LITMIR.BIZ

      GENERAL VIEW, FROM THE WEST

      The Grand Council was the ultimate basis of the State, and was composed of all nobles above twenty years of age,139 including the Minor Councillors, the Senators, and all the officials. Its numbers usually ranged from 200 to 300. It met in September, and the list of vacant offices were read out by the Count. The Secretary called up the Councillors one by one, drawing the numbers of all the seats from a bag. Each Councillor then drew a ball from an urn, which contained a number of gold balls equal to that of the offices to be filled; those who drew the gold balls took their seats beside the Count and Minor Council, and ordered the Secretary to nominate three Councillors for each office. As each name was called out the Councillor in question and his nearest relatives left the hall and waited outside. Then all the remaining Councillors were given linen balls, which they were to drop into another urn divided into two sections, one for the ayes and one for the noes. If none of the three candidates received more than half the votes recorded, the election was repeated. No one might refuse the office thus conferred upon him, save a small number of persons who could obtain a dispensation by paying a small fine.140

      The Grand Council ratified all the laws of the Republic; it gave the final decision for peace or war, although the diplomatic function was reserved to the Senate; it could recall exiles, it received petitions, and it managed many of the daily affairs of the city. Sixty members (including the Count and the Minor Council) formed a quorum.

      Besides the three Councils, there were a number of special bodies appointed for different purposes. Thus there was the Corte Maggiores or Major Curia, already alluded to, whose sentences in civil matters were without appeal until 1440; the Minor Curia or Lower Court, with special advocates attached to each; the Advocatores Comunis or Public Prosecutors, and many other functionaries. The three Camarlenghi kept the public accounts, and the Doanerii supervised the customs. The four Treasurers of Santa Maria had important fiscal duties in guarding the State treasury and paying out the public money according to the decrees of the Senate. They also had certain charitable duties, and spent the income of invested surpluses in providing poor girls with dowries, and later in ransoming Christian slaves from the Turks or the Barbary pirates. Private citizens, and even foreigners from Slave lands, often appointed them executors of their wills. Originally they had been the guardians of the relics and treasury of the Cathedral, but as they gradually came to have so large a share of the financial business of the Republic on their hands, in 1306 another board, called the Procurators Sanctæ Mariæ, was instituted to manage the affairs of the Church, and act with powers of attorney for various religious confraternities. A similar body was formed when the church of St. Blaize was erected in 1349. The notary of the Republic, who drafted all public acts, patents, diplomas, &c., was usually an expert Italian lawyer.

      There were numbers of other officers for different departments of the administration and for the purposes of defence, such as those super sale, super blado comunis, super turribus, the capitani di custodia, who were elected every month, and the captains of the sestieri or six wards, into which Ragusa was divided. All the citizens in turn had to bear arms for the defence of the town, and certain nobles, who were changed very frequently, commanded the guard, and saw that the gates were securely fastened at night. The rest of the Republic’s territory was ruled by officers appointed by the Grand Council, called counts, viscounts, or captains. They governed despotically, and no native of the territory had any voice in the administration. In many cases the Government was very tyrannical and arbitrary. Ragusan ideas of liberty were not only restricted to a limited class, but did not extend a yard beyond the walls. Only the island of Lagosta, purchased in 1216 from Stephen Uroš, King of Servia, was permitted to retain its own customs and laws.

      It will thus be seen that the Constitution was essentially copied from that of Venice, and was designed above all to make personal government impossible. None of the officials, save the Venetian Count, remained in office for more than a year, and the great majority of them could not be re-elected for two years afterwards. Everything was done to prevent individuals from acquiring undue influence, and to make the Government as collective as possible. All business was executed by boards and committees, and hardly anything by single individuals. Every detail was carefully regulated, so as to leave no loophole for tampering with the institutions or suspending the continuity of the Government. The result was from some points of view satisfactory. In the whole history of Ragusa only three or four revolutions are recorded—almost a unique distinction among the city-republics of Italy and other European lands, whose history is one long tale of civil wars and seditions. Venice alone enjoyed a similar though less complete immunity. On the other hand, it gave the Executive very little power of acting energetically and pursuing a bold, broad-minded policy, and prevented Ragusa from expanding into a first-class maritime State, as it had more than one opportunity of doing. At the same time, had it become really powerful, and acquired a hegemony over a large part of the Adriatic littoral and of the Slave lands, it would have run greater risks at the hands of the Turks. Venice, who felt the need of a swift and silent executive, instituted the Council of Ten, to which the Ragusan constitution offers no parallel. The Ragusan Senate was too numerous a body to act in the same way, and in it those who hesitated and doubted usually carried the day.

      We realise the character of the Ragusan constitution from the fact that so few individuals have left their mark on the town’s history. We read of the various noble families whose names appear again and again in the public records, but hardly any single citizen emerges high above the others. The few names which are remembered are those of scholars, men of letters, or scientists. Even the ambassadors were always sent in pairs, although in the Middle Ages this was not peculiar to Ragusa.

      Another aspect was that the three Councils who had to transact all the weightiest matters of the Republic were also overwhelmed with the petty details of municipal administration. This of course was difficult to avoid in the case of a small city-republic, but it constituted the radical failing of that type of state, for its Government was a parliament, a court of justice, and a town council all in one. The same body might be called upon to decide on an alliance with Hungary and on the seaworthiness of a carrack in the same sitting.

      In diplomatic affairs, however, the Ragusans were past-masters. The Republic was in constant danger from the powerful enemies which surrounded it on all sides. The Venetians, who claimed the monopoly of the Adriatic, were ever anxious to increase their influence and to become absolute masters of the city, as they were of the other Dalmatian towns, and after their retirement from Ragusa in 1358 they made many attempts to reinstate their authority. On the mainland there was the King of Servia, the Banus of Bosnia, the Lord of Hlum, watching for an opportunity to occupy Ragusa, whose splendid harbour they envied. But the city fathers, by a policy which was often tortuous and not always straightforward, certainly achieved their object of preserving the Republic’s autonomy. Although Ragusa was never absolutely independent—for she either had a Venetian Count or paid a tribute to this or that Power—she was always free from foreign control in her internal affairs, and to a great extent in her external relations. The Government always knew when to give way and when to hold out; this feature became particularly conspicuous in the Republic’s dealings with the Turks.

      Of the non-noble citizens we hear very little. They played no part in the Government, and were ineligible save for the very lowest offices. On the whole, they seem to have acquiesced in the oligarchical constitution, and apparently had little desire to take part in public affairs. They were ruled with wisdom and without oppression, free from faction fights, and their commercial interests, being identical with those of the aristocracy, were well cared for and protected by the Government. Both classes derived their wealth from trade.

CHAPTER IV

       VENETIAN SUPREMACY

       Table of Contents

II.—SERVIAN AND BOSNIAN WARS, 1276–1358

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