SALVE · VENETIA

THE SALUTE

SALVE · VENETIA

GLEANINGS
FROM VENETIAN HISTORY
BY
FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD
WITH 225 ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOSEPH PENNELL
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1906
All rights reserved

Copyright, 1905,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published December, 1905. Reprinted
January, 1906.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

FROM OUTSIDE THE LIDO

SALVE VENETIA!

Venice is the most personal of all cities in the world, the most feminine, the most comparable to a woman, the least dependent, for her individuality, upon her inhabitants, ancient or modern. What would Rome be without the memory of the Cæsars? What would Paris be without the Parisians? What was Constantinople like before it was Turkish? The imagination can hardly picture a Venice different from her present self at any time in her history. Where all is colour, the more brilliant costumes of earlier times could add but little; a general exodus of all her inhabitants to-day would leave almost as much of it behind. In the still canals the gorgeous palaces continually gaze down upon their own reflected images with placid satisfaction, and look with calm indifference upon the changing generations of men and women that glide upon the waters. The mists gather upon the mysterious lagoons and sink

RIO DELLA PACE

away again before the devouring light, day after day, year after year, century after century; and Venice is always there herself, sleeping or waking, laughing, weeping, dreaming, singing or sighing, living her own life through ages, with an intensely vital personality which time has hardly modified, and is altogether powerless to destroy. Somehow it would not surprise those who know her, to come suddenly upon her and find that all human life was extinct within her, while her

THE MISTS GATHER ON THE LAGOONS

own went on, strong as ever; nor yet, in the other extreme, would it seem astonishing if all that has been should begin again, as though it had never ceased to be, if the Bucentaur swept down the Grand Canal to the beat of its two hundred oars, bearing the Doge out to wed the sea with gorgeous train; if the Great Council began to sit again in all its splendour; if the Piazza were thronged once more with men and women from the pictures of Paris Bordone, Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, and Titian; if Eastern shipping crowded the entrance to the Giudecca, and Eastern merchants filled the shady ways of the Merceria. What miracle could seem miraculous in Venice, the city of wonders?

Mut. Less.

It is hard indeed to recall the beginnings of the city, and the time when a few sand-ridges just rose above the surface of the motionless lagoon, like the backs of dozing whales in a summer sea. The fishermen from the mainland saw the resemblance too, and called them ‘backs’—‘dorsi’—giving some of them names which like ‘Dorso duro’ have clung to them until our own time, and will perhaps live on, years hence, among other generations of fishermen when Venice shall have disappeared into the waste of sand and water, out of which her astonishing personality grew into being, and in which it has flourished and survived nearly fifteen centuries.

We are not concerned scientifically with the origin of the Venetian people or of their name; we need not go back with Romanin to the legendary days of the first great struggle between Asia and Europe, in the hope of proving that the Venetians were of the great Scythian race and took the side of Troy against the injured Atrides; it matters not at all whether the Venetians were the same as the Eneti, whether Eneti was a Greek name signifying those that ‘went in,’ the ‘Intruders,’ or whether it came from the Syriac Hanida, meaning a ‘Pilgrim.’ Venice did not begin under the

EVENING IN THE LAGOON

walls of Troy, nor even in the great Roman consular province of the mainland that bore the name and handed it down. Venice began to exist when Europe rang with the cry of fear—‘The Huns are upon us!’—on the day when the first fugitives, blind with terror, stumbled ashore upon the back of one of the sand whales in the lagoon, and dared not go back.

Venice was Venice from the first, and is Venice still, a person in our imagination, almost more than a place. To most people her name does not instantly suggest names of great Venetians, as ‘Florence’ suggests the Medici, as ‘Rome’ suggests the Cæsars and the Popes, as ‘Paris’ suggests Louis XIV. and Bonaparte, as ‘Constantinople’ suggests the Sultan and ‘Bagdad’ the Caliphs. ‘Venice’ calls up a dream of colour, of rich palaces and of still water, and at the name there are more men who will think of Shylock and Othello than of Enrico Dandolo, or Titian, or Carlo Zeno, or Vittor Pisani. Without much reading and some study it is almost impossible to realise that Venice was once a great European power and a weighty element in the alternating equilibrium and unrest of nations; Venice seems to-day a capital without a country, an empress without an empire, and one thinks of her as having always existed simply in order to be always herself, a Venice for Venice’s sake, as it were, and not for the purpose of exercising any power, nor as the product of extraneous forces concentrated at a point and working towards a result.

These considerations may explain the charm felt by all those who know her, and the attraction, also, which is in most books that treat her as an artistic and romantic whole, complete in herself, to be studied, admired, and perhaps worshipped, with only an occasional allusion to her political history. So, too, one may account for the dry dulness and uncharming prosiness of most books that profess to tell the history of Venice impartially and justly. There is no such thing as impartial history, and impartial justice is an empty phrase, as every lawyer knows. It is only the second-rate historian, or the compiler of school primers, who does not take one side or the other in the struggles he describes; and a judge who feels no instinctive sympathy for right against wrong, while as yet but half proved, can never be anything but a judicial hack and a legal machine.

Preface Chron. Alt.

Who seeks true poetry, said Rossi, writing on Venice, will find it most abundantly in the early memories of a Christian nation; and indeed the old chronicles are full of it, of idyls, of legends, and of heroic tales. Only dream a while over the yellow pages of Muratori, and presently you will scent the spring flowers of a thousand years ago, and hear the ripple of the blue waves that lent young Venice their purity, their brilliancy, and their fresh young music. You may even enjoy a pagan vision of maiden Aphrodite rising suddenly out of the sea into the sunshine, but the dream dissolves only too soon, grace turns into strength, the lovely smile of the girl-goddess fades from the commanding features of the

MIDNIGHT, THE LAGOON

reigning queen, and heavenly Venus is already earthly Cleopatra.

It is better to open our arms gladly to the beautiful when she comes to us, than to prepare our dissecting instruments as soon as we are aware of her presence. Phidias and Praxiteles were ignorant of medical anatomy; Thucydides knew nothing of ‘scientific’ methods in history; the Rhapsodists were not grammarians. No man need be a grammarian to love Homer, nor a scientific historian if he would be thrilled with interest over the siege of Syracuse, nor an anatomist when he elects to dream before the Hermes of Olympia.

And so with Venice; she is a form of beauty, and must be looked upon as that and nothing else; not critically, for criticism means comparison, and Venice is too personal and individual, and too unlike other cities to be fairly compared with them; not coldly, for she appeals to the senses, and to the human heart, and craves a little warmth of sympathy; above all, not in a spirit of righteous severity, for he who would follow her story must learn to forgive her almost at every step.

She has paid for her mistakes with all save her inextinguishable life; she has expiated her sins of ill-faith, of injustice and ingratitude, by the loss of everything but her imperishable charm; the power and the will to do evil are gone from her with her empire, and her name stands on the subject-roll of another’s kingdom; she is a widowed and dethroned queen, she is a lonely and lovely princess; she is the Andromeda of Europe, chained fast to her island and trembling in fear of the monster Modern Progress, whose terrible roar is heard already from the near mainland of Italy, across the protecting water. Will any Perseus come down in time to save her?

LOOKING TOWARDS ST. GEORGE’S

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE, VENICE

I
THE BEGINNINGS

In the beginning the river washed sand and mud out through the shallow water at the two mouths of the Brenta; and the tide fought against the streams at flood, so that the silt rose up in bars, but at ebb the salt water rushed out again, mingled with the fresh, and strong turbid currents hollowed channels between the banks, leading out to seaward, until the islands and bars took permanent shape and the currents acquired regular directions, in and out, between and amongst them. In the beginning the spirit of unborn Venice seemed to say, more truly than Archimedes, ‘Give me a place whereon to stand, and I will move the world’;

THE LIGHTS OF THE LIDO

and the rivers and the tides heaped up the sand and made a dry place for her in the midst of the sea.

The lagoon is a shallow basin, roughly shaped like a crescent, its convexity making a bay in the mainland, its concave side bounded against the open sea by the curving banks, called ‘Lidi,’ beaches, which are long and narrow islands, to distinguish them from the islets of less regular shape that rise above the surface here and there within the confines of the lagoon, those on which Venice stands, and Torcello and Murano, and others which make a miniature archipelago, ending with Chioggia, at the southern point of the crescent.

