Abstract This chapter discusses the politico-economic and sociocultural landscape in which Venice’s secret service evolved and developed in the sixteenth century. It also provides a general overview of the intelligence pursuits of some of the most significant players—politically and economically—in early modern Europe, including major Italian city states—such as Milan, Florence, Genoa and Rome—Spain, England, France, and the Ottoman Empire. The chapter analyses the gradual emergence of systematized intelligence in sixteenth-century Europe, as it was instigated by momentous political, economic, social, and religious events. Through this historical analysis, Venice’s centrally administered state intelligence service emerges as an idiosyncratic phenomenon, setting the scene for its nuanced examination in the ensuing chapters.

Abstract This article offers a detailed investigation of Byzantine and post-Byzantine perceptions of the political organization of the Italian city-states. Drawing on philosophical and historical writing produced by Byzantine and post-Byzantine authors between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, it identifies the main patterns and motifs that informed Byzantine discourse about the constitutional arrangements of such Italian cities as Genoa, Venice, Florence, and Milan. It shows how these come into play in the writings of major figures of Byzantine and post-Byzantine intellectual life such as Theodoros Metochites, John Kantakouzenos, Nikephoros Gregoras, George of Trebizond, Cardinal Bessarion, Laonikos Chalkokondyles, and John Kottunios. It also explores the ways in which the classical legacy of political thought was applied by Byzantine writers in their analysis of various constitutional forms. The findings of this survey provide new insights into cross-cultural exchanges between the Byzantine world and medieval and early modern Europe and the formation of Byzantine identity.

The subject of the study is the multifaceted and long-popular historiographical theme of comparing the political structure of the Novgorod Republic with that of the ancient Greek polis and the Northern Italian city-state during the Middle Ages. Despite the frequent use of both Italian and ancient Greek analogies in the study of Novgorod's political system, a comprehensive and in-depth comparison utilizing extensive source and historiographical bases has yet to be conducted. The article pays special attention to analyzing the evolution of political regimes in both the ancient Greek polis and the medieval city-states of Italy and Northwestern Rus. The political structure, examined not in a static but in an ever-changing form, allows for unexpected and non-obvious conclusions. The method of broad historical comparison used in this work, not with one state in a randomly selected era, but rather with a multitude of polities over a broad historical interval, allows for a new understanding of the structure of pre-industrial society in general and the Novgorod Republic in particular. The research reveals that all the key features of the political system of the Novgorod Republic had analogies in similar states of antiquity and the Middle Ages. Novgorod shares several key characteristics with the ancient Greek polis. Firstly, the very notion of a state as a collective of citizens possessing political rights and forming an army. Secondly, the type of political power exercised by the civic collective: in both Novgorod and the ancient Greek polis, governance was conducted directly by the civic collective through the veche or ekklesia. An essential feature that unites Novgorod and the Italian city-states is the urban nature of the polity. In both cases, power belonged to the urban citizens, while the rural population possessed no political rights. All of this allows for a new perspective on the history of the Novgorod Republic.