Venice as the Polity of Mercy

Richard Mackenney is a professor in the Department of History at Binghamton University, State University of New York.

"Mackenney links his analysis of institutions and behaviour to the physical spaces of the city, showing how political and social relationships were deeply affected by the places where people lived, worked, and worshipped. This is one of the most important and ground-breaking aspects of Venice as the Polity of Mercy."

Monique O’Connell, Dept. of History, Wake Forest University:

"Venice as the Polity of Mercy challenges the persistent image of Venice as a patrician dominated, top-down, hierarchical regime. The central question of Venetian history is how to explain its unusual stability and lack of the riots, regime changes, and civil and factional struggles that characterized other Renaissance states. Richard Mackenny offers a new and persuasive answer to that old question by challenging the idea that patricians controlled popular life through strict oversight of popular institutions such as confraternities."