CHAPTER VIII.

The Sun of Venice set!--Many short-lived Doges

and Dogaressas--Games at Cards--A stout unwieldy

Dogaressa!--Another Hero-Doge--The Morea conquered--“Woman

maketh Man!”--A wrinkled face--Loss of Candia--Universal

idleness and indulgence--Venice dying as a whirling

ballet-dancer!--A virtuous Dogaressa--Her cell a

treasure-house--A Princess-costumier--A dress of

solid gold!--A costly wedding--The Tragedy of Madonna

Francesca Grimani-Mocenigo--A Lady-bountiful--A

Cultured Dogaressa--Polissena--A Rope-dancer Dogal

spouse, Margherita Delmaz--“Stop that bell!”--Agnello

Emo the last Captain of Venice--The Last Scene--Feeble

Doge Lodovico Manin--A despairing Dogaressa--The

roar of cannon!--Abdication of the Doge--The Regalia

burnt--Buonaparte hands Venice over to Austria--“_La

Republica xe Morta_” 292–314

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

An Ideal Portrait--Dogaressa Teodora Selvo, _Frontispiece_

La Maga Irene holding a Reception, _To face page_ 4

Il Sposalizio--The Betrothal Ring, „ 24

La Cazza del Toro--Bull-running, „ 36

A Typical Family Group, „ 46

The Dogaressa and her Maids of Honour, „ 62

Going to a Masked Ball, „ 76

A Mystic Dance, „ 92

Doge Reniero and Dogaressa Aloicia Zeno, „ 102

A Court Ball Parade, „ 118

Doge Francesco and Dogaressa Elisabetta Dandolo, „ 138

Two Courtesans and Pets, „ 152

Festa Campestre--Picnic on the Brenta, „ 162

La Ninfa--A Love Affair, „ 176

Marriage Reception in a Palace, „ 192

Fashionable Hair-dressing, „ 208

Dance in a Villa Garden, „ 216

Le Novizze--Brides in Gondolas, „ 226

A Bride’s Debut, „ 238

Dogaressas Zilia Dandolo-Priuli; Loredana

Marcello-Mocenigo; and Cecilia Contarini-Venier, „ 254

Dogaressa Loredana Marcello-Mocenigo, „ 268

Dogaressa Morosina Morosini-Grimani, „ 282

A Game at Cards--“_La Trappola_,” „ 294

The Fortune-Teller, „ 304

INTRODUCTION

VENICE--“THE CITY OF VENUS!”

The “Queen of the Adriatic” came into being quite as mysteriously and

almost as miraculously as did the “Queen of Beauty.”

Where the iridescent bubbles of the light zephyr-borne foam of the

ever-flowing sea-wash disperse, with intangible impact, upon the golden

strand of shallow shoals, all strewn with opal-hued sea-shells--making

plaintive cadences in the keen sea-breeze--there, there, was Venus

born--so too was Venice!

The fair form of the fascinating goddess lay prone--partly in and

partly out, of the generating water until the breath of life, skimming

over the crested ripples, exhilarated her blushing limbs. Most delicate

sprays of aromatic seaweed intermingled with the abundant tresses of

her rich auburn hair, flawless pearls of the ocean threaded themselves

around her shapely arms and bosom, her cincture was a cunning veil of

coloured sea-mist, and her feet were covered with glittering scales of

gold and silver fish.

Upon the aqueous shore the Four Seasons wait with their twelve

attendant lunar nymphs to cast about their “Venus calva” the emerald

and topaz girdle of virginity, and the ruby and sapphire mantle of

royalty. A merrily dancing chorus of seven times fifty-and-two dainty

fairies of the day, hand-in-hand, are ready to escort their Queen

through the amber grotto to her royal throne beneath the myrtle-grove.

All this is metaphorical of the “City of Venus”--Venice--for, to quote

Shelley’s tender ode:--

“Underneath day’s azure eyes,

Ocean’s darling, Venice, lies.”

Sea and silt united were the parents of the “daintie Citie.” Ebbing,

ever ebbing, the brackish head-waters of the gulf heaped up grain on

grain of terra-firma--the detritus of many a fruitful river and the

shifting rolling sea-sand. Thus was Venice formed, “born,” as Goethe

says, “out of the water.” “Venice calva” laid along the lagunes, her

graceful form reposed upon the _velme_ or _barene_ of Rivo-Alto,

Olivolo, and Poveglia--sand and seaweed submerged; her shapely feet

rested upon the firmer ground of Malamocco and Chioggia; and her comely

hands grasped the _tumbe_ or sedge-growth,--seldom covered by the

tide,--of Torcello, Burano, and Mazzorbo.

Rivo-Alto, or Rialto, was the first of sixty sisters of the languishing

lagunes. Over them silence and solitude reigned supreme, but the sun

shone with generous warmth and the breeze blew with healthful vigour,

and, almost imperceptibly variegated moss clothed the naked _rive_ and

_lidi_. Green math and rush covered the golden dunes, flowers of the

sea,--pinks and anemones,--and blossoms of the land,--lavender and

poppies, imparted colour and fragrance to the wastes of mud.

For hundreds of years, and hundreds more, those oozy quicksand swamps

were nesting-grounds for wild birds of the sea--the feeding-place of

feathered visitants migrating to other climes. The depths were choked

with fish, and the shallows reeked with creeping things, but no hold

was there for foot of man or spoor of beast.

Then, in historic times, into those sandy shifting channels came

strange forms, scaring both fish and fowl away--the coracles of daring

aborigines, from the contiguous shores in quest of food and what-not.

Uncouth men cast their nets and spread their snares amidst struggles

for proprietorship--the lagunes had changed their character.

Another era dawned, that of fire and storm, and fugitives from the

devastating wrath of Alaric and the Goths fled, crouching, scared, and

breathless, for sanctuary to the lagune fastnesses. With them appeared

corsairs of the coast, preying upon the hunted men and women and

seeking hiding-places for their pelf. Thus a ribald population grew up

amid the trackless ways of no-man’s land.

For bare existence had they to fight--no weakling child, no thriftless

woman, no loafing man could long endure that fierce survival of the

fittest. Stripped to their loin-cloths men worked to give stability to

their foothold in the swamp. Balks of timber from submerged forests

were clamped together and great piles of wood driven deep, deep down

into the ooze and silt. Women girding up their skirts waded knee-deep

in the sea-wash, weaving osier basket-work to retain what grains of

gravel rested beneath their feet. Children fetched and carried.

Flotsam and jetsam all came ready to hands which clawed and thewed for

mutual advantage. Shelters of dry mud or baked sunslime with boarded

roofs, windowless and without doors, were the homes of these strenuous

people. Then, by degrees, every safest stretch of sand had its dotting

of cottages and its hamlets. Besides the daily struggle to keep the

greedy water out and the slender soil retain, there was much to do for

one and all. Fishing, bird-snaring, carrying and piloting of goods and

craft were obvious occupations; and then came the rendering of salt and

bitumen, and the gradual cultivation of the bleak wind-swept islets.

Some sort of constitution was in force from the earliest date: the

best man of each collection of dwellings was looked upon as head and

guide, and he gathered the wisdom that he lacked from men next him in

years and influence. The people of the lagunes were not savages--they

were the descendants of men and women highly civilised. Invention and

creation were instinct in them all, and they were Christians too.

Their legislation and religion were based upon the examples of their

forebears in the mainland. All looked to Rivo-Alto,--the port of Padua,

it was called,--as the centre of their geographical economy, and there,

too, in 421, Padua sent consuls to regulate the lives and property of

the water-settlers and to safeguard the common weal from inroads of

barbarians.

* * * * *

VENICE--“THE CITY OF SAINTS!”

is quite as appropriate a title as any other bestowed upon the

“Queen of the Adriatic.” The translation of the body of Saint Mark

the Evangelist from Alexandria, in 829, excited in every class of

the population a fervid emotion and an insatiable ambition for the

possession of relics of the Saints, not alone as objects of devotion

but as mascots for protection.

Bodies--more or less entire--were exhumed, purchased, or stolen,

from scenes of fierce martyrdom, or from quiet resting places, and

reverently conveyed in Venetian galleys to the Lido for distribution

among the churches of the Lagunes. Each translation was an exhibition

of manly abasement and womanly devotion: Doge and Dogaressa, no less

than the poorest of the poor, took part in the ecstatic ceremonies.

Each saintly personage had ascriptions of peculiar benevolence, and

became the centre of special devotions; indeed many of the holy shrines

were regarded as objects of perpetual pilgrimages. Venetian manners,

Venetian poetry and literature, and Venetian vernacular, were all

marked by the hagiography of the saintly city.

In a very curious volume published in Venice by Giacomo Zoppi, in 1519,

entitled “Viaggia da Vinegia al Santo Sepolcro et al Monte Sinai,”

and illustrated by quaint wood-cuts of cities, peoples, and animals,

encountered by the way, is a list of the bodies of Saints enshrined in

Venetian Churches, in the following order:--

_San Marco_ “Messer San Marco”--St. Mark the Evangelist, from

Alexandria, under the high altar; (2) The glorious Martyr

Sant’ Isidoro, from the Island of Chios, in the Chapel of the

Crucifixion--(1125).

_San Pietro di Castello_:--SS. Sergio and Bacco, in a marble

tomb in the crypt of the Confession.

_San Danicle_:--San Giovanni, martyr from Alexandria.

_San Giovanbattista in Bragora_:--San Giovanni the Almsgiver,

Patron of Alexandria.

_Sant’ Antonino_:--“Messer San Sabba,” Abbot of Acre--(992).

_SS. Trinita_:--Venerable monk and martyr, Sant’ Anastatio.

_San Zaccaria_:--(1) “Messer San Zaccaria,” father of St.

John Baptist; (2) San Gregorio Nazanzino, Patriarch of

Constantinople; (3) San Teodoro, confessor, from the Island of

Samos; (4) San Pancrazio, martyr, in a marble sarcophagus; (5)

Santa Sabina, martyr of Acre, in a marble sarcophagus; (6) San

Tharaso, martyr, of Roumania, in the crypt; (7) San Ligerio,

martyr.

_San Lorenzo_:--SS. Giorgio, Barbaro, and Paul--Bishop, martyrs

all from Constantinople.

_San Sebastiano_:--Venerable Sebastiano, rector of San Giovanni

(head wanting!)

_Santa Marina_:--Venerable nun and patient martyr Marina, in the

choir, from Greece.

_San Salvadore_:--San Teodoro, martyr, from

Constantinople,--_martyr et cavalier di Dio_.

_San Paterniano_:--SS. Gondino and Epimaeo.

