Over three decades ago, Steven Shapin, one of the main scholars responsible for the “culturalist turn” in the history of science, directed the attention of historians of early modern science toward the importance of those practitioners who had materially accomplished the most famous experiments in the time of Robert Boyle and the Royal Society.1 As Shapin argued, the skillful activities of these practitioners must be seen as a substantial contribution to the construction of modern science, although they have disappeared from sight. This has happened not only because of the negligence or ideological preconceptions of historians of the Scientific Revolution, but also because the historical sources themselves tend to be silent about these early modern practitioners. Yet, some traces of their presence remain, for instance in images depicting them in the sublimated form of assistant putti or cherubs. Much progress has been made towards the reevaluation of these “practical bearers” of knowledge since Shapin’s remarks on the importance of submerged micro- sociological contexts. They were people from the working classes such as craftsmen, miners and midwives.2 Fishermen also belong to this world of expertise from below. Florike Egmond has made us aware of their relevance through several case studies, the most prominent of which is that of the Dutch merchant and student of marine life, Adriaen Coenen (1514–1587), himself the son of a fisherman. Through his mixed expertise, Coenen acted as a bridge between various social and epistemological communities. Indeed, he established his fame by collecting mirabilia, and interviewing fishermen and travelers in order to gather marine information. Throughout his life, he exchanged specimens, drawings and knowledge with common people, university scholars and prominent figures.3 Following Egmond’s invitation to investigate the roots of ichthyology at the point of encounter between different groups, I will here turn my attention to the question of the link between erudition and fishermen’s practical knowledge in the Renaissance, with Italy and Venice as my main areas of inquiry. I will begin with some remarks on the importance of practice in connection to nomenclature, on the basis of evidence drawn from the most reputed authors who wrote on ichthyology in the 16th and early 17th centuries. Secondly, I will point to some important aspects of fishermen’s water expertise in Venice by resorting to historical documents on fishing legislation and water management. My attempt is to shift the focus from the culture of the elites to that of water laborers. Eventually, I will look at one specific fish species, the gobius (which was and is still called ‘go’ in Venice), as an object of inquiry from a variety of epistemological and social perspectives. This fish, as the sources tell us, constituted an important ingredient in people’s diet in the area of Venice area from antiquity to early modernity.
1 Fish Nomenclature and Practical Knowledge
The problem of nomenclature is ubiquitous in early-modern books on plants and animals. An understanding of the classics in this field presupposed that a correct correspondence be established not only between Greek and Latin sources – a problem for literati – but also between ancient names and those in use among ordinary people. Only on the basis of such translation efforts across different languages could knowledge of the past be reactivated, assessed and, if necessary, corrected and expanded. Indeed, the practical experience of the lower classes was a repository of empirical knowledge from which science and philology could greatly benefit.
In one of the most elegant Renaissance works on fish, Aquatilium animalium historiae liber (History of Aquatic Animals) (Rome 1554), the physician Ippolito Salviani of Rome (1514–1572) pitted observation against bookish knowledge and labeled the former as “historical”, in accordance with Pliny the Elder. Although Salviani, a learned humanist, held the ancients in high esteem (especially Aristotle, Pliny, Solinus, Oppian, Aelian, Athenaeus and Eustathius), he argued that “reality”, rather than opinions, counts. He opposed res – “things”, which lie at the basis of historical truth (historiae veritas) – to men’s authority (hominum auctoritas):
Our purpose has been to affirm nothing else than that which we learned and observed in reality itself [re ipsa]. Thus, we have often been forced to correct the writings of others, not in order to contradict them (as might seem) but for the sake of truth, which should be a greater friend to us than Plato and Socrates.4
In order to reassess and advance ichthyology, Salviani started from names. The first, extensive part of his Aquatilium animalium historiae liber deals with nomina. It is an alphabetical list of fish from ‘Ablennis’ to ‘Zygaena’. A column to the left lists the Latin names, while a series of additional columns on two consecutive pages present the following information (in this order): the corresponding Greek names; the Italian ones (occasionally with the specification of local variants used in Rome and Venice); the main characteristics of the different species; and the relevant passages in Aristotle, Oppian, Pliny, Athenaeus, Aelian and varii auctores (various authors) [Fig. 12.1A–B]. This was by no means an erudite exercise performed for its own sake, because its scientific purpose was clear. It was a necessary premise for any critical engagement with ichthyology and the connection between ancient knowledge and the empirical knowledge that could be gathered from the present.
Salviani Ippolito, Aquatilium animalium historiae (Rome, Ippolito Salviani: 1554). Multicolumn tables of fish names concordances and fish information, fol. 19v
Salviani Ippolito, Aquatilium animalium historiae (Rome, Ippolito Salviani: 1554). Multicolumn tables of fish names concordances and fish information, fol. 20r
These synoptic tables are followed by the “empirical” part. This features wonderful engravings of various fish species accompanied, whenever possible, by their Greek, Latin and Italian names. The text is presented according to a precise scheme that Salviani explains to his readers:
First, we offer the name of each individual fish in Greek, Latin and the vernacular (as far as this is possible). Then, we describe the appearance of its entire body and, after that, we address its nature and habits. Additionally, we abundantly teach what its specific juices are, as well as its nutritional properties and the diseases they cure. In this manner, in my opinion, nothing is missing for a complete account [universa historia].5
The visual element has a fundamental epistemological function. Indeed, Salviani’s engravings serves as a substitute for direct observation [Fig. 12.2].6 The origin of the drawings is not specified, but I consider them to be a witness of exchanges with the world of practice, or of the “fieldwork activity” of this author.7 Yet, one can only speculate about the exchanges that took place between Salviani and fishermen, because he conceals his encounters with working-class people behind the ostentatious dialogue between himself and classical authors (such as Aristotle, Strabo and Galen) and the high clergy in Rome.
