Abstract
Challenging the traditional view that credits the emergence of public opinion to the Enlightenment era, this article claims that the modern Western roots of the concept can be already identified in the political environment of the urban communes in late medieval and Renaissance Europe. Consequently, its focus is on the role that public opinion played in the constitutional framework of one of the most prominent European city-states, the Republic of Venice. In order to capture the complexity of the issue, the study juxtaposes normative political ideals against the social praxis of Venetian political life. This historical excursion culminates with an account of the dramatic defeat at Agnadello in 1509, which serves as a backdrop illustrating not only the deep impact that public opinion exercised over Venetian domestic politics but also the extensive international role that it played in the realm of the Renaissance world of politics, economics, and warfare.
Writing in 1503, the Venetian banker and chronicler Girolamo Priuli (1912–1938, Vol. 2, pp. 312–313) lamented that there were two things “very dangerous in governing the state or a republic.” Both were mutually related, and the author identified them as (1) the “damned ambition” of populist politicians who do not hesitate to pander (2) to the opinione vulgare—a term, this essay argues, which can be reasonably translated into the modern political jargon as an earlier iteration of the concept of public opinion. Yet, ever since Jürgen Habermas (1962/1989) published his influential thesis on the origins of the public sphere, communication scholars on both sides of the North Atlantic firmly espoused the idea that public opinion is both etymologically and epistemologically a product of the Enlightenment period.
In the last few decades, such a claim became so deeply engrained into our thinking by its constant repetition, that it assumed genuinely hegemonic dimensions in the communication circles. This makes it difficult for any new research to challenge such taken-for-granted assumptions, mainly because they rest upon the authority of some of the most renowned scholarly authorities (cf. Baker, 1990; Donsbach, 2008; Donsbach and Traugott, 2008; Glynn, Herbst, Shapiro, & O’Keefe, 2004; Price, 1992). Some historians such as Landi (2006), De Vivo (2007a), Rospocher (2012a), and Salzberg (2014) recently began to challenge such notions by systematically exploring the overall role of public communication in Italian Renaissance city-states, although the professional sensitivities of mainstream historians preclude them from fully delving into deeper sociological speculation and comparative analysis across wider spans of time and space. Yet, their undoubtedly pioneering work opens up many new trajectories of historical exploration. Rospocher’s (2012a) edited volume is a good synthesis of similar efforts, a direct invitation for social and political sciences in the Anglo-Saxon world to liberate themselves from their ethnocentric and disciplinary constraints, and to seriously start examining alternative historical periods and social organizations.
Indeed, it was Belgian historian Henry Pirenne (1915) who, half a century before Habermas, already claimed that the roots of modern Western democracy—such as elementary forms of self-government, rational public debate, and argumentation—need to be searched for among the nascent urban communities of the High Middle Ages (ca. 1000–1300 CE). Accordingly, the goal of this essay is to confront Pirenne’s thesis with the Habermasian argument and by doing so further problematize the discussion about the origins of public opinion as one of the fundamental concepts of social philosophy.
In order to capture the nuances of its gradual historical development, this essay conceptualizes public opinion as a threefold phenomenon that can be defined in its most elementary form as a set of tacit social practices. Under certain circumstances, such practices may be inadvertently turned into a normative ideal by a society that by simple trial and error arrives at the point when it empirically recognizes popular consensus as an important source of political legitimation, even before becoming aware of the concept itself at the epistemological level. Only after this phenomenon attracts the attention of political philosophers does it become defined also as an abstract philosophical category and as such enters the realm of social analysis.
Consequently, this study argues that at the level of social praxis, public opinion was manifestly present practically in any complex social body forced to make some elementary decisions for its mere survival and reproduction. In the context of Western cultural tradition, it can certainly be traced back to classical Greece and Rome and—reflecting Pirenne’s thesis—it emerges again in the urban culture of the High Middle Ages. At the peak of the medieval period, the political culture of European urban communes already required that the most important legislative initiatives and electoral acts be approved by popular acclamation, which essentially established public opinion as a normative ideal by turning it into a source of political legitimation.
Yet, the urban communes of medieval Europe became notorious for political instability, partially because of the volatile nature of the popular opinion upon which they relied. Arguably, it was this experience which served as a catalyst that induced the emerging political philosophy of the Renaissance period to start focusing on this phenomenon. The empirical evidence gathered in the context of developments in the Republic of Venice in the course of the High Renaissance period (ca. 1490–1530) clearly supports such a claim. This study argues that despite the obvious lexical difference, the expression opinione vulgare was used in Venice by the end of the 15th century with a denotative meaning that would allow a modern political communication scholar to translate it with some hesitation as public opinion.
Furthermore, it was obvious from the context within which the expression was used in the republican political culture of Renaissance Venice that the concept it represented had a distinctly derogatory connotative meaning. Such a normative quality could be attributed to the extent to which the emerging Renaissance political imagination became increasingly influenced by the classical Greek and Roman political philosophy. It fostered more elitist, aristocratic forms of classical republicanism (cf. Pocock, 1975), turning its back on the vanishing culture of medieval urban communes erected upon the ideals of popular participation.
