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Title: Salve Venetia, gleanings from Venetian history; vol. II
Author: Crawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion)
Language: English
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VENETIAN HISTORY; VOL. II ***
[Illustration: THE ANGELS OF THE SALUTE]
SALVE · VENETIA
GLEANINGS
FROM VENETIAN HISTORY
BY
FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD
_WITH 225 ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOSEPH PENNELL_
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II
NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1906
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1905,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published December, 1905. Reprinted
January, 1906.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. THE ARISTOCRATIC MAGISTRACIES AT THE BEGINNING
OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 1
II. GLEANING FROM VENETIAN CRIMINAL HISTORY 51
III. VENETIAN DIPLOMACY 77
IV. THE ARSENAL, THE GLASS-WORKS, AND THE LACE-MAKERS 95
V. CONCERNING SOME LADIES OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 117
VI. A FEW PAINTERS, MEN OF LETTERS, AND SCHOLARS 132
VII. THE TRIUMPHANT CITY 168
VIII. THE HOSE CLUB--VENETIAN LEGENDS 189
IX. THE DECADENCE 207
X. THE LAST HOMES--THE LAST GREAT LADIES 232
XI. THE LAST CARNIVALS--THE LAST FAIRS--THE LAST FEASTS 266
XII. THE LAST MAGISTRATES 288
XIII. THE LAST SBIRRI 310
XIV. THE LAST DOGES 334
XV. THE LAST SOLDIERS 348
XVI. THE LAST DIPLOMATISTS 361
XVII. THE LAST HOUR 380
XVIII. CONCLUSION 412
THE DOGES OF VENICE 421
TABLE OF THE PRINCIPAL DATES IN VENETIAN HISTORY 425
INDEX 433
ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATES
The Angels of the Salute _Frontispiece_
The Last Rays, St. Mark’s _To face page_ 35
Palazzo Ressonico ” 72
Steamers coming in ” 96
Afterglow, the Grand Canal ” 134
Venice from the Garden ” 140
Entrance to the Sacristy, Frari ” 149
Campiello delle Ancore ” 208
The Salute from the Riva ” 246
Fondamente Nuove ” 313
From San Georgio to the Salute ” 326
Ponte Canonica ” 356
Out in the Lagoon ” 382
IN TEXT
PAGE
S. Maria degli Scalzi, Grand Canal 1
Hall of the Great Clocks, Ducal Palace 7
Hall of the Pictures, Ducal Palace 9
The Stair of Gold, Ducal Palace 13
Rio S. Atanasio 20
S. Samuele 30
On the Zattere 39
Rio del Rimedio 41
Mouth of the Grand Canal 51
The Rialto at Night 53
From the Balcony of the Ducal Palace 54
The Columns, Piazzetta 55
The Salute from the Giudecca 61
A Garden Wall 69
Palazzo Dario 83
Calle Beccheria 85
Ponte del Cristo 95
S. Michele 99
Venice from Murano 100
The Duomo Campanile, Murano 101
Murano, looking towards Venice 103
Murano 104
The House of Beroviero, Murano 105
The Palaces 109
The Rialto Steps 112
Noon on the Rialto 113
At the Rialto 115
Evening off S. Georgio 117
Casa Weidermann 125
The Grand Canal in Summer 132
Euganean Hills from the Lagoon, Low Tide 135
House of Tintoretto 145
House of Aldus 147
S. Giacomo in Orio 157
Doorway of the Sacristy, S. Giacomo in Orio 159
Fondamenta Sanudo 161
A Holiday on the Riva 168
Door of the Carmine 174
Interior of the Carmine 177
Campo behind S. Giacomo in Orio 181
The Piazza 185
Pigeons in the Piazza 187
Sotto Portico della Guerra 189
Ponte S. Antonio 193
S. Zobenigo 197
Ponte dell’ Angelo, Giudecca, Old Wooden Bridge 202
Rio S. Sofia, Night 207
Santa Maria Formosa 211
Grand Canal looking towards Mocenigo Palace 217
The Fondamenta S. Giorgio, Redentore in Distance 222
Steps of the Redentore 224
The Nave of S. Stefano 229
The Riva from the Dogana 232
Campo S. Bartolomeo, Statue of Goldoni 233
SS. Giovanni e Paolo 243
Night on the Riva 244
Rio della Toresela 253
A Narrow Street, near the Academy 259
Grand Canal 266
Church of the Miracle 271
The Procession of the Redentore 276
Near the Fenice 286
Grand Canal from the Fish Market 288
S. Barnabò 289
Instituto Bon, Grand Canal 293
When the Alps show Themselves, Fondamenta Nuove 300
Café on the Zattere 301
The Dogana 303
Rio della 310
Rio S. Stin 313
Rio della Guerra 318
Via Garibaldi 325
The Pesaro Palace, Grand Canal 334
Marco Polo’s Court 339
Ponte della Pietà 344
From the Public Garden at Sunset 348
Boat-Builders 353
The Vegetable Market 355
Fondamenta Weidermann 357
The Salute from S. Giorgio 361
From the Ponte della Pietà 365
On the Way to Fusina, from the Mouth of the Brenta 369
A Lonely Canal 374
Evening 380
The Salute from the Lagoon 385
From the Ponte S. Rocco 397
Campo SS. Giovanni e Paolo 403
So-called House of Desdemona 407
Sails 412
A Gateway 413
SALVE · VENETIA
[Illustration: S. MARIA DEGLI SCALZI, GRAND CANAL]
I
THE ARISTOCRATIC MAGISTRACIES AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Like other aristocracies, the Venetian government rarely destroyed or
altogether abolished any office or regulation which had existed a long
time. When a change was needed the duties or powers of one or more of
the Councils were extended, or a committee of the Council of Ten was
appointed and presently turned into a separate tribunal, as when the
Inquisitors of State were created.
In one sense the government of Venice had now existed in a rigid and
unchangeably aristocratic form during two centuries, and that form never
changed to the very end. But in another sense no government in the world
ever showed itself more flexible under the pressure of events, or better
able to provide a new legislative weapon with which to combat each new
danger that presented itself. This double character of an administration
which inspired awe by its apparent immutability and terror by its
ubiquity and energy, no doubt had much to do with its extraordinarily
long life; for I believe that no civilised form of government ever
endured so long as that of Venice.
It is therefore either frivolous or hypocritical to seek the causes of
its ultimate collapse. It died of old age, when the race that had made
it was worn out. It would be much more to the point to inquire why the
most unscrupulous, sceptical, suspicious, and thoroughly immoral
organisation that ever was devised by man should have outlasted a number
of other organisations supposed to be founded on something like
principles of liberty and justice. Such an inquiry would involve an
examination into the nature of freedom, equity, and truth generally; but
no one has ever satisfactorily defined even one of those terms, for the
simple reason that the things the words are supposed to mean do not
anywhere exist; and the study of that which has no real existence, and
no such potential mathematical existence as an ultimate ratio, is
absolutely futile.
The facts we know about the Venetian government are all interesting,
however. It had its origin, like all really successful governments, in
the necessities of a small people which held together in the face of
great dangers. It was moulded and developed by the strongest and most
intelligent portion of that people, and the party that modelled it
guessed that each member of the party would destroy it and make himself
the master if he could, wherefore the main thing was to render it
impossible for any individual to succeed in that. The individual most
likely to succeed was the Doge himself, and he was therefore turned into
a mere doll, a puppet that could not call his soul his own. The next
most probable aspirant to the tyranny would be the successful
native-born general or admiral. A machinery was invented whereby the
victorious leader was almost certain to be imprisoned, fined, and exiled
as soon as his work was done and idleness made him dangerous. Pisani,
Zeno, Da Lezze are merely examples of what happened almost invariably.
If a Venetian was a hero, any excuse would serve for locking him up.
Next after the generals came the nobles who held office, and lastly
those who were merely rich and influential. They were so thoroughly
hemmed in by a hedge of apparently petty rules and laws as to their
relations with foreigners, with the people, and with each other, that
they were practically paralysed, as individuals, while remaining active
and useful as parts of the whole. No one ever cared what the people
thought or did, for they were peaceable, contented, and patriotic. Every
measure passed by the nobles was directed against an enemy that might at
any moment arise amongst themselves, or against the machinations of
enemies abroad. Of all Italians the Venetians alone were not the victims
of that simplicity of which I have already spoken. They believed in
nothing and nobody, and they were not deceived. They were not drawn into
traps by the wiles of the Visconti as Genoa was, and as many of the
principalities were; they were not cheated out of their money by royal
English borrowers as the Florentines were; they were not led away out of
sentiment to ruin themselves in the Crusades as so many were; on the
contrary, their connection with the Crusades was very profitable. For a
long time they could be heroes when driven to extremities, but they
never liked heroics; they were good fighters at sea, because they were
admirable merchant sailors, but on land they much preferred to hire
other men to fight for them, whom they could pay off and get rid of when
the work was done.
Like other nations, their history is that of their rise, their
culmination, and their decline. Like other nations, Venice also
resembled the living body of a human being, of which it is not possible
to define with absolute accuracy the periods of youth, prime, and old
age. But we can say with certainty that each of those stages lasted
longer in the life of Venice than in the life of any other European
state, perhaps because no one of the three periods was hastened or
interrupted by an internal revolution or by the temporary presence of a
foreign conqueror.
It can be said, however, that Venice was, on the whole, at the height of
her glory about the year 1500, and it would have needed a gift of
prophecy to foretell the probable date of the still distant end. At that
time the Great Council was more than ever the incarnation of the State,
that is, of the aristocracy; and every member of the great assembly had
a sort of ‘cultus’ for his own dignity, and looked upon his family, from
which he derived his personal privileges, with a veneration that
bordered on worship. The safety and prosperity of the patrician houses
were most intimately connected with the welfare of the country; a member
of the Great Council would probably have considered that the latter was
the immediate consequence of the former. As a matter of fact, under the
government which the aristocrats had given themselves, it really was so;
they were themselves the State.
It was therefore natural that they should guard their race against all
plebeian contamination. From time to time it became necessary to open
the Golden Book and the doors of the Great Council to certain families
which had great claims upon the public gratitude, as happened after the
war of Chioggia; but the book was opened unwillingly, and the door of
the council-chamber was only set ajar; the newcomers were looked
[Sidenote: _Rom. iv. 469._]
upon as little better than intruders, and the ‘new men,’ while they
were invested with the outward distinctions of rank before the law, were
not received into anything like intimacy by their colleagues of the
older nobility.
It is a law of the Catholic Church that baptism creates a relationship,
and therefore a canonical impediment to marriage, between the baptized
person or his parents on the one hand, and the godfathers and godmothers
on the other, as well as between each of the godparents and all the
rest. But it was the custom of Venice to have a great many godfathers
and godmothers at baptisms, and the nobles were therefore obliged by law
to choose them from the burgher and artisan classes. It was perfectly
indifferent that a young patrician should contract a spiritual
relationship with a hundred persons--there were sometimes as many
godparents as that--if these persons were socially so far beneath him
that he must lose caste if he married one of them; but it was of prime
importance that the law should forbid the formation of any spiritual
bond whereby a possible marriage between two members of the aristocracy
might be prevented, or even retarded. Every parish priest was therefore
required to ask in a loud voice, when he was baptizing a noble baby,
whether there were any persons of the same social condition as the
infant amongst the godparents. If he omitted to do this, or allowed
himself to be deceived by those present, he was liable to a very heavy
fine, and might even be imprisoned for several months.
The Avogadori now replaced their old-fashioned register by the one
henceforth officially known as the Golden Book, in which were entered
the marriages of the nobles and the births of their children. Every
noble who omitted to have his marriage registered within one week, or
the birth of his children within the same time, was liable to severe
penalties. But the
[Illustration: HALL OF THE GREAT CLOCKS, DUCAL PALACE]
names of women of inferior condition who married nobles were not entered
in those sanctified pages, since the children of a burgher woman could
not sit in the Great Council. Nevertheless, it happened now and then
that a noble sacrificed the privileges
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Dog._]
of his descendants for the present advantage of a rich dowry; and as
this again constituted a source of anxiety for the State, the amount of
a burgher girl’s marriage portion was limited by law to the sum of two
thousand ducats.
The young aristocrats received a special education, to fit them for
their future duties and offices. We have already seen that young men not
yet old enough to sit in the Great Council were admitted to its meetings
in considerable numbers, though without a
[Sidenote: _Yriarte, Vie d’un Patricien de Venise, 67._]
vote. The instruction and education of young nobles were conducted
according to a programme of which the details were established by a
series of decrees, and especially by one dating from 1443; and in the
Senate very young noble boys were employed to carry the ballot-boxes, in
which office they took turns, changing every three months. There were
probably not enough noble children to perform the same duty for the
Great Council, which employed for that purpose a number of boys from the
Foundling Asylum.
The young nobles were brought up to feel that they and their time
belonged exclusively to the State, and when they grew older it was a
point of honour with them not to be absent from any meeting of the
Councils to which they were appointed. Marcantonio Barbaro, the
patrician whose life M. Yriarte has so carefully studied, missed only
one meeting of the Great Council in thirty years, and then his absence
was due to illness. When one considers that the Great Council met every
Sunday, and on every feast day except the second of March and the
thirty-first of January, which was Saint Mark’s day, such constant
regularity is really wonderful.
[Illustration: HALL OF THE PICTURES, DUCAL PALACE]
During the summer the sittings were held from eight in the morning until
noon, in winter from noon to sunset; this, at least, was the ordinary
rule, but the Doge’s counsellors could multiply the meetings to any
extent they thought necessary, and we know that when a doge was to be
elected the Great Council sometimes sat fifty times consecutively.
The public were admitted to the ordinary sittings of the Great Council,
and in later times one could even be present wearing a mask, as may be
seen in certain old engravings. But no outsiders were admitted when an
important subject was to be discussed, and on those occasions a number
of members were themselves excluded. If, for instance, the question
concerned the Papal Court, all those who had ever avowed their sympathy
for the Holy See, or who had any direct relations with the reigning
Pope, or who owed him any debt of gratitude, were ordered to leave the
hall. Such persons were called ‘papalisti,’ and were frequently shut out
of the Great Council in the sixteenth century, a period during which the
Republic had many differences with Rome.
In 1526, for instance, the Patriarch of Venice laid before the Great
Council a complaint against the Signors of the Night, who refused to set
at liberty a certain priest arrested by them, or even to inform the
ecclesiastical authorities of the nature of his misdemeanour. That would
have been one of the occasions for excluding the ‘papalisti.’ The
Patriarch seems to have been a hot-tempered person, for on finding that
he could get no satisfaction from the Great Council, he excommunicated
the Venetian government and everybody connected with it, and posted the
notice of the interdict on the columns of the ducal palace. The matter
was patched up in some way, however, for on the morrow the notice
disappeared.
The Senate met twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I find among
their regulations a singular rule by which the beginning of every speech
had to be delivered in the Tuscan language, after which the speaker was
at liberty to go on in his own Venetian dialect.
[Sidenote: _Fulin, Studii, Arch. Ven. I. 1871 (unfinished)._]
I have already spoken at some length of the Council of Ten; it is now
necessary to say something of the Inquisitors of State, to whom the Ten
ceded a part of their authority in the sixteenth century.
In the first place, the Inquisitors of State never had anything to do
with the ‘Inquisition,’ nor with the ‘Inquisitors of the Holy Office,’ a
tribunal, oddly enough, which was much more secular than ecclesiastic,
and which belongs to a later period.
Secondly, the so-called ‘Statutes of the Inquisitors of State,’
published by the French historian Daru, in good faith, and translated by
Smedley, were
[Sidenote: _Rom. vi._]
afterwards discovered to be nothing but an impudent forgery, containing
several laughable anachronisms, and a number of mistakes about the
nature of the magistracies which prove that the forger was not even a
Venetian.
Thirdly, the genuine Statutes have been discovered since, and are given
at length by Romanin. They do not bear the least resemblance to the
nonsense published by Daru. No one except Romanin would have attempted
to whitewash the Inquisitors and the Council of Ten, and even he is
obliged to admit that for ‘weighty reasons of state’ they did not
hesitate to order secret assassinations; but they were not fools, as the
‘Statutes’ of Daru make them appear.
The proof that the Statutes published by Romanin are genuine consists in
the fact that two independent copies of them have been found; the one,
written out by Angelo Nicolosi, secretary to the Inquisitors, with a
dedication to them dated the twenty-fifth of September 1669; the other,
a pocket copy, written out in 1612, with his own hand, by the Inquisitor
Niccolò Donà, nephew of the Doge Leonardo Donà. The Statutes in these
two copies are identical; the earlier one, which belonged to Donà,
contains also a number of interesting memoranda concerning the doings of
the tribunal in that year.
Lastly, it is conjectured by Romanin that the author of the forgery that
imposed on Daru and others was no less a personage than Count Francesco
della Torre, the ambassador of the Holy Roman Empire. He died in Venice
in 1695.
These facts being clearly stated, we can pass on to inquire how and why
the court of the Inquisitors of State was evoked, it being well
understood that although they were not the malignant fiends described by
Daru, who seems to have had in his mind the German tales of the
‘Wehmgericht,’ yet, in the picturesque language of their native Italy,
‘they were not shinbones of saints’ either.
Most historians consider that ‘Inquisitors of the Council of Ten’ were
first appointed by that Council
[Illustration: THE STAIR OF GOLD, DUCAL PALACE]
in 1314, and it is generally conceded that they did not take the title
‘Inquisitors of State’ and begin to be regarded unofficially as a
separate tribunal till 1539. The mass of evidence goes to show that
these two dates are, at least, not far wrong, and during more than two
hundred years between the two, the members of the committee were called
indifferently either the ‘Inquisitors,’ or the ‘Executives’ of the Ten.
They were at first either two, or three; later they were always three,
and they were commissioned to furnish proofs against accused persons,
and occasionally to make the necessary arrangements for secretly
assassinating traitors who had fled the country and were living abroad.
At first their commission was a temporary one, which was not renewed
unless the gravity of the case required it. Later, when they became a
permanent tribunal of three, two of their number were always regular
members of the Council of Ten, and were called the ‘Black Inquisitors,’
because the Ten wore black mantles; the third was one of the Doge’s
counsellors, who, as will be remembered, were among the persons always
present at the meetings of the Ten, and he was called the ‘Red
Inquisitor’ from the colour of his counsellor’s cloak.
The fourteenth century was memorable on account of the great
conspiracies, and it is at least probable that after 1320 the secret
committee of the Ten became tolerably permanent as to its existence,
though its members were often changed. Signor Fulin has discovered that
during a part of the fifteenth century they were chosen only for thirty
days, and that the utmost exactness was enforced on those who vacated
the office. A long discussion took place at that time as to whether the
month began at the midnight preceding the day of the Inquisitor’s
election, or only on the morning of that day; since, in the latter case,
an Inquisitor at the end of his term would have the right to act until
sunrise on the thirty-first day, whereas, in the other, he would have to
resign his seat at the first stroke of midnight. The incident is a good
instance of the Venetian manner of interpreting the letter of the law.
So long as the tribunal was merely a committee depending on the Ten it
had no archives of its own, and whatever it did appeared officially as
the act of the Council, of which the Inquisitors were merely executive
agents. They were dismissed at the end of their month of service with a
regular formula:--
‘The Inquisitors will come to the Council with what they have found, and
the Council will decide what it thinks best with regard to them.’
In those times they received no general authorisation or power to act on
their own account, and their office must have been excessively irksome,
since a heavy fine was exacted from any one who refused to serve on the
committee when he had been chosen. Though they were not, as a rule, men
of over-sensitive conscience, they felt their position keenly and served
with ill-disguised repugnance, well knowing that they were hated as a
body even more than they were feared, and that their lives were not
always safe.
In early times their actual permanent power was very limited, though the
Ten could greatly extend it for any special purpose. For instance, they
could not, of their own will, proceed even to a simple arrest; they
could not order the residence of a citizen to be searched; and they
could not use torture in examining a witness, without a special
authorisation from the Ten on each occasion.
Their work then lay almost wholly in secretly spying upon suspected
persons; and it often happened that when such an one was at last
arrested the whole mass of evidence against him was already written out
and in the hands of the Ten. It also certainly happened now and then
that a person was proved innocent by the Inquisitors who had been
suspected by the Ten, and who had never had the least idea that he was
in danger.
The machinery did not always work quickly, it is true, especially after
the accused was arrested and locked up. Trials often dragged on for
months, so that when the culprit was at last sentenced to a term of
prison, it appeared that he had already served more than the time to
which he was condemned. This abuse, however, led to a vigorous reform by
a series of stringent decrees, the time of inquiry was limited, for
ordinary cases, to three days, and for graver matters to a month, and
ruinous fines were imposed on Councillors and Inquisitors who were not
present at every sitting of the Court.
It was towards the close of the sixteenth century that the Inquisitors,
being then elected for the term of a year, were given much greater power
than theretofore. Though they were still closely associated with the
Ten, they now had a sort of official independence, including the right
to a method of procedure of their own, with secret archives quite
separate from those of the Ten. The year 1596 is generally given as the
date at which the separate tribunal was definitely created, with
permanent instructions to watch over the public safety, and to detect
all plots and conspiracies that might threaten the ‘ancient laws and
government of Venice.’
It cannot be said that the procedure of the Ten, or of the Inquisitors,
was arbitrary, and the supreme Venetian tribunals have not deserved all
the obloquy that has been heaped upon them; but at a time when the most
inhuman methods were used to obtain evidence, they certainly did not
give an example of gentleness.
Signor Fulin, to whose recent researches all students of Venetian
history are much indebted, says, with perfect truthfulness, that torture
was by no means used with moderation. He cites a document signed by the
Ten and the Inquisitors, dated the twenty-fifth of April 1445:--
‘We have received a humble petition from Luigi Cristoforo Spiaciario,
sentenced to two years’ imprisonment and ten years of exile for
unnatural crimes. The said convict has passed two years in prison
according to his sentence, and five years more in the corridors of the
prisons, because his feet having been burnt and his arms dislocated by
torture, he could not leave Venice. The said convict petitions that, out
of regard for so much suffering, he may be pardoned the last five years
of his condemnation.’
The same writer also tells us that in spite of the precautions which
were supposed to be taken, torture often ended in death; and in the
archives of the Ten there are instances of horrible mutilations besides
public decapitations, secret stranglings, and hangings and poisonings;
there are also some cases of death inflicted by drowning, though these
were less frequent than has been supposed; and lastly, the quiet waters
of the canals have more than once reflected the blaze of faggots burning
round the stake.
Romanin’s industry has left us an exact list of the official drownings
that took place between 1551 and 1604, a period of fifty-three years. As
it is not long, I append it in full. The list is made out from the
register of deaths which is preserved in the church of Saint Mark’s.
In 1551 there were secretly drowned 2 persons
1554 “ “ 2 “
1555 “ “ 2 “
1556 “ “ 3 “
1557 “ “ 4 “
1558 “ “ 1 “
1559 “ “ 8 “
1560 “ “ 7 “
1569 “ “ 6 “
1571 “ “ 4 “
1573 “ “ 7 “
From 1574 to 1584 “ “ 12 “
1584 to 1594 “ “ 55 “
1594 to 1600 “ “ 50 “
1600 to 1604 “ “ 40 “
---
Total number of drowned 203 during 53 years
===
The last person who suffered death by drowning was a glass-blower of
Murano in the eighteenth century.
Before going on to say a word about the prisons in the sixteenth century
it is as well to call attention to the fact that the Inquisitors of
State twice found themselves in direct relations with the English
government; once, in 1587, when they called the attention of England to
a conspiracy which was brewing in Spain; and again, a few years later,
in connection with the tragedy of Antonio Foscarini in which they played
such a deplorable part. Is it not possible that there may be some
documents in the English Record Office bearing upon those circumstances,
and likely to throw more light upon the tribunal of the Inquisitors?
In connection with the prisons, I take the following details, among many
similar ones, from documents found by Signor Fulin in the archives of
the Inquisitors of State. He says, in connection with them, that they
are by no means exaggerated. One of the most characteristic is a case
dated towards the end of the fifteenth century, and it will serve as an
example, since it is known that no great changes were made in the
management of the prisons until much later.
‘There has been found in the prisons a youth named Menegidio
Scutellario, whom the Council of Ten had sentenced to twenty-five blows
of the stick, which he received, and to a year’s imprisonment. He was
transferred from the new prisons to the one called Muzina, where he
contracted an extremely painful inflammatory disease which has produced
running sores. He has several on his head, and his face is much
[Illustration: RIO S. ATANASIO]
swollen. Moreover, this boy is shut up in the prison with twenty-five
men of all ages, which is very dangerous for him from a moral point of
view. A widow, who says she is his mother, comes every day to the Palace
begging and imploring that her son may not be left in this abominable
prison, lest he die there, or at least learn all manner of wickedness in
the company of so many criminals. We consequently order that in view of
the justice of these complaints the boy be kept in the corridor of the
prisons till the end of his year.’
As in the Tower of London, so also in the gloomy dens of the Pozzi,
former prisoners have left short records of themselves. For instance:
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Annali Urb._]
‘1576, 22 March. I am Mandricardo Matiazzo de Marostega’; ‘Galeazze
Avogadro and his friends 1584’; and lower down the following misspelt
Latin words, ‘Odie mihi, chras tibi (_sic_)’--‘My turn to-day, to-morrow
yours.’
Occasionally some daring convict succeeded in escaping from those deep
and secure prisons. In his journal, under the fifth of August 1497,
Marin Sanudo writes:--
It has happened that in the prisons of Saint Mark a number of
convicts who were to remain there till they died have plotted to
escape; they elected for their chief that Loico Fioravante, who
killed his father on the night of Good Friday in the church of the
Frari. There was also Marco Corner, sentenced for an unnatural
crime; Benedetto Petriani, thief, and many others. On the evening
of the fourth, when the jailers were making their usual rounds, the
prisoners succeeded in disarming and binding them, and went on from
one prison to another, their numbers increasing as they went, till
they reached the last (novissima); there they found arrows and
other arms, and began to discuss a plan of escape. Now it chanced
that two Saracens who were amongst them wished to get out more
quickly, without waiting for the deliberations of their comrades.
One of them was almost drowned in the canal, the other took fright
and began to cry out for help. A boat of the Council of Ten which
was just passing picked up the half-drowned man; the fact that he
was a Saracen suggested that he might be a fugitive, and he was
frightened into confessing. The plot was now revealed and the guard
was immediately informed. On the following morning the chiefs of
the Ten, Cosimo Pasqualigo, Niccolò da Pesaro, Domenico Beneto,
went to the prisons with a good escort, but they could not get in,
for the prisoners defended themselves. Then wet straw was brought,
and it was lighted in order that the smoke might suffocate them.
And they were advised to yield before the order of the Council of
Ten was repeated thrice, for otherwise they would all be hanged.
Marco Corner was the first to surrender, and after him all the
others. They were taken back, each to his prison, under a closer
watch.
In Marco Corner’s case the love of liberty must have been strong, for in
the same journal of Sanudo we find that in little more than a year after
their unsuccessful attempt at flight, he and some companions actually
succeeded in getting out and made their exit through the hall of the
Piovego, that is to say, through the Doge’s palace. Their numbers were
considerable, and six of them were sentenced to imprisonment for life.
During the night they reached the monastery of Saint George, and at dawn
they were already beyond the confines of Venetian territory.
Having disposed of the Inquisitors of State, I shall now endeavour to
explain the position and duties of the Inquisitors of the Holy Office,
with whom the ordinary reader is very apt to confound them.
In the first place, the Holy Office in Venice was a much milder and more
insignificant affair than it was at that time in other European states.
In Venice it seems to have corresponded vaguely to the modern European
Ministry of Public Worship. There are some amusing stories connected
with it, but no very terrible ones so far as I can ascertain.
The Republic had long resisted the desire of the Popes to establish a
branch of the Holy Inquisition in Venice, but by way of showing a
conciliatory spirit, while maintaining complete independence, the
government had created a magistracy which was responsible for three
matters, namely, the condition of the canals, the regulation of usury,
and--of all things--cases of heresy. It is perfectly impossible to say
why three classes of affairs so different were placed under the control
of one body of men. Considering the gravity of the Venetian government
we can hardly suppose that it was intended as a piece of ironical wit at
the expense of the Holy See. It may, at all events, be considered
certain that the Savi all’ Eresia, literally the Wise Men on Heresy, of
the thirteenth century, had not accomplished what was expected of them,
since in 1289 the government recognised the necessity of establishing a
special court to deal with affairs of religion, presided over, at least
in appearance, by a person delegated for that purpose from the Vatican.
The Holy Office was thereby accepted in Venice, but with restrictions
that paralysed it.
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Stud. e Ric._]
The tribunal was, in principle, composed of three persons, the Apostolic
Nuncio, the Patriarch, and the Father Inquisitor, all three of whom had
to be approved by the Republic. As a first step towards hindering them
from acting rashly, they were strictly forbidden to discuss or decide
anything whatsoever, except in the presence of three Venetian nobles,
who were appointed year by year, and preserved their ancient title of
Wise Men on Heresy. Next,
[Sidenote: _Rom. ii. 252, and viii. 348._]
the Holy Office was not allowed to busy itself about any religious
matter except heresy, in the strictest sense; it could not interfere in
connection with any violation of the laws of the Church, not even in
cases of sorcery or blasphemy, for magicians fell under the authority of
the Signors of the Night, and blasphemers were answerable to the
Executives against Blasphemy.
These laws had not changed in the sixteenth century, and the Holy Office
had less to do than most of the contemporary tribunals. An examination
of the documents preserved in its archives shows that from the year 1541
to the fall of the Republic there were three thousand six hundred and
twenty trials, of which fifteen hundred and sixty-five fell in the
sixteenth century, fourteen hundred and ninety-seven in the seventeenth,
and only five hundred and sixty-one in the eighteenth. In the majority
of cases the testimony was declared insufficient; in others, the accused
hastened to abjure their errors. Sometimes, however, we find long
trials in the course of which torture was used as by the other
tribunals, and in these cases the end was frequently a sentence of death
or a condemnation to the galleys.
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Stud. e Ric., and Cecchetti, Corte di Roma._]
No heretic was ever burned alive in Venice; death was inflicted by
strangling, beheading, or hanging. Each Doge promised, indeed, on his
election, to burn all heretics, but it is amply proved that only their
dead bodies or their effigies were really given to the flames.
[Illustration:
A: Clerk of the Exchequer
B: Commissioner of the Inquisition
C: The Patriarch’s Vicar General
D: The Nuncio’s Auditor
E: The Father Inquisitor
F: The Patriarch
G: The Pope’s Nuncio
H: A Venetian Senator
I: A Venetian Senator
J: A Venetian Senator
A B C D E F G H I J
Door used by the +-++-++-++-++-++-++-++-++-++-++-+
Father Inquisitor, the | ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ |
Nuncio’s Auditor, the | | Door used by the
Patriarch’s Vicar, -+ /-------------------------\ +- Patriarch, the
the Commissioner |Court of the Holy Office | Nuncio, and the
of the Inquisition, -+ \-------------------------/ +- three Senators.
and the Clerk of | |
the Exchequer. | |
+-------------------------------+
]
The tribunal of the Holy Office sat in a very low vaulted room in the
buildings of Saint Mark’s, which was reached by a narrow staircase after
passing through the Sacristy. The Court had no prisons of its own.
Persons who were arrested by it, or sentenced by it to terms of
imprisonment, were confined in the prisons of the State, probably in
those of the Ponte della Paglia. It is likely that the Court had at its
disposal two or three cells near its place of sitting, for the
detention of the accused during the trials. Signor Molmenti has
ascertained precisely how the members of the tribunal were placed, and
has published a diagram which I here reproduce for the benefit of those
who like such curious details.
As will be seen by the diagram, one half of the personages used one
entrance, and the rest came in by the other. Until the year 1560, the
Inquisitor himself was a Franciscan monk, but afterwards he was always a
Dominican.
The hall was gloomy and ill-lighted, the furniture poor; it did not
please the Republic to spend money for the delectation of a court which
it did not like.
It was here that two famous trials took place in the sixteenth century,
namely, that of Giordano Bruno, the renegade monk, dear to Englishmen
who have never read the very scarce volume of his insane and filthy
writings, and that of the celebrated painter Paolo Veronese. The
contrast between these two documents is very striking, but both go to
prove that the Holy Office in Venice was seldom more than a hollow sham,
and that its proceedings occasionally degenerated towards low comedy.
Having escaped from Rome, Giordano Bruno left the ecclesiastical career
which he had dishonoured in
[Sidenote: _Previti, Vita di Giordano Bruno._]
every possible way, and wandered about in search of money and glory. In
the course of time he came to London, where his coarseness and his loose
life made him many enemies. Thence he went on to Oxford, where, by
means of some potent protection, he succeeded in obtaining the privilege
of lecturing on philosophy; but the university authorities were soon
scandalised by his behaviour and frightened by the extravagance of his
doctrines; in three months he was obliged to leave. He revenged himself
by writing a libel called ‘La Cena delle Ceneri,’ in which he described
England as a land of dark streets in which one stuck in the mud
knee-deep, and of houses that lacked every necessary; the boats on the
Thames were rowed by men more hideous than Charon, the workmen and
shop-keepers were vulgar and untaught rustics, always ready to laugh at
a stranger, and to call him by such names as traitor, or dog. In this
pleasing pamphlet the Englishwoman alone escapes the writer’s
foul-mouthed hatred, to be insulted by his still more foul-mouthed
praise. One may imagine the sort of eulogy that would run from the pen
of a man capable of describing woman in general as a creature with
neither faith nor constancy, neither merit nor talent, but full of more
pride, arrogance, hatred, falseness, lust, avarice, ingratitude and,
generally, of more vices than there were evils in Pandora’s box; one
might quote many amenities of language more or less senseless, as, for
instance, that woman is a hammer, a foul sepulchre, and a quartan fever;
and there are a hundred other expressions which cannot be quoted at all.
Towards 1591, the patrician Giovanni Mocenigo, an enthusiastic collector
of books, found in the shop of a Dutch bookseller a little volume,
entitled _Eroici Furori_, which contains some astrological calculations
and some hints on mnemonics. The purchaser asked who the author might
be, learned from the bookseller that it was Giordano Bruno, entered into
correspondence with him, and at last invited him to Venice.
Bruno, it is needless to say, accepted the invitation eagerly, as he
accepted every thing that was offered to him, but it was not long before
Mocenigo regretted his haste to be hospitable. He had begun by calling
his visitor his dear master; before long he discovered the man to be a
debauchee and a blasphemer. Now it chanced that Mocenigo had sat in the
tribunal of the Holy Office as one of the three senators whose business
it was to oversee the acts of the Father Inquisitor, and he was not only
a devout man, but had a taste for theology. He began by remonstrating
with Bruno, but when the latter became insolent, he quietly turned the
key on him and denounced him to the Holy Office. A few hours later the
renegade monk was arrested and conveyed to prison. He was examined
several times by the tribunal, but was never tortured, and as the judges
thought they detected signs of coming repentance they granted him a
limit of time within which to abjure his errors. But the trial did not
end in Venice, for the Republic made an exception in this case and soon
yielded to a request from the Pope that the accused should be sent to
Rome. He was ultimately burnt there, the only heretic, according to the
most recent and learned authorities, who ever died at the stake in
Italy. He was in reality a degenerate and a lunatic, who should have
ended his days in an asylum.
M. Yriarte has published in the appendix to his study of the Venetian
noble in the sixteenth century the verbatim report of the proceedings of
the Holy Office on the eighteenth of July 1573. The prisoner at the bar
was Paolo Veronese. I quote the following from M. Yriarte’s
translation:--
REPORT of the sitting of the Tribunal of the Inquisition on
Saturday July eighteenth, 1573.
This day, July eighteenth, 1573. Called to the Holy Office before
the sacred tribunal, Paolo Galliari Veronese residing in the parish
of Saint Samuel, and being asked as to his name and surname replied
as above.
Being asked as to his profession:--
Answer. I paint and make figures.
Question. Do you know the reasons why you have been called here?
A. No.
Q. Can you imagine what those reasons may be?
A. I can well imagine.
Q. Say what you think about them.
[Sidenote: _The Supper in the house of Simon, Paolo Veronese;
Accademia, Room IX._]
A. I fancy that it concerns what was said to me by the reverend
fathers, or rather by the prior of the monastery of San Giovanni e
Paolo, whose name I did not know, but who informed me that he had
been here, and that your Most Illustrious Lordships had ordered him
to cause to be placed in the picture a Magdalen instead of the dog;
and I answered him that very readily I would do all that was
needful for my reputation and for the honour of the picture; but
that I did not understand what this figure of Magdalen could be
doing
[Illustration: S. SAMUELE]
here; and this for many reasons, which I will tell, when occasion
is granted me to speak.
Q. What is the picture to which you have been referring?
A. It is the picture which represents the Last Supper of Jesus
Christ with His disciples in the house of Simon.
Q. Where is this picture?
A. In the refectory of the monks of San Giovanni e Paolo.
Q. Is it painted in fresco or on wood or on canvas?
A. It is on canvas.
Q. How many feet does it measure in height?
A. It may measure seventeen feet.
Q. And in breadth?
A. About thirty-nine.
Q. In this Supper of our Lord, have you painted (other) persons?
A. Yes.
Q. How many have you represented? And what is each one doing?
A. First there is the innkeeper, Simon; then, under him, a carving
squire whom I supposed to have come there for his pleasure, to see
how the service of the table is managed. There are many other
figures which I cannot remember, however, as it is a long time
since I painted that picture.
Q. Have you painted other Last Suppers besides that one?
A. Yes.
Q. How many have you painted? Where are they?
A. I painted one at Verona for the reverend monks of San Lazzaro;
it is in their refectory. Another is in the refectory of the
reverend brothers of San Giorgio here in Venice.
Q. But that one is not a Last Supper, and is not even called the
Supper of Our Lord.
A. I painted another in the refectory of San Sebastiano in Venice,
another at Padua for the Fathers of the Maddalena. I do not
remember to have made any others.
Q. In this Supper which you painted for San Giovanni e Paolo, what
signifies the figure of him whose nose is bleeding?
A. He is a servant who has a nose-bleed from some accident?
Q. What signify those armed men dressed in the fashion of Germany,
with halberds in their hands?
A. It is necessary here that I should say a score of words.
Q. Say them.
A. We painters use the same license as poets and madmen, and I
represented those halberdiers, the one drinking, the other eating
at the foot of the stairs, but both ready to do their duty, because
it seemed to me suitable and possible that the master of the house,
who as I have been told was rich and magnificent, should have such
servants.
Q. And the one who is dressed as a jester with a parrot on his
wrist, why did you put him into the picture?
A. He is there as an ornament, as it is usual to insert such
figures.
Q. Who are the persons at the table of Our Lord?
A. The twelve apostles.
Q. What is Saint Peter doing, who is the first?
A. He is carving the lamb in order to pass it to the other part of
the table.
Q. What is he doing who comes next?
A. He holds a plate to see what Saint Peter will give him.
Q. Tell us what the third is doing.
A. He is picking his teeth with his fork.
Q. And who are really the persons whom you admit to have been
present at this Supper?
A. I believe that there was only Christ and His Apostles; but when
I have some space left over in a picture I adorn it with figures of
my own invention.
Q. Did some person order you to paint Germans, buffoons, and other
similar figures in this picture?
A. No, but I was commissioned to adorn it as I thought proper; now
it is very large and can contain many figures.
Q. Should not the ornaments which you were accustomed to paint in
pictures be suitable and in direct relation to the subject, or are
they left to your fancy, quite without discretion or reason?
A. I paint my pictures with all the considerations which are
natural to my intelligence, and according as my intelligence
understands them.
Q. Does it seem suitable to you, in the Last Supper of our Lord, to
represent buffoons, drunken Germans, dwarfs, and other such
absurdities?
A. Certainly not.
Q. Then why have you done it?
A. I did it on the supposition that those people were outside the
room in which the Supper was taking place.
Q. Do you not know that in Germany and other countries infested by
heresy, it is habitual, by means of pictures full of absurdities,
to vilify and turn to ridicule the things of the Holy Catholic
Church, in order to teach false doctrine to ignorant people who
have no common sense?
A. I agree that it is wrong, but I repeat what I have said, that it
is my duty to follow the examples given me by my masters.
Q. Well, what did your masters paint? Things of this kind, perhaps?
A. In Rome, in the Pope’s Chapel, Michel Angelo has represented Our
Lord, His Mother, St. John, St. Peter, and the celestial court; and
he has represented all these personages nude, including the Virgin
Mary, and in various attitudes not inspired by the most profound
religious feeling.
Q. Do you not understand that in representing the Last Judgment, in
which it is a mistake to suppose that clothes are worn, there was
no reason for painting any? But in these figures what is there that
is not inspired by the Holy Spirit? There are neither buffoons,
dogs, weapons, nor other absurdities. Do you think therefore,
according to this or that view, that you did well in so painting
your picture, and will you try to prove that it is a good and
decent thing?
A. No, my most Illustrious Sirs; I do not pretend to prove it, but
I had not thought that I was doing wrong; I had never taken so many
things into consideration. I had been far from imagining such a
great disorder, all the more as I had placed these buffoons outside
the room in which Our Lord was sitting.
These things having been said, the judges pronounced that the
aforesaid Paolo should be obliged to correct his picture within the
space of three months from the date of the reprimand, according to
the judgments and decision of the Sacred Court, and altogether at
the expense of the said Paolo.
Et ita decreverunt omni melius modo. (And so they decided
everything for the best!)
The existing picture proves that Veronese paid no attention to the
recommendations of the Court, for I find that it contains every figure
referred to.
After this brief review of the more serious offices of the Republic, I
pass on to speak of a tribunal which, though in reality much less
serious, gave itself airs of great solemnity, and promulgated a great
number of laws. This was the Court of the ‘Provveditori delle Pompe,’
established in the sixteenth century to deal with matters of dress and
fashion. As far back as the end of the thirteenth century, the ‘Savi,’
the wise men of the government, had feebly deplored the increase of
luxury. Their plaintive remarks were repeated at short intervals, and on
each occasion produced some new decree against foolish and unreasonable
expenditure.
[Illustration: THE LAST RAYS, ST. MARK’S]
The length of women’s trains, the size and fulness of people’s sleeves,
the adornment of boots and shoes, and all similar matters, had been most
minutely studied by these wise gentlemen, and the avogadors had their
hands full to make the regulations properly respected. One day a lady
was walking in the square of Saint Mark’s, evidently very proud of the
new white silk
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, vita Priv._]
gown she wore. She was stopped by two avogadors who gravely proceeded to
measure the amount of stuff used in making her sleeves. It was far more
than the law judged necessary. The lady and her tailor--there were only
male dressmakers in Venice in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries--were both made to pay a fine heavy enough to make them regret
the extravagance of their fancy. I quote this story from Signor
Molmenti. Marin Sanudo tells of another similar regulation in his
journal under the month of December 1491: ‘All those who hold any office
from the State, and those who are finishing their term of service, are
forbidden to give more than two dinner-parties to their relations, and
each of these dinners shall not consist of more than ten covers.’
At weddings it was forbidden to give banquets to more than forty guests.
Some years later another regulation was issued on the same subject. It
was decreed ‘that at these wedding dinners there shall not be served
more than one dish of roast meats and one of boiled meats, and in each
of these courses there shall not be more than three kinds of meat.
Chicken and pigeons are allowed.’
For days of abstinence, the magistrates take the trouble to inform
people what they may eat, namely, two dishes of roast fish, two dishes
of boiled fish, an almond cake, and the ordinary jams. Of fish, sturgeon
and the fish of the lake of Garda are forbidden on such days, and no
sweets are allowed that do not come under one of the two heads
mentioned. Oysters were not allowed at dinners of more than twenty
covers. The pastry-cooks who made jumbles and the like, and the cooks
who were to prepare a dinner, were obliged to give notice to the
provveditors, accompanied by a note of the dishes to be served. The
inspectors of the tribunal had a right to inspect the dining-room,
kitchen, and pantry, in order to verify all matters that came under
their jurisdiction.
As if all this were not enough, considerable fines were imposed on those
who should adorn the doors and outer windows of their houses with
festoons, or who should give concerts in which drums and trumpets were
used. In noting this regulation in his journal, Sanudo observes that the
Council of Ten had only succeeded in framing it after meeting on three
consecutive days in sittings of unusual length. One is apt to connect
the Council of Ten with matters more tragic than these; and one fancies
that the Decemvirs may have sometimes exclaimed with Dante--
Le leggi son, ma chi pon mano ad esse?
(‘There are laws indeed, but who enforces them?’)
The Council judged that there was only one way of accomplishing this,
namely, to create a new magistracy, whose exclusive business it should
be to make and promulgate sumptuary laws. For this purpose three nobles
were chosen who received the title of Provveditori delle Pompe.
M. Armand Baschet, whose profound learning in matters of Venetian law is
beyond dispute, is of opinion that the new tribunal helped Venice to be
great, and hindered her from being extravagant. I shall not venture to
impugn the judgment of so learned a writer, yet we can hardly forbear to
smile at the thought of those three grave nobles, of ripe age and
austere life, who sat down day after day to decide upon the cut of
women’s gowns, the articles necessary to a bride’s outfit, and the
dishes permissible at a dinner-party.
‘Women,’ said their regulations, ‘shall wear clothes of only one colour,
that is to say, velvet, satin, damask, of Persian silk woven of one
tint; but exception is made from this rule for Persian silk of changing
sheen and for brocades, but such gowns must have no trimming.’
Shifts were to be embroidered only round the neck, and it was not
allowed to embroider handkerchiefs with gold or silver thread. No woman
was
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Less._]
allowed to carry a fan made of feathers worth more than four ducats. No
gloves were allowed embroidered with gold or silver; no earrings; no
jewellery in the hair. Plain gold bracelets were allowed but must not be
worth more than three ducats; gold chains might be worth ten. No
low-neck gowns allowed!
Jewellers and tailors and dealers in luxuries did their best to elude
all such laws, but during a considerable time they were not successful,
and it is probable that the temper of the Venetian ladies was severely
tried by the prying and paternal ‘Provveditori.’ The only
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, vita Privata._]
women for whom exceptions were made were the Dogess and the other ladies
of the Doge’s immediate family who lived with him in the ducal palace.
His daughters and grand-daughters were called ‘dozete,’ which means
‘little dogesses’ in Venetian dialect, and they were authorised to wear
what they liked; but the Doge’s more distant female relations had not
the same privilege.
At the coronation of Andrea Gritti, one of his nieces appeared at the
palace arrayed in a magnificent gown of gold brocade; the Doge himself
sent her home to put on a dress which conformed with the sumptuary laws.
Those regulations extended to intimate details of private life, and even
affected the furnishing of a noble’s private apartments. There were
clauses which forbade that the sheets made for weddings and baptisms
should be too richly embroidered or edged with too costly lace, or that
the beds themselves should be inlaid with gold, mother-of-pearl, or
precious stones.
Then the gondola came into fashion as a means of getting about and at
once became a cause of great extravagance, for the rich vied with each
other in adorning their skiffs with the most precious stuffs and
tapestries, and inlaid stanchions, and the most marvellous allegorical
figures.
In the thirteenth century the gondola had been merely an ordinary boat,
probably like the modern ‘barca’ of the lagoons, over which an awning
was rigged as a protection against sun and rain. The gondola was not a
development of the old-fashioned
[Illustration: ON THE ZATTERE]
boat, any more than the modern racing yacht has developed out of a Dutch
galleon or a ‘trabacolo’ of the Adriatic. It had another pedigree; and I
have no hesitation in saying, as one well acquainted with both, and not
ignorant of boats in general, that the Venetian gondola is the caïque of
the Bosphorus, as to the hull, though the former is rowed in the
Italian fashion, by men who stand and swing a sweep in a crutch, whereas
the Turkish oarsman sits and pulls a pair of sculls of peculiar shape
which slide in and out through greased leathern strops. The gondola,
too, has the steel ornament on her stem, figuring the beak of a Roman
galley, which I suspect was in use in Constantinople before the Turkish
conquest, and which must have been abolished then, for the very reason
that it was Roman. The ‘felse,’ the hood, is a Venetian invention, I
think, for there is no trace of it in Turkey. But the similarity of the
two boats when out of water is too close to be a matter of chance, and
it may safely be said that the first gondola was a caïque, then
doubtless called by another name, brought from Constantinople by some
Greek merchant on his vessel.
In early times people went about on horses and mules in Venice, and a
vast number of the small canals were narrow and muddy streets; but as
the superior facilities of water over mud as a means of transportation
became evident, the lanes were dug out and the islands were cut up into
an immense number of islets, until the footways became so circuitous
that the horse disappeared altogether.
In the sixteenth century there were about ten thousand gondolas in
Venice, and they soon became a regular bugbear to the unhappy
Provveditori delle
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Less._]
Pompe, who were forced to occupy themselves with their shape, their
hangings, the stuff of which the ‘felse’ was made, the cushions, the
carpets, and the number of rowers. The latter were soon limited to two,
and it was unlawful to have more, even for a
[Illustration: RIO DEL RIMEDIO]
wedding. The gondola did not assume its present simplicity and its black
colour till the end of the seventeenth century, but it began to
resemble what we now see after the edict of 1562.
As usual, a few persons were exempted from the sumptuary law. The Doge
went about in a gondola decorated with gold and covered with scarlet
cloth, and the foreign ambassadors adorned their skiffs with the richest
materials, the representatives of France and Spain, especially, vying
with each other in magnificence. To some extent the youths belonging to
the Compagnia della Calza--the Hose Club before mentioned--were either
exempted from the law, or succeeded in evading it. Naturally enough, the
sight of such display was odious to the rich noblemen who were condemned
by law to the use of plain black; and on the whole, the study of all
accounts of festivities held in Venice, down to the end of the Republic,
goes to show that the Provveditori aimed at a most despotic control of
dress, habits, and manners, but that the results generally fell far
short of their good intentions. They must have led harassed lives, those
much-vexed gentlemen, not much better than the existence of ‘Jimmy-Legs’
on an American man-of-war.
Now and then, too, the government temporarily removed all restrictions
on luxury, as, for instance, when a foreign sovereign visited Venice;
and then the whole city plunged into a sort of orgy of extravagance.
This happened when Henry III. of France was the guest of the Republic.
Such occasions being known and foreseen, and the nobles being forced by
the Provveditori to save their money, they spent it all the more
recklessly when they were allowed a taste of liberty--like a child that
breaks its little earthenware savings-box when it is full of pennies.
One naturally returns to the Doge after rapidly reviewing such a legion
of officials, each of whom was himself a part of the supreme power. What
was the Doge doing while these hundreds of noble Venetians were doing
everything for themselves, from directing foreign politics to spying
upon the wardrobes of each other’s wives and auditing the accounts of
one another’s cooks?
It would be hard to ask a question more embarrassing to answer. It would
be as unjust to say that he did nothing as it would be untrue to say
that he had much to do. Yet the Venetians themselves looked upon him as
a very important personage in the Republic. In a republic he was a
sovereign, and therefore idle; but he was apparently necessary.
I am not aware that any other republic ever called its citizens
subjects, or supported a personage who received royal honours, before
whom the insignia of something like royalty were carried in public, and
who addressed foreign governments by his own name and title as if he
were a king. But then, how could Venice, which was governed by an
oligarchy chosen from an aristocracy, which was the centre of a
plutocracy, call herself a republic? It all looks like a mass of
contradictions, yet the machinery worked without breaking down, during
five hundred years at a stretch, after it had assumed its ultimate form.
If a modern sociologist had to define the government of Venice, he
would perhaps call it a semi-constitutional aristocratic monarchy, in
which the sovereign was elected for life--unless it pleased the electors
to depose him.
What is quite certain is that when the Doge was a man of average
intelligence, he must have been the least happy man in Venice; for of
all Venetian nobles, there was none whose personal liberty was so
restricted, whose smallest actions were so closely watched, whose
lightest word was subject to such a terrible censorship.
Francesco Foscari was not allowed to resign when he wished to do so, nor
was he allowed to remain on the throne after the Council had decided to
get rid of him. Even after his death, his unhappy widow was not allowed
to bury his body as she pleased. Yet his was only an extreme case,
because circumstances combined to bring the existing laws into play and
to let them work to their logical result.
From the moment when a noble was chosen to fill the ducal throne, he was
bound to sacrifice himself to the public service, altogether and till he
died, without regret, or possible return to private life, or any
compensation beyond what might flatter the vanity of a vulgar and
second-rate nature. Yet the Doges were very rarely men of poor
intelligence or weak character.
At each election, fresh restrictions were imposed by ‘corrections’ of
the ducal oath. M. Yriarte says very justly that the tone of these
‘corrections’ is often so dry and hard that it looks as if the Great
Council had been taking measures against an enemy rather than editing
rules for the life of the chief of the State. He goes on to say,
however, that the principle which dictated those decrees protected both
the Doge and the nobility, and that the object at which each aimed was
the interest of the State. He asks, then, whether those binding
restrictions ever prevented a strong personality from making itself
felt, and whether the long succession of Doges is nothing but a list of
inglorious names.
It may be answered, I think, with justice, that the Doges of illustrious
memory, during the latter centuries of the Republic’s existence, had
become famous as individual officers before their elevation to the
throne. The last great fighting Doge was Enrico Dandolo, the conqueror
of Constantinople, who died almost a hundred years before the closure of
the Great Council. In the war of Chioggia, Andrea Contarini’s oath not
to return into the city till the enemy was beaten had the force of a
fine example, but the man himself contributed nothing else to the most
splendid page in Venetian history.
There were Doges who were good historians and writers, others who have
been brave generals, others like Giovanni Mocenigo who were good
financiers; but the fact of their having been Doges has nothing to do
with the reputation they left afterwards. The sovereignty, when it was
given to them, was a chain, not a sceptre, and from the day they went up
the grand staircase as masters, their personal liberty of thought and
action was more completely left behind than if they had entered by
another door to spend the remainder of life in the prisons by the Ponte
della Paglia, beyond the Bridge of Sighs.
At the beginning of the fifteenth century the Doge Michel Steno was told
in open Council to sit down and hold his peace. No change in the manners
of the counsellors had taken place sixty years later when
[Sidenote: _Tassini, under ‘Moro.’ Rom. iv. 319._]
the Doge Cristoforo Moro objected to accompanying Pius the Second’s
projected crusade in person, and was told by Vittor Cappello that if he
would not go of his own accord he should be taken by force.
It is hard to imagine a more unpleasant position than that of the chief
of the State. Suppose, for instance, that by the choice of the Council
some post or dignity was to be conferred on one of his relatives, or
even on one of his friends; he was literally and categorically forbidden
to exhibit the least satisfaction, or to thank the Council, even by a
nod of the head.
[Sidenote: _Yriarte, Vie d’un Patricien, 359, and Marin Sanudo._]
He was to preside at this, and at many other ceremonies, as a
superbly-dressed lay figure, as a sort of allegorical representative of
that power with which every member of the government except himself was
invested. And as time went on this part he had to play, of the living
allegory, was more and more defined. He was even deprived of the title
‘My Lord,’ and was to be addressed merely as ‘Messer Doge,’ ‘Sir Doge.’
From 1501 onward he was forbidden to go out of the city, even for an
hour in his gondola, without the consent of the Council, and if he
disobeyed he had to pay a fine of one hundred ducats; he was not allowed
to write a letter, even to his wife or his children, without showing it
to at least one of his six counsellors, and if he disobeyed he was to
pay a fine of two hundred ducats, and the person, his wife or his own
child, to whom the letter was addressed, was liable to be exiled for
five years.
After 1521 the Doge was never allowed to speak without witnesses with
any ambassador, neither with the foreign representatives who came to
Venice, nor with Venetian ambassadors at home on business or leave; and
when he spoke with any of them in public, he was warned only to make
commonplace remarks.
The Dogess never had any official position in Venice, but during the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries she was made use of as an ornamental
personage at public festivals. After that time she returned to the
retirement in which the wives of the early Doges had lived. An outcry
was raised against the custom of crowning her when she entered the ducal
palace, and from that time forth she never appeared beside her husband
on state occasions; and if any foreign ambassador, supposing that he was
acting according to the rules of ordinary court etiquette, asked to be
presented to her, she was bound to refuse his visit.
Everything in the life of the Doge was regulated by the Great Council.
That august assembly once even remonstrated with the so-called sovereign
because the Dogess bore him too many children. If any one hesitates to
believe these amazing statements he may consult Signor Molmenti’s recent
historical work, _La Dogaressa_, which is beyond criticism in point of
accuracy.
At certain fixed times the Doge was allowed the relaxation of shooting,
but with so many restrictions and injunctions that the sport must have
been intolerably irksome. He was allowed or, more strictly speaking, was
ordered to proceed for this purpose, and about Christmas time, to
certain islets in the lagoons, where wild ducks bred in great numbers.
On his return he was obliged to present each member of the Great Council
with five ducks. This was called the gift of the ‘Oselle,’ that being
the name given by the people to the birds in question. In 1521, about
five thousand brace of birds had to be killed or snared in order to
fulfil this requirement; and if the unhappy Doge was not fortunate
enough, with his attendants, to secure the required number, he was
obliged to provide them by buying them elsewhere and at any price, for
the claims of the Great Council had to be satisfied in any case. This
was often an expensive affair.
There was also another personage who could not have derived much
enjoyment from the Christmas shooting. This was the Doge’s chamberlain,
whose duty it was to see to the just distribution of the game, so that
each bunch of two-and-a-half brace should contain a fair average of fat
and thin birds, lest it should be said that the Doge showed favour to
some members of the Council more than to others.
By and by a means was sought of commuting this annual tribute of ducks.
The Doge Antonio Grimani
[Sidenote: _Portrait of Antonio Grimani kneeling before Religion,
Titian; Sala delle Quattro Porte._]
requested and obtained permission to coin a medal or the value or a
quarter or a ducat, equal to about four shillings or one dollar, and to
call it ‘a Duck,’ ‘Osella,’ whereby it was signified that it took the
place of the traditional bird. He engraved upon his medal figures of
Peace and Justice, with the motto ‘Justitia et Pax osculatae sunt,’
‘Justice and Peace have kissed one another,’ in recollection of the
sentence he had undergone nineteen years previously as Admiral of the
fleet defeated at Parenzo. In 1575 the Doge Luigi Mocenigo engraved upon
his Osella the following inscription referring to the victory of
Lepanto: ‘Magnae navalis victoriae Dei gratia contra Turcos’; the
reverse bears the arms of the Mocenigo family, a rose with five petals.
Later, in 1632, the Doge Francesco Erizzo was the first to replace his
own effigy kneeling before Saint Mark by a lion. In 1688 Francesco
Morosini coined an Osella bearing on the obverse a sword, with the motto
‘Non abstinet ictu,’ and on the reverse a hand bearing weapons, with the
motto ‘Quem non exercuit arcus.’ In 1684 Marcantonio Giustiniani issued
an Osella showing a winged lion rampant, bearing in the one paw a single
palm, and in the other a bunch of palms, with the motto ‘Et solus et
simul,’ meaning that Venice would be victorious either alone or joined
with allies.
The successor of Antonio Grimani, Andrea Gritti, chose for his Osella
to have himself represented as kneeling
[Sidenote: _Andrea Gritti, praying, Tintoretto; Sala del Collegio._]
before Saint Mark; the reverse bore his name with the date.
But fresh trouble now arose. It came to pass that some nobles sold their
medals or used them for money, and disputes even took place as to the
true value of the ducal present. The Council of Ten was obliged to
examine seriously into the affair. As it appeared certain that it would
be impossible to avoid the use of medals as money, it was decided to
replace them definitely by a coin having regular currency.
[Illustration: MOUTH OF THE GRAND CANAL]
II
GLEANINGS FROM VENETIAN CRIMINAL HISTORY
The records of the different tribunals of Venice are a mine of
interesting information, and it is to be wondered that no student has
devoted a separate volume to the subject. I shall only attempt to offer
the reader a few gleanings which have come under my hand, and which may
help to give an impression of the later days of the Republic.
There were two distinct classes of criminals in Venice, as
elsewhere--namely, professional criminals, who helped each other and
often escaped justice; and, on the other hand, those who committed
isolated crimes under the influence of strong passions, and who
generally expiated their misdeeds in prison or on the scaffold.
Though the professionals were infinitely more dangerous than the others,
it is a remarkable fact that they enjoyed the same sort of popularity
which was bestowed upon daring highwaymen in England in the coaching
days. They were called the ‘Bravi,’ they were very rarely Venetians by
birth, and they had the singular audacity to wear a costume of their
own, which was something between a military uniform and a mediæval
hunting-dress. One might almost call them condottieri in miniature. They
sold their services to cautious persons who wished to satisfy a grudge
without getting into trouble with the police, and they drew round them
all the good-for-nothings in the country. ‘Bandits’--that is, in the
true interpretation of the word, those persons whom the Republic had
banished from Venetian territory--frequently returned, and remained
unmolested during some time under the protection of one of these bravi.
The most terrible and extravagant crimes were committed in broad day,
and the popular fancy surrounded its nefarious heroes with a whole cycle
of legends calculated to inspire terror.
The government cast about for some means of checking the evil, and hit
upon one worthy of the Inquisitors of State. The simple plan consisted
in giving a free pardon for all his crimes to any bravo who would kill
another. We even find that a patrician of the great house of Quirini,
who had been exiled for killing one of Titian’s servants, obtained leave
to come back and live peacefully in Venice by assassinating a
[Illustration: THE RIALTO AT NIGHT]
bravo. It is easy to imagine what crimes could be committed under this
law, and the government soon recognised the mistake and repealed it in
[Sidenote: _Pinelli, Raccolta di Leggi Crim._]
1549, in order to protect ‘the dignity of the Republic, and the goods
and lives of its subjects.’
Thereafter the bravi and the bandits led more quiet lives, and returned
to their former occupations.
There existed at that time a statue of a hunchback modelled by the
sculptor Pietro di Salò, which had been used to support a ladder, or
short staircase, by which the public criers ascended the column of the
Rialto, in order to proclaim banns of marriage and other matters
[Illustration: FROM THE BALCONY OF THE DUCAL PALACE]
which were to be made public. From 1541 to 1545 thieves were usually
sentenced to be flogged through the city from Saint Mark’s to the
Rialto, where the ceremony ended by their being obliged to kiss the
statue of the hunchback. In order to get rid of this degrading absurdity
a small column was set up near by, surmounted by a cross, in order that
‘sinners might undergo their sentence in a Christian spirit.’
On the sixteenth of December 1560, the Council of Ten met to discuss the
question of the bravi. It was now admitted that the government no longer
had isolated criminals to deal with, but regular bands of ruffians
continually
[Illustration: THE COLUMNS, PIAZZETTA]
on the look-out for adventures. The Ten published an edict by which all
bandits were formally warned that any one who exercised the profession
of a bravo, whether a subject of the Republic or not, would be taken and
led in irons to the place between the columns of the Piazzetta, where
his nose and ears would be carved off. He would then be further
sentenced to five years at the oar on board one of the State galleys,
unless some physical defect made this impossible for him, in which case
he was to have one hand chopped off and to be imprisoned for ten years.