A fish engraving in Salviani Ippolito, Aquatilium animalium historiae (Rome, Ippolito Salviani: 1554)
One can find more references to practical contexts in other works from the same period, for instance Paolo Giovio’s De Romanis piscibus libellus (Booklet on Roman Fish) (Rome 1524). This book, which predates Salviani’s, deals with the problem of nomenclature in connection with both philology and nature itself. Giovio (1483–1552) claims that a major difficulty in gaining knowledge about fish lies in the ‘almost infinite variety’ of aquatic species. According to him, problems of languages and natural variability concur to make ichthyology an arduous field of investigation. This complexity partially explains the divergences that, in his view, mark the distance between the classics and the living experience of contemporary fishing:
It should come as no surprise for curious people that the works of the ancients largely conflict with the fishing of our times. Even if the animal species of land and sea may have always remained the same according to the perpetual order of nature, there is no doubt that they seem to have varied and changed, owing to many causes.8
Giovio remarks that fish migrate, just like birds. This fact accounts for the relevant changes that often occur in marine animal populations.
Fish spontaneously migrate […]. Fishermen are [at times] surprised at what fish they have caught with their nets. One ought to believe that they come from the extreme recesses of the seas or the depths of the profoundest eddies, or that they have arrived in the Mediterranean Sea [Mare nostrum] through the strait of Gibraltar [Gaditanas fauces], in the same manner as, in certain years, unusual birds will fly into Italy from very distant regions, as has been reported.9
Giovio also mentions the fish market as a place of encounters. However, he does not present it as a place in which knowledge about fish is gathered, but rather as one in which it is important to already have adequate knowledge, in order not to be cheated by the fishmongers. Moreover, he considers some of the difficulties that scholars face in trying to understand ancient sources on fish to be the result of discontinuities in fishing practices. Hence, he acknowledges the importance of these practices, at least indirectly: ‘As fishing was neglected, the old names for fish have been radically forgotten’.10
Two French authors stand out alongside these Italians for their exploration of aquatic regions and linguistic aspects. In his systematic Libri de piscibus marinis, in quibus verae piscium effigies expressae sunt (Books on Marine Fish, in Which the True Images of Fish Are Presented) (Lyon 1554), the Montpellier professor of medicine, Guillaume Rondelet (1507–1566), lists as many vernacular names as possible in addition to the Latin and Greek ones, including French and Provençal words, but also very local expressions used in harbors such as those of Marseille and Italian seaside towns. The encyclopedic naturalist, Conrad Gessner (1516–1565), who only saw the sea twice and sojourned in Venice for one month, compiled one of the most monumental works on water animals of his time by drawing information about Mediterranean fish from secondary sources, including Rondelet, whose linguistic explanations he highly praised:
Rondelet displayed uncommon diligence in his highly accurate inquiry into the true and ancient names of fish, their descriptions (for which he personally traveled to Belgium and Italy), learned references, and explanations of dubious and obscure passages in the reference authors.11
Gessner also integrated his knowledge through the collection of images, which he received and widely exchanged. They included images of fish, some of them of Venetian provenance [Fig. 12.3].12 Another prominent French author, Pierre Belon (1518–1564), published a booklet of fish images and descriptions, De aquatilibus, libri duo (Two Books on Water Animals) (Paris 1554), which began with a proud celebration of his own explorations:
I dare to say only this: there is nothing imaginary or conjectural [in this work], but only the expression of that which I observed at various moments in Pontus and Hellespont, the Tyrrhenian, Eritrean and Adriatic seas, and our ocean.13
Two species of gobius from Gessner’s collection of watercolours, which served as a basis for his Historia animalium. Provenance: MS University Library Amsterdam C III 22–23
Still, in spite of Belon’s self-celebratory observational attitude, many legendary animals find their place in his De aquatilibus, libri duo.14
2 The Sociology of Fishermen’s Water Expertise in Early Modern Venice
In light of the texts just discussed, the question arises of the origin of the empirical knowledge possessed by the many Renaissance authors who wrote lengthy works on ichthyology. To what extent did scholars like Giovio, Salviani, Belon, Rondelet and Gessner interact with seafaring people? What was fishermen’s epistemic status, for instance? Do we have any access to it? From what sources can we gather information about water practitioners’ experience and their contribution to science? I propose to investigate Venetian sources on water policies and fishing legislation as a vantage point to newly address these questions and contribute to a reconstruction of early modern knowledge about marine animals in its socio-epistemological multidimensionality.
Knowledge about aquatic environments and water policies were areas of common concern across the classes that constituted the republican body politic of early modern Venice. Rather than taking the form of top-down decisions and technical solutions, water policies – as a ‘public domain’ – had a more circular character than in Italian provinces ruled by princes.15 A technical institution, the ‘Magistrate for the Waters’ (according to its later name), was specifically entrusted with overseeing all water-related matters, including the creation and maintenance of channels, river diversions, the defense of the lagoon and the protection of the coastline against alterations of anthropic or natural origin. The savi alle acque (water magistrates) and proti (practitioners with engineering expertise) working within this institution also relied on the knowledge of fishermen, whose epistemological status as experts on the lagoon is witnessed by the documentary evidence. As one reads in a decree of 1536, the water officers had to take into account fishermen’s advice whenever they endeavored to carry out engineering work in the lagoon:
Since no one understands the flow and movements of the waters of our lagoon better than the fishermen who travel through it by day and by night, the Gastaldo [the chief of the fishermen’s community] and the fishermen’s guild of San Nicolò shall choose two of the most sensible and practical elderly fishermen, or retired fishermen […] the choice of another person must be made by the Gastaldo and the fishermen of Sant’Agnese; another will be chosen by the fishermen of Murano, two by those of Burano and two by those of Chioggia. All eight of them, when we deal with matters related to this lagoon, should be summoned to this Office to share their opinions and recollections about the matter proposed, for the benefit of our lagoon.16
Many archival sources bear witness to existing forms of collaboration between the water officers and the local fishing community.17 In some cases, the fishermen carried out ambitious technical projects such as the mapping of the lagoon to define public and private waters. The Venetian Senate backed the fishermen’s request to define these boundaries. For them, it was a means to ascertain where they could fish freely. Through a proclamation of 7 June 1684, the political authorities specifically requested the water officers to conduct such a survey. Their explicit goal was the safeguarding of public waters.18 The connection between fishing and the preservation of the morphology of the lagoon also emerges from the statutes of the fishing community of San Niccolò in Venice. In the so-called Mariegola vecchia della comunità di San Nicolò (the old guild statutes of the community, today preserved in the Library of the Correr Museum in Venice), privileges, regulations and decisions of relevance for the fishermen were brought together. Among other documents, the mariegola includes the transcription of an order that the water officers issued in 1549 and which, anticipating the aforementioned plan to map the waters of the lagoon, called for an assessment of the effects on the lagoon of barriers delimiting fish farms, the so-called ‘valli da pesca’ (literally, “fishing valleys”, or fishing enclosures inside the lagoon).19 The officers argued that barriers erected for this purpose could damage the lagoon bed. As these structures also hindered the free movement of fishermen, the Magistrate for the Waters and the fishermen had a common interest to contrast the “privatization” of the public waters. For the sake of fishing and the preservation of the lagoon, artificial structures and anything that might restrict movement in the waters of the lagoon were to be reduced to a minimum. There are many other documents that bear witness to this alliance.20 These sources also preserve indirect information about the fauna of the lagoon in the past. For instance, one reads in another sixteenth-century document that the area of San Raffaele in Venice, today part of the stony city center, was full of reeds and populated by ducks. The document was indeed a ban on hunting them.21 The great respect for the fishermen’s community and their knowledge in Venice is further witnessed by the existence of questionnaires about their trade and interviews with them conducted by water officials. Together with some colleagues, I have already investigated a specific set of interviews in the context of a study of the geomorphological history of the Venice lagoon.22 I should now like to turn my attention to these and similar documents as a source of information about fishermen’s practical knowledge and link them to ichthyology.