CHIOGGIA

This archipelago contains twelve principal islands, some of which were inhabited by families that got a living by trading, by hunting and by fishing, selling both fish and game to the ships that plied between Ravenna and Aquileia.

Very early the people of the latter city had made a harbour for their vessels on the island of Grado, which was nearest to them, and the Paduans made small commercial stations on the islands of Rialto and Olivolo. Now and then some rich man from the mainland built himself a small villa on one of the wooded islets, and came thither for his pleasure and for sport. For some of these islands were covered with pine-trees and cane-brakes, while some were muddy, naturally sterile, and inhospitable; but the early settlers had soon solidified and modified the soil, and reduced it to the cultivation of fodder for cattle, and of vines.

The archipelago was therefore not so much a barren solitude as a quiet corner in very troubled times, and while the small farmers and fishermen knew nothing of Italy’s miserable condition, the rich sportsmen who spent a little time there were glad to forget the terrible state of things in their own great world.

Rom. i. 26.

For since the capital of the Empire had been transferred to Constantinople, Italy had fallen a prey to the greed of barbarians, and the province of Venetia had been left under the very intermittent protection of a few paid troops supposed to be commanded by a Count or ‘Corrector’ appointed by the Emperor.

On the rich mainland stood the cities of Venetia, Aquileia, Altinum, Padua, and many more; and the wealthy citizens built villas by the sea, with groves of noble trees, trim gardens and wide fishponds, and marble steps leading down to the water’s edge; and they hunted the wild boar and the stag in the near forests, all the way to the foot of the Julian hills. The land was rich, and far removed from turbulent Rome and intriguing Constantinople, and many a Roman noble took sanctuary from politics on the enchanting shore, to dream away his last years in a luxurious philosophy that was based on wealth but was fed on every requirement of culture, and was made sweet by the past experience of danger and unrest.

BRIDGE AT CHIOGGIA

About 406 A.D.

Then came the first Goths, with fire and sword—‘more fell than anguish, hunger or the sea’—and then a score of years later fair-haired Alaric, the Achilles of the North, and, like Pelides, untiring, wrathful, inexorable, bold, yet just, according to his lights, and high-souled if not high-minded, destined first to terrible defeat at Pollentia, but next to still more awful victory, and soon to death and a mysterious grave.

Before the Goths men scattered and fled, the rich to what seemed safety, in Rome, the poor to the woods, to the hills, to the wretched islets of the lagoon. Back they came to their villas, their sea-baths and their groves, when it was surely known that great Alaric was dead and laid to his royal rest in the bed of the southern river.

They came back, the poor and the rich, while the world-worn, luxurious, highly-cultivated men of the last days of the Empire enjoyed their hunting and fishing in peace; and over their elaborate dishes and their cups of spiced Greek wine they quoted to each other Martial’s lines:—

‘Ye shores of Altinum, ye that vie with Baiae’s villas—thou grove, that sawest Phaëthon’s fiery end—and Maiden Sola, fairest of wood-nymphs thou, espoused beside the Euganean lakes with Faunus of Antenor’s Paduan land—and thou, Aquileia, that rejoicest in Tamavus, thine own river, sought by Leda’s sons where Castor’s steed drank of the seven waters—Ye shall be unto mine old age a haven and resting-place, if but mine ease may have the right to choose.’

But while they repeated the fluent elegiacs they remembered the Goths uneasily, for the Empire was in its last years and weak, and Venetia was protected against the barbarians north and east by a handful of Sarmatian mercenaries. What had happened once might happen again, and as the years slipped by, each one seemed to bring it nearer; and in half a century after Alaric’s first descent, there came another conqueror more terrible than the first, whom men called Attila, the Scourge of God; but he told the Christians that he was the dreadful Antichrist, and the people cried out, ‘The Huns are upon us,’ and they fled for their lives into the cities. Aquileia, at that time the second city of Italy, and Padua, Altinum and others, defended themselves and fell, and the people who could not escape perished miserably.

D’ Ancona.

This is history, single and clear. But here springs up legend and says that Attila, who never crossed the Po, laid waste all Tuscany, and his name is a byword of terror, for blood and massacre, and destruction and all bestial ferocity. Legend says, too, that while he was besieging Aquileia, the Hun king saw the need of a fort on high ground, where there was none; and that in three days his hordes piled up the hill on which Udine stands, bringing earth in their helmets and shields and stones on their backs. Then the Aquileians attempted to flood the country and drown out their besiegers, and they broke through the dykes that kept out the waters of the Piave; but the Huns cut down the grove of Phaëthon and made a vast dam of the trees.

It is also told by Paul the Deacon how on a certain day Attila came too near the walls, spying for a weak point, and a party of the besieged folk fell upon him unawares; but he escaped, with his bow in his hand and his crooked sword, the sword of a Scythian war-god, between his teeth, ‘dire flame flashing from his eyes,’ and all that his enemies had of him was his crest.

So Aquileia resisted him long, and the Huns were discouraged, until Attila saw a flight of storks flying from the walls and knew thereby that there was famine within.

Then, says the legend, the king of the Aquileians, Menappus, who seems to be quite mythical, took

THE CATHEDRAL AT MURANO

counsel with his brother Antiochus, how the people might escape over the lagoon before the city fell. So they set up wooden images as soldiers with helmet and shield on the ramparts, to represent sentinels, and the Huns were deceived. But one of Attila’s chief warriors flew his hawk at the walls, and it settled upon the head of one of the wooden soldiers. So, when the Huns saw that the sentinel was an image and not a man, they scaled the battlements and sacked the almost deserted city and burned it.

It is told also, and the fishermen of those waters still believe the tale, that before they escaped the Aquileians dug a deep well and hid their treasures in it; and deeds of sale of land are extant, dated as late as the year 1800, in which the seller of the property reserved his right to the legendary treasure well, if it should ever be found. The truth is, however, that after the destruction of the great city and the disappearance of the Huns, many of the fugitives went back and recovered what they had hidden.

The tide of legend sweeps down the coast with the wild riders to Altinum, where mythical King Janus fights, like a Roland, on a steed that has human understanding and that bears him out of Attila’s reach, half dead of his wounds. And inland, then, towards Padua, and up to its very walls, the heroes fight; this time Attila is wounded and is saved only by his horse’s marvellous speed, but on the next day the two kings meet again in the presence of their armies to decide the war in single combat.

Janus unhorses Attila, and strikes off his ear, and would cut off his head too, but five hundred Hunnish knights rush to the rescue of their king, and Janus is prisoner. But Attila’s anger is roused against them. They have broken the laws of knightly combat. His honour is tarnished because his life is saved. To clear it, he sets King Janus free and hangs his five hundred knights as a vast sacrifice for atonement. Then Padua is overpowered and sacked and burned.

The myth goes on to the end in a blaze of impossibilities. Before Rimini Attila disguises himself as a French pilgrim, hides a poisoned knife under his robe, and steals into the besieged city to murder Janus. He finds him playing at dice with one of his knights, and armed from head to foot. He interrupts the game, asks questions, forgets himself, shows his wolfish teeth, and Janus recognises him by the absence of the one ear lopped off at Padua. In an instant the king and the knight overpower the great Hun and slay him on the spot; and so ends Attila, and the myth.

. . . . . .

Of all this legend little enough remains, and that is best summed up in the now almost forgotten line quoted by Professor d’Ancona in his Leggende:—

... nata ella sola
Di serve madri libera figluola.

‘The only daughter—among many—of enslaved mothers that was ever born free.’ Truly well said of Venice.

The chronicles tell the true story of the first beginnings, and how the people of the pillaged cities found a precarious refuge in the little archipelago. They crossed in their light boats and landed safely,

Rom. i. 56-57.

554-564 A.D.

568 A.D.

and forthwith made huts and tabernacles of branches to shelter the relics of the saints which they had saved as possessions more precious than their household goods or little hoards of gold and silver. But the people themselves beached their boats high and dry and lived in them, sheltered from the weather only by awnings, just as the last of the sailor traders still live wherever they find a market on the Calabrian shore; for they hoped to go back to their homes. And so indeed they did, when the Huns departed at last; they returned to their cities and rebuilt the battered walls of Aquileia and Altinum, trusting to dwell in peace. But the second destruction was not far off: the Ostrogoths came, and the Lombards, and the people fled once more, never to return.

The unknown author of the Chronicle of Altinum carries on the tale in a most amazing compound of history, fiction, poetry and statistics. More than one scholar has indeed been tempted to surmise that this document is the work of several writers.

