Brilliant book. Thoroughly readable history.

Spectacular scope, but a little biased from an author who lived in 'Little Venice'... of course, everyone wants the military history, the glories, but the end comes awfully quick when it was in truth a century in the making. Perhaps such a city deserved to have its decline as discussed as its apogee: not least when its apogee was unique and its decline a prescient warning on state decay.

A political history of Venice from its first settlement until the destruction of the Republic by Napoleon. Norwich is a fine writer and is able to make fourteen hundred years of 'and then ... and then' interesting. What I found particularly intriguing is Venice's survival as a republic for over a thousand years, a record for continuous self-government that has not been equalled anywhere to my knowledge - no revolutions, no conquests until Napoleon. How was this possible? Venetians were no more honest or wiser than any other people. Norwich spends considerable time describing the evolution of its constitution. The underlying principles seem to have been - a prohibition to passing on political power to one's children; a bafflingly complicated and ever evolving electoral system intended to prevent the fixing of elections (see the quote below); rotating positions of authority on a monthly basis; multiple layers of political bodies each limiting the others' powers; a willingness to tax their wealthy punitively when it was necessary to the survival of the city.

“On the day appointed for the election, the youngest member of the Signoria was to pray in St. Mark's; then, on leaving the Basilica, he was to stop the first boy he met and take him to the Doges' Palace, where the Great Council, minus those of its members who were under thirty, was to be in full session. This boy, know as the ballotino, would have the duty of picking the slips of paper from the urn during the drawing of lots. By the first of such lots, the Council chose thirty of their own number. The second was used to reduce the thirty to nine, and the nine would then vote for forty, each of whom was to receive at least seven nominations. The forty would then be reduced, again by lot, to twelve, whose task was to vote for twenty-five, of whom each this time required nine votes. The twenty-five were in turn reduced to another nine; the nine voted for forty-five, with a minimum of seven votes each, and from these the ballotino picked out the names of eleven. The eleven now voted for forty-one – nine or more votes each – and it was these forty-one who were to elect the Doge....

"So much for the preliminaries; now the election itself could begin. Each elector wrote the name of his candidate on a paper and dropped it in the urn; the slips were then removed and read, and a list drawn up of all the names proposed, regardless of the number of nominations for each. A single slip for each name was now placed in another urn, and one drawn. If the candidate concerned was present, he retired together with any other elector who bore the same surname, and the remainder proceeded to discuss his suitability. He was then called back to answer questions or to defend himself against any accusations. A ballot followed. If he obtained the required twenty-five votes, he was declared Doge; otherwise a second name was drawn and so on.”

If you love Venice, you would love Norwich’s book. How I wish I had read it before I went there recently!

Venice is beautiful and unique, mostly because it has never been defeated until it surrendered to Napoleon. It is protected by the Lagoon which only the locals have knowledge to navigate; if you have travelled there from the airport by boat you would realise how treacherous the lagoon is.

Safe from greedy kings and princes, Venice developed the most democratic government. The Doge is not allowed to pass his post to his family, at least not immediately. The Doge is chose through a complicated process. Subsequently there is the Council of Ten, and the other subcommittees. Through her superior ship technology, she remained the strongest naval country in the mediterranean, getting tax free concessions from The Holy Roman Empire, Byzantium and even the Ottomans; controlling ‘quarter and half a quarter’ of the Roman Empire. She has monopoly on the lucrative salt trade, as well as control of the Silk Road trade. At one point she was so strong she sacked Constantinople and brought back the 4 famous bronze horses (in St Mark’s museum; the ones on top of the Basilica are fakes). Diplomacy was her strong point; coupled with her military strength, she dealt with and held her own against the Great Powers.

Then Portugal and Spain found alternate routes to the East ‘Spice islands’. Her power started to decrease. The Ottoman Empire further weakened her power by taking over the trade route, and building an equally strong army. Even though she won the famous Battle of Lepanto, she did not manage to reverse the gradual decline.