3 Archival Evidence of the Social Circulation of Knowledge about Fish in Early Modern Venice
In a set of questionnaires from 1623 [Fig. 12.4], designed to assess the consequences of the diversion of the river Brenta, fishermen first were asked about their work and what areas of the lagoon they usually fished in:
A questionary devised by the water officers of Venice in 1623 to interview fishermen on the consequences of a river diversion. Provenance: Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Savi ed esecutori alle acque, Atti, pezzo 123, fol. 7r
The interviewers expected the fishermen to report any observations they might have made in the lagoon and also to express their opinions about the causes of the changes they witnessed, for instance concerning water flows. The officers were particularly interested in the state of harbors. They wanted to know whether they had been damaged by the diversion of the river Brenta. Fishermen could share their opinions quite freely and often offered advice on how to solve specific problems, for instance ones related to navigation. One of the questions directly concerned fishing: ‘Has fishing remained the same [as before the river diversion]?’24 The documents show that the fishermen were quite critical about the recent diversion. They were especially concerned about the alteration of the quality of the waters, in particular stagnation, which was deadly for fish. They expressed a series of concrete criticisms of the consequences of the Brenta diversion of 1610. They claimed that waters had become shallower in the areas in which the river used to enter the lagoon. The water was not flowing as it used to, more algae were growing and fish were becoming rarer. Additionally, some navigable water channels in the lagoon had become difficult to navigate. Fishermen also reported about the erosion of saltmarshes and changes relative to the semi-submerged islands, so-called “velme”. Additionally, new sandbanks had been formed at the lagoon inlets.
On 28 June 1623, Nadalin Gritti, a 64-year-old fisherman, had the following exchange with the water officers:
Several other fishermen had noted the same effects: water stagnation, algae and a drop in the number of fish. For instance, Andrea Spinazzi of San Niccolò, a 42-year-old man, declared:
I repeat that this is what I have observed. Now that the Brenta is no longer there, one does not fish as before. In fact [the river branch] Melison was the best possible place and one could fish everything there. But now it is full of hair.26
Another interviewee, Giacomo Ingiostro of the Giudecca, added that stagnating waters infected the air and that this constituted a public health hazard.27 The water officers recorded all remarks, suggestions and criticisms. On some occasions, the officers rebuked fishermen for their skepticism about the human possibility of governing the elements and for their excessive reliance on Providence. The officers sometimes corrected the individual perception of the alterations on the basis of the historical records preserved in the archives of their institution. Moreover, instead of appealing to God or nature as the force responsible for the pristine conditions of the lagoon, whenever the discussion touched upon such theological and philosophical topics, the officers would tell the fishermen that the lagoon landscape was not immutable but the result of a long-term process, which depended on human decisions and interventions. The officers clearly pointed out to the leader of the fishing community, their ‘Gastaldo’ Domenico Papacica, that ‘the river Brenta did not use to naturally end where we had it, for it had been brought there artificially [condotta con arte]’.28 In this manner they countered his observation that the lagoon should be left alone, as God had created it.
In spite of these disagreements between the fishermen and the water officers, such exchanges bear witness to the fact that a process of cultural and scientific negotiation took place between the two sides. I would call these exchanges forms of knowledge circulation from below. Fishermen were conscious of the relevance of their work and their experience for the city. Menego Balbi of Sant’Agnese, a 74-year-old fisherman, directly criticized his interviewers on the 1st of August 1623 for previously disregarding the advice of those who were most familiar with the lagoon: ‘It was a big mistake not to collect information from us when the Brenta was diverted, as we are so familiar [havemo tanta pratica] with these places’.29
The socially shared character of water knowledge in early modern Venice is also witnessed by fishing regulations. They incorporate knowledge about the reproduction times of the various aquatic species and techniques that can endanger their well-being. An excerpt from a medieval document shows that Venice imposed restrictions on the times of the year in which fish could be caught as early as 1314:
It is ordered that no fisherman should dare to catch young fish with a net until the feast of Saint Peter [the 29th of June] […]
If someone catches any [such fish], he should throw it back into the water and should not dare sell them or let anyone else sell them […]
If someone contravenes this [order], he will forfeit his equipment and pay a fine, which will be more or less [steep] depending on the judges’ decision.30
These regulations established what fishing techniques were lawful. In particular, nets’ mesh should not be too thick, for otherwise young fish would be killed before reaching maturity.
