<P> Of the major republics, only Venice managed to retain an exclusively patrician government, which survived until Napoleon . In Venice, where the exclusive patriciate reserved to itself all power of directing the Serenissima Repubblica and erected legal barriers to protect the state increased its scrutiny over the composition of its patriciate in the generation after the Battle of Chioggia . Venetians with a disputed claim to the patriciate were required to present to the avogadori di commun established to adjudicate such claims a genealogy called a prova di nobiltà, a "test of nobility". This was particularly required of Venetian colonial elite in outlying regions of the Venetian thalassocracy, as in Crete, a key Venetian colony 1211--1669, and a frontier between Venetian and Byzantine, then Ottoman, zones of power . For Venetians in Venice, the prova di nobiltà was simply a pro forma rite of passage to adulthood, attested by family and neighbors; for the colonial Venetian elite in Crete the political and economic privileges weighed with the social ones, and for the Republic, a local patriciate in Crete with loyalty ties to Venice expressed through connective lineages was of paramount importance . </P> <P> Active recruitment of rich new blood was also a character of some more flexible patriciates, which drew in members of the mercantile elite, through ad hoc partnerships in ventures, which became more permanently cemented by marriage alliances . "In such cases an upper group, part feudal - aristocratic, part mercantile would arise, a group of mixed nature like the' magnates' of Bologna, formed of nobles made bourgeois by business, and bourgeois ennobled by city decree, both fused together in law ." Others, like Venice, tightly restricted membership, which was closed in 1297, though some families, the "case nuove" or "new houses" were allowed to join in the 14th century, after which membership was frozen . </P> <P> Beginning in the 11th century, a privileged class which much later came to be called Patrizier formed in the German - speaking free imperial cities . Besides wealthy merchant Grand Burghers (German: Großbürger), they were recruited from the ranks of imperial knights, administrators and ministeriales; the latter two groups were accepted even when they were not freemen . </P> <P> Members of a patrician society entered into oaths of loyalty to one another and directly with respect to the Holy Roman Emperor . </P>

Why did citizens allow patricians to fix elections in medieval cities