In passing, I call
[Sidenote: _Horatio Brown, Venetian Studies._]
attention to the fact that life between decks on a State galley cannot
have been pleasant, since five years of it were considered equivalent to
the loss of a hand and ten years of imprisonment.
These terrific penalties inspired little or no fear, for the bravi were
infinitely quicker and cleverer than the sbirri of the government, and
were very rarely caught. Besides, they had powerful supporters and
secure refuges from which they could defy justice, for they were
sheltered and protected in the foreign embassies, where they knew how to
make themselves useful as spies, and occasionally as professional
assassins, and it was not an uncommon thing to see a sbirro standing
before the French or the Spanish embassy and looking up at a window
whence some well-known bravo smiled down on him, waved his hat, and
addressed him with ironical politeness. The picture vividly recalls
visions of a cat on top of a garden wall, calmly grinning at the frantic
terrier below.
Then, too, the bravi were patronised by the ‘signorotti’ of the
mainland, a set of rich, turbulent, and licentious land-owners, who
could not call themselves Venetian nobles and would not submit to be
burghers, but set themselves up as knights, and lived in more or less
fortified manors from which they could set the police at defiance. They
employed the bravi in all sorts of nefarious adventures, which chiefly
tended to the satisfaction of their brutal tastes.
It was a second period of transition, as Molmenti very justly says, and
in the beginning of the decadence the knight had already ceased to be
knightly. Those rough lordlings were neither without fear nor without
reproach, says the learned Italian writer, but were altogether without
remorse, and if they were ever bold it was only in breaking the law.
From time
[Sidenote: _Tassini, Condanne Capitali._]
to time one of them was caught perpetrating some outrageous crime, and
was dragged barefooted, in a long black shirt and black cap, to the
scaffold, as an awful example, there to be flogged, hanged, and
quartered. Such horrors had long ceased to have any effect in an age
that saw blood run in rivers. By way of increasing the disgrace of a
shameful death, a gibbet was set up which was so high that the victim
had to mount thirty-two steps, and it was painted scarlet. The first
miscreant who adorned it was one of the chiefs of the sbirri himself,
who had used his position to protect a whole gang of thieves with whom
he divided the plunder.
I abridge from Signor Molmenti’s work the following story, in which more
than one type of
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Banditi e Bravi._]
the sixteenth-century criminal makes his appearance.
The village of Illasi is situated in a rich valley in the territory of
Verona. At the end of the sixteenth century its castle was inhabited by
a certain Count Geronimo and his beautiful lady, Ginevra. From time to
time the couple introduced a little variety into their solitude by
receiving Virginio Orsini who, though a Roman noble, was in the service
of Venice as Governor of Verona. He was, I believe, a first cousin of
that Paolo Giordano Orsini who murdered his wife Isabella de’ Medici in
order to marry Vittoria Accoramboni. I have told the story at length in
another work.
Virginio, the Governor, fell in love with the Countess Ginevra before
long; but she, though strongly attracted to him, tried hard to resist
him, would not read his letters, and turned a deaf ear to his pleadings.
On a certain Saturday night, when Count Geronimo was away from home and
Ginevra sat by the fire in her own chamber, having already supped and
said her prayers, the curtain of the door was raised and two men came
in. The one was Grifo, the man-at-arms whom the Count trusted and had
left to guard her; the other was Orsini. Ginevra sprang to her feet,
asking how the Governor dared to cross her threshold.
‘Madam,’ he said, coming near, ‘as you would not answer my letters, I
determined to tell you face to face that if you will not hear me you
will be my ruin.’
‘Sir,’ answered the Countess, ‘that is not the way to address a lady of
my condition. You are basely betraying my noble husband, who entertains
for you both friendship and esteem.’
Here Grifo joined in the conversation and began to persuade the Countess
that every noble lady of the time had her ‘confederate knight.’ No doubt
he knew that she loved Orsini in spite of herself, and when he had done
speaking he went away, and the two were alone together in the night.
An hour later Virginio took his leave of her, and now he told her with
words of comfort that he would presently send her poison by the hand of
Grifo, that she might do away with her husband; for otherwise he must
soon learn the truth and avenge himself on them all three. But Ginevra
was already stung by remorse.
‘I have dishonoured my husband for you,’ she answered. ‘But I will not
do the deed you ask of me. It is better that I should myself die than
that I should do murder.’
‘In that case,’ answered Orsini, ‘I myself must put him beyond the
possibility of harming you.’
Thereupon he left her; but she was tormented by remorse, until at last
she went to her husband and told him all, and entreated him to kill her.
He would not believe her, but thought she had gone mad, though she
repeated her story again and again; and at last he rose and went and
found Grifo, the traitor, and dragged him to her room.
‘Is it true,’ she asked, ‘that you brought the Governor here to my
chamber unawares?’
The man denied it with an oath. Then Ginevra snatched up a dagger and
set the point at Grifo’s breast. He saw that he was lost, and told the
truth, and then and there the woman whose ruin he had wrought did
justice on him and was avenged, and stabbed him again and again, that he
died.
There ends the story, for that is all we know. After that the chronicle
is silent, ominously silent; and when the castle of Illasi was
dismantled a walled niche was found in one of the towers, and within the
niche there was a woman’s skeleton. That is known, surely; but that the
bones were those of the Countess Ginevra there is no proof to show.
I should say that Grifo belonged to the type of the bravi, so that the
crimes of passion which his betrayal
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Vecchie Storie._]
caused were connected, through him, with those of the professional type.
But others were committed, then as now, in passion, quick or slow. As an
example of them, here is a story from another of Signor Molmenti’s
exhaustive works.
It is first mentioned by the Bishop Pietro Bollani in a letter addressed
to his noble friend Vincenzo Dandolo, in the month of July 1602:--
‘A certain Sanudo, who lives in the Rio della Croce, in the Giudecca,
made his wife go to confession day before yesterday evening; and she was
a Cappello by birth. During the following night, at about the fifth hour
(one o’clock in the morning at that season according to the old Italian
sun-time), he killed her with a dagger-thrust in the throat. He says
that she was unfaithful, but every one believes that she was a saint.’
We learn that the poor woman was thirty-six, and that Giovanni Sanudo
had been married to her eighteen years. The Council of Ten ordered his
arrest, but he had already escaped beyond the frontier, and he was
condemned to death in default and a prize of two thousand ducats was
offered for his head.
[Illustration: THE SALUTE FROM THE GIUDECCA]
He had left five children in Venice, three boys and two girls; and the
oldest, a daughter christened Sanuda, addressed a petition to the Ten
which is worth translating:--
Most Serene Prince (the Doge), Most Illustrious Sirs (the Ten), and
most merciful my Masters (the Counsellors, the High Chancellor, and
the Avogadors):
Never did unfortunate petitioners come to the feet of your Serenity
and of your most excellent and most clement Council, more worthy of
pity than we, Sanuda, Livio, Aloïse, Franceschino and Livio second,
the children of Messer Giovanni Sanudo; misfortune has fallen upon
our house because our father having been accused of taking our
mother’s life, the justice of your Serenity and of your most
excellent Council has condemned him to death; wherefore we, poor
innocent children, have lost at once our father and our mother, and
all our possessions; and we assure you with tears that we should
have to beg our bread unless certain charitable souls helped us.
Therefore I, the unhappy Sanuda, who have reached the age of
eighteen years, and my brothers and sisters who are younger than I,
shall all be given over to the most abject poverty and exposed to
the greatest dangers unless your Serenity and your most excellent
Council will consent to help us for the love of religion and
justice. And so, in order to prevent five poor and honest children
of noble blood from perishing thus miserably, we prostrate
ourselves at the feet of your Serenity and of your most Illustrious
Lordships, imploring you, by the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ,
to allow our unhappy father to come back to Venice for two years,
that he may provide for the safety of his family and especially of
his daughters, whose honour is exposed to such grave peril in that
state of neglect in which they are now living. We pray that the
good God may grant your Serenity and your Lordships long and happy
life.
The Council of Ten was apparently moved by the appeal. It answered the
petition by the following resolution:--
‘The case of Sanuda, Livio, Aloïse, Franceschino, and Livio second,
brothers and sisters, the children of Giovanni Sanudo, condemned to
death by this Council on July twenty-ninth, is so serious; the petition
of these poor children is so humble, so honest and so reasonable, that
it behooves the piety and clemency of our Council to grant the said
Giovanni Sanudo a safe-conduct, good for two years, in order that during
this period he may provide for the future of his family.’
Sanudo came back, and before the two years had expired he obtained a
prolongation of the grace for two years more, at the end of which time
he presented another petition worded in the same manner, which was also
granted; and so on from two years to two years until 1621, nineteen
years after the crime, he being still technically under sentence of
death.
Now, however, he obtained a formal pardon from his wife’s family, the
Cappello. This curious document reads as follows:--
In the name of God and of the Holy Trinity, March thirtieth, 1621.
I, Carlo Cappello, son of the late Pietro Cappello, considering the
weakness and the lamentable vicissitudes to which humanity is
subject, and desirous of forgiving the shortcomings and misdeeds of
others, in order that the Lord our God may protect me also, and
desiring, too, the full pardon of every sin: do forgive my
brother-in-law, Giovanni Sanudo, the offences he may have
committed against me, promising henceforth to bear him neither
hatred nor malice, and I pray God to grant us both a good Easter
and the pardon of every sin.
(Signed) CARLO CAPPELLO.
PIETRO CAPPELLO.
LIVIO CAPPELLO.
Having obtained forgiveness of his wife’s family, Giovanni Sanudo now
looked about for a means of extorting a final pardon from the Council of
Ten. There existed in the Venetian states a small town, called Sant’
Omobono, which had received, as the reward of some ancient service
rendered to the Republic, the privilege of setting at liberty every year
two outlaws or two bravi. Sanudo succeeded in winning the good graces of
the municipality, and was then presented by the mayor and aldermen to
the Signory as one of the yearly candidates for a free pardon. The
Council of Ten then permanently ratified its decree of immunity, and
Giovanni Sanudo was once more a free man. Considering the usual
character of the Council, it is hard not to surmise that it had found
some cause for regretting the sentence it had passed. The poor murdered
woman had confessed and received absolution before death: may we not
reasonably suppose that, after all, there had been something to confess?
There is ground for believing it possible that Shakespeare may have used
the original murder as part of the groundwork of his _Othello_. If we
compare the dates and glance at the history of Italian literature, we
may reasonably conclude that Shakespeare, after perhaps planning his
tragedy on a tale of Giraldi’s, was much struck by the details of
Sanudo’s crime, and especially by the murderer’s wish that his wife
should confess before dying.
Mr. Rawdon Brown supposed the poet to have used another incident,
related by Marin Sanudo in his voluminous journal, but the hypothesis
involves an anachronism. _Othello_ is thought by good authorities to
have been first played in London in the autumn of 1602, only a few
months after the crime in the Giudecca; whereas Mr. Rawdon Brown’s
heroine was not murdered until thirteen years later.
The legend of the Fornaretto belongs to the beginning of the sixteenth
century, a hundred years earlier. Travellers will remember being told by
their guides how a poor little baker’s boy, who was carrying bread to a
customer on a January morning in 1507, stumbled over the body of a noble
who had been stabbed by an unknown hand. The sheath of the dagger lay on
the pavement, and the boy was imprudent enough to pick it up and put it
into his pocket, for it was richly damascened and very handsome. The
police found it upon him, it was considered to be conducive
circumstantial evidence, the poor boy confessed under torture that he
had committed the crime, and he was hanged on his own confession.
A few days later the real murderer was arrested and convicted; and
thereafter, in recollection of the tragic injustice that had been done,
whenever the magistrates were about to pass a sentence of death, they
were admonished to remember the poor Fornaretto.
By way of making the story more complete, the guide usually adds that
the little lamp which always burns before an image of the Blessed Virgin
on one side of the Basilica was lighted as an offering in expiation of
the judicial murder, and that it is for the same reason that a bell is
rung during twenty minutes on the anniversary of the baker boy’s
execution.
Strangely enough, there is hardly a word of truth in this story. The
only record in the archives of the Ten which faintly suggests it is the
trial and execution of a baker named Pietro Fusiol, who had murdered a
man of the people in January 1507, and there is no reference to any
mistake on the part of the court. The ringing of the bell and the little
lamp which burns day and night before the image, are a sort of _ex voto_
offerings left by certain seamen in recollection of a terrible storm
from which they escaped.
I pass on to speak of the political prisoners of the Republic, who were
not by any means all treated alike, since some of them were confined in
places of tolerable comfort, whereas others were treated little better
than common criminals.
[Sidenote: _Dr. Heinrich Thode, Der Ring des Frangipane._]
The story of Cristoforo Frangipane shows that political delinquents were
not judged according to any particular code, and that each case was
examined as being entirely independent from any other.
I must recall to the reader that during the league of Cambrai the
Emperor Maximilian was commissioned to win back Friuli, Istria, and
other provinces annexed by the Republic. Though the league had been
formed in great haste, Venice was not taken by surprise, for it had long
been apparent that the European powers desired her destruction and
dismemberment.
[Sidenote: _Venice defying Europe, Palma Giovane; Sala dei Pregadi,
ducal palace._]
During the war which followed the Venetian army was at one time under
the orders of Bartolomeo d’ Alviano, and that of the Emperor was
commanded by Cristoforo Frangipane. Now the Frangipane family held lands
in fee from Venice as well as from the Emperor, and owed feudal service
to both; so that the Republic was justified in considering Cristoforo as
a traitor according to feudal law, since he was in command of a hostile
army.
A learned German student, Doctor Heinrich Thode, has discovered and told
with great charm the following story concerning the imperial general. In
1892, Doctor Thode being then in Venice, certain peasants of the village
of Osopo, near Pordenone, showed him a gold ring of marvellous
workmanship and in the style of the sixteenth century, which they had
found in a field. The ring consisted of two spirals, one within the
other, which could be taken apart, so that a lock of hair or a relic
could be placed between them. On the outer spiral of the ring were
engraved the words, ‘Myt Wyllen deyn eygen,’ which may be translated,
‘By mine own will thine own.’ Doctor Thode bought the ring, but for a
long time could make nothing of it. At last, however, his industry was
rewarded by the discovery of an interesting passage in the almost
inexhaustible diary of Marin Sanudo, of which I shall abridge the
substance as much as possible.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century the Emperor Maximilian met in
Augsburg a very beautiful girl named Apollonia von Lange, with whom he
fell deeply in love. He caused her to come to the Court of Vienna, where
she behaved so admirably that, according to the chronicler, all the
Austrian nobles wished to marry her. As a matter of fact she was married
in 1503 to the Count of Lodron, who happens to be the very person whom
the Cappelletti of Verona wished to marry to their Juliet in spite of
her promise to Romeo Montecchi.
The Count of Lodron died soon after his marriage, leaving no children.
The Emperor continued to extend to the young widow his honourable
protection, and in 1514 he married her to his favourite general
Cristoforo Frangipane. It was no doubt on this occasion that the warrior
received from her the ring of which the motto answered a question that
had often been on his lips. He might, indeed, reasonably have supposed
that she was marrying him in deference to the Emperor’s wishes; he must
have asked her if this were true, and no doubt more than once she
answered, ‘Of my own will I am thine own.’ The marriage had scarcely
taken place when Frangipane was obliged to take command of the imperial
army and to leave his wife. The first battle of the campaign was fought
near Pordenone in the Venetian territory. Marin Sanudo narrates that on
that day Frangipane lost a precious
[Illustration: A GARDEN WALL]
relic, a fact which he considered to be of bad augury for the future.
Only a few days later, when reconnoitring the position of the enemy, he
was climbing over a boulder which overlooked the valley. It either gave
way with him, or else some large piece of stone rolled against him and
threw him down. The accident was seen from a distance, and it was at
once reported to Venice that he was dead. But he was only wounded, and
was carried in a litter to Goritz, whither his wife hastened at once.
Under her loving care he soon recovered, but before he was able to ride
again the Venetians took the town and made him prisoner. He was conveyed
to Venice, and was confined in the tower of the ducal palace which
overlooked the Ponte della Paglia. In his confinement he kept up a
constant correspondence with his wife, which, it is needless to say, was
carefully examined by the government; every letter which came or went
was read aloud before the Senate, so that Marin Sanudo had ample
opportunity to copy the documents for his journal, as he frequently did.
The beautiful Apollonia was in a state bordering on despair, the grief
of the separation preyed upon her mind, and she fell into a state of
terrible languor and depression. Amongst many tender messages she makes
mention of the ring.
‘As for the ring,’ she wrote, ‘most gracious and beloved husband, let me
tell you that the one ordered of John Stephen Maze should be a little
smaller than the old one, and on it must be engraved the words with
which I answered the question you asked me, and which is graved on the
ring I always wear on my finger. I wish you to wear the ring in memory
and for love of me, but as we have no good jewellers here, I entreat you
to order it yourself.’
In the face of such evidence it is hardly possible to doubt that the
ring found at Osopo is the identical one given to Frangipane by his
bride, and is the ‘relic’ which he lost in his first engagement with the
Venetians.
The correspondence of the loving couple, passionate and sad, continued
during six months, at the end of which time Apollonia wrote to the
Signory imploring permission to share her husband’s prison; but this was
refused her, though her request was supported by the warmest
recommendations from the Emperor himself. Exasperated, Frangipane
attempted to escape from prison, but his plan was discovered, and he was
only the more closely watched. Apollonia now requested the favour of a
safe-conduct that she might, at least, come to Venice as a traveller and
visit her husband; this also was refused, not once only, but again when
she wrote a second time.
There was now but one thing left for her to do, and she determined to
risk coming to Venice without a safe-conduct. She arrived in the depth
of winter in 1516, with four maids of honour, her chamberlain, her
physician, and twenty-two servants. As the Council of Ten was ashamed to
imprison her it placed her in the keeping of the patrician Dandolo, who
was the general inspector of the ducal prisons, and he placed at her
disposal his palace on the Grand Canal, which is now the Hôtel Danieli.
She took up her quarters there on the thirteenth of January with her
suite, and on the twentieth she appeared before the Doge and his
counsellors arrayed in a magnificent silk gown and a black satin mantle
lined with sable; a heavy gold chain hung down upon her bosom, and a
golden coif was set upon her hair in the German fashion; three young
girls dressed in black cloth followed her, one after the other, and an
old duenna, the physician, and the chamberlain brought up the rear.
The fair Countess addressed the Doge with feminine eloquence and tact.
She began by rendering thanks for the kindness and consideration shown
to her husband, and she requested permission to see him twice a week.
She argued that this permission was absolutely necessary to her, for she
said that she was very ill, and that the treatment ordered by her doctor
was of such a nature that she entirely declined to submit to it except
in the presence of her husband. The Doge and his counsellors had never
had to face such arguments before; they felt themselves absolutely
powerless, and yielded at once.
But on the morrow old Dandolo, the inspector of prisons, appeared before
them in a condition of indescribable dismay and excitement. He said that
when the Countess was at last in her husband’s prison, on the previous
evening, she had made such a scene in order to be allowed to stay all
night that he, Dandolo, had yielded much against his will and had left
the couple together. And now, in the morning, he had found the
[Illustration: PALAZZO RESSONICO]
Countess still in bed, declaring that she was dangerously ill, and
demanding that her doctor should be sent to her without delay.
The Doge and his counsellors were in a quandary, and Dandolo was tearing
his hair. Sanudo informs us that ‘there was much noise in the council’
that morning, and it is easy to believe that he was telling the truth.
Almost half of the grave magistrates were in favour of leaving the
Countess with her husband; the rest, with a very small majority, voted
that she must quit the prison. The motion passed, but it was one thing
to decide what she should do, and quite another thing to make her do it.
She declared that since she was inside the tower, no power on earth
should get her out of it, and she defied the Doge, the Council of Ten,
and all their works. Before such portentous obstinacy the government of
Venice retired in stupefaction, and she was left in peace.
But she was human, after all, and under prolonged imprisonment her
health broke down, and she was obliged to leave the tower each year to
go to the waters of Abano; but even then she refused to go out until a
formal promise had been given her that she should be allowed to return
immediately after the cure.
No doubt it was owing to her presence that Frangipane’s confinement
became by degrees less rigorous, and that he was even allowed to watch
the procession of Corpus Domini from the balcony of the Library.
Apollonia had come in January 1516, and the pair were not liberated
till more than two years later. Germany, France, and Venice signed a
truce of five years, and agreed to exchange prisoners and give hostages
on the thirty-first of July 1518. Francis I. asked that Germany should
hand him over Frangipane as security for keeping the peace, promising
that he should not be imprisoned, but should be merely a prisoner of the
King on parole. It was not freedom yet, but such a change was more than
welcome, and the negotiations with the Signory for Frangipane’s delivery
were completed on the third of September. The words he wrote in the
embrasure of the window of his prison may still be read, says Dr. Thode,
who copied the inscription which I reproduce:--
Fo inchluso. qua. in. torise ... fina.. terzo
zorno de. setembro. del. M.D. XVIII. io. Christoforo. Frangepanibus
Chonte. de. Veglia. Senia. et Modrusa
Et io. Apollonia. Chonsorte. de sopradicto signor. chonte.
Vene. far. chompagnia. a. quelo. adi. XX. Zenar. MDXVI perfina
sopra dicto setembro. Chi mal. e. ben. non. sa. patir. a. grande
honor. may. poi. venir. anche. ben. ne. mal. de. qui. per.
sempre. non. dura.
I translate literally as follows:--
I was shut up here in the Torrisella till the third day of
September of 1518, Christopher of the Frangipane, Count of Veglia,
Senia, and Modrusa. And I, Apollonia, wife of the aforesaid lord
Count, came to keep him company on the twentieth of January 1516
until the said September. ‘Who cannot bear good and ill fate, Will
never come to honour great.’ Also, Nor good nor evil lasts for ever
here.
Frangipane seems to have written this record during one of his wife’s
absences at Abano, being perfectly sure that he was about to be set at
liberty. But there had been a hitch in the negotiations. Venice was not
ready to hand him over, and meanwhile, when Apollonia came back she was
refused admittance. Dandolo again offered her a home in his palace, and
did all he could to help her. Frangipane, deprived of her comforting
presence, fell ill and went almost mad. Even the Doge himself supported
his request to be allowed to be taken to a private dwelling. It was in
vain; but Apollonia was at last allowed to return to her husband. They
left no means untried to obtain the fulfilment of the treaty, and at
last Dandolo became so exasperated with the Council of Ten that he
resigned his post of inspector of prisons, telling the councillors to
their faces that of twelve thousand prisoners who had been in his
keeping, first and last, Frangipane was the only one who had been able
to complain of injustice.
The Ten accepted his resignation almost without comment, and replaced
him by two nobles. Then the couple tried to escape, but were discovered
and again separated. At last the government consented to ask the King of
France what was to be done with his hostage, whom he seems to have quite
forgotten. He answered by requesting that Frangipane should be sent to
Milan and handed over to the French governor, De Lautrec.
The loving pair were allowed to meet in the prison again, two days
before the departure, but Apollonia was not permitted to follow her
husband to Milan, and a heart-rending farewell took place at
Lizzafusina, on the frontier. Having reached his destination, the
unlucky Frangipane found himself in a much worse prison than the one he
had occupied so long in Venice. Again his faithful wife succeeded in
joining him, to share his captivity. But her strength was far spent, and
she died on the fourth of September 1519, in the fortress of Milan; and
soon afterwards Frangipane succeeded at last in escaping by sawing
through the bars of his window and letting himself down by a rope.
[Illustration]
III
VENETIAN DIPLOMACY
Before quitting the subject of Venetian official life, I must devote a
few pages to the diplomacy of the Republic, which has remained famous in
history.
The kings of France often confided diplomatic missions to the clergy,
but the Venetian diplomatists were always laymen, without a single
exception. The Signory constantly professed the most devout faith in
Catholic dogma, and as constantly exhibited the most profound distrust
of the popes. The Vatican was, indeed, the chief object of the
government’s suspicion. From the fifteenth century onward, any noble
who entered holy orders lost his seat in the Great Council, and I have
already explained that during the discussion of matters relating to
Rome,
[Sidenote: _Cecchetti, Corte Romana._]
all the ‘papalisti’ were ordered to withdraw. When Sixtus V. was elected
Pope in 1585, and the Republic sent four ambassadors together to
congratulate him, the sixteen nobles who attended the mission were most
carefully chosen from among those who never could be ‘papalisti.’
In answer to any criticism of her methods, Venice was almost always able
to bring forward the unanswerable argument of success; but the pages
which record her diplomatic relations with other powers are not the
fairest in her history. Her dealings with her neighbours were regulated
by strictly business principles; and ‘business’ is, I believe, the art
of becoming legally possessed of that which is not our own.
The marvellous accuracy with which the Venetian ambassadors related to
their government the details of what they observed abroad is proverbial,
and has been a godsend to students of history, such as M. Yriarte, to
whom the world is so much indebted for his study of Marcantonio Barbaro.
The post of foreign representative was a most honourable one, but there
were overwhelming responsibilities connected with it. In early times,
when diplomatic relations were less close and less continuous, the
Republic had sent permanent embassies only to Rome and Constantinople;
to other capitals special envoys were only despatched when some matter
was to be discussed. But in the sixteenth century Venice had
ambassadors everywhere, and each week brought long letters from all
countries teeming with details, not only of political or military
events, but concerning social festivities, manners, customs, court
intrigues, and every sort of gossip.
These letters were read aloud on Saturday to the Senate, which thus
assisted at a sort of consecutive series of lectures on the history of
the times; and as it was customary to choose the ambassadors from among
the senators, it was tolerably sure that when chosen they would always
be well informed, up to the latest moment.
The missions of the Republic were limited to a residence of two years in
any one foreign capital; but this short time was amply sufficient to
bring about the financial ruin of the ambassador if he was not very
rich. It was his duty to display the most boundless magnificence for the
greater glory of the Republic, and his expenses bore no proportion to
his salary.
The following instructions, according to M. Yriarte, were given to
Marcantonio Barbaro on his departure for the court of France:--
‘You are to keep eleven horses for your service, including those of your
secretary and his servant, and four mounted messengers. You will
[Sidenote: _Yriarte, Vie d’un Patricien._]
receive for your expenses two hundred gold ducats monthly (about £1800
yearly), of which you are not required to render an account. You will
receive a thousand gold ducats for presents, and three hundred for the
purchase of horses, harness, and saddle cloths.’
The Secretary of Embassy was also named by the Senate, and though the
attachés might be chosen by the ambassador, his choice had to be
confirmed by the government. He was not allowed to take his wife with
him, as her presence might have distracted him from business, and also
because it might possibly have been a little prejudicial to the keeping
of secrets; but he was allowed to take his cook. These same instructions
appear as early as the thirteenth century.
Modern diplomatists, and especially Americans, will be interested to
know that the post of ambassador was so little desired as to make it
necessary to impose a heavy fine on any noble who refused it when he was
appointed; and it actually happened more than once that men paid the
fine rather than ruin themselves altogether in the service of their
sordid government. Once having left Venice, however, no resignation was
allowed, and the ambassador dared not return unless he was ordered to do
so. Requests for leave were very rare, and were only made under the
pressure of some very exceptional circumstances. Such a petition was
considered so serious a matter that when one arrived from abroad all
persons related to the ambassador were ordered to leave the Senate, lest
their presence should interfere with the freedom of discussion; but the
request was never granted unless two members of the family would swear
that the reasons alleged in the petition were genuine.
Legend assures us that each ambassador received, together with his
credentials, a box full of gold coin and a small bottle of deadly
poison. This is childish nonsense, of course, so far as the portable
realities were concerned, but ambassadors were instructed to hesitate at
nothing which could accomplish the purpose of the State, neither at
spending large sums which would be placed at their disposal when
necessary, nor at what the Senate was good enough to call measures of
exceptional severity--namely, murder.
The most important post in Venetian diplomacy was the embassy at
Constantinople, where the chief of the mission enjoyed the title of
Bailo, together with the chance of making a fortune instead of losing
one. The Bailo of Constantinople and the ambassador to the Pope took
precedence over all other Venetian diplomatists, and they were expected
to make an even greater display, especially at the pontifical court. The
four ambassadors sent to congratulate Sixtus V. on his election had each
four noble attachés, four armed footmen, and five-and-twenty horses, and
the one of the four who was already the resident in Rome was indemnified
for his expenses in order that he might appear as magnificently as his
three newly arrived colleagues.
On their return from a foreign mission the envoys of the Republic were
bound to appear at the chancery of the ducal palace, and to inscribe
their names there in a special register; and within a fortnight they
were required to render an account of what they had seen and learnt
abroad, and of the affairs with which they had dealt. These accounts,
called ‘relazioni,’ were brief recapitulations of their weekly letters
to the Senate; the first phrases were always written in Latin, but the
body of the discourse might be in Italian, or even in dialect. The
ambassador presented himself in full dress, wearing his crimson velvet
mantle and bringing the manuscript of his speech, which he afterwards
handed to the High Chancellor; for as early as the fifteenth century all
public speeches were required to be written out, in order that they
might be preserved exactly as they had been spoken, or rather read, for
it was not even allowable to recite them by heart. I need hardly add
that no stranger was ever admitted to hear an ambassador’s account of
his mission, and the senators swore a special oath of secrecy for the
occasion, even with regard to the most insignificant details.
Any one who examines a number of these documents will soon see that they
all begin with a portrait of the sovereign to whom the envoy was
accredited, and there is often a great deal about the royal family, its
surroundings, tastes, and habits. Almost invariably also the account
ends with a list of the presents and titles or decorations bestowed upon
the ambassador at the close of his mission, and all these he was
required to hand over intact to the Signory. Not uncommonly, however,
the presents were returned to him; but as no foreign titles could be
borne by Venetians, the recipient of them was usually created a Knight
of the Golden Stole, the only heraldic order recognised by the Republic
and in the gift of the government.
It would be curious to examine into the first causes
[Illustration: PALAZZO DARIO]
of the relations between Venice and the other European states. It was
the exchange of raisins for wool which obliged England and Venice to
send each other permanent diplomatic missions. Up to that time only
occasional special envoys had been necessary. The first time that
England addressed a letter to the Signory she employed as her official
agent a Neapolitan monk, the Bishop of Bisaccia, chaplain to King
Robert, and this was in 1340. The envoy came to say that King Edward the
Third of England had the honour to inform the Doge Gradenigo that he had
defied Philippe de Valois to say that he was the anointed of the Lord.
The envoy further stated that the two rivals were about to invoke the
judgment of God, either by going unarmed into a den of wild beasts, who
would of course respect the Lord’s anointed and promptly devour the
pretender, or else by ‘touching for King’s Evil.’ Beginning in the
[Sidenote: _Rawdon Brown, Archives._]
fifteenth century there is a long list of English ambassadors and
ministers resident in Venice. The last English diplomatic representative
in Venice was Sir Richard Worsley, of whom I shall have occasion to
speak hereafter.
All the foreign diplomatists in Venice were constantly on the look-out
for the arrival of the special mounted messengers attached to each
foreign embassy. These were celebrated throughout Europe for their speed
and discretion. In the fifteenth century they were thirty-two in number,
and formed a small guild which was under the protection of Saint
Catharine; and they were almost all natives of Bergamo, a city which is
still singularly noted for the honesty and faithfulness of its
inhabitants, and which even now furnishes Venice with trusty
house-porters and other servants of whom responsibility is required.
[Illustration: CALLE BECCHERIA]
In the _Souvenirs_ of M. Armand Baschet, I find that the courier who
brought the news of the signing of the treaty of Cambrai from Blois to
Venice covered the distance in eight days, the best previous record to
Paris, which is about the same distance, having been nine, and the usual
time employed being fifteen. The employment of State courier could be
bought and could be left by will.
Each ambassador of the Republic seemed to possess a part of the
marvellously universal vision that belonged to the Council of Ten. Mr.
Rawdon Brown made a special study of the weekly letters of the Venetian
ambassadors in England, and found, for instance, that one of the
Republic’s representatives succeeded in regularly copying the letters
which Queen Elizabeth wrote to her lovers, which were therefore read
aloud to the Senate with the greatest regularity, together with many
other curious details of English court life.
I shall give two specimens, translated from the weekly letters in the
Albèri collection. In 1531 the patrician Ludovico Falier came to render
an account of his mission to the Court of Henry VIII. He expresses
himself as follows, concerning that King and the English:--
In order that my discourse may be better understood I shall divide
it into two chief parts, of which the one concerns my journey, and
the other the most puissant King Henry VIII., and the manners and
customs of his country from the year 1528 to 1531.... On the tenth
of December I reached Calais [he had left Venice in the middle of
October, but had travelled by short stages with a numerous suite];
it is a city of the French coast which belongs to the most serene
King of England, as I shall have occasion to repeat hereafter.
There I went on board a vessel to cross the ocean, which after
behaving furiously during the passage at last threw me upon the
English shore. I therefore arrived at Dover much more tired by
these few hours of navigation than by a journey of ninety days on
dry land. Having rested a little at Dover I got on horseback to go
to London. At St. George’s I met my most illustrious predecessor
Venier with several personages of the Court, including the most
reverend the Cardinal (Thomas Wolsey), and we all entered the city
together, and they accompanied me to my house. I was ordered almost
at once to go to the Cardinal, in order to kiss his hand, for this
ceremony always preceded that of an audience with the King; such is
the power of this prince [of the Church]. On leaving his apartment
I was conducted to his most serene Majesty, with whom I then had
the interview which I described in detail in my letter to your
Signory and to this glorious Senate.
The ambassador goes on to speak in the past tense of Cardinal Wolsey,
who had fallen into disgrace in the interval. He goes on to speak of the
Queen, who was then Catharine of Aragon.
My lady the Queen is small of stature, and plump, and has an honest
face; she is good and just, affable and pious. She speaks fluently
Spanish, Flemish, French, and English. Her subjects love her more
than they ever loved any Queen; she is five and forty years old,
and she has already lived thirty-five years in England.
The ambassador speaks of the King next.
God has united in King Henry VIII. beauty of soul with beauty of
body, so that every one is astonished by such wonders ... he has
the face of an angel, for it would not be enough to say that he is
handsome; he resembles Cæsar, his look is calm, and contrary to
English fashion, he wears his beard; who would not admire so much
beauty accompanied with so much strength and grace? He rides very
well, jousts and handles a lance with great skill; he is a very
good shot and an excellent tennis player. He has always cultivated
the extraordinary qualities with which nature has adorned him from
his birth, for he thinks that nothing is more unnatural than a
sovereign who cannot dominate his people by his moral and physical
qualities.
And here the ambassador seems to have thought that he had gone rather
far, for he finds something to say about Henry’s less admirable
characteristics.
Unhappily this prince, so intelligent and reasonable, is given up
to idleness, has allowed himself to be led away by his passions,
and has left the government of the State in the hands of a few
favourites, the most powerful of whom was the Cardinal, until he
fell into total disgrace. Since then, from having been generous, he
has become miserly, and whereas formerly all those who treated of
affairs with him went away satisfied and covered with gifts, he now
allows all to leave the Court with discontent. He makes a show of
great piety, hears two low masses every day, and high mass also, on
feast days. He gives to the poor, to orphans, widows, young girls,
and infirm persons, and for these charities he gives his almoner
ten thousand ducats yearly. He is beloved by all. He is forty years
of age and has reigned twenty-two.
Falier speaks next of the climate of Great Britain and the products of
the country, and gives a long description of a brewery. He briefly but
sufficiently describes the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and
gives some account of the British Constitution. He gives also a
statement of the King’s sources of income with their amount, and the
accuracy of the figures suggests that he must have got access to papers
not intended for his perusal.
His Majesty may count upon over five hundred thousand ducats
[£375,000] a year, divided as follows:--
Ducats.
From the Crown (Lands) 190,000
Customs 150,000
Vacant Benefices 40,000
Privy Seal 10,000
Rebels (Confiscations, etc.) 50,000
Lands on the Continent 10,000
Fines for Crimes 25,000
Royal Guards 50,000
_______
Total 525,000
=======
I cannot tell exactly what he gets from taxes, but from information
which I have endeavoured to obtain from grave and experienced
persons, His Majesty exacts from his subjects about a million of
ducats; for the six millions of ducats which he had inherited from
his father were all spent in the wars with France, Flanders, and
Scotland. His Majesty usually spends 425,000 ducats for his Court,
which consists of five hundred men; namely, twenty-six
chamberlains, of whom one is Treasurer of the Chamber [keeper of
the privy purse?], one is a Majorduomo called a ‘Steward,’ his
assistant, who carries a little white stick as a sign of his
dignity; the Treasurer General, who pays all accounts; the
accountant who distributes [the payments]; the ‘cofferers’ in
charge of the said accounts; the Master of the Horse who has the
management of the royal stables. There are three hundred horses,
between Arabs, Turkish horses and racers, hackneys and others. His
Majesty has also eight chaplains, of whom one distributes his
charities, and there are many persons for his service of whom I do
not speak in detail lest I should fatigue Your Serenity. His
Majesty has always in his pay three hundred halberdiers who are on
guard by tens at a time for the King’s person, and pass the night
in the private antechamber.
His Majesty spends as follows:--
Ducats.
For the Maintenance of his Court 100,000
Presents 120,000
Horses 20,000
Parks, and Packs of Hounds 50,000
Soldiers who guard the Fortresses 30,000
His Majesty’s Chamber (Privy Purse) 30,000
Buildings 10,000
Charities 10,000
Embassies and King’s Messengers 40,000
Expenses of the Queen (Catharine of Aragon), and
the Princess (Mary) 30,000
-------
Total 440,000
=======
In case of war his Majesty could arm four thousand light horse and
sixty thousand infantry. The latter would fight in the
old-fashioned way, with bow, sword, shield, helmet, and with pikes
of one or two points which are excellent against charges of
cavalry. They are now beginning to use guns and artillery. The
English do not fear death. As soon as the battle commences, they
provoke the enemy and charge furiously; in very quick engagements
they are generally victorious, but they often yield if the war
drags on. They have not the slightest fear of Frenchmen, but they
are much afraid of the Scotch.
During forty days they are obliged to serve in the army without
receiving pay; after that time they receive three crowns and a half
for a period of service determined beforehand. The fleet consists
of one hundred and fifty vessels.
It now only remains for me to tell you who are the friends of the
King, and what consequences his divorce might have, and I shall
then add a few words on the most Reverend the Cardinal York.
Since the affair of the divorce has come up [Falier is writing in
1531, and Henry VIII. married Anne Boleyn the next year] the Pope
[Clement VII.] is not in his Majesty’s good graces. If the Holy
Father will not grant the King permission to divorce, the result
will be a very great advantage for the English crown, and a great
danger to the Roman Church, for the King will detach himself from
the latter, and will seize all the revenues of the ecclesiastical
benefices; this will yield the Crown more than six million ducats
[£4,500,000].
Falier was not mistaken, unless, perhaps, in his figures. He proceeds to
speak of the relations between England and all the other European
states, after which he returns to the question of the divorce,
expressing himself in a very singular way for a Catholic. It must be
remembered, however, that he was a Venetian, and therefore a man of
business first, and a baptized Christian afterward.
The Englishman [Henry VIII.] must necessarily divorce, for he
wishes to have a legitimate son, and he has lost all hope of one
being born to him by the Lady Catharine [of Aragon]. He will
therefore marry his favourite [Anne Boleyn] the daughter of the
Earl of Vuilcer (_sic_) [Wiltshire--note the Venetian’s phonetic
spelling!] as soon as possible. He will have trouble, for the
faction that is for the Queen will rise.
It is quite clear that Venetian diplomatists did not indulge themselves
in sentiment, and the information they presented to the Senate was as
brutally frank and coldly precise as a medical diagnosis. They sought
for facts and did not philosophise about them. Here is Falier’s opinion
of Cardinal Wolsey:--
The King and the kingdom were in his hands, and he disposed of
everything as the King himself might have done, or the Pope. All
the princes were obliged to bow down to him. He received one
hundred and fifty thousand ducats yearly over and above the gifts
which he had from the English and the foreign princes. He counted
much on France, with which kingdom he kept up extremely
affectionate relations. His court was magnificent, more magnificent
than the King’s. He spent all his income, he was very proud, and he
wished to be adored like a god rather than respected as a prince.
In connection with the great Cardinal, I shall translate a passage of
the letter in which Falier had informed the Senate of his disgrace. The
fragment has some value also, from the light it throws on the
comparative values of coins at that time. It must be remembered that the
value of the gold ducat never changed to the last, while that of all
other European coins varied greatly.
The King of England has had the Cardinal put in prison, has
deprived him of the government, and has confiscated all his
property. His fortune is valued at forty thousand pounds English,
equal to twenty thousand of our grossi [the silver mark], or two
hundred thousand [silver] ducats; in these forty thousand pounds
must be included thirty thousand pounds English in cash, that is,
fifteen thousand of ours or one hundred and fifty thousand
[silver] ducats. His real estate has also been confiscated,
consisting of his Archbishopric, which brought him a very large
sum.
At the risk of wearying my readers I give a short extract from the
report of another ambassador to England, Jacopo Soranzo, which was read
before the Senate on the ninth of August 1554 (Queen Mary then
reigning). The Venetian expresses his surprise at the way in which
trials by jury were conducted in England.
Crimes are tried before twelve judges who may not leave the court,
nor eat, nor drink, until they all agree, without one exception, on
the sentence to be passed.... When sentence has been passed, the
judges execute it immediately, but without ever resorting to the
mutilation of a member or exile. If the accused is innocent, he is
acquitted; if he is guilty, he is condemned to death.
I need not lay stress on the defective form of such trials; your
Lordships see for yourselves how reprehensible such a mode of
procedure is, for it often happens that eleven persons who wish to
acquit the accused decide to condemn him to death in order to be of
the opinion of the twelfth, who is determined to bear starvation
till this verdict is given.
Before closing this chapter it is worth while to note that if the
Venetian ambassadors abroad succeeded in knowing almost everything that
was happening, the
[Sidenote: _A. Bashet, Archives._]
government took good care that foreign representatives residing in
Venice should not follow their example. They were never told anything in
the way of news, and though honours and privileges were heaped upon
them, they were kept at arm’s length. As far back as the fourteenth
century there was a law forbidding all patricians to have any
acquaintance or social intercourse with any foreign representative
except under the most exceptional circumstances, and M. Baschet has
found material in the Archives sufficient to prove that the foreign
ambassadors lived in something very like the seclusion of exile, and
were altogether banished from all intercourse with the upper classes.
The same writer adds that the diplomatists resented this rude exclusion,
and that the practice of it made the Republic not a few enemies.
To such a criticism Venice would have answered, as usual, by the
argument of success on the whole during many centuries. Those who care
to examine the point more closely may read M. Baschet’s interesting work
on the Secret Chancery.
[Illustration: PONTE DEL CRISTO]
IV
THE ARSENAL, THE GLASS-WORKS, AND THE LACE-MAKERS
The old Arsenal is such a museum of shadows nowadays that it is hard to
realise what it once meant to the Venetians. Six hundred years ago, the
sight of it inspired one of Dante’s most vivid descriptions of activity,
and I have sometimes wondered whether in his day the three
dwelling-houses of the Provveditors were already nick-named Heaven,
Purgatory, and Hell, as they were always called at a later date.
The Arsenal was founded in the twelfth century, and from the very first
was one of the institutions most jealously watched over by the
government. In the sixteenth century it had grown to be a vast enclosure
of docks and basins, protected by a crenellated wall, and having but one
entrance, which was guarded by sentinels. In the interior, the houses of
the Provveditors had grown to be three great palaces, built round a
courtyard, each officer occupying one of them during the thirty-two
months of his term of office.
The Provveditors were nobles, of course, but they must necessarily have
been men who thoroughly understood nautical matters, for it was their
duty to oversee all work done in the place, to the minutest details, and
they had absolute control of all the vast stores accumulated for
building and fitting the fleet of the Republic. Every manufactured
article was stamped with the arms of the Republic as soon as it was made
or purchased, and not a nail, not a fathom of rope, not a yard of canvas
could be brought out of the storehouses without the consent of one of
the Provveditors. If anything was found outside the walls of the Arsenal
with the public mark on it, the object was considered by law to be
stolen, an inquiry was made, and if the culprit who had committed the
misdemeanour could be caught, he was condemned to the galleys.
In order to enforce the rigid regulations the government not only
required all three Provveditors to inhabit constantly the palaces
assigned to them, but insisted that one of them should remain day and
night within the
[Illustration: STEAMERS COMING IN]
boundaries of the yard, during a fortnight, without going out at all.
This service was taken in turn, and the official who was on duty was
called the ‘Patron di Guardia.’ Into his hands all the keys were given
every evening when work was over.
The artisans of the government ship-yard were the finest set of men in
Venice, and their traditions of workmanship and art were handed down in
their families from father to son for generations, as certain
occupations still are in Italy. I know of a man-servant, for instance,
whose direct ancestors have served those of the family in which he is
still a servant for more than two hundred years without a break. In the
Venetian Arsenal, it sometimes happened that an old man was foreman of a
department in which his son was a master smith or carpenter, and his
grandson an apprentice.
There was something military in the organisation, which bound the
artisans very close together, for they trained themselves in fencing and
gymnastics, and also in everything connected with extinguishing fires
and saving wrecks or shipwrecked crews, for in any case of public danger
it was always the ‘Arsenalotti’ who were called in. They were sober and
courageous and excessively proud of their trade, and the government
could always count on them. Twice, towards the end of the sixteenth
century, the ducal palace took fire, and would have burnt down but for
the prodigious energy of the workmen from the government docks. On the
first occasion they proudly refused the present of five hundred ducats
which the Doge offered them, but gratefully accepted an invitation to
dine with him in a body; and as they numbered over fifteen thousand the
Doge did not save money by the arrangement. Three years later, all their
efforts could not hinder the hall of the Great Council from burning, and
priceless works of art by such men as the two Bellini, Titian,
Tintoretto, and Pordenone were destroyed in a few moments. But the
Arsenalotti saved the rest of the building, and again refused any
recompense for their services.
When Henry III. of France came to Venice, the Arsenal employed about
sixteen thousand men, and could count on a budget of two hundred and
twenty-four thousand gold ducats, of which one hundred and twenty-four
went to pay the wages of the workmen, and the rest was expended for
materials. Those were large sums in the sixteenth century, but Venice
looked upon the Arsenal as the mainspring of her power, and spared
nothing to keep it in a state as near perfection as possible. In the
long struggle with Genoa, the enemy used every art to bring about its
destruction, but always in vain. The men who guarded the docks were
absolutely incorruptible. In the sixteenth century it seemed as if the
pure blood of the old Venetians ran only in their veins, and as if they
alone still upheld the noble traditions of loyalty and simplicity which
the founders of the Republic had handed down from braver days.
Next to the construction of her war-ships and merchant fleets, one of
the most important matters to the commerce of Venice was the
manufacture of glass, which brought enormous profits to the State and to
[Illustration: S. MICHELE]
individuals, as is usually the case when a valuable product is made out
of cheap materials by processes which are secret, and therefore have the
effect of a monopoly.
As early as the fourteenth century the government had understood the
immense importance of the art, and the glass-blowers of Murano were
protected and favoured in a most especial way. As in one part of France,
a sort of nobility was inherent in the occupation, and an early law
sanctioned the marriage of a master
[Illustration: VENICE FROM MURANO]
glass-blower’s daughter with a patrician by allowing their children to
be entered in the Golden Book.
The glass-works were all established in the island of Murano, as their
presence in the city would have caused constant danger of fire at a time
when many of the houses were still built of wood, and the whole
manufacture was subject to the direct supervision of the Council of Ten,
under whose supreme authority Murano governed itself as a separate city,
and almost as a separate little republic. Not only were the
glass-blowers organised in a number of guilds according to the special
[Illustration: THE DUOMO CAMPANILE, MURANO]
branches of the profession, such as bead-making, bottle-blowing, the
making of window-panes and of stained glass, each guild having its own
‘mariegola’ or charter; but over these the Muranese had their own Great
Council and Golden Book, in which the names of one hundred and
seventy-three families were inscribed, and their own Small Council, or
Senate. The Ten gave Murano a ‘Podestà,’ but he had not the power which
similar officers exercised in the other cities and islands of the
Dogato, and it is amusing to see that the people of Murano treated him
very much as the Venetians themselves treated their Doge. He was
required to be of noble blood; he was obliged by law to spend three days
out of four in Murano; he was forbidden to go to Venice when important
functions were going on; he could not interfere in any affair without
the permission of both the Councils of Murano, and altogether he was
much the same sort of figure-head as the Doge himself. On the other
hand, Murano supported a sort of consul in Venice with the title of
Nuncio, whose business it was to defend the interests of the island
before the Venetian government.
Neither the Missier Grande, the chief of the Venetian police, nor the
‘sbirri,’ were allowed to exercise their functions on the island.
Offenders were arrested and dealt with by the officers of the Murano
government, and were handed over to the Venetian supreme government only
in extreme cases, most trials taking place on the island.
The heraldic arms of Murano displayed on an azure field a cock with red
legs, wearing a crown of silver.
In the sixteenth century the population was about thirty thousand souls,
and the little city had a great reputation for the beauty of its
churches and especially of its gardens, in which quantities of exotic
plants and flowers were cultivated.
The two most powerful families amongst the glass-blowers were those of
Beroviero and Ballarin. I have told at length in the form of a romance
the true story
[Illustration: MURANO, LOOKING TOWARDS VENICE]
of Zorzi Ballarin and Marietta Beroviero, availing myself only of the
romancer’s right to be the apologist of his hero. The facts remain.
Angelo Beroviero, a pupil of Paolo Godi, the famous mediæval chemist,
worked much alone in his laboratory, noting the results of his
experiments in a diary which became extremely valuable. By some means
this diary came into the hands of Zorzi Ballarin, so-called by his
comrades on account of his lameness. He loved Marietta, and she loved
him, but he was poor, and moreover, as far as I have been able to
ascertain, he was of foreign birth, and could therefore not become a
master glass-blower. When he found himself in possession of the precious
[Illustration: MURANO]
secrets, he used his power to extort Beroviero’s consent, he married
Marietta, obtained the full privileges of a master, lived a highly
honourable life, and became the ancestor of a distinguished family, one
of whom was a Venetian ambassador, as may be read in the inscription on
his tomb in Murano. Beroviero’s house, with the sign of the Angel, is
still standing in Murano, and I think the ancient glass-works nearly
opposite were probably his. As for Zorzi Ballarin, I daresay that the
process by which he really got possession of the diary was not strictly
legal, but love has excused worse misdeeds than that, and Beroviero does
not seem to have suffered at all in the end. If there had been any
foundation for the spiteful story some chroniclers tell,
[Illustration: THE HOUSE OF BEROVIERO, MURANO]
a man of Beroviero’s power and wealth could have had Zorzi imprisoned,
tortured, and exiled without the slightest difficulty.
Venice was almost as famous for her lace as for her glass. On the
admittedly doubtful authority of Daru and Laugier, Smedley gives an
anecdote of the Emperor Frederick III. for what it is worth. It at least
illustrates the fact that all foreigners did not esteem Venetian glass
as highly as the Venetians themselves. When Frederick visited the city
on his way to Rome, he was most magnificently entertained, and amongst
other presents offered to him was a very beautiful service of Murano
glass. The Emperor was not pleased with the gift, which, to his
barbarous ignorance, seemed of no value; he ordered his dwarf jester to
seem to stumble against the table on which the matchless glass was set
out, and it was all thrown to the ground and smashed to atoms. ‘If these
things had been of gold or silver, they could not have been broken so
easily,’ said the imperial boor.
In contrast with this possibly true story of the fifteenth century, I
find that the lace collar worn by Louis XIV. at his coronation was made
in Venice, and was valued at an enormous sum. He afterwards bribed
Murano glass-blowers to settle in France.
In those times, more or less as now, women made lace at home, and
brought the results of their long and patient labour to the dealers, who
bought and sold it at a fabulous profit. A few specimens of the finest
lace of the sixteenth century are still in existence, and are worn on
great occasions by Italian ladies whose ancestresses wore them more than
three hundred years ago; but the art of making such lace is extinct.
Glance only, for instance, at a picture by Carpaccio, in the Museo
Civico of Venice, representing two patrician ladies of the fifteenth
century, one of whom wears white lace on her gown. It is of the kind
known as ‘point coupé’ or cut point, and is the same which Francesco
Vinciolo taught the French a hundred years later when it was no longer
thought fine enough, in Venice, for ornamenting anything but sheets and
pillow-cases. It is inimitable now. Or look at the exquisite lace of
network stitch with which Gentile Bellini loved to adorn the women he
portrayed. Yet in the sixteenth century still further progress had been
made, and the ‘air point’ was created, which surpassed in fineness
anything imagined before then, and for which fabulous prices were paid.
The collar of Louis XIV. was of this point, and it is said that as no
thread could be spun fine enough for it, white human hair was used.
There is also a story to the effect that the Emperor Joseph II., who
ascended the throne in 1765, ordered a set of air point worth the
improbable, though not very great price of 77,777 francs. As neither
Austrians nor Venetians used the franc, the story is most likely of
French origin.
Another lace greatly valued in Venice was the ‘rose point,’ which is
probably the best known of the ancient laces. It was preferred, for
collars, both by high officials and great ladies, and the Dogesses often
used it for their veils. The Doge Francesco Morosini possessed some
wonderful specimens of it, which I am told are still in the possession
of his descendants.
One more stitch was invented in the sixteenth century, which oddly
enough obtained the generic name of ‘Venetian point.’ There is a pretty
story about it. A sailor, says the legend, came home from a long voyage
and brought his sweetheart a kind of seaweed known to botanists by the
name of _Halimedia Opuntia_, of which the little branches were so fine
that the people called the plant ‘Siren’s hair.’ The man sailed again on
another voyage, and the girl, full of loving and anxious thoughts for
him, occupied herself by copying the dried plant with her needle, and in
so doing created the Venetian point.
The minister Colbert introduced it into France a century later, under
Louis XIV., and gave it his own name; and the King and the Republic
quietly quarrelled about this French infringement of a Venetian
monopoly. In the end, the Inquisitors of State issued a decree which was
intended to recall errant and erring Venetian lace-workers and
glass-blowers to the security of their homes:--
‘All workmen or artisans who carry on their trade in foreign countries
shall be ordered to come back; should they disobey, the members of their
families shall be imprisoned, and if they then return, they shall be
freely pardoned and again employed in Venice. But if any of them persist
in living abroad, messengers shall be sent to kill them, and when they
are dead their relations shall be let out of prison.’
The glass-blowers who were to be murdered were men, but the lace-makers
were women, and the decree, which was made about 1673, is a fine
instance of Venetian business principles, since the killing of men and
women by assassination was a measure introduced solely for the
protection of trade.
Coloured bobbin lace was also made in Venice, with dyed silk thread and
threads of gold, in the fifteenth century, and Richard III. of England
desired his queen to wear it on her cloak at their coronation in 1483.
The modern Burano lace was first made after the
[Illustration: THE PALACES]
end of the Republic, and is almost the only sort which is now
manufactured in any quantity. Some of the finer points are imitated, it
is true, and are vastly advertised, advertisement having taken the place
of assassination in business methods as a means of creating a fictitious
monopoly; but in spite of some really good pieces of needlework wrought
with great care--as advertisements--the mass of the work turned out is
of a cheap and commercial character.
The policy of Venice with regard to her manufactures was one of
protection, as has been seen, and the result was on the whole very
satisfactory to the people as well as to the great merchants. Very heavy
duties were levied on almost all imported articles, and among the very
few excepted were the silk fabrics from Florence known by the name of
‘ormesini.’ This material was in such common use in Venice that the
local silk weavers could not meet the demand for it. One of the reasons
why the working people of Venice were always satisfied was that they
were almost always prosperous; the price of labour was high, while that
of necessities was relatively low, and the people accordingly lived in
comfort without excessively hard work.
On the other hand, some of them were always extravagant, as some of the
nobles were, and some were unfortunate; and though there was no
pauperism, there were many families of hopelessly poor persons. In a
measure the hospitals, hospices, and orphan asylums provided for those
in want, but in Venice, as in modern cities, the candidates for charity
were always just a little more numerous than the shares into which
charity could divide herself.
There were also those who, if not exactly poor, were in difficulties,
the class that for ever feeds the pawnbroker and the small money-lender.
The Republic exercised the strictest supervision over these industries,
and few cities in the world ever turned a harder face against the
inroads of the Hebrews. It was with the greatest unwillingness and with
many precautions that Jews were ever admitted into the city at all, and
a special code provided the most extraordinary and cruel penalties for
the most ordinary misdemeanours when committed by them. They were forced
to wear a special dress with a large patch of yellow on the chest, and
they could only follow the meanest occupations. In mediæval Rome it was
the business of the Jews to bury the Christian dead, but it often
happened that the Pope’s private physician was a Hebrew. I do not find
that in Venice they were ever forced to be gravediggers for the poor,
but they were forbidden to act as physicians except for their own sick.
Both Church and State rigorously forbade their intermarriage with
Christians, and, so far as the happy ending of the love story is
concerned, Lorenzo and Shylock’s daughter could never have married. More
than once, before the sixteenth century, the Jews were expelled from
Venice and made to live in Mestre, which seems to have been their
regular headquarters, but they were allowed to come into the city during
the time of certain public fairs. If they prolonged their stay beyond
the limit, however, they became liable to fine or imprisonment. Some of
these measures had been partly relaxed by the middle of the sixteenth
century, but the Jews never enjoyed anything like equality with the
other citizens.
Oddly enough the money-lender of the lower classes in Venice was the
wine-seller, whom the people called the Bastionero. In the wine-shop it
was customary to pawn objects for wine and money
[Illustration: THE RIALTO STEPS]
simultaneously, one-third of the value being given in wine, which was
generally watered. If the pledge were not redeemed within three months,
the amount to be paid for getting it back was increased, and again at
the end of the next three months, and so on, until,
[Illustration: NOON ON THE RIALTO]
at the end of the year, the original sum lent was doubled. If it was not
paid, the wine-seller had a right to sell the object for what it would
bring.
A modern Eastern proverb says that one Greek can cheat any ten Jews, but
that one Armenian can cheat ten Greeks. Considering that Venice had a
distinctly oriental character during the Middle Ages, and since we know
that the small money-lending wine-sellers were not Jews, I suspect that
they were principally Greeks and Armenians, the more probably so as we
know that great quantities of Greek and Armenian wine were imported into
Venice, and that those wines will bear a good deal of watering. The
latter is an important point, for it is manifest that when the pledge
was redeemed within the first three months, the lender’s profit was the
difference between the nominal and the real value of the wine which
formed one-third of the loan.
The government which tolerated this ignoble occupation exhibited the
most extraordinary prejudice against the government pawnbroking offices
which were common in other Italian cities. Historians have in vain
endeavoured to discover why this prejudice went so far that, in 1524,
the Council of Ten published a decree threatening with death on the
scaffold any one who should even propose the creation of such an
establishment. Without entering into any ingenious speculation, it seems
possible that the Venetians, who were wise if not virtuous, considered
that while it was impossible to prevent the poor from borrowing small
sums on their little possessions, to authorise such borrowing by making
the government the lender would greatly increase the temptations of
that more shiftless class to whom borrowing seems to be a prime
necessity of existence.
[Illustration: AT THE RIALTO]
The centre and heart of all this activity, good and bad, was the bridge
of the Rialto. We find it hard to realise that until near the end of
the sixteenth century it was still built of wood with a movable
drawbridge in the middle to admit the passage of larger vessels.
Carpaccio, who lived in the fifteenth century, has left us a faithful
representation of it as it remained for nearly a hundred years
afterwards. It would be interesting to place beside that picture
Turner’s lost painting of the same subject, a very beautiful canvas
which I have twice had the good fortune to see in the course of its more
than mysterious peregrinations. I last heard of it, though not
certainly, as being in the south of France.
The present bridge was begun after infinite hesitation in 1588, and was
built after the designs of Antonio da Ponte, whose name was certainly
prophetic of his career. Twelve thousand elm piles had to be driven into
the soil on each side of the canal to a depth of sixteen feet to make
the foundations of the arch. The construction occupied three years, and
is said to have cost 250,000 ducats, presumably of silver. The bridge as
it stands is a remarkable piece of work, and would be beautiful if the
hideous superstructure of shops could be removed. It is interesting to
note that fifty years before its completion, Michelangelo offered the
Doge Andrea Gritti a plan for a bridge, as is amply proved by the
existence of a picture in the Casa Buonarotti in Florence representing
the subject.
[Illustration: EVENING OFF S. GEORGIO]
V
CONCERNING SOME LADIES OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
The clever modern Italian playwright, Signor Martini, makes one of his
witty characters say that there are ‘women,’ but that there is no such
thing
[Sidenote: _Martini, ‘Chi sa il giuoco non l’ insegni.’_]
as ‘woman’ in the abstract. In other words, ‘women’ are a fact, but
‘woman’ is a myth. Though this may be a little paradoxical, there are
certainly distinct types of women in each class of life. The smart
society woman of to-day and the labourer’s wife, like the Venetian
patrician lady of the sixteenth century and the fisher-wives of
Chioggia, have in common only their sex, their weaknesses and their
sufferings; there is very little resemblance between their virtues, and
none at all between their joys.
The noble ladies of Venice in the sixteenth century were as idle and
frivolous as Orientals. The fact must be admitted by any one who studies
the times; and if it is not of a nature to please those who idealise
that period, it may be partly excused by the consideration that the
Venetian nobleman treated his womankind very much as a Turk treats his
harem. He was not jealous, as lovers understand jealousy; granted a
certain degree of beauty and a dowry of a certain value, he cared very
little whom he married. When Kugler, the famous art critic, says of
Titian’s picture of the Schiava, the Slave, in the Barberini Gallery in
Rome, that the name is utterly meaningless, he shows that he knew
nothing of Venetian life. The slave in the sixteenth century not seldom
meant everything, where the wife meant nothing; and if the wives were
idle and frivolous, we must remember that when they were young and
good-looking, they often found themselves in competition with beautiful
Georgian and Circassian women for their masters’ favour. Where women are
plentiful, beautiful, and not clever, the men who love them are rarely
jealous. But those grave and magnificent Venetians, who had not a
scruple in politics, nor in matrimony, were excessively sensitive about
anything which touched their technical honour, and it seemed to them
altogether safer and wiser to teach their wives and daughters what they
were pleased to call ‘habits of domestic seclusion.’ To be plain, they
encouraged them to stay at home; and sometimes, by way of making
obedience easier, they locked them up. M. Yriarte says with partial
truth that their ‘seclusion’ was that of the harem, not that of the
classic gynaeceum; he did not realise that the latter was nothing but a
harem too, and that if the Greeks kept their wives at home, it was that
they might sup undisturbed in the society of Phryne.
