Doge (Lat. dux, a leader), the title of the elective chief magistrate in the republics of Venice and Genoa. The dignity or office was called dogato. The doges of Venice were elected for life. The first of them was called to the dignity in the year 697, when Venice had scarcely risen to the importance of a city, and he and his successors ruled it as sovereigns, with nearly absolute power. But when the state grew mightier both on land and sea, through commerce and conquests, its nobles continually strove to check the power and influence of their elective head, and the government became more and more oligarchical, its form more and more republican, the dogate a magistracy, and finally a mere title. A change in the constitution toward the end of the 12th century put the whole legislative power into the hands of the council of 470; this elected the executive council of 6 and the 60 pregadi, and the doge was elected by 12 electors, chosen by 24 members of the great council. The first chief magistrate thus elected was Sebastiano Ziani (1173), who, in order to make his dignity, now stripped of every power, at least popular, distributed money among the people at his installation; an act adopted by his successors as one of the ceremonies of inauguration.

Another ceremony introduced by the same doge was that of marrying the sea by a ring thrown into the waves of the Adriatic, which emblem of power over the mighty element was bestowed upon him with many other marks of dignity by Pope Alexander III., whom he supported in his long and bloody struggle against the emperor of Germany, Frederick Barbarossa. A new council of 40, established in 1179, and vested with supreme judicial power, also served to circumscribe the prerogatives of the doge. It was in vain that many a chief magistrate covered his office and the state with glory; in vain that Enrico Dandolo, the nearly blind nonogenarian, led the victorious fleet of the fourth crusade to Constantinople (1202-'4), that he was, at both attacks, among the first to storm it, that he refused the conquered imperial crown; the nobility were incessantly bent on the humiliation of the so-called chief of the state, which was completed in the second half of the 13th century, and at the beginning of the next, by the new and last election law, the most complicated instrument of indirect exercise of sovereignty that has ever been framed, by the introduction under Gradenigo of the hereditary nobility and its golden book, and the establishment of the terrible council of ten, supreme in power, irresponsible, and judges of the doge himself.

Stripped of nearly all his prerogatives, the power of the doge was confined to the command of the army and the opportunity of profiting by the frequent strifes and contentions of the different councils and classes; and the office became so burdensome that a law had to be enacted (1339) prohibiting any one from laying it down, and that in 1367 Contarini had to be forced to accept it. The doge received ambassadors, but could give them no answer of his own, and their letters he opened in the presence of the senate; money was struck in his name, but without his stamp or arms. He was not allowed to leave the city, to announce his acccession to any hut princes of Italy, to accept presents, to possess estates in foreign countries, or to marry his daughters to foreigners. His children and relatives were excluded from every important office. He was surrounded by spies, fined for every transgression, and his conduct scrutinized after his death by a tribunal of three inquisitors and five correctors. The office was destroyed with the state in 1797, by the French, under Bonaparte. - In Genoa, the first doge was elected for life in 1339, after the victory of the popular party over that of the nobility, and voluntarily shared his power with a council of state consisting of twelve members, six from the nobility and six from the people.

But during the long internal and external contentions of this republic, the dogate was often modified, and sometimes even abolished. Andrea Doria, the great admiral, and the deliverer of the republic from the yoke of the French in 1528, reorganized it, and his constitution remained, but slightly altered, till the French conquest (1797). According to it, the doge, who must be a noble, and 50 years of age, was elected for two years; he presided in the two legislative councils, of 300 and of 100; had the right of proposing and vetoing laws; exercised the executive power with 12 secret councillors; and resided in the palace of the republic. The ceremonies and restrictions connected with his election and dignity were similar to those in Venice. Napoleon, having founded the republic of Liguria, restored this ancient dignity (1802), and abolished both when elected emperor of the French (1804).