The Regulation of Domestic Service in Renaissance Venice

This study examines Venetian legislation concerning domestic service from the late thirteenth through the sixteenth century. Through a careful analysis of capitularies issued by the capi di sestieri in 1503 and the censori in 1541, it charts shifting concerns of masters and changing attitudes toward servant keeping. Specifically, during the sixteenth century an aristocratic style of servant keeping with an emphasis on male servants replaced a bourgeois or mercantile style more concerned with female servants that was typical of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The transformation was the result in large part of changing notions of honor.