The Council of Ten and the Inquisitors of the State

Venice’s central intelligence organization was engineered by the Council of Ten (Consiglio dei Dieci: see Fig. 0.1). Established in 1310, in the aftermath of Baiamonte Tiepolo’s failed attempt to overthrow the reigning Doge, Piero Gradenigo, the Council of Ten was the exclusive committee responsible for the security of the Venetian empire. The council was actually made up of seventeen men, including ten ordinary members who served annual terms, the Doge’s six ducal counsellors,  

Fig. 0.1. La Sala del Consiglio dei Dieci, Gabriele Bella. Reproduced with permission of the Fondazione Querini Stampalia Onlus, Venice.

who did not have voting rights, and the Doge as the ceremonial figurehead. Every month three ordinary members took turns at heading the Ten’s operations. They were called Capi, the Heads of the Ten. Initially, the Ten were tasked with protecting the government from overthrow or corruption. 

Progressively, however, their political and judicial powers extended to such a degree that, by the midfifteenth century, they encompassed diplomatic and military operations, control over secret affairs, public order, domestic and foreign policy. 

By the first decade of the sixteenth century, the power of the Council of Ten had increased to such a degree that the committee assumed the dimensions of a ‘crypto-oligarchy’.³⁵ Crucially, much of the Ten’s supremacy was premised on their organization and systematic control of the Venetian intelligence apparatus that operated within the city, across, and beyond the Venetian dominion.

Intrepid and imperious, from early on the Ten displayed an indomitable political appetite for systematizing Venice’s intelligence operations, which materialized in a distinct and relatively continuous funding line, and, importantly, in an efficient administrative system that enabled the Venetian state’s central intelligence organization. 

Such weighty responsibilities, so pivotal to the city’s governance, merited a prominent position in the city’s topography. The Ten, therefore, were housed in one of the most impressive state intelligence headquarters of the early modern (and, admittedly, even the modern) world, the Palazzo Ducale, overlooking the Venetian lagoon in Saint Mark’s Square. Therein the Ten organized and administered one of the world’s earliest centrally organized state intelligence services. 

As we shall see, this resembled a kind of proto-modern public sector organization that operated with remarkable complexity and maturity. This service was also supported by several other state institutions, including the Senate (the Venetian government’s debating committee and primary legislative organ, especially up until the mid-sixteenth century), the Collegio (the Senate’s steering committee), and the office of state attorneys (Avogaria di Comun), as well as the local authorities of the Venetian territories in Italy, the Adriatic, and the Mediterranean.

An attempt to restraint the Ten’s prominent role in the government of the Venetian state took place in 1582, when a reform (correzione) imposed by the Maggior Consiglio (Great Council)—the assembly of the entire body of male Venetian patricians³⁷—attempted to reduce their power and make them more accountable to the Collegio.³⁸ The autocratic way in which the Ten wielded their power tarnished their reputation and enveloped them in an aura of fear-inducing authority, at times even tyrannical superciliousness.

 Their infamous eruptions were committed to ink by several contemporaneous chroniclers, such as the inveterate diarist Marino Sanudo (1466–1536).‘This Council imposes banishment and exile upon nobles, and has others burnt or hanged if they deserve it, and has authority to dismiss the Prince, even to do other things to him if he so deserves’, he once wrote in his account of Venice’s quotidian existence.

The Ten’s unbending authority stemmed from respect for two fundamental Venetian virtues: order that was achieved by secrecy and maturity that was guaranteed by gerontocracy. Both these virtues were deemed paramount for state security. It is not a coincidence, therefore, that the Ten’s stringent regulations did not exclude the Council’s own members. 

As the governing body responsible for state security, failure to act speedily on issues that imperilled it could render them liable to a 1,000-ducat fine,⁴³ a hefty sum, considering that a Venetian patrician serving as an ambassador in the sixteenth century earned 2,400 to 7,200 ducats annually.

In a way, the Ten seemed to espouse Machiavelli’s maxim that a ruler ‘must not worry if he incurs reproach for his cruelty, so long as he keeps his subjects united and loyal. By making an example or two, he will prove more compassionate than those who, being too compassionate, allow disorders which lead to murder and rapine’. 

Nevertheless, what emerges from the Ten’s secret registers is the image of an unabashed, yet dignified committee that, at times, went to great lengths to ensure the safety and welfare of those in their employ and those directly affected by their policies. Such actions included ordering the protection of an imperilled Venetian courier, providing financial support to the family of a deceased covert operative who fell in service of the Republic,⁴⁷ and releasing erroneously arrested detainees and restoring their confiscated possessions.

In other words, the study of the covert and clandestine operations of the Council of Ten reveals that, while imperious and authoritative, it had a propensity to act in a just and even benevolent manner ‘for the dignity of our Signory and the preservation of public trust’.