Norwich is totally on Venice’s side; all other countries are more or less described in unsavoury terms; this makes this book so fun to read.

This long but smoothly written book, by the very recently deceased John Julius Norwich, scion of English nobility, covers more than a thousand years of Venetian history. Nowadays Venice is mostly known as an overloaded tourist destination, or as a victim of environmental degradation, rather than as the world power it was for most of its history. Norwich, who loved the city and talks in detail not only about its past but also its architecture, often tying the two together, ably restores the place of Venice in history. And in so doing, he manages to both be interesting and to show us viable alternatives to the dead end into which “liberal democracy” has led us.

Venice is very old, though not as old as the rest of settled Italy—its origins only go back to the late Roman empire, since a group of islands in a lagoon, lacking much in the way of agriculture and having no minerals, is not an obvious place to settle. It might make a good place for hunter-gatherers in the James C. Scott mold, although it’s pretty cold in the winter, but as the heart of a civilization, at first glance the location’s costs outweigh the benefits. As with so many city foundings, the initial impulse to overcome those drawbacks was war—the very early Venetians, probably in the sixth century, settled the lagoon as refugees from the barbarian hordes overrunning the (western) Roman Empire. Venice was both out of the way and difficult to get to, protected by water, so it was a logical place to go to avoid barbarians spreading over land, who were attracted to existing concentrations of wealth and to substantial farmland. Whatever the precise outline of its founding, which naturally is shrouded in myth, the city only emerges into history in the eighth century, with the election of the first doges.

Other than canals and gondolas (as I read this book, my daughter kept asking, “have you gotten to the part about the gondolas?”), what most people know of Venice is the office of doge. At a casual glance, it seems like a type of monarchy, but that is completely wrong. The office was originally modelled, apparently, on that of the Byzantine exarch, or imperial administrator of Italy, who sat in Ravenna (though that office ended with Lombard conquest in 751). From early on, however, the doge was elected, and the office was constrained by various devices to limit the doge’s power. This is one of the major themes of Norwich’s book—the obsession of the Venetians with controlling the power of the doge, such that he not become a monarch, much less a hereditary monarch, which in practice over the centuries resulted in the doge becoming more and more a figurehead. During more than a thousand years there is a lot of variation in any political system, so no doubt much of what Norwich discusses is summary, but to me Venetian political structure was the most fascinating part of this book, and the office of doge was only one part of that structure, and in many ways the least important part.

Technically Venice at its founding was part of the Eastern Roman Empire, which theoretically ruled all of northern Italy at the time, and in fact Venice defeated an attempt in the early ninth century by Charlemagne to occupy the city, as Byzantine power in the West fell away. In practice, though, the city was always largely autonomous, maintaining for a long time its early cordial relationship with the Byzantines (including, crucially, trade privileges in Constantinople), and throughout its entire history engaged in one balancing act after another with respect to its neighbors. What made Venice unique was commerce. Without significant landholdings (at least until much later), wealth, and therefore power, derived primarily from trade. Originally, the key product was locally produced salt formed by controlled evaporation, but types of trade goods quickly expanded, given the pivotal position of Venice as a protected enclave, centrally located and closely tied to Byzantium.

Trade not only made Venice rich, but formed its entire political system. The aristocracy that came into being in the city differed from all other Italian aristocracies, as well as from the broader European aristocracies. Venetians had less interest in war for aggrandizement, much more interest in stability, and considerably more appreciation for the common good. As Norwich says, “In Venice there was no separate military caste; the nobles were merchants, the merchants noble, and the interests of both were identical.” This produced stability (although far from perfect stability, especially in the early years) and the creation of a magnificent city, as aristocrats spent, like the ancient Greeks, to benefit their fellow citizens and memorialize themselves. Moreover, tight geography and city living meant everyone important knew, more or less, everyone else important, and therefore trust was high, a benefit reinforced by constant commercial interaction among the populace. Thus, feudalism had no role in Venice, both because of its circumstances and because of its Byzantine backdrop (feudalism did not exist under the Eastern Roman Empire), unlike in the rest of Italy, with its Frankish and Norman sensibilities and customs. (A further part, and perhaps not a small part, of Venetian stability was that the Venetians appear to have been very long lived. Norwich claims that even today their life span is longer than other Italians, and most of the doges were elected in their seventies and served into their eighties or even their nineties.)

