VENICE AND ITS STORY

First Edition, October 1903
Second Edition, November 1903
Third, Revised and Cheaper Edition, September 1910
All Rights Reserved

V E N I C E
AND ITS STORY
BY
T. O K E Y

ILLUSTRATED BY
NELLY ERICHSEN
W. K. HINCHLIFF &
O. F. M. WARD
1910
LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS, LTD.
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.

“Italie is the face of Europe
Venice the eie of Italie.”

PREFACE

THE History of Venice is the history of a State unparalleled in Europe for permanence and stability. For centuries Venice occupied that position of maritime supremacy now held by Great Britain, and time was when an English king was fain to crave the loan of a few warships to vindicate his rights in France. The autonomy of the Venetian Republic so imposed on men’s minds that it was regarded as in the very nature of things, and even so acute an observer as Voltaire wrote in the Dictionnaire Philosophique, less than three decades before her fall: “Venice has preserved her independence during eleven centuries, and I flatter myself will preserve it for ever.”

In the course of our story we have freely drawn from the old chronicles, while not neglecting modern historians, chiefest of whom is the Triestine Hebrew scholar, Samuele Romanin. Indeed, all that has been written on Venetian history during the past forty years does but increase our admiration for the imperturbable industry and sagacious judgment of the author of the Storia Documentata di Venezia, to whom our heaviest debt is due.

The history, criticism and appreciation of Venetian architecture and Venetian painting are indissolubly associated with the genius of Ruskin, and notwithstanding some waywardness of judgment and spoilt-child philosophy, his writings are, and ever will be, the classic works on the subject. Among more recent authorities we are indebted to the publications of Berenson, Bode, Burckhardt, Ludwig, Morelli, and Saccardo.

For purposes of description we have divided the city and outlying islands of the Venetian lagoon into twenty sections, arranged rather with regard to their relative historical and artistic importance than to strict topographical considerations, although these have not been lost sight of. In our quality of cicerone we have drawn from an acquaintance of the city at various times extending over a period of twenty years: more detailed and practical information may be sought in the admirable guide-books of Baedeker, Grant Allen, Gsellfels and Murray.

A pleasant duty is that of expressing our gratitude for personal help and counsel to, among others, Mr Horatio F. Brown, Signor Cantalamessa the courteous Director of the Accademia, Mr Bolton King, Signor Alfredo Melani, and Mr René Spiers.

In order not to burden our pages with many notes we have limited references to such passages as seemed specially to call for them, exigencies of space having straitened a wide subject within close bounds. If, however, the perusal of this slight and imperfect sketch may lead intending travellers to turn to richer springs—and in that hope we have appended a list of the main sources[1] from which we have drawn—our pleasant labours will be amply rewarded. It is with travel as with other modes of observation. The eye will see what the mind takes with it, for as the Spanish proverb quoted by Dr Johnson runs: “He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.”

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PART I.—THE STORY

CHAPTER I
The Foundation at Rialto

“Venice seems a type
Of life—’twixt blue and blue extends, a stripe,
As life, the somewhat, hangs ’twixt nought and nought.”
—Browning.

OF the original home of the earliest settlers in that province of North Italy known to the Latins as Venetia, little can be told with certainty. Historians and antiquarians are pleased to bring them, under the name of Heneti or Eneti, from Paphlagonia, and explain some characteristic traits they subsequently developed—the love of colour and of display, the softness of their dialect—by their eastern origin. They were an independent, thriving and organised community when the Roman Empire first accepted their aid in the fierce struggle against the invading Gauls, and so they continued to be until they were absorbed as a province of the Empire. The land they cultivated, “mervailous in corne, wine, oyle, and all manner of fruites,” was one of the richest in Europe. Its soil was formed by ages of alluvial deposit brought by the rapid streams that drain the southern slopes of the Alps.

The traveller who enters Italy by any of the Alpine passes will not fail to note the contrast between the northern streams and the more torrential water-ways of the south, which, however, being soon checked by the deposit they bring, grow slack and fray out into many and varying channels, through which the waters find their way with small, at times almost imperceptible, flow into the sea. So lazily do the rivers discharge that the north-east shores of the Adriatic are formed of sandbanks, shoals and islets, which for nigh a hundred miles from Cavarzere to Grado constituted the dogado of Venice. The famous Venetian lagoon is confined to some thirty miles north of Chioggia, and is divided into the Laguna morta, where the tide is scarcely felt, and the Laguna viva, where the sea is studded with numerous islands and islets protected by the lidi, a long line of remarkable breakwaters formed by the prevailing set of the current to the west, with narrow openings or Porti through which the shallow tide ebbs and flows. This natural barrier has made the existence of Venice possible, for the islands on which the city is built afforded a refuge safe alike from attack by sea or land. The colonisation, development and defence of these lagoons and islands by settlers from the mainland make up the early history of Venice. Some misapprehension exists as to the nature of these settlements. The picture of terror-stricken and despoiled fugitives from the cities of Venetia escaping from hordes of pursuing Huns or Lombards to seek a refuge in the barren and uncertain soil of mud-banks and storm-swept islands is true in part only. In many cases the movement was a deliberately organised migration of urban communities, with their officers, their craftsmen, their tools, their sacred vessels, even the very stones of their churches, to towns and villages already known to them. Among the settlers were men of all classes—patrician and plebeian, rich and poor. “But they would receive no man of servile condition, or a murderer, or of wicked life.”

Some islands were already inhabited by a hardy race of pilots and fishermen: others by prosperous Roman patricians, with their villas, farms, gardens and orchards. Grado was a busy commercial settlement with rich vineyards and meadows, and joined to the mainland by a causeway that led to Aquileia. Heraclea was rather a mainland than a lagoon city; Torcello is said to have been a fashionable Roman watering-place, and Roman remains have been found at S. Giorgio Maggiore. Much of the ground was covered with pine forests, the haunts of game and other wild creatures. For a long time the islands were not regarded by the settlers as abiding places. Again and again many of them returned to their old homes on the mainland when the invaders’ force was spent. It was only in 568 that the Lombards, more cruel, or perhaps more systematic in their oppression than Marcoman or Hun, finally determined the Venetians to make the lagoons their permanent home.

Who of us northmen that has reached the descending slope of an Alpine pass, it may be through mist and sleet and snow, to gaze upon the rich and luscious plains of Lombardy or Venetia smiling with vine and fruit and corn; who that has felt the warm breath of sun-steeped Italy caressing his face as he emerges from northern gloom, but will feel a twinge of envy which is akin to covetousness, and which in strong and masterful races quickly develops into lust of conquest?

In the fifth century of our era the Roman Empire decaying, like most giants, at the extremities, lay defenceless before the inroads of those forceful, elemental peoples who from north and east swept down the passes to ravage the garden of Italy and to enslave her inhabitants. In 452 Venetia became the prey of God’s scourge—Attila. Aquileia, now a poor village just within the Austrian frontier, but then a Roman city of the first rank, was plundered. Altinum, a city famous for its strength and wealth, resisted for a time but soon its inhabitants and those of Padua, Asolo, Belluno and other mainland cities forsook their homes and migrated to the lagoons.

The earliest settlements were twelve: Grado, Bibbione, Caorle, Jesolo (now Cavallino), Eraclea, Torcello, Burano, Rivoalto (now Venice), Malamocco, Poveglia, Cluges Minor (actual site now unknown, but not Sotto Marina, as sometimes stated), Cluges Major (now Chioggia). Of these, Grado was occupied by the Aquileians; Rivoalto and Malamocco by the Paduans; Eraclea by the Bellonsese; Torcello and Burano by the Altinese. To the pious imagination of chroniclers these migrations were not without divine admonition. In 568 the terrible Lombards were threatening Altinum, whose inhabitants entreated the help of heaven with tears and prayers and fastings; and, lo! they saw the doves and many other birds bearing their young in their beaks flying from their nests in the walls of the city. This was interpreted as a sign from God that they also were to expatriate themselves and seek safety in flight. They divided into three bodies, one of which turned to Istria, another to Ravenna. The third remained behind, uncertain whither to direct their steps. Three days they fasted, and at length a voice was heard saying: “Salite alla torre e guardate agli astri.” (Ascend the tower and look at the stars.)

Their good Bishop Paul climbed the tower, and to his gaze the very stars of the firmament seemed to set themselves in a constellation that figured forth the fateful group of islands in the lagoon before him. His flock, following this warning from heaven, went forth, headed by their bishop and clergy bearing the sacred vessels and relics, and passed to an island high and fertile, which they called Torcello, from one of the twelve towers of their old city. The very hierarchy of heaven, from Our Lord and His Blessed Mother to St Peter and the Baptist, even to Giustina, the martyred little maid of Padua, appeared to Mauro, the priest, in a vision, as he paced the sea shore, and in sweet voices bade him build here a church and there a church in their honour. The immigrants therefore had come to make the lagoons their permanent home. Their new city was organised. In process of time churches were built; trade guilds were formed; painters and mosaicists enriched the buildings. The marble seat on the grass-grown piazza of Torcello, to this day called Attila’s chair, was probably the official seat of the tribune when he administered justice to the people.

It will be seen that no definite date can be assigned to the foundation of Venice, though Sanudo is very sure it was in “the year ccccxxi., on the xxv. of March, which was a Friday, that day on which our father Adam was created, when about the hour of nones the first stone of St Giacomo di Rivoalto was laid by the Paduans.” The great diarist gives a charming picture of the earliest Venetians trading in fish and salt with their little barks to the neighbouring shores: “They were a lowly people, who esteemed mercy and innocency, and, above all, religion rather than riches. They affected not to clothe them with ornaments, nor to seek honours, but when need was they answered to the call.”

There is little doubt that originally the settlers were subject to the Consuls at Padua, but in 466 they were strong enough to meet at Grado and to elect their own tribunes, one for each of the twelve communities. A passage in a famous letter of Cassiodorus to these Tribuni Maritimi in 523 affords the first glimpse in history of the lagoon folk. The secretary of Theodoric the Great writes urging them not to fail to transport the tribute of oil, honey and wine from Istria to Ravenna, and expatiates on their great security and the wonderful habitations that he has seen, like sea-birds’ nests, half on land, half on sea, or like the cyclades spread over the broad bosom of the waters. Their land is made not by nature but by man, for the soil is strengthened by flexible withy bands, and they oppose frail dykes to the waves of the sea. Their boats are tied to posts before their doors like horses are on the mainland. Rich and poor live in equality. They flee from the vice of envy, to which the whole world is enslaved. Instead of plough and scythe they handle cylinders. In their salt they produce a merchandise more desired than gold, so all the fruits of the earth are at their command.

About 530, when Narses the Eunuch began the great campaign which wrested the Italian dominions of the Emperors from the Goths, the Venetians gave him effective aid by transporting an army of Lombard mercenaries from Aquileia to Ravenna. As a reward Narses sent some Byzantine masters, who from the spoils of the enemy built the Church of St Theodore at Rivoalto on a plot of ground known as the Broglio or garden where now stands the Basilica of St Mark.

Scarcely, however, were the Goths defeated, when in 568 Alboin and his Lombards menaced the land. Longinus, who succeeded Narses in the exarchate of Ravenna, came to Venice and asked her aid as subject to the Emperor. He was given an honourable and festive welcome, but the Venetians had bought their freedom at a great price and stoutly refused to admit his claim. They declared that the second Venice which they had made in the waters was a mighty habitation and their very own by right of creation; that they feared no power of Prince or Emperor, for it could not reach them. They, however, furnished a ship and sent an embassy with Longinus to Constantinople, and in return for valuable trading rights, agreed to acknowledge the suzerainty of the Emperor if no formal oath were exacted.

In 584 the lagoon folk had so expanded that an additional tribune was chosen for each community. Of these Tribuni majores was formed a federal council, the original tribunes now serving as heads of local administrations.

The golden age so lovingly dwelt upon by the early chroniclers was of short duration. Already, before the institution of the new tribunes, family and local feuds, the ambition of the tribunes and jealousy of the people, led to bloody affrays in the Pinete (pine forests) with which the lidi were clothed. Anarchy threatened the state; bands of Lombards under the Duke of Friuli plundered the churches of Heraclea and Grado. The crisis was met by the public spirit and wisdom of the Church. A general meeting (Arengo) was called by the Patriarch of Grado at Heraclea. Two vital problems came to the front—the organisation of self-defence and the maintenance of public order. The whole Assembly having invoked the name of Christ, the great churchman stood forth, and after reviewing the political situation, proposed that all the tribunes should be relegated to purely local offices, and a Capo or chief elected for life. His new polity was approved and in 697 Pauluccio Anafesto was chosen first Doge and invested with sovereign powers. Thus was constituted the Dogeship of Venice which, save for a short interruption of six years, endured for eleven centuries. The Doge could nominate, degrade or dismiss all public officers, convoke or dissolve the Arengo and the synod. The appointment of Patriarchs and Bishops was subject to his veto. The military authority, entrusted to a Master of the soldiers, was subordinate to him; foreign affairs were in his hands, though the approval of the people was required to declare war or conclude peace. He could impose taxes; his feudal dues and rights of corvée were extensive. His state was regal. When he went abroad, girt with a sword and surrounded by his guards, a state umbrella was held over him, lighted tapers were borne by his side, trumpets blared and banners waved. He sat enthroned in an ivory chair, holding a sceptre, and arrayed in a silk mantle with a fringe of gold fastened by a gold clasp over a tightly fitting tunic trimmed with ermine; he wore red hose and a high biretta richly jewelled, which was subsequently shortened by constricting the middle so as to form two lobes, one of which soon disappeared, and the familiar horned cap of the later Doges was evolved. A close cap of fine linen was worn beneath, so that when the biretta was raised his head should be covered as a mark of dignity. The Doge was no fainéant. He rose before the dawn, and having heard mass went forth to judge the people and transact the business of the day. On solemn occasions he gave his benediction. The blessing of God was invoked upon him in the litany. The election, more or less democratic until the abolition of the Arengo in 1423, was made by the whole people, who were summoned from Grado to Cavarzere. Their chosen one was acclaimed and carried shoulder high to the church, which he entered barefoot, and there swore to govern according to the laws and to work for the good of the people. The result of the election was communicated to the Pope and the Emperor; to the latter usually by the Doge’s son in person.

Anafesto had a difficult task. The young state lay between two mighty powers: Lombards or Franks and Pope in the west, the Byzantine Emperor in the east. Only by vigilance and prudence could she escape subjection. And these rival interests were active within her borders—aristocratic Heraclea leaning towards the Eastern Empire; democratic Malamocco and Jesolo towards the Western kingdoms and the Pope. One of the first acts of the new Doge, after securing internal peace, was to conclude a treaty with Luitprand, King of the Lombards, by which the boundaries of the Republic were defined, and in return for an annual payment, valuable rights of wood-cutting and horse-breeding and trading were conceded. But political jealousy dies hard. Two powerful families revolted in 717, and the Doge perished in a civil broil in the Pineta of Jesolo.

During the reign of the third Doge, Orso of Heraclea, the Venetians were called to meet a new danger. The rise of the Iconoclasts in the early eighth century, and the zeal of their protagonist, the Emperor Leo III., had set east and west aflame. Leo’s attempt to enforce the decree against the use of images in the western Church was met by an invitation to the Lombards from the Pope to attack the seat of the eastern power in Italy. War was the very breath of their nostrils, and they were not slow to respond. Ravenna was besieged and captured and the Pentapolis occupied.[2] The Exarch Paul fled to the lagoons and appealed to Orso for help. The fugitive enlarged on the danger to Venice of the advancing Lombards, now at their very door. The Doge agreed to furnish a fleet, and by successful strategy Ravenna was surprised and recaptured and the Exarchate restored. The gratified Emperor rewarded the Venetians by conferring the title of Hypatos (knight) on their Doge, who adopted it as a family name.

This imperial policy was, however, bitterly resented by the popular party. A civil war ensued which lasted two years, and ended in the defeat of the Heracleans, the murder of the Doge, and the banishment of his son. Another experiment in statecraft was now made. The Dogeship was abolished, and the Master of the soldiers appointed head of the State for a term of one year. This new departure proved disastrous. After six years of civil discord, the last of the Masters, a Heraclean, was captured and blinded by the opposite party. An Arengo was called, this time at Malamocco, and a compromise effected. Deodato, son of Orso, a Heraclean, was made Doge at Malamocco, whither the capital was now transferred. But Heraclea and Jesolo were rivals, fierce as ever, for the ducal chair. The internecine strife went on with its savage incidents. Assassination, blinding,[3] or banishment were the price of defeat. At length, by the election of Maurizio Galbaio in 764, “noble by race, nobler in deeds,” the distracted state was ruled with wisdom and firmness, and faction for a time was silenced.

The epoch-making victory of Charles of the Hammer over the Arabs at Tours had drawn the eyes of all men to France, and to a mighty race of princes destined to change the face of Europe. The restless Lombards in 752 had reoccupied Ravenna and the Pentapolis, and the Pope turned to the new Carlovingian dynasty for help against them. Pepin answered to the call, wrested the cities from their hands, and gave them to the Pope, who thus became a temporal sovereign. Twenty years later the papacy was again constrained to summon help. Charlemagne, Pepin’s son, crossed the Alps by the Great St Bernard pass, fell like a thunderbolt of war on the Lombards, and in 774 their dominion was finally crushed by the capture of Desiderio, their King, and Pavia, their royal city. Romanin argues from the silence of the chroniclers that the Venetians took no active part in the siege of Pavia, but from an old inscription in Venetian, on a thin plate of hammered lead,[4] preserved in the British Museum, we learn that on the invitation of Charlemagne, the Venetians sent a fleet of twenty-four galleys, with four nobles who knew the art of war (saveva far la guara) up the Po to the siege, and had the honour of guarding the captive King. Venice had indeed watched every phase of the struggle, seizing, as was her wont, any opportunity that offered for extending the trading privileges so vital to her existence. By secret information to the Church from her merchants at Constantinople, she had nipped a plot to recover the Exarchate, now for ever lost to the Greek Emperors. But in 781 Pepin, son of Charlemagne, had been crowned King of Italy by the Pope; the power of the Franks was growing apace, and their alliance with a territorial Pope alarmed the Heraclean party. They believed a wiser policy was to form an alliance with the weaker Empire far in the east against the Franks. In 778 Doge Maurizio Galbaio was permitted, on the plea of infirmity, to associate his son Giovanni with him, and on the death of Maurizio, the son stepped into his father’s office, thus effecting a subtle change in the nature of the Dogeship, by no means pleasing to the democratic party. The Franks were not long in making their power felt. Venetian merchants had acquired some territory near Ravenna, and many trading centres in the neighbouring cities. They were incorrigible slave traders. Pope Zacharias, a generation before, had been moved to compassion on seeing in Rome groups of Christian slaves,[5] men and women, belonging to Venetian merchants, destined to be sold to the pagans in Africa. He paid their price and set them at liberty. Charlemagne had recently published an edict against the traffic in slaves, and now called on Pope Hadrian to take action. The Venetians were expelled from Ravenna and the Pentapolis. In 797 the new see of Olivolo which had been created a few years before to meet the growing needs of the population, became vacant, and the new Doge preferred Christophorus Damiatus, a young Greek to the bishopric. The Patriarch of Grado, around whom the Frankish party centred, refused to consecrate one whom he regarded as a nominee of the Byzantine Emperor, and excommunicated Bishop and Doge. The Doge’s answer was swift and terrible. He despatched his son Maurizio with a fleet to Grado; the city was attacked; the Patriarch captured, thrown from the tower of his palace, and dashed to pieces. To allay popular indignation, Fortunatus, a nephew of the murdered Patriarch was appointed in his stead. The new prelate soon showed of what stuff he was made. With infinite resource and indomitable purpose he set himself to avenge the insult to the Church, and, but for the premature discovery of the plot, would have wrought the destruction of the Doge and his party. Fortunatus fled to the court of Charlemagne, who was now created Holy Roman Emperor, and harbouring no tender feelings towards the rebellious children of the lagoons. Obelerio, tribune of Malamocco, and the other heads of the conspiracy found safety at Treviso, whence they stirred their partizans to action with decisive effect. The Doge and his son were exiled to Mantua; Obelerio was proclaimed Doge in 804; the triumph of the Frankish party was complete. The Heracleans, however, soon rallied. In their civil fury they fell upon Jesolo, and almost wiped it out. The Doge immediately led a punitive expedition to Heraclea, and wreaked a similar vengeance on that hot-bed of Byzantine faction. The situation was now felt to be unbearable. By general consent a meeting of the whole dogado was called, and it was decided that in order to make peace, the remaining populations of Heraclea and of Jesolo should be transported to Malamocco.

Fortunatus meanwhile was watching events at Istria. Under the sun of Charlemagne’s favours he had waxed rich and powerful. He possessed four ships, and traded under royal patronage wherever the new western Emperor’s power reached. By skilful diplomacy he effected his recall to Grado, and placed a Frankish partizan in the see of Olivolo. But the Heracleans had lost their home, not their ideals and policy. They appealed to the Byzantine Emperor, and a Greek fleet sailed up the Adriatic. Fortunatus once again was a fugitive. The Doge and his party protested a loyalty to their suzerain, which in 809 was translated into acts by the despatch of a fleet to aid him to recover the exarchate for the Greeks. It was unsuccessful, but none the less irritating to the Pope and Emperor, who now determined to subdue the Venetians and incorporate them into the Holy Roman Empire of the West. The immediate cause of the rupture is not known, but when the princes of the earth are bent on war a pretext is seldom hard to find. A great empire, aiming at universal dominion, is ill at ease with a sturdy freedom-loving state on its borders, and the far-reaching arm of the invincible Carlovingians was stretched forth to grasp, as they thought, an easy prey.

In the stress of a common danger, faction was silenced. Obelerio and his brother Beato, whom he had associated with him a year after he was proclaimed Doge, advised that the Venetians should agree with their adversary before it was too late, but a wave of popular indignation swept them from power, and Angelo Participazio, a Heraclean by birth, and one of the tribunes of Rivoalto, was made head of a provisional government of national defence. The churches were filled with earnest, determined men, entreating with fasting and prayer the divine aid in their hour of need; a call was made on every citizen at home and abroad to hasten to the defence of the fatherland. Provisions were accumulated, ships built, fortifications raised, channels blocked by chains and sunken hulks, guide posts drawn.

Meanwhile, King Pepin had summoned his allies, and a fleet sailed up to the lagoons. On the mainland the advance of the Frankish armies was irresistible; north and south they closed in on the Venetians. Grado soon fell; Brondolo, the Chioggie, and other cities were captured; fire and sword wasted their settlements. The porti of Brondolo, Chioggia, and Pelestrina were forced, Malamocco[6] the capital threatened. At this crisis the momentous decision was taken to abandon Malamocco and concentrate at Rivoalto (Rialto), the compact group of islands between the mainland and the lidi.

On the lido of Pelestrina, south of S. Pietro in Volta, where the steamer to Chioggia now calls, is the little fishing village of Porto Secco. Here in olden times was a porto called Albiola. North of this passage was the city of Albiola on the lido which stretched towards Malamocco. South began the lido of Pelestrina. It was here that, according to tradition, a stand was made. The Frankish host of horse and foot gathered on the lido of Albiola, waiting for their fleet to force the porto, which was deep enough to allow of the passage of the transports. Opposite, on the lido of Pelestrina, stood the Venetians near their boats, which were armoured with ramparts of sails, cordages, and masts, behind which their archers did much execution. For nigh six months the desperate fight was waged. “Ye are my subjects,” cried Pepin, “since from my lands ye come.” The Venetians answered, “We will be subject to the Emperor[7] of the Romans, not to thee.” Malamocco was at length captured, but was found to be deserted. Rough rafts and pontoons were constructed to thread the maze of shallow channels that led to Rivoalto, but the light, waspish boats of the Venetians drove them on to the shoals by the canal Orfano, where they were caught front and rear, and those who escaped suffocation in the water and the mud were quickly cut down by their enemies. The summer heats came; the arrows of the sun, more deadly than Venetian arms, wrought havoc among the Franks, whose forces wasted away, and the Carlovingians were baffled. A Greek fleet threatening his rear, forced Pepin to come to terms. He promised to withdraw, to restore the captured territory, and to reaffirm all the ancient trading rights and privileges in his dominions in return for an annual payment. The Venetians emerged from the struggle a victorious and a united people centred at Rialto, and the State of Venice was now firmly rooted in the lagoons.

CHAPTER II

St Mark the Patron of Venice—The Brides of St Mark—Conquest of Dalmatia—Limitation of the Doge’s Power

“But I must tellen verilie
Of St Marke’s . . .
. . . holy shrine
Exalt amid the tapers’ shine
At Venice.”
—Keats.

AN immediate outburst of creative energy was the result of the victory. Angelo Participazio was chosen Doge and according to precedent associated his son with him. He set himself to enlarge, fortify and embellish Rialto. The ravaged settlements of the Chioggie, Brondolo, Pelestrina and Albiola were rebuilt, and a new Heraclea, called Città nuova, rose on the ruins of the old capital. Dykes were built, rivers diverted and canals bridged. A ducal palace was erected near the Church of St Theodore, and a church to S. Pietro at Olivolo. The Chapel and Convent of S. Zaccaria were founded and endowed by the Doge to contain the body of S. Zaccaria, father of the Baptist, and other relics given to the Venetians by Leo the Eastern Emperor.

There was an old tradition among the early settlers at Rialto that St Mark on his way from Alexandria to preach the Faith in Aquileia was caught in a violent storm and forced to land on one of the Rialtine islands where now stands the Church of S. Francesco della Vigna. As he stepped forth from his bark an angel saluted him saying: “Pace a te Marco Evangelista mio” (Peace to thee Mark my Evangelist), and announced that one day his body should find a resting-place and veneration at Rialto. Traditions like prophecies have a way of bringing their own fulfilment, and in the brief reign of Angelo’s son Giustiniani (827-829) some Venetians trading with the infidels in defiance of imperial prohibition succeeded in stealing the Evangelist’s body and carrying it to Venice. The story of “how the precious body of Monsignor S. Marco came to Venice” is thus told by Da Canale. “Now at this time there was a ship of the Venetians at Alexandria on which were three valiant men. The one called Messer Rustico of Torcello, the other Messer Buono of Malamocco, the third Messer Stauracio; which three valiant men had great hope and devotion to bring the body of S. Marco to Venice, and they so got round (s’en alerent tant autour) the guardian of the body that having won his friendship they said to him, Messer, if thou wilt come with us to Venice and bear away the body of Monsignor S. Marco thou shalt become a rich man. And when he, who was called Theodore, heard this he answered: Sirs, hold your peace, say not so, that may not be in any wise, for the pagans hold it more precious than aught else in the world, and if they espied us would surely cut off our heads. Then said they, wait until the blessed Evangelist command thee. And it came to pass that there entered into the heart of this worthy guardian a desire to bear away the body, and he came back to them saying: Sirs, how can we take away Monsignor S. Marco without the knowledge of any man? And one answered: Right wisely will we do it. And they went hastily by night to the sepulchre where the body was and put it in a basket and covered it with cabbages and swine’s flesh, and they took another body, laid it in the tomb in the very same cloth from which the body of Monsignor S. Marco had been taken and sealed the tomb as it was before. And the valiant men bore the body to the ship in that same basket as I have told of, and for dread of the pagans slung it to a mast of their ship. What shall I tell you? At that very moment when they opened the tomb so sweet and so great an odour spread through the midst of the city that all the spiceries in Alexandria could not have caused the like. Wherefore the pagans said: Mark is stirring, for they were wont to smell such fragrance every year. Nevertheless there were of them who misdoubted and went to the tomb and opened it and seeing the body I have told of in St Mark’s shroud were satisfied. And some there were who came to the ship and searched it about, but when they saw the swine’s flesh by the mast did straightly flee from the ship crying, Kanzir! Kanzir! which is to say, Pork! Pork! Now the wind was fair and strong, and they set sail for Venice and on the third day came by Romania (Greece). And a mighty wind arose by night when the mariners were sleeping, and the ship was driving on to the rocks; but the precious Evangelist awakened the master mariner and said to him: Look that thou set down the sails, for we are making for the land. And the master awakened the shipmen and they struck the sails. And if anyone will know the truth let him come to Venice and see the fair Church of Monsignor S. Marco, and look in front of this fair church, for there is inscribed all this story even as I have related it, and likewise he will gain the great pardon of vii. years which Monsignor the Apostle (the Pope) granted to all who should go to that fair church.”

The Doge and clergy welcomed the body with great ceremony, the traders were forgiven their unlawful voyage, and St Mark became the patron of the Republic instead of St Theodore. A modest little chapel was begun on land acquired from the nuns of S. Zaccaria in the Broglio, which was still a grass-grown field planted with trees bounded by the Canal Battario, which flowed across what is now the Piazza of St Mark. In the next reign the body, which had been temporarily placed in the ducal palace, was solemnly transferred to its shrine in the new chapel of St Mark and Stauracio appointed Primicerio or President of the Chapter.

