Bernardo Giustiniani’s influential History of Venice, in an unusual case-study edition

Bernardo Giustiniani’s De origine urbis Venetiarum, posthumously published in Venice in 1493 (1492 ‘more veneto’) and presented here in a curious case-study edition (see details below), is an important early account of Venice’s political, social, and artistic history, and a key contribution to the development of a humanist tradition of historiography.

Giustiniani, Bernardo (1408-1489). De origine urbis Venetiarum, rebusque a Venetis gestis libri quindecim […] Adiecta insuper divi Marci euangelistae vita, ac eius translatione […] Venetiis, [Antonio Brucioli], 1534 (Colophon: Impressum Venetiis, per Bernadinum Benalium, [1493])

See more information about this copy here.

Writing in the aftermath of Constantinople’s fall to the Ottomans, Giustiniani (1408-1489) saw Venice as a true ‘sea-wall of Christianity’ against the Turks, and devotes many pages to the conflicts between East and West. His focus is, however, not restricted to Venice alone, but ranges over the Mediterranean world and early medieval Europe, ultimately tracing a history of East and West from the fifth to the ninth centuries. In its investigations into the city’s origins, the book also contains lengthy excurses on the Goths (books IV-VI), the Lombards (VII), the Turks (VIII) and the Saracens (XI).

Bernardo Giustiniani (or Giustinian) was the scion of a noble family and a major figure of the Venetian Quattrocento. His uncles included Saint Lorenzo Giustiniani – who was elected patriarch of Venice in 1451 and later canonized – and the powerful statesman Marco Giustiniani. Giustiniani’s father Leonardo was a poet and Petrarchan classicist, and an important figure in Venetian governmental and cultural affairs. He was – as his son would be as well – a champion of humanistic studies, which he ardently promoted, especially to more skeptical patricians who worried such an education would distract youths from their civic duties. Leonardo, who amassed a rich library of works in Greek, Latin and the vernacular, held by contrast that a humanistic education would only better equip young people for such duty, instilling in them a loftier sense of civic virtue inspired by the great deeds of antiquity.

Bernardo Giustiniani would follow in his father’s footsteps, his life shaped through a balance of education, religiosity, and civil service. He had a prestigious education as the pupil of Guarino Veronese, Francesco Filelfo and George of Trebizond before pursuing arts and law at the university at Padua. As with other members of his family, he went on to a high-ranking political career: he was appointed Captain of Padua in 1456 and as ambassador of Venice was sent on sensitive diplomatic missions to Louis XII of France, Emperor Frederick III, and Popes Pius II, Paul II and Sixtus IV. He was also elected to the Council of Ten, and in 1474 was appointed one of the nine procurators of Saint Mark, the second-highest ranking position in the Republic of Venice, second only to that of the doge (cf. P.H. Labalme, Bernardo Giustiniani: a Venetian of the Quattrocento, Rome, 1969).

His diplomatic career spanned three decades of a particularly turbulent period in Venetian history, and with his lifetime spanning almost the entire fifteenth century, Giustiniani was a prominent witness to vast changes in Venice’s fortunes. It was during this century that the Republic had acquired its mainland Empire, and it reached the height of its power under Doge Francesco Foscari, at whose funeral in 1457 Giustiniani, a renowned orator, would deliver his most famous oration. At that time, he spoke of “a golden era of peace, enjoyed in goodwill rather than defended by just arms from unjust war.” (Labalme, Bernardo Giustiniani, 233)

