The secret service of Renaissance Venice: intelligence organisation in the sixteenth century

ABSTRACT

Contrary to more rudimentary espionage networks created by rulers (and their rivals) in various parts of early modern Europe, by the sixteenth century, early modern Venice had created a remarkable, centrally organised state intelligence organisation, the Venetian secret service. This was built on a rigid organisational hierarchy and branched out into distinct communication networks. This article describes, in detail, the structure and function of the Venetian secret service, dwelling on how it was administered and managed by the Council of Ten, Venice’s infamous spy chiefs. To explore the early modern organisational and managerial practices on which this service was premised, the article borrows theoretical concepts deriving from the disciplines of Intelligence Studies, Sociology, Organisation Studies, and Management, which it weaves together with archival sources and relevant literature. In doing so, the article explores some of the methodological challenges of studying the phenomenon of early modern intelligence organisation. Ultimately, the article puts forth the argument that systematised intelligence and espionage are not ‘modern’ phenomena, as conventional wisdom dictates, but date back to the early modern era.

KEYWORDS:

• Venice
• espionage
• intelligence organisation
• organisational theory
• management
• methodology

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank the editors of this special issue, the editors of the journal, and the anonymous reviewers for their professionalism, collegiality, and constructive feedback. I would also like to express my immense gratitude to the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust for supporting financially my research for this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Archivio di Stato, Venice (hereafter ASV), CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Registro (hereafter Reg.) 9, carta (hereafter c.) 33 r (21 October 1569). Please note, all dates have been modified to follow the Gregorian calendar, with the calendar year commencing on 1 January, rather than on 1 March, as it was customary for early modern Venice.

² On the Venetian bailo in Constantinople, see amongst others, Eric R. Dursteler, ‘The Bailo in Constantinople: Crisis and Career in Venice’s Early Modern Diplomatic Corps’, Mediterranean Historical Review 16, no. 2 (2001): 1–30; Stefan Hanß, ‘Baili and Ambassadors’, in Il Palazzo di Venezia a Istanbul e i suoi antichi abitanti / İstanbul’daki Venedik Sarayı ve Eski Yaşayanları, ed. Maria Pia Pedani (Venice: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, 2013), 35–52; Emrah Safa Gürkan, ‘Laying Hands on Arcana Imperii: Venetian Baili as Spymasters in Sixteenth-Century Istanbul’, in Spy Chiefs II: Intelligence Leaders in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, ed. Christopher R. Moran et al. (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2018), 67–96.

³ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, c. 33 r–v (21 October 1569).

⁴ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, c. 37 r–v (26 October 1569).

⁵ In his study of the Stuart regime in early modern England, Alan Marshall offers a similar definition. See Alan Marshall, Intelligence and Espionage in the Reign of Charles II, 1660–1685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 3.

⁶ Ibid.

⁷ On the development and systematisation of late medieval and early modern diplomacy, see Isabella Lazzarini, Communication and Conflict: Italian Diplomacy in the Early Renaissance, 1350–1520 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

⁸ The bibliography on intelligence and espionage as “modern” phenomena is vast. For an overview, see Philip Knightley, The Second Oldest Profession: Spies and Spying in the Twentieth Century (London: Deutsch, 1987).

⁹ See, inter alia, Fernando Cortés Cortés, Espionagem e Contra-Espionagem numa Guerra Peninsular 1640–1668 (Lisbon: Livros Horizonte, 1989); Lucien Bély, Espions et ambassadeurs au temps de Louis XIV (Paris: Fayard, 1990); Marshall, Intelligence and Espionage; Paolo Preto, I servizi segreti di Venezia: Spionaggio e controspionaggio ai tempi della Serenissima (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1994); Carlos J. Carnicer García and Javier Marcos Rivas, Espías de Felipe II: Los servicios secretos del Imperio Español (Madrid: La esfera de los libros, 2005); Emrah Safa Gürkan, “Espionage in the 16th Century Mediterranean: Secrecy, Diplomacy, Mediterranean Go-Betweens and the Ottoman Habsburg Rivalry”, (PhD diss., Georgetown University, 2012)’; Idem, “The Efficacy of Ottoman Counter-Intelligence in the 16th Century”, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 65, no 1 (2012), pp. 1–38.