In 829 Giov. Participazio, the third of the dynasty, began his uneasy tenure of eight years. Obelerio plotted to regain his lost power in Venice, but was foiled and executed, and his head exposed on a stake. A more successful rival was the Tribune Caroso, who worked on popular suspicion of the hereditary tendencies in the reigning family, and drove Giovanni to exile in France. Caroso’s tyranny, however, was a bad exchange for the milder rule of the exiled Doge. The usurper was overthrown and blinded, and Giovanni recalled. But the same jealousy on the part of the people which made Caroso’s coup d’état possible again manifested itself. The Doge was seized as he was returning on St Peter’s Day from the church at Olivolo; his hair and beard were shaven, and he was forced to retire into a monastery at Grado.

Pietro Tradonico, the chosen of the democracy in 836, was much occupied with the pirates who, from their rocky fastnesses in the creeks and bays of the Dalmatian coast, swooped down on the rich Venetian argosies as they sailed the Adriatic. By a first expedition he reduced their chiefs for a while to submission; a second was less happy in its results.

The tide of Saracen invasion was met at Caorle and rolled back, and two great ships of war were constructed to guard the porti. Amid the stress of war the arts of diplomacy were not neglected. A treaty still exists, dated 840, between Lothair, “by Divine Providence Imperator Augustus and the most glorious Duke of the Venetians,” for a period of five years: their relations in peace and war are defined; mutual restitution of runaway slaves is promised, and traffic in the subjects of the contracting powers prohibited; the inviolability of ambassadors and of correspondence assured. Pietro had the honour of welcoming the first royal tourists (855) in the person of King Louis II. of Italy and his consort, who spent three days at Venice. The defeated Participazi were, however, biding their time. In 864 the people’s Doge was assassinated when leaving the Church of S. Zaccaria after Vespers and his body lay on the ground until nightfall, when the pious nuns gave it sepulture in the atrium of their church. The chroniclers record the great wisdom and piety of Orso Participazio, who succeeded the murdered Doge. He cleared the seas of pirates, and sought, by calling a synod of clergy and laity, to purge Venice from the iniquitous traffic in slaves, which continued to stain her commerce. Rialto was made healthier by drainage and building; Dorsodura peopled. The growth of the arts of peace may be measured by the fact that the Venetians were able at this time to make a present of twelve bells to the Greek Emperor. Orso died full of years and honours in 881, and was buried in S. Zaccaria. During the short reign of his son Giovanni a descent was made on Comacchio, a city on the mainland north of Ravenna, whose growing power and commerce roused the jealousy of Venice. The Venetians had long memories, and the help given to Pepin was now avenged by the devastation of the city and the country even up to the walls of Ravenna. In 887 Pietro Candiano, a devout Christian, and a wise and brave prince, was elected, and after a reign of five months met a soldier’s death fighting against the pirates. Pietro Tribuno, who succeeded him, was called upon to face a new danger. In the spring of 900 the Hungarians came down the usual track of the barbarian invaders by the Fruilian passes—“that most baneful gate left open by nature for the chastisement of the sins of Italy”—and ravaged the land. They were held too cheaply by Berengarius, King of Italy, and flushed with victory, spread terror even to the lagoons. The preparations made to resist Pepin were renewed. Rialto was fortified and a castle built on the island of Olivolo, which is called Castello to this day. By the way of the Franks the terrible barbarians overran the outer cities of the dogado, and made for the Porto of Albiola. The Venetian fleet met them, happy omen, at the very spot where Pepin’s might was crushed. A fierce fight ensued, and the battle was again to the islanders. The Hungarians were scattered, and fled, never to return; Pietro was hailed by Berengarius preserver of the public liberty, and was honoured by the Eastern Emperor. Two years later the foundations of the old Campanile were laid in a spot where a great elder tree flourished. At the death of the Doge in 912 the Participazii returned to power.

Orso Participazio II. (912) was a saintly and righteous prince who retired to a monastery after a peaceful reign of twenty years, during which the Venetians obtained from the Emperor Rudolph a confirmation of the right to coin their own money. How great was the expansion of their trade is illustrated in the reign of the next Doge, Pietro Candiano II. (932), who, by the simple expedient of a commercial boycott, brought the arbitrary feudal lord of Istria to his knees. In 942, after a short and uneventful term of power by the rival dynasty, Candiano’s son Pietro became Doge.

A romantic incident in the ever-recurring battles with the Narentine (Slav) pirates may be referred to this reign. On the feast of the translation of St Mark it was the custom for the marriageable damsels of Venice to repair to S. Pietro in Castello, bearing their dowries with them in caskets, to be formally betrothed to their lovers and receive the benediction of the Church. Informed of this anniversary, some pirates concealed themselves in the thick bush which then covered part of the island, and during the ceremony forced their way into the church, seized brides and dowries, and regained their boats. The Doge, who was present, hastened from the church, and called the people to arms. Some vessels belonging to the Cabinet-makers’ Guild, whose quarter was near the Church of S. Maria Formosa, were offered to the Doge. The avengers set forth in pursuit, and came upon the pirates dividing their booty in a remote part of the lagoon of Caorle, afterwards called porto delle Donzelle, defeated them, and returned in triumph to Rialto with brides and dowries, the Cabinet-makers having greatly distinguished themselves. To commemorate the rape and rescue of the brides of St Mark, the Doges were used on the day of the Purification to proceed in solemn state to the Church of S. Maria Formosa to render thanks to the Virgin. Twelve poor girls, the Marie, were dowered and took part in the procession, together with the chief guilds of Venice. Simple in its origin, the celebration became more and more sumptuous, till at length so great was the burden on the private resources of the families whose lot it was to provide for the Marie, that in 1271 the number was reduced to four. Later, a tax was imposed on every family to meet the cost of the eight days’ festa. In 1379 the funds were swallowed up in the financial demands of the Genoese wars, and all that remained of the old magnificence was the annual visit of the Doge to the church, and the offering made to him by the parish priest of oranges, muscat wine, and gilded straw hats. The origin of the Doge’s attendance at this church, and of the quaint offerings, is traced to a legend that the Cabinet-makers, in acknowledgment of their prowess, asked of the Doge the favour of an annual visit. To the Doge’s objection, “But if it be too hot,” they answered, “We will give you refreshment”; and to the further objection, “But if it rain,” they answered, “We will furnish you with hats.” The custom lasted till the end of the Republic. Da Canale gives a graphic description of the festival as it was celebrated in the thirteenth century. On the vigil of the feast of the translation of St Mark, a company of noble youths came by water to the ducal palace, and having distributed banners to some children, formed in line two by two, accompanied by trumpeters and players of cymbals, and by other youths bearing trays of silver loaded with sweets, silver vessels filled with wine, and cups of gold and silver. The clergy followed, arrayed in Calamanco cloth of gold, chanting a litany, and the whole procession went its way to S. Maria Formosa, where a number of dames and damsels were met, to whom wine and sweets were presented. On the last day of January the procession was renewed with greater splendour. Over five hundred banners were distributed, and more than a hundred lads bearing crosses of silver took part. Following the priests came a clerk, dressed as the Virgin, in Damascus cloth of gold, borne in a richly decorated chair on the shoulders of four men, gonfalons resplendent with gold waving around. The Doge, surrounded by the Venetian nobility, stood at a window of the ducal palace, while three of the clergy chanted the usual lauds of his greatness and power. The Doge then joined the procession, which wended its way to S. Maria Formosa. Here stood another clerk dressed as the angel Gabriel, who sang the “Hail Mary” as the figure of the Virgin appeared. The ceremony being ended, twelve great banquets were held, at each of which one of the Marie was present, clad in cloth of gold adorned with jewels and pearls innumerable, and wearing a crown of gold set with precious stones. On the day following, a gorgeous aquatic pageant, more than a mile and a half in length, with the Doge in his mastro nave, the clergy and the Marie made the tour of the Grand Canal, and “if you were there you could see the whole waters covered with boats filled with men and women, so that no one could count them, and a throng of dames and damsels at the windows and on the banks, apparelled so richly that none in Venice might surpass them.” Regattas, balls, and music followed; the whole city gave itself up to joy and gladness.

Pietro Candiano’s reign of seventeen years set in storm and calamity. His son and colleague, Pietro, rebelled, and sought to drive his father from the throne. There was a sharp fight on the Piazza; the rebellion collapsed and the Venetian Absalom was only saved from death by the entreaties of his aged father. He was excluded from the succession and banished, but only to turn pirate and harry his countrymen. The scourge of the plague and sorrow for his son’s impiety embittered the last days of the old Doge, and in 959 he died a broken-hearted man. But scarce was he laid to rest when a splendid fleet, gay with banners, bore a deputation of nobles and clergy to Ravenna to invite the proscribed pirate to become lord of Venice: the pressure of a powerful family and the fear of civil discord had led to the recall of the only prince who seemed strong enough to rule the troubled state. He began by blinding and exiling the Bishop of Torcello, guilty of simony, and by calling a synod to deal again with the persistent abomination of the slave trade at Venice. There was no concealment. Slaves, chiefly young girls from twelve to sixteen years of age, bought in the ports of Russia and Circassia, were openly sold by auction at Venice and the deed of sale drawn up by a notary. Doge, clergy and people met in St Mark’s and the disgraceful traffic was again prohibited under severe penalties. Another scandal of Venetian commerce was challenged by the Greek Emperor, who in 971 sent an embassy to Venice threatening to burn cargo and crew of any vessel found trading in munitions of war with the Saracens. It was decided that no arms, or iron, or wood for naval construction should be sold to the infidels, exception being made of utensils of carved wood, such as goblets, platters, basins.

But the demons of Pride and Ambition still lurked in the unquiet breast of the Doge. He forced his wife to take the veil at S. Zaccaria that he might marry Gualdrada, sister of the Marquis of Tuscany, who brought him a rich dowry of money and lands. He affected a state of Imperial magnificence, surrounded himself with mercenaries and dragged his subjects to fight for his feudal rights on the mainland. The indignant populace rose in revolt and attacked the palace. Foiled in their purpose by the devotion of the Doge’s foreign guards, the insurgents fired the adjacent houses and drove the doomed prince to seek safety by a passage that led into the atrium of St Mark’s. Here he was met by a company of Venetian nobles to whom he prayed: “And have you, too, my brothers, willed my destruction. If I have sinned in word or deed, grant me life and I will remedy all.” There was an angry shout of, “He is worthy of death,” and a dozen weapons were plunged into his breast. His infant son was spitted on a spear in its nurse’s arms; the hated mercenaries were slain. The bodies of father and babe were cast to the shambles, and only redeemed by the entreaties of a saintly monk who removed them for burial to the abbey of S. Ilario.

In a city built mainly of wood, fire is a disastrous weapon. Their vengeance glutted, the revolutionists turned to count the cost, and were sobered. The churches of St Theodore, St Mark and S. Maria Zobenigo, the ducal palace, three hundred houses and a large number of factories were destroyed. It was a subdued assembly that met in S. Pietro on August 12th, 976, and elected Pietro Orseolo, a rich patrician descended from an ancient Roman family of the earliest settlers in Torcello. Threats of Imperial vengeance hung over the Republic, and Gualdrada’s claims for compensation had to be met. For this, and to rebuild the city, a subsidy of a decima was voted to be imposed on the property of each citizen. Artificers were brought from Constantinople and plans for a new St Mark’s[8] and a new palace made. The Doge dedicated nearly all his patrimony to the building; founded a hospital for the sick poor near the Campanile, and spent much time as well as money in works of charity. He soon grew weary of the cares of state, and an opportune visit of the Abbot of St Michael’s in Aquitaine to Venice confirmed his desire to enter a cloister. He asked for time to prepare. The abbot promised to return and claim him. A year later, on a September night, the abbot and two friars repaired to the monastery of S. Ilario, where they were met by the Doge, his son-in-law and a friend, disguised as pilgrims. Horses were in waiting; they were ferried across the lagoon, and at full speed the party rode for France. On the morrow the Venetians awoke to find their beloved prince fled and the ducal chair vacant. The Candiani who had never ceased intriguing to regain power were ready, and their nominee, Vitale Candiano, was raised to the Dogeship, to retire after fourteen months, sick and disillusioned, to die in a monastery. Pietro Memo succeeded him in 978, a feeble prince, whose reign was dishonoured by the rise of the Caloprini and Morosini factions that in the end nearly compassed the destruction of Venetian liberties. It was the old strife renewed with increased bitterness. The Morosini being partisans of the Orseoli favoured the Byzantines: the Caloprini standing for the Candiani leaned on the western powers. For the first and last time in her history Venice saw her children traitorously inviting a foreign sovereign to enslave their fatherland. The Caloprini, having assassinated Dom. Morosini, fled to the court of Otho II., and impiously laying bare the weak places in their country’s defences, called him to conquest. The Emperor was nothing loth. Venice was a standing challenge to the Empire; the only state in Western Europe that stubbornly refused to be absorbed in the feudal system. His subjects were forbidden to trade with the Republic; her food supplies were cut off; her enemies goaded on to attack her; the Caloprini faction in Venice stirred to rebellion; ships of war collected to blockade if not to attack the islands. It was the gravest danger that had ever threatened Venice, for the foes were partly those of her own household. But the stars, which watched over her birth, seemed now in their courses to fight for her salvation. The mighty arm of the Emperor was raised to crush the little state, when the angel of death touched him and it fell impotently to his side.

At this epoch arose to guide her destinies one of the greatest princes that ever sat in the ducal chair. Memo, suspected of complicity in a more than usually atrocious assassination, was deposed and forced to enter a monastery, and in 991 Pietro Orseolo II. began his eventful reign. By his consummate statesmanship the Republic soon found herself at peace with east and west and able to deal with the problem of the Adriatic pirates. The Doge at once abolished the feeble expedient of paying blackmail to their chiefs, and on a renewal of their depredations chastised them into respect. The unhappy borderland along the Dalmatian coast, nominally under the lordship of the eastern Empire, but actually eluding control by east or west, was dotted with a number of small trading communities—Zara, Trau, Spalato, and Ragusa—continually harassed by Slav and Saracen pirates from the sea and by Croats on land. The defeated pirates in their rage now united with the Croats and turned on the Dalmatians, who appealed to Venice, the only power which seemed able to protect them. The Doge at once grasped the importance to Venetian commerce of a protectorate over Dalmatia. The greatest fleet that had hitherto sailed from Venetian waters set forth with banners consecrated by the Church to police the Adriatic. The voyage was a triumphant procession. Chief after chief submitted. At Zara and elsewhere the Venetians were magnificently received: the last stronghold of the pirates, impregnable Lagosta, yielded to the splendid courage of the Venetian seamen. Slavs and Croats were cowed and hostages given for future good behaviour. The woods of Curzola now made Venice independent of Italy for timber. It was the first stage in her development as a European power. The title of Doge of Dalmatia was added to that of Doge of Venice and a ceremony instituted which a hundred and eighty years later became the famous Sposalazio del Mare or Wedding of the Adriatic. On the morning of Ascension Day a State barge covered with cloth of gold bearing the clergy of the Chapter of St Mark’s in full canonicals and furnished with a vessel of water, a vase of salt and an aspersoir of olive branches, sailed to the Canal of S. Nicolo del Lido to await the Doge’s barge, called later the Bucintoro. On its arrival two Canons intoned the litany and the Bishop rose up and solemnly pronounced in Latin the words, Deign, O Lord, to grant that this sea be calm and peaceful to us and to all that sail upon it; thus we pray. O Lord hear us. The Bishop blessed the water and, having reached S. Nicolo, drew near to the Doge’s barge before the procession advanced into the open Adriatic. The Primicerio then prayed: Purge me, O Lord, with hyssop, and I shall be clean; the Bishop aspersed the Doge and his suite, and poured what was left of the water into the sea. Such was the origin of the famous festa of La Sensa of which we shall hear more later.

The fame of the Doge’s exploits had fired the imagination of the young and ardent Emperor Otho III., who made a mysterious voyage by night to the great Orseolo at Venice and disguised in mean attire went about the strange city marvelling at the glories of its architecture. The new ducal palace had just been completed, a stately embattlemented edifice, in which was constructed a small chapel rich in precious marble and gold and furnished with an organ of wondrous craftsmanship. A romantic affection sprang up between the two potentates which was cemented by the Emperor standing god-father and giving his name to one of the Doge’s sons. The friends parted, after much intimate converse, embracing each other and in tears.

Honours too from the East were lavished upon the Doge. Responding to an appeal from the Greeks he led a fleet to Bari, which was invested by the Saracens. Signs and wonders in the heavens heralded his coming, and after three days of hand-to-hand fighting the siege was raised and a Greek army delivered from destruction. The Byzantine Emperor showed his gratitude by bestowing the hand of his niece on the Doge’s son Giovanni, and joyous festival was held at Constantinople in honour of the alliance. But whatever pride may have been engendered in the Doge’s breast by this almost more than mortal success was soon chastened by failing health, affliction at home, and the desolation wrought by plague and famine in the city. Rich in piety and charity this noble and heroic servant of the people declined to his end, and at the early age of forty-eight was laid to rest in S. Zaccaria.

The story of the enriching of this church with the body of S. Tarasio is too characteristic to be passed by. We tell it in Sanudo’s words. In the year 1019 some Venetian merchants, with whom was a certain priest of Malamocco, disembarked at a promontory called Chiledro. The priest and two companions went into a deserted monastery and heard a voice crying Tolle hoc corpus sanctum et defer tecum (Take this holy body and bear it away with thee). He looked around and finding no monument prayed to God for guidance, and soon discerned an altar inscribed, “This body of S. Tarasio shalt thou find wrapped in a cloth.” He then turned and saw a cave in which lay the body with four lights burning before it. Now the said priest was sorely hurt in one of his hands, which he carried in a sling, and having entered the cave he at once became whole. As he raised the body, which weighed nought, so light it was, a voice proceeded from it saying, Tolle me quia tecum venire præsto sum (Take me, for I am ready to come with thee). They carried the body to the ship, three miles distant, and lo, there came some monks running apace and crying, “Cruel men, give us back our father. Ye shall not depart hence if ye restore him not to us, for once on a time a strange people came and stole a tooth of the saint and never could they depart until they had returned the same to us.” But the Venetians caring nought for such words set sail for Venice, and, though the ship was heavy laden, she sailed light as a bird over the sea, so precious a treasure she bore.

Otho Orseolo, who succeeded his father in 1008, by overweening ambition, drew on himself the ill-will of the people. God-son of an Emperor, brother-in-law of the sainted King Stephen of Hungary, he promoted one of his brothers to the patriarchate of Grado (next to the dogeship the most important position in the state), and another to the See of Torcello. The Patriarchs of Aquileia and of Grado had long been at bitter enmity, and more than once had fought out their quarrels with all too secular weapons. During the Lombard dominion the Patriarchs of Aquileia were tainted with the Arian heresy, whereas those of Grado remained orthodox and claimed jurisdiction over the whole of the lagoons. Moreover, the growing power and wealth of the latter aroused the jealousy of their rivals. The Aquileian Pastor was generally a German by race and sympathies, and subject to the Empire, while the Patriarch of Grado was subject to Venice.[9] The Pastor of Aquileia now organised the popular discontent, and drove his rival of Grado and the Doge to exile in Istria; but the horror wrought in Grado by this warlike churchman, who added perjury to ferocity to accomplish his vengeance, brought about a reaction in the Doge’s favour, and he was recalled, only, however, to wreck himself again on the iron-bound determination of the Venetians never to be subject to a feudal prince, and he was again exiled. For Venice was founded by citizens of the Roman Empire, with traditions of municipal freedom and imperial dominion to whom the feudal system of the German conquerors of Italy was alien and hateful. His successor, Dom. Centranico, elected in 1026, was unable to rule the storm, and after an ineffectual reign of six years was shorn of his beard and sent to Constantinople. Again the Venetians turned to the twice-exiled Doge. An honourable embassy was sent to invite Otho to return, only to find him beyond the reach of earthly honours. In the political confusion another Orseolo usurped power for a day, and was chased to Ravenna by the people, whose hatred of the Orseoli was now so fierce that the whole family were ostracised and laws enacted which finally blocked any tendency in the dominant families to form a dynasty.

Under Dom. Flabianico, who was raised to the ducal chair in 1032, an Arengo was called, and after the acts of the Doges for the past three hundred years, their ungovernable ambitions and tragic ends had been recapitulated, it was decided to abolish association and hereditary succession. Two ducal councillors were appointed to assist the Doge in the discharge of the ordinary duties of his office. In extraordinary matters of grave public importance he was compelled to invite the more prominent and experienced citizens to his council. By these two momentous constitutional changes that paring away of the Doge’s powers was begun which in the end made of him little more than a figurehead, and gave free play to the evolution of the most capable and powerful oligarchy in history. It is easy to trace in the two consiglieri ducali the beginnings of the Ducal Council, and in the “Invited” (Pregadi) the Senate, or meeting of the Pregadi. The object of the reformers were effected. During the reigns (a period of thirty-eight years) of Flabianico and of Dom. Contarini, the fury of ecclesiastical jealousy alone disturbed the state.

That the choice of the Doge was still democratic in form is clear from an interesting description by an eye-witness, Dom. Tina, of the election of Doge Dom. Selvo in 1071. An immense multitude of citizens came in boats and armed galleys to an assembly on the island of Castello; and while the clergy and the monks from the Abbey of S. Nicolo, founded on the Lido in the previous reign, were praying in St Peter’s for divine guidance, a mighty shout rose from the people, Noi volemo dose Domenigo Selvo e lo laudiamo (We desire and approve Dom. Selvo for Doge). Selvo was seized by a company of nobles and borne shoulder high to his barge, where he bared his feet that he might enter St Mark’s in due humility. Tina, who was on Selvo’s boat, intoned the Te Deum; a thousand voices joined him and a thousand oars dashed the waters into foam. From all the churches bells pealed as the Doge alighted and was carried to St Mark’s, where the clergy met him and such psalmody and acclamation were raised that the very domes of the chapel seemed like to burst with the noise. The Doge entered and prostrated himself to the ground, giving thanks to God and to St Mark for the honour conferred upon him. Having taken the insignia of office from the altar he proceeded to the palace, followed by an immense concourse of people, who in accordance with usage looted the palace of its furniture and received largess from the new Doge.

Selvo’s popularity was not, however, shared by his consort, a Greek princess, who shocked the simpler tastes of the Venetians by her oriental luxury. Not only was she said to bathe in dew and scent her robes with costly perfumes, she was of tanta delicatezza that she would not touch her food with her fingers, but made use of certain two-pronged instruments of gold to carry it to her mouth. The outraged Divine Majesty, say the chroniclers, punished her by the infliction of a loathsome disease and she sickened into such corruption that none could be found to tend her.

CHAPTER III

Expansion in the East—Reconciliation of Pope Alexander III. and the Emperor Barbarossa—The Wedding of the Adriatic

“All the golden cities
Overflowing with honey
. . .
Say, lords, should not our thoughts be first to commerce.”
—Blake.

ONE of the most remarkable figures of mediæval history is that of Robert Guiscard, son of a poor Norman knight, who with a handful of military adventurers carved out for himself a great duchy in South Italy, founded a race of kings, defeated the Emperors of East and West, and in his colossal ambition aimed at nothing less than uniting in his person the divided Empire of the Romans. Alexius Comnenos, the Greek Emperor, hard pressed at Durazzo by the puissant duke’s forces, appealed to Venice for help and promised valuable trading privileges in return. She responded to the call, and in 1081 a great armata of sixty-three sail under the command of the Doge appeared before the besieged city and by masterly strategy and strenuous fighting defeated the Normans. But Duke Robert was not easily crushed. In 1084 Alexius was constrained to pay the inevitable price of further commercial favours for another naval contingent from Venice. Doge Selvo with a fleet of great ships and 13,000 men fell upon the Normans near Corfu. Victory inclined to the Venetians at first, but in the end they were overwhelmed by Robert’s fierce onslaught. The huge towering galleons of the islanders were involved in hopeless confusion, and as the Normans pressed on to cut down the Venetian sailors, Robert tempted them by promising to spare the lives of those who would enter his service. “Know, Duke Robert,” answered the devoted Venetians, “that if we saw our wives and children slain before our eyes we would not break troth with Alexius.” Robert, admiring their loyalty, suffered them to be held for redemption. Selvo reached Venice in November with a remnant of his shattered fleet and a loss of 6000 men. Before a month was past he was deposed by a popular rising whose chief instigator, Vitale Falier, lifted himself up to the ducal chair. Unhappy Doge Selvo’s memory is, however, enshrined in St Mark’s, for he it was who set himself to adorn the edifice with marble incrustations, columns of porphyry and other precious stones, mosaic and painting.

The naval supremacy of Venice was essential to her existence, and one of the first acts of Falier was to collect a fleet more powerful than any that had yet left the lagoons. In the spring of 1085 the shame of defeat was wiped out by a great victory over the Normans on the scene of the former engagement. In a few months plague had quenched for ever the fiery spirit of Duke Robert, and Alexius had leisure to reward the Venetians. The Doge’s title of Duke of Dalmatia was formally recognised and that of Augustus added. Trading franchises and exemption from customs were granted in all the parts of the Eastern Empire. Lands and factories were assigned to them, a Venetian quarter was founded in Constantinople. The first grip of the young Republic was laid on the capital of the Greeks and never relaxed until she had overthrown their empire and fixed herself there—victorious and dominant.

In 1094 the new Church of St Mark was ready for formal consecration; but it was a casket void of its treasure. For since the great fire of 976 all traces of the Saint’s body had been lost and great was the affliction of Doge and people. It was decided to institute a solemn fast and procession, and to supplicate the Eternal Majesty to reveal the hidden relic. On the 25th day of June, while the procession of Doge, clergy and people was slowly pacing St Mark’s, a great light shone from a pillar near the altar of St James, and part of the masonry falling away, a hand was thrust out with a ring of gold on the middle finger and a sweet fragrance was diffused throughout the church, “nor could any draw this ring off” (says Sanudo[10]) “save Giov. Delfino, counsellor to the Doge, whose descendants a few years ago gave it to the Scuola di S. Marco. The body being found, the whole city was filled with joy and gave thanks to the eternal God for having restored so great a treasure. On the 8th of October the said church, which of old was called St Theodore, was consecrated in the name of St Mark, and in the presence alone of the Doge, the bishop, the primicerio and the procurator of St Mark, the body was placed (as it is famed) in the high altar of the said church. And Bernardo Giustiniani maketh mention in his history that he being once procurator, it was told him in great secrecy where the said body lay, and that in very truth it was in the said church.”

On the 6th of May 1811 the body was rediscovered in a marble tomb in the crypt, with a few coins, a gold ring minus its jewel; a lamina with the date October 8, 1094, and the name of Vitale Falier.

A great festival was instituted to commemorate the discovery, and the fame of the miracle drew many pilgrims to Venice, among whom was Henry IV., Emperor of the West, who combining piety with statecraft, paid his devotions to the Saint and courted the favour of the Republic, whose help, or at least neutrality, he needed in his wars with the papacy to avenge the humiliation of Canossa.[11] The Emperor was magnificently received, and after admiring the beauty of the architecture and the wonderful site of the city he left, having added many privileges to those already enjoyed by the Venetian merchants in his dominions.

In 1096 Vitale Falier died, and on Christmas day was buried in the portico of St Mark’s. The people, whom the devastation wrought by tempest, earthquake and famine[12] had made unjust, ran to the church and cast bread and wine at the tomb, cursing and saying: “Sate thee now, who in life wouldest not provide plenty for thy people.”

Towards the close of the 11th century harrowing stories of the atrocities committed by the Saracen conquerors of Palestine on Christian pilgrims, and the impassioned oratory of Peter the Hermit had fired the West with a desire to cleanse the Holy Land from the pollution of the infidel. Wave after wave of unorganised enthusiasm broke against the forces of nature and the military prowess of the Saracens, until at length the epic story of the conquest of Jerusalem by the organised Chivalry of Christendom rang through Europe. The Venetians, who aimed at something more solid than the gratification of religious emotion, looked on unmoved, until an appeal came to the maritime states of Italy to furnish transport for the crusaders and pilgrims who were flocking to the East. Doge Vitale Michieli, in 1096, called an assembly in St Mark’s. He appealed to the religious zeal of the people and dwelt on the unwisdom of permitting their rivals of Pisa and Genoa to forestall them again and increase their power in the East. Commercial interest and state policy left them no choice. A fleet was manned and after solemn mass at St Mark’s the expedition set sail, bearing the consecrated banner of the Cross, under the command of the Doge’s son Giovanni and the Bishop of Castello. But the Greek Emperor, ever fearful of the whole movement, incited the Pisans to attack the Venetians, and a fierce battle between the rival armaments at Rhodes disgraced the Christian host. The Venetians were victorious and continued their voyage. A call was made at Myra, where lay the body of St Nicholas, patron saint of mariners, which the Bishop had long coveted for the Abbey of St Nicolo on the Lido. Having learnt from his spies that the city was almost deserted, the worthy prelate proceeded to the church accompanied by some sailors, and demanded of the custodians where the body of the saint was. They replied that they knew not, and indicated an old tomb, saying that some relics were there and some had been removed, and the Bishop might have what he could find. The sailors working day and night broke open the tomb and found nought save some oil and water. Whereupon the Bishop, waxing very wroth, put the four custodians to the torture, who cried: “Wherefore dost thou afflict us, verily in the altar of St John are two bodies of saints.” The altar being opened two chests were found with inscriptions saying they contained the bodies of St Theodore the Martyr and St Nicholas the Less. The spoilers were about to depart when a sailor, by “divine inspiration,” turned back to look again at the rifled tomb, and lo, an odour of such great sweetness came forth that surely, he said, there must lie some relic of great worth. The sailors dug deeper and came upon a third chest with an inscription in Greek saying: “Here rests the great Nicholas, who wrought wonders on land and sea.” The chests were carried abroad with great devotion, and the fleet went its way to the Holy Land. The Venetians assisted in the capture of Caifa, and on St Michael’s Day returned laden with the saint’s body and much spoil. Meanwhile their interests in the West had not been neglected. For help afforded to the Countess Matilda in Ferrara the usual reward of trading privileges in that city was given.

