And now commenced a reign which continued twenty-two years (1289-1311), during which time the most important changes were made in the government of Venice; serious wars were undertaken, and great disasters encountered; the Republic was placed under the ban of the Church; grave revolutions occurred. Indeed, these years seem not to have had a day that was not heavy with important results; and yet, as we now review them after the lapse of centuries, we know that the effect of wars, insurrections, interdict, and plague combined, did not compare in importance with two great political changes which were brought about under Gradenigo's leadership,--the {95} closing of the Great Council (_Serrata del Consiglio Maggiore_), and the establishment of the Council of Ten. Daniel Barbaro sums up the character of Gradenigo thus:-- "He was a person of infinite astuteness and sagacity. For the vigor of his understanding and the soundness of his judgment he was not more remarkable than for his constancy of purpose and firmness of will. In the prosecution of his formed designs his energy and resolution were indomitable. As an orator, his delivery was fluent, his language copious, and his manner persuasive. Toward his friends and partisans, no one was more urbane in deportment, more profuse in kindness, more apparently studious to please. Toward those who had provoked his enmity, no one could be more unforgiving and implacable. In politics he was a dexterous tactician and an habitual dissembler; and he at all times evinced a backwardness to employ force, until intrigue and artifice were exhausted." There is little doubt that Gradenigo was pledged to fully carry out the policy of the aristocrats. By a certain management they had been essentially in power for a long time, but occasionally they were made to realize the dissatisfaction of the people and their claim to authority. The time was favorable for the politicians to perfect and initiate their schemes, almost unnoticed by the people, who were fully occupied with the Genoese war, which gave them much anxiety and distracted their thoughts from what was being quietly done in their very midst. The intent of the closing of the Great Council was to exclude from election all save the aristocrats; it is thus explained by Romanin:-- "The citizens were divided into three classes: first, those who neither in their own persons nor through their ancestors had ever formed part of the Great Council; second, those whose progenitors had been members of it; third, those who were themselves members of the Council, both they and their fathers. {96} The first were called new men, and were never admitted save by special grace; the second class were included from time to time; finally, the third were elected by full right."