The influence of the East on everything connected with private life in
Venice increased with the Renascence, and is even more perceptible then
than during the nominal domination of the Byzantine Empire, when Roman
traditions still had great force, and new currents of thought reached
Venice from the Lombards.
Yet in one respect there was nothing oriental about the Venetian noble
of the sixteenth century. When he ordered his women to appear in public
at all, he sent them out adorned like those miraculous images which are
covered with ‘ex voto’ offerings, and they mixed in the crowd that
filled the Piazza of Saint Mark’s, shoulder to shoulder with the
shameless free.
The Venetian gentleman, so sensitive about his technical honour, was not
even displeased when the chronicler, the reporter of his day, confounded
ladies and courtesans in pompous praise of their beauty and dress. One
of the nobleman’s principles seems to have been that a woman was never
in danger in public, nor when her door was locked on the outside and the
key was in her husband’s pocket, but that any intermediate state of
partial liberty was fraught with peril.
At home the Venetian ladies suffered the pains of boredom in common with
the Georgians and Circassians, who not infrequently lived under the same
roof, but who presumably saw something more of their masters. The young
mother had not even a resource in her children, for it was necessary
that the latter should be brought up to be precisely like their fathers
and mothers, and in order to accomplish this the fathers kept the boys
with themselves, and made them serve in the Senate when they were still
quite small; whereas it seems that the girls were brought up largely in
convents, such as that of the Vergini, lest they should learn too well
from their mothers what it meant to be the wife of a member of the Great
Council.
Does any one remember, in all the portraits of Venetian ladies by
Carpaccio, Tintoretto, Veronese, or Titian, to have seen a mother
accompanied by her little child? There is the conventional flower, there
is the jewel, there is often the lap-dog; but the child is as
conspicuously absent as the effigy of Brutus at Junia Tertia’s funeral.
Children were born and were splendidly baptized; but after that they had
no part in their mothers’ lives. And the ladies themselves had no great
part in Venetian social life, except on its great occasions of baptisms,
marriages, and funerals, or in public ceremonies, when they appeared in
a body, by order of the Ten, in their richest clothes and as a part of
the decoration. It is no wonder that they had few friends and were bored
to extinction.
As a specimen of what a young and noble Venetian girl could become if
emancipated, one cannot do better than take Bianca Cappello. She was
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Annali._]
born in 1548 in the magnificent palace which her father, Bartolommeo
Cappello, had built for himself near the Ponte Storto. Her mother died
when Bianca was a little child, a misfortune which probably had no very
great influence on the girl’s education or character, seeing how little
the Venetian ladies occupied themselves with their children. She
received the usual teaching, and learned to read and write after a
fashion, and such of her letters as have been preserved show that her
writing was anything but good. No doubt she had the usual number of pet
birds and lap-dogs to play with, and plenty of sweetmeats, and when she
was sixteen she was very like other girls of her class and age.
In Italy young girls are taught not to look out of the window in town.
Bianca was terribly bored, and she looked out of the window. Opposite
her father’s palace was a house occupied by two Florentine burghers,
uncle and nephew, Bonaventuri by name, who represented the great Tuscan
banking-house of Salviati.
Bianca looked out of her window, dreaming, no doubt, of the dancing
lessons which she would be allowed to have when she should be married,
and of other similar and harmless frivolities; and young Pietro
Bonaventuri also looked out of the window, neglecting his ledgers.
The girl was very lonely and excessively bored. She never left the
palace except to go with her father
[Sidenote: _Galliccioli, iii. 210._]
to their villa in Murano for a few weeks in the fine season. She was not
even taken to church, because, some eighty years, earlier, a young girl
called Giovanna di Riviera, when going to mass with her mother on the
morning of the third of March 1482, had been picked up and literally
carried off by a too enterprising lover. After that, young girls of good
birth were not allowed to go to church, and mass was said for them in a
little chapel at home.
Bianca was so terribly bored that she began to make signs to Pietro from
her window. She had nothing else to do. One of her most important
occupations was to sun her hair on the high ‘altana.’ That was a real
pleasure, for the palace was gloomy, though it was new, and her room
felt like a prison cell; but she could not be always sunning her hair.
The young banker’s clerk responded to her signals of distress with
alacrity, and a dumb love affair began, apparently highly approved by
the youth’s uncle, who was a man of business. On the night
[Sidenote: _1564._]
between the twenty-eighth and the twenty-ninth of December the two
eloped and got away from Venice without being caught.
Bartolommeo Cappello’s appeal to the Council of Ten is extant. I give
the most interesting part of it:--
‘I shall here expose, and not without tears, the cruel and atrocious
deed of which I was the victim on the night of December the
twenty-ninth. The scoundrel Pietro Bonaventuri, with the consent of his
uncle, Giovanni Battista, and of accomplices whom I know not ... entered
my house, which is almost opposite his, and carried off my only
daughter, sixteen years old; he first took her to his house and then hid
her from place to place, to my great dishonour and that of all my
family.’
The document goes on in a strain of lamentation, and ends with the
request that the Council of Ten should set a price on the head of the
seducer, and bring the girl back to be locked up in a convent; and the
unhappy father offered a prize of six thousand lire to any one who would
bring him Pietro Bonaventuri, alive or dead. The letter expresses more
hatred of the lover than sorrow for the lost child.
The Ten proceeded in the matter without delay; Pietro’s uncle was thrown
into prison, and died there soon afterwards of a putrid fever. Bianca’s
woman-servant and the latter’s husband, who was a gondolier, and who
had, of course, both been acquainted with the plan of her flight, were
arrested and tortured; as for Pietro and Bianca, they had been already
some time in Florence, where they learned that they had both been
condemned to death by default. The Ten had proceeded against the
insignificant banker’s clerk with terrible energy.
But Bianca, who had been so dreadfully bored, now had too much to do.
Pietro’s affairs did not prosper, and after selling the jewels she had
brought with her, she was obliged to work with her hands in his house,
which was not at all what she had bargained for. Chance favoured her,
however, and she helped chance as well as she could, and succeeded in
attracting the notice of Francesco de’ Medici. He was the son of Cosmo,
the Grand Duke, and the brother of Isabella, then not yet drowned in her
own basin by Paolo Giordano Orsini, and of Cardinal Ferdinando, who
afterwards poisoned his brother and became Grand Duke. Francesco lost
his heart to the beautiful Bianca, and she had no objection to winning
it; Pietro Bonaventuri, who was a man of business instincts, but not
sufficiently cautious, had no objection either. But old Cosmo, the Duke,
was much scandalised by his son’s behaviour, though he himself had been
accused of nothing less than loving his own daughter Isabella, and he
remonstrated with Francesco.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘that I do not wish to weary you with preaching,
but when things go too far you must learn what I think of you.’
Francesco learned, but does not seem to have been much affected by the
knowledge, for he presently installed Bianca and her complaisant husband
almost under the same roof with his wife. Pietro, however, was really so
superfluous that he was soon suppressed, after which his widow occupied
an official position in
[Illustration: CASA WEIDERMANN]
the court of Tuscany as the acknowledged mistress of the heir to the
throne. Francesco now attempted to get a reversal of the sentence
passed on Bianca by the Council of Ten, and employed an influential
person to plead the cause; but it was thought improper that such a case
should be treated in the name of old Cosmo while he insisted on ignoring
Bianca’s existence. Cosmo died in 1574, but still nothing was done.
It may be doubted whether any woman in Bianca’s situation ever went to
such extremes of treachery and effrontery. Her victim, the gentle
Archduchess Giovanna of Austria, Francesco’s wife, died at last in 1578,
possibly without being helped out of the world, and Francesco married
Bianca secretly two months later; but the marriage was not announced to
the people until the year of mourning was over. Bianca was Grand Duchess
of Tuscany.
The effect of the news in Venice was magical. The Senate made the
following curious declaration:--
‘The Grand Duke of Tuscany having deigned to choose as his consort the
lady Bianca Cappello, of noble Venetian family, endowed with such great
qualities that we judge her worthy of that dignity, it is but right that
our Republic should exhibit its satisfaction at the honour conferred
upon it by this important and prudent decision of the said Grand Duke.
We therefore decree that the aforesaid illustrious and puissant lady,
Bianca Cappello, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, be declared the adopted and
beloved daughter of our Republic.’
Bianca’s father, who, being a good Venetian, was almost as good a man
of business as Salviati’s murdered clerk, and much more prudent, wrote a
letter full of touchingly tender feeling to the daughter whom he had
cursed so loudly and so long; he and his sons, Bianca’s brothers, were
made Knights of the Golden Stole, and all the records of the scandalous
trial that had taken place fifteen years earlier were burnt. Bianca’s
public marriage and coronation took place on the twelfth of October
1579, and the Republic sent two ambassadors and the patriarch Grimani to
show the Grand Duchess that all old scores were forgotten. She was
thirty-one years old.
We know even more than is necessary of Bianca’s life and intrigues. She
survived her triumph eight years, till she and her ill-gotten husband
died of poison within a few hours of each other; but whether the drug
was administered by the Cardinal Ferdinando, Francesco’s brother, or
whether the two meant to give it to him and took it by mistake, is not
clear. He himself declared that he had not poisoned anybody. It is at
least certain that he would not allow Bianca to be interred in the
Medici vault, but had her privately buried in the crypt of San Lorenzo.
The Venetian Republic did not go into mourning for its ‘well-beloved
adopted daughter,’ since it was best not to quarrel with the Cardinal
Grand Duke, who had probably suppressed her, though his physician made
an autopsy and assured the public that she had died of frightful
excesses of all sorts.
The moral of this unpleasing tale is that the manner of bringing up
Venetian girls in the sixteenth century was not of a kind to develop
their better instincts, for there is nothing to show that Bianca
Cappello was very different from other girls of her time, except in the
great opportunities for doing harm which fell to her share.
Probably the most enjoyable weeks of a noble Venetian girl’s life were
those which preceded her marriage, and were chiefly spent in the
preparation of her wedding outfit. The age was eccentric as to dress; it
was the time of the huge Elizabethan ruffle and hoops; in Venice it was
especially the time of clogs.
The latter had been introduced in the fourteenth century on account of
the mud in the still unpaved
[Sidenote: _Urbain de Gheltof, Calzature._]
streets, and they continued to be worn and grew to monstrous dimensions
after their usefulness had very much decreased. It became the rule that
the greater the lady was, the higher her clogs must be, till they turned
into something like stilts, and she could no longer walk except leaning
on the shoulders of two servants. In China, the Chinese men, as
distinguished from the Tartars, encourage the barbarous breaking of
girls’ feet, because it makes it impossible for them to gad about the
town when they are older, and still less to run away. The Venetian
noblemen approved of clogs for the same reason.
M. Yriarte tells how a foreign ambassador, who was once talking with the
Doge and his counsellors in 1623, observed that little shoes would be
far more convenient than the huge clogs in fashion. One of the
counsellors shook his head in grave disapproval as he answered: ‘Far too
convenient, indeed! Far too much so.’
The civic museum in Venice contains two pairs of clogs, one of which is
twenty inches in height, the other seventeen. Some were highly
ornamented, and the Provveditori alle Pompe made sumptuary regulations
against adorning them with over-rich embroidery or with fine pearls. At
the same time, shoemakers were warned that they would be liable to a
fine of twenty-five lire for any pair of clogs not of proper dimensions
and becoming simplicity. Yet they continued to be worn of extravagant
size and excessively ornamented till the end of the seventeenth century,
when they suddenly sank to nothing, so that a clever woman of the time
complained that the Venetian ladies were beginning to wear shoes no
thicker than a footman’s.
They were especially affected by the nobles, for the burgher class wore
them of much more moderate size. Altogether the life of the burghers’
wives was far more enjoyable; they occupied themselves with music and
painting; they held gatherings at which men and women really exchanged
ideas, and ‘academies’ at which women with a turn for poetry or science
could compare themselves with the most gifted men of Venice.
The most alive of the noble women of the sixteenth century, the one of
whom we have the most vivid impression, was assuredly Bianca Cappello,
who was a monster of iniquity. The others, who had not her
opportunities for great crime, all seem like lay figures, or common
odalisques, who lived a sensuous existence that was never disturbed by
an idea. But the burgher women amused themselves, and thought, and
wrote, and sometimes even allowed themselves a little sentiment.
As for the women of the people, we know nothing about them, as there are
no documents regarding them, but it seems probable that they were, on
the whole, both happy and honest.
There was one more category of women in Venice, as elsewhere, a class
that numbered eleven thousand six hundred and fifty-four members,
towards the end of the century, all young, many of them fair, all
desirous of pleasing, and all, strange to say, present at every public
festival--the class of those who were outside of class, the gay and
shameless free. A Venetian of those days made a catalogue ‘of all the
chief and most honoured courtesans of Venice ... their names ... the
lodgings where they live ... and also the amount of the money to be paid
by noblemen and others who desire to enter into their good graces.’ This
list is dedicated ‘to the most magnificent and gracious Madam Livia
Azzalina, my most respected patroness and lady ... the princess of all
Venetian courtesans.’ Moreover, at the end of the pompous dedication,
the writer, who signs only his initials, adds that he kisses the gay
lady’s ‘honoured hands.’
Some authors, taking this for a catalogue made out by the government,
inform us that the Venetian Senate always gave courtesans the title of
‘deserving.’ Lord Orford refuted this calumny in a curious pamphlet
quoted by Mr. Horatio Brown in his valuable and delightful _Venetian
Studies_. The catalogue contains two hundred and fifteen names; at
number two hundred and four stands the name of the famous Veronica
Franco--‘that skilled writer of the sonnet and curiously polished verses
which say so little and say it so beautifully,’ says Mr. Brown.
Tassini tells an anecdote in point. Two gentlemen were walking one day
over the bridge near the Church of Saint Pantaleo, and they were
confiding to each other their conjugal troubles. ‘Do you know who is the
only honest woman in Venice?’ asked one of them. ‘There she is!’ He
painted to a little marble head which is still visible in the front of a
house below the bridge. The story went the rounds, and the bridge itself
was re-christened ‘Il Ponte di Donna Onesta.’
The elegance of the gay ladies was incredible, and it was in order to be
distinguished from them that respectable women little by little adopted
the black silk gown and veil which they wore to the end of the Republic.
The veil was black for married women and white for young girls.
I find in some statistics for the year 1581 the following statement as
to the women of the better classes. There were 1659 patrician ladies,
1230 noble girls, 2508 nuns, and 1936 women of the burgher class. What
could they do against 11,654? The note adds that all the others were
women of the people.
[Illustration: THE GRAND CANAL IN SUMMER]
VI
A FEW PAINTERS, MEN OF LETTERS, AND SCHOLARS
According to some trustworthy authorities, Raphael, Martin Luther, and
Rabelais were born in the same year. The fact that they were certainly
contemporaries with each other and with many other men of genius of
contradictory types is one of the principal features of that most
contradictory age. Signor Molmenti compares the gifts of Carpaccio and
the two Bellini to rays that warm and gladden, those of Titian and
Tintoretto to lights that dazzle but give no heat. In two centuries that
immense change in art had taken place; from having spoken to the soul it
had come to appeal to the eye.
The best painters of the fifteenth century touch us, and remain
impersonal to us. What do we know, for instance, of Carpaccio’s dreams
or struggles or sufferings while he was painting his great picture of
Saint Ursula and her maiden company? We gaze upon those virgin faces,
those crowns of martyrdom, those tenderly smiling women’s lips, those
almost childlike gestures, and they touch us deeply. Perhaps we should
like to ask them the secret of Carpaccio’s melancholy soul. But the lips
move not, nor do the eyes answer; the eleven thousand maidens seem
rather to beckon us away to that place of refreshment, light and peace,
where we may hope that the great painter’s sadness ended at last. They
tell us not of him, nor of themselves, but of heaven.
A hundred years have gone by, and still artists paint pictures; but they
tell us no longer of anything but their own selves, their own lives,
their own passions. It is the world that has changed; perhaps it is not
faith that is gone, faith the evidence of things unseen, but most
assuredly belief has taken flight and left men sceptical, the belief
which is the mother of all bright dreams, and which must see in order to
believe, if only in imagination, and, believing, cannot fail to see.
The time had come when the artists were interesting for their own sakes
as well as for what they did, and when the reporter-chronicler thought
it worth while to note every anecdote of their daily lives, to put down
the names of their models, to tell us who sat to them for their
Madonnas. And those names are mostly names of good and honest women, and
we know to a nicety why they chose this face for one purpose and that
for another. There is an end of all the legends of saintly heads begun
by the artist and finished before morning by an angel’s hand. There is
an end, too, of dreams of refreshment, light and peace. The artists of
the sixteenth century are the most human of mankind, the most subject to
humanity’s passions, its weaknesses and even its madness, and their
works bear the stamp of the sensuous naturalism in which they lived.
The patrician Alvise Pisani possessed a beautiful house at San Cassian,
standing on a tongue of land called Biri Grande. From the embrasured
windows Murano could be seen, and the island of San Cristoforo, and of
Pace; beyond these, in the distance, rose the tall tower of Torcello,
and a dark line along the water marked the forest of the distant island
called Deserto; to the left rose the Euganean Hills, to the right
stretched a long beach of gleaming sand. The fishermen used to say that
when the mysterious glow spread over the waters of the lagoon at night,
the Fata Morgana had floated up the Adriatic and was bathing in the
dark.
[Illustration: AFTERGLOW, THE GRAND CANAL]
All those things might be seen from the windows of Alvise Pisani’s
house; and there dwelt Titian, no longer the thoughtless gallant of his
earlier days, but grave now, stately and magnificent. Violante is
forgotten, he lives honourably with his wife Cecilia, but he
[Illustration: EUGANEAN HILLS FROM THE LAGOON, LOW TIDE]
still keeps his love of conversation, his luxurious tastes, his lordly
manner; and now he feels himself the equal of the great of the earth,
and it amuses him to exchange letters with princes. For secretaries he
has poets, historians, and even a cardinal; he is the Titian who will
allow an emperor to stoop for the brush that has fallen from his hand.
But few men ever had such grace and winning charm, and his house is
ever open to his countless friends, a place of gathering, of wit and of
good talk, where ladies are received, some of whom a later age will call
blue-stockings, ladies who are members of learned academies, and ladies
that play the lute.
Such was Titian, and such the house in which he was rarely alone. He had
among many friends two at least with whom he was really intimate, the
sculptor Sansovino, and Pietro Aretino the man of letters. The former
was the friend of his heart and of his artistic intelligence; the latter
he himself regarded as a sort of wild beast whom he had tamed and whom
he kept to frighten his rivals and his enemies. He could not let a day
go by without seeing both, and the three were generally together. If one
of them was asked to dinner, he invariably begged his host to invite the
other two.
They certainly did not resemble one another. Aretino was an adventurer
who had tried most things: in his boyhood he had forged and stolen; in
his young prime he had been a renegade monk, and then a courtier; in his
maturity, to use one of his own expressions, he earned his living by the
sweat of his ink. The Grand Duke of Tuscany had hired a house for
[Sidenote: _Tassini, under Carbon._]
him at the Riva del Carbon, for sixty soldi yearly, on the Grand Canal,
and it was there that he followed an occupation which procured him all
the necessaries and some of the luxuries of life. He made it his
business to address the most abjectly flattering panegyrics to eminent
persons, and even to sovereigns like Francis I. and the Emperor Charles
V., and they rewarded him with presents of money or old wine. Or if some
unlucky aspirant to office was in need of popularity or favour, Aretino
quietly explained to him that a little article from his own pen could
make or mar success; and there was nothing to be done but to pay, and to
pay handsomely. Between the composition of one libel and the next, the
amiable Tuscan lived riotously on his latest earnings with his two
daughters Adria and Austria; in plain language he was a blackmailer, a
voluptuary, a man of the highest taste, and of the lowest tastes.
No one loved him, but he was generally feared, and was therefore much
sought after. His house was
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Annali._]
always full, and it was said that it was impossible to go there without
meeting a scholar, a soldier, and a monk. He himself said pleasantly
that the steps of his house were as much worn by the feet of visitors as
the pavement before the Capitol was by the cars of triumphing Roman
generals. Nor was it only those that could pay blackmail who mounted the
stairs. The man was full of contradictions; the poor crept up to his
door and did not return empty-handed. Aretino was charitable.
He could not bear to see a child crying for cold or hunger, nor to see
men or women sleeping shelterless in the streets, and often he took in
under his roof pilgrims and poor wandering gentlemen. On Easter day he
never failed to feed eighteen little beggar children at his table. But
when he was tired of his visitors, rich or poor, he took refuge with
Titian at San Cassian, for Titian was the only human being whom he loved
sincerely, and all the resources of his venomous wit and cruel pen were
at the disposal of this one friend. As for Titian’s other friends,
Aretino spared them, but the artist’s enemies he harassed without mercy.
He was a physical coward, of course, as all such men are. He hated
Jacopo Tintoretto for two reasons, first, because his growing reputation
was beginning to be a source of anxiety to Titian, and secondly, because
he was too poor to be blackmailed and too proud to show himself in
Titian’s house with the threadbare clothes which his wife, good soul,
made him wear for economy’s sake. Aretino accordingly abused him, and
Tintoretto heard of it and determined to put an end to it in his own
way.
One day he met Aretino in the street, stopped him, and proposed to paint
his portrait. The blackmailer was delighted, as the picture would cost
him nothing and would certainly be valuable, and he at once made an
appointment to go to Jacopo’s studio. On the appointed day he appeared
punctually, and seeing an empty canvas ready for the portrait, sat down
in a becoming attitude. But the painter’s turn had come. ‘Stand up!’ he
said, and Aretino obeyed. Then Tintoretto pulled out a long
horse-pistol. ‘What is this?’ asked Aretino, alarmed. ‘I am going to
measure you,’ replied the artist, and he proceeded to measure his
adversary by the length of the pistol. ‘You are two pistols and a half
high,’ he observed; ‘now go!’ and he pointed to the door. Aretino was
badly frightened, and lost no time in getting out of the house; and from
that day he neither wrote nor spoke any word that was not flattering to
Jacopo Tintoretto.
Aretino received another lesson one day from the famous Andrea Calmo.
The latter was an extremely original personage, half man of letters,
half actor, whose improvised speeches in the character of Pantaloon were
so remarkable as to give rise to the mistaken belief that he had
invented that mask. He also wrote open letters to prominent men, as
Aretino did, and published them, and as his were quite as libellous as
the Tuscan’s, and sometimes even more witty, they had
[Sidenote: _Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act iv. sc. 2 (Cambridge edition,
1863)._]
an immense success. In fifty years they went through fifty editions, and
there is positive proof that Shakespeare was acquainted with them, for
he quotes a line and a half from one of Calmo’s works:--
Venetia, Venetia,
Chi non ti vede non ti pretia.
Calmo’s chief virtue was neither patience nor forbearance, and it
appears that Aretino irritated him exceedingly. One day his nerves could
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Studi, and Nuovi Studi._]
bear no longer with the Tuscan, and he gave vent to his feelings in an
ironical open letter addressed to the object of his dislike. Here is a
fragment of it:--
‘You are not a rational, natural human being, but aërial, celestial,
deified, a devout man and a calm one, esteemed by all, adorned with
every treasure and with all the virtues that no one being possesses,
from the East to the West. You are the temple of poetry, the theatre of
invention, a very sea of comparisons--and you behave in such a manner as
to scare even the dead!’
Titian’s other friend, Jacopo Sansovino, the celebrated architect, was
also a Tuscan by birth, but was of quite another stamp. His youth had
been wild, but he had then married a woman of great beauty and
refinement whose name was Paola, and who completely dominated him. The
couple were often seen at the house at San Cassian, as Titian and
Cecilia his wife often visited them in their dwelling in Saint Mark’s
Square close by the clock tower.
Sansovino was handsome still, and rather a fashionable person, but
excitable withal and a brilliant talker; his life had been saddened for
some length of time by the wild doings of his son, but to his great
relief the young man at last took to literature and the art of printing.
The Sansovino couple also made their house the general meeting-place of
many friends, as Titian did.
Though Jacopo was a Tuscan, Venice made every effort to monopolise his
time and industry after he had become famous throughout Italy, and he
was appointed the official architect of Saint Mark’s. He was charged
with the erection of the Mint and the Library, and of
[Illustration: VENICE FROM THE GARDEN]
a new Loggia to replace the very simple one in which the patricians had
been accustomed to gather before the meetings of the Great Council, ever
since the thirteenth century. How well he succeeded in that, the
beautiful construction which fell with the Campanile amply showed.
While he was at work on the Library, Titian was called to Rome to
execute an important commission, and set out in the certainty that on
his return he should find the building finished and his friend covered
with glory. The construction grew indeed, and was soon finished, with
its two stories, of Doric and Ionic architecture, and the balustrade
that crowns the edifice, and the really royal staircase, and all the
rest.
But unhappily, on the night of the eighteenth of December 1545, the
vault of the main hall fell in, with no apparent reason. Instantly all
Sansovino’s rivals raised a terrific outcry, accusing him of having
neglected the most elementary rules of his art, and asserting that the
accident was altogether due to his negligence and incapacity. The
zealous magistrate whose duty it was to oversee the construction of
public buildings did not even wait for a proper warrant, but seized
Sansovino instantly and sent him to prison.
Paola was in despair, and when the news was generally known, early on
the following morning, the indignation of the architect’s friends knew
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Annali._]
no bounds. In a few hours Aretino wrote a consoling letter to Paola,
another to Titian, explaining to him what had happened, and a series of
libellous articles against every architect in Venice except Sansovino
himself. No one escaped who could be supposed to have uttered a single
word against the reputation of the artist in trouble. There was a
certain architect called Sanmichele, a man of great piety--greater
perhaps than his talent--a frequenter of Titian’s house, a rich man,
too, such as Aretino delighted to fleece. Possibly also the good old
artist’s character was irritating to the evil Tuscan, who could not see
why a man should be both distinguished and virtuous, nor why Sanmichele
should have a special mass said when he was about to begin an important
work. One of Aretino’s favourite tricks was to use the most frightful
language before the mild old man, till the latter, having exhausted
entreaty and finding reproach useless, was driven to buy the
blasphemer’s silence with a handsome present of rare old wine.
The occasion of Sansovino’s imprisonment seemed to Aretino an excellent
opportunity for venting his spleen against the devout artist, and at the
same time for obtaining a lucrative return for his industry. He
therefore accused Sanmichele of being the direct cause of his friend’s
arrest, and the abuse heaped upon him was so virulent and so persistent
that its victim was obliged to have recourse to the usual bribe, which
this time consisted of a fine basket of fish.
Sansovino’s friends soon triumphed, for they were many and powerful. I
do not know whether a vaulted ceiling only just constructed can suddenly
collapse and fall in of itself without some fault on the part of the
architect, but Sansovino was unanimously declared to be entirely
innocent, and the unlucky magistrate who, with some show of reason, had
ordered his arrest was thrown into prison in his place.
His brilliantly successful career continued until he was eighty years of
age, when, being too old for work, he was succeeded in the post of
architect to the Republic by the celebrated Palladio. After that he
lived eleven years longer in the society and friendship of Titian, who
was two years older then he. On the register in the church of San Basso
is to be found the following entry: ‘On November the seventh 1570 died
Jacopo Sansovino, architect of the Church of Saint Mark; he was
ninety-one years old and he died of old age.’
Aretino’s life had come to an abrupt close fourteen years earlier. I
find in Tassini under the name ‘Carbon,’ Aretino’s place of residence, a
statement of the singular fact that Aretino’s death was predicted a few
months before it took place, though he was at that time perfectly well.
The author of the _Terremoto_, addressing the Tuscan man of letters,
says: ‘In this year LVI thou shalt
[Sidenote: _1556._]
die; for the appearance of the star to the Wise Men at the birth of Our
Lord was held to be a great sign, and I now hold the comet of this year
to be a little sign which comes on thy account, because thou art against
Christ.’ In that year Aretino actually died. It is said that his death
was caused by his falling off his chair when convulsed with laughter at
an abominable story, and though there may be some exaggeration about the
tale, the physiognomy of the man might justify it. No one regretted
him. In the State Archives of Florence a letter from a Venetian has been
found which says: ‘The mortal Pietro Aretino was taken to another life
on Wednesday evening at the third hour of the night by a (literally)
cannonade of apoplexy, without leaving any regret or grief in any decent
person. May God have pardoned him.’
Titian died six years after Sansovino, surviving to be the last of the
triad of inseparable friends. He was then ninety-nine years of age, and
was carried off by the plague when, judging from the picture he was
painting at the time of his death, he was still in full possession of
his amazing powers. Of all the victims of the terrible epidemic, amongst
tens of thousands of dead, he was the only one to whom the Republic
granted a public funeral.
If we ask what was the ‘social standing’ of Titian and of some of the
most famous Venetians, we shall find that they were simple members of a
Guild, and were reckoned with the working men. The Golden Book was the
register of the nobles, the Silver Book was reserved for the class of
the secretaries, that is, of the burghers or original citizens; but he
who exercised an art such as painting, sculpture, or architecture,
belonged to the people. Like the commonest housepainter, or the painter
of gondolas and house furniture, Titian and Tintoretto were subject to
the ‘Mariegola,’ or charter of their Guild, and had to pass through the
degrees of apprentice and fellow-craftsman before becoming masters.
The law was that ‘no painter, either Venetian or foreign, should be
allowed to sell his paintings unless he was inscribed on the register of
painters and had sworn to conform to the rules of that art,’ in other
words, to the charter of the Guild. Furthermore, if
[Illustration: HOUSE OF TINTORETTO]
he sold his work anywhere except in his shop, he was liable to a fine of
ten lire.
We know that neither Titian nor any of the great artists of his time
rebelled against these regulations. They were all their lives ‘brethren’
of their Guild, and every one of them was obliged to obey the chief of
the corporation in all matters concerning that fraternity, though he
might be a mere painter of doors and windows. It was not until the
eighteenth century that the artist painters organised themselves in a
separate body called the College of Painters. The examination of Paolo
Veronese, which I have translated in speaking of the Holy Office, shows
clearly enough what a poor opinion the authorities had of artistic
inspiration.
Many writers, amongst whom Monsieur Yriarte is an exception, have told
us that literature and the sciences were not cultivated with any success
in Venice during the sixteenth century. It is at least true that the few
who occupied themselves with those matters displayed qualities not far
removed from genius.
It was very common for the great Venetian nobles to play patron to
poets, painters, and architects, and almost every name that became
famous in the arts and sciences recalls that of some patrician or
secretary who protected the artist, the writer, or the student. The
Republic was often the refuge of gifted men whom political or personal
reasons had exiled from their homes. Roman, Tuscan, and Lombard
celebrities spent their lives in Venice and added their glory to hers.
Who remembers that Aldus Manutius was a Roman? Or that Gaspara Stampa,
who is always counted as one of the best of Venetian poets, was born in
Milan? The Venetians, too, showed a wonderful tact in the degree of the
hospitality they accorded. One need only compare the reception Petrarch
met with in the fourteenth century, which was nothing less than royal,
with the good-natured toleration shown to Pietro Aretino two hundred
years later. The Republic’s treatment of the two men is the measure of
the distance that separates the immortal poet from the brilliant and
vicious pamphleteer. If the latter spent some agreeable years in Venice,
that was due much more to the protection of a few friends than to any
privileges granted him by the government.
[Illustration: HOUSE OF ALDUS]
There were certainly a great many intellectual centres in Venice at that
time, and one might fill many pages with the names of the so-called
academies that were founded and that flourished for a time. Almost every
special tendency of human thought was represented by one of them, from
the Aldine, devoted enthusiastically to classic Greek, to those
academies which adorned their emptiness with such titles as ‘The
Seraphic,’ ‘The Uranian,’ and the like, and which gave themselves up to
the most unbridled extravagance of taste. Of such follies I shall only
quote one instance, which I find in Tassini under the name ‘Bernardo.’
In the year 1538 the will of that academician was opened. He therein
directed his heirs to have his body washed by three famous physicians
with as much aromatic vinegar as would cost forty ducats, and each
physician was to receive as his fee three golden sequins absolutely
fresh from the mint. The body was then to be wrapped in linen clothes
soaked in essence of aloes, before being ‘comfortably’ laid to rest in a
lead coffin and enclosed in one of cypress wood. The coffin was then to
be placed in a marble monument to cost six hundred ducats. The
inscription was to enumerate the actions and virtues of the deceased in
eight Latin hexameters, of which the letters were to look tall to a
spectator placed at a distance of twenty-five feet. The poet who
composed the verses was to receive one sequin for each. Moreover, the
history of the dead man’s family was to be written out in eight hundred
verses, and seven psalms were to be composed after the manner of the
Psalms of David, and twenty monks were to sing them before the tomb on
the first Sunday of every month.
We read without surprise that this will was not executed to the letter,
and the tolerably reasonable monument erected to Pietro Bernardo by his
descendants,
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE SACRISTY, FRARI]
twenty years after his death, may still be seen in the church of the
Frari.
There were also academies which bore names, devices, and emblems of a
nature that might well shock and surprise us, were they not the natural
evidences of that coming decadence, moral and artistic, whereof all
Italy, and Venice in particular, already bore the germs.
Amongst the great names that belong to the end of the fifteenth century,
as well as to the sixteenth, hardly any has more interesting
associations for scholars than that of Aldus Manutius.
The founder of the great family of scholars and printers was born at
Sermoneta in the Pontifical States in 1449, and was over forty years old
when he finally established himself in Venice.
[Sidenote: _Firmin-Didot, Alde Manuce._]
He had been tutor in the princely family of Pio, where he had educated
the eldest son, and he himself added the name to his own, though he did
not transmit it to his descendants.
One of the legends about the origin of printing tells that it was
invented in the Venetian city of Feltre, by a certain Castaldi, who was
robbed of his invention by Germans, presumably Faust and Guttenberg.
There is probably no foundation for this tale, but it is certain that
the Venetians brought the art of printing to something near perfection
within a few years of its creation, and that the government protected it
by laws of singular wisdom and great severity, in an age when the idea
of copyright was in its infancy.
Aldus was neither a money-maker nor a man given up to ambition; he was
a true artist, and cared only for perfecting his art. When he first
invented the italic type he was almost beside himself with delight, and
instantly applied to the Council of Ten for letters patent to forbid any
imitation of his work during ten years. The petition is curious, for
Aldus went as far as to suggest to the Ten the penalties to be incurred
by any one who defrauded him of his rights, and they were by no means
light.
He dreamed of never allowing any work to leave his press which was less
than perfect at all points. When he meditated the printing of a Greek
classic, he gathered about him all the most conscientious men of letters
in Venice; such men as Sabellico and Sanudo, the highly accomplished
Cardinal Bembo, and Andrea Navagero all worked at comparing the best
texts, in order to produce one that should be beyond criticism. In the
course of such profound study, learned discussions arose and conclusions
were reached which were destined to influence all scholarship down to
modern times. Little by little, and without any artificial encouragement
or intention, the workshop of Aldus became the gravest of classical
‘academies’; a vast amount of work was done there, and a very small
number of books were very wonderfully well printed.
In two years five publications appeared, among which was the first Greek
edition of Aristotle’s works. That Aldus might have done better is
possible, and every reader of ancient Greek must deplore the selection
of type he made for printing in that language. It is ugly, unpractical,
and utterly inartistic, but such was the man’s influence that he imposed
it upon scholars, and it is by far the most commonly used type to this
day. Aldus might have done better; but, on the other hand, the
unquestionable fact stands out that no one, in those days, did half so
well, and that if his Greek type is unpleasing, his italic is beautiful
and has never been surpassed; finally, good copies of his best
publications bring high prices at every modern sale.
He and his friends were busy men, and spent whole days shut up together,
thereby rousing much curiosity, and attracting many unwelcome visitors.
At last Aldus was wearied by their importunity, and the loss of time
they caused became a serious matter. He composed the following notice
and put it up outside his press:--
‘Quisquis es, rogat te Aldus etiam atque etiam: ut si quid est quod a se
velis perpaucis agas, deinde actutum abeas: nisi tanquam Hercules
defesso Atlante, veneris suppositurus humeros. Semper enim erit quod et
tu agas, et quotquot huc attulerunt pedes.’
I quote the Latin from Didot. It is hardly worthy of the editor,
printer, and publisher of Aristotle, but Aldus himself printed it in the
preface, addressed to Andrea Navagero, which precedes the edition of
Cicero’s _Rhetoric_, published in 1514. Here is a translation of it:--
‘Whoever you are, Aldus begs you again and again, if you want anything
of him, to do your business with few words and then to go away quickly;
unless, indeed, you come as Hercules to tired Atlas, to place your
shoulders under the burden. For there will always be something to do
even for you, and for as many as bend their steps hither.’
The story even goes so far as to say that Erasmus came one day to
Aldus’s door with the manuscript of his _Adagia_ under his arm, but that
he was disconcerted by the notice and was going away, when the great
printer himself caught sight of him and made him come in.
Aldus, who was not a Venetian, was not a man of business, and did not
grow rich by his work. He gave his time lavishly, for no true artist,
such as he was, ever said that time was money; and his expenses were
very heavy, not the least being that incurred for the fine cotton paper
he got from Padua. On the other hand, he hoped to encourage learning and
to disseminate a general love of the classics. Some of his prices,
however, were very high; for instance, a complete Aristotle sold for
eleven silver ducats, which Didot considers equal to over ninety francs
in modern French money. But a copy of the Musæus, which would perhaps
sell to-day for forty pounds sterling, could be bought for a little more
than one ‘marcello.’
Aldus had established himself in Venice about 1490. Eight years later, a
visitation of the plague decimated the population, and the great printer
himself sickened of it. Believing himself all but lost, he vowed that if
he recovered he would abandon his art, which would be by far the
greatest thing he could give up, and would enter holy orders. He
recovered, but the sacrifice was greater than he could make, though he
was a good man, of devout mind. He at once addressed a petition to the
Pope, begging to be released from his vow, and M. Didot discovered in
the Archives of the Council of Ten the favourable answer returned by
Alexander VI., who, it will be remembered, was the Borgia Pope, of evil
fame. It was, of course, addressed to the Patriarch, and it reads as
follows:--
Venerable Brother:
Our beloved son Aldus Manutius, a citizen of Rome, set forth to us
some time ago that when the plague was raging he, being in danger
of death, took an oath that if he escaped he would enter the holy
orders of priesthood. Seeing that since he has recovered his
health, he does not persist in his vow, and seeing that in his
condition of poverty he cannot subsist otherwise than by the work
of his hands, whereby he earned his living, now therefore he
desires to remain a layman, and we have granted his petition. We
commission you therefore and command your fraternity to absolve in
our name the said Aldus from the vow he took, if he humbly requests
you to do so, and if things stand as he says, requiring of him a
return by such other acts of piety as it shall seem good to your
conscience to impose, and this if there be no other obstacle.
Given in Rome, August the eleventh, 1498, in the sixth year of our
Pontificate.
It is characteristic of the far-reaching power of the Council of Ten
that this curious document should have been found in their Archives.
One year after having been released from his vow, Aldus married Maria,
daughter of Andrea Torresano. I do not knew whether an attachment which
perhaps dated from before the plague could have had anything to do with
the great printer’s aversion to fulfilling his vow; if so, the world is
deeply indebted to his wife. There was, however, a considerable interval
in his career after 1498, during which no books were issued by the
Aldine press, and those belonging to the first period have a much higher
value than the rest.
Possibly children were born to the couple and died between the time of
their marriage and the birth of their son Paulus Manutius in 1512, three
years before the death of his father Aldus. The dates show the absurdity
of the story that Aldus brought up his son to be a scholar and a printer
like himself. He died when that son, who was destined to be famous also,
was less than four years old. He breathed his last on the sixth of
January 1516, being not yet sixty-seven years old, surrounded by his
faithful friends and his manuscripts. Owing to his having married so
late, and to his son not having been born till thirteen years after his
marriage, the lives of the father and son cover the period between 1449
and 1574, no less than one hundred and twenty-five years.
Prince Pio, his former pupil and one of the most distinguished members
of the Aldine Academy, claimed the honour of burying him at Carpi, a
feudal holding of the Pio family. His body was carried thither with
great pomp, and he was laid in state in the church of Saint Patrinian,
surrounded by books, and was finally buried in the Prince’s family
vault.
Another and very original type of scholar was Marin Sanudo, whose name
occurs so constantly in all writings that deal with the sixteenth
century in Venice. He was of a patrician family, and
[Sidenote: _Marin Sanudo, Diario; Mutinelli, Annali._]
was so early predisposed to observe and note everything of interest that
when he was only eight years old he copied the inscriptions which
Petrarch had written under the pictures in the hall of the Great
Council, and it is thanks to his childish industry that we know the
nature of those great works which were destroyed in the fire of 1474.
As the child grew up he cultivated the habit of making notes of all he
saw and heard; and, though he strictly adheres to the principle of
relating daily events briefly and clearly, he constantly reveals himself
to us as a man of broad views and keen sight, cautious, slightly
sceptical, and thoroughly independent. As soon as he had attained the
required age he was admitted to the Council, and he kept a journal of
everything that happened there. It is surprising to find that a
government which knew everything should allow any one such full liberty
to make notes. Possibly the value of his work was not at first
understood, but when it was, the manner in which appreciation showed
itself was not flattering to the chronicler.
The Republic always employed a regular official historian whose business
it was to narrate the deeds and misdeeds of the government in a manner
uniformly pleasant to Venetian vanity. One of the most successful
writers in this manner was the untrustworthy Sabellico, and when he died
Marin Sanudo aspired to succeed him, being in poor circumstances, and
having on several occasions rendered services to the Republic. But to
his infinite mortification Cardinal Bembo was appointed to the post,
and, as if to add insult to injury, Sanudo was requested to place his
valuable diaries at the disposal of the new public historian. Sanudo was
deeply hurt, as may be imagined, but he was poor and in debt, and the
paternal government of his business-like country easily drove him to the
wall. For the use of his diary, and for his promise to bequeath it to
the State at his death, he accepted a pension of one hundred and fifty
ducats (£112) yearly. This small stipend was not enough to lift him out
of poverty. The expense of the paper which he used for his notes was a
serious item in his little budget, and the binder’s bill was a constant
source of anxiety. He was often obliged to borrow money, and once he was
imprisoned for debt. On the latter occasion he made the following entry
in his journal:--
‘December eighteenth, 1516.--On this day in the morning a dreadful thing
happened to me. I was going to Saint Mark’s to hear mass as usual when I
was recognised by that traitor Giovanni Soranzo, to whom I have owed a
hundred ducats for ten years, and forty-seven for a debt before that.
Now I had solemnly promised that I would pay him the money, but in order
to shame me he had me imprisoned till next day in San Cassian. I vow to
be avenged upon him with my own hands.’
Having vented his wrath on paper, Sanudo promptly forgot his sombre
vows of vengeance. For many years afterwards he went backwards and
forwards
[Illustration: S. GIACOMO IN ORIO]
between the ducal palace and his own house at San Giacomo in Orio, where
he had collected books and prints to a very great value. He was almost
forgotten until very recent times, when he was rediscovered in his
diary, and treated with the honour he deserves by his own countrymen.
There was no university in Venice, but the government encouraged those
teachers who established themselves in the city and gave instruction in
their own homes. In this way they formed little schools which quarrelled
with each other over definitions, syllogisms, and etymologies in the
most approved fashion. There is a good instance of one of these
miniature civil wars in connection with the historian Sabellico. He was
[Sidenote: _Cicogna, Iscrizioni, i. 341._]
ferociously jealous of a certain learned priest called Ignatius, who
taught literature, as he did, and had many more scholars. In his
lectures Sabellico attacked Ignatius furiously, and did his best to
destroy his reputation. The priest on his side held his tongue, and
waited for a chance of giving his hot-headed adversary a lesson. At last
Sabellico published a very indifferent work, of which the priest wrote
such a keen criticism that the book was a dead failure. The State
historian’s rage broke out in the most violent invectives, and from that
time Ignatius was his nightmare, and the mere mention of his name drove
him into uncontrollable fury, until, dying at last, Sabellico realised
that his hatred of the priest had been the mortal sin of his life, and
on his deathbed he sent for him and asked for a reconciliation. Ignatius
freely pardoned him, and even delivered a very flattering funeral
oration over his body a few days later.
A distinguished man of this period who deserves mention was Federigo
Badoer, who may almost be said
[Illustration: DOORWAY OF THE SACRISTY, S. GIACOMO IN ORIO]
to have been educated in the printing press of Aldus, and afterwards
became the friend of Paulus Manutius. Like all Venetian nobles, he
learned from his boyhood how he was to serve the State, and became
acquainted with the working of its administration, and he was soon
struck by the condition of the Code. The laws had multiplied too much,
and were often obscure, and the whole system was in great need of
revision. Badoer conceived the idea of founding an academy for the
purpose of editing and printing the whole body of
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Annali._]
Venetian Law; the Council of Ten gave him their approval, and he founded
the Academy of ‘La Fama’--of Fame--with the singularly inappropriate
motto, ‘I fly to heaven and rest in God.’ The printing of the new Code
was entrusted to Paulus Manutius.
My perspicuous reader, having recovered from his astonishment at the
unexpected liberality of the Council of Ten, has already divined that
such a fit could not last long, and that Badoer and his noble academy
were doomed to failure. Badoer was not rich enough to bear the expense
of such an undertaking alone, and the Ten had no intention of helping
him. Moreover, he and the scholars of his academy kept up a continual
correspondence with doctors of law in other countries. It would have
seemed narrow-minded, however, to suppress the academy by a decree; it
was more in accordance with the methods of the Council to accuse Badoer
of some imaginary misdeed for which he could be brought to trial.
Accordingly, though he had sacrificed his own fortune in the attempt, he
was accused of having embezzled the academy’s funds, and in three years
from the time of his setting to work the
[Illustration: FONDAMENTA SANUDO]
academy was crushed out of existence, and he was a ruined man.
Another shortlived but celebrated literary society was that of the
‘Pellegrini,’ the ‘Pilgrims,’ whose pilgrimage led them only from their
solemn palaces in Venice to the pleasant groves of Murano, and was
performed by moonlight when possible. The pilgrims were Titian,
Sansovino, Navagero, Gaspara Stampa, the old Trifone, Collaltino di
Collalto, and some others, and it is very unlikely that their evening
meetings had any object except pleasant converse and intellectual
relaxation. We know something about the lovely Gaspara and Collalto, at
all events, and it can be safely said that they were more pleasantly
occupied than in conspiracy, and that what they said to each other
concerned neither the Doge nor the Council of Ten.
Though there was no university in Venice, the Republic possessed one of
the most renowned in Europe by right of having conquered and annexed
Padua; and it is interesting to note that because that great institution
of learning was not situated in Venice itself, it was allowed a degree
of liberty altogether beyond Venetian traditions.
Padua was temporarily obliged to submit to Louis XII. of France at the
beginning of the sixteenth century, but the Republic took it again in
1509, and from that date until 1797 there was never the least
interruption in the academic courses. The only influence exercised upon
the university by the Venetian government was intended to give it a more
patriotically Venetian character. In earlier times the Bishop of Padua
had been _ex officio_ the Rector of the university; he was now deprived
of this dignity, which was conferred jointly on three Venetian nobles,
who were elected for two years, and were required to reside in Venice
and not in Padua, lest they should be exposed to influences foreign to
the spirit of the Republic. Their title was ‘Riformatori dell’
Università,’ and great care was exercised in choosing them. They were
also the official inspectors of the Venetian schools and of the national
libraries, and it was their business to examine candidates for the
position of teachers in any authorised institution.
They were no doubt terrible pedants, inwardly much dignified by a sense
of their great responsibilities, and to this day, in northern Italy, it
is said of a man who wearies his family and his acquaintances with
perpetual ‘nagging’--there is no dictionary word for it--that he is like
a ‘Riformatore’ of the University of Padua, though the good people who
use the phrase have no clear idea of what it means.
These three patricians had an official dress of their own, which was a
long robe, sometimes black and
[Sidenote: _Yriarte, Vie; Rom. iv. 449._]
sometimes of a violet colour, changing according to some regulation
which is not known, but always made with sleeves of the ‘ducal’ pattern;
and they put on a black stole over it. If one of them was a Knight of
the Golden Stole, as often happened, his robe was of velvet and his
stole was of cloth of gold.
The Holy See was not much pleased by the way in which the Republic
treated the Bishop of Padua, and constantly complained that the students
of the University were allowed too much license to express opinions
that ill accorded with Catholic dogma. Like all commercial countries,
Venice was Protestant in so far as any direct interference of the
Vatican was concerned. Mr. Brooks Adams was, I think, the first to point
out the inseparable connection between Protestantism and commercial
enterprise, in his extraordinary study, _The Law of Civilization and
Decay_. The peculiarity of Venice’s religious position was that it
combined an excessive, if not superstitious, devotion to the rites of
the Church with something approaching to contempt of the Pope’s power.
The University of Padua was resorted to by students of all nations,
including many English gentlemen. In the Archives of the Ten a petition
has been found signed by a number of foreign students in Padua to be
allowed to wear arms, and we find that the
[Sidenote: _Rom. iv. 449, note 5._]
necessary permission for this was granted in 1548 to Sir Thomas Wyatt,
‘a Knight of the English Court,’ Sir---- Cotton, Sir John Arundel,
Christopher Mayne, Henry Williams, and John Schyer (?).
It is amusing to find that the French students in Padua excelled in
fencing, riding, dancing, and music, but apparently not in subjects more
generally considered academic.
I cannot close this chapter without saying a few words about Galileo
Galilei, who was for some time in the employ of the Republic. I quote
from his life, written by his pupil Viviani, but not published till
1826.
After lecturing in Pisa for three years Galileo was appointed by the
Venetian government to be professor of mathematics in Padua for a term
of six years, during which he invented several
[Sidenote: _1592._]
machines for the service of the Republic. Copies of his writings and
lectures of this time were scattered by his pupils throughout Italy,
Germany, France, and England, often without his name, for he thought
them of such little importance that he did not even protest when
impostors claimed to be the authors of them. During this period, says
Viviani, he invented ‘the thermometers (_sic_) ... which wonderful
invention was perfected in modern times by the sublime genius of our
great Ferdinand II., our most serene reigning sovereign ...,’ the
Cardinal Grand Duke who poisoned his brother and Bianca Cappello.
At the end of his term Galileo was re-appointed for six years more, and
during this time he observed a comet in the Dragon, and made experiments
[Sidenote: _1599._]
with the magnet. He was re-appointed again and again with an increase of
salary.
In April or May, in 1609, when he was in Venice, it was reported that a
certain Dutchman had presented Maurice of Nassau with a sort of eyeglass
which made distant objects seem near. This was all that was known of the
invention, but Galileo was so much interested by the story that he
returned to Padua at once, and in the course of a single night succeeded
in constructing his first telescope, in spite of the poor quality of the
lenses he had, and on the following day he returned to Venice and
showed the instrument to his astonished friends. After perfecting it he
resolved to present it to the reigning Doge, Leonardo Donà, and to the
whole Venetian Senate.
I translate literally the letter he wrote to the Doge to accompany the
gift.
Most Serene Prince: Galileo Galilei, your Serenity’s most humble
servant, labouring assiduously and with all his heart not only to
do his duty as lecturer on mathematics in the University of Padua,
but also to bring your Serenity some extraordinary advantage by
means of some useful and signal discovery, now appears before you
with a new device of eyeglass, the result of the most recondite
theories of perspective; the which [invention] brings objects to be
visible so near the eye and shows them so large and distinct, that
what is distant, for instance, nine miles, seems as if it were only
one mile away, a fact which may be of inestimable service for every
business and enterprise by land and sea; for it is thus possible,
at sea, to discover the enemy’s vessels and sails at a far greater
distance than is customary, so that we can see him two hours and
more before he can see us, and by distinguishing the number and
nature of his vessels, we can judge of his forces and prepare for a
pursuit, or a battle, or for flight. In the same manner, on land,
the quarters and the defences of the enemy within a strong place
can be descried from an eminence, even if far away; and even in the
open country, it is possible with great advantage to make out every
movement and preparation; moreover, every judicious person will
clearly perceive many uses [for the telescope]. Therefore, deeming
it worthy to be received and considered very useful by your
Serenity, he [Galileo] has determined to present it to you, and to
leave it to your judgment to determine and provide concerning this
invention, in order that, as may seem best to your prudence, others
should or should not be constructed. And this the aforesaid Galilei
presents to your Serenity as one of the fruits of the science which
he has now professed in the University of Padua during more than
seventeen years, trusting that he is on the eve of offering you
still greater things, if it please the Lord God and your Serenity
that he, as he desires, may spend the rest of his life in the
service of your Serenity, before whom he humbly bows, praying the
Divine Majesty to grant you the fulness of all happiness.
The letter is not dated, but on the twenty-fifth of August 1609 the
Signory appointed the astronomer professor for life, with ‘three times
the highest pay ever granted to any lecturer on mathematics.’
It was in Padua that Galileo invented the microscope, observed the
moon’s surface, and the spots on the sun, discovered that the milky way
and the nebulæ consist of many small fixed stars, discovered Jupiter’s
moons, Saturn’s rings, and the fact that Venus revolves round the sun,
‘and not below it, as Ptolemy believed.’
Much has been written of late about Galileo, but most of what has
appeared seems to be founded on this life by his pupil Viviani.
[Illustration]
VII
THE TRIUMPHANT CITY
When Philippe de Commines came to Venice in 1495 as ambassador of
Charles VIII. he wrote: ‘This is the most triumphant city that ever I
saw.’
He meant what he said figuratively, no doubt, for in that day there was
something overwhelming about the wealth and splendour, and the vast
success of the Republic. But he meant it literally too, for no state or
city of the world celebrated its own victories with such pomp and
magnificence as Venice.
The Venetians had never been altogether at peace with the Turks, in
spite of the treaty which had been made soon after the fall of
Constantinople;
[Sidenote: _Daru; Rom._]
but when Venice herself was threatened by all the European powers
together, it was with the highest satisfaction that she saw the Moslems
attack her old enemies the Hungarians. Yet her joy was of short
duration, for the Emperor soon made peace with the Sultan. It will be
remembered that the Imperial throne had then already been hereditary in
the Hapsburg family for many years.
The character of Turkish warfare in the Mediterranean was always
piratical, of the very sort most certain to harass and injure a maritime
commercial nation like Venice, and the latter began to lose ground
steadily in the Greek archipelago, and now found herself obliged to
defend the coasts of the Adriatic against the Turks as she had formerly
defended them against the pirates of Narenta. From time to time a
Turkish vessel was captured, and hundreds of Christian slaves were found
chained to the oar.
There were also other robbers along the Dalmatian coast, who exercised
their depredations against Turks
[Sidenote: _Niccolò da Ponte triumphs over the Usocchi; Tintoretto, Hall
of the Great Council._]
and Christians alike, with admirable equity. These were the so-called
‘Usocchi,’ a name derived from a Slav root meaning to ‘leap out’--hence,
those who had escaped and fled their country and were outlaws.
About this time the island of Cyprus had fallen in part under Turkish
domination. The Turks had
[Sidenote: _Cicogna, Iscr. Ven. iii. 134._]
made a piratical descent upon Nicosia, and had carried off all the women
who were still young enough for the Eastern market. But one of these, a
heroine whose name is lost, fired the ship’s powder-magazine and saved
herself and her companions from outrage by causing the instant death of
every soul on board. This was in the latter half of the sixteenth
century.
Thirsting for vengeance, the Venetians now eagerly joined Philip II. of
Spain in the league proposed by the Pope. The three fleets were to meet
at Messina, and much precious time was lost, during which the Turks
completed their conquest of Cyprus, which was heroically defended by
Marcantonio Bragadin. His fate was horrible. His nose and ears were cut
off, and he was obliged to witness the death of his brave companions,
Tiepolo, Baglione, Martinengo, and Quirini. They were stoned, hanged,
and carved to shreds before his eyes, and a vast number of Venetian
soldiers and women and children were massacred before him during the
following ten days. At last his turn came to die; he was hung by the
hands in the public square and slowly skinned alive. It is said that he
died like a hero and a saint, commending his soul to God, and forgiving
his enemies.
The ferocious Mustapha, by whose orders these horrors were perpetrated,
ordered his skin to be stuffed and had it carried about the streets,
under a red umbrella, in allusion to the arms of the Bragadin family.
The hideous human doll
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Seb. Venier._]
was then hoisted to the masthead of Mustapha’s ship as a trophy and
taken in that way to Constantinople.
But in his lifetime Bragadin had ransomed a certain man of Verona from
the Turks, and had earned his undying gratitude. This Veronese, hearing
of his benefactor’s awful end, swore to bring home his skin, since
nothing else remained, and with incredible skill and courage actually
entered the Turkish arsenal at Constantinople, where the trophy was
kept, stole it and brought it home. It is related that the skin was
found as soft as silk and was easily folded into a small space; it is
preserved in the church of San Giovanni e Paolo.
The vengeance of the league was slow, but it was memorably terrible; in
1571 Don John of Austria, a stripling of genius, scarcely six and twenty
years of age, commanded the three fleets and led Christianity to victory
at Lepanto.
[Sidenote: _Lepanto, A. Vicentini; ducal palace._]
One of the decisive battles of the world checked the Mohammedan power
for ever in the Gulf of Corinth, and the blood of eighty thousand Turks
avenged the inhuman murder of Bragadin and the self-destruction of the
captive Venetian women.
Not many days later, on the eighteenth of October 1571, the great ‘Angel
Gabriel,’ a galley of war, came sailing into the harbour of Venice, full
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Seb. Venier._]
dressed with flags, and trailing in her wake long line of Turkish
standards, and turbans and coats. Then the cannon thundered, and the
crew cried ‘Victory! Victory!’ and the triumphant note went rolling over
Venice, while Onofrio Giustiniani, the commander of the man-of-war, went
up to the ducal palace. Then the people went mad with joy, and demanded
that all prisoners should be set free in honour of the day; and the
Council allowed at least all those to be liberated who were in prison
for debt. Then, too, the people cried ‘Death to the Turks!’ and would
have massacred every Mussulman in the Turks’ quarter; but to the honour
of Venice it is recorded that the government was strong enough to hinder
that.
And then the Doge, Aloise Mocenigo, found his way through the closely
packed crowd to the Basilica,
[Sidenote: _Aloise Mocenigo, praying, Tintoretto; Sala del Collegio._]
and fifty thousand voices sang ‘Te Deum laudamus Domine,’ till the
triumphant strain must have been heard far out on the lagoon. During
four days processions marched through the streets and hymns of victory
and thanksgiving were sung; the greatest battle of the age had been
fought and won on the feast of Saint Justina, who was one of the patrons
of Venice. In return for her military assistance an enthusiastic and
devout people resolved to set up a statue of her in the Arsenal and to
build her a church in Padua, as she already had one in Venice.
Religious obligations being thus cancelled, the universal rejoicing
manifested itself in civic pageantry,
[Sidenote: _Rom. vi. 317._]
and, to use a modern expression, the Venetians held a general exhibition
of their treasures. The square of the Rialto was draped with scarlet
cloth, on which were hung the pictures of the most famous masters, at a
time when some of the greatest that ever lived were alive in Venice and
at the height of their glory. In the midst of the square a trophy was
raised, composed of Turkish arms and banners, turbans, slippers, jewels,
and all sorts of ornaments taken from the slain. From the jewellers’
lane to the bridge a canopy of blue cloth covered with golden stars was
spread high across the way, the most precious tapestries were hung on
the walls of the houses, the shops showed all their most artistic wares
in their windows. The German quarter was so crammed with beautiful
objects that it seemed one great enchanted palace. To increase the
general gaiety, the government made a special exception and allowed
masks in the streets.
When it is remembered that Venice really obtained little or no immediate
advantage from the battle of Lepanto, her frenzy of triumph may seem
exaggerated; yet it was moderate compared with the reception Rome gave
to the commander of the Papal fleet, Marcantonio Colonna. The Venetian
captain, Sebastian Venier, was not present, and there was not the least
personal note in the rejoicings; that, indeed, would have been very
contrary to the usual behaviour of the Republic towards her own sons,
for if they failed she disowned them or put them to death, and if they
succeeded it was her motherly practice to disgrace them as soon as
possible, and generally to find an excuse for imprisoning them, lest
they should grow dangerous to herself.
We cannot help reproaching her for that; yet out of her magnificent
past comes back ever that same answer: she succeeded, where others
failed. She bred
[Illustration: DOOR OF THE CARMINE]
such men as Enrico Dandolo, Vittor Pisani, Carlo Zeno, and Sebastian
Venier, yet she was never enslaved by one of her own children. Rome
served her Cæsar, and her many Cæsars; France, her Bonaparte; Russia,
her Ivan Strashny, the Terrible; Spain, her Philip II.; England, her
Richard III.--and her Cromwell, Protector and Tyrant. But Venice was
never subject to any one Venetian man beyond the time needed to compass
his destruction and death, which was never long, and sometimes was
awfully brief.
Venier did not return to Venice till long after the battle of Lepanto,
and his presence was necessary in the Archipelago in order to protect
such colonies as were left to the Republic.
[Sidenote: _Venier returns in triumph, Palma Giovane; Sala dei
Pregadi._]
For though the Turks had suffered a disastrous defeat, final in the
sense that their advance westwards was checked as effectually as the
spreading of the Moorish conquest had been by Charles Martel at
Poitiers, yet they were still at the height of their power in
Constantinople, and were strong on the eastern side of the dividing line
which was now drawn across the Mediterranean, and which marked the
eastern limit of Christian domination. When Venier returned, the Turks
were absolute masters of the island of Cyprus, and Venice was already
beginning to pay what was really a war indemnity, destined to reach the
formidable sum of three hundred thousand ducats. As Montesquieu truly
says, it looked as if the Turks had been the victors at Lepanto.
Three years after that battle Venice was again adorned in her best to
greet Henry III. of
[Sidenote: _Rom. vi. 341._]
France, who visited the city in July 1574, the year of his accession.
The King was to make his entry on the eighteenth, and he was requested
to stop at Murano on the previous evening, in the
[Sidenote: _Horatio Brown, Venetian studies._]
Palazzo Cappello, which was all hung with silk and cloth of gold in his
honour. Forty young nobles were attached to his person and sixty
halberdiers mounted guard, dressed in yellow and blue, which were
regarded by the Venetians as his colours, and wearing a
[Sidenote: _Henry III. visits Venice, A. Vicentino; Sala delle Quattro
Porte._]
cap with a white tuft for a cockade. Their weapons were taken from the
armoury of the Council of Ten. There were also eighteen trumpeters and
twelve drummers dressed in the King’s colours.
Henry III. was still in mourning for his brother Charles IX., and
appeared very plainly clad in the midst of all this display. The
chronicles have preserved the details of his costume; he wore a brown
mantle that fell from his neck to his feet, and beneath it a violet
tunic of Flemish cloth with a white lace collar. He also wore long
leathern boots, perfumed gloves, and an Italian hat.
The night was passed in feasting, during which the French and the
Venetians fraternised most closely, and on the following morning a huge
galley was ready to take the King to Venice by way of the Lido.