From them, or from the one, we learn something of the circumstances which drove the inhabitants of Altinum to take to their boats and seek a final refuge in the lagoons; and the story of the second flight, like that of the first, is fantastically illuminated by the writer’s poetic imagination.

‘In the days of the Bishop Paul’ is the only date the Chronicle gives, and doubtless that was very clear to the first monk who took down the manuscript

Chron. Altin.

from its place in the convent library and first pored over its contents. In the days, therefore, when Paul was bishop in Altinum, there came out of the west a pestilence of cruel pagans, fierce Lombards, who destroyed cities in their path as the flame licks up dry grass, and who would surely have made an end of the peaceful people of Altinum if Heaven had not sent signs warning them to escape.

For one day Bishop Paul looked up to the towers and turrets of the city and saw that the birds which had their nests therein were flying round and round in agitation, and were chirping and chattering and cawing, each after his kind, as if they were gathered together in consultation. But suddenly, as Paul looked, the birds all took their flight southwards; and those that had young which could not yet fly, carried them in their beaks.

The good Bishop knew at once that this portent was a warning, and he called his flock together and told what he had seen. Then many of the people, never doubting but that he was right, fled at once towards Ravenna, and to Istria, and to the cities of the Pentapolis; but the rest fasted three days and prayed that God, by another sign, would show them the path of safety.

On the third day, therefore, a strong and clear voice was heard, saying, ‘Go up into the great tower and look towards the stars.’ And they went up; and the stars’ reflections made paths upon the water, towards the islands of the lagoons. Then the people who had remained filled their boats with their possessions; and the good Bishop Paul led them, and the two holy priests Geminianus and Maurus, and two noble knights, Arius and Arator; and they came safely to the island of Grado, and landed there, and were saved. But soon afterwards they spread over some of the other islands and gave names to these, which recalled memories of their old home.

Now, as has been pointed out already in speaking of the first flight, the little archipelago was by no means uninhabited. Fishermen lived on the islands, and small farmers and some herdsmen, none of whom, it may be supposed, were inclined to give the newcomers a warm welcome. In plain fact the people of the mainland, well provided and well armed, made an easy conquest of the islands; but in the fiction of the Chronicle it seemed necessary to account for the high-handed deed on grounds of virtue and religion, and the author forthwith launches into legend, showing us how Arius and Arator set at rest the scruples of the conquerors, if peradventure they had any.

God and the saints intervened. One day the holy Maurus looked towards one of the islands, and behold, two bright stars stood together above it, and a great voice was heard saying, ‘I am the Lord, the master and the Saviour of the world. Raise thou here a temple to my glory.’ But from the other star came a soft clear voice which said, ‘I am Mary, the mother of God. Build unto me a church.’

There was no possibility of questioning such a form of investiture, or of disputing the right of invaders who received their orders audibly from heaven.

A little farther on there was a very beautiful island, covered with grass, whereon pastured great flocks of cattle and sheep; and Maurus asked whether perchance these herds belonged to any man, and received answer immediately. For suddenly there appeared in a rosy brightness like the dawn two figures of divine beauty; and one was that of an old man, but the other was young and little more than a lad. Then spake the old man and said, ‘I am Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, who am set over all flocks, and have power to forgive all sins. I give unto thee this island, and thou shalt build a temple in honour of my name.’ Also the youth spake, saying, ‘I am the servant of God. I am called Autolinus, and I gave my life for Christ’s sake. Build me a little church. My name is nowhere spoken in the liturgy with those of the martyrs; I enjoin upon thee to name me in thy prayers, both night and day, and I will pray God to grant all that thou shalt ask, for thee and thine.’ Moreover, the two saints, before they vanished, traced on the ground the plans of the churches they desired for themselves.

Again, a little white cloud appeared to the holy Maurus, and it was the footstool under the feet of a most fair maiden, who spake and said, ‘I am Justina, whom they put to death in Padua because I confessed the name of Christ. I beseech thee, thou priest of the Lord, that thou wilt raise upon this island a little church, to honour me; wherein thou shalt sing praises to me every day and every night, as a Martyr and a Virgin, and I will grant whatsoever thou askest of me.’

Afterwards many other heavenly visions came to comfort the people of Altinum, and, amongst other saints, Saint John the Baptist also received the promise of a fair temple.

By heavenly or earthly means, therefore, the fugitives had now obtained for themselves a home, and they began to consider how they should establish themselves in it conveniently, so that it should not be taken from them. Then, such of the people as had occupied a high position in Altino were charged by the leaders to take each the command of one island—here a Marcello, there a Faliero, and farther on a Calciamiro; all names which appear again and again throughout the history of the maritime state which was then and there founded and began to live, while the Lombards were tearing down the walls of the old homes on the mainland and burning what could not be destroyed in any other way.

THE ISLANDS

THE APPROACH FROM MESTRE

II
THE LITTLE GOLDEN AGE

As soon as the fugitives had given up all hope of returning to the mainland, they began that tremendous struggle with nature which built up the Venice we still see, and which, in some degree, will end only when it shall have finally disappeared again in the course of ages. The beginners displayed an almost incredible activity, which their descendants sustained without a break for centuries.

They strengthened the muddy islands with dykes and rows of driven piles; they dug canals and lined them first with timber and then with stone; they straightened the course of the currents, lest these should wash away the least fragment of land, where there was so little; they worked like beavers to win a few poor yards of earth from the restless flood.

The different tribes led strangely independent existences, though living so near together in the islands they had seized. Each one endeavoured to model the new home as much as possible upon the old, celebrating the same feasts in honour of the same saints, upon altars that enshrined the same long-treasured relics, and clinging with the affection and tenacity of unwilling exiles to the traditions and customs of the fatherland.

Rom. i. 73.

Though living almost within a stone’s throw the one from the other, the people of Aquileia, of Altinum and of Padua held at first hardly any communication, and had little in common; but they all clung to the patriarchal life, as is easily proved by very ancient documents. It is quite certain that each group had a chief, chosen to govern the little colony on account of his superior experience, riches, and authority. He was the guardian of the old home traditions, and strove to preserve them ever young, and to him appeal was made in all questions of justice and equity.

It is most important to remember that all these early settlers were descended from people who had been subject for centuries to Roman influence, as well as to

Rom. i. 95.

Roman government; and it was only natural that they should long afterwards show traces of such early national training, if I may use the expression. Their society almost instinctively sifted itself into castes: there were nobles—that is, the rich; there were the burghers, and there were the ‘little people,’ as they were called—‘minori.’ It was the duty of the nobles to provide all the rest with the means of living, as well as to govern and protect them. Custom required

Rom. i. 60.

that every rich man should entertain under his protection a certain number of families of lower rank, who were called the ‘convicini,’ that is, ‘fellow-neighbours,’ a usage which recalled the Roman system of patron and client. The father of the family, as in Rome, had almost unlimited power over his children. All meetings of importance were presided over by the clergy.

Rom. i. 76.

Chron. Altin.

It was, in fact, an assembly of the clergy and of fathers of families which, in each group of emigrants, had given the leader of the expedition the Roman title of Tribune; and after a leader’s death his successor was elected in the same way, very generally from amongst his direct descendants. If this occurred during three or four successive generations, his family became naturally invested with a real hereditary authority. The relation between the head of the family and the ‘fellow-neighbours’ consisted of generosity on the one hand and of gratitude on the other, a species of exchange of sentiments not likely to produce undue tension. But where the head of the colony was concerned, an ambitious tribune, who showed signs of trying to turn himself into an autocrat, was held in check by the necessity of being re-elected to his office every year. For in each island, on the feast of its particular patron saint, the people met together, either in the church or on the shore, to choose the chief for the next twelve months, and they often elected the same tribune again and again; but if he had done the slightest thing to displease them, they had it in their power to choose a better man in his place.

During his term of office the tribune took for himself tithes on game that was killed, fish that was caught, and crops that were harvested.

Properly speaking, there were neither magistrates nor tribunals at that time, for the tribune himself judged all causes in public, most often in the church. A few fragments of written law existed, no doubt, but they were wholly inadequate; and though it was attempted to supply their deficiencies by adding some articles from the Lombard code, the real law was tradition. Such was the good faith of that little golden age, that the sworn evidence of two respectable persons was enough to convict any misdoer without any further form of trial, and condign punishment followed directly upon conviction.