Some Renaissance Orders Issued by the Most Excellent College of Fishmongers in 1595 (Ordini presi nell’Eccellentissimo Collegio delle Pescarie) offer some insight into many details related to fishing laws and policies that the authorities adopted in order to mitigate any decline in fish populations. Some of these regulations concerned the protection of fish during reproduction periods:
No one should dare to take the fish gobius with his hands when it lays its eggs. The punishment for those who transgress [this law] is to row in a galley for two years with chains on his feet, and to pay 25 ducats, half of which will go to the complainant, while the other half [will be assigned] at the discretion of the Lords of [the Magistracy of] the Rason Vecchie. Whoever is not suitable for a galley will be locked up in prison for five years.31
It is totally forbidden to take menole [spicara maena] in Istria in the season when they breed and lay eggs, especially in the months of March, June, July and August […].32
Engraving of a maena in Rondelet Guillaume, De piscibus marinis (Lyon, Macé Bonhomme: 1554–1555) 138. Provenance: Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek
With the same goal of protecting fish, their habitat and reproduction, a regulation of 2 May 1726 prohibited walking on the shallow marshes and semi-submerged velme to harvest oysters, because this practice caused the devastation of the seabed and the death of black fish (pesce negro), presumably the gobius niger.33
4 The Gobius and People’s Diet in Early Modern Venice
Practical knowledge about fishing and fish thus entered Venetian legislation. Did this also lead to its introduction into erudite scientific literature? To what extent did the social and epistemic status of a community like that of the Venetian fishermen contribute to the advancement of science? At present, I do not have enough evidence to answer this question, which ultimately concerns the codification practical knowledge on fish in erudite scientific literature. For the time being, I will only examine the socio-epistemological multidimensionality of a specific species, the gobius, typical of the Lagoon of Venice. This fish is repeatedly mentioned in Venetian fishing legislation and is also described in the most relevant early modern works on aquatic animals. Most of them refer to Venice in connection to the specific variant of this species, the gobius marinus niger, which was typical of its lagoon. Belon, for one, begins his section on the gobius by mentioning its Venetian name, before adding a series of other vernacular names:
The Venetian call the sea gobius ‘goi’, the Genoese ‘guigiones’, the Romans ‘missori’, although the name ‘missor’ is also applied to many other fish. The inhabitants of the towns of La Spezia, Porto Venere and Genoa call them ‘zoseros’.34
Gessner quotes this passage literally in his illustrated Historia animalium liber IIII, qui est de piscium et aquatilium animantium natura (History of Animals, Book IV, Dealing with the Nature of Fish and Other Aquatic Animals) (1558).35
The old statutes of the fishing community of San Niccolò comprise, among the earliest documents, the transcription of a deliberation of the justice magistrates (the provveditori comuni della vecchia giustizia) of 14 November 1503 which prohibited “unsustainable” fishing techniques. It includes the prohibition to fish the gobius by hand in the lagoon, because this practice damaged the seabed and fish eggs.36 The regulations concerning the fishing of the gobius were then revised. The prohibition later only concerned specific times of the year: the reproductive season for this fish.
It should be remarked that a constant concern about the fishing of gobius emerges from the extant archival legislation. This fish must have been an important ingredient in the local diet since antiquity. The first-century poet Martial wrote the following verses:
The Bologna naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605) quotes these verses in the section devoted to the gobius in his treatise De piscibus et de cetis (On Fish and Cetacea). Aldrovandi begins his presentation of this fish with a description (descriptio) accompanied by some illustrations. For this purpose, he includes some images taken from Rondelet and Gessner [Fig. 12.6]. He then discusses the gobius’ habitat, its reproduction (locus, partus), its nutritional properties (in a longish section entitled ‘Usus in cibis’) and finally its medical properties (in a very brief section entitled ‘Usus in medicina’). The culinary part stresses the gobius’ poor taste, at least in comparison to other kinds of fish:
Marcello Virgilio indicated that the gobius is a very bad fish by quoting Juvenal’s verses ‘Do not desire a goatfish [mullus] if you only have a gobius’.38
Images of gobius, taken from Gessner and Rondelet, in Aldrovandi Ulisse, De piscibus et de cetis (Bologna, Giovanni Baptista Bellagambia: 1613). Provenance: Biblioteca Universitaria di Padova
In his answer to the question whether the gobius is a nutritious food (An nutriat), Salviani relies on ancient authorities, who argued that it is only in quantitative terms that this poor animal can contribute to human nutrition.
As Athenaeus reports on the basis of Hicesius, ‘the gobius has a lot of juice, which can easily be extracted; they do not nourish much, and produce no good juice. When it turns golden, its meat has little substance to it; it is less fat, the juice lighter and less abundant; but owing to its bigger size, it is more nourishing’.39
According to these sources, the gobius is a juicy fish but does not have much flesh. In the Venice area, it is still used for a typical risotto, a rice dish in which the gobius essentially adds flavor but not much substance. Concerning the reputation of this fish (quantae sit aestimationis), Salviani remarks that ‘although the gobius cannot be compared to the most noble fish, as Juvenal witnesses […], nonetheless it should not be despised, because it has a fairly good taste. For this reason, the ancients held it in some esteem’.40 Galen, for example, considered its taste to be very pleasant (praestantissimum ad voluptatem).41
Judging from the constant references to the fishing of the gobius in the lagoon and the constant efforts to regulate it in Venetian legislation, it must have been a favorite ingredient across the centuries. Independently of the high or, actually, rather poor esteem it enjoyed among scientists and physicians, the gobius continued to be present in the local diet as a protein source. Fish was seen as an important source of nourishment in general. Indeed, the sale of fish was strictly regulated by the Venetian authorities. Official lists of fish were issued for the markets of San Marco and Rialto, to set maximum prices. From such tariffe (prices), one discovers that the gobius was one of the cheapest fish. In 1760, one gobius cost 8 or 6 soldi, depending on its size. This was almost the same price as a frog (8 and 5 soldi, again depending on its size) [Fig. 12.7].42
List of fish prices for the fish market in 1760 for the months of June and July. Provenance: Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Compilazione leggi Pesca, Pescaria, Pescatori, Pesce (1314–1786). A big gobius (go) costs 8 soldi, just like a big frog (rana grande)