The classical roots of public opinion studies
Despite the influence that Habermas’ thesis continues to exercise over the contemporary sociological imagination, one can reasonably argue that at the level of a social praxis, the issues of public opinion—the process of its formation, its impact on the individual will, and consequently also on the decision-making process within a civic body—were an intrinsic part of the social experience of practically any advanced social formation. In the city-state context of ancient Greece, the thriving rhetorical tradition and persuasion were perceived simultaneously as the essence of republican political culture, but also as its Achilles heel. In The Republic, Plato (1968, 492c) pointed out how vulnerable the mind of even an educated individual becomes when exposed to crowd psychology dominating popular assemblies. In Gorgias, the author explicitly warned society of a persuader with advanced rhetorical skills, able to speak “against everyone and on every question in such a way as to win over the votes of the multitude, practically in any matter he may choose to take up” (Plato, 1925, 457a). Even the pragmatic Aristotle warns in The Politics (Aristotle, 1944, 1292a) that a resourceful demagogue capable of winning the favors of the masses can very easily twist democracy into tyranny.
Republican Rome advanced the Greek experience even further. In his Life of Caesar (1982, 61.2-3), Plutarch captured a pivotal moment in which the aspiring emperor tested the opinion of the Roman populace in a way reminiscent of methods of the modern polling guru Frank Luntz (2007, p. 78) and his peoplemeter dials, which capture the real-time reactions of the audience. After the decisive victory over his main rival, Pompey Magnus, Caesar needed to assess the readiness of the Roman populace to accept him as an emperor and—with the help of Mark Antony—designed a strategy that would test public opinion in the matter. During one of the popular festivals, Caesar was sitting in the Forum facing the crowd when Mark Anthony came to him and—relaying on a rehearsed signal—tried to put a crown of laurel on his head. The crowd cautiously applauded. But when Caesar pushed away the wreath, the applause became much stronger. To assure the “statistical validity” of the experiment, Mark Antony offered the crown again and Caesar again refused, while the reactions of the public remained exactly the same. Such historical experiences were not lost on the Venetians who, with the advent of the Renaissance, increasingly studied the classics.
Popular voice in medieval urban communes
During the High Middle Ages, important matters of Italian city-states like Venice were traditionally decided by the arengo or concio generalis, a popular assembly that was the basis of political legitimation. The most important political decisions required approval by acclamation, the laudatio populi (Madden, 2003, p. 54; Maranini, 1974, p. 83). This experience fully corresponds with Pirenne’s (1915) assertion that modern democracies are the offspring of the culture of urban communes that emerged during the High Middle Ages mainly in Flanders and Northern Italy. Florentine chancellor Leonardo Bruni (1401/1978) tellingly lauded the medieval constitution of his city because it recognized that “what concerns many ought to be decided by the action of the whole citizen-body acting according to the law” (p. 170).
The chronicle of Romuald of Salerno (pp. 218–240) illustrates the power that the popular voice enjoyed in the context of the medieval Venetian commune. Among other important events, it captures the tumultuous circumstances preceding the legendary peace treaty between Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and Pope Alexander III that was negotiated and ratified in Venice in 1177. On several occasions, the chronicler noted that the volatility of the popular mood, upon which the Venetian government depended as a mediator between the pope and the emperor, seriously jeopardized its ability to reconcile the two warring sides. In Frederick Barbarossa’s final address, recorded verbatim by Romuald of Salerno (1725, p. 237), the emperor used the expression popularis opinio—popular opinion—when addressing the challenges that the negotiations had to overcome.
The internal instability of medieval communes that relied on the popular mood was one of the causes of their gradual demise. Even in Venice, the medieval political landscape dramatically changed, utterly transforming the role ascribed to political communication in the public arena (cf. Cox, 2003, p. 671). The violent murder of Doge Vitale II Michiel in 1172 triggered a series of structural changes with a profound long-term impact (Madden, 2003, p. 56). They culminated in what became known as the serrata—the gradual closure of the Venetian legislature that sorted itself out in the years 1286–1323 (Rösch, 2000). During its course, decision-making power shifted from the popular arengo to the relatively narrow circle of less than 200 leading families, the cittadini nobili—noble citizens or simply the nobles (Maranini, 1974, pp. 63–109).
This development is a key to understanding why the political philosophy in Venice subsequently adopted a skeptical attitude toward popular opinion as a potential source of political legitimation. Bouwsma (1968, p. 19) claims that the problem of internal political stability became one of the major challenges of Renaissance political thought, and it is clear that constitutional reform in Venice was driven mainly by an attempt to shield state affairs from popular caprice. The degree to which Venetian constitutional reforms succeeded can be measured by the fact that in the aftermath of the serrata, the republic adapted and proudly began touting the nickname la Serenissima—the most serene one. Two centuries later, chronicler Sanudo (1493/1992) bragged that “the order with which this holy Republic is governed is a wonder to behold; there is no sedition from the populo, no discord among the patricians, but all work together to [the Republic’s] increase” (p. 21).
The political system of a Renaissance republic
It would not be an exaggeration to say that after the serrata, the political structure of the Venetian state began to closely resemble an ideal aristocratic republic, not unlike the utopian republics envisioned by classical philosophers. Although there is no direct evidence that would link the constitutional reforms to the gradual rediscovery of the Greek and Roman philosophical texts by humanist scholars, it is clear that through its historical ties to Byzantium, Venice, among all Italian city-states, was the best positioned to get in touch with the original works of Greek classical heritage (cf. Lane, 1973, p. 103).