On the high poop-deck a seat was placed for the King, covered with cloth
of gold; on his right sat the Papal Nuncio, who was the Cardinal San
Sisto, then came the Dukes of Nevers and Mantua; on his left the Doge
and the Ambassadors. Four hundred rowers pulled the big vessel over, and
fourteen galleys followed bringing the Senators and many others. To
amuse the King during the short passage, the glass-blowers of
Murano had constructed on rafts a furnace in the shape of a marine
monster that belched flames from its jaws and nostrils, while the most
famous workmen blew beakers and other vessels in the beast’s body, of
the finest crystal glass, for the King and his suite.
Just when he might be thought to be weary of this spectacle a long array
of decorated boats began to manœuvre before his eyes, with sails set and
banners flying. These belonged to the various guilds and were
wonderfully adorned. One represented a huge dolphin; on its back stood
Neptune driving two winged steeds, while four aged boatmen in costume
stood for the four rivers of the Republic, Brenta, Adige, Po, and Piave.
Some of the boats had arrangements for sending up fireworks, others were
floating exhibitions of the richest and most marvellous tapestries and
stuffs.
The royal vessel, instead of proceeding straight to Venice, went round
by the Lido to the landing of Saint Nicholas, where the State architect
Palladio had erected a triumphal arch which Tintoretto and Paolo
Veronese had covered with ten beautiful paintings. Here the King was
invited to leave his galley in order to go on board the Bucentaur.
Tintoretto was in the crowd, looking out for a chance of sketching the
King, precisely as a modern reporter hangs about the docks and railway
stations to get a snapshot at royalty. Tintoretto did not disdain the
methods of a later time either; he succeeded in exchanging his
threadbare cloak for the livery of one of the Doge’s squires or footmen,
by which trick he managed to get on board the Bucentaur. Once there he
made a sketch in pastels of the King which pleased the royal treasurer,
De Bellegarde, and the latter persuaded his master to sit to the artist
for a full-length portrait, which was presented to the Doge on the
King’s departure, in recollection of the visit.
During the following days nothing was omitted which might amuse the
Sovereign or tend to strengthen the pleasant impression he had already
received. Every sort of Venetian game was played, and all the
traditional contests of strength and skill between Niccolotti and
Castellani were revived, and with such earnestness on both sides as to
lead to a fresh outbreak of their hereditary hate. Two hundred men
fought with sticks at the Ponte del Carmine, as savagely as if the
safety and honour of their wives and children depended on the result. At
the most critical moment the fisherman Luca, the famous chief of the
Niccolotti, fell into the canal, his followers were momentarily thrown
into disorder by the accident, and the Castellani won the day.
Afterwards a banquet was given to the King, of which the remembrance
remains alive amongst the people to our own time. The gondoliers and
fishermen of to-day describe the feast, its magnificence, the beauty of
the patrician ladies, the splendour of the service, as if they were
speaking of something that happened yesterday instead of more than ten
generations ago.
The tables were set in the hall of the Great Council for three thousand
persons. The King sat in the middle of the hall under a golden canopy.
We are told that the bill of fare set forth twelve hundred different
dishes, and that all the company ate off solid silver plates, of which
there were enough for all without having recourse to the reserve which
had been set up for show on a huge sideboard at the end of the hall.
After the feast, the King assisted at the performance of the first opera
ever given in Italy, composed by the once famous master Zarlino da
Chioggia.
The banquet and the music must have occupied several hours; yet we are
amazed to learn that so short a time sufficed for putting together a
whole galley, of which Henry had seen the pieces, all taken apart, just
before sitting down to table. When he left the ducal palace, he saw to
his stupefaction the vessel launched into the canal on rollers, and
towed away towards the Lido.
Not surfeited by the official amusements offered him by the Republic,
the King diverted himself on his own account and went about the city in
disguise,
[Sidenote: _Mut. Annali._]
like Otho of old. The government had directed the jewellers and
merchants to have in readiness their finest wares in order that when the
King sent for them, he might buy objects worthy of the reputation of the
Venetian shops; and the shopkeepers inquired with feverish anxiety when
they were to go to the Palazzo Foscari.
But Henry preferred to go out shopping himself. One morning the jeweller
at the Sign of the Old Woman on the Rialto Bridge was visited by a noble
stranger, who inquired the price of a marvellously chiselled golden
sceptre: apparently the Venetian jewellers kept sceptres in stock in
case a king should look in. The price of this one was twenty-six
thousand ducats, or between eighteen and nineteen thousand pounds,
which seems dear, even for a sceptre. But the noble stranger was not at
all surprised, thought the matter over for a few seconds, nodded
quietly, and ordered the thing to be sent to the Foscari palace, to
[Illustration: CAMPO BEHIND S. GIACOMO IN ORIO]
the inexpressible joy of the jeweller, who knew the address well enough.
At that time there dwelt in Venice a branch of the famous Fugger family
of Augsburg, the richest bankers of the sixteenth century. They owned
all
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Annali._]
the district of the city round the church of San Giacomo, and had even
protected themselves by a sort of wall. There they had built a bank, a
hospital, and houses for their numberless retainers, and they lived in a
kind of unacknowledged principality of their own which was respected
both by the State and the people.
The family had the most magnificent traditions of hospitality. When the
Emperor Charles V. passed through Augsburg in the earlier part of the
same century, he lodged in the Fuggers’ house, and as it was winter, his
hosts caused his fires to be made only of aromatic wood imported as a
perfume from Ceylon. Henry III. visited the Fuggers in Venice, and they
were neither surprised by his unannounced visit nor unprepared to
receive a royal guest.
While in Venice the King spent much of his time with Veronica Franco,
the celebrated poetess and courtesan. She, on her side, fell deeply in
[Sidenote: _Tassini._]
love with the man who was to be the worst of all the French kings. But
he was only twenty-three years old then, he was half a Medici by blood,
and all of one by his passionate nature. Veronica loved him with all her
heart, and amidst all the evil he did there was at least one good
result, for when he was gone she would not be consoled, nor would she
ever look on another man, but mended her life and lived in a retirement
to which she sought to attract other penitent women.
She had a picture of the King painted, and no doubt he was vividly
present in her thoughts when she wrote the following sonnet, which is
attributed to her, and which I do into prose for greater accuracy:--
Begone, deceiving thoughts and empty hope,
Greedy and blind desires, and bitter cravings,
Begone, ye burning sighs and bitter woes,
Companions ever of my unending pain.
Go memories sweet, go galling chains,
Of a heart that is loosed from you at last,
That gathers up again the rein of reason,
Dropped for a while, and now goes forth in freedom.
And thou, my soul, entangled in so many sorrows,
Unbind thyself and to thy divine Lord
Rejoicing turn thy thoughts;
Now bravely force thy fate,
Break through thy bonds; then, glad and free,
Direct thy steps in the securer way!
In order to give my readers some idea of what was done to furnish the
Palazzo Foscari for Henry’s visit, I quote some items of the expenditure
from the _Souvenirs_ of Armand Baschet:--
‘Crimson silk and gold hangings, fifty-eight pieces making three hundred
and seven braccia and a half at a ducat for each braccio and twelve
inches. White silk and silver stuff; shot-silk and silver stuff; white
satin with gold lines, etc. Cushions of brocade embroidered with gold
and of blue velvet with gold and fringes etc. at forty ducats each. A
bed quilt with gold lines and scarlet checks, twenty ducats. Yellow
damask with little checks at one ducat the braccio. A rep rug of gold
edged with blue velvet and lined with red silk, sixty ducats. A
tablecloth of silver and gold brocade with white and gold fringe,
thirty-four ducats. Green and blue velvet for the floor, at one ducat
the braccio. Complete hangings for a room of yellow satin with gold and
silver fringe and gold lace, over seven hundred and thirty ducats.’
Further, we find for the royal gondolas the following items:--
‘Felse of scarlet satin, one hundred and fifty-six ducats. A boat’s
carpet of violet Alexandria velvet; a felse of the same velvet lined
with silk, fifty-five ducats. Another velvet carpet of the same colour,
two canopies, one of violet satin fringed and embroidered with gold, the
other of white satin, and two cushions of scarlet satin and gold.’
These things were put away in boxes, an inventory was taken, and they
were valued at four thousand two hundred sequins, or more than three
thousand pounds. The King on his side was generous. When he went away he
presented each of the young noblemen who had attended him with a chain
worth a hundred ducats, and gave a collar worth three hundred to his
host, Foscari. The captain of his guard received a silver basin and ewer
worth a hundred crowns. For the halberdiers of the guard there were
three hundred crowns, eighty for the trumpeters and sixty for the
drummers. His Majesty left a thousand crowns for the workmen of the
Arsenal, two hundred for the rowers of the Bucentaur, one hundred for
the major-domo, and fifty to the chief steward of the house.
The Duke of Savoy, who accompanied the King of France, also left some
splendid presents. To the wife
[Illustration: THE PIAZZA]
of Luigi Mocenigo, in whose house he had been staying, he gave a belt
composed of thirty gold rosettes, ornamented with fine pearls and
valuable precious stones. The Duke was doubtless unaware that as soon as
he was gone the handsome ornament would have to be handed over to the
Provveditori delle Pompe, not to be worn again unless a special and
elaborate decree could be obtained for the purpose.
In the first year of the reign of Sixtus V. Japan sent ambassadors to
the Pope ‘to recognise him officially as Christ’s vicar on earth.’ These
[Sidenote: _1585. Rom. vi. 387._]
personages, who were converts to Christianity, were received with
demonstrations of the greatest joy and esteem when they visited Venice,
and were regaled with spectacles which were partly religious in
character and partly secular. A procession was organised against which
the Pope himself protested in the most formal manner; but the Republic
paid no more attention than usual to this expression of papal
displeasure. It was always the dream of Venice to be Roman Catholic
without Rome.
The Japanese envoys looked on while all the clergy of the city passed in
review before them, as well as all the guilds bearing the images of
their
[Sidenote: _Giustina Renier Michiel, Origini._]
patron saints and their standards; these were followed by cars carrying
enormous erections of gold and silver vessels, built up in the form of
pyramids, and of columns, stars, eagles, lions, and symbolic beasts.
Other cars came after these with platforms, on which actors represented
scenes from the lives of saints, even including martyrdom. The
[Illustration: PIGEONS IN THE PIAZZA]
Japanese may have been more amazed than edified by these performances.
The Venetians always loved processions, and it is to one of these
pageants that the pigeons of Saint Mark’s owe their immunity. As early
as the end of the fourteenth century it was the custom to make a great
procession on Palm Sunday, in the neighbourhood of Saint Mark’s. A canon
of the Cathedral deposited great baskets on the high altar, containing
the artificial palms prepared for the Doge, the chief magistrates, and
the most important members of the clergy. The Doge’s palm was prepared
by the nuns of Sant’ Andrea, and was a monument of patience. The leaves
were plaited with threads of palm, of gold, of silver, and of silk; and
on the gilded handle were painted the arms of the Doge. According to the
appointed service the procession began immediately after the
distribution of the palms; and while the choir chanted the words
‘Gloria, laus et honor’ of the sacred hymn, a great number of pigeons
were sent flying from different parts of the façade down into the
square, having little screws of paper fastened to their claws to prevent
them from flying too high. The people instantly began to catch the
birds, and a great many were actually taken; but now and then, one
stronger than the rest succeeded in gaining the higher parts of the
surrounding buildings, enthusiastically cheered by the crowd. Those who
had once succeeded in making their escape were regarded as sacred for
ever with all their descendants. The State provided them with food from
its granaries, and before long, lest by some mistake any free pigeons
should be caught on the next Palm Sunday, the Signory decreed that other
birds than pigeons must be used on the occasion.
[Illustration: SOTTO PORTICO DELLA GUERRA]
VIII
THE HOSE CLUB--VENETIAN LEGENDS
In the fourteenth century, life in Venice was simple and vigorous, and
found its civic expression in the formation of the Guilds which united
in
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Vita Privata. Sansovino. Galliccioli, ii. 267,
269. Mutinelli, Lessico._]
close and brotherly bonds men of grave and energetic character, devoted
to their country and to its advantage. In the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries the tendencies of the later Venetians took visible shape in
brotherhoods of joyous and not harmless amusement, and chiefly in that
known as the ‘Compagnia della Calza,’ in plain English the ‘Hose Club.’
The learned Professor Tomassetti of the University of Rome, whose
authority in all that concerns the Middle Ages in Italy is indisputable,
informs me that he believes the right of wearing hose of two or more
colours, as one leg white and one leg red, or quartered above and below
the knee, belonged exclusively to free men, and that the fashion was
adopted by them in order that they might be readily distinguished from
the serf-born, in crowds and in public places. This is, indeed, the only
reasonable explanation of the practice which has ever been offered, and
is borne out by a careful examination of the pictures of the time. The
‘Hose Club’ distinguished themselves and recognised one another by their
hose, which were of two colours, one leg having at first a peacock
embroidered on it, whence the whole company was sometimes nicknamed ‘The
Peacocks.’
The Doge Michel Steno, who painted his four hundred horses yellow, and
had been concerned in the libel against the nephew of Marin Faliero,
[Sidenote: _1400._]
had been counted among the gayest youths of his day; and when he was
elected the rich young men of Venice, knowing by hearsay from their
fathers that he had been wild in his youth, determined to celebrate the
accession of a former dandy in a manner suited to their own tastes. They
agreed upon the dress which afterwards became famous, and each paid a
sum of two thousand ducats into a general fund which was entirely spent
in pageantry, banqueting, and masquerades.
They had not at first intended the Club to be permanent, but when the
anniversary of the Doge’s coronation came round in the following year,
they met again to consider the advisability of prolonging an institution
which made such an agreeable contrast to the general gravity of Venetian
life.
They now composed a sort of charter or constitution, which would have
made the heads of the artisan Guilds tremble with indignation, and might
[Sidenote: _1401._]
well have caused the fathers of Venetian families to look even more
grave than usual.
The Club was to be always a Company of twenty members, chosen for four
years only; for as soon as a young Venetian married, or took his seat in
the Great Council, he put on the long gown of older years and more
dignified habits, which effectively eclipsed his brilliant legs from the
public gaze. Each Company was to choose its name, an emblem, and a
motto. There were to be officers, a president, a secretary, and a
treasurer; and as the Venetians had a mania for sanctioning even the
most frivolous doings by means of some religious exercise, each Company
was to have a chaplain to celebrate a solemn mass at the admission of
each young scapegrace who joined. The chaplain also administered the
oath which every Companion was bound to take on admission.
The smallest infraction of the rules entailed a heavy fine, and the
fines were, of course, periodically spent in riotous amusements. As for
the dress, the hose always remained a part of it, but the greatest
latitude was allowed in the matter of colour and embroidery, or other
ornamentation.
The formation of the joyous Companies was a natural reaction after the
huge efforts, the strenuous labours, the awful dangers that had filled
the fourteenth century, and had placed Venice high among the European
powers. From the foundation of the first of the Company, that of the
‘Peacocks,’ to the dispersion of the ‘Accesi,’ the ‘Ardent,’ which was
the last, a hundred and eighty-six years went by, which may be called
six generations, during which forty-three Companies succeeded each
other, and the ‘Hose Club’ became famous throughout Europe for its
extravagance, and for the fertility of its festive inventions.
It made it its especial business to adorn with its presence in a body
the public baptisms of noble children, and important weddings, the
visits of illustrious personages, and even elections where there was
much at stake. When a foreign sovereign stopped in Venice, he asked to
be made an honorary member of the Company, he sometimes adopted its
dress, and he took home with him its emblem and its motto.
The most famous of all the Companies was that of the ‘Reali,’ the
‘Royals,’ which was in existence about the year 1530. The members wore a
red
[Sidenote: _Cicogna, Iscr. iii. 366._]
stocking on the right leg, and a blue one on the left, which was
embroidered on one side with large flowers of violet colour, and on the
other the emblem of the Company, which was a cypress, over which ran
the motto, ‘May our glorious name go up
[Illustration: PONTE S. ANTONIO]
to heaven.’ The members wore a vest of velvet embroidered with gold and
fine pearls, and the sleeves were fastened on by knots of ribband of
different colours, a fashion permitting the wearer to display his shirt
of gossamer linen, exquisitely embroidered.
A leathern or a gilded girdle was worn too, ornamented with precious
stones, and over the shoulder was carelessly thrown a short mantle of
cloth of gold, or damask, or brocade, with a hood thrown back, in the
lining of which was seen again the emblematic cypress.
Last of all the ‘toga,’ the great cloak, was red, and was fastened at
the neck by a small golden chain, from the end of which a handsome jewel
hung down below the ear, over one shoulder. The boots were of
embroidered or cut leather, and were made with very thin soles.
Venice had to thank the Companions of the Hose Club for some of the
first real theatrical performances ever given, which gradually led to
the creation of the ‘ridotti,’ and were more or less aristocratic
gambling clubs in connection with the theatres. We read that in 1529 the
Companions played a comedy with immense success in the house of one of
the Loredan family. In the following year the Duke of Milan visited the
city, and the Club determined to out-do all its previous festivities. A
Giustiniani was then the president of the ‘Royals,’ and he appeared with
a deputation before the Doge and the Signory. After announcing that the
Club had determined to produce the spectacle of a naval combat, he
requested the government to lend for the purpose forty of the light
war-pinnaces from the Arsenal. As if this were nothing unusual, he went
on to ask for the use of the hall of the Great Council for a dance, of
the Library for a supper, and of the Square of Saint Mark’s for a
stag-hunt.
The Hose Club evidently had large ideas. The Doge, however, granted all
that was necessary for the naval show, but said that he should have to
think over the other requests!
It is needless to say that the ladies of Venice had their share in the
gay doings of the Club, first as invited guests only, but later as
honorary Companions, wearing the emblem embroidered on their sleeves and
on the scarlet ‘felse’ of their gondolas, until the sumptuary laws
interfered.
There were times when the Signors of the Night and the Council of Ten
thought fit to limit the Club’s excessive gaiety, and it was found
necessary to issue a decree which strictly prohibited any of the eleven
thousand light ladies of the city from being received as Companions, or
asked to its entertainments; for, oddly enough, the reputables do not
seem to have resented the presence of the disreputables in the sixteenth
century.
Now and then the Companions fell out among themselves. Marin Sanudo, in
his diary, mentions that in February 1500 the Companions
[Sidenote: _Marin Sanudo, iii. I, 39._]
dined in the house of Luca Gritti, son of late Omobono; and after dinner
Zuan Moro, the treasurer of the Club, went out with Angelo Morosini,
Andrea Vendramin, and Zacaria Priuli; and they quarrelled about a
matter concerning which I refer my scholarly reader to his Muratori, and
Zuan Moro was wounded in the face, and turned and gave his assailants as
good as he had got, to the infinite scandal of the whole city, for these
Companions were all the young husbands of beautiful women, and they
disfigured each other!
We learn also from Sanudo that the Companions frequented the parlours of
nunneries as well as the palaces of their noble relations and friends,
and that in 1514, for instance, they played a comedy by Plautus in the
convent of Santo Stefano. The Company of the ‘Sempiterni,’ the
‘Eternals,’ wished to give a performance of Pietro Aretino’s ‘Talanta’
in one of the monasteries, but this was more than the monks could
endure, which will not surprise any one who has read Aretino’s works;
they might as well have proposed to give one of Giordano Bruno’s obscene
comedies; and perhaps they would, if he had then already lived and
written. Refused by the monks, the Companions hired a part of an
unfinished palace on the Canarregio for their performance.
At first sight, what surprises us is the impunity enjoyed by these young
gentlemen of pleasure, and we ask what the three ‘Wise Men on Blasphemy’
were doing. They were the Censors of the Republic, and it is amusing to
note that they acted in regard to licensing plays precisely as the
modern English government censorship does, for whereas they allowed a
scandalous piece by Aretino to be performed unchallenged, they most
strictly forbade the presentation of any biblical personage or subject
on the stage. The stories of Judith, of Jephthah’s daughter, and of
Samson were those of which the wise magistrates most particularly
disapproved, I know not why.
The first theatre Venice had was built by the Companions
[Illustration: S. ZOBENIGO]
in 1560 after the designs of Palladio, of wood, in the court of the
monastery of the Carità, but after a few years it took fire, and the
monastery itself was destroyed with it.
I find that the Companions were great ‘racket’ players; but I apprehend
that by ‘rackets’ the chroniclers intended to describe court tennis,
which was played in Venice, whereas in most other Italian cities the
game of ‘Pallone’ was the favourite, and has survived to our own time.
It is played with a heavy ball which the player strikes with a sort of
wooden glove, studded with blunt wooden pins and covering most of the
forearm.
To return to the question of the large freedom and impunity granted to
the Club by the government, the reason of such license is not far to
seek. Young men who spend their time in a ceaseless round of amusement
do not plot to overthrow the government that tolerates them. The
Signory, on the whole, protected the Companions even in their wildest
excesses, and no doubt believed them to be much more useful members of
society than they thought themselves, since their irrepressible gaiety
and almost constant popularity helped to keep the people in a good
humour in times of trouble and disturbance.
At the time of the league of Cambrai, for instance, when Pope Julius
II., the Emperor Maximilian, Louis XII. of France, and Ferdinand of
Aragon agreed to destroy the Venetian Republic, and when it looked as if
they must succeed, the Company of the ‘Eternals’ produced a mummery
which was highly appreciated both by the government and the population.
They gave a sumptuous feast, after which the dining-hall was, as by
magic, turned into an improvised theatre. In the middle of the stage
[Sidenote: _1510. Rom. v. 246._]
sat a young noble who personated the King, splendidly arrayed in the
Byzantine fashion, and attended by his counsellors, his chancellor, and
his interpreter. Before him there came in state one who played the Papal
Legate, dressed as a bishop in silk of old-rose colour, and he presented
a brief and his credentials; whereupon, after crowning and blessing the
King, he observed that he should like to see a little dancing, and two
of the Companions at once danced for him with two of the fairest ladies.
The Legate was followed by the Ambassador of the Holy Roman Empire, and
the Ambassadors of France, Spain, Hungary, and Turkey arrived in turn;
each spoke in the language of his country, and his speech was
interpreted to the King. Last of all came the Ambassador of the Pigmies
mounted on a tiny pony accompanied by four dwarfs and the professional
buffoon Zanipolo. We must suppose the speeches to have been very witty,
and the dwarfs and buffoons highly comic, since this incomprehensible
nonsense was a stupendous success and was talked of long afterwards.
The taste for these ‘momarie,’ literally ‘mummeries,’ grew in Venice.
Marin Sanudo describes one which was produced in the Square of Saint
Mark’s on the Thursday before Lent in 1532. I translate a part of the
list of the masks, to give an idea of the whole.
First, the goddess Pallas Athene with her shield and a book in her hand,
riding on a serpent.
Second, Justice riding on an elephant, with sword, scales, and globe.
Third, Concord, on a stork with sceptre and globe.
Fourth, Victory on horseback, with sword, shield, sceptre, and palm.
Fifth, Peace riding a lamb, and holding a sceptre with an olive branch.
And so on. Then Ignorance, riding an ass, and holding on by the tail,
met Wisdom and fought and was beaten. And Violence appeared on a
serpent, and Mars on a horse, and Want on a dog with a horn full of
straw for its emblem. And Violence was soundly beaten by Justice,
Discord by Concord, and Mars by Victory, and Abundance drove Want from
the field.
Such were the shows that amused the Venetians, while written comedy was
slowly growing out of infancy.
The Companions of the Hose Club revenged themselves cruelly on any one
of their own number who
[Sidenote: _Tassini, under Osteria della Campana._]
showed signs of meanness. Sanudo tells the following anecdote. Alvise
Morosini, one of the ‘Eternals,’ on the occasion of his marriage with a
daughter of the noble house of Grimani, gave his fellow-Companions a
very meagre dinner. Not long afterwards they got into the Grimani palace
and carried off two magnificent silver basins; these were placed in the
hands of professional buffoons who paraded the city with them, informing
the public that the bridegroom meant to pawn them to pay for the dinner
which the Companions were going to eat at the sign of the Campana
instead of the dinner which they should have eaten at the Palazzo
Morosini, and also to pay for wax torches for taking home the fair
ladies who were to be asked to the feast.
The paternal and business-like government of Venice, seeing how much the
Companions contributed to the national gaiety, allowed them to
transgress the sumptuary laws which were so binding on every one else.
For instance, ordinary mortals were forbidden to ask guests to more than
one meal in the twenty-four hours, but the Companions eluded the
law--with the consent of the police--by keeping an open table all night,
so that breakfast appeared to be only the end of supper. Even in the
matter of the gondolas, the rule was that the ‘felse’ should be of black
cloth, yet the Companions covered theirs with scarlet silk and the
Provveditori delle Pompe had nothing to say.
Then, suddenly, the government had a fit of morality, and in 1586 the
Hose Club was abolished by law, all privileges were revoked, and the
decree was enforced. Venice lost some amusement and much beautiful
pageantry, and gained nothing in morality. It was not very long before
the grave senators who objected to the Companions were seen in their
scarlet togas presiding over authorised gambling establishments in the
‘ridotti.’
The Venetians were an imaginative people who delighted in fables,
amusing, terrible, or pious, as the case might be. Their stories differ
from those of other European races in the Middle Ages by the total
absence of the element of chivalry upon which most other peoples
largely depended for their unwritten fiction. One can make almost
anything of a business man except a knight.
Near the Ponte dell’ Angelo in the Giudecca stands a house which shows
great age in spite of much
[Illustration: PONTE DELL’ ANGELO, GIUDECCA, OLD WOODEN BRIDGE]
modern plastering. The windows are gothic, of the
[Sidenote: _Tassini, under ‘Angelo.’_]
ogival design, and on the façade there is an image of the Virgin with
the infant Christ in her arms. Higher up, a bas-relief represents an
angel standing with outstretched wings as if he were about to fly away
after blessing with his right hand the globe he holds in his left.
In the year 1552 this house was inhabited by a barrister of the ducal
court who professed unbounded devotion to the Madonna, and practised the
most indelicate methods of improving his fortunes.
One day the lawyer asked to dinner a holy Capuchin monk who enjoyed the
highest reputation for sanctity. Before sitting down to table he
explained to the good friar that he had a most wonderful servant in the
shape of a learned ape, that kept his house clean, cooked for him, and
did his errands. The holy man at once perceived that the ape was no less
a personage than the Devil in disguise, and asked to see him; but Satan,
suspecting trouble, hid himself till at last he was found curled up in
his master’s bed, trembling with fright.
‘I command thee,’ said the monk, ‘in the name of God, to say why thou
hast entered this house.’
‘I am the Devil,’ answered the ape, seeing that prevarication would be
useless, ‘and I am here to take possession of this lawyer’s soul, which
is mine on several good grounds.’
The monk inquired why the Devil had not flown away with the soul long
ago, but the fiend replied that so far it had not been possible, because
the lawyer said ‘Hail, Mary,’ every night before going to bed. Thereupon
the Capuchin bade the Devil leave the house at once; but the Devil said
that if he went he would do great damage to the building, as the
heavenly powers had authorised him to do. But the monk was a match for
him.
‘The only damage you shall do,’ said the friar, ‘shall be by making a
hole in the wall as you leave, which shall be a witness of the truth of
what we have seen and heard and of the story we shall tell.’
The Devil obeyed with alacrity and disappeared through the wall with a
formidable crash, after which the lawyer and his guest sat down to
table, and the monk discoursed of leading a good life; and at last he
took the table-cloth and wrung it with both hands, and a quantity of
blood ran out of it which he said was the blood the lawyer had wrung
from his clients. Then the sinner began to shed tears and promised to
make full reparation, and he told the monk that if the hole in the wall
were not stopped up, he feared the Devil would come in by it again. So
the friar advised him to place a statue of the Madonna before the hole
and an angel over it, to scare the Devil away. And so he did.
Another Venetian legend of slightly earlier date tells how there was
once in the confraternity of Saint John
[Sidenote: _Tassini, under ‘San Lio.’_]
the Evangelist a man who led a bad life, to the great scandal of all who
knew him. One of the brethren having died, the Superior hoped to touch
the heart of that wicked man by asking him to bear the Cross in the
funeral procession. ‘I will neither walk in the procession to-day,’
answered the sinner, ‘nor do I wish to be so accompanied when the Devil
carries me off.’ After some time he died, and the brethren proceeded to
bury him, walking in procession after the Cross; but when they reached
the bridge of San Lio it became so heavy that it was impossible to lift
it from the ground, much less to carry it. The Superior now remembered
the words of the blasphemer, and told the story to the brethren while
[Sidenote: _Picture representing the scene, Mansueti; Accademia delle
belle Arti._]
they halted. So they all decided that the Cross must not follow the
procession, and thereupon it instantly became light again, and was
carried back to the chapel of Saint John the Evangelist.
The fireside is the natural place for telling stories, and there is
certainly some connection in the human mind between firelight and the
fabulous. Dante tells that in his time the women of Venice consulted the
fire in order to know the future. When a girl was engaged to be married
she appealed to one of the burning logs, and decided from the augury
whether she was to be happy or unhappy. Those who wanted money struck
the log with the tongs, calling out softly, ‘Ducats! ducats!’ If the
sparks flew out abundantly there was some hope that a rich relation
might die and leave the inquirer a legacy. When the sparks were few and
faint, poverty was prophesied.
Unlike all other Italians, who believe that hunchbacks bring good luck,
the Venetians feared them excessively. A Venetian proverb says, ‘Leave
three steps between thyself and those whom God has marked, eight if it
is a hunchback, and twenty-eight if the man be lame.’
One of the pretty superstitions of Venetian mothers was that if they
took their little children out before dawn on Saint John’s Day, the
twenty-fourth of June, so that the morning dew might dampen their cheeks
and hair, they would have lovely complexions and golden locks. There are
old Venetian lullabies that promise babies the midsummer dew.
[Illustration: RIO S. SOFIA, NIGHT]
IX
THE DECADENCE
The seventeenth century, like the fourteenth, was one of transition; but
whereas the earlier period was one of improvement, the latter was one of
decay. When time at last began to do its work upon the Republic, Venice
had been independent nine hundred years; she was still at the height of
her glory, still in the magnificence of her outward splendour, but the
long-strained machinery of government was beginning to wear out. At the
commencement of the seventeenth century all Italy seemed to be
threatened by war; the peace
[Sidenote: _1598. Rom. vii. 5._]
patched up between Philip II. of Spain and Henry IV. of France at
Vervins had been of an unsatisfactory and precarious nature; the Holy
See was more and more on its guard against the Protestant powers, and
Spain took advantage of this in order to sow discord between the court
of Rome and other governments. Venice was especially involved in these
difficulties, because she had signed in 1589 a commercial treaty with
the Grisons which had greatly displeased Spain, the latter being then in
[Sidenote: _Rom. vi. 412._]
possession of Milan. The Republic was accused of being too obliging to
Protestants, and her enemies assured the Pope that she had seriously
endangered the safety of the Catholic Church by allowing the English
ambassador to have an Anglican Church service in his private oratory.
The complaints of Clement VIII. and Paul V. were received with stony
indifference by the Republic, which never had the slightest respect for
Rome. The latter had many causes of complaint. Venice had been granted
in former times the privilege of trying priests for ordinary crimes in
the ordinary courts, on condition that the Patriarch should sit among
the judges. Little by little the Venetian government stretched this
privilege to make it apply to all suits whatsoever brought
[Sidenote: _Rom. vii. 43, notes._]
against ecclesiastics, and in most cases the Patriarch was not even
represented. It chanced, at the very time when the Pope had
[Illustration: CAMPIELLO DELLE ANCORE]
complained of the liberty granted to the English ambassador, that two
priests were accused of an abominable crime, and were tried like
ordinary delinquents. This encroachment upon the bulls of Innocent VIII.
and Paul III. took place just when the Senate was passing a law which
greatly restricted the holding of property by the clergy. As if these
facts were not enough to show the Pope that the Venetian flock intended
to manage its own corner of the Catholic fold in its own way, the
government, on the death of the Patriarch, named as his successor a
member of the house of Vendramin, and merely announced the fact to the
court of Rome, although the old canonical law required that in cases
where governments were authorised to appoint their bishops, the latter
should be examined and approved by the Pope’s delegates.
Spain took advantage of all these circumstances to bring about a
complete rupture between Venice and
[Sidenote: _Rom. vii. 45, 50-51._]
the Holy See. Paul V. now hesitated no longer, and discharged a major
excommunication against the whole Venetian State. This measure produced
little impression on the Senate, and none at all on the Doge Leonardo
Dandolo. He declared openly that the sentence was unjust, and therefore
null and void. The Capuchin, Theatin, and Jesuit orders closed their
churches in obedience to the Pope, and were immediately expelled from
Venetian territory by the government. The Pope’s wrath was as tremendous
as it was futile, and it is impossible to say how far matters might
have gone if Henry IV. had not used his influence to bring about a
reconciliation. It was his interest to do so in order that Venice, being
friendly to him, might in a measure balance the power of hostile Spain,
and he sent the Cardinal de Joyeuse to Italy to try and obtain from the
Pope some concession which
[Sidenote: _Rom. vii. 53._]
might facilitate an act of submission on the part or the Republic. Spain
was playing a double game as usual, but the Cardinal was too much for
the Spanish diplomatists, and he brought about an arrangement by which
Venice handed over to the Pope the two priests who were on trial, and
[Sidenote: _Rom. vii. 64._]
permitted the Patriarch to undergo the examination required by the
canonical law. On his side the Pope exempted from that examination all
future Patriarchs.
It is a singular fact that the usually docile Venetian population
greatly resented the attitude taken by the government towards the Holy
See. The Doge himself was hissed and howled at when he went to the
church of Santa Maria Formosa on the Feast of Candlemas. ‘Long live the
Doge Grimani, the father of the poor,’ yelled the rabble, for Grimani
had been a man of exemplary piety and had been dead and buried for some
time. ‘The day will come when you shall wish to go to church and shall
not be able!’ screamed others. Even after the reconciliation with the
Pope,
[Sidenote: _Rom. vii. 251._]
Spain did not cease to conspire against the Republic, and while
persecuting the Catholics in Valtellina tried to make out that the
Republic was allied with the Protestant powers because it opposed those
persecutions.
It is impossible to speak of the quarrels between Venice and Rome
without mentioning the monk Paolo Sarpi who played so large a part in
them. At the
[Illustration: SANTA MARIA FORMOSA]
time when the attitude of the Pope made it clear that serious trouble
was at hand, the Signory felt the need of consulting a theologian in
order to give her resistance something like an orthodox shape. There was
at that time in Venice a monk well known for his profound learning and
austere life. He had entered the order of the Servites as a novice at
the age of thirteen, and was now fifty-four years old. In more than
forty years
[Sidenote: _Rom. vii. 73, 77._]
his love of retirement and study and his profound devotion had suffered
no change. He was brought from his seclusion by an order from the Senate
to give his opinions on the burning questions of the moment. Fra Paolo
Sarpi vigorously sustained the cause of the Republic, and was at once
denounced to the Pope as a sectarian and a secret partisan of the
Protestants. Fanatics attempted to assassinate him, and the government
spread the report that the murder
[Sidenote: _Statue of Fra Paolo Sarpi erected in 1812 in the church of
Santa Fosca, near the spot where he narrowly escaped assassination,
Marsili._]
had been attempted by the court of Rome. These reports further
exasperated the Vatican against him, while the Republic supported him
all the more obstinately and consulted him on every occasion. He was
installed in a little house in the Square of Saint Mark’s in order to be
within easy reach of the ducal palace, and the severest penalties were
threatened for any attempt against his life.
In spite of these precautions two more attempts were made to assassinate
him, and he was heard to say that death would be preferable to the
existence which the government obliged him to lead. Nevertheless he
lived sixteen years in the service of the Republic. The unbounded
confidence which was placed in him is amply proved by the fact that he,
and he only, in the history of the Council of Ten, was allowed free
access to its archives, a privilege which, oddly enough, proved fatal to
him; for it was while working on his own account amongst those documents
that he caught a cold from which he never recovered, and he died three
months afterwards in the winter of 1622. On the fourteenth of January he
felt his end approaching, and the news was at once known throughout the
city. The Signory at once sent for Fra Fulgenzio, his most intimate
friend. ‘How is Fra Paolo?’ inquired the Ten. ‘He is at the last
extremity,’ answered the monk. ‘Has he all his wits?’ ‘As if he were
quite well,’ answered Fra Paolo’s friend.
Immediately three questions regarding an important affair were sent to
the dying man, who concentrated his mind upon them and dictated the
answers with marvellous clearness and precision. His last words were a
prayer for his country’s enduring greatness. ‘Esto perpetua!’ he prayed
as he closed his eyes for ever.
The government gave him a magnificent funeral, and ordered the sculptor
Campagna to make a marble bust of him for the church of the Servites;
but the Venetian ambassador in Rome advised the Republic not to rouse
the Pope’s anger again by such a tribute to the great monk’s memory. We
are not called upon to decide upon the orthodoxy of Fra Paolo’s
opinions, but he was undeniably one of the greatest and most gifted
Italians of the seventeenth century.
The troubles with Rome, and the general excommunication which had
brought them to a crisis, had disturbed the confidence of the Venetian
people in their government more than anything that had happened for
years; and soon afterwards matters were made worse by the terrible
judicial murder of Antonio Foscarini, in which England was deeply
concerned.
Foscarini was a fine specimen of the patriotic Venetian noble, devoted
to his country, imbued with the most profound respect for the
aristocratic caste to which he belonged, haughty and contemptuous
towards most other people, as the following anecdote shows. He was in
Paris as ambassador when Maria de’ Medici, the wife of Henry IV., was
crowned, and as he had only recently arrived he was not acquainted with
all his diplomatic colleagues when he met them in the church of Saint
Denis. After the ceremony he bowed to the Spanish Ambassador, who
inquired who the stranger was who saluted him. Foscarini introduced
himself. ‘Oh,’ exclaimed the Spaniard, ‘the Ambassador of the
Pantaloons!’ ‘Pantaloon’ was a Venetian theatrical mask, and the word
had become a contemptuous nickname for the Venetians. But the Spaniard
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, St. e Ric._]
had counted without his host, for Foscarini fell upon him then and
there. He described what he did in a letter to his government: ‘I loaded
the Spanish Ambassador with vigorous blows and kicks, as he deserved.’
A Venetian, Pietro Gritti, who was in Foscarini’s suite, wrote a letter
at the same time in which he said that his chief kicked the Spanish
Ambassador down the whole length of the court.
Foscarini was afterwards ambassador in England, and the long series of
circumstances which led to his tragic end dates from that period. He was
still young, he was inclined to be fond of amusement, and for some
unknown reason the secretaries of embassy who were sent with him hated
him and calumniated him in the basest manner, accusing him to the
Council of Ten of being a Protestant in secret, and of carrying on a
treacherous correspondence with the Spanish government. But there was
worse than this. A famous French spy, La Forêt, bribed Foscarini’s
valet, Robazza, got access to the ambassador’s rooms when he was out,
and copied his most important letters for the French government.
His second secretary of embassy, Muscorno, obtained leave to return to
Venice on pretence of visiting his father who was ill, and when
Foscarini was suddenly recalled he found the ground prepared for an
abominable action against him. He himself, his valet, and his chaplain
were all imprisoned, and his trial for high treason began. It proceeded
very slowly, but he was acquitted after having been in prison three
years, for Robazza confessed his treachery without being tortured.
Having been declared innocent of high treason, Foscarini had little
difficulty in disproving some minor accusations that were brought
against him; and a few weeks after his release he appeared before the
Senate to give an official account of his embassy in England. Muscorno,
who had accused him falsely, was condemned to two years’ imprisonment in
a fortress; Robazza, the valet who had been bribed, had his right hand
struck off and was exiled for twenty years.
James I. of England sent Foscarini especial congratulations, and he was
again employed in important affairs. Unhappily, however, Muscorno had a
successor worthy of him in the person of Girolamo Vano, a professional
spy in the service of the Republic. If by any chance the smallest State
secret was known abroad, it was always insinuated by Foscarini’s enemies
that he was responsible for divulging it, and it was quite in keeping
with the ordinary practice of the Venetian government to employ spies to
watch a man who had been once suspected, even though he had been
declared innocent and was again in high office.
The spy Vano took advantage of Foscarini’s friendship, or affection, for
the English Countess of Arundel, as a means of making out a strong case
[Sidenote: _Rom. vii. 183._]
against him. Foscarini had known her in London, and she had afterwards
made long visits to Venice, in order to be near her sons, who were
making their studies at the university of Padua. At her house Foscarini
often met the Envoy of Florence and the secretaries of the Spanish and
Austrian embassies.
She did not spend all her time in Venice, however, but was often many
months in England. It was when she was returning to Venice after one of
these absences that she was stopped at some distance from the city by a
messenger from the English ambassador, Sir Henry Wotton, who entreated
her to turn back. The unfortunate Foscarini had been convicted of high
treason and strangled, and his corpse was that very morning hanging
between the two red columns of the fatal window in the ducal palace.
Lady Arundel’s name had been connected during the trial with that of
the condemned man, and the ambassador was anxious to save her any
possible trouble.
But she was not of the sort that turns back from danger at such times,
and that very evening she reached
[Illustration: GRAND CANAL, LOOKING TOWARDS MOCENIGO PALACE]
the English Embassy and demanded an audience of the Doge; it was with
the greatest difficulty that she could be made to understand the
impossibility of being admitted until the next morning, and she
reluctantly retired for the night to her hired house, that Mocenigo
palace which was afterwards successively inhabited by Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu and by Lord Byron.
On the morrow the ambassador went with her to the ducal palace, and she
must have passed below the window from which the body of her friend had
hung all the previous day. She was admitted to the presence of the
Signory, and the Doge made her sit on his right hand. She now learned
that she was believed to have allowed Foscarini to use her house as a
place from which to carry on intrigues with foreign courts. Sir Henry
Wotton spoke in the Countess’s defence, and proved that her relations
with Foscarini had always been of the most honourable character, and
that the two had not met for many months. England’s star was in the
ascendant, Elizabeth had reigned, and it was not good to contradict an
English ambassador nor to speak lightly of an English lady. The Doge
made the Countess his most humble excuses and promised to send them to
her husband, the Earl Marshal, through the Venetian ambassador in
London.
The Senate took cognisance of the affair also, and voted a small sum of
money to be expended in a present of comfits and wax to the Countess,
this being the custom for all persons of quality who appeared before the
Signory. But that was all. Lady Arundel had exculpated herself, but so
far Foscarini’s guilt seemed to be so incontrovertibly proved, that Fra
Paolo Sarpi refused to accept a legacy which the unhappy patrician had
left him in his last will.
But as time went on the whole of Vano’s fabricated evidence began to go
to pieces. The Inquisitors of State themselves seem to have been the
first to suspect that they had made a mistake, and before long the
dreadful truth was only too clear. Foscarini
[Sidenote: _Rom. vii. 196; Armand Baschet, Arch. 631._]
had been perfectly innocent and had been murdered by justice. It was not
a case that could be hushed and put out of the way, either, for too many
people knew what had happened.
The Council of Ten made amends: let us give them such credit as we can
for their public repentance, without inquiring too closely what pressure
was brought to bear upon them by the public, and not improbably by
England. Monsieur Baschet becomes lyric in his praise of their
magnanimity. For my part, I do not think it would have been safe for the
Council to try and hide its mistake. The Ten apologised amply before the
world: that is the important matter. Monsieur Baschet gives the original
text of the apology, of which I translate a part from the Italian:--
‘Since the Providence of our Lord God has disposed, by means truly
miraculous and incomprehensible to human intelligence, that the authors
and promoters of the lies and impostures machinated against our late
beloved and noble Antonio Foscarini should be discovered ..., it behoves
the justice and mercy of this Council, whose especial business it is,
for the general quiet and safety to protect the immunity of the honour
and reputation of families, to rehabilitate as far as possible those who
lie under the imputation of an infamous crime ...,’ and so on.
The Ten also decreed that an inscription should be set up in the church
of Sant’ Eustachio, recording the error of the court, a unique example
of such a public and enduring retractation.
Other circumstances occurred to prove that organisation of the Venetian
tribunals was beginning to wear out. Too many conflicting regulations
had been introduced, and there were too many magistracies. Venice was
‘over-administered,’ as generally happens to old countries, and
sometimes to new ones that are too anxious to be scientifically
governed. The jurisdictions of the different officials often encroached
upon one another. The three Inquisitors of State were frequently at odds
with the other seven members of the Council of Ten, and in the confusion
which this caused it was impossible that the laws should be as well
administered as formerly.
About this time a grave case enlightened the public as to certain abuses
of which the existence had not
[Sidenote: _Rom. vii. 210, 215, 223, 229._]
been previously suspected. The Council of Ten was always charged with
the duty of seeing that the Doge performed to the letter the promises of
the ‘Promission ducale.’ These solemn engagements were several times
violated by the Doge Corner for the advantage of his sons. He allowed
one of them to accept the dignity of the Cardinalate while two others
were made senators, but as the Council of Ten did not like to interfere,
one of its heads, Renier Zeno, took upon himself to impeach the Doge.
The latter was accused of illegal acts in contradiction with the
‘Promission,’ and the question was taken up by the whole aristocracy and
discussed before all the different Councils. The opposite parties were
fast reaching a state of exasperation, when one of the Doge’s sons
attempted the life of Renier Zeno. He and his accomplices were merely
exiled to Ferrara, and the lenity of the sentence sufficiently shows the
weakness of the government.
At the same time Renier Zeno was arbitrarily forbidden, contrary to all
law, to call into question the conduct of the courts in general, but he
was too proud and energetic to submit to such despotism, and what it
pleased the Council of Ten to call his ‘pride’ served his adversaries as
a pretext for accusing him. The Council had the imprudence to condemn
him to ten years’ imprisonment in the fortress of Cattaro; but this was
too much, and the Ten were soon forced to revoke the sentence as
completely as they had annulled that of the unfortunate Foscarini. But
the world saw, and the prestige of the Council was gone; the government
cast about in vain for some means of restoring it, and could find
nothing to do except to make a few reforms and changes in its old system
of spying and repression.
Ever since the fourteenth century there had been a locked box with a
slit in it, placed in a public part of the ducal palace, into which any
one might drop an anonymous written accusation against any one else,
from the Doge down. Little by little the use of this means of
‘informing’ developed, until it had now become common to try cases on
the mere strength of such unsupported accusations. The boxes were
called the Lions’ Mouths on account of the shape they had taken, and
there was much talk about them when it was attempted to reform the Code
of Laws in the seventeenth century. A decree of the year 1635 restored
the old regulations as to the nature of the misdeeds which might be thus
denounced.
[Illustration: THE FONDAMENTA S. GIORGIO, REDENTORE IN DISTANCE]
It was decided that if the accusation was signed, four-fifths of the
judges must agree before the case could be brought to trial; if the
information was anonymous there could be no trial without the consent of
the Doge, his counsellors, and the chiefs of the Ten to bring the case
before the Great Council, and the trial could not be opened unless it
were voted necessary by five-sixths of the assembly. These measures
were no doubt prudent, but it was the system itself that was at fault;
any Venetian was authorised by it to take upon himself the duties of a
detective, and was encouraged to spy on his neighbours, because the
courts generally rewarded the informer after a conviction.
It is always a fault in a government to make laws unchangeable like
those of the Medes and Persians, and some authors have said that the
Venetian Republic never looked upon any of its decrees as immutable.
This is true as regards the form, for no government ever remodelled its
laws more often in their text. Sometimes the same decree appears in more
than one hundred shapes, but neither the spirit nor the point of view is
modified. A law passed against the freemasons in the eighteenth century
is conceived in precisely the same spirit as the decrees against the
conspirators in the days of Baiamonte Tiepolo and Marin Faliero; the
last Missier Grande of the police was very like the sbirri of the Middle
Ages in character and in methods. The Republic was growing old; the tree
might still bear fruit, but the fruit it bore had no longer within it
the seeds of future life.
It cannot be denied that Venetian diplomacy was better of its kind than
Venetian magistracies. During the thirty years’ war, for instance,
[Sidenote: _Rom. vii. 275._]
Venice never once lost sight of the great object it had in view, which
was to abase the closely related powers of Spain and Austria, while
skilfully avoiding any action which might bring about reprisals.
On the other hand, it was impossible to remain neutral in the war of
succession to the Duchy of Mantua, in which Carlo Gonzaga, Duke
[Sidenote: _Rom. vii. 276._]
of Nevers, was supported by France, and Ferrante Gonzaga by the Emperor.
As Austria’s
[Illustration: STEPS OF THE REDENTORE]
enemy, Venice naturally backed the former. Venice furnished him
abundantly with money and soldiers, and between the month of November
1629 and the month of March following, spent six hundred and
thirty-eight thousand ducats to support the party which was defending
the cause of Italian independence against the Empire. Austria
nevertheless succeeded, and got the better of the formidable coalition;
but though the Imperials took possession of Mantua at the time, they
were obliged to give it up to Carlo Gonzaga soon afterwards, in April
1631, by the treaty of Cherasco.
About the same time Venice suffered another terrible visitation of the
plague, and more than thirty-six thousand persons perished in the city
[Sidenote: _Rom. vii. 302._]
alone. On a similar occasion in 1575 the Venetians had vowed a church to
the Redeemer if the plague was stayed, and the church they built is that
of the Redentore; in 1630 a church was vowed to the Blessed Virgin,
under the name of the Madonna della Salute. This was at first only a
wooden
[Sidenote: _Rom. vii. 306._]
building, in which a great thanksgiving took place on the first of
November. The present church was not finished until 1687.
Amongst the many circumstances which hastened the decadence of the
Republic during the seventeenth century was the terrible war in Crete.
In
[Illustration: _Quadri, 275._]
that memorable struggle with the Turks for the possession of the island
the Venetians displayed much of their old heroism and good generalship,
but the Republic was no longer young, and could not make such gigantic
efforts with impunity; Venice was permanently weakened by that last
great war. It originated in a piece of rash imprudence on the part of
the Knights of Malta, who seized a number of Turkish vessels; it lasted
twenty-five years, and it cost the Republic her best generals and her
bravest soldiers, besides vast sums of money. Yet the enthusiasm was
boundless; mindful of Enrico Dandolo and Andrea Contarini, the aged Doge
Francesco Erizzo determined to take command himself, but death overtook
him on the eve of his departure.
Prodigies of valour were performed. Tommaso Morosini, with a single
ship, victoriously resisted the attack of forty-five Turkish galleys,
but lost his life in the engagement. Lorenzo Marcello took eighty-four
Turkish vessels and their crews with a far inferior force, but like
Morosini he was killed in the fight. Ten thousand Turks were slain and
five thousand were taken prisoners.
Europe looked on in amazement and admiration, and many brave captains
and soldiers thought it an honour to serve under the standard of Saint
Mark. There were more Germans and Frenchmen among these volunteers than
soldiers of other nations, and Louis XIV. himself hoped to associate his
name with the campaign. He sent the Duc de Beaufort with a considerable
fleet, twelve of his best regiments, and a detachment of the Guards,
besides a great number of volunteers under the command of the Duc de
Noailles. Yet all was in vain, and after a quarter of a century of
fighting Venice was obliged to yield Crete to the Turks.
The peace was of no long duration, for the Turks attacked Austria next,
and, though the brave Sobieski drove them away from Vienna, they allied
themselves with the Hungarians, and became so dangerous to the Empire
that the Pope himself was in anxiety for the safety of Christianity in
general. Exhausted by her long war in Crete, the Republic attempted to
decline all requests that she should join a league against the Turks,
but was at last obliged to yield, and war was renewed in the Archipelago
and the Peloponnesus.
Francesco Morosini, the same general who a few years earlier had been
obliged to evacuate Crete after the most heroic efforts, was placed in
[Sidenote: _Rom. vii. 490._]
command of the Venetian forces and commissioned to drive the Turks from
the islands of Santa Maura and other strong places in the Ionian Sea. On
the eleventh of August 1687 a swift felucca brought to Venice news that
Morosini had taken Patras and Corinth, besides Santa Maura. In joyful
[Sidenote: _Bust of Francesco Morosini, Hall of the Council of Ten._]
enthusiasm the Senate forthwith voted the victor a bronze bust, which
was placed in hall of the Council of Ten, with the standard taken from
the Turks. It bears the inscription:--
FRANCISCO MAUROCENO
Peloponnesiaco adhuc viventi
Senatus.
Another monument in Venice recalls the glorious war of the Peloponnesus.
After having taken Athens, Morosini hastened to the Parthenon, for he
[Sidenote: _Quadri, 302; Rom. vii. 491._]
appears to have been a man of highly cultivated tastes. To his
inexpressible disappointment he found the temple half ruined, for the
Turks had used it as a powder magazine, and a Venetian bomb had blown it
up. Morosini was so much overcome that he broke out into lamentations
over a loss which nothing could replace. But there amidst piles of ruins
he saw two splendid lions of marble from Pentelicus, which he at once
caused to be placed on board his vessel, rather to save them, perhaps,
than to exhibit them as trophies. In Venice they were set up on each
side of the gate of the Arsenal.
Morosini was one of the few Venetian generals who was not made to suffer
for his success. When
[Sidenote: _1688. Rom. vii. 504._]
at the very height of his triumph he learnt that he was elected Doge,
and though he had little success in the campaign after that, and was
even dangerously ill, he was magnificently received when he returned to
Venice. Pope Alexander VIII., Ottoboni, sent him the staff and military
hat which it was customary to give to generals who had distinguished
themselves in war against infidels. But it was clear that in his absence
nothing could be accomplished, and he soon obtained permission of the
government to take command of the Venetian forces once more. His
departure on the twenty-fourth of May 1693 was a sort of national
festivity. The Senate went to fetch him in his own apartment, and a long
procession accompanied him to Saint Mark’s. Preceded by halberdiers,
singers, files of servants in liveries of scarlet velvet and gold, many
priests, canons, and the Patriarch himself, besides the traditional
silver trumpets, the Doge walked between the Pope’s nuncio and the
French ambassador. He wore the full dress of a Venetian
commander-in-chief, which was of gold brocade with a long train. But
even in his glory the Venetians noticed with displeasure and suspicion
that he carried in his hand the staff of the General, which he evidently
preferred to the sceptre of the Doge, and which suggested to the crowd
the thought that he might seize the supreme power.
[Illustration: THE NAVE OF S. STEFANO]
On the following day he embarked upon the Bucentaur, which took him on
board his flagship amidst the applause of the crowd, the pealing of the
church bells, and a salute of artillery from the fort of Saint Nicholas
on the Lido, as his vessel got under way.
The expedition proved of little advantage to the Republic, and cost
Morosini his life, for his health was undermined by the fatigues of his
previous campaigns, and he died in the Greek province of Romania, where
he had hoped to rest for a few weeks. His body was brought back to
Venice, and buried with great pomp in the church of Santo Stefano.
The war went on under his successor, Silvestro Valier, but it now
entered upon a new phase, for the Czar Peter the Great threatened the
Turks on their northern frontier, while the Venetian fleet held them in
check in the south. A treaty of peace was signed at Carlowitz in 1699,
by which the Republic kept her conquests in the Morea as far as the
isthmus of Corinth, including the islands of Egina, Santa Maura, and
other less important places. Dalmatia was also left to her, but she was
obliged to withdraw her troops from Lepanto and Romania on the north
side of the Gulf of Corinth.
From all this it is clear that the military spirit was still alive in
Venice, when the administration had almost
[Sidenote: _Rom. vii. 370, 371, 487; Quadri, 293._]
completely broken down. Nothing gives the measure of the situation
better than the fact that in order to meet the expenses of the war in
Crete any Venetian who would engage to support a thousand soldiers for
one year, or any foreigner who would support twelve hundred for the same
period, was allowed thereby to have and hold all the privileges of
nobility. This speculation was never sanctioned by law, and was even
rejected by the Great Council when proposed, but it was nevertheless
actually practised, and a number of seats in the Great Council were
sold to the highest bidder. The government went one step farther, and
sold the office of procurator of Saint Mark. The decadence had reached
the point of decay.
[Illustration: THE RIVA FROM THE DOGANA]
X
THE LAST HOMES--THE LAST GREAT LADIES
Two men, a painter and a dramatist, have left us the means of knowing
exactly what the eighteenth century
[Sidenote: _Pictures of Venetian life by Longhi; Accademia, Room XIV.,
and Museo Correr, Rooms II. and IX._]
was in Venice. It is not a paradox to say that Longhi painted comedies,
and that Goldoni wrote portraits. Both were Venetians, and they had the
courage to depict and describe respectively the glaring faults of their
own people, not realising, perhaps, that the general corruption was
beyond remedy, and that the end was at hand.
[Illustration: CAMPO S. BARTOLOMEO, STATUE OF GOLDONI]
Look at Longhi’s ‘Fortune-Teller’ or ‘Dancing-Master,’ at his ‘Tailor,’
his ‘Music-Master,’ or his ‘Toilet,’ and you may see precisely what the
Republic was when it died of old age; there are all the successions of
light colours, as in a pastel-painter’s box; you can hear the high
running laughter that rings from rosy lips, you can guess what dreams of
pleasure fill those pretty heads, and yet there is something sad about
it all; unless one belongs to that little band of human beings who love
the eighteenth century, it sets one’s teeth on edge--like the dance
music in the ‘Ballo in Maschera,’ danced while Riccardo is dying.
Something rings false; I think there is too much discrepancy between
what we see or read and what we really know about that time. About other
centuries, even the nineteenth and twentieth, we can still have
illusions, but the eighteenth was all a sham that went to pieces with
the French Revolution.
As for the position of women at that time, it was never lower. They were
dolls, and nothing more. They were perhaps more neglected in the
sixteenth century, but, at least in theory, there was still some respect
for them. In the eighteenth they existed only to adorn places of
amusement, theatres, and gambling houses. The biographer of that
remarkable woman, Giustina Renier Michiel, says they were so little
esteemed that it seemed useless to teach them anything, and he adds that
the Signory looked upon an educated woman as a being dangerous to
society and the State.
Most young girls of noble family were brought up in convents, where the
most crass ignorance accompanied the loosest ideas of morality. The
greater number of these convents were only nominally connected with the
ecclesiastical authorities. In practice
[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 351._]
they were controlled by lay inspectors, ‘Provveditori sopra Monasteri,’
who were commissioned by the government to superintend the morals of
convents in general, but found it much more diverting to help in
undermining them.
While the girls were being brought up in such places, their father was
chiefly preoccupied in assuring and increasing the fortune which was to
be inherited by his eldest son. The natural consequence of this was that
the marriage portions of the daughters became smaller and smaller, so
that it was found hard to marry them at all, and much less troublesome
to leave them in their convents for life. Each of the fashionable
convents was a little court of noble ladies; in the one, Her Most
Reverend Excellency the Mother Abbess was a Rezzonico; in another, the
Noble Dame Eleonora Dandolo was Mistress of the Larder.
The scholars did not leave the convent at all while their education
lasted, but nothing was neglected which could amuse them, and their
principal lessons were in dancing, singing, and reciting verses. In
Carnival, the convent parlours were turned into theatres or ballrooms;
dames and cavaliers danced the minuet or the ‘furlana’; ‘Punch,’
‘Pantaloon,’ and ‘Pierrot’ vied with each other to make the bevies of
aristocratic young ladies laugh at jests they should never have
understood.
Even during the rest of the year the convents were what would now be
called brilliant social centres, to
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult. 92._]
which married women came accompanied by their officially recognised
‘cicisbei,’ while young gentlemen of leisure flirted with the
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult. 61-62._]
scholars. It was even common for the girls to keep up a regular
correspondence with their admirers.
Take the following passage which I translate from Goldoni’s
autobiography, a book which may
[Sidenote: _Goldoni, vol. i. chap. xix._]
be trusted and is singularly free from exaggeration. The adventure
happened to him in Chioggia.
I had always cultivated the acquaintance of the nuns of Saint
Francis, where there were some very beautiful scholars, and the
Signora B. (one of the nuns) had one under her direction who was
very lovely and very rich and amiable. She would have been exactly
to my taste, but my youth, my condition, and my want of fortune did
not allow me to entertain any illusions.
However, the nun did not refuse me hope, and when I went to see her
she always made the young lady come down to the parlour. I felt
that I should become attached to her in good earnest, and the
governess (the nun) seemed glad of it; and yet I could not believe
it possible. But one day I spoke to her of my inclination and of my
timidity; she encouraged me and confided the secret to me. This
young lady had good qualities and property, but there was something
doubtful about her birth. ‘This little defect is nothing,’ said the
veiled lady; ‘the girl is well behaved and well brought up, and I
will be surety to you for her character and conduct. She has a
guardian,’ she continued, ‘and he must be won over, but leave that
to me. It is true that this guardian, who is very old and ruined in
health, has some pretensions as to his ward, but he is wrong,
and--well, as I am also interested in this--leave it to me,’ she
repeated, ‘and I will manage for the best.’ I confess that after
this talk, after this confidence and this encouragement, I began to
think myself happy. The Signorina N. did not look unkindly on me,
and I considered the matter as settled. All the convent had noticed
my inclination for the pupil, and there were some young ladies who
knew the intrigues of the parlour and had pity on me, and explained
to me what was happening; and this is how they did it. The windows
of my room were precisely opposite the belfry of the convent. In
building it there had been placed in it several casements of cloudy
glass through which one could vaguely make out the outlines of
people who came near them. I had several times noticed at those
apertures, which were oblong, both figures and gestures, and in
time I was able to understand that the signs represented letters of
the alphabet, and that words were formed, and that one could talk
at a distance: almost every day I had half an hour of this mute
conversation, in which, however, we conversed properly and
decently.
By means of this hand-alphabet I learned that the Signorina N. was
very soon to be married to her guardian. Angry at the Signora B.’s
way of acting, I went to see her during the day in the afternoon,
quite determined to show her all my displeasure. She is sent for,
she comes, she looks steadily at me, and perceiving that I am
angry, guessing what had happened, she does not give me time to
speak but is the first to attack me vigorously, with a sort of
transport.
‘Well, sir,’ she said to me, ‘you are displeased, I see it in your
face’--I tried to speak, but she does not hear me, raises her voice
and goes on--‘Yes, sir, the Signorina N. is to be married, and she
is going to marry her guardian.’ I tried to raise my voice too.
‘Hush, hush,’ she cries, ‘listen to me; this marriage is my doing:
after having reflected upon it, I helped it on, and on your
account I wished to hasten it.’ ‘On my account?’ I said. ‘Hush,’
she replied, ‘you shall understand the conduct of a prudent woman
who has a liking for you. Are you,’ she went on, ‘in a position to
take a wife? No, for a hundred reasons. Was the Signorina to wait
your convenience? No, she had not the power to do so; it was
necessary to marry her; she might have married a young man and you
would have lost her forever. She marries an old man, a man in his
decline and who cannot live long; and though I am not acquainted
with the joys and disappointments of marriage, yet I know that a
young wife must shorten the life of an old husband, and so you will
possess a beautiful widow who will have been a wife only in name.
