Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty

Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty: Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter Reformation by William J. Bouwsma recasts the history of the Renaissance by shifting the spotlight from Florence to Venice. What began as a study of Paolo Sarpi expands into a sweeping exploration of how Venice, under pressure from papal interdicts, forged a distinctive republican ideology in opposition to the Counter-Reformation’s universalist claims. Two confrontations with Rome—Julius II’s interdict of 1509 and Paul V’s of 1606–07—frame the drama, marking both the rise of Venice as a self-conscious republic and the climax of its struggle for liberty against papal authority.

Bouwsma situates Venice in dialogue with Florence, shaped by Machiavelli and Guicciardini, and with Rome, at once ancient empire and Counter-Reformation hub. Mining the writings of Venetian statesmen, historians, and political thinkers—canonical and obscure alike—he traces a century-long development of what he calls the Venetian political mind, a body of thought and historical reflection that once commanded Europe’s admiration before Florence eclipsed it in the nineteenth century. At stake is not only Venice’s neglected place in the Renaissance but also the larger question of how republican values persisted, adapted, and were defined against Rome’s claims to universality. In restoring Venice to center stage, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty reframes the Renaissance as a pan-Italian and European story of competing visions of power, history, and freedom.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1968.