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The College of Judges played a significant role in the political, institutional and legal world of Vicenza in the modern age. It was composed of legal experts belonging to aristocratic families, who found in this institution the right space to defend the identity, the prerogatives, the privileges and the statutes of the Respublica of Vicenza after the annexation to the Venetian State. Old and new families thus found in the College a suitable space to affirm their authority, enhance their status and manage the administrative and judicial affairs of both the city and the territory. In the past, interest has been given to the relations of power within the Vicenza ruling class, but also between the local power and the central power, to the attraction exercised by the courts of Venice among the elites formed in law, to families of recent nobility, to their path and to their alliances with the ancient aristocratic families within the College and the city councils. It is now necessary to consider an ancient aristocratic house that assumed a prestigious role in the Vicenza society and outside of the Venetian Republic, through the examination of the case of Marco Thiene who, in 1599, tried to be admitted to the College. The paper analyses the operation of the corporation, the recruitment criteria, such as the nobilitas (noble lineage), natalia (place of birth), aetas (age), studium (education), and mores (character) of the applicant Marco, as well as the relationship established among the cousins and uncles within the noble house of Thiene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Republic of Venice had comparatively high rates of violence by early modern European standards. This article presents new archival evidence which details one facet of the problem - sacred space. Churches were not immune from violence because of their social and political functions. The research explores the multiple uses of sacred space - as places of asylum, theatres for the display of honour, pick-up joints and magnets for paid assassins - and points the way to further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]