Lesson 14 -- 2024-11-14

The government organisation branching out: the Quarantìa (Council of Forty) and the Pregàdi or Senate. Core attributions for Quarantìa very generic; earliest deliberation concerns a ban on re-sale of timber for export. Core attributions for Pregàdi focused on trade and navigation, e.g organisation of the convoys of State ships with armed escort on preordained routes. Loading space on ships rented out by bid to merchants. Duties of the captains. Expansion of the attributions of the Pregàdi to political and international matters. Delegations by the Major Council. Signoria (doge, Minor Council, three Chief of the Forty) as bench of all Councils for consistency in political line and proposals. Collegio made of three groups of Savi of the Pregàdi. Pien Collegio (Signoria and Collegio). Giustizia distributiva as division of labour and not of powers. Aggregations of all magistrates to the Council which instituted them and of all Councils to the Major Council to ensure exhaustiveness in debate and avoid repeated discussions by different institutions. How a controversy about fines for absenteeism, solved by the Major Council, brought about the appropriation of attributions of the Forty by the Pregàdi and the shifting of the Forty to an early instance of second degree of jurisdiction.