1591). ²³⁴ ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 12 (30 March 1601). ²³⁵ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 7, c. 84v. (10 June 1562). For another such example, see ibid., Reg. 6, c. 50r. (5 Aug. 1550); ibid., f. 7 (5 Aug. 1550). ²³⁶ See, for example, Ibid., Reg. 7, c. 48v. (19 June 1561); ibid., Reg. 14, c. 4r. (30 April 1596). ²³⁷ Ibid., Reg. 14, c. 2r./v. (5 April 1596).

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if deemed worthy of concealment from certain committees. In October 1605, for example, it was agreed that the minutes of discussions about the fortress of Bergamo would be communicated to the Collegio and from there to the Senate under strict secrecy, removing, however, any information pertaining to a certain Count Francesco Martinengo Colleoni, a notorious bandit of aristocratic pedigree who was frequently targeted by the Capi as a man threatening state affairs in the Terraferma.²³⁸ In the case that the Collegio decided not to communicate this affair to the Senate, the Ten could request the restitution of the minutes, forbidding the Collegio to produce a copy of them.²³⁹ Deliberately withholding items of information from letters, reports, and minutes whose content was expected to inform other deliberative bodies was a rather innocuous process, which could, potentially, impact political decisions. Organizational secrecy, however, entailed more complex procedures. This included ordering other organizational actors, aside from state secretaries, to withhold information as well. In the spring of 1564, for example, the Council of Ten ordered the Capitano in Golfo to send two galleys to Zara and to inform their commanders to present themselves to the rectors and the provveditore of the city as soon as they reached the port, in order to execute secret orders that they would receive by them. No more information was to be given to the galley commanders (most probably not to the Capitano either, since the letter sent to him did not reveal the reason for this mission), except the instruction to keep the affair strictly confidential, pretending that the voyage to Zara was purely for their own needs and interests.²⁴⁰ This instruction, however, brings us back to the pervasive issue of the central organization of Venice’s secret service. As this sets apart the Venetian intelligence apparatus from other, more rudimentary spy networks employed by crowned heads and other men (and occasionally women) in power, it is worth reflecting on it further.

Venice’s Central Intelligence Organization Following the bureaucratic growth of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the systematic organization of Venice’s secret service became emblematic of good government and good governance.²⁴¹ This is because, contrary to other, more ²³⁸ On Count Francesco Martinengo Colleoni, see Cristina Gioia, ‘Aristocratic Bandits and Outlaws: Stories of Violence and Blood Vendetta on the Border of the Venetian Republic (16th–17th Century)’, in Steven G. Ellis and Luďa Klusáková (eds.), Imagining Frontiers, Contesting Identities (Pisa: Edizioni Plus—Pisa University Press, 2007), pp. 97–107. ²³⁹ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 14, cc. 110v.–111r. (22, 25 Oct. 1605). ²⁴⁰ Ibid., Reg. 8, c. 2r. (6 March 1564). ²⁴¹ Baldassare Bonifacio, De archivis liber singularis (Venice: Apud Io. Petrum Pinellum, 1632); Romanin, Storia documentata, Vol. VI, p. 130; Bartolomeo Cecchetti, Gli archivi della Repubblica veneta dal XIII secolo al XIX secolo (Venice: Tipografia del commercio, 1865), p. 21.

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rudimentary espionage networks created by monarchs, their noble acolytes, or rivals, Venice’s secret service functioned like an organization of public administration with managerial structures that determined the working relationships between its members. At the top of the hierarchy sat the Council of Ten, who, as the political and organizational elites, took all executive decisions and stagemanaged the operations that were assigned to those acting at their behest, such as Venetian diplomats and governors, military commanders, secretaries, and, as we shall see in the following chapters, lay spies and informants. Deputizing and delegating tasks to the relevant subordinate authority, the Ten managed to evaluate information systematically through a process of comparing and contrasting. Their managerial delegation of duties, imbued with trust, praise, and even rebuke, was an expression of their ongoing accomplishment of power, which was sanctioned through a string of regulations that determined not only uniform professional operations but interwoven ways of working based on the notion of giving account through formal reports. Indeed, as the management and accounting history scholar Luca Zan has argued, ‘there is no doubt that the Republic was intensively using accounting in almost every aspect of the public administration’.²⁴² The development of an organizational mentality built upon managerial ideals and accounting notions was not a novelty of the Venetian state administration. Within the Venetian Arsenal, new managerial and accounting practices that superseded the artisanal type of industrial organization had already emerged in the fifteenth century, while a distinct managerial discourse had developed by the late sixteenth century.²⁴³ It is for this reason that the Arsenal has been termed a ‘hybrid organization’, displaying both modern and ‘pre-modern’ features ‘whereby working relations are already internalized according to a capitalistic mode of production, though labour itself is not totally under control, with the persistence of pre-modern forms of labour organisation’.²⁴⁴ Aside from the Arsenal, ‘important antecedents’ of managerial discourses and practices can be found ‘in other kinds of organisations besides firms’, especially in European state bureaucracies and,²⁴⁵ even more pertinently, ‘in the public sector of the Italian sixteenth century’.²⁴⁶ The Venetian secret service was an exemplar due to the legal authority vested in the Ten by formal norms and regulations which endorsed their managerial capacity and, in a way, legitimized Venice’s intelligence organization. ²⁴² Zan, ‘Accounting and Management Discourse’, p. 150. ²⁴³ Zan and Hoskin, ‘Il “discorso del maneggio” ’, p. 50; Zan, ‘Accounting and Management Discourse’. On the organization of work in the Arsenal, see also Lane, Venetian Ships and Shipbuilders; Davis, Shipbuilders of the Venetian Arsenal. ²⁴⁴ Zan, ‘Accounting and Management Discourse’, p. 149. See also Zan and Hoskin, ‘Il “discorso del maneggio” ’, p. 11. ²⁴⁵ Zan, ‘Accounting and Management Discourse’, p. 146. ²⁴⁶ Zan and Hoskin, ‘Il “discorso del maneggio” ’, p. 61.

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Since we are dealing with an emergent, proto-modern state bureaucracy, it seems prudent to draw on the work of one of the foundational thinkers of bureaucratic management theory and, by extension, organization theory, the German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920) in order to elaborate this contention further. For Weber, any social structure held together through some kind of authority that manifested via commonly accepted rules and regulations—that is, legally binding directives or decrees—could be perceived as an organization.²⁴⁷ Such authority presupposed mutually acknowledged hierarchical roles between seniors and subordinates.²⁴⁸ Venice’s secret service, made up of geographically dispersed state representatives and their state officials, men of the military and the navy, in-house and expatriate white-collar state functionaries, as well as mercenary spies and informants, all headed by the Council of Ten, fits Weber’s conceptualizations of organization. This is because the Venetian secret service was contingent upon the organization of commonly accepted patterns of work that were determined by explicit norms and regulations stemming from the Ten’s formal deliberations. They were also premised on hierarchical relationships between different state councils and state officials. As a departure point, then, Venice’s secret service resembled Weber’s definition of organization (Verband) as ‘a social relationship which is either closed or limits the admission of outsiders’, and which is determined by regulations that ‘are enforced by specific individuals: a chief and, possibly, an administrative staff, which normally has administrative powers’.²⁴⁹ The instrumentality of regulations in the coordination of work among those who staffed Venice’s secret service necessitates further elaboration. According to Weber, the actions of the individuals making up the organization are ‘oriented to realizing the organization’s order’ or, put differently, they are directed towards ‘carrying into effect the order governing the organization’.²⁵⁰ In the case of Venice’s central intelligence organization, these actions were materialized through a series of formal decrees and regulations that the Council of Ten deliberated upon and issued, and that determined the interwoven ways of working across all different operations of Venice’s secret service. Such regulations provided a legal authority which departed from more conventional forms of power and control that were imposed primarily by tradition or charisma,²⁵¹ as in the case of other Italian and European states. In practice, this meant that ‘powers of command’ were ‘legitimated by that system of rational norms’ in the sense that those serving in Venice’s secret service were expected to bestow their obedience less upon the Ten and more on the decrees and directives issued by them, which, in turn, legitimized the Ten’s power of command.²⁵² Accordingly, it was the implementation of such norms and regulations stemming from the Ten’s ²⁴⁷ Weber, Economy and Society, Vol. 1, p. 51. ²⁴⁸ Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 957. ²⁴⁹ Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 48. ²⁵⁰ Ibid. ²⁵¹ Ibid. ²⁵² Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 954.

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formal deliberations that rendered Venice’s intelligence organization possible by enabling ‘a commitment to order, method and system’.²⁵³ The norms and regulations that brought into existence Venice’s central intelligence organization could not have been enforced without a fundamental tool of management—correspondence. As we saw above, within the context of Venice’s secret service, official correspondence, including encrypted letters, became less a means of information exchange and more a vital tool of management which involved complex processes of issuing, sending, receiving, executing, and reporting on written instructions. The focus of both superiors and subordinates on the instructions conveyed by a letter rather than the subject matter disclosed or undisclosed in it further supports this argument. Moreover, the string of norms and regulations on the provision, use, classification and disposal of methods of encryption further reinforces the managerial function of written communication as a process requiring and dictating uniformity of action. In this respect, the Ten’s decrees served as commonly accepted patterns of conduct that demarcated the boundaries, passages, or obstacles of knowledge transmission. This systematic organization of (secret) correspondence spawned the need for collecting, ordering, indexing, and utilizing large quantities of filed knowledge, a process that in contemporary contexts of state security has been termed ‘information management’.²⁵⁴ The Venetian ducal chancery, with the Secreta as the organic centrepiece, the motherboard that connected all other components of Venice’s secret service, enabled the purpose of copying, cataloguing, and archiving large quantities of information, using them for the Republic’s institutionally controlled historical image creation. Genealogically, the creation and organization of Venice’s secret archive was symbiotic with, if not symptomatic of, the emergence and systemization of the state bureaucracies of the late medieval and early modern period.²⁵⁵ These were premised upon the ‘official secret’, which, according to Max Weber, was a ‘specific invention of bureaucracy, and few things it defends so fanatically’.²⁵⁶ It is this formalized documentation, regulation, and protection of official (secret) knowledge, epitomizing Weber’s notion of bureaucracies as sites of secrecy, that has led historians to present Renaissance Venice’s chancery as ‘the forerunner par excellence of modern bureaucracy’,²⁵⁷ despite the challenges

²⁵³ Zan, ‘Accounting and Management Discourse’ p. 150. ²⁵⁴ For a historical overview of information management within the context of state security, see Alistair Black, ‘Information Management in Businesses, Libraries and British Military Intelligence: Towards a History of Information Management’, The Journal of Documentation 55, no 4 (1999), pp. 361–74; Alistair Black and Rodney Brunt, ‘MI5, 1909–1945: An Information Management Perspective’, Journal of Information Science 23, no 3 (2000), pp. 185–97; Grey, Decoding Organization, pp. 218–19. ²⁵⁵ See, for instance, Senatore, ‘Uno Mundo de Carta’; De Vivo, Information and Communication; Soll, The Information Master; Gamberini and Lazzarini, The Italian Renaissance State. ²⁵⁶ Weber, Economy and Society, Vol. 2, p. 992. ²⁵⁷ De Vivo, ‘Cœur de l’État’, p. 709.

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territorial states faced in the efficient administration of their dominion.²⁵⁸ In actual fact, the systematic organization of record-keeping ‘is testament of the very nature of accountability’ that developed within Venice’s public administration in general, and intelligence organization in particular.²⁵⁹ Accordingly, the development of efficient systems of information management in the primordial bureaucracies of the early modern era, while located in historiographical debates on the rise of the state,²⁶⁰ is inextricably linked to the systematic organization and centralization—in the case of Renaissance Venice—of intelligence operations within the sphere of domestic and foreign security. In light of the above, it becomes apparent that Venice’s secret service was built on a process of organizing (secret) knowledge work and (secret) knowledgesharing through basic managerial and administrative processes that were implemented via a string of formal norms and regulations which authorized the Ten’s power of command. As such, the Venetian intelligence organization was built on administrative principles that became formal-bureaucratic practices for the purposes of state security. Consequently, the organization of Venice’s secret service is demonstrative of an emerging form of organization of work that the historian and accounting theorist Keith Hoskin has styled ‘governmental management’,²⁶¹ echoing Michel Foucault’s notion of governmental management as the multivalent process that ‘has population at its main target and apparatuses of security as its essential mechanisms’.²⁶² Undeniably, this type of managerialism emerged in a society that did not recognize it as such and was conceived to respond to ad hoc sociopolitical challenges faced by elites in their efforts, and eventually failure, to maintain Venice’s economic hegemony and political authority in the international arena.²⁶³ Nevertheless, the accomplishment of authority through legal-rational administration in the case of Venice’s secret service is worth noting.²⁶⁴ Through the organization of uniform patterns of working, the Ten, as the organizational

²⁵⁸ Cozzi, Stato, società e giustizia; Alfredo Viggiano, Governanti e governati. Legittimità del potere ed esercizio dell’autorità sovrana nello stato veneto della prima età moderna (Treviso: Fondazione Benetton, 1993). ²⁵⁹ Zan, ‘Accounting and Management Discourse’, p. 172. ²⁶⁰ See, for example, Parker, The Grand Strategy; Soll, The Information Master; Gamberini and Lazzarini, The Italian Renaissance State. ²⁶¹ Keith W. Hoskin, ‘Getting to the Surface of Things: Foucault as a Theorist and Historian of Management and Accounting’, in Alan McKinley and Eric Pezet (eds.), Foucault and Managerial Governmentality: Rethinking the Management of Populations, Organizations and Individuals (New York and Abington: Routledge, 2017), pp. 33–53. ²⁶² Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France (1977–1978), transl. Graham Burchell (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 107. ²⁶³ On the history of managerialism, see Matthias Kipping and Behlül Usdiken, ‘History in Organization and Management Theory: More Than Meets the Eye’, The Academy of Management Annals 8, no 1 (2014), pp. 535–588, and the bibliography therein. ²⁶⁴ Legal administration based on rational rules of management has been noted in other preindustrial managerial practices as well. See Ruef and Harness, ‘Agrarian Origins’.

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elites, were able to allocate human resources efficiently for the implementation of intelligence missions. This demonstrates that, especially in the early modern era, management was discretionary and contingent upon the manager,²⁶⁵ an enlightening insight, primarily because it defines management as ‘the conduct of the individual’s conduct’ vis-à-vis the organization’s goals, and hierarchy as a means of assuring that managers know what they need to know in order to manage.²⁶⁶ In this respect, the Ten’s organizational and managerial practices shepherded a form of governmentality that bears a resemblance to a hybrid form of what has been termed modern managerialism. This is manifest in the Ten’s attempt to solve complex organizational problems that resemble contemporary managerial issues that at the time were neither given nor self-evident,²⁶⁷ coupled with the constant presence of objectives and the requirement for regular reports to the authorities. All these characteristics indicate that, indeed, ‘certain regularities in the discourse on management start to appear’.²⁶⁸ Ultimately, Venice’s secret service functioned as what today would be seen as a complex organization of public administration with managerial structures that determined uniform and interlaced ways of working between its members. It also entailed ‘conditionally related processes’ such as deliberating, corresponding, reporting (or accounting), registering, indexing, and archiving, which occurred progressively in time and required ‘a day by day, indeed minute by minute, enactment’.²⁶⁹ This organization was not seeking profit maximization but, instead, it was premised upon ‘a logic of common good, or public interest in military and economic terms’.²⁷⁰ Accordingly, even though the Venetians developed a remarkable administrative apparatus, the development of such an apparatus is as significant as the novel principles of organizing and the new mentality of management that they created. It is for this reason that Venice’s secret service is emblematic of organization in two senses of the word, organization as a bounded entity and as a systematic and progressive process of becoming.

Conclusion Renaissance Venice was one of the first early modern states to create a centrally administered state intelligence organization. Headquartered in the Doge’s Palace, overlooking the Venetian lagoon in Saint Mark’s Square, Venice’s secret service was headed by the Council of Ten, the body that ‘most powerfully encapsulated the republic’s executive power’.²⁷¹ From there, the Ten stage-managed all actions ²⁶⁵ ²⁶⁷ ²⁶⁹ ²⁷⁰ ²⁷¹

Bento da Silva and Iordanou, ‘The Origins of Organizing’, p. 143. ²⁶⁶ Ibid. Zan and Hoskin, ‘Il “discorso del maneggio” ’, p. 17. ²⁶⁸ Ibid., p. 13. Grey, Decoding Organization, p. 15. Zan, ‘Accounting and Management Discourse’, pp. 165–6. De Vivo, ‘Cœur de l’État’, p. 713.

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that pertained to the Venetian Republic’s domestic and foreign security and that, more often than not, had to be enveloped in secrecy. For this reason, they deliberated upon and issued a slew of decrees and regulations that undergirded Venice’s intelligence operations. These operations were carried out by the different organizational actors involved in the several state departments that comprised Venice’s secret service, which included formal Venetian representatives and diplomats, military and naval chiefs, and the state functionaries supporting the inner workings of the Venetian secret service and its administrative operations. Within this organizational framework state secrecy not only was official business but became the business of officials. Secrecy as the business of officials is nowhere else more evident than in Venice’s department of professional cryptology. This was a unique branch of Venice’s intelligence organization that not only was responsible for the code-making and codebreaking needs of the Venetian state, but helped transform the art of cryptology from an emblem of intellectual prowess displayed by a handful of Renaissance polymaths to a distinct state-controlled and regulated profession, comparable in significance to other eminent early modern professions, such as those of the priest, the lawyer, and the notary. Judging by the significance of enciphered correspondence as a vital tool of management, without the ability to encipher, decipher, and crack enemy codes, Venice’s secret service would not have been able to exist, let alone function. So great was the importance of this department for Venice’s intelligence pursuits, that it merits further exploration and analysis against the backdrop of the historical development of cryptology in the long Renaissance, and the socio-economic and political context in which this development took place. All these will be discussed in detail in the next chapter.

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4 Venice’s Department of Cryptology The art and science of writing in cipher but also that which is uniquely estimable and important of breaking enemy [ciphers] without a key.¹ In 1583, a Venetian citizen named Agostino Amadi produced a magnificently hand-lettered cryptology manual entitled Delle ziffre.² In the tome’s preface Amadi highlighted the widespread use of secret writing not only by princes and emperors (see Fig. 4.1 for an example of a musical cryptogram similar to the one, allegedly, sent by Charles V to Doge Andrea Gritti, warning Venice about an imminent rebellion against her, which will be discussed below) but by priests, intellectuals, and even lovers who sought clandestine ways of hiding the written communication of their ‘fiery ardours’.³ Delle ziffre is not to be mistaken for a low-quality pamphlet or an encryption manual of questionable quality, such as those that routinely circulated within and beyond the city of Saint Mark.⁴ On the contrary, Agostino’s manuscript, which still survives in the Venetian State Archives, is emblematic of the superlative intellectual capacities of Venetian cryptologists. In it, Amadi detailed myriad ways for the production of ciphers in several languages, including Greek, Arabic, Latin,

¹ ‘ . . . l’arte, et scientia del scriver in ziffra, ma quella che è solamente stimabile, et importante di trazer le aliene senza sconrro’. ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 13, c. 49r./v. (16 March 1588). ² ASV, IS, b. 1269. ³ Ibid., c. 1r. ⁴ On cheap prints and pamphlets circulating in early modern Venice, see Rosa Salzberg, Ephemeral City: Cheap Print and Urban Culture in Renaissance Venice (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014). For examples of contemporaneous writing manuals published in Venice that referred to ciphers , see Leonardo Furlano, Opera noua la quale insegna scriuere e leggere in vintisette modi di zifere, & per homini eccellenti desiosi di virtu, & contiensi in essa sette capitoli molto maestreuoli & salutiferi ad ogni fidel christiano. Stampata nuouamente . . . (Venice: Gulielmo Fontaneto, 1543); Giulio Cesare Capaccio, Il secretario opera di Giulio Cesare Capaccio napolitano. Oue quanto conuiene allo scriuer familiare, cioè, all’ornato del dire, all’ortografia, alla materia de i titoli, delle cifre, dello scriuer latino, breuemente si espone. Insieme col primo volume di lettere dell’istesso autore. In questa terza editione accresciuto, & emendato. Aggiuntoui anco di più quattro tauole di quanto nell’opera tutta si contiene (Venice: Nicolò Moretti, 1597). For instances of such manuals published in other parts of Italy, see, for example, Fedele Fedeli Piccolomini, Della nuoua inuentione della vera scienza delle cifre breue discorso di Fedel Piccolomini Fedeli (Pesaro: Heredi di Bartolomeo Cesano, c.1560); Giovanni Battista Palatino, Libro nuouo da imparare a scriuere tutte sorte lettere antiche et moderne di tutte nationi, con nuoue regole, misure et essempi. Con vn breue, & vtile Trattato de le cifre, composto per Giouambattista Palatino cittadino romano (Rome: Nella contrada del Pellegrino per la moglie che fu di Baldassarre de’ Cartolari, 1543). I am grateful to Alex Bamji and Rosa Salzberg for sharing their knowledge about such manuals with me.

Venice’s Secret Service: Organizing Intelligence in the Renaissance. Ioanna Iordanou, Oxford University Press (2019). © Ioanna Iordanou. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198791317.001.0001

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Fig. 4.1. Charles V Cryptogram, Agostino Amadi © Archivio di Stato di Venezia.

and even the language of the Devil, for which he provided practical examples (see Fig. 4.2).⁵ He also detailed several deciphering techniques and recipes for the production of invisible ink.⁶ The delicate and critical nature of the book’s content is most probably the reason why it never found its way into print. ⁵ ASV, IS, b. 1269, Terzo Volume, c. 35v.

⁶ ASV, IS, b. 1269.

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Fig. 4.2. Lettere Diaboliche and other alphabets, Agostino Amadi © Archivio di Stato di Venezia.

As we saw in the previous chapter, encrypted correspondence provided the fuel for Venice’s intelligence machinery. This is because, as a vital tool of management, enciphered letters enabled the systematic communication of long-distance assignments and interactions that fuelled the Republic’s intelligence operations. For this reason, the methodical nurture of the ‘art and science’

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of cryptology was crucial.⁷ The Ten acknowledged this necessity early on and, already from the 1570s, they decreed that official cryptologists should be formally trained as a matter of ‘utmost importance’ for the state.⁸ When, in the late 1580s, Amadi’s Delle ziffre was handed over to them by his widow, the Ten were so impressed by the intellectual superiority of its content that they decided to adopt it as a training manual for their trainee cryptologists, so that ‘our young secretaries, who wish to be employed in such a noble profession in our service can be instructed and trained’.⁹ As this chapter will show, the Council of Ten pioneered the development of a fully fledged, state-controlled and regulated department of cryptology, housed in the Doge’s Palace and annexed to the ducal chancery. In full operation since 1543, this department oversaw several cryptology functions, including the creation of ciphers, deciphering encrypted messages, training chancery staff in the use of cipher keys, breaking enemy ciphers, and even the development of a distinct training and development regime for Venetian state cryptologists.¹⁰ Due to the instrumentality of ciphers for Venice’s intelligence pursuits, this department was ring-fenced with harsh regulations that included the death penalty when ciphers or their keys were mishandled. In an attempt to reconstruct the evolution of Venice’s cryptology department, the chapter advances the argument that, because of Renaissance Venice’s central intelligence organization, cryptology evolved into a distinct stand-alone profession. Put differently, the professionalization of cryptology in the sixteenth century made its way through the Doge’s Palace, where virtuosos of ciphers turned cryptology from an applied scientia to a profession così nobile—‘such a noble profession’, as the Venetian authorities labelled it.¹¹ While scholars have attempted to explore the historical development of cryptology, particularly focusing on the emergence of Black Chambers—the secret rooms where professional cryptologic pursuits took place—and the codebreaking activity taking place in them,¹² the gradual professionalization of the discipline in ⁷ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 13, c. 49r./v. (16 March 1588). ⁸ Ibid., Reg. 11, c. 77v. (25 Jan. 1576). ⁹ Ibid., Reg. 13 c. 49r./v. (16 March 1588). ¹⁰ The most comprehensive works on early modern cryptolgy include Bartolomeo Cecchetti, ‘Le scritture occulte nella diplomazia veneziana’, Atti del Regio Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, Vol. XIV, Series III (1868–69), pp. 1185–1213; Friedrich Wagner, ‘Studien zu einer Lehre von der Geheimschrift’, Archivalische Zeitschrift 11 (1886), pp. 156–89; 12 (1887), pp. 1–29; 13 (1888), pp. 8–44; Aloys Meister, Die Anfänge der modernen diplomatischen Geheimschrift: Beiträge zur Geschichte der italienischen Kryptographie des XV. Jahrhunderts (Paderborn: Schöningh 1902); Meister, Die Geheimschrift im Dienste der päpstlichen Kurie von ihren Anfängen bis zum Ende des XVI. Jahrhunderts (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1906); David Kahn, The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966), esp. Chapters 3 and 4; Couto, ‘Spying in the Ottoman Empire’. ¹¹ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 13, c. 49r. (16 March 1588). A copy of this document can be found in ASV, CCX, Raccordi, Reg. 1 (Unico), c. 3r./v. ¹² See, for instance, Eugène Vaillé, Le Cabinet noir (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1950); Franz Stix, ‘Zur Geschichte und Organisation der Wiener Geheimen Ziffernkanzlei’, Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, Vol. 51 (1937), pp. 131–60; De Leeuw, ‘The Black Chamber’; De Leeuw, ‘Cryptology in the Dutch Republic: A Case Study’, in Karl de Leeuw and

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the long Renaissance has been largely overlooked by historians, primarily, as they have argued, due to the unsophisticated state of early modern codes and ciphers.¹³ This contention, however, shaped by contemporary perspectives of early modern cryptography, fails to account for the systematic proliferation of Black Chambers in several areas of central Europe from the seventeenth century onwards, or the widespread diffusion of cryptology in eighteen-century political practices.¹⁴ Accordingly, in order to investigate the professional development of cryptology in that period and to gain a rounded understanding of Venice’s professional codemaking and codebreaking activities, it is necessary to zoom out of the narrow focus on the level of complexity (or simplicity) of early modern codes and ciphers and examine both the historical background and the wider sociopolitical context in which cryptology evolved from an esoteric practice to an applied scientia, and, eventually, to an actual profession. Before embarking on a brief historical overview of cryptology, it might be helpful to clarify some of the terms used in this book.¹⁵ Cryptology, in this context, is ‘the science that embraces cryptography and cryptanalysis’.¹⁶ Cryptography is the transformation of a text (which in cryptology parlance is called ‘plain text’) so that it becomes unintelligible to outsiders without a key, while cryptanalysis or codebreaking is the process of breaking down or solving a ‘cryptogram’, a wrapped-up secret message. This is distinctly different from ‘deciphering’ or ‘decoding’, which entails knowledge of a key or system through which the recipient of a secret message can ‘reverse the transformations and bare the original message’.¹⁷ Finally, a ‘code’ is a method of altering the meaning of a message by using, for instance, a codeword, while a ‘cipher’ is a technique that hides the message by changing the characters in which it is presented.¹⁸

A Brief Historical Overview of Cryptology At the dawn of the sixteenth century, the celebrated Renaissance humanist Sir Thomas More (1478–1535) concocted the fictional island society of Utopia. Utopia comprised several unique features including a utopian language. This was based on the Utopiensium Alphabetum (the Utopian alphabet), which included Jan Bergstra (eds.), The History of Information Security: A Comprehensive Handbook (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2007). ¹³ See, for example, Herbert Rowen, John de Witt, Grand Pensionary of Holland, 1625–1672 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 25; Augusto Buonafalce, ‘Bellaso’s Reciprocal Ciphers’, Cryptologia 30, no 1 (2006), pp. 39–51. ¹⁴ De Leeuw, ‘Cryptology in the Dutch Republic’, pp. 331–2. ¹⁵ These terms are premised on the terminology used by Kahn, and can be found in Kahn, The Codebreakers, pp. xiiii–xvi. ¹⁶ Ibid., p. xvi. ¹⁷ Ibid., p. xv. ¹⁸ Ibid., pp. xiii–xv.

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symbols in the shape of squares, circles, and triangles.¹⁹ Like Latin, the Utopian alphabet was modelled on the Phoenician alphabet, where each letter represents a phonetic unit. While only a small sample of the Utopian language is presented in More’s text, there is enough internal consistency to suggest that the alphabet was meticulously thought through and worked out.²⁰ This is an early example of encrypting letters by using symbols. Even so, the long history of cryptography dates back to antiquity and can be traced to the military and political cosmos of ancient Greece and Rome. As ancient Greek historians Herodotus, Polybius, and Plutarch have revealed in their writings, in classical times, cryptography was primarily intended as a tool for military strategists.²¹ The first system of military cryptography was invented in the fifth century  by the Spartans, ‘the most warlike of the Greeks’.²² This was one of the earliest transposition ciphers, called scytale, after the Greek word for ‘baton’ σκυτάλη. In his Parallel Lives, Plutarch portrayed the scytale as a rod, around which a piece of parchment was wrapped in a spiral. The messenger would write the message along the rod, unwrap it and send it off. The disconnected letters on the parchment made no sense unless the recipient rewrapped the parchment around a rod of the same diameter, in which case the characters would reassemble in the correct order to produce the hidden message.²³ By the era of Julius Caesar, the military use of ciphers had become more widespread. As the Roman historian Suetonius (69–after 122) noted in his biography of the famed general, Caesar used his own cipher to communicate secretly with his army, which was premised on the substitution of the a plain-text letter of the alphabet with the letter three places later in the alphabet.²⁴ This eventually lent its name to one of the simplest substitution ciphers in existence, Caesar’s cipher.²⁵ Rather than serving as a martial tool for military strategists, cryptography gradually assumed a semi-intellectual function that grew roots behind the draperies of medieval monastic humanism. Specifically, during the

¹⁹ Thomas More, Utopia, ed. George M. Logan, Robert M. Adams, and Clarence H. Miller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 23, 27. The first edition of Utopia was published in Latin in Louvain, in 1516, by Dirk Martens. ²⁰ The Utopian alphabet in More’s first edition has been attributed to his friend Pierre Gillis (1486–1533). See discussion in Edward Surtz and Jack H. Hexter (eds.), The Yale Edition of the Complete Works of St. Thomas More, Vol. IV Utopia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977), pp. 277–8. ²¹ On cryptography in classical times, see Edgar C. Reinke, ‘Classical Cryptography’, The Classical Journal 58, no 3 (1962), pp. 113–21; P. L. Jacob, La Cryptographie: ou l’art d’écrire en chiffres (Paris: Adolphe Delahays, 1858), pp. 1–10; Kahn, The Codebreakers, pp. 81–4. On intelligence in that period, see Rose Mary Sheldon, Intelligence Activities in Ancient Rome: Trust in the Gods but Verify (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005). ²² Kahn, The Codebreakers, p. 82. ²³ Plutarch, Lives, Vol. IV, transl. Bernadotte Perrin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959), pp. 285–7; Cecchetti, ‘Le scritture occulte’, p. 1191. ²⁴ Suetonius, The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, transl. Robert Graves (London: Penguin, 2007). ²⁵ Kahn, The Codebreakers, p. 84.

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Middle Ages, encryption became the scribal pastime of monks, who, inspired by techniques of letter substitution that they encountered in Hebrew texts, started to produce rudimentary ciphers for ‘scribal amusement’.²⁶ In the period of the Renaissance, the primary use of cryptology shifted from an intellectual pastime to an emblem of intellectual prowess (or merely a means of intellectual escapism) for Renaissance polymaths who wrote celebrated or illicit treatises on secret writing either to boast their knowledge of the arcane or simply to evade daily tediousness. The most striking example is that of the Italian humanist Leon Battista Alberti (1404–72). The epitome of the Renaissance man—an architect, painter, poet, philosopher, indeed a man of protean capabilities and a towering intellect—Alberti has also been called the Father of Western Cryptology.²⁷ This is because he invented the system of polyalphabetic substitution, which involves the knowledge and use of two or more cipher alphabets in the same text. In essence, Alberti’s polyalphabetic method was grounded on the premise that each character is never replaced in the same manner, rendering a key necessary in order to decipher the message.²⁸ Alberti published his method in 1466 in a Latin treatise entitled De componendis cifris, which was only translated into the vernacular a century later, in 1568.²⁹ Half a century after the publication of De componendis cifris, the German intellectual Abbot Johannes Trithemius of Heidelberg (1462–1516) authored the first printed instruction manual on cryptology, Polygraphia.³⁰ Polygraphia was made up of six books and included Trithemius’ most pioneering invention, the Ave Maria method, in which Christian prayers camouflaged the plain text.³¹ Notwithstanding Trithemius’ advanced intellectual capacities, it was the young Neapolitan prodigy Giovanni Battista Della Porta (c.1535–1615), who, combining the key premises in the pioneering works of Alberti and Trithemius, produced ‘the modern concept of polyalphabetic substitution’.³² Other Italian cryptographers who left their mark on the history of cryptology include Giovanni Battista ²⁶ Ibid., pp. 77–9, 106. ²⁷ Ibid., pp. 125, 130. ²⁸ Ibid., pp. 125–6. ²⁹ The Italian translation of Leo Battista Alberti’s De componendis cifris is Leon Battista Alberti, Opuscoli morali di Leon Ba[t]tista Alberti Fiorentino. Ne’ quali si contengono molti ammaestamenti, necesarij al viver de l’Huomo, così posto in dignità come privato. Tradotti, et parte corretti da M. Cosimo Bartoli (Venice: Francesco Franceschi Sanese, 1568), pp. 200–19. Alberti’s Latin text has been edited by Meister, Die Geheimschrift. ³⁰ Johannes Trithemius, Polygraphiae Libri sex Ioannis Trithemij, abbatis Peapolitani quondam Spanheimensis, ad Maximilianum Caesarem (Würzburg: Impressum ductu Ioannis Haselberg de Aia, 1518). Polygraphia was published in the vernacular in 1568. On Trithemius, see Robert W. Seton-Watson, ‘The Abbot Trithemius’, in Robert W. Seton-Watson, Tudor Studies (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1924), pp. 75–89; Paul Chacornac, Grandeur et adversité de Jean Trithème, bénédictin, abbé de Spanheim et de Wurtzbourg (1462–1516): la vie, la légende, l’œuvre (Paris: Éditions Traditionnelles, 1963); Klaus Arnold, Johannes Trithemius (1462–1516) (Würzburg: Kommissionsverlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 1971); Noel L. Brann, The Abbot Trithemius (1462–1516): The Renaissance of Monastic Humanism (Leiden: Brill, 1981); Brann, Trithemius and Magical Theology: A Chapter in the Controversy over Occult Studies in Early Modern Europe (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998). ³¹ For an analysis of Trithemius’ Polygraphia, see Kahn, The Codebreakers, pp. 133–7. ³² Ibid., p. 137; On Della Porta’s scientific work, see Murano, Giambattista Della Porta.

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Bellaso (1505–death unknown), who, on the basis of the theories of Alberti and Trithemius, produced three short cryptography manuals and pioneered the autokey cipher—a cipher that incorporates the message into the key.³³ The idea of the autokey cipher was masterminded by the accomplished Milanese physician and mathematician Girolamo Cardano (1501–76) but his formulation of it was defective.³⁴ A cryptographer who has escaped the historians’ gaze is the Italian-Jewish engineer Abramo Colorni (c.1544–99).³⁵ A versatile inventor and a virtuoso of military engineering, Colorni started his career as an engineer at the court of Alfonso II d’Este, duke of Ferrara, with professional expertise in military technology.³⁶ Following in the footsteps of distinguished Renaissance polymaths, Colorni also became ‘a most renowned physician and philosopher’,³⁷ a connoisseur and voracious collector of antiquities, and a master of cards and magic tricks.³⁸ In addition to his multiple claims to eminence, Colorni was an accomplished cryptographer. His cryptographic treatises were published in his Scotographia (the ‘dark treatise’), published in Bohemia in 1593,³⁹ after failed attempts to be granted publication permission in Venice, Mantua, and Florence.⁴⁰ The idiosyncrasy of Colorni’s cipher lies in his use of Roman characters that are not used in the Italian alphabet, such as K, W, X, and Y. This was due to his desire to create a universal cipher that would be used widely across and beyond Europe,⁴¹ an ambition that would defeat the object of encryption, as the more widely utilized a cipher was, the easier it would be to break. Colorni also offered more simplified enciphering methods for busy professionals, such as merchants, traders, and other skilled masters, who relied on high volumes of—at times, secret—correspondence for their daily business affairs.⁴²

³³ Kahn, The Codebreakers, p. 137. For the literature on Giovanni Battista Bellaso, see Buonafalce, ‘Bellaso’s Reciprocal Ciphers’. ³⁴ Charles J. Mendelsohn, ‘Cardano on Cryptography’, Scripta Mathematica VI (October 1939), pp. 157–68. ³⁵ On Colorni, see Joseph Adler, ‘Abraham Colorni: An Uncommon Jew in the Italian Renaissance’, Midstream: A Monthly Jewish Review 32 (1996), pp. 16–18; Jütte, The Age of Secrecy, pp. 116–223; For the earliest comprehensive work on Colorni, see Giuseppe Jarè, Abramo Colorni: Ingegnero mantovano del secolo XVI: Cenni con documenti inediti (Mantua: Balbiani, 1874); Jarè, Abramo Colorni: Ingegnere di Alfonso II d’Este: Nuove ricerche (Ferrara: Premiate Tipografi a Sociale, 1891). ³⁶ Jütte, The Age of Secrecy, pp. 69, 126–9. ³⁷ Ibid., p. 121. ³⁸ Ibid., pp. 126, 217. ³⁹ Abramo Colorni, Scotographia, overo scienza di scrivere oscuro, facilissima & sicurissima, per qual si voglia lingua; le cui diverse inventioni divisi in tre libri, serviranno in più modi, & per Cifra & per Contracifra: Le quali, se ben saranno communi a tutti, potranno nondimeno usarsi da ogn’uno, senza pericolo d’essere inteso da altri, che dal proprio corrispondente (Prague: Sciuman, 1593). ⁴⁰ Colorni submitted a petition to the Venetian authorities via the Venetian ambassador in Prague. The ambassador’s letter and Colorni’s petition are published in Colorni, Scotograghia, pp. 33–4. On the Mantuan publication, see ibid., p. 35. For its distribution in Florence, see ASF, Pratica Segreta, f. 73, c. 155r./v. (1592); ibid., f. 189, c. 189r./v. (1592). ⁴¹ Jütte, The Age of Secrecy, p. 179. For a detailed discussion of Colorni’s choice of characters, see Colorni, Scotograghia, Book 1, Chapter 1. ⁴² Jütte, The Age of Secrecy, p. 180.