As one of the most affordable fishes on the market, gobius must have been important for the sustenance of less affluent people. Indeed, the political reasons for the publication of fish prices by the Venetian authorities was to protect their citizens from overpricing, as is clearly stated in a ducal proclamation of 30 November 1765:
The excessive price at which fish are sold, creating universal discontent and difficulties for poor families, who are damaged in their livelihood, aroused the zeal of your Excellencies. Given their role, it was their duty to identify the guilty reasons [for this]. They clearly determined that this [problem] stems from the fact that so many Public Laws are not respected, fish is not brought into the public market, nor is it delivered to fishmongers. Instead, the food passes to traffickers. In this manner, an artificial famine is always created, even in the most plentiful fishing times and seasons. And by passing from hand to hand, the product becomes more expensive.43
Similarly, fishing techniques were regulated so as to ensure the future prosperity of the city by protecting fish as a source of food. As one reads in the Ordini in proposito della pesca del pesce novello (Orders Concerning the Fishing of Young Fish) of 1760 (reissued in 1774–1775):
The wisdom of our ancestors always aimed to protect the fishing of young fish through excellent and beneficial laws, since the abundance of an indispensable food largely depends on this. They therefore distinguished the times, places and different uses of nets and techniques […] because if fish are allowed to grow and are caught only in the appropriate and permitted seasons, this brings a happy abundance to everyone’s benefit, thanks to copious fishing.44
5 Concluding Remarks
Renaissance knowledge about fish is an interesting field to focus on in order to investigate the multilayered nature of early modern science at the encounter between people and groups belonging to different epistemological and social circles. In this essay I have explored this multidimentionality starting from the detection of traces of practical knowledge in the empirical sections of works by the most erudite early modern authors dealing with ichthyology: Paolo Giovio, Ippolito Salviani, Pierre Belon, Guillaume Rondelet, Conrad Gessner and Ulisse Aldrovandi. I then shifted my focus from the top-down cultural attitude of these learned elites to a bottom-up perspective by considering archival material pertaining to the fishing community of Venice. These documents range from water officers’ interviews with fishermen for the assessment of the state of the lagoon and its engineering to the community statutes of the fishermen of San Niccolò and fishing regulations. All these documents provide information about knowledge about fish, showing that it lay at the basis of early modern environmental policies – for instance, the protection of fish during the reproductive season and the prohibition of overfishing through non-standard nets. After suggesting a multiple way of accessing early modern knowledge about fish, I chose to focus on a species, the gobius, that is typical of Venice and which constituted an important component of the local diet. As I have pointed out, information about this fish is found across a range of fields and disciplines. It was protected by Venetian laws and was described and engraved in most sixteenth-century scientific publications. This is a brief case study of the multidimensional social epistemology of knowledge in early modernity. By zooming in on the gobius, which today is considered of little gastronomic relevance, I have stressed the connection between knowledge about fish, people’s diet and food policies. As I have also pointed out, economic was an important factor in the production and circulation of knowledge about fish. The Venetian authorities were very concerned about securing food and regulating the market for the benefit of everybody, but especially the less affluent classes who could buy fish only if overpricing was avoided. This essay is an attempt to highlight the importance of fishermen’s practical knowledge, as well as the broader societal paradigms of early modern science.
Acknowledgments
This essay is part of a project that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (GA 725883 ERC EarlyModernCosmology). It also contributes to the following research projects: FARE EarlyGeoPraxis (Grant of the Italian Ministry of University and Research, cod. R184WNSTWH) and Max Planck Partner Group The Water City (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, in collaboration with Ca’ Foscari University of Venice). I also wish to thank THE NEW INSTITUTE Center for Environmental Humanities (NICHE), Venice and the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, Jena.
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Egmond F., “On Northern Shores: Sixteenth-Century Observations of Fish and Seabirds (North Sea and North Atlantic)”, in MacGregor A. (ed.), Collecting, Recording and Preserving the Natural World from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-First Century (Leiden – Boston: 2016) 129–148.
Egmond F., “Aldrovandi, Truthfully Drawing Naturalia, and Local Context”, Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia 32, 18 (2020) 81–95.
Gessner Conrad, Historia animalium liberIIII, qui est de piscium et aquatilium animantium natura, […] continentur in hoc volumine Guilelmi Rondeletii […] Petri Bellonii […] de aquatilium singula scripta (Zurich, Christopher Froschauer: 1558).
Giovio Paolo, De Romanis piscibus libellus (Rome, F. Minitius Calvus: 1524).
Il Serenissimo Prencipe, Fa sapere ([Venice]: li figliuoli di Z. Antonio Pinelli, 30 Novembre 1765).
Klein U., Nützliches Wissen: die Erfindung der Technikwissenschaften (Göttingen: 2016).
Long P.O., Artisan/Practitioners and the Rise of the New Sciences, 1400–1600 (Corvallis: 2011).
Omodeo P., Alle origini delle scienze naturali (1492–1632) (Soveria Mannelli, Catanzaro: 2001).
Omodeo P. D. – Renn J., Science in Court Society: Giovanni Battista Benedetti’s Diversarum speculationum mathematicarum et physicarum liber (Turin, 1585) (Berlin: 2019).
Omodeo P.D., “Scientific Revolution, Ideologies of the”, in Jalobeanu D. – Wolfe C.T. (eds.), Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences (n.p.: 2020).
Omodeo P.D., “Hydrogeological Knowledge from Below: Water Expertise as a Republican Common in Early Modern Venice,” Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte: History of Science and Humanities 45, 4 (2022) 538–560.
Omodeo P.D. – Trevisani S. – Senthil B., “Benedetto Castelli’s Considerations on the Lagoon of Venice: Mathematical Expertise and Hydro-Geomorphological Transformations in Seventeenth-Century Venice”, Earth Science History 39, 2 (2020) 420–446.
Provveditori sopra la giustizia vecchia, Nuova tariffa per la vendita del pesce ([Venice], figliuoli di Z. Antonio Pinelli: 17 May 1760).
Rivoal S., “Agir en être collectif: L’État, la communauté des Nicolotti et l’approvisionnement de Venise à l’époque moderne”, Tracés: Revue de Sciences humaines 29 (2015) 65–84.
Salviani Ippolito, Aquatilium animalium historiae (Rome, Ippolito Salviani: 1554).
Scarpa G., “Premessa”, in Mariegola della Scuola di Sant’Andrea de’ Pescadori 1569–1791 (Sottomarina: 1996) 9–44.
Shapin S. – Schaffer S., “Introduction to the 2011 Edition: Up for Air”, in Shapin S. – Schaffer S. (eds.), Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and Experimental Life (Princeton: 2011 (first edition 1985) xi–l.
