Venice – Servants

This is, thank whichever divine you follow, the final research episode for the Venice material. It isn’t that I’ve researched all of the things that were on the shopping list that I put in a previous episode, it’s that you get to a point where the research begins to make you want to give the project up, and at that point you really should start writing.

The final set of notes are from “Housecraft and Statecraft: Domestic Service in Renaissance Venice, 1400 to 1600”

Ostention Clock.

Ostention an idea from modern folklore studies. That is, I think it’s from Foucault. It’s when your actions make a piece of folklore real. That is, they bring the piece of folklore into the real world by allowing it to alter your actions. He has stolen the term in Catholic services. The Ostention is the bit where the priest holds up the wafer to allow you to see Jesus. The idea of the Ostention Clock is, as the characters complete their adventures, if they favour the Player of Games, the Faerie Aura of Venice will get deeper, so achronal elements will become more severe. The Carnival will become less and less like it is in the 12th century, and more like it is in the 15th and 16th century. The Great Fleets will be less like they are in the 12th century, and more like they are at the high point of the nation’s ship building. When the Ostention Clock gets to the maximum setting, 10, then at that point the Dogaressa in Stone manifests into the world through the stones of Venice. As it gets higher the Carnivale gets longer. Servants become more worldly and corrupt and rebellious. The Arsanel gets bigger. Those of you who have played Pendragon have seen something similar to this. It’s the Pendragon era system.

Notes on the Corruption of Servants

The writing about servants in medieval Venice is generally by rich people, and they depict their servants as childlike and carefree. They also say that they are less sinful than their masters because they have less temptation, because they have less freedom, and therefore the master is doing their servant a favour by keeping all the worries of the world away from them. In parallel, there are other works that say that servants are generally lazy and still from their masters. Servants are later seen as a reflection of their masters. Witnesses are thought to impress flaws into the children who they nurse, and so there are some substantial authors who suggest noble women must breastfeed their own children so that the children are impressed with nobility. Notably, most noble women don’t agree with them. Children are sometimes given governance over servants so that they can learn how to rule a household, because ruling a household is seen as a parallel of ruling estate. Similarly, a person who is in public office who can’t rule his own servants is suspected of being incompetent in his role as a politician. Yet more books for me to cross check.

De Forza notes that servants are generally healthier than their masters, because work is good for their health, and he notes that there is a precipitate decline in the health of doges once they gain the position. That being said, most doges are in their 80s, so I think his point that stress in sitting down are bad for them, however true it may be, may be exaggerated.

Tricks from gondoliers

Gondoliers charge tourists more than the legally set fair, and they do this by claiming that it’s a feast day, or that they’re against the tide, or that the weather is bad. Sometimes they refuse to land until they’re paid off, and sometimes they rock the boat until they’re paid to travel more smoothly.

A ferry station is called a Traghetti, and we’ll get back to those later. Most gondoliers don’t
work in service to a nobleman, they pick up fares from the Traghetti. But those who do hire out
to a nobleman for an extended period are believed to conspire with his other servants to rip him off because they have a method of getting smuggled goods out of the house, to punish him for not letting the gondolier live in the house by keeping him waiting at weird places at night, to get tips and treats from the women in the house of the children, when carrying the house’s wood, wine, or other supplies to steal some and put it under the poop of the gondola,
and to take a share of any picnics that the family has, and if they don’t get a share of the food to steal a gilded knife or a silver fork.

Second chapter, laws on servants.

The first big set of laws on servants are passed in 1541. The Council of Ten passes a law that enables two censors and one state attorney to cut down on the insolence of boatmen and servants, and their goals are to break up bonds and agreements between the lower classes, anti-union activity essentially, to enforce humility, to stop them being immoral and disgusting, and these three were allowed to punish by the drawing of blood if two of them agreed, and punish with death if all three agreed. This has parallel to the city’s control of labour guilds which we’ve discussed in previous episodes.

Originally, servants were restrained by the capi di sestieri. The capi di sestiari, as a position were created in 1171, that’s a traditional date. Each was supported by four guards or wardens and they patrolled that sestieri. They also had at least one notary to keep track of who’d been caught and what they’d been doing. The capi was elected by the nobles who live in that sestieri, and they supervise the Capi di Contrade, who are the heads of the approximately 70 parishes in the city. The capi di sestieri are required to be out their officers in the Rialto for three days a week to hear cases. They also supervise inns and taverns and the capi di contrade are required to spy on foreigners. The capi di sestieri are in charge of sex work and at least originally have control of the contracts between masters and servants.