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While all these cryptology masters dedicated a great deal of their time and effort to penning works on the science of secret communication, none of them can claim professional specialization in cryptology. Alberti was primarily an architect, Trithemius a clergyman, and Della Porta a natural historian. Bellasso was a state secretary, Cardano a physician and mathematician, and Colorni, a ‘jack of all trades’ who started off as a military engineer. As such, their cryptologic treatises were not driven by professional ambition but by a scholarly passion that satiated their appetite for intellectual escapism. At times, this escapism bordered on a kind of epicurean indulgence, a peculiar predilection for the arcane and the occult that was born out of their remarkable intellectual ability to use and abuse scientific knowledge, as well as the fluidity that existed between science and magic in that period.⁴³ It becomes apparent, then, that in the Renaissance, the methodization of the intellectual use of cryptology far exceeded its professionalization. As the Renaissance progressed, however, the systematization of the diplomatic activities of states assigned a different function to the use of cryptology.

The Diplomatic Use of Ciphers in the Renaissance The proliferation of the diplomatic use of codes and ciphers started in the long Quattrocento, the century that saw the methodical systematization of diplomatic activities in Italy and, more broadly, in Europe.⁴⁴ The gradual intellectualization of cryptology in that period, which steadily made its way via the printing press, helped transmogrify the discipline from an esoteric practice to an applied scientia in the service of diplomacy. Of great importance in this process was the publication of Cicco Simonetta’s (1474) Regulae ad extrahendum litteras zifferatas sine exemplo.⁴⁵ Simonetta (1410–80) was a long-serving state secretary in the duchy of Milan, one of the most well-informed city states in the late medieval period. Especially under Francesco Sforza, “the ‘signore di novelle’ par excellence,”⁴⁶ an efficient network of intelligence gatherers and diplomats contributed to a steady stream of information to and from that city.⁴⁷ It was for this reason that Milan pioneered the systematic use of clandestine communication upon which overseas diplomatic missions were based.⁴⁸ Responsible for the Milanese secret chancery and its ciphers in the second half of the fifteenth century,⁴⁹ Simonetta has been

⁴³ On the blurred boundaries between science, nature, and magic, see Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature; Eamon, The Professor of Secrets: Mystery, Medicine, and Alchemy in Renaissance Italy (Washington DC: National Geographic Society, 2010); Jütte, The Age of Secrecy. ⁴⁴ Lazzarini, Communication and Conflict. ⁴⁵ See Paul M. Perret, ‘Les Règles de Cicco Simonetta pour le déchiffrement des écritures secrètes’, Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 51 (1891), pp. 516–25. ⁴⁶ Lazzarini, Communication and Conflict, p. 47. ⁴⁷ Senatore, ‘Uno mundo de carta’. ⁴⁸ Ibid. ⁴⁹ Cerioni, La diplomazia sforzesca, Vol. 1, pp. xviii–xix.

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remembered in posterity as one of the first professional cryptologists to be employed in state administration.⁵⁰ Sophisticated ciphers for diplomatic purposes were in use in the Italian peninsula from the beginning of the fifteenth century. Already in 1401, the dispatches from Mantua to the Mantuan chancellor Simone de Crema were encrypted through multiple cipher representations.⁵¹ The fact that multiple substitutes, which were called ‘homophones’, were applied specifically to vowels and not randomly in the text indicates a basic knowledge of frequency analysis.⁵² One century later, the professional operation of ciphers by specialist operatives was formally sanctioned by the emergence of the term cifrista, the professional cipher secretary. The term was most probably coined in Venice,⁵³ and half a century later it was widely used in Rome, where the office of Cipher Secretary to the Pontiff was introduced in 1555. The Pope’s first recorded cipher secretary was Triphon Benicio de Assisi.⁵⁴ Still, it was Giovanni and Matteo Argenti, uncle and nephew, who between them served five popes in the twenty year span from 1585 to 1605, who lay claim to fame as Rome’s most renowned cipher secretaries in that period.⁵⁵ Professional cipher secretaries were employed in several European courts, especially those that were part of vast territorial states. Henry III and Henry IV of France found their expert codebreaker in the mathematician and lawyer François Viète de la Bigotière (1540–1603).⁵⁶ As we saw in Chapter 1, Spain’s cryptology pursuits intensified substantially under Philip II in the Despacho Universal, a specialist branch of the Spanish state bureaucracy in which enciphered diplomatic correspondence was managed.⁵⁷ Eventually, the emergence of Black Chambers in the seventeenth century is suggestive of the systematization of the professional use of ciphers.⁵⁸ In Renaissance Venice, however, cryptology charted a distinct path, that of becoming a well-defined profession through the Ten’s systematized, professional cryptology pursuits.

⁵⁰ On Simonetta and cryptologists of the Milanese chancery, see Cerioni, La diplomazia sforzesca, Vol. 1; on state secretaries in early modern Europe, see the essays in Dover, Secretaries and Statecraft. ⁵¹ Kahn, The Codebreakers, p. 107. On diplomacy in late medieval Mantua, see Daniela Frigo, ‘ “Small States” and Diplomacy: Mantua and Modena’, in Frigo, Politics and Diplomacy, pp. 147–75. ⁵² See Kahn, The Codebreakers, p. 107. ⁵³ Preto, I servizi segreti, pp. 268–9. ⁵⁴ Richard A. Mollin, Codes: The Guide to Secrecy from Ancient to Modern Times (London: Chapman and Hall, 2005), p. 58. ⁵⁵ On Matteo Argenti, see Meister, Die Geheimschrift, pp. 148–70; On Matteo Argenti’s codes, see Christiane Villain-Gandossi, ‘Les Dépêches chiffrées de Vettore Bragadin, baile de Constantinople (12 juillet 1564–15 juin 1566)’, Turcica IX, no. 2 (1978), pp. 52–106. ⁵⁶ Devos, Les chiffres de Philippe II, pp. 29–30. ⁵⁷ See Devos, Les chiffres de Philippe II; Allaire, ‘Le Décodage de la correspondance chiffrée’; Couto, ‘Spying in the Ottoman Empire’, pp. 296–9. ⁵⁸ The history of Black Chambers is substantial. See, for example, Vaillé, Le Cabinet noir; De Leeuw, ‘The Black Chamber’.

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Venice’s Cryptology Department In his Dele Zifre, the cryptology manual discussed in the introduction of this chapter, Agostino Amadi relates a fascinating anecdote revealing the precocity of Venetian cryptology. Once, during his long rein, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V sent Doge Andrea Gritti what ostensibly looked like a madrigal, a secular Renaissance song designed to be performed by several singers wthout the accompaninet of musical instrumets. The imperial gift was not fortuitious, as, already from 1527, Venice boasted the appointment of Adrian Willaert, the celebrated Flemish musician and one of the most inluential Renaissance composers, as maestro di cappella of St Mark’s.⁵⁹ Upon receiving the musical gift, the Doge summoned Willaert and his renowned musicians at once, ordering them to sing the imperial melody at the presence of the Venetian nobility. Upon looking at the page, however, Willaert and his colleagues remained tongue-tied, unable to sing the musical notation. The audience was dumbfounded. Whatever happened to the talent of the distinguished maestro? Is it possible that he was incapable of reading the tune sent by ‘the most glorious of emperors’? At that inauspicious moment, a state secretary named Ludovici addressed the Doge,⁶⁰ asserting that it was impossible that his majesty sent a composition so incomprehensive that it could silence the Republic’s most celebrated musicians. He, therefore, asked persmission to study the document in order to find a way to help those or other musicians to decipher it. Consequently, the following day Ludovici requested an audience from the Doge, in the company of four secretaries. There, at the presence of astounded Venetian noblemen, he ‘conducted’ the small team into revealing a secret message from Charles V about an organised rebellion against Venice so egrigious, that the emperor was urged to disclose it to the Venetians in the most secret of ways, implicating the famed Netherlandish musician. Indeed, Willaert was unable to read Charles’s musical notation because it was actually a musical cryptogram passing for a madrigal, making absolutely no sense to a mere musician’s naked eye, despite his towering talent.⁶¹ It is not possible to ascertain whether Amadi’s story is real or tinctured with embellishment or fabrication. Nevertheless, the anecdote suggests that already from the early sixteenth century, Venice had built a reputation as a centre for virtuosos of both music—aside from other arts—and the ‘most noble science of ciphers’.⁶² In Venice, the first known enciphered diplomatic letter was penned by

⁵⁹ On Adrian Willaert and the madrgal, see Martha Feldman, ‘Venice and the Madrigal in the MidSixteenth Century’, Unpublished Ph.D Thesis (University of Pennsylvania, 1987). ⁶⁰ Although Ludovici’s identity is not revealed in the text, it is highly probable that he was Giambattista de Ludovici, one of the first professional cryptologists in the Venetian employ, discussed below. ⁶¹ ASV, IS, b. 1269, cc. 36v.–37r. An example of Charles V’s cryptogram can be found on c. 37v. ⁶² Ibid., c. 37r.

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Doge Michiel Steno in 1441, and was dispatched to his ambassadors to the Papal Court and King Ladislaus V of Hungary, negotiating a peace treaty.⁶³ Even though there is no evidence of the systematic use of professional cryptography in Venice by that time, there is some documented use of systematically complex substitution ciphers (‘nomenclators’).⁶⁴ The seeds of the gradual professionalization of cryptology, however, were sown by a single, yet significant event, the appointment of Giovanni Soro as Venice’s official cipher secretary in 1505.⁶⁵ Our knowledge of Soro is limited and primarily derives from the daily accounts of Marino Sanudo. According to his diary entries, Soro’s remarkable ability to break multilingual ciphers was so great that he enjoyed an unblemished reputation as one of Italy’s most accomplished professional code-makers and codebreakers.⁶⁶ Even the Pope would solicit his assistance in his efforts to access the content of enciphered intercepted letters, and Soro nearly always managed to crack the codes.⁶⁷ A Venetian secretary stationed in France once wrote that in that country Soro was considered to be divine (tenuto per Dio) due to his ability to break the ciphers in which intercepted letters had been written with remarkable speed.⁶⁸ It is not accidental, then, that Soro was honoured with several grand titles by both his coevals and contemporary eulogists of his work. Alvise Borghi, one of his assistants and successors, called him ‘the father of this rarest of virtues’.⁶⁹ The historian Paolo Preto described him as the ‘true founder of the Venetian school of cryptology’,⁷⁰ while one of the world’s most eminent authorities on the history of cryptology, David Kahn, boldly declared him to be ‘perhaps the West’s best cryptanalyst’.⁷¹ Soro served the Venetian Republic for nearly forty years, until his death in 1543.⁷² During his career, he broke innumerable enemy ciphers for the Venetians, the Florentines, and the Papal Court, amongst others.⁷³ In 1539, he produced and presented to the Ten a cryptology instruction manual with sections in Italian, Spanish, and French that was deemed by Borghi to be more angelic than human in quality.⁷⁴ Keen to keep him gratified, the Venetian authorities granted him several

⁶³ Pasini, ‘Delle scritture in zifra’, p. 300. ⁶⁴ The nomenclator was an encryption technique that ‘united the cipher substitution alphabet of letters and the code list of word, syllable, and name equivalents’. See Kahn, The Codebreakers, p. 107. ⁶⁵ Ibid., p. 109. ⁶⁶ Sanudo, I diarii, Vol. X, p. 231; ibid, Vol. XI, p. 393. ⁶⁷ Ibid., Vol. X, p. 832; ibid., Vol. XXVIII, p. 125; CSPVen, Vol. 2, p. lxxi. ⁶⁸ Sanudo, I diarii, Vol. XLII, p. 473; CSPVen, Vol. 2, p. lxxi. ⁶⁹ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, f. 7, n.d. (attributed by the archivist to the year 1548); CSPVen, Vol. 2, p. lxxi. ⁷⁰ Preto, I servizi segreti, p. 276. ⁷¹ Kahn, The Codebreakers, p. 109. ⁷² Pasini, ‘Delle scritture in zifra’, p. 302. ⁷³ It is not clear why Soro was allowed to serve other courts. It is probable that diplomatic reasons, in conjunction with the nascent state of the systematic professionalization of cryptology at the time, enabled the Venetian authorities to maintain a lenient attitude. ⁷⁴ Preto, I servizi segreti, p. 277. Alas, Soro’s manuscript has not survived the passing of time.

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pay raises and other benefits throughout his career.⁷⁵ A year before he died, in 1542, he was assigned two assistants.⁷⁶ From then on, the Ten kept a minimum of three permanent cipher secretaries on the payroll. The formal appointment of the assistants to Giovanni Soro marked the beginning of the professionalization of Venetian cryptology. Thereafter, a line of eminent cryptologists found themselves in the employ of the Council of Ten, working in the secreto, as the Venetian Black Chamber was called, on the top floor of Venice’s Ducal Palace. Their work was conducted under strict laws of secrecy, breach of which was subject to legal sanctions, including the death penalty.⁷⁷ When he died, Soro was succeeded by four cipher secretaries: Alvise Borghi, Giambattista de Ludovici, an unknown engineer named Giovanni, and Zuan Francesco Marin,⁷⁸ who was already working as a state secretary when he was chosen to join the team of cifristi in 1544.⁷⁹ Zuan Francesco Marin was the most distinguished of the four recruits. His ascent to eminence commenced when he succeeded in cracking an extremely complex Spanish code,⁸⁰ a feat that attracted the attention of other European states. It was for this reason that, in 1552, the Heads of the Ten were inclined to turn down a formal request from the French king, made via his ambassador in Venice, to have Marin decipher some letters for him.⁸¹ Marin occupied the post of cifrista for nearly thirty years, during which he made a name for himself as one of Venice’s most distinguished cryptanalysts, breaking countless ciphers in different languages, and helping to forestall several state threats.⁸² Before his appointment as a cipher secretary, however, he was already in post in the Venetian chancery, where he gradually rose from the ranks of secretario straordinario (extraordinary secretary), the entry-level position in a Venetian bureaucrat’s career, in 1532, to a secretary of the Council of Ten in 1572.⁸³ This was the second-highest-ranking position in the hierarchy of the Venetian Ducal Chancery, after the post of Cancellier Grande, the Great Chancellor. The latter, as we saw in the previous chapter, was the most important office open to members of the cittadini class, who could never aspire to governmental posts reserved strictly for patricians, such as the position of the Doge.

Professional Training and Development The heavy losses of Venetian strongholds in the Peloponnese followed by the fall of Cyprus in 1571, in combination with a devastating plague that ravaged the city ⁷⁵ ⁷⁶ ⁷⁷ ⁷⁸ ⁸⁰ ⁸²

Sanudo, I diarii, Vol. XI, p. 232; Preto, I servizi segreti, p. 141. Kahn, The Codebreakers, p. 109. See, for instance, ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 11, c. 158r./v. (23 May 1578). CSPVen, Vol. 2, p. lxxi. ⁷⁹ BNM, Mss. It., cl. VII 1667 (8459), fol. 6r. CSPVen, Vol. 2, p. lxxi. ⁸¹ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, f. 8 (27 July 1552). Ibid., Reg. 11, c. 90v. (21 March 1576). ⁸³ BNM, Mss. It. cl. VII 1667 (8459), fol. 6r.

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and deprived it of one-quarter to one-third of its population from 1575 to 1577,⁸⁴ induced the Ten to make more methodical provisions for the training and development of their professional cryptologists. By that point, the Venetian cryptology service had reached a state of maturation that allowed it to display distinct traits of professionalization, such as specialist skills formation through systematic training.⁸⁵ For this reason, Zuan Francesco Marin, the Ten’s most eminent cryptologist, was named the new recruits’ trainer due to his natural aptitude for cryptology and his tireless study of the discipline.⁸⁶ Marin, therefore, became the first known formal trainer in the Venetian school of professional cryptology, an in-house training and development regime for novice professional cryptologists. His appointment as the school’s official instructor categorically refutes contemporary scholarly contentions that no systematic in-house training and development for state cryptologists existed prior to the eighteenth century.⁸⁷ As they dealt with the state’s most delicate secrets, the Venetian cipher secretaries underwent a rigorous programme of training and development. This started with an entrance examination aimed at determining their aptitude for codebreaking. If they passed the examination, the novice cipher secretaries were expected to dedicate themselves to the methodical study of the foundational cryptologic treatises, including the works of Alberti, Trithemius, and Della Porta.⁸⁸ Their probationary period formally ended when they passed a final, more rigorous examination in breaking a complex cipher without a key.⁸⁹ This accomplishment also entailed a salary increase from four to a maximum of ten ducats monthly.⁹⁰ If the trainee cipher secretaries were recruited from other departments in the ducal chancery, they were required to retake the cipher examination from time to time to ensure that their skills were constantly sharpened. Such internal transfers were customary before and compulsory after 1608. Overall, for the Ten, the Venetian cipher secretaries’ training was vital, as the end goal was not simply the ability to encipher, decipher, and break unknown codes but the cultivation of deep theoretical and practical knowledge of the scientia of cryptology.⁹¹

⁸⁴ On the 1575–7 plague in Venice, see Paolo Preto, Peste e società a Venezia nel 1576 (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1978). For a re-evaluation of the impact of the plague on Venetian society and the Venetian economy, see Iordanou, ‘Pestilence, Poverty, and Provision’. ⁸⁵ O’Day, The Professions in Early Modern England, p. 4. ⁸⁶ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 11, cc. 77v.–78r. (25 Jan. 1576). ⁸⁷ Gerhard F. Strasser, Lingua Universalis: Kryptologie und Theorie der Universalsprachen im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1988), pp. 66, 249. According to conventional wisdom, systematic training and professional skills formation are nineteenth-century phenomena. See Larson, The Rise of Professionalism; Kathleen Thelen, ‘Skill Formation and Training’, in Geoffrey Jones and Jonathan Zeitlin (eds.,) The Oxford Handbook of Business History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 558–80. ⁸⁸ Preto, I servizi segreti, p. 271. ⁸⁹ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 11, cc. 77v.–78v. (25 Jan. 1576). ⁹⁰ Ibid., Reg, 14, c. 127r./v. (31 Aug. 1605); ibid., Reg. 15, cc. 16v.–17r. (24 Oct. 1607). ⁹¹ Ibid., Reg. 19, c. 18r./v. (14 July 1636).

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Alas, Zuan Francesco Marin did not live long enough to complete his job of training the next generation of Venetian cryptologists. His death in 1578 left an intellectual and professional vacuum that posed a significant challenge for the authorities.⁹² Given the lack of a suitable replacement, the Ten eventually decreed that what Marin was able to teach ‘con la sua voce’ (orally) while still in life, he could do so posthumously ‘con la sua scrittura’ (through his writings). For this reason, the Capi ordered that Marin’s voluminous writings were consigned to the state, indexed, and deposited in a chest within their office, sealed with a key to be kept solely by the Ten. The trainee cifristi were expected to study that instruction material dutifully, paying particular attention to the passages relating to codebreaking. They were also granted permission to make copies for dedicated home study. Failure to keep the duplicate material confidential could lead to the death penalty, an incredibly harsh punishment for the potential sloppy treatment of classified information which would be almost unthinkable in the twenty-first century. For this reason, the cifristi were expected to maintain an inventory of their copies, which would be stored in a designated casket where all relevant state ciphers were kept.⁹³ This autodidactic mode of training and professional development was deemed sufficient for Marin’s team of cryptologists. But when, twenty years later, a fresh intake of recruits entered the Venetian cryptology department, a new instructor was sought. This was Girolamo Franceschi, who had initially been recruited as a prodigy on account of an innovative cipher that he had invented, which was deemed impossible to crack without a key.⁹⁴ In 1596, twenty years into his service, Franceschi was appointed to the role of trainer of the next generation of Venetian cryptologists.⁹⁵ Extant documents do not reveal why it took two decades to find a new trainer but it seems to have been important for the Ten that the new tutor was internally trained. From a chronological perspective, Franceschi was appointed concurrently with the new cifristi. From this we can hypothesize that Marin’s initial and posthumous training regime was deemed sufficient for his own cohort of trainees but inadequate for new entrants to the service. Amongst the nominated new trainees was Piero Amadi, a state secretary who had displayed a natural adeptness at ciphers.⁹⁶ Piero was the son of Agostino Amadi, who in the 1580s had produced Delle ziffre, the cryptology manual discussed at the beginning to this chapter. After his death, his wife consigned the manuscript to the Ten,⁹⁷ who, impressed with its intellectual calibre, decided to adopt it as a training manual for their cryptologists.⁹⁸ In compensation for his work, the Ten offered Amadi’s two sons two concessions: a monthly pension of

⁹² ⁹⁴ ⁹⁶ ⁹⁸

Ibid., Reg. 11, c. 158r./v. (23 May 1578). ⁹³ Ibid. Ibid., c. 87r. (29 Feb. 1576). ⁹⁵ Ibid., Reg. 14, c. 7r./v. (9 Sep. 1596). Ibid. ⁹⁷ Ibid., Reg. 13, cc. 48r.–49r. (10 March 1588). Ibid., c. 49r./v. (16 March 1588).

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ten ducats for life, as recompense for the poverty in which the family had been reduced after the paterfamilias’s death,⁹⁹ and the opportunity for employment in the Venetian chancery when a vacancy became available, after they had reached the age of 15. It was also decreed that they would not sit the customary entrance examinations for Senate secretaries. Instead, they would take the specialist examination for aspiring cipher secretaries, in the hope that at least one of them would have inherited his father’s natural aptitude for ciphers.¹⁰⁰ Indeed, in 1590, Piero Amadi was inducted in ‘the art of ciphers’ by Franceschi,¹⁰¹ and one year later he was made secretario extraordinario of the Senate, gradually ascending the chancery’s hierarchy to become a secretary of the Senate in 1610.¹⁰² This approach to the selection and recruitment of new cifristi denotes a strong preference for familial specialization, which further designates a proclivity to intergenerational favouritism, that is, reserving specific state secretary positions for members of the family of already instated bureaucrats. As we saw in the previous chapter, this nepotistic approach to hiring was commonly deployed by the Council of Ten and the Great Chancellor, who oversaw recruitment and internal promotions in the Venetian chancery.¹⁰³

Recruitment and Promotion in Venice’s Cryptology Department The concept of nepotism manifested itself in the reservation of specific state secretary positions for the family members of elite bureaucrats, a privilege that the social class of the cittadini originarii enjoyed. Indeed, like several other services of state bureaucracy in Venice, the profession of the cifrista was a family business, passed on from father to son, grandson, or nephew. The case of Zuan Francesco Marin was emblematic of this hereditary practice. When, in the late 1570s, the Ten appointed Marin as trainer of the next generation of state cryptologists, they offered him the opportunity to name two of the three new recruits. In response, Marin nominated his son Ferigo and his nephew Alvise.¹⁰⁴ The Ten granted Marin this privilege of recommending family members in the hope that his descendants would have inherited his natural talent and insatiable appetite for the study of cryptology. More specifically, the Ten knew that Ferigo, Marin’s youngest son, had learnt the tricks of the trade almost by osmosis, having displayed glimpses of his father’s ‘natural inclinatione’ (natural inclination) for cryptology from early own. In consequence, Ferigo was fast-tracked to the formal entry-level position of an extraordinary secretary without having to sit the

⁹⁹ ¹⁰¹ ¹⁰³ ¹⁰⁴

Ibid., cc. 48r.–49r. (10 March 1588). ¹⁰⁰ Ibid. Ibid., Reg. 14, c. 7r./v. (9 Sep. 1596). ¹⁰² BNM, Mss. It. cl. VII 1667 (8459), fol. 9r. De Vivo, ‘Cœur de l’État’, p. 720. ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 11, cc. 77v.–78r. (25 Jan. 1576).

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customary entrance examination.¹⁰⁵ He was to serve in this capacity until the age of 20, when he would be promoted to the next level in the Venetian civil service hierarchy, that of an ordinary secretary (secretario ordinario). Five years after that promotion, assuming that he passed the formal examination that involved breaking a cipher without a key, he would ascend to the respectable position of a secretary of the Senate or of the Collegio.¹⁰⁶ Meanwhile, Alvise Marin had to wait for a year for a post,¹⁰⁷ as appointments in the Venetian state bureaucracy were dependent on official openings arising, which usually ensued from the death of an employee.¹⁰⁸ Once they made it into the system, the progression of both young men was steady but gradual. At the age of 20, Ferigo assumed the role of secretario ordinario, which at that point was left vacant due to the death of his brother, another Alvise.¹⁰⁹ Several years after their appointment, and having long completed their formal induction to the post of cipher secretary, both men assumed high-level civil service posts, Ferigo as secretary of the Senate and Alvise as an ordinary secretary, having passed the examination that involved breaking a polyalphabetic cipher without a key.¹¹⁰ Zuan Francesco Marin, his son Ferigo, and his nephew Alvise were not the only members of the Marin family to have secured positions in the Venetian chancery. As family trees and organizational charts of Venetian secretaries stored in the archives of Saint Mark’s library in Venice reveal, the Marin family had an established foothold in the Venetian chancery for generations. Their intergenerational employment started with the recruitment of Marin’s father, Alvise Marin de Zuane, as a secretario extraordinario in 1497.¹¹¹ Alvise’s brother also served as a state secretary from 1498 to 1515.¹¹² Alvise’s sons secured jobs in the Venetian state bureaucracy as well. While his youngest son Ferigo only managed to reach the first rank of secretario extraordinario in 1544,¹¹³ his eldest son, Zuan Francesco, as we have seen, enjoyed a long and successful career as one of the state’s most eminent cryptologists, and eventually assumed the highest-ranking state secretary position, that of secretary of the Council of Ten.¹¹⁴ Zuan Francesco Marin managed to secure positions for his three sons, Alvise, Zuane, and, of course, Ferigo, who was trained as a cifrista by his father. Due to his success, Ferigo was also allowed to induct his own two sons, Zuan Francesco and Antonio, into the Venetian chancery.¹¹⁵ Overall, numerous descendants of the Marin family would occupy the post of state secretary or cipher secretary for generations.¹¹⁶ ¹⁰⁵ Ibid. ¹⁰⁶ Ibid. ¹⁰⁷ Ibid., Reg. 11, c. 117v. (8 Jan. 1577). ¹⁰⁸ Ibid., cc. 117v.–118r. (8 Jan. 1577). ¹⁰⁹ Ibid., c. 142r.–v. (23 Sep. 1577). See also BNM, Mss. It. cl. VII 1667 (8459), fol. 8r./v. ¹¹⁰ ASV, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 13, cc. 61v.–62 r. (22 Aug. 1589); ibid., c. 81r./v. (29 Nov. 1590); ibid., c. 82r./v. (23 Jan. 1591). ¹¹¹ BNM, Mss. It. cl. VII 1667 (8459), fol. 4v. ¹¹² Ibid. ¹¹³ Ibid., fol. 6v. ¹¹⁴ Ibid., fol. 6r. ¹¹⁵ Ibid., fols. 4v.–10r. See also Gürkan, ‘Espionage in the 16th Century Mediterranean’, pp. 179–80. ¹¹⁶ BNM, Mss. It. cl. VII 1667 (8459), fols. 10r.–12v.; Preto, I servizi segreti, p. 276.

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Especially for a profession that necessitated a close-knit organizational structure, due to the sensitive content and nature of the work, this intergenerational nepotism naturally led to professional segregation. From a practical perspective, cipher secretaries were excluded from the obligation to serve the Republic abroad, except for the odd occasion when permission for overseas travel was granted to one at a time.¹¹⁷ This exclusion was a direct outcome of the instrumentality of their work, which necessitated their continuous presence in the ducal chancery, where, more often than not, they were required to work secluded in the secreto.¹¹⁸ More crucially, it was the specialist and delicate nature of their work that necessitated professional segregation. This was achieved more effectively through nepotism. This privileged class of Venetian cipher secretaries—as well as the Venetian state secretary coterie in its entirety—is redolent of the prestigious professional administrative elite of other early modern states, such as France. This administrative elite formed part of the patriarchal structure of society, whereby a traditional authority figure, such as a king or queen, offered patronage in the form of politicoeconomic privileges to selected office-holding families in exchange of their service.¹¹⁹ As we saw in the previous chapter, safeguarding secretarial posts for family members of already instated secretaries compensated for the dwindling salaries that were continually pruned by the mounting costs of the Republic,¹²⁰ and for lack of political rights.¹²¹ For state cryptologists, however, intergenerational nepotism served a more technical purpose, due to the specialist expertise required for the delicate craft of cryptography and cryptanalysis. More specifically, the Ten hoped that an aptitude for cryptology would have been passed on in a hereditary manner.¹²² Viewed in this light, intergenerational employment was linked to skills and knowledge transfer, aside from privileged eligibility. Moreover, as in the case of other state secretaries who were considered keepers of secrets in the early modern period,¹²³ secrecy, and its instrumentality in the construction of a professional identity, also played a significant role in this nepotistic trend. As we have already seen, by erecting barriers between those privy to privileged knowledge and those ignorant of it, secrecy can enhance one’s sense of inclusion in the group of

¹¹⁷ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Comuni, Reg. 32, c. 201r. (20 Feb. 1577). ¹¹⁸ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 14, cc. 126r.–127r. (31 Aug. 1605). ¹¹⁹ On the patriarchal function of early modern states, see Sarah Hanley, ‘Engendering the State: Family Formation and State Building in Early Modern France’, French Historical Studies 16, no 1 (Spring, 1989), pp. 4–27 and the bibliography therein. For a sociological analysis of this phenomenon, which she terms ‘patriarchal patrimonialism’, see Julia Adams, ‘The Rule of the Father: Patriarchy and Patrimonialism in Early Modern Europe’, in Charles Camic, Philip S. Gorski, and David M. Trubek (eds.), Max Weber’s Economy and Society: A Critical Companion (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), pp. 237–66. ¹²⁰ De Vivo, ‘Cœur de l’État’, pp. 720–2. ¹²¹ De Vivo, Information and Communication, p. 51, n. 31. ¹²² Gürkan, ‘Espionage in the 16th Century Mediterranean’, p. 180. ¹²³ See Biow, Doctors, Ambassadors, Secretaries, esp. Chapter 6.

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those in the know.¹²⁴ The need for continuous intentional concealment cements the conscious awareness of being a privileged member of a distinct group and further boosts the process of identification with it, which leads to the construction of a group identity.¹²⁵ In the absence of documented self-narratives of Venetian cipher secretaries, we can only infer that the identification with their professional coterie, especially due to their specialist expertise, led to a gradual process of the construction of a professional identity. Consequently, by reinforcing the distinctive significance of these professionals’ work with exclusive benefits, such as posts in the Venetian secret chancery, the government can be seen as engineering the social construction of a professional identity that was premised on secrecy.¹²⁶ Moreover, by reserving such privileges for the families of these secretaries in exchange for their secrecy, the authorities managed to maintain their loyalty and continuous service. Indeed, there is no known case of betrayal of secrecy on the part of any Venetian cipher secretary who was privy to what nowadays would be termed classified information. This is indicative of a nascent professional ethos, and of secrecy used as an emerging method of socialization. Unquestionably, the combination of natural aptitude, technical knowledge, and professional specialization that cryptography and cryptanalysis required rendered the recruitment from a small and exclusive pool of established bureaucrat families problematic. In consequence, when necessary, the Ten had to look further afield in order to build a robust team of professional cifristi. Accordingly, aside from Ferigo and Alvise Marin, they hired two other young men who demonstrated great potential in cryptology. The first was Pietro Pellegrini, who was endorsed by the Cancellier Grande.¹²⁷ The second was Girolamo Franceschi, Zuan Francesco Marin’s successor as the new trainer of the Venetian cryptologists.¹²⁸ After several trials, two years after his appointment, Franceschi’s cipher was deemed unbreakable by the Ten. Accordingly, they decided to adopt it for all their secret communication with their underlings and ordered all diplomatic envoys and their secretaries, in addition to anyone dealing with secret state affairs, to use solely that cipher in their written interactions with them. As this was a high-security cipher, it was reserved exclusively for correspondence with the Ten, and all state secretaries supporting Venetian diplomats overseas were expected to receive intense training in it. Moreover, ducal secretaries were ordered to produce lists of all those who received the cipher’s key, making a note of the specific way in which the key would be returned after its use.¹²⁹ ¹²⁴ Simmel, ‘The Sociology of Secrecy’, p. 497. ¹²⁵ Ashforth and Mael, ‘Social Identity Theory’; Alvesson, Ashcraft, and Thomas, ‘Identity Matters’; Ybema et al., ‘Articulating Identities’. ¹²⁶ Simmel, ‘The Sociology of Secrecy’. ¹²⁷ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 11, cc. 77v.–78r. (25 Jan 1576). ¹²⁸ Ibid., c. 87r. (29 Feb 1576). ¹²⁹ Ibid., cc. 166r.–167r. (18 Aug. 1578).

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Organizational Control and State Regulation By the time Ferigo Marin and Girolamo Franceschi took the reins of the Venetian cryptology department, cryptology, as a professional practice, had reached a state of maturation that rendered it a stand-alone professional service, controlled and regulated by the authorities. In the late 1590s, the Ten even elected a committee of five delegates—all noblemen with hereditary rights to statecraft—who were responsible for overseeing strategic decisions on the state’s encryption policies.¹³⁰ These included selecting the most effective cipher to be used by the Venetian authorities and their diplomats.¹³¹ The role of the five-member committee was particularly relevant when disputes arose, especially with regard to the quality of the ciphers produced, in which case they were asked to settle arguments and restore order. In 1596, for instance, an egregious dispute broke between Franceschi and Pietro Partenio, a Venetian notary, who, unlike Franceschi, was not a formal cipher secretary but served the Ten as an honorary cryptographer due to his extraordinary gift in cryptography.¹³² More specifically, during the last decade of the sixteenth century, Partenio invented and consigned to the authorities seven ciphers of, allegedly, unsurpassable quality.¹³³ The first (see Fig. 4.3), created in 1592, was deemed unbreakable by the five-member regulatory committee. The cipher’s claim to flawlessness lay in the fact that, even if the cipher key ended up in enemy hands, the real meaning of the narrative could not be revealed unless the cryptanalyst was aware of a specific motto that the users of the cipher had to memorize in order to decipher the message accurately. Accordingly, it was decreed that Partenio would teach Franceschi how to use this innovative cipher. In compensation for this service rendered to the Republic, Partenio was granted a lifetime pension of twelve ducats per month, a sum higher than the maximum of ten ducats experienced codebreakers earned,¹³⁴ together with other privileges, such as income stemming from state offices that he could share with his son.¹³⁵

¹³⁰ Ibid., Reg. 14, c. 8r. (16 Sep. 1596). ¹³¹ See, for instance, ibid., Reg. 13, cc. 92v.–93r. (16 March 1592); ibid., Reg. 14, c. 8r. (10 Feb. 1598). ¹³² Another notary who turned out to be a cryptography aficionado was Giovanni Nicolò Doglioni. Doglioni was a prodigious author of several literary and historical works. In 1621, after an accident on a frozen bridge incapacitated him, depriving him of his ability to ply his trade, he produced his treatise on cryptography, entitled Dello scrivere in zifra, in which he introduced several innovative ways of enciphering. On Doglioni, see Pedani Fabris, ‘Veneta Auctoritate Notarius’, pp. 171–2. ¹³³ Pedani Fabris, ‘Veneta Auctoritate Notarius’, pp. 170–1. Partenio’s ciphers, together with instructions for use, can be found in ASV, CCX, Raccordi, Reg. 1 (Unico), cc. 23r.–32v. (17 March 1592, 28 April 1593). ¹³⁴ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 13, cc. 92v.–93r. (16 March 1592); ASV, CCX, Raccordi, Reg. 1 (Unico), cc. 23r.–25r. (17 March 1592). ¹³⁵ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 13, c. 113r. (30 Aug. 1593).

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Fig. 4.3. Pietro Partenio’s First Cipher © Archivio di Stato di Venezia.

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A year later, Partenio produced another two ciphers ‘of superlative perfection’ for the Ten (see Fig. 4.4). One of them, in particular, was praised for its easiness of use in comparison to the official cipher deployed by the authorities at the time. Once again, this cipher was offered with a supplementary aphorism that, committed to memory, would unlock the true meaning of the seemingly logical, yet incoherent narrative of the encrypted message. The quality of the cipher was so great that it accentuated the significance of having a variety of ciphers to ensure that the Venetians’ messages were not read by others. It was at that point that Partenio’s feat was considered indispensable to the Venetian cryptology service. In consequence, the Ten asked him to instruct all secretaries accompanying ambassadors and other state representatives in overseas missions in the use of his ciphers, and granted him two secretaries of the Senate to assist him in this gargantuan task.¹³⁶ Infuriated and indignant, Franceschi could not stomach the fact that the work of an amateur so reviled by him was so revered by the authorities. In consequence, he voiced his contempt by contesting bitterly the superiority of Partenio’s ciphers. In their efforts to settle the dispute, the Ten ordered the five-member committee to grant an audience to both codemakers in order to decide on the most secure cipher for the Republic’s encryption needs.¹³⁷ Reaching a decision was no easy task, however, and over a year later the five delegates were still debating a conclusive solution.¹³⁸ As they did not wish to dishearten Franceschi but, at the same time, could not turn a blind eye to Partenio’s enterprising ciphers, it is highly probable that Franceschi’s timely appointment as the trainer of the Venetian cryptologic service in September 1596 was offered as a recompense for the unsettled dispute.¹³⁹ On the eve of the seventeenth century, the regulation of the Venetian cryptology service became even more stringent. In 1605, it came to the Ten’s attention that several of the older cipher keys had gone missing and even ended up in the wrong hands, including those of state representatives no longer in service. Accordingly, both Ferigo Marin and Piero Amadi were summoned to a formal audience with the Heads of the Ten, and ordered to set aside all cipher keys already used and produce new ones that were to be distributed to all state envoys. The Ten also decreed that, for purposes of secrecy and security, older keys no longer in use ought to be burnt. Importantly, Marin and Amadi were instructed to create two books—one for the Venetian strongholds in the Mediterranean and one for the Venetian colonies in the Italian mainland—in which they would clearly register all ciphers and their keys, taking a note of the date and the person to whom they had been consigned, and the expected return date. They were also enjoined to create two copies of these volumes, which were to be stored in secret locations.

¹³⁶ Ibid., c. 107r./v. (28 April 1593); ASV, CCX, Raccordi, Reg. 1 (Unico), cc. 20r.–32v. (28 April 1593). ¹³⁷ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 14, c. 8r. (16 Sep. 1596). ¹³⁸ Ibid., c. 27r. (10 Feb. 1598). ¹³⁹ Ibid., c. 7r./v. (9 Sep. 1596).

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Fig. 4.4. Pietro Partenio’s Second Cipher © Archivio di Stato di Venezia.