In the beginning, it was the vote of all the citizens that elected the doge, directly, and also declared war. The early Venetian constitutional system also contemplated the doge being advised by counsellors, whom the doge was required to consult, and the doge having the right to call the assembly of the people to vote. But by the late twelfth century, the doge tended to ignore the counselors, and there were so many citizens it was impractical to call an assembly, not to mention that such assemblies tended to degenerate into riotous, demanding mobs. Thus, the Great Council was created—originally 480 prominent citizens, nominated by representatives of city districts, and holding office for one year. The Great Council in turn appointed the officers of the state (who were required to accept the honor, since many did not want the unprofitable burden), and also the representatives of the city districts, thus “after the first year, when these representatives were elected democratically, they and the Great Council, each nominating the other, formed a closed circle which completely excluded the general populace from any say in their composition.” The election of the doge was also changed to be done by eleven electors chosen by the Great Council, to be “confirmed” by the people, and the number of counselors to the doge, and their power to check his actions, was increased. Moreover, starting at this point, the accession oath of the doge became a real check on his power, constantly revised to address perceived inadequacies and hemming him around with specific, substantive restrictions. All this was aimed at preventing the doge from accruing power and the masses from causing trouble.

This structure, complicated enough, became even more complicated over time, especially in the election of the doge, the potential distortion of whose office was perceived as a major threat to the Republic. (The doge’s election involved multiple rounds of selecting electors who selected other electors, with a large random element, and included features like an assigned man going out and grabbing the first boy he found to pull numbers from a hat.) For republic was what Venice was, for more than a thousand years, in the old meaning of republic—a mixed government, containing elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Over time, the aristocratic elements became stronger, while the democratic elements became weaker, but until its end, Venice remained a true republic. This process was ongoing—for example, other bodies were added in the fourteenth century, notably the Council of Ten, a body that in concert with the doge and his six councilors and had very significant authority, especially in areas of national security, but whose authority was hedged around with checks. These included terms of only one year and not more than one member from any given family at time, and a rotating three-member leadership—for a month at a time, during which they were confined to the doge’s palace to prevent the access of those who might bribe or coerce them. The Council of Ten could also temporarily expand their numbers, thereby giving greater heft to their decisions. All together these bodies formed a coherent whole, flexible enough to respond to crises, but broad enough not to be captured by factions and to make the common good their prime goal.

What was originally a republic weighted toward the democratic element became, as Venice grew in power and wealth, a republic weighted toward the aristocratic element. In 1299, in the Serrata or “Lock-Out,” membership in the Great Council, theoretically the supreme body of the state, was formally and permanently restricted to those whose families had held office during the past four years, along with a few others earlier holding office. This list was later called the Golden Book—all those citizens eligible for election. Norwich notes that this occasioned little unhappiness among those denied membership, then or later, even among the middle-upper stratum no longer eligible for the Council, the cittadini (“citizens”), whom Norwich analogizes to the Roman equestrian order. These were not powerless—the Grand Chancellor, for example, an extremely important office more powerful than the doge, was required to be held by one of the cittadini. Thus, the cittadini became a bulwark to, rather than an opposition to, the oligarchical system, and being a Venetian citizen a much sought-after position by those outside the city who had dealings with it. Not to mention that the Great Council was, by the Serrata, expanded to more than 1,500 men, representing a broad cross-section of Venice and therefore quite representative—not democratic, but democracy in the modern sense is not at all necessary for a representative state, of course, as long as the aristocracy is broad enough and has the requisite virtue.

