Sanudo Diaries: Defending the Homeland: July 10, 1513; restricting convents in 1509

1513: Sanudo speaks before the Great Council and the doge. The bold is my emphasis.

Editor's Note: "This was not easy for him. His intervention was in response to a speech by the doge, who wanted patricians to help defend Padua and Treviso, newly under attack by the imperial armies. But, said the doge, all debtors must at the same time pay half of their debts. Those who did not would be forever excluded from the Senate and from all other positions and offices, and they would not be able to occupy offices to which they had been elected during their absence." p. 10

Sanudo Diaries: July 10, 1513; (16:489-91): "And seeing that no one spoke about the matter of great importance, it seemed to me that I should put off every consideration save the good of the homeland, and so I rose from the second bench, where I was sitting, and I made the voting stop and went to contradict..." praying "that God would give me courage because I had never yet spoken in the Great Council,"

"Most serene Prince, most illustrious Signoria, most excellent Council, my most excellent fathers and gentlemen...: These are the bulwarks and suburbs of the city of Venice. For their defense, we must send patricians who will not spare their persons or their purses or anything else in the world.... But this proposal, in my opinion will not have the effect desired by Your Excellencies, because it proposes that those who are debtors, by going, become eligible to be nominated and elected to offices but may not enter into them without paying them half of their debt. This is a terrible proposal, because a poor gentleman, for the love of his homeland, will tighten his belt to find some funds and will go to help his homeland by defending these two cities, and Your Excellencies, if this gentleman is nominated to some position, it will honor him, but he cannot enter the office because he does not have the means to pay. Although he has spent his own money for arms and has put his own life on the line, he will have achieved nothing, nor will he be able to enjoy the grace of Your Magnificence. Therefore I fervently beseech you, gentlemen, councillors, heads of the Quarantia, amend this proposal so that those who go may, for a while, compete for office and, if chosen, may enter freely into these offices as has been done in the past years...."

"We were 1300 in number, no one spat, and I was praised universally by all. And when I came down from the podium, everyone praised and blessed me, and the doge called me and lauded my opinion, saying, "You have always been dear to us." And the councillors amended the proposal ..., and it was passed."

nedits: Just in time. Within a couple months in 1513, Sanudo could go to the top of the bell tower of San Marco and see the fires set by the imperial forces on dry land. There's some decent photos of the view from the top of the tower if you scroll down the page at the link a ways.

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• Nuns on the radio, TODAY. The president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious representing 80% of nuns in the US was on Teri Gross. They are being mandated to more closely adhere to Vatican language on topics like birth control. She said, but "God has no gender". "If the rights of the fetus trumps the right of all those that are already born ... then that is a distortion."  "Can we be Catholic and have a questioning mind?" Forty minutes.

1509, during the dogeship of Leonardo Loredan (con't), Sanudo talks about convents. A lot.

nedits: With the news of such a great many number of springtime failures all over Italy for Venetian forces coming in, - not just the recent calamity at Agnadello - and still in the early days of this all-out assault by so many shifting external powers against the livelihood of Venice and all that she stood for, the Senate found in it's good nature to take the time to dole out punishments and threats against those who would contravene the traditions of the city's convents and Conventuals. Also, so that they could make some of their own rules.

Editor's note: "... in the Senate a month later, severe measures were proposed. The details of these measures reveal how difficult it was to implement these strictures against aristocratic resistance." p. 382.

Sanudo Diaries: June 29, 1509: (8:454-56); "Preserving all our laws and ordinances in this matter that deal with the wicked and sacrilegious transgressors against the convents of consecrated nuns dedicated to divine service and worship, and especially that of May 30, 1486, it is proposed that [a new law] be added that all those who have traffic with nuns, within the convent or outside it, and likewise those who take nuns away from the convents, even if they claim they have not had commerce with them, shall, in addition to the penalties of imprisonment and fines that the preceding laws imposed, be perpetually banished from Venice and its environs and be prohibited from holding office or enjoying any benefit or emolument of our government in any of our territories. And if they shall be found within our boundaries and captured, they will be confined to our Strong Prison for two years and then returned to exile, and this as many times as they violate their exile. And those who apprehend and present to our authorities any of these sacrilegious men will receive 500 gold ducats, at 124 soldi to the ducat, of the criminal's goods, which will forever remain obligated to this reward.... Truly, nuns who leave their convents for any reason shall be immediately detained and consigned to the most reverend patriarch, whom the Signoria prays and entreats to punish them so as to make them a most significant example to others. Indeed, those who dare to accept any of these nuns into their homes or arrange for others to accept them, whoever they may be, shall be banished for five years from Venice and its environs.... In truth, the servants, the boatmen, and others who, in whatever fashion, transport these nuns away from the convents either through this city or elsewhere must be imprisoned for six months and shall be whipped from San Marco to Rialto. And the same penalty will be applied to those who row anyone around the convents. And because in these convents of Conventual nuns are employed female servants in secular dress, who come and go out of the convents as they please, causing much trouble with their go-between activities, it is decreed that these servants must depart from the convents within fifteen days.... But if the aforesaid nuns wish to have persons in their service, they must be servant nuns, according to the constitution of their rule, who will wear religious habits outside the convent.... And no pardon, favor, revision, or compensation may in any way be made of these penalties or of the above statute. ..."

Editor's note: "Such severe measures elicited at least one skeptical response, that of Sanudo's fellow diarist Girolamo Priuli, who remarked that "for about one month this law will be observed, but then everything will be as before, because, 'a Venetian law lasts but a week'." Over the next decade and a half the old Venetian proverb proved both right and wrong. For there was now in Venice a patriarch determined to pursue the reformatio of the Venetian church." p. 383

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All quotes as Sanudo Diaries or Editor's notes or Editor's Footnotes from Venice, Cita Excellentissima, Selection from the Renaissance Diaries of Marin Sanudo translated by Linda L Carroll,  editors: Patricia H LaBalme and Laura Sanguineti White, published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008