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Additionally, the cifristi were instructed to work in the secreto or the anti-secreto—the room opposite the formal working quarters of the cipher secretaries—with their doors hermetically closed. Failure to abide by this rule would result in another severe penalty, the forfeit of one year’s salary.¹⁴⁰ In the meantime, as Ferigo Marin was getting older and frailer, Amadi, who had blossomed into a fine cryptanalyst, was deemed the ideal candidate to complement Franceschi and Marin in their deciphering activities.¹⁴¹ The announcement of this decision was made to Amadi by the Heads of the Ten under a mantle of strict secrecy,¹⁴² and it seems to have been expedited due to Marin’s ailing health, which added disproportionately to the overstretched Franceschi’s workload. Indeed, with a large network of embassies in Europe and the Levant at the close of the sixteenth century, the Republic’s enciphering and deciphering needs increased to such an extent that the Senate was asked to dispense with two more of its secretaries, Valerio Antelmi and a certain Marchesini, who were called to assist the overworked cipher secretaries.¹⁴³ A decade later, as Marin’s health deteriorated rapidly and none of the other secretaries had produced sons who were inherently gifted in the art of cryptology, the Cancellier Grande was ordered to recruit two more cipher secretaries under the pupillage and mentorship of Franceschi and Amadi. Their starting salary was set at four ducats per month. Accordingly, in November of that year Giambattista Lionello and Ottavio Medici were appointed. When, after their two-year probation, they passed the examination in breaking a polyalphabetic cipher without a key, their monthly salary increased to ten ducats.¹⁴⁴ Thus, the Venetian cryptology service continued to train and develop Venice’s professional cryptologists until the fall of the Republic, routinely reserving this precious post for fathers and sons who demonstrated an inherited ability to carry on the arte di cavar le zifre (the art of breaking ciphers).¹⁴⁵

The Professionalization of Cryptology in Sixteenth-Century Venice From the appointment of Giovanni Soro and his assistants in the 1540s to the initiation of the training and development programme for state cryptologists, the Council of Ten played a pivotal role in the professionalization of the discipline of cryptology in that period. To explore this contention further, it is important to expound on the concept of professionalization, especially within the socioeconomic landscape of the early modern era. Professionalization has been defined ¹⁴⁰ ¹⁴² ¹⁴⁴ ¹⁴⁵

Ibid., cc. 126r.–127r. (31 Aug. 1605). ¹⁴¹ Ibid., c. 7r./v. (9 Sep. 1596). Ibid., c. 7v. (10 Sep. 1596). ¹⁴³ Ibid., cc. 6v.–7r. (9 Sep. 1596). Ibid., c. 127r./v. (31 Aug. 1605); ibid., Reg. 15, cc. 16v.–17r. (24 Oct. 1607). Ibid., Reg. 11, c. 77v. (25 Jan. 1576); ibid. Reg. 13, cc. 48r.–49r. (10 March 1588).

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as the systematic organization and development of a trade or occupation into a distinct profession based on ‘cognitive specialization’.¹⁴⁶ It is not to be confused with professionalism, a disciplinary device that ‘allows for control at a distance through the construction of “appropriate” work identities and conducts’.¹⁴⁷ Academic orthodoxy dictates that professionalization emerged from the industrial and urban demands of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, excluding the preindustrial era from relevant scholarly debates.¹⁴⁸ This lacuna is not due to the lack of relevant established professions in that period but to the absence of institutional frameworks—aside from the Church or the university—within which professions could develop.¹⁴⁹ Nevertheless, professionalization is an emergent and dynamic phenomenon that, just like organizational entities and managerial practices, seems to have been under way long before linguistic terms were coined to describe it, born out of the wider sociopolitical, intellectual, and even religious contexts of the early modern period.¹⁵⁰ The sixteenth century saw a gradual proliferation of professions primarily due to the urbanization of Italian city states, which increased the demand for professional expertise.¹⁵¹ Still, the term professione, as used in the early modern period is, to this day, a challenging one to define.¹⁵² According to Baldassare Castiglione’s Il libro del cortegiano (1528), professione meant, among other things, ‘intellectual labor within a culturally defined discipline, such as priesthood or the law’, as well as ‘the product of any practice that required master-pupil training’.¹⁵³ By the time Tommaso Garzoni published his famous treatise on ‘all professions of the world’,¹⁵⁴ a distinct ‘professional mentalité’ was giving rise to a whole host of claims on professional identity and expertise.¹⁵⁵ In short, professione was a polysemic term, denoting either the activity through which one’s faith, ideas, or doctrines were professed or an intellectual or manual occupation that rendered a service—what someone professed to offer—rather than a distinct form of work organization.¹⁵⁶ The term, therefore, encompassed what we call the ‘learned

¹⁴⁶ Larson, The Rise of Professionalism, p. 3. ¹⁴⁷ Valerie Fournier, ‘The Appeal to “Professionalism” as a Disciplinary Mechanism’, The Sociological Review 47, no 2 (1999), pp. 280–307 (here p. 281). ¹⁴⁸ Alexander M. Carr-Sanders, Professions: Their Organizations and Place in Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928); Larson, The Rise of Professionalism; O’Day, The Professions in Early Modern England, p. 7. ¹⁴⁹ Biow, Doctors, Ambassadors, Secretaries, p. 11. ¹⁵⁰ O’Day, The Professions in Early Modern England, p. 14. See also Maria Malatesta, ‘Introduction: The Italian Professions from a Comparative Perspective’, in Malatesta, Society and the Professions in Italy, 1860–1914, transl. Adrian Belton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 1–23. ¹⁵¹ Biow, On the Importance of Being an Individual in Renaissance Italy: Men, their Professions, and their Beards (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), p. 39. ¹⁵² Andrew Abbott, The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 318. ¹⁵³ Biow, Doctors, Ambassadors, Secretaries, p. 7. ¹⁵⁴ Garzoni, La piazza universale. ¹⁵⁵ McClure, ‘The Artes and the Ars moriendi’, pp. 95, 121. ¹⁵⁶ Malatesta, ‘Introduction’; Biow, Doctors, Ambassadors, Secretaries, pp. 5–6.

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professions’, such as the clergy and lawyers.¹⁵⁷ As certain occupations gradually claimed knowledge, expertise, and monopoly, however, a tacit or more explicit discourse on what exactly was professed developed.¹⁵⁸ To understand the evolution of professionalization in the early modern period, it is important to delineate the key characteristics of a profession as they have been outlined by sociologists and historians. These include a sense of commitment; an appeal to expertise; reliance on both theoretical knowledge and practical skills; a professional ethic; internal control and discipline; professional training and development; organization of work and, stemming from the latter, a certain degree of autonomy in the workplace and a perceived esprit de corps.¹⁵⁹ Amongst these characteristics, particular emphasis has been placed on the ‘rise of a system of formal education’ that ‘recognized and superseded apprenticeship’.¹⁶⁰ A word of caution is necessary here, however. While several of these professional attributes can be traced back to some early modern occupations, they stem, primarily, from nineteenth-century professions, especially in the Anglosphere,¹⁶¹ and are not entirely representative of professional traits in the early modern era.¹⁶² Still, their similarity to professional traits of that period is worth noting. The sociologist Megali Larson identified two primary characteristics of early modern professions: an inextricable link to social stratification and a ‘liberal education’ based on a combination of classical schooling and practical skills.¹⁶³ Viewed in this light, cognitive specialization was almost exclusively reserved for the literate elites upon whom specialists relied for their professional existence.¹⁶⁴ Accordingly, the learned professions brought about establishment and social standing, as evidenced by the rise of the medical profession and other professions that rendered services to the State and the Church.¹⁶⁵ These were predominantly performed by an educated elite, as opposed to the mass of manual labourers.¹⁶⁶ Within this context, the Venetian cipher secretaries were an elite of servile functionaries whose raison d’être was service and commitment to the state.¹⁶⁷ To be sure, one could argue that the role of the cifrista was nothing more than a subdivision of the established profession of the secretary,¹⁶⁸ which entailed not only the routine tasks of writing, copying, and cataloguing documents but also the

¹⁵⁷ O’Day, The Professions in Early Modern England, pp. 9–11. ¹⁵⁸ Ibid., p. 13. ¹⁵⁹ Ibid., p. 4. ¹⁶⁰ Larson, The Rise of Professionalism, p. 4. ¹⁶¹ O’Day, The Professions in Early Modern England, p. 4. ¹⁶² Biow, Doctors, Ambassadors, Secretaries, p. xii. ¹⁶³ Larson, The Rise of Professionalism, p. 4. ¹⁶⁴ Carr-Sanders, Professions. ¹⁶⁵ For the medical profession, see Eliot Freidson, Profession of Medicine: A Study of the Sociology of Applied Knowledge (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1970). ¹⁶⁶ O’Day, The Professions in Early Modern England. ¹⁶⁷ O’Day called this underlying philosophy ‘Social Humanism’, ibid., p. 5. ¹⁶⁸ In his list of established professions, Tommaso Garzoni discusses cifranti (not cifristi) as those who can write in code and cipher, within the broader category of professional writers and scribes. Instead, cifristi are better suited to Garzoni’s description of ‘Consiglieri, e Secretarii’. See Garzoni, La piazza universale, pp. 182, 174.

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‘learned rhetorical expertise’ of performing such tasks.¹⁶⁹ According to Andrew Abbott’s structural and relational theory of professions, however, a specific body of work delegated by a profession to a subordinate group can generate a new profession. This can happen as the newly delegated body of work embraces novel technical and intellectual developments in order to generate new knowledge.¹⁷⁰ This is certainly the case for the cifrista, whose expert knowledge of and deftness with ciphers, contingent upon specialist education and training, extended beyond the customary intellectual tasks of the professional secretary. This proposition merits further elaboration through a notable historical episode. In the late 1540s, in a fervent petition to the Venetian government for a promotion to the profession of cifrista, the state secretary Alvise Borghi maintained that the ancients by far surpassed contemporaries in all domains of intellectual activity except in the discipline of cryptology. This was because, while several ingenious minds could invent secret ways of writing, the complexity of professional cryptology meant that employment by princes was possible for a selected few genuine professionals.¹⁷¹ For the Council of Ten, what separated the amateurs from the professionals was specialist skills developed through continuous professional training. This was the prerequisite for employment when they sought individuals to enter the service as professional cifristi, not talent. Talent and aptitude for cryptology were taken as a given. That was the case for Ferigo Marin, who was expected to study under his father and to continue to enhance his skill set after his second promotion to ordinary secretary.¹⁷² This was also the case for Piero Amadi, who was taught by Girolamo Franceschi,¹⁷³ and for Giambattista Lionello and Ottavio Medici, who were trained by both Franceschi and Amadi.¹⁷⁴ In other words, a common educational process, combined with a shared professional identity, and an emerging professional ethos and philosophy led to the development of a stand-alone profession of cryptology in sixteenth century Venice.¹⁷⁵ While these distinct traits of a sixteenth-century profession are redolent of several of the criteria that contemporary sociologists have postulated as key determinants for ‘modern’ professions, it would be misleading, if not wrong, to examine the profession of the cifrista against every single one of these characteristics. This is because the principles determining professions and professionalization in the early modern period are ‘distinctly at odds with modern

¹⁶⁹ Biow, Doctors, Ambassadors, Secretaries, p. 4. ¹⁷⁰ Abbott, The System of Professions. ¹⁷¹ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, f. 7, n.d. (attributed by the archivist to the year 1548). ¹⁷² Ibid., Reg. 11, c. 45v. (25 Jan. 1576); ibid., Reg. 13, cc. 61v.–62r. (22 Aug. 1589). ¹⁷³ Ibid., Reg. 14, c. 7r./v. (9 July 1596). ¹⁷⁴ Ibid., Reg. 15, cc. 16v.–17r. (24 Oct. 1607). ¹⁷⁵ See also Iordanou, ‘The Professionalization of Cryptology’; For education, professional ethos, and philosophy as key characteristics of early modern professions, see O’Day, The Professions in Early Modern England.

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sociological criteria’.¹⁷⁶ Undeniably, some of these principles—such as appeal to expertise, work organization, and internal discipline—emerged in the early modern period. In the absence of documented self-narratives of cifristi about their sense of professional identity and expertise, however, Borghi’s description of the profession of the cifrista, echoing the meaning ascribed to it by the very institution that brought it into existence, the Council of Ten, offers such ‘a communal, selfauthenticating discourse that both periodically defined and policed . . . notion[s] of a particular profession as a meaningful form of work’.¹⁷⁷

Conclusion The period of the Renaissance saw the intellectualization of cryptology by spirited polymaths and savants of knowledge, such as the Italian humanist Leon Battista Alberti and the German abbot Johannes Trithemius. Machiavelli’s political doctrines, which sanctioned the significance of secrecy for heads of state, also played a role in the increased intellectual politicization of cryptology as a tool to protect arcana imperii, state secrets.¹⁷⁸ Above all, the systematization of the ambassadorial system in the fifteenth century and the methodical development of diplomacy that transformed the use of cryptology from an emblem of intellectual curiosity and prowess to an instrument of statecraft driven by political imperatives provided the impetus for its professionalization. At the forefront of this process was the Council of Ten, who, as Venice’s spy chiefs, oversaw the evolution of cryptology from an ‘arte, et scientia’ to a fully fledged professional service, shepherding the development of what is now called ‘signals intelligence’ (SIGINT), acquired from the interception and decryption of communications.¹⁷⁹ With the exception of the systematic development of the quality and quantity of Spanish ciphers under Philip II,¹⁸⁰ no other Italian or European state could boast a professional service of cryptology of the calibre and organizational structure that the Venetian cryptology department assumed.¹⁸¹ This Venetian peculiarity can be attributed to three characteristics. The first was the gradual transformation of cryptology from an intellectual pursuit to a state-controlled and regulated

¹⁷⁶ Biow, Doctors, Ambassadors, Secretaries, p. xii. ¹⁷⁷ Ibid., p. 12. ¹⁷⁸ Pesic, ‘Secrets, Symbols, and Systems’, p. 675; Jütte, The Age of Secrecy, pp. 56–7. ¹⁷⁹ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 13, c. 49r./v. (16 March 1588). ¹⁸⁰ Devos, Les chiffres de Philippe II. ¹⁸¹ While Venice’s precocity in the systematic development of ciphers is generally acknowledged in the literature (see, for example, Villain-Gandossi, ‘Les Dépêches chiffrées’; Kahn, The Codebreakers; Preto, I servizi segreti; Couto, ‘Spying in the Ottoman Empire’; Iordanou, ‘The Professionalization of Cryptology’), this Venetian superiority, as presented in this chapter, is only a reflection of extensive analysis of extant documents and relevant academic literature. Other early modern states’ cryptologic pursuits still await scholarly study and analysis by historians.

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profession that was grounded on ammaestar,¹⁸² the mastery of that ‘difficult and most significant science’ through professional training and development.¹⁸³ This characteristic also included the social construction of the professional identity of the cifrista that was premised on intergenerational nepotism and professional segregation. The second characteristic was the development of an internal school of professional cryptology, set up for the specialist training of cipher secretaries and all other state functionaries whose professional responsibilities included enciphering and deciphering official documents.¹⁸⁴ The final and most crucial characteristic was that Venice’s department of cryptology, just like the secret chancery, was a distinct branch of Venice’s secret service. As such, it was subjected to the same organizational and human resource management practices—such as talent acquisition, recruitment and promotion, and performance appraisals—as all other branches of the Venetian bureaucracy that comprised Venice’s central intelligence organization. Venice’s intelligence organization, however, was first and foremost intended to carry out and administer the Council of Ten’s espionage activities. For this reason, it comprised a composite network of informants and intelligence gatherers, which included professional informants and amateur spies. The former were the formally appointed diplomats stationed in various territories around Europe and the Levant where Venice had diplomatic representation or a commercial presence. The latter were amateur intelligencers, such as travelling merchants and mercenary spies, who were shipped to any area where intelligence operations were under way, especially the Ottoman Empire, Venice’s perennial enemy. Tiptoeing through fields seeded thickly with political hazards and traps, they were tasked with the pursuit of vital intelligence for the defence and security of the Venetian state. Their identity and espionage pursuits will be the object of analysis of the following chapter.

¹⁸² ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 19, c. 18r. (30 July 1636). ¹⁸³ Ibid., Reg. 14, c. 127r. (31 Aug. 1605). ¹⁸⁴ Dejanira Couto mentions the existence of at least another trainer of cifristi in sixteenth-century Italy but the claim is stripped of archival or historiographical references. See Couto, ‘Spying in the Ottoman Empire’, p. 289.

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5 Venice’s Secret Agents The public service of penetrating the most important affairs and secrets of that court in the juncture of these most trying times.¹ The Scuola Grande di San Rocco, the Venetian religious confraternity of Saint Roch, was established in 1478 and rapidly became the most affluent scuola in Venice.² Quartered in one of the most spectacular specimens of Renaissance architecture in Campo San Rocco in the heart of the lagoon city, the scuola is the proprietor not only of Saint Roch’s relics, which were deposited there in 1485, but, importantly, of an impressive collection of paintings created by Renaissance artists of towering talent, such as Giorgione (1478–1510), Titian (1488–1576), and Jacobo Robusti (c.1518–94), most commonly known as Tintoretto. Tintoretto’s monumental work, adorning several of the scuola’s walls and ceilings, is, in fact, one of its primary claims to fame. While Tintoretto’s masterworks have furnished the scuola with a strong foothold in the world’s elite art museums, it is the distinct line of walnut panels enclosed between eccentric sculptures by Francesco Pianta (1634–92) that has gradually emerged from Tintoretto’s shadow as the establishment’s hidden treasure.³ Coming from a family of wood-carving artisans and predestined by nature and pedigree to become one of the most ‘skilled artists of Venetian mannerism’,⁴ Pianta was commissioned to decorate the wooden dossals of the scuola’s upper hall, the Sala Capitolare, with a series of allegorical figures, oppressively surrounded by, and even providing a ‘counter-melody’ to, the heaviness of Tintoretto’s canvases.⁵ Amongst them we find one of the earliest artistic representations of a secret agent, Pianta’s Spy or Curiosity, an exquisite work of baroque ¹ ‘ . . . il publico servitio di penetrar nelli piu importanti negotii et secreti di quella corte nella congiontura de presenti travagliosissimi tempi’. Deliberation of the Council of Ten in ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 14, cc. 106v.–107r. (30 March 1604). ² On the scuole of Renaissance Venice, see the classic work by Brian Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice: The Social Institutions of a Catholic State, to 1620 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1971). ³ On Francesco Pianta’s work in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, see Enrico Lacchin, Di Francesco Pianta, junior, bizzarro e capriccioso scultore in legno del barocco veneziano e dei suoi ‘geroglifici’ nella scuola di San Rocco (Venice: Emiliana Editrice, 1930); Paola Rossi, Geroglifici e figure ‘di pittoresco aspetto’: Francesco Pianta alla Scuola Grande di San Rocco (Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 1999); Rossi, Guida alle sculture di Francesco Pianta alla Scuola Grande di San Rocco (Padua: La Garangola, 2001). ⁴ Chiara Romanelli, Francesco Pianta at San Rocco: The Beauty of Virtues and the Ugliness of Vices (Venice: Marsilio, 2014), p. 3. ⁵ Romanelli, Francesco Pianta. See also Rossi, Geroglifici e figure.

Venice’s Secret Service: Organizing Intelligence in the Renaissance. Ioanna Iordanou, Oxford University Press (2019). © Ioanna Iordanou. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198791317.001.0001

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Fig. 5.1. The Spy or Curiosity, Francesco Pianta. Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice. © Cameraphoto Arte.

art (see Fig. 5.1). The suave attire of the sculpture expressively reveals a nobleman enveloped in his heavy cloak, concealed by a hat, and equipped with a lantern to help illuminate his mission. The spy’s apparel is complemented by winged boots that signify Mercury’s speed and diligence, as the emissary of the gods. The parchment across the spy’s waist emphasizes the significance of a spy’s covert work—gentle as a lamb, yet cunning as a fox—as he infiltrates foreign courts.⁶

⁶ The Latin inscription on the sculpture is the following: ‘SUBTER OVIS SP(E)CIE MITIS SIPA VERSATUR EXT ( . . . ) VULPIS HABET PLURIMUM ID’. As explained by the Italian iconographer Cesare Ripa in his Iconologia, this inscription stems from the Alexandrian philolologist John Philoponus’ (c.490–c.570 ) anagram De Sipa (meaning De Spia, Italian for ‘spy’), which is given in its entirety in Ripa’s volume. It is highly probable that Pianta was influenced by that text, which he most probably read in Ripa’s work. The excerpt that Pianta used to construct his Latin inscription reads ‘subter ovis specie mitis versatur in Aula / Sipa, sed intuitus, extaque vulpis habet’, which broadly translates into ‘Under the guise of a gentle lamb the spy spends his time at court, on the lookout, and he has the heart of a fox’. See Rossi, Geroglifici e figure, p. 51; see also Cesare Ripa, Iconologia di Cesare Ripa Perugino (Siena: Heredi di Matteo Florini, 1613). I am grateful to the staff of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco for their assistance with the history of Pianta’s inscription about the Spy. I would also like to thank Ioannis Markouris and Irene Van Renswoude for their input on the translation of the Latin text.

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Fig. 5.2. Spy, Cesare Ripa.

Pianta’s Spy was most probably inspired by one of the earliest pictorial depictions of a spy published in Iconologia, a highly influential sixteenth-century emblem book by the Perugian iconographer Cesare Ripa (c.1560–c.1622) (see Fig. 5.2).⁷ In it, the spy is depicted as a nobly dressed man, covering his head with a hat and his body with a cloak, on which ‘the eyes, and the ears signify the instruments with which spies exercise their craft in order to please their masters and patrons’.⁸ Equipped with the quintessential tools of a spy, a lantern and ⁷ The original volume was entitled Iconologia overo descrittione dell’ imagini universali cavate da antichità et da altri luoghi, first published in 1593, in Rome. The image and text of the spy (Spia) first appeared in the fourth edition, published in Siena in two volumes by the Heredi di Matteo Florini in 1613. ⁸ Cesare Ripa, Della piu che novissima Iconologia di Cesare Ripa Perugino, parte terza (Padua: Donato Pasquardi, 1630), p. 91. The same pattern of ears and noses appears on the dress of Queen Elizabeth I in the renowned Rainbow Portrait (c.1600–2) attributed to Isaac Oliver or Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (see Fig. 5.3). Perhaps the most heavily symbolic portrait of the celebrated queen, it was painted about a decade after Ripa’s Iconologia was published. It is, therefore, probable that the painter, like Pianta, might have been influenced by Ripa’s work.

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Fig. 5.3. The Rainbow Portrait, Isaac Oliver or Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger. Reproduced with permission of the Marquess of Salisbury Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, UK/Bridgeman Images.

winged boots, he traces vital intelligence with the help of a sniffing hound. Ripa maintained that the purpose of the elegant attire was purely utilitarian, enabling the spy to ply his trade not only amongst the ordinary people, but also amongst the gentry, who would only bestow their trust upon those fastidiously dressed.⁹ Yet Ripa’s view of spies, especially those amongst the nobility, was dryly sardonic. ‘It is a shame of our times’, he wrote, ‘that more noblemen, rather than the plebs, practise spying’,¹⁰ dismissing espionage as a Mephistophelian activity that sacrificed honour for the prospect of ingratiating oneself with patrons, even if it meant betraying friends.¹¹ Ripa’s somewhat incendiary critique of the act of spying as conducted by the nobility implies negative connotations of espionage. This view echoes one of the first definitions of a spy, produced by Tommaso Garzoni. In his 1587 treatise on all professions of the world, Garzoni described spies as: the sort of people that, in secret, follow armies and enter cities, exploring the affairs of enemies, and reporting them back to their own people. And even if the ⁹ Ripa, Iconologia, p. 90.

¹⁰ Ibid., pp. 90–1.

¹¹ Ibid., p. 91.

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profession is infamous and if found, they are hung by the neck, these people are essential, as History and practice have shown.¹²

Bartolomeo Pelliciari from Modena, Garzoni’s contemporary, described spies in similar terms in his treatise on the instrumentality of good intelligence in military affairs.¹³ The Florentine humanist Benedetto Varchi, on the other hand, affirmed that ‘to spy on the secrets of the enemy is one of the most important and laudable things that one can do’.¹⁴ By and large, throughout the early modern period, espionage was associated with dishonesty and treachery, traits that cast on it lasting negative connotations that induced the French philosopher Charles de Montesquieu to voice the oft-quoted statement: ‘L’espionnage serait peut-être tolérable s’il pouvait être exercé par d’honnêtes gens; mais l’infamie nécessaire de la personne peut faire juger de l’infamie de la chose’.¹⁵ For the Venetians, the practice of espionage was situated somewhere in the hinterland between delinquency and necessity.

Spie, Confidenti, Exploratori Already by the sixteenth century the word ‘spy’ had assumed negative connotations in Venice. It was most commonly used to indicate an enemy’s informant or someone who reported on the suspicious behaviour of fellow citizens.¹⁶ In that context, a spy was called a spione or a spia. A letter to the Council of Ten at the dawn of the sixteenth century denounced a certain Franceschino Greco as a spia for both Maximilian I, the Holy Roman Emperor, and Alfonso I d’Este, the duke of Ferrara.¹⁷ Over a century later, the Venetian envoy in London reported to the State Inquisitors a ‘spia fortissima’ of the Spanish operating at the English court.¹⁸ In this context, espionage was considered a felony and was to be dealt with accordingly. In the 1540s, for instance, an anonymous denunciation accused Camilla Pallavicina of being a ‘spia diabolica’ and a ‘potentissimo strumento de diavolo’ who was associating with the infamous French ambassador, Guillaume

¹² Garzoni, La piazza universale, p. 705. ¹³ Bartolomeo Pelliciari, Avertimenti militari del Colonnello Bartholomeo Pelliciari da Modona: Utili & Necessarii a Tutti gli Officii che Possono Essere Essercitati in un Formato Essercito, Principiando dal Soldato Privato, et Ascendendo per Ordine fino al Carico del Capitano Generale (Modena: Gio. Maria Verde, 1600), pp. 73, 270, 279. ¹⁴ Preto, I servizi segreti, p. 26. ¹⁵ ‘Spying would perhaps be tolerable if it could be exercised by honest people, but the necessary infamy of the person [i.e. the spy] can make the thing [i.e. espionage] be judged infamous’, Charles de Secondat Montesqieu, De l’esprit des lois, Vol. 1 (Geneva: Barrillot & Fils, 1749), p. 326. I am grateful to Chris Blackburn for bringing to my attention Charles de Montesquieu’s views on espionage. ¹⁶ Preto, I servizi segreti, p. 42. ¹⁷ ASV, CCX, Miscellania, b. 5 (8 Aug. n.d. [c.1510]). ¹⁸ ASV, IS, b. 442 (17 Sep. 1620). See also how the incident is reported by the Spanish ambassador to Venice, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, to Philip II in AGS, Estado, Legajo 1518, ff. 243–4 (5 Oct. 1547).

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Pellicier, in order to conspire against Venice.¹⁹ So severe was this accusation that the case was formally investigated by the Council of Ten, who interrogated Pallavicina and the ambassador’s agent. As a result, while the former was banished from the city, the latter, alas, was guillotined.²⁰ For semantic distinction, spies in the Venetian employ—rather than those acting against Venetian interests—were called confidenti.²¹ The confidenti were informers upon whom the Council of Ten could rely in order to gather valuable intelligence. In 1604, the formal Venetian legate in Milan was praised by the Ten for having recruited a local engineer as a confidente.²² The Ten’s excitement evaporated rapidly, however, when it was made clear that the engineer’s alleged ‘secrets’ were unsubstantiated fabrications intended to extract a hefty compensation from the Venetian authorities.²³ The medieval term exploratore or esploratore was also in use—albeit less frequently—in that period. At the start of the sixteenth century, for example, the Venetian consul in Damascus expressed his confidence that the Venetian authorities had access to intelligence on the Ottomans via several of their exploratori.²⁴ Contrary to the negative connotations of the word spia, which indicated an enemy’s spy, the term exploratore was used for one’s own spy as well as those of rivals. In the summer of 1547, the Council of Ten cautioned the governors of Corfu against an Andrea Daversa, who was sent to the island by the Viceroy of Naples to explore and inform (esplorar e significar) about Venetian affairs.²⁵ Similarly, in a letter to the Inquisitori di Stato, the Venetian bailo in Constantinople mentioned a Milanese explorator in the employ of the Spanish who had recently been exposed and imprisoned by the Ottomans.²⁶ These different perceptions of spie, confidenti, and exploratori imply that, contrary to other established ‘conventional’ professions, such as those of the priest, the lawyer, the doctor, the secretary, the cipher secretary, the notary, and, of course, the merchant,²⁷ the métier of the spy had still not blossomed into a ¹⁹ ASV, CCX, Miscellania, b. 2 (15 Oct. 1542). On Camilla Pallavicina, see Katherine A. McIver, Women, Art, and Architecture in Northern Italy, 1520–1580: Negotiating Power (Farnham: Ashgate, 2006), esp. pp. 47–56; on Pellicier’s attempted conspiracy, see Flaminio Cornaro, Ecclesiae Venetae antiquis monumentis nunc etiam primum editis illustratae ac in decades distributae, Vol. 4 (Venice: Pasqualus, 1749), p. 294. ²⁰ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 5, c. 76r. (18 Sep. 1542). BNM, Mss It., cl. VII 2579 (12471), Successi dei secretarij del consig. de Dieci et de Pregadi che rivelono li secreti al Signor Turco, anno 1542. ²¹ The use of the term confidente was not universal. In a 1574 missive to the Vatican, for example, the Papal nuncio refers to his own spie, whom he sent to Friuli in search of a wanted man. See ASVat, Segreteria di Stato, Venezia, b. 14, c. 63r. (1 May 1574); ibid., b. 16, c. 76r. (1 May 1574). ²² ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 14, cc. 111v.–112r. (8 Nov. 1604). ²³ Ibid., cc. 113v.–114v. (15, 18 Dec. 1604). ²⁴ ASV, CCX, Lettere dei Rettori e di Altre Cariche, b. 255 (15 Jan. 1516). ²⁵ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 5, cc. 72v.–73r. (21 Aug. 1547). ²⁶ ASV, IS, b. 416 (1 Nov. 1609). ²⁷ On professions and professionalization in the early modern period generally, see O’Day, The Professions in Early Modern England, esp. pp. 18–43. On ‘conventional’ professions in Renaissance Italy specifically, see Biow, Doctors, Ambassadors, Secretaries. On the professionalization of chancery secretaries and cryptologists, see Chapter 4 of this book; see also Iordanou, ‘The Professionalization

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distinct profession in the early modern era. Due to this lack of professionalization, the distinction between a spy—a person actively recruited, authorized, and instructed to obtain information for intelligence purposes—and an informer (or ‘intelligencer’)—someone who voluntarily initiated information-gathering processes in the hope of a reward and, on occasion, a formal appointment by the government—is blurred. Similarly hazy is the term ‘informant’, which denoted someone who reported to the authorities information they were privy to, primarily out of a sense of duty.²⁸ In this chapter, the different types of secret agents that the Council of Ten employed for their intelligence pursuits will be explored and analysed. Ambassadors and other Venetian state representatives acted as formal informants, while mercenary spies and intelligence gatherers engaged in more daring espionage missions in the service of the Venetian authorities.

Venice’s Secret Agents The ubiquitous Council of Ten, which, as we saw in previous chapters, oversaw the central administration of intelligence-gathering and espionage in Renaissance Venice, was primarily responsible for recruiting and overseeing Venice’s secret agents. These came from all echelons of Venetian (and non-Venetian) society and, in their totality, made up a multifarious network of professional and amateur informers that branched out into three categories: the professional informants, composed of formally appointed Venetian diplomats and state representatives; the amateur intelligence gatherers, made up of Venetian merchants traversing the Mediterranean or stationed in commercial hubs of strategic significance, like the territories of the Levant; and the numerous mercenary spies, a complex category of semi-professional intelligence gatherers, which included individuals of all levels of society who either anonymously or under their own name, for a fee or gratis, offered to gather and disclose information pertaining to the security of the Venetian state.²⁹ To be sure, disentangling rumours and fabrications from hard facts was not an easy task. Yet the composite network of these varied informants and intelligence gatherers enabled the systematic evaluation of information of Cryptology’. On professional notaries in early modern Venice, see Pedani Fabris, ‘Veneta Auctoritate Notarius’; On the emergence of professional accounting, see Richard Goldthwaite, ‘The Practice and Culture of Accounting in Renaissance Florence’, Enterprise and Society 16, no 3 (2015), pp. 611–47. The bibliography on professional merchants in the late medieval and early modern period is vast. For emblematic case studies on Venice, see Lane, Andrea Barbarigo; Lane, I mercanti di Venezia (Turin: Einaudi, 1982). ²⁸ For the semantic challenges posed by these diverse terms, see Marshall, Intelligence and Espionage, pp. 4–5. ²⁹ On the different categories of informants and intelligence gatherers in the employ of the Council of Ten, see also Iordanou, ‘What News on the Rialto?’; Iordanou, ‘The Spy Chiefs of Renaissance Venice’.

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through a process of comparing and contrasting. Amongst them, ambassadors and governors in the Venetian dominion constituted the Republic’s most refined specialist informants.

Venice’s Professional Informants Ambassadors in Foreign Courts ‘An ambassador’, wrote Sir Henry Wotton (1568–1639), the famed English diplomat who served as James I’s envoy to Venice in the early seventeenth century, ‘is an honest man, sent to lie abroad for the good of his country’.³⁰ Already from the fourteenth century, ambassadors were ‘not simply acting as attorneys for the execution of the specific terms of their instructions, but also collecting news and intelligence on any matter which they thought might be of interest to their government’.³¹ Isabella Lazzarini has aptly shown the constant concern of envoys and legates to supply their lords or government with intelligence of geostrategic significance.³² The dispatches of Pietro Cornaro, the Venetian ambassador to Milan in the early 1380s, for instance, are revealing of some of the ‘less obvious principles of diplomatic intelligence’, such as obtaining information on military expeditions from casual informers or supplying other ambassadors and statesmen with such information.³³ In the fifteenth century, this preoccupation with intelligence supply on the part of formal envoys gradually transmogrified ‘from gathering to control, and from control to manipulation’.³⁴ By the sixteenth century, Venice had managed to secure permanent representation in all the principal courts of early modern Europe.³⁵ As the official representatives of the Venetian Republic in foreign courts, Venetian ambassadors—like all their coeval counterparts—were tasked with three primary responsibilities: representation, negotiation, and the collection of information.³⁶ The latter responsibility was part of their ‘public service to penetrate the most important affairs and secrets’ of the courts they served in.³⁷ In consequence and in order to fulfil their duties, a number of specialist skills were part of their professional repertoire, including the meticulous composition and dispatch of detailed intelligence reports, which, as we saw in Chapter 3, were often written in cipher for secrecy purposes.³⁸ A surviving ³⁰ Logan Pearsall Smith, Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, Vol. I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1904), p. 47. ³¹ Hyde, ‘The Role of Diplomatic Correspondence’, p. 239. ³² Lazzarini, Communication and Conflict, pp. 70–2. ³³ Ibid., p. 71. ³⁴ Ibid. ³⁵ Garett Mattingly, ‘The First Resident Embassies: Medieval Italian Origins of Modern Diplomacy’, Speculum XII (1937), pp. 423–39; Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy; Queller, Early Venetian Legislation. ³⁶ Isabella Lazzarini, ‘Renaissance Diplomacy’, in Gamberini and Lazzarini, The Italian Renaissance State, pp. 425–43. See also Lazzarini, Communication and Conflict. ³⁷ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 14, cc. 106v.–107r. (30 March 1604). ³⁸ Ibid.

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anonymous Venetian document of the period that offers guidelines on effective ambassadorial reportage that are ‘highly systematic, formal, and even humanistic in tone’ explicated both the rigid and the more indirect ways in which an ambassador was to collect and disseminate information on a number of significant issues, such as the country’s size, infrastructure, climate, natural resources, citizens, customs, tradition, religion, trade exports and imports, government, and rulers.³⁹ More pertinently, the document emphasized the ability to discover deftly ‘the affairs of the court, the news of the world, and the important business of other princes’, while managing to maintain the anonymity of one’s informers ‘because otherwise you will lose their trust and damage your friends’.⁴⁰ In essence, Venetian ambassadors acted as the heads of intelligence operations within the territory of their diplomatic representation. Accordingly, and in order to successfully fulfil their responsibilities, they were expected to recruit and manage their own informers and spies. For this purpose, they were furnished with a discrete budget, granted to them for ‘secret expenses’.⁴¹ In 1528, for example, the Council of Ten unanimously agreed to disburse 30 scudi to the Venetian ambassador in Hungary for expenses on spies and informers. At the time, Hungary was involved in a lengthy war with the Ottomans, and a spy was needed to travel to those parts of the European continent in order to gather intelligence on ongoing military and political developments there.⁴² Similarly, at the close of the sixteenth century, the Venetian ambassador to the Holy Roman Empire requested and was granted permission to gift up to 100 ducats to the secretary of the Spanish ambassador in the imperial court, whom he was using as a ‘means to penetrate the most secret news and the most intimate affairs’ of the Holy Roman Emperor. The gift was to be offered any time the Spanish secretary could provide the Venetian legate with important intelligence.⁴³ Such confidenti, then, were vital actors in an ambassador’s intelligence pursuits, because the prospect of acting behind the scenes, free from the court’s rigid diplomatic etiquette and stifling codes of enmity, conferred on their paymaster what in contemporary parlance is termed ‘plausible deniability’, the possibility for the ambassador to deny involvement in contemptible acts of espionage. Recruiting loyal confidenti who were willing to infiltrate foreign courts in order to extract vital intelligence was a key aspect of an ambassador’s role. Nevertheless,

³⁹ See Donald E. Queller, ‘How to Succeed as an Ambassador: A Sixteenth-Century Venetian Document’, Studia Gratiana 15 (1972), pp. 655–71 (here p. 665). The anonymous text was discovered in the nineteenth century by Armand Baschet, La Diplomatie vénitienne. Les princes de l’Europe au XVIe siècle. François Ier, Philippe II, Catherine de Médicis, les papes, les sultans d’après les rapports des ambassadeurs vénitiens (Paris: Henri Plon, 1862), pp. 30–1. ⁴⁰ Cited in De Vivo, Information and Communication, p. 72. The anonymous document can be found in BMCV, Ms. Cicogna 3271/III, n.d. ⁴¹ See, for instance, ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 14, cc. 1v., 22r., 25v. (22 March 1596, 5 Sep. and 16 Dec. 1597). ⁴² Ibid., Reg. 2, c. 48v. (7 Jan. 1528). ⁴³ Ibid., Reg. 14, c. 40v. (30 Aug. 1599).