Shapin S., “The Invisible Technician”, American Scientist 77, 6 (1989) 554–563.
Smith P., The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago: 2004).
Trevisani S. – Omodeo P.D., “Earth Scientists and the Sustainable Development Goals: Geocomputing, New Technologies, and the Humanities”, Land 10 (2021) no. 294 (https://doi.org/10.3390/land10030294).
Valleriani M., The Structures of Practical Knowledge (Cham: 2017).
Zago R., I Nicolotti: Storia di una comunità di pescatori a Venezia nell’età moderna (Padova: 1982).
Shapin S., “The Invisible Technician”, American Scientist 77, 6 (1989) 554–563. Shapin coauthored with Simon Schaffer the work that is most commonly regarded as a watershed between the earlier contextualist sociology of science and the new culturalist sociology of scientific knowledge, Leviathan and the Air-Pump (1985). Cf. the authors’ “Introduction to the 2011 Edition: Up for Air”, in idem (eds.), Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and Experimental Life (Princeton: 2011, first edition 1985) xi–l. On the historiographical problem of changing perspectives on the Scientific Revolution, see Cohen F., The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry (Chicago: 1994) and Omodeo P.D., “Scientific Revolution, Ideologies of the”, in Jalobeanu D. – Wolfe C.T. (eds.), Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences (n.p.: 2020).
This is a sort of Marxist triad of knowledge-bearers from below. Back in the 1930s and 1940s, Boris Hessen and Edgar Zilsel already pointed to the importance of craftsmen for the construction of modern science, in their works on the socio-economic roots of early modern science. Substantial contributions to the understanding of the micro-sociology of practical knowledge have been made in more recent years. See, among others, Long P.O., Artisan/Practitioners and the Rise of the New Sciences, 1400–1600 (Corvallis: 2011); Smith P., The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago: 2004); Valleriani M., The Structures of Practical Knowledge (Cham: 2017); and Klein U., Nützliches Wissen: die Erfindung der Technikwissenschaften (Göttingen: 2016).
Egmond F., “On Northern Shores: Sixteenth-Century Observations of Fish and Seabirds (North Sea and North Atlantic)”, in MacGregor A. (ed.), Collecting, Recording and Preserving the Natural World from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-First Century (Leiden – Boston: 2016) 129–148.
Salviani Ippolito, Aquatilium animalium historiae (Rome, Ippolito Salviani: 1554) fols. 8r–v: ‘Nobis propositum fuit nihil affirmare, nisi quod ita se habere re ipsa didicimus, ac perspeximus, unde saepe coacti fuimus aliorum scripta reprehendere, non sane contradicendi studio (ut videmur) sed veritatis gratia, quae nobis amicior Platone et Socrate, esse debet […]’.
Salviani, Aquatilium animalium historiae fol. +8r: ‘Primum exposuimus, quo singuli pisces nomine, tum Graece, tum Latine, tum etiam vulgari gentium lingua (quantum consequi potuimus) appellentur, dein totius corporis figuram descripsimus, denique naturam, moresque illorum persecuti sumus, ad haec quaque arte et capi, et condiri debeant, qualis singulorum succus sit, quale nutrimentum, quibusque morbis medeantur copiose docuimus, ut universam historiam (iudicio meo) plane nihil deesse videatur’.
On “epistemic images” see Egmond F., “Aldrovandi, Truthfully Drawing Naturalia, and Local Context”, Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia 32, 18 (2020) 81–95.
Cf. Egmond, “On Northern Shores” 131: ‘Some sixteenth-century naturalists who described fishes of the Mediterranean (e.g., Guillaume Rondelet, Pierre Belon, Ippolito Salviani) are known to have personally gathered at least part of their information out at sea, on the coast, in the ports, at fish markets, and via conversation with fishermen. This is as close as we can get to “field” work in early modern marine research, and although the term is perhaps not perfectly suited to marine research, it does help to distinguish personal observation and fieldwork once removed (via fishermen) from book learning’.
Giovio Paolo, De Romanis piscibus libellus (Rome, F. Minitius Calvus: 1524) fol. A3r: ‘Neque mirum curiosis esse debuerit, si quae veteres prodidere, nostrae tempestatis piscationi, omni ex parte, minime consenserint. Nam, et si easdem semper animantium species perpetuo natuae ordine terra marique fuisse, nequaquam sit dubitandum, multa tamen variis de causis variata, atque immutata videntur’.
Giovio, De Romanis piscibus libellus fol. A3v: ‘Peregrinantur enim sua sponte pisces […]. Novos etiam pisces retibus exceptos piscatores admirati sunt, quos de extremis maris recessibus, imisque profundi gurgitibus provenire, vel per Gaditanas fauces in mare nostrum a vastissimo oceano irrumpere credendum est, sicuti etiam certis annorum curriculis inusitati generis aves e diversa terrarum regione in Italiam advolasse traduntur’.
Giovio, De Romanis piscibus libellus fol. A4v: ‘Neglecta piscatione, vetera piscium nomina penitus exolverint’.
Gessner Conrad, Historia animalium liber IIII, qui est de piscium et aquatilium animantium natura, […] continentur in hoc volumine Guilelmi Rondeletii […] Petri Bellonii […] de aquatilium singula scripta (Zurich, Christopher Froschauer: 1558) fols. b1r: ‘Rondeletius diligentiae summae circa indaganda vera ac vetera piscium nomina, eorumque descriptiones (peregrinatus etiam ipse ad Belgas et Italos), variam eruditionem, et in explicandis dubiis obscurisque authorum locis haud volgarem solertiam adiunxit’.
I am very thankful to Florike Egmond for informing me about these images. For their context, see her essay, “A Collection within a Collection: Rediscovered Animal Drawings from the Collections of Conrad Gessner and Felix Platter”, Journal of the History of Collections 25, 2 (2013) 149–170. See also Egmond F. – Kusukawa S., “Gessner’s Fish: Images as Objects”, in Leu U. – Opiz P. (eds.) Conrad Gessner (1516–1565): Die Renaissance der Wissenschaften / The Renaissance of Learning (Berlin – Boston: 2019) 581–606.
