2025/05/05 by Catherine Kovesi · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1515/9783111705446-016
openalex publication_date 2025/05/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
The Republic of Venice was the longest lived of all republics.Lasting for over 1000 years, it is at once both the most vivid exemplar of the enduring legacy of the Republic that was Rome, and of the fragility of any republican enterprise.Alone amongst Italian cities, Venice could claim that it had not merely inherited Rome, but that it had never ceased 'being' Rome, even when Rome itself had fallen.Despite exquisite refinement of a series of governmental mechanisms that seemed to auger well for its stability and longevity, the end when it came was swift and devastating.This chapter examines the core elements of the Venetian republic together with the long-held debates about the reasons for its fallwhether primarily internal or externaland concludes with a brief reflection on the present fate of the city under the governance of the Republic of Italy.This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper. T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men (1925)As I began writing this chapter, the justices of the Supreme Court of the republic of the United States of America were deciding whether a President whilst still in office can be immune from prosecution for attempting to overturn the election of their successor.In an ambiguous decision, the Court ruled that former presidents can never be prosecuted for actions relating to core powers of their office, but that they can be prosecuted for their private acts.As the individual concerned, by now a convicted felon, was recently re-elected for this highest of offices, a final trial has now been deferred, perhaps indefinitely. 1For the Council of Ten, the highest judicial authority in the Republic of Venice until 1797, any need to debate such matters was unthinkable.Formed in the wake of a conspiracy against the State in 1310, the Council did not hesitate in April 1375 to sentence to execution and damnatio memoriae the sitting head of state, Doge Marin Falier, for conspiring to extend his powers.To this day a cautionary black curtain remains painted over his former image in the hall of the Great Council Donald J. Trump was defeated in the election of November 2020.On 6 January 2021 a mob of his supporters attempted to overturn the formal confirmation of his successor, Joe Biden, in a joint session of Congress in the Capitol.In May 2024 Trump became the first former US president to be convicted of felony crimes (34 in total).In the election of 5 November