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ambassadors had to obtain the Ten’s formal approval for their recruits by providing detailed reports on them. When the Venetian legate in France wrote to the Ten about a ‘grand personage’ who supplied him with intelligence on the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis between Henry II of France and Philip II of Spain, the Ten wrote back, congratulating him on his dedication and diligence but criticizing his failure to expound on his informer’s background.⁴⁴ Parsimony in written communication with the Ten was not always the result of oversight or indolence. As interception of letters was a common practice in that period, Venetian ambassadors, who were well versed with the Ten’s decrees on state secrecy, were deliberately laconic in their description of their informers. In 1586, the Venetian ambassador to Spain vaguely reported to the State Inquisitors that he had recruited a blue-blooded informer from within the royal Spanish entourage. The new recruit’s compensation was in kind, particularly in fine muscat wines, as his status precluded monetary bribes.⁴⁵ On this occasion, the fact that the informer was a well-heeled Spaniard with a strong foothold at Philip II’s court was adequate information for the Ten to sanction and fund the lavish bribe. Courtiers in the Spanish royal household were notorious for their eclectic tastes, and the Venetian authorities knew that they had to dig deep into their pockets to entice them to come forward with worthy revelations. In 1576, the Venetian ambassador to Madrid communicated to the Ten the desire of Antonio Pérez, Philip II’s infamous Secretary of State, to acquire a ‘good old’ painting by Titian in exchange for ‘great benefits’ for Venice. Accordingly, the Ten unanimously agreed to disburse 200 ducats for this purpose.⁴⁶ Antonio Pérez’s devious quest for Titian canvases was justified by Philip II’s keen pursuit of artwork, which undercut any common mortal’s attempt to obtain work by the famed Venetian master.⁴⁷ The gift must have borne fruit, as two years later the Ten decided to increase their spending on Titian’s art to 500 ducats in order to keep the secretary gratified.⁴⁸ Although it is problematic to trace the provenance of Renaissance masterpieces before they ended up adorning the walls of some of the world’s most renowned museums and galleries, one wonders whether any of these rewards was Titian’s The Fall of Man, now at the Prado in Madrid.⁴⁹ So pernickety were the Ten about the informers and spies employed by Venetian ambassadors that, when it was deemed necessary, they went the extra mile to gather intelligence on their character. In 1563, for instance, they inquired into a Turkish slave in the employ of Semiz Ali Pasha, the Grand Vizier ⁴⁴ Ibid., Reg. 7, c. 3r. (29 May 1559). ⁴⁵ ASV, IS, b. 483 (1 Sep. 1586). ⁴⁶ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 11, c. 83r./v. (14 Feb. 1576). ⁴⁷ Levin, Agents of Empire, pp. 183–6. ⁴⁸ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 11, c. 155v. (4 Apr. 1578). ⁴⁹ Antonio Pérez, like his father Gonzalo, was a collector of Titian’s art. The Fall of Man was one of Titian’s paintings that formed part of his impressive collection. The work is housed at the Prado but its provenance is unknown. See Angela Delaforce, ‘The Collection of Antonio Pérez, Secretary of State to Philip II’, The Burlington Magazine 124 (1982), pp. 742–53.

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of the Ottoman Empire, who had been acting as a confidente to the bailo in Constantinople. When they found out that the Turk was originally from Genoa, Venice’s perennial commercial rival, they instantly instructed the bailo not to reveal any significant intelligence to his informer, in case the latter was acting as a double agent for the Genoese. They counselled him, however, to treat him with affability and deference, in order to continue to wheedle updates on the Ottoman court out of him.⁵⁰ With more determination, the Ten instructed the Venetian Residente in Milan to tactfully dismiss his confidente, who deviously promised to reveal secrets pertaining to the security of Venice’s strongholds. As their enthusiasm for his abilities evaporated when they evaluated his unsubstantiated sources, they asked the envoy to convey to him that they would only consider offering compensation for information of substance and quality.⁵¹ It becomes apparent from the above that Venetian ambassadors were expected to be crafty informants on foreign courts for the benefit of the Venetian Republic. When the obfuscating formalism of the court precluded the acquisition of vital intelligence through widely accepted diplomatic avenues, they turned into heads of intelligence operations, seeking the Ten’s authorization to recruit spies and informers who were able and willing to employ more stealthy means for acquiring and supplying intelligence. Especially at the close of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth, extant records reveal a proliferation of informers and spies employed, in one way or another, by Venetian envoys resident in foreign courts. Venetian governors overseeing the Dominante’s strongholds were also assisted in their intelligence pursuits by their own informers and spies.

Governors and Consuls within and beyond the Venetian Dominion The web of professional informants forming part of Venice’s secret service was not solely restricted to formal exchanges between ambassadors and the ruler, as was the case for other Italian city states.⁵² The Venetian intelligence network was so meticulously organized that it branched out to officially appointed representatives in the Venetian territories of the Stato da Mar in the Balkans and the Mediterranean, in the Venetian cities of the Stato da Terra on the Italian mainland, and in other Mediterranean regions where there was notable Venetian merchant presence but no formal diplomatic representation. Depending on their role, these state representatives were called provveditori, rettori, or even consoli. As the official governors of Venetian strongholds, they were expected to participate in more daring clandestine missions, acting as the formal police force in the region of their jurisdiction and engaging in espionage activities either directly or indirectly.

⁵⁰ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 7, c. 115v. (21 April 1563). ⁵¹ Ibid., Reg. 14, cc. 111v.–112r., 113v., 114r./v. (8 Nov, 15 and 18 Dec. 1604). ⁵² Senatore, ‘Uno Mundo de Carta’; Frigo, ‘ “Small States” and Diplomacy’.

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For this purpose, they were expected to recruit and manage their own spies and intelligencers. In July 1533, a war between the Ottomans and the Venetians loomed large on the horizon. In this politically charged climate, the governor of Zante received direct orders from the Ten to send a ‘practical and faithful’ messenger to Admiral Andrea Doria, a legendary Genoese mercenary commander (condottiere), who, during the first half of the sixteenth century, had been patrolling the Mediterranean, launching several naval expeditions against the Turks and other Barbary corsairs.⁵³ As the Ten had a top-secret message to convey to Doria, the governor was ordered not to communicate in writing with the messenger. Instead, he was charged with finding an informant who spoke Turkish or any other language that Doria spoke, in order to forgo the need for an interpreter. If the use of an interpreter was ultimately unavoidable, the governor was instructed not to recruit a well-known Genoese translator, who was also in the Ottomans’ employ.⁵⁴ By and large, like Venetian ambassadors to foreign courts, governors of Venetian strongholds and other Venetian representatives were expected to appoint their own spies. In November 1537, for example, just a few months after the siege of Corfu by the Ottomans, the Venetian authorities were becoming restless for intelligence on military developments and preparations in Constantinople. Letters were sent to the Venetian governors of Crete, Cattaro, Zante, and Corfu, instructing them to appoint spies who would enter the Ottoman capital in order to extract military intelligence on the Turks and inform the bailo Canal, who was stationed there.⁵⁵ In his reply, Melchior Michiel, the rector of Cattaro, repeatedly informed the Ten that he had employed three esploratori and was seeking further information on the Turkish army and navy through a casus (spy) arriving in Cattaro from Constantinople.⁵⁶ As with their proclivity for detailed information about the Venetian ambassadors’ network of spies and intelligencers, when it was deemed necessary, the Ten were over-fastidious with their governors’ own espionage recruits. In the winter of 1559, the Venetian governor of Bergamo communicated to them the rumours conveyed to him by several denizens of that town that the Spanish king was preparing to wage war against the Venetian Republic. When they received the news, the Ten replied directly, ordering the governor to find out, in secret, the names and backgrounds of the informers, how they acquired that piece of information, and ultimately, whether the information was true.⁵⁷ Additional information about the governor’s spies would enable the Ten to corroborate the

⁵³ ⁵⁴ ⁵⁵ ⁵⁶ ⁵⁷

On Andrea Doria, see Francesco D. Guerrazzi, Vita di Andrea Doria, 2 vols. (Milan: Guigoni, 1864). ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 4, c. 14r./v. (21 July 1533). ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 3 (10 Nov. 1537). ASV, CCX, Lettere dei Rettori e di Altre Cariche, b. 275 (6 Jan., 25 May 1538). ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 7, cc. 14v.–15r. (20 Dec. 1559).

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provenance and accuracy of the reports in order to decide whether further action was necessary. When the Venetian authorities evaluated information and disentangled facts from fabrications, they proceeded to issue instructions to their formal representatives on the actions they were expected to take. Policing duties formed a substantial part of the governors’ responsibilities. In the summer of 1574, for instance, the Ten requested from the rector of the Venetian city of Brescia the whereabouts of a certain Giulio Sala. Sala was suspected of engaging in treasonous dealings with the Spanish, involving several of his cronies in his machinations. The Brescian authorities were asked to locate him and ship him off to the prisons of the Ten, while keeping a close eye on his relatives and acquaintances. They were also ordered to change all the guards on the city’s gates, most probably suspecting that Sala could have bribed them in order to let him escape.⁵⁸ As we saw in Chapter 3, ordering the alternation of the guards’ shifts, so that they were constantly stationed at different places on the city’s walls and forts, was a common tactic employed by the Ten to forestall the guards’ collaboration with firebrands and turncoats.⁵⁹ At times, however, intelligence operations orchestrated by Venetian governors might indicate the need for military reinforcement. In October 1561, the governor of Crema was instructed to gather intelligence on any military developments in Milan, which at the time was under Habsburg rule. For this purpose, he was ordered to send four or six ‘faithful’ spies to several Milanese territories with the clear instruction that the informers would not have prior knowledge of each other, most probably so that they would not suspect the reasons for their deployment. The governor was also ordered to increase the city’s security and to bring in military reinforcements if any nefarious developments were suspected or actually occurred.⁶⁰ Even the Venetian consuls who were stationed in cities with no permanent diplomatic representation were assigned diplomatic responsibilities and were tasked with the provision of vital intelligence.⁶¹ Consuls were not formal diplomats but acted as intermediaries between Venetian envoys overseas and the intelligence headquarters in the Doge’s Palace. Thus, on several occasions they oversaw the safe exchange of letters between the Ten and the designated Venetian legate in the region in which they were stationed.⁶² In January 1585, for example, Pietro Michiel, returning from his assignment as the Venetian consul in Aleppo, submitted to the Council of Ten a list of his expenses during his service in that city. This included fees paid to spies sent to Constantinople in order to gather ⁵⁸ Ibid., Reg. 11, c. 17r./v. (1 July 1574). ⁵⁹ Ibid., Reg. 14, c. 10r. (29 Dec. 1596). ⁶⁰ Ibid., c. 62r. (3 Oct. 1561). ⁶¹ See, for example, ASV, CCX, Lettere dei Rettori e di Altre Cariche, b. 255 (25 Nov. 1515) on the Venetian consul in Alexandria communicating information between the Signoria and Mameluke Sultan Al-Ashraf Qansuh Al-Ghuri. ⁶² ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 10 (27 March 1579).

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intelligence on military developments in the Ottoman Empire, as well as news from the ongoing war between the Ottomans and the Safavid Shah of Persia.⁶³ The money for this exchange came out of a 300-ducat budget that was designated for this purpose.⁶⁴ The intelligence-gathering network of professional informants such as Venetian ambassadors, governors, and consuls acting on behalf of the Council of Ten was as composite and multifarious as were their diplomatic and administrative responsibilities. The hierarchical, corporate-like distribution of duties so characteristic of Venice’s intelligence organization was evident in the managerial interactions between the Ten and their underlings. Yet the Venetian intelligence apparatus was not solely restricted to the Serenissima’s formal representatives in the dominion and overseas. As Jacob Burckhardt has shrewdly argued, ‘every Venetian away from home was a born spy for his government’.⁶⁵ This was nowhere more evident than in the case of traders and tradesmen, who, ceaselessly crossing Mediterranean and other European waters and lands, offered information-gathering services to the Venetian authorities in an amateur capacity.

Amateur Informers: Merchants and Tradesmen within and beyond the Dominion The systemization of diplomacy in that period was not a rigid process but a flexible activity in which a variety of agents interacted and interfered with more formal diplomatic structures.⁶⁶ Italian merchants played an important role, as, already from medieval times, they were directly or indirectly involved in diplomatic and political affairs.⁶⁷ Genoa’s idiosyncrasy as a major commercial centre with no territorial expansion, for instance, meant that diplomatic negotiations were dealt with by mercantile and economic agents, while official envoys were solicited only for the most formal of occasions.⁶⁸ Venice, in contrast, as a major ⁶³ On the Ottoman-Safavid War, see Rudi Matthee, The Ottoman-Safavid War of 986–998/ 1578–90: Motives and Causes, International Journal of Turkish Studies 20, no ½ (2014) (Special Section on Ottoman-Persian Historical Exchanges) (1972), pp. 1–20. ⁶⁴ ASV, CCX, Lettere dei Rettori e di Altre Carriche, b. 255, fols. 5–6 (3 Jan. 1585). ⁶⁵ Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, transl. S. G. C. Middlemore (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co, 1904), p. 67. ⁶⁶ On the flexible and multifarious nature of diplomacy in the late Medieval and early modern period, see Lazzarini, Communication and Conflict, esp. Chapter 1. ⁶⁷ On the enmeshment of the commercial and diplomatic activities of Italian merchants in the late medieval period, see Isabella Lazzarini, ‘I circuiti mercantili della diplomazia italiana nel Quattrocento’, in Lorenzo Tanzini and Sergio Tognetti (eds.), Il governo dell’economia: Italia e penisola iberica nel basso Medioevo (Rome: Viella, 2014), pp. 155–77. On Italy and the Iberian Peninsula specifically, see the essays in Tanzini and Tognetti, Il governo dell’economia. On the informative nature of merchants’ written communication, especially in relation to political affairs, see Trivellato, ‘Merchants’ Letters’. ⁶⁸ See Christine Shaw, ‘Genoa’, in Gamberini and Lazzarini (eds.) The Italian Renaissance State, pp. 220–35.

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commercial entrepôt with territorial expansion over several areas of northern Italy, the Adriatic, and the islands of the Levant, had a more mixed diplomatic organization that entailed formal diplomatic networks whose work was, at times, anticipated and undergirded by merchants.⁶⁹ Early diplomatic studies attributed merchants’ involvement in diplomacy to their dexterity in the art of negotiation.⁷⁰ Nevertheless, the robust research tradition in Italian commercial circuits has overwhelmingly overlooked the diplomatic role of merchants, both in the medieval and in the early modern period.⁷¹ Undoubtedly, the interlocking circuits of trade and diplomacy have a long established pedigree in the late medieval and early modern era.⁷² Mercantile networks that operated in the Italian peninsula, the Mediterranean region, the islands of the Levant, but also in key commercial centres across the European continent, played such a prominent role in diplomatic interactions that, as Isabella Lazzarini aptly put it, ‘If there was a lack of ambassadors, there was no lack of merchants’.⁷³

Patrician Merchants Already from the thirteenth century Venetian merchants and businessmen had assumed a certain degree of diplomatic agency by acting as message carriers, so much so that, at times, the Signoria trusted them more than formal couriers with the transport of important letters.⁷⁴ This is not accidental, considering the pedigree of Venetian merchants, as several of them came from the Venetian patriciate, the highest order in the Venetian social hierarchy. As such, Venetian merchants had their feet firmly planted in two overlapping worlds: those of trade and politics, which enabled their involvement in diplomatic pursuits, which routinely included intelligence-gathering and, at times, espionage. This is because, as frequent travellers in the Mediterranean and the Levant, they felt a deep sense of service to the ‘mercantile state’,⁷⁵ considering it their duty to signal any suspicious manoeuvres of enemy ships, especially in the Near East, which was vital for Venice’s commercial supremacy.⁷⁶ In consequence, Venetian merchants had a deep knowledge of local know-how and a wide pool of connections that they could draw upon in order to extract intelligence that could be of politico-economic significance for the Venetian government. Indeed, as adroit dealers in goods and news, Venetian ⁶⁹ See, for instance, Gino Luzzatto, Studi di storia economica veneziana (Padua: CEDAM, 1954); Lane, I mercanti di Venezia. ⁷⁰ See, for example, the classic work of Alfred von Reumont, Della diplomazia italiana dal secolo XIII al XVI (Florence: Barbera, 1857). ⁷¹ See Armando Sapori, Studi di storia economica. Secoli XIII–XIV–XV (Florence: Sansoni, 1982); Federico Melis, I mercanti italiani nell’Europa medievale, Ed. Luciana Frangioni (Florence: Le Monnier, 1990). ⁷² Lazzarini, ‘I circuiti mercantili’. See also Iordanou, ‘The Professionalization of Cryptology’. ⁷³ Lazzarini, Communication and Conflict, p. 40. ⁷⁴ Pozza, ‘Lettere Pubbliche’, p. 122. ⁷⁵ Kissling, ‘Venezia come centro di informazioni’, p. 99. ⁷⁶ Preto, I servizi segreti, pp. 248–50.

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merchants were aware of the value of good intelligence for competitive advantage, and, at times, they devised their own ways of concealing it. Andrea Barbarigo, for example, a seasoned Venetian merchant with prolific commercial activity across the Mediterranean, had, by the 1430s, already created his own cipher for his confidential communication with his business agent, Andrea Dolceto, in the Levant. The cipher still survives in the Venetian State Archives and it remains to this day unbroken.⁷⁷ The political tribulations of the late Quattrocento, especially in terms of Ottoman-Venetian relations, meant that Venice had to rely on her extensive merchant community in Constantinople for both diplomatic representation and intelligence-gathering.⁷⁸ In 1496, at a time of diplomatic turbulence between the Ottoman Empire and the Venetian Republic, the young merchant and future Doge of Venice Andrea Gritti was residing in Constantinople. As a popular merchant in the boisterous city, Gritti had befriended several high-ranking dignitaries in the Sublime Porte and enjoyed a particularly warm friendship with Sultan Bayezid II and Grand Vizier Hersekzade Ahmed Pasha.⁷⁹ With privileged access to Ottoman affairs due to his popularity and local knowledge, Gritti doubled as a diplomat and a spy for the Venetians in the Ottoman Capital.⁸⁰ When the bailo Girolamo Lippomano was urgently recalled to Venice after leaking sensitive state secrets to the Spanish government,⁸¹ Gritti took the reins of both commercial and diplomatic negotiations. In 1497 he convinced the Sultan to overturn the embargo on grain export that the Ottomans had imposed on Italian merchants in Constantinople.⁸² In 1503, he successfully negotiated the final details of the peace treaty between Venice and the Ottoman Empire.⁸³ In parallel to his intense diplomatic activity, he sent numerous letters to the motherland, informing the ⁷⁷ The cipher can be found in ASV, Archivio Grimani-Barbarigo, b. 4, Reg. 1, c. 158r. On Andrea Barbarigo, see Lane, Andrea Barbarigo. The use of encryption by businessmen such as merchants, bankers, and their agents was not uncommon in the medieval and early modern period. Tommaso Spinelli, the eminent Florentine banker and patron of Renaissance architecture, also used a cipher to communicate business instructions to his brother. On Spinelli, see Philip Jacks and William Caferro, The Spinelli of Florence: Fortunes of a Renaissance Merchant Family (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001). On the amateur use of cryptology by Venetian merchants, see Iordanou, ‘The Professionalization of Cryptology’. ⁷⁸ On Venetian merchants in Constantinople, see Eric. R. Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople: Nation, Identity, and Coexistence in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), esp. Chapter 2. ⁷⁹ Ibid., p. 176. ⁸⁰ On Andrea Gritti as both a merchant and a spy for the Venetians, see James C. Davis, ‘Shipping and Spying in the Early Career of a Venetian Doge, 1496–1502’, Studi Veneziani XVI (1974), pp. 97–108. ⁸¹ A detailed account of Lippomano’s behaviour and the subsequent revocation of his title as the bailo of Venice in Constantinople is provided by his successor’s secretary, Gabriele Cavazza, a copy of which can be found in TNA, SP 99/1, fols. 264–71 (n.d.). On Lippomano’s treachery and tragic ending, see Augusto Tormene, ‘Il bailaggio a Costantinopoli di Girolamo Lippomano e la sua tragica fine’, Nuovo Archivio Veneto, n.s. 3, no 6 (1903), pp. 375–431; n.s. 4. no 7 (1904) pp. 66–125, 288–333; n.s. 4, no 8 (1904), pp. 127–61. ⁸² Sanudo, I diarii, Vol. I, p. 508. ⁸³ Lane, Venice, p. 270.

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Venetian authorities of political and military developments in Constantinople that could have implications for Venetian interests in the Mediterranean.⁸⁴ To divert suspicion, he used commercial jargon to camouflage his intelligence. Once he sent a letter informing the authorities that commercial goods were arriving in Venice from sea and land and that he would send a precise bill in his following letter.⁸⁵ The actual meaning of his message was that the Ottomans were preparing to attack with their fleet and army and that he would communicate a more accurate number of Ottoman vessels imminently.⁸⁶

Well-to-Do Venetian Subjects and Foreigners Constantinople was a strategic hub of both economic and political significance for Venice. It was not surprising, therefore, that Venetian merchants working in the city doubled as covert informants or even spies for the Republic. Leonin Servo, a Venetian subject of Cretan origin, was a merchant residing in the Ottoman capital. With an impressive network of connections and knowledge of current affairs, he acted as an informer to the bailo and the Council of Ten throughout his residence in the Levantine city.⁸⁷ In July 1566 he notified the bailo that Ibrahim Granatin, a favourite of the Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmet Pasha and a foe of Venice, was en route to the lagoon city. The news had already reached Venice a month earlier and had caused great anxiety amongst the Ten,⁸⁸ who ordered Granatin’s assassination as a top-secret priority.⁸⁹ So dexterous was Servo in smuggling covert communication to Venice that he allegedly hid letters written by the bailo Barbaro in hollow canes and transported them on board his ship.⁹⁰ The mercantile network of intelligence-gathering did not only include men of Venetian dissent or Venetian subjects. Well-to-do foreigners who conducted their business affairs in the Republic also contributed to intelligence-gathering and reportage. The famed Dalmatian printer and publisher Bonino de Boninis was one of them. Between 1494 and 1554, in the midst of the Italian Wars, de Boninis acted as a spy for the Council of Ten,⁹¹ working in close collaboration with the

⁸⁴ Sanudo, I diarii, Vol. II, p. 559. ⁸⁵ Ibid., p. 208. ⁸⁶ Davis, ‘Shipping and Spying’, pp. 101–2. ⁸⁷ On Servo, see Christos Apostolopoulous, ‘Λεονίνος Σέρβος: Ένας Πολυπράγμων Χανιώτης Έμπορος του 16ου Αιώνα στην Κωνσταντινούπολη [Leonino Servo: Mercante Facendiere Caniota a Costantinopoli Cinquecentesca]’, Ανθή Χαρίτων 18 (1998), pp. 9–27. ⁸⁸ The bailo had written the news to the Ten on 21 June. See ASV, CCX, Dispacci Ambasciatori, b. 3 (21 June 1566); ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 8, c. 63r./v. (13 July 1566). ⁸⁹ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 8, c. 64v. (23 July 1566). ⁹⁰ Apostolopoulos, ‘Λεονίνος Σέρβος’, p. 19. ⁹¹ On Bonino de Boninis in general, see Lamberto Donati, ‘Bonino de Boninis Stampatore’, Archivio Storico per la Dalmazia II, iii (1927), pp. 55–64. On Bonino de Boninis as an informer of the Venetians, see Giuseppe dalla Santa, ‘Il tipografo dalmata Bonino de Boninis, “confidente” della Reppublica di Venezia, decano della Cattedrale di Treviso (a. 1454–1528)’, Nuovo Archivio Veneto XV (1915), pp. 174–206. I am grateful to Katherine Kikuchi for bringing to my attention the case of Bonino de Boninis.

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Venetian ambassador in France.⁹² While residing there, he sent several missives to Venice reporting on French affairs, masking ‘news from France’ as ‘dispatches of books’ and the Council of Ten as ‘our company’.⁹³ In compensation for the service of this ‘faithful friend’, as Marino Sanudo described him, he systematically received cash and ecclesiastical privileges.⁹⁴ The technique of substituting specific words with inconspicuous code words was a widely popular method of encoding called in parabula or the Cicero method.⁹⁵ The Venetians, who were adept at camouflaging information of political value with commercial jargon, simply termed this approach lettere mercantili, that is, ‘mercantile letters’.⁹⁶ So extensive was the use of this cryptographic method amongst Venetian merchants that the renowned papal cipher secretary Matteo Argenti went as far as to attribute its development and diffusion to the Venetians, who,⁹⁷ as seasoned travellers and dealers in both merchandise and news, had developed a flair for inventiveness in secret communication.⁹⁸ The Venetians popularized the use of merchants as intelligence gatherers to such an extent that, when in the late 1530s they required an agent to deliver letters to the Safavid Shah of Persia and bring back his reply to the Ten, they appointed an informer who was to pass as a travelling merchant. Accordingly, arrangements were made for him to accompany some Venetian merchants on their trip to Persia, so that he would not raise suspicions about his presence in that part of the world.⁹⁹ On the whole, so prolific was the contribution of merchants doubling as amateur spies and intelligence gatherers, especially in the Mediterranean, to the diffusion of clandestine missions in early modern Venice that in a letter to Charles V, the imperial ambassador in Venice reiterated that no news on the Turks had arrived from Venetian merchants in Constantinople.¹⁰⁰ Yet, in a city where pretty much everyone had a service to sell, modes of covert communication were widely used by all strata of Venetian society, especially in exchange for benefits for clandestine services rendered to the Venetian government.¹⁰¹

Distinguished Jews Affluent Jews of distinguished professions, such as doctors and merchants, made perfect undercover agents for the Ten, due to their extensive networks and, ⁹² See, for example, ASV, CCX, Dispacci Ambasciatori, b. 9 (2 Feb. 1501); ibid., (30 Apr. 1501). ⁹³ Preto, I servizi segreti, p. 269. ⁹⁴ Ibid., p. 218. ⁹⁵ On the history of the in parabula method, see Couto, ‘Spying in the Ottoman Empire’, pp. 292–4; Strasser, Lingua Universalis, pp. 23–5. ⁹⁶ See, for example, ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, cc. 126v.–127r. (26 Jan. 1571). ⁹⁷ Meister, Die Geheimschrift, p. 92. ⁹⁸ The use of codes and ciphers by merchants and tradesmen is, to this day, largely unexplored. For Venice specifically, this can be attributed to the limited number of surviving merchants’ letters in the Venetian state archives. On this issue, see Mackenney, ‘Letters from the Venetian Archive’. ⁹⁹ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 4, c. 96r./v. (21 Aug. 1538). ¹⁰⁰ AGS, Estado, Legajo 1308, fol. 186 (5 May 1531). ¹⁰¹ See, for example, Iordanou, ‘What News on the Rialto?’

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ironically, despite those networks, on account of their social disenfranchisement as people on the margins of society. For this reason, the large Jewish community that had ties with Venice provided a steady supply of covert operatives and informers for the Ten. Leon Abravanel, a former Venetian subject who was working in Naples as a doctor, is an exemplar case. Known for his numerous relatives in Constantinople, at the start of the sixteenth century Abravanel was approached by the Venetian ambassador in Naples in the hope that they would be able to supply the Venetians with some intelligence on Ottoman affairs and developments. Abravanel, who was well-versed in clandestine missions, maintained that this was not possible because he was not in possession of a cipher that would shield written communications between him and his connections. Instead, he offered an attractive alternative. Aside from his medical practice, Abravanel was known as a skilled astrologer. In that capacity, he offered to travel to the Ottoman capital in order to consort with and to extract information from the Sultan’s astrologer.¹⁰² While Abravanel’s reimbursement for his bold mission is unknown, it is unlikely that he was driven purely by a sense of duty. Even though, as we shall see below, the Council of Ten was keen to entice informers with bribes, there were cases where intelligence gatherers were coerced into action. The well-documented case of the Sephardic Jewish merchant Hayyim Saruk is a case in point.¹⁰³ Hailing from the town of Thessaloniki in northern Greece, Saruk was residing in Venice when, in 1571, during the War of Cyprus, the Venetian authorities appointed him to travel to Constantinople in order to spy on ‘the affairs, designs and military equipment of the Turks’.¹⁰⁴ His recruitment was actually forced upon him in order to settle legal accounts with the Venetian Republic.¹⁰⁵ For this purpose he was asked to produce his own in parabula code, in which he coded the Ottomans as ‘drugs’, people as ‘money’, dispatches as ‘purchases’, and, sardonically, the ‘Pope’ as a ‘rabbi’.¹⁰⁶ To ensure that his letters would reach the Council of Ten, Saruk agreed to address them to his wife and two acquaintances. The nominal addressees were known to the Venetian authorities, who were expected to intercept the letters before they reached their formal destination and forward them directly to

¹⁰² ASV, CCX, Dispacci Ambasciatori, b. 18 (28 Feb. 1501). On Jewish physicians practising astrology, see Harry Friedenwald, Jewish Luminaries in Medical History and a Catalogue of Works Bearing on the Subject of the Jews and Medicine from the Private Library of Harry Friedenwald (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1946), pp. 11–12; On more instances of Jews engaged in clandestine missions in early modern Venice, see Jütte, The Age of Secrecy. ¹⁰³ On Hayyim Saruk, see Arbel, Trading Nations, esp. Chapters 6 and 7. ¹⁰⁴ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, f. 15 (23 Nov., 30 Dec. 1571). ¹⁰⁵ Arbel, Trading Nations, p. 146. ¹⁰⁶ Saruk’s personal code book survives in the form of a short booklet of 184 words and expressions and can be found in ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, f. 15 (23 Nov., 30 Dec. 1571).

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the Ten.¹⁰⁷ Saruk’s pay for his year-long mission was 500 ducats,¹⁰⁸ a lavish compensation, compared to the mediocre one-off payments mercenary spies received, as we shall see below. Saruk was only one of a series of Jewish spies whom the Venetians employed in the Levant. Another renowned Jewish merchant working for the Council of Ten was Daniel Rodriga. Rodriga has been committed to collective memory as the instigator of the construction of the Venetian port of Split, which he envisaged as the Venetian gateway to the East that would provide special fiscal arrangements for merchants opting for that commercial route.¹⁰⁹ He also played a prominent role in the negotiations with the Venetian authorities to allow Jews of Spanish and Portuguese origin—commonly known as Ponentine Jews—to settle in Venice after the War of Cyprus, at the end of 1573.¹¹⁰ It is probable that the favourable treatment Rodriga received from the Council of Ten was due to his clandestine activity as a secret agent for the Venetians in the Balkans and in Constantinople. In fact, a few days after the readmission of the Ponentine Jews to Venice, Rodriga was sent to Constantinople to spy on Ottoman affairs, as rumours reached Dalmatia that the Ottomans were trying to obstruct the commercial route between the Balkans and the Levant.¹¹¹ Aside from Jewish spies such as Leon Abravanel, Hayyim Saruk, and Daniel Rodriga, the Jewish community also furnishes us with one of the very few instances of women who acted as secret informers for the Council of Ten. This is the case of Chirana, a lady of honour in the entourage of Sultan Murad III’s mother, Nurbanu Sultan, one of the most prominent women in the Ottoman dynasty, who may have been of Venetian origins.¹¹² Nurbanu was notorious in the Sultan’s court for her political influence over her son, favouring Venetian interests

¹⁰⁷ Directing the letters to diverse nominal addressees in order to mislead those who intercepted letters was a common tactic used by the Ten. David Passi, a Jew who lived in Ragusa and was repeatedly sent to Constantinople as a spy for the Venetians, was also granted a different nominal addressee to direct letters from the house-arrested bailo Barbaro. See ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, c. 101v. (16 Nov. 1570); cc. 138v.–139r. (13 Feb. 1571); cc. 157v.–158r. (14 April 1571). On David Passi’s espionage activities, see Emrah Safa Gürkan, ‘Touting for Patrons, Brokering Power, and Trading Information: Trans-Imperial Jews in Sixteenth-Century Istanbul’, in Emilio Sola Castaño and Gennaro Varriale (eds.), Detrás de las apariencias. Información y espionaje (siglos XVI–XVII) (Madrid: Universidad de Alcalá. Servicio de Publicaciones, 2015), pp. 127–51. ¹⁰⁸ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, c. 189v. (23 Nov. 1571); ibid, f. 15 (23 Nov., 30 Dec. 1571). ¹⁰⁹ Historiography on Rodriga’s negotiations and activities on the port of Split is substantial. For an overview, see Arbel, Trading Nations, p. 7, n. 22. ¹¹⁰ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 10, cc. 159v.–160r. (23 Dec. 1573). See also Arbel, Trading Nations, p. 92. Another well-documented case of a prominent Jew who managed to secure privileges for the Jews in Venice due to his diplomatic and even espionage activities in Constantinople for the benefit of the Venetians is the physician Solomon Ashkenazi. See ibid. ¹¹¹ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 10, c. 163r. (13 Jan. 1574). ¹¹² Benjamin Arbel, ‘Nur Banu (c.1530–1583): A Venetian Sultana?’ Turcica 24 (1992), pp. 241–59; Pinar Kayaalp, The Empress Nurbanu and Ottoman Politics in the Sixteenth Century: Building the Atik Valide (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2018).

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and routinely leaking information on Ottoman affairs to the Venetians.¹¹³ While information on her lady of honour Chirana is limited, the secret registers of the Ten indicate that throughout the years she was in the Sultana’s entourage, the Ten sent her several bribes, including a bed, bedding, and other cash sums, in order to act as a messenger between the imperial mother and the Council of Ten.¹¹⁴ The bribes seem to have paid off, as she kept informing the Ten and exchanging letters with them through her own agenti.¹¹⁵ Chirana encapsulates the definition of an informer, someone who knowingly engages in information-gathering activities, seeking compensation in return.¹¹⁶ This is somewhat different from the well-known case of the renegade Beatrice Michiel (Fatima), a woman of Venetian pedigree, who, escaping a dysfunctional marriage in Venice, moved to Constantinople, espoused Islam, and embraced an Ottoman lifestyle. Enclosed in the Sultan’s harem as the sister of Gazanfer Ağa, a Venetian renegade who had been captured by the Ottomans as a boy and eventually became one of Sultan Selim II’s favourite officials, Beatrice was privy to significant intelligence on the political, diplomatic, and military affairs of the Ottomans, which she frequently communicated to the bailo.¹¹⁷ While hoping that the Venetian government would treat her sons, who were growing up in Venice, kindly, it seems that Beatrice’s information-gathering activities atoned for having abandoned her motherland and the Christian faith.¹¹⁸ In this sense, she more aptly fits the bill of an informant, someone who reports out of a sense of duty. On the whole, a detailed study on the information-gathering activities of women is still missing from Venetian historiography, following an archival tradition that remains mute on female spies and intelligence gatherers in the early modern period.¹¹⁹ Nadine Akkerman’s pioneering work on female intelligencers in seventeenth-century Britain is one of the few exceptions to this scholarly lacuna. In an arresting and convincing narrative, Akkerman has shown how women of the British court had ample opportunities to engage in espionage activities due to the ‘invisibility’ conferred on them by their gender. Their elevated social status, however, rendered them more likely to survive in ¹¹³ On Nurbanu and her relationship with Venice see, for example, Susan A. Skilliter, ‘The Letters of the Venetian “Sultana” Nūr Bānū and her Kira to Venice’, in Aldo Gallotta and Ugo Marazzi (eds.), Studia turcologica memoriae Alexii Bombaci dicata (Naples: Istituto universitario orientale, 1982) pp. 515–36. ¹¹⁴ ASV, CCX, Dispacci Ambasciatori, b. 5, cc. 120, 156 (23 Dec. 1579, 20 Aug. 1580); ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 12, cc. 36r., 49v.–50r. (2 March, 4 Nov. 1580). ¹¹⁵ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 12, cc. 58r./v., 118v. (12 Jan. 1581, 24 Jan. 1582). ¹¹⁶ Marshall, Intelligence and Espionage, pp. 4–5. ¹¹⁷ On Beatrice Michiel and Gazanfer Ağa, see Eric R. Dursteler, Renegade Women: Gender, Identity, and Boundaries in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), pp. 1–33. ¹¹⁸ Ibid. ¹¹⁹ Paolo Preto briefly mentions some Venetian courtesans or prostitutes acting as spies in the eighteenth century but makes no reference to female espionage activities in the 1500s and 1600s. See Preto, I servizi segreti, pp. 479–81.

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archival memory compared to their lower-order counterparts.¹²⁰ Similarly, the regular access to the Sultan that the seraglio (imperial harem) granted to women of the Ottoman court and the ‘great power’ that this status yielded can account for several instances of female informers in the Sultan’s harem who have been committed to the documentary record. On the contrary, the lack of an established court in Renaissance Venice which could have admitted patrician women to the diplomatic and political circles of the period is one of the reasons why archival records remain silent with regard to the espionage and information-gathering activities of Venetian women.

Venice’s Voluntary Informers and Mercenary Spies Ambassadors, governors, and consuls, and, to a lesser extent, patrician merchants and tradesmen could only act as semi-professional informants for the Venetian authorities. This is because, as we have already seen, their position as prominent personages in the social circles in which they moved and operated precluded their involvement in activities that transgressed the socially accepted norms of diplomacy or commerce. For this reason, while acting as an outright spy, due to the negative connotations that espionage carried, was beyond the realm of diplomatic decorum, procuring the services of spies and other informers via financial reimbursement and other perks was a more accepted endeavour in diplomatic circles. It is for this reason that several voluntary intelligence gatherers and spies were drawn from the social orders of the cittadini and the popolani.¹²¹

The Venetian Citizens The Venetian citizens—the cittadini—were ‘a hereditary defined caste of men below the nobility’.¹²² Venetian society recognized two categories of citizens. The cittadini originarii were men of Venetian ancestry who enjoyed several exclusive privileges, which included holding special secretarial, legal, and diplomatic posts.¹²³ The Residenti and state secretaries whom we encountered in previous chapters came from that social order. The cittadini originarii also occupied lower governmental posts, serving, for instance, as notaries,¹²⁴ or other important positions, such as those of managers (gastaldi), the captain of the port, and even the custodian of the bell of Saint Mark’s basilica.¹²⁵ By 1622, their cittadino status depended on proof of abstention from manual labour (including artisanship and

¹²⁰ Nadine Akkerman, Invisible Agents: Women and Espionage in Seventeenth-Century Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). ¹²¹ On the social classes of Renaissance Venice, see Romano, Patricians and Popolani. ¹²² Ibid., p. 7. ¹²³ Ibid., p. 29. ¹²⁴ Ibid., p. 30. ¹²⁵ Grubb, ‘Elite Citizens’, p. 354, n. 89.