_San Giuliano Martiro_:--(1) San Floriano, martyr, from Greece;

(2) San Paolo, hermit (head wanting!)

_San Canciano_:--San Maximo, bishop and martyr.

_San Maria delli Crocichieri (Formosa)_:--

Venerable virgin and martyr Santa Barbara,--in a “_bella

cappella_.”

_San Geremia_:--Venerable Magno--Bishop of Altino, builder of

the first church in Venice.

_Santa Lucia_:--Venerable Santa Lucia, virgin and martyr, in a

chapel. Translated from Saragossa to Constantinople, and thence

to Venice.

_SS. Gervasio e Prothasio_--called “Sa Trovasi”--Santo

Grisogono, martyr from Zara.

_San Niccolo dai Mendigoli_:--San Niceto, martyr.

_San Raffaelo_:--Santa Niceta, virgin and martyr from Nicomedia.

_San Basileo_:--San Costantio, confessor, from Ancona, in a

coffer before the high altar.

_Sant’ Apollinare_--called “San Aponal”:--San Gioria, prophet.

_San Simeone Propheto_:--(1) _San Simeone_, from

Constantinople--in a marble sarcophagus before the high altar;

(2) San Hermoleo, priest and martyr, from Nicomedia--in a marble

sarcophagus in the middle of the nave.

_Sant’ Elena_:--“The glorious Queen Sant’ Elena”--(1205).

_San Niccolo di Lio (Lido)_:--(1) San Niccolo Magno, Archbishop

of Mirraea (1100); (2) San Niccolo, Bishop and Abbot of Mount

Sinai; (3) San Theodoro, Archbishop of Morea.

_San Giorgio Maggiore_:--(1) San Stefano, first martyr, in

a special chapel (1105); (2) San Paolo, Duke and martyr of

Constantinople; (3–4) SS. Cosimo and Damiano, martyrs; (5) San

Cosima, confessor and virgin, from Constantinople.

_San Clemente Papa_:--Sant’ Aniano, Patriarch of Alexandria,

disciple of Saint Mark.

_San Servilio_:--San Leo, Bishop of Modon--(819).

_San Secondo_:--San Secondo, martyr, from Aste.

_Santa Maria di Murano_:--(1) San Donato, bishop and martyr,

in the crypt--(1125); (2) San Gerardo, Bishop of Moravia and

martyr--a Venetian by birth.

_Sant’ Albano di Burano_:--(1) Sant’ Albano, Bishop; (2) Sant’

Orso, martyr; and (3) San Domenigo, hermit and confessor, both

from Armenia.

_Santa Maria di Torcello_:--Sant’ Eliodoro, Bishop of Altino and

martyr.

_Basilica di Torcello_:--San Fosca, virgin and martyr from

Aquileia.

_Sant’ Antonio di Torcello_:--Santa Cristina, virgin and martyr,

from Armenia.

_Basilica di Grado_:--(1) San Hermacoro, Patriarch of Aquileia;

(2) San Fortunato, archdeacon--both in the crypt.

_Santa Croce della Zecca_:--“The body of the most holy Doctor

Saint Athanasius, Patriarch of Alexandria.”

_Basilica di Chiosa_ (Chioggia):--SS. Felice and Fortunato (?)

from Aquileia.

_San Rocco di Chiosa_:--San Rocco.

In addition to these Bodies were very many other relics of Saints, for

example; arms of St. Andrew the Apostle, St. Barnabas the Apostle, St.

George of Cappadoccia, heads of St. Sixtus the martyr, S. Simeon the

Apostle, etc., etc. Every Church has its reliquary for veneration, and

in it a fragment of the True Cross.

Venice, moreover was a nursery of Saints: she numbered among her

honoured dead scions of nearly every noble family who, for one good

reason or another, had attained to the pre-eminence of Sanctity. Such

were San Pietro Orseolo, San Lorenzo Guistiniani and San Vincentio

Ferrar--to name but three. A religious atmosphere pervaded the islands

of the Lagunes and kept alight many a kindled shrine on mud-bank pile

and at _casa_ corner. Inside the homes of the Venetians also,

according to orthodox custom, were Ikons and Anconas with candles

burning in honour of favourite saints.

Nevertheless, and in spite of such a wealth of saintly environment, the

Venetians were undoubtedly backward in sending their sons to fight the

battles of the Cross in Palestine. On the other hand they were ready

with no niggard contributions in aid of Crusaders from other lands.

Venetian gold, Venetian ships, and Venetian seamen, carried the armies

of the Cross to foreign ports; and Venetian alms endowed hospitals and

funds for the benefit of the wounded and the sad, upon the islands of

the Lagunes.

In the “_Viaggia da Vinegia_” is a very simple but doubtless

efficacious recipe for the treatment of weary Crusaders:--“For pilgrims

suffering from the heat and tender feet, anoint with wine-lees mixed

with olive oil overnight; then, in the morning wash in a bath of sweet

herbs and sweet water.”

Perhaps the reason for the apparent luke-warmness in the defence of

the Holy Sepulchre may be seen in the isolation of the lagune dwellers.

They were not in such close touch with other communities as are nations

with artificial boundaries. Their charity began at home, and their

customs were unlike those of their neighbours. All islanders are so

differentiated from inhabitants of continents: citizens of the British

Isles are remarkable to-day for insular idiosyncrasies.

Venice is still one of the most religious cities in all Italy. Prayer

never ceases, the Blessed Sacrament is perpetually exposed, the

churches are open night and day, and the devotions have little that is

merely perfunctory.

Saint Giustina was one of the saintly patrons of Venice. She was a

Paduan maiden of Royal birth--a daughter of King Vitalicinio. Haled

before the Roman Emperor she professed herself a Christian: in vain

did he strive to shake her resolution. Sentenced to be beheaded the

sword of her executioner turned upon himself, and this occurred three

times in succession. Eventually, in 303, she was cast into the sea and

drowned.

Mariners sailing along the Venetian Coast still, it is said, hear at

the hour of Vespers, the sighs of the holy martyr, and the devouter

sort cross themselves reverently and crave her guidance and patronage.

In Venetian art Saint Giustina accompanies Saint Mark, Saint George,

and Saint Catherine of Alexandria as assistants at the throne of the

Virgin Queen of Heaven. The unicorn generally accompanies her--the

mystic emblem of chastity.

The first church dedicated to her honour was built at Padua in 453 by

Orpillo, a pious citizen, in times of unrest and disaster. In Venice

Saint Giustina’s church was erected by Dogaressa Elena, spouse of

Doge Agnello Badoero: it was situated in the Calle del Te Deum but

suppressed and dismantled in the seventh century.

A very pretty legend is linked to the memory of Saint Giustina. It is

recorded that when the people of Altino and the other towns threatened

by the Longobards flew disconsolately to the islands of the lagunes,

a white cloud appeared to two holy priests Germaniano and Mauro and

out of it proceeded the sweetest of all voices--that of Saint Mary

the Consoler. With her conversed Saint Peter the Apostle, Saint John

the Baptist, Saint Antonio of Padua, and other holy martyrs. Saint

Giustina joined the sacred conclave and was deputed to indicate to

the faithful clerics the spots whereupon it was the will of Heaven

that churches should be built. Torcello, Burano and Mazzorbo owe their

sacred edifices to the girl Saint’s instruction. She also told Bishop

Magnus of Altino that wherever he found a vine there to erect a church.

At Padua one may see the prison of the Saint--a dungeon seven feet by

three. The martyrdom of Saint Giustina has tenderly inspired the pen of

the poet and the brush of the painter, and they have together handed

down a delightful tradition for Saint Giustina was regarded as the

“Patroness of the Dogaressa.”

VENICE--“THE CITY OF ‘FAIR’ WOMEN!”

The two things most famous and most remarkable in Venice, throughout

the whole of her fascinating story, are first of all the beauty of her

women, and secondly the splendour of her palaces. No city in the wide

wide world, ever did, or ever can, compare with Venice in the number

and magnificence of her palaces. They are as unique and as majestic,

individually and collectively, as is the Queenly City herself.

Concerning them, that trenchant epigram of Francesco Sansovino, the

historian, “_Veni Etiam_” is a truism--Come again and again, and

you shall always find some fresh beauty, some unimagined delight.

Venice had a greater distinction far, than the elegance of her private

and public buildings,--she was always full of beautiful women. “I never

beheld,” exclaimed the Cardinal of Lorraine to Doge Pasquale Malipiero,

“such a number of lovely women as I see everywhere in your bewitching

city!”

Nicolo Ciccio d’Arezzo, a poetaster of the fifteenth century, invited

all true poets to sing with him the praise and glory of “_Tanta

Donna_,” as he suggestively calls the woman-effigy of Venice.

He unites with Jacopo d’Albiggotto, and Guido da Firenze, in the

enthusiastic refrain:--

“_Di tutta Italia, Lombardia, e Toscana.

Secondo che si vede per effeto

Vinegia e la piu nobile e sovrana._”

Gianni Alfani, a poet of the thirteenth century, in his “_Gentildonne

di Vinegia_,” writes thus:--“I wish to sing with you about my

Mistress, because she is adorned with every virtue and every charm.”

The women of Venice were always distinguished for their natural

quickness and intelligence, their sprightliness and vivacity of manner,

their talkativeness and coaxing ways, and their fondness of music, song

and dance. Perhaps their most characteristic talent however was their

devotion to the toilet--their love of beauty and of clothes!

In person they were usually somewhat short of stature, but endowed with

grace of carriage. Their figures, especially their bosoms, were full

even to the degree of stoutness. This was in a great measure due to the

softness of the Venetian climate, which induced a natural and becoming

indolence. Nevertheless they were vigorous in action and quite able to

give a good account of themselves in marital and other squabbles!

Their features were clearly cut and yet not too severe, their heads

well shaped and borne, their eyes blue like their skies or grey like

their seas, and their hands and feet were small. Their most attractive

attributes were the fair satin peach-like delicacy of their skin, and

the brilliant lustre and golden sheen of their abundant light auburn

hair. Speaking of the consummate art and artifice of Venetian women

Pietro Aretino exclaimed:--

“_Sotto il nero trasparente velo

Veggonsi in carne gli angeoli del cielo!_”

That most fallacious saying,--“Beauty is but skin deep,”--never applied

to Venetian women. Their fair beauty, like all real beauty, not only

covered the whole person externally but it was instinct in their

blood, their muscle, and their nerve,--moreover it was hereditary.