All these changes were organic and slow. Part of Venetian stability was their adherence to tradition—for example, the tradition lasting until the sixteenth century that each new doge give a present of wild birds to numerous people in government, replaced ultimately by special coins minted for the occasion, because birds had decreased while recipients increased—an early nod to environmental sustainability while maintaining tradition. It was not just ceremonial traditions that were maintained; you do not ever find the Venetians adopting new structures based on ideology or some new form of thought.

Early Venice was famed for the ease with which any person could participate in trade, by forming a colleganza (or commenda), where anyone with some money could form a limited liability entity (not a partnership, which implies unlimited liability for the participants) with a merchant, generally a young, aggressive one looking to make his name, and share the profits through a recognized legal form. This is what is known today as “default rules,” such as corporation law, making it easy for people to form businesses, knowing that the law provides reasonable rules that they do not have to re-invent, or even fully understand, to be adequately protected. And Venice always had relatively low taxation, very low in the early years of its glory. Most taxation was in the form of customs duties and other levies on trade, but in times of need, forced loans from the nobility, usually in the form of a small percentage of income (e.g., in 1313, a one-time tax of three percent on income—we should be blessed with such taxation). All this together meant ever-increasing amounts of capital in the city—after all, the recipe for economic success isn’t that hard, it’s just envy that, in most societies, eventually corrodes systems where real wealth is generated—and while doubtless the Venetians were subject to the vice of envy, they never let it dictate public policy. So Venice grew in wealth and power. From the thirteenth century onwards, Venice expanded into an imperial power, dominating not only the Adriatic, but large sections of northern Italy and the Dalmatian coast, Istria, Illyria, and parts farther south, as well as much of the Aegean. And, for a time, large parts of the Byzantine Empire, although she gave those up soon enough, finding them more trouble than they were worth.

For most of their history, the Venetians occupied an ambiguous position with respect to Islam, with whose adherents they had dealings since their earliest times. Muslims were good trading partners, and Venice’s control of the eastern Mediterranean was not significantly threatened until the 1400s. Thus, the Venetians looked at the Crusades with a jaundiced eye, willing enough to be paid to help transship Crusaders and to obtain trading rights and privileges in Outremer, and in the Fourth Crusade, to participate in sacking and looting Constantinople, but not committed to put the boot on Islam, had that even been possible. Norwich, unfortunately, continues the Gibbon/Runciman tradition, rooted in anti-Catholicism and Enlightenment stupidity and sophistry, of seeing the Crusades as a whole as “one of the blackest chapters in the history of Christendom,” when in fact they were heroic and awesome. True, they were subject to the foibles of man and fate, and nobody would defend the Fourth Crusade’s result—it should have been directed against Islam, and that it was not, was wholly the fault of the Venetians. Norwich is also subject, to a limited degree, to the modern disease of highlighting Christian bad behavior upon the storming of cities, while ignoring or downplaying identical Muslim behavior, which was regarded as entirely normal up until the modern era. Although he buys into propaganda about the Crusades, Norwich at least rejects the equally discredited idea that Venice was a proto-totalitarian police state, a favorite trope of Enlightenment writers, and part of the Black Legend. Certainly, the organs of the state sought out subversives, but the prisons were mostly empty most of the time, and Venice probably had a lighter touch than most governments of the Renaissance. But none of this looms large in the book—just in my mind, since I am looking out for these things, being touchy on the subject of historical illiteracy.

