Giovanni Soranzo (Latin: Iohannes Superantio born Burano, 1240 - died Venice, 31 December 1328) was a Venetian statesman of the prominent Soranzo family who served as the 51st Doge of Venice. He ascended to the position on 13 July 1312 and served until his death. Soranzo was a member of a noble family; he was married to Franchesina.[1] In 1310 his son-in-law, Niccolo' Querini was exiled for life from Venice for taking part in Bajamonte Tiepolo's conspiracy to overthrow the state. Soranzo was succeeded as Doge by Francesco Dandolo. He was also an Italianpolitician, diplomat and admiral.
Son of Antonio Soranzo, who was procurator of San Marco, he was born around 1245, probably in the parish of Sant'Angelo[it] where his family's residence was located. The year of his birth can be deduced from the chronicle of Gian Giacomo Caroldo, according to which at the time of his appointment as doge he was 67 years old. There is no basis for what is reported by genealogists of the modern era, according to which he was born in Burano in 1240. [2]
From his will, drawn up on 8 August 1321, we know that he had married Francesca Molin. From her (or from a previous wife of whom we have no information) he had three sons and three daughters: Marino (married to a certain Caterina), Nicolò (before he died), Antonio known as "Belello", Soranzo (married to Nicolò Querini), Elena (Benedictine in San Giovanni di Torcello) and Fontana (Franciscan in Santa Maria Maggiore).[2]
Political & Military career
His political career has been reconstructed thanks to contemporary documents and historiographical sources. However, the existence of some namesake with whom he may have been confused cannot be ruled out.[2]
Elected several times to the Great Council (1264, 1266 - 68, 1270, 1275, 1281, 1295), he was also mayor of Poreč and during this mandate, he suffered excommunication by the local bishop Boniface, who had pro- Aquileian tendencies. He then sat in the Minor Council and in 1290, after the election of Doge Pietro Gradenigo, he became ducal councillor. He was also mayor in Chioggia ( 1294 ), in Isola d'Istria (end of the century), and in Pula ( 1299 ). In 1300 he participated in a diplomatic mission with Andrea Sanudo to Frederick III of Sicily. He was then count of Zadar in 1301 - 03, ambassador to Egypt and again count of Zadar in 1305 - 07.[2]
In the last years of the century he became the protagonist of a heroic military enterprise. In the spring of 1296 , during the disastrous war against Genoa, he left Venice at the head of a fleet headed for Constantinople and captured an enemy galley stationed on the Bosphorus . Having freed access to the Black Sea , the squadron joined other Venetian boats and attacked the Ligurian colony of Caffa in Crimea , plundering and destroying several enemy ships. With the arrival of autumn Soranzo withdrew the fleet to Negroponte , entrusting it to Andrea Dandolo , and returned to Venice where he was welcomed with all honors.[2]
He had different luck a decade later, when he was among the main protagonists of the Ferrara war . Before the start of the conflict, in 1307 , he was sent to Azzo VIII d'Este to offer the help of the Doge Gradenigo against the Papal States . With the death of the marquis, the following year, the Venetians occupied the city and the doge designated Soranzo podestà from November 1308 to March 1309 . Pope Clement V 's reaction was not long in coming and, after having hurled the interdict and excommunication on Venice on 27 March 1309 , he quickly took control of Ferrara. At this point Soranzo was put at the head of a fleet with the aim of reconquering the lower course of the Po , but the undertaking ended in serious failure .[2]
Despite this, in the same year he obtained the prestigious appointment as procurator of San Marco and became one of the eligible candidates for Gradenigo's succession to the dogate. Meanwhile, the fate of the war had created discontent within the patriciate , which resulted, in June 1310 , in the well-known conspiracy hatched by Baiamonte Tiepolo and Marco Querini (related to Soranzo, since his daughter Soranza had married Nicolò Querini). After the failure of the coup and the death of Querini, it was Soranzo who led the negotiations with Tiepolo so that he would surrender .[2]
The course of these events did not resolve the problems of domestic and foreign politics. During the last year of Gradenigo's government, Zara rebelled once again, while under his successor Marino Zorzi , doge for less than a year, the issues remained unresolved .[2]