Despite the Council of Ten’s gradually assuming considerable power of the Venetian government in the sixteenth century, its autocratic proclivities were not left uncontrolled. The extraordinary maturity of the Venetian political system endeavoured to contain any potential autocracy, at least in principle. The institution of the zonta (the Venetian linguistic variation of aggiunta or addizione, meaning ‘addition’) was the mechanism put in place for this purpose. 

Venetian government in the sixteenth century

The zonta was an adjunct commission of initially twenty men—reduced to fifteen after 1529, even though this number varied depending on the circumstances—who participated in all important assemblies of the Council of Ten.

Either elected or co-opted, they played the role of an impartial referee whose duty was to recognize and combat occurrences of nepotism and cronyism. It was usually made up of patricians who had not secured election to the other governing bodies. 

The zonta, therefore, was a ‘constitutional shortcut’ for those noblemen who wished to actively participate in the Venetian oligarchy but had not achieved the necessary backing.⁵² By the beginning of the sixteenth century, several pivotal state affairs, such as continuous wars with the Ottomans and the spectre of the new Portuguese spice route, rendered the protection of state secrets a matter of urgency. 

As a result, in 1539, the Council of Ten—with the blessing of the Senate and the Great Council— decided to establish a counter-intelligence magistracy. This took shape in the institution of the Inquisitors of the State (Inquisitori di Stato), a distinct committee that should not be confused with the Santo Ufficio, the Venetian Inquisition.

Initially entitled ‘Inquisitors against the Disclosures of Secrets’, the Inquisitori were a special tribunal made up of three men, two from the ranks of the Ten and one of the Doge’s ducal counsellors.⁵⁵ They held an annual tenure, upon completion of which they could seek re-election.

Their role stemmed from a medieval judicial tradition that enabled both the Church and the State to initiate secret investigations and trials ex officio, ‘making guilt easier to prove and evidence less open to discussion’.⁵⁷ While the Inquisitori were primarily responsible for counter-intelligence and the protection of state secrets, gradually their activity encompassed all aspects of state security, including conspiracies, betrayals, public order, and espionage.

All these were expected to be concealed under a thick mantle of secrecy but, unquestionably, ought to be communicated to the Ten. Beyond its organization and management of Venice’s intelligence infrastructure, it is also worth pointing out that the Council of Ten was more broadly responsible for military preparedness and defence, both within and beyond the city of Saint Mark.

This involved building, reinforcing, and occasionally repairing the dominion’s city walls and fortifications in order to render Venice and its possessions impregnable to assault. For example, in 1583, following intelligence of an imminent Ottoman attack, the Ten ordered the construction of a wall around the Venetian town of Novigrad, plus cavalry reinforcements, for the ‘maximum security of the inhabitants’.

They were also anxious to ensure that the gates of Venetian strongholds, especially in the Terraferma, were constantly guarded, so that the local authorities could monitor those entering and exiting the urban terrain. A particular security concern was the Arsenale, the production site for the renowned Venetian galleys that contributed to the Republic’s commercial and military might. As the nucleus of Venetian navigation, the Arsenale was of geostrategic significance to Venice. 

For this reason, the Ten took its maintenance incredibly seriously. When, in the run up to the third Ottoman-Venetian War, for instance, it came to their attention that Venetian merchants were trading hemp—a vital raw material for shipbuilding and navigation, whose production within the Venetian dominion was dwindling—they urgently ordered their naval chiefs to bring back to the Arsenale any hemp discovered on commercial galleys traversing the Adriatic, even compensating the merchants for their loss.

Periodic inspections of the state shipyards, delegated to the Provveditori all’Arsenale, were also part of the measures employed by the Ten to maintain the security of the Venetian state. Alas, the large number of measures they introduced did not prevent a devastating fire that whipped through the Arsenale and obliterated the stockpile of munitions, together with several galleys of the Republic’s reserve fleet, on the night of 10 September 1569. 

Arson or accident, rumours raged for days that the culprit was either Joseph Nasi, an adviser to Sultan Selim II, or a Turkish saboteur. Under similarly suspicious circumstances, perhaps in retaliation, two weeks later a fire engulfed the Arsenal in Constantinople, wrecking the Jewish quarter of the Ottoman capital. 

Scholarship has explored the Council of Ten as an oligarchic governmental committee with a composite mixture of exclusive judicial and political prerogatives that intensified in the course of the sixteenth century.

 The Ten’s subsidiary, the Inquisitors of the State, have received considerably less attention from contemporary scholars, with the exception of a recent study focusing on their activity in the 1600s, primarily due to the surviving documentation, which is scarce for the sixteenth century but plentiful for the seventeenth.

Considering that both committees’ jurisdictive authorities were contingent upon their organization and systematic control of the Venetian intelligence apparatus that branched out across Europe, Anatolia, and even Northern Africa, where Venice had diplomatic and commercial representation, an analysis and evaluation of their intelligence organization is long overdue. 

In view of the meteoric rise in historiography of contemporary intelligence and espionage, especially in the Anglosphere, over the last thirty years,⁷¹ such a scholarly endeavour could not be more timely