What made Venice’s republican system work was the willing adoption of great responsibility by great men, or at least those charged with greatness. Luck and geography helped, too—other Italian city states, such as Genoa, were republics as well, but their position on the mainland meant they were more subject to attack from the outside, and turmoil sooner or later resulted in the imposition of some form of autocracy. It has become fashionable nowadays to believe that Venice declined when the democratic elements of the republic became less, though of course it was never a democracy in the modern sense, even in the earliest times. (The imprecise use of the word “democracy” is a major cause of inanity in today’s political discourse.) For example, Daron Acemoglu’s and James A. Robinson’s not-very-good Why Nations Fail claims that Venice declined after 1300, because of the increase in oligarchic power and because the colleganza was banned. Their conclusion is that the aristocrats wanted to extract the juice produced by everyone else, and they killed the golden goose by the Serrata. This shallow reading of history has been picked up by other under-informed pundits, such as Jonah Goldberg in "Suicide of the West" and Chrystia Freeland in "Plutocrats," and appears to be gaining ground among the chattering neoliberal classes.

But that Venice declined after 1300 is objectively false; as Norwich makes clear, thus giving the lie to Acemoglu’s entire theory. Actually, Venice continued along its sparkling path; the height of Venice’s power was nearly two hundred years after the Serrata. What initiated Venice’s decline had nothing to do with its internal political, or economic, arrangements. Rather, it was the opening of the Cape of Good Hope route to Africa in 1499, eliminating the Venetian hold over much Eastern commerce, and even more the expansion of the Ottomans after 1453, who ended Venetian commercial dominance. It did not help that Venice lost her mainland possessions, and also came out on the losing end in mainland battles, such as the wars against the League of Cambrai, composed of basically “everyone not Venice.” It is probably true that ending arrangements like the colleganza ultimately harmed the Venetian economy, but given Venice’s dominance of the entire Mediterranean trade until around 1500, there is no direct line, While I know little about the details, it seems to me that Venetian state subsidy and regulation of trade (including turning certain lucrative trades, such as the triangular trade in Greek wine, English wool, and Flemish woolens, into state monopolies), while still encouraging it, may have been a better strategy for dominance than ad hoc arrangements that may have made more sense when Venice was not a hegemon in its area. Norwich, at least, thinks that state regulation and subsidy of work like shipbuilding, especially given the military overlay, was beneficial. There appears to have been little regulation of the rent-seeking type, benefiting one set of individuals over another; regulation was directed at strengthening the state. That said, increased taxation to feed increased bureaucracy must have led to increased scleroticism over time; doubtless there was some accumulating drag on the system—but wealth can alleviate that problem to some extent, as long as virtue in the governing class remains.

[Review finishes as first comment.]

WAY more detail than I ever bargained for. Had to skim through most of it.

A remarkable history of 1,000 years. WEll worth learning about. The book is a little dense, as history books can be, but it could use a better narrative with more of an interesting story flow. It is challenging to describe a rich 1,000 year history in one book. The author is passionate about the topic and a little bit too English in style, but overall a very good book.

I bought this book when we were wrapping up a visit to Venice. After days of gawking at the city’s cramped, sultry beauty, I wanted to know more. How did this astonishing city get built? And literally: HOW did they do it, rising buildings out of some muddy lagoon? What of the great painters: Tintoretto and Titian and Canaletto? Or the evolution of the city’s exquisite palazzos and churches and opera house(s)? How came the gondolas and the canals they oared? How did the famed trading/shipping enterprise work? And how did this whole miracle navigate its way into the Twentieth Century? I picked up A History of Venice thinking I’d learn all this and more. In fact, I learned NONE of this… and more.

So what will you learn about in 650 pages? Doges. Doges signing treaties and going to war. Doges going toe-to-toe against emperors and popes and princes. Doges getting sick (for they were all inevitably ancient) and doges suddenly dying and other inevitably old doges suddenly getting elected in their stead. Smart doges and stupid doges. Doges! Doges! On every page, doges! There were one hundred and twenty doges, and if you ever wondered what they did and didn’t do? This is the book for you. Its scope starts with the first doge, and ends (in 1797) with the last. I can’t remember the name of either man. In fact, I’m willing to bet you can’t name a single doge. In the end, what does it matter?