Apprentices are not in this system. They’re under the Capi di Giustizieri Vecchi and registration
is required. In 1402, all contracts of apprenticeship need to be witnessed directly by the justices
Vecchi. The distinction between apprenticeships and servitude is not clear at the time. There
are law cases that try and distinguish it and it is particularly blurry in female-dominated trades. In 1368, a law is passed that all slave sales must be from the Rialto and that there is a license required from the capi di sestireri to sell slaves.

In 1386, the capi di sestieri start registering anime, that is indentured servants, to make sure they’re not resold later as slaves. No indenture can be longer than four years. The anime tend to be young people from the Balkans, which is being invaded at the time. In 1388, the maximum length of the indenture is lengthened to 10 years. Note that salaried servants are not at this point registered. In 1541, the censors take the role of looking after servants from the capi di sestieri and extend their role to salaried servants.

In 1503, all laws on servants are collected into a single capitulary, single book,
and it has some useful things. For a servant contracts can’t be longer than 10 years,
beating servants to trick them into breaking their contract by flight is popular and it’s
explicitly disallowed. Fornicating servants could be whipped, but only if the act was in the master’s house. Similarly, they could be branded. Torture is permitted in such cases, but that’s carried out by the Signori di Notte..

In 1410, Niccolo Barbo, who is the son of a prominent political figure, can’t remember who, was murdered. And this is because he discovers that his Tatar slave, Bona, is pregnant, and he beats her with a sort of harness used to carry water. So she goes to a pharmacy on St Pantaleon, and she buys arsenic, which is used for killing rats and other domestic things. It’s also used as makeup, moving on. So she buys some poison, she doses him the first time he doesn’t die, she doses him again, he dies, and she’s caught and she’s burned at the stake in the middle of the Piazza. There’s a ban put on all toxins and poisons for sale anywhere, but the Merceria, which is a particular street of merchants. There is one exception, there are two streets from San Zulian to the Rialto, which are still allowed to sell poison, but the poison has to be kept under lock and key, only handled by the druggist, not by their servants, and you can only buy it if you already have a receipt from the Giustizeri Vecchi saying that you are allowed to have it. There is a list of prescribed substances, but I don’t have that list. I’ll use that for a plot hook.

Citizenship is progressively withheld from the children of slaves, serving girls and women of, quote, low status. This could also go into the extension clock. The sensors are created in 1517
to uncover electoral corruption, and then they’re dismissed in 1521, and then they’re restarted again in 1524. When that happens, they add policing gambling to their functions. In 1541, they take over all cases involving servants. In 1544, the signore di notte are divided into two branches: the signore di notte al civil and the signore di notte al criminal. When this happens, the capi di sestiari are discontinued as no longer having a non-parallel function.

There is a lot of whipping and branding threatened in the capitulary that was previously mentioned. There’s also a note that servants may not wear silk, and that if a noble catches a servant wearing silk, they get the clothes. In 1537, there is a new policing office, the executors against blasphemy, and then in 1547, there is another new office which investigates heresy.

The capitulary sets maximum wages. Nobles were not meant to bid higher and higher rates to steal each other servants. In the plague of 1575 to 1577, servants become scarce and their pay increases substantially regardless. In the 16th century, servants are seen as accessories and accoutrements, particularly male servants who are taken out of the house. They’re given uniforms – even in silk – and it’s considered better to have two gondoliers than one. This makes their masters more vulnerable to shame because of the disloyalty or disorderly conduct of their servants.

There’s a note here that street brawls are dealt with by neighbourhood patrols appointed by the capi di sestiari or the cinque alla pace, which are the police magistrates. Theft, rape and murder are investigated by the segnori di notte al criminal, and the censors look after masters and servants.

Then there’s a list of servant offences, but we’ll skip that. The doge’s promissione says he has
twenty servants between the ages of twenty and sixty male and armed at his expense with iron
weapons. They are a bodyguard of last resort. Every member must be a Venetian. From 1275,
no one can bring weapons into the ducal palace while the great council is in session. They
essentially leave them together like a cloakroom.

After 1266, no one may wear the arms of a noble on their shield or on their weapon because these are treated as gang signs. After 1266, underlings in public service are not allowed to wear noble badges. They must wear the insignia of mark on their sleeve or shield. In 1310, the Querini-Tiepolo conspiracy breaks out. That’s an attempt by a noble family with some military support to take over the government and institute and autocracy similar to that found in other northern Italian city cities. Some changes to the ducal household in 1289, the ducal household has two knights and these act as master of the bedchamber and they have a rule against the receipt of gifts. Three kitchen supervisors, a notary a keeper of the seal, a priest and an acolyte, say mass, and there’s a note that this retinue is far smaller than northern kings or other northern dukes.