According to the accounts they have left of themselves, these primitive Venetians were a simple and devout people, who divided their time between honest labour, the singing of psalms and devout hymns, and the narration to each other of beatific visions of Apostles and Virgin Martyrs, who appeared for the purpose of ordering themselves churches. The churches were undoubtedly built in great numbers, largely out of the better fragments which could still be gathered amidst the ruins of the old forsaken cities on the mainland. The nobles of Padua, who were probably the best of the colonists, brought enough old material to build themselves the whole town of Heraclea, on the island of that name; but even there the best and most artistic pieces of stone and marble were used in the construction of the churches and monasteries.

The people worked in the fields, cultivated the vine, bred cattle, and dealt in salt, which latter was one of their chief resources. They were not yet rich, but they were already economical, and their gains more than sufficed for their needs, so that the slow accumulation of wealth began at a very early period.

Rom. i. 67.

The ancient Venetian type, described in Roman times, continued to dominate even beyond the fourteenth century. The men were large, fair-haired, and strong; the women were rather inclined to be stout, and it was noticed that their hair turned grey comparatively early.

Vecellio.

Both sexes dressed with great simplicity, and for a long time clung to the old Roman fashions. They had always shown a remarkable liking for blue clothes; during many centuries the inhabitants of Venetia had been known as the ‘Blues,’ and long after the division of the Empire one faction in the games of the circus went by that name.

Dalmedico.

Their speech was still Latin at that early time, but soon afterwards the influence of the Greeks and Lombards began to make itself felt in their language, as well as in their dress and ornaments, and even in their architecture.

Mut. Costumi.

They lived in a certain abundance, and ate much meat, after the manner of all young nations. One may dig almost anywhere and come upon layers of the bones of wild boar and other game, as well as of cattle and sheep. Among fish they are known to have thought the turbot the best, and they preferred wild ducks to all other birds. The vine throve also, and produced good wines which soon gained a reputation on the mainland.

At first the emigrants needed no occupations beyond husbandry, fishing, and the preparation of salt; but as the population increased and prices rose accordingly, since saving had begun, the need of a wider field of activity was felt, and the Venetians rapidly developed the seafaring instincts of all healthy and active island peoples. Two hundred years had not elapsed since the raid of the Huns before the small archipelago at the head of the Adriatic was in possession of the finest fleet of vessels that Italy could yet boast.

Such a golden age as the chroniclers describe could not last long. In every newly-peopled country the rule is good faith, mutual help and charity between man and man, so long as there is a common adversary to be overcome, whether in the shape of natural difficulties, as was the case in the Venetian islands, or of wild

Rom. i. 68.

beasts, or of human enemies, as in North America. So long as the settlers in the archipelago had to fight against the elements to win a stable foundation for their towns against the changeful, hungry currents; so long as they had to work hard to break and plough the land, to plant the vine, to build habitations for themselves and temples for their protecting saints, just so long did they abstain from coveting their neighbours’ goods. There was even a sort of rough-and-ready federation between the islands for the joint protection of their commerce and their ships, and now and then, in exceptional circumstances, the tribunes of the different isles had met together in debate for the common welfare. Their improvised parliament even received a name; it was called the Maritime University.

But as the general wealth increased, and the energetic struggle with nature settled into a steady and not excessive effort, the people of each island very naturally began to think less about themselves and more about their neighbours. Leisure bred vanity, vanity bred envy, and envy brought forth violence of all sorts.

The evil began at the top of the communities and spread downwards. The families of the tribunes became jealous one of another, and tried to outdo each other in wealth and display and power; and the poorer sort of the people took sides with their leaders and vied with each other, island with island, so that before the end of the seventh century much blood had dyed the lagoons.

Naturally enough, such internal discord laid the communities open to attacks from without; and the Slav pirates came sailing in their swift vessels from the Dalmatian coast, and gathered rich booty in the archipelago. In the face of a common danger home quarrels were once more forgotten, and the people of the islands met to consider the general safety.

697-717 A.D.

It was soon decided that internal peace could only be maintained by electing a single leader over all, a Dux, a Duke, a Doge, and the first choice fell on Paulus Lucas Anafestus, of Heraclea. Each island was to preserve its own tribune, its own laws, and its own judges, if it had any, and the Doge was to meddle with nothing that did not concern the common welfare of the whole federation. Moreover, no measure proposed by him was to become law until the people had voted upon it in general assembly called the Arengo.

Such was the remedy proposed, and in it lay the germ of the future form of government. But at first it produced a result the contrary of what was expected. The families of the different tribunes had envied and hated one another; they united to envy and hate the family of which the head was in power as Doge.

Rom. i. 107.

A violent dispute between the partisans of Anafestus and those of the tribune of Equilio brought about the first conflict. Equilio was in part overgrown with pine-trees, and the angry adversaries met in the dusky grove and fought to the death; and it is recorded that the small canal, which drained the land under the trees, ran red that day, wherefore it was afterwards called ‘Archimicidium,’ which I take to mean ‘the beginning of killing’; but it is now the Canal Orfano, in which criminals were drowned during many centuries.

That day was indeed the beginning of murder between the people of Equilio and those of Heraclea, and their hatred for each other was handed down afterwards from generation to generation, to our own times, so that even when the two islands were both included in the city of Venice, and both governed by the same municipal laws, the people still formed two hostile factions, of which more will be said hereafter.

737-742 A.D.

After having elected three doges, the people concluded from the result that they had been mistaken in choosing such a form of government, and by common agreement the power was placed in the hands of a military head, who was called the Chief of Militia; but as this experiment proved a failure after a trial of five years, the federation went back to the election of a Doge.

During all this period, and up to the ninth century, the islands were nominally under the protection of the Eastern Empire, if not under its domination; but a little study of the subject shows that the actors more than once changed parts, and that the protected were as often as not besought to become the protectors. For instance, the Exarch Paul, the viceroy of the Emperor, could never have re-entered his city of Ravenna, after the Lombards had taken it, unless the Venetians had helped him; and when the Doge Orso received of the Emperor the title of ‘Hypatos,’ it must have been given to him rather as the acknowledgment of a debt of gratitude to an ally than as a recompense granted to a faithful subject.

In such a difference there is something more than a shade that distinguishes two similar formalities; and historians have interpreted the Emperor’s brief, and other acts of the Court of Constantinople, according to their varying pleasure. Yet the truth is clear enough. The new-born Republic possessed a real independence, based on the good relations she maintained with her neighbours in general. She was satisfied with her power of governing herself, and was not inclined to quarrel with the Court of Constantinople, or with her nearer neighbours on the peninsula, about such trifles as words and forms. Her early policy was rather to escape notice than to boast of her liberty; yet it cannot be denied that during the seventh and eighth centuries the Greek influence predominated, both in the spirit of the laws and in the commercial activity of the Republic.

Meanwhile the more discontented citizens, and notably the more powerful families, which were jealous of each other, did their best to stir up faction and to bring about a revolutionary change which would have been ruinous. In the hope of internal quiet, the capital was transferred from Heraclea to Malamocco, of which the inhabitants were considered the most peaceful and law-abiding in all the lagoons; but the remedy was not a serious one, and the doges were successively murdered, or exiled, or forced to abdicate.

The Republic was on the point of perishing in these inglorious struggles when an unforeseen danger from abroad saved it from ruin by forcing all the Venetians to forget their differences and unite against a common enemy.

The year 810 marks the beginning of a new era.

FISH BASKETS

Venice From The Lido

III
THE REPUBLIC OF SAINT MARK

During some time the influence of the Franks had been felt in the islands, and was beginning to counter-balance that of the Greeks. The great families now separated into two distinct parties, one of which favoured the rising Empire of the West, while the sympathies of the other remained firmly attached to the Court of Constantinople. These opposite leanings, however, were caused by questions of trade and money-making much more than by any political tendency, and neither side had any inclination to accept a master.

Yet one man seems to have seriously meditated betraying the Republic to Pepin, the son of Charlemagne, who had received the Kingdom of Italy as his

SHOPS NEAR THE RIALTO

portion, and desired to extend his dominions by wresting Dalmatia and Istria from Nicephoros,

Rom. i. 140.

the Emperor of the East. The traitor was the Doge Obelerio, who had spent a part of his youth at Pepin’s court, and is said to have married his daughter.