For Mr. Norwich, “history” is ONLY political history. He has no interest in Venice’s culture, engineering, architecture or any events of the past 225 years. His history concludes in 1797 when the republic evaporates. The design of Piazza San Marco is given a paragraph. Its greatest painters are barely mentioned. And so this was not at all the book I wanted, and there were times when Mr Norwich was so lost in the weeds describing the terms of some tedious alliance, that I wanted to chuck him off the train.

But you know what? Over time, Norwich and the doges he chronicled… they worked their magic. I came to appreciate the author’s astonishing knowledge, and to see poignancy in Venice’s capacity for self-sabotage and recovery, and to find trenchant contemporary resonances in the Republic’s decline and (spoiler alert) ultimate, undignified fall.

I’d still like to read a cultural history of Venice (and would happily welcome any suggestions) but in the meanwhile, this book taught me things I never really thought I cared about. Which is, I suppose, the best compliment one can give a “history” book.

118 Doges of Venice some lasting many years and some receiving only a couple of paragraphs because they died so soon after their appointment. I learnt a lot about Mediterranean history, Christian history, Catholic history and much more than just Venice. I had not realised the incredibly influential and pivotal role that the Most Serene Republic of Venice held in the establishment of nations and the various histories that were intertwined stretching from mainland Europe across to Jerusalem and the Ottoman Empire.
So many Doges, so many wars, so many treaties during which time the flag of St Mark rose and fell many times in many different countries, bringing success and failure.
It is not an easy read considering it covers eighteen hundred years of history. I am pleased that I have had the opportunity to accumulate so much knowledge about such a beautiful City and its place in World history.

After Karen and I visited Venice over the summer, I grew interested in its history. This book covers its history from it's earliest founding until its fall into French hands in 1797. The Most Serene Republic of Venice had an amazing run: it existed as an entity - with a very secure, non-dynastic, political structure - from the late 7th century until Napoleon...more than 1100 years!

Venice is a beautiful city in a remarkable (and defensible) locale, but today it's hard to picture it at its height: when it stood astride the western world, with an unparalleled far flung trading empire and a place at the table with the great empires.

The story itself is fascinating: the ebb and flow of relations with the Ottoman Empire, the dynamics of the fractured (literally Machiavellian) Italian peninsula, the shame of the 4th crusade (the crusader sack of the Christian city of Constantinople, from which it never fully recovered), the long decline of the Mediterranean after Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope and opened up an alternate route to the Orient.

And Venice's political system was interesting as well. The complex process of picking each "doge for life" was designed to prevent hereditary control, and was effective at doing so, but Venice was no democracy. Over time, a smaller and smaller number of elite families came to dominate, and the famous star-chamberish "Council of Ten" to operate outside of constitutional constraints. Nevertheless, when compared to its contemporaries, Venice was remarkably tolerant and free - no one was ever executed for heresy, for example, throughout its entire history.

But the book itself was a bit tedious. I started it in the summer and only picked it up again to finish over the Christmas holidays. It tells the story comprehensively, but not particularly engrossingly. I probably won't read another history of Venice, so I can't say if there's a better one. But look around before deciding this is the one you want to read.

One final note - did you know that the original islands of the lagoon were too small and too soft to support the great city Venice became. So as early as the 9th century, a foundation was established using thousands upon thousands of wooden piles, whose sawn off tops made a unified and solid surface. Many houses in Venice today still stand on piles sunk around 1000 years ago, and the technique was continued throughout the life of the city. As one example, the Santa Maria della Salute church, in Dorsoduro, supposedly stands entirely on such piles: more than 1.1 million of them!

For a more intense-than-needed history of the “Most Serene Republic”, this is it. A History of Venice, by legendary historian John Julius Norwich, has the same DNA as his other books: the story is told chronologically (523 AD – 1797 AD), the text it is readable but dense (639 pages in very small type), words in foreign languages are used for added flair, and the primary emphasis is on political history. Additionally, the creation of the book was personal for Norwich. As a boy, his politician/historian father wanted to write a book about Venice’s history “to set the record straight” because he felt that the 1,000-year republic did not get its due. After his father’s death, Norwich used his father’s notes to guide the project.

