Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen · 1900
Schullern’s review presents Zanelli’s study of Brescia from 1426 to 1644 as a valuable contribution to early modern social and administrative history. Its historical synopsis traces the frustration of civic expectations under Venetian rule: Brescia’s voluntary submission in 1426, following cooperation between noble families and the popular party against the Visconti, promised renewal but brought neither lasting peace nor protection for democratic institutions. Renewed warfare instead strengthened the nobility and accelerated the restoration of aristocratic government.
Im Jahre 1488 war das Ziel erreicht; der grosse Rath war nun eine geschlossene Adelskörperschaft, die nur noch von den neuen Elementen, den neu geadelten Geschlechtern, zu säubern war, was dadurch gelang, dass man für diese die Erblichkeit negierte.
English translation: In the year 1488 the goal was attained; the Great Council was now a closed corporation of the nobility, which had only to be purged of the new elements, the newly ennobled families, and this was achieved by denying hereditary right to the latter.
This passage identifies institutional closure as a decisive mechanism of noble ascendancy: control of the council was secured not only against the citizenry but also against newly ennobled families through restrictions on hereditary status. Schullern then follows the reversals and compromises that interrupted this consolidation. Its eventual success depended on more than constitutional exclusion: the impoverishment of the citizen estate and Venice’s damaging fiscal policy strengthened the nobility. He singles out Zanelli’s treatment of that fiscal policy as one of the book’s most interesting chapters.
The popular appeal to the Venetian Senate in 1644 sought the restoration of lost rights, but achieved little lasting change. Schullern condenses the outcome into a stark judgment:
Brescia blieb in den Händen einer Adelsoligarchie.
English translation: Brescia remained in the hands of an oligarchy of the nobility.
The review’s organizing contrast is thus between hopes for protection under Venetian sovereignty and the persistence of local oligarchic power. Yet Schullern distinguishes the explanatory force of Zanelli’s account from its partisan emphasis:
Die mit vielen Urkunden belegte Darstellung Zanellis ist durchaus lebhaft und plastisch, lässt sich aber — wenn ihr etwas zum Vorwurfe gemacht werden kann, so ist es dies — durch eine vielleicht etwas gar zu einseitige Abneigung gegen die Adelspartei tragen.
English translation: Zanelli's account, supported by many documents, is thoroughly lively and vivid, but it allows itself to be carried along — if anything can be held against it, it is this — by a perhaps somewhat too one-sided aversion to the party of the nobility.
His reservation qualifies an otherwise favorable assessment: documentary richness and vivid presentation coexist with a potentially excessive hostility toward the noble party. The review closes by identifying appendices of broader scholarly interest—the municipal statute of 1429, revenue and expenditure records for 1641 and 1672, and the Senate’s decree of 3 September 1644. These materials reinforce the book’s relevance to the linked histories of civic rights, municipal finance, and aristocratic administration.
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