The early parents of the race, or rather intermingled races, were

Trojans and Greeks: then Teutonic-Lombard fathers mated with mothers of

Veneto and the Lagunes, and the stock became stable in its properties

of strength, grace, and beauty. Pliny, of old time, truly cast their

horoscopes when he wrote of the first mothers of Venice thus:--“They

are chaste, simple, and modest, they never give themselves away even

when their men folk are idle and lascivious, their character and

demeanour are marked by Grecian calmness.” Surely he had in view the

line of the Dogaressas!

The treatment of the skin was a speciality of the Venetian women. The

use of the bath was one of their inheritances, they bathed the whole

body frequently, sometimes in the sea at the Lido, but every house

had its bath--in humble homes of wood or common metal, in patrician

palaces of porcelain, glass, or silver. With the water they mixed

simple or exotic perfumes. One of their secrets was to remain, with

the whole body immersed and motionless, for at least half an hour;

and another was, they never rubbed the skin but just dabbed it and

let it dry naturally. Then the nostrums of the masseusses’ art were

exploited. A not uncommon custom was to lay a slice of raw veal, dipped

in new milk, upon the face at night! For richer women other artifices

followed suit--puffs and powders to gently temper the epidermis or hide

unsightly blotches, and pigments,--rouge and others,--with which art

might most effectively colour crude or enervated nature.

Every woman and girl in Venice, at all times, painted,--even the

poorest of them. The cult is still practised at Chioggia, where you

never see a woman without artificial colour. There, by the way, may

be seen still the true Venetian type of female beauty, and the old

Venetian trait of sitting leisurely, under shade or shelter, while some

sympathetic voice reads Ariosto or some other favourite poet.

One very delightful attribute of Venetian women was their

fragrance,--their skins and their hair were always perfumed. Wherever

a _gentildonna_ passed she left behind her a delicious aroma, if she

paused the air around her became saturated with sweetest odours. This

seductive charm is still characteristic of the real Venetian: her love

of scent is hereditary and delightful. In a very real sort of way the

Venetian _gentildonna_ was a living embodiment of Venus--“the fairest

and the sweetest of all the Goddesses:” hence Venice has been quite

aptly called the “City of Venus,--the City of Fair Women.” A couplet

from San Gemignano is quite applicable to this delightful fancy:--

“_Donzellette, giovane, e garzoni

Servir portare amorose ghirlande._”

There was one especial favourite among all the delicious perfumes

which dispersed their sweet aroma all over Venice, and Count Lorenzo

Magalotti, in his “_Fiore d’Arancio_” tells us how it was made.

“Take,” he says, “the empty skin of an orange, with a little powdered

benzoin, with two pounded cloves, and a small stick of cinnamon, cover

them with the finest rose water and set to boil upon a brazier.”

In the sixteenth century the far-famed Portuguese _buccheri_ got to

Venice,--little charms of sweet-smelling clay--and they very soon

became every woman’s treasures. The odour dispersed when a _bucchero_

was dipped in hot water was very refreshing, and resembled the aroma

which arises from parched ground on a hot summer’s day after a copious

shower of rain. When dipped in essences they gave forth for ever so

long the sweetest of perfumes: women wore them in their bosoms, and

were accustomed to place them often upon their lips, so that their

kisses might be scented too!

Not only were the girls and women of “Venice--the City of Saints” much

drawn to the general claims and duties of religion but, in particular,

they were exponents of some of its minor behests. The Apostle speaks of

the hair of women and says it was given them to be a protection and a

glory. The Venetians exactly carried out the apostolic injunction.

From the very first foundation of Rivo-Alto, away in the fifth

century, the women of the lagunes were accustomed to resort daily to

the _altane_, or flat-roofs of their dwellings, and there spend much

time in combing and dressing their hair in the sunshine. This habit

they undoubtedly inherited from their Greek ancestresses. Homer sings

about “the beautiful fair hair of the Greeks,” and he has painted the

captivating Helen of Troy with abundant locks of gold. The general

colour of Grecian women’s hair was brown,--light and dark,--and such

naturally was the hue of Venetian women’s tresses. The poets however

made a dead set against that tint, and stated their case so broadly,

that brown hair was regarded with aversion as appertaining to traitors,

murderers, and other evil doers! The painters took up the cue, and we

rarely see in the pictures of Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto or

Veronese women with brown hair.

Auburn, or, as they called it,--golden, hair,--was the most popular,

most beautiful and most expressive. The more it glittered the better

was it liked, and what Nature marred Art embellished. A primitive but

withal most effective device in the Venetian artifices of the toilet

was the superimposition upon the top of the head,--the hair being

well combed-out and rippling over the shoulders,--of a crownless,

wide-brimmed straw hat called _solana_,--“sun-frame.” The brim

shielded the neck and bosom, while the sunlight, not the heat, got

at the roots of the hair and blanched its growth. Every _altana_ had

its group of animated “mushrooms”--each woman and girl sitting thus,

and ever and anon damping the exposed hair and cuticle with a small

sponge, stuck at the end of a spinning-spindle or some such sceptre,

and dipped in cunning tinctures. Beneath the brim of the _solana_ big

long-toothed combs of yellow tortoiseshell were used to keep the hair

supple, or frizzing-irons, or bones to make it curl or wave. This

method was admirably effective, and it is still adopted privately

by many a beautiful Venetian girl and buxom dame. With respect to

the recipes employed in the concoction of the tinctures little can

be authoritatively said, for each fair one kept her elixir and its

secret to herself. Anyhow, generally speaking, one may say that the

finest of fine Lido golden sand, crushed vitreous plaques of Murano,

ivory sawdust, pounded sea-shells and,--in exuberant and extravagant

humour,--even powdered pearls, and precious gold dust were employed.

Vegetable compounds--the juice of grapes, berberis, ivy-berries,

lemon-squash and orange-flavour, with aromatic powders of all sorts and

kinds were also used. Dyes, strictly so called, were not in favour:

their effect was ephemeral.

Venetian women and girls owed a good deal to Dogaressa Teodora Selvo,

in the eleventh century, for she introduced toilet batteries, fully

furnished with all the requisites for skin, hair, and teeth,--together

with delicious Eastern perfumes. Giovanni Marinello of Modena, in the

sixteenth century, gathered up all that was known of the artifices of

the coiffure in his classical work “_Gli Ornamenti delle Donne_.”

Venetians were past-mistresses in the mysteries of hair-dressing.

The Greek style was always the most in favour, where the hair, not

being too dry nor too tightly plaited, was drawn off the face and

neck, tied in a ribbon at the back, and then coiled round and round

the head, and stuck fast with combs and pins. The hard line of the

forehead was tempered by a small row of curls under a semi-diadem,

fillet, or crescent--called _gabbia_--literally “a cage”--and usually

made of precious metal and jewelled. This style Titian painted in the

well-known portrait of his daughter Lavinia presenting a golden dish of

ripe fruit.

Another fashion affected by gay and opulent courtesans was called

_al Corno_, with reference to the conventional head-dress of the

Dogaressas. Sometimes only one horn was projected, at others two

or even three or more. An invisible bandeau was hidden under the

hair, bearing spikes of tortoiseshell or whalebone, up which single

strands of hair were twisted and curled until they assumed the

appearance of vine spirals and tendrils. This vogue lasted quite

a long time--certainly from 1540 to 1630. It was a very difficult

feat to arrange these horns becomingly, so as to avoid any idea of

the ridiculous, the animal, or the demoniacal: _crescenti_ they

were euphemistically called, as suggestive of the crescent moon of

Diana,--the Huntress of the Gods! The painters never admired this style

of hair-dressing, and very few of them, if any, have depicted the _al

Corno_. Giacomo Franco and other engravers, however, have preserved for

us illustrations of this peculiar mode.

A third manner of hair-dressing was popular amongst quite young girls

and aged women--the two extremes--the cap of Juliet. The hair was

combed out and smoothed down, and then tight-fitting jaunty caps or

nets were fitted close over the head behind the ears, leaving the long

locks of hair spread out like fans upon the neck behind or in small

ringlets. These caps were usually very beautifully made, as often as

not of gold or silver thread or net, or wire and gemmed. A favourite

style was a delicate net of silk or very small artificial flowers of

blue, as contrasting most serenely with the golden glitter of the hair.

Fashionables always carried fans,--not those with which

we are familiar,--but little flags set on stems or poles;

_ventolini_--“windguards”--they were called. Strong sea-breezes, not

strong sunbeams, were to be warded off, for they disturbed the hair

and roughened the skin. Venetian beauties never, as we say, fanned

themselves: they had no need to do so, because the sea air always

tempered the sun’s heat. These fans were from six to twelve inches

square, and were made of cloth of gold, richly embroidered silk, Burano

lace, or feathers: they were fringed with beads and shells, through

which the wind whistled musically when shaken in the air. The stem,--a

foot or more long,--was usually of tortoiseshell, carved cedar-wood

or of gold and silver, and jewelled for State occasions. In 1522 the

_Provvidetori delle Pompe_ published a decree of the Council regulating

extravagant decoration of the _ventolini_.

Venetians never used parasols or sunshades; they wore their dress

sleeves short in order to expose the arm,--with its jewelled bracelets

above the elbow,--and their bare or lace-covered breasts, to the soft

sea air of the lagunes and the not too ardent rays of the golden

sun--nature’s assistants in the labours of the toilet.

“O fairest of the fair was she,

Dream of gold and cremisini;

Peach-silk her skin, golden her hair,

_Gentildonna di Venezia_.”

THE DOGARESSAS OF VENICE

CHAPTER I

I

“To the Lagunes!”--“To the Lagunes!”--“Attila Australis

plaga!”--“Attila Flagello di Dio!”--these were the despairing cries of

panic-stricken people in dire distress.

Ominous sounds came hustling over ragged peaks, and through dense

forests from the lofty snow-fields of the distant Alps; and, like the

storm-borne scum of tempestuous seas,--leaping and hissing,--they tore

along the hurrying torrents. Sweeping wildly over rippling lake and

rolling plain the warning cry re-echoes across the ruffled waters of

the salt marshes, and strikes terror in hearts of oak and pales brows

of bronze.

The heavy tread of barbarian hordes, their savage oaths, and

the clashing of their rude weapons, rush upon the wings of the

_tramontana_, as underfoot they trample the fertile lands of

Gallia Togata on their way to Rome.

The dreaded Huns are upon the prosperous Græco-Roman cities of Veneto,

with their noble civilisation, their graceful villas and gardens,

their well-equipped baths and theatres, their imperial palaces, their

arsenals, and their mints. “Splendid Veneto,” as Cassiodorus, the

Emperor Maximus’ famous minister of art and literature, in startled

admiration, calls the province,--is doomed to destruction.

