From the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Venetian ambassadors used the adjective ‘despotic’ and its variants in various contexts. The first proven cases regarded the Pope of Rome and the Holy See, whose political and spiritual power was contested by those Venetians patricians close to Paolo Sarpi. But Richelieu, Mazzarino and Oliver Cromwell were also occasionally described as ‘despotic’ rulers. Moreover, in the case of England, from the mid sixteenth century onwards, the weakening of the aristocracy and the increasing power of the monarchy prompted the noble Venetians to draw strange parallels with the Ottoman Empire.
It is undeniable, however, that the Venetians’ reflection about despotism focused in particular on the Ottoman Empire. Unlike the Holy See, the Venetians never demonized their powerful neighbour, with whom they veered between war and peace for centuries. Their ambassadors’ relazioni, or end-of-mission reports (much read and admired in Italy and Europe), tried instead to give a rational assessment of the empire’s strong and weak points, taking into account the thinking of authors like Machiavelli, but adding their own original observations, updated with their personal experiences and enriched by the comparisons drawn with earlier relazioni. In spite of this, great patricians like Marcantonio Barbaro never quite managed to overcome a feeling of perplexity and embarrassment about having to deal with viziers who were, legally speaking, slaves entirely dependent on the Sultan. It was when reflecting upon this situation among Ottoman ministers and subjects that Marcantonio Barbaro used the solar metaphor to express the central role played by the sultan.