Here are 8 “highlights” I enjoyed reading about:
- Venice, one of the most beautiful cities on the planet with Gothic and Renaissance architecture and canals everywhere, was ruled (with a soft hand) by the Byzantine Empire in its earlier days. This gave them more of a Greek influence (although they were still Catholic), and it protected them from surrounding hostile enemies. At times, Venice held colonies “overseas”, like Crete (now part of Greece).

- Venice obtained the corpse of St. Mark (from Alexandria, Egypt) partially due to a fear of what invading Muslims would do with it. As a result of this “theft”, St. Mark is embedded in all things Venetian.

- Culturally speaking, Venice was very religiously tolerant, obsessed with trade and profit, and famous for elaborate celebrations. Diplomacy and neutral war policies were highly valued. It was extremely advanced in the Medieval Ages compared to other parts of Europe; in the 1300s they adopted the first national health care system!

- Throughout the Medieval Ages, unlike monarchies all over the world, Venice was a republic (representative government) and had a complex system of elected leaders. Over time, there were abuses of power and it became more like an oligarchy, but even still it was a very effective government. A side note is that Venice’s population was only 200,000 at its peak.

- Starting in the 1100s, the “Arsenal” was an incredible manufacturing section of Venice that pumped out ships like an assembly line in the Industrial Revolution. A full ship (merchant or military) could be produced in only a few hours. Over 16,000 workers were employed, almost all specialists.

- The total failure of the Fourth Crusade (early 1200s) was horrific and the most entertaining part of the book. Enrico Dandolo, Venice’s blind leader in his nineties, greedily demanded payment from Western European Crusaders who needed Venetian naval help. Things got so desperate that, after sacking a nearby Christian city (Zara in 1202), the Crusaders went on to sack another Christian city, the glorious capital city of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople (1204). The Byzantine Empire never recovered, and Norwich claims that never in history was so much beauty destroyed in so short a time. Although Venice benefitted from these events the short term, ironically for the Christian world, the weakening of the Byzantine Empire allowed further Muslim expansion into Christian Europe.

- To put pressure on a country to change its politics, the medieval Catholic Church would sometimes resort to excommunicating (kick them out of the Church) and placing an interdict (stop priest services) on entire nations; basically damning everyone in the country to Hell. They did this to Venice four times. On the last occasion, in the early 1600s, Venice vigorously protested this treatment, and as a result the Church folded, was embarrassed, and never did this to another country again.

- The “three greatest blows” Venice absorbed in its history, before meeting their end (Napoleon conquered it in 1797), were: a) when the Portuguese established all-water trading routes to Asia, undercutting Venetian trade; b) the 200 year spread of the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean region after the fall of Constantinople in 1453; and c) the failed League of Cambrai invasion (early 1500s) - Pope Julius II, seemingly the most anti-Venetian guy in history, wanted to stamp out Venice forever and was able to rally everyone in the area to the cause for a short time.

In closing, despite of all the interesting highlights and praise, I give this book 3.5 out of 5 stars. For one, it is just too long. For example, almost 20 pages chronicle a conflict over the Greek island of Crete (the Cretan War). Next, there are just too many names. “Doge” is the title of the leader of the Republic of Venice, and Norwich seems to chronicle almost all 120 doges, however briefly. Finally, I think it would have been better if there was more social and cultural history; there is too much emphasis on leaders and military battles. Hardcore historians about Venice would enjoy this book the most.

Incredibly detailed complete history of Venice. If you want to know why and how Venice is still to this day a stand alone city when compared to the rest of Italy, this book has you covered and then some. Still amazing to consider that they had (have? Can't think of a longer run) the longest consecutive Republic in the history of Europe. And throughout the golden age of Monarchy and feudalism in Europe.