Indeed, as Edward Muir points out, “ by the sixteenth century virtually every word, gesture and act that the doge made in public was subject to legal and ceremonial regulation ”.

According to John Julius Norwich, the traditional first doge of Venice, Paolo Lucio Anafesto, was actually Exarch Paul, and his successor, Marcello Tegalliano, Paul's magister militum ( General ; literally, " Master of Soldiers.

During this period, the seat of the local Byzantine governor ( the " duke / dux ", later " doge ") was situated in Malamocco.

In the 12th century the foundations of Venice's power were laid: the Venetian Arsenal was under construction in 1104 ; the last autocratic doge, Vital II Michele, died in 1172.

Francesco Foscari ( 1373 – 1 November 1457 ) was doge of Venice from 1423 to 1457, at the inception of the Italian Renaissance.

His task as doge was to lead Venice in a long and protracted series of wars against Milan, governed by the Visconti, who were attempting to dominate all of northern Italy.

Contrary to popular belief the doge was not a duke in the modern sense, nor was a doge the equivalent of a hereditary duke.

The " doge " was the senior-most elected official of Venice and Genoa ; both cities were republics and elected doges.

Whether or not the first doges were technically local representatives of the Emperor of Constantinople, the doge, like the emperor, held office for life and was similarly regarded as the ecclesiastical, the civil and the military leader, in a power structure termed caesaropapism.

The doge's prerogatives were not defined with precision, and though the position was entrusted to members of the inner circle of powerful Venetian families, after several doges had associated a son with themselves in the ducal office, this tendency towards a hereditary monarchy was checked by a law which decreed that no doge had the right to associate any member of his family with himself in his office, or to name his successor.

After 1172 the election of the doge was finally entrusted to a committee of forty, who were chosen by four men selected from the Great Council of Venice, which was itself nominated annually by twelve persons.

In a ceremonial formula for consulting the Venetians, when a new doge was chosen, before he took the oath of investiture he was presented to the people with the formula: " This is your doge, if it please you.

" This practice came to an end in 1423, after the election of Francesco Foscari, who was presented with the unconditional words " Your doge ".

The Doge's Palace, Venice | Doge's Palace complex. While doges had great temporal power at first, after 1268, the doge was constantly under strict surveillance: he had to wait for other officials to be present before opening dispatches from foreign powers ; he was not allowed to possess any property in a foreign land.

The official income of the doge was never large, and from early times holders of the office remained engaged in trading ventures.

Rescued by two Neapolitan barons who had sided for Louis, Raimondello Orsini and Tommaso di Sanseverino, after six months of siege he succeeded in making his escape to Genoa with six galleys sent him by doge Antoniotto Adorno.

After a period of Byzantine domination in 8th century, Venice became an independent maritime Republic ruled by its elected doge.

The doge Andrea Gritti portrayed by Tiziano Vecellio | Tiziano

Then the forty-five were once more reduced by lot to eleven, and the eleven finally chose the forty-one who actually elected the doge.

From 7 July 1268, during a vacancy in the office of doge, the state was headed ex officio, with the style vicedoge, by the senior consigliere ducale ( ducal counsellor ).

The doge would appear in the center of the procession, preceded by civil servants ranked in ascending order of prestige and followed by noble magistrates ranked in descending order of status.

Every Easter Monday the doge headed a procession from San Marco to the convent of San Zaccaria where the abbess presented him a new camauro crafted by the nuns.

* A dramatic account of the ceremonies and procedures that accompanied the election of a doge is to be found in the Estoires de Venise of Martino da Canal ( an English translation was published by Laura K. Morreale, Padua, UniPress 2009 ).

Following the economic and population collapse, Genoa adopted the Venetian model of government, and was presided over by a doge ( see Doge of Genoa ).

After their expulsion by the popular forces under Boccanegra ’ s lead, the republic remained in Genoese hands until 1396, when the internal instability led the doge Antoniotto Adorno to surrender the title of Seignior of Genoa to the king of France.

Popular demand forced the doge to gather a retaliatory expedition, which however fell apart when struck by the plague early in 1172.

The marker is frequently mistaken by tourists as being a medieval marker of the actual tomb of the doge.

The basilica was consecrated in 1094, the same year in which the body of Saint Mark was supposedly rediscovered in a pillar by Vitale Faliero, doge at the time.

The doge himself appointed for celebrations a special clergy led by the primicerio.

In 1026, his father was deposed as doge by a revolt of the Venetians and he had to escape to Constantinople.

Elections in medieval and renaissance Venice, including that of the doge, often included the choice of electors by lot, using balls of different colors drawn from an urn.

The first doge (" duke ") of Genoa, Simone Boccanegra, whose name is kept alive by Verdi's opera, was appointed by public acclaim in 1339.

Dux is also the root of various high feudal noble titles of peerage rank, such as ( via the French duc ) the English duke, the Spanish and Portuguese duque, the Venetian doge the Italian duca and duce and the modern Greek doukas ( δούκας ).

Moss made two memorable appearances in Bob Hope films, as Hope's Casablanca contact in the espionage spoof My Favorite Spy and as a conniving Venetian doge in Casanova's Big Night.

This calculated duality means that Contarini ’ s doge, which the second book of De magistratibus is almost entirely devoted to discussing, represents the closest point in his text to what actually occurred, because the Doge served as a literal embodiment of the idealisation of the reality of Venetian politics.

In 883, Charles signed a treaty with Giovanni II Participazio, Doge of Venice, granting that any assassin of a doge who fled to the territory of the empire would be fined 100 lbs of gold and banished.

In 1453 the Republic of Venice regained possession of the palace and sold it by auction to the Doge of the time, Francesco Foscari ; he had the palace destroyed and rebuilt in late Venetian gothic style ; the building was chosen by the doge for its position on the Grand Canal.

The Italians, themselves living in Republics like Florence and Venice ( although note that the doge was an elected monarch ), looked back on these states as models of social organization.

In 1596 he was appointed provveditore ( procurator ) of St. Mark ( 1596, next in dignity to the doge ), and Provveditore delle Fortezze ( superintendent of fortifications ) in 1597.

The establishment of cordial relations between the cities and the Croatian dukedom seriously began with the reign of Duke Mislav ( 835 ), who signed an official peace treaty with Pietro, doge of Venice in 840 and who also started giving land donations to the churches from the cities.

Prince Mislav of Croatia ( 835 – 845 ) built up a formidable navy, and in 839 signed a peace treaty with Pietro Tradonico, doge of Venice.