ABSTRACT
This essay is a discussion of social boundaries within the early modern city, how they were defined, and the extent to which these definitions were blurred by social realities. As an exercise in social space, it demonstrates that, rather than being characterised by distinctive groupings, the upper levels of Venetian society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries represented overlapping spaces, where what was shared, be it lifestyle or membership of kinship networks, was more important than what was not, such as the monopoly of political power in the hands of the hereditary patriciate. 1 Contrary to what was believed by Venetians themselves, and by those of their contemporaries elsewhere in Europe who were influenced by the myth of the Most Serene Republic’s political stability and longevity, Venetian society was organised on far more complex lines than a tripartite division into a ruling caste of patricians [nobeli], a semi-privileged group of citizens [cittadini], and ordinary people without any civic rights [popolani]. 2