And indeed, the basic outlines of the city’s constitution clearly reflect many essential ideas of the Aristotelian pragmatism conveyed in The Politics. In the mid-15th century, when the Byzantine delegation at the Council of Florence (1438–1845) popularized Platonic texts among the Italian humanists, Venetian political philosophy began increasingly bearing also the marks of Plato’s skeptical humanism. As a result, Venetian patrician circles started actively promoting the idea that their legislation stemmed from Plato’s teachings in the same manner that the authorship of the Athenian constitution was attributed to Solon and the Spartan to Lycurgus (Novotný, 1977, pp. 335, 342). This claim was explicitly expressed by George of Trebizond (1452/1997) in the foreword to his translation of Plato’s Laws which was dedicated to Venice. The author boasted that borrowing “from the Platonic rivulets,” Venetian legislators were able to create a constitution even better “than Plato himself have ever imagined for his own republic” (p. 129).
Overall, the contemporary Venetian political philosophers agreed that their republic was a perfect fusion of all three types of governments outlined by Plato. It was led by an oligarchic doge, whose every decision was controlled by an aristocratic Senate, which in its turn was elected by a democratic assembly of all noble citizens—the Great Council (cf. Contarini, 1543, p. 52). In essence, it represented an almost ideal-typical model of a classical republican constitution, whose fundamental elements were still clearly recognizable, for example, in the political structure of the American republic under George Washington.
Pocock (1975) in his work famously retraced the Anglo-Saxon political-philosophical heritage back to the humanistic circles of the Renaissance Florence. Yet, Venice as a study case may offer even better opportunity to prove the profound Italian influence on the early Atlantic republican tradition. At the end of the serrata process, only adult male members belonging to Venetian noble families enjoyed full-fledged citizenship that entitled them to the right to vote and to stand for key public offices (Rösch, 2000, p. 83). In line with the classical political heritage, Venetian political philosophy rejected factionalism and political parties. Instead, the politics of Venice valued, above all, the spirit of internal harmony, unity, and consensus (King, 1986, p. 92).
Technically, all political power in Venice was limited to only about 5% of the total population—adult males that enjoyed noble status. This segment was represented by a total of some 2000 adult men endowed with the right to participate in the Great Council, although only 60% of them usually exercised their prerogative (Finlay, 1980, p. 174; Martin & Romano, 2000, pp. 20–21). In essence, the regular weekly meetings of the entire electorate could be compared to gatherings of the assemblies in the Athenian Pnyx, and their legislative decisions paralleled popular referenda in which a civic body decided the most important matters of state by secret ballot.
The rest of the Venetian population was often described as forestieri—strangers or foreigners. The term itself was used ambiguously, not only to label outside visitors, but was also frequently attached to Venetians by birth who did not belong to the nobility (Martin & Romano, 2000, pp. 20–21). Those among the non-nobles who could prove that their families were not engaged in manual labor for several consecutive generations enjoyed the status of cittadini originarii, or citizens by birth. The remaining 90% of the Venetian population—from shopkeepers, artisans, to manual workers—was known as the popolani, or the people (p. 17).
The deliberations in the Great Council
Reflecting the classical republican disdain for rule by the will of a multitude, Venetians believed that if hijacked by a populist politician, public opinion would inevitably lead to tyranny. Therefore, their political philosophy dismissed any form of political reasoning that originated in the public forum—forensibus iudiciis (Contarini, 1543, p. 9). Political factionalism, seen as an unavoidable byproduct of any passionate discussion taking place in the public arena, was similarly perceived as a nuisance that would gradually erode the basic tenets of the republican government. Consequently, the Republic of Venice perfected a political system that could be described as a democracy without deliberation. On a normative level, it fostered the belief that noble citizens were rational human beings who—given access to factual information void of any spin and following only their individual consciences—would always reach an optimal conclusion when deliberating upon the matters of public interest.
This belief was implicitly conveyed in all procedural practices that guided the assemblies of the Great Council. The pulpit from which its members addressed the audience and the speeches that they delivered there were both referred to as la renga (cf. De Vivo, 2007a, pp. 31, 56–57). Etymologically, the term is related to the earlier mentioned medieval popular assembly called arengo. This further emphasizes historical parallels between both institutions, which represented two historical iterations of the democratic element in the Venetian constitutional framework.
The Great Council met every Sunday after church in a spacious hall on the upper floor of the Ducal Palace. Upon entry, the nobles, all dressed in uniform black robes, were seated back to back in 10 long rows of pews (Contarini, 1543, pp. 18–19). Ideally, they were expected to remain silent for hours without any mutual communication, listening to the reports of different committees and letters of the Republic’s ambassadors and military leaders, which often preceded any important vote. At times, chronicler Sanudo (1879–1903) mentions in his diary that a particular session of Great Council was concluded early “because there were no letters to be read” (Vol. 56, p. 549).
Just as the modern press prides itself in the fact that it strictly separates news from opinion in order to meet the expectations of objectivity, those who were addressing the Great Council were similarly expected to suppress any kind of editorializing. The Great Council had its own elaborate set of strategic rituals that regulated its deliberations. The range of topics discussed, the list of documents to be read during its plenary sessions, even opportunities to speak publicly in front of the assembly were all controlled by the collegio—the Senate steering committee, presided over by the doge. The collegio used a set of truly byzantine rules that limited discussion to rational argument and curbed any exchange of opinion that had the potential to stir up passions. They are minutely described by Contarini (1543) in his political treatise De magistratibus & republica venetorum (pp. 53–60). For example, in 1516, chronicler Sanudo (1879–1903, Vol. 22, p. 172) bragged about the fact that in the three decades of his active political life, he addressed the Great Council three times, which put him among its most frequent rank-and-file speakers.