The army of the Franks appeared on the mainland, by a secret agreement with the Doge, and before preparations could be made for opposing it. But the common danger became at once a bond of union; the Venetians forgot their discords and their quarrels, and rose as one man to defend their liberty. Almost from the first the Doge was suspected of treachery; he was watched, he was convicted by his own acts, he was taken, and he paid for his treason with his life. His severed head was set up on a pike on the beach of Malamocco, where the enemy could watch how the carrion birds came daily and picked it to a skull.

Mol. Dogaressa, 29.

809 A.D.

Pepin at the siege of Rialto, A. Vicentino; Pepin’s defeat, by the same; Ducal Palace, Sala dello Scrutinio.

But the Franks took the nearer islands one by one, till at last the Venetians left Malamocco and sought refuge on the Rialto and Olivolo, which were the more easy to defend, as it was harder for the enemy to reach them. A legend says that one poor old woman stayed behind, resolved to save Venice or perish in the attempt, and we are told that she went to meet Pepin and counselled him to build a wooden bridge that should extend all the way from Malamocco to Rialto, and that Pepin followed her advice; but the horses of his army were scared by the dancing lights on the water, and by the swaying of the light bridge, and they plunged and reared and fell off into the lagoon, and they and their riders were drowned by thousands, like Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea.

A more likely story tells us that the Franks had no light boats of shallow draft, and that in pursuing the Venetians their heavier vessels got aground in the intricate channel, so that the Venetians surrounded them, ship by ship, and did them to death conveniently and at leisure.

Be that as it may, Pepin was defeated and forced to give up the attempt, and when he had burned everything on the islands he had taken, he went away, in anger and humiliation, towards Ravenna. Thereafter, when peace was made between him and the Eastern Empire, Venice was reckoned with the East.

Among those who most distinguished themselves during the short struggle was Agnello, or Angiolo Partecipazio, a member of one of the most renowned families of the former tribunes. Sismondi says, I cannot find with what authority, that this noble house changed its name to Badoer, in the tenth or eleventh century, under which name it still lives. It was this Angiolo who persuaded the people to retire to Rialto, by which measure Pepin was defeated, and when the war was over he was soon elected Doge.

His first step was to fortify Rialto, which from that day became the seat of government, and the small neighbouring islands were soon united to it. Upon them grew up what was the beginning of modern Venice, eleven hundred years ago, and the waste land was covered with dwellings, towers, churches and religious houses in a wonderfully short time.

The devout tendencies of the people had changed little since the first fugitives had placed the islands under the protection of those several tutelary saints whose relics they had saved, and the descendants of

GRAND CANAL, NEAR RIALTO

those early emigrants now cast about for a holy patron who should, as it were, guarantee to them the blessing of heaven. They then remembered the ancient legend: how Saint Mark the Evangelist was shipwrecked and cast upon the shores of Rialto, and how he heard a mysterious voice saying, ‘Pax tibi Marce, Evangelista meus’; that is, ‘Peace be with thee, O Mark, my Evangelist.’ And the words became the motto of the Republic.

The devotion to Saint Mark grew at an amazing rate after the revival of this old tradition, and it became the dream of every Venetian to obtain relics of the Evangelist’s body. This precious treasure was at that time preserved in Alexandria, and was therefore in the power of the Musulmans; but a strict ordinance of the Emperor Leo, to which the Doge had been obliged to agree on behalf of the Venetians, forbade all intercourse with the unbelievers, even for purposes of commerce.

Rom. i. 168.

Two Venetian merchants and navigators, Buono da Malamocco and Rustico da Torcello, determined to risk their lives and fortunes in disobeying the imperial decree. They fitted out a very fast vessel and freighted her with merchandise for the Eastern market and set sail without declaring their real destination. Reaching Alexandria with a fair wind, they proceeded at once to the basilica in which the body of the saint was kept, and obtained possession of it by the simple process of bribing the men in charge of the church. Here the story says that they placed their treasure in the bottom of a cart, and heaped salt pork upon it, as much as the mules could draw, sure that no Musulman would touch the unclean meat; and so they passed through the city and got on board of their ship, and put to sea that very night.

When they came near home, sailing with a fair wind and the blessing of heaven and Saint Mark, they sent

About 828 A.D. Translation of the body of St. Mark, mosaic of the XIIIth century on the façade of the Basilica.

a light boat into the lagoons to inform the Doge that they were bringing the Evangelist’s body; for they were sure that he and their fellow-citizens would gladly forgive them for having disobeyed the imperial decree. Then all the people gathered on the shore as the ship came in; and the noblest of Venice took the priceless burden upon their shoulders and bore it to the private chapel of the ducal palace, where it was to remain in state until a church could be built for it; and a great cry of ‘Viva San Marco’ rang from street to street, and from island to island, even up to Grado and down to Malamocco, and it was ever afterwards the war-cry of Venice. Thus was Saint Mark proclaimed protector of the Republic, and the words which he himself had heard became the nation’s motto; and Saint Theodore took the second rank, though he had been patron of the lagoons ever since the days of Narses and Justinian.

It was clear to those simple believers that Saint Mark had not come among them against his will. Had he been displeased with the change from Alexandria to Venice a storm would surely have arisen in the night, and the holy relics would have disappeared in thunder, lightning, and rain, to return to their former resting-place or to be miraculously transported to another; for such was the pleasure of the saints in the dark ages. But Saint Mark remained where he was, pleased, no doubt, with the homage of that glad young people, and rejoicing already in the glories they should attain under his patronage; and from this complaisance the Venetians naturally concluded that a divine blessing had descended upon them, and they became once more a single family, bonded as brothers to stand and win together.

But before pursuing the great story of what came afterwards, let us stand a while on the threshold of the tenth century and look at Venice as she was a few years after Saint Mark had taken her under his special protection.

In the first place, the alternate currents caused by the tide and the rivers were not yet completely controlled by stone-faced canals, and in many places the soil still consisted of long stretches of unstable mud, upon which the tide threw up masses of seaweed that lay rotting in the sun. The only means of obtaining a firm foundation for a stone building on such ground lay in laboriously driving piles, side by side, and so close that each one touched the next, and the whole formed a solid surface. It was a slow method, it was costly and required considerable skill; but the result was good, and has stood the test of a thousand years, for there are buildings standing to-day on piles driven in the year 900.

It follows that in the tenth century the majority of dwelling-houses were still only light constructions of wood, which could stand upon the mud without danger of sinking. There were many stone buildings already, however, but like their humbler neighbours they mostly had only one story above the ground floor, with small windows on the outside, and larger ones on the inner court, and all alike were roofed with thatch. It is hard to imagine Venice a thatched city, of all cities in the world; yet the reason of the peculiarity is plain enough. Neither brick nor tiles could be made from the soft mud of the lagoons, a wooden house cannot have a flat roof, and the construction of a vaulted roof upon a stone house requires a greater skill in building than the Venetians then possessed.

Sagredo.

In building ordinary dwellings, Sagredo tells us that the usual method was to lay down a floor of heavy planks, upon which a thick layer of mortar and small pebbles was spread out and beaten down to a hard surface; upon this again a second layer of cement mixed with pounded bricks was spread, and this was beaten with heavy wooden beaters till it was perfectly hard and even. Precisely the same method is employed to-day in southern Italy; and it was from this beginning that the so-called ‘Venetian pavement’ soon developed. For rich people caused small pieces of coloured marbles, and even of mother-of-pearl, to be set into the cement of the second layer, which was then no longer beaten, but rolled with a ponderous stone roller and then rubbed down with a smooth stone and sand and water, and at last polished to a brilliant surface. To this day the ‘Venetian pavement’ is made in this way in all parts of the world. The Venetians had probably inherited the art directly from the Romans, together with some knowledge of mosaic, which it roughly resembles. The polished floor of the main room was an especial object of pride in the eyes of good housekeepers.

The Venetian houses resembled those of the Romans in many respects. A covered portico, surrounding a closed court, gave access to the ‘hall of the fireplace,’ as the principal place of gathering for the family was named, and to the kitchens and offices. The upper story consisted entirely of bedrooms, and had a wide balcony called the ‘liago’—a word corrupted from the Greek heliacon, ‘a place of sunshine.’ Here in warm weather the family spent the evening. Higher still, a rustic wooden platform was built over a part of the gabled and thatched roof, and was called the ‘altana.’ It was here that the linen was dried after washing, and later, in Titian’s day, it was here that the Venetian ladies exposed their hair to the sun after moistening it with the fashionable dye.