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retail trade) for at least three generations.¹²⁶ The second category of citizens, the cittadini de intus or de intus et extra were foreigners who earned a special citizenship status after having lived in the city and fulfilled their fiscal responsibilities for about twenty-five years. For the most part they were merchants who were granted the right to exercise their commercial activities in the Venetian territories and the Levant, under the protection of the Venetian state.¹²⁷ The citizens, therefore, while not entitled to full political rights, enjoyed several economic and administrative privileges that distinguished them from the mass of the Venetian commoners. Aside from holding prominent roles in the burgeoning state bureaucracy supporting Venice’s secret service, as we saw in previous chapters, several cittadini were involved in intelligence-gathering and espionage activities. Lawyers and notaries, who had direct access to their clients’ private affairs, were amongst the most frequent informers to the government. In 1616, for instance, a lawyer boasted to the State Inquisitors that ‘lawyers have the occasion of hearing many of their clients’ private affairs and, when a gentleman hears something concerning the interest of the state, he must at all costs let your Excellencies know about it’.¹²⁸ Of course, when the opportunity arose to make some extra cash, they did not refrain from leaking information to the Spanish or French ambassadors, who were always willing to invest in valuable revelations.¹²⁹ Some specialist professionals belonging to this social order were even required to perform intelligence-related duties that were more daring than the supply of information. In 1574, for instance, a professor of Botany at the University of Padua was entrusted with the unpalatable assignment of concocting a deadly poison intended for a villainous Ottoman spy. As we shall see in the following chapter, when he botched the job, the Ten appointed a physician to carry out the gruesome task.¹³⁰

Commoners and Convicts As the ‘secondary elite’ in Renaissance Venice,¹³¹ Venetian cittadini were still bound by norms of social decorum which they could not easily flout. For this reason, the men who acted as outright spies were recruited overwhelmingly from the mass of the Venetian commoners, the popolani. The Venetian popolani were a social group distinct from the higher echelons of Venetian society, namely the patricians and the cittadini. As a social entity, they comprised the mass of Venetian residents and subjects who enjoyed no legal status and were divided ¹²⁶ Chambers and Pullan, Venice, p. 261. ¹²⁷ See Luca Molà and Reinhold C. Mueller, ‘Essere straniero a Venezia nel tardo Medioevo: accoglienza e rifiuto nei privilegi di cittadinanza e nelle sentenze criminali’, in Simonetta Cavaciocchi (ed.), Le migrazioni in Europa, secc. XIII–XVIII. Atti della ‘Venticinquesima Settimana di Studi’ dell’Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica ‘F. Datini’ (Florence: Le Monnier, 1994), pp. 839–51. ¹²⁸ De Vivo, Information and Communication, p. 78. ¹²⁹ Ibid. ¹³⁰ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 11, cc. 32v.–33r., 35v. (6, 10 the 24 Oct. 1574). ¹³¹ Chambers and Pullan, Venice, p. 261.

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into two categories, the popolo minuto and the popolo grande.¹³² The former, the ‘artesani over popolo menudo’, as the Venetian diarist Marino Sanudo styled them,¹³³ were ‘the city’s workers, whether skilled or unskilled’, who served the numerous industries that flourished in Venice.¹³⁴ Amongst them were textile workers, glassmakers, shipbuilders, bakers, barbers, and tavern owners.¹³⁵ Within the semi-skilled or unskilled ranks, there were boatmen, domestic servants, and fishermen.¹³⁶ The popolo grande consisted of ‘the well-to-do commoners’,¹³⁷ individuals, who, while not enjoying cittadino status, were distinct from the greater labour force through owning workshops, employing workers, and possessing property.¹³⁸ Venetian popolani were commonly known to engage in intelligence-gathering activities in their various trades and professions. This engagement spanned the entire spectrum of information-gathering, from unsubstantiated chatter and gossip to outright espionage, and was intertwined with these individuals’ trades and professions. Apothecaries, for instance, due to their pricy merchandise and, as a result, their distinguished clientele, had access to information that was potentially of interest to the Venetian authorities.¹³⁹ Barber shops, where men of any rank mingled and chattered during their daily grooming routine, became hubs of political conversations and, consequently, the locales of many information dealers.¹⁴⁰ These supplemented the work of travellers, soldiers, and immigrants, who were charged with sharing news about war, national politics, and international affairs.¹⁴¹ It was, however, on account of fully fledged espionage activities that the Council of Ten hand-picked foolhardy individuals willing to risk their lives in daring clandestine missions in exchange for cash or a privilege, such as a state office that conferred a steady salary for either a fixed period of time or even for life, or simply to evade political conviction. Such recruitments intensified in the early 1570s, when the imminent war with the Ottoman Empire and the ensuing loss of Cyprus necessitated a steady flow of spies between Venice and Constantinople. Already at the end of 1570 the Council of Ten authorized the Collegio to disburse ‘as much as needed’ on the recruitment of secret agents, who would be sent to Constantinople and other places in order to gather intelligence on the military preparations of the Ottomans.¹⁴² In December of that year, as the threat of impending military confrontation intensified, the Ten followed the recommendation of a Venetian citizen and appointed the Armenian Soltan Sach to esplorar

¹³² For this distinction, see Romano, Patricians and Popolani. ¹³³ Marino Sanudo, De origine, situ, et magistratibus urbis venetae ovvero La Città di Venetia (1493–1530), ed. Angela Caracciolo Aricò (Milan: Cisalpino-La Goliardica, 1980), p. 22. ¹³⁴ Romano, Patricians and Popolani, p. 37. ¹³⁵ Ibid., pp. 30–1. ¹³⁶ Ibid., p. 31. ¹³⁷ Ibid., p. 36. ¹³⁸ Ibid., pp. 36–7. ¹³⁹ De Vivo, Information and Communication, p. 87. ¹⁴⁰ Ibid. ¹⁴¹ Ibid., p. 91. See, for example, ASV, Notarile Atti, b. 4854, notary Giovanni Nicolò Doglioni (10 May 1578) for mercenary soldiers reporting on gruesome crimes committed by the Ottomans against Venetian subjects in the Levant. ¹⁴² ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, c. 102r. (17 Nov. 1570).

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the Ottomans’ military preparations and to deliver letters to the bailo Marcantonio Barbaro, who, throughout the duration of the war, was under house arrest in Pera, the Constantinopolitan suburb where the Venetian embassy was located. For this reason, the bailo was unable to communicate directly with the Ten.¹⁴³ For secrecy purposes, the Armenian was called into the Palazzo Ducale in the small hours of the morning, where he was given his mission for a reimbursement of 100 ducats, of which 20 were granted instantly, while the remaining sum was to be paid upon completion of his assignment. Even though Sach readily accepted, he unsuccessfully appealed for a higher compensation, maintaining that the expense of such a lengthy and perilous journey could easily outstrip the amount offered.¹⁴⁴ Despite their negative response, the Ten were well aware of the extreme peril involved in espionage missions to the Ottoman capital at that time. For this reason, a few days later they appointed another Armenian, named Simon de Iacomo, to travel to Constantinople with the same instructions. His commission was significantly higher than that offered to Soltan Sach. He was promised 140 ducats in total, of which 100 ducats were paid upon completion of his mission, six months after his appointment.¹⁴⁵ For espionage operations within the Ottoman Empire, the Ten recruited locals who hailed mainly from Venetian strongholds in the Balkans and the Mediterranean,¹⁴⁶ due to their savoir faire, which included command of native tongues and dialects. Such individuals proved particularly useful during the War of Cyprus, primarily because they could pass for Turks. Consequently, the Ten could make use of them in their efforts to communicate with the detained bailo Barbaro. According to the nuncio’s report back to Rome, during his house arrest the bailo was so constrained that he could barely send any news to Venice.¹⁴⁷ Kept under strict surveillance, he was only allowed to exit his residence escorted by janissaries, while his servants were persistently searched when entering or leaving the Venetian embassy. Eventually his seclusion became so stringent that the Grand Vizir Sokollu ordered the Venetian embassy’s windows barricaded and all papers and inkpots confiscated.¹⁴⁸ It was for this reason that, in their efforts to establish a communications link, the Ten tried different ways of getting letters to him, either via several Venetian representatives in the Levant, such as the governor of Corfu,¹⁴⁹ or, primarily, by enlisting a small army of spies.

¹⁴³ Arbel, Trading Nations, p. 77. ¹⁴⁴ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, c. 108r./v. (3 Dec. 1570). Sach completed his mission and was reimbursed in full nearly seven months later. See ibid., c. 164r./v. (30 June 1571). ¹⁴⁵ Ibid., cc. 113v.–114r. (22 Dec. 1570); ibid., c. 164r. (16 June 1571). ¹⁴⁶ ASVat, Segreteria di Stato, Venezia, b. 8, cc. 6r.–7v. (8 July 1570). ¹⁴⁷ Ibid., c. 24r. (5 Aug. 1570). ¹⁴⁸ Gürkan, ‘The Efficacy of Ottoman Counter-Intelligence’, p. 19. ¹⁴⁹ ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 8 (9 June, 19 July 1572); ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, f. 16 (9 Aug. 1572).

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Two weeks after he completed his first espionage assignment to Constantinople, for which he received a special commendation for his valour and courage,¹⁵⁰ Simon de Iacomo was again approached by the Ten and asked to return to the Ottoman capital with fresh letters for the bailo. This time, however, the hazard of such an enterprise had increased exponentially. Having seen one of the bailo’s messengers impaled on a spike during his previous trip to the Turkish metropolis, and fearful that he might be recognized by the Ottoman authorities and have a similarly gruesome ending, the Armenian turned down the offer for 140 ducats as incommensurate with the vertiginous risk involved in his second assignment. The hapless messenger was most probably the Franciscan friar Paulo Biscotto, who had, alas, been caught trying to smuggle letters to the bailo.¹⁵¹ The Venetian secretary who acted as the interpreter in the Armenian’s dealings with the Ten—as Simon had an excellent command of Turkish but could not boast a similar fluency in Italian—managed to convince him that, upon completion of his mission, he would have earned the right to petition the authorities for a permanent post for him and his descendants, which would provide him with a steady salary for life. The deal was sealed and the Armenian set off for a new six-month journey to the Ottoman capital.¹⁵² Sadly, extant records do not reveal whether Simon’s return visit to Constantinople was a success or a mission too far. As the confrontation between Venice and the Ottoman Empire intensified, other Christian states expressed concerns over the conflict’s potential consequences. To that end, at the start of 1572, Diego Guzmán de Silva conveyed to the Venetian doge a request made by Don John of Austria, half-brother of Philip II, that the Venetians increase the number of spies infiltrating Ottoman territories in the Levant. The doge consented and advised that the Spanish do the same.¹⁵³ For this reason, in the autumn of 1572, another local, Joseph from Cyprus, who could pass for a Turk in both attire and language, was sent to Constantinople to deliver letters to the bailo Barbaro and to bring back updates about him.¹⁵⁴ For this purpose, the governor of the Venetian stronghold of Trau (contemporary Trogir in Croatia), via which Joseph was travelling to the Levant, was instructed to offer his assistance to the amateur spy in any way possible. At exactly the same time, the same governor received another letter destined for the bailo and was ordered by the Ten to have it delivered by a Turkish spy who had been in his employ for the past few months. The instructions for the Turk were nuanced and direct. He was to hide the letter in a waterproof piece of cloth ¹⁵⁰ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, cc. 113v.–114r. (22 Dec. 1570); ibid., c. 164r. (16 June 1571). ¹⁵¹ See Gürkan, ‘The Efficacy of Ottoman Counter-Intelligence’, p. 19. ¹⁵² ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, cc. 164v.–165r. (1 July 1571). See also Preto, I servizi segreti, p. 251. Preto seems to conflate the two cases of Armenian spies. Diego Guzmán de Silva also related the incident to Philip II: see AGS, Estado, Legajo 1329 (21 June 1571). ¹⁵³ AGS, Estado, Legajo 1323, fol. 57 (8 Jan. 1572). ¹⁵⁴ ASV, CCX, Lettere dei Rettori e di Altre Cariche, b. 302 (5 Oct. 1572); ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 10, cc. 73v.–74r. (14 Nov. 1572). See also Preto, I servizi segreti, p. 251.

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supplied by the Ten specifically for this purpose. The concealed letter should then be stitched up as a secret compartment inside his clothes. Upon arrival at the Venetian embassy in Pera he would be able to hand in the letter to the bailo through a sealed window under which he would have to wait until the bailo appeared, collected the letter, penned a response, and handed it back to the spy, who was to bring it back to Trau. To ensure that the job would be carried out in its entirety, the governor was ordered to pay only a fraction of the spy’s compensation, withholding the remaining sum until the completion of the undertaking, when the Turk would bring back the response from the Venetian legate.¹⁵⁵ What becomes apparent from the above is that for the most exceptional circumstances the Ten conscripted the most unexceptional men, those whose brash personalities would enable them to defy any fear of imminent risk or danger.¹⁵⁶ These were usually convicts or banished criminals who were willing to exchange their banishment for freedom or a monetary prize. Manoli Soriano’s mission corroborates this claim. In November 1570, on the eve of the war with the Turks, the mission of the Cypriot Manoli Soriano involved attacking the Ottoman settlements in the Dalmatian town of Skradin and setting ablaze the Ottoman fleet stationed in the eastern Adriatic.¹⁵⁷ The Ten rewarded brazen acts in a variety of ways, including the revocation of exiled criminals’ sentences.¹⁵⁸ In fact, the overturning of banishments in exchange for participation in intelligence operations increased significantly during and following the War of Cyprus.¹⁵⁹ To successfully carry out his daring mission, Soriano requested a squadron of 300 men. As several of them were exiled convicts, the condition set was that, upon completion of the operation, their banishment would be revoked.¹⁶⁰ Venetian and, when necessary, non-Venetian commoners, especially banished criminals seeking favours, were recruited either as a result of personal recommendations to the Ten or by means of a raccordo. A raccordo was an official proposal for an invention, a service, or a revelation of a secret that could benefit the state in exchange for a favour. The raccordi were made directly to the Ten by those seeking favours, and some of them were so ingenious that in 1579 the

¹⁵⁵ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 10, cc. 73v.–74r. (14 Nov. 1572). ¹⁵⁶ Preto, I servizi segreti, p. 247. On amateur agents and early modern ‘diplomacy from below’, see the articles in Maartje Van Gelder and Tijana Krstić (eds.), ‘Cross-Confessional Diplomacy and Diplomatic Intermediaries in the Early Modern Mediterranean’, Special Issue of Journal of Early Modern History 19, no 2–3 (2015), pp. 93–285. ¹⁵⁷ ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 7 (25 Nov. 1570). ¹⁵⁸ See, for example, a letter sent by the Ten to the governor of Cattaro asking him to offer liberation from banishment to those willing to travel to Constantinople and gather intelligence on the Ottomans’ military preparations in ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, cc. 88r.–89r. (13 Sep. 1570). See also Canosa, Alle origini, p. 53. ¹⁵⁹ See, for instance, ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 10, cc. 115r.–116r. (15–25 April 1573). ¹⁶⁰ ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 7 (25 Nov. 1570).

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Council decided to catalogue and archive them.¹⁶¹ One striking example of a banished felon turned secret agent via a raccordo is that of Giovanni Antonio Barata. Barata hailed from the town of Savigliano in Piedmont, but, at the time of his recruitment, he lived in Milan.¹⁶² In late 1569, Barata requested an audience with the Ten to inform them of some rumours he had heard the year before, when he was residing in Constantinople. The rumours involved an experiment with explosives in the residence of Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmet Pasha, with the intention of setting the Venetian Arsenal on fire. Barata informed the Ten that in June 1569 he had visited the Venetian legate in Milan to apprise him of the particulars. The latter, however, dismissed the claims as unsubstantiated. When the Arsenale was, indeed, set ablaze in September of that year, Barata appealed to the Venetian envoy anew and was once again dismissed.¹⁶³ After several deliberations, however, and fearful of alarming military developments in Anatolia at the beginning of the 1570s, the Ten agreed to recruit him in the event of an emergency.¹⁶⁴ The emergency presented itself in the form of the War of Cyprus, and Barata was formally enlisted in January 1571 in exchange for cash and the revocation of his banishment, provided that he carried out his mission successfully. Equipped with an extensive job description, a code book he had compiled himself—in order to communicate secretly in commercial jargon—and instructions on the use of invisible ink, he was sent by ship to Constantinople to spy on the enemy.¹⁶⁵ According to the Ten’s commands, Barata was supposed to pass for a textile merchant called Gioan Pessaro, allegedly on a business trip to the boisterous Ottoman capital. From there, he was expected to send letters to his supposed brother and business partner, Ottavio Pessaro, in Paris. While Ottavio was most probably a real textile merchant residing in the French metropolis, it is probable that the letters to Paris would be sent via the bailo, which meant that the Ten would have the opportunity to open and read them before they reached their nominal addressee in the French city.¹⁶⁶ Conscious of his hazardous mission,

¹⁶¹ See, for example, ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, c. 96v. (30 Oct. 1570) on a certain Vicenzo Merula from Zara who petitioned to the Ten via a raccordo to save the city from an imminent attack by the Ottomans. On the raccordi, see Preto, I servizi segreti, pp. 155–68. ¹⁶² Benjamin Arbel claims that Barata was from Seville, which is probably a mistake, on the basis of the fact that in the Registro of Deliberazioni Secrete of the Council of Ten Barata is recorded as ‘Giovanni Antonio Barata da Sivigliano’. In a later page, however, he is mentioned as ‘Giovanni Antonio Barata Piemontese’, which indicates that he came from the town of Savigliano in Piedmont. As the Italian language was not standardized at the time, diverse spellings of the same word were quite common in written communication. See ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, c. 48r. (2 Jan. 1570); ibid., c. 64r./v (31 March 1570). ¹⁶³ Ibid., c. 48r./v. (2 Jan. 1570). ¹⁶⁴ Ibid., c. 64r./v. (31 March 1570); ibid., c. 65r. (7 April 1570). ¹⁶⁵ ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 7 (17 Feb. 1571); ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, cc. 126v.–127r. (26 Jan. 1571). ¹⁶⁶ ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 7 (17 Feb. 1571). I am grateful to Mauro Bondioli for sharing his insights on Barata’s case with me. I would also like to thank Luca Molà for the clarification on Venetian terminology of textiles and textile merchants in the early modern period.

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the Venetian authorities took Barata’s wife and young children under their wing while he was away, relocating them from Milan to the Venetian city of Bergamo and providing them with a monthly stipend which turned into a permanent yearly pension for Barata’s widow when, nearly one year later, he was caught and decapitated in Constantinople.¹⁶⁷ A few years after his death, his wife successfully petitioned for a pension increase and was eventually granted the income from a small lifetime office for the benefit of her fatherless children.¹⁶⁸ Barata was one of a series of unremarkable men thrown into remarkable circumstances by the Venetian authorities, with no formal risk assessment or training for the perilous missions they were expected to undertake. It was probably for this reason that the contract or formal agreement between an aspiring spy and the Ten nearly always included clauses for posthumous provisions for the recruit’s spouse and dependants. When, during the Ottoman Siege of Corfu in 1537, a Venetian subject from Crete offered to lead a team of men to Corfu in order to help restore Venetian rule over it, he was offered a monthly salary of ten ducats for life, which would increase to twelve if he was killed while serving the Venetian Republic. His men were also promised a lifetime compensation of four ducats per month, which their children would inherit if the conscripts lost their lives during their mission.¹⁶⁹ On the whole, as extant documents reveal, looking after the family of a deceased ‘serviceman’ was an obligation that the Ten did not take lightly. To be sure, having a plethora of mercenary spies could backfire, as several of them would casually bestow their allegiance on any master who would offer them a hefty compensation. Yet simultaneously serving two masters could prove fatal. The Venetian jeweller Marco de Nicolò, for example, was decapitated by the Ottomans when he was discovered to be a double agent for the Sultan and Charles V.¹⁷⁰ Moreover, being a double agent could cause mix-ups which could have serious repercussions for diplomatic relations between two states. One such misunderstanding arose in 1568, when the Viceroy of Naples, then under Spanish rule, wrote to Philip II to complain about the alleged assassination by the Venetian authorities of a Spanish spy who also doubled as an informer for the Venetians. Extremely displeased with this fabrication, the Ten protested vehemently to the Venetian ambassador in Naples, ordering him to inform the viceroy that the man in question, a certain Andrea Arcudi from Corfu, had indeed been used as a spy by

¹⁶⁷ ASV, CCX, Miscellanea, b. 6 (13 Feb. 1571); ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, c. 198r. (15 Dec. 1571). ¹⁶⁸ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 11, c. 78v. (26 Jan. 1577). ¹⁶⁹ Ibid., Reg. 4, cc. 79v.–80r. (15 Sep. 1537). ¹⁷⁰ AGS, Estado, Legajo 1312 (27 March 1536). The Venetians knew he was spying for the Ottomans but still granted him safe conduct and recruited him: see ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 4, cc. 37r./v.; 50r.–51r. (31 Oct. 1534; 23 June, 12 July and 8 Aug. 1535).

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them, but had been released from Venetian employ a few days earlier and was, to the best of their knowledge, faring well in both body and spirit.¹⁷¹

Spying in Early Modern Venice: A Profession? The diverse instances of informants and spies discussed above point to a fraction of the multiplicity and variety of secret agents and covert operatives who were deployed by the Council of Ten in order to carry out Renaissance Venice’s intelligence-gathering and espionage pursuits. Based on their portrayal, the image of the early modern spy emerging from this account is somewhat nebulous and, consequently, inadequate to permit a historically situated definition of the term. Venetian ambassadors and governors, to be sure, acted as debonair and dignified informants whose espionage activity was limited to a bounded terrain governed by norms of diplomatic etiquette. Accordingly, the more devious means necessary to infiltrate foreign courts and other loci of strategic significance had to be employed by low-profile individuals. Protected under their professional veneer, roving merchants and other men of business also assumed amateur intelligencegathering responsibilities. It was the mass of mercenary spies, however, most of whom were lured by financial rewards, other material privileges, or simply the evasion of political convictions, who were willing to wallow in the grisly risks of espionage. These were by no means stout-hearted Venetian partisans but, to a large extent, lesser individuals whose intrepid nature enabled them to defy the hazards of their daring missions. In fact, the more daring the enterprise, the greater the need for a random mercenary spy rather than a professional state representative such as an ambassador or governor. The deployment of undistinguished, even invisible popolani to carry out some of the most elaborate espionage activities on behalf of the Venetian state is redolent of what the international history scholar Scott Lucas termed ‘stateprivate networks’.¹⁷² In a broad sense, the concept of the state-private network describes the cooperative partnership between the state and independent civilians in pursuit of intelligence-gathering, consensus-building, and even propaganda. Much as this term applies to contemporary politics, deriving primarily from Lucas’s work on the CIA and the Cold War,¹⁷³ it is hard to overlook the similarity with the Venetian state, where nominally private citizens or subjects acted as

¹⁷¹ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 8, c. 136r./v. (10 Nov. 1568). ¹⁷² Scott Lucas, Freedom’s War: The American Crusade against the Soviet Union 1945–56 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), esp. Chapter 7. I am grateful to Christopher Moran for introducing me to the concept of ‘state-private networks’. ¹⁷³ Scott Lucas, ‘Mobilizing Culture: The State-Private Network and the CIA in the Early Cold War’, in Dale Carter and Robin Clifton (eds.), War and Cold War in American Foreign Policy 1942–62 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 83–107.

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intelligence gatherers and spies at the behest of the state in order to ‘obscure the source of government activity’.¹⁷⁴ Under the mantle of their amateur status and social and political invisibility, however, they stood a better chance of securing plausible deniability for the Venetian authorities. By and large, then, it is evident that in early modern Venice there was spying rather than professional spies. This is because, unlike the profession of the cipher secretary, which, as we saw in the previous chapter, gradually became a distinct function of the ‘ordo scribarum’ in that period,¹⁷⁵ or other ‘professionals of oral and written communication’ who were involved in public administration,¹⁷⁶ there was no established profession of a spy. This is surprising, granted both the systematization of diplomacy and intelligence, and the gradual proliferation of stand-alone professions in sixteenth-century Italy.¹⁷⁷ Despite these developments, the métier of the spy did not meet any of the criteria that sociologists and historians have demarcated as akin to a profession, which inter alia include a sense of commitment, an appeal to expertise, reliance on theoretical knowledge and practical skills, a professional ethic, and a perceived esprit de corps.¹⁷⁸ In short, while systematizing the organization of intelligence operations and despite professionalizing the art of cryptology, Renaissance Venice failed to establish a profession of espionage based upon ‘cognitive specialization’, that is, some kind of formal training which transcended the boundaries of apprenticeship, qualities that have been deemed inherent to the process of professionalization.¹⁷⁹ On the whole, the absence of documented narratives that would allow a glimpse into Venetian spies’ perception of the work they performed for the Council of Ten hinders our understanding of any sense of professional identity they might have constructed. Still, even without any documented testimony of an emerging professional identity or esprit de corps, it is fair to maintain that espionage, as a professional service, had not yet been subjected to any formal organization of work, let alone any division of labour between professional activities in that period.¹⁸⁰ It is for this reason that attempting a straightforward definition of an early modern spy is challenging, despite the multiple manifestations of espionage deployed by the Venetian authorities. Viewed through this prism, early modern espionage was as flexible and multifarious an activity as was early modern diplomacy.

¹⁷⁴ Eric Pullin, ‘Secrecy, State-Private Networks and Operational Effectiveness in Cold War Europe’, Contemporary European History 25, no 3 (2016), pp. 551–60 (here p. 554). ¹⁷⁵ Contarini, De Magistratibus, p. 110. ¹⁷⁶ Lazzarini, Communication and Conflict, pp. 115, 202. ¹⁷⁷ Biow, On the Importance of Being an Individual, p. 39. ¹⁷⁸ O’Day, The Professions in Early Modern England, p. 4. ¹⁷⁹ Larson, The Rise of Professionalism, pp. 3–4. ¹⁸⁰ Burke, ‘Early Modern Venice’, p. 393.

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Conclusion Renaissance Venice’s ‘secret agents’ were drawn from all strata of Venetian society. Representing the patriciate, Venetian ambassadors and governors acted as semi-professional informants whose intelligence-gathering activities were coterminous with the norms of diplomatic decorum. Venetian merchants from either the patriciate or the social order of the cittadini also offered their services as amateur intelligence gatherers, protected under the guise of their professional activity. For outright espionage missions, however, when the spy had to infiltrate foreign lands, the Ten handpicked run-of-the-mill mercenary spies who were willing to risk their lives for a cash reward, an official privilege, or a political favour. The more daring the mission, the less gravitas the individual spy carried in terms of his professional orientation. Indeed, in order to secure their cooperation, the Ten turned to the quintessential Venetian trait, business dealing. In consequence, intelligence-gathering and espionage turned into a transaction between the government and the governed whereby the latter expected some kind of benefit in return for services rendered to the former. Compensating for favours by means of gifts has been deemed a remnant of the patronage system that proliferated in the Renaissance period.¹⁸¹ Yet the Venetian (and non-Venetian) commoners’ active involvement in espionage missions transcended the realm of patronage to assume political overtones. More specifically, through the transactional nature of intelligence-gathering and espionage, ordinary Venetians, who were categorically excluded from political participation, developed a political purpose within the state, one that was masked in the form of a business deal whereby they rendered espionage and intelligence-gathering services to the Venetian spy chiefs in exchange for some kind of benefit.¹⁸² All these diverse manifestations of espionage activities demonstrate the flexible and multifarious nature of early modern espionage, which, as it was not properly professionalized, was carried out in a variety of systematic and unsystematic ways. Such intelligence operations were bolstered by a plethora of tactics and tricks that, when necessary, assumed extraordinary proportions. These extraordinary measures will be discussed in detail in the following and final chapter of this book.

¹⁸¹ Sharon Kettering, Patrons, Brokers, and Clients in Seventeenth-Century France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 192–206. ¹⁸² Iordanou, ‘What News on the Rialto?’ Filippo de Vivo aptly analysed the subtle, yet vital role played by commoners in the diffusion of information that was charged with political undertones. See De Vivo, Information and Communication; De Vivo, Patrizi, informatori, barbieri.

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6 Extraordinary Measures Kill him at once, either by having him strangled or in any other most secret way that you see fit.¹ In the summer of 1547, the Heads of the Council of Ten wrote twice to the governors of Brescia, ordering them to investigate the local militia guarding the city’s castle. The instruction stemmed from intelligence indicating that some soldiers had treacherous dealings with Cornelio Bonini, a jurist concocting a conspiracy to capture and surrender the city to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V.² After they declared Bonini banished,³ they offered a cash reward of 6,000 ducats for his capture and 3,000 ducats for his assassination.⁴ They also decreed that, in case he refused to accept his banishment and attempted to enter the dominion, he would be arrested and hanged between the columns of Saint Mark and Saint Theodore at the Piazzetta for everyone to see the gruesome, yet rightful ending those plotting against the Venetian state deserved. Following his banishment, Bonini’s property was confiscated, and his descendants lost their citizenship and the right to call themselves bresciani.⁵ In a separate incident, in the midst of the War of Cyprus, the Pope’s envoy to Venice sent a letter to the Vatican administration reporting a nefarious scheme allegedly devised by the Council of Ten. Rumours had circulated in Venice that the Ottoman fleet, while abounding in feedstock to build new ships, and with a surplus of enslaved rowers, was desperately lacking in expert mariners to navigate them. For that reason, the Ottomans were on the market for specialist seamen, a purchasable commodity that the Venetians possessed in abundance. Anxious to thwart this Ottoman endeavour at any cost, especially immediately after the siege of Famagusta and the Ottoman debacle in Lepanto, the Ten, allegedly, considered postponing any impending offer of clemency to imprisoned mariners and, more

¹ ‘Lo farete di subito morire, ò col farlo strangolare, ò d’altra maniera più secreta, che vi parerà’. Order issued by the Heads of the Ten to the Capitano of Brescia in ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 14, c. 23r./v. (13 Nov. 1597). ² ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 4 (3 Aug. 1547). On Cornelio Bonini’s anti-Venetian conspiracy, see Enrico Valseriati, Tra Venezia e impero. Dissenso e conflitto politico a Brescia nell’età di Carlo V (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2016); Valseriati, ‘Carlos V, Ferrante Gonzaga y la Lombardia veneciana: la conspiración de Cornelio Bonini, Brescia, 1547’, Pedralbes: revista d’història moderna 35 (2015), pp. 43–70. ³ ASV, CCX, Lettere dei Rettori e di Altre Cariche, b. 21 (5 Oct. 1547). ⁴ Valseriati, ‘Carlos V’, p. 63. ⁵ Ibid., pp. 64–6.

Venice’s Secret Service: Organizing Intelligence in the Renaissance. Ioanna Iordanou, Oxford University Press (2019). © Ioanna Iordanou. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198791317.001.0001

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callously, executing them in secret in order to hinder the expansion of the Ottoman armada to the detriment of Venetian defence.⁶ Stealthy assassinations were an extreme measure that the Council of Ten did not hesitate to employ frequently in the name of state security. This tool was utilized primarily with those suspected of espionage and treason against the Republic. On such occasions, the Venetian spy chiefs could be ruthless, ordering immediate assassination with tried and tested methods such as drowning or strangulation. In the late 1570s, a mercenary soldier serving in the fortress of Corfu was executed in the former way, while his colleague was threatened with the latter.⁷ As this chapter will show, the means employed by the Council of Ten to undergird and complement their official state secrecy and espionage activities were not always that extreme but were certainly extraordinary. Such measures oscillated between tortures and assassinations deployed to undercut rival plots against the Venetian Republic and more benign tricks and tactics. These included the commonly accepted practice of letter interception and the universally acknowledged diplomatic offering of gifts and bribes in exchange for political favours. All these pursuits were intended to secure the safety of not only Venetian subjects across the dominion but ‘all kinds of people’ who wished to navigate and traverse the Adriatic and the Mediterranean freely in times of peace.⁸ This chapter’s aim is twofold. Firstly, it will discuss the extraordinary measures the Venetian authorities employed in their ongoing effort to maintain the security of the Venetian state throughout the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Such dealings were devised to complement the Republic’s intelligence operations and state surveillance pursuits. Secondly, it will show how such extraordinary measures, some more brutal, others more benign, were routinely normalized and commonly accepted without dispute or dissent. Instead, with unstinting panache and little consideration for public censure, the Ten routinely legitimized morally reprehensible acts in the name of state security. Their most brute force was revealed on one crucial occasion: the need to prevent enemies from obtaining intelligence on Venetian affairs.

Venetian Counter-Intelligence Complementing espionage campaigns, counter-intelligence was one of the fundamental functions of Renaissance Venice’s secret service. Venetian counter-intelligence ⁶ ASVat, Segreteria di Stato, Venezia, b. 9, cc. 119v.–120r. (23 Oct. 1571); ibid, b. 10, c. 265r. (23 Oct. 1571). ⁷ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 11, c. 131r. (27 May 1577); ibid., c. 102r. (24 July 1576); Paolo Preto, ‘La guerra secreta: spionaggio, sabotaggi, attentati’, in Maddalena Redolfi (ed.), Venezia e la difesa del Levante. Da Lepanto a Candia 1570–1670 (Venice: Arsenale, 1986), pp. 79–85 (here p. 80). ⁸ BMCV, Manoscritti Donà delle Rose, n. 79, c. 11r./v, n.d.

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Fig. 6.1. Tribunale Supremo, Gabriele Bella. Reproduced with permission of the Fondazione Querini Stampalia Onlus, Venice.

involved a plethora of activities targeted at counter-espionage, nefarious plots, assassinations on behalf of foreign powers, as well as the protection of specialist technical and industrial knowledge. As we already saw in the book’s Introduction, so central was counter-intelligence to Venetian intelligence operations that, already from 1539, the Council of Ten had established the Inquisitori di Stato, Venice’s dedicated counter-intelligence magistracy, also known as the Tribunale Supremo (the ‘Supreme Tribunal’: see Fig. 6.1). Initially named ‘Inquisitors against the Disclosures of Secrets’, the Inquisitori were a special tribunal made up of three men, two from members of the Council of Ten and one ducal counsellor, all of whom held an annual tenure.⁹ As part of their jurisdiction, the Inquisitori had formal authorization to disburse state funds for the purpose of inviting denunciations against individuals who disclosed state secrets to foreign authorities.¹⁰ On most occasions, the bribes reached the sum of 300 ducats per accusation but formal authorization from the Capi was needed before payment was released.¹¹ Moreover, ⁹ Romanin, Gli Inquisitori di Stato, p. 16; Romanin, Storia documentata, Vol. VI, pp. 78–80 (Deliberation of 20 Sep. 1539). ¹⁰ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 13, c. 9r. (24 Oct. 1584). ¹¹ Ibid., c. 71r. (28 Dec. 1589).

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the Inquisitori had vested power to initiate tortures, issue banishments, and even reduce or overturn imprisonments, exiles, and galley service sentences for those who successfully revealed potential conspirators.¹² Formally appointed diplomats and governors representing the Venetian Republic within and beyond its territories functioned as the Inquisitori’s eyes and ears beyond the watery confines of the lagoon city. Venetian ambassadors stationed overseas were responsible for flagging up cases of foreign spies entering the Venetian bloodstream or already operating within its dominion. Secret agents of the Holy Roman Emperor and the Spanish king, in particular, paid frequent visits to Venice and its colonies in the Ionian Sea. In 1545, the Venetian ambassador serving in London forewarned the Capi that a spy of the Spanish monarch was on his way to Venice, travelling from England to the Ottoman capital.¹³ At the end of the sixteenth century, the State Inquisitors were in constant communication with the Venetian legate in Spain, in an effort to obstruct significant intelligence on Venetian state affairs from reaching the Iberian Peninsula. More specifically, in 1586, the Venetian ambassador to Philip II’s court was tasked with identifying an unknown person who was leaking and even publishing details of secret deliberations of the Council of Ten and the Senate.¹⁴ Identifying the turncoats, however, in a state that, as we have seen, feasted on news, rumours, and fabrications, was a mammoth task that could last for months, years, even decades. As a matter of fact, even twenty years after that initial attempt to discover the propalatori of state secrets, the Inquisitori were still desperately looking for the source of the leaks at the Spanish court.¹⁵ The French ambassador stationed there was particularly troublesome, as he had access to a large network of intelligence gatherers who supplied him constantly with information on other states’ affairs. In an effort to identify the source of the leaks, the Venetian diplomat was encouraged to employ mercenary spies and emphasize that compensation would be offered solely for intelligence on that burning issue and no other matters.¹⁶ Governors of Venetian strongholds in the overseas territory were constantly reminded to keep their eyes open for foreign spies seeking intelligence on issues relating to Ottoman-Venetian affairs, especially on the advancems of the Turkish armada. They were also ordered to evict such impostors from those territories not out of ‘willingness but out of necessity called for by the times’.¹⁷ This was not always an easy undertaking, as such spies resorted to camouflaging techniques, usually masquerading as merchants who frequented those islands, primarily on account of the thriving currant trade.¹⁸ For this reason, to tackle the lack of hard ¹² Ibid., c. 12r./v. (7 March 1584). ¹³ ASV, CCX, Dispacci Ambasciatori, b. 14, fol. 50 (20 Sep. 1545). ¹⁴ ASV, IS, b. 170 (3 Dec. 1586). ¹⁵ Ibid. (10 March 1607). ¹⁶ Ibid. (24 Dec. 1610; 5 May 1611). ¹⁷ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 8, cc. 33v.–34v. (27 April 1565). See also ibid., Reg. 6, c. 65v. (11 May 1551); ibid., f. 8 (2 May 1551). ¹⁸ Ibid., Reg. 6, cc. 85v.–86r. (4 May 1552). On the currant trade in the early modern Mediterranean, see Fusaro, Uva passa.

