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Updated: May 1, 2025
Venice at present formed a federative state, united by the memory of a common origin and the sense of a common interest; the arrengo, which met at Heraclia, the parent capital, at irregular intervals to deliberate on matters of public concern, was too numerous and too schismatical to exercise immediate control over the nation; and each island was consequently governed, after the abolition of the primeval consulate, in the name of the people, by a gastaldo or tribune, whose power, nominally limited, was virtually absolute.
The sacrilegious inroads were not without their beneficial result; for they afforded those who might be disposed to institute reforms an admirable ground not only for bringing the matter more closely and immediately under the public observation, but they enlisted in the cause the foremost ecclesiastics, who might recognize in this internal disunion a danger of interminable attacks and depredations from without, if not an eventual loss of political independence; and, accordingly, in the course of the spring of 697-698, the patriarch of Grado himself submitted to the arrengo at Heraclia a scheme, which had been devised by him and his friends, for changing the government.
He was to preside over the synod as well as the arrengo, either of which it was competent for him to convoke or dissolve at pleasure; merely spiritual matters of a minor nature were alone, in future, to be intrusted to the clergy; and all acts of convocations, the ordination of a priest or deacon, the election of a patriarch or bishop, were to be subject to the final sanction of the ducal throne.
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