The walls of Aquileia,--“Aquileia la Bella”--called so from the beauty

of her women, are the first to fall. Men and children are butchered

relentlessly--stalwart fathers and helpless babes lie side by side,

women are stripped and ravished, and the young girls carried along

by the intoxicated savages--the fairest spoils of war. A weeping

despairing band of fugitives alone escape the fury, and led by

Secundus, their Archbishop, with his clergy carrying relics of Saints

and sacred vessels, they hurry on till their blistered feet feel the

cool sea-wash at Grado.

Fruitful Concordia rooted up, her people fly to Caprule,--a swamp

of corncrakes, where, in place of working in the arts and crafts

as of yore, they are fain to tend sheep and goats for their

livelihood--Caorle they called it later on. Studious, lordly Padua

scatters her scholars and her patricians--Greek influence counts for

nought face to face with brute force--and makes common cause with busy

thriving Oderzo. Malamocco, with its sand-dunes, offers a shelter in

the storm to the Paduans; Eraclea and Jesolo, amid their pine-woods,

conceal the Oderzani; and Altino, smiling and fertile in times of

peace--in war-time a desert and a tomb, sends stragglers to Torcello.

Padua’s King, alone of leaders, withstands the brunt of battle in

421--brave Giano. Flight is not for him, and by his side stands, and

stand she will, or with her master fall, his wife, Queen Adriana the

Heroine.

Giano challenges Attila to personal conflict, whilst, wild and

remorseless as they are, the Huns look on with admiration and encourage

each valiant prince in turn. The Paduan skilfully parries the fierce

onslaught of the “Scourge of God” and, at last, although nigh bested,

he lays his enemy low, and the victims of Veneto are avenged!

The Queen has stood all through the fell encounter close behind her

consort, stripped ready for the fray, for, should Giano fall, then she

would try conclusions with Attila! Snatching the fallen chieftain’s

weapon, all gory with her husband’s blood--it had entered nearly into

his vitals--out of the death-grip of his strong right hand, she holds

it aloft calling upon Heaven to avenge the blood of her people.

To Rivo-Alto she bears it, in a lordly galley, a ghastly token of

deliverance, and, there, upon hallowed ground she sets it up, where she

plants her foot, in pledge of the church and convent which she vows she

will erect, in memory of a hardly-won victory, to the honour of holy

Raphael--the Archangelic healer of human wounds.

Quite a different story with respect to the death of Attila is set

forth eloquently in the erotic poem, “La Venezia Edificata,” composed

by Giulio Strozzi--a grandson of the great Filippo. Therein Oriana

Augusta, daughter of the Empress Galla Placida, titular Queen of

Dalmatia, is represented as consort by rape of the Hunnish King. Making

her escape from the camp of her captor she fled to Venetia-al-Lido

pursued by Attila. To prevent violation she leaped from the ship into

the sea and came near perishing, until rescued by kindly hands from

Aquileia.

The barbarian chieftain vowed to be avenged upon the Aquileiese, and,

they in their turn, vowed to guard the Queen. Attila had recourse

to a famous fortune-teller of Aquileia, “La Maga Irene,” who, in

consideration of a heavy bribe, consented to aid his vengeance. By

woman’s craft, or witch’s wiles, Irene contrived to set the people

of Aquileia all agog with their neighbours of the littoral, and at

variance with one another,--so that their quarrels might screen an

attack by the Huns. The enchantment entirely failed in its object,

for Giovanni Anafesto and Sostinio Rinieri,--leaders at Aquileia of

rival parties--joined hands to repel the invader. Irene, by the way,

had fooled them both by crossing them in love. Whether mesmerised by

the black art of the enchantress, or incited by personal jealousy

the captains of Attila’s host rose against him and against each

other. Intrigue and counterplot divided the councils of the Hunnish

chieftains. Nadasto, Attila’s second in command, made court to

Fulvia,--a lady of Altino--wife of his rival Aetis, and won over to his

cause her beauteous young daughter, Idilia, whom Attila had tried to

seduce.

[Illustration: LA MAGA IRENE HOLDS A RECEPTION.

FROM A WOODCUT AFTER A. PINELLI. 1624.

“La Veneta Edificata.”--Giulio Strozzi.]

One evening, when the incantatrice Irene had cast her spell upon the

Hunnish leader, and Ariana, her mystic-magic singer, had lulled him to

slumber in his tent, and when Nadasto had bribed and rendered drunk the

soldiers of his guard, Idilia stole silently through the darkness to

the couch whereon Attila was heavily sleeping. Like Jael she hesitated

not to make use of her opportunity to avenge her wrong and aid her

lover. Driving, with all the force of a strong desperate woman, the

sword she found by the sleeper’s side, she pierced Attila through the

breast, and pinned his body to the bed-board beneath. Thus died the

“Scourge of God,”--the ravisher of women--by a woman slain!

Not alone was heroic Adriana of Padua in deeds of

woman-prowess,--Martza d’Aquileia, standing astride her husband’s

stricken body, his sword in her hand, hurled bold defiance and hardy

blows together at her foes, until overborne by numbers she fell

fighting to the last!

Degna too, of Aquileia, daughter of the Queen of Dalmatia, dignified

and devoted matron that she was, her spouse and sons slaughtered

before her eyes, took refuge with her young daughters within the

gateway-tower, and thence threw down coping-stones and coals of fire

upon the heads of their enemies. Short was that attack on woman’s

valour, for brawny arms and hands were soon stretched out to seize the

brave defenders. Degna slew her children by dashing them to the ground,

and she, fearless of death, followed them to preserve their honour and

hers!

The skill and courage of the women of Veneto in the use of bow and

arrow, and in the casting of the javelin, came to be the undoing of

many a stalwart barbarian. The Huns were amazed at the heroism, no

less than at the beauty, of their fair opponents. Those viragoes had

in their veins the blood of Greek heroes, and their muscles were of

iron like the Romans. Noble and bold in heart were they, vigorous and

graceful in form and feature, and well dowered with mental capacity and

resource.

Not once, but many a time, when the rope-hawsers, which worked the

defenders’ catapults, gave out and the defence seemed doomed to

failure, the women and the girls of besieged towns cut off their

tresses of strong, fine, lustrous hair, with which to weave new stout

cords for the disabled machines!

Those were the women, who either stood shoulder-to-shoulder with

their lords and masters to repel the hateful foemen, or, blessed

with families of young children, fled for safety to the islets of

the lagunes, there to guard them from all ill, and ready to lay down

their lives in their defence. Among the fugitives men-folk were

rare,--grandsires and men past service and lads just entering on their

teens,--but the bones of the strongest and best lay bleaching and

unburied upon the desolate plains of Veneto.

This earliest settlement was a woman’s commonwealth, and mothers and

daughters nursed patiently a new generation. They inculcated lessons

of faith and devotion and inspired their boy-offspring with energy and

earnestness. Bereaved and comfortless themselves they looked to Holy

Church for consolation and direction. They listened, in their dreams,

to the soothing voices of the Saints, and loved to tell sweet stories

from tradition. Cells for holy men and women, released from the world,

were fixed on every sandy beach; and chapels, simple and primitive

enough, called by tinkling bells, holy souls to Mass and vespers.

Women prayed and children sang, till phœnix-like out of a cataclysm of

tribulations, arose a new Venice--“Venezia Seconda.”

Generation followed generation, and family cohesion banded the

scattered groups of islet dwellers together for mutual protection and

defence. The terror of invasion by barbarians became old men’s tales,

and mothers scared their children to make them good with stories of the

“Scourge of God.” Many lads, now grown, went back to terra-firma, and

rebuilt the homes of their grandparents, and married and settled there.

One hundred years rolled along almost uneventfully for “Venezia

Seconda” and the dwellers upon her shores, but, at length, times of

peace and comparative prosperity were rudely disturbed by another

fateful cry from the mountains!

Longobards,--Bavarians, Bulgarians, Swabians, and other mixed

races,--were said to be pouring over the passes into Italy, and late

in the autumn of 567, a mighty horde began to move over the plains

marching ever southwards. Terror once more struck home to the hearts

of the people of Veneto and of the islands of the lagunes. Were the

horrors of the almost forgotten invasions of the Goths and Huns to be

re-enacted? What was to become of them, and their children?

The only reply was the old, old cry “To the Lagunes!” Altino led the

way: her inhabitants were premonished by a startling apparition. The

storks, which made their nests upon the roof-trees of the houses,

suddenly began to circle round the city uttering shrill cries, then,

darting down with one accord they picked up in their long bills their

little fledgelings and made off right out to sea!

The people looked on amazed, but when they noted that the birds stayed

their flight over Torcello and her sister islets, they said one to

another--“This is a warning of Providence--which we must follow--it

is the ‘finger of God’!”

The Longobards, however, were not intent so much on conquest as on

settlement. Tales of the fertility of the soil of Italy, and stories

of the profitable industries of her cities, had found their way to

northern lands, and had excited, in the hearers, vehement desires to

share such good things. They came not in serried ranks of warriors but

in caravans in peaceful guise, with their household goods and chattels

upon their waggons, and their old folk and little children securely

mounted on the top. To them Veneto was the Land of Promise.

If the peaceful inhabitants of the province were not slain as in the

days of Alaric and Attila, they were scattered, for the Longobards

meant to have and to hold what they seized. Dressed in skins of beasts,

with linen tunics of many colours, loose breeches girded with leathern

belts, and shod in wooden and metal sandals, they presented a marked

contrast to the natives of Veneto. They shaved the back of their heads,

but wore the hair low upon the foreheads with ringlets, and the men

were bearded.

Their conduct towards the people they had come to dispossess of lands

and homes was marked by consideration, and they made an excellent

impression by not meddling with matters ecclesiastical. Indeed so

suave and gentle were they in their bearing that not a few of the less

fearful maidens looked kindly upon the invaders, and not one but many

brides of Veneto were mated to Longobard grooms! Surely this was a rare

exhibition of the old and world-wide sentiment--_noblesse oblige_!

A new and healthy strain was thus intermingled with blue Græco-Roman

blood, and, whereas, the citizens of the Eastern Empire, at large,

dwindled and deteriorated, the men and women of “Venezia Seconda” grew

in numbers, strength, and comeliness.

The Greek protection of Veneto and the lagunes was withdrawn in 641,

and then at once it was borne in upon the elders of the families and

the leaders in their councils that unbounded liberty was a dangerous

expedient. Parliaments representative of every class--work-people,

middle class, and patricians,--with the clergy at their head, were

called together for deliberation and unity of action.