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evidence that the gutter world of espionage entailed, the Ten had to expose other crimes committed by such impostors in order to arrest or eliminate them. In the summer of 1554, for instance, the chief magistrate of Crema was ordered to omit from a criminal’s published condemnation the fact that he was an esploratore—the genuine reason for his trial—emphasizing, instead, his other indiscretions, which included thefts and homicides. For secrecy purposes, this order was to be omitted from the transcription of the formal investigation (processo).¹⁹ When possible, the Inquisitori would inform Venetian governors of potential spies in the territory of their jurisdiction. In 1612, for example, the Inquisitori sent a confidential letter to the governor general of Crete, instructing him to read it in solitude and to share the information only with his secretary. The enciphered message warned the governor of a certain Milanese man in his employ who was suspected of being a spy of Philip III of Spain. According to the Ten’s intelligence, the Milanese servant was sending information directly from the governor’s residence to various Spanish representatives in Venice and elsewhere. For that reason, the Provveditore was ordered to corroborate the suspicion and to report back to the Capi in cipher. When, a few months later, the Provveditore had found no incriminating evidence against his employee, the Inquisitori grew even more suspicious. Accustomed to the veil of obscurity seasoned spies weaved around them, they instructed the governor to dismiss him and to expel him from the Venetian dominion, suspicious that he had managed to cover up seamlessly his espionage activities.²⁰ The information protected by the Venetian counter-intelligence magistracy did not pertain solely to issues of a diplomatic, political, or military nature. Intelligence of industrial and, by extension, economic importance, also had to be safeguarded, especially if it related to thriving Venetian industries, such as glass production, wool-making, and shipbuilding. For this reason, in 1547, the Council of Ten decreed that the Murano glassmakers were not allowed to leave the city of Venice or ply their trade outside the island of Murano.²¹ Indeed, issues of ‘illicit expatriation’ of glassmakers were formally a matter of state secrecy for the Council of Ten.²² Accordingly, when in October 1569 the podestà of Murano received a list of Venetian glassmakers who had escaped to Florence, including others about to defect to the Tuscan city, he was ordered to expedite the runaway craftsmen’s imminent repatriation in order to prevent them from setting up shop in any other rival state.²³ Similarly, when Lorenzo Priuli, the outgoing Venetian ambassador to ¹⁹ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 6, c. 124v. (27 June 1554). ²⁰ ASV, IS, b. 32 (8 June 1612; 10 Jan. 1613). There is a possibility that the Provveditore was in cahoots with his employee but extant documents furnish no such evidence. ²¹ Romanin, Storia documentata, Vol. VI, p. 531. ²² Francesca Trivellato, Fondamenta dei vetrai. Lavoro, tecnologia e mercato a Venezia tra Sei e Settecento (Roma: Donzelli, 2000), pp. 19, 112, n. 3. ²³ ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 7 (22 Oct. 1569). On protectionism and the monopoly of the Venetian glassmaking, see Eduardo Juárez Valero, Venecia y el secreto del vidrio: Cuatrocientos años

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Madrid, on his way to his new diplomatic post found two Venetian wool-makers (the brothers Alvise and Battista Drera), in Marseilles, revealing secrets of the longestablished Venetian wool-making craft, which at the time was facing fierce competition from other Italian cities, he reported the incident at once.²⁴ Overall, Venetian industry was haemorrhaging expertise well into the late seventeenth century.²⁵ The above episodes demonstrate that the leak of Venetian state secrets— regardless of their nature—was not caused solely by enemy spies. Venetian officials, who were responsible for forestalling the leak of privileged knowledge, could also become entangled in counter-intelligence adventures, despite the Ten’s repeated decrees against the unauthorized revelation of official secrets, as we saw in Chapter 2. When in 1584 the Venetian diplomat Giacomo Soranzo was accused of disclosing state secrets to the papal agent Livio Cellini,²⁶ who, according to the Venetian authorities, hobnobbed with foreign ambassadors and unreliable avvisi writers,²⁷ he was deemed ‘a thief and a spy’.²⁸ Both men were formally tried and, while Cellini was condemned to imprisonment, Soranzo was banished to the city of Capodistria (contemporary Koper in Slovenia), stripped of his office, and threatened with a 10,000-ducat fine if he broke the banishment order.²⁹ A couple of years into his sentence, however, the authorities took pity on him and granted him permission to return to the motherland,³⁰ a decision that shows the mutability of human fortune, especially when that human belonged to the ranks of the nobility. Taking pity on condemned propalatori of Venetian state secrets was extremely rare. On the contrary, in an exemplary display of the negative effects of their power, the Council of Ten deployed some extreme measures in their endeavour to prevent foreign spies and moles from infiltrating Venetian territories. Fearful interrogations, complemented by gruesome tortures and executions, and even chemical warfare were part of the repertoire of terrors at the Ten’s disposal.

de monopolio (Madrid: Catarata, 2013). On relocation restrictions on Venetian glassmakers, see Romanin, Storia documentata, Vol. VI, p. 531. ²⁴ ASV, CCX, Dispacci Ambasciatori, b. 11, fol. 77 (20 Oct. 1572). On the Venetian wool industry, see Domenico Sella, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Venetian Woollen Industry’, in Pullan, Crisis and Change, pp. 106–26. ²⁵ See, for instance, NMM, ADM/A/1804/25–26 (3 Feb. 1694), on a proposal made to the British consul in Genova by a Venetian master shipwright to travel to England with his son in order to teach the English how to build Venetian-style galliasses, like the ones constructed in the Venetian Arsenal. I am grateful to Mike Brevan from the National Maritime Museum for his assistance with dating this document. ²⁶ AGS, Estado, Legajo 1517, cuaderno xv, fol. 8 (8 June 1584). On Cellini’s papal mission to Constantinople, where he met the bailo Giacomo Soranzo, see Georg Hofmann, ‘Griechische Patriarchen und römische Päpste: Untersuchungen und Texte’, Orientalia Christiana 76 (1932), pp. 221–304. ²⁷ Preto, I servizi segreti, p. 59. ²⁸ AGS, Estado, Legajo 1517, cuaderno xv, fol. 15 (30 June 1584). ²⁹ Ibid., fol. 21 (28 July 1584). ³⁰ Malcolm, Agents of Empire, p. 439.

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The Terrors of the Ten Interrogations, Tortures, and Assassinations In the summer of 1588, the janissary Abdabei and his companion Mustafà, called Zamogliano,³¹ were arrested in Corfu, suspected of false identity and espionage against the Venetians. Suspicions against them had been raised by the bailo, who informed the Ten of the presence of three Ottoman spies on the island. When questioned, both suspects maintained that they were originally of Greek descent but had been enslaved by the Turks and forced to convert to Islam before they escaped and returned to Greece in order to espouse, once again, the Orthodox rite. The authorities, who were not convinced by the suspects’ explanations, persisted with their interrogations, amplifying the pressure with agonizing torture that included the rack and piercing their body with hot metal, so that the accused culprits would confess to their implication in espionage. While Abdabei managed to withstand the throbbing pain and stonewalled, Mustafà, overcome by the duress, presented significantly inconsistent versions of the pair’s story. Eventually, the four-month investigation closed when the suspects succumbed to the torture, even though it is highly probable that Abdebei was poisoned.³² Torture, or the threat of it, was a common instrument of intimidation that the Council of Ten used either in the name of counter-espionage, that is, to thwart enemy spies, or for the purpose of forestalling conspiracies against the Venetian state. In the former case, when there was serious suspicion of espionage against the Republic, the Ten did not shy away from ordering local authorities to arrest suspects, isolate them in secret places, and interrogate them, casually resorting to torture techniques in order to extract admissions and declarations of guilt. In more serious cases of potential conspiracy against the Venetian state, suspects were taken to the Ducal Palace’s harrowing torture chambers, where they were subjected to agonizing ill-treatment if they refused to confess their complicity in plots against the Venetian Republic.³³ The Ten took conspiracies very seriously and were prepared to employ the harshest means to ensure the security of the Dominante and its dominion. To alleviate any wrongdoing, especially if they were in need of more evidence prior to pursuing a case to the torture chamber, formal ³¹ The term ‘zamogliano’ indicates a Janissary ranking. It stems from acemoğlanı, a novice devşirme, that is, a Christian boy serving as a levy recruit for the Ottomans, with the intention of training for civil or military service in the Ottoman Empire, if possible as a janissary. I am thankful to Emrah Safa Gürkan for clarification of the Ottoman terms. ³² ASV, Quarantia Criminal, b. 94, Processo 34 (1 Oct. 1588). ³³ See, for example, ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 14, c. 146r./v. (22 Jan. 1607). On the torture rooms of the Ducal Palace, see Franzoi, Itinerari segreti, pp. 228–36. On numerous cases of torture of spies or conspirators against the Venetians, see Preto, I servizi segreti, pp. 95–146, 342–59; Chrysovalantis Papadamou, ‘A Secret War: Espionage in Venetian Corfu during the Construction of the San Marco Fortress’, in Georgios Theotokis and Aysel Yıldız (eds.), A Military History of the Mediterranean Sea: Aspects of War, Diplomacy, and Military Elites (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 347–70.

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interrogation preceded a potential culprit’s incarceration in the Doge’s Palace. In the winter of 1590, for instance, the Capitan Generale del Golfo conducted a thorough investigation of Rade Dragostervich, a mariner in the service of Uskok pirates who was suspected of spying on the Venetians. The suspect was allegedly overheard claiming that, simply by changing his attire, he could alter his identity, and it was through that simple technique that he could perform espionage services for the Uskoks. During a lengthy interrogation that lasted for three weeks, a number of witnesses were meticulously examined but no incriminating evidence against him was found. As a result, the case was eventually dropped.³⁴ In a similar case, Rubbian Martinelli from Mantua, a former soldier, was arrested and interrogated in Cattaro, when he arrived there in the company of two Italians whom he had allegedly helped to escape from Ottoman captivity in Constantinople. With a track record of ceaseless roving in the Mediterranean and the Balkans and a fluent command of Turkish, Martinelli raised suspicions that he was a spy in the Ottoman employ. These were confirmed when it was discovered that he was circumcized, which indicated Ottoman allegiance either by birth or by religious conversion. His arrest was ordered because the authorities grew alarmed when, while claiming he was accompanying Italian slaves to freedom, he made a conscious decision to stop in Cattaro to conduct unknown business, carrying several Turkish documents on him. Martinelli’s claim to Christian altruism did not convince the local governor who was leading the investigation. Nevertheless, after repeated questioning and threats of utilizing ‘other means that you will not like’ for extracting the truth from him, no hard evidence was produced. In consequence, the governor sent the Turkish letters in Martinelli’s possession to the bailo, requesting their translation. The bailo’s response confirmed that the letters contained nothing of significance and that Martinelli was actually a man held in high esteem in Constantinople’s Christian community. On the basis of this evidence, six months after their initial arrest, Martinelli and his companions were set free.³⁵ Dragostervich and Martinelli were fortunate in their acquittal, as accusations of their culpability were unfounded. In cases where suspects’ complicity had been substantiated prior to any formal interrogation, however, their immediate elimination could be ordered without an opportunity to defend themselves. In October 1571, Francesco Coronel, an Ottoman subject, was arrested in the Venetian city of Chania, suspected of several crimes against Crete, including actively spying for the Ottomans. The Ten ordered the local governor to corroborate these accusations and, if they were found to be authentic, to execute him stealthily, spreading rumours that his death was caused by infirmity during his imprisonment.³⁶ The

³⁴ ASV, Quarantia Criminal, b. 106, Processo 94 (9 Jan. 1591). ³⁵ Ibid., b. 108, Processo 104 (20 April 1591). ³⁶ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, c. 181r/.v. (10 Oct. 1571).

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plan miscarried, however, as eight years later Coronel was spotted in Constantinople, conspiring, yet again, against the island of Crete, where he was rumoured to dispatch spies. Consequently, the governor general of the island was instructed to arrest and secretly execute him and any of his cronies after he had interrogated them in order to verify fresh intelligence on Coronel’s machinations against Venetian possessions.³⁷ A Turkish privateer captured by the Venetians when his galliot was seized in 1565 was less fortunate. While extant documents do not reveal why the Ten wished him exterminated, it is probable that he was deemed a threat to the security of the Venetian state. For this reason, a missive was swiftly dispatched to the Provveditore Generale del Golfo, ordering him to pretend to be treating the privateer, who had been seriously injured during his vessel’s seizure, plus the young child accompanying him, with affability. Secretly, however, the Provveditore was asked to order the ship’s barber, who acted as a lay doctor, to poison the privateer, either by applying a toxic substance to his wound or by encouraging him to drink it, so that his death could be attributed to an accident or his injuries. Importantly, the naval general was instructed to communicate to the barber that the execution was ordered by the Provveditore, not by the Ten. For the purpose of utmost secrecy, the Provveditore was also asked to return to the Ten the written instructions he had been furnished with by them, and to report on the execution by means of a letter written by him and no one else.³⁸ It is evident that, on this occasion, the Ten were anxious to conceal their indiscretions under a thick mantle of secrecy. As we have already seen, counter-intelligence activities provided a platform for the Venetian state to reveal its most cruel side to those who committed the felony of spying or conspiring against the Serenissima. For this reason, crafty assassinations were an extreme method the Council of Ten deployed to exterminate foreign plotters and spies who put the security of the Venetian state at risk. In 1525, for instance, when they decided to eliminate a man who had been proven to have malicious designs against the Republic, they offered a sizeable army of 300 men, freedom from banishment, and, even more generously, a pension for life to any banished criminal who would volunteer to assassinate the culprit.³⁹ Admittedly, the Venetians’ primary suspects were spies and turncoats acting on behalf of the Ottoman Empire, as plentiful instances of executions of Ottoman subjects threatening Venetian state security expose.⁴⁰

³⁷ Ibid., Reg. 12, c. 33v. (12 Feb. 1580). ³⁸ Ibid., Reg. 8, cc. 113v.–114r. (12 May 1568). ³⁹ Ibid., Reg. 1, c. 23v. (9 Oct. 1525). ⁴⁰ The registers of the Ten’s secret deliberations, especially in the years that preceded the War of Cyprus, are overflowing with cases of executions and secret assassinations of spies and plotters in the Ottoman employ. See, in particular, ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9–11.

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One of the most controversial cases of attempted assassination involves Mustafa dai Cordoani, a legate of the Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmet Pasha. While very little is known about Mustafa’s life, surviving information indicates that he was a renegade, most probably descending from a family of rope-makers or leather tanners.⁴¹ Both in 1574 and in 1576, he was sent to Venice to request formally the liberation of Ottoman slaves. Following intelligence from the Venetian bailo, however, the Ten were convinced that he was ‘a most astute’ spy in Mehmet Pasha’s employ, plotting against the Republic, possibly even against the Holy See. For this reason, while, seemingly trying to cajole him with cordial pleasantries—since, ultimately, he was a formal Ottoman legate—the Ten decreed that he should be poisoned.⁴² To perform the gruesome act, they invited Marchio Vilandrino (more widely known as Melchiorre Guilandino), a physician and professor of Botany at the University of Padua, to produce a poison for that purpose.⁴³ In vain was Mustafa forced to drink the toxic substance twice, as its potency was anything but lethal.⁴⁴ When it was clear that the professor had botched the job, the Ten resorted to another physician, named Comasco, to produce a new poison.⁴⁵ Even then, Mustafa survived the attempted assassination and the Ten decided to let him return to Constantinople, deferring a decision on having him poisoned on board the galley that would transport him to Dalmatia on his way to the Ottoman capital.⁴⁶ Two years later, however, in the midst of a catastrophic plague that rampaged throughout the city, Mustafa returned to Venice. At that time, it was decided that, ‘for the benefit of our state and the whole of Christianity’, he should be assassinated in secret, in such a way as to make it look as if the plague had claimed his life. For this reason, a man under the alias of Captain Trec was tasked with carrying out the unpalatable task.⁴⁷ A few days later, a missive was sent to the bailo, informing him that Mustafa had been found dead on the street, having succumbed to the plague, and instructing him, if asked, to say that he had heard the news from a friend, rather than formally from the Ten.⁴⁸ Undoubtedly, Mustafa had been

⁴¹ ASV, CCX, Dispacci Ambasciatori, b. 4, fols. 213–16 (24 Aug. 1575); Maria Pia Pedani, In nome del Gran Signore: Inviati ottomani a Venezia dalla caduta di Costantinopoli alla Guerra di Candia (Venice: Deputazione Editrice, 1994), pp. 188–9. ⁴² ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 11, c. 7r./v. (6 April 1574); ibid., c. 9r./v. (29 April 1574). ⁴³ Ibid., c. 32v.–33r. (6, 10 Oct. 1574). On Melchiorre Guilandino, see Maurizio Rippa Bonati and Fabio Zanpieri, ‘Historical Overview of Medical Liability’, in Santo D. Ferrara, Rafael Boscolo-Berto, and Guido Viel (eds.), Malpractice and Medical Liability: European State of the Art and Guidelines (Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2013), pp. 13–49 (esp. pp. 25–8); Paolo Preto, ‘Un infortunio professionale di Melchiorre Guilandino, direttore dell’Orto Botanico di Padova’, Quaderni per la Storia dell’Università di Padova 22–3 (1989–1990), pp. 233–6. ⁴⁴ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 11, c. 34r. (19 Oct. 1574). ⁴⁵ Ibid., c. 35v. (24 Oct. 1574). ⁴⁶ Ibid., c. 36r. (29 Oct. 1574); ibid., f. 18 (21 Oct. 1574). ⁴⁷ Ibid., f. 19 (19 July 1576); ibid., Reg. 11, cc. 101v.–102r. (19–20 July 1576). ⁴⁸ Ibid., c. 103r./v. (18 Aug. 1576).

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assassinated, but the Ten did not want this important information to reach the Sublime Porte; hence the twisted version of the story reported to the bailo. This was not the first or the last time that the Ten reported fabricated information to their diplomat in Constantinople in order to brush gruesome acts under the carpet. The idiosyncrasy of Ottoman-Venetian relations, upon which commercial access to the Levant and the East was dependent, meant that several of these executions were planned and carried out in a stealthy manner and, in the name of organizational secrecy, even individuals like the bailo were not to be privy to the actual facts. In strikingly similar circumstances, shortly after Mustafa dai Cordoani’s execution, another Ottoman spy, Mustafa Celebi, arrived in Venice, formally requesting the liberation of a Turkish slave called Mamut, on behalf of Mehmet Pasha. Following conventional diplomatic avenues, the Ten wrote to the bailo, explaining that the plethora of crimes committed by Mamut against Venetian subjects in peacetime precluded them from releasing him. To that end, the bailo was instructed to communicate to the Ottoman grandee the reasons why the Venetian authorities could not, on that occasion, grant him the favour he was seeking. They offered, however, to liberate a handful of other Turkish slaves who did not pose an imminent threat to the Venetian dominion. Moreover, the Ten conveyed to their envoy in Constantinople their intention to have Mamut secretly executed by the Provveditore dell’ Armata.⁴⁹ This intended execution did not take place for nearly a decade, due to the glacial slowness with which ongoing overtures between the Ottoman and Venetian authorities unfolded. Initially, the former offered to liberate Mamut in exchange for enslaved Venetian subjects in the Ottoman Empire but the Venetians declined the offer, maintaining that Mamut’s liberation would incite great distress amongst their subjects.⁵⁰ Nevertheless, the Venetians were reluctant to proceed to his execution, most probably because Mamut seems to have been a favourite of Sultan Murad III’s mother, Nurbanu Sultan, who, as we saw in the previous chapter, had been particularly partial to the Venetian state.⁵¹ Eventually, in 1583, turning a deaf ear to Ottoman demands for his liberation, the Ten initially decided to poison him in a way that looked like a natural death, but suspended the execution in anticipation of letters from Constantinople.⁵² Finally, three years later, by which time, incidentally, Nurbanu had passed away, the Capi took the executive decision to execute him instantly.⁵³ Accordingly, in the summer of 1586, the bailo received the news that Mamut’s death had been caused by prolonged

⁴⁹ Ibid., cc. 83v.–84r. (15 Feb. 1576). ⁵⁰ Ibid., cc. 84v.–86v. (17, 22 Feb. 1576); ibid., cc. 142v.–143v. (16 Oct. 1577). A series of letter exchanges between the Ten and the bailo on this matter have been deposited in ibid., f. 23 (20 Feb. 1586). ⁵¹ ASV, CCX, Dispacci Ambasciatori, b. 5, fol. 70 (8 April 1579). ⁵² ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 13, c. 6r. (23 June 1583). ⁵³ Ibid., cc. 30v.–31r. (20 Feb. 1586).

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infirmity in prison.⁵⁴ Two struck-through lines in the draft notes of the deliberation, however, indicate a crafty assassination.⁵⁵ While Ottoman spies were amongst the Ten’s primary targets, spies working for the Spanish monarch also faced the prospect of ill-treatment by the Venetian authorities. Pedro Lanza, a notorious spy and corsair from Corfu, is a case in point. Lanza had established a reputation as ‘a chaser of frigates and galliots, Venetian ships and Venetian subjects’ in the Mediterranean.⁵⁶ This caused particular problems for the Spanish ambassador to Venice, who received frequent complaints from the Venetian government about Lanza’s indiscretions.⁵⁷ Initially in the Venetian employ, Lanza gradually defected to the Spanish camp and, by the mid-1570s, he had assumed leadership of the Spanish spy network in the Levant.⁵⁸ Already by 1571, a Venetian attempt to have him assassinated had failed, despite the promise to an anonymous hitman of 1,500 ducats and the revocation of his banishment, if he happened to be a banished criminal. Another attempt ensued in 1574, when the Ten ordered their governors in Corfu and Zante to have him executed in any way possible, reassuring the Spanish authorities that they were helping them to get rid of a man of ‘the worst of qualities’.⁵⁹ When they failed yet again, in the summer of 1578 a copy of the 1574 execution order was re-sent to the governor of Corfu with the exact same instructions.⁶⁰ Once again, Lanza managed to escape the Venetians’ schemes against him and thirty years later, in 1608, he was in Constantinople, plotting to assassinate the Sultan and to set the Ottoman Arsenal ablaze in such a way that the crimes would look like impeccably crafted Venetian conspiracies.⁶¹

Chemical Warfare During times of armed conflict, the Venetians needed to eliminate more than one troublesome individual at a time. For this reason, they resorted to the use of techniques that could lead to mass assassinations. Chemical warfare against

⁵⁴ Ibid., c. 34v. (9 July 1586). ⁵⁵ This instruction to communicate to the bailo that Mamut died of sickness rather than assassination is only mentioned in the filza, not in the transcribed letter in the formal register, and it has been struck through with two diagonal lines: see ibid., f. 23 (15 Feb. 1586). ⁵⁶ Fernard Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, Vol. II, transl. Siân Reynolds (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1995), p. 879. ⁵⁷ AGS, Estado, Legajo 1336, fols 100–1 (21 Dec. 1577; 21 Jan. 1578). ⁵⁸ Preto, I servizi segreti, pp. 122, 342. ⁵⁹ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 11, c. 19r. (9 July 1574); Vladimir Lamansky, Secrets d’état de Venise: Documents, extraits, notices et études servant à éclaircir les rapports de la Seigneurie avec les Grecs, les Slaves et la Porte ottomane, à la fin du XVe et au XVIe siècle (Saint Petersburg: Imprimerie de l’Académie impériale des sciences, 1884), p. 461. ⁶⁰ ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 9 (17 Dec. 1578). ⁶¹ ASV, CCX, Dispacci Ambasciatori, b. 19 (16 Dec. 1608).

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enemies through poisonous substances was a tactic commonly employed in military conflict already from the medieval period.⁶² Emboldened by the doctrines of arcana imperii that legitimized secret and morally reprehensible acts in service of state security,⁶³ the Venetians had mastered the use of toxic substances from early on.⁶⁴ The deployment of such means intensified in the sixteenth and seventieth centuries, when Venice was gradually losing its influence in the Mediterranean, while the Ottoman Empire was steadily establishing a firmer foothold in the region.⁶⁵ As a late sixteenth-century manual on ‘various secrets related to war affairs’ stored in the Capi’s records reveals, the Council of Ten had a battery of chemical warfare techniques at their disposal.⁶⁶ Amongst them were poisonous fumes that could disorientate both humans and animals for a maximum of forty hours, a toxic fire with a potent smell that could drive away enemy troops, as well as virulent substances that could contaminate the water supply of ‘Turks’ and other ‘infidels’ in order to protect Venetian military and naval forces.⁶⁷ The Venetian authorities had access to a variety of toxic substances to facilitate their chemical warfare campaigns. Amongst them, they seem to have favoured mercury compounds, such as the sublimate mercuric chloride that poison manufacturers deemed extremely toxic.⁶⁸ As Daniel Jütte has argued, the primary suppliers of chemical substances used for the production of poisons were members of the Jewish community. In fact, certain Jewish families, such as the Sarfatti family, had built a long and stable tradition in that profession.⁶⁹ Once the Ten obtained the required substances, they assigned specialists such as doctors or professors at the nearby university in Padua to produce the desired poisons, as the aforementioned case of Marchio Vilandrino shows. The Ten also welcomed raccordi, inviting ordinary individuals to create poison recipes and, more often than not, their antidote.⁷⁰ Such calls were part of a wider campaign to produce formulae for innovative antidotes to lethal diseases, such as the plague and other blood infections.⁷¹ When it was deemed necessary or possible, the Ten even endeavoured to solicit manuals on the subject.⁷² The most commonly deployed chemical warfare tactic for gaining strategic advantage in the period was contaminating the much-needed water supply of rival troops with poisonous substances.⁷³ The Venetians intensified their use of this ⁶² Preto, I servizi segreti, p. 313. ⁶³ Jütte, The Age of Secrecy, p. 53. ⁶⁴ Preto, I servizi segreti, pp. 313–327, 366–71. ⁶⁵ Jütte, The Age of Secrecy, p. 55. ⁶⁶ ASV, CCX, Raccordi, Reg. 1 (Unico), cc. 33r.–40r. (1581). ⁶⁷ Ibid., c. 38r. ⁶⁸ Preto, I servizi segreti, p. 364; Jütte, The Age of Secrecy, p. 55, n. 135. ⁶⁹ Jütte, The Age of Secrecy, p. 55. ⁷⁰ See, for example, Preto, I servizi segreti, p. 316. Vladimir Lamansky has published some poison recipes in Secrets d’état de Venise, pp. 534–7. ⁷¹ See, for example, ASV, CCX, Raccordi, Reg. 1 (Unico), cc. 58r.–59r. (23 May 1578); ibid., cc. 64r.–65v. (3 Sep. 1576); ibid., cc. 68r.–68v. (1567). ⁷² In 1601, for example, the Ten procured a Hebrew book, with an Italian translation, on poisons by Domenico Gerosolimitano. ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 14 c. 72r./v. (18 July 1601). ⁷³ Jütte, The Age of Secrecy, pp. 57–8.

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method in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, when several colonies in the Adriatic and the Levant were placed under threat due to aggressive Ottoman advances.⁷⁴ In July 1570, for instance, according to a report from the papal representative in Venice to His Holiness, suspicions of an imminent seizure of the Venetian stronghold of Split by the Turks had been confirmed.⁷⁵ An urgent enciphered missive was dispatched to the local governor in Dalmatia, containing eight bottles of poison devised by a certain Nicolò Dalla Pigna, a man who was known for his exquisite sugar sculptures, according to Francesco Sansovino’s quasi-hagiographic portrayal of the Serenissima.⁷⁶ The lethal liquid was intended for the contamination of the advancing Ottomans’ water supply.⁷⁷ The main complexity of this operation was to reduce the prospect of Venetian subjects residing in these territories being affected. In that instance, the Dalmatian governor was instructed to be extremely vigilant in his mission, so that the water quality and, in consequence, the safety of the Christian population living there would not be compromised.⁷⁸ Technologically, however, such a feat was beyond the realm of possibility at the time. With a touch of Schadenfreude, a few months later, the Ten urged the governor’s successor to complete the task his predecessor had started but had been unable to accomplish.⁷⁹ The governor replied that he was willing to oblige, but was unsure of the effectiveness of the operation, as the Ottomans had developed immunity to this type of warfare, deftly finding alternative water supplies.⁸⁰ Indeed, just months earlier, at the outset of the War of Cyprus, the attempt of the local noblemen Giovanni Muscorno and Giovanni Sozomeno, together with a small band of infantrymen, to poison the water supply of the Turks on the island miscarried, as the enemy had anticipated it and swiftly searched for alternative sources.⁸¹ These devious, yet vital methods of warfare were not only deployed by the Venetians. The Ottomans were also notorious for their extensive use of toxic substances, especially in areas to which they laid aggressive claims, such as the Balkans and the Ionian islands. Pursuits of this sort intensified during periods of armed conflict between the two empires.⁸² Accordingly, during the War of Cyprus, the governor general of Cephalonia received strict instructions from the Heads of the Ten to keep all the wells of the island under strict surveillance. As the conflict was ongoing, the governor took the executive decision to seal and lock up ⁷⁴ Preto, I servizi segreti, pp. 316–18. ⁷⁵ ASVat, Segreteria di Stato, Venezia, b. 8, c. 11r. (15 July 1570). ⁷⁶ Francesco Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima et singolare, descritta in XIII. libri (Bergamo: Leading Edizioni, 2002), p. 166v. ⁷⁷ ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 7 (21 Aug. 1570); See also Lamansky, Secrets d’état de Venise, p. 78. ⁷⁸ ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 7 (21 Aug. 1570). ⁷⁹ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, c. 130r. (5 Feb. 1571). ⁸⁰ ASV, CCX, Lettere dei Rettori e di Altre Cariche, b. 302 (4 March 1571). ⁸¹ This anecdote was narrated by the contemporary mythographer and historian Natale Conti in his Delle historie de’ suoi tempi, Parte Seconda (Venice: Damian Zenaro, 1589), p. 79v. ⁸² Jütte, The Age of Secrecy, p. 56.

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the island’s wells and cisterns, opening them only for two hours a day, when inhabitants could extract limited amounts of water to fulfil their daily needs. One of his underlings was made responsible for monitoring this process and threatened with the penalty of rowing in the galleys for eighteen months if he failed to maintain close surveillance. The governor was also expected to ensure that no Turk or other foreigner would set foot on the island during those dangerous times.⁸³ The Ottomans suspected that the Venetians would react proactively and tried different methods of chemical attacks, employing Italians to carry out the job. A Spanish letter, for instance, reported that the Venetians arrested a certain man from Vicenza who had been employed by the Turks to contaminate their water supplies.⁸⁴ While bleak political climates required ruthless responses to threats to state security, less serious diplomatic situations called for more benign, yet, at times, equally devious approaches to dealing with rival powers and their expansionist proclivities to the detriment of the Dominante. Letter interceptions and diplomatic bribes were amongst the most commonly utilized tricks and tactics that the Council of Ten deployed to undergird their multifarious intelligence operations.

Other Tricks and Tactics Letter Interceptions One of the ways in which significant information of political and economic value leaked to unauthorized recipients was through letter interception. Once heedlessly portrayed with the metaphor of ‘deflowering’ as the act of robbing letters ‘of their innocence by illegally opening them’,⁸⁵ letter interception was one of the oldest tricks in the book of diplomatic stunts and ploys, and it was widely overused and misused. The Venetian authorities both feared and favoured it for the advancement of their intelligence and counter-intelligence operations. As the Papal nuncio in Venice reported back to the Curia (the Vatican administration), the Venetians were certain that their letters would get intercepted by foreign powers, especially during times of diplomatic turbulence between the Venetian Republic and the Ottoman Empire.⁸⁶ One of the reasons for this anticipation was their own enduring penchant for intercepting letters, routinely opening and reading them, then resealing them—at times with counterfeit seals—and eventually sending them on to their designated addressees.⁸⁷ ⁸³ ⁸⁴ ⁸⁵ ⁸⁶ ⁸⁷

ASV, CCX, Lettere de Rettori e di Altre Cariche, b. 287, fol. 46 (20 March 1571). AGS, Estado, Legajo 1327, fol. 48 (28 May 1570). Akkerman, Invisible Agents, p. 1. ASVat, Segreteria di Stato, Venezia, b. 12, cc. 299r., 302r. (27 June, 4 July 1573). See, for example, ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, f. 8 (27 Aug. 1551).

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Letter interception was part of the specialist repertoire of a governor overseeing Venetian possessions in the Italian mainland, the Adriatic, and the Levant. In early 1528, for instance, the Venetians ordered their legate in Ravenna, at that time under Venetian rule, to stop a passing courier and intercept all letters he was carrying, except those written by Venetian patricians. The purpose of this intervention was to seize missives written by Charles V’s ambassador to Venice, Alonso Sánchez, which, according to the Ten’s intelligence, were ‘letterlocked’ in packaging nominally addressed to German merchants in Rome, sent by their counterparts in Venice.⁸⁸ Similarly, a few months later, the governors of Padua were urged to halt the progress of Venetian couriers who had recently departed with German merchants from that city for the Holy Roman Empire and confiscate the letters they were carrying, because they allegedly communicated significant intelligence they wished to access. Still, since such practices could cause diplomatic ruptures, the Ten exercised strict control over their underlings’ interception activity, micromanaging their actions when necessary. In 1572, the governors of Cattaro were castigated when they intercepted letters written by the Holy Roman Emperor’s agent in Constantinople. ‘In the future’, the Ten wrote to them, ‘unless otherwise ordered, when you get hold of such letters, make sure you forward them to their nominal addressee’.⁸⁹ When the Ten’s intelligence indicated that letters carried by foreign couriers included information they sought access to, they would not refrain from employing more devious means of obtaining them. In 1550, for example, the Capi ordered one of their local staff to anticipate the courier expected from Rome late at night, force him into his house, and keep him there until the morning, when he would be summoned to the Doge’s Palace and ordered to have his consignment inspected by the Inquisitori di Stato. This violent apprehension was premised on rumours that had reached the Inquisitori’s ears, alarming them that secrets of the Venetian state were being leaked to Vatican grandees.⁹⁰ Reports of this sort, and the lurid suspicions that they fed, persisted for decades. By the early seventeenth century, the State Inquisitors had devised a counterfeit seal that they used to reseal letters reaching Venice from Rome which they routinely opened and read. This left the nuncio with no choice but to regularly change his seal, much as he offered to assist the Inquisitori in their dogged, yet futile efforts to identify the propalatori.⁹¹

⁸⁸ Ibid., Reg. 2, cc. 50v.–51r. (28 Feb. 1528). In absence of the mass-produced envelope of the nineteenth century, in the early modern era letters were folded in a series of packets that served as the letter packaging. This process, through which ‘a substrate such as paper, parchment, or papyrus has been folded and secured shut to function as its own envelope’, has been styled ‘letterlocking’. See Jana Dambrogio, ‘Historic Letterlocking: The Art and Security of Letter Writing’, Book Arts/Arts du Livre Canada 5, no 2 (2014), pp. 21–3 (here p. 21). ⁸⁹ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 10, c. 27v. (30 May 1572). ⁹⁰ Ibid., Reg. 6, c. 44r. (22 April 1550). This forceful process of apprehension was commonly employed by the Inquisitori. See, for instance, ibid., Reg. 6, c. 55v. (23 Aug. 1550). ⁹¹ ASVat, Segreteria di Stato, Venezia, b. 4, cc. 14r./v., 152v., 153r. (1 May, 5 June, and 4 Sep. 1610).

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This crafty treatment of epistolary circulation did not go unnoticed by other states and foreign authorities. In the 1570s, the papal nuncio petitioned with animus the Vatican administration for the establishment of a weekly papal postal service. The reason for this request was to put an end to Rome’s reliance on Venetian couriers, who had turned letter interception into a daily routine.⁹² This was not the first time papal representatives in Venice had expressed their frustration over these Venetian stunts to the Vatican authorities. An erstwhile nuncio had already, from the 1530s, given up composing important letters in cipher, hoping that writing in plain Italian might minimize suspicions and, hence, allow the letters to reach their destination unscathed.⁹³ Similarly concerned about the Venetians’ letter interception proclivities, in the 1570s, Don Cèsar de la Marra, the Spanish consul in Ragusa, requested that dispatches addressed to him from the Spanish court be written in invisible ink rather than in cipher,⁹⁴ as Venetian cryptanalysts were widely renowned for their ability to crack any code.⁹⁵ Letters were intercepted not only by the Venetian governors in the dominion. Ambassadors were also expected to engage in such enterprises. In the spring of 1563, the Venetian ambassador to France got hold of letters sent by the Holy Roman Emperor to Catherine de’ Medici, Charles IX’s mother. The Venetian legate had the letters translated into Italian and, subsequently, conveyed them to the Heads of the Ten in cipher.⁹⁶ Similarly, the bailo, who acted as a spymaster for the Venetians in the Ottoman Empire,⁹⁷ engaged extensively in the practice of letter interception, reporting the use of elaborate ciphers by foreign spies who were writing under noms de plume from Constantinople to their masters. In 1606, he informed the Inquisitori of his suspicion that the Greek merchants Hieronimo and Antonio Paronda, a father and son residing in Constantinople,⁹⁸ were spies of the Viceroy of Naples and, by extension, the Spanish court. The bailo’s suspicions ripened into certainty when his secretary broke the cipher in which their intercepted letters were written, exposing ‘pretty vulgar things and with little proof ’ about the Republic.⁹⁹ Occasionally, the bailo also supplied both the Capi and the Inquisitori with the cipher keys, when they were discovered by his secretary.¹⁰⁰

⁹² Ibid., b. 10, fol. 73 (31 Aug. 1570). Complaints by Papal representatives about the Venetians’ letter interception proclivities were frequent. Three years earlier, for instance, the nuncio’s patron, Cardinal Alessandrino, was actively looking for ways to forestall the interception of his correspondence, to no avail. See ASV, CCX, Dispacci Ambasciatori, b. 5, fols. 133–6 (9 Feb. 1580). ⁹³ ASVat, Segreteria di Stato, Venezia, b. 1, c. 149r. (11 July 1533). ⁹⁴ AGS, Estado, Legajo 1517, cuaderno iv, fol. 4 (27 March 1577). ⁹⁵ ASVat, Segreteria di Stato, Venezia, b. 10, fol. 73 (31 Aug. 1570). ⁹⁶ ASV, CCX, Dispacci Ambasciatori, b. 11 (8 March 1563). ⁹⁷ Gürkan, ‘Laying Hands on Arcana Imperii’. ⁹⁸ Antonio Paronda was a Venetian subject from Napoli di Romania. Having been banished from both Venice and Crete, he made Constantinople his new home. In 1590, he appears to have received a safe conduct from the Venetians to temporarily return to and work in Venice and its dominion. See ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 13, c. 73r. (18 June 1590). ⁹⁹ ASV, IS, b. 406 (1 Dec. 1606). ¹⁰⁰ Ibid.

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As we saw in Chapter 3, due to the Venetian monopoly of the postal network between the Ottoman Empire and Europe, the Venetian bailate in Constantinople was a hotbed of letter interception.¹⁰¹ This monopoly granted the bailo, his household, and, by extension, the Ten, a ‘legitimate right’ to unprecedented access to the written communications of foreign rulers, diplomats, and merchants.¹⁰² Consequently, once the bailo’s son-in-law was recorded handing over to the Capi letters he had intercepted which were assumed to be written by Ferdinando Sanseverino, the prince of Salerno.¹⁰³ So frequent was the interference of the bailo and his famiglia with foreign letters that Jacques Savary, the French ambassador to the Sublime Porte, sarcastically reported that he would advise his monarch not to bother sealing his missives to Constantinople, as the Venetians would open them anyway, on the pretext of fumigating any incoming mail against the plague.¹⁰⁴ The English were also frustrated by the Venetians’ perusal of their letters but did not voice their vexation as vociferously as the French, according to a letter sent by Sir Peter Wyche, the English ambassador to Constantinople, to Dudley Carleton, the English Secretary of State.¹⁰⁵ Despite the baili’s interception proclivity being common knowledge, such a practice was bound by conventions that interceptors had to observe, especially in relation to the ways in which the content of intercepted letters would be communicated to higher authorities. In the summer of 1555, a dangerous incident ensued when the bailo seized letters sent by the Holy Roman Emperor to the Grand Vizier Kara Ahmed Pasha, and, instead of communicating the gist of their content to the Ten in cipher, he forwarded the originals to them. Alarmed at the prospect of a diplomatic incident, the Ten berated him, reminding him that he ought to convey either copies of intercepted letters in cipher or a brisk summary of any substantial intelligence mentioned in them, clearly stating in his own letters that his intelligence came from a ‘reliable source’ (per bona via).¹⁰⁶ A few years later, the Ten ordered their bailo to desist altogether from seizing the Sultan’s correspondence, imploring him to use his informers in order to penetrate the imperial court’s affairs.¹⁰⁷ Ten years down the line, as the Venetians were desperately trying to maintain a much-needed peace with the Ottomans, they reiterated their directive

¹⁰¹ Dursteler, ‘Power and Information’. ¹⁰² Hassiotis, ‘Venezia e i domini veneziani’, p. 122. ¹⁰³ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 6, cc. 97v., 98v. (4, 5 Feb. 1553). ¹⁰⁴ Dursteler, ‘Power and Information’, p. 618. Due to the frequent outbreaks of the plague, the Venetians employed several disinfection processes that they enforced on trade shipments and postal routes. Fumigation was one of them, and it was particularly imposed on ship cargoes. See Duane J. Osheim, ‘Plague and Foreign Threats to Public Health in Early Modern Venice’, Mediterranean Historical Review 26, no 1 (2011), pp. 67–80; Jane L. Stevens Crawshaw, Plague Hospitals: Public Health for the City in Early Modern Venice (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), esp. Chapter 6. ¹⁰⁵ TNA, SP 97/15, fol. 80 (12 March 1631). ¹⁰⁶ ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 5 (2 Aug. 1555). ¹⁰⁷ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 6, c. 172r. (30 March 1557).