Venice’s golden age was, however, fading. The proud, confident level of independence that characterized Venice in the 1450s was transformed in the 1460s and 1470s, as the city bore the brunt of Turkish advances in the Mediterranean and repeatedly attempted to organize an anti-Ottoman crusade. Giustiniani often represented this interest in pleas to foreign leaders on behalf of the Republic, and many of his other celebrated orations derive from these efforts, even if they ultimately failed to engender any joint action. With the subsequent Ferrarese war, Venice became less independent than ever, and its perceived ambition and pride made it increasingly unpopular. With Venice’s own internal social discord rising as well, Giustiniani looked toward the past for the roots of the golden age. “There he began to see it again, in the early history of this city, in the origins of the greatness which he had served. That became for him the time when the Venetian destiny and the Venetian virtù shone clearly, when libertas was real, and aristocratic leadership was effective.” (Labalme, Bernardo Giustiniani, 233) It is with this perspective that Giustiniani took to writing his History of Venice, the composition of which seems to date from between 1477 and his death in 1489, although Labalme narrows the range to the last five years of his life. (Labalme, Bernardo Giustiniani, p. 258; cf. Pistilli 2001)

The first comprehensive history of Venice, what really sets Giustiniani’s work apart is the way it shifts the method of presenting history, moving away from chronicles toward a modern mode of historiography based on the critical examination of a wide variety of sources, both old and new. In so doing, the author considered Venice from not only an Italian but also a Mediterranean and world-historical perspective, recalling classical precedents for Venetian virtues and religiosity while also considering the commercial factors that helped bring about and shape its success. While a certain amount of idealization and bias is apparent, Giustiniani also harnesses his impressive rhetorical skills to urge reform in the name of the city’s past glory, thus suggesting a certain lack of ease with its contemporary situation despite, or perhaps in light of, his evident patriotism. For above all he contends that while fortunes are subject to change as empires rise and fall, Venice’s sense of freedom is woven into the very fabric of its origins.

Giustiniani’s De origine urbis Venetiarum was published by Bernardino Benali (printed, after the author’s death, not before 31 gennaio 1493, 1492 ‘more veneto’), who obtained, on 17 August 1492, one of the first privileges ever granted to a printer-publisher (C. Witcombe, Copyright in the Renaissance, Boston, 2004, p. 55; read more about the history of the privilegio in Venetian print, including that granted to Sabellico’s Decades Rerum Venetarum and the first ‘real’ authorial privilege, granted on 3 January 1492 to Pietro Tomai for his Phoenix, here).

The copy we are pleased to present here is a very peculiar case-study edition: printed forty years after Benali’s incunable edition, it is a reuse of this latter, to which was added a new title page replacing the first original blank leaf. Also, the first quire with the dedication addressed by Benetto Brugnoli (1427-1502) to Lorenzo Giustiniani, as well as the final leaf, the verso of which, in the Benali edition, mistakenly contained a variant setting of the recto of the second leaf of Giustiniani’s Orationes published the same year, were reset. The rest of the volume is exactly the same as the 1493 edition.

Jacopo de' Barbari, View of Venice (first state), 1500. Woodcut print. Minneapolis Institute of Art (Public domain).

This being a particularly formative moment in Venetian printing, and one in which the Serenissima was beginning to recognize the potential of the press in amassing public support, one other very early print privilege seems relevant here: that granted by the Senate in 1500 to a German merchant from Nuremberg, Anton Kolb, for the multi-sheet aerial View of Venice by Jacopo de Barbari (ca. 1450–1511). In his petition for the privilege Kolb stated that the work had been in preparations for three years and was undertaken, "ad fama de questa excelsa cità de Venetia," that is, to promote the fame of this most excellent city of Venice. Measuring roughly 4.5 x 9 ft, the View is certainly a testament to the city’s glory, but what makes it a landmark of Renaissance printmaking is not only the finesse of the artist’s hand, but above all his remarkable intellectual ability to visualize a totality that was in fact not yet able to be seen.

Giustiniani’s De origine urbis Venetiarum is a comparatively stunning achievement of great intellectual and formal importance. With its breadth and erudition, this early history of Venice is a monument of Renaissance civic humanism that helped usher in a new way of looking at history.

How to cite this post

Fabrizio Govi, “Bernardo Giustiniani’s influential History of Venice, in an unusual case-study edition," PRPH Books, 29 September 2021, https://www.prphbooks.com/blog/giustiniani. Accessed [date].

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