Belon Pierre, De aquatilibus Libri duo, cum ειconibus [sic] ad vivam ipsorum effigiem, quoad ejus fieri potuit, expressis (Paris, Charles Estienne: 1553) fol. aiiir: ‘Hoc unum affirmare ausim, nihil hic esse confictum, aut supposititium, sed ita expressum, quemadmodum nos aliquando in Ponto, Hellesponto, Tyrrheno, Eithraeo, Adriatico, nostroque Oceano conspeximus’.
For instance, the legendary monkfish. For a brief yet exact overview of Renaissance ichthyology, see my grandfather’s book Omodeo P., Alle origini delle scienze naturali (1492–1632) (Soveria Mannelli, Catanzaro: 2001), chap. IV, “Studi sui pesci”.
In archival documents, one can find expressions such as publico dominio and publiche aque. Cf. Archivio di Stato di Venezia [State Archives of Venice, henceforth ASV], Compilazione leggi Pesca, Pescaria, Pescatori, Pesce (1314–1786) fol. 1065r. See my paper on the political epistemology of early modern Venetian hydrogeology, ‘Hydrogeological Knowledge from Below: Water Expertise as a Republican Common in Early Modern Venice’. Much has been written about science in court society. See esp. Biagioli M., Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism (Chicago-London: 1993). See also Omodeo P.D. – Renn J., Science in Court Society: Giovanni Battista Benedetti’s Diversarum speculationum mathematicarum et physicarum liber (Turin, 1585) (Berlin: 2019).
Scarpa G., “Premessa”, in Mariegola della Scuola di Sant’Andrea de’ Pescadori 1569–1791 (Sottomarina: 1996) 9–44, here 28 (own translation): ‘Perché niuno meglio intende il corso et andamenti de le acque de queste nostre lagune de quello farà li pescadori che il zorno et nocte le practicano però sia preso che per el gastaldo et scuola dei pescadori de San Nicolò sia facta electione de duo dei più sensati vechi e pratici pescadori, o che siano stati pescadori che potranno trovar. Et questo sotto debito de Sacramento; et simile electione far debi de uno altro il gastaldo et pescadori di Sant’Agnese, et di uno altro li pescadori de Muran, et de duo altri quelli de Buran, et duo quelli de Chioza, li quali tuti otto quando se tracterano materia tantum de questa lacuna se debino far intervenir in questo Collegio per haver da loro, le loro opinion et aricordi circa dicta materia fosse proposta per benefitio de questa nostra laguna’.
On the fishing community of San Niccolò, see above all Zago R., I Nicolotti: Storia di una comunità di pescatori a Venezia nell’età moderna (Padova: 1982) and Rivoal S., “Agir en être collectif: L’État, la communauté des Nicolotti et l’approvisionnement de Venise à l’époque moderne”, Tracés: Revue de Sciences humaines 29 (2015) 65–84.
ASV, Compilazione leggi Pesca, Pescaria, Pescatori, Pesce (1314–1786), fol. 1050r.
Mariegola vecchia della comunità di San Nicolò al Angelo Rafael de Mendicoli, in Biblioteca del Museo Correr, coll. Cicogna, no. 2789, Ms. IV, no. 100, fol. 42v.
For instance, an order was issued in 1549 to eliminate all barriers constructed in a large area of the lagoon, because they altered its flows (ibidem, fol. 43r). Another document from the sixteenth century forbade the canons of Torcello to charge fishermen wishing to fish in their area. The document made it clear that that the area in question was not private: ‘We tell them that it is our intention that they pay no rent because the Lagoon is public’ (ibidem, fol. 45v: ‘Gli dicemo che intention nostra è che non gli paghino fitto per esser la Laguna publica’). Another similar document, issued by the water officers in 1565, guaranteed fishermen’s right to freely exercise their trade in the public waters, in accordance with the orders of the most important political magistracy, the Council of Ten (ibidem, fol. 85v).
Ibidem, fol. 32r. The problem of the extraction of proxy data for the environmental sciences and geomorphological history needs to be taken very seriously and constitutes a challenge for geoanthropological studies. See Camuffo D. et al., “A Novel Proxy and the Sea Level Rise in Venice, Italy, from 1350 to 2014”, Climatic Change 143, 1–2 (2017) 73–86, and Camuffo D. et al., “When the Lagoon was Frozen over in Venice from A.D. 604 to 2012: Evidence from Written Documentary Sources, Visual Arts and Instrumental Readings,” Méditerranée: Revue géographique des pays méditerranéens, Varia (2017) 1–68 (https://journals.openedition.org/mediterranee/7983) (accessed 23 November 2020). “When the Lagoon Was Frozen over in Venice from A.D. 604 to 2012”; Trevisani and Omodeo, “Earth Scientists and the Sustainable Development Goals”.
For a preliminary study, focused on hydrogeological issues, see Omodeo P.D. – Trevisani S. – Senthil B., “Benedetto Castelli’s Considerations on the Lagoon of Venice: Mathematical Expertise and Hydro-Geomorphological Transformations in Seventeenth-Century Venice”, Earth Science History 39, 2 (2020) 420–446.
ASV, Savi ed esecutori alle acque, Atti, pezzo 123, fol. 7r: ‘Qual sia la sua professione. / Dove son soliti a pescar. / Che osservatione han fatto del stato della laguna doppo levata la Brenta’.
Ibidem: ‘Se le pesche sono le medesime’.
Ibidem, fols. 14r–v: ‘E domandato: “Le pesche si sono elle mutate?” Rispose: “Signor sì, perché dove vi è questo pelo non vi nasce niente.” / E domandato: “Da che nasce questo pelo?” / Rispose: “Dalle acque morte che non hanno moto et da quel sporchezzo che vien zo dei tagli.”’
Ibidem, fol. 19r: ‘Io torno a dire che trovo così et dopo che non vi è la Brenta non vi si pesca più come si faceva perché Melison era il miglior luoco che fosse et vi si prendeva d’ogni cosa et adesso è tutto pelo’. Giacomo Ferro, a 72 year-old, gave the same witness on 3 July 1623. Cf. ibidem, fols. 21r–v: ‘Dove capitava la Brenta si prendeva del pesce che non si prende adesso perché all’hora el si nutriva con quell’acqua et anco li fondi si sono mutati’.