If it is true--maybe it is--that each hundred years of a nation’s

development corresponds to a decade of human growth, then the

Commonwealth of the islets of the lagunes attained its maturity in 697

or thereabouts. The infant Venice,--nursed in her Malamocco cradle by

her father and motherland of Padua some two hundred years before,--was

now a vigorous maiden and of age.

Her sponsors, wisely chosen, one from each of twelve most important

settlements, who had exercised their tribuneship to good account,

forgathered at Eraclea to elect a worthy guardian of the State, a

leader--“Dux,” “Doxe” or “Doge” of the Venetians. Some of them were

Veneto-Greeks, like the Partecipazi and the Michieli, and some of them

were Veneto-Romans, like the Candiani and the Orseoli, with rivalries,

domestic and political to unite and disunite them, but all were fired

with the new idea of mutual life and independence.

From every _lido_ and _riva_ came barca and gondola, gaily dressed with

flowers and greenery: the helm held stoutly by men--brave as they

were wise, whilst at the prow, beauty and youth sang tuneful melodies.

Well-stored with food and delicacies were those festal galleys, for

their crews were bent on pleasure as well as business. Matron and maid

in holiday attire accompanied their lords and sweethearts to the solemn

happy ceremonial--it was a domestic celebration in simple homely state.

Where manly strength and wisdom make of life a scene of wear and tear

ungarnished and uncharmed by women’s ways, true femininity intervening

administers juice of grapes to gladden man’s heart, and oil of olives

to make him of a cheerful countenance,--so to paraphrase the holy

psalmist. At Eraclea grace and force embraced one another.

The women and the girls of the islands brought with them to Eraclea

armfuls of sea-pinks and sprays of jessamine, red poppies and yellow

flags, fragrant orange flowers and the sweet bays of myrtle, gathered

from their gardens. They wove gay garlands with the tenacious dime

rushes and coiled them about with the tendrils of the vine. Every

street shrine in Eraclea, every Virgin ikon in her modest homes, was

adorned with floral offerings, and the altars of her sanctuaries were

covered with pure white fragrant Mary lilies.

The twelve electors held their parliament in the modest basilica and

cast their votes in secret, but all were satisfied when Paolo Lucio

Anafesto of Aquileia was hailed as the first of Venice Doges--judge,

general, and pope combined.

Promptly the Patriarch of Grado blessed the new Head of the

State, and the twelve electors joined in crowning him with the

“_Corno_”--the horned Phrygian bonnet of renown and liberty. The

day’s solemnities performed all held picnic in the woods; Eraclea kept

open house. Night fell all too soon and lines of gaily-lighted gondolas

made off to homes across the phosphorescent waves and the summer moon

smiled upon a scene of perfect peace and content.

Alas for the stability of mundane matters--two short years were

scarcely spent when Doge Anafesto met with his death, lamentably

enough, in a conflict between the citizens of Eraclea and Jesolo. This

was a calamity, perhaps, rare in Venetian history, for, if Martino

Sanudo, the quaint and voluminous chronicler, may be believed:--“The

inhabitants of Venezia were a lowly peaceful people, esteeming love and

mercy highly, and above all religious--they cared not for honours but

were ever ready to help one another, regardless of class and station.”

Three Doges only ruled at Eraclea, and then in 742 the seat of the

Government was removed to Malamocco as being less open to attack, and

more favourably placed for the development of trade with the east.

The Doge was elected for life and his family, if of plebeian origin,

ennobled: his wife however had no precedence and was regarded pretty

much as one of her spouse’s goods and chattels.

The citizens of the Commonwealth enjoyed a lengthy period of peace

and prosperity, during which they were building up a national and

self-reliant character. Men, women, and children gained urbanity

and repose of manners, and were animated alike by vivacity and

gravity of bearing. The women especially were remarkable for their

good-breeding and refinement--vulgarity and pretence were non-apparent.

As mothers they had a softening yet wholesome influence upon their

families and households. Many Latin writers have noted these feminine

characteristics.

In matters of dress and personal adornment the _gentildonne_

followed more closely than their humbler sisters the Greek modes. The

mosaics at San Marco’s show that velvets and brocades were worn with

handsome furs and folds of lace. Blue was the favourite colour with all

classes--a cerulean tint, like the reflection of the azure skies in the

still waters of the lagunes.

When Charlemagne came to Friuli to hunt big game in 776, he made

friends with the heads of noble Venetian families, and adopted their

more graceful garments in lieu of his semi-savage state. He had set

his heart upon seeing Venice and seizing what he could of her outlying

islets. Her romantic story appealed strongly to his imagination and

he even made proposals that Frankish brides should find their way to

the lagunes. His ideas were actually adapted in the dogado of Obelario

Antenorio (804–809), for his consort was a Frank princess.

The Franks shared the sporting instincts of the Venetians and they

were emulous of the boasts of the men of Venice:--“One can catch

more fish in a month in the lagunes than in a whole year in all the

Mediterranean!”, and, “One can entrap more birds at Malamocco than

anywhere else in Italy!” Grebe-shooting was a favourite pastime, and

ladies entered into the sport quite as enthusiastically as their lords.

Cross-bows and clay pellets were the weapons, snaring was barred as

unsportsmanlike, and heads were nailed on barn doors as trophies.

Whilst Charlemagne and his courtiers were pleased to meet the

Venetians, in sport, or when on marriage bent, he and they never quite

concealed their designs upon the lagunes; but the monarch’s chagrin was

bitter when he was forced to admit the impossibility of success. “As my

brand sinks out of sight, nor ever shall appear to me again, so let all

thoughts of seizing Venice vanish from my will,”--he once exclaimed,

as, standing upon his royal galley off the coast of Padua, he cast his

sword far, far away, out into the sea!

The first actual Dogaressa--not merely the wife of the Doge, but the

First Lady in Venice and his official consort, was a Frenchwoman--the

Countess Carola,--a lady of honour at the Court of Aix-la-Chapelle.

Obelario Antenorio and his brother Beato, who was associated with him

in the dogado, were the guests of Charlemagne at Aix, and there the

Doge saw and wooed his bride. How they got there nobody knows: it was a

stupendous journey in those days. Perhaps fortune favoured Obelario and

Beato and brought the maiden in the suite of the Empress into Southern

France to Aix in Provence! The Emperor approved the match and promised

his friendship and protection for the island Republic.

Carola was a woman of great energy of character, remarkable for the

exercise of a strong will, and endowed with the faculty of attracting

respect and obedience. She had a difficult _rôle_, for the ladies of

Venice resented the introduction of a Frenchwoman as consort of their

Doge.

Beato Antenorio, it appears, played a double part, for whilst acting

as best man to his brother and paying court to Countess Carola, he

was negotiating with the Emperor at Constantinople for a union with a

Byzantine princess with a view to supplant the Doge and Dogaressa.

Carola very soon took the measure of Beato’s perfidy, and when he

brought his imperial bride to Venice, she adroitly placed Valentino,

her husband’s youngest brother, an attractive youth, in the young

girl’s way. There was little love lost between Beato and Cassandra,

and the brothers very soon became estranged, and thus the Dogaressa

held her own triumphantly. The story goes however that, consistent with

woman’s ever changing mood, having set Beato against his wife, the

Dogaressa became her rival in the affections of Valentino.

Perhaps the Venetian saying was true of her in a very special

way:--“_El segreto dele femene no lo sa nessun altro che mi e vu, e

tuto il commun!_”--“A woman’s secret is known to none save me, and

you, and all the town!”

Obelario Antenorio, who had been Tribune of Malamocco, was “an indolent

man, irresolute and faithless.” When a Greek fleet approached the

lagunes with peaceful intentions, but viewed by the Doge as supporting

the pretensions of Beato, he had recourse to the French Court for

assistance. This was regarded by the Greeks as an hostile act, and they

attacked and destroyed Eraclea, Jesolo, Fossone, Chioggia, and other

Venetian ports. The chief men of Venice were slain or taken captive,

and Obelario and Beato Antenorio were carried away as hostages to

Constantinople, where they and their wives, Carola and Cassandra, died.

II

The first “Grand” Doge and Founder of Venice was Agnello Badoero,

better known perhaps to historians by his Greek title “Ipato” or

“Protospataro,”--in the Rialto vernacular Partecipazio. The Badoeri,

originally from Padua and one of the twelve premier families of the

Commonwealth, were descended from Giovanni d’Eraclea, who was among the

twelve Tribunes voting at the election of Paolo Lucio Anafesto as first

Doge of the Lagunes in 697.

Agnello was Tribune of Malamocco, although a native of Eraclea, a man

of many parts, he exhibited remarkable talents in almost every walk of

life. A Greek of the Greeks by descent, he was a pronounced humanist

in the school of Plato. A born legislator, he was by inclination an

engineer and builder, and excelled his peers in mercantile industry and

political acumen.

Long before he was called to the supreme office of Doge he had fixed

ideas about, and matured plans for, the conservation and development

of the conditions of the islands of the Lagunes. Immediately after

his election in 810, he broke with the traditions of the dogado, by

removing the seat of Government to Rivo-Alto as being far and away a

more convenient centre and at the same being much more secure from the

attacks of enemies. Already there was a considerable population in

the new capital and churches and houses of some importance had been

erected--many of them of stone.

All the same the ordinary Rivo-Alto dwellings were of modest dimensions

and few rose beyond one storey in height. A marked feature of them

all was the outside staircase, which gave access to the living rooms,

and also led directly to the _altana_ or look-out tower upon the flat

roof. They were furnished with a _solario_ or _liago_--an open balcony

whereupon the inmates could sit and take the air and hold chit-chats

with their friends.

Upon the flat roof the women of the household performed their toilet,

combing out their hair and exposing it to the sunshine. Various

domestic duties also were transacted upon the “sun-traps,” for example

newly-washed linen bleached nowhere as effectively as there. Bedrooms

occupied the upper part, and the plan of the ground floor provided

kitchens and offices with rooms for meals and the reception of guests.

These, in the large structures, were arranged upon three sides of a

square forming a courtyard or garden patch.

Such a habitation was occupied by Doge Agnello and Dogaressa Elena

with their growing family. It was situated upon what was subsequently

known as the Campiello della Cason, adjoining the ancient church SS.

Apostoli, and facing towards the neighbouring island of Murano, just

where a small canal, the Rio Hadran, entered the Lagune. The principal

entrance was in Calle della Cason with a postern at the corner for

observation and defence. At the back, giving on a narrow back lane, was

another doorway which led to a small garden and an orchard.