Be quite easy on this point, therefore; she will have improved her
own affairs, she will be much richer than she is now, and in the
meantime you will make your journey. And do not be in any anxiety
about her; no, my dear friend, do not fear; she will live in the
world with her old fellow and I shall watch over her conduct. Yes,
yes! She is yours, I will be surety to you for that, and I give you
my word of honour----’
And here comes in the Signorina N. and approaches the grating. The
nun says to me with an air of mystery, ‘Congratulate the young lady
on her marriage!’ I could bear it no longer; I make my bow and go
away without saying more. I never saw either the governess or her
pupil again, and thank God it was not long before I forgot them
both.
After reading such stories and looking into the archives of the
‘Superintendents of Convents,’ it is easy to understand that Pope
Gregory XIII.
[Sidenote: _Rom. vi. 360._]
should have exclaimed bitterly, ‘I am Pope everywhere except in Venice’;
and more than one of his successors in the eighteenth century had cause
to repeat his words. The Church protested in vain against the abuse of
the veil by Venetian ladies, for the State protected them on the
specious pretext of superintending their morals, and the remonstrances
of the popes and of the patriarchs of Venice were not even heard within
the walls of those sham cloisters. With such a system of education and
such examples the bankruptcy of morality was merely a question of time.
The number of marriages diminished amongst the aristocracy, and when a
young man made up his mind to matrimony he consulted nothing but his
financial interests.
The expenses of a fashionable marriage were considerable. There were
always several festive ceremonies in the bride’s house. The first was
the
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult. 86; Goldoni, vol. i. chap. xxvi._]
signature of the contract; the second, which followed soon afterwards,
was a gathering of all the relations and friends of the two families
with a sort of standing collation, and it was on this occasion that the
future bridegroom gave his betrothed the first present, which was
generally a big diamond set in other stones, and was called the
‘ricordino,’ the ‘little remembrance.’
A few days before the wedding the two families and their friends met
again, and if the man’s mother was still alive it was she who gave the
bride a pearl necklace; otherwise the duty fell to one of his near
female relations. This pearl necklace was thought absolutely
indispensable for the honour of the family, and the bride was bound to
put it on at once and to wear it till the end of the first year of her
marriage. Where it would have caused financial difficulty it was simply
hired for the time, and was returned to the jeweller at the end of the
year.
After her marriage every well-born woman took a ‘cicisbeo’ or ‘cavalier
servente.’ These cavaliers were in most cases, especially at the
beginning
[Sidenote: _Rom. ix. 13._]
of the century, neither young, nor handsome, nor the least lover-like,
though there were
[Sidenote: _Tassini, under ‘Grassi.’_]
exceptions to the rule. The choice of them was often the occasion of the
first conjugal dispute, and a lady of the Condulmer family retired to a
convent for life because her husband objected to the cavalier whom she
wanted.
The serving cavalier accompanied his lady on all occasions, for the
husband never did, and the two were
[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 207, 303, and ix. II; Molmenti, Vita Priv._]
seen everywhere together, and especially under the felse of the gondola;
for ladies never used the gondola uncovered, even on beautiful summer
evenings. And they were perpetually out, so that grave historians inform
us that they only spent a few hours of the night in their palaces, and
during the day the time they needed for dressing. When required, the
‘cicisbeo’ waited on his lady instead of her maid; her smallest caprices
were his law, and she dragged him after her everywhere, to mass,
benediction, and the sermon. ‘The object of mass is to go to walk,’ said
Businallo in one of his satires, after saying that the proper purpose of
pilgrimages was to make a great deal of noise.
Not unfrequently the cicisbei were mere adventurers who pretended to be
great nobles from other Italian cities, and to have left their homes in
consequence of some misfortune.
Goldoni wrote a comedy called ‘Il Cavaliere e la Dama’ on the subject of
the ‘cicisbei,’ whom he calls ‘singular beings, martyrs to gallantry,
and slaves to the caprices of the fair sex.’ In speaking of this piece,
in his autobiography, he observes that he could not have printed the
word ‘cicisbeatura’ on the bill for fear of offending the numerous class
whom he intended to satirise.
He goes on to say of his play that a man is presented who is the husband
of one lady and the serving cavalier of another, and the mutual
satisfaction of the two women is exhibited. ‘A married woman,’ Goldoni
says, ‘complains to her cicisbeo that one of her lacqueys has been
disrespectful to her; the cavalier answers that the man should be
punished. “And whose business is it but yours to see that I am obeyed
and respected by my servants?” cries the lady.’
The playwright no doubt heard the speech in actual life. The cavalier
was the real master of the house in many families, yet now and then a
husband could be jealous, though not in the least in love.
Goldoni says that there were husbands who put up with their wives’
cavaliers in a submissive spirit, but that there were others who were
enraged
[Sidenote: _Goldoni, vol. ii. chap. x._]
by those strange beings, who were like second masters of the house in
disorganised families.
It is certain that the Venetian ladies cared more for gambling than for
adornment, or anything else. In the morning they wore a dress of more or
less rich stuff, but always black, and when they went out they wore a
long scarf, also black, which they disposed with much grace upon their
heads, crossed upon their bosom, and knotted loosely behind the waist.
This dress went by the general name of ‘Cendaleto,’ and it was the
custom to apply the appellation also to those who wore it. They said,
for instance, that there were so many ‘Cendaleti’ at a ceremony, meaning
that number of ladies. Giustina Renier Michiel, the historian of all
that was left of grace and beauty in Venice, says that the scarf had the
magic power of making the plainest women pretty.
Though dress was simple enough on ordinary occasions, conforming to
certain rules, yet on gala occasions the latest fashions were consulted.
[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 303._]
In earlier times Venice had set the fashion for the world, and
beautifully dressed dolls had been sent by the Venetian women’s tailors
as models to Paris. In the eighteenth century Paris sent dolls to
Venice. These dolls were exhibited at the fair of the Ascension, near
the entrance to the Merceria, and took the place of fashion-plates and
dressmakers’ journals. The men wore the cut-away coat, breeches, silk
stockings, shoes with buckles, wigs, and three-cornered hats, then
common throughout Italy and France; but they had invented a singular
fashion of their own, which was that of throwing a light mantle of
velvet, satin, or cloth over their hat and wig. It was called the
‘velada,’ and was adorned with embroidery, lace, or a fringe. In the
end, it was sometimes made of lace only. As the law did not allow any
member of the Great Council to appear in public without his toga, the
nobles introduced a fashion which soon became common in all classes;
they wore a black or white mask,
[Illustration: SS. GIOVANNI E PAOLO]
and covered themselves entirely with a black silk mantle having a hood,
on the top of which they
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Lessico; G. R. Michiel, i. 283._]
placed the three-cornered hat. This garment was nothing, in fact, but a
domino. Of course the women soon discovered the advantages of a dress in
which they could not only disguise themselves but could even pass for
men. The ‘Cendaleto’ remained as the proper dress for going out in the
morning, but in the afternoon and evening, at
[Illustration: NIGHT ON THE RIVA]
the theatre, at the ridotti, or in the piazza, the mask and domino
became indispensable, and men and women wore precisely the same
three-cornered hat.
It was soon noticed, however, that the domino did not tend to improve
the public morals, and a decree was issued limiting its use to the
period between the first Sunday in October and Advent Sunday, and during
Carnival and the festivities which took place at the Ascension.
The women, no doubt, amused themselves in various ways, not excepting
that form of diversion in which women have such marked advantages over
men; but their chief enjoyment, if not their principal occupation, was
gambling. Games of chance were played for very high stakes in the
ridotti, which were gaming-clubs, not much better than the ‘hells’ of
modern cities. The most celebrated was that connected with the theatre
of San Moisè, which the government protected as a useful social
institution. A patrician, generally a senator, presided in his toga at
the tables, in order to see that there was no cheating. The singular
rule of admission was that one must be either noble or masked, and the
consequence was that the Venetian ridotti were frequented not only by
the Venetians themselves, but by half the gamblers, adventurers, and
blacklegs in Europe.
King Frederick IV. of Denmark once visited San Moisè disguised in a
domino, and won a large sum of money from a Venetian noble who was
[Sidenote: _Tassini, under ‘Ridotto.’_]
risking the last remains of his fortune. On being told the
circumstances, he pretended to stumble, upset the table with all the
money on it, and disappeared, leaving the embarrassed gentleman to pick
up his gold again, which he did with marvellous alacrity. The number of
players at San Moisè was so great that in 1768 the government enlarged
the place, using for the purpose the proceeds of property confiscated
from the nuns, which terribly scandalised the population and provoked
some bitter epigrams. At the ridotto the most illustrious patrician
ladies quarrelled for places at the table with ladies of no character at
all, and a contemporary observes that in order to pay their gambling
debts and continue to
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult. 54._]
amuse themselves, they were reduced to the last extremity. He adds that
they played from the hour of tierce, which is half-way between dawn and
noon at all times of the year.
In 1780, when the Republic had but a few years more to live, the two
ridotti of San Moisè and San
[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 303, and ix. II._]
Cassian, which had been protected and superintended by the government,
were suppressed, but the only result was that a new class of
gaming-houses came into existence called Casini, which were much worse
in character than the old establishments. Ruined nobles borrowed
enormous sums from usurers, and even from plebeians, sharing the
winnings with the lender when successful, and being entirely at his
mercy if they lost. Some women kept private Casini of their own, to
which they invited
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult._]
men and women; and while they played at Pharaoh, Basset, and Biribissi
within, the gondoliers played Morra at the landing outside.
Venice slept little, and was devoured day and night by the fever of
pleasure. The lighting of the city
[Illustration: THE SALUTE FROM THE RIVA]
was paid for by the proceeds of the lotto, which had been introduced in
1734. Goldoni says that the shops were always open until ten o’clock
[Sidenote: _Goldoni, vol. i. chap. xxxv._]
at night, while a great many did not close till midnight, and some never
shut at all. In Venice, he continues, you would find eatables exposed
for sale at midnight exactly as at midday, and all the eating-houses
were open. It was not the custom to give many dinners or suppers in
Venetian society, but a few such occasions have remained famous, and the
invited guests appear to have behaved with as little restraint as if
they had been in a common eating-house. A certain noble, of the Labia
family, once gave a supper at which he showed all his finest plate, and
the guests could not refrain from admiring the magnificent chiselled
pieces of gold and silver that covered the table. Suddenly, as the
gaiety increased, the master of the house jumped up and began to throw
the plates and dishes through the open windows into the canal,
accompanying this mad proceeding with one of the worst puns ever made in
the Italian
[Sidenote: _Tassini, under ‘Labia.’_]
language, or rather in the Venetian dialect: ‘L’abia o non l’abia, sarò
sempre Labia’--the words mean, ‘Whether I have it or not I shall always
be Labia.’
The conditions of married life in the decadence were such amongst the
nobles that it is best not to inquire too closely as to what went on. In
[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 303; Mutinelli, Ult. 86._]
a great number of cases husband and wife were like strangers to each
other, and the children were utterly neglected, when there were any.
When divorce becomes common, the family, which is the first of social
institutions, soon ceases to exist, and no country has ever shown
vitality or long endurance where society was not based on the relations
of father, mother, and children to each other. There never was any
divorce law in Italy, but there was, and is, such a thing as the
annullation of marriage. In Venice, between 1782 and 1796, the Council
of Ten registered two hundred and sixty-four applications for
annullation, and the great part of them were admitted.
As generally happens when a form of government is exhausted and is about
to go to pieces, the Venetian
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult. 71._]
people retained ideas of morality longer than the wealthy burghers or
the worn-out nobility; the wives of the artisans necessarily lived more
at home than their richer sisters, and were generally able to keep their
husbands. The love of pleasure was too universal to admit of excepting a
whole class from its influence, and to the last the working people seem
to have been very prosperous under the old government; but their
amusements were harmless and their pleasures innocent compared with
those of the upper thousands. The women of the people organised their
diversions with a good deal of system, forming groups among themselves,
each of which had a presidentess and a treasuress, who collected the
subscriptions, kept the money in safety, and made out the accounts when,
at intervals, the little fund was drawn upon for excursions and parties
of pleasure, to which men were not invited.
On the morning of one of those appointed days, the women and girls met
at the landing from which they were to start, all dressed very much
alike. Those who belonged to the class of the better artisans wore a
rather dark cotton skirt, a blouse of scarlet cloth, a chintz apron with
a design of large flowers, and lastly, a white linen kerchief called the
‘niziol,’ which was to them what the black ‘cendal’ was to the Venetian
ladies; and from ‘niziol’ the word ‘nizioleto’ was formed, like
‘cendaleto,’ and meant a pretty woman or girl of the people. Of course,
when they met for a day’s pleasure they wore whatever ornaments they
possessed.
The women of the poorest class wore over the dark skirt a very wide
apron which covered it entirely when let down, but which they pulled up
over their heads like a sort of hood when they went out.
The fathers, husbands, and brothers of the women came with them as far
as the boat, but left them then, as the people would have thought it
highly
[Sidenote: _Rom. ix. 18._]
improper that decent women should amuse themselves in the company of the
other sex. Yet for their protection two elderly men of unexceptionable
character went with them, as well as the necessary rowers, and it was a
common practice to be rowed about for a time before leaving the city,
singing songs together.
The principal diversions of the day were the picnic, which was a solid
affair, a dance, generally the country ‘villotta,’ accompanied by the
singing of couplets, and the return to Venice in the boat, illuminated
with festoons of little coloured lanterns. At the landing they parted,
dividing what was left of the provisions, lest anything should be lost,
and no doubt each good wife did her best to bring home a few titbits for
the men of her household, if only to make them envy her for being a
woman. I find no record of what the men did with themselves on picnic
days, but it must have been very quiet in the house, and they may have
felt that there were compensations even for being left at home.
Another time of gaiety was the evening after a regatta. Then the houses
of the winners were decked with garlands of green, and the doors were
open to every friend; the silk flag, which was the token of victory, was
hung in a conspicuous place for all visitors
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Nuovi Studi, 318._]
to admire, and when it grew late they all sat down to a plentiful
supper, which on those occasions generally consisted principally of
several dishes of fish washed down with copious draughts of the island
wine. The last homes of Venice, in any real sense, were the homes of the
working people.
Life in the country did little to bring the members of a noble family
nearer together, but there was a good deal of it, such as it was. At a
time when France set the fashions, which she was before long to impose
on the greater part of Europe, every rich Venetian noble dreamt of
making a little Versailles of his own villa. The residences of the
Marcello, the Corner, the Gradenigo, the Foscarini, and the Pisani, on
the road to Treviso and on the banks of the Brenta, were so many little
courts, in which every element was represented from the sovereign to the
parasite, from the parasite to the buffoon, and the lesser nobles
imitated the greater throughout a scale which descended from the sublime
to the ridiculous. The villas themselves were often decorated by the
greatest artists. In the hall of the Pisani’s country-house at Strà, for
instance, Tiepolo had painted a wonderful picture representing the
reception of Henry III. in Venice.
In going from the city to the villas, people went by water as far as it
was possible, and each family had a sort of light house-boat for this
purpose,
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Ult. 112, 116._]
called a ‘burchiello,’ and fitted with all possible comfort. The
travellers dined and supped sumptuously on board, and spent most of
their time in playing cards; and when the end of the journey was reached
a long round of pleasures and amusements began, in which the ‘cicisbei’
played an important and, one would think, a terribly fatiguing part.
They were assisted by regular relays of parasites who were invited for a
few days at a time, and who were expected to pay with ready flattery and
story-telling for the hospitality they received.
Eating then played a much larger part in what was called pleasure than
we moderns can well understand. We are ourselves no great improvement
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Vita Priv._]
on our fathers, in respect of manly virtue, faith in things divine, or
honesty when it does not happen to be the best policy; but as an age of
men we are not greedy of food. The Venetians were. Not only did they
employ French cooks and spend much time in considering what things to
eat, but their dinners were so interminably long, and the courses they
ate were so numerous, that they found it convenient to use three
dining-rooms in succession for the same meal, the first being for the
soup and the beef, the second for the roast meats and vegetables, and
the third for the pudding and dessert.
The Venetians were near their end when they ceased to be men of business
and turned into gamblers and spendthrifts. All this extravagance,
especially in the country, led to financial embarrassment at the end of
the season; and in order to satisfy the creditors who then appeared in
force, it was necessary to rackrent the peasants or to sell property and
produce at ruinous prices. In one of his comedies Goldoni makes a ruined
nobleman say again and again to his steward, ‘Caro vecchio, fè vu’--‘My
dear old man, manage it yourself.’ The expression was so true to life
that not one but a number of nobles complained to the government that
they were being publicly libelled by a playwright.
Everything was in a state of decay already approaching ruin. When the
Princess Gonzaga came to Venice
[Sidenote: _Archivio Stor. Ital. fourth series, vol. xvi. p. 180._]
she had such an abominable reputation that no Venetian lady had the
courage to present her to the society of the capital. At last, however,
the Signora Tron, the wife of a procurator of Saint Mark, offered to do
so. She introduced the Princess with these historic words: ‘Ladies,
this is the
[Illustration: RIO DELLA TORESELA]
Princess Gonzaga. She belongs to an illustrious family. As for the
rest, I will not answer for her, nor for you, nor for myself.’
She was wise in refusing to answer for herself, at all events, for she
was accused of setting a higher price on
[Sidenote: _Horatio Brown, Sketches._]
her box at the theatre than on herself. ‘That is true,’ she answered,
‘for I sometimes give myself for nothing.’
It is comprehensible that where great ladies talked like this, a burgher
dame should have put up her
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult. 82._]
daughter’s honour at a lottery, for which the tickets were sold at a
sequin, about fifteen shillings, each.
The decadence was turning into final degeneration, and everything morbid
was hailed with enthusiasm.
[Sidenote: _Carrer, Annali, 34._]
Two lovers committed suicide, for instance, and immediately
handkerchiefs were sold everywhere adorned with a death’s head in one
corner, and embroidered in the middle with the lovers’ initials
surrounded with stains of the colour of blood.
The average Venetian lady was at once ignorant and witty, yet here and
there one succeeded in cultivating her mind by reading and intercourse
with the famous foreigners who spent much time in Venice at the end of
the eighteenth century. Giustina Renier Michiel was undoubtedly the most
remarkable and admirable Venetian woman of her times. She was born in
1755, the daughter of Andrea Renier, afterwards Doge, and the niece of
Marco Foscarini. At the age of three she was sent to a convent of
Capuchin nuns at Treviso; at nine she was brought back to Venice and
placed in a fashionable boarding-school kept by a Frenchwoman, where
she learned French badly, and Italian not at all. But the girl was a
born bookworm, and even in her school succeeded in reading a vast number
of books, and in filling her girlish imagination with a vast store of
ideals. She naturally hated complication and prejudice, and aspired to
be simple and just. Like many women of independent mind, she could not
help associating dress with moral qualities and defects; and when she
was old enough to please herself, she always wore a long straight
garment of woollen or white linen, according to the season, and adorned
her beautiful hair with a crown of roses. Such a costume might surprise
us nowadays, but she loved flowers, and deemed that to wear them brought
her nearer to nature. If she was obliged to wear fashionable clothes for
some public occasion, she spoke of them as a disguise, and hastened to
‘take off her mask and domino,’ as she expressed it, as soon as she
reached home. ‘Molière may say that a Countess is certainly something,’
she wrote in French to a friend; ‘he should have written that a Countess
is very little, or a Count either!’ She often used to say: ‘I should
like to know why every one does not try to please me, since it would
take so little to succeed!’ One of her hobbies was not to give trouble,
and she pushed this admirable virtue so far that one day, when her frock
caught fire, she would not call any one, but rolled herself on the
carpet till the flames were extinguished.
She had a great admiration for the Cavalier Giustiniani, the same who
faced Bonaparte so bravely a few years later, but she did not marry him.
She is said to have been very beautiful, but short, a fact which
disturbed her unnecessarily, to judge by a note found in one of the
commonplace books in which she copied passages from her reading and
wrote out her own reflections. ‘A monarch who was rather famous in the
last century,’ she wrote with child-like simplicity, ‘forbade his
soldiers to marry short women; on the other hand, he rewarded them if
they married gigantic women. Can it be because people fear that short
women will turn out more mischievous than tall ones?’
At the age of twenty she was married to Marcantonio Michiel, and a few
months later she accompanied him to Rome, where her father, Andrea
Renier, was ambassador. She made a profound impression on Roman society,
and soon went by the name of ‘Venerina Veneziana,’ the little Venetian
Venus. In Rome she met the genial poet Monti, then very young, and
recommended to the Venetian ambassador by Cardinal Braschi. To fill her
idle hours, the industrious little lady studied engraving on wood.
Not long after her return from Rome her paternal uncle was elected Doge.
He was not a very estimable personage, and as he had married a dancer
whom the people refused to accept as the Dogess, his niece Giustina did
the honours of the ducal palace when occasion required.
In her early youth she began several literary works, among which a
rather inaccurate translation of some of Shakespeare’s plays has come
down to us. She was a literary personage, however, when still young, and
the drawing-rooms of the Palazzo Michiel were frequented by all that was
most distinguished in Venice, as well as by the best of the foreign
element. Giustina, like all women who succeed in gathering intellectual
people about them, encouraged the discussion of all sorts of subjects
from the broadest point of view. At that time she was slightly inclined
towards the new order of ideas, and boasted of being somewhat
democratic; but if this was true, it did not prevent her from sincerely
lamenting the fall of the Republic a few years later.
On the twelfth of May 1797, after the fatal session which ended the
history of Venice, a few nobles gathered at her house to mourn over the
sudden end. While they sat together, heavy-hearted and conversing in
broken sentences, they heard the rabble in the street below, howling at
those whom it called the assassins of Saint Mark. The little group
upstairs understood the danger, and after a moment’s silence Giustina
called upon them to save the city at least, if they could no longer save
the Republic. Her cousin Bernardino Renier was there, and was
temporarily charged with seeing to the safety of the city. The only
means he could think of for preventing pillage was violence, and he
swept the streets with artillery.
For a while Giustina cherished the vain hope that Bonaparte would help
Venice to rise from her ashes. That fact explains why she was willing to
receive in her house the handsome, fair-haired Marina Benzon, who
danced round the tree of liberty in the Square of Saint Mark’s with the
‘Carmagnola’ on her head, on the day that saw the Venetian flag replaced
by the Phrygian cap of liberty. It explains, too, why Giustina was in
[Sidenote: _1809._]
the square ten years later, when Napoleon came to Venice a second time.
It was a singular meeting enough.
When the Emperor was passing his troops in review in the square,
Bernardino Renier pointed out his cousin Giustina, who was in the crowd
looking on, and Napoleon at once sent two officers to bring her to him.
The story is that the Emperor planted himself before her with his arms
crossed and his legs apart.
‘What are you celebrated for?’ he asked roughly.
‘I, sire? Celebrated?’ cried the lady.
‘Yes, you. But to what do you owe your celebrity?’
‘To friendship, no doubt, which attributes to me an importance I do not
possess.’
‘What have you written?’ demanded the Emperor.
‘Little things not worth mentioning,’ answered Giustina.
‘Verse or prose?’
‘In prose, sire. I never was able to write a verse in my life.’
‘Ah, then you improvise, you improvise, do you?’
‘I wish I could, sire! for I should have an excellent opportunity to-day
of covering myself with glory!’
‘Come, what have you written?’ asked the Emperor impatiently.
‘A few translations.’
[Illustration: A NARROW STREET, NEAR THE ACADEMY]
‘Translations?’
‘Of tragedies,’ answered Giustina.
‘The tragedies of Racine, I suppose?’
‘I beg your majesty’s pardon, I have translated from the English.’
The eye-witnesses of this meeting say that when the Emperor received
this answer he turned on his heel and left the high-born lady standing
there.
The final state of Giustina’s mind was somewhat contradictory, for her
frankly democratic dreams had faded away, yet there remained an
unlimited indulgence for the most contradictory opinions which were
sometimes expressed in her presence, together with the greatest
indignation against those who judged Venice by modern standards, whether
they were Venetians or foreigners. She seemed to make it her duty to
prevent anything from disturbing the ghost of the defunct Republic.
When Chateaubriand made his first visit to Venice
[Sidenote: _1806._]
he had the bad taste to write an article in the _Mercure de France_,
from which I translate a few extracts:--
TRIESTE, July thirtieth, 1806.--In Venice there had just been
published a new translation of the _Génie du Christianisme_. This
Venice, unless I am mistaken, would please you as little as it
pleases me. It is a city against nature; one cannot take a step
without being obliged to get into a boat, or else one is driven to
go round by narrow passages more like corridors than streets! The
Square of St. Mark alone is by its general effect worthy of its
reputation. The architecture of Venice, which is almost altogether
Palladio’s, is too capricious and too varied; it is as if two or
three palaces were built one upon the other. And the famous
gondolas, all black, look like boats that carry coffins; I took the
first one I saw for a corpse on the way to burial. The sky is not
our sky beyond the Apennines. Rome and Naples, my dear friend, and
a bit of Florence, there you have all Italy. There is, however, one
remarkable thing in Venice, and that is the number of convents
built on the islands and reefs round the city, just as other
maritime cities are surrounded with forts which defend them; the
effect of these religious monuments seen at night over a calm sea
is picturesque and touching. There are a few pictures left by Paolo
Veronese, Titian....
Giustina was filled with indignation on reading these lines, which were
signed by an author whose sentimentalism had found an echo in her heart.
A lady who admired Foscolo’s _Jacopo Ortis_ would naturally be pleased
with the _Génie du Christianisme_. The attack on her beloved native city
seemed all the more unkind for that, and she hastened to reply in a long
letter written in French, which she published in Pisa in the _Giornale
dei Letterati_. She answered Chateaubriand categorically, concluding
with the following words:--
I know that you have promised to return here; come then, but come
in a mood less sad, in a spirit less weary, with feelings less
cold.... I do not flatter myself that you will exclaim with that
Neapolitan poet that Venice was built by the gods, but I hope at
least that you will find here something more interesting than the
convents on the islands and the translation of your works.
Giustina had been in her grave eighteen years when Chateaubriand
returned to Venice, with a spirit indeed less weary, and allowed
himself to grow enthusiastic, and wrote a beautiful description of the
city in his _Mémoires d’Outre Tombe_.
At one time Napoleon ordered a species of inquiry to be made on the
following and similar questions:--What are the prejudices of the
Venetians? What are their political opinions? What are their dominant
tastes? The well-known and learned writers, Filiasi and Morelli, were
commissioned to answer these inquiries, but they refused on the ground
that such questions admitted no answer. Giustina’s interest and ambition
were roused at once, and during several weeks she worked hard at a book
on moral statistics which has never been published, but which, no doubt,
suggested to her the excellent work she afterwards produced on the
origin of Venetian feasts, a book which I have often quoted in these
pages. She worked at this with enthusiasm, bent on evoking in the minds
of future generations the memory of beautiful and touching ceremonies
long disused when the Republic fell. In that age which loved epithets
and classic parallels, the lady who had been nicknamed in Rome the
little Venetian Venus was now called the Venetian Antigone. Indeed, she
made it her business to defend Venice and Venetian history too. But as
she grew old her enthusiasm got the better of her, and she wrote such
terrible answers to people who made small mistakes that she could not
always get her articles printed. In particular, the tragedian Niccolini
published in 1827 a tragedy upon the story of Antonio Foscarini, in
which he held up the court that condemned and executed that innocent
man to execration, but by methods not honestly historical. Giustina was
now over seventy years of age, but she wrote such a furious article on
Niccolini’s play that no one dared to publish it.
She was fond of Englishmen, and called them the Swallows, because they
came back to Venice at regular intervals, and she used to say that
England seemed to her the sister of the ancient Republic of Venice. She
had known the Duke of Gloucester when he was a mere child, and when he
returned to Venice in 1816 his first visit was for her. I translate the
note she wrote in answer to his message announcing his visit:--
A message from H.R.H. the Duke of Gloucester, delivered at the
theatre last night, and saying that he wished to honour the Michiel
with his presence, has filled her with lively exaltation. She much
desired to see him again. If H.R.H. had not become the great Prince
he is in virtue of his birth; if he were still that amiable little
boy whom she so often embraced, she would have let him know by this
time that she desired to embrace him affectionately. And indeed she
might have said so now, since the difference of ages is always the
same. Then he was a child and she was young and pretty; now he is
young and charming and she is a little old woman, and also somewhat
deaf. There might therefore still be the purest innocence in the
sweetest embrace. But setting aside this jesting, which is indeed
too familiar, H.R.H. will please to accept in advance the thanks of
Giustina Renier Michiel for the honour which he intends to do her
this evening, and she is impatiently awaiting that desired moment.
Though Giustina had begun life by giving signs of being emancipated,
she behaved with the greatest devotion to her daughter and her
grandchildren. ‘I have hardly any company but that of children,’ she
wrote to a friend. ‘I think very highly of their patience, since there
is between me and them the same distance of age which exists between
them and me. I find I have nothing in common with them but the taste for
“anguria,” and this is a good argument for the truth of what I say.’
Her most intimate friend was Isabella Teodochi Albrizzi. This lady was
born in Greece, and was a passionate worshipper of the beautiful; her
taste in all matters seems to have been more delicate than Giustina’s
and her character was much more gay and forgetful. Giustina lived in the
past, Isabella in the present. Everything about Giustina was Venetian,
the mantilla she wore on her head, the furniture she had in her house,
the refreshments she offered her friends; to the very last everything
connected with her belonged to the eighteenth century. With Isabella
Albrizzi nothing, on the contrary, was Venetian, nothing was durable; at
one moment the French taste ordered her furniture, her bibelots, and her
books, and provided her with subjects of conversation; at another,
everything about her was English. ‘When you left the Michiel’s
drawing-room you had learned to love Venice,’ says her biographer; ‘when
you left Madame Albrizzi’s drawing-room you had learned to love Madame
Albrizzi.’
They died nearly at the same time. Giustina breathed her last at the age
of seventy-seven on April sixth, 1832, surrounded by her grandchildren
and her friends. Andrea Maffei wrote that the death of Giustina Michiel
was indeed a public loss. ‘To the excellence of her mind she united in a
high degree the beauty of her character, and I know of no writer who
more dearly loved his country than she.’
[Illustration]
XI
THE LAST CARNIVALS--THE LAST FAIRS THE LAST FEASTS
No people ever combined business with pleasure so advantageously as the
Venetians, and few governments have understood as well as theirs how to
make use of amusement in managing the people; indeed, the method was so
convenient that at last the Signory preferred it to all others, and took
most pains to promote the public gaiety just when the Republic was on
the verge of dissolution. There is something unnatural
[Sidenote: _Rom. ix. 213._]
in the contrast between the outward life and the inward death of Venice
in those last years; something that reminds one of the strangest tales
ever told by Hoffmann or Edgar Poe.
Never dull, even at the last, all Venice went mad with delight at the
feast of the Ascension, when the great fair was held. It will be
remembered that Pope
[Sidenote: _1177._]
Alexander III., on the occasion of his visit to Venice, issued a brief
granting numerous indulgences to all persons who would pray in the
basilica of Saint Mark between the hour of Vespers on the eve of
Ascension Day and Vespers on the day itself; and the brief concluded by
invoking the malediction of heaven on any one who should oppose this
practice or destroy the document itself.
With their usual keen eye for business, the Venetians saw at once that
while their souls were profiting by the much-needed indulgence, their
pockets could be conveniently filled without vitiating that state of
grace which is especially necessary during such religious exercises.
Many strangers from the mainland would visit the city on the
anniversary, and by holding out a rational and sufficient inducement
they could be made to come again, in greater numbers, year after year.
Nothing was so sure to attract a rich class of pilgrims as a great
annual fair, and to make their coming absolutely certain it was only
necessary to suspend the duties on imported wares during eight days.
The first Ascension Fair was held in the year 1180, when Orio
Mastropiero was Doge, and it was a vast financial and popular success.
Merchants of all the nations of the earth spread out their merchandise
for sale in booths and tents, and under every sort of improvised
shelter. For more than a week the Square of Saint Mark’s was a vast
bazaar of little shops, following the most irregular and winding lanes,
just wide enough for two persons. Every merchant, foreign or Venetian,
was free to set up his booth as he pleased and where he pleased, and
there were thousands of them, in each of which at least one person had
to sleep at night. The effect of it all must have been vastly
picturesque, as many things were when effect was never thought of.
The annual fair was held in this same way for about five hundred years,
during which time it did not occur to any of the Signory that the
contrast between the amazing irregularity of the bazaar and the solemn
symmetry of the surrounding architecture was disagreeable.
[Sidenote: _1678._]
Then in the Barocco age came artificial taste and set things to rights,
and the Senate issued a decree ordering that the shops should be set up
in straight lines, and by squares, like Chicago; and it seems to me that
about that time the Ascension Fair turned itself into the first
Universal Industrial Exhibition. From that time there was a commission
established to which all exhibitors were required to send a detailed
list of their merchandise. There were no prizes and no medals, yet I
have no doubt but that the result was much the same, and that certain
houses of merchant-manufacturers made their reputations and their
fortunes on the strength of the impression they created at the Venetian
Fair.
It was destined to be still more like a modern exhibition. In 1776 the
Signory commissioned an architect to put up a vast oval building of
wood, like a double portico, looking both inwards and outwards, and
almost filling the Square of Saint Mark’s. It was very practically
arranged, for to those who sold the more valuable objects shops were
assigned on the inside of the oval, where they were better protected,
and the shops on the outside, facing the porticoes of the Procuratie,
were filled with the more ordinary wares, which would naturally attract
more buyers from the lower classes.
On this occasion painters and sculptors exhibited their work, and
Canova, who was then but nineteen years old, is said to have shown one
of
[Sidenote: _G. R. Michiel, vol. i. 279._]
his earliest groups. But we learn without surprise that the products
offered for sale by Venetians
[Sidenote: _Marble Group, Daedalus and Icarus, Accademia, Room XVII._]
were of inferior quality, and that there was a bad contrast between the
showy architectural shops and the poor wares they contained. The end was
at hand, and Venetian manufacture was dead.
But the people cared not for that, and were as gay and happy over the
Fair as their ancestors had been hundreds of years ago. It mattered
nothing to them; if the wares were poor, the charlatans who cried them
up were wittier than ever. There was one in particular, a certain Doctor
Buonafede Vitali of Parma, who employed four celebrated actors, one of
whom was Rubini, famous in Goldoni’s companies; they were dressed in the
four Italian theatrical masks, and by their clever improvisations and
witty sallies they advertised the doctor’s miracles, and amused the
clients that waited to be cured by him.
There were professional jesters, too, who joked on their own account,
and there was usually somewhere a black African buffoon-contortionist;
and there were long-legged tumblers, called ‘guaghe,’ absurdly dressed
as women, who kept the crowd laughing, and while the people looked on
they chewed the pods of carobs, which were sold off trays with nuts and
other things by the Armenians who moved about in the throng. In the
motley multitude nobles and magistrates
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult._]
and foreign ambassadors elbowed each other, and great ladies and light
ladies, all effectually disguised under the ‘tabarro,’ the ‘bauta,’ and
the mask, which were allowed in public during the Fair.
The Espousal of the Sea was the great ceremony of the week, and the one
which most directly recalled the visit of Alexander III. It was last
performed by the last Doge in 1796, the six-hundred-and-eighteenth time,
I believe, since its institution, and all the ancient ceremonial was
carefully followed.
On the eve of the Ascension, the Bucentaur was hauled out of the Arsenal
and anchored off the Piazzetta
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Lessico._]
in full view of the delighted population. It was no longer the ‘Busus
aureus,’ built by the Senate in 1311, and towed by a small boat from
Murano, called the ‘peota.’ In four hundred years new ones had been
constructed several times, and the last
[Illustration: CHURCH OF THE MIRACLE]
Bucentaur was built in 1728. It was about one hundred and fifteen feet
over all, with twenty-two feet beam, and was twenty-six feet deep from
upper poop-deck to keel. In length and beam it had therefore about the
dimensions of a fair-sized schooner yacht, but it was vastly higher out
of water, and was flat-bottomed, so as to draw very little. The
consequence was that even in smooth water it might have been laid over
by a squall, and it was never used except in absolutely fine weather. It
was rowed by one hundred and seventy-eight free artisans from the
Arsenal, who swung forty-two oars, each of which, however, according to
the model now preserved, consisted of three, linked and swung together
in one rowlock. The rowers occupied what we should call the main deck,
and the upper deck was fitted up
[Sidenote: _G. R. Michiel, Origini, i. 197._]
as one long cabin or saloon, taking the whole length of the vessel, but
rising by a step at the after end, and having a small window at the
stern from which the Doge threw out the ring in the course of the
ceremony. His throne was further raised by two steps. Over the cabin
were spread enormous draperies of crimson velvet, ornamented with gold
fringe, gold lace, and gold tassels. In the stern, within the cabin, was
figured a marine Victory with appropriate trophies, and two carved
babies, of the rotund and well-creased breed dear to the eighteenth
century, supported a huge shell as a canopy over the throne. The fair
Giustina Michiel’s description of the decorations makes one’s blood run
cold. Prudence and Strength stood sentinels at the Doge’s elbows. In the
ceiling of the saloon Apollo smiled upon the nine Muses, pleased to
consider the Bucentaur as his temple; the Virtues were inappropriately
present, too, and with more reason the Arts, or Occupations, of
Shipbuilding, Fishing, Hunting, and the like. The saloon had no less
than forty-eight windows, from which the numerous party of ambassadors,
magistrates, and distinguished strangers who accompanied the Doge could
see all that went on. Lastly, the vessel’s figurehead was a colossal
wooden statue of Justice, ‘protecting goddess of every well-regulated
government,’ says the lady Giustina, and therefore as inappropriate
there as the Virtues themselves.
At the hour of tierce, which was somewhere near eight o’clock in the
morning at Ascension, all the bells began to ring, except, I think, that
solemn one that tolled while condemned men were being led to death; and
excepting, too, that one of lighter tone, the ‘Bankrupt’s Bell,’ which
was rung every day for half an hour about noon, during which time
debtors might walk abroad and sun themselves without being arrested.
Then the Doge came from his palace preceded by his squires, and the
silver trumpets, and the standards, and the bearer of the ducal sword,
and the
[Sidenote: _Carrer, Annali._]
Missier Grande, who was nothing more nor less than the head constable of
Venice; and after his Serenity came the High Chancellor, the Pope’s
Nuncio, the ambassadors, and the principal magistrates. When all were on
board the Bucentaur, a salute of artillery gave the signal of departure,
and the huge oars began to swing and dip; and after the big barge came
the smaller one of the ‘Doge’ of the fishermen, the Niccolotti, the
little ‘peota’ of the Murano glass-blowers, and the barges and boats of
the Signory, and all the gondolas of Venice, richly draped for that one
day. So all moved slowly out; and when they passed the statue of the
Virgin before the Arsenal all the people sang, and sent up prayers and
invocations with suppliant gestures ‘to the Great Mother of Victories,’
and the sailors cheered and yelled. Then they went on to Saint Helen’s
island.
There the Patriarch was waiting with his flat boat, and the monks of
Saint Helen served him a collation of chestnuts and red wine, which, at
eight or nine o’clock in the morning, was cruelly ungastronomic; and the
Patriarch gave his sailors bread and fresh broad beans in the shell.
The Patriarch sent acolytes to the Doge with a nosegay of Damascus
roses; and his flat boat having been taken in tow by the Bucentaur, and
another boat in which a choir sang the hymns composed for the occasion,
they all moved out towards the open sea.
Then, in profound silence, the Doge opened the little stern window
behind his throne, and the Patriarch,
[Sidenote: _Horatio Brown, Venice._]
who had come on board, poured holy water into the sea and prayed,
saying, ‘Lord, vouchsafe calm and quiet weather to all them that journey
by sea’; after which prayer the Patriarch handed the ring to the Doge,
who dropped
[Sidenote: _Carrer, Annali._]
it into the sea just where the holy water had been poured, saying, ‘We
espouse thee, O Sea, in token of perpetual sovereignty.’
The guns of the fortresses thundered out a salute, and all the thousands
of spectators cheered for Saint Mark, and all the young men waved flags;
then the whole company began to throw flowers, freshly cut, from boat to
boat, and the Patriarch presented great silver dishes full of flowers to
the Doge; and all went ashore at San Nicola on the Lido to hear the
pontifical high mass, after which every man went home to his own house.
That was the ceremony at which the Venetians assisted in 1796, little
guessing that they saw it for the last time. A few months later a vandal
mob
[Sidenote: _Rom. x. 305; Mutinelli, Lessico and Ult._]
beached the Bucentaur on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, and
stripped it of all its ornaments, to burn them and get the gold. The
hull was then armed with four heavy old guns, and was turned into a sort
of floating battery and sailors’ prison at the entrance of the harbour.
On her stern was painted her new name ‘Idra,’ the Hydra, and there she
rotted for years. A few fragments of the old vessel are now preserved in
the Arsenal. More than two hundred men worked at reducing the Bucentaur
and the two big carved boats of the Signory to the democratic standard
of beauty.
The last pilot of the Bucentaur was Andrea Chiribini, who, like all his
predecessors, called himself ‘admiral,’ and was a ruffian not worth the
rope with
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult.; Bembo, Ben. 265._]
which he should have been hanged when he was young. He was one of the
worst types in the Venetian revolution; and after living all his life on
the bounty of the Signory, he was the first to help in breaking up the
Bucentaur, and in sacking the Arsenal. In order to reward him for these
noble acts of patriotism, and in the absence of appropriate funds, he
was given a magnificent carved jewel of oriental chalcedony from the
treasure of Saint Mark. The talisman did not bring the fellow luck.
After wandering about for nearly thirty years, living more or less
dishonestly by his wits,
[Illustration: THE PROCESSION OF THE REDENTORE]
he presented himself one day in 1826 at one of the asylums for the poor,
where he spent a day; but when towards evening he was requested to put
on the dress of the establishment, he flew into such a terrible rage
that he had fever all night, and had to be watched. On the following
morning he shook the dust from his feet and departed, declaring that a
gentleman like himself could not live among such brigands. During two
years the workmen of the Arsenal subscribed to give him a pittance; at
the end of that time, feeling that his days were numbered, he consented
to enter the little hospice of Saint Ursula, which a pious person of the
fourteenth century had founded for the perpetual support of three poor
old men.
It is said that the last Carnival of Venice was the gayest in all her
history, and fully realised the condition of things described by Goldoni
some years earlier in his comedy _La Mascherata_. I translate the
couplet into prose:--
Here the wife and there the husband,
Each one does as best he likes;
Each one hastens to some party,
Some to gamble, some to dance.
Provided every one in Carnival
May do exactly as he chooses,
It would not seem a serious matter
Even to go raving mad.
A good many different traditional and legendary feasts amused the
Venetians in old times, but the only one that has survived to our own
day is
[Sidenote: _G. R. Michiel, iii. 389._]
the Festa del Redentore, the feast of the Redeemer, which was instituted
as a thanksgiving after the cessation of the plague in 1576, and is kept
even now both as a civil and religious holiday. The serenades,
illuminations, and feasts in the island of the Giudecca certainly
delight the Venetian populace of to-day as much as in the times when the
old flag of Saint Mark floated over everything, and the little movable
kitchens on wheels were adorned with the symbols of the Evangelist
prettily outlined with flowers on a ground of green leaves.
The central point of all amusement in Carnival was the theatre, for the
Venetians always had a passion for spectacles, and, at a time when the
worst possible taste debased the stage throughout Italy, the reform
which has since raised the Italian theatre so high began in Venice with
Goldoni’s comedies. Properly speaking, there was no dramatic art in
Italy before him. As I have explained in speaking of the sixteenth
century, the Hose Club founded the first theatre, but most of the
performances were what we still call mummeries, in which more or less
symbolic personages said anything witty or profound that occurred to
them, or talked nonsense in the absence of inspiration. Pantaloon was
the national mask of Venice, and was always supposed to be a doctor who
became involved in the most astonishing adventures. Valaresso, a man of
taste in those days, produced a play that ended with a battle supposed
to be fought behind the scenes. In his satire the poet makes the
prompter appear upon the stage carrying a little lamp. ‘Ladies and
[Sidenote: _Aureli, Vita del Pergolesi._]
gentlemen,’ he says, ‘I see that you are expecting some one to bring you
news of the battle; but it is of no use to wait, for every one is dead.’
Thereupon he blows out his lamp, and goes off to bed.
In his memoirs Goldoni explains the rules then followed by dramatic
authors. He had occasion to
[Sidenote: _Goldoni, i. xxviii._]
learn them himself when he read his first piece, _Amalasunta_, to Count
Prata, director of one of the large theatres in Milan.
‘It seems to me,’ said the Count, ‘that you have studied tolerably
well the _Poetics_ of Aristotle and the _Ars Poetica_ of Horace,
and that you have written your composition according to the true
principles of tragedy. Then you did not know that a musical drama
is an imperfect work, subject to rules and traditions which have no
common sense, it is true, but which must be followed to the very
letter. If you had been in France you might have thought more of
pleasing the public, but here you must please actors and actresses,
you must satisfy the composer of the music, you must consult the
scene-painter; everything has its rules, and it would be a crime of
_lèse majesté_ against the art of playwriting to dare to break them
or not to submit to them. Listen to me,’ he continued, ‘I am going
to point out to you some rules which are unchangeable, and which
you do not know. Each of the three principal characters in the
drama must sing five airs--two in the first act, two in the second
act, and one in the third. The second actress and the second “man”
soprano can only have three, and the third parts must be satisfied
with one, or two at the most. The author of the words must provide
the musician with the different shades which form the chiaroscuro
of the music, taking good care that two pathetic airs shall not
follow each other. It is also necessary to separate with the same
care showy airs, airs of action, of undefined character, minuets,
and rondeaux. One must be especially careful to give no airs of
affection or movement nor showy airs nor rondeaux to the second
parts. These poor people must be contented with what is assigned to
them, for they are not allowed to make a good figure.’
Count Prata would have said more, but Goldoni stopped him, for he had
heard quite enough. He went home in that state of mind which some young
authors have known, and obtained a sort of morbid satisfaction from
burning his manuscript.
‘As I was poking the pieces of my manuscript together to complete
the burning,’ he says, ‘it occurred to me that in no case had any
disappointment made me sacrifice my supper. I called the waiter,
and told him to lay the cloth and bring me something to eat at
once.... I ate well, drank better, went to bed and slept with the
most perfect tranquillity.’
Goldoni was of the strong, to whom is the race.
[Sidenote: _Portrait of Goldoni, P. Longhi; Museo Civico, Room IX._]
From the ashes of his Amalasunta rose comedies that reformed the Italian
stage.
The composers were not much better off than the playwrights.
‘The modern master,’ says Marcello, ‘must make his manager give him
a large orchestra of violins, hautboys, horns,
[Sidenote: _Teatro alla moda, Benedetto Marcello, quoted by
Molmenti in Nuovi Studi._]
and so forth, saving him rather the expense of the double basses,
as he need not use these except for giving the chords at the
beginning. The Symphony is to consist of a French time, or
_prestissimo_ of semiquavers in major, which as usual must be
succeeded by a _piano_ of the same key in minor, closing finally in
a minuet, gavotte, or jig, again in the major, thus avoiding
fugues, _legature_, themes, etc., etc., as old things outside of
the modern fashion. He will endeavour to give the best airs to the
prima donna, and if he has to shorten the opera he will not allow
the suppression of airs or roundels.’
The same master observes wittily that the authors of the words to
accompany this sort of music generally excused themselves from reading
the works of older writers, on the ground that the latter had not been
able to read their successors, but had, nevertheless, done very well.
When the playwright or musician had succeeded in pleasing the actors,
the actresses, the manager, the scene-painter, and all the rest of the
company, he still had to please the Council of Ten, not to mention the
Inquisitors of State and the Inquisitors of the Holy Office, for they
all had something to say in the censorship of the theatre.
The infamous Jacopo Casanova, who amongst a number of ignoble
occupations acted as a confidant or spy to the Council of Ten, called
attention
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Nuovi Studi, 300._]
in 1776 to a piece called _Coriolanus_, which was being given in the
theatre of San Benedetto. It appears to have been a sort of pantomime,
which presented on the stage a starving population, a cruel nobility,
the unjust condemnation of Coriolanus, the tears of Virgilia and
Volumnia, everything, in short, which, according to the scrupulous
Casanova, could pervert the Venetian people; and the Inquisitors
accordingly suppressed the piece.
Sometimes these gentlemen shut up the provincial theatres altogether for
a time with a view to stopping the advance of modern ideas. Here is an
edict relating to these measures of prudence, signed by the Doge one
year before the fall of the Republic. The first paragraph is in Latin,
the rest is in Italian.
Ludovicus Manin, by the grace of God Doge of Venice,
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Nuovi Studi._]
to the noble and wise man, Federicus Bembo, by his commission
Podestà and Captain of Mestre, Fid. Dil. Sal. et Dil. Aff. [_Fideli
dilecto salutem et dilectionis affectum._]
Seeing that the Austrian troops now coming down from Friuli are
about to enter the Trevisan province, to which some of the French
troops may also move, and it being according to the zealous
forethought of the government to remove all inducements which give
individuals of the troops the desire to come still nearer to these
lagoons, the Council of Ten, considering that one inducement might
be the reopening of the theatre, orders you to put it off as long
as may seem best to the prudence of the Heads of the said Council.
Given in our Ducal Palace on the twenty-seventh of September in the
fifteenth year of the Indiction, 1796. [I find that the year of the
Indiction does not correspond with the date.]
There was another magistracy which also had to do with the theatres. The
‘Provveditori di Commun’
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Lessico, ‘Teatro.’_]
fixed the price of the libretto of the play. It was Council of Ten,
however, that named the hour at which the performance was to begin and
end.
The lighting of the theatres was wretched and the boxes were completely
dark, which appears to have
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Nuovi Studi._]
given the ladies a considerable sense of security, for I find that in
1756 the noble dame Pisani Grimani, who owned the theatre of San
Benedetto, was forbidden by the Inquisitors of State to stand at the
door of her box in a costume which might ‘produce grave disorder.’
In 1776 the government made an effort to limit such extreme views of
comfort in warm weather, and an edict was issued commanding ladies to
wear modest dresses, with domino and hood, at the theatre. The noble
ladies Maria Bon Toderini and Elisabetta Labia Priuli were put under
arrest in their own houses in the following year for having, in their
boxes, thrown back their hoods and allowed them to slip down upon their
shoulders.
The musicians’ desks were lighted with candles of Spanish wax, from
Segovia in Castile. The stage was illuminated by lamps fed with olive
oil. In the dim house there seems to have been a good deal of rough
play, and the patricians in the boxes occasionally threw
‘projectiles’--possibly hard sweet-meats are meant--at the people in the
pit. The lights were put out as soon as the curtain fell on the last
act, and the spectators groped their way out in the dark as they could,
helped by the big brass lanterns which the gondoliers brought to the
door when they came to wait for their masters.
Plays were not advertised at all. A small bill giving the name of the
play and the names of the authors was pasted up in the Piazzetta, and
another was to be seen at the Rialto, but that was all. It was the
business of the State to provide foreign ambassadors and ministers with
boxes, and a vast deal of care was bestowed on this matter, which was
full of difficulties; for the boxes were generally the property of
private families that did not at all like to give them up. But the
government always reserved the right to take any boxes it chose for the
use of the Diplomatic Corps. In Venice, the smallest affairs were always
conducted according to a prescribed method, and there was a regular rule
by which the boxes were distributed. The document has been found by
Signor Molmenti in the Archives of the Inquisitors of State, docketed
and labelled: ‘Theatres. Foreign Ambassadors. Boxes.’ Here it is:--
The Ambassadors present themselves with a formal request
(memoriale) to the Most Excellent Council. By the latter, through a
Secretary of the Senate, His Serenity is requested to draw the lots
for the boxes of each. He puts into the ballotbox the numbers of
all the boxes on that row which corresponds to the rank of the
Minister who applies, and he draws one number. The proscenium boxes
are excepted, and the balcony, the boxes occupied by other
Ministers, and the one that belonged to the Minister who last went
away. Afterwards, by the method explained hereinafter, notice (of
the number drawn) is sent to the Minister, the owner (of the box),
and the Council.
When the Minister does not like the box drawn for him, he lays
before the Council his request that it may be changed, and by the
same method His Serenity is requested to draw again. In that case
he only puts in the numbers of the boxes opposite which are free,
he draws again and sends the notices to that effect, informing the
owner of the second box that he may use the one first drawn.
When the box was at last drawn and had been accepted by the Minister,
the owner of it received a notice in the following form:--
This day ... (date). By order of the Most Excellent Savi
(literally, ‘Wise Men’) notice is given to Your Excellency the
Noble Sir, etc., etc.... (or Noble Dame, or Your Illustrious
Worship, or other proper title), that His Serenity has drawn Box
No.... Row ... in the ... theatre belonging to Your Excellency (or
other title) for His Excellency the Ambassador (or Minister) of
..., and this notice is sent you for your guidance.
The feelings of the box-owner, dispossessed by this formal nonsense, may
be guessed, for the indemnity paid by the ambassadors was very small.
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Lessico._]
It seems that even the Council anticipated that he would use bad
language, for the underling who took him the notice was a
Comandator-Portier, and was made to wear a red cap with the arms of the
Republic as a badge ‘to protect him against abuse’!
In 1791, when a company formed of nobles undertook to build the Fenice
Theatre, using part of the ruins of the old theatre of San Benedetto,
they presented to the Doge a memorandum concerning the boxes for the
Diplomatic Corps, of which I give an extract for the sake of its
monumental absurdity, translating the terms quite literally:--
The reverend Company of the New Theatre is disposed to meet the
public commands with submissive obedience, and will therefore at
all times venerate whatsoever Your Serenity may be pleased to
prescribe....
In order to continue the building begun, it is necessary to sell
the new boxes which have been added to those which formed the last
theatre, and the greatest profit that may be hoped for lies in
those situated in the first and second rows; but, as those places
are subject to the dispositions above alluded to, which take from
the owners the use of their own boxes, without fixing the measure
of the corresponding indemnity, the sale of those boxes would be
rendered impossible in the present state of things, to the
incalculable damage of the sinking company, which would thus see
removed the hope of soon finishing the building begun, or else
would be put to new and enormous expense which would cause to
vanish those expectations of profit which the Sovereign Clemency
of the Most Excellent Council of Ten had benignly permitted the
Company to entertain.
[Illustration: NEAR THE FENICE]
The memorandum ends with the rather startling statement that the
pretensions of the ambassadors, if admitted, would cause the Company to
lose eleven thousand ducats.
The Doge, who afterwards showed small alacrity to act when the country
was in mortal danger, was apparently much moved on receiving the
Company’s petition, and forthwith summoned the Senate to consider the
weighty matter; it is true that if he had done anything for the
petitioners without appealing to that body, he would have been naturally
suspected of being a shareholder.
The Senate decided that, without making any change in the method of
drawing boxes, and without prejudice to the existing system in any other
theatre, ambassadors should pay owners one hundred and sixty’ ducats for
boxes in the first row, and that ministers should pay eighty ducats for
those in the second; whereby, said the Senate, which still preserved
traditions of business, the owners of the said boxes would be getting
four per cent on the money they had invested.
The construction of the famous Fenice lasted twenty months, and the new
theatre opened with an opera by Paisiello on a libretto by Alessandro
Pepoli.
[Illustration: GRAND CANAL FROM THE FISH MARKET]
XII
THE LAST MAGISTRATES
The philosophical reader will naturally ask what elements composed the
Great Council of the Venetian Republic at a time when France was on the
brink of the Revolution, and all Europe was about to be shaken by the
explosion of the first new idea that had dawned on mankind since
Christianity. I shall try to answer the question.
[Illustration: S. BARNABÒ]
There were three classes of men in the Council: first, the ancient
aristo-plutocracy which, though with a few
[Sidenote: _Rom. ix. 7._]
additions to its numbers, and though itself divided into two parties,
had on the whole steered the Republic through eleven hundred years of
history; secondly, a number of families, mostly of ‘new men,’ though
they had sat in the Council four hundred years and more, but who had all
been more or less occupied with the legal profession since they had
existed; thirdly and lastly, the poor nobles called the ‘Barnabotti,’
from the quarter of San Barnabò, where most of them were lodged at the
public expense.
The first category generally held the posts of highest dignity, many of
which implied a salary by no means small, but never sufficient to pay
for the display which the position required, according to accepted
customs. The traditional splendour which the Venetian ambassadors of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had inaugurated was dear to the
Senate, and had come to be officially required, if not actually
prescribed in so many words. These great families had long been
accustomed to play the leading parts, and as the business spirit which
had made Venice the richest power in Europe died out, their pride was
often greater than their sense of responsibility. These and many other
causes lowered the standard according to which young Venetians had been
brought up during centuries to understand the administration of their
country; and the result was that they were not fit to fill the offices
to which they were called, and therefore handed over their work to
private secretaries, who were generally ambitious and intriguing men.
To be a member of the Great Council had now only a social value, like
those hereditary coats of arms in which there had once been such deep
meaning. Throughout ages the aristocracy of Venice had differed
altogether from the nobility of other countries, but as decadence
advanced to decay, and decay threatened destruction, the Venetian
senator grew more and more like the French marquis of the same period.
In an access of greatness Louis XIV. is reported to have said, ‘L’état
c’est moi!’ but the State continued to exist without him. The Venetian
nobles might have said with much more truth, and perhaps with more
reasonable pride, ‘We nobles are the Republic!’ For when they
degenerated into dolls, the Republic soon ceased to exist.
The second category of nobles comprised by far the sanest and most
intelligent part of the aristocracy, and it was generally from their
ranks that the Quarantie were chosen, as well as the ‘Savi,’ and those
magistrates from whom special industry and intelligence were required,
or at least hoped.
The Barnabotti had nothing in common with the two other classes, except
their vanity of caste, which was so infinitely far removed from pride.
As I have said, they owed their name to the parish
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Nuovi Studi, 308._]
which most of them inhabited. Their nobility was more or less recent and
doubtful, and almost all had ruined themselves in trying to rival the
richer families. The majority of them had nothing but a small pension,
paid them by the government, and barely sufficient to lift them out of
actual misery. It was especially for them
[Sidenote: _Horatio Brown, Venice, 109; Rom. ix. 7._]
that the College of Nobles had been founded, in which their sons were
educated for nothing, with all the usual imperfections of gratuitous
education. Like the ‘New Men’ of the fourteenth century, they felt that
an insurmountable barrier separated them from the older and richer
classes, and the humiliations to which they were often exposed by the
latter kept alive in them the sort of hatred which was felt in other
parts of Europe by the agricultural population for the owners of the
land. Their poverty and rancorous disposition made them especially the
objects of bribery when any party in the Great Council needed the
assistance of their votes against another.
The better sort of Venetians were well aware of the evils that were
destroying the governing body. In 1774 a member of the Council made a
speech on the subject, in which he said that the greatest damage the
Republic had suffered had been caused by the action of time; it lay in
the already very sensible diminution in the numbers of the Great
Council, which was, in fact, the government itself. He pointed out that
within one century a large number of patrician families had become
[Sidenote: _Cecchetti, quoting Arch. Ven. iii. 435._]
extinct, and that the condition of the aristocracy must clearly continue
to go from bad to worse. It could not be otherwise, since marriages were
yearly becoming less numerous. A family was looked upon as a calamity,
because it meant a division of fortune, and therefore interfered with
those ancient traditions of almost royal
[Illustration: INSTITUTO BON, GRAND CANAL]
magnificence which appealed to the vanity of younger men.
The speech to which I have alluded was delivered not very many years
after the time when a number of seats in the Grand Council had been sold
in order to meet the expenses of the Turkish war. In 1775, in order to
increase the numbers of the Council, it was proposed to admit to it
forty noble families from the provinces, provided they could prove that
they had a yearly income of ten thousand ducats. The proposal was
energetically opposed by a Contarini. If the sons of ancient families
showed so little zeal for the public welfare, he argued, what could be
expected of strangers? Was it wise to display to all Europe the evils
from which the Republic was suffering? Moreover, even if the bill were
passed, would it be easy to find forty families willing to leave their
homes and establish themselves in the capital to the great damage of
their fortunes? And if they were found, would their admission not result
in impoverishing the provinces by the amount of their incomes which
would be spent in Venice? It was luxury and extravagance that were
ruining the country, he said.
A lively discussion followed. ‘Beloved sons,’ cried one old noble, ‘for
us who are old there may be a little of the Republic left, but for you
children it is completely finished!’ The bill passed, but Contarini had
been right; only about ten families asked to be inscribed in the Golden
Book.
Satirists and lampooners made merry with the proceedings of the Great
Council. After the stormy sittings just referred to, the caricatures of
the five patricians entrusted with framing measures of reform were to
be seen everywhere in the city, and a copy of the cut is still in the
Archives. It
[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 211._]
represents the most eloquent and zealous of the committee, Alvise Emo,
urging his horse against an enormous marble column; two of his
colleagues follow him in a post-chaise and observe his movements with a
spy-glass; a fourth, who is lame, is trying to follow the carriage on
foot, and the fifth comes after him, beating him to make him mend his
pace.
On the twenty-second of May 1779 the secretary of the Inquisitors of
State wrote to his brother Giuseppe Gradenigo, then in France: ‘If these
gentlemen do not seriously think of taking measures to meet the events
which are brewing, if they do not introduce some order into the affairs
of the army and navy, the Republic will be lost as soon as an enemy
appears on land or by sea.’
This letter was prophetic. The idleness and indolence of the nobility
were such that it was hard to obtain an attendance at meetings of the
Great Council or the Senate. The members were accustomed to spend their
nights in gambling-dens and cafés, and it was a hard matter for them to
get up in the morning. Their physicians recommended rest, which they
indeed needed; and as they could not take any at night, they devoted a
large part of the day to following the doctor’s advice. Yet as it was
necessary that the government should go on in some way, it became
habitual to leave everything to the Savi of the Council, who on their
part fell into the habit of not always rendering an account of what
they did. By obligingly saving their colleagues the trouble of getting
out of bed, they made themselves the arbiters of the Republic’s final
destiny.
