Justifying the Serrata. Social, institutional and political change in Venice between the 13th and 14th centuries

Probably, on no other subject of medieval venetian history has so much been written as on the Serrata of the Great Council (1297-1323). That said, one may ask what new or different can be added to this topic. Some further elements of reflection can be produced precisely by the concepts of justification and management of change that are the specific subject of this editorial project. What, in fact, we will try to do, along with an examination of the technical-legal aspects of the Serrata and the transformations it induced both in the political-institutional and social spheres, will be to identify the discourses of justification developed in particular by the ruling class to legitimize the change, the degree of conscience and the forms of awareness expressed and the ability to elaborate ideology and create consensus; in other word, all those mechanisms of control, containment and dissimulation of change that somehow favoured (and justified) its realization.