Donna Elena occupied herself in cultivating “simples” and

sweet-smelling flowers, without which no Venetian considered his home

complete. Perhaps no people set greater store by fragrant flowers

and succulent herbs than did those Venetian children of the sea-mists

and salt-sands. The simplest bloom that the saline breeze allowed to

grow was as precious as the most luxuriant rambler-rose, or flowering

laurel. Vines grew everywhere and throve amazingly, and everybody had a

floral or arboreal hobby.

Having established himself in his primitive palace, Doge Agnello set to

work to carry out his ideas of utility and expansion. First of all, in

view of the many inroads of ruthless invaders into Veneto, he turned

his attention to the strengthening of the defences of the islands.

Strong cables were slung across the narrower channels, disused hulks of

vessels were sunk in the deeper water-ways, and a system of signals by

day and of beacons by night was established.

The chief life’s work of the sapient Head of the State was the

protection of the low-lying _lidi_ from floods and denudation.

Thousands and thousands of great timber balks from the Pineta of

Ravenna were secured and driven far down into the yielding mud and

sand. From pile to pile was woven a basket-work of unbreakable osiers,

and then the pumping out of needless channels and the draining of wet

marsh-lands was followed by the sinking of innumerable loads of solid

earth and gravel, until the reclaimed areas assumed something of the

appearance and consistency of terra-firma.

With such primitive appliances as were at hand, the success achieved

was little short of marvellous. To his new-made plots of land Doge

Agnello gave the name of “_Fondamenti_.” To Rivo-Alto as the centre of

his plan, he connected all the neighbouring islands by throwing across

the water-ways wooden bridges,--thus Venice assumed her present form.

Well may we, in imagination, behold the noble-hearted Doge, habited

in simple guise and grey-bearded, yet, vigorous of frame with eagle

eyes and firm set brow and mouth, ferried day by day, over the Grand

Canal,--the actual channel of the river which Livy calls Præ-altus.

To the _fondamento_ of San Giacomo--that earliest holy shrine of the

Venetian fugitives he is bound, there to superintend the works he has

initiated. With plans in hand, elaborated with Grecian geometrical

precision, he watches and directs the work-people, both men and

women--at their toil. No master was more solicitous for the welfare of

his working people than Doge Agnello Badoero.

Much of her time the Dogaressa spent with her husband on the

_fondamento_, where her presence cheered him. Thickly veiled, as was

the custom of good women, and modestly attired she moved among the

women workers, pouring out sympathy and affording relief.

The crowning labour of Doge Agnello Badoero, so far as the building of

Venice was concerned, was the erection of the Ducal Palace in 820. This

was purely Byzantine in design, very large, and built of rare marbles

and mosaics: “Il Palazzo” it was called, for there was nothing like it

in new Venice, or at Eraclea. Probably it resembled in some respects

the _Fondaco de’ Turchi_ built at the same period and by the same

master-builder--Doge Agnello. Unhappily nothing now remains of this

earliest official residence of the Doges of Rialto.

Francesco Donato has painted in a few words the character of Doge

Agnello Badoero:--“He rose,” he says, “easily above all parties, a man

very stable and dependable, a true Catholic, upright and devoted to

the true interests of the Commonwealth.” This encomium assuredly was

deserved by Dogaressa Elena as well.

The times were strenuous and many an one, weary of the toil of the

world and yearning for the consolation of religion was irresistibly

drawn to assume the habit of the monastery. Men and women of worth

became founders of religious houses and, among them, Doge Agnello and

Dogaressa Elena, who with their eldest son Giustiniano, built the

monasteries of Sant’ Ilario and San Zaccaria. This they did as the

Codice Trevisiano records, “revelatione Domini Omnipotentis.”

Following the example of his predecessors in the dogado Doge Agnello

Badoero, towards the end of his life, associated his two eldest sons

Giustiniano and Giovanni with himself in the direction in the affairs

of State. The two young men had been carefully trained for the duties

of government by their father, and by their mother, in the observances

of religion and the exercise of moralities.

Doge Agnello died in 827, and his two sons were elected to succeed him.

No record is preserved concerning the death of the good Dogaressa.

Probably they were both buried in the church of San Zaccaria.

The example of Doge Agnello and Dogaressa Elena, with respect to the

daily exercise of religion, was followed by their sons, their wives

and families. Mass always found them in attendance. Every day at dawn

the _Marangona_ or Mass-bell awoke the slumbering citizens, and

again at midday, and at dusk were the faithful summoned to devotion.

With singular simplicity the pious sons and daughters of Venice served

their God and served their city in the best way they could: none were

hypocrites.

The brief and quiet reign of Giustiniano Badoero was remarkable for

one eminent event--the translation of the body of Saint Mark the

Evangelist, from Alexandria to Venice.

The pious Venetians were well aware of the importance of possession of

relics of the Saints. At Aquileia, Eraclea, Padua and the other cities,

whence their forebears had fled to the islets of the lagunes, the

churches were the depositories of such treasures, and the revenues of

the ecclesiastical authorities were greatly augmented by the devotion

of the religiously minded inhabitants. Besides, such holy shrines

drew pilgrims and visitors from other states and so enhanced their

reputation. A quotation from the Zancarol Chronicle in the Library of

San Marco, exactly expresses the current idea:--“_La qual citade e

stada hedificada da veri e boni Cristiani_.”

Venetian envoys to Constantinople and travellers generally in the

Orient were admonished to secure if possible relics for translation

to the lagune city. Accordingly in 828 news reached Venice that two

sea captains of Venetian merchant galleys, wintering in the port of

Alexandria, had entered into relations with the ruler of the city. On

their part they were to smuggle arms and provisions for the use of the

Egyptian forces against the Eastern Emperor, and in exchange to take

whatever they might like from ruined temples near the sea-shore,--one

was the traditional burial-place of the second Evangelist.

Treasures of all sorts were unearthed, and, at length, the tomb of the

Saint yielded up a corpse undecayed and arrayed in episcopal vestments.

Acknowledged and venerated upon the spot the hallowed remains were

reverently conveyed to Venice, and received there with tumultuous

acclamations and temporarily enshrined within the ancient church of San

Pietro di Castello.

Doge Giustiniano and Dogaressa Felicita presided at the religious

ceremonies, which brought together and cemented the people of the

outlying islands and the inhabitants of the coast towns of terra-firma.

Religious fervour overspread all Venice, men and women surrendered

themselves, their children, and their goods, in honour of the Saint,

who then and there was hailed one of the patrons of Venice, sharing the

distinction with St Mary the Virgin, St Teodoro, and St Giustina of

Padua.

That must have been a busy time for the Dogaressa and her ladies, and,

indeed, for all the well-disposed women-folk of Venice. There were rich

hangings to embroider, fine linen to weave and stitch, delicate lace to

fret out, flowers to arrange, and sweet odours to confection. For St

Mark nothing was spared, and even the poorest of the poor put on the

best attire she could obtain and made festival with her richer sisters.

Not content with the splendours of the day of translation, the last day

of January was for ever set apart as an annual festival in honour of St

Mark; and with it was associated the ancient and beautiful custom of

public marriage upon the Eve of the Feast of the Purification.

Giustiniano Badoero very soon wearied of the responsibilities of office

and retired, with Donna Felicita his wife into the cloister of San

Servilio, which he had enriched by gifts of lands near the coast city

of Abondia Vigilia.

To the third Doge of the Badoero family, Giovanni, second son of the

“Grand Agnello,” belongs the glory of founding “the most resplendent

Christian shrine in Europe,” San Marco di Venezia. He succeeded his

brother as sole Doge in 829. What special part he and his Dogaressa

took in the actual building and first dedicatory celebration, history

has not recorded.

The reign of Giovanni Badoero lasted seven years--a season of

consolidation of Venetian power and also of family influence. The house

of Partecipazio gave seven Doges to Venice,--men of approved probity,

ruling their households and themselves with simple dignity, and the

State with firmness and distinction.

They one and all, with their consorts, when public cares and duties

became excessive, sought the solace of the cloister. What a very

sensible custom was this, and how conducive to efficiency in the

service of the State, and withal how indicative of the influence of the

Church in human affairs!

Women and girls in the times of the first three Badoeri Doges were

treated less harshly than they had been in earlier days, but still

they were under restrictions which were almost Oriental in character.

Their men-folk professed themselves jealous of the family honour and

were eager to uphold their autocratic rights over their own households

against all intruders.

In public women were veiled,--matrons in black, maidens in

white,--except upon festivals, which happily, for the sake of dear

Prince Cupid, were frequent enough, when they were allowed to appear at

church, on the Piazza, and in barca or gondola uncovered,--these were

lovers’ opportunities!

When a youth had become familiar with the form and carriage of a

girl, and was taken therewith, he was wont to haunt the neighbourhood

of her father’s house, in order to get a good look at her features

and expression when she came out. If the opinion he had formed was

confirmed then he was accustomed of a night to stand beneath the

iron-barred window of his _innamorata_, and there breathe out his

love ditty, or twang amorously the strings of his guitar.

If the girl responded to the youth’s ecstasy, she was permitted to

flash a light through the open shutter. The repetition of this signal

was an intimation that the wooer might address himself to her father,

requesting acceptance as a “novice in the form and art of love-making.”

The father’s consent was regarded as the first step of the betrothal,

and then the happy young couple were required to await the festal day

of good San Marco, for the public acknowledgment of the suit. Liberty

was meanwhile allowed for interviews, and negotiations were put on foot

with respect to equality of family and amount of dowry, etc.

The girl dressed simply in white was permitted to receive visits from

her lover and his young companions. Upon the eve of the festival when

many friends were assembled, serious and gay, the bridegroom-elect

took his bride’s hand in his and slipped upon her finger a

ring,--_penge_ they called it,--as a pledge of his honourable

intentions. The girl immediately withdrew with her mother, whilst the

guests were feasted.

Nobody went to bed that night, for there was much to be done in

preparation for the morrow’s nuptials. The bride had to be bathed and

her hair plaited in two great coils, her dress and her ornaments had to

be arranged, and finishing touches put to the festal decorations of the

house.

Attendance at early Mass was _de rigueur_, and then the bride,

covered with a lace or fine net veil knelt to receive her father’s

blessing, and at the same time she had placed in her hands by her

two sponsors--the most estimable and influential of her father’s

acquaintances--a casket or purse, in which was deposited her

dowry. These receptacles were called _arcella_ and were objects of

considerable value from an artistic point of view. If caskets they

were of embossed silver, or carved wood, or painted by hand, and if

they took the form of purses they were of the richest material, very

beautifully embroidered, and often enough ornamented with pearls and

precious stones.