In 1104, in the third year of the reign of Ordelafo Falier, a Doge, “young in years but old in wisdom,” came a summons from Baldwin, King of Jerusalem, for a naval contingent. A fleet of more than a hundred sail was despatched, which, after contributing to the victory of Jaffa and to the capture of Sidon, swept the sea of pirates. The Venetians exacted important concessions—a quarter of the conquered city; their own church, bakery and mill; a market-place; exemption from customs, taxes and dues; the right to use their own weights and measures; and a yearly tribute in money from the king. They were also to be subject to their own laws.

But at home evil days had fallen upon Venice. An awful tempest and inundation wrought havoc in the city. Houses and factories were levelled to the ground; the ancient capital Malamocco was engulfed in the sea. Scarcely had the unhappy citizens recovered from their terror when two disastrous fires consumed a great part of the city. Thirty churches were destroyed, and the ducal palace and St Mark’s injured. Abroad, the King of Hungary attacked their protectorate of Dalmatia, and the fleet was recalled from the East. It had done what was expected of it. A certain Friar Peter being at Constantinople heard that the body of St Stephen, the proto-martyr, was in a church there, and “found means to obtain it.” The fleet was in the harbour, and the sacred treasure put on board, not without opposition from the Greeks, who were with difficulty restrained from attacking the bearers. A great procession went forth to meet the fleet as it neared Venice, and the Doge himself transferred the holy burden on his shoulders to the ducal barge. Many churches contended for the possession of the relic, which at length was conferred on the rich Benedictine Abbey of S. Giorgio Maggiore, founded in the year 982.

The Bishop of Castello, who had been sent to Constantinople to plead for help in the reconquest of Dalmatia, was no less successful. As a token of the Emperor’s favour, he returned with the right hand of St John the Baptist in a vase. Two armaments were sent to recover Dalmatia. In 1117, when the Venetians were wavering before a fierce attack of the Hungarians outside Zara, the Doge spurred forward to hearten them. His horse stumbled on a dead body: the enemy closed on him, and he was slain—the second Doge who had met a soldier’s death.

Ordelafo Falier is remembered in Venice to-day by two monuments: one of art—the famous Pala d’oro in St Mark’s; the other of civic utility—the scattered squeri or shipyards were concentrated by him in the great Arsenal, whence issued the mighty vessels innumerable that for centuries maintained the naval supremacy of Venice. It was this Arzanà, now the Arsenale Vecchio, which Dante saw and immortalised in the famous description of the fifth of the Malebolge:—

“Quale nell’arzanà de’ Viniziani
bolle l’inverno la tenace pece
a rimpalmar li lor legni non sani,

che navicar non ponno, e in quella vece
chi fa suo legno nuovo, e chi ristoppa
le coste a quel che più viaggi fece;

chi ribatte da proda, e chi da poppa;
altri fa remi, ed altri volge sarte;
chi terzerudo ed artimon rintoppa.”[13]

The first duty of Dom. Michiel, 1118, was to make peace with the King of Hungary, that he might be free to devote himself to Eastern affairs. The King of Jerusalem was a prisoner in the hands of the Saracens and a stirring appeal from the Pope for Venetian help was read in St Mark’s. A year was spent in building and equipping a fleet of forty great galleys, twenty-eight transports, and many smaller craft. It was a magnificent spectacle when the vessels, painted with many colours and bright with banners, set forth bearing a gallant army of knights and footmen, their armour flashing in the sun, the banner of St Mark and the consecrated standard of the Cross waving proudly from the Doge’s ship. But the captive king was to linger yet another year, for the Doge had pressing affairs nearer home. The Greek Emperor Johannes must be chastised for his unfriendly attitude. The fleet anchored before Corfu and spent the winter in an attempt to capture the island. Having wreaked what damage they could and having “invoked the divine assistance,” they resumed their voyage in the spring. After devastating Chios, Lesbos and Rhodes they reached Cyprus, where news came that a Saracen armament was off Jaffa. The fleet at once pressed forward and fell upon the infidels. The Doge’s galley went straight for the Emir’s ship and sank it. Confusion seized the enemy and a memorable victory was won. The slaughter was terrible. For years the mariners of Jaffa declared the sea to be infected with the corpses of the Saracens. The Doge was met at Jaffa by the clergy and barons of Jerusalem and borne in triumph to the holy city, where he was acclaimed as the champion of Christendom. Being urged to further service the Doge replied that nothing was nearer the hearts of the Venetians than to increase the Christian dominion in the East, and that the piety and religion which had always distinguished them was burning to express itself in deeds. In the name of the King and his barons it was agreed that of the captured cities and all spoils one-third should be the portion of the Venetians, one-third of the King, one-third of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and that the cost of the war should be met in thirds. The trading privileges granted in Sidon were confirmed and were to be extended to all future conquests. A hot discussion arose as to whether Tyre or Ascalon should be the objective of the next expedition. It was decided to cast lots, and a boy drew from the urn the word “Tyre.”

The capture by the Venetians and Franks of Tyre, mother of Carthage, “the mart of nations made very glorious in the heart of the seas,” is one of the epics of history. The besiegers attacked with desperate courage. The flower of Saracen chivalry garrisoned the city. The warriors of Damascus and fleets from Egypt fought in vain to raise the siege. In the alternations of the struggle murmurs were heard among the Franks of impending desertion by the Venetian fleet. The Doge, when the report came to his ears, had a plank knocked out of the side of each ship and borne before him to the Frankish camp. With grave words he rebuked the slanderers and offered to leave those material pledges of Venetian loyalty. Towards the end of the siege money failed: the Doge cut coins of leather, promising to exchange them for good ducats when the fleet returned to Venice. After five months’ resistance, famine wore down the courage of the Saracens. Honourable terms of surrender were granted and the banners of the King of Jerusalem and the standard of St Mark floated over the captured city. Venice had planted her foot in Syria. The fleet turned westward, but its work was not yet done. Johannes had expelled the Venetian traders from the ports of the Empire, and the Greeks were to be taught another lesson. The course of the avengers through the eastern seas was marked by the ravaged cities of the Greek islands spoiled of their wealth and bewailing their captive sons and daughters. The Doge paused in his work to recover the Dalmatian fiefs from the King of Hungary, and cities reduced to heaps of smouldering ruins bore witness to the power of Venice to vindicate her sovereignty. Reinforced from Dalmatia the victorious fleet turned again on the Greeks, who hastened to make peace and agreed to the Doge’s terms. Great was the rejoicing in Venice when the triumphant Doge returned bringing the bodies of St Isidore from Chios and of S. Donato from Cephalonia, and such spoil of Eastern magnificence as had never yet been seen there since she rose from the sea. But before we follow him to his retreat and death in the Monastery of S. Giorgio Maggiore, where to this day may be seen a partially obliterated epitaph to the “Terror of the Greeks and the Glory of Venice,” we may record one domestic innovation worthy of grateful remembrance. Few things are more charming to the wayfarer in Venice than the little shrines of the Virgin and Child decked with flowers and lighted by night with an oil lamp in the nooks and corners of the city. Though no longer needed for their original purpose of illuminating the ways, they are still tended by the piety of the people. It was to Michieli that this provision was due. To aid the watchmen in ridding the dark and tortuous lanes of the thieves that infested them, and to light the city, the clergy were ordered to provide for the public safety by erecting and maintaining the shrines, and were empowered to levy a rate to meet the cost.

From the retirement of Dom. Michieli to the election of Vitale Michieli II. in 1156, two Doges, Pietro Polani and Dom. Morosini, presided over the growth of the lagoon state. In spite of troubles with the Adriatic pirates, the Hungarians in Dalmatia and the Paduans, new markets for Venetian commerce were won by the familiar process of squeezing the rival Cæsars of East and West. It was a time of building. The Campanile was finished, many churches were erected, and a hospital was founded for the mothers and widows of seamen fallen in the service of the state.

Political theories that no longer correspond to realities are dangerous in proportion to the character and genius of those whose imagination they seize upon. Actually the Roman Empire had fallen to pieces, but so faithfully had the Romans wrought that it was regarded even by the northern invaders as an integral part of civilisation. The Church accepted and sanctified it, and the Holy Roman Empire continued to exist in theory until the wit of Voltaire and the big battalions of Napoleon destroyed the sham for ever. In the poetic mind of Dante, with his passionate aspiration for peace and righteousness, it became a beautiful but ineffectual ideal of a kingship over kings; an Emperor curbing the warring factions and states of Christendom and coercing such as threatened to break the common peace, so that the golden days of the Pax Romana might be seen of men again. But the times were making for nationality and not for empire, and the attempts of the great emperors to realise their theoretical power were foredoomed to failure.

Such an attempt was made by Frederick Barbarossa. Reports came to his ears of a rebellious and factious spirit in the south. The burgesses of the Italian cities were growing restive under the imperial vicars. Milan had attacked and wasted Lodi: the feudal princes both of Church and State were scandalised by common burghers and mechanics rising to hold public offices, and even exercising the profession of arms. Twice the Emperor descended the Alps to bring the Italian communes to subjection. For a time he was successful, but a new era was dawning in Italy. The Lombard cities banded themselves in a league whose soul was the Pope, and swore to make no peace with the Emperor until their communal rights and privileges were secured. Venice, true to her policy of facing both ways, at first held aloof; but later, fearing her turn might come next, promised naval and financial aid to the league. The struggle continued until 1176, when the flower of German chivalry, including the emperor himself, bit the dust before the stout burghers of the Lombard League at Legnano. Frederick, to punish the Venetians for their support of the League and of Alexander III. against his own nominees for the papal chair, moved their arch enemy the Patriarch of Aquileia to attack Grado. He was defeated by the Doge and taken captive to Venice. With twelve of his canons he purchased liberty by undertaking to pay a yearly tribute of a fine bull, twelve pigs, twelve loaves of bread, and a quantity of wine. A quaint ceremony marked the reception of the tribute. The Doge with a train of nobles repaired to the ducal palace, where he struck down certain wooden castles with a wand. Then in the presence of the Doge and his suite a bull-fight took place in the Piazza; the pigs were beheaded, cut in pieces, and distributed among the nobles. At later celebrations a youth by an ingenious contrivance flew down from the top of the Campanile to the balcony of the ducal palace and presented a nosegay to the Doge. In Leonardo Loredano’s time the number of recipients had so increased that it was decided to distribute the pigs among the monasteries, and the bread and wine were given to the prisons.

In 1171, a few ships, all that remained of a fine merchant fleet in Constantinople, sailed up the lagoons and roused the Venetians to fury by the recital of a wanton attack on their countrymen in the East. All the Venetians in the ports of the Empire had been seized by order of the Emperor Manuel, cast into prison, and their property confiscated. The Emperor had been secretly gathering his forces, and by leaning on the Genoese felt strong enough to pay off old scores. An irresistible wave of popular indignation swept the state into a war with the Eastern Empire. To meet the cost a forced loan of one per cent. on property was levied, a national bank formed, and state bonds were issued for the amount of the loan bearing interest at four per cent. These securities were quoted daily on the Rialto according to the fluctuations of the market, and formed the first funded debt in Europe. In six months the Doge set forth with a magnificent fleet and the flower of Venetian manhood; but he wasted precious time in a punitive attack on Ragusa, and while besieging the capital of Negropont, the ancient Eubœa, weakly agreed to treat with the Emperor. The subtle Greeks temporised with the Venetian envoys, one of whom, Enrico Dandolo, we shall hear of again. Winter came, and a terrible pestilence wasted the Venetian forces. So great was the mortality that the Giustiniani perished to a man, and the last scion of this noble house was permitted to leave the cloister in order to marry the Doge’s daughter and save his name from extinction. Having raised up several sons, his wife retired to a convent and he to his cell at S. Nicolo del Lido to fulfil his interrupted vow. Before a year was past the unhappy Doge and all that remained of the expedition returned to Venice. The city became infected with the plague, and the angry people turned upon the Doge, who fled for refuge to S. Zaccaria, but was cut down before he reached the threshold.

The hasty inception and calamitous issue of this ill-omened war profoundly impressed the aristocracy of Venice. They determined that neither popular passion nor ducal ineptitude should again sway the policy of the state. The supersession of the democratic element and the further curtailment of the ducal privileges were effected by an elaborately-conceived constitution, which gave the shadow of power to the people and the substance to the aristocracy. Each of the six wards (sestieri) of the city was to elect two representatives, who were each to appoint forty of the chief citizens of their respective wards to form a great Council of four hundred and eighty members. The Council sat for a year, and when its term was completed, it, not the wards, nominated the twelve who were to appoint the Council for the following year. The Council was to elect the officers of state, including the Doge, who was chosen by eleven of its members delegated for that purpose. Further to control the Doge the two privy councillors instituted in 1032 were increased to six.

The constitution of 1172 narrowly escaped a baptism of blood. When the new Doge, Sebastiano Ziani, was presented for popular approbation a riot ensued, but the people were duped by an empty formula—Quest’ è il vostro doge se vi piace (This is your Doge if it be your pleasure), and debauched by a more abundant distribution of largess and a more gorgeous pageant.

The state of the finances no less than affairs on the mainland impelled the Republic to come to terms with Manuel. To strengthen her hands an alliance was sought with the Normans, and again we find Enrico Dandolo an ambassador, this time at the Court of Sicily. Barbarossa was now wearying of the struggle with the papacy. Like Henry IV., he found his legions powerless against a feeble old man armed with the impalpable weapons of the spiritual power. He had set up three schismatic popes, seized the very seat of Peter at Rome, and driven Alexander III., a wanderer and a suppliant, to the Courts of Europe. The indomitable old pontiff at length found his way to Venice, all’ unico domicilio di libertà, and an attempt at reconciliation was made. A splendid naval procession went to meet him: a seat of honour was prepared for him in the ducal barge between the Doge and the Patriarch, and apartments were assigned to him in the patriarchal palace at S. Silvestre. Soon it was reported that the Emperor himself was at Chioggia, and after many negotiations terms were agreed upon.[14] A bitter morsel the Emperor was forced to swallow. The uncompromising Pope would abate no jot of his claims—the Emperor must solemnly recognise him as the true and only successor of Peter, God’s vicar on earth, supreme over Cæsar.

Sunday the 24th of July 1177 was a superb day for Venice. The whole Piazza was alive with princes and peoples of many nations. Two tall masts lifting up the banners of St Mark stood at the landing-stage by the Piazzetta. The day before, the Emperor, who was not permitted to land at Venice, “until he had set aside his leonine ferocity and put on the gentleness of the lamb,” was brought in great pomp from Chioggia to Lido and passed the night at the Abbey of S. Nicolo. In the early morning the Pope, having received at St Mark’s the formal abjuration of the schism by the Chancellor of the Empire, solemnly absolved the Emperor from the ban of the Church. The Doge and a great procession then set forth and brought the Emperor from Lido seated in the ducal barge between Doge and Patriarch. When he disembarked a procession was formed headed by the Doge, the Patriarch, and the clergy bearing banners and crosses, behind whom walked the Emperor. Having reached the Piazza he saw the Pope enthroned in full canonicals and surrounded by a throng of cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and clergy awaiting him in front of the atrium of St Mark’s.[15] “Touched by the Holy Spirit” he cast off his purple cloak, bowed his neck, and prostrated himself at the Pope’s feet, “venerating God in Alexander.” The pontiff then arose, stretched forth his hand, raised the Emperor, gave him the kiss of peace and blessed him. The air shook with the pealing of bells and the singing of the Te Deum by the Germans. The doors of St Mark swung open, the Emperor, giving his right hand to the Pope, led him to the altar, and having received his benediction returned to the Ducal Palace. The next day at the request of the Emperor a solemn mass was sung in St Mark’s by the Pope. The Emperor laid aside his mantle, took a wand, expelled the laity from the choir and led the aged Pope to the altar protecting him from the crowd. Himself sat in the choir amid the clergy, and devoutly and humbly listened to mass. At the sermon the Pope noticing the Emperor close by the pulpit ordered the patriarch of Aquileia to translate the sermon from Latin into German. The credo having been sung, the Emperor approached the Pope’s feet and made his oblations. At the end of mass the Emperor took the Pope’s hand, led him to his white horse and held the stirrup while he mounted. The Pope permitted him to go no further, dismissed him, and gave him his blessing. The successful accomplishment of this reconciliation added great lustre to the Venetian state. Never had she stood so high in the eyes of Europe. Nor were more solid gains lacking. Making the best of both worlds she received valuable privileges both spiritual and political before Pope and Cæsar left her shores. Many were the legends that clustered round this dramatic scene. Stories were told in later days of the fugitive Pope arriving in Venice, in mean attire, wandering about the tortuous ways until overcome by fatigue he lay down and slept on the bare ground near the Church of S. Apollinare. When rested he wandered on until he was received in the monastery of the Carità, where he served six months as a common scullion. A Venetian who had been on a pilgrimage to Rome recognised him. The Doge was advised and the Pope led to the palace in great pomp. To this day near the Church of S. Apollinare an inscription marks the legendary spot where “Alexander III. reposed when fleeing from the violence of Frederick the Emperor.” Frederick then bade the Venetians, so runs the fable, deliver up the fugitive or he would plant his eagles in St Mark, where they had never been before. To which the Doge retorted that the Venetians would not wait for him, and on learning that a fleet of seventy-five ships under the Emperor’s son, Otho, was under sail for Venice, set forth with thirty-four galleys, attacked the imperial fleet, captured forty vessels, sunk two, and made Otho prisoner. In the great scene before St Mark’s the Emperor was imagined lying prostrate on the ground, the Pope placing his heel on the imperial neck and saying: “I will tread on the asp and on the basilisk.” To which the Emperor objected: “Not to thee but to Peter”; to be quickly answered by the Pope: “Both to me and to Peter.”

The festival of La Sensa was celebrated during the Pope’s stay at Venice. The pontiff on that occasion handed a consecrated ring to the Doge saying: “Receive this as a pledge of the sovereignty which you and your successors shall have in perpetuity over the sea.” Henceforth the ceremony was held with added magnificence, and became the greatest of the many pageants for which Venice was so famous. On his gilded barge, the Bucintoro, commanded by three admirals and many captains of the fleet, and impelled by the arms of one hundred and sixty shipwrights from the arsenal, four to each oar, stood the Doge surrounded by the Patriarch and clergy, the great officers of state and the foreign ambassadors, the standard of St Mark waving over their heads. A great procession of gilded galleys and gondolas bright with flags followed the Doge to the island of St Helena where a collation of peeled chestnuts and red wine was offered by the Bishop of Castello and his clergy, while the Doge presented damask roses in a silver cup. One he took himself and distributed the others to his suite. The Bucintoro then swept through the Porto of the Lido into the open Adriatic. The patriarch blessed the ring and handed it to the Doge who cast it into the sea pronouncing the formula: “Sea, we wed thee in token of our true and perpetual dominion over thee.” From the musicians’ gallery on the barge rang out a joyous theme, and the Doge returned to the Molo after having heard mass at S. Nicolo. In the evening a banquet was given at the palace to the admirals and the hundred masters of the arsenal, the chief magistrates and the ambassadors. A great fair was held and the city gave itself up to a week’s festivities. Such with some modifications in detail was the famous wedding of the Adriatic, which ended only with the Republic herself in 1797.

Among the spoil from Syria were three huge granite columns, one of which had fallen into the canal during unloading: the other two lay on the shore, and no one could be found to raise them. A proclamation was made that any onesta grazia would be granted to the master who should erect them on the piazzetta. Many had tried and failed when Nicolo Barattieri, a Lombard engineer, offered his services. He is said to have stretched stout ropes, soaked them in water and fixed them to the pillars.[16] As the ropes dried and contracted the columns “with great art and some little assistance” were slowly elevated and were surmounted with the familiar bronze and marble statues of the Lion of St Mark and St Theodore. The former was cast and erected in 1178, the latter carved and erected in 1329. When asked to name his reward, Nicolo begged permission to set up gaming-tables between the columns. His request was granted, but orders were given that all public executions should henceforth take place there, and the “two red columns”[17] have a gruesome interest in subsequent Venetian history. Two attempts, one in 1559, another in 1809, were made to recover the third pillar. The same ingenious master is said to have erected the first wooden Rialto bridge in 1173.

On Ziani’s retirement the method of electing the Doge was again modified. Instead of the eleven, four members of the Great Council were chosen who nominated an electoral college of forty. Only a single member might be taken from any one family, and the forty elected the Doge by an absolute majority of votes.

When the papal summons came to Venice in the reign of Ziani’s successor, Mastropiero, for a naval contingent in the service of the third Crusade, she held too great a stake in Syria to remain wholly indifferent. Manuel promised satisfaction for the spoliation of the Venetians in 1177 by the payment of a large indemnity, and the long struggle with the Hungarians for the recovery of Zara and the Dalmatian protectorate was intermitted. A fleet was sent to the east which bore a brave part in the relief of Tyre and the famous two years’ siege of Acre. But Venice fought in conjunction with her rivals of Pisa and Genoa, and it was not until the barons of France, during the organisation of the fourth Crusade gave her the opportunity of demonstrating her naval supremacy and controlling the movement for her own ends that she put forth all her strength.

Enrico Dandolo, now an old man of more than four score years, was made Doge in 1193. On his election he was made to subscribe to a Promissione ducale (coronation oath), an ingenious instrument designed in the interests of the aristocracy, which defined and limited his powers. Dandolo had inherited the Dalmatian trouble, and was occupied with stubborn Zara, which for the fourth time had resisted the efforts of the Venetians to recover it from the King of Hungary, when a wail of distress from the hard-pressed Christians in Palestine reached the ears of the great Pope Innocent III. and the fourth crusade was launched.

CHAPTER IV
Enrico Dandolo and the Capture of Constantinople

“August pleasant Dandolo
Worshipping hearts about him for a wall,
Conducted blind eyes hundred years and all
Through vanquished Byzant, where friends note for him
What pillar, marble massive, sardius slim,
’Twere fittest to transport to Venice’ square.”
—Browning.

THE fourth crusade afforded Venice an opportunity of rising to a commanding position in Europe. She seized it with resolution yet with the cautious deliberation so characteristic of her temper. Amid the fervent enthusiasm of the crusaders she kept a cool head, ever intent on directing the movement to the attainment of her secular policy—the extension of her commerce and of her dominion in the East.

The story of the Conquest of Constantinople has been told for us by one who played a leading rôle in the drama, Jeffrey of Villehardouin, Marshall of Champagne, who was one of the six envoys sent by the organisers of the crusade to Venice to treat for the transport of the army to the East. He was a man of simple piety and singleness of purpose, a heroic soldier and capable administrator, but like his fellows no match for the shrewd old Doge who then directed the policy of the republic. It is difficult to say how far the almost cynical exploitation of the crusaders’ enthusiasm, charged upon Venice by some historians, was redeemed by nobler motives. The policy of making the best of both worlds is not a modern invention, and states as well as individuals are moved by mixed impulses. To the Doge and his councillors it may well have seemed that the expansion of the Venetian Republic and the cause of Christendom were not incompatible. Certain it is that this, the finest armament that ever set sail to wrest the Holy Land over seas from the infidel, was diverted by Venetian policy to an attack on the possessions of a Christian prince, himself a crusader, and after wasting a precious year melted away in a wanton conquest and spoliation of the capital of Eastern Christendom, and in the attempt to maintain there a Franco-Venetian Empire.

In February 1201 the envoys reached Venice and laid their request before the Doge. A delay of three days was asked. On the fourth day they entered the ducal palace, qui mult ere riches et biaus (which was very rich and beautiful), and found the Doge seated in the midst of his Council. They prayed his help on behalf of the high barons of France who had taken the cross to revenge the shame of Jesus and to reconquer Jerusalem, for no people were so mighty on sea or so powerful to further their cause. They entreated him in the name of God to have pity on the land beyond the sea and on the shame of Jesus Christ, and lend them warships and transports. “This,” replied the Doge, “is a great thing you ask,” and begged eight days’ interval for reflection. In due time the terms on which help would be forthcoming were stated. Venice would furnish transports for 4500 horses and 9000 esquires, ships for 4500 knights and 20,000 footmen, with provisions for nine months. The sum asked was 85,000 marks in silver of the standard of Cologne. The terms were to hold good for one year from the day of the departure of the Armata, “to do the service of God and of Christianity in whatsoever place it may befall.” The Republic would add on her own part fifty armed galleys on condition that of the conquests “which we shall make on land or sea we shall have the one half and you the other.” The envoys requested a day’s delay. They took counsel by night and in the morning came before the Doge and agreed to the terms. “The Doge summoned the Senate and Great Council, and by his great wisdom and clear wit disposed them to do his will and praise his purpose. Then he assembled in the Chapel of St Mark 10,000 of his people and bade them hear mass and pray God for counsel concerning the envoy’s request, and so did they most willingly. When mass was ended the Doge begged the envoys to come before the people and humbly entreat them to agree to the conditions. There was great curiosity to see the barons, and they were much gazed at. Jeffrey spoke for them, and said: ‘Sirs! the highest and most powerful among the barons of France have sent us before you. They crave that ye may take pity on Jerusalem, which is in bondage to the infidel, and that for God’s sake you be willing to aid therein to avenge the shame of Jesus Christ, for they know no other nation so mighty as yours on the sea, and they command us to fall at your feet and not to rise again till you have granted their prayer and had pity on the Holy Land oltremer.’ Then the six fell upon their knees with many tears at the feet of the multitude, and the Doge and all his people burst into tears of pity and cried aloud with one voice—‘We consent, we consent.’ Great was the tumult, so that the very ground did shake. When the noise was calmed and that great pity assuaged, the good Doge ascended the pulpit and said: ‘Sirs! behold the honour that God hath shown you, in that the best nation in the world has scorned all the other nations and chosen your company to effect together a thing of such high import as the deliverance of our Lord.’ All the fair words the Doge spoke to them I cannot relate.”

Sealed contracts were exchanged with more weeping and genuflexions, the parties to the contract on either side swearing on the bodies of the saints to well and loyally keep their bond. It was secretly agreed that Babylonia (Old Cairo) should be the objective of the expedition. Publicly it was given out that it was bound for beyond the sea. On the Feast of St John, 1202, the Frankish host was to assemble at San Nicolo on the Lido, and the vessels were to be ready. Every detail was specified; the amount of bread and wine per man, and corn per horse. A court of arbitration was formed to settle matters of dispute that might arise. But selfish and worldly motives swayed the actions of too many among the warriors of the cross and whole armies were foresworn. A rich and powerful detachment set sail from Bruges after swearing on the gospels to join at Venice, but engaged transports at Marseilles and Genoa.

Walter of Brienne,[18] with many another great knight, went off to Apulia to subdue the inheritance of his wife and promised to meet the army at Venice. “But adventures befall as it pleaseth God,” and at the trysting-place they were found wanting. Many others, including the Bishop of Autun, broke their oaths.

Great was the consternation of the leaders of the crusade. The Venetians had honourably, indeed generously, done their part. Never had such a fleet been beheld by Christian men. But the crusaders were too few to fill it or to meet the payment due. The barons spared neither entreaties to their erring companions nor their own possessions and credit. Time went on: the day for meeting their obligations was past; the Venetians demanded payment; 30,000 marks were still wanting, perchance to the secret satisfaction of the Republic, for the Venetians had no keen desire to dislocate their remunerative trade with the East. The Sultan of Egypt was their good friend. Commercial privileges had been granted them while the crusaders were gathering at Venice. Two envoys, Marino Dandolo and Dom. Michieli[19] set sail for Egypt, and in May 1202 had concluded a secret treaty between the Republic and the Caliph, by which in return for increased and substantial commercial privileges the Venetians implicitly agreed to divert the fleet from any attack on Egypt.

The Doge was not slow to make the most of the crusaders’ hard case. For the fifth time Zara had revolted and was held for the King of Hungary. The Frankish leaders were eating their hearts out at the delay; inaction was demoralising their forces. The Doge offered a compromise. The contract had been broken, and legally the amount paid was forfeited, but if the barons would help the Venetians to subdue Zara on the way, the Armata might sail and payment of the balance of money be deferred. The papal legate, Peter of Capua, indignantly declaimed against the bargain, but the barons were in a cleft stick. They could do no other than accept, and the chance of winning from the spoils of Zara enough to pay the balance of their debt was a potent factor in their decision.

All was now ready; the people were assembled in St Mark’s on Sunday, the barons being present, and says Villehardouin ere mult gran feste (there was a very great festival). “Before Mass began the Doge ascended the pulpit and said: ‘Sirs, ye are companions of the best nation in the world for the highest emprise that ever man attempted. I am old and feeble and have need of repose, nor am I whole in body; but I perceive that none can guide nor command you so well as I who am your lord. If ye will grant that I take the sign of the cross and watch over you and direct you, and that my son remain in my stead to guard the land then will I go to live or die with you and the pilgrims.’ When the people heard him they all cried out, ‘We beseech you in God’s name that ye do even as ye say.’ Then great pity melted the hearts of the people of the city and of the pilgrims, and many tears were shed for this valiant man who had so much cause to remain at home, being old, and though his eyes were beautiful he saw not, because he had lost his sight through a wound. But he was of exceeding great courage. He left the pulpit and fell on his knees before the altar, and the cross was sewn on the front of a great silken biretta that it might be seen of all. Then the Venetians began to put on the cross in great numbers, for up to that day few were they who joined.”