Mut. Costumi.

The ‘hall of the fireplace’ was more than any other part of the house a special feature of Venetian dwellings, and was as necessary to them as the balcony that ran round the inner court. To this day the Venetians boast that their ancestors invented the modern chimney flue, and that while King Egbert still warmed himself like a savage before a fire of which the smoke escaped through a hole in the roof, the poorest Venetian fisherman had a civilised fireplace before which he could warm his toes as comfortably, and with as little annoyance from smoke, as any fine lady of the twentieth century.

Another peculiarity of the early Venetian house which has come down to our day was that it almost always had two entrances, the one opening upon the

A WATER DOOR NEAR ST. BENEDETTO

water, and the other, at the back, upon land. In those days this back door almost always gave access to a bit of garden, in which flowers and a few kitchen vegetables were carefully cultivated, but these gardens were soon crowded out of existence by the necessity for larger and more numerous houses.

The palace of the Doge differed from other Venetian dwellings chiefly by its size and its battlemented walls, and was very far from resembling what we see to-day in its place. It was destroyed by fire again and again, and only here and there some fragment of the original walls was incorporated in the new buildings which the doges were so often obliged to construct for themselves. A high battlemented wall joined the island of Olivolo with Rialto and enclosed the ducal palace.

The churches were out of all proportion richer and better cared for than the private dwellings, and were generally built after the model of the Roman basilica, with an apse and a portico for worshippers, which frequently served as a shelter for all sorts of little shops and money-changers’ booths, very much like the temple in Jerusalem. These churches have been rebuilt and repaired again and again till there is little left of the originals; but many fragments of them have been used again, here a light column, there a bit of mosaic, a carved capital, a piece of early sculpture or a delicate marble tracery—all of them, more often than not, of better workmanship and in purer taste than the later buildings they now help to adorn.

The centre and focus of Venetian life was Saint Mark’s Square, but it was altogether a different place in those days. It was, indeed, nothing but an irregular open space, a field of mud in winter, a field of dust

Monumenti artistici ecc. 1859.

in summer, divided throughout its length by a small dyked canal called the Rivo Battario. On opposite sides of the latter, and opposite to each other, there were then still standing the chapels dedicated by Narses to Saint Theodore and to the holy martyrs Geminianus and Menus.

Furthermore, the foundations of the Campanile, which fell in 1902, were already laid, but the work was not advancing quickly, and the surrounding space was obstructed by the heaps of materials which had been prepared for the construction. As for the church of Saint Mark, the one that was then standing must have strongly resembled the next, which was built on its ruins by the Doge Pietro Orseolo after it had been burnt down in 975. It was in the shape of a Greek cross, and was approached by a portico like almost all churches of that time. We know also that it was roofed with thatch.

There were as yet no bridges across the canals, though we may perhaps suppose that there was a single one, built of wood, between Rialto and Olivolo, and at that time there was no great number of boats, and there were none that resembled the gondola for its lightness and speed. Many of the smaller canals were afterwards dug for the convenience of getting about by water, where in the tenth century there were narrow lanes, dark and muddy, and the receptacles of whatever people chose to throw out of their windows. Then, and long afterwards, men went about on foot if they were poor, or on horses and mules if they were rich. When water had to be crossed there were flat-bottomed ferry-boats

NARROW WATER LANE

for man and beast. The word ‘gondola’ seems to have been applied indiscriminately to several kinds of boats, at least by writers, and even included the heavy barges, manned by many oars, which towed sea-going vessels in and out of the harbour, through the intricate channels of the lagoons.

Mut. Costumi.

There were trees in Venice in those days, both scattered here and there, and also growing in little groves, where young people gathered in the fine season to pass an hour in singing and dancing and story-telling, and in making music on stringed instruments of fashions and shapes now long forgotten. The most common trees were the oak, the cypress, and the ‘umbrella’ pine, which latter is believed to be indigenous in Italy; but there were cork-trees, too, and one of them afterwards played a part in the tragedy of Bajamonte Tiepolo, the great conspirator.

Venice had charm even then, in spite of her narrow and unsavoury lanes, her winter’s mud, and the dust of her summer heat. The pretty little thatched houses, side by side along the water’s edge; the handsome churches gleaming with mosaic fronts; the dark cypress-trees and stone pines, and the vividly green oaks; the battlemented towers reared here and there against the clear blue sky; the rippling waters of the lagoon; the vessels great and small, with sails pure white or dyed a rich madder brown—there was colour everywhere, then as now, there was air, there was sunshine; and there was then, what now there is no more, the movement, the elastic youth, the gladness of a people’s life just ready to bloom for the first time.

They led easy lives, those early Venetians, compared with the existence of the Italians on the peninsula, easy and even luxurious, and their constant intercourse had given them the love of jewels and silk and all rich and rare things. Even in the days of Charlemagne, the

ON THE GIUDECCA

dames of Venice wore robes and mantles and veils which an empress would not have disdained.

Mut. Costumi.

Charlemagne himself, on his way to Friuli, once halted at Pavia just when the great fair was held which best of all others displayed the wealth and industry of all Italy; and the Venetians had brought thither the rich merchandise with which they had loaded their ships in the East, and had spread out their splendid stuffs, their soft Persian carpets, and their costly furs.

Then the rough Franks were ashamed of their coarse garments, and began to buy all manner of fine woven materials to take the place of their woollen tunics and their leathern coats. But not long afterwards, when they were all hunting in the deep forest, a great storm came up and broke upon them, and the rain beat through their silks and the thorns tore their finery to shreds, and they were in a sad plight. Then the giant Emperor laughed aloud at their mishap, and asked them whether the goatskin jerkin he wore was not worth ten of their soft Venetian dresses when the rain was pelting down and the winter wind was howling through the wild-boar’s lair.

The old paintings leave us in no doubt as to the Venetian fashions of the tenth century. The nobles wore a long tunic tightened to the waist by a belt or girdle, and over this they threw a mantle of rich material which in winter was lined with fur, and which was fastened on one shoulder with a golden pin, like the fibula of the Romans or the brooch of the Highlander. On his head the noble wore a cap oddly adorned with two ribbands which made a Saint Andrew’s cross in front.

The dress of the matrons was not very different, but the cloak was pinned together on the breast instead of on one shoulder, and was cut with a train. The ladies, moreover, wore tunics cut low at the neck, even in winter and out of doors, which seems strange enough, though it accounts for the quantities of rich fur they used. Their splendid hair fell loose upon their shoulders from beneath a little gold-embroidered cap, instead of which young girls often wore a very fine gauze veil.

The labouring people seem to have confined their taste for variety to the selection of colours suitable to the occupations they followed, and therefore least likely to show wear and tear and stain.

Mut. Costumi.

Every one worked hard in those young days, from the Doge downwards, at the administration of the Republic, at beautifying the city, at commerce and the development of navigation; and as for play, they were passionate lovers of the chase and of grebe-shooting. The latter sport was the delight of rich and poor alike, apparently without much regard to the time of year, but its strict rules hindered any wholesale slaughter. The sportsman dressed himself in green in order that his figure might not scare the grebes, as he poled his narrow punt—the ‘fisolara’—amongst the sedge and reeds at the mouths of the rivers. If he had boatmen to help him, they wore green too. Now it seems to have been the rule that no weapon should be used in this sort of shooting but the cross-bow, charged with clay bullets or with small bolts, and it would have been thought as unsportsmanlike to snare the birds as it is nowadays to catch trout with worms; and as the grebe is a great diver, when in danger, and is by no means easy to hit with a good shot-gun, it must have required remarkable skill to shoot him with such a poor weapon as the cross-bow of the tenth century. The Venetians used to fasten the heads of the birds they killed upon doors and windows as trophies, just as a Bavarian gentleman or a Black Forester of our own time mounts the horns of every roebuck he shoots and hangs them in his hall.

If I have dwelt too long upon these details it is

THE STEPS OF THE SALUTE

because I am inclined to think that a sportsmanlike spirit has characterised all young nations; and the spirit of the true sportsman is not to kill wantonly, but to measure himself in strength, or skill, or speed, against his fellow-man, and against wild things, and often against nature herself, with fairplay on both sides; and the true delight of his sport lies in doing for pleasure what his ancestors were forced to do in the original struggle for life.

