Venetian politics altered in the 13th and 14th Centuries. In 1297 a law was passed for election to the Great Council limiting access to only male descendants of those families already represented on the Council, thus precluding access for new families. To this end a register of the Venetian nobility was established in 1315, the so-called “Libro d’Oro” (Golden Book) , in which all eighteen-year-olds belonging to the old families were entered.

The Republic of Venice thus abandoned its previous enlarged oligarchy and became a sort of aristocratic merchant republic, since nearly all the representatives of the nobility were merchant ship owners or traders, most of them middle class. The protests voiced by opponents to this abuse of power often ended in the shedding of blood, such as the dramatic rebellion led by Querini and Tiepolo in 1310.

As a result, a special court was set up, the Council of Ten, which in 1335 became a permanent decision-making organ of the state. So important was this Council that in 1355 it even sentenced a doge, Marino Falier , to death, accused of wanting to overthrow the Republican regime to establish a personal Signoria.

These were not easy years for Venice: in addition to these bloody revolts and attempted coups, the city was hit by a violent earthquake on 25th January 1348 and a terrible plague in March of the same year, causing the deaths of at least three-fifths of the then Venetian population of 100,000.

1100 - 1200 - - rev. 0.1.7