All of these jobs are jobs for life and over time they become sinecures for people who are politically skilled. The chevalier (the knight – in a later stage the title changes to the French form) physically supports the doge. They’re the doge’s bodyman. This is because the doges are mostly in their 80s. The servants, who are called scuderi, gather each morning to accompany the Duke to the Collegio. They do crowd control and they also carry symbols of office during important parades. Two of them act as guards on the ducal bedchamber. They have a weekly rotation. Once many of these roles become stipendiary, the actual work is done by other people. The steward arranges feasts. Servants of the upper level are lodged in the Ducal palace.

Many of these posts are deliberately held by people of middle or low rank, for example,
in 1578 one of the scuderi was an ex-slave. The reason for this is so that a noble family can’t
get its hooks into the government. The doge, in addition to this public staff, has a private
staff of personal servants who do the non-role related duties, like cooking non-banquets and
looking after their personal possessions. In the late 16th century, the dogearessa’s role is
amped up and so she requires more servants. Similarly, widowed dogearessa’s are given
government subsidies so that they can have a certain number of servants for the dignity of
the state.

Then it moves on to discussing a patricians household. It again defines the fraterna, which we’ve covered in previous episodes. Essentially, rich Venetian families like to keep the money concentrated by working as a single business unit and to stop the money spilling out. Only one or two of the children would marry and have children of their own. The surplus women would go to convents, the surplus men would either enter the church or become sort of merchant adventurers, who, if they made enough bank, would separate themselves from the fraterna and have their own household or alternatively leave all of their wealth to their nephews and their mistresses. Living in fraterna is cheaper because it allows each of the nuclear households in the fraterna to share servants’ cooks, for example.

The Priuli family, which is discussed, has a member of the Council of Ten, so the highest level of society. It notes that the oldest son has one male servant and the next son, who is married, has one male, one female and two witness servants. The third son is not in Venice, he’s in England.
In a later census, the head of the family, Lorenzo, his wife, Paola and their three sons, their two wives and up to six grandchildren, have at least ten servants. Each adult essentially has one servant of the same gender, plus there are witnesses and governesses for the children, and as the children age, there are fewer servants because the witnesses and governesses are reduced enough. Toward the end of the records we have for this returner, the oldest brother gets a second servant, he gets Gondolier, but there’s reason to believe that these were shared around throughout the family, so he was the brothers Gondolier legally, but in terms of his daily work, he probably ferried around everyone in the house.

Then there’s the census information from the Babarico family, they are not a political family. It was a young, up-and-coming man who wanted to keep all of his money liquid so he didn’t buy a house, he rented a house, and he rented a slave until he marries and has a couple of sons. Around this time he buys three more slaves, but he rents out one for the rest of that slave’s life because he has more slaves than he needs. As his children are born, he hires a witness each time, although he’s unusual in that he doesn’t have any male servants. The first half of the 15th century is the peak for the slave trade. In 1469, after Babarico dies, his widow buys the house that they are renting, his children, who are brothers, live in fraternor, the oldest one has a wife and two children, and their servants are Lina, who is a companion for the widowed mother, who used to be a witness for one of the brothers. One male indentured servant, two female indentured servants, two witnesses, and one or two slaves. Slaves were considered cheaper because you paid everything up front. The younger brother dies without children, the older has 11 children with his wife, four of these are boys, one of these, when it grows up, separates off because he wants to be in politics and so he rents closer to the center of power and the process of separating off is a legal process. He’s split from the fratera. The three brothers are served by one or two female servants.

Male servants are more likely to live away from the house and commute, especially gondoliers. Accommodation is often part of the wage and salary package given to servants. Sometimes elderly servants are left the use of accommodation, particularly if it’s not in the main house.

A cittidano household is the next social status down, a citizen. The most significant citizen is the grand chancellor, who mustn’t be noble. They are elected for life. They supervise the chancery and they officiate at the most important meetings of state. The politics for the election are intense and they have a similar pattern of one servant per adult, although at one stage the grand chancellor, because he may not be, noble but he is rich, has a household of himself, his wife, 10 other adults, and eight children of that household four are male and eight are female servants.

The Spinelli family accounts of two middle class adults and they have one female servant and they constantly have one female servant ticking over to a new female servant as each one retires. They were clearly quite good to their servants. They have expenses for medicine burials and loans after they retire. Their servants stay with them from an extremely long time. Those servants stay less than a year and when they’re looking to fill places, they fill them in some cases in a couple of days.

After 1539, prostitutes were not allowed to have servants under 30 years of age because it was thought that they would apprentice them in sex work. There were similar laws for Jews with the additional burden that Christians could not leave in with Jews. Jews were required to have
a licence to our Christian servants.