At length on the octave of the Feast of the Holy Incarnation of Jesus Christ the host took ship and set forth. Never did so great a fleet sail from any port. “Ah! dear God,” exclaimed Jeffrey, “how many a good steed was there, and great ships charged with arms and gallant knights and squires and banners so fair.”

It was indeed a gorgeous and thrilling spectacle. Three chief Venetian galleys, the Peregrina, the Paradiso and the Aquila towered above the rest of the fleet. The vessels were one mass of glittering steel and magnificently coloured banners, that of St Mark, a golden lion on crimson ground, waved proudly in the wind. The air trembled at the blast of trumpets. In swelling chorus the host burst forth into the Veni Creator Spiritus, and the mighty fleet turned its prows—for Zara.

On the way a punitive call was made at Trieste, which agreed to pay tribute to Venice. Another call was made at Omago and an oath of allegiance exacted. Zara was reached on St Martin’s Eve, the 10th of November. The stronghold so impressed the Marshal of Champagne that he exclaims: “How shall such a city be taken except God be with us!” On the 18th, after a stubborn fight the city yielded, pillage followed and half the booty went to each ally. The Pope was scandalised. He had tried to tamper with the French: he now demanded the restitution of the pillage of a city that belonged to a Christian king and crusader. The barons excused themselves as best they might; the Venetians boldly told the papal nuncio that the Holy See had no concern with the affairs of the Republic.

The season was now far advanced, and the fleet wintered at Zara. The chief of the Crusaders, Boniface, Marquis of Montferrat, who had stayed at Venice, took up his command after the capture. The problem of the fate of the expedition faced the allies. Already a bloody fray had embittered the feeling between Venetian and Frank. Boniface, too, was tempted by his own ambition. He claimed the kingdom of Salonika, and hoped to subdue it with the help of the Armata.

And events seemed to beckon away from duty. The sickening drama of bloodshed and treachery that stained the palace of the Greek Emperors during the Comnenian dynasty had, in 1185, reached the point when Isaac Angelos Comnenos, having stabbed his kinsman Andronicus (himself a usurper), was enthroned at Constantinople. But a throne whose steps are drenched with blood affords but a slippery foothold. In 1195 Isaac in his turn was dethroned, cast into prison, and his sight destroyed by his brother Alexius Angelos, who unaccountably spared Isaac’s son Alexius. He was a bright lad twelve years of age when his father fell, and was forced by his uncle to attend the court and exalt the usurper’s state. He escaped, and after many vicissitudes reached the court of Philip of Swabia, who had married his sister Irene. The fleet was on the point of leaving Zara when the young Alexius arrived to implore the help of Boniface on behalf of himself and his father Isaac. King Philip promised in his nephew’s name tempting rewards. The moment was well chosen, Boniface with an eye to Salonika lent a willing ear to his plaint: Dandolo, too, apart from the 100,000 marks to be gained by another year’s hire of the fleet, had politic reasons for giving the wronged prince a sympathetic audience. Egypt would be safe from attack, and the Venetians had an old score to settle with the Greeks, for a large part of the indemnity promised by the Emperor Manuel for the wanton spoliation of the Venetians in 1171 was still unpaid. Isaac, first repudiating, then yielding to threats, had promised to pay the 200,000 marks due. When Alexius Angelos seized the throne the account was still unsettled. He, too, was evasive, though ready enough to grant commercial favours. The young Alexius, therefore, was told that the leaders would receive him at Corfù, whither the fleet was bound.

But what of the unhappy infidel-ridden land over the sea? Many of the more conscientious knights, mindful of their high purpose and of the holy zeal with which they had set forth, loudly demanded to be led to Syria. The Pope, who had just received news of the most wretched state of the Christians in Palestine, wrote warning the crusaders that they had taken the cross not to avenge the wrongs of princes but of God: he refused his benediction, and menaced them with the curses of heaven. But it was of no avail, present gain was more potent than a far call to duty. At an opportune moment the young Alexius arrived. The chivalrous natures of the crusaders were wrought upon: the recalcitrant knights were swept away in a wave of enthusiasm for the wronged prince’s cause.

After much negotiation the start was made from Corfù on the eve of Pentecost 1203. “There were all the transports and galleys of the host and many a merchant ship. The day was fair and clear; the wind gentle and mild; the sails were set to the breeze. And Jeffrey de Villehardouin doth truly witness, who never lied in one word to his knowledge, and who was present at every Council, that never was so fair a sight. And verily it seemed that the fleet must subdue the land, for so far as the eye could reach nought could be seen save the sails of ships and of vessels, so that men’s hearts did much rejoice.” Once again the avenging host set forth, and not against Saracen or Turk but against the capital of Eastern Christendom.

To follow the incidents of the capture and re-capture of Constantinople would take us too far. Venetian and Frank fought with desperate courage. Dandolo by his local knowledge (for he had already been ambassador there), by his iron will, his ready wit and dauntless spirit became leader. It was a stupendous venture. The apparently impregnable city of a million souls was girt by a double rampart of walls and towers, and a moat wide and deep. The attacking force could have barely exceeded 20,000 men. Dandolo was the hero of the siege. At a critical moment the brave old sea-dog was seen erect in his armour on the prow of his galley, the gonfalon of St Mark unfurled before him. His men had wavered; with entreaties and threats he urged them on. The galley was driven ashore and the old fellow[20] leapt on to the beach, the gonfalon being borne before him. From shame and humiliation the Venetians followed. Twenty towers soon fell into the hands of the Venetians. Meantime news came that the French were in danger. Alexius Angelos at the head of sixty squadrons was about to fall upon them. Dandolo, with characteristic chivalry, let the prize fall from his grasp and hastened to relieve his allies. The very rumour of his coming was enough to scare the craven heart of the Greek prince. He returned within the walls, and having gathered a great treasure of gold and jewels, sought safety and won disgrace by flight. Isaac was led from a dungeon to a throne: his wife recalled to his side: his son restored to him. But his joy was tempered by a hard and one-sided bargain. Fulfilment of the promise made by Philip in the name of young Alexius at Zara was demanded by the allies.

Twenty thousand marks were to be paid to the Venetians; the Greek Church was to recant her heresy and submit to Rome: 10,000 men were to be raised for the Holy Land. Young Alexius as he entered the city in triumph by his bearing and presence won the hearts of the people. But the bond lay heavily on the restored family. Holy vessels and images of the saints were seized and melted; private fortunes were impounded. Yet sacrilege and extortion combined did no more than meet in part the demands of the allies. Disaffection began to show itself. Young Alexius, fearing lest the departure of the crusaders would leave him at the mercy of his fickle subjects, urged his deliverers to winter at Constantinople, and promised to pay the Venetians for the extended hire of the fleet. The more restive barons, chafing at the delay, were overruled by the authority of the Doge. The young Prince gained his purpose. Boniface was bribed by the promise of 1600 pieces of gold to head him (now joint-Emperor with his father) on a tour of the provinces to test the loyalty of his subjects and attempt the capture of his uncle. But his popularity at the capital, already waning, was quenched by the fanatical license of the Latins, who, in destroying a mosque and in spoiling the Jews, wrought the destruction by fire of a whole quarter of the city. On his return, young Alexius had to choose between his subjects and the hatred of the Latins. He was weak and angered both. The allies sternly demanded the execution of his bond. Their envoys with almost incredible daring penetrated to the very throne-room of the palace, passing lines of sullen and angry Greeks eager to leap at their throats. They saw Isaac enthroned, between his wife and son and surrounded by all the luxury and pomp of an Eastern court. In a peremptory voice they delivered their ultimatum, strode proudly from the imperial presence, leaped on their horses, and rode to camp. They were but six, three Venetians and three Franks, who braved the fierce passions of a treacherous populace and the armed retainers of a despotic court. The rage of the Greeks at this insult reacted on the restored family. Alexius Ducas, dubbed Murzuphles from his black and shaggy eyebrows, led the revolt. The Venetian fleet was saved from destruction only by the vigilance of a sentry and the address of the sailors.

The instrument of the popular vengeance was a Prince of far different calibre from his namesake. His unscrupulous ambition was served by energy, resolution and capacity. He first fawned on the young Alexius, then seized his person and saw him strangled. At once grasping the sceptre, the opportune death of Isaac spared him another crime. He sent an envoy with a plausible story to the French camp and an invitation to the chiefs of the army to dine at the palace, but the sagacity of the Doge saved them from the fate that awaited them had they accepted.

After some parley the second siege of Constantinople was decided upon. A plan of operations and the principles on which the booty was to be shared were arranged. It was a tougher job than before. Murzuphles was a resourceful leader; the Greeks were hot with the passion for revenge. Early on the morning of the 9th of April 1204 the assault began. The French made desperate though unsuccessful efforts to scale the walls. But stout old Dandolo heartened his Venetians by an oration thus given by Da Canale:—

“Sirs, marvel not that the French have failed to take the city, for though they be brave men and wise they are not used to climb ships’ ladders as you are. Remember what your forefathers did at Tyre, and through Syria and Dalmatia and Romania, where verily no fortress could withstand their onslaught. I know well that ye be of such lineage that no city can be defended against you. And I promise you, by the faith I hold in God, that I will share among you the great treasure within the city; and to the first who shall plant the ensign of Monsignor S. Marco on the walls I will give 1000 perperi; to the second, 800; to the third, 500; to the fourth, 300; to the fifth, 200; and 100 to every one who shall mount the walls. Now, be valiant, that the blood of your forefathers, whose issue ye are, may be proven in you, so that by the help of Jesus Christ and of S. Marco, and by the prowess of your bodies, ye be masters of the city and may enjoy the riches thereof.”

On the 12th the second assault was made, and after varying fortune, by a happy change of wind, the huge galleys, the Pellegrino and the Paradiso, the flagships of the bishops of Soissons and Troyes, firmly locked together, were brought under one of the principal towers of the city. The ladders just reached the summit. Two whose names are preserved to us, Pietro Alberti of Venice and André d’Artoise of France, were the first to win a foothold; their fellows swarmed up, and the tower was won. Meanwhile three gates were battered down. Panic seized the Greeks, and the besiegers rushed in. They stood by their arms all night, and in the morning the enormous riches of the city lay before the victors. It was forbidden to slay, but free scope was allowed to rapine. The sack of the town began, and lasted through Holy Week. “Humanity reddens with shame,” says Romanin, “and the mind recoils from telling the story of the horrors committed.” The Crusaders’ lust was unrestrained even by the sanctity of virgin vows. Nothing was spared. Palaces and houses were ransacked; churches and sanctuaries stripped; priceless statues were melted down; pictures torn to shreds. The Latin Christians wrought more havoc in those few days than Hun, Sclav or Arab had done in as many centuries. The Venetians, says Romanin, che animo più gentile aveano (who were a more cultured people), exerted themselves to save as many as possible of the wondrous works of art from destruction.

It had been decided that all the loot should be placed in three churches set apart for that purpose, but large spoils of jewels and of smaller objects of value were secreted by individuals. The worth of the French plunder, after deducting the 50,000 marks due to the Venetians, amounted to the magnificent sum of 400,000 marks. All over Western Europe the monasteries and churches were enriched by reliquaries and precious stones, some of them finding their way as far as Norfolk. The plunder of the city, says Jeffrey, exceeded all that has been witnessed since the creation of the world. The four famous bronze horses of St Mark’s formed part of the Venetian spoil. It is related that a hind foot of one of the horses was broken during the transit, and Morosini, the owner of the galley that was freighted with them, begged permission to retain the foot as a memorial. The Senate agreed, and had another foot cast and fitted to the horse. “And,” says Sanudo, “I have seen the said foot at the front of Morosini’s house in S. Agostino, whence it was afterwards removed to the corner of a house in the SS. Apostoli.”

Two master passions dominated the Venetians—to possess living commerce; and dead saints. As a centre of hagiolatry, Venice now became second to Rome. She acquired the bodies of St Simeon the Apostle and of St Lucy, part of the wood of the Holy Cross, some of the Holy Blood, part of the body of St John the Baptist, the arm of St George the Martyr, and the famous image of the Virgin, which still remains the object of Venetian devotion in St Mark’s.

The political results were incalculable, for the chief bulwark of the Cross against the growing power of the Crescent was shattered. Six electors were appointed by each of the allies to choose an Emperor. Dandolo by his commanding genius was the obvious choice, but he refused the proffered honour and threw his weight on the side of Baldwin, Count of Flanders, who became the first Latin Emperor of the East. Of the territorial spoils St Mark took indeed the Lion’s share. One-fourth formed the Emperor’s domain; another fourth was shared among the Frankish lords, Boniface’s reward being the sovereignty of Crete and of Salonika. To Venice went one-half—a rich possession, including the Morea, the Ionian islands, the islands of the Archipelago, a large slice of Thessaly, among other cities those of Adrianople, Trajanople and Durazzo, the province of Servia and the coasts of the Hellespont. But the Lion of St Mark had a greedy maw. Like the Lupa in the “Inferno,” after a meal he was hungrier than before. Crete, the largest and most fertile of Mediterranean islands, was a trading centre of tempting value and covetous eyes were set upon it. Boniface was approached, and for a sum of 10,000 marks the island was transferred to Venice which at one bound rose to be the dominant power in the Levant. To the title of Doge of Venice, Croatia and Dalmatia was now added that of Despot and Lord of one-fourth and one-half of the Romanian Empire. A Venetian—Tomaso Morosini—was appointed to the Partriarchate of Constantinople, and the Chapter filled with his nominees.

But to carve out territory on a map is one thing: effective possession another. Adrianople was recalcitrant. In April 1205, while the united forces of Baldwin and Dandolo were attempting to subdue it, the King of Bulgaria, once spurned by the haughty Latins, appeared with a powerful army to raise the siege. The Latins, attacking with their usual impetuosity, were snared by the enemy’s light cavalry; the Emperor and many knights taken prisoners; the main body put to flight. Jeffrey gives a graphic picture of the disaster. The old Doge, infirm but unbroken in spirit, advised a retreat to Constantinople and led the van. The retreat was successfully accomplished but the Latins were in evil plight; their Emperor was a prisoner; Boniface slain; the whole country swarming with the Bulgarian light horse; an Armenian reinforcement wiped out. And now the great Doge, their chief counsellor and leader, worn by disease and privation, died. His long span of life was but two years short of a century. He was buried in June 1205, with due pomp and honours, at St Sophia in a private chapel belonging to the Venetians, “for even the church was divided.”

The magnificent tomb erected to perpetuate his memory was destroyed by Mahomet II. and the old hero’s breast-plate, helmet, spurs and sword were afterwards given to Gentile Bellini, who brought them back to Venice on his return from the Turkish court. To this day a marble slab remains in the south gallery of the great mosque of S. Sofia with the inscription—Henricus Dandolo. His best epitaph, is the simple phrase of Jeffrey, mult ere sages et proz (he was very wise and brave).

It was on the 20th of July that a post galley brought the sad news to Venice that her greatest Doge lay dead. Pietro Ziani, a wealthy noble, experienced in Venetian statecraft, was chosen to second him. The Republic had now in fact become an empire. From the mother city along the Gulf of Trieste over Dalmatia, Croatia, the Morea, the islands of Corfù, Crete and the Archipelago from Greece to Constantinople, even up to Syria, the standard of St Mark was planted. Most of the islands were granted in fief to such of the leading Venetian nobles who engaged to secure and maintain effective possession. Crete was made a great feudal colony. Many vassals of the Greek Empire swore allegiance to their new masters and promised tribute. But the cost of empire was soon felt. A new loan was raised. A fleet of forty-three galleys and thirty ships was placed under the joint-command of Premarino and of Dandolo’s son Renier, for the seas were swarming with Genoese pirates and a heavy task remained to consolidate and occupy the new possessions. The fleet sailed eastwards and in its way captured the Genoese corsair Liovecchio, an old enemy of the Republic, and twelve galleys; another, Arrigo Bellapolo, with five galleys, met the same fate. The Venetians swept the sea. Da Canale describes them as swooping down like hawks on their quarry. They reached Corfù, hanged Liovecchio and planted a garrison there. Crete, ever a stubborn and rebellious vassal, gave more trouble. Renier Dandolo was slain, and many a stout Venetian bit the dust or died a sailor’s death ere the dominion of Venice was made good. The Latins meanwhile had recovered themselves at Constantinople, but their empire was a shadow; the real masters were the Venetian governor and his ubiquitous officials. Baldwin I. did not long survive his captivity. The story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife was enacted in his person and that of the Bulgarian queen. He met a horrible death at the hands of the abused king and his successor and brother, Henry of Flanders, held unquiet possession of the Empire for ten years, continually fighting against stubborn vassals. Henry’s sister, Yolande, and her consort, Peter of Courtenay, next sat on the unstable throne. Their son Robert, a feeble prince, succeeded. His incapacity and the anarchic state of the Empire, raised the most vital problem that ever Venetian statesmen were called to face. Events seemed inevitably tending to one solution—that they who were masters in fact of the new Latin Empire should proclaim themselves so in name. Doge Ziani called a meeting of the Great Council and put forward a proposition, fraught with tremendous issues, that the seat of the Government should be transferred from Venice to Constantinople. The orations made by Ziani for and by the venerable Angelo Faliero against the revolutionary motion are given at great length by the chroniclers. A curious passage in the speech attributed to Faliero recalls Macaulay’s famous New Zealander: “A few years hence perchance,” cried the old statesman, “some Venetian traveller calling at these islands will find our canals choked, our dykes levelled, and our dwellings razed. He will see a few pilgrims wandering amid the ruins of our rich monasteries, a scanty and fever-stricken population; and a foreign ruler will be sitting in this very hall dictating laws to what was once Venice.” When the motion was put to the vote the ballots for and against were found to be equal, and a casting vote decided the fate of Venice. It was known afterwards as the vote of Providence.

CHAPTER V
Peace and War—The Holy Inquisition—Conflict with the Genoese—Loss of Constantinople

“Who hath taken this counsel against ... the crowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the honourable of the earth.”—Isaiah.

THE Easter of 1214, falling in a year of general peace and prosperity in Italy, was celebrated by many great festivals. The Trevisans had sent invitations to the whole surrounding country, especially to the Venetians, and never was so magnificent a spectacle. The procession of the Trade Guilds was witnessed by a great multitude, among whom were 2600 noble gentlemen and 3600 gentlewomen with a numerous train of squires and pages and ladies-in-waiting. The principal feature was a Castle of Love erected in the Piazza, with portcullis and turrets complete, decorated inside and out with precious tapestry and other sumptuous ornaments, wherein were placed the fairest and most graceful dames and damsels richly clothed with silk and resplendent with jewels.

It was ordained that they should be striven for per amore by three companies of noble youths. On the one part the Trevisans essayed to effect a surrender to them by calling, “Madama Beatrice, Madama Fiordelice! ora pro nobis!” On the other part the Paduans exhorted the ladies to yield to them, and shot into the Castle sweets, pasties, tarts and roast chicken that they might eat and be well-disposed. But, if we may believe Sanudo, the Venetians, with a profounder insight into feminine psychology, cast in, with nutmegs, ginger, cinnamon and sweet-smelling spices, some ducats and other coins. The fair garrison, seeing the gentilezza of the Venetian youths at once capitulated. Whereupon was great rejoicing and the standard of St Mark was run up on the Castle ramparts. This proved too much for the Paduans; they waxed wroth and tore down the Venetian standard and broke it to pieces. An undignified scuffle ensued and the celebration of peace ended in open war. The Paduans aided by the Trevisans, wasted Venetian territory, advancing near to Chioggia and threatening the fortress of Bebbe, but by the prompt action of the Podestà of Chioggia, who called out the militia without waiting for orders, the garrison was relieved and the Paduans routed. Four hundred prisoners were made, among whom were two hundred nobles, and taken to Venice. The Paduan prisoners were humiliated—it is said by offering ten of them to any Venetian who brought a white hen—and afterwards released without ransom through the mediation of the Patriarch of Aquileia. The Chioggians were relieved of a tribute of twenty couples of hens due to the Doge, and their Podestà was richly rewarded.

For twenty-five years save one, Ziani presided over the destinies of the Republic. Her commercial influence was extended. Valuable treaties were concluded with Germany, Hungary, Aleppo, Egypt and Barbary.

“In this reign,” says Sanudo, “were two most saintly men, Francis of Assisi and Domenic of Spain. Now St Francis returning[21] from beyond the seas came to Venice where he found that many birds were come to sing on the boughs of the trees in the marshes. He having gone thither with his companion, stood in the midst of the birds reciting the offices and commanded them to be silent; whereupon they kept silence, nor did they depart until he had given them leave. And he stayed in a certain oratory where at present are a church and monastery of the friars called San Francesco del Deserto.” The traveller to-day on his way to Torcello will see in the distance on his right hand the island and monastery, with its picturesque setting of pine and cypress. It is still inhabited by a few brothers and recalls the sweetest, gentlest human soul that ever breathed since Him of Galilee.

The choice of Ziani’s successor gave rise to a novel incident. The votes of the College were equally divided between Marino Dandolo and Giacomo Tiepolo. For five days they were scrutinised in the vain hope of finding a casting vote. The Senate then authorised an appeal to chance. Lots were cast, and fortune declared in favour of Giacomo Tiepolo on the 6th of March 1229. During the interregnum between the resignation of Ziani and the election of his successor opportunity was taken to strengthen still further the power of the aristocracy and to weaken that of the Doge. A Board of Correctors of the Ducal Promissione or Coronation oath, and another of Inquisitors of the dead Doge were formed. The former was composed of five men of great wisdom and experience, whose duty it was to examine and reform the Promissione at the death of each Doge. On the latter board three sat who were charged to listen to the complaints of those who felt aggrieved at any action of the late Doge; to examine his papers for any unpaid debts, and award praise or blame of his conduct whether as citizen or as head of the state. As a result, the Promissione Ducale exacted from Dandolo and Ziani was made still more stringent in the case of Tiepolo. He was forbidden to communicate with foreign princes or to interfere in ecclesiastical matters: he was made to pay taxes. The Promissione sworn by Tiepolo is given in full by Romanin, and covers nine closely-printed large octavo pages. The details are curious: the number of his cooks was fixed; he swore to receive no gifts nor presents of any kind from any person save and except rosewater, flowers, sweet-smelling herbs and balsam, “which it shall be lawful for us and our agents to receive.”

A great work was done in the codification and reform of the statute laws. The navigation laws were made a model of humane legislation.

Meanwhile anxious eyes were again turned to the East. As the Latin kingdom waned the Republic had increased her power at Constantinople, and in return for naval services the arsenal was ceded to her. On the death of Robert Courtenay the crown descended to his brother, Baldwin II., a lad of ten. But in stirring times a child emperor was impossible, and John of Brienne, titular king of Jerusalem, a heroic old crusader, was during his minority chosen as Emperor.

John of Brienne had filled his thankless office but two years when the capital was menaced by the allied forces of the Emperor of Nicea and the King of Bulgaria. It was a critical moment. The Latin army was much reduced by desertion, and it is said Brienne had less than two hundred knights and four hundred footmen to oppose an army of many tens of thousands. But the brave old Emperor—he was eighty years of age—put himself at the head of his little band and sallied forth to meet the host. An impetuous charge scattered them like chaff. The Venetians, too, were not slack. An urgent message had been sent for help, and a fleet of twenty galleys was hastily sent to Constantinople, which swooped down on the Greek fleet at the entrance to the Dardanelles. The whole Armata and transports were destroyed or taken, and the Venetian admirals made triumphant entry into Constantinople to receive the felicitations of the Emperor. Two years later the Greeks were again foiled by the irresistible onslaught of the Venetian and Latin fleets.

At the death of John of Brienne financial ruin was impending and a strange expedient was adopted to raise a loan. Of the sanctuary spoils at the taking of Constantinople, the crown of thorns had been appointed to the emperor. It was now brought forth with the lance of the passion and mortgaged to the Venetian Bailo of Constantinople, Alberto Morosini, for the loan of 14,000 perperi subscribed by the leading merchants. The bill fell due: the money was not forthcoming and the security was legally forfeited. But a third party was found in the person of a rich Venetian banker, who, towards the end of the year 1237, advanced the sum for a month to give breathing time. If the payment was again deferred the lender might remove the relic to Venice for a period of four months, which being expired the mortgagee was empowered to foreclose. Meanwhile the saintly king, Louis IX. of France, had heard of the transaction and was much scandalised. He sent two Dominicans to Constantinople to redeem the pledge and secure the precious relic for Paris. It was, however, already on its way to Venice when the two black friars reached the capital of the Empire. The good ship that was freighted with the thorns arrived at Venice on the 4th of September 1238. Hastily the envoys retraced their steps and sought an audience of Tiepolo, who straightway led them to St Mark’s and showed them the sacred treasure. They then went to the banker and offered the money to redeem the pledge. It was handed to the friars who returned joyfully to Paris. King Louis, barefoot and in his shirt, took part in the solemn procession that accompanied the relic through the streets of Paris and the Sainte Chapelle, the richest gem of Gothic architecture in North Europe, was built to receive it.

Commercial expansion continued through Tiepolo’s reign. Trieste renewed her fealty and treaties were concluded with Ravenna, Padua and Ragusa. The Sultans of Aleppo and of Egypt confirmed and extended privileges granted to the Venetians, and owing to the skill of their ambassadors Barbary and Armenia were generous in concessions. To the tale of saintly relics were added the bodies of St Marina and of St Paul the first hermit, minus the head.

“In Tiepolo’s time,” says Sanudo, “so I have read, our citizens went as magistrates to all the cities of Italy, for they were righteous men.” They were usually chosen by the free communes of Lombardy, where their capacity and incorruptibility made them eagerly sought for. The Doge’s son, Pietro, ruled at Treviso; a Zeno at Bologna; a Morosini at Faenza; a Dandolo at Conegliano; a Badoer at Padua. The cities of the Lombard League deposited their funds with Venetian bankers. The papacy which had consistently taken the side of the free cities of Italy against the western emperors now found herself sorely pressed in her fierce struggle with Frederic II. Pope Gregory IX. turned with longing eyes to the one Italian state that could decide the contest. Desire for vengeance and state policy made it easy for Venice to join the league—at a price. Eccelino da Romano, at Frederic’s instigation, had devastated Venetian territory up to Mestre and Murano to punish the Republic for her moral support to the league. It was agreed that the Venetians should fit out a punitive expedition to Sicily, of which half the cost was to be met by the Pope, who promised moreover to cede Bari and Salpi to them and to grant in feud all the territory they might conquer in Apulia and Sicily.

Ferrara, formerly held from the Holy See by Azzo of Este, had become a Ghibelline stronghold and Azzo had been banished. To Venice happily Guelph and Ghibelline were but names. No factions destroyed her domestic peace; no feudal tyrants spoiled her citizens, or fury of popular jealousy flung itself against her nobles. But in Ferrara valuable trading rights granted by the Countess Matilda and maintained by the Guelphs were ignored by the Ghibellines. The restoration of these rights was made the price of her alliance with the Papal forces in an attack on Ferrara. The siege was a long one. The city was defended by the Imperialists under the most famous soldier of the day, Taurelli Salinguerra. At a critical moment the Papal legate appealed for help to the Doge, who, impelled by memories of his great predecessor, determined to take command of the forces in person. His son was left to rule in his absence, and after mass in the Church of Santo Spirito the expedition sailed forth, the Bucintoro, with the Doge on board, leading. Ferrara was subdued and the Doge was careful before leaving to exact from the restored Azzo the reinstatement of the Venetians in their former advantageous position as traders. Meanwhile the naval expedition had reached Apulia and after devastating many cities, returned to Venice with a rich booty.

Tiepolo is said to have possessed a prodigious memory. “This note I have found,” says Sanudo, “solum in one chronicle, yet it was the truth. This Doge was very wise and had great fame through all parts of the world. When any ambassadors came to deliver their suits he held his eyes shut: after he had heard he recited chapter by chapter and answered everything which they had expounded in such manner that all marvelled greatly at so profound a memory, for he was a most wise Doge.” On the 20th of May, 1249, Tiepolo, weary of his burden of the state, laid it down to retire to his house in S. Agostino.

The foundation in 1234 of the Dominican Monastery and Church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo (S. Zanipolo) was due, the chroniclers relate, to the piety of the Doge, who saw in a vision the oratory and neighbouring Piazza of San Danieli filled with flowers and white doves bearing on their heads crowns of gold, and two angels came down from heaven and perfumed the place with golden censers. Then a voice was heard saying: “This is the spot I have chosen for my preachers.” Thereupon the Doge made over certain marshy lands near Santa Maria Formosa to Brother Alberico of the Dominicans, and aided by papal favour and the piety of individuals the building was so far advanced by 1293 that it was ready to accommodate the general chapter of the order. The facade was finished in 1351, and after the lapse of a century the mortal remains of the founder were laid there. His simple tomb wrought with figures of doves and angels, recalling the visions, still exists on the left of the entrance. The great church and monastery of the rival order of friars, S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, was also begun in Tiepolo’s reign. Until that time the friars of St Francis, says Sanudo, had no monastery in this city and dwelt near S. Lorenzo, where they worked with their hands and lived by their labour and by alms.