When Zorzi died on 3 July 1312 , Soranzo represented the most suitable candidate to succeed him, as he was welcome both by the Ghibelline faction loyal to Gradenigo and by the hostile one, and the most suitable for relaxing relations with the Pope. On 13 July he therefore ascended to the ducal throne .[2]
Dogate
As first measures, he dealt with resolving the still open war issues. He sent Francesco Dandolo to Avignon to conduct exhausting negotiations, which led on 26 January 1313 to the lifting of the interdict and excommunication and on 17 February to definitive peace (through the bull Decet sedis ), however unfavorable to Venice.[2]
He then closed the problem of Zara by subjecting the city to a heavy siege which forced it to surrender, sanctioned in September 1313 with a treaty of submission.[2]
In these years trials began for the survivors of the conspiracy, to which the Doge had to comply without being able to exercise any clemency. Among the condemned there was also her daughter Soranza, banished with her husband Nicolò Querini; she later tried to return to the city trusting in the intervention of her father, but she was confined to the monastery of Santa Maria delle Vergini by decision of the newly formed Council of Ten.[2]
For the rest, the Soranzo government represented a period of peace, in which attempts were made to resolve international issues with diplomacy rather than war. It was from this perspective that the project for a new crusade, propagated by Marin Sanudo the Elder in the Liber secretorum fidelium Crucis, was rejected . While, as regards the Venetian mainland, Venice kept out of the war events involving Cangrande della Scala , with whom they tried to maintain good relations thanks to a treaty concluded in 1317.[2]
There was also a resumption of trade by sea (although hindered by some episodes of piracy by the Turks and Genoese), with the signing of agreements with the empires of Byzantium and Trebizond and the kingdoms of Armenia , Cyprus , Sicily and Tunis; in addition, the route which, through the Strait of Gibraltar , reached Flanders and England was strengthened . Land trade was also favored by agreements with various cities of the Po Valley , including Bologna , Brescia , Como and Milan.[2]
During the 1320s the subjugation of Dalmatia was completed through the dedication of cities such as Šibenik , Split and Nin.
The last days of the dogate were marked by the repression of a new conspiracy, hatched by members of the Barozzi family. [2]
Death
After his death he was buried in the Basilica of San Marco , in a tomb that has been preserved to this day. However, in the first half of the twentieth century , a fourteenth-century image of him reported on a sheet of the State Archives of Venice was stolen .
Soranzo was a man of culture and had contacts with some intellectuals, including Tanto, great chancellor and author of poems in Latin, and the pre-humanist Albertino Mussato , with whom he maintained a correspondence concerning the birth of three cubs from a pair of lions that Federico III of Aragon had donated it to the Doge (an event so unusual that it was recorded in the oldest of the Libri pactorum of the Municipality). He also had the opportunity to meet Dante Alighieri in 1321 , when the poet took part in a diplomatic mission on behalf of Guido Novello da Polenta, lord of Ravenna .
Related Research Articles
Marino Faliero was the 55th Doge of Venice, appointed on 11 September 1354.
The Basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo, known in Venetian as San Zanipolo, is a church in the Castello sestiere of Venice, Italy.
The Contarini is one of the founding families of Venice and one of the oldest families of the Italian Nobility. In total eight Doges to the Republic of Venice emerged from this family, as well as 44 Procurators of San Marco, numerous ambassadors, diplomats and other notables. Among the ruling families of the republic, they held the most seats in the Great Council of Venice from the period before the Serrata del Maggior Consiglio when Councillors were elected annually to the end of the republic in 1797. The Contarini claimed to be of Roman origin through their patrilineal descendance of the Aurelii Cottae, a branch of the Roman family Aurelia, and traditionally trace their lineage back to Gaius Aurelius Cotta, consul of the Roman Republic in 252 BC and 248 BC.
Vitale Faliero Dodoni and usually known in English as Vitale Falier was the 32nd Doge of Venice from 1084 until his death in 1095.
Andrea Dandolo was elected the 54th doge of Venice in 1343, replacing Bartolomeo Gradenigo who died in late 1342.
