Famous for being a marine empire, Venice was both protected and constrained by its environment. One example of how the limits in the physical size of the city reveals itself, is in how it dealt with its criminals. The lagoon was only so big, the amount of actual land to build upon was always at risk and needed to be improved upon. With so much to protect in its population, its mores, its cultural lifeblood, with so many ways for a population to err and stray, where was there room to punish the criminals?
Exile was a preferred course, but where to keep them in the meantime before sentencing, and what about those who could not be simply sent out of the city? Venice in those times did keep a prison and it was maintained in the center of the city. A prison break shows some of the problems of the city and its would be escapees.
Sanudo Diaries: August 5, 1497 (1:704-5) "It happened during the night in this city that a number of prisoners who were serving life sentences at prisons in Piazza San Marco -- decided to escape together. They chose a captain; he was Lodovico Fioravante, who had his father killed at the church of the Friars Minor on Holy Friday evening. The leaders were Marco Corner, "of the beard", serving a life sentence for sodomy, and Beneto Oetriani, for thievery, and quite a few others. In the evening of the fourth, when the guards of the prison, the prisoners had the chance to take them and disarm them. Thus they went from prison to prison [cell to cell], breaking out. Gathering strength, they got as far as the very new prison [newest cells] and were very close to breaking out completely. Many bows and arrows were kept there. And it happened that on that night two Saracens wanted to be the first to escape through a privy, and one escaped, and the other one drowned. The one who got away started to call for a boat in the night. One of the boats of the Council of Ten was passing, and when it stopped to pick him up, the [boatmen] began to wonder, since he was dark-skinned, if he was escaping, and they frightened him. From him they heard about the escape plot hatched by the prisoners.
The officials were called, and a strong guard was posted for the night. On the morning of the fifth, the heads of the Council of Ten were called: this month they are Cosma Pasqualigo, Nicolo da ca' da Pexaro, and Domenego Beneto." [pp. 142-3]
Editor's footnote: "The heads of the Council of Ten rotated every month."
Once those escaping could get out of the prison, then they had to leave the city. Someone had to have a boat. Also notice that skin tone is what made this escapee suspicious to the boatman and that this fact, Sanudo does not fail to list, as a mark for suspicion.
Sanudo Diaries (con't): "Together with a number of officials, they went to the prison, and the prisoners were very stubborn. In the end, burning straw was used to force smoke through all the windows of the prison, so that the smoke suffocated them. The heads of the Council of Ten issued a decree that if on the third try they did not respond and show obedience, they would all be hanged by the neck. Thus Marco Corner was the first to surrender, and then the others. They were put back in their prisons with more care, and the guards were ordered to pay more attention. I decided to include this incident because it is noteworthy."
Editor's footnote: "See Sanudo's entry for 19 August 1514 (18:445-48) for another jailbreak." [p. 143]
It should be remembered that using fire was a very dangerous weapon in such a crowded city in those days, even to control dangerous criminals.
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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
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