At Tiepolo’s death the electoral college increased to forty-one, chose Marin Morosini, an experienced magistrate and civil servant, as his successor. Meantime the Inquisitors had met and decided that the late Doge had been too zealous in the advancement of his sons. A new clause was therefore added to the coronation oath forbidding the Doge to ask or cause to be asked any office for any person, or to accept any charge outside Venetian jurisdiction or in Istria.

The short reign of Morosini was marked by one important innovation. The Republic by tradition and policy was eminently tolerant. It was essential to a great commercial metropolis that men of all nations and of all creeds should freely assemble and carry on their business without fear of ecclesiastical penalties. Venice therefore had consistently refused to admit the tribunal of the Holy Inquisition within her boundaries. In the Promissione Ducale of Morosini, however, an article was inserted by virtue of which the Doge was ordered to name in agreement with his Council certain religious men of integrity and wisdom who were to search out heretics, and commit to the flames those who were declared to be such by the Patriarch of Grado or any of the bishops of the Dogado. But before condemnation the consent of the Doge and his Council had first to be obtained. The Republic thus asserted her authority and defended her subjects from arbitrary and ecclesiastical domination. This, however, was far from satisfying the papal authorities. The Venetians were repeatedly exhorted to admit the jurisdiction of the Holy Office itself, but nothing further was effected until 1289 when it was decided to accept the Inquisition, but under stringent limitations. Two of the three Inquisitors appointed by the Pope were made subject to the veto of the Doge. Three lay representatives, the Savii all’Eresia,[22] over whom the Vatican should have no power to assert direct or indirect power, were to be present at every session of the tribunal with the object of preventing abuses, false accusations, or any exercise of arbitrary power. They had the right to suspend proceedings or stay execution of sentences, and were charged to keep the Government informed of all that transpired at the sessions of the Holy Office. Generally they were to maintain the purity of the faith while safeguarding the rights of the State. No extradition was allowed. The property of condemned heretics[23] was to descend to their heirs. The funds of the Holy Office were to be under the charge of a Venetian treasurer who was to render his account and be responsible to the civil authorities alone.

Morosini’s reign was a peaceful and happy one. “So long as he was Doge,” says Da Canale, “the Venetians were doubly blest, and with joy and gladness their hearts were filled. Every man, rich or poor, increased his substance, for Messer Marino Morosini was right gracious and none durst assail him in war. His ships went beyond the seas to all places without guard of galleys: he had peace with all: the sea in his time was void of robbers.”

The advent of Renier Zeno in 1253 to the Ducal throne was marked by a further suppression of popular rights. It was decreed that, before publication of the new Doge’s name by the electoral college of the forty-one, the people should swear to accept their choice. The blow was accompanied by an application of Napoleon’s favourite device—Amuse the people with toys. A magnificent tournament and gorgeous processions celebrated the new Doge’s election and enthronement. Zeno was a tried administrator and soldier; he had commanded as podestà the Bolognese forces at the siege of Ferrara. Nor did his military genius rust for lack of use. In his troublous reign of sixteen years began the long and exhausting struggle with Genoa for naval supremacy and commercial monopoly.

At St Jean d’Acre was a church dedicated to St Sabbas, and there the Genoese and Venetians were wont to worship in common—each, however, claiming exclusive ownership in the building. A dispute as to an alleged Venetian corsair captured by the Genoese ended in a riot. The Genoese raided the Venetian ships, sacked their quarter of the city, and burnt the church.

After vain and perhaps insincere attempts at pacification Venice determined to wreak vengeance on her rival, and in 1286 Lorenzo Tiepolo was despatched with a fleet to Acre. He spoiled and burned the Genoese vessels in harbour, landed and destroyed part of their settlement, and after some fighting captured their stronghold, the castle of Mongioia. They sued for a truce, which was granted for two months. As trophies and palpable sign of his success, Tiepolo sent to Venice the short column of porphyry which now stands at the south-west angle of St Mark’s known as the Pietra di Bando, (proclamation stone), because there were promulgated the laws of the Republic; and the two beautifully decorated, square, marble columns that stand side by side facing the Piazzetta, over against the south side of the church.

The truce was a hollow one. Each side was eager to try its strength again, and fleets were hastily collected. A desperate battle was fought between Acre and Tyre. The Genoese were defeated and their admiral was taken prisoner. Meanwhile a second Venetian squadron raided the Genoese settlements all over the Levant. Domestic troubles at Genoa prevented for a time further action, but in 1258 a new fleet was fitted out and set sail under Rosso della Turca to retrieve her fortunes. The Venetians, too, had reinforced their admiral, and the hostile squadrons met on Midsummer Day near the scene of Tiepolo’s former victory. A day was spent in vain attempts by the Genoese admiral to outmanœuvre his enemy. On the morrow he was forced to give battle. Before the action Tiepolo delivered a stirring oration to his men, exhorting them to brave deeds. He bade them remember that the honour of Venice, the command and security of the seas, were at stake. A great shout of Viva San Marco protettore del Veneto dominio was raised, and the attack began. It was a long, bloody and stubborn fight. In the end the Venetians were again victorious. Twenty-five galleys and 2600 men were captured and sent to Venice, the prisoners being lodged in St Mark’s granaries. The remainder of the fleet was scattered and Tiepolo’s damaged vessels returned to Acre to refit, where the Venetians in the heat of victory stained their country’s reputation by a wanton attack on the Genoese quarter, which they sacked and burned.

It was a heartrending spectacle to Christian Europe: another act in that pitiful and suicidal struggle between the two most powerful maritime states which in the end reduced one to impotence, and left the other too exhausted to resist the advancing tide of Turkish conquest. The Papacy, generally solicitous to compose the differences of Christian states, intervened, and an honourable but temporary peace was made.

Three years passed and a fresh storm burst in the East. Under the feeble rule of Baldwin II. the Latin Empire was tottering to its fall. Self-indulgence and corruption had destroyed the character of the Frankish knights, death, desertion and private interest had reduced their numbers. The Emperor, poor futile creature, had employed most of his reign in wandering about Europe from court to court, whining for outside help. The Crown of Thorns had already been pledged, the rich jewels and precious objects alla greca, the beautiful icons of gold and silver, known in Sanudo’s time as the jewels of St Mark, had followed, and the emperor’s son was now left at Venice, a princely pawn, for a loan advanced by the Cappellos. Meanwhile by the energy of her princes the Greek empire of Nicea was being welded into a powerful military state. In 1260, Michael Paleologus, guardian of the heir to the throne, had bid for and won the imperial office. To make his hold secure he aimed at nothing less than the restoration of the Greek Empire at Constantinople. By prudent and virile measures he had collected an army of 25,000 men near the city under the command of his favourite general, Alexios. One of the gates was treacherously opened by night. The city was entered; the Greek inhabitants, weary of alien domination, welcomed the invaders, and the imperial city that cost the apostasy of a Christian army, two sieges and the flower of Frankish chivalry, was lost in a night. Venice truly had long foreseen the danger, and had kept a great armament in the Bosphorus to watch events. Was she playing for a higher stake and hoping ultimately to pick up the falling Frankish sceptre? Chi sa? What did happen to the amazement and disgust of the Home Government was that the fleet, when the critical moment came, was away on a punitive expedition in Thrace, and returned only in time to receive the fugitive Baldwin and the Venetian governor. The crestfallen admirals gazed impotently at the reddening sky, on a multitude of their fellow-countrymen and their allies on the shore stretching forth their hands to implore protection, and heard the cries of the victims, and the exultant shouts of the conquerors in the city. On the 26th of July 1261, Michael Paleologus made a triumphant entry into Constantinople, once more the capital of the Greek Empire, and the pillage was stayed. It was a bitter humiliation to Venice. She knew the Genoese had secretly allied themselves with the new Emperor, and soon learned the price of the alliance. The island of Chios, a Venetian possession, was made over to them for a trading station. The very palace of the Venetian governor was surrendered to them, and later was razed, the more precious of its marble decorations being sent as spoil to Genoa.

Negropont, a Venetian fief, was with Michael’s approval seized and the Venetians expelled. All the results of more than fifty years’ effort and sacrifice were lost in a few hours, and the proud masters of the masters of the Latin Empire found themselves degraded to the level of Pisa in the city they perhaps regarded as their ultimate prize.

CHAPTER VI
The Duel with Genoa—The Closing of the Great Council

“The dire aspect
Of civil wounds ploughed up with neighbours’ swords.”
—Shakespeare.

BUT Venice was yet in the full vigour and buoyancy of lusty manhood, and nerved herself to regain her lost position. Alone among the Italian states she was able to evoke a fervent, whole-hearted patriotism. Rich and poor, patrician and plebeian were stirred. To the amazement of her enemies, fleet after fleet was expedited against the Genoese. Some minor engagements were fought with varying success, and at length the two powers met off Trapani in 1264 for a final battle. The Genoese were superior in numbers, and had the wind in their favour. The Venetians, having intoned the gospel for the day and called for help on Christ and Monsignor S. Marco, began the attack. A fierce struggle ensued on the interlocked vessels, which formed a vast battlefield. The carnage was terrible. At length Venetian courage and Venetian skill inflicted a crushing defeat on the Genoese, who lost the whole of their fleet.

The affection of the Greek Emperor for the Genoese was now chilled; he sued for terms, and after much debate, in which the forward party in Venice vainly pushed their policy of founding a new empire, with its centre at Constantinople, a treaty was signed in 1268, by which Venice recovered her commercial standing in the capital, though she chafed under the necessity of tolerating the presence of her rivals.

In 1265 the banner of the Cross was again raised in Venice, this time against an Italian prince, Eccelino da Romano, the black-browed monster of Padua, who for his infamous cruelty was immersed by Dante up to his eyes among the tyrants in the river of boiling blood. A platform was erected in the Piazza, from which the papal legate, the Archbishop of Ravenna, inveighed against the atrocities committed by the serverissimo tiranno whom the Pope had excommunicated, declaring that if he were permitted to live longer it would be to the shame of Christendom. The Doge made an oration in support of the crusade, and Venice joined the league against the tyrant. Eventually Padua was stormed and captured, Eccelino’s victims released, himself in a later engagement mortally wounded by a bowshot. He fell, asking the name of the place where he was struck. “Sire,” replied his attendant, “it is called Cassano.” An astrologer had foretold that he should die at Bassano. “Bassano, Cassano,” the dying lord was heard to mutter, “small difference is there between Bassano and Cassano.” He plucked the arrow from the wound, thrust aside a friar who sought to confess him and died impenitent. Never was such joy in Italy, says Da Canale, as when the news came that the tyrant, more cruel than Pharaoh or Herod, was slain. The bells were rung all over Venice in praise of God, even as they do on saints’ days. In the evening all the towers were illuminated with candles and torches so that it was a great marvel to see. The same annalist, writing of Venice with all the enthusiasm of an Elizabethan singing the praises of England, gives a vivid picture of his native city as it appeared towards the end of the thirteenth century. “In the year of the Incarnation of our Lord 1267, I, Martin da Canale, toiled and travailed so that I found the ancient story of the Venetians and how they made the fairest, noblest and pleasantest city in the world, filled with all beauty and excellency. And I have set me to translate this story for the honour of that city men call Vinegia from Latin into French, for that language hath course throughout the whole world and is more delightful to read and to hear than any other. For I would have all men to know, who may travel thither, how the noble city is built; how filled with all good things and how mighty is the lord of the Venetians, the most noble Doge; how powerful are her nobles; how full of prowess her people and how all are perfect in the faith of Jesus and to Holy Church obedient, for within that noble Venice neither heretic, nor usurer, nor murderer, nor thief, nor robber dares dwell. And I pray Jesus Christ and His sweet mother, St Mary, and Monsignor St Mark, the Evangelist (in whom after Jesus Christ we have put our trust), that they may grant health and long life to Monsignor the Doge and to the Venetians. From all places come merchants and merchandise, and goods run through that city even as waters do from fountains. Provisions in abundance men find there, and bread and wine and land-fowl and water-fowl, meat, fresh and salt, and great fish from the sea and from the rivers. You shall find within that fair city a multitude of old men and youths, who, for their nobleness, are much praised; merchants, and bankers, and craftsmen, and sailors of all kinds, and ships to carry to all places, and great galleys to the hurt of her enemies. There, too, are fair ladies, youths and maidens adorned most richly.” The chronicler describes the Piazza much as we see it in Gentile Bellini’s picture (p. [262]). “St Mark’s is the most beautiful square in the world. Towards the east is the fairest church in the whole world, the Church of Monsignor St Mark, and next is the palace of Monsignor the Doge, great and most marvellously beautiful. Towards the south is the end of the Piazza over the sea, and on the side of that Piazza (the Piazzetta) is the palace of Monsignor the Doge, and on the other side are palaces to house the commoners, and these hold as far as the Campanile of St Mark, which is so great and high that the like could not be found. And there, next the Campanile, is a hospital which Madonna the Dogaressa has built to receive the sick, and men call it the Hospital of St Mark. Next are the palaces of the treasurers, whom the Venetians call the procurators of St Mark, and next to their mansions are the palaces to lodge nobles, and these houses go far along the Piazza up to a church (S. Geminiano). On the other side (N.) are noble buildings for high barons and gentlemen, and these reach as far as the church of St Mark.”

The firm hand kept by the aristocracy on civil government was felt during Zeno’s reign. The Genoese were too high-spirited to submit to terms while under the shame of defeat and a new naval war was imminent. To meet the cost the corn tax was increased and a bread riot took place on the Piazza. The Doge tried in vain to reason with the mob, and at last was driven to resort to force. Troops were levied; the sedition was crushed; the ringleaders were beheaded between the red columns. But when order was restored the obnoxious tax was quietly withdrawn. The Government was severe to aristocratic brawlers. Two of the Dandolo family sided with the people, and Lorenzo Tiepolo, son of Doge Giacomo, headed the Government party. The rival leaders met in the streets and Tiepolo was assaulted. The Dandoli were at once heavily fined and a law was passed forbidding the people to have the escutcheons of any nobles painted on their houses or to wear any of their emblems. The Doge died in 1268 and was honoured with a sumptuous State funeral in S. Zanipolo.

Before the election of a successor the most complicated machinery ever devised by the wit of man for the election of a chief magistrate was elaborated by the Venetian aristocracy.

The youngest of the Privy Councillors having invoked the divine blessing in St Mark’s, issued forth and laid hands on the first boy he met on the Piazza. Meantime the Great Council met and having excluded all members who were under thirty years of age, those that remained were counted. Ballots equal in number to the purged Council were then prepared, into thirty of which was inserted a piece of parchment inscribed with the word “lector.” The ballots[24] were placed in a hat; the captured boy was introduced and bidden to draw out the ballots and hand one to each Councillor. The ballots were then opened and the thirty who held the parchment stayed in the chamber; the others left. The thirty reduced themselves to nine by the same process; which nine sat in close conclave until they had chosen forty, each by a majority of at least seven votes. These forty were reduced by lot to twelve. The twelve elected twenty-five, each by a majority of at least nine votes. The twenty-five were again reduced to nine, who chose forty-five, each by at least seven votes. The forty-five reduced themselves to eleven who made the final choice of forty-one by at least nine votes each. The electoral college of forty-one thus formed, having heard the Mass of the Holy Ghost, met and chose three presidents and two secretaries. Each elector in turn placed the name of his candidate in an urn. The secretaries unfolded the papers and read out the names. The papers were again folded and placed in the urn and one was extracted. If the candidate thus selected were in the room, he was ordered to withdraw, and each elector invited to state his objections to him. The candidate was then called in to refute any charges made against him, and a last vote was taken for or against the candidate. If he obtained twenty-five ballots he was declared Doge. The election was proclaimed, and a deputation led the Doge-elect to the Ducal Palace, and then by the ducal staircase to St Mark’s. He ascended the marble pulpit to the left of the choir and showed himself to the people. Having heard mass, he swore fealty to the State and to observe its laws. The Primicerio then solemnly invested him with the ducal mantle and handed him the standard of the Republic. He was then chaired and made the usual tour of the Piazza, distributing largess to the people. Afterwards he ascended the great staircase (after the Giants’ Staircase was built he stood between the statues of Mars and Neptune), where the oldest Councillor placed the ducal cap on his head. A banquet given by the Doge to the electors completed the ceremony.

Such, with slight modifications, was the machinery by which the Doges were elected until the fall of the Republic. The ceremony over, public festivities followed. By Da Canale’s vivid description of the rejoicings that attended the election of Lorenzo Tiepolo in 1268 we are able to gain some idea of what they were like. “On the day of S. Apollinare was such great joy in Venice that the mouth of man could not tell of it. For the Venetians had remembrance of Messer Jacopo Tiepolo, father of Lorenzo, how noble and debonnair, how famous for good deeds he was, and great were their hopes of Messer Lorenzo.” Soon as the good news was known the bells rang a glad peal, and all the people, even the little children, ran to St Mark’s shouting, “Messer Lorenzo Tiepolo is made Doge!” After mass and consecration he was given the gonfalon of St Mark all of gold. Having ascended the palace stairs he stood, gonfalon in hand, while the lauds[25] were sung, and again swore fealty to the people and spake wisely to them. Meanwhile his chaplains went to S. Agostino to fetch the Dogaressa, and to her also were praises sung. On the morrow, having made a public reconciliation with the Dandoli, a naval review was held on the Grand Canal in front of the Ducal Palace, led by Pietro Michiel, who with a great fleet of galleys was about to sail overseas. Choirs were aboard who sang the ducal lauds. The waters were alive with boats of all kinds, those of Torcello and Murano adorned with banners and shields distinguishing themselves by their splendour. A grand procession of Guilds next defiled before the Doge. First came the master smiths, two by two, each wearing a garland, accompanied by their trumpeters and other musicians and by their standard-bearers. As they came in front of the Doge they saluted him and wished him long life and victory. His serenity returned a gracious answer, and they then went their way shouting, “Viva nostro Signor Messer Lorenzo Tiepolo,” to S. Agostino, to salute the Dogaressa. Then followed the furriers, dressed in ermine, calimanco and taffeta; the tanners, richly clothed in rare furs and bearing silver cups and phials filled with wine; the weavers, clad in finest cloth; the tailors, magnificently arrayed in white garments, adorned with vermilion stars and trimmed with furs, “and the great joy they made must be truly told, for they set their gonfalon in front, with trumpets and instruments of music, and gave themselves up to great gladness, singing canzoni and folk-songs; and having in their turn saluted their new lord right well, went their way to Madame the Dogaressa rejoicing exceedingly.” The wool-workers bore olive branches in their hands and garlands of olive on their heads—they, too, were filled with great joy. The silk-weavers, “they that make pellisses right richly,” decked their bodies all anew with coats and mantles of fustian. The makers of quilts and doublets, to honour their lord, arrayed themselves newly with cloaks of white, trimmed with fleur-de-lys, and each cloak had a hood richly dight with pearls set in gold; little children marched in front of them. The makers of cloth of gold were apparelled in cloth of purple and of gold, with crowns of pearls set in gold; the shoemakers and mercers in fine silk and cloth of gold; the cheesemongers and pork butchers in cloth of scarlet and purple and divers colours, wearing garlands of pearls and gold; the fishmongers and poulterers followed, “and know, sirs, that right well should Messer Lorenzo Tiepolo have them that sold fish in remembrance as they passed, for many a fair trout and sturgeon and other great fish had he obtained from them.” The glass-makers bore some of the finest of their wares in their group, and the comb-makers a cage full of birds of all kinds, and as they passed, opened the door and set the birds free to delight the Doge. And “there, sirs, you would have heard great laughter on all sides.” But the barber surgeons were they that most distinguished themselves by their ingenuity. They had with them two men on horseback armed cap-à-pie, called knights-errant, who escorted four damsels, most gorgeously apparelled, two on fair steeds and two on foot. On reaching the Doge one of the horsemen dismounted and making obeisance, cried: “Sire, we be two knights-errant who rode to seek adventure, and enduring pains and travail have won these fair damsels. Now are we come to your Court, and if there be any knight who is minded to prove his body and win these strange damsels we are ready to defend them.” “Sirs,” answered the Doge, “ye are welcome, and may the Lord let you rejoice in your conquest, for I will that ye be honoured at my Court.” The knight then remounted his steed and all cried, “Long live our lord, Messer Lorenzo Tiepolo,” and went their way to repeat the play before the Dogaressa.

How many were the Guilds that took part in the procession we know not for Da Canale stays his narrative to tell of the Genoese wars, after describing the goldsmiths wearing on their caps and cloaks, pearls and gold and silver, sapphires, emeralds, jacinths, amethysts, jaspers and carbuncles and other precious stones. After the procession an exhibition was held in the palace, of all the arts of Venice, in honour of the Dogaressa.

Scarcely had the echoes of the music and shouting in the Piazza died away when the gaunt spectre of famine hovered over Venice. The wheat harvest had failed in Europe, the Crusaders had devastated Africa, and she appealed to her allies on the mainland for help. A strong state ever fighting for its own hand may win the respect born of fear, but sympathy, never. The entreaties of Venice fell on deaf ears. Strenuous efforts were made to collect cargoes of corn from Dalmatia, Greece and even Asia. In the nick of time a small consignment came in from Dalmatia and was immediately distributed with absolute impartiality among the people. When the pressure was relieved, a corn office, consisting of three magistrati delle Biade, was created to control the corn trade and take measures to prevent any future possibility of famine. The bas-relief in the Ducal Palace, now known as the Cobden Madonna (p. 253), commemorates the wise means adopted by these magistrates in a time of scarcity two centuries later.

The coronation oath sworn to by Tiepolo was made even more stringent on the accession of Jacopo Contarini in 1275. The Doge was fast becoming little more than the official mouthpiece of the aristocracy. A clause binding the Doge to keep himself informed of the number of prisoners in the cells at the Ducal Palace and to see that each and every prisoner should be brought to trial within a month of his incarceration, demonstrates how careful the aristocracy were to justify power by wise principles of government. Contarini was an old man of eighty when he accepted office, and after six years retired on an annuity of 1500 lire, the first pension ever granted to a Doge. The steady pursuance of commercial aggrandisement brought Venice in the previous reign into conflict with Bologna. Duties were levied on all ships trading in the ports between Ravenna and Fiume, and a captain of the Gulf of Adria appointed to exact them by force of arms. It was only too apparent that Venice aimed at making the whole Adriatic a Venetian sea, and in 1283 the territories of the Republic in Dalmatia were menaced by a formidable coalition of Aquileia, Ancona, and the Count of Goritz.

The Republic replied by laying siege to Trieste. During the armistice granted by Morosini, the Venetian commander, to enable the Patriarch of Aquileia to bury his nephew, fallen in battle, a certain Contestabile of Infantry, Gerard of the Long Lances, was found to have corresponded with the enemy by means of slips of paper attached to his arrows. He confessed under torture and was shot from a mangonel into the enemy’s camp, a mangled mass of treachery. The siege was, however, a failure, and Morosini on his return was disgraced and imprisoned. The victorious allies marched on Caorle, captured the podestà and burned his palace: they even singed the very mane of the Lion of St Mark by a descent on Malamocco. The executive, endowed with unlimited powers, made a levy en masse on the whole able-bodied population, another armament was fitted out and at length Trieste fell. The Pope, anxious to buttress the tottering fabric of the Latin dominion in the East, effected a peace, and a huge bonfire in the Piazza made of the surrendered Triestine artillery satisfied Venetian pride, though her attempt to dominate the Adriatic was but partially successful.

The sleepless eyes of Venetian statesmen were now turned southwards. Constance of Swabia, unhappy Manfred’s

“bella figlia, genitrice
dell’ onor di Cicilia e d’ Aragona,”[26]

by her marriage brought the strong arm of Peter of Aragon to enforce her claims to the throne of the Two Sicilies, which the Pope’s darling, Charles of Anjou, had won by the defeat of Manfred and the destruction of the Ghibelline cause at Benevento.

The Republic, still smarting under the commercial condominium of the Genoese at Constantinople, and enticed by the prospect of regaining her former ascendency, was drawn into an offensive and defensive alliance with the Pope and Charles against the Greeks. But on Easter Eve, in 1282, an insult offered to a noble Sicilian damsel by a French soldier fired the rage of the Sicilians, and before the dawn of Easter Day the blood of eight thousand French in Palermo alone had glutted their vengeance. The Sicilian Vespers wrecked Charles’s fortunes, and the Republic turned to renew her former understanding with the Greek Emperor. Martin IV., enraged at the defection of his ally, laid Venice under the ban of the Church, but his opportune death soon made reconciliation possible.

Visitors to Venice may have noticed a traditional motto written in brass nails on some of the gondolas that ply for hire which admirably sums up the old popular Venetian idea of government: Pane in Piazza: Giustizia in Palazzo (Bread in the market-place: Justice in the palace). This principle always inspired the rule of the aristocracy. In 1284, during Giovanni Dandolo’s reign, a calamitous inundation had plunged the people into misery. To meet their urgent needs a loan was raised on Government security, and ten thousand bushels of wheat were distributed at a nominal cost among the people.

In October of the same year the mint issued the first gold ducat of Venice, which for centuries was famous for its purity, fineness and weight throughout the whole commercial world. Orders were given that it was to be similar to and even purer than the golden florin of Florence, which had been coined thirty-two years before. Sanudo remembers to have seen an inscription on marble in the mint, dated 1285, commemorating the first striking of the gold ducat of the Venetians in honour of the Blessed Mark the Evangelist and of all saints, in the reign of the renowned Doge of the Venetians, Giovanni Dandolo. This beautiful zecchino (sequin) was worth about nine shillings and sixpence in English money, and admirably illustrates the dress of the Doges during a period of five hundred and thirteen years. The evolution of the corno or horn on the ducal bonnet may be clearly traced on the coins issued between the reigns of Francesco Foscari and Leonardo Loredano.

The sepulchre had hardly received the body of Giovanni Dandolo in 1289 when a formidable demonstration in favour of Giacomo, son of Doge Lorenzo Tiepolo, put the new constitution to a severe test. Giacomo, son and grandson of Doges, was known to have popular leanings, and so threatening was the attitude of the crowd on the Piazza that the Privy Council personally urged him to disclaim any intention of accepting the proffered honour.

Tiepolo, preferring his country’s peace to the gratification of his own ambition, exhorted the crowd to respect the law, and left for the mainland till the crisis should be past. But the delicate electoral machinery was never for a moment put out of gear. The provisional Government was appointed; through all the tumult the electors calmly rattled their ballots in the Ducal Palace, and to the sullen displeasure of the popular party a prominent aristocrat, Pietro Gradenigo, was proclaimed Doge twenty-three days after the death of his predecessor. For the first time the officer who recited the formula: Quest’è il vostro doge si vi piacerà, turned aside without staying to receive the approbation of the people.

The long reign of Gradenigo (1289-1311) is one of the most important in the annals of Venice. By the fall of Acre in 1291 the doom of the Christian power in the Holy Land was sealed, and Venice, whose interest in the Crusades and in the Latin dominion over Syria was frankly a commercial one, turned the new situation to her own advantage. Her policy was to frustrate her rivals, the Genoese. To the scandal of Christendom a treaty was concluded with the infidel in 1299, and ere long slaves and materials of war were openly sold by the Venetians in their ports. The Sultan declared in the charter his steadfast will that the Venetians should be protected and honoured beyond all people in the world, and entitled to the sole right of a Saracen escort for Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem. The Genoese found themselves squeezed out of the coast towns, and Venice in exclusive possession of the Syrian trade.

The Pope, anxiously revolving the sad vicissitudes of the Christians in the east, turned to Venice and Genoa, praying them for the love of Christ to combine and save the fair island of Cyprus, still unpolluted by the presence of the infidels. But the lion of St Mark was a fierce yoke-fellow. The more restricted the field of influence became between Venice and Genoa the more bitter grew their jealousy. Two fleets were, however, fitted out in response to the Papal appeal. Their prows had scarcely touched Cyprian waters when a fight took place between some of the allied ships, and to the edification of the Saracen the two greatest maritime powers of Christendom were soon engaged in mutual destruction. Unavailing efforts were made by the Church to heal the strife, for while the Dominican envoys were treating at Venice the feverish activity at the arsenal told too plainly that the time for the peacemaker was not yet come. Rumours soon reached Venice of an alliance between the Genoese and the Greeks and of the threatened closure of the Dardanelles to her ships. She delayed no longer to strike. All her seamen between sixteen and sixty were enrolled; her patrician houses were called to furnish their part of a new armament, and on October 7th, 1294, the fleet was under sail. The admiral, Marco Besegio, sighted the Genoese fleet under Nicolo Spinola off Ayas, in Asia Minor. The enemy was inferior in strength, and Besegio, too confident perhaps of victory, was out-manœuvred, defeated with heavy losses, and himself slain. The Genoese, to clinch their victory, despatched a mighty fleet of nigh two hundred sail manned by forty-five thousand men, among whom were the chiefs of their noble houses. Meanwhile Venice, shrewdly calculating that the heavy financial strain involved in the maintenance of so huge an armament would soon wear the enemy out, steadily equipped a new fleet, called out a fresh levy, and concentrated her force on the defence of the lagoons. Before a year was past the Genoese, after spoiling and slaughtering the hapless inhabitants of Canea in Crete, returned to port.