The tradition of grand oratory generally went against the very nature of the quiet Venetian temperament. Finlay (1980, p. 229) argues that public persuasion itself never reached the level of a highly developed art in the city’s assemblies. Certainly, the classical art of rhetoric was considered one of the fundamental skills of noble education, but at least at the normative level, the Venetian republican culture fostered mainly epideictic oratory, which limited the scope of rhetoric to laudatory speeches. Chiefly, the older exponents of the humanistic school in Venice saw the art of speaking as bene dicere—the ability of expressing thoughts eloquently and in a straightforward manner. This aspect was much more important than the practical skill of persuasion corresponding with forensic and deliberative rhetoric (Cox, 2003, pp. 671–672, 680). Addressing the plenary session of the Great Council, “one should speak with clarity and truth, not with beauty of words, which are useless,” emphasized ambassador and future doge, Leonardo Donà (in De Vivo, 2007a, p. 23). Overall, any public address delivered in Venetian assemblies was expected to be to the point, avoiding topical deviations and emotional appeals, especially when it preceded a vote.
Contrary to other Renaissance political centers like Florence, where the state meticulously recorded the details of legislative debates in the ledgers known as Consulte e pratiche (Brucker, 1979, pp. 8–10), the Venetians did not keep any similar records of political deliberations in their own legislative bodies. Such a practice must have been the result of a conscious decision, since otherwise there were legions of state secretaries in the ducal palace who “minutely and with diligence” (Priuli, 1912–1938, Vol. 2, p. 268) penned down and archived every other important state deed.
Indeed, at a time when the councils discussed an extremely sensitive topic, everyone who did not have the voting right—including those ducal secretaries who were sworn to the highest levels of secrecy—had to leave the room (Sanudo, 1879–1903, Vol. 17, p. 119). The doors were subsequently shut, not only to prevent divulgence of the secret deliberations but, one may argue, even more importantly to create an atmosphere in which the members of the assembly felt free to declare their positions without the need to embrace populist views. “It is of the utmost importance for a republic that all decisions are made freely,” without any external pressure, emphasized Contarini (1543, p. 25).
Overall, the ban on the publication of parliamentary speeches was broadly accepted by Renaissance political systems of various stripes. It was only the English Civil War that definitely ended this practice in the 1640s. Zaret (2000, pp. 44–67) describes this phase in Western history—epitomized by the 1644 publication of Milton’s Areopagitica—as one of the core social developments which ultimately exalted public opinion as a major source of political legitimation (cf. Raymond, 2003, pp. 262–275). Despite the pitfalls of presentism, one could not help but speculate that the main benefit of preventing the divulgence of parliamentary deliberations was in avoiding the problems that modern democracies brought upon themselves by allowing TV cameras into the halls of their parliaments.
However, thanks to the records taken by the diarists whose noble birth guaranteed access to the representative assemblies in Venice, we can reconstruct the dynamics of several important deliberations. For four decades, Marin Sanudo almost obsessively recorded not only the results of all important votes but also the positions of the dissenting sides and occasionally even a passionate talk delivered by an elder member in the Great Council or Senate despite attempts to curb this type of rhetoric (e.g. Sanudo, 1879–1903, Vol. 8, p. 41). The final vote-counts were never unanimous. In fact, they very often reflected notable dissent (e.g. Vol. 4, pp. 201–204). Yet, whatever decision was ultimately taken by the majority, to the outside world the whole legislative body of citizens projected an image of cohesion and unity in line with the principal classical republican virtues (King, 1986, p. 92).
Venetian political practices and Rousseau’s general will
The deliberations of the Great Council in Venice constituted one of the earliest known sets of modern parliamentary practices. They remained in place for several centuries and made a deep impact on many famous visitors whom the Venetians proudly invited to observe the voting procedures. English utopian author James Harrington (1656), who personally visited Venice and later conveyed his observations in The Commonwealth of Oceana, was openly puzzled by what he saw. “For a council, and not a word spoken in it, is a contradiction” (p. 115), claimed Harrington dazzled by strict rules that limited rhetorical action to a necessary minimum. The atmosphere of voting, with the Venetian noblemen standing patiently in long lines to cast their ballots, left him even more perplexed. “But there is such a pudder with their marching and countermarching, as, though never a one of them draw a sword, you would think they were training,” observed the author (p. 115).
Nonetheless, Venetian noble Gasparo Contarini (1543, pp. 55–56) claimed that the Venetians could arrive much more easily at the best solution by first appointing small committees of experts who prediscussed each issue and came up with a narrow range of possible solutions. The assembly then cast ballots upon each of the expert proposals with limited space to further question them. Contarini argued that this was much better than endless debates where single members attacked each other’s positions in the full plenum like the old Romans did. “We discuss with urns and ballots, not with words,” emphasized the author (p. 59).
The same balloting scene captured above by Harrington also left a deep impact on Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1782/2000, p. 395) who lived in Venice in the 1740s as a secretary to the French ambassador and later admitted that this experience sparked in him a desire to study political institutions. Indeed, there is an obvious parallel between the procedural rules that Rousseau undoubtedly observed in the Great Council and the concept of the general will that he outlined in The Social Contract. Rousseau’s (1762/2006) claim that optimal decisions of a public body arise from “the deliberations of a people properly informed, and provided its members do not have any communication among themselves” (p. 73), captures almost perfectly the essence of procedural practices of the Venetian Great Council.
