Abstract
Patricia H. Labalme and Laura Sanguineti White, eds, Venice, Cità Excelentissima: Selections from the Renaissance Diaries of Marin Sanudo, trans. Linda L. Carroll, The Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore MD, 2008; 640 pp., 46 b&w illus., 3 maps; 9780801887659, $54.00 (hbk)
Despite being among the most important writers of his time, Marino Sanudo (in Latinized form, Sanuto) is today remembered primarily by a limited number of specialists. Therefore, the present book, the first to make his writings available to the non-Italian reading public, is most welcome.
Marino Sanudo (1466–1536) was born into an old noble Venetian family. In his youth, he acquired an extensive knowledge of the classics that led him to build up a magnificent library of books and manuscripts and to participate in the cultural life of late Renaissance Venice. By virtue of his noble status, Sanudo was a member of the Maggior Consiglio (Great Council) of Venice, and served as a Senator and member of various magistracies. Imbued with a passionate love of Venice, he stood for the preservation of the laws of the Republic and denounced corruption and irregularity.
Although Sanuto wrote many works still valued by scholars today, he is best remembered for his Diaries describing events day by day, from 1496 to 1533, a ‘super-blog’. The Diaries were published over a 24-year period, between 1879 and 1903 in 58 folio-size volumes of double-columned pages with small print, and re-issued in 1969–70. These volumes contain a total of almost 40,000 columns, which, with 51 lines per column and an average of seven to 10 words per line, adds up to the prodigious number of well over 15,000,000 words, with on average over a hundred additional columns of indices per volume.
Sanudo’s assertions that ‘I was continually in the public squares investigating every occurrence, no matter how minimal, how unimportant it was’ and ‘everything I saw and heard, I noted down’ were not as great an exaggeration as might be assumed. Legislation, decrees, accounts of debates, reports of ambassadors, official and unofficial letters, as well as documents provided by friends all found their way into his Diaries, together with accounts of every unusual thing that he saw or heard. And Sanudo had very sharp eyes and broad interests. The reader quickly begins to feel a part of the dynamic Venetian scene, accompanying the author on his rounds and participating in a kaleidoscope of Venetian life.
The current volume was painstakingly edited by Patricia Labalme, who sadly passed away as the volume was being completed, and Laura Sanguineti White who both consulted with numerous specialists in the field for the compilation of insightful, up-to-date notes. The translation of the text of Sanudo, written in Venetian chancellory vernacular with technical terms and Venetian expressions and often-awkward syntax with run-on sentences peppered with Latin phrases and sayings, was skilfully undertaken in a most readable manner by Linda Carroll.
The volume opens with a section entitled ‘About the Translation’, in which the editors explain the care with which they prepared the current translations, painstakingly comparing the printed version of the passages selected for translating with the original manuscript preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice, noting words omitted or added in the printed version, as well as occasional misreadings, incorrect numbers, misinterpreted abbreviations, and misleading added punctuation. The introduction, ‘Marino Sanudo, His Life, His City, and His Diaries’, serves as a concise orientation to the selections themselves. They are divided into nine units, with further introductions to the units and their subdivisions: Sanudo on Sanudo; The Venetians Govern; Crime and Justice; Foreign Affairs: War and Diplomacy; Economic Networks and Institutions; Society and Social Life; Religion and Superstition; Humanism and the Arts; and Theatre in Venice, Venice as Theatre. Two valuable appendices, ‘Money, Wealth and Wages’, and ‘Glossary and Terms’, followed by the bibliography and index complete the volume.
I would like to suggest one minor, easily implemented addition: to facilitate consultation of the excellent translation and the most valuable textual and contextual notes, it would be very useful to include in future editions of this work a chronologically ordered list of all the selections with the corresponding pages of the translation.
Sanudo had written: ‘no writer will ever make much of modern history who has not seen my diaries’. He intended to use these diaries as the basis for a more elegantly written formal history that he never wrote; however, that is not an unmitigated misfortune, for it assured the preservation of his priceless Diaries and of innumerable documents, letters and descriptions that otherwise might have been lost to posterity. Certainly, every student of the Venetian republic and its contemporary world will have their knowledge and insight greatly expanded by this volume of Diary selections. We are indebted to the editors, the translator, and all named in the Preface who had a hand in its preparation.