¹⁰ Luca Zan, “Complexity, anachronism and time parochialism: historicising strategy while strategising history”, Business History, 54, no 8 (2016): 571–596.

¹¹ On an excellent problematisation of the issue of anachronism in historical research, see ibid, ‘Complexity, 573–576.

¹² Gaetano Cozzi, “Authority and the Law”, in Renaissance Venice, ed. John R. Hale (London: Faber and Faber, 1973), 293–345, 308.

¹³ Mauro Macchi, Istoria del Consiglio dei Dieci (Turin: Fontana, 1848).

¹⁴ Gaetano Cozzi, “La difesa degli imputati nei processi celebrati col rito del Consiglio dei Dieci”, in Crimine, giustizia e società veneta in età moderna, ed. Luigi Berlinguer and Floriana Colao (Milano: Giuffrè, 1989), 1–87; idem, “Venezia nello scenario europeo”, in La Repubblica di Venezia nell’età moderna: Dal 1517 alla fine della Repubblica, ed. Gaetano Cozzi, Michael Knapton, and Giovanni Scarabello (Turin: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, 1992), 3–200.

¹⁵ On the Inquisitors of the State, see Samuele Romanin, Gli Inquisitori di Stato di Venezia (Venice: Naratovich, 1858); Romano Canosa, Alle origini delle polizie politiche: Gli Inquisitori di Stato a Venezia e a Genova (Milano: Sugarco, 1989), 19–85; Preto, I servizi segreti, 55–74; and Simone Lonardi, “L’anima dei governi: Politica, spionaggio e segreto di stato a Venezia nel secondo Seicento (1645–1699)” (PhD diss., University of Padua, 2015). On the relevant founding decrees, see Samuele Romanin, Storia documentata di Venezia, 10 vols. (Venice: Naratovich, 1853–61), 6: 122–4.

¹⁶ Romanin, Gli Inquisitori di Stato, 16; idem, Storia documentata, 6: 78–80 (Deliberation of 20 September 1539).

¹⁷ See Lonardi, “L’anima dei governi”.

¹⁸ Ioanna Iordanou, “The Spy Chiefs of Renaissance Venice: Intelligence Leadership in the Early Modern World”, in Moran et al., Spy Chiefs II, 43–66; See also idem, “’What News on the Rialto?’ The Trade of Information and Early Modern Venice’s Central Intelligence Organization”, Intelligence and National Security 31, no. 3 (2016): 301–26.

¹⁹ On the Italian states in general, see the essays in Daniela Frigo, ed., Politics and Diplomacy in Early Modern Italy: The Structure of Diplomatic Practice, 1450–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). On examples of European states, see, amongst others, Marshall, Intelligence and Espionage; Carnicer García and Marcos Rivas, Espías de Felipe II; Jacob Soll, The Information Master: Jean Baptiste Colbert’s State Intelligence System (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009); John P. D. Cooper, The Queen’s Agent: Francis Walsingham and the Court of Elizabeth I (London: Faber and Faber, 2011). On a synthetic analysis of the intelligence operations of other early modern Italian and European states, see Ioanna Iordanou, Venice’s Secret Service: Organizing Intelligence in the Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), esp. ch. 1.

²⁰ See, for instance, ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 11, c. 32 v–33 r (6, 10 October 1574).

²¹ Maria Fusaro, Political Economies of Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean: The Decline of Venice and the Rise of England 1450–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 204. On Anthony Sherley, see Anthony Sherley, The Three Brothers: Travels and Adventures of Sir Anthony, Sir Robert and Sir Thomas Sherley in Persia, Russia, Turkey and Spain (London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co., 1825). On Sherley’s sojourn in Venice, see D. W. Davies, Elizabethans Errant: The Strange Fortunes of Sir Thomas Sherley and His Three Sons, As Well in the Dutch Wars as in Muscovy, Morocco, Persia, Spain and the Indies (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967), 141–65. I am grateful to [removed for purposes of anonymization] for bringing the case of Anthony Sherley to my attention.

²² ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 14, c. 113 v (1 December 1604).

²³ Lazzarini, Communication and Conflict, 74.

²⁴ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 14, c. 113 v (1 December 1604). Davies, Elizabethans Errants, 162–4. In fact, during his first two years in Venice, Sherley was acting as a double spy for the Spanish and the Scots. See ibid., 141–2.

²⁵ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 14, c. 113 v (1 December 1604).

²⁶ ASV, CCX, Lettere dei Rettori e di Altre Cariche, busta (hereafter b.) 302 (1 January 1605).

²⁷ Davies, Elizabethans Errants, 164.

²⁸ See, for instance, ASV, CCX, Lettere dei Rettori e di Altre Cariche, b. 286 (29 July 1592). This aspect of Venetian merchants’ and seamen’s duties to the Serenissima still awaits exploration and analysis by historians.

²⁹ On the Council of Ten’s communication channels, see Iordanou, ‘What News on the Rialto?’.

³⁰ On Venetian state secretaries, see, Giuseppe Trebbi, “Il segretario veneziano”, Archivio Storico Italiano 144 (1986), 35–73; Mary F. Neff, “Chancery Secretaries in Venetian Politics and Societies, 1480–1533” (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1986); Andrea Zannini, Burocrazia e burocrati a Venezia in età moderna: I cittadini originari (sec. XVI–XVIII) (Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 1993); Massimo Galtarossa, Mandarini Veneziani: La cancelleria ducale del Settecento (Rome: Aracne, 2009).

³¹ Giuseppe Trebbi, “La cancelleria veneta nei secoli XVI and XVII”, Annali della Fondazione Luigi Einaudi 14 (1980), 65–125, at 69–70; Andrea Zannini, “Economic and Social Aspects of the Crisis of Venetian Diplomacy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries”, in Frigo, Politics and Diplomacy in Early Modern Italy, 109–46, at 132. On Venetian citizens, see Dennis Romano, Patricians and Popolani: The Social Foundations of the Venetian Renaissance State (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987); Zannini, Burocrazia e Burocrati, esp. 61–118; James S. Grubb, “Elite Citizens”, in Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State,1297–1797, ed. John Martin and Dennis Romano (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2002), 339–64; Anna Bellavitis, Identitè, marriage, mobilitè sociale: Citoyennes et citoyens à Venise au XVIe siècle (Rome: École française de Rome, 2001); idem, “Donne, cittadinanza e corporazione tra medioevo ed età moderna: ricerche in corso”, in Corpi e storia: Donne e uomini dal mondo antico all’ età contemporanea, ed. Nadia Maria Filippini, Tiziana Plebani, and Anna Scattigno (Rome: Viella, 2002), 87–104.

³² Zannini, “Economic and Social Aspects”, 132.

³³ Lazzarini, Communication and Conflict, 101.

³⁴ On a synthesis of the inner workings of the Venetian political system, especially in the sixteenth century, see Alfredo Viggiano, “Politics and Constitution”, in A Companion to Venetian History, 1400–1797, ed. Eric R. Dursteler (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 47–84.

³⁵ On the Venetian popolani, see Romano, Patricians and Popolani. On a revisionist perspective on the role of the popolani in the Venetian society and economy, see Ioanna Iordanou, “Pestilence, Poverty, and Provision: Re-evaluating the Role of the Popolani in Early Modern Venice”, The Economic History Review 69, no. 3 (2016): 801–22.

³⁶ See, for instance, ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 14, carte (hereafter cc.) 1 v, 22 r, 25 v (22 March 1596, 5 September, and 16 December 1597).

³⁷ Zannini, “Economic and Social Aspects”, 125.

³⁸ Luca Zan, “Accounting and Management Discourse in Proto-industrial Settings: The Venice Arsenal in the Turn of the 16^th Century”, Accounting and Business Research 32, no 2 (2004): 145–75, at 146.