Adoptees are relatively common occurrence in medieval Venice and it’s increasingly popular in the 15th and 16th century. Adoptees are in some senses similar to servants. The population of the city peaks in 1575 or thereabouts. Estimates are anywhere between 120,000 and 196,000 people and then the plague in 1575 to 1577 kills off 10% of the population. It works its way but up again and then in the plague of 1630 to 1631 30% of the population die. The 1563 census says that there were 15,117 nobles, 18,939 citizens, 127,746 artisans, 539 poor or beggars, and 6,233 religious and Jewish persons in the city. But religious breakdown is Friars, 1196 nuns, 2,134 hospital patients, 1479 and Jews, 1424. In the census there are 12,908 servants which makes up 7.65% of the population. However, in this census no artist has a servant. This is clearly wrong. There are more female servants than male servants. So as a rough rule of thumb for design of covenants there is one servant per noble man, woman and child, one servant for every two and a half citizens, and after the plague the proportion of servants plummets. Also the male proportion of servants is somewhere between 30% at its lowest and 40% at its highest.

The author I’m following is not sure if there were slave markets or servant markets. A lot of hiring is by social connections, often hire the relatives of their current servants. Rapid turnover is a problem because you have to train your new servants. Servants expect wages, some get them monthly, some get them annually, wages and tips are expected at new year and at sensor. Sensa is a special festival for servants held at the ascension. There is a table of wages but we’re going to skip it because we’ll just use an arithmetic penny. Female servants are far cheaper and that’s why there are more of them. Payments for wages are sometimes delayed if the master is strapped for cash. Some masters keep their servants’ wages in trust which is called “in salvo”.
Bachelors sometimes have quasi-marital relationships with their servants and when the bachelor dies the servant then needs to sue for their wages to support themselves. Many people formally enter service about the age of 9 or 10, says here early teens, maybe 9 to an average.

Many girls in the artisan class spend 5 to 10 years in service to save for dowry. Some contracts make the employers responsible for marrying off their servant girls. They often leave service at marriage and return later if their finances require. The primary duties of male servants are to clear a path through crowds for their master and to carry torches at night. Also, to lead their master’s funeral procession, collect the master’s goods, receive goods at the house and deliver messages. They also participate in the master’s quarrels and crimes. In addition to this, of course, the gondoliers have to care for the master’s boats and provide transport.

Gondoliers wait for their masters a lot. The government hates this because they’re worried that the gondoliers will get together and organise. They also think they make the Rialto look scruffy.

There are Traghetto stations along the Grand Canal and around the city periphery. Traghetti act like guilds, so you might have one run by magi. They are closed corporations. Membership is only by vote of members and the major duties of Traghetti are election of new members, scheduling work shifts so that there are always gondoliers around, protecting their territory from neighbouring traghetti, maintaining the cavana, which is the mooring station, and the casoto, which is the hut, and many of them maintain scule, which are the semi-religious organisations that we’ve discussed in previous episodes. Many male servants want to save up, get a boat, leave service, and join a traghetta station.

Theft, smuggling, and rape by male servants are common. It’s harder for female servants to pinch things because they don’t leave the house as often so they can’t pass material off as easily. Boatmen hang out at the traghetto and the quays at the Rialto, San Marco and at the boatyards. They drink and gamble and gossip.

They curse a lot. Their habit of cursing and using obscene gestures is, in the book I’m following, called an anti-language. Its purpose is to create a sense of solidarity within the social group.

The main duties of female servants are to maintain the home care for children and accompany the mistress. There are three types. The most respected are wet nurses and governesses. They are also the best head. Below them are chambermaids who look after the family’s provisions and accompany the mistresses in travel and underneath that are the what we’d call maids of work in the English situation. They do the cooking, the cleaning, manual work. Among servants, informal friendship networks are very important.

For female servants, the schule piccola, the local parish church fraternity, is where they tend to socialise. They also socialise at wellheads and at the parties of their masters. The largest of the schoula attended by female servants is the scholar of St Ursula and it has devotees across the city.

Then there are some notes on the Sensa Fair. Tips and advances in pay are given so that servants can attend the Centre. It’s a fair not for the great goods that foreign traders come for. It’s small gifts and ornaments and, for female servants, stuff for trousseaux.

Aged servants often lost their job once they could not perform physical labour. They resorted to begging food selling, washing and keeping vigil over dead bodies, candle selling, prayer reciting, joining convents under third order vows or accompanying their mistress into a convent. Hospitals existed for the deserving poor but could not fully accommodate all of the aged servants. And some of them were maintained in the master’s home. There are no servant guilds and then there is once again another note that Venetian households are far smaller than those of nobles in other states and that is us.

Now we begin the drafting.

Your saga may vary.