A procession was formed of gaily-decorated gondolas with the wedding

guests--the bride’s contained herself, and her father with her

sponsors, and bore silken streamers of blue and white with two captive

white doves at the prow; and all made for the island cathedral of San

Pietro di Castello.

[Illustration: SPOSALIZO.

LORENZO. LOTTO.

PRADO MADRID]

The bride bearing her _arcella_ suspended from her neck by a blue

silk ribbon knelt by her father’s side before the Bishop, and then

the groom, ushered by his witnesses, took his place at her right hand

offering the wedding-ring for the episcopal benediction. Removing the

_penge_,--which he slipped upon his own finger,--he replaced it with

the golden hoop of matrimony. Lighted candles were placed in the hands

of the couple, whilst the Bishop blessed their union. An offering in

their behalf is made by the bridegroom’s next friend, and the religious

ceremony ended with the singing of a marriage ode.

A merry, happy party betook themselves one and all to the fleet of gala

gondolas, scattering on their way sweetmeats and small current coins,

among the bystanders. A banquet with dancing and singing filled the

afternoon and, at dark, the minstrel band led the newly-married pair to

the bridegroom’s brilliantly lighted house.

The best man held a position of importance, he it was who found the

beverages for the guests, toasted the nuptial couple, and gave drink

and money all round. Early in the morning following the marriage he

repaired to the nuptial chamber, and knocking loudly at the door,

offered the happy spouse two fresh-laid eggs,--often enough stained

and painted exquisitely,--and a casket of aromatic pastilles--tokens

of good wishes for marital felicity. The bride’s girl friends too laid

beside the door little wicker-work baskets beautifully trimmed with

silk and decorated with fresh flowers, and full of delicious sweetmeats

and fresh fruit--emblematic again of what married life should ever be.

Such were some of the pretty wedding observances in old Venice.

One of the prettiest of the many charming customs, which illustrate so

delightfully the ever-fascinating story of Venice,--“the Venus City

of the Adriatic,”--was the annual presentation of the _boccola_--the

rose nosegay of San Marco. For its origin we must hie us back to a very

distant century--the ninth.

Doge Orso Badoero, grandson of the “Grand” Doge Agnello Partecipazio,

had a lovely only daughter, Maria was her name in baptism, but, by

reason of the ardent flashes of her brilliant jet-black eyes she was

known as Vulcana--“Vulcana of the black eyes!” Then one day, there came

from far Provence a handsome troubadour with his light guitar. He was

called Tancred--a child of chance as it appears; and he sang outside

the dark-eyed beauty’s iron-barred window the doughty deeds of knightly

prowess and the conquering charms of maiden troth.

Prince Cupid set to work, as busy as could be, and began to shoot his

love-dipped arrows up and down, till he had transfixed both Vulcana and

Tancredo. Alas! the maiden knew full well her father would never listen

to the plea of a simple singing youth, and so she wept and sighed, and

sighed and wept!

“Go, gentle minstrel,” she cried, “tarry not, seek the Court of the

King of France, and clothe thyself with the glory of martial renown, I,

thy Maria, will wait for thee!”

With a tender embrace, and the maiden’s thin gauze scarf for guerdon

tied round his arm, the troubadour set off to fight the Moors.

Seasons came and seasons went and beauteous Maria Vulcana upon the

_altana_ of her father’s palace scanned in vain the wide lagune

for signs of the warrior’s return. “Will Tancredo never come back?”

she asked herself, and she wept and yearned for him. At last rumours

of bold adventure and the names of many goodly knights were banded

from tongue to tongue. The dreaded Moors had been vanquished, and the

hero of the fights was a youthful soldier of fortune one Tancredo of

Provence!

Well-a-day, an embassy presently arrived in Venice from great

Charlemagne, its leader was Sir Roland the Invincible. He sought here

and there for Maria Badoero the Doge’s weeping daughter, but she never

showed herself--her heart was with Tancredo--she cared for none beside.

At length they met and Roland bending over her, sighing, said, “Lady

fair, I kiss thy hand for brave Tancredo, and bid thee weep no more for

him, he died in these arms of mine breathing out thy name,--see he bid

me with his last words give thee this red rosebud, which he had plucked

for thee, saying, ‘Bid her pray for me always.’”

Maria was silent, she paled, her heart gave no more than one big throb,

as she placed the pledge of her Tancredo’s love between her breasts,

and then she laid her down and died!

This is the “Legend of the Boccola.”

The day that heart-broken Maria Vulcana breathed her last was the

name-day of Saint Mark the Evangelist, 25th April. Thereafter every

lovelorn lad in the islets of the lagunes offered to the girl he

loved best a freshly gathered red rosebud as a fragrant pledge of his

devotions. The _innamorate_ were accustomed to place the sweet tokens

in their open bosoms, as did the beauteous but unhappy maiden of old

times, and proudly wear it all that livelong day. Sometimes to be sure,

the girl rejected her admirer’s tender gift, but she who could show no

rosebud in her bosom suffered mighty heart-burns all the same, and her

girl companions and the young men of her acquaintance looked askance at

her.

At the sounding of the curfew all were safe of course indoors, and then

the simple offering, withered as it was, was taken lovingly between

both the maiden’s hands, caressed affectionately, and placed in the

most secret hiding-place she had. It might be a long, or it might be a

little, while before her parents acknowledged the successful suitor;

but that frail blossom of early summer never lost its fragrance, and

many a dewdrop of a tear fell upon the faded petals, whilst the loved

one waited impatiently for the next _Festa delle Marie_.

III

Perhaps the proudest of all the proud families of old Venice was that

of the Candiani--an offshoot of the ruling clan of Sanudi, in ancient

times in Padua. Their name they derived from the village whence they

sprang, just outside the proud city,--_Candiana_. In the eighth and

ninth centuries, as Counts of the Western Empire, they ruled over Padua

and Vicenza and were endowed with lands and titles by Otto I.

The first member of the family to wear the ducal bonnet was Pietro, the

descendant of an earlier Pietro, who, in 697 was one of the twelve

electors of the first Doge, Paolo Lucio Anafesto. His election in

886 was due, in a considerable measure, to the extreme youth of Doge

Giovanni Badoero’s son Orso, but especially in view of the need of

a strong man to deal with the incipient feuds of the rival families

of the Polani, Giustiniani, and Barozzi, and the Burbolani, Iscoli,

and Selvi. Doge Pietro was a man of war, he led twelve armed galleys

against his city’s constant foes, the pirates of the coasts of Istria

and Dalmatia, and died at sea after one short year of office.

His son and grandson, both Pietro, were sandwiched between Orso Badoero

II. and Pietro Badoero,--so keen was the rivalry and so equal the

opportunities of the two families. All four, with their consorts, were

conspicuous for their devotion to their public duties and for their

piety. Daily they attended Mass and evening devotions, and observed

frugality in dress and table.

Pietro Candiano III. married Archielda or Richielda, who brought him

neither dowry nor social distinction. Who she was nobody has recorded,

probably she was the child of one of the Slav women who were brought

captive to Venice in 887, by the expedition, which destroyed the nests

of Narentian pirates in the Adriatic, under Pietro Candiano I.

All we seem to know about the Dogaressa Archielda is that, when her

consort died, she according to Venetian rule, was cloistered. Doubtless

she suffered much when her son Pietro raised a party against his father.

One other son of Archielda is named by Dandolo the chronicler,

Domenigo, who became Bishop of Torcello. She survived her husband

many years, under whose will she inherited a rich vineyard and a

dwelling-house in the marches of Veneto, which she seems to have passed

over to the nuns of San Zaccaria.

The name of Pietro Candiano III. has come down to us in gracious

valiant guise. It was the Feast of the Purification in the year 944,

and the “Brides of Venice” were kneeling before the Bishop in the

church of San Pietro di Castello. The Doge and Dogaressa, and their

household were assisting at the ceremony, when, suddenly wild figures

of daring buccaneers from Trieste dashed into the sacred building.

Robbery not rape was their primary intention, for the maidens’

_arcelle_ were well worth the risk the robbers ran. The girls held

tightly to their dowries, and so they were borne off bodily by their

captors, _arcelle_ and all!

Recovering from their consternation the men-folk of the congregation

and the hangers-on outside laid hands on weapons, tools and anything,

and were swiftly on the heels of the ravishers. Luckily the barcas of

the Guild of Marriage-chest makers were moored in the canal, and so

available for use.

Doge Pietro, divesting himself of his State mantle, and girding on his

sword, headed the pursuers. Calling on Heaven for vengeance he boarded

the foremost boat and bade every armed man to follow: it was the barca

of Andrea de’ Cappelli of the _fondamento_ of Santa Maria Formosa,--the

quarter of the makers of hats. He was one of the bridegrooms-elect,

and, mad with rage, he and his companions swore to be avenged and to

bring back their brides to Venice.

That was a stern chase to be sure, the robbers rowed their hardest,

and the lovers of the “Brides” bent to their sweeps with all their

wind and thew. Not till the pirates had crossed the Caorle lagune did

Andrea de’ Cappelli’s boat grapple with the quarry. Then it was a

fight hand-to-hand, pole-to-pole,--but at last, Andrea, leaping into

the _batello_ of the pirate chief struck the villain down, and

gathered to his breast his fainting bedraggled bride. Bearing her light

form under his left arm he neatly beheaded his enemy and, holding aloft

the gory trophy, regained his boat.

Victory,--as by well-bound convention,--crowned virtue, and back to

Venice rowed swiftly the proud flotilla--the happy maidens waving

aloft their bridal veils in token of their deliverance. Landing at the

_campo_ of Santa Maria Formosa all entered the sacred edifice, hard by,

where the clergy sang “Te Deum.” The assembly broke up hilariously to

spend the evening in universal merriment.

Coming out of the church the Master of the Guild of Hat-Makers

requested a favour of the Doge,--by whose side walked the motherly

figure of the Dogaressa, her face radiant with smiles,--namely that an

annual commemoration of the gallant rescue of the “Brides of Venice”

should be instituted whereat the Doge and Dogaressa should preside.

Dandolo gives an amusing account of the interview:--

“But if it rains?” asked Doge Candiano.

“Why, we will give you hats to cover you!”

“And if we come hungry?”

“Well then you shall have the finest catch of fish and the sweetest

basket of fruit.”

“But if we are thirsty too?”

“We will refresh you with the best vintage we possess!”

And so it came to pass. Every year the Doge and Dogaressa, with

all their households and the members of the Grand Council, paid a

ceremonial visit to Santa Maria Formosa. Each dignitary received a

brand-new straw hat,--richly gilt and decorated with flowers, a flask

of finest Malvaggia,--ruddy and rare, and a silver fish with a golden

orange apiece. This is the origin of the _Festa delle Marie_.