³⁹ Max Weber, Economy and Society: Outline of Interpretive Sociology, 2 vols., ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978), 2: 957.

⁴⁰ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 6, c. 6 v (22 June 1547).

⁴¹ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 8, c. 85 r (23 April 1567).

⁴² ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 7, c. 41 r (12 February 1561).

⁴³ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 14, c. 9 r–v (29 December 1596).

⁴⁴ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 14, c. 10 r (29 December 1596).

⁴⁵ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 14, c. 9 r–v (29 December 1596).

⁴⁶ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 14, c. 10 v (27 January, 5 February 1597).

⁴⁷ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 14, cc. 20 r (2 June 1597), 20 v (6 June 1597).

⁴⁸ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 14, cc. 11 r–12 v (7 February 1597), 16 r–v (14 March 1597), 18 v (9 April 1597).

⁴⁹ ASV, CCX, Dispacci Ambasciatori, b. 25 (1 June 1567).

⁵⁰ Benjamin Arbel, “Venice’s Maritime Empire in the Early Modern Period”, in Dursteler, Companion to Venetian History, 125–253, at 152. See also, Biblioteca del Museo Correr, Venice, Manoscritti Donà dalle Rose, no 79, c. 11 r–v.

⁵¹ ASV, Inquisitori di Stato, b. 399 (16 April 1601).

⁵² Christopher Grey, “’We Are All Managers Now’; ‘We Always Were’: On the Development and Demise of Management”, Journal of Management Studies 36, no. 5 (1999): 561–85.

⁵³ On Uskok pirates in the Adriatic, see, Gunther E. Rothenberg, “Venice and the Uskoks of Senj: 1537–1618”, Journal of Modern History 33, no. 2 (1961): 148–56; Alberto Tenenti, Piracy and the Decline of Venice, 1580–1615 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1967), 3–15; Catherine W. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj: Piracy, Banditry, and Holy War in the Sixteenth-Century Adriatic (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press: 1992); Edigi Ivetic, “Gli uscocchi fra mito e storiografia”, in “Venezia non è da guerra”: L’isontino, la società friulana e la Serenissima nella guerra di Gradisca (1615–1617), ed. Mauro Gaddi and Andrea Zannini (Udine: Forum, 2008), 389–97.

⁵⁴ ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 13, cc. 108 v–111 v (18, 28 June 1593).

⁵⁵ Ibid.

⁵⁶ See Iordanou, Venice’s Secret Service, esp. ch. 1.

⁵⁷ Iordanou, Venice’s Secret Service.

⁵⁸ Stephen Cummings, Todd Bridgman, John Hassard, and Michael Rowlinson, A New History of Management (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 146.

⁵⁹ Ibid.

⁶⁰ Weber, Economy and Society, 2: 958.

⁶¹ Ibid., 2: 958.

⁶² Ibid., 1: 52.

⁶³ Max Weber called this attribute “Verwaltungsordnung”. See Weber, Economy and Society, 1: 51.

⁶⁴ Luca Zan and Keith W. Hoskin, “Il ‘discorso del maneggio’: Lo sviluppo del discorso manageriale e contabile all’Arsenale di Venezia, 1580–1650”, Ateneo Veneto 36 (1998): 7–62, at 50; Zan, ‘Accounting and Management Discourse’.

⁶⁵ Weber, Economy and Society, 1: 48.

⁶⁶ Ibid., 2: 954.

⁶⁷ Zan, “Accounting and Management Discourse”, 150.

⁶⁸ Weber, Economy and Society, 2: 957 and 1: 51.

⁶⁹ Ibid., 1: 48.

⁷⁰ Keith W. Hoskin, “Getting to the Surface of Things: Foucault as a Theorist and Historian of Management and Accounting”, in Foucault and Managerial Governmentality: Rethinking the Management of Populations, Organizations and Individuals, ed. Alan McKinlay and Eric Pezet (New York: Routledge, 2017), 33–53.

