Marcantonio Sabellico’s Rerum Venetarum and “the Definitive History of Venice” . The Beginnings of the Official Historiography in Venice?
Marcantonio Sabellico’s Rerum Venetarum and “the Definitive History of Venice” . The Beginnings of the Official Historiography in Venice?

Summary/Abstract: This study focuses upon one of the most influential writing dealing with the history of the Republic of Venice. Published in 1497, Rerum Venetarum ab Urbe condita of Marcantonio Sabellico was able not only to provoke controversies in the period when it was written (meaning to the end of the 15th century), but especially to the modern historical writings dealing with the history of humanism. As a matter of fact, one could note that Rerum Venetarum gave birth to many contradictory opinions from the side of the modern scholars.Despite all these debates, and maybe even due to them, it results that Sabellico’s work about the Venetian history from the origins to his times has a particular importance in the Venetian historiography.Being both eulogized and criticized, it was exactly because of this that Sabellico’s work has a particular place in the Venetian historiography. What matters is that all the reactions that it has provoked both in his lifetime and especially afterwards and even nowadays among the modern scholars represent the proof for his special position among the “fathers” of the Venetian historiography, as official or unofficial “public historian” of the Venetian Republic.

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