And so after this brief glance at early Venice, I go on to speak of the circumstances and the men that presently directed the young state to a form of development which was without example in the past history of nations, and was destined to have no imitators in the future.

THE RIVA AT NIGHT

IV
VENICE UNDER THE FAMILIES OF PARTECIPAZIO, CANDIANO, AND ORSEOLO

For historical purposes it is best to consider that Venice was really founded in the year 811. From that date till 1032 the ducal throne was occupied, with only three exceptions, by a Partecipazio, a Candiano, or an Orseolo. It is true that every Doge was elected, but the great families would hardly have been human if they had not done their best to make the dignity hereditary.

They were not afflicted by that strange fatality under which the Roman Cæsars almost always died without male issue, and which led the Emperors to adopt their successors and to make them coadjutors in their government, generally with tribunitian powers; and four centuries were to elapse before the race of Hapsburg was to fasten itself at last upon the Holy Roman Empire, never to be shaken off so long as it could beget sons, or even daughters. The great Venetian races were vital and fortunate, and reared generation after generation for ages, with hardly any diminution of strength or wit.

But the principle on which they attempted to secure to themselves the succession to a power which was hereditary was the same which the Romans followed before them and which the Hapsburgs were to adopt long afterwards. They chose their own successors amongst those nearest to them, educated them to government, made them helpers in their rule, and designated them in their wills to succeed in their places.

There was always discontent after each election, and there were often serious riots; several doges of this period were forced to abdicate, or were even exiled, and one of them, at least, was assassinated; but the thirst of the great families for hereditary power was not diminished, and each revolutionary rising was directed by an aristocratic faction which had everything to gain by overthrowing the one in office.

Yet, strange to say, this disturbed condition of things neither hindered nor retarded the growth of national prosperity. The three factions quarrelled about the ducal throne for two hundred years, but their commercial activity was not in the least diminished by their

ST. MARK’S

differences. They and the less powerful nobles possessed the financial instinct in the highest degree; the citizen class vied with them as traders and usurers, and though they could not outdo them, having started behind them in the race for wealth, they often rivalled them; and as for the people, they were the ready and willing instruments of their masters, they were intrepid sailors, they were patriotic soldiers, they were hard-working labourers, and they seem to have cared very little who was Doge, so long as every effort they made contributed directly to their own well-being. And this was always the case, as in every young and successful state.

Nevertheless, the continual state of discord between the strongest families of the aristocracy was not without its bad results, and enemies abroad found it easy to strike unexpected blows at the Republic, when she was least prepared to retaliate. Chief among these enemies were the Dalmatian pirates, whose principal stronghold was the city of Narenta, situated at the head of the gulf of that name, almost over against Ancona. The Venetians seem to have been more than a match for the corsairs when actually at sea, for their merchant vessels were fast sailors and were well armed; but the Dalmatians lost no opportunity of descending upon any corner of the Republic’s island territory which chanced to be left unprotected, and they plundered and laid waste the land, and carried off the people into slavery.

Molmenti, Vita Privata.

One of these sudden descents of the corsairs on the day of the yearly marriage ceremonies was not only strikingly dramatic in itself, but became one of the turning-points in the history of the Republic. In order that what happened may be clearly understood, I must in the first place briefly explain how marriages were made and how they were always celebrated in Venice on the thirty-first of January at that time; for I cannot remember that a similar custom ever obtained in any other city ancient or modern. I may add, however, that in their claims to an extravagantly ancient descent the Venetians pretended

A CHAPEL, ST. MARK’S

to have inherited the usage directly from the Babylonians.

However that may be, it is quite certain that in those days the brides of Venice were all married on the thirty-first of January, the anniversary of the translation of

THE PORCH, ST. MARK’S

Saint Mark’s body, in the church of San Pietro d’Olivolo, which was always the cathedral, and which now became the scene of one of the strangest and most romantic events in the history of any nation, rivalled, but certainly not surpassed, by the half-mythic rape of the Sabines in the Forum.

De Gubernatis e Bernoni.

In old Venice the women were treated very much as they have always been in the East. They were naturally dignified and reserved, or enjoyed that reputation, but the men were jealous, and would not trust in anything so inward and spiritual as good qualities. They held that the equilibrium of feminine virtue, though always admirable, is generally of the kind described in mechanics as unstable; in other words, that it resembles the balance of a pyramid when poised on its apex rather than its security when established on its base. They therefore watched their wives and daughters and kept them at home a great deal, insisting that they should veil themselves when they went to church, and on the rare occasions when they were allowed to go elsewhere. The maidens wore veils of pure white, but the married women were allowed colours. The only exception to the rule of the veil was made on the days of the ‘Sagre,’ the feasts of the patron saints in the different parishes of the city; then even the girls were allowed to wear their beautiful hair floating on their shoulders, and confined only by chaplets of flowers. Those were the only times when the men had a chance of seeing them to judge of their beauty, and perhaps to choose a wife amongst them, and they made the most of it; we may even suppose that the custom had been originally introduced as a necessary one if young men and maidens were ever to be betrothed at all.

One sight sufficed, perhaps, and a glance or two exchanged as the long processions of men and women went up into the churches or came out again; and after that, when the nights were fine, the youth took his lute and went and made music under the chosen one’s window. But she never looked out, nor showed him so much as the tips of her white fingers in the moonlight; that would have been unmaidenly and bold. If her heart softened to his appealing song, a single ray of light from between the close-drawn shutters was answer enough; if not, all remained dark, while the unhappy lover sang his heart out to the silent lagoon. But being reassured by the friendly ray, not once but many times, the aspirant went to the girl’s father and begged permission to make her his ‘novice’—that meant his betrothed—until the next feast of blessed Saint Mark.

When the youth and maid were secretly agreed, the course of love generally ran smooth, and the real courtship began. Manners were simple still, dowries were small, the only conditions to be considered were those of rank and faction; and few lovers would have been bold enough to play a Romeo’s part in Venice, while the lines of caste were even then so closely drawn that still fewer would have thought of overstepping them. Therefore, if the young man was of as good a family as the young girl, and if he did not belong to some rival faction, the betrothal was announced at a great dinner, at which the families of both met in the house of the maiden’s parents. Then the youth renewed his request before them all, and the maid was brought to him dressed all in white, and he slipped upon her finger a

ST. MARK’S

very plain gold ring, then called the ‘pegno,’ which is to say, the pledge. Sometimes the engagement was presided over by a priest, and became thereby more solemn and unbreakable.

The time of betrothal was called the noviciate, as if marriage were one of the holy orders to enter which a term of trial is exacted; and while it lasted small gifts were exchanged. So, at Easter, the young man brought a special sort of cake; at Christmas, preserves of fruit; on Lady Day, a posy of rosebuds. On her side the young girl gave him a silk scarf, or something made with her own hands. It is told that the daughter of a Doge spent three years in embroidering with silk and gold a shirt which she meant to give to the unknown youth whom she expected to love some day.

When the young people came of rich families they gave each other also small trinkets, notably those little chains of gold called ‘entrecosei,’ which were specially made by Venetian goldsmiths. Moreover, whether the presents were trinkets or silk scarfs, cakes or rosebuds, they all had reference to good luck much more than to anything else, and it would not have been safe for either party to send a gift not included in the old-fashioned list. For the Venetians were superstitious. Like all young races whose fortune lies before them, they saw signs of success or failure in small things at every turn. They judged of the immediate future by the pictures they saw in the coals of their great wood fires, especially in cases of approaching marriage, by the accidental spilling of red wine on the cloth, by the passing of a hunchback on the right or the left. To upset red wine was lucky, to upset olive-oil presaged death; it was thought to indicate a great misfortune if a man going out of his own house came first upon an old woman. Similarly, when young people were betrothed, there were objects which they could on no account give each other as presents. The forbidden things were chiefly such as magicians were supposed to use in their incantations, and among these, strangely enough, nothing was reckoned more certainly fatal to happiness than a comb. If any youth had dared to offer one, however beautiful, to his future bride, she would have unhesitatingly returned his ring.

At that time the church did not require the publication of bans, a regulation which became necessary in order to put a stop to abuses of a less simple age. Instead, a second festive meeting was held at the house of the bride a few days before the marriage; and this time, besides the near relations of both families, the ‘convicini,’ the ‘fellow-neighbours,’ were bidden, as the ancient Romans entertained their clients on great occasions.