With regard to the other magistracies, a few anecdotes will give a good
idea of what they had become. My readers know that the Avogadori enjoyed
very great consideration, and that it was their business to see that all
the tribunals did their work smoothly and regularly. One of these
important officers, Angelo Quirini, who was at the same time one of the
most distinguished members of the Senate, exhibited his power and
courage by banishing from Venice a little milliner who had made a
mistake in trimming certain caps for a great lady in whom he was
interested. From her exile the woman wrote a protest to the Inquisitors
of State, who did her justice and recalled her. Quirini now lost his
temper with these gentlemen and swore that they were encroaching upon
his rights, just at this time a
[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 104._]
rich member of the parish of San Vitale departed this life, and the
sacristans prepared to bury his body; but the deceased belonged to a
confraternity called La Scuola Grande della Carità, and his brethren
claimed the right of burying him to the exclusion of the parish
sacristans. The Inquisitors of State and the Council of Ten took the
matter up; the Provveditori alla Sanità, who were the health officers,
declared that the matter concerned them only; the elders and judges of
the guilds and corporations took part in the discussion, and a general
quarrel ensued, which was only brought to a close by the authority of
the Council of Ten. But this did not please Angelo Quirini, who
violently attacked the Council and began to give himself the airs of a
popular tribune, though not possessing the popularity which is essential
for the position. The people, in fact, would have none of him. One night
the Council of Ten caused him to be quietly taken from his palace and
carried off under a good escort to the fortress of Verona. The matter
now had to be brought before the Great Council, and a regular trial was
held to ascertain how the Council of Ten and the Inquisitors were in the
habit of performing their duties.
[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 108._]
During several days the Corregitori received all the complaints that
were handed in, and examined the archives of the two tribunals. Those of
the Ten were found to be in perfect order, but those of the Inquisitors
were in the utmost confusion.
[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 114._]
The whole city discussed the affair excitedly, and nothing else was
spoken of in the streets, in the cafés, and in drawing-rooms. It was the
first time in history that the tribunal of the Inquisitors of State had
been put under an inquiry, and this tremendous result had been produced
because a little milliner had made a cap that did not fit.
Endless discussions followed. A number of patricians declared that if
the Council of Ten and the Inquisitors of State were abolished, they
themselves would not stay another day in Venice, as there would no
longer be any check on the violence and the intrigues of men of their
own class: a confession which suddenly exhibits the whole aristocracy
in its true light.
Others proved beyond all question that a tribunal which was particularly
charged with the preservation of the State from danger could not always
[Sidenote: _1762._]
do its work with the miserable tardiness of the other magistracies, and
they recalled the many cases in which the Ten had saved Venice.
[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 136-137._]
One of the debates was prolonged for five consecutive hours. At last the
Conservative party carried the day.
The wild enthusiasm of the population, on learning that the Ten and the
Inquisitors were to remain in existence, shows well enough what the
people thought; their only protection against the nobles lay in the two
tribunals. Six thousand persons waited in the Square of Saint Mark’s to
learn the result of the contest, and when it was known proceeded to burn
fireworks before the palaces of the nobles who had been the chief
speakers in defence of the Ten--Foscarini, Marcello, and Grimani. The
populace then declared that it would set fire to the houses of the
nobles who had tried to do away with the only institution they still
feared, and the palaces of the Zen and the Renier were only saved from
fire and pillage by the energetic intervention of the Inquisitors of
State, whose office those aristocrats had attempted to abolish.
I know of no more convincing answer to the numerous dilettante
historians who have accused the Council of Ten of oppressing the
people.
If the Council and the Inquisitors were in need of an excuse for
occasionally overstepping their powers in order to act quickly, they had
a good one in the absurdly cumbrous system of the magistracies, as they
existed in the eighteenth century. As a curiosity,
[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 399._]
I give a list or the principal magistracies, taken by Romanin from an
almanack of 1796, the last year of the Republic:--
The Doge’s Counsellors 6
Savi of the Council 16
Procurators of Saint Mark 9
‘Criminal’ Quarantia 40
‘Old’ Civil Quarantia 40
‘New’ Civil Quarantia 40
Colleges of the XXV. and the XV. 40
Senate 60
‘Zonta,’ supplementary to Senate 60
Council of Ten 10
Inquisitors (of Ten) 3
Avogadori of the Commonwealth 3
---
Total 327
besides the whole of the Great Council, which consisted of all nobles
over twenty-five years of age, and of the younger men chosen by lot to
sit without a vote.
And these are only the principal magistracies. The secondary ones
comprised over five hundred officials, divided between something like
one hundred and thirty offices, such as Provveditors, or inspectors of
some forty different matters, from artillery to butchers’ shops, from
‘Ancient and Modern Justice’ to oats: Savi, Inquisitors of all matters
except religion, Auditors, Executors, Correctors, Reformers, Deputies,
and Syndics; a perfect ant-hill of officials who were perpetually in one
another’s way.
Here is an instance of the manner in which ordinary justice was
administered, even by the Council of Ten.
[Illustration: WHEN THE ALPS SHOW THEMSELVES, FONDAMENTA NUOVE]
On the sixth of March 1776 a patrician called Semitecolo, who was a
member of one of the Quarantie, and therefore a magistrate, was walking
in the Fondamenta Nuove when he saw a big butcher named Milani
unmercifully beating a wretched peddler of old books. He stopped and
expostulated; the butcher took his interference ill, and delivered a
blow with his fist which caused the blood to gush abundantly from the
magistrate’s nose. Semitecolo was taken into a neighbouring house, and
the butcher walked off.
Still covered with blood, Semitecolo hastened to lay the matter before
the Council of Ten, demanding the
[Illustration: CAFÉ ON THE ZATTERE]
arrest of Milani. But Pier Barbarigo, who was one of the Capi for the
week, while sympathising deeply, excused himself from arresting the
culprit, on the ground that a detailed account of the affair signed by
witnesses must be laid before the Council; and, moreover, the Council
was busy just then, he said, owing to the arrival of the Pope’s Nuncio,
and there would be no meeting on the next day. Semitecolo could not
even get an order to have the butcher watched by the police, and the
culprit had full time and liberty to leave Venice before anything was
done. Note that he himself did not expect impunity, but only a very long
delay before his arrest was ordered.
The public followed the affair and was indignant, and freely criticised
the Ten in public places; whereupon the Inquisitors ordered all the
cafés to be closed two hours after dark. This was especially galling to
the Venetians, who were fond of sitting up late, and loved the bright
lights of the cafés.
One morning a notice appeared on the walls, drawn up in the following
terms:--
‘The Guild of the Night-Thieves wishes to thank his Excellency the
“Capo” Barbarigo for having provided them with much more sufficient and
convenient
[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 399._]
means of earning their bread during the present hard times.’
The Inquisitors’ ordinance was soon modified so as to allow the cafés to
remain open till midnight.
As for the minor courts, Goldoni, who was brought up to be a lawyer,
says that there were nearly as many different ones as there were
different kinds of suits possible. They paralysed each other, and could
not have worked well even if they had been honest.
But they were not. An Avogador acquitted a man accused of theft. The
Signors of the
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult. 143._]
Night--the chiefs of police--who had committed the accused for trial
believed him guilty and determined to examine the papers relating to
the trial.
[Illustration: THE DOGANA]
With this intention they made a search in the house of the Avogador and
confiscated the private accounts in which he set down the profit and
loss of his judicial industry; for he was a very careful man. Surely
enough, the Signors found an entry of one hundred and fifty sequins
(£112. 10s.) received for acquitting the thief.
About the same time there was a very beautiful dancer called the Cellini
at the theatre of San Cassian.
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult. 144._]
A magistrate who exercised the righteous functions of an ‘Executor
against Blasphemy’ became anxious to get into her good graces, but as
she would have nothing to do with him, he brought an accusation against
her in his own court, tried her, and condemned her to a severe penalty.
But she appealed to the Council of Ten, proved her innocence, and was
acquitted. Thereupon the Venetians began to swear ‘by the holy Virgin
Cellini.’
With such a state of things in Venice, it was only to be expected that
the condition of justice in the provinces should be still worse. When
[Sidenote: _Mut. Ult._]
Goldoni was Secretary to the Chancery of Feltre, in the Venetian
territory, there was a huge scandal about a whole forest cut down and
sold without any order or authority from the government. An inquiry was
attempted and begun; it was found that more than two hundred persons
were implicated, and as it soon became apparent that the same thing had
been done before them, within the century, it was judged better to draw
a veil over the whole affair.
This naturally encouraged others. In 1782 the Provveditor Michiel
informed the Senate that the Podestà of the city of Usmago had calmly
pocketed the price of an oak forest, which he had asked leave to cut
down on pretence of using the funds for repairing his official
residence.
Finally, a number of posts, especially in the ducal household, were
openly sold; in the last years of the Republic even the office of a
procurator of Saint Mark could be bought.
In close connection with the magistracies and the legal profession
generally, I give the following amusing extract from Goldoni’s memoirs.
He begins by telling us that although he had been entered at a lawyer’s
office for two years, he left it fitted for the profession in eight
months,
[Sidenote: _Goldoni, i. 23._]
because the administration interpreted the two years to mean the dates
of two consecutive years, without any regard to the months. Young
Goldoni then took a lodging in the lawyers’ quarter near San Paterniano,
and his mother and aunt lived with him.
I put on the toga belonging to my new station (he continues), and
it is the same as that of the Patricians; I smothered my head in an
enormous wig and impatiently awaited the day of my presentation in
the Palace. The novice must have two assistants who are called in
Venice Compari di Palazzo [‘Palace godfathers’]. The young man
chooses them amongst those of the old lawyers who are most friendly
to him....
So I went between my two sponsors to the foot of the grand
staircase in the great courtyard of the Palace, and for an hour
and a half I made so many bows and contortions that my back was
broken and my wig was like a lion’s mane. Every one who passed
before me gave his opinion of me; some said, Here is a youth of
good character; others said, Here is another Palace sweeper; some
embraced me, some laughed in my face. To be short, I went up the
stairs and sent the servant to find a gondola, so as not to show
myself in the street in such a dishevelled state, naming as a place
of meeting the Hall of the Great Council, where I sat down on a
bench whence I could see every one pass without being seen by any
one. During this time, I reflected on the career I was about to
embrace. In Venice there are generally two hundred and forty
lawyers entered on the register; there are ten or twelve of the
first rank, about twenty who occupy the second; all the others are
hunting for clients; and the poorer Procurators gladly act as their
dogs on condition of sharing the prey....
While I was thus alone, building castles in the air, I saw a woman
of about thirty approaching me, not disagreeable in face, white,
round, and plump, with a turned-up nose and wicked eyes, a great
deal of gold on her neck, her ears, her arms, her fingers, and in a
dress which proclaimed that she was a woman of the common class,
but pretty well off. She came over and saluted me.
‘Sir, good day!’
‘Good day, Signora!’
‘Will you allow me to offer you my congratulations?’
‘For what?’
‘On your entrance into the Forum; I saw you in the courtyard when
you were making your salaams. Per Bacco! Sir, your hair is nicely
done.’
‘Isn’t it? Am I not a handsome young fellow?’
‘But it makes no difference how your hair is done; Signor Goldoni
always cuts a good figure.’
‘So you know me, Signora?’
‘Did I not see you four years ago in the land of the lawyers, in a
long wig and cloak?’
‘True; you are right, for I was then in the house of the
Procurator.’
‘Just so; in the house of Signor Indrie’ [Goldoni’s uncle].
‘So you know my uncle too?’
‘In this part of the world I know every one, from the Doge to the
last copyist of the Courts.’
‘Are you married?’
‘No.’
‘Are you a widow?’
‘No.’
‘Oh--I do not dare ask more!’
‘All the better.’
‘Have you any business?’
‘No.’
‘From your appearance I took you for a well-to-do person.’
‘I really am.’
‘Then you have investments?’
‘None at all.’
‘But you are very well fitted out; how do you manage to do it?’
‘I am a daughter of the Palace, and the Palace supports me.’
‘That is very strange! You say you are a daughter of the Palace?’
‘Yes, sir; my father had a position in it.’
‘What did he do?’
‘He listened at the doors and then went to take good news to those
who were expecting pardons, or verdicts, or favourable judgments;
he had capital legs and always got there first. As for my mother,
she was always here, as I am. She was not proud, she took her fee,
and undertook some commissions. I was born and brought up in these
gilded halls, and, as you see, I also have gold on me.’
‘Yours is a most singular story. Then you follow in your mother’s
footsteps?’
‘No, sir. I do something else.’
‘That is to say?’
‘I push lawsuits.’
‘Push lawsuits? I do not understand.’
I am as well known as Barabbas. It is very well understood that all
the lawyers and all the Procurators are my friends, and a number of
people apply to me to obtain advice for them and counsel for
defence. Those who come to me are generally not rich, and I look
about amongst the novices and the unemployed [lawyers] who want
nothing but work in order to make themselves known. Do you know,
sir, that though you see me as I am, I have made the fortunes of a
round dozen of the most famous lawyers in the profession. Come,
sir, courage, and if you are willing, I shall make yours too.’
It amused me to listen to her, and as my servant did not come, I
continued the conversation.
‘Well, Signorina, have you any good affairs on hand now?’
‘Yes, sir, I have several, indeed I have some excellent ones. I
have a widow who is suspected of having occultated her monkey;
another who wishes to prove a marriage contract got up after the
fact; I have girls who are petitioning for a dowry; I have women
who wish to bring suits for annulment of marriage; I have sons of
good families who are persecuted by their creditors; as you see,
you need only choose.’
‘My good woman,’ I said, ‘so far I have let you talk; now it is my
turn. I am young, I am about to begin my career, and I desire
occasions for showing myself and obtaining occupation; but no love
of work nor fancy for litigation could make me begin with the
disgraceful suits you offer me.’
‘Ha, ha!’ she laughed, ‘you despise my clients because I warned you
that there was nothing to earn; but listen! My two widows are
rich, you will be well paid, and shall be even paid in advance, if
you wish.’
I saw my servant coming in the distance; I rose and answered the
chattering woman in a fearless and resolute tone.
‘No, you do not know me, I am a man of honour....’
Then she took my hand and spoke gravely.
‘Well done! Continue always in the same mind.’
‘Ah!’ I exclaimed, ‘you change your tone now?’
‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘and the tone I take now is much better than
the one I have been using. Our conversation has been somewhat
mysterious; remember it and see that you speak to no one about it.
Good-bye, sir. Always be wise, be always honourable, and you will
be satisfied with the result.’
She went away, and I was left in the greatest astonishment. I did
not know what all this meant; but I learned later that she was a
spy and had come to sound me; yet I never knew, nor wished to know,
who sent her to me.
[Illustration: RIO DELLA SENSA]
XIII
THE LAST SBIRRI
It is worth while to glance at the agents of the police, of the Council
of Ten, and of the Inquisitors of State
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Lessico._]
at the end of the Republic. The two Councils had six in their service,
called the Fanti de’ Cai, the footmen of the Heads, and one of them was
at the beck and call of the Inquisitors. This particular one was the
famous Cristofolo de’ Cristofoli, whose name is connected alike with
all the tragedies and the comic adventures of the last days.
He was a sort of general inspector of freemasons, rope-dancers,
circus-riders, antiquaries, bravi, and gondoliers, and he exercised in
his manifold functions all the civility of which a detective can
dispose. He was a giant in body, a jester and a wit by nature, a
combination certainly intended for the stage rather than the police.
His especial bugbear was freemasonry, together with all the secret
societies which were then largely in the pay of France, employed by her
to promote general revolution. A manuscript preserved in the Museo
Correr gives an account of the first discovery of a Lodge.
A patrician named Girolamo Zulian, says this document, when returning
one night from a meeting of the Lodge left upon the seat of his gondola
a piece of paper on which were drawn certain incomprehensible signs. The
gondoliers found the paper, and supposed that the symbols were those of
some kind of witchcraft. One of the men took the scrap to a monk he knew
and begged him to decipher the signs, or at least to give his advice as
to what should be done with the thing, as it might be fatal even to
destroy a spell of black magic. The monk told the gondolier to take it
to the Inquisitors of State. The man did so, and one of them kept him in
a garret of his house, to protect him against any possible vengeance on
the part of the secret society, and Cristofolo de’ Cristofoli was
commissioned to clear up the mystery. On the following night he raided
the house indicated by the gondolier with thirty Sbirri, and found there
assembled a large meeting of the brethren, one of whom had the presence
of mind to throw into the canal the heavy register containing a complete
list of their names. Cristofoli took a quantity of papers, however,
together with the paraphernalia of the Lodge, and he afterwards, says
the manuscript, dictated from memory the names of the persons he had
seen at the meeting. But he must have made mistakes, since several of
the persons he designated are known to have been absent from Venice on
foreign missions at the date of the raid, May sixth, 1785.
Another manuscript, published by Dandolo, gives a different account of
the affair, under the same date. It was copied by the famous Cicogna,
and is amusing for its language:--
It was the anniversary of the feast of the principal Protector of
this most serene dominion, Saint Mark the Evangelist, April the
twenty-fifth, 1785, when it was discovered that the public Arsenal
of Venice had been treacherously set on fire; the fire was
eventually discovered by a certain woman, who was rewarded for life
[_i.e._ with a pension] by the public munificence; and by the
discovery of it, a fire was prevented which might have been fatal
to a large part of the city, and which was not to have broken out
till the night following the twenty-fifth, but which showed itself
after noon on account of an extraordinary wind which had
temporarily arisen from the east and which blew with fury all day.
Such an accident, as fatal as its prevention by the Evangelist
[Illustration: FONDAMENTE NUOVE]
Saint Mark was miraculous, not only moved the public vigilance to
guard that public edifice under more jealous custody, but also [to
watch] all the quarters of the city; to this end multiplying
watchmen and spies, in order to discover, if that
[Illustration: RIO S. STIN]
might be possible, the perpetrators of such an horrible and
terrifying felony.
In the inquiries, it was observed by trustworthy spies on the night
of the [date omitted in the original] May, that a certain palace
situated in Riomarin, in the parish of San Simon Grande, was
entered from time to time after midnight by respectable-looking
persons, for whom the door was opened at the simple signal of a
little tap. Information of this being given to the Supreme
Tribunal, the latter ordered the most circumspect inquiries; when,
on the same morning, information was given to the Secretary of the
said Supreme Magistracy by a certain ship’s carpenter that having,
on commission of N. N., finished making a large wardrobe, he
inquired of that cavalier where he was to bring it in order to set
it up properly; and that he had been told to bring it to a certain
palace in Riomarin and to leave it in the entrance (gateway) of the
same, and that he would be sent for later to place it where it was
to go; that seeing several days go by without receiving that
notice, and yielding to curiosity, he stole near in the night to
see if the wardrobe were still in the entrance of the palace, where
he had placed it, and he convinced himself that it had been taken
elsewhere; and being displeased with this, because some other
workman might have handled his work, and guessing from a hint of
the gentleman’s that the wardrobe had been intended to be placed
against the windows of a balcony, and observing in this palace a
balcony of just about the length of the wardrobe made by him, he
tried to get into the apartment above the one where the balcony was
[let to some one], explaining to the people who lived in that house
that his suspicion induced him to ask their permission to make a
hole with a gimlet, in order to see whether his wardrobe had been
put up where he guessed it must be; and that he had obtained
consent to this request, because the lodgers in that second
apartment had conceived some curiosity to know who the persons
might be who met there only at night time; that therefore he betook
himself to that dwelling on the night of the fourth of May, having
previously made a hole, and stopped there till the first-floor
apartment was opened, and he saw that after midnight a hall was
lighted up which was hung with mourning and furnished with a
throne covered with blue cloth and with other symbols of death, and
here and there were disposed small lanterns, and persons also
sitting here and there, dressed in black robes; so that at this
horrid sight he was terrified, and he heard him who sat on the
throne say these very words: ‘Brethren, let us suspend our meeting,
for we are watched’; and in that room he saw indeed his wardrobe
placed against a balcony.
And that he left the lodgers in that second apartment in
consternation, and he himself, full of amazement and terror, and
still surprised by the novelty of the things, and supposing, in his
simplicity, that witchcraft was practised there and the works of
the devil, he was scandalised, and went to the parish priest of San
Simon Grande, his confessor, and that having told him all he had
seen, heard, and observed, he (the priest) advised him to quickly
lay before the government all that he had chanced to see and hear.
The good man did so, and told all to the Secretary of the
Inquisitors of State. A warrant was therefore issued on that same
morning of the sixth of May by the Supreme Tribunal to its own
officer Cristofoli, to go thither (to Riomarin), accompanied by the
Capitan Grande and twenty-four men. Having entered that apartment,
where he surprised a nobleman who guarded the place, he
(Cristofoli) discovered a lodge of freemasons.
Emanuele Cicogna [the distinguished historian] copied this on the
twenty-fourth of August 1855, from two codices existing in his
collection.
On the following day, the Inquisitors publicly burned the black
garments, the utensils, the ‘conjuring books,’ as they are described,
and
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult._]
all the booty Cristofoli had confiscated, while the populace, believing
that it was all a case of witchcraft, danced round the fire and cheered
for Saint Mark.
The persons implicated were treated with the greatest indulgence, and
Malamani observes that in the whole affair it was the furniture that got
the worst of it.
About the same time Cristofoli made a vain attempt to arrest the
notorious Cagliostro.
This man, whose real name was Giuseppe Balsamo, was born in Palermo on
the eighth of June 1743. His youth was wild and disreputable. He tried
being a monk, but soon tired of it, and threw his frock to the nettles,
as the French say, in Caltagirone, in Sicily; after that he lived by
theft, by coining false money, and by every sort of imposture. In Rome
he married a girl of singular beauty, Lorenza Feliciani, who became his
tool in all his intrigues.
The French freemasons made use of the singularly intelligent couple to
propagate the doctrines of the revolution. Pretending to change hemp
into silk, and every metal into gold, and selling marvellous waters for
restoring the aged to youth and beauty, the two got into many excellent
houses, changing their names and their disguises whenever they were
compromised.
Balsamo arrived in Venice in 1787 or 1788, under the name of Count
Cagliostro, and began an active revolutionary campaign, to the great
annoyance
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult. 31._]
of the Inquisitors, who fancied they had suppressed the whole movement
when Cristofoli had discovered the famous Lodge. He was less fortunate
this time. He tracked the Count everywhere, but could get no substantial
evidence against him, till he suddenly came upon positive proof that the
impostor had stolen a thousand sequins from a rich merchant of the
Giudecca. And then, at the very moment when the great policeman was sure
of his game, the man disappeared as into thin air and was next heard of
beyond the Austrian frontier.
The chief of the Sbirri had better luck when he raided the Café
Ancilotto, which was a favourite place of meeting for the
revolutionaries. They
[Sidenote: _Tassini, under ‘Ancilotto.’_]
tried to open a reading-room there, furnished with all the latest
revolutionary literature, but Cristofoli got wind of the plan, called on
the man who kept the café, and informed him that the first person who
entered the ‘reading-room’ would be invited to pay a visit to the
Inquisitors of State. After that, no one showed any inclination to read
the French papers. In connection with Cristofoli, we also come upon the
curious fact that he arrested, at the Café
[Sidenote: _Tassini, under ‘Caffetero.’_]
of the Ponte dell’ Angelo, a number of Barnabotti, who were preaching
suspicious doctrines. As usual, the poor nobles were the class most
easily bribed and most ready to betray their country.
Cristofoli was occasionally entrusted with missions more diplomatic than
the arrest of revolutionaries. He was sometimes sent to present his
respects to great nobles who did not guess that they had attracted the
eyes of the police.
It was the business of the Inquisitors to watch over the artistic
treasures of the capital. During the last year of the Republic a number
of nobles sold precious
[Illustration: RIO DELLA GUERRA]
objects to strangers, such as paintings and statues, of which the
government much regretted the loss to the city. A few measures were
passed for preventing this dispersion of private collections, but it
happened only too often that priceless things were suddenly gone,
leaving no trace of their destination, except in the pockets of the
former owners.
The Grimani family possessed some magnificent statues and a wonderful
library of rare books, inherited from Cardinal Domenico Grimani, who
died in 1523. Shortly before the fall of
[Sidenote: _Statue of M. Agrippa; Museo Correr._]
the Republic a foreigner bought the statue of Marcus Agrippa; the boat
which was to take it on board an outward bound ship was at the door of
the palace, and the men who were to take it down from its pedestal and
box it were ready, when Cristofolo Cristofoli appeared at the entrance,
gigantic and playful.
He walked straight to the statue, took off his cap to it and bowed
gravely before he delivered his message to the marble: ‘The Supreme
Tribunal of the Inquisitors, having heard that you wish to leave this
city, sends me to wish a pleasant journey, both to you and his
Excellency Grimani.’
‘His Excellency Grimani’ did not relish the idea of exile; the workmen
disappeared, the boat was sent away, and the statue remained. It was
destined to be left as a gift to the city by another Grimani, less
avaricious than ‘His Excellency.’
In spite of his good-humour, Cristofoli inspired terror, and his mere
name was often
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Studi e Ricerche._]
used to lend weight to practical jokes. It is related, for instance, of
the famous Montesquieu, the author of the _Esprit des Lois_ and the
friend of King Stanislaus Leczinski, that when he was making notes in
Venice his friend Lord Chesterfield managed to cause a mysterious
message to be conveyed to him, warning him to be on his guard, as the
Chief of the Ten employed spies to watch him, and Cristofoli was on his
track. And thereupon, says the story, the excellent Montesquieu burned
all his most compromising notes, and fled straight to Holland with the
remainder of his manuscripts.
The Council of Ten and their Sbirri had not yet done with the Bravi.
They were numerous in the provinces, and when they were caught they were
tried and hanged in Venice. The ‘Signorotti’--the rich landowners, who
were not Venetian nobles, but called themselves ‘knights’--were many and
prosperous, and were the professional murderers’ best clients. Indeed,
the Venetian mainland provinces and much of Lombardy presented a case of
arrested development; at the end of the eighteenth century they had not
emerged from the barbarism of the early fifteenth.
The lordlings entertained Bravi, and when there was no more serious
business on hand, they laid wagers with each other as to the courage of
their hired assassins. A bet of this kind was made and settled in 1724
between an Avogadro and a Masperoni, two country ‘knights’ who lived on
their estates in the province of Brescia. One evening the two were
discussing the character of a ruffian whom Masperoni had just taken into
his service. His new master maintained that the fellow was the bravest
man in the ‘profession.’ Avogadro, on the other hand, wagered that he
would not be able to traverse the road between his master’s castle and
Lumezzane, which belonged to Avogadro. Masperoni took the bet, and
explained the situation to the man. The latter, feeling that his
reputation was at stake, started at once, carrying on his shoulder a
basket of fine fruit as a present from Masperoni to his friend, and he
took his way across the hills of Valtrompia. When he was a few miles
from Lumezzane he was met by two well-armed fellows, who ordered him to
turn back, but he was not so easily stopped. He set down his basket, and
in the twinkling of an eye killed both his adversaries, after which he
quietly pursued his journey.
Avogadro was very much surprised to see him, and asked with curiosity
what sort of trip he had made.
‘Excellent,’ he answered. ‘I met a couple of good-for-nothings who
wanted to stop me, but I killed them, and here I am.’
Avogadro, filled with admiration, gave him a purse of gold and sent him
back to Masperoni with a letter of congratulation.
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Banditi, 289._]
Incidents of this kind occurred long afterwards, even after the fall of
the Republic. The name of Cristofoli is associated with that of Count
Alemanno Gambara in a story which could not be believed if the documents
that prove it were not all preserved in the various archives, and
principally in those of the Inquisitors.
The Gambara family was of Lombard origin, and had always been very
influential in the neighbourhood of Brescia. The race had produced fine
specimens of all varieties--soldiers, bishops, cardinals, murderers, and
one woman poet, besides several bandits, traitors, and highwaymen. In
the late sixteenth century two brothers of the family, Niccolò and
Lucrezio, had a near relative, Theodora, an orphan girl of fourteen
years and an heiress, who was in charge of a guardian. On the
twenty-second of January 1569 the two brothers went to the guardian and
ordered him to give up the girl. On his refusal they threw him down his
own stairs, wounded his people who tried to defend him, broke down the
door of the girl’s room, and carried her off.
I only quote this as an instance of the family’s manners. The last scion
of the race who lived under the Republic, and who outlived it, was Count
Alemanno, a young monster of perversity. He was born after his father’s
death at the castle of Pralboino, on a feudal holding belonging to his
house. His mother was soon married again to Count Martinengo Cesaresco,
and she took the boy with her to her new home. He was naturally violent
and unruly; at fifteen he was an accomplished swordsman, and was
involved in every quarrel and evil adventure on the country side. When
still a mere boy his conduct was such as to give the government real
trouble, and the authorities imposed a guardian upon him in the person
of a priest of his family, who was instructed to teach him the ordinary
precepts of right and wrong; but the clergyman soon announced that he
was not able to cope with his young relative, and the Council of Ten
learned that the boy’s violent character showed no signs of improvement.
He was now arrested, brought to Venice, and confined in one of the
Piombi, his property being administered under the direction of the
government. The Inquisitors of State examined the record of the
complaints laid against him, and concluded that his faults were due to
his extreme youth; they therefore ordered him to reside within the
fortress of Verona, but gave him control of his fortune.
The Captain of Verona, knowing the sort of prisoner he had to deal with,
and being made responsible for him, sent for an engineer and asked his
opinion as to the possibilities of escape for a prisoner who was not
locked up in a cell. The engineer wrote out a careful criticism of the
fortress, concluding with an extremely practical remark: ‘With good
means of escape,’ he observed, ‘a man may escape from any place, but
without means it is not possible to escape at all.’
The Captain, only partially reassured, set to work to convert his
prisoner, and sent him a good priest to teach him his Catechism and
exhort him to the practices of Christianity; but the young Count would
have neither exhortation nor religious instruction. The Council of Ten
now sent him to the fortress of Palma for a change of air, and the
commander of that place inherited the feverish anxiety about his charge
which had tormented the Captain of Verona. He did not consult an
engineer, however, and one morning the prisoner was not in his room,
nor in the fortress, nor anywhere in the neighbourhood of Palma.
The Inquisitors now sent Sbirri in all directions throughout the
Venetian territory. They could not catch Alemanno, but he wearied of
eluding them, and judged that he could get better terms by submitting to
the Inquisitors. He did so, using the offices of his aunt, Countess
Giulia Gambara, who was married to a gentleman of Vicenza. The Podestà
of the latter city sent an officer and six soldiers to the place
designated by Alemanno, and he surrendered, and was taken first to
Padua, and then to Venice. As soon as he landed at the Piazzetta he was
put in charge of Cristofoli and the Sbirri, who took him before the
Inquisitors.
They exiled him to Zara, and wrote to the Governor of Dalmatia: ‘We
desire him to have a good lodging.... See that he frequents persons of
good habits, thanks to whom he may not wander from the right path on
which he has entered, and in which we wish him to continue.’
The Inquisitors, good souls, so mildly concerned for the wild boy’s
moral welfare, were soon to learn what Alemanno considered the ‘right
path,’ for the Governor of Dalmatia kept them well informed. Before long
they learned that a certain fisherman, who had refused to let the
Count’s butler, Antonio Barach, have a fine fish which was already sold
to another client, had been seized, taken into the Count’s house, and
severely beaten.
But the Inquisitors were inclined to be clement and paid no attention
to the accounts of his doings. In 1756 he was authorised to return to
his domains of
[Illustration: VIA GARIBALDI]
Pralboino and Corvione, and his real career began. His first care was to
engage as many desperate Bravi as he could find. One of these having had
a little difficulty with the police, and having been killed during the
argument, Alemanno captured a Sbirro, and so handled him that he sent
him back to his post a cripple for life.
Scarcely a year after his return from Zara, he rode through the town of
Calvisano, and without answering the Customs officer, whose duty it was
to ascertain if he were carrying anything dutiable, he galloped on and
escaped recognition. His servant, who followed him at a little distance,
was stopped, and as he answered the Customs men very rudely he was
locked up in jail. But when the officer in charge learned who the man
was, his fright was such that he not only set him at liberty at once,
but conversed with him and treated him in the most friendly manner.
The young Count was of course delighted to learn that his name spread
terror amongst government officials, and by way of showing what he could
do, he sent fifteen of his Bravi to Calvisano with orders to besiege the
Customs men. In the fighting that followed, one of the latter was killed
and their officer narrowly escaped.
The Council of Ten now interfered, and summoned Count Alemanno Gambara
to appear before them, and if he refused, the local authorities were
ordered to take him and send him by force. Instead of obeying, he
fortified his two castles, increased the numbers of his band of Bravi,
and defied the law. With his ruffians at his back he rode through the
length and breadth of the Brescian territory as he pleased, and once
even traversed
[Illustration: FROM SAN GEORGIO TO THE SALUTE]
the city itself with his formidable escort. No one dared to meddle with
him. His neighbours in the country were completely terrorised, and he
and his head ruffian, Carlo Molinari, committed the wildest excesses.
Alemanno seems to have especially delighted to watch the effect of
fright on his victims. One day his men chased a priest of Gottolengo and
three friends, who had been shooting in the woods not far beyond the
boundary of the estate of Corvione. The fugitives succeeded in reaching
the church of Gottolengo, in which they took refuge, barricading the
door against their pursuers. But the Bravi starved them out, and they
were obliged to surrender unconditionally. They were then led out to a
lonely field and were exhorted to commend their souls to God, as they
were about to be killed and buried on the spot. Alemanno watched their
agony with delight, concealed behind a hedge. When he was tired of the
sport, he came out of concealment and ordered his men to beat and kick
them back to Gottolengo.
A retired colonel lived quietly on a small estate near one of Gambara’s.
His servants accidentally killed one of the Count’s dogs; he had them
taken, cruelly beaten, and sent back to their master after suffering
every indignity. The colonel thought of lodging a complaint with the
Council of Ten, but on reflection he gave up the idea as not safe, for
Gambara’s vengeance would probably have been fatal to any one who
ventured to give information of his doings. No one was safe within his
reach, neither man, nor woman, nor child. A volume might be filled with
the list of his crimes.
At last, in 1762, the municipality of the town of Gambara, from which he
took his title, resolved to petition the Council of Ten for help and
protection against him. When he learned that this was their intention,
he rode into the town with his escort, and halting in the market-place
addressed the citizens; his threats of vengeance were so frightful, and
he was so well able to carry them out, that the chief burghers fell upon
their knees before him, weeping and imploring his forgiveness.
One day several Sbirri traversed some of his land in pursuit of a
smuggler who sought his protection. He met them smiling, and cordially
invited them to spend a night under his roof. With the childlike
simplicity which is one of the most endearing characteristics of most
Italians, they fell into the trap. On the next day, a cart loaded with
greens entered Brescia, and stopped opposite the house of the Venetian
Podestà. The horses were taken out and led away, without exciting any
remark, and the cart remained where it had been left, till the foul
smell it exhaled attracted attention. It was unloaded, and underneath
the greens were found the bloody corpses of the Sbirri who had accepted
Gambara’s hospitality.
This time the Inquisitors of State took matters seriously, and sent a
squadron of cuirassiers and a detachment of Sbirri, under the command of
an officer called Rizzi, to arrest him and his henchman Molinari. Rizzi
came to Pralboino and broke down the gates, but the two men were already
gone, and the expedition ended in the confiscation of a few
insignificant letters found in Alemanno’s desk.
He had understood that he must leave Venetian territory for a time, and
riding down into the Duchy of Parma he sought the hospitality of his
friend, the Marchese Casali, at Monticelli. He next visited Genoa, and
judging that it was time to settle in life, he married the Marchesa
Carbonare, whom he judged, with some reason, to be a woman worthy of his
companionship.
They returned together to Monticelli, where they led a riotous existence
for some time. Being one day short of money, Alemanno stopped the
messengers who were conveying to Venice the taxes raised in Brescia, and
sent them on after giving them a formal receipt for the large sum he had
taken from them. But this was too much for the Duke of Parma, who now
requested the couple to spend their time elsewhere than in his Duchy.
They consulted as to their chances of getting a free pardon for the
crimes the Count had committed on Venetian territory and against the
Republic, and the Countess addressed a petition to the Doge which begins
as follows: ‘Every penitent sinner who sincerely purposes to mend his
life obtains of God mercy and forgiveness; shall I, Marianna Carbonare,
the most afflicted wife of Count Alemanno Gambara, not feel thereby
encouraged to fall upon my knees before the august Throne of your
Serenity?...’ And much more to the same effect.
Another petition signed by both was addressed to the Inquisitors, and a
third, signed only by Alemanno, to the Doge and the Inquisitors
together. In this precious document he calls them ‘the most perfect
image of God on earth, by their power.’
The object of these petitions was that the Count might be sent into
exile, anywhere, so long as he were not shut up in a fortress, a
sentence which would soon kill him, as he was in bad health.
He had certainly committed many murders and had killed several servants
of the Republic in the performance of their duties; and he had stolen
the taxes collected in Brescia. Amazing as it may seem, his petition was
granted, and he was exiled to Zara for two years, after which he was
allowed to come to Chioggia on the express condition that he should not
set foot outside the castle, and should see no one but his wife and son.
He remained in Chioggia just a year, from the twenty-fifth of September
1777, to the twenty-sixth of September 1778, after which the Inquisitors
were kind enough to give him his liberty if he would present himself
before their Secretary, which he did with alacrity.
My readers need not be led into a misapprehension by the touching
unanimity which the loving couple exhibited in the petitions they
signed. They never agreed except when their interests did, and were soon
practically separated in their private life. The Countess took Count
Miniscalchi of Verona for her lover, while Alemanno showed himself
everywhere with the Countess of San Secondo. In the end they separated
altogether, and the son, Francesco, remained with his father, who
educated him according to his own ideas.
So far as can be ascertained, the man never changed the manner of his
life. After his pardon he returned to his estates in the province of
Brescia, where he found his old friends, who were few, and the
recollections of his youth, which were many. In a short time Pralboino
and Corvione were once more dens of murderers and robbers as of old, and
as in former days he had been helped in his blackest deeds by Carlo
Molinari, his chief Bravo, so now he was seconded by his steward,
Giacomo Barchi, who kept the reign of terror alive in the country when
it pleased the Count to reside in Venice.
He was sleeping soundly in his apartment in the capital one morning
towards the end of March 1782, after having spent most of the night at a
gambling house by the Ponte dell’ Angelo--he never slept more than four
hours--when he was awakened by an unexpected visit from Cristofolo de’
Cristofoli, who requested him to appear at once before the Secretary of
the Inquisitors. An examination of conscience must have been a serious
affair for Alemanno, and not to be undertaken except at leisure; and it
appears that on this occasion he really did not know what he was to be
accused of doing. The Secretary of the Inquisitors merely commanded him
not to leave the city on pain of the Tribunal’s anger, and on the
morrow he learned that his steward Barchi had also been arrested.
For some reason impossible to explain, nothing was done to either, and
before long even the steward was set at liberty. The Inquisitors
confined themselves to threatening the two with ‘the public indignation’
and their own severest measures, if the Count did not dismiss his Bravi
and ‘reform his conduct.’
After that, history is silent as to his exploits. He was no longer
young, and even the zest of murder and rapine was probably beginning to
pall on his weary taste. We know that he sincerely mourned the fall of
the Republic which had been so consistently kind to him, and he never
plotted against the government. He could not but feel that it would have
been an exaggeration to accuse it of having been hard on him.
His son Francesco, on the contrary, turned out to be one of the most
turbulent of revolutionaries, and helped to lead the insurrection at
Bergamo. But for the intervention of Bonaparte himself, he would have
been killed by the inhabitants of Salò, who remained faithful to the
Republic, when they repulsed the insurgents. He was one of the five
delegates whom the city of Brescia sent to Bonaparte, to name him
president of the Cisalpine Republic. He died in 1848, after having
written a life of his father, which was published eleven years later in
Trieste. One cannot but feel that in composing a memoir of his parent,
filial piety led him too far.
In concluding this chapter, which has dealt with criminals, I shall
take the opportunity of observing that the places in which criminals
were confined in Venice shared in the general decay of everything
connected with the government. In the seventeenth century and earlier
all prisoners had been carefully kept separate according to their
misdeeds; in the eighteenth, mere children were shut up with adult
criminals, and debtors were confined with thieves. In the women’s
prisons lunatics were often imprisoned with the sane, a state of things
that led to the most horrible scenes.
The gaolers of the Pozzi and the Piombi did not even keep the prisons
clean, and the state of the cells was such that I do not care to disgust
the reader by describing it. In the other prisons, or attached to them,
a regular tavern was tolerated and perhaps authorised, as a place of
gathering for the prisoners, and here games of chance were played, even
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult._]
such as were forbidden elsewhere in the city. The archives of the Ten
show how many crimes were committed in the very places where men were
confined to expiate earlier offences. As for the gaolers, they were one
and all corruptible. One of the Savi, the patrician Gritti, denounced to
the Senate, in 1793, a gaoler who let the healthiest and most airy cells
to the highest bidders.
[Illustration: THE PESARO PALACE, GRAND CANAL]
XIV
THE LAST DOGES
Between the beginning of the eighteenth century and the end of the
Republic eleven Doges occupied the throne. Of these the only one who
might
[Sidenote: _1700-1797._]
have saved the government or retarded its fall was the very one who
reigned the shortest time. Let us say that if he had lived, he might
have so far restored the strength of the ancient aristocracy as to admit
of its perishing in a struggle instead of dying of old age.
This Doge was Marco Foscarini, who was elected on the thirty-first of
May 1762, and died on the thirty-first of the following March. He was a
man whose integrity was never questioned, even by
[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 142._]
the revolutionaries, and he accepted the Dogeship with the greatest
regret. He was a man of letters, and the endless empty ceremonial of the
ducal existence obliged him to leave unfinished his noble work on
Venetian literature. Even had the Doge’s action not been hopelessly
paralysed by the hedge of petty regulations that bristled round him,
Foscarini’s experience of affairs in the course of occupying many
exalted posts had left him few illusions as to the
[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 302._]
future of his country. ‘This century will be a terrible one for our
children and grandchildren,’ he wrote some time after his election.
Like many of the Doges he was a very old man when he was elected, and
was over eighty-eight years of age when he died, apparently much
surprised at finding himself at his end, though not unprepared for it.
He complained that his physicians had not told him how ill he was, and
he asked for a little Latin book, _De modo bene moriendi_, which had
been given him by his friend Cardinal Passionei; presently he tried to
dictate a few reflections to his doctor, but was too weak, and expired
whispering, ‘My poor servants!’ He had apparently not provided for them
as he would have done if he had not been taken unawares.
His successor was Aloise IV. Mocenigo, who had been Ambassador to Rome
and to Paris. His election was celebrated in a manner that recalled the
festivities of the sixteenth century. A secretary was sent to the
Mocenigo palace to announce the news to
[Sidenote: _1763._]
his family, and the Dogess took four days in which to complete her
preparations, after which she came to the ducal palace accompanied by
her two married nieces, her sisters, her mother, all her own female
cousins, and all those of her husband; and this battalion of noble women
in their gondolas was followed down the Grand Canal by an innumerable
fleet of gondolas and boats. All the male relations were waiting at the
landing of the Piazzetta to escort the ladies to the palace, where the
Dogess, seated on a throne, received the homage of the electors and of
all the nobility. She did not wear the ducal insignia on that day. In
the evening there was a ball, which she opened with one of the
Procurators of Saint Mark.
A series of festivities began on the following day, at which she
appeared in a memorably magnificent dress: a long mantle of cloth of
gold, like the Doge’s own, with wide sleeves lined with white lace,
opened to show a skirt and body all of gold lace-work; a girdle of
diamonds encircled her waist; her head-dress was a veil, arranged like a
cap, but the two ends hung down to her shoulders, and were picked up and
fastened to her back hair by two diamond clasps.
On three consecutive evenings there were balls at the palace, and at
each the Dogess danced only one minuet, with a Procurator of Saint Mark,
[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 148._]
as etiquette required when there were no foreign princes in Venice.
This reminds one of old times; it is even true that in some ways the
display at the ducal palace was greater than it had ever been. The
banquets especially took the importance of
[Sidenote: _G. R. Michiel, i. 289._]
public spectacles, and were always five in number, given at the feasts
of Saint Mark, the Ascension, Saint Vitus, Saint Jerome, and Saint
Stephen, after the last of which the distribution of the ‘oselle’ took
place, representing the ducks of earlier days, as the reader will
remember. At these great dinners there were generally a hundred guests;
the Doge’s counsellors, the Heads of the Ten, the Avogadors and the
heads of all the other magistracies had a right to be invited, but the
rest of the guests were chosen among the functionaries at the Doge’s
pleasure.
In the banquet-hall there were a number of sideboards on which was
exhibited the silver, part of which belonged to the Doge and part to the
State, and this was shown twenty-four hours before the feast. It was
under the keeping of a special official. The glass service used on the
table for flowers and for dessert was of the finest made in Murano. Each
service, though this is hard to believe, is said to have been used in
public only once, and was designed to recall some important event of
contemporary history by trophies, victories, emblems, and allegories. I
find this stated by Giustina Renier Michiel, who was a contemporary, was
noble, and must have often seen these banquets.
The public was admitted to view the magnificent spectacle during the
whole of the first course, and the ladies of the aristocracy went in
great numbers. It was their custom to walk round the tables, talking
with those of their friends who sat among the guests, and accepting the
fruits and sweetmeats which the Doge and the rest offered them, rising
from their seats to do so. The Doge himself rose from his throne to
salute those noble ladies whom he wished to distinguish especially.
Sovereigns passing through Venice at such times did not disdain to
appear as mere spectators at the banquets, which had acquired the
importance of national anniversaries.
Between the first and the second courses, a majestic chamberlain shook a
huge bunch of keys while he walked round the hall, and at this hint all
visitors disappeared. The feast sometimes lasted several hours, after
which the Doge’s squires presented each of the guests with a great
basket filled with sweetmeats, fruits, comfits, and the like, and
adorned with the ducal arms. Every one rose to thank the Doge for these
presents, and he took advantage of the general move to go back to his
private apartments. The guests accompanied him to the threshold, where
his Serenity bowed to them without speaking, and every one returned his
salute in silence. He disappeared within, and all went home.
During this ceremony of leave-taking, the gondoliers of the guests
entered the Hall of the banquet and each carried the basket received by
his master
[Sidenote: _G. R. Michiel, Origini i. 302._]
to some lady indicated by the latter. ‘One may imagine,’ cries the good
Dame Michiel, ‘what curiosity there was about the destination of the
baskets, but the faithful gondoliers regarded mystery as a point of
honour, though the basket was of such
[Illustration: MARCO POLO’S COURT]
dimensions that it was impossible to take it anywhere unobserved; happy
were they who received these evidences of a regard which at once touched
their feelings and flattered their legitimate pride! The greatest
misfortune was to have to share the prize with another.’
The reign of Aloise Mocenigo was the one in which the question of
reforms was the most fully discussed, but many of the discussions turned
on theories, and though a few led to the passage of measures which
somewhat affected commerce and public instruction, no real result was
produced. The Republic, I repeat, was dying of old age, which is the
only ill that is universally admitted to be incurable.
At the death of Mocenigo, three candidates were proposed for the ducal
throne, namely, Andrea Tron, Girolamo Venier, and Paolo Renier. If the
people had been consulted, Venier would have been acclaimed, though I do
not pretend to say that his election would have retarded the end.
Nothing is easier than to speculate about what ‘the people’ might have
done at any given point in history; nothing is harder than to guess what
they are going to do; nothing, on the whole, is more certain than that
the voice of the people never yet turned the scale at a great moment in
a nation well out of its infancy. No one pretends nowadays that the
French revolution was made by ‘the people.’
The many in Venice were vastly surprised to hear of Paolo Renier’s
candidacy, for he had a very indifferent reputation; to be accurate, the
trouble was that it was not indifferent, but bad. He was, indeed, a man
of keen penetration, rarely eloquent, and a first-rate scholar. He knew
Homer by heart, and he had translated Plato’s _Dialogues_, which latter
piece of work might partly explain, without excusing,
[Sidenote: _R. viii. 240, 241; Mutinelli, Ult._]
his deplorable morals; but it was neither from Plato nor from Homer that
he had learned to plunder the government of his country. One of his
contemporaries, Gratarol, described him as possessing ‘the highest of
talents, the most arrogant of characters, and the most deceptive of
faces.’
It was commonly reported in Venice that when he had been Bailo at
Constantinople he had taken advantage of the war between Turkey and
Russia, under Catherine the Great, to enrich himself in a shameful
manner, and the ninety thousand sequins he made on that occasion
afterwards served him, according to popular report, for bribing the
Barnabotti in the Great Council in order that the forty-one electors
chosen might be favourable to him. He was certainly not the inventor of
this plan, but he is generally said to have just outdone his
predecessors in generosity, without overstepping the limits of strict
economy. The general belief is that he bought three hundred votes at
fifteen sequins each, which was certainly not an excessive price. It
appears, too, that he distributed money to the people in order to soothe
the irritation his candidacy caused. If all these accusations were not
clearly proved, they were at least the subject of contemporary satire.
A certain priest in particular wrote biting verses on him, in Venetian
dialect, describing the righteous anger of the late Marco Foscarini’s
ghost at the election of such a successor. The shade of the honourable
[Sidenote: _Malamani._]
man tears off the ducal insignia in disgust, and bitterly reproaches
Venice.
‘Ah, foolish Venice!’ it exclaims, ‘a Renier is Doge of our country, one
who with ribald heart and iniquitous words sought to undo that tribunal
which defends our country from all evil! Ah, mad Venice! Now indeed I do
repent me of having been Doge one year! Strike my name from the series
of the Doges, for I disdain to stand among traitors.’
After his election Paolo Renier had his first ‘osella’ coined with a
peculiarity in the superscription which irritated the public. The words
ran: ‘Paulus Reinerius principis munus,’ his name being in the
nominative case, a grammatical mistake which had always been regarded as
the special privilege of kings and emperors.
He made money of everything, by selling posts, franchises, and licenses
to beg at the door of the Basilica of Saint Mark. The Dogess was
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult._]
not a person likely to increase her husband’s popularity, for she had
been a rope-dancer, and never appeared at public ceremonies. As I have
explained elsewhere, it was the Doge’s niece who did the honours of the
palace, Dame Giustina, who was beloved and esteemed by all Venetians,
but ‘the Delmaz,’ as the Doge’s wife was called, interfered in a hundred
details of the administration.
It is told, for instance, that the priest of the church of San Basso
used to have the bell rung for mass very early in the morning, and that
it had a peculiarly harsh and shrill tone which disturbed the Dogess’s
slumbers. She sent for
[Sidenote: _Tassini, under ‘San Basso’; also Molmenti, Vecchie Storie._]
him and promised to make him a canon of Saint Mark’s if he would only
have the bell moved, or not rung. The good man promised and went away
delighted, but when, after a time, the canonry was not given to him, he
began ringing again, and doubtless enjoyed the thought that every stroke
set the faithless Dogess’s teeth on edge.
The people revenged themselves on the Renier family for its many
misdeeds in scathing epigrams, and when at last the Doge lay dying in
long agony, the
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult._]
gondoliers said that his soul refused to leave without being paid. The
truth is that as his death took place in Carnival week, on February
eighteenth, 1789, it was decided to keep his death a secret not only
over Ash Wednesday, but until the first Monday in Lent, in order not to
disturb the merrymaking,
[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 300._]
nor the reaction which was supposed to follow it; and he was buried
without much ceremony and with no display in the church of the
Tolentini.
The candidates proposed for election to succeed him were numerous, but
not of good quality. One of them, Sebastiano Mocenigo, was such a bad
[Sidenote: _Rom. viii, 301._]
character that when he had been in Vienna as Ambassador the Empress
Maria Teresa had asked the Republic to recall him. The truth was that
the few who were fit for the Dogeship would not accept it, or were
opposed by the whole body of the corruptible.
[Illustration: PONTE DELLA PIETÀ]
As a specimen of what went on during the election of the last Doge of
Venice, I subjoin an official list of what were considered the
legitimate expenses of the electors. The figures are from Mutinelli
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult._]
and may be trusted. They are given in Venetian ‘lire,’ one of which is
considered to have been equal to half a modern Italian ‘lira,’ or French
franc.
Ven. Lire.
Bread, wine, oil, and vinegar 29,421
Fish 24,410
Meat, poultry, game 20,370
Sausages, large and small 3,980
Preserved fruits and candles 47,670
Wines, liquors, coffee 63,845
Spices, herbs, fruit, flowers 6,314
Wood and charcoal 31,851
Utensils hired, worn, and lost 41,624
Small expenses 45,327
Given to footmen and to workmen of the guilds 63,583
Tobacco and snuff 4,931
Poem ‘La Scaramuccia’ (The Skirmish) 48
Almanacks 8
Game of Rocambole (said to have been a kind of Ombre) 550
Nightcaps 450
Felt caps 56
Socks 16
Black silk wig-bags 48
French, German, and Spanish snuff-boxes 3,077
Combs ‘à la royale,’ for wigs, and for caps 2,150
Essence of rose, carnation, lavender, and vanilla;
olive gum and gold powder 173
Rouge 9
One rosary 15
-------
Total 389,926
=======
Romanin, probably with another copy of the account which he does not
give in items, and writing earlier than Mutinelli, makes the sum a
little smaller. In any case it is certainly one of the most
extraordinary bills ever brought in by a Republic for electing its
chief.
In view of modern methods it will interest some
[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 302, note._]
of my readers to see how the expenses of Venetian elections increased
towards the end, according to Romanin:--
Ven. Lire.
Election of Carlo Ruzzini in 1732 68,946
“ Aloise Pisani “ 1734 70,629
“ Pietro Grimani “ 1741 70,667
“ Francesco Loredan “ 1752 134,290
“ Marco Foscarini “ 1762 120,868
“ Aloise Mocenigo “ 1763 125,234
“ Paolo Renier “ 1779 222,410
“ Ludovico Manin “ 1789 378,387
Greatly increased expenditure for successive elections during half a
century can only mean one of two things, the approach of a collapse, or
the imminence of a tyranny. The greater the proportionate increase from
one election to the next, the nearer is the catastrophe. The election of
the last Doge of Venice cost five and a half times as much as that of
Carlo Ruzzini. It would be interesting to know what proportion Julius
Cæsar’s enormous expenses, when he was elected Pontifex Maximus, bore to
those of a predecessor in the same office fifty years earlier.
The Venetian electors who managed to consume, or make away with, nearly
eight thousand pounds’ worth of food, drink, tobacco, and rose-water in
nineteen days, chose an honest man, though a very incompetent one, and
the public showed no enthusiasm for the new Doge, in spite of the great
festivities held for his coronation. The Venetian people, too, preserved
their artistocratic tendencies to the very last, and always preferred a
Doge of ancient lineage to one who, like Manin, came of the ‘New men.’
He was not fortunate in his choice of a motto for his first ‘osella.’
He, who was to dig the grave of Venetian liberty, chose the single word
‘Libertas’ for the superscription on his first coin; and on that which
appeared in the last year but one of the independence of Venice were the
words ‘Pax in virtute tua,’ which, as Mr. Horatio Brown has pointedly
observed, ‘reads like a mocking epitaph upon the dying Republic.’
Manin was a weak and vacillating man, though truthful, generous to a
fault, and not a coward. As Doge, he was bound hand and foot, and only a
man of great character could have broken through such bonds to strike
out an original plan that might have prolonged his country’s life. He
gave his fortune without stint, but the idea of giving anything else did
not occur to him. Before the tremendous storm of change that broke with
the French revolution and raged throughout Europe for years, he bowed
his head, and Venice went down. No man is to be blamed for not being
born a hero; nor is the mother of heroes in fault when she is old and
can bear them no more.
[Illustration: FROM THE PUBLIC GARDEN AT SUNSET]
XV
THE LAST SOLDIERS
During the eighteenth century Venetian diplomacy succeeded in preserving
the Republic’s neutral position in spite of the great wars that agitated
Europe. Her only war was with the Turks, and it was disastrous.
Early in the century the Turks attacked the Peloponnesus, and Venice
lost her richest colonies in rapid
[Sidenote: _1715._]
succession. Her navy was no longer a power, and she was almost without
allies, for the European powers were exhausted by the recent war of the
Spanish succession, and though Malta and the Pope befriended her, the
help they could give was insignificant. It was not until the Turks
attacked Hungary that she received any efficient assistance; by uniting
her forces with those of the Empire she obtained some success, and the
desperate courage of Marshal Count von Schulenburg, a Saxon general in
the Venetian service, saved Corfu. The Turks, beaten at sea by the
Venetians, and on the Danube by the Hungarians at Temesvar, made peace,
and the treaty of Passarowitz put an end to the war.
[Sidenote: _1718._]
But Venice had for ever lost the Peloponnesus, Crete, and other valuable
possessions.
After this disastrous struggle, it was impossible to preserve any
further illusions as to the future. Venice felt that she was in full
decadence, and only endeavoured to hide its outward signs. Instead of
trying to beat against the current, she allowed herself to drift; things
went from bad to worse, and before long the army, the navy, and the
Arsenal were completely disorganised, though their expenses had not in
the least diminished. A contemporary says that a regiment looked like a
company, and a
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult. 150 sqq._]
company like a corporal’s guard, whereas the Republic was paying for
regiments with their full complement of men.
The service of the hired troops was beneath contempt. In Padua the
students of the
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult. 176._]
University defied the garrison. On one occasion, in a hideous orgy, they
accidentally or intentionally did to death a pretty beggar girl; but
when a detachment of Croatian soldiers attempted to arrest the culprits,
the students treated them with such utter contempt that their commander
was terrified, fled with his men to the safety of the barracks, and
bolted and barred the doors.
If such things happened on Venetian territory one may fancy what the
state of things was in the colonies. Corfu was supposed to be defended
by a company of Venetian soldiers and two companies of Albanians. From
1724 to 1745 the latter were represented by two men, a major and a
captain, whose sole business was to draw the pay of the whole force. The
two officers embezzled the sums allowed for the men’s food and uniforms,
and the pay was sent to the soldiers, who lived in their own homes in
the mountains. No trouble was taken even to identify them, and when one
died it was customary for another to take his name and receive his pay.
The two companies thus literally earned immortality, and the names on
the rolls never changed. Several Albanians who drew their pay as
Venetian mercenaries enrolled themselves also in the so-called ‘Royal
Macedonian’ regiment, in the service of the King of Naples, and were
never found out by the Republic. In twenty-one years these imaginary
troops cost Venice 54,300 sequins, or over £40,000.
The colonial garrisons economised their gunpowder by abolishing all
target practice, and consisted chiefly of utterly untrained old men who
were absent most of the time. The fortresses were not more serviceable
than the troops that were supposed to defend them. On the mainland, the
frontier fort of Peschiera was half dismantled, the drawbridges had
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult. and Tassini, under ‘Bombardiere.’_]
long rusted in their positions and could, not be raised, and the
ramparts were so overgrown with trees and shrubs as to be impassable; at
one time the fort did not even possess a flag to show its nationality.
Ninety of its guns had no carriages; the gunners lived quietly at their
homes in Venice, and if they ever remembered that they were supposed to
be soldiers it was because the government dressed them up on great
occasions as a guard of honour for the ducal palace. Their number was
between four and five hundred.
As for the fort of Corfu, it was robbed by a common thief. In 1745, a
certain Vizzo Manducchiollo promised the Turks two good guns, one of
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult. 169._]
bronze and one of iron. With the help of his gang he scaled the wall of
the Raimondo Fort one night, carried off the cannon, and sold them to
the Turks for twenty-seven sequins.
The workmen of the Arsenal in Venice, who had formerly been the
best-organised body of men in the Republic, had completely come to grief
in the eighteenth century. The Arsenal was supposed to be governed by a
voluminous code of laws, most of which were now either altogether
disregarded, or were administered with culpable leniency. The disorder
was incredible. Every son of a workman in the Arsenal had an hereditary
right to be employed there, but the officials who were in command did
not take any means of checking the men’s attendance; they paid so much a
head for every workman on the payroll, according to his age, whether he
ever appeared except on pay-days or not. In this way the State paid out
vast sums to men who only entered the gates once a month to draw their
wages for doing nothing. Many of them had other occupations, at which
they worked regularly and industriously. Some were even actors, and one
of the cleverest ‘Pantaloons’ was officially known as one of the
best-paid Arsenal hands. The six hundred apprentices who were supposed
to attend the technical schools attached to the different departments of
the yard, only looked in now and then. When the time came for them to
pass for the certificate of master workman they paid the sum of
thirty-four Venetian lire, in consideration of which the Examiners
pronounced them competent. In this way, as Mutinelli
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult. 145, 153._]
truly says, ignorance became hereditary, as employment in the Arsenal
already was, and the yard became a mere monument of former generous
initiative, very expensive to maintain.
At the fall of the Republic, Bonaparte seized and sent to France a large
number of vessels. When the Arsenal was sacked in 1797 it was
[Sidenote: _Rom. x. 162, note 2, and 304._]
found to contain 5293 pieces of artillery, of which 2518 were of bronze,
and the rest of iron; and at the last there were brought from the docks
ten ships of seventy guns, eleven of seventy-six, one of fifty-five,
thirteen of forty-two, two of thirty-two, twenty-three galleys, one
floating howitzer battery, two ‘cutters,’ whatever the Italian writer
may have meant,
[Illustration: BOAT-BUILDERS]
twelve gunboats, three brigs of sixteen to eighteen guns, one
fore-and-aft schooner, seven galleons and as many ‘zambecchi,’ five
feluccas, many boats armed with grenade mortars, ten floats with two
guns, and one floating-battery of seven guns.
If these vessels were not all badly built, they were certainly badly
fitted out and badly sailed when they went to sea. The Provveditori and
Inquisitors Extraordinary, sent from time to time by the Senate to
inspect the fleet, complained that they found neither good carpenters
nor good sailors. One frigate, which had a nominal crew of one hundred
and fifty-seven men, the _Concordia_, was found to have barely thirty,
and not able seamen at that. As for the convicts who pulled the oars on
the war-galleys, they were kept half-clothed and shelterless when
ashore; but being only carelessly guarded they often ran away, and not
unfrequently succeeded in finding employment, under assumed names, in
the smaller ports of the Republic. Some are known to have become
house-servants. Nevertheless the overseer of each gang regularly
pocketed the money allowed for their food and clothing.
In 1784 it was proved that for a long time from sixty to seventy
thousand fagots of wood and an immense number of barrel staves had
disappeared yearly, no one knew how. The workmen of the Arsenal did not
think it necessary to buy firewood when it could be had for nothing.
In 1730, the Provveditor Erizzo was ordered to one of the Eastern
colonies on an important mission, with several large vessels. Almost at
the moment of starting, the officers of one of these galleys came and
begged him to give them a captain not belonging to the
[Illustration: THE VEGETABLE MARKET]
navy, as they should not otherwise feel safe to go to sea.
Yet at this very time Goldoni wrote that every one sang in Venice:
‘They sing in the squares, in the streets, on the canals; the
shopkeepers
[Sidenote: _Goldoni, i. chap. xxxv._]
sing as they sell their wares; the workmen sing as they leave their
work; the gondolier sings while he waits for his master. The
characteristic of the nation is its gaiety.’
In the midst of this laughing decadence, in the very depth of this gay
and careless disintegration of a country’s body and soul, we come across
one devoted, energetic character, a fighting man of the better days, who
reminds us of what Venice was in her greatness.
Angelo Emo was great, considering the littleness of Venice in his time.
If we compare him with Vittor Pisani, Carlo Zeno, or Sebastian Venier,
he seems small as a leader; but as a plain, brave man, he is not dwarfed
by comparison with men who were colossal in an age of giants.
