Note 394 — Scene II.—The Ducal Chamber.

{360}[The famous measure known as the closing of the Great Council was carried into force during the Dogeship (1289-1311) of Pietro Gradenigo. On the last day of February, 1297, a law was proposed and passed, "That the Council of Forty are to ballot, one by one, the names of all those who during the last four years have had a seat in the Great Council.... Three electors shall be chosen to submit names of fresh candidates for the Great Council, on the ... approval of the Doge." But strict as these provisions were, they did not suffice to restrict the government to the aristocracy. It was soon decreed "that only those who could prove that a paternal ancestor had sat on the Great Council, after its creation in 1176, should now be eligible as members.... It is in this provision that we find the essence of the Serrata del Maggior Consiglio.... The work was not completed at one stroke.... In 1315 a list of all those who were eligible ... was compiled. The scrutiny ... was entrusted to the Avogadori di Comun, and became ... more and more severe. To ensure the purity of blood, they opened a register of marriages and births.... Thus the aristocracy proceeded to construct itself more and more upon a purely oligarchical basis."—Venice, an Historical Sketch, by Horatio F. Brown, 1893, pp. 162-164.]