The decline of Venice remains one of the classic episodes in the economic development of modern Europe. Its contrasts are familiar enough: the wealthiest commercial power in fifteenth-century Europe, the strongest western colonial power in the eastern Mediterranean, found its principal fame three centuries later in carnival and the arts.  Meer

The decline of Venice remains one of the classic episodes in the economic development of modern Europe. Its contrasts are familiar enough: the wealthiest commercial power in fifteenth-century Europe, the strongest western colonial power in the eastern Mediterranean, found its principal fame three centuries later in carnival and the arts.  Meer

This book provides a wide-ranging analysis of 'unrespectable' women and children living on the margins of mainstream Italian society, considering the interrelated aspects of Italian social history, Catholic charity and social policy over a period of five centuries.  Meer