This may sound like heresy to the modern reader, blinded by the fetishism of deliberative democracy and the marketplace of ideas as core concepts of any modern republican-democratic constitution. However, as Schmuhl and Picard (2005) point out, in the case that such a marketplace is permeated by factionalism and spin, the battle of ideas does not ultimately lead to the discovery of Miltonian truth, but to the victory of that partisan position which is backed by the most effective spin. In Rousseau’s words, the will of each of the partisan groups involved in this type of deliberation will become general in relation to its own supporters. It was thus an imperative for both the Venetians and Rousseau (1762/2006) that “there should be no sectional associations in the state, and that every citizen should make up his own mind for himself” (p. 73).
Lofty normative ideals versus social praxis
Ideally, all political life in Venice should have been limited to a group of nobles representing some 200 family clans and their adult male members. Venetian political elites literally believed that it was their duty to administer the state on behalf of its entire population by the way of their superior civic virtues which were of hereditary nature (cf. Chambers, Pullan, & Fletcher, 1992, pp. 168–171; Sanudo, 1879–1903, Vol. 42, pp. 317–319). Yet, the empirical evidence clearly shows the fallacy of such an assertion. Despite meticulously designed measures that were supposed to assure a wall of separation between the governing circles and the rest of the population, the Venetian nobility recognized that it could not govern the state without some level of support among the popular masses. Consequently, long before Hannah Arendt (1958/1998, p. 38) pointed out the repercussions of the 19th-century expansion of the electoral franchise on the nature of government—the rise of the social as she called it—the Venetians who meticulously studied the histories of classical republican societies from Athens to Rome had a good grasp of the problem.
The study of public opinion in Venice consequently assumes at least three essential dimensions that are all further explored on the following pages. As described above, in the strict sense of the word, it was a phenomenon that influenced political, legislative, and pre-electoral deliberations only at the level of the governing noble circles. However, in a much broader sense, the term assumed also two additional dimensions. The second dimension was related to the opinion of those who were permanently excluded from the government, but on whose labor, service, expertise, and overall goodwill the republic nevertheless relied for its very survival. To assure their goodwill, the state created elaborate social safety nets whose role was to keep not only the lower classes but also a significant portion of the impoverished nobles just above the level of misery. It was done, observed the papal ambassador in 1533, so that “they will not entertain evil thoughts, as persons in strained circumstances are prone to do” (in Chambers et al., 1992, p. 222). The third dimension involved the image of the republic in the eyes of its international trading partners and military rivals—a public relations aspect that constituted the soft power on which the hegemony the Republic of Venice relied (cf. Nye, 2004).
When studying public opinion in Renaissance Venice, one must take into consideration that, despite the strict regulation of the government information flows and policies that promoted secrecy, the city of Venice was in essence an echo chamber in which even the most secret government deliberations soon became the subject of popular chatter in the streets, public squares, churches, taverns, brothels, and barber shops (De Vivo, 2007b; Rospocher, 2012b; Salzberg, 2010, 2014). The unrestricted ways by which public opinion was formed and made its way through the squares and streets of Venice are masterfully captured by Venetian noble Nicolò Lippomano in his 1495 account of the final defeat of Charles VIII that ended the first in a series of French military interventions in Italy (in Malipiero, 1843–1844, p. 355).
On his usual morning walk toward Piazza San Marco, Lippomano was surprised by a strange buzz. He saw agitated priests gathering in front of their churches and groups of people rushing toward ducal palace. Lippomano soon learned that the news had just arrived about the French defeat. When he reached the piazza, groups of elder citizens who typically gathered next to the Church of St. Mark were already passionately discussing the impressive victory. Lippomano turned around and started walking toward the commercial heart of the city in the Rialto, where his relatives operated one of the most prestigious Venetian banks. Here, he joined a group of respectable nobles who were trying to make sense of such a favorable turn of events in Italy. Newcomers were continuously joining the group, contributing fresh insight and information to the discussion. It was determined that three separate couriers confirmed the news, and the group was reasoning how the new developments would affect both business and politics.
So far, the account corresponds almost perfectly with the ideal situation of a public sphere where citizens gather to form their positions toward the policies of the state by the means of rational debate (Habermas, 1964/1979, p. 198). But Lippomano’s account gets messy. In the meantime, someone spread a rumor that the French king himself was taken a prisoner in the battle and the entire square was exuberant. Emboldened by the victory, many shouted that Venetians should now attack the neighboring Duchy of Ferrara, which supported the French invasion.
The rational deliberation and joyous celebration soon turned into chaos. Some in the crowd began looting stalls in the neighboring fruit market. The bankers and merchants were hastily closing their shops and packed away merchandise. At that moment, the crowd spotted a group of Savoiardi—probably merchants from the French-leaning region of Turin —and pelted them with eggs, melon peels, and radishes. It took some effort to stop the mob from molesting the foreigners, Nicolò Lippomano concluded (in Malipiero, 1843–1844, p. 355). His eyewitness account almost perfectly encapsulates the fear that classical political philosophers habitually associated with a lawless multitude gathered spontaneously in the public forum.
