"To imitate the Ancients, having adopted the Corrections of the Moderns": Scipione Maffei’s Consiglio politico

Abstract

Scipione Maffei’s political treatise Consiglio politico [Political advice] appeared shortly before the fall of the Republic of Venice in 1797. Maffei, however, had composed the work sixty years earlier in 1736, upon returning from a three year-long journey through Northern and Central Europe. The Consiglio politico resulted from the combination of the author’s knowledge of ancient history and the experiences gathered during his travels, and it offered the authorities of the Venetian Republic an institutional reform project. Aware of the importance of expanding political participation in order to stabilise and strengthen the state, Maffei suggested the opening of public offices to the elites of Venice’s mainland domains, through the admission of representatives to the Great Council of Venice. The Consiglio politico proposed larger participation in the government of a republic and resurfaced – not by chance – at the time of Napoleon Bonaparte’s occupation of Venice. In the nineteenth century, the book inspired two generations of political thinkers of the Risorgimento, most notably Carlo Cattaneo. During the 1840s and 1850s, Cattaneo advocated revolutionary ideas of republican federalism, and considered Maffei one of Italy’s greatest political minds. In Maffei’s work, one finds the origins of ideas of wider political participation into republican institutions – and, ultimately, of federalism.