He was born in 1731, and was brought up by his father to dream of older
and greater times, and to know more of his country’s history than most
[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 289._]
youths of his day. He travelled early and far, often employed on
business of the State, and he was able to compare the condition of
Venice with that of other European countries, especially England and
France, in regard to military and naval matters.
He was not yet thirty years old when the government sent him to Portugal
to study the means of reviving the commercial relations between that
kingdom and Venice. Sailing down the Adriatic, he put into Corfu,
probably for fresh provisions; but on learning
[Illustration: PONTE CANONICA]
that many intrigues were already on foot to deprive
[Illustration: FONDAMENTA WEIDERMANN]
him of his mission, he set sail again at once for the Mediterranean in
order to be beyond reach of recall. He passed the Straits of Gibraltar,
but fell in with a gale of wind in the ocean which nearly put an end to
his sailing for ever. The Venetian vessels were not remarkable for their
seaworthiness at best, and ocean weather was almost too much for Emo’s
ship. He himself describes the frightful confusion in the storm, and the
difficulty he had in managing his men. To make matters worse, the
freshwater tanks were sprung and most of the supply was lost, so that
water was served out in rations, while the food consisted principally of
what the British sailor terms ‘salt horse.’ Then the vessel lost her
rudder, and things looked badly; but the gale moderated and died out at
last, and the ship brought to near a wooded coast, whence Emo was able
before long to get a tree, which was rough hewn to serve as a rudder,
and he got his vessel into port at last, ‘with the admiration and
applause of every one,’ says Romanin, after describing the affair of the
jury-rudder as only a landsman can describe an accident at sea.
His mission to Portugal was successful, and Emo returned to Venice; but
when he tried to direct the attention of the government to reforms of
which the army and navy stood in urgent need, he could obtain no
practical result, so that when he was
[Sidenote: _1784._]
placed in command of a fleet, with orders to punish the Bey of Tunis and
the Algerian pirates, he was well aware that his force was by no means
what it appeared to be to the inexperienced public. In the course of the
campaign his largest ship, _La Forza_, ill-equipped and worse
officered, sank before his eyes off Trapani, and none of the other
vessels could be relied on to do any better. Yet with such material and
such men he sustained a conflict that lasted three years, and if he was
unable to destroy the Bey of Tunis, he at least humbled him, brought
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult. 150, and Rom. viii. 294._]
him to terms, and obtained from him a formal treaty engaging to put down
piracy on the African coast. France profited much by the result of this
expedition, and one of the last documents signed by Louis XVI. before he
fell was a letter to the Doge Manin, in which Angelo Emo was praised to
the skies for the good work he had done.
The Admiral was rewarded with the title of Cavaliere, the only one the
Republic ever conferred, and with the office of Procurator of Saint
Mark’s, but I cannot find that his advice as to reforms was ever
listened to. A few years later, the Bey of Tunis broke his promise in
regard to piracy, and Emo was again sent with a fleet to chastise him,
but was suddenly taken ill in Malta, and died in a few days. He was
poisoned, it is said, by Condulmer, his principal lieutenant, who at
once succeeded him as admiral.
The last Venetian fighting man was of average height and lean, and
stooped a little; he
[Sidenote: _Statue of Emo, Canova; Arsenal._]
was pale, his forehead was broad, and he had blue eyes and black
eyebrows, particularly thick and bushy. His mouth was strong, but the
lips were thick and coarse.
His remains were carefully embalmed in Malta and were brought home to
Venice on his flagship, the _Fama_--‘fame’--which came to anchor on the
twenty-fourth of May 1792. The body was followed from the mole to Saint
Mark’s by the clergy, the schools, the magistracies, and a vast
concourse of people. The funeral mass was sung in the presence of the
Doge, and the vast procession wended its way to the church of the
Serviti. To the martial sound of drums and the solemn roar of the minute
gun, Venice laid her last captain to rest beside his fathers.
[Illustration: THE SALUTE FROM S. GIORGIO]
XVI
THE LAST DIPLOMATISTS
During the seventeenth century the Republic had no doubt of her own
military strength, but nevertheless trusted much to her diplomacy; in
the eighteenth the latter was the last good weapon left her of the many
that had once been in her armoury, and skilled as her diplomatic agents
were, their efforts could not prevent her from spoliation by the Turks,
whose simple rule was to take first and to talk about rights
afterwards.
In a measure, too, Venice’s position as a neutral power was dearly
bought, and more than once in the war of the Spanish succession her
territory was the
[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 5, sqq._]
scene of fighting between French and Germans. The same skill kept her
out of the field during the quarrels for the succession of Parma, of
Tuscany, of Poland, and of Austria, and obtained for Venetian
Ambassadors a place of honour in the congresses that resulted in the
treaties of Utrecht, Vienna, and Aix-la-Chapelle.
During the American war of independence, there were constant diplomatic
relations between the Republic and the American deputies who came to
France for the congress of Versailles. The Venetian archives contain a
letter signed by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson, by
which the Americans hoped to lay the foundations of a commercial treaty;
but owing to the excessive caution of Venice the attempt had no result.
The Republic of the Adriatic had almost always looked eastward for her
trade, and distrusted the new world which she had declined to help to
discover. The original letter, written in the English language, and
addressed to the Venetian Ambassador in Paris, Daniele Dolfin, has not
been published, I believe; and I shall not insult the memory of such
writers by attempting to turn Romanin’s
[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 229, 230._]
translation back into their language. The letter explains that the three
signers are fully empowered by their government to negotiate a friendly
treaty of commerce, and will be glad to enter upon the negotiation as
soon as the Venetian Ambassador is properly authorised to do so; in
signing they use the form, ‘your most obedient, humble servants.’ For
the benefit of any American who may wish to get at the original, I may
add that Romanin found the letter in the Archives of the Senate, with
the despatches from France of Daniele Dolfin, envelope 261.
A letter from another Venetian Ambassador in Paris, Cappello,
prophetically dated July fourteenth, 1788, exactly one year before the
destruction
[Sidenote: _Rom. ix. 153._]
of the Bastille, to the very day, sounds the first warning alarm of the
approaching revolution; few writers have better summed up the condition
of the French monarchy when it was on the brink of the abyss, and no
diplomatist could have given his own country better advice.
The Committee of the Savi, who concentrated all power into their own
hands, did not even communicate this letter to the Senate. Cappello
spoke still more clearly when he made his formal report in person, on
returning from his mission and after leaving Paris just when the King
was to be asked to sign the Constitution, a document for which the
Ambassador confesses that he can find no name. ‘It is not a monarchy,’
he says, ‘for it takes everything from the monarch; it is not a
democracy, because the people are not the legislators; it is not that of
an aristocracy, for the mere name is looked upon in France not as
treason against the King, but as treason against the nation.... The
National Assembly began by encroaching upon all powers, and by
confounding within itself all the attributes of sovereignty, usurping
the administrative functions from the executive power, and from the
judiciary the right of judging criminal cases.’
It is easy to understand the impression made by such a report, in the
course of which the Ambassador narrated the scenes that took place in
Versailles and at the Tuileries after the night of October sixth, 1789.
The aristocratic Venetian Republic sympathised profoundly with the dying
French monarchy; but it was impossible to believe that such a state of
things would last long, and the government was painfully surprised by
the letter in which Louis XVI. announced that he accepted the situation.
That letter is in existence. In it the King declares that he has
accepted the new form of government ‘of his own free will; that the
National Assembly is only a reform of the ancient States General, and
will ensure the happiness of the nation and the monarchy.’ The King
adds, as if to hide his weakness from himself, that what is called a
‘revolution’ is mostly only the destruction of a mass of prejudices and
abuses which endanger the public wealth, and that he was therefore proud
to think that he should leave his son something; better
[Sidenote: _Rom. ix. 178._]
than the crown as he had inherited it from his ancestors, namely, a
constitutional monarchy.
This letter, with its artificial enthusiasm, is dated March fourteenth,
1791, three months before the King’s flight and his arrest at Varennes,
and less than two years before his murder on the scaffold.
[Illustration: FROM THE PONTE DELLA PIETÀ]
Cappello’s successor as Ambassador in Paris, Alvise Pisani, continued to
keep his government informed of what occurred. On the twenty-fifth of
September 1791, Louis XVI. addressed another letter to his ‘most dear
friends, allies, and confederates,’ the Venetians, in which he expresses
the certainty that they will be rejoiced to hear of his having signed
the Constitution, which had so greatly shocked Cappello. In spite of the
painful impression produced by these documents, it was necessary to
answer them, if only as a matter of etiquette.
The position of the Republic was a difficult one. Prudence required the
strictest neutrality as to the affairs of other nations; but the mere
fact that every one recognised this as Venice’s only possible position
exposed her to perfidious and secret attacks of all sorts. France
maintained a vast number of secret agents to propagate revolutionary
doctrines in the Venetian territory, and at the same time lost no
opportunity of trying to pick a quarrel with the Republic, by insulting
her flag. On the twenty-ninth of November 1792, the captain of a French
man-of-war, bearing a Spanish name, the _Buenos Ayres_, asked permission
to land with eight men on the Venetian shore, but refused to submit to
the regulations of the Health Office. His request was refused. Thereupon
he proceeded to abuse the Venetian government from the deck of his ship.
He wound up by declaring that there was no such thing existing as a
Sovereign Government, that all men were equal, and that he was a
magistrate, as good as any senator. He chose to land, and he would land
if he chose. A Venetian galley hindered him
[Sidenote: _Rom. ix. 219._]
from doing so, but as he made off he cried out: ‘You will change your
minds in a year!’
Poor France! She herself was to learn a century later that all men are
equal--in the eyes of German Jews.
At that time Austria allied herself with Piedmont to oppose the French
invasion which was imminent, and the Venetian Envoy at the court of
Turin continually advised his government to join this league, which
alone could save the Republic and the other Italian powers.
The Committee of the Savi who had absorbed the government of Venice
simply by saving trouble to all the other officials, allowed the Senate
to
[Sidenote: _Rom. ix. 195._]
discuss this proposition, probably because they understood its vast
importance. But the Senate declared for strict neutrality, and the Savi
felt that after this they were free to do as they pleased, and from that
time they decided according to their own judgment as to the question of
showing any despatch to the Councils or of suppressing it in order to
avoid public discussions.
Nevertheless, they felt the danger of the moment enough to recall the
Venetian vessels stationed at Malta and Corfu, in order to defend the
approaches to Venice, a measure which displeased France on the ground
that it was a preparation for hostilities. Thus the success of the
French army in Savoy obliged the Savi to call in the Senate again, to
discuss the public safety. The ‘fathers of their country’ were at that
time mostly in their country places, thoroughly enjoying themselves; but
they too must have felt that there was danger in the air, for they
answered the summons of Francesco Pesaro, the presiding Savio for the
week. A lively discussion took place, but once more neutrality was voted
by a strong majority, and the government of the Savi now entered upon a
course of half measures more dangerous in reality than any one mistake
could have been. Permission was granted to the Imperial troops to
transport provisions from Trieste to Goro, and with a last revival of
the business spirit the Republic violated the neutrality she had voted
by selling corn and oats to the Austrians. At this the Venetian
Ambassador withdrew to London for safety, leaving his secretary in
charge.
An incident now occurred in Venice
[Sidenote: _Rom. ix. 203._]
which was calculated to bring matters to a crisis.
The French Ambassador, who had quitted Venice, had left in charge of the
Embassy a certain Monsieur Henin, who had taken as his private secretary
a priest called Alessandri. On the twenty-ninth of December 1792 this
priest was sent for in haste by the Superior of the bare-footed
Carmelites of the monastery of San Geremia, close to the palace occupied
by the French Embassy. He was introduced with some mystery, but with no
loss of time, and was conducted to the Superior’s room, where he was
warned that unless he left Venice by the sixth of January, he would be
assassinated. There was a plot to kill him, but one of the intended
murderers had confessed to the Superior himself, and under the seal of
confession had begged the monk to save Alessandri’s life.
The priest, who does not seem to have been timid, was much surprised,
but promised nothing as to leaving the city, though he appears to have
at once considered
[Illustration: ON THE WAY TO FUSINA, FROM THE MOUTH OF THE BRENTA]
the means of getting away. But on that same evening the Superior
received an anonymous note with these words: ‘Either the Abbé Alessandri
will leave Venice to-morrow, and at once quit Venetian territory, or
something serious will happen to him.’ The Superior sent for Alessandri
again. The note, strange to say, had been delivered together with
fifteen gold sequins, which the unknown writer sent to help the priest’s
flight.
The priest now lost no time, but left at once for Fusina on the
mainland, and finding no means of getting on at once, pursued his
journey on foot. He had left with the monk a written receipt for the
money, which he had been forced to accept, and he had also informed his
employer, Monsieur Henin, of the cause of his sudden departure.
Monsieur Henin was furious, and not without some reason. He wrote a
violent letter to the Venetian Government, inquiring how an unknown
person could dare anything so outrageous in a well-regulated community.
Who was instigating the outrageous crime? What monster had paid fifteen
sequins to have the murder committed? What was the meaning of the
pretended confession? Why did the villainous author of the abominable
plan drag a monk into the plot? This was the gist of Monsieur Henin’s
letter, and he ended by demanding the immediate arrest and condign
punishment of the murderer, or murderers, and the recall of his fugitive
secretary, who, he insisted, must be so well guarded by the government
as not to be in fear of his life.
The Secretary of Embassy certainly had right on his side so far, but he
followed up his letter in an interview with one of the Inquisitors, in
which he declared his belief that it was the government itself that
threatened Alessandri. The Inquisitors might have answered that they
disposed of much simpler and surer means than the hand of a hired
assassin whenever they wished to be rid of an obnoxious person. Henin
suggested, too, that the outrage was instigated by Austria in order to
exasperate France, an idea which seems deficient in logic.
Henin appears to have been a violent sort of person, and anything but a
diplomatist. Of course he had right on his side, but Alessandri, on
inquiry, turned out to be a bad character, and anything but the ‘mild,
tranquil, reticent, and retiring’ creature of fifty-six, whom the
Frenchman represented him to be. He had been obliged to leave his native
city, Trent, for debt and various misdemeanours; he was a violent
revolutionary, and in his ‘tranquil retirement’ he dwelt with a
disreputable woman of the people, whom he had enticed away from her
family; from which facts it was easy to argue that he had made himself
the object of some private vengeance.
Nevertheless, and although Henin had not at that time any proper
credentials as _Chargé d’Affaires_, the Inquisitors thought it best to
avoid disturbance, and Alessandri was brought back and properly
protected. Almost immediately upon this Henin received credential
letters from his government, and asked to present them to the Senate.
The Savi, who detested the man, were much disturbed; and as the Senate
and the Great Council left the matter to them, they asked the assistance
[Sidenote: _Rom. ix. 207._]
of those of their colleagues who had served their time and retired. As
they wore black cloaks the people nicknamed them the ‘Consulta Nera,’
the ‘Black Cabinet.’
Not to receive the official representative of the new French government
would have been contrary to the policy of strict neutrality adopted by
the Venetian Republic; to receive him was to irritate Austria and to
expose Venice to an attack from that side. She had pursued a policy of
half measures, and the end of half measures is always a fall between two
stools. The fall was precipitated by the soothing eloquence of one of
the speakers, who assured his colleagues that all Europe would
understand and forgive them for yielding to necessity.
The Senate accordingly voted with the Black Cabinet that Henin should be
received, but instructed its ambassadors at the various European courts
to convey information of the fact with all the circumspection possible,
and in such a way as to palliate the action of the Venetian government
in the eyes of the world.
While this was going on, the secretary whom the Venetian Ambassador
Pisani had left in charge at Paris, wrote an eloquent letter describing
the
[Sidenote: _1793._]
death of Louis XVI., and he sent at the same time a scrap of the cloak
which the King had worn on his way to the scaffold. This caused the most
profound emotion. In the Senate, Angelo Quirini loudly declared that all
diplomatic relations with a government of hangmen and executioners must
be instantly broken off.
The matter was still in discussion when Henin demanded, in the name of
his government, the authorisation to place the arms of the French
Republic over the door of his residence. As his credentials had been
accepted it was impossible to refuse this request, but the general
indignation of the better sort of the people was unbounded.
There were now two parties in Venice. On the one hand, the secret
emissaries of France preached revolutionary doctrines, and stirred up
the criminal classes; on the other, a vast literature of pamphlets,
articles, satires, and caricatures, all attacking the French, were
openly circulated throughout the city. In the hope of diverting the
attention of the whole population from political matters the Savi made
frantic and extravagant efforts to amuse everybody. The very last
carnival before the end was the most magnificent ever remembered.
In the year of the French King’s murder, Bonaparte was a captain of
artillery, and France was about to face the first coalition of the
powers, after putting down the royalists in Vendée.
Henin continued to annoy the Signory in every possible way, and made the
smallest incidents the subjects of official complaint and protest. He
was at last recalled, but his successor was a man called Noël, who was
such a notoriously bad character that the Venetian Senate put off
receiving his credentials again and again on all sorts of grounds,
doubtless believing, too, that the French revolutionary government was
not going to last even so long as it did. To gain time was to save
dignity, thought the Senators. But Noël grew tired of waiting, and
abruptly returned to Paris in a very bad humour, to stir up against
Venice the resentment of the Committee of Public Safety.
It was now no longer an easy matter to keep up
[Illustration: A LONELY CANAL]
appearances of neutrality. England, especially, lost no opportunity of
urging Venice to join the European League, and Worsley, the last English
Minister, was perpetually insisting on a rupture with France.
Another circumstance occurred to increase the difficulty of Venice’s
position. The Comte de Lille, afterwards Louis XVIII., who styled
himself Regent of France during the captivity of his nephew, the
unfortunate child Louis XVII., being obliged to leave Piedmont, asked
permission to reside in Verona, and the Signory, anxiously hoping for a
restoration in France, received him with the honours due to his rank and
the welcome a friend might expect. At this the French Republic took
umbrage and protested violently, but the Venetians answered that the
presence of the Comte de Lille in Verona, where he led a retired life,
was no violation of neutrality.
The Savi now had more on their hands than they could manage, for they
were obliged at one and the same time to watch the movements of the
revolutionary propaganda and to keep themselves informed of the doings
of the royalist party who plotted in Venice to restore the French
monarchy. And meanwhile, in spite of a nominal press censorship, the
_Postiglione_ newspaper satirised the French Republic in the bitterest
manner, giving Robespierre constant cause of complaint.
Diplomatic relations were now strained almost to the breaking point.
Pisani was still supposed to be the Venetian Ambassador in Paris, though
[Sidenote: _Rom. ix. 231-239._]
he resided in London, and the French Envoy in Venice had left in
disgust at not being received. On the latter point the French yielded,
and sent another and more respectable representative, a certain
Lallement, whom the Signory consented to receive in spite of the
objections of the English Minister.
The question now arose, who was to succeed Pisani in Paris, and how the
new envoy was to be styled. Lallement had brought very simply worded
credentials, and had agreed to assume any designation which the Signory
desired. The Savi were much distressed about this matter, but they
selected Aloise Quirini for the mission, and at last decided that he
should be addressed neither as Ambassador nor Minister, but simply as
‘the Noble Quirini.’ They could hardly have chosen a title better
calculated to irritate a government which held that nobility was a worse
crime than forgery or assassination.
The Noble Quirini accordingly went to Paris with a very magnificent
salary, and with instructions to keep up the splendid traditions of
former Venetian representatives abroad.
But meanwhile the child Louis XVII. had disappeared from the scene, and
the Comte de Lille, or the Comte de Provence as he was called
[Sidenote: _Rom. ix. 252._]
when not travelling incognito, was a source of much anxiety to Venice.
He was now undoubtedly the legitimate King of France, and his modest
residence in Verona had become a court at which every point of etiquette
was most rigorously observed. The European powers encouraged him in his
efforts to restore the monarchy in his own person, and England, Austria,
and Russia sent envoys to him in Verona without in the least considering
the difficulties which their action might cause the Venetian government.
At this juncture France invented another form of government, and
Lallement appeared before the Senate with an entirely new set of
credentials as
[Sidenote: _1796._]
the Envoy of the Directory, which, he declared, was no less disposed
than its predecessors in power to remain ‘in perfect understanding and
on the most friendly terms’ with the Venetian Republic. The man who was
to end the hideous and grotesque succession of butcheries and farces
which had lasted seven years was in favour with this last-hatched and
half-fledged government, and his dominating influence was beginning to
be felt. Bonaparte was now twenty-six years old; he was grown up.
A few months earlier Lallement had read before the Venetian Senate a
proclamation which the ‘Representatives of the People’ sent to the army
[Sidenote: _1795._]
of the Alps, as a general warning against the Genoese, the Tuscans, and
the Venetians, who, in spite of their protestations of friendship,
allowed their ships to capture and plunder French vessels on the high
seas. By the end of 1795 the French were masters of the Riviera, having
beaten the Austrians very badly.
Venice was now accused of having violated her neutrality by allowing the
passage of Austrian troops through her dominions. She answered that she
had acted in accordance with a very ancient treaty which accorded the
Empire the use of the road to Gambara, and that she was as neutral as
ever; but this the French found it hard to believe. When further accused
of favouring royalist intrigues, the Signory made a show of punishing
the authors of a few libels on the Directory.
As for Louis XVIII., as the Comte de Lille was now called by his
adherents, Venice was reluctantly obliged to ask him to leave her
territory, as the Directory threatened war if he remained.
He departed, shaking the dust from his feet. He demanded that the name
of his family should be
[Sidenote: _Smedley, Sketches from Venetian History, ii. chap. xx.
note._]
erased from the Golden Book, and that the armour of his ancestor Henry
IV. should be given back to him. This armour Smedley rightly conjectures
to have been the sword worn by Henry IV. at the battle of Ivry, with
which he had knighted the Venetian Ambassadors after his accession, and
which he then presented to the Treasury of Saint Mark’s.
The Signory entirely refused to accede to the Comte de Lille’s demands.
It could not deprive itself, it replied, of the satisfaction of counting
the royal family of France amongst its nobility, and it could not bring
itself to part with such a valuable gift as it had received from Henry
IV.; and with this quiet answer to the Russian envoy who represented him
the Comte de Lille had to be satisfied.
But France was not, and the Inquisitors received many private warnings
to the effect that the French government would seize upon any pretext
for attacking Venice. ‘Arm, if you hope not to be trodden under foot!’
Such was the burden of these fruitless messages.
Austria, Sardinia, Naples, and Pius VII. openly allied themselves
together, and the Duchies of Parma and Modena secretly promised their
help. Genoa was paralysed by the vicinity of the French army; Tuscany
was playing the game of neutrality, like Venice.
The Signory had great confidence in the army of the allies and in its
chief, Bonaparte was only a boy; the old general Beaulieu would easily
beat him.
But the Signory was mistaken. The boy had grown up--‘Napoleon, Apollyon,
destroyer of Cities, being a Lion roaming about,’ as the barbarous Greek
jest on his name has it.
[Illustration: EVENING]
XVII
THE LAST HOUR
The end was at hand when Bonaparte crossed the river Po. One is apt to
forget that he had already showed himself to be much more than a
victorious
[Sidenote: _1796. Rom. ix. 284._]
general, and that throughout the campaign he displayed that marvellous
skill in dealing with men which so often ensured him an enthusiastic
reception in places where he could not have been expected to be
welcome.
He had soon realised the horrible impression produced everywhere outside
of France by the Revolution, the Terror, and the Committee of Public
Safety, and he hastened, by his numberless agents, to exalt the virtues
of the Directory. They were not a herd of bloodthirsty ruffians, he
taught, but an assemblage of the future saviours of mankind, who were to
emancipate the world from all those ancient political and social
prejudices which had so long held it in bondage.
He could not unteach the scum of the Italian populace what the agents of
the Revolution had taught it with such lavish expenditure in
disreputable taverns and worse resorts, but he could control the
teachers and gradually change the direction of the education. The
Venetian gondoliers could be taught something, too, and the Venetian
Barnabotti could be bribed to learn anything, and to impart what they
learned.
‘No organisation,’ says Bonnal, ‘was ever superior to his (Bonaparte’s),
no revolutionary organisation was ever more formidable. We mean
“revolutionary” as regards the legitimate governments
[Sidenote: _Bonnal, Chute d’une République, 273-274._]
existing in Italy, with which we were not at war, and as regards the
means used.... It was at Milan that his system became a definite
official service, both political and military. Thence arose two
principal offices exactly answering the aim he was pursuing, that is,
the political propaganda and the military propaganda. By means of the
political propaganda he sought to bring about either the substitution of
one domination for another, or the modification of the forms of
government.... Lombardy is an example of the first case, the Italian
Duchies of the second. By his military propaganda he roused the
populations to arms, sometimes against the legitimate sovereign, as
happened in Venice and Parma, sometimes against a foreign power, as at
Milan.’
Once more, as in the war of the Spanish succession, the Venetian
territory became a refuge and a provision market for two hostile armies.
The fortresses, as has been seen, were really at the mercy of any one
who chose to occupy them. On the ninth of May the Imperial troops,
yielding to the request of Contarini the Governor of Crema, and
supposing the place to be capable of defence, consented to pass by the
city without entering it. If they had insisted no one could have
hindered them, and the letter Contarini afterwards wrote to the Venetian
government disturbed even the astounding optimism of the Savi. The
latter were shocked when they thought of the risk they had run, and by
way of getting rid of all further responsibility they appointed a
Provveditor to watch over the safety of the Venetian territory. More
than this their worst enemies could not have expected them to do. They
selected a Foscarini for the office, and were particularly careful to
admonish him that he must ‘preserve intact the tranquillity of the
Republic, and administer comfort and consolation to its subjects.’ I
translate literally the phrase, which sounds like the drivelling of an
old man in second childhood.
The imperial troops were barely out of sight of
[Illustration: OUT IN THE LAGOON]
Crema when the French appeared, and Contarini renewed his request that
the city might not be entered. Berthier consented, but requisitioned
provisions and forage. Soon afterwards came Bonaparte himself and he
also consented to pass on, but not until he had squeezed every particle
of available information out of the governor, whose letter narrating the
interview gives a remarkably clear idea of the great young man’s
conversation.
The Senate wrote to the Commander of the fortress of Peschiera not to
allow any foreign soldiers to enter under any circumstances. I have
described the condition of the place elsewhere, and the unlucky colonel
at once answered, inquiring what in the world he was to do in order to
prevent the passage of the Imperial troops.
The Austrian general Liptay found it convenient to install himself in
Peschiera for some time, and when the Republic protested, he answered
with admirable coolness and much truth that the place was not a fortress
at all, and that he was encamped there as the French were in the fields
towards Brescia.
Even Bonaparte understood the absurdity of this case. ‘The truth about
the affair of Peschiera,’ he wrote to the Directory, ‘is that the
Venetians
[Sidenote: _Rom. ix. 297-299._]
have been duped by Beaulieu; he asked leave to pass with fifty men and
then made himself master of the city.’
In spite of this conviction, Bonaparte took advantage of the incident to
declare to the Provveditor Foscarini that he would burn Verona to punish
the Venetians for having favoured the Austrian troops; and Foscarini,
obliged to act on the spur of the moment and without consulting the
government, opened the gates of Verona to Masséna on receiving the
latter’s assurance that the city should not be burned. He probably
fancied that he had obtained a great concession, and did not understand
that Verona was absolutely necessary to the French as a base from which
to advance on Mantua, held by the Imperial troops.
The news of the occupation of Verona produced the utmost alarm in
Venice, yet the Great Council was not summoned, nor was there a regular
sitting of the Senate. The days had gone by when the great bell of Saint
Mark’s was rung backward to call every fighting man to arms, and every
aged Senator to the Council. The handful of scared and vacillating men
who had steered Venice to her end met stealthily by night in the Casino
Pesaro, more like conspirators than defenders of their country. Most of
them fancied the French already in the lagoons, if not in the city;
some, forgetting that they had neither troops nor captains, were for
defence to the death; some, who had secretly adopted revolutionary ideas
and principles, rejoiced at heart because the end was so near.
Such a meeting of such men could come to nothing; and nothing was
decided except that Foscarini, the Provveditor, should be assisted by
two other nobles, commissioned to negotiate with Bonaparte.
They went and found him apparently in the mildest and most friendly
humour, but the report of their interview with him reached the Senate
together with a communication from the Inquisitors explaining
Bonaparte’s plan for taking possession of the fort of
[Illustration: THE SALUTE FROM THE LAGOON]
Legnago, making sure of the free navigation of the Adige, and
threatening to destroy Venice in order to extort a sum of five or six
millions of francs.
So Venice, still theoretically neutral, was driven to collect such poor
forces as she had by land and sea, in order to defend herself against
the depredations of the combatants. She had not a single general to
direct her men, or to plan a defence. Three nobles were in charge of her
boundaries on the mainland; another was made responsible for the
capital, and two were placed in charge of the lagoons. A war-tax was
levied, too, and it is due to the citizens of the dying State to say
that they were generous to their country to the last. Many citizens of
all classes gave large sums of their own free will to help the defence,
and not in Venice only; the cities of Friuli and Dalmatia, and even
small communities at a great distance, made heavy sacrifices
spontaneously for the public safety.
The historian Romanin was of opinion that even at that moment, if the
government had found resolution enough to sacrifice all her possessions
on
[Sidenote: _Rom. ix. 321._]
the mainland, as at the time of the League of Cambrai, a clever
diplomacy might yet have saved the State. But he was a Venetian and a
most patriotic one, and he could not understand that it needed something
more than skill to keep Venice alive, that it needed life itself, the
life that was all spent, at last, after more than a thousand years.
The Provveditor for the lagoons, Giacomo Nani, wrote to the Doge the
courageous words: ‘A State has not the right to possess provinces which
it cannot defend.’ He, too, remembered the League of Cambrai. But the
Doge was not to be roused; it was no longer vacillation, it was
paralysis of the will that made him follow the Senate. Yet Nani’s
letters determined the Savi to look about for some general into whose
hands the whole defence might be given. It was the old tradition of
employing the condottiero; but there was only one man alive just then
who had the genius and the conviction that save a cause all but lost; he
was a man who could have stopped a host with Falstaff’s ragged company,
and he was at the gates of Venice. The Savi hit upon the Prince of
Nassau as a possible captain, but Austria stepped in and forbade that he
should be called.
The King of Naples now signed an armistice with the French, and
Bonaparte made himself at home on the Venetian mainland, quartering his
troops at Bergamo, Brescia, and Crema without ceremony, and merely
notifying the Venetian Senate that he did so, as if no excuse were
needed. He took the Venetian guns he found at Legnago and used them at
the siege of Mantua as if they were his own. Bonaparte was well aware of
the truth of what Nani had written to the Doge, and he took full
advantage of the axiom. If the governors of the cities in which he chose
to stop did not please him, he wrote them notes like the following:--
... I beg you, Sir, to let me know what game we are playing, for I
do not believe you will allow your brothers in arms [the French
soldiers!] to die without help
[Sidenote: _Rom. ix. 341._]
within the walls of Brescia, or to be murdered on the highroad. If
you are not able to keep order in your country, and to make the
city of Brescia furnish what is needed for establishing hospitals
and for the wants of the troops, I shall have to take more
efficient measures.--Believe me, with feelings of esteem and
consideration,
BONAPARTE.
Bonnal says of him that he avenged legitimate complaints with a host of
accusations and denials, and with unmistakable threats; and the
Venetians
[Sidenote: _Bonnal, 275._]
made excuses. Whereupon Bonaparte answered that he would ‘beat the
Austrians and make the Venetians pay for the war.’ Which he did.
At the same time he was writing to the Directory:--
... I am obliged to be indignant with the Provveditor, to
exaggerate the number of assassinations, etc., in order that he, to
calm my fury, may furnish me everything I
[Sidenote: _Rom. ix. 351._]
need; they will continue to give us what we want, willingly or by
force, until Mantua is taken, after which I shall demand of them
such contribution as you may order me, which will not be in the
least difficult.
If Bonaparte could find pretexts for accusing the Venetians of helping
the Austrians, the latter had excellent reasons for complaining that
Venice helped the French. Austria and France were the two stools between
which half measures had led the Republic, and between which she fell.
The position of the French army was not enviable at that time, and the
alliance of Venice would really have been worth having, which was the
reason why her obstinate efforts at neutrality exasperated Bonaparte to
such a degree. At last his patience gave out and he ordered General
Baraguay d’Hilliers, the father of the marshal of that name who died in
1878,
[Sidenote: _Twenty-fifth of December 1796._]
to occupy Bergamo, not as a guest, but as master. The Austrians at once
replied by seizing Palma and Osopo.
The peasants and the small communities were now driven to extremities;
for the Government had left them to their fate, and they were plundered
alike by the French and the Austrians. Discontent spread rapidly, and
the rural population may be supposed to have been in the best possible
disposition to receive the revolutionary doctrines by which Bonaparte
had already called into existence the Cispadane Republic. That
short-lived affair was made up of the cities and territories of Ferrara,
Bologna, Modena, and Reggio d’Emilia, and was momentarily the
headquarters of republicanism. In spite of all that the remnant of
government in Venice could do against it, its influence was felt on
Venetian territory. Behind all, the propaganda of Milan worked
[Sidenote: _Rom. x. 12._]
steadily to carry out Bonaparte’s plan under General Landrieux, whom he
had deputed to take charge of that end of it.
Bergamo was the first city to rise and drive out the Venetian governor,
in order to join the Cispadane Republic; the city of Brescia followed,
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Nuovi Studi, 356._]
naturally enough. But the country people of the two provinces still
remained faithful to the Republic, and the peasants about Brescia were
so indignant with the city for its defection that they would have
marched upon it to burn it down if they had not been hindered by their
Bishop, Dolfin. At Vallesabbia, certain emissaries of the republicans
from the city were so ill received that they fled precipitately in fear
of their lives.
Two days after the latter incident, the inhabitants of the villages of
the valley met in a field
[Sidenote: _March 1797._]
near Nozze, and drew up the following declaration, which was approved
with absolute unanimity.
VALLESABBIA,
_March 27th, 1797_.
In order to record its own fidelity and obedience to its beloved
Prince of Venice, and taking oath of perpetual loyalty and
adherence to the said Prince, this body votes that if persons of
any class or condition are found in this Valley having the cockade
of rebels against the Prince of Venice, and actually having that
cockade on their hats, any one shall be free to arrest them, and
let him have a prize of three hundred lire piccole for each one, of
[the funds of] the Valley.
And let this present vote be made known in every commune and put up
in the usual and habitual places for public notices; and it is not
to go into effect for three days, within which the parish priests
in their parishes shall publicly give notice of it to the people.
And if gangs of rebels against the Prince of Venice, or troops of
theirs, enter the Valley, the communities comprising the Valley
shall ring the bells with a hammer [meaning to ring them out, and
not to ‘chime’ them only]; and whosoever is between sixteen and
sixty years old, and whosoever else will volunteer, is to take arms
in the name of the Valley to arrest them [rebels or troops], and
may also kill them; and whoever refuses shall be punished by
confiscation of all his goods.
The government might have done something to encourage people capable of
such devotion; it might at least have ordered them to send deputations
to the capital to give information of the state of the country. This the
province of Verona asked to be allowed to do, through the Marchese
Scipione Maffei, in a petition which the Savi suppressed, without even
[Sidenote: _Rom. x. 32._]
presenting it to the Great Council, because they considered that it
might lead to dangerous discussion. They confined themselves to
recommending every subject of the most Serene Republic to act with the
greatest circumspection towards all the French, as the Venetians had no
means of defending themselves against the latter’s pretensions.
In spite of the bad impression made by such weakness, more than thirty
thousand men from the provinces volunteered to put down the republican
rising, but they had to be sent home for lack of funds and weapons. One
hundred young men of the burgher class offered to arm and support
themselves at their own expense. From all this it is clear enough that,
at the very last, the descendants of the nobles who had made Venice were
responsible
[Sidenote: _Nievo, Memorie d’un ottuagenario, 262._]
for her fall. Ippolito Nievo said pithily, that the Venetian aristocracy
was a corpse that could not revive, while the Venetian people were a
living race shut up with it in the tomb.
The republican revolution thus progressed almost without finding any
resistance and practically aided and abetted by the French troops.
Bonaparte was so sure of his plan that he did not even make a mystery
of it to the envoys of the Venetian Republic who met him at Goritz. He
actually offered to pacify the Venetian provinces for the modest sum of
a million of francs monthly for six months, which was generous,
considering that he alone had caused all the disturbance. A Venetian
noble of the fifteenth century would certainly have got the better of
him in such a matter of business, but he was too much for the two nobles
with whom he had to deal. The monthly million was granted, but on
condition that he was not to interfere in the civil discord that
distracted the Republic, and not to hinder the government in its efforts
to reduce the rebellious cities to subordination.
Such an attempt was made, and the insurgents were beaten more than once,
and some of the ringleaders were brought to Venice. In other times
[Sidenote: _Rom. x. 56._]
they would have been tried by the Council of Ten and hanged within
twenty-four hours; now they were merely confined in the fort on the
Lido, in charge of two nobles, Tommaso Soranzo and Domenico Tiepolo, who
were recommended ‘to treat them charitably.’
But these successes so greatly encouraged the reaction against the
insurrection that Bonaparte feared lest he should lose some of the
fruits of
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Nuovi St. 356, 357._]
his industrious propaganda. Accordingly, by his instructions, General
Landrieux accused the Venetian troops of threatening the French army in
the valleys of Bergamo, and ordered the Venetian Governor, Battaglia,
to be put in irons, and his ‘accomplices’ to be hanged. These were mere
threats, of course, but after that the rebels were openly supported by
the French. On the other hand, the communities that meant to remain
faithful to the Republic invoked its help a last time before returning
the weapons they had taken from the insurgents, and swore that if they
were only given a leader they would die to a man in defence of Venice.
Even after the French had occupied the whole Venetian territory the
Senate still received loyal letters from Vallesabbia; one of these ended
with these words: ‘Our hearts will always be for Saint Mark, and we
therefore swear to break any promise that may be before long got from us
by force, at the first sight of the Venetian standard we love.’
The truce of Judenburg between France and Austria was destined in
Bonaparte’s opinion to decide the destinies of the Republic. Junot
appeared suddenly in Venice on Good Friday, bringing a despatch from
Bonaparte dated the ninth of April. A more violent and theatrical
document can hardly be imagined. The general accuses the Venetians of
rousing the country people to murder the French and ordering a perfect
Massacre of the Innocents. His magnificent generosity has met with
‘impious perfidy’ on the part of the Senate. His adjutant offers peace
or war, and war is declared if the authors of the massacres are not
delivered. Observe, that as there had been no massacres, no authors of
them could be given up, and therefore the declaration of war was made;
Bonaparte was always logical. He was ‘not a Turk,’ he adds; he was not
even an enemy. These were ‘not the days of Charles VIII.,’ and he gave
the Venetians twenty-four hours to realise the fact or perish. But he
would not come like their ‘assassins,’ to ‘lay waste the lands of an
innocent and unhappy people.’ He came to protect. The people would ‘one
day bless even the crimes which had obliged the French army to free them
from the tyranny of Venice.’
Bonaparte’s name is still execrated throughout Italy, and in a large
part of the south ‘French’ means ‘abominable.’ Even the southern sailors
call a dangerous storm ‘French weather.’
Junot had been informed that the government could transact no business
till after Holy Week, but he insisted on being received, and read the
despatch before the Doge and the Signory in an imperious tone. Bonaparte
possessed a marvellous dramatic sense, and he trained his men to act his
comedies to perfection. In the part of the Avenging Angel, Junot was
terribly impressive.
It may be supposed that even then Venice had a choice: she might submit,
or perish bravely in self-defence. But such men as Ludovico Manin and
the Savi were not free to choose. No weak man is when the strong man has
him by the collar. The Signory was used to humiliation, and was past
shame, and it followed to the end the path it had chosen.
The truce between France and Austria continued, but only the possession
of Venice could be the basis of a durable peace. Bonaparte’s plan was
to exasperate the Venetians till they really violated their neutrality,
and then to seize the city. No one ever comments on the morality of
conquerors nowadays. Virtue has nothing to do with the greatness of
princes. Bonaparte’s scheme was odious, of course, but it succeeded.
It had been part of the comedy to christen a ship of the French fleet
‘the _Liberator of Italy_.’ With this vessel a certain commander,
Laugier,
[Sidenote: _Rom. x. 112 sqq._]
was despatched to carry out Bonaparte’s stratagem. The ship sailed up
towards the Lido, stopped a fishing-boat, and took an old
[Sidenote: _April twentieth, 1797._]
fisherman for a pilot. The man protested that foreign war vessels were
not allowed to enter the harbour. Laugier threatened to hang him, and
set him to con the wheel, after asking him many questions as to the
vessels of which Venice disposed.
When the ship was opposite the Lido she saluted, and the guns of the San
Nicola Fort answered; as Laugier did not bring to, the commander of the
fort, Domenico Pizzamano, sent two boats alongside him to warn him not
to enter, yet the French captain took no notice. Other French vessels
were following at a distance; Pizzamano fired two shots to warn them
off, and they bore away. Laugier now said he was going to anchor, though
he did not clew up his top-gallant sails nor otherwise shorten sail; it
is clear that there was only a very light breeze on that day.
A Venetian galley lay at her moorings in the Lido harbour, and Laugier
proceeded to foul her, intentionally without doubt, for he evidently
knew his business. This was enough. The two vessels were close
alongside, and their crews were fighting one another in an instant. At
the same time the cannon from Fort Sant’ Andrea chimed in, and an
indescribable confusion followed. Laugier was killed by a ball; the old
fisherman who had steered him in was wounded, and died soon afterwards.
The Venetians got the better of the fight, and plundered the French war
vessel in spite of Pizzamano’s desperate efforts to prevent it. The
French officers and crew were handed over to the ‘benevolent custody’ of
Tommaso Soranzo and Domenico Tiepolo.
The account of the affair sent by the Minister, Lallement, to the
Directory was wholly untrue, of course; but Bonaparte had what he
wanted.
He was so sure of it that by the preliminary treaty of Leoben, preceding
the treaty of Campo-Formio, he had already ceded to Austria all the
[Sidenote: _April eighteenth. Rom. x. 121, and Document at 377._]
Venetian provinces that lay between the Po, the Oglio, and the Adriatic;
it was pretended that in compensation for these she was to receive the
three legations of Romagna, Ferrara, and Bologna.
Much of this preliminary agreement had been kept secret; but the
Venetian Ambassador in Vienna, Grimani, knew of the general tenor of the
document, and warned the Senate that it was intended to dismember the
Venetian territory.
The Senate was roused from its apathy when it was
[Illustration: FROM THE PONTE S. ROCCO]
too late, and now sat permanently. Orders were given that no stranger
was to be allowed to enter the city unless bearing official letters, and
no ship was to pass into the lagoons that did not fly the Venetian flag.
Some attempt was made to get more vessels ready for sea.
The French had not wasted time, and a general insurrection had broken
out under their management in all the cities of the mainland. Within
twenty-four hours the governors of Padua, Verona, and other important
places came in for refuge, as also the Provveditors of the army, whose
occupation was gone.
Meanwhile two nobles, Francesco Donà and Leonardo Giustiniani, had been
sent in haste to Gratz, after Junot’s appearance, and they were received
by Bonaparte on the twenty-fifth of April. The interview that followed
is highly characteristic of the man when it suited his ends to work
himself into a fury. The political prisoners were to be liberated, or he
would ‘come and break down the Piombi; he would have no Inquisition, no
antique barbarities.’ He spoke of the imaginary massacre of his innocent
troops. ‘His army cried vengeance, and he could not refuse it.’ ‘If all
the culprits were not punished, if the English Minister were not driven
away, if the people were not disarmed, if all the prisoners were not set
free, if Venice would not choose between France and England, he declared
war.’ ‘He would have no Inquisition, no Senate, he would be an Attila to
the Venetian State.’ And much more to the same effect, all of which is
on record. The two Venetians answered sensibly, when they could get in
a word, but Bonaparte meant war, and when he meant that he would listen
to no one.
Having acted his scene, he asked the two to dinner and proceeded to
extract information from them, after his manner. His inquiries chiefly
concerned the horrors attributed to the aristocratic government by the
very imaginative French democratic mind; for the lower classes, being
nearer to nature, have always had much more imagination than their
social betters, which explains their belief in ghost stones, hidden
treasures, and the rights of man.
After dinner Bonaparte condescended to state his demands. He wanted
twenty-two millions from the Venetian mint and all English drafts
deposited in Venice. That was all. There was no mention of the Duke of
Mantua’s treasure, from which the envoys suspected that it was included
in the secret treaty of Leoben, but I find no mention of it in that
curious document, though it may have been tacitly included in Article
VI. which provided for the restitution of Mantua and other places to
Austria.
Having thus expressed himself, Bonaparte left the envoys to their
reflections and went off to Bruck. Almost at the same time they received
news of the fighting at the Lido, with instructions to inform Bonaparte
of the death of Laugier, with all the caution possible; they did so by
letter, and probably congratulated themselves on not being materially
able to convey the news by word of mouth; but they nevertheless really
asked another audience. He answered in a fury, called Laugier’s death an
assassination, and spoke of them and the Venetian Senate as ‘dripping
with French blood.’ If they had anything new to tell him, he would
receive them, he said, after writing on the same page that he would not.
They went before him again, poor men, and listened once more to his
furious language. ‘Not a hundred millions of money, not all the gold of
Peru, would now prevent him from avenging the blood of his men,’ and so
forth, and so on. This was the truth, as he had purposely risked
shedding it for the very purpose of being revenged.
On the twenty-ninth of April, French troops occupied the Venetian
frontiers, and General Baraguay d’Hilliers entered the capital with
perfect assurance--and, it must be added, with perfect fearlessness--and
installed himself in the best hotel. The Senate tried in vain to
ascertain from him Bonaparte’s intentions; the soldier answered that he
was accustomed to obey his chiefs without question and that he knew
nothing of their plans. He had been told to come to Venice and he had
come.
On learning that Bonaparte so very particularly detested them, the Savi
agreed that it was no longer safe to meet publicly, and they held their
sittings in the Doge’s private apartments in the presence of the
Counsellors, and the ‘Savi of the Mainland,’ ‘Savi of Orders,’ ‘Savi of
Writings,’--Savi of every species. To all these were added the three
Heads of the Ten. This last assembly was a sort of amplification of the
Black Cabinet already explained.
They have been described as the sextons of the Republic, met together to
arrange the details of the funeral. Their acts and resolutions can only
excite pity. The first question discussed on the night of April
thirtieth was whether a supposed intimate friend of Bonaparte’s (Haller,
at one time French Minister of Finance) should be treated with in order
to calm his master’s anger. The next question was, whether this
proposition might be discussed at once, or whether eight days must be
allowed to pass before beginning the debate, according to the law. A
third question asked what measures should be taken to inform the Great
Council of what was happening.
Several hours had been consumed in these miserable quibbles, during
which no attention was paid to the distant booming of guns from the
direction
[Sidenote: _Rom. x. 138._]
of Fusina, when a messenger brought a letter for the ‘Savio on
Writings.’ He passed it on anxiously to the Savio of the week, who
opened it with evident emotion. It was a message from Condulmer, in
command of the flotilla of the lagoons, to say that the French had begun
operations for improving the approaches to Venice, and that he was going
to attempt to destroy what they did as fast as they worked. It was at
this moment that the Assembly first noticed the sound of artillery. In
the frightened silence the Doge walked up and down the room. ‘To-night
we are not safe even in our beds,’ he said.
The Procurator, Pesaro, turned to the Secretary: ‘I see that it is all
over with my country,’ he said, in broad Venetian dialect. ‘I can
certainly be of no assistance. To an honest man, every place is his
country; one may easily occupy oneself in Switzerland.’
He rose as he finished this remarkable speech, apparently with the
intention of proceeding to Switzerland at once, but his colleagues
‘comforted’ him, he took snuff, and sat down again to help Valeressi in
framing a measure for calling the Great Council together on the morrow.
These curious details can be trusted. Pesare was afterwards, in fact,
the first to make his escape to Istria and Vienna.
During the remainder of the meeting it was debated whether it might not
be possible and advisable to give Venice a democratic form of government
likely to please Bonaparte, and the majority adopted the idea of
introducing any modifications which he might suggest.
It was hoped by this means that he would be moved to forgive the
Inquisitors and the captain of the Lido, whose punishment he had
demanded, and to excuse the Venetian banks from handing over the English
drafts.
The next day was the first of May, the anniversary on which the Doge had
always paid his annual visit to the Convent of the Vergini, since the
days of Pier Candiano, a ceremony which was always the occasion of great
festivities in the city. But to-day, instead, the bell of the Grand
Council was ringing, and the nobles assembled anxiously. The Doge
explained in broad dialect the situation of the Republic with regard to
France. Peace, he said, must be made with Bonaparte
[Illustration: CAMPO SS. GIOVANNI E PAOLO]
at any price, and the best thing the members of the Council could do was
to say their prayers and ask the help of Heaven in their supreme
danger.
Heaven, as usual in such circumstances, did not help those who would not
help themselves. The Council thought it had done wonders when it voted
by 598 to 21 that two deputies should be sent to Bonaparte with power to
discuss radical changes in the Venetian constitution. The envoys chosen
were Angelo Giacomo Giustiniani, who had been Provveditor extraordinary
in Treviso since the second of April, Alvise Mocenigo, the Governor of
Udine, and Francesco Donà. They were given regular credentials, and
were, as usual, exhorted to use the utmost caution in all they said.
On the same day Bonaparte declared war against Venice in his most
furiously bombastic style. The document must be read, not to be
believed, as most of the statements it contains were totally untrue, but
to appreciate the marvellous gifts of the man of genius who composed it.
It is long, and I have not space for it; I can only say that it
altogether outdid the former letters and speeches I have referred to.
The deputation found Bonaparte in Treviso. To the eternal glory of the
family that had lost an hundred of its name in one campaign, Giustiniani
quietly faced Bonaparte on every point, reproached him with the
shallowness of the pretexts under which he justified his acts of
violence, swore to the sincerity of the Venetian government when it had
protested that it had no intention of doing any injury to the French,
and concluded by saying that if Bonaparte required a hostage or a victim
he, Giustiniani, was there to give his life.
Bonaparte was everything except a coward. He was a conqueror and a
comedian, a brutal dictator and a subtle diplomatist; he was a great
commander and he was the Little Corporal. He was also as brave as the
bravest man in any of his armies. Giustiniani’s speech affected him
strangely, for he well knew what terror he inspired in most people. His
sudden admiration for the Venetian patriot was as boundless as
everything else in his nature, and broke out in words of praise. He
concluded by promising that even if he confiscated the property of every
noble in Venice, whatsoever belonged to Giustiniani should be respected.
There spoke the man of the middle class that Bonaparte always was. The
gentleman answered proudly that he had not come to promote his own
interests when those of his country were so desperately at stake.
A truce of four days was signed, within which time the three Inquisitors
of State and the commander of the Lido fort were to be arrested and
punished, and all political prisoners were to be set at liberty.
On the fourth of May the Doge had the courage, or the cowardice, to
propose to the Great Council the arrest of the Inquisitors and their
impeachment as required by Bonaparte. There
[Sidenote: _Rom. x. 159._]
was no hope for Venice in any other course, he said.
This dastardly measure was voted by 704 votes to 27. The Inquisitors and
the commander of the Lido were arrested and taken to San Giorgio
Maggiore, and all the political prisoners were released from the Piombi,
the Pozzi, and the other prisons of the city. On the following day, two
hundred and eighty-eight Frenchmen who had been taken with weapons in
their hands during the insurrections in the provinces were handed over
to Baraguay d’Hilliers in Venice.
Bonaparte was now sure that he had only to show himself in order to be
master of the city. The Venetians also made haste to present Bonaparte’s
‘friend,’ Haller, with a little present of six thousand sequins in
bullion, in the hope that he would use his kind offices with the great
man.
‘I beg you,’ Bonaparte wrote about that time to the Directory, ‘to order
the citizen Haller, a scoundrel who
[Sidenote: _Bonnal, Chute, 287._]
has come here to steal, to present his accounts to the head manager’
(‘ordonnateur en chef’).
So much for Bonaparte’s ‘friend.’ The Republic also offered the most
profuse hospitality to Madame Baraguay d’Hilliers, in the hope that she
would soften her husband’s harsh temper.
By this time Bonaparte knew as well as Condulmer himself that the
Venetian fleet was miserably manned, and that the city must yield at
once if besieged, and he thought it quite useless to receive any more
envoys. Besides, he knew that his propaganda had succeeded in the
capital itself; his paid agents had done their work well, and it had
been bravely seconded by the manifest incompetence of the government
which had exasperated all classes. It is said that there were fifteen
thousand republicans ready to answer the first signal as soon as it
should be given by Villetard, the Secretary of the French Legation.
These were not by any means all of the people, for many ladies of the
nobility had been
[Illustration: SO-CALLED HOUSE OF DESDEMONA]
spending their time in making tricolour cockades, and the government
knew it.
The French no longer took the trouble to conceal the preparations they
were making for a revolution. A wholesale grocer who played a very
suspicious part in the whole affair, Tommaso Zorzi, was dining with
Villetard, and heard several Frenchmen speaking of the revolution that
was arranged for the next day; it was intended to set up a tree of
liberty in the Square of Saint Mark’s and to declare the fall of the
aristocratic government. When every one else was gone, Zorzi implored
Villetard to put off firing the train, and explained that a large part
of the populace would side with their old masters. The French Secretary
would promise nothing, and on leaving him Zorzi hastened to the ducal
palace and was received by the Doge in spite of the late hour.
He told what he had heard. The Doge sent at once for Pietro Donà, and
the two bade Zorzi obtain from Villetard a written declaration of the
conditions on which he would consent to give up the revolution. On the
following day Zorzi and his friend Spada appeared before the Savi with a
paper which they said they had drawn up in the presence of Villetard,
who had refused to write anything himself.
The impression one gets in reading this document is that Zorzi and his
shadow were in the trick with Villetard. The paper calls them
‘mediators,’
[Sidenote: _Rom. x. 386 for the text._]
talks of ‘pacifically changing the aristocratic forms of government,’
‘leaving open to the sight of the public the prisons called the Piombi
and Pozzi,’ abolishing capital punishment, setting up a tree of liberty
in the Square of Saint Mark’s, publicly burning the insignia of the old
government, a universal amnesty, and a Te Deum in Saint Mark’s, where
the image of the Virgin Mary was to be exhibited.
The paper also named the provisional government, in which the grocer and
his shadow were to occupy high positions.
This stuff was not read by Zorzi before the assembly. The Doge deputed
Pietro Donà and Francesco Battagia to hear him in a neighbouring room.
Donà dismissed him with the remark that the government would wait to
discuss such propositions until they were officially laid before the
Venetian envoys by Bonaparte himself.
Then Donà returned to the hall and communicated the contents of Zorzi’s
paper to the government. The effect was terrific. A few voices protested
that no attention should be paid to such an informal proposition, but
terror prevailed, and Donà and Battagia were charged to go at once to
Villetard to ask him to put off his revolution till the envoys should
return from their interview with Bonaparte. Villetard, for reasons known
to himself, granted the government a respite of four days.
Meanwhile it was thought wise to dismiss the Slavonic troops, yielding
in this to one of the demands expressed in Zorzi’s paper. Their presence
‘irritated’ Villetard. They were accordingly ordered home under the
command of Niccolò Morosini, but they did not leave at once.
On the twelfth of May the Great Council met. Early in the morning
Villetard had informed Battagia that the Venetian envoys sent to
Bonaparte had refused to accept a democratic and representative
government, but that the French meant to obtain it by force unless the
aristocracy would resign its powers. It was Haller who had brought the
news to Villetard after accepting a bribe of six thousand sequins a few
days earlier. An American politician once defined a scoundrel as ‘a man
who will not stay bought.’
Donà came back with an official letter from Villetard to the Doge, which
contained Bonaparte’s ultimatum. The city was in a state of nervous
excitement that must break into action before long; the members of the
Council were already in terror of their lives while they stood waiting
for the hour of meeting. Even then, everything had to be done according
to tradition. The patricians were, no doubt, devising more concessions
to be made to Bonaparte, as they moved towards the ducal palace, and
most of them were ready to sacrifice everything, including their honour,
in exchange for personal safety. The last of the Slavonic soldiers were
embarking under the direction of the Arsenal men; there were republican
conspirators everywhere, and they found their way even to the Doge’s
private apartments.
The Council met at the usual hour, and the roll was called. Only 537
members were present, whereas 600 constituted a quorum. It is possible
that the many absent members had hoped to obstruct all proceedings by
keeping away, for to the last the minutest rules had been observed. But
the members who had assembled decided that they had a right to act.
The Doge opened the sitting, pale and overcome. Painfully, and in his
Venetian dialect, he recapitulated the acts of the Consulta of Savi and
others, who had taken charge of affairs on the thirtieth of April. His
miserable speech was followed by the reading of the report of Donà and
Battagia, Haller’s letter, and other documents.
The Secretary, Valentin Marin, then read the measure which was brought
before the Council.
The Bill had the old sanctimonious tone. ‘The principal purpose of
preserving religion,’ etc., were the first words; the measure was, that
the Great Council should accept ‘the proposed provisional representative
government.’
The Secretary had finished reading the Bill, and was just beginning his
comments on it, when the sound of a discharge of musketry rang sharply
through the ancient hall. The patricians rushed to the doors. One voice
called them back.
‘Divide! Divide!’ it cried, above the din.
To the last gasp formality bound them. Hastily, but not informally, they
went through the form of voting. The Bill to accept the democratic
government was passed by 512 yeas to 30 nays and 5 blanks.
Then, in the twinkling of an eye, the
[Sidenote: _1797, May twelfth._]
hall was silent and empty.
[Illustration: SAILS]
XVIII
CONCLUSION
The discharge of musketry which had frightened the Great Council out of
its senses had been only the parting salute of the Slavonic soldiers as
they
[Sidenote: _Tassini, under ‘San Bartolomeo.’_]
sailed out of the harbour. It was the last mark of respect the Venetians
of Venice received, and it was by a dramatic coincidence that it was
offered at the very instant when the Republic ended. Every one has read
how the Doge went back to his own room and
[Illustration: A GATEWAY] handed his ducal bonnet to his servant,
saying that he should not need it again.
What has been less noticed by historians is that General Salimbeni, who
knew that the crowd was waiting to know what had taken place, put his
head out of a window and shouted ‘Viva la Libertà’; and that when no one
broke the silence that followed, he took breath again and shouted ‘Viva
San Marco,’ whereupon the multitude took up the cry and cheered till
they were hoarse, and the old flag of Saint Mark was hoisted everywhere,
and the populace took it into its head to burn down the houses of Donà
and Battagia and the grocer Zorzi, and though they were hindered, they
did plunder and burn the dwellings of a number of burgher families that
had played a double game and had helped to bring on the final
catastrophe.
In the midst of this confusion well-armed republican gangs appeared in
all directions, and during the night between the twelfth and the
thirteenth of May there was a hideous tumult. The last time that
Venetian cannon was fired by Venetian orders, it was pointed at
Venetians.
On the fifteenth, the French occupied the city as conquerors. On the
sixteenth, two notices were put up in the Square of Saint Mark’s. The
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Nuovi Studi._]
first simply announced that the aristocratic government yielded up its
powers to a provisional Municipality which would sit in the hall of the
Great Council; and this was the last public document which began with
the words, ‘The Most Serene Prince announces,’ etc.
The other informed the public that the provisional Municipality of
Venice declared the Great Council to have ‘deserved well of the nation’
because it had abdicated; it thanked particularly the members of the
late government which had put down the riot on the night of the twelfth;
and it went on to declare a ‘solemn amnesty’ for all political misdeeds,
and so forth, and so on.
Then came the usual French nonsense about liberty, equality,
brotherhood, peace, the rights of man, and the like; all of which might,
perhaps, be excused on the ground of mistaken and foolish sentiment, if
we did not know that Bonaparte was even then almost in the act of
selling his newly found, free, and equal brothers into slavery to
Austria, then the most really absolute despotism in Europe.
The whole affair was a horrible farce. The new Municipality decided to
preserve the Lion of Saint Mark as the national symbol, but for the
words ‘Pax tibi Marce’ inscribed on the book under the Lion’s paw were
substituted the words ‘Rights and Duties of Man and Citizen.’ The
gondoliers observed that Saint Mark had at last turned over a new leaf.
The Lion, however, was soon thrown down from his column, and was broken
into more than eighty pieces on the pavement. On the fourth
[Sidenote: _Rom. x. 219._]
of June the tree or liberty was raised in the middle of the Square.
Around it were grouped emblems of the sciences and arts. Fagots were
heaped up near by, to make a fire in which the Golden Book and the ducal
insignia were solemnly burned between two statues representing Freedom
and Equality. Inane verses were inscribed on the pedestals of
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Nuovi Studi._]
these images. Lest I should be thought to exaggerate their atrociously
bad literary quality I give the original Italian.
One ran:--
Depono la tirannide,
Sollevo l’innocente,
Ognor lieto e ridente
Il popol mio sarà.
The other said:--
Il libro d’ oro abbruciasi
L’accende il reo delitto,
All’ uom resta il suo dritto
La dolce libertà.
The Procuratie, both the old and the new, were renamed, according to the
revolutionary dictionary, ‘Gallery of Liberty,’ ‘Gallery of Equality.’
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult. 218; also Tassini, 591._]
In the course of the month of June began the trial of the three
Inquisitors, Agostino Barbarigo, Angelo Maria Gabrieli, and Catterino
Corner, and of Pizzamano, the commander of the Lido fort. Even Bonaparte
was obliged to admit that there was nothing against them, but he would
not allow them to be acquitted; he thought it better policy to pardon
them ‘in consideration of their advanced age.’ His letter on the subject
is dated the fourth of October. But Pizzamano, though declared free,
was still kept in prison at Bonaparte’s pleasure, and on the
twenty-sixth of October sent a petition directly to the latter.
Bonaparte sent it on to General Serrurier, in Venice, with an order for
the man’s liberation written in the margin.
Bonaparte had kept up his comedy to the very last. On the eighth of
October, General Balland had given the Venetians, in his chief’s name,
the most ample assurances of attachment and devotion.
On the seventeenth, nine days later, by the treaty of Campo-Formio,
Bonaparte sold Venice and the whole Venetian territory to the Emperor of
Austria, including Dalmatia and Istria, in exchange for the Ionian
Islands, the Cisalpine Republic, the Duchy of Modena, and the provinces
of Lombardy as far as the Adige and Mantua.
Having got his price for the dead body, Bonaparte proceeded to strip it
of everything valuable, so far as he could, before handing it over. The
horses of Saint Mark’s were taken down from the façade of the basilica,
the most valuable pictures, parchments, and books were packed, and all
was sent to Paris.
The farce of freedom was over, and the bitterness of reality came back,
harder to bear, perhaps, but as much more honourable, as suffering is
more dignified than drunken rioting. On the eighteenth of January 1798
the Austrian garrison took possession of Venice.