Ibidem, fol. 23r: ‘Et però io credo che a serrar questi tagli si faria bene, li quali tagli con il sporchezzo che conducono causano anco danno all’aria et faranno ammorbar Venetia’.
Ibidem, fol. 11r: ‘La Brenta non capitava dove voi havete detto naturalmente ma ne vi era stata condotta con arte’.
Ibidem, fol. 28r: ‘L’è sta un grand’error quando si ha levato detta Brenta non prender anco information da noi altri che havemo tanta pratica dei luochi’.
ASV, Compilazione leggi Pesca, fol. 516r: ‘Ordinatum fuit quod nullus piscator a modo usque ad festum Sancti Petri [29 giugno] sit ausus capere pisces vaninos cum tractis … Et si quis ceperit eos debeat eos proiicere in aquam, et non sit ausus eos vendere, nec vendi facere. Item si quis fecerit, vel facere fieri voluerit tracturos de nocte debeat accipere … Item quod nullus audeat ire ad tratturos pedem per palludos. Item, si quis vult ponere cucullos, vel sorborarcios in aqua, debeat ispos ponere de vero in prima campana et in mane ante tercias ipsos debet elevare: et si quis contra haec omnia […] fuerit debeat perdere ipsas artes, et insuper solvat bannus intergum, et plus et minus ad voluntatem Dominorum Iustis’.
Collegio delle Pescarie, Ordini presi ([Venice], Antonio Pinelli: 15 December 1595), fol. A2r: ‘Che niuno ardisca preder gò à brazzo al tempo, che hanno gettato l’ove predette fatto pena a chi contrafacesse d’esser condannato in Galea per anni doi a vogar il remo con li ferri alli piedi, et di pagar Ducati 25 applicati la mità al denontiante, et l’altra mità ad arbitrio delli Signori delle Rason vecchie, et non essendo buono da Galea di stare per anni 5 in pregion serrato’.
Ibidem, fols. A2r–v: ‘Che sia totalmente prohibito il prender le menole [Spicara maena] nell’Istria al tempo che vanno in frega, et sono da ove, et particolarmente nelli mesi di Marzo, Zugno, Lugio et Agosto […].’
ASV, Compilazione leggi Pesca, fol. A2r.
Belon, De aquatilibus 233: ‘Gobiones marini Venetis Goi, Genuensibus Guigiones, Romanis Missori vacantur, quamquam Missoris vox ad plerosque alios pisces transferatur. Incolae Urbis de le Specie et qui Portum Veneris ac Genuam inhabitant, Zoseros nominant’.
Gessner, Historiae animalium liber IV 466.
Mariegola vecchia della comunità di San Nicolò, fol. 10r: ‘Item per avanti el fu proibido, che non se podesse per algun modo pigliar go a brazo in algun tempo per esser sta robba el libro dove era nota tal ordene, et el sia venuto in consuetudine che ogni uno pesca, et piglia i detti go a brazo guasta e rompe le ove de tal pesci con gran detrimento nostro. Per tanto ordenemo, et volemo che de cetero el non sia alguno sia chi esser si voglia che ardisca piar né far piar go a brazo sotto penna de lire cento de pizoli e star mesi tre in preson per ogni volta. Lequal tutte penne sia divise per mittà tor la mittà all’accusador et l’altra mittà dell’officio preditto, et sia publicada nelle pescarie a Rialto et S. Marco a notitia’.
‘In Venetis sint lauta licet convivia terris / Principium caenae Gobius esse solet’. Quoted from Aldrovandi Ulisse, De piscibus et de cetis (Bologna, Giovanni Baptista Bellagambia: 1613) 99. The same verses can be found in other ichthyological sources, as well.
Ibidem: ‘Marcellis Virgilius ex hoc Iuvenalis versu “Nec Mullum cupias cum sit tibi Gobio tantum” Gobium vilissimum piscem esse indicavit’.
Salviani, Aquatilium animalium historiae liber, fol. 215r: ‘Ut refert Athenaeus authore Hicesio, “Gobiones multi succi sunt, facile excernuntur, non multum nutriunt, nec bonum succum gignunt. Flavescentium autem caro substantiae est rarioris, minus pinguis, succumque tenuiorem, neque ita copiosum praebet; ob magnitudinem tamen magis nutriunt”’.
Ibidem: ‘Etsi Gobius cum nibilissimis piscibus conferri non debeat, ut testari videtur Iuvenalis […]; haud tamen spernendum est, cum iucunde satis sapiat; et propterea apud etiam veteres in aestimatione fuit’.
Ibidem.
Provveditori sopra la giustizia vecchia, Nuova tariffa per la vendita del pesce (17 May 1760) 9.
Il Serenissimo Prencipe, Fa sapere ([Venice]: stampato per li figliuoli di Z. Antonio Pinelli, 30 Novembre 1765): ‘L’eccessivo strabocchevole prezzo, a cui viene venduta la Vittuaria del Pesce con universale reclamo, e con sbilanzio delle povere Famiglie, altamente pregiudicate nella loro economia, chiamò il zelo di Sue Eccellenze per dover della propria Deputazione a rintracciarne i rei motivi, ed hanno chiaramente conosciuto che ciò deriva perché in sprezzo di tante Pubbliche Leggi non viene condotto il Pesce nelle Pubbliche Pescarie, né s’esequisse la messa de’ Compravendi, ma passa la Vittuaria in potere de Sbazzegari; cosicché comparisse sempre una procurata carestia, anche ne’ tempi, e staggioni più fertili della Pesca, e col passaggio da mano a mano s’incarisse il prodotto’.
Ibidem, fol. 538r: ‘La Sapienza de’ Maggiori con ottime, e salutari avvertenze ebbe sempre in vista di custodire la pesca del pesce novello, come quello da cui dipende in gran parte l’abbondanza d’una Vittuaria indispensabile, distinguendo i tempi, i luoghi il diverso uso delle Reti, ed Arti […] poiché se il pesce si lasciasse crescere, ed alle sole opportune permesse stagioni si pescasse apporterebbe una gioconda ubertà a benefizio universale, e nella felicità delle Pesche copiose […]’.