Marino Zorzi Zazzera, born in Venice, was the 50th Doge of the Republic of Venice, from 23 August 1311 until his renunciation in 1312 and withdrawal to a hermitic life. He was married to Agneta. Considered to have been a devout man, he had served as an ambassador to Rome. He may have been elected to decrease tensions in the city caused by the attempted revolt of Bajamonte Tiepolo as well as tensions with Rome, still angry with Venice over her occupation of the city of Ferrara (1308–09).
Bajamonte Tiepolo was a Venetian noble, great-grandson of Doge Jacopo Tiepolo, grandson of Doge Lorenzo Tiepolo, son of Giacomo Tiepolo. Bajamonte's wife was the Princess of Rascia. Marco Querini, a fellow conspirator, was his father-in-law.
Giovanni di Mocenigo was doge of Venice from 1478 to 1485. He fought at sea against the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II and on land against Ercole I d'Este, duke of Ferrara, from whom he recaptured Rovigo and the Polesine. He was interred in the Basilica di Santi Giovanni e Paolo, a traditional burial place of the doges. His dogaressa was Taddea Michiel, who was to be the last dogaressa to be crowned in Venice until Zilia Dandolo in 1557, almost a century later. His brother, Pietro Mocenigo, served as Doge before him, in 1474–1476.
Jacopo Tiepolo, also known as Giacomo Tiepolo, was Doge of Venice from 1229 to 1249. He had previously served as the first Venetian Duke of Crete, and two terms as Podestà of Constantinople, twice as governor of Treviso, and three times as ambassador to the Holy See. His dogate was marked by major domestic reforms, including the codification of civil law and the establishment of the Venetian Senate, but also against a mounting conflict with Emperor Frederick II, which broke into open war from 1237 to 1245.
Dogaressa was the official title of the wife of the Doge of Venice. The title was unique for Venice: while the heads of the Republic of Genoa were also called Doge, the wives of the Doges of Genoa were not called Dogaressa, nor did they have such a public position.
This article presents a detailed timeline of the history of the Republic of Venice from its legendary foundation to its collapse under the efforts of Napoleon.
Andrea Ghisi was a Venetian nobleman, and the first Lord of Tinos and Mykonos.
The bailo and captain of Negroponte was the representative of the Republic of Venice stationed at Chalcis (Negroponte) on the island of Euboea. The bailo played an important role as the mediator between, and de facto overlord of, the triarchs of Euboea, who had their common residence in Negroponte. The triarchies were created by the division of the island between three rulers (triarchs) after its conquest following the Fourth Crusade (1204).
The Bailo of Corfu was the leader of the Venetian delegation to the island of Corfu who oversaw the affairs of the island while under Venetian rule and protected the commercial and military interests of the Republic of Venice. The first mention of a bailo in Corfu is in 1386 and is found in a Greek chronicle. The bailo of Corfu is also mentioned in a document by historian Marco Guazzo from 1544.
Geremia Ghisi was a Venetian nobleman who in c. 1207, following the Fourth Crusade, captured the Greek islands of Skiathos, Skopelos, and Skyros and became their lord, while his brother Andrea Ghisi conquered the islands of Tinos and Mykonos. Their sister or half-sister, Agnese Ghisi, married Othon de Cicon, who became the lord of Karystos on Euboea.
The Podestà of Constantinople was the official in charge of Venetian possessions in the Latin Empire and the Venetian quarter of Constantinople during the 13th century. Nominally a vassal to the Latin Emperor, the Podestà functioned as a ruler in his own right, and answered to the Doge of Venice. The Podestà was also officially known as Governor of One-Fourth and One-Half of the Empire of Romania and was entitled to wearing the crimson buskins as the emperors.
This is an alphabetical index of people, places, things, and concepts related to or originating from the Republic of Venice. Feel free to add more, and create missing pages.
The Venetian patriciate was one of the three social bodies into which the society of the Republic of Venice was divided, together with citizens and foreigners. Patrizio was the noble title of the members of the aristocracy ruling the city of Venice and the Republic. The title was abbreviated, in front of the name, by the initials N.H., together with the feminine variant N.D.. Holding the title of a Venetian patrician was a great honour and many European kings and princes, as well as foreign noble families, are known to have asked for and obtained the prestigious title.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