Public opinion and the crisis of Agnadello in 1509
A perfect study case of the influence that public opinion exercised over Venetian politics is the course of events that preceded the dramatic defeat at Agnadello in 1509, one of the defining moments of the city’s history. As a result of the expansionistic policies that the republic accelerated in the course of the previous century, Venice—traditionally a maritime state—dramatically enlarged its territory on the Italian mainland. This turn of affairs not only pulled precious resources from Venetian activities on the seas, even more importantly, it led the state to become increasingly involved in perpetual domestic wars that also gradually dragged in European continental powers. Consequently, the expansionist policies became one of the major issues passionately discussed in Venetian political circles (Rubinstein, 1973) and are used here as a perfect illustration of the ways in which contemporary social practice and political thought perceived public opinion and its impact on the affairs of state.
“What stupidity ever drew us away from the sea and turned us to the land?” asked the Doge Loredan after the defeat at Agnadello (in Chambers et al., 1992, p. 397). The detailed answer to his question is beyond the scope of this essay, but public opinion certainly played a key role in interpreting the shift. Braudel (1982–1984, Vol. 3, pp. 242–246) considered the move from the risky life of long-distance trade toward landed capital as a natural step in the evolution of all maritime republics. Venice was no exception. Throughout the 15th century, the Venetian elites started to increasingly turn their sights toward sumptuous villas and manor houses surrounded by prosperous farms on the Italian mainland. This trend exposed a growing conflict between the conservative older generations of nobles who in their core were austere merchants and the younger ones who felt that the time had finally come to start enjoying the wealth accumulated by their forefathers (Tenenti, 1973, pp. 19–22).
The mainland expansion, known also as the policy of terraferma, defied the core tenets of Venetian political philosophy, clearly recognizing that the demise of many classical republics was caused by their insatiable appetite for new territories (cf. Paruta, 1599, p. 3). Importantly, the mainland expansion also required enormous sums of money for hiring mercenary armies to defend the newly acquired territories (Mallett, 1973). Yet, the supporters of the terraferma policy always found a politician who was willing to lend his ear to their cause, especially if it helped to advance his own political career. Just 6 years before the Agnadello debacle, Priuli (1912–1938) described a heated Senate exchange pitting elder statesmen against a small group of “ambitious politicians supported by the precipitous young [nobles], citizens, and the people” (Vol. 2, pp. 312–13), discussing a military expedition and the potential annexation of the rebellious papal territories in Emilia-Romagna.
It is vulgar because it vulgarizes the political process
This brings back the moment mentioned in the opening of this essay, when the chronicler Priuli concluded that the combination of personal political ambition and opinione vulgare are the two most dangerous things for a republic. Although the term vulgare is historically used in the Italian language to denote the classes of lower social status and base cultural tastes (Battaglia & Bàrberi Squarotti, 1961, Vol. 21, p. 986), it is clearly applied in this case in a more figurative way to express the chronicler’s deep disdain for any kind of political populism. The context in which the expression opinione vulgare is used here explicitly denotes that it relates not only to the vulgar popular masses but also to the merchants and young nobles who were part of the social and political establishment.
In his analysis of the situation in the aftermath of the Agnadello defeat, Priuli (1912–1938, Vol. 4, pp. 237, 246) repeatedly uses the term opinione vulgare, as if to further emphasize the vulgarizing role that public opinion played in the political life of his city. According to the chronicler, “many words, much opinion, many various talks, chatters, expressions of will and reasoning” (Vol. 4, p. 246) were made in post-Agnadello Venice by its stunned population which was desperately trying to grasp the causes of the defeat and to figure out its city’s prospects for the future.
The entire Venetian mainland territory, a century-worth of conquest that included prosperous cities like Padua, Verona, or Brescia, was lost in a mere 15 days (Priuli, 1912–1938, Vol. 4, p. 15). The chronicler noted that members of all social classes—from the noblemen to ordinary citizens and simple folks—wanted to “show their wisdom, prudence and intelligence by pitching their few cents into the debate” (Vol. 4, p. 246) in this precarious situation. The entire city was completely absorbed in this discussion; groups of people passionately argued in the squares and public loggias. It was not only the market of the Rialto that was full of such buzz and murmur, the argumentation also permeated the churches, barber shops, taverns, and brothels.
Despite the fact that the situation inadvertently evokes an ideal Habermasian public space, Priuli (1912–1938) does not leave any doubt that such “words spoken by the Venetian nobles as well as by the common people” contributed very little to the common good. Indeed, at times they were even causing “enormous damage and detriment to the Venetian Republic” (Vol. 4, p. 246). And the chronicler repeatedly emphasized that it was public opinion that pushed the republic onto the wrong path that ultimately led to Agnadello in the first place:
There are many senators in the city of Venice, who are susceptible to the talk [of the piazza] and opinione vulgare, and they adjust their own opinions to it in the hope that they will advance their careers, which ultimately caused the ruin of the state. (Priuli, 1912–1928, Vol. 4, p. 344)
The chronicler claimed that in the decisive moment of the battle, it was such “opinione vulgare of the squares and loggias” (Vol. 4, pp. 264, 343) whose jingoistic zeal pushed one of two commanding Venetian generals, Bartolomeo d’Alviano, to defy his strict orders and attack French armies—a mistake that broke the Venetian ranks and opened the door to the debacle.
It would be too audacious to claim that Renaissance Venetian philosophy already possessed a full-blown theory of public opinion that captured, on an abstract level, the dynamics of its formation and impact on the political process. Yet, the empirical experience of previous centuries spoke too eloquently to be ignored. Medieval Venice inadvertently embraced public consensus as the tool of political legitimation, only to discover that its political process soon became hijacked by its vulnerable nature. This led to a strong counter-reaction, in which any idea of a wide popular deliberative process was ostracized and a priori censored by both political theory and praxis.