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to the new bailo, asking him to communicate it to his successor, before his departure from his diplomatic post.¹⁰⁸ The Ten’s rapacious interception of foreign correspondence would, at times, go to extreme lengths. The astonishing fact that they considered collaborating with the infamous counterfeiter Celio Malespini, a novelist who had made a name for himself as a forger of signatures, is a case in point.¹⁰⁹ In 1579, Malespini boldly offered his services to the authorities, boasting of his ability to produce bogus enciphered letters. The intention behind the creation of such letters was to throw foreign princes and their diplomats off the scent, as they would waste time trying to decode Venetian letters, alas, in vein, since the cipher would be phony. In his petition to the Ten, Malespini confirmed his ability to work in Latin and Latinderived languages, such as Italian, Spanish, and French. Provided he was granted an interpreter, he even offered to work in German, Greek, Croatian, Hebrew, and Turkish.¹¹⁰ The Ten found Malespini’s enterprising proposition enticing and offered to deliberate on it formally. More bewilderingly, they even considered the astronomical compensation of 800 ducats per annum in order to secure his services, when an experienced cryptanalyst with several years of service in the Venetian Black Chamber earned 120 ducats annually.¹¹¹ Nevertheless, it is likely that either his scheme or the proposed remuneration was deemed too unrealistic or too exorbitant, and the deliberative committee voted down the proposal by a majority of 21 to 4, thus putting an end to Malespini’s avaricious fantasies.¹¹²

Bribes and Gifts While necessary within the wider landscape of diplomacy and intelligence organization, letter interceptions interrupted the steady flow of information and news so much that, at times, this disruption extended further to affect the circulation of goods, as the Cinque Savi alla Mercanzia—the Venetian Board of Trade—once warned Giovanni Gritti, the Venetian ambassador to Rome.¹¹³ The ensuing commotion could cause political and economic tumult that the Venetians sought to avoid at all costs. To minimize the effect of such disruptions, the Council of Ten pulled out another ace from up their sleeve, a sop to Cerberus. In essence, this was ¹⁰⁸ Ibid., Reg. 8, cc. 137v.–138r. (5 Jan. 1569). ¹⁰⁹ On Celio Malespini, see Roberta Lencioni Novelli, Celio Malespini tra biografia e novella (Naples: Linguori, 1983). ¹¹⁰ A copy of Malespini’s petition to the Ten can be found in ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 12, cc. 15v.–16v. (19 Aug. 1579). A part of it is published in Lencioni Novelli, Celio Malespini, pp. 128–9. ¹¹¹ Zannini, ‘Economic and Social Aspects’, p. 127. ¹¹² ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 12, c. 15r. (19 Aug 1579); A copy of his petition to the Ten can be found in ibid, cc. 15v.–16v. (19 Aug. 1579). See also Preto, I servizi segreti, p. 272; Lencioni Novelli, Celio Malespini, pp. 105–6, 128–32; Dejanirah Couto, ‘Spying in the Ottoman Empire’, p. 292. ¹¹³ ASV, Cinque Savi alla Mercanzia, prima serie, b. 492, c. 12v. (24 Oct. 1586).

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the habitual practice of conferring gifts and other types of bribes to well-heeled individuals with access to foreign courts. In 1543, for instance, Nicolò Da Ponte, the future Doge of Venice, who was, at the time, serving as the Venetian ambassador to the Holy Roman Emperor, wrote to the Heads of the Ten requesting that a gold chain be sent to him as a gift to a close servant of the emperor who shared intelligence on imperial affairs with several foreign diplomats in exchange for gifts.¹¹⁴ Personages such as the imperial servant were selected on account of their ability to offer intelligence vital to Venetian state affairs or, even better, due to their capacity to influence decisions of geostrategic and economic significance for the Republic. The offer of gifts in the name of diplomacy was an established tradition with deep roots in the late medieval and early modern period.¹¹⁵ Well versed in the art of effective diplomatic courtship, which they had mastered from early on, the Venetians aspired to securing their influence in the East in order to maintain control over their dominion and, by extension, their commercial hegemony in the Mediterranean. Especially during the second half of the sixteenth century, bribes and gifts served the purpose of safeguarding the stability of their gradually declining maritime empire, not always successfully. To that end, they did not refrain from offering lavish gifts as a form of enticement to those who could help them further their ambitions. For the most part, the recipients of such gifts were Ottoman dignitaries and officials frequenting the Sultan’s court in the Sublime Porte who were partial to fine Venetian silk, velvet, and glassware, aside from ready cash.¹¹⁶ In the spring of 1528, for instance, Tommaso Contarini, the outgoing ambassador to Constantinople, was granted 8,000 ducats for the purpose of gaining the Sultan’s favour and keeping him gratified, ensuring that he would not devise any cunning plans to attack Cyprus.¹¹⁷ Contarini, who would travel to the Golden Horn—the primary inlet of the Bosporus in Constantinople—through Dalmatia and Bosnia, was also expected to confer gifts on the ‘magnificent sanjakbey of Bosnia’—which was an administrative unit of the Ottoman Empire—in order to solicit his favourable treatment of neighbouring Dalmatian populations that were under Venetian rule.¹¹⁸ As extant documents reveal, the most frequent occasions upon which the Venetians offered diplomatic gifts to Ottoman dignitaries were the appointment and, by extension, the arrival of a new bailo in the Ottoman capital or the rarer occasions when a short-term ambassador was elected to represent the Venetian ¹¹⁴ ASV, CCX, Dispacci Ambasciatori, b. 29, fol. 66 (25 May 1543). ¹¹⁵ See the essays in Biedermann, Gerritsen, and Riello, Global Gifts, and the bibliography therein. ¹¹⁶ On the insatiable appetite for silk and velvet at the Sultan’s court, see Nurhan Atasoy, Walter B. Denny, Louise W. Mackie, and Hulya Tezcan, IPEK: The Crescent and the Rose: Imperial Ottoman Silks and Velvets (London: Azimuth, 2001); Molà, ‘Material Diplomacy’. ¹¹⁷ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 2, c. 55r. (7 April 1528). ¹¹⁸ Kenneth M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1204–1571), Vol. 3: The Sixteenth Century to the Reign of Julius III (Philadelphia, PA: The American Philosophical Society, 1984), p. 301.

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Republic for a specific diplomatic reason, such as the ratification of a peace treaty, the festivities for the circumcision of the Sultan’s sons, or the enthronement of a new ruler.¹¹⁹ On his departure from Venice to Constantinople in 1547, the Council of Ten granted the newly elected bailo Alvise Renier 10,000 ducats in cash and 400 ducats’ worth of silk, which would enable him to execute his duties ‘more conveniently’ in a way that would ‘benefit our affairs’.¹²⁰ The Ten were particularly keen to court the Grand Vizier Rüstem Pasha Opuković, because he played a vital role in moderating the Ottomans’ rapacious proclivities towards Venetian possessions in Dalmatia. For this reason, they instructed the bailo to gift secretly 2,000 ducats to Rüstem Pasha during his first formal audience with him, offering ‘general words of love’, and to promise him a supplementary sum of 10,000 ducats if he was willing to promote Venetian interests in the Sublime Porte.¹²¹ Dominico Trevisan, Renier’s successor, was also authorized to present Rüstem Pasha with 1,000 ducats, both upon taking up the bailate in 1552 and before completing his diplomatic mission two years later.¹²² As Luca Molà has compellingly shown, in the sixteenth century, for every new diplomatic delegation in Constantinople, the Venetian government spent substantial sums on opulent gifts that ranged from just under 14,000 to over 20,000 ducats.¹²³ Considering that during the course of the sixteenth century the Venetian state dispatched seventy official envoys to Constantinople,¹²⁴ it is not difficult to calculate the exorbitant sums disbursed on diplomatic bribes or the variety of such gifts, especially during attempts to increase Venetian influence in the Levant. When Ambassador Andrea Badoer and the bailo Antonio Tiepolo set off for Constantinople with the challenging task of sealing a peace treaty with the Ottomans following the War of Cyprus, they carried a panoply of gifts with them.¹²⁵ These included twenty-five freshly liberated Turkish slaves, all dressed in fine Venetian wool,¹²⁶ and large quantities of brocade cloth and gold silk fabrics, as the Spanish ambassador to Venice reported to Philip II.¹²⁷ During the course of the ensuing four years, they boosted their offering by sending thirtyseven gyrfalcons to the Sultan.¹²⁸ To ensure that the Sultan’s prime minister would not feel overlooked, the bailo was instructed to present him with an array of Venetian gifts, including fine silk, preserves, and confections from Naples, which were to be presented ‘in perfect condition’.¹²⁹ So accustomed were the Ottoman ¹¹⁹ Molà, ‘Material Diplomacy’, pp. 58–9. ¹²⁰ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, f. 7 (7 June 1547); ibid., Reg. 6, c. 7v. (30 June 1547). ¹²¹ Ibid., Reg. 6, c. 8r./v. (6 July 1547). ¹²² Ibid., f. 8 (6 April 1552; 17 April 1554). ¹²³ Molà, ‘Material Diplomacy’, p. 59. ¹²⁴ Maria Pia Pedani, ‘Elenco degli inviati diplomatici veneziani presso i sovrani ottomani’, Electronic Journal of Oriental Studies 5, n. 4 (2002), pp. 1–54. ¹²⁵ AGS, Estado, Legajo 1332, fol. 42 (11 April 1573). ¹²⁶ Molà, ‘Material Diplomacy’, p. 62. ¹²⁷ AGS, Estado, Legajo 1332, fol. 52 (14 May 1573). ¹²⁸ ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 9 (14 Jan. 1575, 28 Jan., and 2 Feb. 1579). ¹²⁹ Ibid., f. 10 (5 May 1579).

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grandees to receiving gifts from the Venetians that at the turn of the century, in an audience with the bailo’s secretary, Grand Vizier Damat Ibrahim Pasha allegedly complained ‘Don’t you see this old piece of rag that I am wearing? Is it possible that your Signori hold me in such low esteem that they let me wear it?’ In response to this grievance, the bailo ordered two new robes for the imperious statesman, who also brashly requested Venetian glass, in order to finish off the construction of new windows for his residence.¹³⁰ The gifts must have paid off, as the Vizier was reported to have conferred ‘extraordinary caresses’ (straordinarie carezze) on the bailo, accompanying him in private walks and boat rides in his gardens, diplomatic indulgences that were unheard of at the time.¹³¹ Ottoman officials lower in the Sultan’s administration were also frequent recipients of gifts and bribes by the Venetian authorities. Dragomans or interpreters were recurrent beneficiaries of such enticements, primarily because, with direct access to the Ottoman court, they constituted an unparalleled source of intelligence, not only for the Venetians, but for all European courtiers.¹³² Yunus Bey, one of the most renowned Ottomans who worked as a ‘translator-cumdiplomat’ for the Sublime Porte,¹³³ was consistently showered with lavish gifts by the Venetian authorities during the six times he visited Venice as a dragoman.¹³⁴ These included hefty sums of cash and luxurious fabrics that were consigned to him in secret, so that he continuously advanced Venetian interests in the Porte.¹³⁵ When Antonio Barbarigo was assigned his diplomatic mission as the bailo in Constantinople in the 1550s, he was instructed to offer the dragoman İbrahim Bey 100 ducats, not as a salutatory gift but as compensation for daily services rendered to the Republic.¹³⁶ İbrahim Bey was also a frequent recipient of

¹³⁰ ASVat, Segreteria di Satato, Venezia, b. 32, c. 52v. (12 April 1597). ¹³¹ Ibid., c. 176v. (25 May 1597). ¹³² Dragomans were Ottoman translators skilled in diplomacy, who were sent as envoys of the Ottoman Empire to Western courts. For this reason, they enjoyed active participation in foreign affairs on behalf of the Sublime Porte and were also allowed to negotiate directly with foreign diplomats in Constantinople. On dragomans, in general, see Pedani, In nome del Gran Signore. On dragomans as informers and primary mediators of cross-confessional diplomacy, see Gürkan, ‘Mediating Boundaries’, pp. 111–16. On dragomans as cultural brokers, see Anthony Pym, Negotiating the Frontier: Translators and Intercultures in Hispanic History (Manchester: St. Jerome, 2000); E. Natalie Rothman, ‘Interpreting Dragomans: Boundaries and Crossings in the Early Modern Mediterranean’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 51, no. 4 (October 2009), pp. 771–800; Tijana Krstić, ‘Of Translation and Empire: Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Imperial Translators as Renaissance Go-Betweens’, in Christine Woodhead (ed.), The Ottoman World (London and New York: Routledge, 2012), pp. 130–42. ¹³³ Gürkan, ‘Espionage in the 16h Century Mediterranean’, p. 116. ¹³⁴ Pedani, In nome del Gran Signore, pp. 40–4. ¹³⁵ See, for example, ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 4, c. 67v. (31 Jan. 1537); ibid., Reg. 5, cc. 28r., 85r./v., 117r. (8 Jan. 1540, 29 Jan. 1543, and 17 May 1544). The sums of money gifted to Yunus Bey ranged from a few hundred to thousands of ducats. For his involvement in the signing of the pyrrhic— for the Venetians—peace treaty between Venice and the Ottoman Empire in 1540, for instance, he requested and was granted 6,000 ducats. See ibid., Reg. 5, cc. 63v.–64v. (25 and 26 May 1542). ¹³⁶ Ibid., Reg. 6, c. 162r. (12 Aug. 1556).

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monetary bribes from the Ten, as he was smuggling letters to the bailo, who then forwarded them to the Doge’s Palace.¹³⁷

The Normalization of Extreme Measures The early 1570s was a watershed for the Venetian Republic. A fresh conflict with the Ottoman Empire resulted in the siege of Cyprus, which brought about vigorous tremors to Venetian hegemony in the Mediterranean.¹³⁸ In consequence, the Council of Ten saw it as incumbent upon themselves to tighten the security of Venetian outposts, not only in the Terraferma but, more pressingly, in the Stato da Mar, as the latter was of strategic geopolitical and economic importance for the Dominante. A steady flow of missives overflowing with nuanced instructions on ways to ‘attend to the security of this most important fortress of ours’ became the norm in the epistolary exchange between the government and its governors.¹³⁹ This urgency was fuelled not solely by political motives but, importantly, by economic ones. After all, Venice was first and foremost a maritime empire whose claim to eminence, at least in the sixteenth century, lay in commerce rather than military intimidation and expansionism, despite its gradually declining economic hegemony as the century progressed.¹⁴⁰ This entailed taking drastic measures against Uskok pirates plundering Venetian merchant vessels in the Adriatic and stealing expensive merchandise (such as fine cloths of gold-threaded silk and camlets), which ended up in the market stalls of Trieste, the ‘great centre for selling and reselling’, according to Fernand Braudel.¹⁴¹ The 1573 peace treaty with the Ottomans caused further headaches to the Venetians, because patrolling the Gulf, where the growing violence of Uskok pirates harmed both Venetian and Ottoman interests, was declared the responsibility of the Serenissima.¹⁴² At the turn of the sixteenth century, the Mediterranean had been infested with Uskoks to such a degree that, due to the ensuing rise in maritime insurance prices,¹⁴³ in Braudel’s words, Venice ‘lost its temper’.¹⁴⁴ Consequently, Doge Marino Grimani was forced to order the immediate sinking of any Uskok ships entering waters controlled by Venice,¹⁴⁵ which led to further friction with the Vatican when a papal vessel was captured by mistake and its crew

¹³⁷ ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 5 (16 May 1553; 17 April 1556). ¹³⁸ Cozzi, ‘Venezia regina’. ¹³⁹ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 10, c. 127v. (3 July 1573). ¹⁴⁰ See Lane, Venice. ¹⁴¹ Braudel, The Mediterranean, Vol. I, p. 131. ¹⁴² Fusaro, Political Economies, p. 11. ¹⁴³ Ibid., p. 111. On insurance prices in the period, see Alberto Tenenti, Naufrages, corsaires et assurances maritimes à Venise, 1592–1609 (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1959). ¹⁴⁴ Braudel, The Mediterranean, Vol. I, p. 131. ¹⁴⁵ So threatened were the Venetians by Uskok pirates that the Capi were rumoured to execute them and anyone assisting them ruthlessly, if they were caught interfering with navigation in the Adriatic. See BMCV, Manoscritti Donà delle Rose, n. 79, c. 11r./v., n.d.

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was spared death at the last minute, because the Venetian crew stoutly refused to sacrifice human lives. Indignant, the nuncio formally complained to the doge on behalf of the Pope, only to receive the cold rebuff that the pontiff had already been made aware of the desperate measures that those desperate times called for.¹⁴⁶ It was those desperate times—especially just before and after the War of Cyprus—that the Ten evoked in order to legitimize their routine use of the extraordinary measures which anchored their intelligence and state surveillance pursuits.¹⁴⁷ While some of these, such as gruesome interrogations and assassinations, were employed to torture and eliminate enemy plotters and spies, others, namely letter interceptions and diplomatic gifts and bribes, were used either to deceive rivals or to flatter individuals of influence in foreign courts in order to harvest political favours. Brutal or benign, what is striking about these measures is that they were commonly accepted as a virtue rather than a vice. In fact, the abovementioned Venetian crew’s refusal to execute their papal counterparts was the exception to the rule. On the contrary, there was neither complaint nor public condemnation of such procedures; they seemed to be regarded as normal practice. Accordingly, the Ten did not even have to disarm their critics, because no criticism was made of their, at times, sinister means. This normalization of such measures was not an exclusively Venetian trait. As we saw in the previous chapter, devious practices were widely deployed in the early modern world, as the fateful ending of several Venetian spies in Constantinople demonstrates. For Venice, however, a maritime empire built on commercial transactions, this normalization of extraordinary means transcended the realm of state security to also assume a transactional character. More specifically, as in the case of the employment of mercenary spies, the Ten offered benefits and favours to those who volunteered to support their state surveillance operations through turning in or executing wanted firebrands. In essence, they presented aspects of state security missions as business propositions. This entrepreneurial acumen is not difficult to comprehend, considering the idiosyncrasy of Venetian patricians, who, both as merchants and statesmen, were seasoned in business negotiations and transactions. In this respect, the Council of Ten normalized such extraordinary measures either by reinforcing their necessity for state security and, by extension, the greater good of the community or by presenting them as opportunities to extract further benefits. Accordingly, in Renaissance Venice intelligence operations were not only a rigid, top-down process of authority and control but a concoction of fluid and flexible activities of multiple frontline and supplementary operations that depended upon bottom-up contributions of lay individuals.

¹⁴⁶ ASVat, Segreteria di Stato, Venezia, b. 361, cc. 44r.–45r. (29 May 1599). ¹⁴⁷ In particular, anonymous paid assassinations of Ottoman spies were a constant phenomenon that intensified in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. See Preto, I servizi segreti, pp. 247–60.

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Conclusion The ultimate driver behind the Ten’s central intelligence organization was the security of the Venetian state. The need to safeguard that security intensified during the sixteenth century, when Venice assumed a policy of neutrality, which was necessary in her efforts to keep a gradually weakened grip over her waning empire. For this reason, the methodization of official state secrecy and the systematic organization of her intelligence pursuits, the two pillars of Venetian intelligence organization, had to be undergirded by extraordinary measures that complemented frontline intelligence operations. These measures ranged from extreme schemes of torturous interrogations and assassinations of individual turncoats and chemical warfare techniques for the mass elimination of the enemy to more benign tricks of stealing a march on rivals, such as letter interceptions and material inducements in order to further politico-economic interests. Moreover, while some of these pursuits were assigned to formal state officials, others were brushed under the carpet, actioned by volunteers who, more often than not, were compensated lavishly for their services, ascribing, once again, a transactional character to official state security pursuits. Shrewd and strategic, these extraordinary measures are representative of the variety of ways in which the Venetian state aggressively pursued the security of its dominion. Notwithstanding their supplementary function in Venice’s intelligence operations, these extraordinary measures were fundamental for Venice’s central intelligence organization and, by extension, security. They supported the ongoing defence of the Venetian empire, helped promote Venetian interests, especially in the Levant, and even served as a perverse practice of civic hygiene, sanitizing the dominion by purging it of criminals who posed severe threats to the safety of its inhabitants. Moreover, just as in the case of breaching public secrecy, some of these measures were employed openly in public, as a deterrent, while others were cunningly covered up, so that they would not cause further ruptures in diplomatic relations with other states. Their normalization as the natural consequence of state security pursuits or simply as manifestations of business dealings between the government and the governed will be reflected upon in the Epilogue, which now follows.

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Epilogue Intelligence Organization in Renaissance Venice: An Evaluation

There is no doubt that the obligation of the most faithful subject towards his natural prince is so great that it should not only induce him to advance constantly the benefit of his Serenity but also to devote his possessions and life on every occasion.¹ In a striking demonstration of organizational maturity, Renaissance Venice created a complex, yet efficient state intelligence apparatus that operated like a primordial public sector organization. Notable for the evolving process of bureaucratization, this organization was headed and steered by the Council of Ten, who acted, in a way, as its senior management committee. Through an effective system of managerial delegation that was premised on official rules and regulations, the Ten oversaw the work of their professional informants (ambassadors, governors, and consuls), amateur and casual informers and spies (merchants and other mercenary secret agents or volunteer dilettanti), in addition to professional state officials (such as secretaries and cryptologists), whose administrative work supported Venice’s intelligence operations. The rigid processes of central administration that characterized Venice’s central intelligence organization set it apart from more rudimentary intelligence structures in other Italian and European states. Those, as we saw in Chapter 1, primarily consisted of systematic communication networks between monarchs—or other high-born individuals—and their informers. Extant documents do not offer a direct explanation why Renaissance Venice diverged from the contemporaneous intelligence praxis whereby a group of spies served the interests of an established or aspiring potentate. Nevertheless, we can advance the hypothesis that Venice’s territorial expansion as a republic that had created—and by the mid-sixteenth century, was striving to defend—a vast maritime empire with diverse geopolitical, linguistic, cultural, and even religious traits may have furnished the primary impetus for the creation of a centrally organized ¹ ‘Non è dubbio alcuno, che l’obligo del fidelissimo suddito verso il suo Principe Naturale è tanto grande, che non solo deve eccitarlo ad invigilare continuamente per il beneficio di sua Serenità ma etiandio spender l’havere et la vita propria in ogni occasione’. Anonymous letter to the Council of Ten in, ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 10 (6 July 1586).

Venice’s Secret Service: Organizing Intelligence in the Renaissance. Ioanna Iordanou, Oxford University Press (2019). © Ioanna Iordanou. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198791317.001.0001

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state intelligence service. After all, the primary goal of the Council of Ten was the security of the Venetian state by means of the defence of its dominions. This, as shown in Chapters 5 and 6, was achieved through the employment of official and unofficial informers that intensified at times of imminent threats, and the use of both legitimate and other crafty measures that were deployed in the name of state security. Accordingly, Renaissance Venice’s imperial make-up was amenable to state intelligence organization, especially due to the necessity for centralized control during times of political and economic instability. Undeniably, the Ten’s willingness to delegate tasks and monitor their execution by supporting their underlings in carrying them out effectively played a pivotal role in this centralization process. As a counterexample, Philip II’s monomaniacal control of Spain’s intelligence operations may have hindered the creation of a central intelligence organization, which Venice’s republican politics enabled, notwithstanding Spain’s imperial make-up. Consequently, one important question arises from the above: was centralized intelligence organization effective in Renaissance Venice? To all outward appearances, Venice’s intelligence organization operated in an effective manner. Situated at the top of the organizational hierarchy, the Ten oversaw a widespread, yet interconnected network of professional and amateur informants and intelligence gatherers; they managed their operations within and beyond the dominion’s confines; they issued orders and expected their execution, as well as reports on their execution; they nurtured a pervasive culture of secrecy, rendering Renaissance Venice the republic of secrets par excellence; and, overall, they employed some extraordinary measures for the defence of the Republic that were widely acknowledged and accepted by those directly or indirectly involved with Venice’s secret service. Furthermore, the Council of Ten brought into existence one of the earliest state-funded departments of professional cryptology, supporting the professional development of eminent state cryptologists and the discipline of cryptology, as a whole. From a practical perspective, then, Venice’s secret service operated as efficiently as a well-oiled machine. The Venetian intelligence organization undergirded the Republic’s diplomatic undertakings at a time when territorial expansion had given way to the continuous defence of its possessions. In particular, due to the political and economic tribulations of the sixteenth century, the politics of Türkenfurcht—the fear of the Turks²—that the Venetians employed were as significant as the ossessione turca, the Venetian obsession with all things Ottoman.³ The coexistence of these paradoxical stances is not accidental, since, for a maritime empire that depended on the control of commercial routes between the East and the West for its

² Hans J. Kissling, ‘Türkenfurcht und Türkenhoffnung im 15./16. Jahrhundert: Zur Geschichte eines “Komplexes” ’, Südost-Forschungen 23 (1964), pp. 1–18. ³ Giovanni Ricci, Ossessione turca: In una retrovia cristiana dell’Europa moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002). See also Dursteler, Renegade Women, p. 14.

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survival, Venice’s intelligence pursuits inevitably centred on the protection of its possessions in the Mediterranean and the Levant. It is for this reason that the Venetians simultaneously contested and cajoled the Ottomans, their lasting rival in the Mediterranean. It was also for this reason that they took calculated measures to protect their navigation and fleet, inviting Venetian merchants to take part in their intelligence undertakings. Accordingly, Venice’s central intelligence organization, devised to buttress the security of the Venetian empire, served both political and economic interests. In fact, the latter reinforced the former. Let us explore this contention further. Trade and industry, the cornerstones of the Venetian economy throughout the centuries, had traditionally been premised on secrecy and efficient intelligence.⁴ Thus, as we saw in Chapter 5, Venetian merchants were well-versed in clandestine activities and were even seasoned in the use of amateur methods of encryption. The distinctive characteristic of Venetian merchants lay in the fact that the very individuals who engaged in, and even conquered, international trade on behalf of the Serenissima came from the Venetian ruling class, which brought Venice’s secret service into existence. Accordingly, Venetian merchants simultaneously inhabited two overlapping worlds: that of trade and that of politics. The Venetian merchant and doge Andrea Gritti, who has been discussed in the preceding chapters, is a case in point. It is possible, therefore, that the same patricians who prompted and systematized Renaissance Venice’s intelligence organization were the ones who had been schooled in a tradition of defending Venetian commercial interests as a fundamental constituent of Venice’s politics. While historiography to date has not furnished firm evidence for this hypothesis to ripen into certainty, this peculiarity of the Venetian ruling class, which accounts for the enmeshment of trade, politics, and diplomacy in early modern Venice, suggests that the systematic organization of Venice’s secret service could have been influenced by prime commercial interests. If anything, it is not accidental that the Ten’s intelligence pursuits intensified during the third (1537–40) and the fourth (1570–3) Ottoman-Venetian Wars, when the Venetians were fighting—both through warfare and diplomacy—to protect some of their most prized commercial strongholds in the Levant, such as parts of the Morea and the island of Cyprus.⁵ Accordingly, while there is no archival evidence to support a contention that the Venetian homo oeconomicus, to use Frederic Lane’s term,⁶ directly interfered with the centralized organization of Venice’s secret service, commercial imperatives, alongside sociopolitical value judgements for the maintenance of the Venetian empire, may have accelerated Renaissance Venice’s centralized intelligence organization.⁷ The question that needs to be asked, then, ⁴ See, for example, Juárez Valero, Venecia y el secreto del vidrio. ⁵ See Arbel, ‘Venice’s Maritime Empire’. ⁶ Lane, Andrea Barbarigo, p. 5. ⁷ Future scholarship could explore further the direct or indirect part played by early modern merchants in intelligence operations, and the hitherto neglected role of organized intelligence for the protection of economic, as well as political, interests.

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is not whether intelligence organization was effective in Renaissance Venice, because it was, but how. In other words, how did the Council of Ten, as the committee at the helm of Venice’s secret service, manage to organize and administer such a vast enterprise, mobilizing, aside from the formally appointed Venetian intelligence gatherers and state officials, a large number of amateur spies and informers? The answer to this question is not straightforward but can be found in two distinct Venetian traits: effective organization and the commercial DNA of early modern Venetians.

Intelligence Organization, Commodification, and the Myth of Venice As we have seen throughout this book, the systematic organization of Renaissance Venice’s secret service was emblematic of good government and good governance. As in the administration of the Venetian Arsenal, through their emphasis on rules and regulations, the Ten ascribed a new cultural significance to the method and system of the organization of work, applying them to problems of coordination that were manifest in the realm of state security and, by extension, the Republic’s economy. This organizational novelty was not fuelled by the notion of profit maximization. Instead, it was premised on a ‘public body’ operating on ‘a logic of common good’—in both political and economic terms—for the benefit of the Venetian state as a whole.⁸ In consequence, this organizational innovation was driven by the complexity of coordinating solutions to contemporaneous politicoeconomic issues rather than by pure economic need or imperative. The management and coordination of the work of a variety of individuals involved in Venice’s intelligence organization was part of this complexity. It is not difficult to understand how the Ten oversaw the work of their formally appointed delegates and the rank-and-file that supported them. As we saw in Chapters 3 and 4, the former were expected to serve the Republic in high-ranking diplomatic posts, as their noble birth and social status dictated. The latter were offered their white-collar posts as a privilege of social class. In both cases, these individuals were representative of a ‘professional administrative elite’ comparable to the emerging bourgeoisie that supported the development of monarchic statebuilding or political centralization taking place in other parts of early modern Europe.⁹ Accordingly, the hereditary nature of Venetian state office-holding functioned as a socio-economic privilege offered by the Venetian authorities in exchange for these families’ loyalty, continuous service, and, as we saw in Chapters

⁸ Zan, ‘Accounting and Management Dicourse’, pp. 165–6. ⁹ Hanley, ‘Engendering the State’, p. 6.

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2, 3, and 4, secrecy. It also indicated a ‘conflation of public and private power’ that enhanced Venice’s gradual bureaucratization.¹⁰ Aside from their ostensibly ‘ “patrimonic” behavior’ towards the office-holding nobility and those supporting them, what is striking is the Ten’s influence on ordinary members of Venetian society, who saw it as incumbent upon themselves to contribute, directly or indirectly, to the security of the Venetian state. In the summer of 1583, for instance, a raccordo made by a man named Romulo Roma and his companion Iacomo de Fiorio promised to offer suggestions for repairing a major defect in the fortification of a Venetian stronghold, most probably the city of Verona, which posed severe threats to its security.¹¹ In recompense, they requested the right to liberate two bandits, in addition to a salary of five ducats per month, in order to sustain their families. To all outward appearances, the raccordo was proposed due to their ‘most ardent desire for the exaltation and conservation of this happiest of states’.¹² In essence, however, this gallant offer of service was complemented by their material requests. The aforementioned episode illustrates the public perception of state surveillance and protection as a key component of the smooth functioning and security of the Venetian state. By encouraging people of all ranks, including ordinary commoners who were excluded from political participation, to take part so indirectly in affairs that had significant sociopolitical ramifications, the Venetian authorities attempted and, overall, managed to control the behaviour of the public and get them on their side, seemingly, if not fundamentally, for the benefit of common good.¹³ It seems plausible, therefore, that through the perceived triumph of the common good over personal interests, the Venetian authorities managed to instil in Venetian subjects a certain degree of esprit de corps and institutional loyalty, contrary to scholarly claims that institutional loyalty had not yet developed in the early modern period.¹⁴ Accordingly, by allowing—even actively inviting—lay individuals to take part in clandestine communication through denunciations or other state surveillance activities, formally or informally, the Council of Ten normalized such pursuits, virtually creating a group of people who were united in their common espousal of the Republic’s state security priorities and, by extension, the principles of reciprocal confidence and trust.¹⁵ This representation of ordinary people as eager to act at the Ten’s behest for the common good of the Venetian Republic challenges the conventional appreciation ¹⁰ Ibid., p. 7. ¹¹ ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 10 (3 July 1583). Even though the city of Verona is not explicitly mentioned in the raccordo, we can infer that the place they refer to as ‘una delle sue principalissime città et fortezze maggiori’ is Verona, since the Ten sent a copy of the raccordo to the governor of that city, asking him to corroborate the claim. ¹² Ibid. ¹³ Horodowich, ‘The Gossiping Tongue’, p. 25. ¹⁴ Daniel Szechi, ‘Introduction: The Dangerous Trade in Early Modern Europe’, in Szechi, The Dangerous Trade, pp. 1–21 (here p. 13). ¹⁵ Bok, Secrets, p. 121.

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of early modern commoners as either devoid of political consciousness or rebellious against the state as a result of their exclusion from political participation. In Venice, in particular, the political dormancy of the commoners was deemed a primary sovereign interest, as the city’s unique internal stability was attributed to the political exclusion of the lower classes.¹⁶ Even the guilds and their representatives were offered no political outlet and were closely monitored by the authorities.¹⁷ Still are not bottom-up initiatives such as anonymous denunciations and voluntary or even salaried espionage missions politicized (if not political) acts? What made people who were excluded from politics engage willingly—and more often than not gratis—in such pursuits, even at their own expense at times? This takes us back to the logic of the common good or public interest, in both political and economic terms, which provided the foundation for Venice’s intelligence organization. Indeed, the Ten’s exhortations, which still survive en masse in the Venetian State Archives, echoed the state’s unfaltering preoccupation with prioritizing the servizio publico—the public good—which was the mainstay of Venice’s security and serenity. In nearly every document they produced, from secret reports to public proclamations, they declared the obligation of the populace to support the state’s efforts to uphold that vision of public good prevailing over individual gains. Their penchant for the preservation and survival of this image is nowhere more evident than in the creation of the secret chancery and its inextricable link to state historiography, as we saw in Chapter 3. Remarkably, the commoners’ reports and denunciations that were stored there echoed similar sentiments of ‘the obligation of my loyalty’ to the state.¹⁸ Even non-Venetians seem to have bought into that rhetoric, declaring their wish to ‘dedicate myself and my children to live and die under the most revered banner of Saint Mark’, as Antonio Barata, the hapless amateur spy who was decapitated in Constantinople, wrote to the Ten in his petition to serve the Venetian Republic.¹⁹ This halcyon image of communal serenity triumphing over private interests and disagreements was the essence of the infamous ‘Myth of Venice’.²⁰ Much as historiographical debates about the validity of the ‘Myth of Venice’ are beyond the

¹⁶ De Vivo, Information and Communication, p. 44. ¹⁷ On the guilds of Venice, see Richard Mackenney, Tradesmen and Traders: The World of the Guilds in Venice and Europe, c. 1250—c. 1650 (London: Croom Helm, 1987); Mackenney, ‘Guilds and Guildsmen in Sixteenth-Century Venice’, Bulletin of the Society for Renaissance Studies 2 (1984), pp. 7–18; Francesca Trivellato, ‘Guilds, Technology, and Economic Change in Early Modern Venice’, in Stephan R. Epstein and Maarten Prak (eds.), Guilds, Innovation and the European Economy, 1500–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 199–231. ¹⁸ ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 11 (March 1597). ¹⁹ ASV, CCX, Miscellanea, b. 6 (13 Feb. 1571). ²⁰ On the ‘Myth of Venice’, see James S. Grubb, ‘When Myths Lose Power: Four Decades of Venetian Historiography’, Journal of Modern History 58 (1986), pp. 43–94; Elizabeth Crouzet-Pavan, ‘Towards an Ecological Understanding of the Myth of Venice’, in Martin and Romano, Venice Reconsidered, pp. 39–64; Filippo De Vivo, ‘The Diversity of Venice and her Myths in Recent Historiography’, The Historical Journal 47, no 1 (2004), pp. 169–77.

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scope of this book, Venetian history abounds with instances of ‘community spirit’ instigating action for the purpose of the ‘common good’.²¹ Venetian shipbuilders, for instance, the renowned Arsenalotti, were granted the ‘privilege’ of rowing the Bucintoro—the Doge’s ceremonial state barge—on festive occasions. They were also charged with the ‘honour’ of guarding Saint Mark’s Square during the Great Council assemblies, and patrolling around the square and the Rialto Bridge in the evening. Additionally, they were the city’s designated firefighters.²² Such responsibilities were presented to them as a privilege of service to the state because they were employed in one of Venice’s most important industries, the famed Arsenale. In other words, the Ten drew upon the Arsenalotti’s professional identity in order to entice them to render extra services to the state for the benefit of public good.²³ Persuading ordinary citizens and subjects to contribute to the collective good through their formal or informal involvement in clandestine undertakings was not straightforward, and, undeniably, this involvement is not representative of the entire population.²⁴ To incentivize cooperation in intelligence operations, the authorities masterfully mobilized the quintessential Venetian trait, commerce. In a state where political and diplomatic activities influenced successful commercial transactions and vice versa, intelligence was turned into a trade of information for reciprocal benefits. Against this backdrop, espionage and other state surveillance operations assumed a transactional character whereby the governed expected some kind of benefit in return for services rendered, while the government advanced strategic objectives through such services. The medium of the raccordo—the official proposal for an invention, a service, or a revelation of a secret that could benefit the state in exchange for a favour—is emblematic of this process. The ill-fated Giovanni Antonio Barata was offered employment as a result of a raccordo.²⁵ Similarly, Pietro Partenio, the ingenious cryptologist in the employ of the Ten, assumed his position as cipher secretary due to a raccordo to the Venetian government.²⁶ Consequently, as a flexible and multifaceted activity, intelligence assumed a transactional character between the government and the governed. Overall, for the city that rose from a small community of fishermen to a maritime empire built on commodities, intelligence took the form of a commercial transaction between the government and the governed, a trade as thriving as that ²¹ Crouzet-Pavan, ‘Towards an Ecological Understanding’, p. 57. ²² Davis, Shipbuilders of the Venetian Arsenal, p. 10. ²³ On the Venetian shipbuilders’ sense of professional identity and community, see Iordanou, ‘Maritime Communities’; Iordanou, ‘Pestilence, Poverty, and Provision’. ²⁴ There are no statistical data indicating the percentage of the population that espoused what has been termed the ‘Myth of Venice’. The plethora of denunciations that are stored in the Venetian state archives, however, is suggestive of such a sentiment, which, to be sure, was influenced by several incentives, including compensation in kind or other favours. ²⁵ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, c. 48r./v. (2 Jan. 1570); ibid. c. 64r./v (31 March 1570); ASV, CCX, Miscellanea, b. 6 (13 Feb. 1571). ²⁶ ASV, CCX, Raccordi, Reg. 1 (Unico), cc. 23r.–29v. (18 March 1592).

