ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the attitudes of ordinary people in early modern Venice towards domestic disorder, dysfunctional marriages and the different means employed by the state and the Church to regulate marital disputes and related sexual offences during the confessional age. According to the dominant understanding in early modern Venice 'bad' government was equated with misrule in material, physical, economic and symbolic terms. In both political and legal discourse, when rule deteriorated it was easily conceived as tyranny. Through the use and analysis of contemporary case studies this chapter presents and examines the dynamics of domestic society, focusing in particular on marital disputes, ideas of gender and the role of the courts in Counter-Reformation Venice. It shows there was a strong connection between the breakdown of marriage and the abuse of male authority. The conflicts that blighted the lives of the city's husbands, wives, parents and children explores through contemporary case studies.