Indeed, Priuli’s reasoning very clearly echoes one of the core normative tenets of Venetian republicanism when it alleges that a government that starts pondering to the opinion of the governed is doomed to fail. In the early 1500s, the prominent statesman Domenico Morosini (1509/1969) obstinately claimed in his treatise De bene istituta re publica (pp. 146, 187, 245) that governing bodies should be completely insulated from the influence of the multitude. Instead, decision-making should be exclusively guided by experienced elder statesmen. Morosini believed that their advanced age would subdue personal ambition and their actions would consequently be driven more by the long-term interest of the republic than by personal gain.
Similarly, Gasparo Contarini (1543, pp. 86–87) in his analysis of ancient and modern republics asserted that any constitutional arrangement that tolerates forms of populism would sooner or later lead to tyranny. Finally, Paolo Paruta (1599, pp. 163–164) concluded that the demise of many republics happened because their leaders became hostages to the will of those on whose behalf they were supposed to govern. In the preface to his work, the author doubted “whether a state dominated by the will of the multitude has even right to call itself a republic” (p. xxx).
War propaganda and public opinion in the international arena
In the aftermath of Agnadello, the major urban centers of Europe were flooded with anti-Venetian propaganda (cf. Rospocher, 2012b). Big public festivities celebrating the humiliation of pretentious Venice were organized in Paris and Lyon, Innsbruck and Mainz in the German lands, but especially on the Italian peninsula in Rome, Milan, and Ferrara. Often such celebrations featured public theatrical performances in which the actors unabashedly mocked ruling Venetian elites. Characters imitating the doge and his counselors were repeatedly put in prison, sold as slaves, or forced to go back to fishing—an insinuation that was supposed to remind Venetians of the humble beginnings of their empire (Priuli, 1912–1938, Vol. 4, p. 424).
The situation clearly illustrates that psychological warfare is by far not an invention of modern propaganda. The Agnadello conflict is an excellent case study of the methods that the warring sides used in order to boost their own morale and undermine the enemy’s will to fight, skillfully manipulating public opinion in broader international arenas. Only 10 years earlier, in 1499, Venetians blamed the total collapse of their banking system on the Florentine propaganda machine, which spread false rumors across Europe about the insolvency of their banks (Priuli, 1912–1938, Vol. 1, p. 111; Sanudo, 1879–1903, Vol. 2, pp. 465, 1001). At that time, Venice was in the middle of an expansionistic war with Florence, and such psychological warfare was one of the common ways that the Renaissance world used to settle scores (Kittler, 2012, p. 171). Merchant Priuli (1912–1938) noted that the subsequent failure of three out of the four main Venetian banks was the result of such rumors and news about their collapse “spread through the entire world” and “had such negative impact on the city of Venice that it is beyond my capacity to describe it to you” (Vol. 1, p. 122).
The battle of Agnadello had its own propagandistic prelude. Immediately after joining the anti-Venetian coalition in the spring of 1509, Pope Julius II excommunicated the city of Venice in an attempt to undermine its internal morale and to discourage Christian souls to fight on its behalf. Venetian ambassadors in Rome informed the Senate that the pope had printed 600 copies of the interdict that were to be distributed and read in public squares across Italy (Sanudo, 1879–1903, Vol. 8, p. 182; cf. Rospocher, 2012b, pp. 129–130). Venetians immediately ordered the censorship of all incoming mail, night guards were reinforced to prevent postings of any anti-Venetian propaganda, and the doge requested that the church officials in Venice suppress all incoming communication from the pope (Vol. 8, pp. 142, 164, 169–170). In order to counterbalance the excommunication act, Venetians dispatched their own courier to Rome who overnight secretly posted two pamphlets defending the Venetian position and mocking the pope, one right on the door of St. Peter’s Basilica. When the pope learned about it the next morning, he was “raging with great fury,” Sanudo confided to his diary (Vol. 8, p. 187).
In her collection of the early Italian ephemera, Levi (1909, pp. 277, 361) reprinted two pamphlets that represent the most famous examples of both pro-Venetian and anti-Venetian war propaganda from the time period of Agnadello. The Lamento Veneciani and Gatta da Padova are both meticulously described by contemporary diarists (Priuli, 1912–1938, Vol. 4, pp. 359, 424; Sanudo, 1879–1903, Vol. 9, p. 335), which further attests to the fact that they were well known and circulated in great quantities. Priuli (Vol. 4, pp. 56–57, 424–426) notes that such pamphlets flooded every castle and city of Europe and were openly sold in public squares, barber shops, and brothels.
Indeed, ephemeral print played an increasingly important role in shaping the overall urban discourse. As Salzberg (2014, pp. 6–7) points out, cheap print that was sold in many public squares of Venice (but also in other European cities) was not only tangible but many times also audible—performed by its peddlers in public spaces and therefore blending very well with the urban culture that was for centuries dominated by orality. And in a world that was still for the most part illiterate, it was mainly such ephemeral print—based on woodblock images accompanied by easy-to-remember stanzas—that played a pivotal role in fostering the gradual shift toward the public sphere relying increasingly on widespread literacy. Alas, it may be said that cheap print paved the way to the next historical re-framing of the normative role that public opinion played in political legitimation, a development that came to its full fruition a century later during the English Civil War (cf. Raymond, 2003; Zaret, 2000).