Early in 1295 news came to Venice which stung her to fury. A street row at Constantinople had developed into a general attack by the Genoese on the Venetians. The former were victorious, and after flinging the Venetian Governor out of the windows of the palace, dashing him to pieces, proceeded to an indiscriminate massacre of the inhabitants of the Venetian colony. The Greeks sent envoys to disclaim any responsibility in the outrage, but they were hectored by the Doge, who demanded an enormous indemnity, which served but to cement their alliance with the Genoese. Late in the spring the Venetian commander, Ruggieri Morosini, with a fleet of forty galleys, forced the Dardanelles, wasted the Genoese suburb of Galata and laid siege to Constantinople. Meanwhile another fleet, under Giov. Soranzo, entered the Black Sea and sacked the Genoese settlement of Caffa; but the elements amply avenged the Genoese. Soranzo returned to Venice bearing an unheroic story of vessels disabled and men frozen to death by the rigours of an Euxine winter. The year 1297 passed in petty expeditions, and towards the end of the autumn Boniface VIII. essayed to negotiate a peace. The magnanimous Pope (Dante’s pet enemy) went so far as to offer, if the Genoese paid one-half, to pay himself the other half of the claims of the Venetians, but the latter rejected all compromise, and Boniface despairing of success inculpated the pride of Venice, and washed his hands of the whole business. Each power prepared for a final struggle.

Among the wealthy Venetians whose enthusiasm took the form of offering themselves and their ships to the common cause was a certain Marco Polo but recently returned from adventurous journies in the mysterious lands of the Grand Khan of Tartary; in Persia, China, Japan, and the Indies; and who from his wonderful stories of the million peopled cities and millions of jewels and treasure he had seen in his twenty-five years’ wanderings was popularly known as Messer Marco Milione. In August 1298 all was ready and a fleet of ninety-five sail, under the command of Andrea Dandolo, set its course southwards and came upon the Genoese squadron of eighty-five vessels, under Lamba Doria off the island of Curzola. The fleets were about evenly matched, and on September 8th the action began. Doria, by superior seamanship, got the weather gauge and the Venetians, fighting too with the sun in their eyes, were routed. Twelve galleys, whose captains, panic-stricken, had abandoned the fight, alone escaped. With abject mien they told the extent of the disaster. The fine fleet was sunken, captured or burned, the loss in killed appalling, and seven thousand of their countrymen were on their way to Genoese prisons.[27] Among the captives was Messer Marco Milione himself, who to relieve the tedium of his imprisonment, dictated in halting French to his prison comrade Rustichello the story of his wanderings and adventures. A small court, in which Marco Polo’s house stood on a site now covered by the Malibran Theatre, is called to this day the Corte del Milione.

Venice, conscious that her staying power was greater than her rival’s, without a moment of panic set about equipping another fleet of a hundred galleys. But Genoa, exhausted by her costly victory, was willing to treat, and in 1299 the Imperial Vicar of Milan effected a peace between the Republics on honourable terms.

During the Genoese war the aristocracy had quietly matured plans for fencing off their preserves from any intrusion of the democracy. Two abortive attempts had been made in 1286 and 1296 to restrict membership of the Great Council to members of the aristocracy. Gradenigo, who was a leader of iron will and indomitable purpose, succeeded the next year in achieving the revolution in the Constitution known as the shutting of the Great Council (Serrata del Gran Consiglio). The Quarantia[28] were charged (1) to put to the ballot one by one all who for the past four years had sat in the Great Council. Those who received not less than twelve votes were to be members up to Michaelmas, when, after being subjected to a new ballot, they were to serve for a further period of one year. (2) Three electors were to be appointed who should submit further names of non-members of the Great Council for election under the same system of ballot. (3) The three were to sit in the Council until Michaelmas, when they were to be superseded by other three, who should sit for a year. (4) The law could not be repealed save with the consent of five of the six privy councillors, twenty-five of the Quarantia, and two-thirds of the Great Council. Such were the chief provisions of the measure which transformed the aristocracy into an oligarchy and created the Maggior Consiglio.

It will be seen that by the second clause an avenue was left open by which a Venetian, not a member of the favoured class, might enter the aristocratic close, but it was rendered inoperative by the principle which the three laid down for their guidance, that only those whose paternal ancestors had been members of the Great Council between 1172 and 1297 should be eligible for ballot. The effect of the change was to increase the number of the Council. In 1296 it consisted of two hundred and ten members. In 1311 they had risen to ten hundred and seventeen; in 1340 to twelve hundred and twelve; in 1490 to fifteen hundred and seventy; and in 1510 to sixteen hundred and seventy-one.

In 1315 it was enacted that a book be kept for the inscription of the names of all persons above eighteen years of age who had the right to enter the Council. So keen was the ambition to be inscribed that in the year following a fine of thirty lire was imposed on all those whose names were unlawfully entered and who did not remove them within a month. In 1319 Avvogadori, a sort of heraldic officers, were appointed and charged to subject to the severest scrutiny the titles of applicants for inscription, and in order to frustrate any attempt to tamper with the electors it was ordained that as many ballots should be used as there were names inscribed, and that of these, a number equal to the candidates to be elected should be of gold. The names were read out in the order of their entry and a boy extracted a ballot as each man was called. Those to whom the gold ballots fell were declared elected. It was further ordained that after the lapse of two years all who had reached the age of twenty-five years and were in possession of the necessary qualifications should ipso facto be entitled to enter the Council. Thus the electors’ functions ended, and any descendant of an aristocratic family who fulfilled the conditions required by the law became at that age a member of the Great Council. This was the actual and definite Serrata (Nov. 25th, 1319).

Every noble was bound to notify his marriage and the birth of his children at the Avvogaria to be entered in a book and stringent regulations were from time to time laid down to insure the purity of the family record. Owing to the association of the golden ballots with the right to enter the Council, this book was called the Libro d’Oro, the Golden book. The Council elected all officers of State, imposed taxes, decreed laws, made peace and war, concluded alliances, until owing to its unwieldy growth many of its powers were delegated to the Senate, the Council retaining as its chief function the election of the officers of the Republic. The Senate was definitely established in 1230 and consisted of sixty members, nominated by four electors of the Great Council, to whom later other sixty were added called the Zonta or addition. The Consiglio Minore (Privy Council) was still composed of six members chosen from the wards of the city. They, with the Doge, presided over the Senate, and with the three chiefs of the Quarantia formed the Serenissima Signoria (Signory). They could act in the absence of the Doge but the Doge could take no action without them. They opened dispatches, received petitions, prepared the agenda for the Great Council and the Senate, read the Coronation oath every year to the Doge and if need were admonished him. The Quarantia (Council of forty) was the judicial authority and controlled the Mint, heard complaints from the subject cities and provinces, and gave audience to ambassadors. In the fifteenth century the civil and criminal functions of the Quarantia were separated and two Quarantie established. The Doge, the living embodiment of the Republic, presided over all these assemblies. In 1308 a small giunta of seven Savii (wise men or experts) was formed to deal with Ferrarese affairs and did its work so well that it continued in office. It was subsequently enlarged and subdivided in 1442 into three bodies, one dealing with home affairs, one with mainland affairs, the third with the arsenal. The three united formed the Collegio (Cabinet). By the permanent appointment of the Council of Ten in 1335 was evolved the famous constitution of Venice which for its stability and efficiency became the admiration of every statesman in Europe, and filled with envy the Italian states of the mainland.

CHAPTER VII
The Oligarchy—Commercial supremacy—The Bajamonte Conspiracy—The Council of the Ten—The Prisons

“O thou that art situate at the entry of the sea which art a merchant of the people for many isles, ... thou hast said: I am of perfect beauty. Thy borders are in the midst of the seas, thy builders have perfected thy beauty.... Thy wise men were thy pilots.... All the ships of the sea were in thee to occupy thy merchandise.... Syria was thy merchant ... they occupied in thy fairs with emeralds, purple and broidered work, fine linen and coral and agate.”—Ezekiel.

THE fourteenth century opens the era of the oligarchy. Venice had made peace with the only rival that could challenge her maritime supremacy. She had not yet entangled herself in an aggressive continental policy. The tramp of the advancing Turk was too far away to echo in the lagoons. The wealth of the Indies and of the far East flowed through her markets. Her merchants laid the known world under contribution. “By way of the Syrian ports and of Alexandria came the cloves, nutmegs, mace and ebony of the Moluccas; the sandal wood of Timor; the costly camphor of Borneo; the benzoin of Sumatra and Java; the aloes, wood of Cochin China; the perfumes, gums, spices, silks and innumerable curiosities of China, Japan and Siam; the rubies of Pegu; the fine fabrics of Coromandel; the richer stuffs of Bengal; the spikenard of Nepaul and Bhutan; the diamonds of Golconda; the Damascus steel of Nirmul; the pearls, sapphires, topazes and cinnamon of Ceylon; the pepper, ginger and satin wood of Malabar; the lac, agates and sumptuous brocades and jewelry of Cambay; the costus and graven vessels, wrought arms and broidered shawls of Cashmere; the bdellium of Scinde; the musk of Thibet; the galbanum of Khorossan; the assafœtida of Afghanistan; the sagapenum of Persia; the ambergris, civet and ivory from Zanzibar; the myrrh, balsam and frankincense of Zeila, Berbera and Shehr.”[29] The bare recital of this catalogue has the effect of a poem and fills the imagination with visions of Oriental splendour. Every year six trading fleets averaging about five hundred vessels each sailed, one for the Black Sea, another for Greece and Constantinople; others for the Syrian ports; for Egypt, Barbary and North Africa; for Flanders and England. These ships were the property of the State, and in due time a public crier announced the number of galleasses ready for the annual voyages. They were farmed out to the highest bidders, who were required to prove their qualifications and the amount of their capital, and to provide on each galleasse accommodation, a suitable mess, and space for a small cargo, for eight young nobles, who thus were trained in naval science and gained experience of commerce. The vessels were constructed on fixed models and convertible at will into men-of-war. Every man aboard, passenger or seaman, bore arms, and was compelled to fight the ship in case of attack. Standardised fittings were obtainable at every Venetian maritime station to replace any that might be lost or damaged by storm or battle. The food and comfort of the seamen were carefully provided for. A cross painted or carved on the side served as a load-line, and Government inspectors checked any attempt to overload. Each ship carried a band of music.

The cargo of a Syrian or Egyptian galleasse was worth about two hundred thousand[30] ducats, and it has been estimated that the Republic in the fifteenth century could dispose of three thousand three hundred ships, thirty-six thousand seamen and sixteen thousand shipwrights. The consuls at every Venetian port were charged to inspect the weights and measures of the traders and to prevent adulteration or fraud. If the consul were found to be venal he was branded on the forehead. At home the same measures were taken to maintain the standard of quality. In 1550 English woollen goods from the Thames were exposed with the brand of the Senate upon them in St Mark’s Palace as evidence of English dishonesty and the decay of English faith. In the fifteenth century, when Turkish pirates infested the seas, navi armate (war-ships) were built to convoy the merchant fleets, and a state navy was thus formed in which slaves or criminals were forced to work the oars.

In 1556, sixty out of a gang of Lutherans convicted of heresy, marching through Flanders on their way to the Venetian galleys, were rescued from slavery by the people of Maestricht and their guards stoned. In earlier times, before the navy was differentiated into merchant and war-ships, Sclavonians were employed for this exhausting labour, and those who manned the galleasses to Flanders and England possessed a burial vault in North Stoneham Church near Southampton.

In the event of a naval war a levy was made on all the male inhabitants. Those liable were divided into groups of twelve and lots were drawn to decide who should serve first. The unfit provided substitutes or were fined. Those on service were given free bread rations and were paid five lire a month by the Commune and one lira from each man of the twelve who was not chosen. Romanin estimates that the equipment of a galley in the early thirteenth century was equal to that of a frigate of seventy-four guns in his day (1850). The discipline was perfect. The seamen were said to obey their chiefs as sheep do their shepherd. Gambling or swearing was severely punished by flogging.

“When the hour of departure neared, the Commander came on board preceded by trumpeters and followed by his staff. Perfect silence reigned as he began his inspection. Every man was at his post, every oar in its place. All the arms, accoutrements and appointments were carefully examined, and when the trumpeters gave signal for departure the rowers simultaneously plied their oars, or if the wind were fair threw them up and sails[31] were set with marvellous alertness. A general holiday was observed with great pomp and magnificence. The ships were coloured white and vermilion, the sails bright with variegated stripes, the poop was richly gilt, the figure-head of the most beautiful design. The Doge and his Council with dazzling pageantry, senators in scarlet robes, the élite of Venetian ladies, famed for grace and beauty and arrayed in gorgeous dresses, and hundreds of citizens in gay gondolas witnessed the departure.”[32] A stirring scene, surpassed alone by that when the clanging of bells from St Mark’s tower called the people to view a victorious fleet sailing up the lagoons and the enemy’s standards trailing on the waters.

In Gradenigo’s reign we note the first indication of a policy of territorial aggrandisement on the Italian mainland. Little wars had already been waged: with the Paduans in 1142, to prevent the diversion of the course of the Brenta; and with Ferrara in 1240, to maintain trading privileges. In 1308 these were again endangered by a dispute between rival claimants for the lordship of Ferrara. Venice intervened and was brought into conflict with the Pope. His Holiness, as a temporal enemy, fought at a vantage, for to the material bolts of Mars he was able to add the spiritual thunders of the Church. When the Papal warning was received, the Doge addressed the Councillors, and stoutly defended his policy and told them that they were not children to be frightened by words. There was an angry scene in the council chamber, and for once the ominous cries, “Guelph and Ghibelline,” were heard within the walls of the palace. The ducal party maintained their position and the ban was laid on Venice. The Doge, his Councillors and the citizens were excommunicated, their possessions in Ferrara confiscated, every treaty with them declared void, commercial relations forbidden, and all the clergy summoned to leave. The Pope’s words, however, were winged with terror to the Venetians. News soon came of banks, factories and ships sacked in Italy, France and England, and even in far Asia. Their trade, except with the infidel, was paralysed; religious and civic life disintegrated. But the Republic never winced. On the very day that the papal interdict reached Venice instructions were sent to the Venetian podestà at Ferrara to fortify himself in Castel Tebaldo and manfully and potently to uphold the rights and honour of his country.

The Venetian garrison, however, weakened by disease, surrendered after a long struggle, and met the fate of the vanquished. The fleet was destroyed, and growing unrest in the State forced the Doge and his party to make terms with the Pope. Ferrara was acknowledged to be a papal fief, and an indemnity paid for the restoration of the trading privileges of the Republic.

In the year of the Serrata the corpses of Bocconi, a popular leader, and ten of his followers dangled between the red columns as a warning to the disaffected, but after the inglorious issue of the war the discontent of the people was intensified, and found a rallying-point in certain ambitious and disgraced nobles of the Quirini, Tiepolo and Badoer[33] families, who were united by a common hatred of the ducal party. Secret meetings were held in Casa Quirini near the Rialto, and Bajamonte, the people’s darling, the “Gran Cavaliere,” son of Jacopo Tiepolo, was drawn into the conspiracy. It was determined to organise a revolution and assassinate the Doge and his chief supporters. The insurrection was fixed for Sunday, June 14th, 1310, the eve of St Vito’s Day. Down the two main avenues of traffic that debouch from the north on the Piazza, the Calle dei Fabri and the Merceria, two divisions under the leadership of Marco Quirini, the chief conspirator, and of Bajamonte, were to march and simultaneously attack the palace, meanwhile Badoer was sent to collect sympathisers at Padua. All had been foreseen save the treachery of man and of the elements. In the early dawn, as the revolutionists rushed from Casa Quirini, shouting “Liberty” and “Death to Doge Gradenigo,” their faces were lashed by a driving rain, their voices smothered by peals of thunder and the howling of the wind. The movements failed to synchronise, and the Quirini section encountered in the Piazza, not their allies from the Merceria, but a ducal force which scattered them and slew their leader and his son. Men who will betray the State will betray their fellows. The plot had been divulged by one Marco Donato, and the Doge had met the danger with his wonted courage and alertness. He increased his guards, summoned help from Chioggia, Murano and Torcello, called out the arsenal men, armed his Councillors and their servants. Having disposed of the Quirini, the Doge was able to deal with Bajamonte’s division in the Merceria. During the fighting Bajamonte’s standard-bearer met the fate of Abimelech.[34] A woman aimed a stone mortar from an upper window at him: it struck him on the head, and the bearer and the banner inscribed with the word, “Liberty,” fell to the ground. Panic seized the rebels and they fled across the Rialto bridge. Meanwhile the remnant of Quirini’s party rallied and made a stand on the Campo S. Lucia, only to be finally crushed by members of the Painters’ Guild and of the Guild of Charity. A more serious task remained, to subdue Bajamonte and his followers, who had hewn down the bridge and fortified themselves in some houses yon side the Rialto. After many negotiations the rebels surrendered. Their lives were spared, but they agreed to banish themselves from Venetian territory. Ill-hap, too, had fallen on Badoer’s reinforcements, which were defeated by the Chioggians. Badoer and his chief followers were captured and hanged between the red columns. To perpetuate the memory of this narrow escape from a great peril S. Vito’s Day was made a day of public festival and thanksgiving for evermore. To Marco Donato and his descendants was granted membership of the Great Council. The woman, Lucia Rosso, who had cast the fateful mortar, being asked to name her reward, begged permission to fly the standard of St Mark from her window on every feast day, and desired that the procurators of St Mark, to whom the house belonged, would not raise to her or to her successors the annual rental of fifteen ducats. The house, known as the Casa e bottega della grazia del morter, appears from an old painting in the Correr Museum to have stood on the site of the first house on the left-hand side of the Merceria entering from the Piazza. The mortar was cast from the third floor window. “The banner I have seen raised,” says Sanudo, “but now that the new buildings are made it can no longer be seen from the Piazza. The under part of Marco Quirini’s house in Rialto was made into shambles, and there they remain to this day” (about 1520).[35] Bajamonte’s house in S. Agostino was razed, the site made over to the commune, and a column set up in the Campo S. Agostino with an inscription stating that the “land once Bajamonte’s had been confiscated for his wicked treachery and to inspire others, with terror.”[36] Certain of the marbles of the house were assigned by the Republic in 1316 for the restoration of the church of S. Vito. For eighteen years Bajamonte lived in exile and never ceased to plot his revenge until he was secretly disposed of by an emissary of the Ten.

The Consiglio de’ Dieci shares with the Comité du Salut publique a sinister notoriety in history. Let us see how far the earlier and more enduring body deserves its reputation. The great plot had showed the urgent need of an executive able to act with rapidity and secrecy. The Council of Ten was appointed to deal with further developments of the plot, but proved so admirable and effective an instrument that it was more than once renewed and finally made permanent in 1335. The Ten were charged “to preserve the liberty and peace of the subjects of the Republic and protect them from the abuses of personal power.” They were elected by the Great Council with careful deliberation among the most reputable of the citizens, and no more than one member of any family could serve. A member sat for one year, he was not eligible for re-election, he received no pay, he was obliged to retire if any of his relations were among the accused; it was a capital offence to receive a gift of any nature. His term of service ended, the dread decemvir passed again into private life. The Ten elected from themselves three chiefs (Capi) who served for one month, during which period they were forbidden to go about the city, to frequent shops or other public places where the nobility were wont to gather. Among other duties, on the first day of their month the Capi were required to send to the Signory a list of the prisoners detained by order of the Ten with suggestions for any reform or improvement in the prisons, and to take measures to expedite the trial of the accused. They were to report to the Council all the arrests made by the previous Capi and to remind the Council of all cases sub judice in the preceding month. The Doge and his six Privy Councillors were present at the sittings, and a legal officer without a vote watched the proceedings to check any abuse of power. Secret denunciations placed in the Bocche del leone, especially if unsigned, were subject to most elaborate procedure before they were acted upon. The accused were usually interrogated in darkness, but if five-sixths of the tribunal agreed, the interrogation might take place in the light. They could call witnesses. If the minutes of the trial exceeded a hundred and fifty sheets they were read a second time on another day, that the members might refresh their strained powers of attention. The defence was read entire. If the condemnation, after five ballotings, did not command more than half the votes of the Council, the accused was set at liberty or the case was retried. When the condemnation had gained an absolute majority it was subject to four re-ballots before being made final and irrevocable. The Ten dealt with—criminal charges against nobles; treachery and conspiracy in the State; espionage; unnatural crimes; secret information likely to be of advantage to the Republic; the regulations of the Greater Scuole or Guilds; the use of secret service money; disobedient State officials; false coiners and debasers of the precious metals used in jewellery; forests and mines; the glass industry at Murano; acts of violence on the water; the use of arms; theatres; masked balls and public morals generally; and, after 1692, the censorship of the printing press.

The tribunal could inflict pecuniary fines; corporal punishment; banishment, with power to compass his death if the proscribed one were found outside bounds; imprisonment for any period, and for life; the galleys; mutilation; death, secretly or publicly. The death sentence was generally carried out by decapitation or hanging from the columns of the palace or between the red columns in the Piazzetta. For the more heinous crimes the guilty were conducted in infamous guise along the Grand Canal, flogged and broken upon the wheel. Secret executions were rarely resorted to, and generally with the object of saving the prestige of the nobility by withdrawing from the public gaze the disgrace of an honoured name.

In 1539 the ever-present dread of Spanish plots fed by the gold of the New World led to the permanent establishment of Il Supremo Terribile Tribunale of the Three State Inquisitors. For among the large body of State officials and members of councils were many patricians who, impoverished by the decline of commerce, were peculiarly open to corruption, and the need was felt of a smaller and more expeditious body than the Ten. Of the Tre Inquisitori di Stato two were appointed by the Ten, one by the Doge’s Privy Council. The latter sat in the middle clothed in red and was called the rosso; the former sat one on either side clothed in black, and were known as the negri. They served for a year and were eligible for re-election. Service was compulsory under a fine of 500 ducats. Their powers were delegated to them, as emergencies demanded, by the Ten, who reserved the right of revising their judgments, which were also published in the Great Council. If the Three were not unanimous they must refer the case to the Ten. Carefully indicted rules guarded against the abuse of secret denunciations, and against the venality or the errors of spies. Suspects were arrested at night and examined in secret, torture being used in accordance with the usual legal procedure of the day. Witnesses were also examined in secret by the Secretary or a ducal notary. The triumvirs acted with appalling swiftness[37] and secrecy, and stout of heart was he who did not quail when the officer of the Three touched him on the shoulder with the usual formula, “Their Excellencies would like to see you.” During the sixteenth century the Ten and its Committee grew to be the dominant body in the State, until in 1582 the right of calling the Zonta was abolished, and having no longer the power of associating with them members of any and every council and of spending money they reverted to their former position.

The tribunals occasionally abused their powers, committed some crimes, and made errors. The murder of the Carraras was a national sin; the execution of Foscarini a grievous blunder. But they were a popular body, and withstood every attack upon them. They were a bulwark against treachery: they protected the people from the insolence and arbitrariness of nobles: they maintained equality, and were stern censors of morals. Their best defence is the fact that they endured to the fall of the Republic.

Much undeserved obloquy has been cast upon the Ten even by historians of repute when treating of the famous prisons under their charge, the so-called Pozzi and Piombi (wells and leads). Lurid pictures have been drawn of victims tortured in cells hot as furnaces under the leads, and in dungeons beneath the canal, where neither light nor warmth ever penetrated, and where the prisoner saw the instruments of his torture on the wall before him. But in truth the Pozzi were as little underground as the Piombi were (immediately) under the leads. The Ducal Palace had been furnished with prisons from its construction by Angelo Participazio and its restoration by Seb. Ziani until the new prison over the Bridge of Sighs, and beyond the rio del Palazzo, was completed in 1606. Except the Torreselle (prisons in the towers), one of which, at the angle of the palace overlooking the Ponte della Paglia, was demolished in 1532 by order of the Ten, the old prisons were situated on the east wing of the palace between the inner court and the rio del Palazzo, and later extended to the other side towards the Molo on the south. They were on the ground floor, which was sub-divided into two storeys of cells. Some of the windows looked on the public courtyard, and at one period the prisoners could talk with passers-by. They were not known as Pozzi before the seventeenth century. After the erection of the new jail on the opposite side of the Rio the so-called Pozzi were used for the more dangerous prisoners, and on the fall of the Republic in 1797 four only were found therein, scoundrels who richly deserved their fate. The Republic bore a unique reputation for its humane treatment of prisoners. Zanotto,[38] from whose admirable monograph we mainly draw, quotes the testimony of Friar Felice Fabri, who, visiting Venice in the middle of the fifteenth century, was struck by the merciful treatment of the prisoners of the Republic. In 1443 the Great Council appointed an advocate to defend the cause of the poor detained prisoners, and in 1553 a second advocate was chosen. In common with the whole of Christian Europe Venice used torture to extract confessions, but she honourably distinguished herself by appointing a surgeon to examine the prisoners and to report if they were able to bear the infliction. In 1564 the Ten ordered an infirmary to be prepared for sick prisoners. The disinfection and cleanliness of the cells and the quality and quantity of the food and wine supplied to the incarcerated were carefully inspected.

In 1591 the Senate permitted the Ten to make use of a floor above the Sala de’ Capi in order that the detained might be in more comfortable, lighter and better-ventilated cells than those allotted to the condemned. The rooms were known as the Piombi, since they were on the floor next below the roof, which was covered with lead. According to Zanotto, between the ceilings, which were made of a double layer of larch planks, and the roof, was a space of several yards, varying with the slope of the roof. The rooms were small; roughly, about twelve by fourteen feet, and from six feet to eight feet high, and were wainscoted with larch. They were lighted from a corridor, and ventilators were fixed in the doors. The detained dressed as they pleased, were allowed to see visitors, and to walk in the corridor.

Gradenigo died before the papal ban had been removed, and found quiet sepulture at Murano. A distinguished senator, Stefano Giustiniani, was chosen his successor, but renounced the office and retired to the monastery at S. Giorgio. The annalists relate that while the electors sat anxiously pondering the situation thus created, a saintly old man was seen passing the palace on his daily round of charity, followed by his servant carrying a load of bread. It was deemed a happy omen, for the need of an understanding with the Pope was urgent, and Zorzi il Santo would be an excellent mediator. Being entreated, he accepted the charge and filled the ducal chair for ten months, during which period he was able to obtain a relaxation of the interdict, which was finally removed in the next reign.

Giorgio the Sainted left a troublesome legacy to his successor, Giov. Soranza. Zara, aided by Hungarians and Croats, was again recalcitrant, and only subdued after a heavy expenditure of men and treasure. But Soranza’s sixteen and a half years of office coincided with a time of great prosperity, and the strain was lightly borne. Venetian trade, aided by diplomacy and enterprise, expanded eastward and westward. The arts of life were developed. Refugees from Lucca founded a silk industry, which became a source of great profit to the Republic. They were governed by their own magistrates, the Provisores Sirici, who were located in the Corte della Seda, near Marco Polo’s house. The city was further embellished, and Soranza enjoyed the popularity that comes to a prince ruling in times of plenty. It was in Soranza’s reign, August 1321, that Dante came to Venice, an ambassador from Guido Novello da Polenta of Ravenna, to negotiate a peace with the Signory, and returned to die a few days after his arrival at Ravenna of a fever caught on the journey.

CHAPTER VIII
Conquests on the Mainland—Execution of Marin Faliero—The Fall of Genoa

“Ill-fated chief——
Him, only him, the shield of Jove defends
Whose means are fair and spotless as his ends.”
—Wordsworth.

WHEN the Great Council met in 1328 after Soranza’s death the oldest member rose, and after uttering praises of the late Doge and lamentations at his death, exhorted all around to be of good heart and to pray God for the election of a wise prince to succeed him.

And never had Venice greater need of wisdom in her rulers. Unhappy Italy, “reeling like a pilotless vessel in a mighty tempest,” had seen the last vain attempt of the Emperors to execute their ideal function. The heroic spirit of Henry VII. of Luxemburg, l’alto Arrigo, had already ascended to fill the vacant and crowned seat, which Dante saw awaiting him among the ranks of the blest, and the poet’s hopes of a Cæsar firmly seated in the saddle and curbing the wanton and savage beast of faction in Italy were shattered. From the political chaos three great families of despots emerged in North Italy, the Scalas of Verona, the Viscontis of Milan and the Carraras of Padua. In 1329 the lords of Verona under Mastino della Scala held sway over Vicenza, Padua and Treviso. Mastino, an ambitious prince subtly urged by the deposed Marsilio da Carrara of Padua, determined to tap the wealth of the Republic by levying duties on all Venetian goods passing through his territories. Venice retaliated by cutting off the supply of salt and a tariff war began. But her food supplies soon ran short and an appeal to arms impended. It was a tremendous choice, for the strength of Venice lay in her naval not in her military power. To fight the mainland despots she must employ mercenaries and successful condottieri were bad servants. Her infallible bulwark, the sea, would be gone, squandered for a vulnerable land frontier and the financial drain of a continental policy.