Before closing these pages, I shall go back a few months and shall
translate Giustina Renier Michiel’s touching account of the scene which
took place in Dalmatia, in the preceding month of August, when the
Austrians came by sea to take possession of the country.
On the twenty-second of August, Rukavina [the Austrian general]
arrived with a fleet and a thousand soldiers and landed at Pettana,
a mile and a half from Perasto. The
[Sidenote: _G. R. Michiel, Origini. Compare also Rom. x. 249._]
Dalmatians, taken by surprise, and seeing that they had nothing
more to hope, resolved to render the last honours to the great
standard or Saint Mark. To this end the people of Perasto, and of
the neighbouring country, and others, assembled before the palace
of the Captain in command; and he, with twelve soldiers armed with
sabres, and two colour-sergeants, went to the hall where the
standard was, and the colours carried in the field, which Venice
had entrusted many centuries ago to the valour and loyalty of the
brave Dalmatians. They were now to take away those dearly loved
flags; but in the very moment of doing what it broke their hearts
to do, their strength failed them, and they could only shed a flood
of tears.
The throng of people who waited in the Square, not seeing any one
come out again, knew not what to think. So one of the judges of the
town was sent up to ascertain the cause; but he, too, was so much
moved that his presence [in the hall] only increased the grief of
the others. At last the Captain, controlling himself of sheer
necessity, made the painful effort; he took down the flags from the
place where they were hung and attached them to two pikes; and he
handed them to the two colour-sergeants, and they and the soldiers,
led by the lieutenant, marched out of the hall; and after them the
Captain, the Judge, and all the rest. As soon as the well-beloved
standard was seen, the grief and tears of the multitude were
universal. Men, women, and children all sobbed and their tears
rolled down; and nothing was heard but the complaint of mourning,
no doubtful proof of the hereditary devotion of that generous
nation to its Republic.
When the sad procession reached the Square, the Captain unfastened
the flags from the pikes and at the same time the ensign of Saint
Mark on the fort was hauled down, and a salute of twenty guns was
fired. Two armed vessels that guarded the port answered with eleven
guns, and all the merchant vessels saluted also; this was the last
good-bye of sorrowing glory to the valour of a nation. The sacred
colours were placed upon a metal salver and the lieutenant received
them in the presence of the Judge, of the Captain, and of the
people. Then all marched with slow and melancholy steps to the
cathedral. There they were received by the clergy and its chief, to
whom the sacred trust was delivered, and he placed it on the high
altar. Then the Captain commanding spoke the following words, which
were again and again interrupted by quick sobbing, and streaming
tears that came from men’s hearts more truly than from their
eyes:--
‘In this cruel moment,’ he said, ‘that rends our hearts for the
fatal destruction of the Most Serene Venetian Government, in this
last expression of our love and faith, with which we do honour to
the colours of the Republic, let us at least find some consolation,
dear fellow-citizens, in the thought that neither our past deeds,
nor those we have done in these recent times, have led to this sad
office, which, for us, is now become a good deed. Our sons will
know from us, and history will teach all Europe, that Perasto
upheld to the last breath the glory of the Venetian flag, honouring
it and bathing it in universal and most bitter tears.
Fellow-citizens, let us freely pour out our grief; but amidst the
last solemn thoughts with which we seal the glorious career that
has been ours under the Most Serene Government of Venice, let us
turn to these well-loved colours and cry out to them, in our
sorrow, “Dear flag that has been ours three hundred and
seventy-seven years without a break, our faith and courage have
ever kept you unstained both on the sea and wheresoever you were
called to face your enemies, which were the enemies of the Church
also. For three hundred and seventy-seven years our goods, our
blood, and our lives have always been devoted to you, and since you
have been with us, and we with you, we have ever been happy, and
famous on the sea, and victorious on land. No man ever saw us put
to flight with you; with you none were ever found to overcome us.
If these most wretched times of rash action, of corrupt manners, of
dissensions and of lawless opinions that offend nature and the law
of nations had not ruined you in Italy, our goods, our blood, our
lives should still be yours; and rather than have seen you overcome
and dishonoured, our courage and our faith would have chosen to be
buried with you. But since we can do nothing more for you than
this, let your honoured grave be in our hearts, let our desolation
be your highest praise.”’
Then the Captain went up and took a corner of the flag and put it
to his lips as if he could not let it leave them; and all thronged
to kiss it most tenderly, washing it with their hot tears. But as
the sad ceremony had to come to an end at last, these dear colours
were laid in a chest, which the Rector placed in a reliquary
beneath the high altar.
THE DOGES OF VENICE
(ACCORDING TO ROMANIN)
NOTE.--_The Venetian year began on March first, whence the frequent
discrepancies between the dates given by different writers. In this
work every effort has been made to bring all dates under the usual
reckoning._
I. Paolo Lucio Anafesto elected 697 d. 717 Seat in Heraclea.
II. Marcello Tegaliano “ 717 “ 726
III. Orso Ipato “ 726 “ 737 (murdered). Seat in Malamocco.
(From 737 to 742, military governors called ‘Magistri Militum.’)
IV. Teodato Orso elected 742 -- 755 (blinded and deposed).
V. Galla Gaulo “ 755 -- 756 (blinded and exiled).
VI. Domenico Monegario “ 756 -- 764 (blinded and deposed).
VII. Maurizio Galbaio “ 764 d. 787
VIII. Giovanni Galbaio and his
son Maurizio “ 787 -- 804 (both deposed).
IX. Obelerio with his sons
Beato and Costantino “ 804 d. 811 (the father put to death as a traitor).
X. Agnello Partecipazio “ 811 “ 827 Seat henceforth in Rialto.
XI. Giustiniano Partecipazio “ 827 “ 829
XII. Giovanni Partecipazio I “ 829 -- 836 (deposed).
XIII. Pietro Tradonico “ 836 d. 864 (murdered).
XIV. Orso Partecipazio I. “ 864 “ 881
XV. Giovanni Partecipazio II. “ 881 -- 888 (abdicated).
XVI. Pietro Candiano I. “ 888 d. 888 (killed in battle with pirates).
XVII. Pietro Tribuno “ 888 “ 912
XVIII. Orso Partecipazio II. (Badoer) “ 912 -- 932 (abdicated and died a monk).
XIX. Pietro Candiano II. elected 932 d. 939
XX. Pietro Partecipazio (Badoer) “ 939 “ 942
XXI. Pietro Candiano III. “ 942 “ 959
XXII. Pietro Candiano IV. “ 959 “ 976 (murdered).
XXIII. Pietro Orseolo I. “ 976 -- 978 (abdicated and died a monk, with the
reputation of a saint.)
XXIV. Vital Candiano “ 978 -- 979 (abdicated and became a monk).
XXV. Tribuno Memmo “ 979 d. 991
XXVI. Pietro Orseolo II. “ 991 “ 1008
XXVII. Ottone Orseolo “ 1008 -- 1026 (exiled to Constantinople).
XXVIII. Pietro Centranigo “ 1026 -- 1032 (driven out).
XXIX. Domenico Flabianico “ 1032 d. 1043
XXX. Domenico Contarini “ 1043 “ 1071
XXXI. Domenico Selvo “ 1071 “ 1085
XXXII. Vital Falier “ 1085 “ 1096
XXXIII. Vital Michiel I. “ 1096 “ 1102
XXXIV. Ordelafo Falier “ 1102 “ 1118 (died in the Hungarian war).
XXXV. Domenico Michiel “ 1118 “ 1130
XXXVI. Pietro Polani “ 1130 “ 1148
XXXVII. Domenico Morosini “ 1148 “ 1156
XXXVIII. Vital Michiel II. “ 1156 “ 1172 (killed).
XXXIX. Sebastian Ziani “ 1172 “ 1178
XL. Orio Mastropiero “ 1178 -- 1192 (abdicated and became a monk).
XLI. Enrico Dandolo “ 1192 d. 1205 (died in Constantinople).
XLII. Pietro Ziani “ 1205 -- 1229 (abdicated).
XLIII. Jacopo Tiepolo “ 1229 -- 1249 (abdicated).
XLIV. Marin Morosini “ 1249 d. 1253
XLV. Renier Zeno “ 1253 “ 1268
XLVI. Lorenzo Tiepolo “ 1268 “ 1275
XLVII. Jacopo Contarini “ 1275 -- 1280 (abdicated).
XLVIII. Giovanni Dandolo “ 1280 d. 1289
XLIX. Pietro Gradenigo “ 1289 “ 1311
L. Marin Zorzi “ 1311 “ 1312
LI. Giovanni Soranzo “ 1312 “ 1329
LII. Francesco Dandolo “ 1329 “ 1339
LIII. Bartolommeo Gradenigo “ 1339 “ 1343
LIV. Andrea Dandolo “ 1343 “ 1354
LV. Marin Falier elected 1354 d. 1355 (beheaded April 17).
LVI. Giovanni Gradenigo “ 1355 “ 1356
LVII. Giovanni Dolfin “ 1356 “ 1361
LVIII. Lorenzo Celsi “ 1361 “ 1365
LIX. Marco Corner “ 1365 “ 1368
LX. Andrea Contarini “ 1368 “ 1383
LXI. Michel Morosini “ 1383 “ 1384
LXII. Antonio Venier “ 1384 “ 1400
LXIII. Michel Steno “ 1400 “ 1413
LXIV. Tommaso Mocenigo “ 1413 “ 1423
LXV. Francesco Foscari “ 1423 -- 1457 (deposed, and died a few days later).
LXVI. Pasquale Malipiero “ 1457 d. 1462
LXVII. Cristoforo Moro “ 1462 “ 1471
LXVIII. Niccolò Tron “ 1471 “ 1474
LXIX. Niccolò Marcello “ 1474 “ 1474
LXX. Pietro Mocenigo “ 1474 “ 1476
LXXI. Andrea Vendramin “ 1476 “ 1478
LXXII. Giovanni Mocenigo “ 1478 “ 1485
LXXIII. Marco Barbarigo “ 1485 “ 1486
LXXIV. Agostino Barbarigo “ 1486 “ 1501
LXXV. Leonardo Loredan “ 1501 “ 1521
LXXVI. Antonio Grimani “ 1521 “ 1523
LXXVII. Andrea Gritti “ 1523 “ 1538
LXXVIII. Pietro Lando “ 1538 “ 1545
LXXIX. Francesco Donato “ 1545 “ 1553
LXXX. Marcantonio Trevisan “ 1553 “ 1554
LXXXI. Francesco Venier “ 1554 “ 1556
LXXXII. Lorenzo Priuli “ 1556 “ 1559
LXXXIII. Girolamo Priuli “ 1559 “ 1567
LXXXIV. Pietro Loredan “ 1567 “ 1570
LXXXV. Aloise (Luigi) Mocenigo “ 1570 “ 1577
LXXXVI. Sebastian Venier “ 1577 “ 1578
LXXXVII. Niccolò Da Ponte “ 1578 “ 1585
LXXXVIII. Pasquale Cicogna “ 1585 “ 1595
LXXXIX. Marin Grimani “ 1595 “ 1606
XC. Leonardo Donà “ 1606 “ 1612
XCI. Marcantonio Memmo “ 1612 “ 1615
XCII. Giovanni Bembo “ 1615 “ 1618
XCIII. Niccolò Donà “ 1618 “ 1618
XCIV. Antonio Priuli “ 1618 “ 1623
XCV. Francesco Contarini “ 1623 “ 1624
XCVI. Giovanni Corner “ 1624 “ 1630
XCVII. Niccolò Contarini “ 1630 “ 1631
XCVIII. Francesco Erizzo elected 1631 d. 1646
XCIX. Francesco Molin “ 1646 “ 1655
C. Carlo Contarini “ 1655 “ 1656
CI. Francesco Corner “ 1656 “ 1656
CII. Bertuccio Valier “ 1656 “ 1658
CIII. Giovanni Pesaro “ 1658 “ 1659
CIV. Domenico Contarini “ 1659 “ 1674
CV. Niccolò Sagredo “ 1674 “ 1676
CVI. Aloise Contarini “ 1676 “ 1683
CVII. Marcantonio Giustiniani “ 1683 “ 1688
CVIII. Francesco Morosini “ 1688 “ 1694
CIX. Silvestro Valier “ 1694 “ 1700
CX. Aloise Mocenigo “ 1700 “ 1709
CXI. Giovanni Corner “ 1709 “ 1722
CXII. Aloise Sebastian Mocenigo “ 1722 “ 1732
CXIII. Carlo Ruzzini “ 1732 “ 1735
CXIV. Luigi Pisani “ 1735 “ 1741
CXV. Pietro Grimani “ 1741 “ 1752
CXVI. Francesco Loredan “ 1752 “ 1762
CXVII. Marco Foscarini “ 1762 “ 1763
CXVIII. Aloise Mocenigo “ 1763 “ 1779
CXIX. Paolo Renier “ 1779 “ 1788
CXX. Ludovico Manin “ 1788 -- 1797 (abdicated with the aristocratic government).
TABLE OF THE PRINCIPAL DATES IN VENETIAN HISTORY
A.D.
421 (about) Venice founded by fugitives from Aquileia, Altinum, and
Padua. (According to tradition on March 25, 421, at noon.)
697 Paulus Lucas Anafestus of Heraclea chosen as first Doge.
809 Pepin, son of Charlemagne, attempts to take Venice and is
defeated.
828 (about) The body of Saint Mark is brought to Venice, and he is
proclaimed protector of the Republic in place of Saint
Theodore.
959 (about) The brides of Venice and their dowries are carried off by Istrian
pirates.
975 The first basilica of Saint Mark is destroyed by fire.
998 Pietro Orseolo is acclaimed as Doge of Venice and Dalmatia.
998 The Emperor Otho III. visits Venice secretly.
1009 Venice is ravaged by the plague.
1099 Venetians defeat the Pisans off Rhodes.
1123 Defeat of the Turks at Jaffa.
1123 The Doge Domenico Michiel takes Tyre.
1167 Venice joins the Lombard League, with Verona, Padua, Milan,
Bologna, and other cities.
1172 Institution of the Great Council, in which membership is
open and elective.
1177 The Emperor Frederick Barbarossa makes submission to
Pope Alexander III. at Venice.
1177 The ceremony of the Espousal of the Sea by the Doge
instituted.
1202 (Oct. 8) The Venetian fleet sets out for the Fourth Crusade under the
Doge Enrico Dandolo.
1204 (April 12) Constantinople taken by the Venetian and French forces.
1277 Membership in the Great Council limited to those of legitimate
birth.
1297 Closure of the Great Council, in which membership becomes
a privilege of the nobles.
1300 Conspiracy of Marino Bocconio.
1310 Conspiracy of Marco Quirini and Bajamonte Tiepolo.
1335 Permanent institution of the Council of Ten.
1348 Venice loses half her population by the plague.
1354 Conspiracy of Marino Faliero.
1379-80 War of Chioggia.
1404-54 During this time Venice possesses herself, on the mainland,
of Padua, Ravenna, Verona, Treviso, Vicenza, Brescia, Bergamo,
Feltre, Belluno, Crema, and Friuli.
1405 Carlo Zeno takes Padua from Carrara.
1426 League with Florence concluded. Brescia surrenders to the
allied forces, the Venetian troops being commanded by
Carmagnola.
1428 Bergamo surrenders to Carmagnola.
1432 (May 5) Carmagnola executed as a traitor to the Republic.
1437 Erasmo da Narni, nicknamed Gattamelata, is made commander
of the Venetian army.
1449 Bartolommeo Colleoni is commander of the Venetian forces.
1453 (May 29) Constantinople taken by the Turks. Many Venetians are
massacred and much Venetian property destroyed.
1477 Scutari, besieged by the Turks, is successfully defended by
Antonio da Lezze.
1489 Venice annexes Cyprus, leaving Catharine Cornaro the empty
title of its Queen.
1508 League of Cambrai, between the Emperor Maximilian, Pope
Julius II., Louis XII. of France, and Ferdinand of Aragon.
1571 (Oct. 7) Battle of Lepanto won by the allied fleets of Venice, Genoa,
the Holy See, and Spain, commanded respectively by Sebastiano
Venier, Andrea Doria, and Marcantonio Colonna, under
Don John of Austria as commander-in-chief.
1574 Visit of Henry III. of France.
1575-7 Venice, swept by the plague, loses one-fourth of her population,
Titian among them. Church of the Redentore built to commemorate
its cessation.
1577 (Dec. 20) Fire destroys the Hall of the Great Council, with many
magnificent works of art.
1630 Another visitation of the plague, commemorated by the Church
of the Salute.
1715-18 The Turks wrest from Venice Crete and the Peloponnesus.
1784 Angelo Emo, the last Venetian leader, humbles the Bey of Tunis.
1788 Election of the 120th and last Doge, Ludovico Manin.
1796 The ceremony of the Espousal of the Sea by the Doge takes
place for the last time.
1797 (April 18) General Bonaparte, by the treaty of Campo-Formio, cedes
to Austria the Venetian provinces between the Po, the Oglio,
and the Adriatic, in exchange for Romagna, with Ferrara and
Bologna.
1797 (May 12) The Doge Ludovico Manin abdicates, and the Great Council
accepts the Provisional Government required by General
Bonaparte.
1798 (Jan. 18) The Austrian garrison takes possession of Venice.
1866 (Oct. 19) Austria cedes Venice to Napoleon III., who transfers it to
Victor Emanuel II., King of Italy.
SOME EMINENT MEN AND WOMEN CONNECTED WITH VENICE
_The places where some of the principal works of Painters and Architects
may be seen are given in this list, which, however, is by no means
exhaustive._
ARCHITECTS
(_Many of these were also Sculptors._)
1618-1684. GIUSEPPE BENONI.
The Dogana.
(Not known)-1529. BARTOLOMMEO BON.
Ducal Palace, S. Maria dell’ Orto, Scuola di San Rocco, Palazzo Foscari.
(Not known)-about 1680. BALDASSARE LONGHENA.
S. Maria degli Scalzi, S. Maria della Salute, Palazzo Giustiniani Lolin,
Palazzo Rezzonico, Palazzo Pesaro.
1518-1580. ANDREA PALLADIO.
Ducal Palace, San Giorgio Maggiore, Il Redentore.
1512-1597. GIOVANNI ANTONIO DA PONTE.
The Rialto.
1484-1549. MICHELE SAMMICHELE.
Palazzo Grimani, Palazzo Corner Mocenigo, Castello di S. Andrea.
1479-1570. JACOPO SANSOVINO.
Ducal Palace, Libreria Vecchia, Loggietta, Procuratie Nuove, Zecca, S.
Giuliano, S. Salvatore, S. M. Mater Domini, Palazzo Corner, Palazzo
Manin.
1552-1616. VINCENZO SCAMOZZI.
Ducal Palace, Libreria Vecchia, Procuratie Nuove, I Tolentini, Palazzo
Contarini degli Scrigni.
CONDOTTIERI
1390-1432. CARMAGNOLA (FRANCESCO BUSSONE).
1400-1475. BARTOLOMMEO COLLEONE.
(Not known)-1443. GATTAMELATA (ERASMO DA NARNI).
His statue by Donatello is at Padua.
1401-1466. FRANCESCO SFORZA.
MEN AND WOMEN OF LETTERS
1492-1566. ARETINO (PIETRO BACCI), Essayist and Playwright.
(About) 1510-1571. ANDREA CALMO, Essayist and Poet.
1310-1354. ANDREA DANDOLO, Historian.
1554-(after 1591). VERONICA FRANCO, Poetess.
1707-1793. CARLO GOLDONI, Playwright.
1720-1806. CARLO GOZZI, Playwright and Satirist.
1449-1515. ALDUS MANUTIUS, Printer.
1512-1574. PAULUS MANUTIUS (son of ALDUS), Printer.
1547-1597. ALDUS MANUTIUS (son of PAULUS, and grandson of ALDUS I.), Printer.
1755-1832. GIUSTINA RENIER MICHIEL, Historian.
1523-1554. GASPARA STAMPA, Poetess.
PAINTERS
1556-1629. ALIENSE (ANTONIO VASILLACCHI).
Ducal Palace, Accademia delle Belle Arti.
1510-1592. BASSANO (JACOPO DA PONTE).
Ducal Palace, Accademia, Museo (Civico).
1548-1591. BASSANO (FRANCESCO DA PONTE, eldest son of JACOPO).
Ducal Palace, Accademia, San Giacomo dell’ Orio.
1558-1623. BASSANO (LEANDRO DA PONTE, third son of JACOPO).
Ducal Palace, Accademia.
1400-1470. JACOPO BELLINI (father of GENTILE and GIOVANNI).
Accademia, Museo Civico.
1421-1501. GENTILE BELLINI (eldest son of JACOPO).
Ducal Palace, Accademia, Museo Civico, S. Giobbe.
1426-1516. GIOVANNI BELLINI (second son of JACOPO).
Accademia, San Francesco della Vigna, Frari, SS. Giovanni e Paolo, S.
Pietro Martire at Murano, Museo Correr.
1491-1553. BONIFAZIO (IL VENEZIANO).
Ducal Palace, Accademia, S. Salvatore, S. Leo, S. Angelo Raffaele.
1513-1588. PARIS BORDONE.
Ducal Palace, Accademia, S. Giovanni in Bragora, S. Giobbe, S. Maria
dell’ Orto.
1697-1768. CANALETTO (ANTONIO CANAL).
Accademia, Museo Civico.
(About) 1450-1522. VITTORE CARPACCIO.
Ducal Palace, Accademia, S. Giorgio degli Schiavoni, S. Vitale, SS.
Giovanni e Paolo, Museo Correr.
1675-1757. ROSALBA CARRIERA.
Accademia, Museo Correr.
1549-1605. GIOVANNI CONTARINI.
Ducal Palace.
1477-1511. GIORGIONE (GIORGIO BARBARELLI).
Accademia, Palazzo Giovanelli.
1712-1793. FRANCESCO GUARDI.
Accademia, Museo Civico.
(Unknown)-1515 or 1529. PIETRO LOMBARDO.
Ducal Palace.
1702-1762. PIETRO LONGHI.
Museo Civico, Palazzo Grassi.
1480-1548. JACOPO PALMA (PALMA VECCHIO).
Ducal Palace, Accademia, S. Maria dell’ Orto, S. Maria Formosa, Scuola
di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, S. Cassiano.
1544-1628. JACOPO PALMA (PALMA GIOVANE, great-nephew of PALMA VECCHIO).
Ducal Palace, Accademia, Frari.
1566-1638. SANTE PERANDA.
Ducal Palace.
1693-1769. GIOVANNI BATTISTA TIEPOLO.
La Fava, Gli Scalzi, I Gesuati, S. Martino, Palazzo Labia.
1512-1594. TINTORETTO (JACOPO ROBUSTI).
Ducal Palace, Scuola di San Rocco, Accademia, S. Maria dell’ Orto, S.
Maria della Salute, Hospital of S. Marco, S. Cassiano.
1519-1594. DOMENICO TINTORETTO (son of JACOPO).
Ducal Palace, Accademia.
1477-1576. TITIAN (TIZIANO VECELLIO).
Ducal Palace, Accademia, Scuola di San Rocco, SS. Giovanni e Paolo,
Frari, S. Maria della Salute.
1545-1611. MARCO VECELLIO (nephew of TITIAN).
Ducal Palace.
1528-1588. PAUL VERONESE (PAOLO CALIARI).
Ducal Palace, Accademia, S. Pantaleone, S. Catarina, S. Francesco della
Vigna.
1568-1637. GABRIELE CALIARI (eldest son of PAOLO).
Ducal Palace.
1539-1614. ANDREA VICENTINO (DEI MICHIELI).
Ducal Palace.
1525-1608. ALESSANDRO VITTORIA.
Palazzo Balbi, Decorations of the Scala d’ Oro in the Ducal Palace.
1543-1616. FEDERIGO ZUCCARO.
Ducal Palace.
SCULPTORS
1757-1822. ANTONIO CANOVA.
Accademia, Frari, Arsenal, Museo Civico, Palazzo Trèves.
1435-1488. VERROCCHIO (ANDREA CIONI DI MICHELE).
Square of SS. Giovanni e Paolo.
INDEX
Academies, 147-149
Academy of ‘La Fama,’ 160
Accoramboni, Vittoria, 58
Adams, Brooks, 164
John, 362
Adige, the, 178, 385, 417
Adriatic, 134, 169, 356, 396
Agrippa, Marcus, statue of, 319
Aix-la-Chapelle, treaty of, 362
Albanians, 350
Albrizzi, Isabella Teodochi, 264
Aldine Academy, 147, 154
Aldine press, 154
Algerian pirates, 358
Alviano, Bartolomeo d’, 67
Ambassadors, 77-94
American War of Independence, 362
‘Angel Gabriel,’ war-galley, 171
Architects, 429
Archives of--
Council of Ten, 153, 164, 212, 333
Inquisitors of State, 284, 321
Senate, 363
Aretino, Pietro, 136-144, 147, 196
Aristocracy, Venetian--
laws relating to baptism, 6
marriage laws, 6-8
registration of births and marriages, 7
Aristotle’s works, first Greek edition, 150-151, 152
Armenians, 114
Arsenal, the, 95-98, 172, 194, 228, 270, 272, 274, 275, 276, 312, 349, 351-354
Arsenalotti, 97, 98, 184
Art, dramatic, 278-280
Arundel, Countess of, 216-218
Sir John, 164
Athens, 227
Augsburg, 68, 182
Austria, 223, 224, 226, 362, 367, 371, 372, 377, 378, 379, 387, 388, 389, 393, 394, 396, 399, 415
Emperor of, 417
Avogadori, the, 6, 296
Badoer, Federigo, 159-161
Bailo of Constantinople, 81, 341
Balland, General, 417
Ballarin, Zorzi, 103
Ballot-boxes, office of carrying, 8
Balsamo, Giuseppe, 316-317
Bandits, 52-53, 55
Banquets, ducal, 337-340
Baraguay d’Hilliers, General, 389, 400, 406
Barbaro, Marcantonio, 8, 78, 79
Barbarigo, Agostino, 416
Barchi, Giacomo, 331, 332
Baschet, M. Armand, 37, 94, 219
_Souvenirs_ of, 85, 183
Basilica of Saint Mark, 66, 172, 267, 342
Bastionero, 112
Battagia, Francesco, 409, 410, 411
Beaufort, Duc de, 226
Beaulieu, General, 379
Bellini, the, 98, 133
Gentile, 107
Bembo, Cardinal, 150, 156
Beneto, Domenico, 22
Benzon, Marina, 257
Bergamo, 84, 332, 387, 389, 392
Bernardo, Pietro, 148-149
Beroviero, Angelo, 103-105
Marietta, 103, 104
Berthier, Marshal, 383
Bey of Tunis, 358-359
Biri Grande, 134
Bisaccia, Bishop of, 84
‘Black Cabinet,’ 371, 372
‘Black Inquisitors,’ 14
Boleyn, Anne, 91
Bollani, Bishop Pietro, 60
Bologna, 389, 396
Bonaventuri, Pietro, 121-127
Bonnal, 381, 388
Bragadin, Marcantonio, 170-171
Braschi, Cardinal, 256
Bravi, 52-53, 55, 56, 60, 64, 320-332
Brenta, the, 178, 251
Brescia, 322, 328, 329, 330, 332, 383, 387, 388, 389
Bridge. _See_ Ponte
of San Lio, 205
of Sighs, 46
British Constitution, 88
Brown, Horatio, 131, 347
Rawdon, 65, 86
Bruno, Giordano, 26-29, 196
Bucentaur, 178, 184, 229, 270-276
Burano lace, 109
Businallo, 240
Byron, Lord, 217
Byzantine Empire, 119
Cæsar, Julius, 346
Cæsars, the Roman, 175
Café Ancilotto, 317
Cagliostro, Count. _See_ Balsamo, Giuseppe
Calmo, Andrea, 139-140
Calvisano, 326
Cambrai, League of, 66, 67, 198, 386
treaty of, 86
Cambridge University, 88
Campanile, 141
Campo-Formio, treaty of, 396, 417
Canova, Antonio, 269
Cappelletti, the, of Verona, 68
Cappello, the, 63, 64
Bartolommeo, 121, 123
Bianca, 121-128, 129
Vittor, 46
Carbonare, Marchesa, 329-330
Carlowitz, treaty of, 230
Carpaccio, 106, 116, 120, 132, 133
Casali, Marchese, 329
Casanova, Jacopo, 281
Castaldi, 149
Catharine of Aragon, 87, 91
Catherine the Great, 341
Cattaro, fortress of, 221
Cesaresco, Count Martinengo, 322
Charles V., Emperor, 137, 182
Charles VIII. of France, 168, 394
Charles IX. of France, 176
Chateaubriand, 260-261
_Mémoires d’Outre Tombe_ by, 262
Cherasco, treaty of, 225
Chesterfield, Lord, 320
Chioggia, 5, 45, 118
Chioggia, Zarlino da, 180
Chiribini, Andrea, 275-277
Churches of--
the Frari, 149
the Madonna della Salute, 225
the Redentore, 225
the Serviti, 360
the Tolentini, 343
Saint Pantales, 131
Saint Patrinian, 154
San Basso, 143, 343
San Giacomo, 181
San Giovanni e Paolo, 171
Sant’ Eustachio, 219
Santa Maria Formosa, 210
Santo Stefano, 230
Cicero’s _Rhetoric_, 151
‘Cicisbei,’ 240-241
Cicogna, Emanuele, 312-315
Cisalpine Republic, 332, 417
Cispadane Republic, 389
Clogs, 128-129
Colbert, Jean Baptiste, 108
Collalto, Collaltino di, 162
College of Nobles, 292
of Painters, 146
Colonna, Marcantonio, 173
Commines, Philippe de, 168
Condottieri, 430
Constantinople, 40, 45, 78, 81, 169, 171, 175
Contarini, Andrea. _See under_ Doges
Convent of Santo Stefano, 196
Convents, 234-239
Corinth, 227
Gulf of, 171, 230
Corner, Catterino, 416
Council of Ten, 2, 11-19, 22, 36, 50, 55, 60, 62, 64, 66, 71, 73, 75, 86, 100, 102, 114, 121, 123, 126, 150, 160, 162, 176, 195, 212, 214, 219-222, 227, 248, 281, 282, 296-302, 304, 310, 320, 323, 326-328, 392
Couriers, State, 84-86
Courtesans, 130-131
Crema, 382, 383, 387
Crete, 225-227, 349
Criminal history, Venetian, 51-66
Cristofoli, Cristofolo de’, 311-321, 331
Cromwell, Oliver, 175
Crusades, the, 4
Cyprus, 170, 175
Dalmatia, 230, 386, 417, 418
Dandolo, Andrea, 312
Vincenzo, 60
_See also under_ Doges
Dante, 36, 95, 205
Danube, the, 349
Daru, 11, 12, 105
Deserto, island of, 134
Didot, M., 151, 152, 153
Diplomacy, Venetian, 77-94
Directory, French, 377, 378, 381, 383, 388, 396, 406
Doge, the, palace of, 22, 97
restrictions on freedom of, 43-50
Doges--
Contarini, Andrea, 45, 226
Dandolo, Enrico, 45, 174, 226
Leonardo, 209
Donà, Leonardo, 12, 166
Erizzo, Francesco, 49, 226
Foscari, Francesco, 44
Foscarini, Marco, 254, 256, 334-335
Giustiniani, Marcantonio, 49
Gradenigo, Bartolommeo, 84
Grimani, Antonio, 49
Gritti, Andrea, 38, 49, 116
Manin, Ludovico, 347, 359, 394
Mastropiero, Orio, 268
Mocenigo, Aloise (Luigi), 49, 172, 186
Aloise IV., 335-340
Giovanni, 45
Moro, Cristoforo, 46
Morosini, Francesco, 49, 107, 227-230
Renier, Paolo, 340-343
Steno, Michel, 46, 190
Valier, Silvestro, 230
Dogess, the, in fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, 47
Dolfin, Daniele, 372, 363
Don John of Austria, 171
Doná, Francesco, 398, 404
Leonardo. _See under_ Doges
Niccolò, 12
Pietro, 408, 409, 410, 411
Dress and fashion, 34-38, 128, 242-245, 249
Drownings, official, 18-19
‘Ducal promise,’ 220
Ducat, gold, 92
Ducks, tribute of, 48-50
Edward III. of England, 84
Egina, 230
Elections of Doge, cost of, 345-346
Elizabeth, Queen of England, 86
Emo, Alvise, 295
Angelo, 356-360
England, 19, 27, 83, 84, 86, 91, 93, 165, 175, 214, 215, 219, 263, 356, 374, 377, 398
Venetian ambassadors to, 83-93
Erasmus, 152
Erizzo, Francesco. _See under_ Doges
‘Espousal of the Sea,’ ceremony of the, 270-275
Euganean Hills, 134
Executives against Blasphemy, 24
of the Ten, 14
Exhibition, first Universal Industrial, 268
Fair of the Ascension, 266-277
Falier, Ludovico, 86-93
Fata Morgana, 134
Father Inquisitor, 24, 28
Faust, Johann, 149
Feasts of--
Ascension, 267, 337
Candlemas, 210
Saint Jerome, 337
Saint Justina, 172
Saint Mark, 337
Saint Stephen, 337
Saint Vitus, 337
Feliciani, Lorenza, 316
Feltre, 149
Ferdinand of Aragon, 198
Ferrara, 221, 389, 396
Filiasi, 262
Florence, 110, 116
Florentines, 4
Fornaretto, legend of, 65-66
Forts of--
San Nicola, 395
Sant’ Andrea, 396
Foscari, Francesco. _See under_ Doges
Foscarini, Antonio, 19, 214-220
Marco. _See under_ Doges
Foscolo, Ugo, 261
Foundling Asylum, 8
France, 42, 74, 79, 100, 106, 108, 116, 165, 175, 199, 224, 242, 250, 288, 311, 352, 356, 359, 362-379, 360-417
Francis I. of France, 74, 75, 137
Franco, Veronica, 131, 182-183
Frangipane, Cristoforo, 66-76
Franklin, Benjamin, 362
Frederick III., Emperor, 105-106
Frederick IV. of Denmark, 245
Freemasonry, 311-316
French Revolution, 234, 340, 347, 363-379, 381
Friuli, 67, 386
Fugger family of Augsburg, 181-182
Fulin, Signor, 14, 17, 19
Fusina, 401
Gabrieli, Angelo Maria, 416
Galilei, Galileo, 164-167
letter of, quoted, 166-167
Gambara, the, 321-322
Count Alemanno, 321-333
Countess Giulia, 324
Francesco, 331, 332
Gambling establishments, 194, 201, 245-246
Garda, Lake of, 36
Genoa, 4, 98, 379
Germany, 74, 165
Geronimo, Count, 57-59
Gibraltar, Straits of, 358
Ginevra, Countess, 57-60
Giovanna of Austria, Archduchess, 126
Giraldi, 65
Giudecca, the, 202, 277
Giustiniani, Angelo Giacomo, 404
Leonardo, 398
Marcantonio. _See under_ Doges
Onofrio, 172
Glass-works, 98-106
Gloucester, Duke of, 263
Godi, Paolo, 103
‘Golden Book,’ the, 5, 7, 100, 144, 294, 378, 416
Goldoni, 232, 236-238, 241, 247, 270, 277-280, 302, 304, 305-309, 355
Gondolas, 38-42, 201
Gonzaga, Carlo, 224, 225
Ferrante, 224
Princess, 252-254
Goritz, 70, 392
Goro, 368
Government of Venice--
aristocratic, 2
provisional, 411
Gradenigo, Bartolommeo. _See under_ Doges
Giuseppe, 295
Grand Canal, 336
Gratarol, 341
Gratz, 398
Great Council, the, 5, 7, 8-10, 44, 45, 47, 48, 78, 120, 141, 191, 222, 230, 231, 243, 288-296, 341, 371, 384, 401, 405, 410, 411, 415
Greek archipelago, 169
Greeks, 114, 119
Grimani, Antonio. _See under_ Doges
Cardinal Domenico, 319
Gritti, Andrea. _See under_ Doges
Luca, 195
Guttenberg, Johannes, 149
_Halimedia Opuntia_, 108
Hall of the Great Council, 179, 195
burning of, 98, 155
Hapsburg family, 169
Henin, M., 368-373
Henry III. of France, 42, 98, 175-186, 251
Henry IV. of France, 208, 210, 214, 378
Henry VIII. of England, 86-92
Heretics, 25, 28
High Chancellor, 82
Hoffmann, 267
Holy Inquisition, 11, 23
Holy Office, 23-34, 146
diagram of Court of, 25
Holy Roman Empire, 12, 199
Homer, 341
‘Hose Club,’ the, 42, 189-201, 278
Hospice of Saint Ursula, 277
Hôtel Danieli, 72
Hungary, 199, 349
Illasi, 57
Castle of, 60
Inquisition, the, 11, 23
Inquisitors--
of Council of Ten, 13, 14
of Holy Office, 11, 23-34, 281
of State, 11-22
Ionian Islands, 417
Istria, 67, 417
Ivan Strashny, the Terrible, 175
Ivry, battle of, 378
James I. of England, 215
Japanese envoys in Venice, 186-187
Jefferson, Thomas, 362
Jews, 111, 114
Joseph II., Emperor, 107
Joyeuse, Cardinal de, 210
Judenburg, 393
Juliet, 68
Junot, Marshal, 393, 394, 398
Jupiter’s moons, 167
Knights of the Golden Stole, 82-83, 127, 163
Knights of Malta, 225
Kugler, Franz, 118
La Forét, 215
Lace-making, 105-110
Ladies, Venetian, of eighteenth century, 234-246
of sixteenth century, 117-131
Landrieux, General, 389, 392
Lange, Apollonia von, 68-76
Laugier, 105
Laws, sumptuary, 34-43, 201
Venetian Code, 160, 222, 223
Legends, Venetian, 201-206
Legnago, fort of, 385, 387
Leoben, treaty of, 396, 399
Lepanto, battle of, 49, 171-175
Lezze, Antonio da, 3
Lido, the, 176, 178, 180, 229, 275, 392, 395, 399, 405
Lion of Saint Mark, 415
Lions of marble from Pentelicus, 228
‘Lions’ Mouths’ (boxes), 222
Liptay, General, 383
Lizzafusina, 76
Lodron, Count of, 68
Lombards, 119
Lombardy, 320, 382, 417
Longhi, 232, 233
Louis XII., 162, 198
Louis XIV., 106, 107, 108, 226, 291
Louis XVI., 359, 364, 366, 372
Louis XVII., 375, 376
Louis XVIII., 375, 376, 378
Luca, chief of the Niccolotti, 179
Luther, Martin, 132
Maffei, Andrea, 265
Marchese Scipione, 391
Magistracies of Venice--
aristocratic, 1-11
in eighteenth century, 299
Malamani, V., 316
Malta, 349, 359, 367
Manin, Ludovico. _See under_ Doges
Mantua, 224-225, 384, 387, 388, 399, 417
Duke of, 176, 399
Manutius, Aldus, 146, 149-154
Paulus, 154, 160
Marcello, Benedetto, 280
Lorenzo, 226
Maria Teresa, Empress, 343
Marin, Valentin, 411
Martel, Charles, 175
Martini, Signor, 117
Mary, Queen of Scots, 93
Masséna, Marshal, 384
Mastropiero, Orio. _See under_ Doges
Maurice of Nassau, 165
Maximilian, Emperor, 66, 67, 68, 71, 198
Mayne, Christopher, 164
Medici, Cardinal Ferdinando dei, 124, 127, 165
Cosmo dei, 124, 126
Francesco dei, 124-127
Isabella dei, 58, 124
Maria de’, 214
Mediterranean, the, 169, 175, 357
Men and women of letters, 430
Merceria, the, 242
Messina, 170
Mestre, 111
Michelangelo, 116
Michiel, Giustina Renier, 234, 242, 254-265, 272, 337, 338, 342, 417-420
Marcantonio, 256
Milan, 75, 76, 208, 381, 382, 389
Duke of, 194
Ministry of Public Worship, European, 23
Mocenigo, Alvise, 404
Giovanni, 27, 28
Sebastiano, 343
_See also under_ Doges
Modena, 379, 389, 417
Molière, 255
Molinari, Carlo, 327, 328, 331
Molmenti, 26, 35, 48, 57-65, 132, 283
Monasteries of--
the Carità, 197
Saint George, 22
San Geremia, 368
Money-lenders, 111-115
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 217
Montecchi, Romeo, 68
Montesquieu, 175, 319-320
Monti Vincenzo, 256
Moorish conquest, 175
Morelli, 262
Moro, Cristoforo. _See under_ Doges
Zuan, 195, 196
Morosini, Alvise, 200
Angelo, 195
Francesco. _See under_ Doges
Niccolò, 409
Tommaso, 226
Mummeries, 198-200, 278
Murano--
Councils, 102
glass-makers, 100-106, 177-178
Golden Book, 102
heraldic arms, 102
podestà, 102
Muratori, 196
Musæus, 152
Museo Civico, 106
Correr, 311
Mustapha, 170, 171
Mutinelli, 345, 346, 352
Muzina (prison), 19
Nani, Giacomo, 386, 387
Naples, 379
King of, 350, 387
Napoleon, 175, 256, 257, 258-260, 262, 332, 352, 373, 377, 379, 380-417
Narenta, pirates of, 169
Nassau, Prince of, 387
National Assembly of France, 363, 364
Navagero, Andrea, 150, 151, 162
Nevers, Duke of, 176, 224
Niccolini, tragedian, 262, 263
Niccolotti and Castellani, 179
Nicolosi, Angelo, 12
Nicosia, 170
Nievo, Ippolito, 391
Noailles, Duc de, 226
Nobles, College of, 292
Oglio, the, 396
Opera, first, in Italy, 180
Orford, Lord, 131
Orsini, Paolo Giordano, 58, 124
Virginio, 58-59
Osella, coining of the, 49-50, 342, 347
‘Oselle,’ gift of the, 48, 337
Osopo, 67, 71, 389
_Othello_, 64, 65
Oxford University, 88
Pace, island of, 134
Padua, 152, 172, 349, 398
Bishop of, 162, 163
University of, 162-167, 349
Painters, 132-146, 430-431
College of, 146
Paisiello, 287
Palace (Palazzo)--
Mocenigo, 217
Renier, 298
Zen, 298
Palazzo (Palace)--
Cappello, 176
Foscari, 180, 181, 183
Michiel, 257
Morosini, 201
Palladio, 143, 178, 197
‘Pallone,’ game of, 198
Palma, fortress of, 323, 389
Papal Court, 10
Parenzo, 49
Paris, 242
Parma, 362, 379, 382
Duke of, 329
Parthenon, the, 227
Pasqualigo, Cosimo, 22
Passarowitz, treaty of, 349
Passionei, Cardinal, 335
Patras, 227
Pawnbrokers, 111-115
Peloponnesus, the, 227-230, 348, 349
Pepoli, Alessandro, 287
Pesaro, Niccolò da, 22
Peschiera, fort of, 351, 383
Peter the Great, Czar, 230
Petrarch, 146, 155
Philip II. of Spain, 170, 175, 208
Philippe de Valois, 84
Piave, the, 178
Piazza of Saint Mark, 119
Piazzetta, the, 270, 283, 324, 336
columns of, 55
Piedmont, 367, 375
Pigeons of Saint Mark’s, 188
Pio, Prince, 149, 154
Piombi, the, 333, 398, 405, 408
Pirates, 169, 358
Pisa, 165
Pisani, Alvise, 366, 372, 375, 376
Vittor, 3, 174, 356
Pizzamano, Domenico, 395, 396, 416, 417
Plague, 144, 152, 225
Plato’s _Dialogues_, 341
Plautus, 196
Plays, 196-197, 283
Po, the, 178, 380, 396
Poe, Edgar, 267
Poitiers, 175
Poland, 362
Political prisoners, 66-76
Ponte, Antonio da, 116
Ponte. _See also_ Bridge
dell’Angelo, 202, 317, 331
del Carmine, 179
di Donna Onesta, 131
della Paglia, 70
Storto, 121
Popes--
Alexander III., 267, 270
Alexander VI., 153
Alexander VIII., 228
Clement VII., 91
Clement VIII., 208
Gregory XIII., 238
Innocent VIII., 209
Julius II., 198
Paul III., 209
Paul V., 208, 209
Pius II., 46
Pius VII., 379
Sixtus V., 78, 81, 186
Pordenone, 67, 68, 98
Portugal, 356, 358
Pozzi, the, 21, 333, 405, 408
Prata, Count, 278, 279
Printing, invention of, 149
Prisons and prisoners--
in eighteenth century, 333
in sixteenth century, 19-22
Priuli, Zacaria, 195
Procession of Corpus Domini, 73
Provisional Government of Venice, 411
Provveditori, 34-43, 129, 186, 201, 235, 282, 296, 354
Psalms of David, 148
Ptolemy, 167
Quirini, the, 53
Aloise, 376
Angelo, 296, 297, 372
Rabelais, 132
Raphael, 132
Record Office, English, 19
‘Red Inquisitor,’ 14
Reggio d’Emilia, 389
Renascence, the, 119
Renier, Bernardino, 257, 258
Paolo. _See under_ Doges
Revolutionaries, 316-317
Rialto, the, 54, 172, 283
bridge of, 115-116, 180
column of, 54
Richard III. of England, 109, 175
Riviera, the, 377
Robert, King, 84
Robespierre, 375
Romagna, 396
Romanin, 11-12, 18, 299, 346, 358, 362, 363, 386
Rome, 10, 28, 78, 81, 106, 111, 141, 173, 174, 186, 208, 209, 212, 213, 256
Barberini Gallery in, 118
‘Royal Macedonian’ regiment, 350
Rubini, the actor, 270
Russia, 175, 341, 377
Sabellico, 150, 155, 158
Saint Catharine, 84
Saint Helen’s Island, 274
Saint Justina, 172
Saint Mark--
procurators of, 231, 305, 336, 359
standard of, 418-420
Saint Mark’s Church, 18, 54, 143, 228, 360
horses of, 417
Sacristy, 25
Saint Mark’s Square, 35, 140, 195, 199, 212, 258, 260, 268, 269, 298, 408, 409, 414, 415
Salimbeni, General, 414
Salò, 332
Salò, Pietro di, 54
Salviati, banking house of, 121
San Cassian, 134, 138, 140, 156
San Cristoforo, island of, 134
San Giacomo in Orio, 157
San Giorgio Maggiore, island of, 275, 405
San Sisto, Cardinal, 176
Sanmichele, 142
Sansovino, Jacopo, 136, 140-144, 162
Sant’ Omobono, 64
Santa Maura, islands of, 227, 230
Sanudo, Marin, 21-22, 35, 36, 65, 68, 70, 73, 150, 155-158, 195, 196, 199, 200
Sardinia, 379
Sarpi, Fra Paolo, 211-213, 218
Saturn’s rings, 167
Savoy, 367
Duke of, 184
Sbirri, 56, 57, 102, 310-333
Scholars, 149-167
Schulenburg, Marshal Count von, 349
Sculptors, 432
See, Holy, 10, 23, 163, 208, 209, 210
Senate, sittings of, 11
Serrurier, General, 417
Shakespeare, 64, 65, 139, 257
Sign of the Old Woman, 180
Signorotti, 56-57, 320
Signors of the Night, 10, 24, 195, 302
Signory, the, 64, 71, 74, 77, 82, 84, 166, 188, 194, 198, 211, 213, 218, 234, 266, 268, 269, 275, 373
‘Silver Book,’ the, 144
Slaves, 169
Smedley, E. W., 11, 105, 378
Sobieski, 226
Societies, secret, 311
Soranzo, Jacopo, 93
Tommaso, 392, 396
Spain, 19, 42, 175, 199, 208, 209, 210, 223
Stampa, Gaspara, 146, 162
Stanislaus Leczinski, King, 320
‘Statutes of the Inquisitors of State,’ 11-12
Steno, Michel. _See under_ Doges
Superstitions, 205-206
‘Talanta,’ Pietro Aretino’s, 196
Tassini, 131, 143, 148
Temesvar, 349
_Terremoto_, 143
Thames, the, 27
Theatre--
Fenice, 285, 287
of San Benedetto, 281, 282, 285
of San Cassian, 246, 304
of San Moisè, 245-246
Theatres, 194, 197, 278-287
Theatrical performances, 194, 278
Thieves, flogging of, 54
Thode, Dr. Heinrich, 67, 74
Tiepolo, Domenico, 392, 396
Giovanni Battista, 251
Tintoretto, 98, 120, 133, 138, 139, 144, 178
Titian, 98, 118, 120, 133, 135-136, 138, 140, 141-145, 162, 261
Tomassetti, Professor, 190
Torcello, 134
Torre, Count Francesco della, 12
Torture, use of, 16-18, 25
Tower of London, 21
Trade, protection of, 108, 110
Treviso, 251, 254, 404
Trieste, 368
Tron, Andrea, 340
Tuileries, 364
Turin, 367
Turkey, 40, 199, 341
Turks, 169-175, 225-230, 348-349, 351, 361
Turner, 116
Tuscan language, 11
Tuscany, 362, 379
Grand Duke of, 126, 136
Usmago, podestà of, 305
Utrecht, treaty of, 362
Valaresso, 278
Valier, Silvestro. _See under_ Doges
Vallesabbia, 390, 393
Valtellina, 210
Vano, Girolamo, 216, 218
Vatican, 23, 77, 164, 212
Vendramin, Andrea, 195
Venice--
ceded to Austria, 417
English ambassadors to, 84
Henry III. of France visits, 175-186
period of decadence, 207-254
period of greatest prosperity, 5
plague visitations, 152, 225
Venier, Girolamo, 340
Sebastian, 173-175, 356
Verona, 57, 323, 375, 376, 377, 383, 384, 391, 398
Veronese, Paolo, 26, 120, 146, 178, 261
trial of, 29-34
Versailles, 364
Congress of, 362
Vervins, 208
Vienna, 68, 226
treaty of, 362
Villetard, 406-410
Vinciolo, Francesco, 107
Visconti, the, 4
Vitali, Doctor Buonafede, 269
Viviani, 164, 165, 167
War of the Spanish Succession, 349, 362, 382
‘Wehmgericht,’ the, 12
Williams, Henry, 164
Wine-sellers, 111-114
‘Wise Men on Blasphemy,’ 196
‘Wise Men on Heresy,’ 23, 24
Wolsey, Cardinal, 87, 92
Women of Venice--
in eighteenth century, 234-246
in sixteenth century, 117-131
Worsley, Sir Richard, 84, 375
Wotton, Sir Henry, 216, 218
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 164
Yriarte, M., 8, 29, 44-45, 78, 79, 119, 128, 146
Zeno, Carlo, 3, 174, 356
Renier, 220, 221
Zulian, Girolamo, 311
THE END
SOUTHERN ITALY AND SICILY AND THE RULERS OF THE SOUTH
By F. MARION CRAWFORD
WITH A HUNDRED ORIGINAL DRAWINGS BY HENRY BROKMAN
Cloth Crown 8vo $2.50 net
“No living man of letters could have handled his materials with greater
skill, or distilled them with more certainty into a fluent and
fascinating narrative.”--_The Dial._
“Mr. Crawford’s manner and method throughout are those of the romantic
historian: true to fact, but true, also, to the romance of events, and
enlivening and strengthening the whole through the historical
imagination. He has taken a subject which he is peculiarly well fitted
to treat by his experience and his studies and his former work, and it
becomes, in his hand, a source of unexpected pleasure.”--_Boston
Herald._
AVE ROMA IMMORTALIS
STUDIES FROM THE CHRONICLES OF ROME
By F. MARION CRAWFORD
_Author of “Rulers of the South,” etc._
Fully Illustrated Cloth Crown 8vo $3.00 net
Dr. S. WEIR MITCHELL writes: “I have not for a long while read a book
which pleased me more than Mr. Crawford’s ‘Roma.’ It is cast in a form
so original and so available that it must surely take the place of all
other books about Rome which are needed to help one to understand its
story and its archæology.... The book has for me a rare interest.”
“The ablest popular work on Rome published in recent years.”--_Chicago
Tribune._
“The ideal chronicle of the Eternal City.”--_Inter-Ocean._
“More valuable to the general reader than any other.”--_San Francisco
Chronicle._
“He recalls the Rome of the great age of the conquests; of the Empire;
of those years when the fires of life were dying; of the age of the
barbarians; of the middle age; of the Renaissance; and of the modern
time.”--H. W. MABIE.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
* * * * *
Writings of F. Marion Crawford
12mo Cloth
Whosoever Shall Offend $1.50
The Heart of Rome 1.50
Cecilia 1.50
Marietta 1.50
Corleone 1.50
Mr. Isaacs 1.50
Dr. Claudius 1.50
A Roman Singer 1.50
An American Politician 1.50
To Leeward 1.50
Zoroaster 1.50
A Tale of a Lonely Parish 1.50
Marzio’s Crucifix 1.50
Paul Patoff 1.50
Pietro Ghisleri 1.50
The Children of the King 1.50
Marion Darche 1.50
The Three Fates 1.50
Katharine Lauderdale 1.50
The Ralstons 1.50
Love in Idleness 2.00
Casa Braccio, 2 vols. 2.00
Taquisara 1.50
Adam Johnstone’s Son, and A Rose of Yesterday 1.50
Saracinesca 1.50
Sant’ Ilario 1.50
Don Orsino 1.50
With the Immortals 1.50
Greifenstein 1.50
A Cigarette-Maker’s Romance, and Khaled 1.50
The Witch of Prague 1.50
Via Crucis 1.50
In the Palace of the King 1.50
=WHOSOEVER SHALL OFFEND.=--“Not since George Eliot’s ‘Romola’ brought her
to her foreordained place among literary immortals, has there appeared
in English fiction a character at once so strong and sensitive, so
entirely and consistently human, so urgent and compelling in its appeal
to sustained, sympathetic interest.”--_Philadelphia North American._
=THE HEART OF ROME (A Tale of the “Lost Water”).=--“Mr. Crawford has
written as absorbingly interesting a story as any of the perennially
engrossing ‘Saracinesca’ trilogy.”--_Brooklyn Times._
=CECILIA (A Story of Modern Rome).=--“The love story, which is the
dominating interest throughout, is so strange and novel a one that many
readers will, we think, compare it with ‘Mr. Isaacs,’ the author’s first
and most popular book.... Mr. Crawford will, we think, be held to have
scored a new and distinct success in this story.”--_The Philadelphia
North American._
=MARIETTA (A Maid of Venice).=--“The workshop, its processes, the ways and
thought of the time, all this is handled in so masterly a manner, not
for its own sake, but for that of the story.... It has charm and the
romance which is eternally human, as well as that which was of the
Venice of that day. And over it all there is an atmosphere of worldly
wisdom, of understanding, sympathy, and tolerance, of intuition and
recognition, that makes Marion Crawford the excellent companion he is in
his books for mature men and women.”--_New York Mail and Express._
=CORLEONE (A Tale Of Sicily).=--_The last of the famous Saracinesca
Series._--“It is by far the most stirring and dramatic of all the
author’s Italian stories.... The plot is a masterly one, bringing at
almost every page a fresh surprise, keeping the reader in suspense to
the very end.”--_The Times_, New York.
=MR. ISAACS.=--“It is lofty and uplifting. It is strongly, sweetly,
tenderly written. It is in all respects an uncommon novel.”--_The
Literary World._
=DR. CLAUDIUS.=--“The characters are strongly marked without any suspicion
of caricature, and the author’s ideas on social and political subjects
are often brilliant and always striking. It is no exaggeration to say
that there is not a dull page in the book, which is peculiarly adapted
for the recreation of the student or thinker.”--_Living Church._
=A ROMAN SINGER.=--“A powerful story of art and love in Rome.”--_The New
York Observer._
=AN AMERICAN POLITICIAN.=--“One of the characters is a visiting
Englishman. Possibly Mr. Crawford’s long residence abroad has made him
select such a hero as a safeguard against slips, which does not seem to
have been needed. His insight into a phase of politics with which he
could hardly be expected to be familiar is remarkable.”--_Buffalo
Express._
=TO LEEWARD.=--“It is an admirable tale of Italian life told in a spirited
way and far better than most of the fiction current.”--_San Francisco
Chronicle._
=ZOROASTER.=--“As a matter of literary art solely, we doubt if Mr.
Crawford has ever before given us better work than the description of
Belshazzar’s feast with which the story begins, or the death-scene with
which it closes.”--_The Christian Union_ (now _The Outlook_).
=A TALE OF A LONELY PARISH.=--“It is a pleasure to have anything so
perfect of its kind as this brief and vivid story. It is doubly a
success, being full of human sympathy, as well as thoroughly
artistic.”--_The Critic._
=MARZIO’S CRUCIFIX.=--“We take the liberty of saying that this work
belongs to the highest department of character-painting in words.”--_The
Churchman._
=PAUL PATOFF.=--“It need scarcely be said that the story is skilfully and
picturesquely written, portraying sharply individual characters in
well-defined surroundings.”--_New York Commercial Advertiser._
=PIETRO GHISLERI.=--“The strength of the story lies not only in the
artistic and highly dramatic working out of the plot, but also in the
penetrating analysis and understanding of the impulsive and passionate
Italian character.”--_Public Opinion._
=THE CHILDREN OF THE KING.=--“One of the most artistic and exquisitely
finished pieces of work that Crawford has produced. The picturesque
setting, Calabria and its surroundings, the beautiful Sorrento and the
Gulf of Salerno, with the bewitching accessories that climate, sea, and
sky afford, give Mr. Crawford rich opportunities to show his rare
descriptive powers. As a whole the book is strong and beautiful through
its simplicity.”--_Public Opinion._
=MARION DARCHE.=--“We are disposed to rank ‘Marion Darche’ as the best of
Mr. Crawford’s American stories.”--_The Literary World._
=THE THREE FATES.=--“The strength of the story lies in portrayal of the
aspirations, disciplinary efforts, trials, and triumphs of the man who
is a born writer, and who by long and painful experiences learns the
good that is in him and the way in which to give it effectual
expression. Taken for all in all, it is one of the most pleasing of all
his productions in fiction, and it affords a view of certain phases of
American, or perhaps we should say of New York, life that have not
hitherto been treated with anything like the same adequacy and
felicity.”--_Boston Beacon._
=KATHARINE LAUDERDALE.=--“It need scarcely be said that the story is
skilfully and picturesquely written, portraying sharply individual
characters in well-defined surroundings.”--_New York Commercial
Advertiser._
=THE RALSTONS.=--“The whole group of character studies is strong and
vivid.”--_The Literary World._
=LOVE IN IDLENESS.=--“The story is told in the author’s lightest vein; it
is bright and entertaining.”--_The Literary World._
=CASA BRACCIO.=--“We are grateful when Mr. Crawford keeps to his Italy.
The poetry and enchantment of the land are all his own, and ‘Casa
Braccio’ gives promise of being his masterpiece.... He has the life, the
beauty, the heart, and the soul of Italy at the tips of his
fingers.”--_Los Angeles Express._
=TAQUISARA.=--“A charming story this is, and one which will certainly be
liked by all admirers of Mr. Crawford’s work.”--_New York Herald._
=ADAM JOHNSTONE’S SON and A ROSE OF YESTERDAY.=--“It is not only one of
the most enjoyable novels that Mr. Crawford has ever written, but is a
novel that will make people think.”--_Boston Beacon._
“Don’t miss reading Marion Crawford’s new novel, ‘A Rose of Yesterday.’
It is brief, but beautiful and strong. It is as charming a piece of pure
idealism as ever came from Mr. Crawford’s pen.”--_Chicago Tribune._
=SARACINESCA.=--“The work has two distinct merits, either of which would
serve to make it great: that of telling a perfect story in a perfect
way, and of giving a graphic picture of Roman society.... The story is
exquisitely told, and is the author’s highest achievement, as yet, in
the realm of fiction.”--_The Boston Traveler._
=SANT’ ILARIO (A Sequel to Saracinesca).=--“A singularly powerful and
beautiful story.... It fulfils every requirement of artistic fiction. It
brings out what is most impressive in human action, without owing any of
its effectiveness to sensationalism or artifice. It is natural, fluent
in evolution, accordant with experience, graphic in description,
penetrating in analysis, and absorbing in interest.”--_The New York
Tribune._
=DON ORSINO (A Sequel to Saracinesca and Sant’ Ilario).=--“Offers
exceptional enjoyment in many ways, in the fascinating absorption of
good fiction, in the interest of faithful historic accuracy, and in
charm of style. The ‘New Italy’ is strikingly revealed in ‘Don
Orsino.’”--_Boston Budget._
=WITH THE IMMORTALS.=--“The strange central idea of the story could have
occurred only to a writer whose mind was very sensitive to the current
of modern thought and progress, while its execution, the setting it
forth in proper literary clothing, could be successfully attempted only
by one whose active literary ability should be fully equalled by his
power of assimilative knowledge, both literary and scientific, and no
less by his courage, and so have a fascination entirely new for the
habitual reader of novels. Indeed, Mr. Crawford has succeeded in taking
his readers quite above the ordinary plane of novel interest.”--_The
Boston Advertiser._
=GREIFENSTEIN.=--” ... Another notable contribution to the literature of
the day. Like all Mr. Crawford’s work, this novel is crisp, clear, and
vigorous, and will be read with a great deal of interest.”--_New York
Evening Telegram._
=A CIGARETTE-MAKER’S ROMANCE and KHALED.=--“It is a touching romance,
filled with scenes of great dramatic power.”--_Boston Commercial
Bulletin._
“It abounds in stirring incidents and barbaric picturesqueness; and the
love struggle of the unloved Khaled is manly in its simplicity and noble
in its ending.”--_The Mail and Express._
=THE WITCH OF PRAGUE.=--“The artistic skill with which this extraordinary
story is constructed and carried out is admirable and delightful.... Mr.
Crawford has scored a decided triumph, for the interest of the tale is
sustained throughout.... A very remarkable, powerful, and interesting
story.”--_New York Tribune._
=VIA CRUCIS (A Romance of the Second Crusade).=--“Throughout ‘Via Crucis’
the author shows not only the artist’s selective power and a sense of
proportion and comparative values, but the Christian’s instinct for
those things that it is well to think upon.... Blessed is the book that
exalts, and ‘Via Crucis’ merits that beatitude.”--_New York Times._
=IN THE PALACE OF THE KING (A Love Story of Old Madrid).=--“Marion
Crawford’s latest story, ‘In the Palace of the King,’ is quite up to the
level of his best works for cleverness, grace of style, and sustained
interest. It is, besides, to some extent, a historical story, the scene
being the royal palace at Madrid, the author drawing the characters of
Philip II. and Don John of Austria, with an attempt, in a broad
impressionist way, at historic faithfulness. His reproduction of the
life at the Spanish court is as brilliant and picturesque as any of his
Italian scenes, and in minute study of detail is, in a real and valuable
sense, true history.”--_The Advance._
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64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York
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