⁷¹ Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France (1977–1978), trans. Graham Burchell (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 107.

⁷² On the history of managerialism, see Matthias Kipping and Behlül Usdiken, “History in Organization and Management Theory: More Than Meets the Eye”, The Academy of Management Annals 8, no. 1 (2014): 535–88.

⁷³ On the provenance of managerialism, see Keith W. Hoskin and Richard H. Macve, “The Genesis of Accountability: The West Point Connections”, Accounting, Organizations and Society 13, no. 1 (1988): 37–73; idem, “Reappraising the Genesis of Managerialism: A Re-examination of the Role of Accounting at the Springfield Armory, 1815–1845”, Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal 7, no 2 (1994): 4–29.

⁷⁴ Zan, “Accounting and Management Discourse”, 165–6.

⁷⁵ On a detailed analysis of the Cancelleria Secreta, see Fabio Antonini, “Historical Uses of the Secret Chancery in Early Modern Venice: Archiving, Researching and Presenting the Records of State”, (PhD diss., Birkbeck College, University of London, 2016). On the role of the Cancelleria Secreta within Venice’s intelligence organisation, see Iordanou, Venice’s Secret Service, esp. ch. 3.

⁷⁶ Marshall, Intelligence and Espionage.

⁷⁷ This position is known as “impositionalism”. See, for example, David Carr, “Narrative and the Real World: An Argument for Continuity”, History and Theory 25, no. 2 (1986): 117–31; Andrew P. Norman, “Telling it Like it Was: Historical Narratives on their Own Terms”, History and Theory 30, no. 20 (1991): 119–35; Alex Callinicos, Theories and Narratives: Reflections on the Philosophy of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

⁷⁸ Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 1; Antonio Strati, Theory and Method in Organization Studies (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2000), 158.

⁷⁹ Michael Rowlinson, John Hassard, and Stephanie Decker, “Research Strategies for Organizational History: A Dialogue between Historical Theory and Organization Theory”, Academy of Management Review 39, no. 3 (2014): 250–74, at 251.

⁸⁰ Fabio Rojas, “Power through Institutional Work: Acquiring Academic Authority in the 1968 Third World Strike”, Academy of Management Journal 53, no. 6 (2010): 1263–80; Rowlinson et al., “Research Strategies”; Paul C. Godfrey et al., “What is Organizational History? Toward a Creative Synthesis of History and Organization Studies”, Academy of Management Review 4, no. 4 (2016): 590–608, at 593.

⁸¹ Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 1; Strati, Theory and Method, 158.

⁸² On organisation as the post-industrial corporation, see, amongst others, Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the American Industrial Enterprise (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962); idem, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977); Louis Galambos, “The Emerging Organizational Synthesis in Modern American History”, Business History Review 44, no. 3 (1970): 279–90; idem, “Technology, Political Economy and Professionalization: Central Themes of the Organizational Synthesis”, Business History Review 57, no. 4 (1983): 471–93; idem, ‘Recasting the Organizational Synthesis: Structure and Process in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries’, Business History Review 79, no. 1 (2005): 1–38.

⁸³ Iordanou, Venice’s Secret Service.

⁸⁴ For exceptions, see Daniel Jütte, The Age of Secrecy: Jews, Christians, and the Economy of Secrets, 1400–1800, trans. Jeremiah Riemer (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015); Iordanou, Venice’s Secret Service.

⁸⁵ See, Bernard Porter, Plots and Paranoia: A History of Political Espionage in Britain, 1790–1988 (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989); Richard C. Thurlow, The Secret State: British Internal Security in the Twentieth Century (London: Wiley, 1994).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by funding from Oxford Brookes University and a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant.

Notes on contributors

Ioanna Iordanou

Dr Ioanna Iordanou is a Reader in Human Resource Management at Oxford Brookes University and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance (Warwick University). She is the author of Venice’s Secret Service: Organizing Intelligence in the Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019) and co-editor of Spy Chiefs I: Intelligence Leaders in the United States and United Kingdom (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2018), and Spy Chiefs II: Intelligence Leaders in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2018).