The bride now waited in her own room, which was always upstairs, until all the guests were assembled in the ‘hall of the fireplace’ on the ground floor. When the time came, the oldest man of the family went up to fetch her, and she appeared leaning on his arm. She stood still a moment on the threshold of the hall and then made a step and half—neither more nor less—towards the assembly. Next, and leaving her companion’s arm, she made a ‘modest little leap’ forwards, which she followed with a deep courtesy, and then, without saying a single word, she went upstairs to her room and stayed there while the feast proceeded. The only variation in the ceremony occurred in cases where the family was of such high rank that the bride and bridegroom, with their friends and near relations, were expected to visit the Doge.

When the long-expected day, the thirty-first of January, came at last, every house in which there was a novice was astir hours before daybreak, and the friends of each were waiting under the windows in their boats long before the sun was up. Meanwhile the bride was dressed for the day, more or less richly according to her fortune, but always in a long white gown, and with fine threads of gold twined amongst her flowing hair.

She then came down from her own room to the hall of the fireplace, where her father awaited her, and she knelt meekly before him and her mother to receive their solemn blessing and her dowry, which it was customary that the bride should carry to the church herself, enclosed in a casket called the ‘arcella’—the ‘little ark.’ The historians tell us that it was never a very heavy burden in those days.

This little ceremony took place at early dawn in every house where there was to be a wedding, and before the sun was up the brides were all gathered in the cathedral, where they ranged themselves round the altar, holding their caskets in their hands. Then at last the bridegrooms made their appearance, arrayed in the richest of their clothes and accompanied by their best men, as we should say—their ‘sponsors of the

DOOR OF ST. MARK’S

ring’ in their own phrase. But I find no mention of any bridesmaids.

The bishop blessed all the young couples, and each bridegroom slipped upon his lady’s finger the symbolic ring, which was the same for all. After that, gifts of virgin wax were left for the candles of the cathedral, and each newly-married man was expected to give a sum of money ‘in proportion with his opinion of his wife’s beauty’—probably the most elastic measure ever ordained for the giving of alms. This money formed a fund out of which poor brides of the people received a dowry in the following year. A malicious writer even hints that this secret fund was sometimes misapplied to compensate for such ugliness as would otherwise have been a bar to marriage altogether.

The Doge himself was invariably present in state during the ceremony, which therefore had a distinctly official character.

On leaving the cathedral sweetmeats and small cakes were showered upon the crowd that waited without, and the respective wedding parties returned to the homes of the brides to spend the rest of the day in the rather noisy gaiety and uproarious feasting that belonged to those times, and to which each bridegroom’s best man was expected to contribute with a present of rare liquors and rich old wines.

When evening came at last the brides were led to their new homes with song and playing of many instruments; and on the next morning each young couple received from the best man a symbolical gift of fresh eggs and of certain aromatic pastilles of which the composition is unfortunately forgotten. Last of all, the bride was

FROM THE GALLERY, ST. MARK’S

given a work-basket, containing a needle-case, a thimble, and similar useful objects, to symbolise the industry she was expected to display in her household duties.

Rom. i. 234.

Now it came to pass, in the reign of the Doge Pietro Candiano III., about the year 959, that a gang of Istrian pirates conceived the bold idea of descending upon the cathedral on the marriage morning, and of carrying off bodily the brides and their dowries.

At that time the Arsenal was not built, and the little island on which it stands, and which lies close to Olivolo, was still uninhabited. During the night between the thirtieth and the thirty-first of January the corsairs ran their light vessels under the shelter of this island, and stole ashore while it was yet dark, to lie in wait in the shadow near the cathedral.

As usual the brides came first, with their families, and ranged themselves round the high altar, with their caskets in their hands, to wait for their affianced husbands. At that moment the pirates rushed into the church, armed to the teeth and brandishing their drawn swords in the dim light of the lamps and candles. There was no struggle, no resistance; the unarmed men, most of them elderly and at best no match for the daring robbers, were paralysed and rooted to the spot, the women screamed, the children fled in terror to the dark corners of the church, and in a moment the daring deed was done. It had been so well planned, and was executed with such marvellous rapidity, that the robbers reached their vessels, carrying the girls and their caskets in their arms, and succeeded in pushing off almost without striking a blow; and doubtless they laughed grimly as the light breeze filled their sails and bore them swiftly out through the channels of the lagoons.

THE GREAT DOORWAY, ST. MARK’S

One may guess at the faces of the cheated bridegrooms when they reached the cathedral and came upon the hysterical confusion that followed upon the robbery. There was no loss of time then, and there was little waste of words. The Doge headed them, dressed as he was in his robe of state, men found weapons where they could, and all made for the nearest boats, and sprang in and rowed like demons; for the pirates were still in sight. Then the breeze that had sprung up at sunrise failed all at once, and the Istrians tugged at their long sweeps with might and main; but the men of Venice gained on them and crept up nearer and nearer, and nearer still, and overtook them, and boarded them in the Caorle lagoon, and slew them to a man, themselves almost unhurt. Also the chronicler says, that of all those fair and frightened girls not one received so much as a scratch in that awful carnage; but the men’s hands were red with the blood, and they could not wash them clean in the sea because it was red too; and so, red-handed and victorious, they brought their brides back to land and married them before the sun marked noon, and the rejoicing was great.

These things happened as I have told, and though the chroniclers do not all agree precisely as to the year, the differences between their dates are not important, and all tell how the event was commemorated down to the last days of the Republic. For it appears that a great number of those men who so bravely pursued the pirates were box-makers, ‘casseleri,’ of the parish of Santa Maria Formosa, and when that famous day was over the Doge asked them what reward they desired. But they, being simple men, asked only that the Doge of Venice should come every year to their church on

Rom. i. 240.

the second day of February, which is the Feast of the Purification. ‘But what if it rains?’ asked the Doge, for that is the rainy season. ‘We will give you a hat to cover you,’ they answered. ‘And what if I am thirsty?’ the Doge asked, jesting. ‘We will give you drink,’ said the box-makers. So it was agreed, and so it was done, and the feast that was kept thereafter was called the Feast of the Maries, and it was one of the most graceful festivities of all the many that the Venetian imagination invented and kept. I shall describe elsewhere more fully how the Doge came to Santa Maria Formosa every year on the appointed day, and how, in memory of the bargain, the people of that quarter made him each year a present of straw hats and Malmsey wine. It was a sort of public homage to the women of Venice until the war of Chioggia, towards the end of the fourteenth century, and it is only fair to say that the lovely objects of such a splendid tribute did much to deserve it. But after that time many things were changed, and there remained of the beautiful Feast of the Maries nothing more than the Doge’s annual visit to the church, instituted by Pietro Candiano III.

The immediate result of the bold attempt and condign punishment of the Istrian pirates was a series of punitive expeditions against them which laid the foundation of Venice’s power on the mainland, and in this struggle, if in nothing else, the Doge was fortunate in his last years. But an evil destiny was upon him at home.

In his old age he associated one of his sons with him in the ducal authority, also called Pietro, ‘at the suggestion of the people,’ says Dandolo in his chronicle. As I have said, this was the usual plan followed by the families that sought to make the dogeship hereditary. The younger Pietro was wild, ambitious, turbulent, and wholly without scruple, and he at once took advantage of his position to plot against his father, in the hope of reigning alone. But he was found out and hindered by the people, who rose suddenly in stormy anger and laid violent hands upon him, to kill him without trial. Yet his father was generous and succeeded in saving him from death, and tried him for his deeds, and sent him into exile.

Mol. Dogaressa.

Then Pietro the younger turned pirate himself, and armed six fast vessels and harassed the Venetian traders all down the Adriatic. But meanwhile he still had a strong party of friends for him in Venice, and their influence grew quickly, even with the people, and many secret influences which we can no longer trace were brought to bear for him; until at last the Venetians themselves, who had tried to murder him, decreed him the ducal crown and the supreme power, and recalled him and deposed his aged father. The old man died within a few weeks, and all he could bequeath to his wife was ‘a vineyard surrounded by walls’ on the shore of San Pietro; and Pietro Candiano IV. ruled alone.

He did outrageous deeds to strengthen his power. To win the protection of the Emperor Otho he forced his wife to take the veil in the convent of Saint Zacharias, and obliged his only son by her, Vitale, to become a monk. Having thus disposed of them, he took to wife Gualdrada, the sister of the Marquis of Tuscany,

THE CHRIST OF ST. MARK’S