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of spice, silk, and news. For their cooperation, ordinary members of the Venetian society received several forms of payment: a meagre salary, release from sentences, and income deriving from state offices, but also a dose of pride in their civic loyalty. It is evident, then, that Venice did not just systematize intelligence: it commodified it. Enshrined in this commodification of intelligence, ordinary Venetians, who were excluded from political participation, developed a political purpose within the state, one that was masked in the form of a business transaction.²⁷ Had all this taken place in a more advanced era, this commercial make-up of Renaissance Venice could easily have had Benjamin Franklin snub it as ‘no longer a Nation, but a great Shop’.²⁸ Adam Smith could have fallen into the trap of misperceiving it as a state of shopkeepers or, more precisely, a state ‘whose government is influenced by shopkeepers’.²⁹ Yet Venetians were not altogether devoid of sensitivity, nor were they enticed solely by the lure of rewards. As recent scholarship has shown, ordinary Venetians saw it as incumbent on themselves to contribute to the common good through acts of charity. This predisposition towards charity stemmed from their communal sense of pride, which was partly rooted in a shared professional identity.³⁰ The systematic organization of the Venetian workforce into guilds facilitated this process.³¹ Similarly, the Ten presented the need for intelligence and state surveillance as the privilege of contribution to the security and survival of the Serenissima, the most serene of states. Accordingly, volunteering for daring espionage missions or reporting on possible threats to the state became a symbol of duty to the community. It was under those circumstances that a Venetian subject was made to feel obligated to dedicate ‘his possessions’, even ‘his life’ to the Republic.³² The ‘Myth of Venice’ was in full swing. It becomes apparent from the above that, when it came to participating in hazardous intelligence operations for the benefit of the Republic, eary modern commoners affiliated to the Venetian state were made to feel like an indispensable part of a state apparatus that operated for the public benefit, the preservation of the glorious Venice of the past and the future, prospering by its people for its people. This rather idealized portrayal of the Ten’s running of Venice’s secret service by no means reveals the whole picture. In fact, it is doubtful whether the Council or their delegates considered any myth when going about their daily business. By enabling and normalizing the indirect involvement of ordinary commoners in politically imbued acts, however, they guided people’s actions ²⁷ Iordanou, ‘What News on the Rialto?’; Iordanou, ‘The Spy Chiefs of Renaissance Venice’. ²⁸ Benjamin Franklin to Charles-Guillaume-Frédéric Dumas, August 6, 1781, in Benjamin Franklin, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Barbara B. Oberg., Vol. 35 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), p. 341. ²⁹ Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. Edwin Cannan, Vol. II (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1977), p. 129. ³⁰ Iordanou, ‘Pestilence, Poverty, and Provision’. ³¹ See Mackenney, Tradesmen and Traders. ³² ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f. 10 (7 July 1583).

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towards communal priorities, increasing, as a result, the chances of safeguarding the security of the Venetian state. If this intention developed into the conception of a myth, that is a different story. Even so, the Ten’s ability to construct and articulate a common purpose that helped, in a way, to ‘mobilize the fanatics and immobilize the sceptics’ is testament to their effective administration of Venice’s intelligence organization and the Venetian state as a whole.³³ For, as Jacob Burckhardt appositely remarked, ‘no State, indeed, has ever exercised a greater moral influence over its subjects, whether abroad or at home’.³⁴

Venice’s Secret Service: Key Takeaways The purpose of this book has been to explore and understand the time-specific meaning and functions of intelligence in a society and for a state that is decisively different from those in which modern intelligence operates. Consequently, examining the continuities and discontinuities between the past and the present is beyond the scope of this book. In fact, such a fatuous undertaking would yield poor insights due to the political, socio-economic, and, importantly, technological discrepancies between then and now. As this book reaches its close, however, one more question remains to be asked: what takeaways can the study of Renaissance Venice’s secret service offer to scholars of history, intelligence, and organization studies, or any individual interested in intelligence organization in the period of the Renaissance? I should like to propose four takeaways. The first is that centrally organized intelligence existed long before conventional wisdom dictates. As we saw in Chapter 1, in most early modern European states intelligence was gathered by personal espionage networks run either by crowned heads or their noble acolytes and rivals, as part of their endeavours for personal advancement. In contrast, the intelligence apparatus that the Venetian Council of Ten headed with the support of the Inquisitors of the State is emblematic of a centrally organized secret service that bears some striking similarities with contemporary intelligence organizations, despite the overwhelming lack of technology in that period. Through the analysis of Venice’s secret service, early modern intelligence emerges as a flexible and multifaceted activity that involves the collection, evaluation, and action upon information of diplomatic, political, military, and even economic value that had to be concealed and protected. Involving a variety of agents, from those of patrician stock to those of humble origins, intelligence was not merely a rigid, top-down pursuit but a fluid, bottomup activity. Exploring the manifestations of intelligence from below, the profound entanglement of state and society in that period becomes more sharply distinct. ³³ Keith Grint, The Arts of Leadership (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 410. ³⁴ Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance, p. 67.

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The notion, therefore, that central political systems responsible for the surveillance of internal and external threats are characteristic of the ‘modern’ state no longer stands on firm ground.³⁵ The second takeaway is about organization. As this book has shown, Venice’s secret service was a public service organization based on a proto-modern form of managerialism. Conventional wisdom on the emergence of organizations dictates that ‘managerialism was only invented when the time was metaphysically right’.³⁶ More specifically, the advent of large organizations engaging in innovative managerial practices has been typically presented as a nineteenth-century phenomenon, a natural by-product of the rationality, industrialization, and technological advances that emanated from the Industrial Revolution.³⁷ It is, therefore, almost axiomatic for disciplines such as business history, organization studies, and sociology that the advent of large organizations—commonly confounded with notions of the modern corporation—is inexorably bound to the post-industrial era that has been characterized by the contested term ‘modernity’. The sociologist and organizational theorist Stewart Clegg even postulated the authoritative view that ‘modernity could only be accomplished by organizations’.³⁸ Yet, as this book has shown, Venice had created a centrally administered intelligence organization in two senses of the word ‘organization’: as a bounded entity and as a systematic and progressive process of becoming. Through the transdisciplinary approach of combining contemporary concepts and theorizations from sociology, management, and organization studies with the thorough analysis of early modern archival records and relevant historiography, this book has revealed the indisputable existence of organizational entities and processes in the early modern era. In consequence, the academic orthodoxy that contemporary organizations represent a sense of normality that did not exist in the distant past due to lack of technological advances or rationality is no longer defensible. In fact, if we accept the conventional wisdom that fully formed and functioning organizations are a contemporary phenomenon independent of the past, then we inadvertently strip them of their claim to practical durability in the future.³⁹ This is because, in the continuum of past, present, and future, no entity can claim independence of one end of the spectrum while maintaining its link to the other; a historical location in time requires both.⁴⁰ Seen in this way, while not

³⁵ See, for example, Porter, Plots and Paranoia; Thurlow, The Secret State. ³⁶ Keith W. Hoskin, ‘Examining Accounts and Accounting for Management: Inverting Understandings of “the Economic” ’, in Alan McKinlay and Ken Starkey (eds.), Foucault, Management and Organization Theory: From Panopticon to Technologies of Self (London: Sage, 1998), pp. 93–110 (here p. 102). ³⁷ For the relevant bibliography, see ‘Introduction’, especially nn. 105–7. ³⁸ Stewart Clegg, Modern Organizations: Organization Studies in the Postmodern World (London: Sage, 1990), p. 25. ³⁹ Martin, Past Futures, p. 6. ⁴⁰ On historical durability and survival in collective memory, see Martin, Past Futures.

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ignoring the distinct values ascribed by business historians and organization studies scholars to contemporary organizations, historical scholarship should not overlook the indisputable existence of pre-industrial organizational entities (and practices) as the progenitors of contemporary organizations. Such entities assumed their form in unlikely places such as armies, churches, feudal estates, and, of course, governments.⁴¹ Ultimately, the Ten’s actions with regard to the security—present and future—of the Venetian state, and their provisions for committing their legacy to collective memory, are suggestive of their preoccupation with not only their public image but also their historical image, that is, how they were perceived by their contemporaries and, importantly, how they wished to be remembered in the human journey through history. The third lesson of this book is about intelligence from below and what this means for our contemporary understanding of early modern politics and societies. The inherent difficulty in gaining insights into the psychology of early modern rulers and those ruled by them makes the sweeping appeal of the Council of Ten’s intelligence pursuits across all layers of Venetian society an arresting object of study. Indeed, it is fascinating how a council of so few managed to incite the curiosity of a substantial part of the Venetian population on issues of political and socio-economic weight. This suggests that in early modern Venetian society people of all walks of life were conscious of the fact that what was deliberated within the walls of the Doge’s Palace had a direct impact on their lives. Such deliberations involved several aspects of their existence, including decisions to go to war or changes to the ways people worked, traded, or even thought. In other words, in Renaissance Venice, there was a sense that what happened at the community level affected the individual. The individual, therefore, had to actively find ways to engage with the community on a political level. Through the tools of anonymous denunciations, raccordi, even voluntary espionage and state surveillance assignments, early modern Venetians, who were barred from direct political participation, found ways to take part indirectly in sociopolitical affairs. This sociopolitical staunchness of ordinary Venetians differs from, even contrasts with, the loss of connection and the sense of social and political disengagement people nowadays experience, primarily due to the inability of political institutions to keep pace with the expectations of an ever-increasing, diverse society.⁴² This ⁴¹ See, for example, Mahmoud Ezzamel, ‘Work Organization in the Middle Kingdom, Ancient Egypt’, Organization 11, no 4 (2004), pp. 497–537; Wren, The History of Management Thought; Low Sui Pheng, ‘Managing Building Projects in Ancient China: A Comparison with Modern-Day Project Management Principles and Practices’, Journal of Management History 13, no 2 (2007), pp. 192–210; Ruef and Harness, ‘Agrarian Origins’. ⁴² For debates on Great Britain in particular, see Douglas Carswell, The End of Politics and the Birth of iDemocracy (London: Biteback, 2012); Matthew Flinders, ‘The General Rejection? Political Disengagement, Disaffected Democrats and “Doing Politics” Differently’, Parliamentary Affairs 68, Special Issue Supplement ‘Britain Votes’ (2015), pp. 241–54. On the degeneration of social and political institutions, see, for example, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty (New York: Crown Business, 2012); Niall Ferguson, The Great

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observation should not be taken as an attempt to compare the past with the present. It merely accentuates the contention that any comprehensive study of intelligence, especially in the early modern era, must take into consideration the inextricable relationship between society and the state, both of which emerge from this book as so alien, yet, at times, so astonishingly familiar. Following from the above, the fourth takeaway from this book is that, while Venice’s secret service operated in a society and for a state that are different from those in which modern intelligence operates, there are some similarities with the past that are worth reflecting upon. One similarity pertains to the existence of an efficient, albeit rudimentary—by contemporary standards—system of centrally administered state intelligence organization, created to tackle threats to domestic and foreign security, such as treason, enemy attacks, and foreign infiltration, amongst others. Another similarity reflects the fascination of ordinary people with the attractions of secrecy and espionage, despite the absence of contemporary mass—let alone social—media in that period. The most important similarity with the present, however, is related to the issue of connectivity in a globalized world. Indeed, if the story of Venice’s secret service could teach us anything, it is that despite the inevitable clashes of people, states, cultures, and beliefs a much more interesting underlying story emerging from this study is one of connectivity in an increasingly globalized early modern world. This connectivity is not only manifest in international trade, which Venice conquered and eventually botched.⁴³ Primarily, it is evidenced in the ceaseless movement of people, products, ideas, and secrets beyond the confines of the Venetian empire, across Europe, the Levant, and even Northern Africa. To be sure, this ceaseless movement was not a Renaissance novelty, as scholars of erstwhile eras have aptly shown.⁴⁴ Yet, as the Venetians knew well, in that age of ‘proto-globalization’,⁴⁵ the route to commercial and political domination—and eventually survival—on the international scene was one that inevitably crossed borders. Paradoxically, rather than shutting cross-border routes, the need for intelligence operations expanded them further. Accordingly, if this book is to impart any useful lessons for here and now, an era when the closing of borders and anti-globalization are postulated as the panacea to

Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die (London and New York: Penguin, 2013). On the loss of connection with contemporary politics, see Matthew Flinders, Defending Politics: Why Democracy Matters in the 21st Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) and the bibliography therein. ⁴³ On Venice’s rise and fall as a commercial empire, see Fusaro, Political Economies, and the bibliography therein. ⁴⁴ See, for example, Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (London: Bloomsbury, 2015); Michael Scott, Ancient Worlds: An Epic History of East and West (London: Hutchinson, 2016). ⁴⁵ Fusaro, Political Economies, pp. viii, 91.

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ongoing geopolitical and economic struggles,⁴⁶ it is to make us more reflective about some of the challenges of the twenty first century. These challenges, which include trade, migration, disease, cyberattacks, and climate change, are fundamentally fluid and, like early modern spies, do not stop at the border. Ultimately, what the story of Venice’s secret service teaches us is that there is no history that is irrelevant or immaterial because it refers to the very distant past. This is because, if we are to concede that history has didactic qualities, its value lies not in the likelihood of repetition and replication but in the possibility of analogy and affinity.⁴⁷ It is this malleability of history, its amenability to being revised and retold, that makes it such a fascinating expression of human nature. Because, fundamentally, history tells us as much about us as about the people we study. So, aside from its informative value, if Venice’s Secret Service can prompt us to consider and reflect upon questions such as ‘Who do we want to be?’, ‘How do we want to be remembered in the future?’—as individuals and collectivities, as professionals and organizations—then this has been a worthwhile scholarly endeavour.

⁴⁶ See, for example, Nick Vaughn Williams, Border Politics: The Limits of Sovereign Power (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012); David Held and Anthony G. McGrew, Globalization/Anti-Globalization: Beyond the Great Divide, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Polity, 2007); Joseph E. Stiglitz, Globalization and its Discontents Revisited: Anti-Globalization in the Era of Trump (New York: Penguin, 2017). ⁴⁷ Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).

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Index Abondio, Agustin 66–8 Abravanel, Leon 176–7 Albania 57, 92 Alberti, Griolamo 59 Alberti, Leon Battista 135–6, 142, 156 Alfonso I d’Este, duke of Ferrara 162 Alfonso II d’Este, duke of Ferrara 136 Amadi, Agostino 129–32, 139, 143 Amadi, Piero 143–4, 150, 152, 155 America 38 Antelmi, Bonifatio 73 Antelmi, Valerio 152 Arcudi, Andrea 186 Argenti, Giovanni 138 Argenti, Matteo 138, 175 Assisi, Triphon Benicio de 138 Babli, Alvise 106 Badoer, Alvise 66–7, 70 Badoer, Andrea 210 Badoer, Ferigo 67 Barata, Giovanni Antonio 185–6, 220–1 Barbarigo, Andrea 173 Barbarigo, Antonio 211 Barbarigo, Nicolò 94 Barbaro, Marcantonio 174, 182 Bayezid II, Ottoman sultan 173 Bellaso, Giovanni Battista 135–6 Berengo, Carlo 109 Bergamo 82, 84, 90, 122, 169, 186 Biscotto, Paulo 183 Bohemia 136 Bonelli, Carlo Michele (Cardinal Alessandrino) 120–1 Bonini, Cornelio 190 Borghi, Alvise 140–1, 155 Botero, Giovanni 82 Braudel, Fernard 43, 46, 212 Brescia 82, 84, 88–90, 92, 170, 190 Byzantine Empire 28 Caesar, Julius 134 Calderini, Apollinare 82–3, 118

Cancelleria Ducale (Ducal Chancery of Venice) 81, 107–14, 125, 132, 141–2, 146 Cancelleria Inferiore (notorial chancery of Venice) 108 Cancelleria Secreta (Secret Chancery of Venice) 69, 107–14, 125 access for contemporary chroniclers 115–17 collective memory and 114–19 secrecy as working culture 77–8, 112–13 state histories 116–19 see also cryptography Capodistria (Koper) 195 Cardano, Girolamo 136–7 Carleton, Dudley 61, 207 Casanova, Giacomo 75 Castiglione, Baldessare 153 Cateau-Cambrésis, treaty of (1559) 43, 52, 167 Catherine of Aragon, queen of England 48 Catholic church 13, 41–2, 50, 82, 153 cryptography and 138, 206 Curia 204 Inquisition 91 Jesuits 42 Papal court/Holy See (Rome) 25, 44, 59, 84, 91, 97, 105, 121, 140, 182, 190, 199, 203, 205, 213 spies and 42, 195 Cattaro (Kotor) 98, 169, 197, 205 Cavazza, Costantin 66–8 Cavazza, Gabriel 94 Cavazza, Nicolò 66–8 Cellini, Livio 195 Charles V, Holy Roman emperor and king of Spain 25, 33, 36, 40, 43, 96, 129, 139, 175, 186, 190, 205 Charles IX, king of France 206 Chirana 177–8 code breaking see cryptography, intelligence Colbert, Jean Baptiste 50, 52 Colleoni, Francesco Martinengo 122

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Colorni, Abramo 136–7 Contarini, Alvise 105 Contarini, Gasparo 114 Contarini, Tommaso 209 Contarini, Paolo 94 Cornaro, Pietro 165 Cornoça, Juan de 72 Council of Ten v, 1–3, 5–6, 16, 19–20, 25, 41, 56, 58–9, 66, 81, 95–7, 99–100, 116–17, 119, 123–4, 132, 141–5, 162–4, 166, 170–1, 174, 185–8, 206, 218 as organizational elites 127–8, 215–16, 218–23 assassinations 191, 198–201 breaches of secrecy 67–71, 193, 195 bribes, use of 208–12 chemical warfare, use of 201–4 condoning of torture 196–8 encouragement of denunciations 71–6, 78, 219–20 piombi (political prisons) 75, 84, 90 poisonings 196, 198–200 policing 170 regulation/management of secrecy 60–71, 77–80, 83–95, 102–11, 115, 119–22, 148, 150, 152, 155–7, 167–9, 174–9, 181–4, 190–8, 205, 207–8, 212–14, 222–3, 225 role of in Venetian governance 7–15, 63–4, 215 see also Cancelleria Secreta, cryptology, Inquisitors of State, Venice, Venetian secret service Crema 82, 84, 88, 91, 98, 170 Cromwell, Thomas 48, 49 Coronel, Francesco 197–8 cryptography/cryptology 17, 46–7, 53, 64, 81, 100–7, 129, 133, 156, 221 black chambers 132–3, 138, 141, 208 cifristi 141, 143–4, 147, 152, 155–7 ciphers 64, 100–7, 119, 129, 132–6, 138, 140–8, 150, 152, 154, 165, 173, 175–6, 194, 206–8 codebreaking v–vi, 39–40, 103, 128, 132–3, 141–3, 152, 206 control and regulation of by the state 148, 150, 152 diplomatic use of 138–9, 206 history of 133–7 need to update ciphers 107 Ottoman attempts to ban 100 professionalisation of in Venice 128–33, 139–44, 152–7, 188, 216, 221

recruitment of cryptographers in Venice 144–7 state cryptographer/s (Venice) 104 training of cryptographers in Venice 132–3, 141–4 zifra grande 103 zifra piccola 103 see also code breaking, Council of Ten, intelligence, Venetian secret service Cyprus 1–2, 17, 20, 29–30, 32, 59, 88, 141, 181, 183, 209, 217 Famagusta 190 Da Ponte, Nicolò, doge of Venice 209 Dalla Pigna, Nicolò 203 Damascus 163 Daversa, Andrea 163 de Boninis, Bonino 174–5 de Fiorio, Iacomo 219 de Franceschi, Andrea 114–15 de Iacomo, Simon 182–3 de’ Medici, Alessandro, duke of Florence 40 de’ Medici, Catherine 206 de’ Medici, Cosimo I, duke of Florence and grand duke of Tuscany 40 de’ Medici, Ferdinando, grand duke of Tuscany 61 de Nicolò, Marco 186 de la Marra, Don Cèsar 206 Della Porta, Giovanni Battista 57, 135, 137, 142 Dolce, Giovanni 72 Dolceto, Andrea 173 Don John of Austria 183 Doria, Andrea 169 Dragostervich, Rade 197 Dutch Republic/Netherlands 4, 37–8, 44, 105 Durazzo (Durres) 29 Egypt 29 Elizabeth I, queen of England vi, 37–8, 48 England vi, 4, 30, 37–8, 44–5, 54, 61, 83–4, 105, 207 intelligence networks of 47–50 London 57, 162, 193 relationship with Catholic church 48 Wars of the Roses 47 Fedeli, Vicenzo 40 Ferdinand II, king of Aragon 43, 116 Ferrara 136 Florence 30, 39–40, 61, 64, 86, 104–5, 136, 162, 194 intelligence networks of 40

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 France 4, 18, 30–1, 37–8, 43, 45, 50, 54, 66–8, 84, 89, 102, 105, 140–1, 146, 167, 175, 180, 185, 193, 206–7 cryptography 138 intelligence networks of 50–2, 193 Franceschi, Alberto 105 Franceschi, Girolamo 102, 143–4, 147–8, 150, 152, 155 Francis I, king of France 52 Franklin, Benjamin 222 Friuli 99 Garzoni, Tommaso 18, 153, 161 Gazanfer Ağa 178 Genoa 30, 41, 44, 98, 168–9, 171 Germigny, Jacques de 94 Giorgione (Giorgio Barbarelli de Castelfranco) 158 Granatin, Ibrahim 174 Gradenigo, Piero, doge of Venice 9 Greco, Franceschino 162 Greece 16, 134 Candia (Heraklion) 106 Cephalonia 29–30, 84, 96, 203 Cerigo (Cythera) 104 Chania 106, 197 Corfu 29, 32, 56, 84, 96–7, 101, 163, 169, 182, 186, 191, 196, 201 Coron 28, 30, 32 Crete 29, 32, 84, 104, 169, 186, 194, 197–8 Malvasia (Monemvasia) 29, 66 Modon 28, 30 Morea 28, 66, 217 Nauplion 29, 66 Negroponte (Euboea) 28–9 Thessaloniki 176 Zante 29–30, 84, 96, 104, 106, 169, 201 Gregolin, Iseppo 104 Grimani, Marino, doge of Venice 212 Gritti, Alvise 59 Gritti, Andrea, doge of Venice 59, 114–15, 129, 139, 173, 217 Gritti, Giovanni 208 Guzmán de Silva, Diego 45, 61, 68, 119, 183 Hersekzade Ahmed Pasa 173 Heidelberg 135 Henry II, king of France 52, 167 Henry III, king of France 138 Henry IV, king of France 138 Henry VIII, king of England 48 Herodotus 134 Holy Roman Empire 1, 25, 30, 40, 42–3, 71, 83–4, 92, 103, 166, 193, 205–7, 209 Hungary 140, 166

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Ibrahim Bey 100, 211–12 India 29, 35, 97 Inquisitors of State (Inquisitori di Stato) v, 9, 13–15, 19–20, 25, 41, 60–1, 67–8, 72–3, 75, 81, 86, 96–7, 162–3, 167, 180, 192–4, 205–6, 223 Tribunale Supremo 192 see also Cancelleria Secreta, Council of Ten intelligence v–vi, 2, 20–38, 54–5, 71, 79, 81, 132, 137, 156–7, 162, 189–91, 225–6 bribes and v, 93, 167, 176–8, 192, 204, 208–13 central organization of in Venice v, 3–19, 56, 58, 84–90, 92–5, 101, 106, 109, 120–8, 184, 214–24 communication and 2, 4, 6–7, 53, 61–5, 80–1, 83–6, 89, 92, 94, 101–7, 125, 131, 167, 175, 188, 204–8, 215, 219 counter intelligence 13, 68, 72–3, 90, 191–5, 198 definition of early modern secrecy 77–8 England and 47–50 France and 50–2 invisible ink 100, 130, 185, 206 Italy and 38–42 Jews and 175–9 merchants 172–5 oaths of secrecy 62–3, 73, 111 Ottoman Empire and 52–4, 57, 62, 198–201 private citizens 174–5, 179–87 provided by Venetian officials working outside of Venice 168–71 role of letters in 95–9, 131, 167, 171, 204–8 secrecy as state activity 56–71, 78–9, 125, 213 secrecy as social capital 76–80 Spain and 42–7 travel time for correspondence 98–9 Venice’s central place in exchange of 35–7, 98–9, 171–2, 207 see also Council of Ten, cryptography/ cryptology, Inquisitors of State, organization, spies, Venetian secret service Ireland 44 Italy 3–4, 11, 29, 43–5, 50, 52–3, 61, 65, 106, 108, 123, 135, 137–8, 140, 171–4, 188, 197 city states 21, 30, 37–42, 54, 124, 153, 156, 168, 195, 215 see also Bergamo, Brescia, Crema, Ferrara, Florence, Friuli, Genoa, Mantua, Modena, Milan, Naples, Padua, Palmanova, Perugia, Pisa, Ravenna, Rome, Treviso, Venice, Verona, Vicenza

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James I and VI, king of England and Scotland 83, 165 Jews 15, 53, 202 Ponentine 177 role in intelligence gathering and dissemination 175–7 Julius II, pope 116 Kara Ahmed Pasha 207 Kemal Reis 35 Ladislaus V, king of Hungary 140 Lanza, Pedro 201 Laurerio, Fernando Goes 90–1 Lio, Roberto 104 Lionello, Giambattista 152, 155 Lippomano, Girolamo 61, 173 Louis VII, king of France 116 Louis XIII, king of France vi, 38, 51 Louis XIV, king of France vi, 50–2, 86 Ludovici, Giambattista de 139, 141 Lyons 98 Machiavelli, Niccolò 12, 58, 116, 156 Malespini, Celio 208 Malipiero, Domenico 36 Malta 56, 100 Manolesso, Emilo Maria 118 Mantua 136, 138 cryptography 138 Marcello, Girolamo 36 Margliani, Giovanni 94 Marin, Alvise 144–5, 147 Marin, Ferigo 104, 144–5, 147–8, 150, 152, 155 Marin, Zuan Francesco 141–5 Marin, Zuane 145 Marin de Zuane, Alvise 145 Martinelli, Rubbian 197 Martolosso, Girolamo 67 Mary I, queen of England 44 Mary, queen of Scotland vi Maximilian I, Holy Roman emperor 116, 162 Maximilian II, Holy Roman emperor 120–1 Medici, Ottavio 152, 155 Mehmet II, Ottoman sultan 29 Mendoza, Diego Hurtado de 33 Michiel, Beatrice (Fatima) 178 Michiel, Melchior 170 Michiel, Pietro 170 Milan 30, 39, 44, 64, 82–3, 86, 88–90, 98, 103, 121, 163, 165, 168, 170, 185–6, 194 cryptography 137–8 intelligence networks of 39–40

Modena 162 Montesquieu, Charles de 162 Morcenigo, Andrea 115 More, Thomas 133–4 Murad III, sultan 177, 200 Muscorno, Giovanni 203 Mustafa Celebi 200 Mustafa dai Cordoani 199–200 Mustafa Pasha 56 Naples 39, 44, 96–7, 105, 163, 176, 186, 206, 210 Academy of Secrets 57–8 Nasi, Joseph 15 Navagero, Andrea 116 Northern Africa 6–8, 15–16, 25, 108, 226 Novigrad 14 Nurbanu Sultan 177–8, 200 organization 2–9, 11, 14, 19, 21–4, 31, 87–9, 94, 215–25 as representation of good government 123–5, 218 effect of bureaucratisation on 126–7 industrial 21–4, 123, 153, 192, 224–5 professionalisation 87, 95–9, 107–8, 110, 152–6, 188 see also Cancelleria Secreta, cryptography/ cryptology, intelligence Ottoman Empire 1–2, 4, 6, 14, 30–5, 37–8, 42, 45, 53–7, 62, 66, 83, 88, 98, 163, 166, 168, 171, 176–84, 186, 190–1, 196–9, 202, 206–7, 209–11 chemical weapons 203–4 conflict with Persia 171 Constantinople v, 1, 15, 19, 28, 36, 56, 59, 64, 68, 70, 88–9, 93–4, 96–100, 103–5, 119, 163, 168–71, 173–8, 181–3, 185–6, 193, 197–201, 205–7, 209–11, 220 intelligence networks of 52–4, 100, 196, 199–201 relationship with Venice 13, 18–19, 36, 57–8, 93–5, 103, 157, 169, 173, 181, 193–4, 200–1, 204, 212–13, 216–17 see also wars and battles Padua 84, 91, 118, 205 university 180, 199, 202 Pallavicina, Camilla 162–3 Palmanova 84 Pargalı Ibrahim Pasha 60 Partenio, Pietro 148, 150, 221 Pellegrini, Pietro 102, 147 Pelliciari, Bartolomeo 162 Pellicier, Guillaume 66, 162–3 Pérez, Antonio 167

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 Persia 171, 175 Perugia 160 Phelippes, Thomas vi Philip II, king of Spain vi, 2, 25, 38, 42–7, 52, 61, 94, 96, 103, 119, 138, 156, 167, 183, 186, 193, 210, 216 Philip III, king of Spain 194 Pianta, Francesco 158–9, 160 Pisa 38 Pius V, pope 120 Plutarch 134 Polybius 134 Portugal 4, 13, 31, 35, 99–90 Prague 83–4 Priuli, Lorenzo 194–5 publishing/printing 34, 118, 137 Querini, Stefano 61 Ragusa (Dubrovnik) 32, 206 Ravenna 205 Renier, Alvise 93, 210 Richelieu, Cardinal (Armand Jean du Plessis) 51–2 Ripa, Cesare 160–1 Rodriga, Daniel 177 Roma, Romulo 219 Rome 30, 39, 43, 134, 138, 205 see also Catholic church Rossignol, Antoine vi Rosso, Andrea 105 Rudolph II, Holy Roman emperor 84 Rüstem Pasha Opuković 210 Sach, Soltan 181–2 Sala, Giulio 170 Sánchez, Alonso 205 Sanseverino, Ferdinando, prince of Salerno 207 Sanudo, Daniele 61 Sanudo, Marino 11, 115, 140, 175, 181 Saruk, Hayyim 176–7 Savary, Jacques 207 Savoy 30, 39, 44, 102, 111, 121 secrecy see intelligence Selim II, Ottoman sultan 15, 178 Semiz Ali Pasha 167–8 Servo, Leonin 174 Sforza, Francesco I 39, 137 Sforza, Francesco II 40–1 Shakespeare, William 34 Sherley, Anthony 83–4 Simonetta, Antonio 39 Simonetta, Cicco 39, 137–8 Skradin 184

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Smith, Adam 222 Sokollu Mehmet Pasha 174, 182, 185, 199–200 Soranzo, Giacomo 195 Soranzo, Giovanni 105 Soriano, Manoli 184 Soro, Giovanni vi, 140–1, 152 Sozomeno, Giovani 203 Spain 2, 4, 25, 30, 34, 38, 50, 52, 54, 84, 97–8, 121, 167, 193–4, 206 cryptology 46, 103, 139, 156 intelligence networks of 42–7, 72, 94, 119–20, 193–4, 201, 210, 216 Spalato (Split) 29, 177, 203 spies 1–3, 38, 40–2, 45–7, 72, 83, 87, 97, 122, 158–62, 164, 166, 169, 171, 174–9, 182–4, 187–9, 193–201, 206, 213, 215, 227 amateur 7, 18–19, 45–6, 51, 81, 85–6, 123, 157, 164, 171–2, 183, 187–8, 215–16, 218, 220 ambassadors and governors 19, 42, 69–70, 88–9, 94, 96, 101, 104, 123, 164–71, 173, 179, 187, 189, 193–5, 206, 215 citizens as 179–80 confidenti 162–4, 166–8 convicts 84–5, 184–6 definitions of 18, 160, 162–4 esploratori 163, 169, 194 mercenary 40, 72, 124, 157, 164, 177, 179, 186–7, 189, 191, 213, 215 merchants as 6, 35–6, 84, 157, 164, 171–5, 179, 187, 189, 193–4, 213, 215, 217 negative connotations of 162–3 punishments of 46, 196–201 risks 186–7 women 178–9 see also Catholic church, Council of Ten, cryptography/cryptology, England, France, intelligence, organization, Ottoman Empire, Spain, Venetian secret service Steno, Michiel, doge of Venice 140 Suetonius 134 Suleiman the Magnificent, Ottoman sultan 37, 57, 59 Syria 97 Tacitus 58 Tiepolo, Antonio 210 Tiepolo, Baiamonte 9 Tintoretto (Jacobo Robusti) 158 Tintoretto, Domenico v Titian (Tiziano Vecelli) 158, 167 Trau (Trogir) 183–4 Tremblay, François Leclerc du (Père Joseph) 51 Trevisan, Dominico 210

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Treviso 84, 91 Trithemius, Johannes 135–7, 142, 156 Trieste 212 Vachero, Giulio Cesare 41 Valier, Giovanni Francesco 66, 68 Vano, Gerolamo 3 Varchi, Benedetto 40, 162 Vendramin, Francesco 46 Venice ambassadors v, 1–2, 12, 19, 25, 40, 46, 61, 64, 68–70, 84–7, 91–2, 94, 97–8, 101–3, 105, 109, 111, 115, 120–1, 140, 150, 156, 164–9, 171–2, 175–6, 179, 186–7, 189, 193–5, 206, 208–10, 215 Arsenale 14–15, 88, 123, 185, 218, 221 Arsenalotti 221 broglio 70–1 bureaucracy 5–6, 16, 21, 41, 55, 66, 85–7, 92, 107, 110, 112–14, 122, 124–6, 141, 144–5, 157, 180, 215 Cinque Savi alla Mercanzia (Venetian Board of Trade) 208 Cittadini de intus/cittadini de intus et extra 180 cittadini originarii 85, 112, 141, 144, 179, 189 Collegio 11, 20, 60, 62, 86, 111, 119, 121–2, 145, 181 consuls 25, 84, 93, 103, 168, 170–1, 179, 215 currency 27, 35 denouncement of fellow citizens 72–9, 89, 192, 219 diplomacy 5–6, 10, 15–19, 21, 25, 31–2, 34–5, 38–9, 55, 59–64, 66–7, 69–71, 84–7, 89, 93–5, 97, 100–3, 105, 108–9, 111, 123, 128, 137–40, 147–8, 156–7, 164–8, 170–4, 178–9, 186–9, 191, 193–4, 200, 204–5, 207–18, 221, 223 doge v, 9–10, 63, 141, 183, 213 economy/trade/commerce 2–3, 5–6, 9, 14–17, 20, 23, 25–37, 54, 57, 66, 84, 87, 95, 98, 108, 126–8, 144, 146, 157, 164, 166, 171–5, 177, 180, 185, 193–4, 204, 208–9, 212–14, 216–18, 220–3, 225–7 fall of the Republic (1797) 75 glassmaking 194 governance of 15–17 governors 1, 17, 19, 25, 39, 64, 82, 84, 86, 88–9, 92, 94, 96, 99, 101–6, 123, 163, 165, 168–71, 179, 182–4, 187, 189–90, 193–4, 197–8, 201, 203–6, 212, 215 Great Chancellor (Cancellier Grande) 110–11, 114, 141, 144, 147, 152 literacy 65–6 Maggior Consiglio 11, 13, 60, 69, 108, 221

military 2, 5–7, 10, 14, 17, 19, 29, 30–2, 38, 60, 82, 87, 100–1, 112, 117, 123–4, 127–8, 134, 136, 162, 165–6, 169–70, 194, 202, 223 ‘Myth of Venice’ 220–3 navy 7, 14–15, 30, 32, 34, 87, 96, 101, 124, 128, 198, 212–13 oligarchy 10, 13 plague 141–2, 199–200, 202, 207 popolo grande 181 popolo minuto 181 postal system 35, 98, 207 relationship with Europe 16, 20, 25, 29–36, 48, 61, 98–9, 120–1, 165–6, 183, 207–8, 215 relationship with local populations 16 relationship with the Ottoman Empire 18, 29–30, 32–4, 36–7, 45, 56–7, 62, 64, 66, 89, 93–4, 100, 103, 157, 171, 173–4, 178, 181, 193–4, 198, 200–4, 207–8, 212–13, 216–17 Rialto 34–5, 63, 221 Scuola Grande di San Rocco 158 Senate 11, 13, 16, 20, 40, 59–60, 62, 66, 69, 71–2, 85–6, 93, 97, 101, 108–9, 111–12, 120–2, 144–5, 150, 152, 193 Stato da Mar (overseas territories) 8, 16–17, 28–32, 84, 103, 168, 193, 205, 212 Stato da Terra / Terraferma (Venetian territories on Italian mainland) 8, 14, 16–17, 84, 122, 168, 205, 212 zonta 13 see also Cancelleria Ducale, Cancelleria Inferiore, Cancelleria Secreta, Council of Ten, Inquisitors of State, spies, Venetian secret service, wars and battles Venetian secret service 3–9, 11, 18, 20–2, 24–5, 30, 35, 79–80, 84–7, 107, 111, 122, 127–8, 157, 164–6, 168, 180, 187–8, 215–18, 222–7 assassinations 191, 199–201 counter-intelligence 13–14, 191–5, 198, 204–12 Scuola dei giovani di lingua 93 organization of 87–101, 121–7 see also Cancelleria Secreta, Council of Ten, cryptography/cryptology, Inquisitors of State, intelligence, organization, spies Verona 82, 84, 88–9, 91, 219 Vicenza 84, 91, 204 Vienna 120 Viète, François, Seigneur de la Bigotière 138 Vilandrino, Marchio 199, 202 Vussoni, Vicenzo 105 wars and battles Battle of Agnadello/League of Cambrai (1509) 18–19, 116–17 Fourth Crusade (1204) 28

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 Lepanto, battle of (1571) 30, 190 Ottoman-Venetian (first, 1463–79) 29 Ottoman-Venetian (second, 1499–1503) 30 Ottoman-Venetian (third,1537–40) 14, 32, 64, 217 Ottoman-Venetian (fourth, ‘War of Cyprus’, 1570–3) 1, 17, 30, 32, 59, 119, 141, 176–7, 181–2, 184–5, 190, 203, 210, 212–13, 217 religious 25, 38, 52 Siege of Malta (1565) 56

Walsingham, Francis vi, 48–50 Willaert, Adrian 139 Wordsworth, William 30 Wotton, Henry 165 Wyche, Peter 207 Yunus Bey 211 Zaffardo, Giovanni Alvise 73 Zara (Zadar) 29, 84, 104, 106, 122

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