ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a comparison of instances in the fourteenth century where subjects of Venetian empire voiced their discontent with the shape of the state that ruled them, using the career and writings of Gian-Giacomo Caroldo in the sixteenth century as a focal point. Between 1508 and 1530 there were widespread political disturbances in all of the regions of Venice’s mainland and Mediterranean empire, from large-scale attempts to throw off Venetian rule to small-scale strife and popular disturbances. The Venetian secretary Caroldo did not directly comment on the disturbances of his own day, but did write a detailed history of the Cretan Revolt of San Tito (1363–65). This chapter explores Caroldo’s representation of medieval rebellion as an expression of Venetian concern with sixteenth-century resistance to patrician authority, suggesting that history writing served as a site for reflecting on resistance in an indirect way for Venetian elites.
