"This study re-examines the political economy of Venice from the point of view of the hundreds of corporations which ordinary people--despite their apparent 'exclusion' from political life--organized and ran for themselves. Mercy was central to their Christian values. Those who offered mercy to their brethren--and sisters--in temporary hardship were investing in the expectation of reciprocity in their own time of need. Venice as the Polity of Mercy traces a formative linking of economy, polity and religion in the thirteenth century, then the expansion and extension of a network of overlapping institutions in the fourteenth and fifteenth. There followed a dislocation during the struggles of Church and State between the mid-sixteenth century and the mid-seventeenth, and a revitalizing reconnection of economy and polity in a different religious climate after the plague of 1630. The book offers a picture of circulation and movement rather than of stability and continuity, and a new understanding of the significance of Venice through a reconfiguration of Venetian history and the history of Venetian art."-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.