Cavalierato, professioni giuridiche e mercatura : binomi plurisecolari per la formazione e la vita politica a Brescia in età veneta

The aim of this paper is to show how, during the 15th and the 16th Centuries, the institutional life in the most important cities of the Venetian mainland was not exclusively subject to the prerogatives of knights and jurists. Although these two poles have been an active role in organizing the political life of a city like Brescia, the specific object of this work, it should not be forgotten that law and the profession of arms were not the only ways to increase the political education. Recent archival discoveries, in fact, show that both knights and doctors in law from Brescia were not strangers to the practice of trade, through which it was possible to integrate the preparation for the res publica.