Such were the considerations that appealed to the mind of the new Doge Francesco Dandolo. But the time was past when a Doge could dictate the policy of the State. The oligarchy felt that inaction meant national suicide. If the passage for Venetian goods to North and West Europe was blocked, it meant ruin to her trade, and war was declared in the chivalrous fashion of the times. To the confines of Padua, envoys were sent, who delivered a protest and in token of defiance, three times cast a stone into the enemy’s territory. A levy was made on all males between twenty and sixty years of age, and alliances concluded with Florence, Milan, Ferrara and Mantua. Mastino, alarmed at the coalition against him, sent Marsilio da Carrara to treat with the Signory. Marsilio was invited, so the story runs, to sit next the Doge at dinner. The “wily old fox” made a sign to the Doge that he wished to speak with him. The Doge let fall his knife. Marsilio bent down to pick it up and as the Doge bent down too, whispered: “What would you give him who gave you Padua?” “We would make him lord of Padua,” replied the Doge. Mastino was unable to stand before so powerful a combination. Padua by collusion with the Carraras fell to Venetian arms, and Alberto della Scala, Mastino’s brother, was led captive to Venice. Marsilio became once more lord of Padua. The provinces of Treviso and Bassano were made over to Venice, who thus came into possession of one of the passes into North Europe and a rich corn land in North Italy. The glorious initiation of this new and vaster policy was celebrated with great rejoicings at Venice and the prophets of evil were silenced. The Republic proved herself a wise and tolerant mistress. Her new subjects were ruled with a paternal regard for their welfare, while local feeling and characteristics were tenderly treated. The device which still remains from Venetian times over the town-hall of Verona, Pro summa fide summus amor, admirably expresses the attitude of the Republic towards her mainland provinces. The citizens of many a State scourged with the scorpions of Italian despots hailed with delight the advent of Venetian rule. Sanudo in his diary describes the entry into Faenza of the Venetian governor on its occupation in 1495. The streets were decorated with tapestry and cloth. For many days the painters had been doing nought but paint San Marco on the doors of the houses. The whole city with great demonstration of joy came forth to receive the new governor, shouting “Marco! Marco!” A quarter of a century later the Venetian ambassador was able to tell Cardinal Wolsey that although the Duke of Milan and the Marquis of Mantua were candidates for the governorship of Verona, the Venetian army as it defiled through the mountains was received by the Veronese with joyful cries of “Marco! Marco!” and the Venetian commissioner installed in the seat of government. St Mark’s lion on his column standing in the market-place of an Italian city was the symbol of a firm, just, enlightened rule.

While Bart. Gradenigo was Doge, Venice was visited by an awful tempest. For three days the angry waves surged against the city. On the third night, February 25, 1340, so runs the legend, as the storm increased in violence a poor old fisherman was making fast his boat at the Molo when he was accosted by a stranger who craved to be ferried over to the island of S. Giorgio Maggiore. The fisherman, terrified by the awful storm, would not venture, but being urged and reassured by the stranger, he loosed his boat and they set forth and reached the island. Here a mysterious knight embarked and commanded that they should be rowed to S. Nicolo on the Lido, and on the boatman protesting the danger of going with one oar he was again comforted and promised good pay. Arrived at S. Nicolo, a third stranger, a venerable old man, joined them and demanded to be taken out to sea. Scarcely had they reached the open Adriatic when they beheld a ship filled with devils pressing swiftly forward to wreak destruction on Venice. Soon as the three strangers sighted the vessel they made the sign of the cross and ship and devils vanished. The sea grew calm: Venice was saved. The three strangers were then rowed back whence they departed and revealed themselves as St Mark, St George and St Nicholas. As St Mark stepped ashore he was stayed by the boatman, who demurred to accepting the honour of taking part in the miracle as adequate payment. “Thou art right,” answered the saint, “go to the Doge and tell what thou hast seen and ask thy reward. And say this has happened because of the master of a scuola at S. Felice, who had sold his soul to the devil and at last hanged himself.” The old man protested: “Even though I tell this, the Doge will not believe me.” St Mark then drew a ring from his finger the worth of which was about five ducats, gave it to the fisherman, saying, “Show this to the Doge and bid him keep it in my sanctuary.” The saint’s bidding was done and the fisherman well rewarded.

In 1343 Andrea Dandolo was raised to the Dogeship. The first patrician who had taken a doctor’s degree at Padua, he had already served on the Ten, and filled the office of Procurator of St Mark, when at thirty-six years of age he was elected Doge. Plague, earthquake and war scourged the Venetians during the scholar Doge’s reign. Zara, tempted by the Hungarians, tried another fall with her Venetian masters for independence. Marin Faliero, a member of one of the most ancient and illustrious families of Venice, who had served as podestà of Padua and of Treviso, was placed in command of a land force: forty galleys set forth under Pietro da Canale to attack by sea. Faliero met the Hungarians forty thousand strong about eight miles from Zara, and won a decisive victory. Meanwhile Canale had forced the harbour, and in a few months the tough old fortress again surrendered. The walls were dismantled, and this time a strong Venetian garrison was left to overawe the Zarantines.

For a century Genoese and Venetians had been rivals in the Crimea for the control of the fur trade with Tartary. In 1346 Marin Faliero was sent to Genoa to complain of certain piratical acts by the Genoese. The latter retorted by accusing the Signory of bad faith in dealing with the Tartars. But the ravages of the Black Death in 1348, when two-fifths of the people of Venice are said to have perished, and fifty noble families to have become extinct, absorbed for a time the attention of the Republic. In 1349 friction with the Genoese led to a definite breach, and another act in the tragedy of Christendom was begun. Two years of naval warfare passed with little advantage to either power. In 1353, in alliance with Peter of Aragon and the Emperor of Constantinople, the Venetians sailed up the Bosphorus and came upon the enemy under Paganino Doria, off Pera. Two hours before sunset the engagement began and a long and bloody struggle raged through the night, illumined only by the lurid glare of burning ships. The Venetians were defeated, and Nicolo Pisani, their commander, retired to Crete to recruit and await reinforcements. In February 1353 he was able to join the Aragonese fleet in Sardinian waters and attack the Genoese under Ant. Grimaldi off Lojera. The enemy were outmanœuvred, their armament utterly destroyed, and Grimaldi, with a few shattered galleys, reached Genoa crushed and humiliated. Panic seized the city. In the despair engendered by defeat a momentous step was taken. The cowed Genoese surrendered their independence and implored the protection of Giov. Visconti, Lord Bishop of Milan. Time for recuperation was, however, needed, and Visconti sought peace for his new vassal by sending Petrarch to Venice as his envoy. The poet had already, by an epistle to Dandolo, which reads like an echo of his pathetic canzone All’Italia, besought the rivals to exchange the kiss of peace and not persist in a war which must end in one of the eyes of Italy being quenched, the other dimmed. As well appeal to two eagles fighting for their quarry. After some weeks at Venice, honoured as a poet but unheeded as a messenger of peace, he returned sorrowing to Milan. A year passed, and a new fleet left Genoa under Doria, who cleverly slipped by Pisani, sailed up the Adriatic, devastated Lesena, Curzola and Parenza, and anchored within striking distance of the lagoons. It was now the turn of Venice to feel alarm. The channels were fortified, a new fleet was equipped, a war tax levied. The Doge, prostrated by the news, never recovered, and died of a broken heart on September 7th, 1354. He lies in the Baptistery that he did so much to beautify, and under his noble and simple monument there still remains the Latin epitaph composed for him by Petrarch, his friend. Andrea Dandolo is remembered as a Venetian historian and an accomplished legist, a lover of the arts, and a great humanist.

On October the 4th the Bucintoro was sent to Chioggia to meet Marin Faliero, recalled from the Roman legation to assume the ducal cap. The great State barge set forth, but so dense a fog enveloped Venice that it was deemed prudent to land in small boats. The gondola bearing Faliero failed to make the usual stage by the Ponte della Paglia, and, sinister augury, landed the Doge between the red columns of the Piazzetta.

Faliero, however, began his term of office happily by signing a truce with the Genoese. The breathing time was used in concentrating the fleet, and scarcely was the term ended when Nicolo Pisani, with his son Vettore, sailed for the Ionian Isles in search of Doria. But the Genoese refused to be drawn, and Pisani went into winter quarters at Portolungo in the Morea behind the island of Sapienza. Doria saw an opportunity to trap his enemy. By a brilliant manœuvre he got part of his fleet between the Venetians and the shore, and attacking front and rear routed them with terrible loss, no less than six thousand being made prisoners. Pisani and his lieutenant, Quirini, escaped with the remnant of the armament to be impeached and degraded in Venice. Under the shadow of this disaster Venice displayed her wonted fortitude. With admirable self-control the Signory exhorted all their podestà, consuls and agents to be of good courage, and called for men and ships in defence of the fatherland. Eight thousand ducats were despatched to Genoa to soften the lot of the captives. Before, however, the spring made further operations possible, a truce was effected by the mediation of the Emperor; and while negotiations were pending for a definite peace, Europe was shocked by the news of the trial and execution of a Doge of Venice. The chroniclers give very circumstantial details of the drama, but to Petrarch, who was on terms of closest intimacy with the Doge, and to other contemporaries the whole business was shrouded in mystery. No record of the trial exists.

Faliero was of a proud and fiery temper. While podestà at Treviso he is said to have boxed the bishop’s ears for having kept him waiting at a religious procession. After the usual bull-fight and festivities in the Piazza on Carnival Thursday the Doge gave a sumptuous banquet and dance in the palace. Among the guests was a young noble, Michel Steno, who, heated with wine, misconducted himself and was by the Doge’s orders expelled from the hall. Steno, furious with rage, pencilled on the ducal chair, as he passed through the Doge’s apartment, an insulting reflection on the Doge’s honour: Marin Falier della bella mujer tu la mantien e altri la galde. Steno was accused before the Quarantia and let off with a punishment which the Doge regarded as derisory. On the morrow it befell that a choleric noble, Marco Barbaro, went to demand certain things of the Arsenal authorities, and being refused struck the Admiral Ghisello with his clenched fist. He was wearing a ring and an ugly wound was left. The Admiral, with bloody face went straightway to the Doge and prayed to be avenged. “What would you?” said the Doge; “Look at the shameful words written of me and the way that ribald Steno has been treated.” “Messer lo dose,” answered Ghisello, “if you will make yourself lord of Venice and get all those cuckold nobles cut in pieces I am prepared to help you.” The tempter spoke to willing ears. A vast conspiracy was formed to make Faliero despot of Venice. Secret meetings were held in the palace, and it was arranged that sixteen leaders should each prepare an armed force of forty men, who, however, were not to be told for what purpose they were wanted. On Wednesday, April 15th, a rumour was to be spread that the Genoese were in the lagoons, and the alarm-bell of St Mark’s to be rung. The leaders with their men were to converge on the Piazza and cut down the nobles and influential citizens who would hasten to answer the call. Faliero was then to be acclaimed lord of Venice. To incite the people to hatred of the nobles, hired roysterers were sent by night about the city doing violence to and insulting the women of the people, calling each other by well-known names of nobles as they mockingly rioted through the streets. “But the Lord God who hath ever watched over this most glorious city,” says Sanudo, “inspired Beltrame Bergamasco, one of the leaders, to go secretly to a beloved patron, Nicolo Lioni, and warn him as he valued his life not to leave his house on the 15th.” Lioni’s suspicions were aroused; he questioned Beltrame and finally locked him in a room while he went to seek Giov. Gradenigo, dubbed Nasone (big nose) and Marco Cornaro in order to take counsel together. They returned to Lioni’s house and after again questioning Beltrame decided to send messengers with an urgent summons to the Ten and the chief Councillors and officers of the State to a meeting in the sacristy of S. Salvatore. Blanched with terror they hurried together. Up to that time the complicity of the Doge was not known, but the immediate arrest of two other conspirators discovered the full danger of the situation. The Ten were equal to the emergency. The chief police officials and heads of the wards were sent for and asked to take good men and true, and arrest the leading conspirators. Armed forces were summoned from Chioggia. All means of egress from the palace were guarded; the bell-ringer forbidden to stir. On the dawn of the 16th the Ten summoned a Zonta of twenty of the wisest, best and most ancient of the nobles of Venice to join them in trying the Doge. He made no attempt to defend himself and was sentenced to death. On the 17th, the biretta removed, stripped of his ducal robes and clothed in a black gown, he was led to the spot on the landing of the staircase[39] in the courtyard where seven months before he had sworn to defend the Constitution. At one stroke his head was severed from his body. A capo of the Ten then went to the arcade of the palace over the Piazza and showed the executioner’s bloody sword to the assembled people, crying: “The great judgment has been done on the traitor.” The gates were opened and the people rushed in to see the body. At night all that remained of Marin Faliero was placed in a boat with eight lighted torches and carried to burial at S. Zanipolo. No record of the sentence is found in the acts of the Ten. On the unfilled space where the minutes should be entered are the words Ñ. Sc̄batur, “Let it not be written.” A year later his portrait was blotted out and the place covered with a black veil with the inscription: Hic est locus Marini Faletro decapitati pro criminibus. Meanwhile the leaders of the plot as they were captured were hanged in a row, with iron gags in their mouths, from the columns of the palace. St Isidore’s Day, April 16th, was made a public festival and as late as 1520 Sanudo saw carried in procession the white damask cloth bespattered with blood which was used at the execution.

On the 21st the vacant chair was filled by the election of Gradenigo il nasone, who had been largely instrumental in frustrating the plot. The Genoese negotiations dragged on, and not until the June following was the treaty of peace signed at Milan. Venetian statesmen had short rest from foreign complications. The defeat of Sapienza and the supposed laming of the executive by the miserable end of Doge Faliero, tempted the Hungarians, who were rapidly increasing in population and civilisation, to achieve their purpose of acquiring possession of a sea-board. War was declared and Francesco Carrara, who held Padua under Venetian tutelage, was called to aid his suzerain. But the Carraras aimed at founding a dynasty and gave secret assistance to King Louis of Hungary, who was besieging Treviso. The defence of Treviso and of Dalmatia was beyond the power of the Republic. After a two years’ struggle and bitter hours of humiliation, Dalmatia, bought with so much blood of Doges, patricians and people, was surrendered by the peace of Zara, in February 1358, to the King of Hungary in exchange for the retention of Treviso. Meantime Gradenigo had died (in 1356) and left to Giov. Delfino the signing of the great renunciation. Delfino was stoutly defending Treviso when elected, and being refused a permit to pass the Hungarian lines broke through by night and met the Senate at Mestre. Broken-hearted, his sight failing, he died of the plague in 1361. Under Delfino’s successor Lorenzo Celsi, Crete, never wholly subjugated, burst into revolt and terror reigned in the island. At this time Petrarch, seeking peace and security, had settled in Venice, the “only nest of liberty and sole refuge of the good.” He lived simply, at the sign of the Two Towers on the Riva degli Schiavoni, where it was his delight to stand at his window watching the huge galleys, big as the house he lived in, and with masts taller than towers, passing and repassing. The poet, honoured and cherished, was on intimate terms with the Signory and advised the employment of the famous Veronese condottiero Lucchino del Verme to subdue the island. On the 4th of June about the sixth hour the poet was at his window chatting with the Archbishop of Patras when the friends saw a galley gliding swiftly up the lagoons, her masts wreathed with flowers; her deck crowded with men waving flags; hostile banners trailed in the waters behind her. She brought the news that Lucchino, falling upon the insurgents, weakened by divided counsels, had defeated them and punished the leaders. A thanksgiving festival was ordered which lasted three days. “The Doge,” writes Petrarch, “with a numerous train took his place to watch the sports over the vestibule of St Mark’s, where stand the four bronze horses (a work of ancient and excellent art) that seem to challenge comparison with the living and raise their hoofs to tread the ground. An awning of tapestry in many colours kept off the heat of the sun and I myself was invited to sit by the right hand of the Doge.” The great Piazza, the church, the Campanile, the roofs, the arcades, the windows, were a mass of people. A magnificent pavilion next the church was filled with more than four hundred gaily dressed ladies.

English knights took part in the jousts. The poet, bored by the length of the festivities, pleaded pressure of business on the second day and came no more. But the rejoicings were premature, the revolt soon flamed forth again, and a costly campaign of twelve months was needed to quench it. Petrarch, to show his gratitude to the Venetian State, offered to make over his great collection of books to found a public library if the Republic would house them. The procurators of St Mark accepted the charge, but the ultimate fate of this priceless gift is unknown. During the short and peaceful reign of Marco Corner, Guariento of Verona was employed to paint on the walls of the Hall of the Great Council the story of Alexander III. and Barbarossa, for which Petrarch composed inscriptions. In 1368 a deputation from the Great Council headed by Vettor Pisani went in search of the procurator, Andrea Contarini, who had been chosen Doge, and found him grafting fruit trees on his farm by the Brenta. Contarini had been warned against accepting the Dogeship by a Syrian sooth-sayer, and threats of confiscation were necessary to force him from his retreat.

At the peace of Zara, Louis of Hungary had shielded Carrara from Venetian vengeance, but the erection of two forts on the Brenta now gave the Venetians a pretext for paying off old scores. Louis again stood by his ally until the lucky capture of the King’s nephew by the Venetians enabled them to exact the abandonment of the war as the price of his ransom, and Carrara was made to pay heavily for disloyalty. Petrarch accompanied the Paduan peace envoys—a grateful task to the poet of peace and concord.[40] It was his last mission to Venice.

The final act in the struggle with Genoa now draws nigh. A quarrel for precedence took place at the Coronation of the King of Cyprus between the Venetian and Genoese envoys, Malipiero and Paganino Doria, in which the latter, “being full of anger and venom,” made use of coarse and unseemly words towards the Venetians. The quarrel was renewed at the banquet that followed, and loaves of bread and other meats were used as missiles. The Cypriotes sided with the Venetians, and many of the Genoese present were flung out of the window and dashed to pieces. But it was a dispute for the possession of the classic Tenedos notissima famæ insula which made war inevitable. The Signory offered the Greek Emperor for the cession of the island (which by its position south of the Dardanelles was of great strategical importance) the sum of three thousand ducats and the return of the Imperial jewels which were held in pledge at Venice. The offer was made a demand by a threat to treat with the Turks if the Emperor refused the bargain. Paleologus had emptied his treasury to meet the cost of the Ottoman wars, and accepted the offer. The Genoese retaliated by taking in hand Andronicus, the Emperor’s rebellious and renegade son, who in return for their support promised to make them masters of the island. The islanders confronted by the rival claims, came forth bearing crosses in their hands to welcome the Venetians, and the Governor declared for St Mark. A Venetian garrison was accepted and an attempted landing by the Genoese was defeated with great slaughter. Each of the powers prepared for the struggle: Genoa by allying herself with the King of Hungary and the Carraras of Padua; Venice with Barnabo Visconti, lord of Milan, for the Milanese patronate of Genoa was of brief duration. Carlo Zeno, whose varied career and charmed life form one of the romances of history, was sent to harass the Genoese in the Mediterranean, and Vettor Pisani given command of the home fleet. After some minor successes Pisani was ordered by the Senate to go into winter quarters at Pola. While resting his exhausted crews and refitting his ships, the enemy appeared in the offing. Pisani, whose better judgment was overruled by the civil Commissioners, was compelled to give battle. Stung by a reflection on his courage he grasped a banner and led the onslaught, crying, “Who loves Messer S. Marco, let him follow me.” Luciano Doria the Genoese admiral was slain, and victory inclined at first to the Venetians, but a clever feint broke their formation. The Genoese turned and the whole Venetian fleet, save six galleys that escaped to Parenzo, was annihilated. Pisani on his arrival at Venice was accused of defective scouting, impeached, and punished by degradation and imprisonment. Venice reeled under the blow. Zeno was far away. The enemy was reinforced by Pietro Doria’s command, and for the first time during many centuries a hostile fleet swept down on the lagoons. But Venice never lost faith in herself or in her destiny. With grim determination she set her teeth and tightened her armour. The approved measures were taken to fortify the city and block the channels. Messengers were dispatched to recall Carlo Zeno. A Franciscan friar was sent to learn the price of the King of Hungary’s neutrality. But the Genoese and Paduan envoys at Buda were already singing the dirge of Venetian independence. A garrison was to be planted at St Mark’s and a castle built at Cannareggio. Her inviolable bulwark the sea was to be breached and indomitable Venice chained by a causeway to the mainland. The attempt to detach the King from his ally failed. The miserable remnant of the fine fleet was entrusted to Taddeo Giustiniani, who to hearten the men decided to attack some Genoese galleys that were hovering off Lido. As he sailed forth, a prisoner leapt from one of the enemy’s ships and swam towards the Venetian fleet. A Genoese bowman took aim and shot him in the head, but he pressed on, and when picked up warned his compatriots that the whole Genoese fleet under Pietro Doria was following. Giustiniani turned back, and his little armament was saved.

Doria had sailed into the gulph, burning Umago, Grado and Caorle. He turned towards the lidi, devastated Pelestrina, captured and utterly destroyed Chioggia minore, and prepared to attack Chioggia maggiore. On the mainland, the Hungarians had occupied important Venetian possessions; Treviso was besieged; Carrara, by strenuous engineering, had joined hands with his ally, and given Genoa a base on the mainland. On the 16th of August a general assault was made on Chioggia. The garrison fought bravely: Emo, their commander, with a handful of men resisted to the last. But he, too, was at length overpowered, and the banners of Genoa, Hungary and Padua floated over Chioggia. It was about midnight when the calamitous news reached St Mark’s. The great bell was tolled, and under the gloom of the disaster it was decided to open negotiations with the enemy. But the offer of the Signory was haughtily rejected. “Ye shall have no peace,” answered Doria, “until I have bridled S. Mark’s horses.” Venice prepared for a death-grapple with her adversary. The common peril evoked a noble enthusiasm. Patrician offered to share the last crust with plebeian and fight shoulder to shoulder in defence of the fatherland. After an unsuccessful attempt to secure the services of Sir John Hawkwood, prince of condottieri, as Captain-General, the post was given to Taddeo Giustiniani. But the people, with finer insight, shouted for Vettor Pisani, under him alone would they fight. The Senate gave way. A great multitude welcomed his release from prison, and bore him in triumph to St Mark’s, crying, “Viva Messer Vettor Pisani.” But their hero rebuked them, and bade them keep silence or shout, “Viva Messer S. Marco.” They only cried the more loudly, “Long live Vettor Pisani and St Mark! Long live Vettor Pisani our father.” As he was borne along, his veteran pilot, Corbaro, shouted, “Now is the time to avenge thee, make thyself dictator.” The answer was a blow from Pisani’s clenched fist. From St Mark’s to his house in S. Fantino, so great was the press of people that there was no place on the ground for a grain of millet seed. He reached home to find that his brother was dead, that his father, too, had gone to an obscure grave. On the morrow he went to the basilica to pray for divine aid, and after his devotions stood by the high altar, and made a bellisima sermone in the vulgar tongue to the people. With cries of “Galleys! galleys! arms! arms!” they streamed out to the Piazza. So great, however, was the disappointment when it became known that Pisani was to share the command with Giustiniani that the seamen refused to serve, and the Senate again gave way. The people’s leader being assured them, enthusiasm knew no bounds. Everyone able to bear arms enrolled himself. A forced loan produced the magnificent sum of more than six and a quarter millions of lire. Gold and silver, jewels and precious stones were cast into the treasury; citizens stripped themselves even of the clasps of their garments. The Signory decreed the ennoblement after the peace of thirty families who should have contributed most in men and treasure to the State. Foreigners were offered citizenship. The Doge himself, seventy-two years and all, reared his gonfalon of gold in the Piazza and decided to lead the armament. A new fleet was equipped: the fortifications strengthened. Meanwhile Doria planned to winter in Chioggia, and Pisani with daring and masterly resource determined to take the offensive and imprison the Genoese in the harbour. On the night of December the 21st, the Venetian fleet left its moorings, towing behind it great hulks filled with stones. Before dawn it had reached the channel of Chioggia. Five thousand men were disembarked on the tongue of land at Brondolo. They were soon attacked and forced by the Genoese to regain their ships. But the diversion had enabled Pisani to sink two of his hulks across the passage, and soon an insuperable barrier blocked the issue. Swiftly he turned under the very jaws of the Genoese cannon and succeeded in holding the enemy while his sappers dammed the channel of Brondolo. With equal skill and bravery the canal of Lombardy was choked, and Carrara cut off from his ally. In a few days every issue from Chioggia was barred, and Pisani hastened out to sea by the Porto di Lido to deal with any reinforcements that might be sent to raise the blockade. Slowly the dark, cold December days dragged on: the strenuous fighting, privation and hunger broke down the spirits of the Venetians. Some there were who murmured, saying, “rather than die here let us abandon Venice and migrate to Crete.” But the Doge met them, drew his sword and swore that though on the verge of eighty he would die sooner than return defeated to St Mark’s. The end of the year was at hand, a mutiny threatened, the Doge again appealed to them, and promised that if on January 1st Zeno had not been sighted, the blockade of Chioggia should be raised. On the morning of New Year’s day anxious eyes scanned the seas. At length a watcher on St Mark’s tower raised a cry. Fifteen sail were on the horizon. Was it invincible Zeno bringing salvation to Venice, or Genoese reinforcements bearing her doom? Some light, swift vessels were sent to reconnoitre. As they neared the squadron St Mark’s banner was run up on the foremost galley. The darkest hour had passed.

For six months after Zeno’s arrival the Genoese held out, but there was never any doubt as to the ultimate result, and on June the 24th the Lion of St Mark again waved from the Tower of Chioggia.

Two Genoese fleets were, however, still at large. Pisani was sent to run them down and died of fever and wounds at Manfredonia.[41] Zeno took up the chase, but the Genoese successfully eluded their pursuers. It was the end of Genoa as a great maritime power. Even as Spain did in her struggle with England two centuries later, Genoa had entered on a contest which tried the nation beyond its powers. Hostilities on the mainland continued till, by the mediation of the House of Savoy, a congress met at Turin and a general treaty of peace was signed in August 1381. For three years no merchant ship had left Venice, yet she emerged from the contest stronger than ever, the acknowledged mistress of the seas.

In September 1381 the Great Council met to elect the thirty contributors to the success of the war, who were to be ennobled. The balloting lasted all day and great part of the night, and on the morrow the names were cried at the edict stones of the Rialto and St Mark’s. Those thus honoured went each bearing a lighted taper in solemn procession to St Mark’s, and the ceremony ended in popular rejoicings.

CHAPTER IX
Aggression on the Mainland—Arrest and Execution of Carmagnola—The Two Foscari

“Are these thy boasts—
To mix with kings in the low lust of sway,
Yell in the hunt and share the murderous prey.”
—Coleridge.

IN June of the next year the venerable and faithful Doge Andrea Contarini was laid to rest in the cloister of S. Stefano, and Michele Morosini was elected in his stead. Morosini was one who in the gloomiest time of the Chioggian war had given an inestimable pledge of his faith in the Republic by buying some house property belonging to the commune for 25,000 ducats, and when rallied by his friends for his folly, replied,[42] “If ill befall the land, I have no desire for fortune.”

Plague carried off Morosini in less than a year, and in October 1382 Antonio Venier became Doge. Peace was a brief sojourner in Italy. A long period of war and diplomacy with the despots of North Italy opens, in which Venice is now the ally and now the foe of Carrara or Visconti. Bribery, treachery and violence were among the weapons used on either side. More than once the Senate and the Ten connived at attempts to poison their country’s enemies. It was the time of the great Condottieri. Patriotism was an affair of the highest bidder. Martial courage and science were sold for a price. No gold, no army. Turk or Christian, English or German, Italian or French, all were welcome who would sell a strong arm and professional skill. English soldiers were much in demand. “Let us have as many English as possible and as few Germans and Italians.” “It would be well for the Paduan contingent to be furnished with the English company, for a thousand lances of theirs are worth more than 500,000 of others.” Such were the instructions of the Signory to their commanders.

In 1387, by a secret treaty, Galeozzo Visconti of Milan and the Carraras of Padua agreed to partition the Scala dominions between them. Visconti was to have Verona: the Carraras, Vicenza. The feeble descendant of Can Grande, Dante’s “magnifico atque victorioso domino” became a Venetian pensioner until poison did Visconti’s work in Friuli, and the widowed and orphaned family of the lord of Verona was reduced to beggary.[43] Before, however, the Carraras had realised what had happened, Visconti had stealthily seized Vicenza. They weakly appealed to Venice for support. But the wounds left by the Chioggian war were not yet healed, and the Signory lent a more willing ear to Visconti, who offered the bitter-sweet morsel of revenge and a tempting prize. Treviso became Venetian once more and territory commanding two passes into North Europe was ceded to the Republic. She averted her eyes while Visconti grabbed Padua. Lord of a wide domain, he now turned his lustful regard on Florence. Venice, alarmed at the monster she had fostered, swung round and helped the Carraras to regain Padua. But in 1402, when the aim of his life seemed near achievement, death struck Visconti down and his dominions became a prey to his generals and his enemies. The Carraras joined in the scramble and attacked Vicenza. Visconti’s widow appealed to Venice for help. The deal was a hard one: Verona and Vicenza were the price of a Venetian alliance. The Carraras, summoned to raise the siege of Vicenza, stood defiant. When their herald reached the edict stone at St Mark’s to deliver the formal challenge, he would have been stoned to death on the Piazza by the boys and populace, if some nobles who happened to be passing had not shielded him; for a story had reached Venice that when the trumpeter of the Republic arrived at the Paduan camp before Vicenza he was seized by order of Jacopo Carrara, his ears and nose cut off, and himself dismissed with the brutal jibe: “Now I have made thee a S. Marco.”

