e
the famous revolution, known as the closing of the Great Council, took
place. By that act, which was only the final step in a revolution that
had been for long in process, those citizens who were excluded from the
Great Council remained for ever outside the constitution; all functions
of government were concentrated in the hands of those nobles who were
included by the Council; the constitution of the Republic was
stereotyped as a rigid oligarchy. Previous to the year 1296, a great
council had existed, created first in the reign of Pietro Ziani (1172);
but this council was really democratic in character, not oligarchic; it
was elected each September, and its members were chosen from the whole
body of the citizens. Earlier still than the reign of Ziani, the
population used to meet tumultuously and express their opinion upon
matters of public interest, such as the election of a Doge or a
declaration of war, first in the _Concione_ under their tribunes, while
Venetia was still a confederation of lagoon-islands; and then in the
_Arengo_ under their Doge, when the confederation was centralized at
Rialto. But of these assemblies the latter was disorderly and irregular,
and the former was of doubtful authority. It is from the closing of the
Great Council that we must date the positive establishment of the
Venetian oligarchy, and the completion of that constitution which
endured for five hundred years, from 1296 till the fall of the Republic
in 1797.

The age at which the young nobles might take their seats in the Council,
that is to say, might enter upon public life, was fixed at twenty-five,
except in the cases of the Barbarelli, or thirty nobles between the ages
of twenty and twenty-five, who were elected by ballot on the fourth of
each December, St. Barbara's day; and in the case of those who, in
return for money advanced to the State, obtained a special grace to take
their seats before their twenty-fifth year.

The chief functions of the Great Council were the passing of laws, and
the election of magistrates. But in process of time the legislative
duties of the Council were almost entirely absorbed by the Senate; and
the Maggior Consiglio only retained its great and distinguished
function, the election of almost every officer of State, from the Doge
downwards. The large number of these magistracies, and the various
seasons of the year at which they fell vacant, engaged the Great Council
in a perpetual series of electio