But let us return to Venice. After the Agnadello defeat, the ducal palace in Venice received daily more than 200 dispatches from all corners of Italy that carefully monitored not only troop movements but also the development of psychological warfare (Priuli, 1912–1938, Vol. 4, p. 57). In order to negotiate the most favorable peace conditions with its enemies, the Venetian government tried to suppress any discourse in public spaces that openly mocked the pope and his main allies. It was assumed that the anti-Venetian league had its own spies in the city that regularly reported back about the mood in the streets (cf. Landi, 2006, pp. 19–51). Consequently, the government worried that any publicly expressed disdain or mockery could have sparked vengeance on the part of the enemy and greatly undermined the republic’s negotiating positions (Priuli, 1912–1938, Vol. 4, p. 237).
Such developments are fully in line with Grendler’s (1988, pp. 40–41) claim that in the course of the 16th century, Renaissance Europe became accustomed to the controversies which attracted a wide international audience. Indeed, different power players were already skillfully using a wide variety of techniques—from printed pamphlets, cartoons, sonnets, ballads, to theatrical performances, and public pageants—which allowed them to manipulate public opinion to their own benefit, not only in the local context but increasingly within the broader international arena (cf. Rospocher, 2012b).
Final analysis
Following Pirenne’s (1915) suggestion that the roots of modern Western democracy need to be searched for in the socio-political experience of medieval urban communes of Flanders and Northern Italy, this essay examined the role that public opinion played in the political environment of the early modern Republic of Venice. In order to trace the genesis of the social phenomena, it theorized public opinion as a threefold concept: a set of tacit social practices, a normative ideal, and a philosophical category. The study argues that at the level of social practice, public opinion has been inherently present in practically any advanced social system. Subsequently, it offers empirical evidence indicating that even the remaining two dimensions can be already identified, to an extent, in the medieval and Renaissance political environment of the Republic of Venice.
The popular vote by acclamation, laudatio populi, had the power of a normative ideal in medieval Venice, implicitly rendering public opinion the faculty of political legitimation. But the notorious instability of medieval political systems based on the gatherings of all citizens, called concio popularis or renga in the case of Venice, led to a broad reevaluation of the normative role of public discussion and popular referenda based on the vote by acclamation. The quest for political stability in Venice triggered a process known as serrata, which eventually put an end to the era of broad popular governing structures. It was succeeded by an aristocratic republican system that—reflecting the political ideals of Plato and Aristotle—restricted deliberative practices at any social level in a manner that rejected also the normative role previously played by the opinion of the popular masses.
From the perspective of some 2000 noble citizens, the political system of Venice continued functioning as a full-fledged representative democracy. Yet, its new constitutional framework was designed in a way that suppressed to a minimum the influence of public opinion on the decision-making process. Instead, Venetians created an intricate procedural system that curtailed the entire deliberative process and left very little space for public argumentation and persuasion. It was built on the premise that if those who enjoyed full citizen rights were supplied with proper factual information void of any partisan spin, as a collective body of citizens they would always be able to arrive at an optimal solution through secret ballot.
This principle was clearly articulated in the idealized constitutional framework and reflected in the writings of the principal Venetian political philosophers such as Morosini (1509/1969), Contarni (1543), and Paruta (1599). However, it is the records of the contemporary Venetian chroniclers that allow us to observe the inner workings of the city’s political system at the level of everyday social praxis. And the contemporary chronicles of Malipiero (1843–1844), Sanudo (1879–1903), and Priuli (1912–1938) reveal an image of political life that was much more complex, riddled with internal dialectic contradictions. At times, the diarists capture scenes closely reminiscent of the Habermasian ideal speech situation in which persons of various social classes—although practically exclusively only male—meet in public to discuss the problems of their republic while selflessly searching for the best possible solutions. But other times, for example, during the period leading to the Agnadello defeat, we can see the worst nightmares of classical republicanism materialize: a group of private citizens following their own self-interest, or an irrational mob gathered in the street, both calling for a populist solution to a long-term problem that may only create more headaches in the future. And they always find the ear of an irresponsible politician who panders to their demands in order to advance his own career.
Thus, the chronicler Priuli may call it opinione vulgare not only because it is vulgar—that is, pertains to the irrational and unsophisticated mob—but also because it vulgarizes the political process itself. Furthermore, the empirical evidence clearly indicates that public opinion in the political environment of Renaissance Europe reached far beyond the boundaries of small regional states, assuming increasingly vital international dimensions. Venetian political philosophers may have stopped short of coining an elaborate theoretical concept of public opinion, yet the city’s historical experience offered countless empirical evidence of its potentially corruptive impact on the deliberative processes of government. This is the main reason why, on a normative level, they were trying to shield the governing bodies from its influence, creating a deliberative environment that modern democracies would describe using terms such as executive privilege or deliberative process privilege.
At the etymological level, the political experience of early republics like Venice was reflected in the fact that the Italian verb deliberare/to debiberate was historically first used as a synonym of the very act of voting, electing, or selecting (Battaglia & Bàrberi Squarotti, 1961, Vol. 4, p. 143). Contarini (1543, p. 59) summed up this political tenet in his claim that Venetians prefer to discuss with urns and ballots, rather than with words. This was also the essence of Rousseau’s concept of the general will. Only in the course of subsequent centuries, the term deliberare reflected the shift in the normative attitudes toward public opinion and increasingly denoted also the discursive process through which a group of individuals assembled to form a public body would arrive at a decision.