The war was a triumph for Venice. In 1404 she occupied Vicenza, in 1405 Verona. Three months later Padua fell to her arms. The Carraras, father and son, were captured and sent to join Jacopo (who had been taken at Verona), in a Venetian prison. So bitter was the feeling at Venice, that as they passed the people cried—“Crucify them! crucify them!” The Signory treated them leniently at first, but the seizure of the Carraras’ papers at Padua revealed a great conspiracy against the Republic in which some of her own most exalted officers were implicated. The Ten assisted by a Zonta sat day and night to try the accused. On a January evening in 1406 it was bruited about the Piazza that old Carrara had been strangled in his cell. On the morrow, his two sons, it was rumoured, had met the same fate. “Dead men wage no wars” was the grim comment of the people. Another day passed and to the stupefaction of Venice Carlo Zeno, now venerable and honoured, was summoned by the Ten and ordered to be put to the question.[44] The stern decemvirs were no respecters of persons. Zeno was convicted of having corresponded with his country’s enemies, stripped of his honours and imprisoned.

During the early fifteenth century, Venice was riding on the full tide of territorial expansion. On the north she touched the Alps, on the west and south the Adige. Dalmatia, bought back for 200,000 florins, was retained by force of arms, and for the eighth time St Mark’s banner was run up over Zara. Several feudal lords dying without heirs left their domains to the Republic. After a war with the Emperor and his allies she gained the province of Friuli, and reached the Carnac Alps in the east. In 1422 she had acquired Corfù, Argos, Nauplia and Corinth. A Venetian sat on St Peter’s chair and two of her bishops were elevated to the Sacred College. Over this vast empire she ruled, a mother city of less than 200,000 inhabitants,[45] mistress of provinces and of the seas. Her wealth was prodigious.[46] The pomp and circumstance of public and private life grew more and more sumptuous. Four frocks prepared for the trousseau of Jacopo Foscari’s bride cost 2000 ducats. In 1400 the famous Compagnia della Calza (Guild of the Hose) was founded to give honourable and princely entertainment among its members and to the guests of the Republic, and to contribute to the magnificence of State festivals. Brilliant suppers, serenades, jousts and regattas were organised by the members, who were drawn from the richest families. They were divided into various companies bearing fanciful names—the Sempiterni, the Cortesi, the Immortali. They wore embroidered on their hose, lengthwise or crosswise, some quaint pattern in many colours—arabesques, stars, or figures of birds or quadrupeds. On solemn occasions the designs were formed of gold, pearls and precious stones. The doublet was of velvet or cloth of gold with slashed sleeves laced with silk ribbons. The mantle of cloth of gold or damask or crimson tabi cloth was fitted with a pointed hood, which, falling on the shoulders, displayed inside the richly embroidered device of the Company. The head was covered with a jewelled red or black cap. Pointed shoes adorned with jewels completed the costume. Ladies were admitted to membership and wore the Calza device embroidered on the sleeves of their dress. The Compagnia was subject to the control of the Ten.

The festivities which celebrated the elevation of Michel Steno in 1400, now an experienced and upright officer of the State, are said to have lasted nearly a year. A significant change, however, had been made by the correctors of the Coronation Oath—the Doge was no longer to be addressed as domine mi, but plain Messer lo Doge.

On a midsummer day in 1405 a great platform was erected outside St Mark’s, where the Doge sat supported by his chief officers of State to receive the homage of Verona. The twenty-one Veronese ambassadors rode, clothed in white, on chargers caparisoned with white taffeta. They alighted in front of the Doge and bowed three times. High mass was then sung, after which the chief orator presented his credentials, and read an address beginning—“Glory to God in the highest.” He then handed to the Doge the official seals and surrendered the keys of the Porta S. Giorgio, the Porta Vescovo and the Porta Calzoni, the first representing the knights and doctors, the second the merchants and citizens, the third the common people. Two banners, one with a white cross on a red field, another with gold cross on a blue field were then presented to the Doge, and a white wand, emblematic of purity and perpetual dominion. The Doge rose and made a speech beginning, “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light,” and applied the text to the good fortune of the Veronese in coming under the dominion of Venice. The orator began his reply with, “My soul doth magnify the Lord,” at the end of which the Doge gave him the golden banner of St Mark, and all cried, “Viva Messer S. Marco.” The two banners of Verona were then placed on either side the high altar at St Mark’s. The same ceremony was used at the homage of Padua.

Tomaso Mocenigo, “one of the noblest and wisest of her children,” came to the throne at a critical epoch of Venetian history. Visconti’s son, Filippo, inherited the fierce passions and regal ambition of his father. Having assassinated his elder brother, Giovanni, he secured the services of the greatest condottiero of the time, Francesco Bussone da Carmagnola. Brescia and Genoa were quickly recovered, and assuring himself of Venetian neutrality, he seized Forlì and became a menace to Florence, who prayed for a Venetian alliance in the face of a common danger. The procurator, Francesco Foscari, his sails filled with successful acquisitions in Friuli, beckoned to a forward policy and favoured the Florentine alliance: Visconti was a danger to the State: when Florence had been bludgeoned he would turn on Venice and rend her. Foscari was answered in the Senate by Tomaso Mocenigo, in whose mouth Sanudo places a long oration. The venerable Doge after reviewing the story of the Milanese troubles, ranged through the whole of sacred and profane history to enforce his plea for peace. He prayed the fathers to be content with defending their present frontiers if attacked: “Let the young procurator beware of the fate of Pisa that waxed rich and great by peace and good government but fell by war.” He summarised the national balance-sheet and the incidence of her trade. “Let the procurator giovane remember that commerce was the basis of Venetian prosperity, peace her greatest interest. Let them trade with Milan, not fight her. They were everywhere welcomed as the purveyors of the world; their islands were a city of refuge from oppression.” He then lifted his hearers to the higher spheres of religion and ethics, and warned them that God would wreak vengeance on an aggressive and unrighteous nation. Foscari was intriguing for the reversion of the Dogeship. He had been chief of the Quarantia; three times a capo of the Ten. His influence was great among the patricians, by reason of his lavish distribution of money, when procurator, to decayed gentlemen whose daughters he dowered from the public charities. A few days after his speech in the Senate, Mocenigo lay on his sick bed; some senators stood around him, and the Doge feeling his end draw nigh again took up his parable and solemnly entreated them as they loved their fatherland not to elect Foscari as his successor; to preserve the priceless inheritance he was about to leave them; and to keep their hands from their neighbours, for God would destroy Venice if she waged an unjust war. Let them live in peace, fear nought and mistrust the Florentines. But in truth Mocenigo’s warning came a century too late. The Nemesis of Empire was already upon Venice. She was impelled to grasp more and more in order to retain what she had already won. The time had passed when so great was the fame of the incorruptible justice[47] of the Fathers that sixty envoys of princes might be found waiting in her halls to ask the judgment of the Senate on important matters of State.

Foscari was elected after a close contest. At his proclamation the last feeble echo of the popular voice was drowned. The Grand Chancellor, reviewing the old formula, asked of the Quarant’ uno, “What if the choice is not pleasing to the people?” and himself answered, “Let us simply say we have elected such a one.” Foscari was presented to the people in St Mark’s with the maimed formula, “Quest’ è il vostro doge.” “Se vi piacerà” was no longer heard. But the coronation festivities were more gorgeous than ever and lasted a whole year. The responsibility of power and the strained relations with the Emperor, for a time sobered the impetuous Foscari. Once and again the Florentine envoys were dismissed unsatisfied. After suffering a severe defeat at Zagognara, the Florentines for the third time appealed to Venice, and in an impassioned oration threatened that if the Venetians permitted Filippo Visconti to make himself King of North Italy, they would help him to become Emperor. Meanwhile Carmagnola, who had risen from a Piedmontese hind to be an arbiter of States, had roused Visconti’s suspicions and fled to Venice, where 30,000 ducats of his fortune were safely invested in the funds. The Signory paid him a handsome retaining fee and sent him to Treviso. Foscari’s opportunity was now come. Carmagnola had been made a senator, and in supporting the Doge’s war policy laid bare the weak parts in Visconti’s position. It was to be an easy and glorious campaign. The terms of the alliance with Florence were drawn up. On February 19th, 1426, Carmagnola was appointed Captain-General, and on March 3rd laid siege to Brescia.

Carmagnola proved a careful, not to say leisurely tactician, and professed much reliance on divine aid. April came, and the Captain-General asked permission to take the waters at Abano for his health’s sake. The Senate consulted physicians and suggested that his presence at the siege was essential, and that an aperient might meet the case. The Captain-General did not take the hint, and spent a pleasant time at the baths. Again in November the delicate state of his health necessitated another journey to Abano. At length Brescia surrendered. Visconti offered to negotiate, and on the last day of the year a treaty signed at S. Giorgio Maggiore gave the whole province of Brescia and a large sub-Alpine territory to the Republic.

In February of the next year Carmagnola took the field with the finest army ever seen in Italy, for Visconti had recommenced hostilities in the Bresciano. It was a fair country. The gentle Italian spring gave way to lusty summer. A battle had been fought in which the Republic suffered a heavy loss in horses; in another some unfortunate cavaliers, including the Captain-General himself, were dangerously hurt by falling from their chargers during a surprise attack. The Senate protested, and urged greater energy and decision. In October Carmagnola’s professional pride was stung. He bestirred himself, won a brilliant victory at Macolò and captured 8000 cavalry. History is silent as to the dead and wounded. He was lavishly rewarded, made a Count, and given a house in Venice and an estate in the country. The Senate now advised him to follow up his advantage, strike at Milan and end the war. But Carmagnola’s aim was to live, not to perish by the sword. The Republic was an excellent paymaster, and it were sorry economy to bring so profitable a business to a premature conclusion. Moreover, his adversary of to-day might be his patron of to-morrow, and his delicate constitution again required the stimulus of the baths. Visconti, too, was anxious for breathing time, and began intriguing with his former general. In 1428 another instrument of peace gave the province of Bergamo to Venice. Carmagnola received princely honours but soon gave in his resignation. The Republic offered him a salary of one thousand ducats a month in peace or war, and all ransoms and prize-money when on active service. The promise of the dukedom of Milan was held before him, but when the third Milanese war began the General’s strategy was more exasperating than ever. He had no plan of campaign, and was known to be in correspondence with Visconti. The patient Senate resolved at last to act. Their members were bound to secrecy, and the Ten with a Zonta of twenty Senators were ordered to deal with the case warily but vigorously. Carmagnola’s arrest was voted. Giovanni de’ Imperi, secretary of the Ten, a pallid-faced notary, left for the camp with instructions to invite the General to Venice for a conference with the Doge. If he failed to take the bait, the secretary bore letters-patent addressed to the staff of the army, commanding them to concert measures for the arrest and detention of their chief. It was a perilous mission, for the mighty Captain-General held the State in the hollow of his hands. But Giovanni of the pale face and nerves of steel successfully achieved his purpose, and Carmagnola left for Venice. On his arrival he was met by eight nobles whose business it was to divert him from his home and lead him to meet the Doge. When he reached the palace the secretary of the Ten disappeared, and Leonardo Mocenigo, procurator of the Collegio, informed the General’s suite that their master was honoured by an invitation to dine with the Doge and that they might retire. As the guest passed through the apartments he noticed with some concern that the doors were closed behind him. On asking for the Doge he was answered that his Serenity was confined to his room with kidney disease, and would see him to-morrow. At the Sala delle quattro porte Carmagnola turned to go home: the officer touched his shoulder and pointed to a corridor that led to the prisons, saying, “This way, my lord.” “But that is not the way!” exclaimed the great captain. “Yes, yes; quite right,” repeated the officer. A signal was given. Guards surrounded him and he was hustled down the stairs, crying, “I am a dead man.” The eagle was snared. At the trial Carmagnola was put to the question. As the executioner prepared the cord, Carmagnola pointed to the arm that had been broken in the service of the Republic. A brazier was applied to his feet instead. On May 5th, 1432, the unhappy soldier was led with a gag in his mouth to his doom between the red columns. After three blows his head fell from his shoulders.

The awful tragedy had been planned and executed with consummate skill and resolution. Two hundred officials were cognisant of the process. Not one opened his mouth to betray the secret. From the time the victim left Vicenza he was practically under arrest, though this he never suspected. The remains were buried in the Frari and afterwards removed to Milan. His widow was pensioned and his daughters were dowered. Four years later another enemy of the Republic lost his head between the red columns. The only surviving son of old Carrara had been convicted by the Ten of an attempt to plot an insurrection in Padua.

During the long remaining years of Foscari’s reign the resources of Venice were drained by a succession of costly campaigns in defence of her conquests. The most famous condottieri, Gonzaga of Mantua, Gattamelata, Francesco Sforza, and Bartolomeo Colleoni were employed, at enormous expense. At length, in 1454, weary and exhausted by the financial, if not by the mortal drain of thirty years’ war, and sobered by the appalling news of the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, the three chief belligerents—Venice, Florence, and Milan—laid down their arms and signed a defensive alliance against any power that should disturb the peace of Italy. The Venetians had held, and even added to, their conquests. Ravenna was occupied in 1440 and the last of the Polentas, father and son died in exile in Crete. Although St Mark’s Lion never looked down from his pillar on a Milanese Piazza, Venice had won the primacy of North Italy. In fifty years she had annexed eleven provinces—Treviso, Vicenza and the Sette Comuni, Verona, Padua, the Friuli, Brescia, Bergamo, Feltre, Belluno, Crema, Ravenna. Her yoke was easy. The subject peoples had small reason to regret the change of masters. The Brescians endured the horrors of a three years’ siege rather than revert to Milanese dominion. The Signory “that could not sleep till Brescia were relieved” organised the transport of a fleet of thirty vessels across the mountains, a distance of two hundred miles in mid-winter, lowered them down the precipitous flank of Monte Baldo and launched them on Lake Carda, a stupendous feat of engineering skill and energy.

Venice never denied her enlightened and paternal rule, which embraced even the cut of ladies’ dresses and the duties of wet nurses. But St Mark’s “insatiable greed” had aroused the jealousies of the transalpine monarchies. The League of Cambrai, which broke down for ever the power of Venice on the mainland, was a direct outcome of Foscari’s policy.

While men’s minds were pre-occupied with the Milanese war and the news of the occupation of part of the Morea by the Turks, a grave domestic scandal weighed upon the Fathers. Charges of corruption were openly made against the Foscari, and in February 1445 the Doge’s only surviving son, Jacopo, was denounced to the Ten for having accepted bribes to use his influence with his father in the allocation of State appointments. The young Foscari was a cultured, but pleasure-loving noble, whose magnificent marriage festivities in 1441 had aroused even the critical Venetians to enthusiasm. He was charged with “having regard neither to God nor man, and accepting gifts of money and jewels against the law,” and cited to appear on the 18th before the Tribunal of the Ten, who were assisted by a Zonta of ten nobles. The arrest of his valet, Gaspero, on the previous day had, however, aroused Jacopo’s suspicions; and when the officer of the Ten tried to serve the warrant, it was discovered that Foscari had fled to Trieste with all the money he could lay hands on. The tribunal having excluded the Doge and all his relations, proceeded to try the accused in default. The members were declared inviolable and permitted to wear arms. Jacopo was found guilty, and banished for life to Nauplia. The Dogaressa was refused permission to visit him at Trieste, and Marco Trevisano with a galley sent to deport him. Messer Jacopo, however, treated the warrant with contempt, and refused to embark. The price of contumacy was outlawry, and decapitation between the two columns. The Ten did not enforce the extreme penalty, and entreated the Doge to persuade his son to obey the law. But efforts were of no avail, and on April 7th the sentence was confirmed, and Jacopo’s property confiscated.

For more than a year the outlaw had been living defiantly at Trieste, when fresh revelations led to the appointment of another Zonta to deal further with the scandal. Five months passed. Marco Trevisano died, and Jacopo fell sick at Trieste. The Ten thereupon resolved to accept, in the name of Jesus Christ, the excuses of the invalid for not proceeding to Nauplia, and to substitute his own country house near Treviso for the place of exile.

We hear nothing more of the case until April 1447, when a chest containing 2040 ducats and some silver plate was discovered, and proven to have been received by Jacopo from the Duke of Milan. The contents of the chest were confiscated, but no further action was taken. In September, the Doge presented a piteous petition for his son’s pardon. The Ten resolved that, since the present critical state of public affairs demanded a prince with a clear and untroubled mind, Jacopo should be restored to his family, as an act of piety to our lord the Doge. Three years elapsed. On a November evening, as Ermolao Donato, one of the Capi who had tried Jacopo, was leaving the palace after attending a meeting of the Senate, he was fatally stabbed. The Ten and a Zonta met to investigate, but failed to penetrate the mystery. On January 2nd, 1451, a signed denunciation was found in the Bocca del leone. Jacopo Foscari was arrested, and put to the question. Incoherent muttering, which the Ten thought to be an incantation, was all that could be forced from his lips. The trial dragged on until March 26th, when Jacopo was declared, on purely circumstantial evidence, guilty of the murder, and banished to Canea, in Crete, where he was to report himself daily to the Podestà. The Doge was exhorted to patience, and on the 29th the condemned Jacopo was put on a galley that was sailing for Crete. In the June of 1456 important despatches in cypher from Canea came before the Ten. The home-sick and intolerant Foscari had written a letter to the Duke of Milan, asking him to intercede with the Signory, and another to the Turkish Sultan, begging that a vessel might be sent to Crete to abduct him from the island. Jacopo and all his household were cited to Venice. Before the Ten he frankly confessed all, and the sentence was then debated. A Capo, Jacopo Loredano, proposed the death penalty. The motion was lost, and his relegation to Canea and a year’s imprisonment were voted. His family were permitted to see him and Jacopo, bearing marks of the torture, was led into the room, where his father awaited him. The poor old Doge fell upon his son’s neck, while Jacopo cried, “Father, father, I beseech you procure for me permission to return to my home.” “Jacopo,” answered the Doge, “thou[48] must obey the will of the land, and strive no more.” As the door closed on his son for ever, the miserable father flung himself upon a chair, uttering lamentations and moaning, “O! the great pity of it!” In six months came news from Canea: Jacopo Foscari was dead. The Doge never recovered from the blow. He secluded himself in his room, and sank into hopeless, sullen grief. The most urgent affairs of State could not divert him from his sorrow. The very Government was paralysed, and the Ten were called to devise a way out of the dead-lock. Having excluded the Doge’s relations, after long debate they decided to invite the Doge in his great charity to take pity on the land and freely resign. They offered a pension of fifteen hundred ducats, and gave him a day to consider his answer. On the morrow, he would say neither yea nor nay, and complained of the unconstitutional suggestion. A second deputation was no more successful. It was then intimated to the Doge that he must resign, and leave the palace within a week, or suffer the confiscation of his property.

On Sunday the 23rd of October, in the presence of the Ten and the chief officers of State, he silently drew the ducal ring from his finger. A Capo broke it in pieces and removed the ducal cap from his head. The discrowned Foscari was bid to retire to his home in S. Pantaleone. As the Councillors were leaving the room he noticed that one of the Quarantia lingered awhile and gazed pityingly upon him. He called him, took his hand and asked: “Whose son art thou?” “I am the son of Marin Memo,” was the reply. “He is my dear comrade,” said the Doge. “Prithee bid him come to see me, for it will be a precious solace to me: we will visit the monasteries together.” Early on the morrow Francesco Foscari left his apartments leaning on a crutched stick accompanied by his brother Marco, his only suite a few sobbing kinsmen and servants. As they neared the principal staircase Marco said: “It is well, your Serenity, that we go to the landing-stage by the other stairway which is covered.” “Nay,” answered Foscari, “I will descend by the same stairs up which I mounted to the Dogeship.” Stripped of his honours, forsaken by his Councillors, bent beneath the weight of his eighty-four years and the long tenure of a great office, the humiliated Foscari tottered down those steps in silence, which more than the third of a century before he had climbed, erect, exultant, full of hope, amid the acclamation of a whole city.

The Great Council met the same day: the electoral machinery was set in motion and on the morrow, the 30th October, Pasquale Malipiero was chosen and proclaimed Doge two hours before sunset. Two days after, on All Saints’ Day, the new Doge, and his Council were at mass at St Mark’s when a messenger came in hot haste with the news that Francesco Foscari was dead. The Councillors gazed mutely at each other. The Ten were convoked and, pricked perhaps by remorse at their severity, voted a magnificent and honourable funeral, the widow protesting against the mockery and declaring that she would sell her dowry to give her lord worthy burial. Wrapped in a mantle of cloth of gold; crowned with the ducal cap; sword by side and spurred with gold, all that remained of the great Doge Foscari lay in state in the hall of the Senate, guarded by four and twenty nobles in scarlet robes to indicate that if the Doge were dead the Signory yet lived. The bier was borne by a picked body of sailors. Pasquale Malipiero, clothed as a simple senator; the officers of State; the clergy; the guilds followed. With solemn pomp the pageant went its way lighted by innumerable tapers along the Merceria and across the Rialto bridge to the Church of the Frari. The sumptuous monument, erected in the choir to his memory, by Ant. Riccio, still testifies to his fame. Those who would gaze on the striking, sensuous features of unhappy Doge Foscari will find his bust in the corridor that leads to the private apartments of the ducal palace, a faithful portrait carved by Bart. Buon. It was rescued when the original group over the Porta della Carta was destroyed in 1797.

Tomaso Mocenigo left Venice at peace with a flourishing exchequer: under Foscari it became bankrupt. In ten years the Milanese war had cost seven million sequins. The funds which stood at 60 when it began, sank to 18½ before its close. Her hands tied by the war, Venice had been compelled to look on while Constantinople fell to the Turks. Increased taxes, forced loans, national default and commercial crises: non-payment of salaries, depreciation of real estate, depression of industry and reduction of population—this was the cost of military glory; the dark background to the brilliant and memorable reign of Francesco Foscari.

CHAPTER X

The Turkish Terror—Acquisition of Cyprus—Discovery of the Cape Route to India—The French Invasions—The League of Cambrai—Decline of Venice

“The gods have done it as to all they do
Destine destruction, that from thence may rise
A poem to instruct posterities.”
—Chapman’s Homer

IN the eyes of Italian and European statesmen, Venice at the death of Doge Foscari seemed mightier than ever, but in truth she had already passed the meridian of her strength and was on the descending arc of her destiny. For a century her consuls had warned the Signory of danger in the East. Pope after pope had summoned his children to cease their fratricidal strife and unite to meet the Turkish peril. During the pauses in the fierce clash of Christian passions and ambitions, could be heard, like the beat of muffled drums, the tread of the advancing infidel hosts sounding the doom of an empire. But no state in Europe, least of all Venice, grasped the full significance of the portent.

In 1416 a fleet had been sent to chastise the Sultan for permitting a violation of treaty rights, and although in the words of the commander, the Turks fought like dragons, yet by the grace of God and the help of the evangelist S. Marco they were utterly routed and the greater part cut in pieces: he was confident on the testimony of a captured Emir that the Turks would never again venture to oppose the Venetians on the seas. In 1438 the Greek Emperor himself came to Venice to implore her aid and that of Europe against the enemy of Christendom. Twice in 1452 the appeal was repeated, but the Christian princes were too busy with their own quarrels to listen, and before a year passed the scimitar of the Turk was red with the blood of the Christians at Constantinople. Had not Venice herself proven that the strong city was not impregnable? When it fell the Republic adopted her usual policy. She accepted the situation and secured her trading privileges by treaty with the Sultan. But when news came in 1463 of the conquest of the Morea and Epirus and that the crescent was flying over the Castle of Argos almost in sight of the Adriatic, Venice no longer stopped her ears to the Papal voice. Friar Michael of Milan was permitted to preach the crusade in the Piazza and a big, iron box was placed in St Mark’s for offerings of money. Cristoforo Moro, the new Doge, addressed the Great Council and in an access of zeal volunteered to lead the crusade. By 1607 ballots against 11 the Great Council approved. Moro[49] was a devout but not very robust creature, and pleading age and infirmity asked permission to withdraw. He was bluntly told by Vettor Cappello to think less of his skin and more of the honour and welfare of the land.

Pius II. came to Ancona with the Sacred College to organise the crusade. A league was made with Hungary. The Duke of Burgundy offered to join in person. Envoys were sent to other Christian princes. On July 30th, 1464, three hours before sunset—a time selected by the astrologers as the best—the Venetian fleet weighed anchor, the Doge leading in a new galley named after him. Scarcely had he disembarked at Ancona when the Pope died and all came to naught. The Doge returned to the ducal palace. The Venetians single-handed fought on sea and land with their usual intrepidity, but the State was already weakened by the Milanese wars. In 1470 she lost the whole island of Negropont. Dazed by the calamity the members of the Collegio slowly walked with leaden feet and downcast looks across the Piazza and, if spoken to, answered not a word. Were they listening to the rustle of the wings of the sable-robed avenging sisters? In the following year a crowd of panic-stricken refugees from Istria and Friuli streamed into Venice and camped on the Piazza and under the arcades of the ducal palace. An army of 20,000 Turks had ravaged the provinces even up to Udine. The Republic was now at the end of her resources. An attempted diversion from Persia had failed. A big loan from her mainland provinces had been swallowed up. The Pope sent her envoys away empty. Not one Italian state stirred to help her. The good Tomaso Mocenigo’s warnings were verified. National wrong meant national sorrow. Venice was harvesting the acrid fruit of the Genoese wars and her fifty years of territorial aggression. At the Congress[50] of Carisano in 1466 Galeazzo Sforza, Duke of Milan, had warned the Secretary of the Republic that she was hated not only in Italy but beyond the Alps. “You do a grievous wrong,” he vehemently exclaimed; “you possess the fairest State in Italy, yet are not satisfied. You disturb the peace and covet the states of others. If you knew the ill-will universally felt towards you, the very hair of your head would stand on end. Do you think the states of Italy are leagued against you out of love to each other? No; necessity has driven them. They have bound themselves together for the fear they have of you and of your power. They will not rest till they have clipped your wings.”

Negotiations were twice begun with a view to peace, but the Sultan’s demands were intolerable and the unequal contest continued. In 1476 Friuli was again devastated and the flames of burning cities could be seen from St Mark’s tower. Sailors were clamouring for their arrears of pay on the very steps of the ducal palace. Scutari (in Albania), after heroically resisting two sieges, was nearing the end. A loan from the mainland provinces and 100,000 ducats from the sum left to the Republic by their condottiero Colleoni were swallowed up. In January 1479 Venice yielded. She ceded Scutari, Stalimene and other territory in the Morea occupied by the Turks during the war, in exchange for which the Sultan restored all that had been taken from her beyond her old boundaries. She maintained consular jurisdiction in Constantinople, but agreed to pay an indemnity of 200,000 ducats and a tribute of 10,000 ducats a year for her trading privileges. It was in Moro’s reign that the last vestige of popular government was effaced. The title of “Communitas Venetiarum,” long disused in actual practice, was formally changed to the “Signoria.” During the wearing anxieties of the Turkish wars from the death of Moro in 1471 to the signature of the peace under Doge Giov. Mocenigo in 1479 four Doges, Nicolo Tron, Nicolo Marcello, Pietro Mocenigo, and Andrea Vendramin followed in rapid succession, the last a descendant of a family ennobled after the Chioggian war. The delimitation of the new frontiers had been barely concluded in the East when a dispute concerning salterns and custom dues on the Po and the arrest of a priest for debt by the Venetian Consul at Ferrara led to another war in the peninsula. In 1482 the whole of Italy was aflame, and states that had watched unmoved the agony of the sixteen years’ Turkish wars now turned on Venice and accused her of sinister motives in concluding the peace. The Republic was now allied with Genoa and the Papacy against the Duke of Ferrara, supported by the King of Naples, by Florence and some minor Italian states. The early operations were in her favour, but in a few months the Pope, alarmed by an attack on Rome by the Neapolitans, joined the league against Venice, and as feudal lord of Ferrara, summoned her, under pain of excommunication, to abandon operations against that city. When the interdict reached the Venetian Embassy at Rome, their ambassador was absent and his agent refused to transmit the document to Venice. It was then fixed on the doors of St Peter’s and afterwards forwarded to the Patriarch at Venice, who was ordered under pain of excommunication to serve it on the Signory.[51] The Patriarch fell diplomatically sick and secretly informed the Doge. The Ten were convoked. The Patriarch was warned to keep silence, and that the services of the Church must proceed as usual. The Pope was a long way off; the Ten were near; he obeyed them. A formal appeal was then made to a future Council of the Church and a copy nailed by a secret agent on the door of S. Celso at Rome.

The new combination was too powerful for the crippled resources of Venice. Driven into a corner she adopted the impious expedient of inviting the King of France to make good his claim to Naples and the Duke of Orleans to vindicate his rights over the duchy of Milan. The weight of the great French monarchy fell with decisive effect on the league. Peace was made and the treaty of Bagnolo (1484) added Rovigo and the Polesine to the Venetian dominions. Three days’ bell-ringing, illumination and rejoicing celebrated the immediate results of the new diplomacy. But the successors of Louis XI. were now factors in Italian politics. The league of Cambrai was one stage nearer.