The superb painting which adorns the first altar of the right aisle at

Santa Maria Formosa--Palma Vecchio’s _chef d’œuvre_, and entitled

“Santa Barbara,” may well have been inspired by the story of the

“Brides.” She is the patroness of the brave--and the old adage--“None

but the brave deserve the fair” never had a fuller vindication than on

that memorable day of the rape of the Venetian brides.

Candiano III. had a son--his second, the stormy petrel of his race, the

vulture of his family. In 959 Pietro Candiano IV. declared his father

incapable of reigning, and with the utmost effrontery, he assumed the

ducal bonnet and estate, apparently no man saying him nay. Alas! How

soon noble deeds are forgotten, how easily the knee is bent to the

supplanter!

The good old Doge and Dogaressa were ousted from the ducal palace, and

the usurper dared to introduce therein the giddy woman with whom he

cohabited. This was such a glaring scandal that he was obliged to bow

to public opinion and put away Giovanniccia--a _divorcée_, whom he

had picked up clandestinely, defying her quondam husband.

No woman of high degree, no _gentildonna_, would cross the threshold of

the palace so long as the Doge kept his mistress there, none greeted

her upon the Piazza--and she became an object of scorn and derision.

At length Pietro yielded to the popular feeling, and fascinating if

corrupt, Giovanniccia was compelled to take the vow of chastity and to

enter the noble convent of San Zaccaria,--the refuge of widowed and

discredited Dogaressas.

In the Museo Civico, in Venice, is an ancient pack of playing-cards

with illustrations of some of the earlier Dogaressas. The Four

of Hearts has a representation of Giovanniccia Candiano with a

_ventilino_,--a fan, in her hand, and accompanied by the following

legend:--“Giovanniccia, wife of Pietro Candiano, divorced, being able

to avenge herself did not do it, so, her husband being slain by the

people, she would not survive--‘If I am not the spouse of Ulysses I am

Death’s’!”

The chronicler, Pietro Diacono, adds that the repudiated Giovanniccia

disowned her child, Vitale, and left the little fellow to be fostered

by a serving-woman who subsequently placed him in a monastery school.

This Vitale Candiano, in 987, was consecrated Bishop of Aquileia, and a

few years later was translated to the Patriarchal See of Grado, where

he ended his days--the last of his family,--in 1018.

No sooner had Pietro Candiano divorced his adulterous wife than the

Emperor Otto III. stepped in and gave him the hand, if not the heart,

of Gualdrada--Valdrada in Venetian--the young sister of Ugo il Grande,

Marquis of Tuscany, of whom Dante speaks thus in his “_Paradiso_,”

Canto XVI.:--

“The great Baron, he whose name and worth

The festival of Thomas still recalls.”

Ugo’s granddaughter was the famous Countess Matilda, the virile ruler

of all Tuscany and the beneficent foundress of the liberties of

Florence.

Countess Valdrada brought to her ducal husband as rich a dowry as any

of the royal brides of Venice had brought. Estates at Trivigiano,

Friuli, Ferrara, and Adria, with castles and well-trained retainers;

a host of slaves, and money-bags well filled with gold, enriched and

ennobled proud Pietro Candiano.

At her betrothal a custom entirely new to the Venetians was introduced,

the so-called “Morgencap” or “Mundio” whereby the Doge conferred a

fourth part of his private income upon his consort. Never stepped

upon the Piazzetta a prouder Dogaressa. Had she been own daughter

of the Emperor she could not have borne herself more haughtily, nor

have treated both her husband and his suite more disdainfully. The

acclamations of the populace she treated with ill-concealed contempt

and turned to ridicule the decorations in her honour.

The Venetians were to a man noted for their self-esteem and high

bearing and the keynote of their character was a spirit of proud and

contemptuous isolation, but they regarded this display of feminine

arrogance with annoyance and disgust. To add to the unfavourable

impression Valdrada made, the armed Florentine guard, which accompanied

her and stood sentry at her beck and call, called forth violent

protests. Altogether the Doge’s marriage was not an unmixed blessing to

himself or his people. Nevertheless Pietro and Valdrada seemed happy

together: he humoured her petulance and she fanned his self-esteem. Two

children were the fruits of this union, Pietro and Marina.

Two important questions were exercising men’s minds in Venice what

time Dogaressa Valdrada mounted the ducal throne--the treatment of

slaves and the expedition against the Saracens. With the first Valdrada

was keenly interested, indeed it was the spectacle of her retinue of

slaves, and their abject condition, that drew special attention to a

very knotty question.

The Doge tried to persuade his wife to dismiss these unfortunate

people, or at all events to reduce their number, but her

ill-conditioned temper would brook no interference. She threw in his

teeth the fact that she was the special _protégée_ of the Emperor,

a descendant of a royal race, and the first Italian Dogaressa to share

the honours of the dogado.

Valdrada was a virago in more senses than one--clever she was and

talented, as well as strong-willed and hard-hearted. To her directly

was due the introduction from Tuscany of the Roman bull-fight, and

this took the quiet and undemonstrative Venetians by storm, and,

incidentally, led to the division of the community into two camps--the

Castellani and the Nicolotti.

Rings were formed at the Lido each Monday in September and October

when the whole of Venice thronged the beach in gondolas. In November

the rendezvous was moved to the gardens of Olivolo, by the church of

San Pietro di Castello; and December saw the bull-baiting transferred

to the site of the Piazza. The Dogaressa was accustomed to preside at

these combats in person, assuming all the attributes of a sovereign.

Popular enough were the sports, for very shrewdly, she added prizes for

athletic contests of all kinds and for regattas on the canals; but the

patricians looked on with anything but kindly eyes.

Doge Pietro IV. was, perhaps, the proudest of all the proud men who

ever occupied the highest position in the Commonwealth, and his wife’s

assumptions and pretensions added greatly to his self-importance. His

name of derision in Rialto was “Superbossimo,” the “Vain-glorious!”

His _entourage_ was largely composed of unscrupulous Tuscans,

truculent Greeks and self-seeking Germans: he kept royal state and

treated the nobles and the officials with coldness and disdain. At the

same time he rallied all the different branches of his family, which

were established in and about Padua and Vicenza, and formed a family

league which threatened to overthrow the constitution of Venice.

Startled at last, by the imminence of the danger to their liberties,

nobles and citizens took arms, in the autumn of 976, and marched to the

Ducal palace. They were received by a deadly volley from the foreign

mercenaries, and, maddened by this treachery, the people acted with a

promptitude which admitted of no quarter. Fire was laid to the great

portal of the palace, and logs of wood dipped in pitch were flung

through the closed windows.

[Illustration: LA CAZZA DEL TORO IN CARNIVAL TIME.

FROM A PRINT. 1560.

“Habiti Delle Donne.”--G. Franco.]

The flames spread rapidly, and eventually enveloped more than three

hundred houses, and the splendid churches of San Marco, San Teodoro,

and Santa Maria Zobenigo. The lust for vengeance and destruction

swept over the calm, but, if once roused, impetuous, populace, and

nobody and nothing was spared.

The Doge fled distractedly from room to room, holding in his arms

his only boy--the infant Pietro. The Dogaressa with Marina rushed

panic-stricken after him. Escape from the crumbling blazing ruins

was only possible by a little wicket which gave upon the courtyard

of San Marco. Here, progress was stayed by a posse of armed nobles

and citizens, among whom the unhappy Doge recognised several of his

personal friends. Of the latter he begged his life and the safety of

his family.

“You, my friends,” he cried in anguish, “have chosen to join in my

destruction. If I have transgressed in any way, either in words or

actions, I crave my life, whilst I promise to satisfy every demand.

Speak and let me pass.”

Words were of no avail, such justice as the popular will required was

swift and drastic. Not one, but many swords clove through ducal bonnet

and robe of state, and Doge Pietro Candiano IV. lay quivering, a livid

mass upon that blood-dyed floor. Not content with this butchery brutal

hands seized the unoffending princeling, and neither his innocence nor

Valdrada’s pleas sufficed to save him. She was cast aside as a foul

thing too hateful for any man to slay, and her child was impaled upon a

spear, stuck into the body of his father!

At eventide a poor man, one who abhorred the foul deed, Giovanni

Gradenigo, came with a company of pious friends and took away the

mutilated bodies and laid them reverently in the crypt of Sant’ Ilario.

The Dogaressa, with her young daughter Marina, succeeded in

escaping,--perhaps she was allowed to do so to avoid difficulties

with the Imperial Court and the arrogant Marquis of Tuscany. She fled

to Verona and threw herself at the feet of the Empress Adelheid the

Emperor’s mother, who resided there.

To be avenged of the Venetians was now her one and only purpose. Her

imperious temperament yielded to a violence of hatred almost diabolical

in its intensity. She appealed to Otto to set fire to Venice, to

take the nobles captive, to cast the citizens into prison, and to

make slaves of the women and children! She demanded the repayment of

the gold she had carried with her to Venice, the restitution by the

Candiani of the estates with which she had dowered her husband, and

demanded a huge tribute by way of compensation for her wrongs.

Pietro Orseolo, who had been elected Doge, after the assassination of

Pietro Candiano, by the tumultuous voice of the people, despatched

Domenigo Grimani to Piacenza where the Emperor was in residence

to discuss the claims of the widowed Dogaressa. By a rare display

of urbanity and tact Valdrada’s vehemence was soothed, her claims

modified, and an agreement was come to agreeable to all parties.

She acknowledged her love for her husband and exclaimed before the full

Court:--“A wife is not given by nature to be her husband’s judge but as

his companion.” She refused however to enter a convent, as became a

widowed Dogaressa, but returned to her brother’s Court in Tuscany, and

apparently ended her days at the castle of Pisa at the end of 997. By

her will, dated 24th November of that year, she bequeathed a castle and

an estate situated in the Adige to her brother, who gave them to the

abbey of Vangadizza.

The web of human life, strained at times and knotted, is never long

spun out before romance and tragedy cross it in the woof. Each man and

woman’s work in the tapestry of fate is run with needles sharp and

blunt. None need look to fiction for inspiration whilst fact is so

devious and so amazing. Cupid and Mars ever were inveterate enemies;

but “Love’s Labour” is _never_ “Lost”--for Love is stronger, after

all, than death!

The love-story of Gerardo Guoro and Elena Candiano is as touching as

any in the gentle annals of romance. She was the daughter of Doge

Pietro Candiano III.,--a girl in whose veins coursed the bluest of

noble Venetian blood, whilst her lover was base-born, though of a

respectable family. He was probably as the Venetian proverb has it

“_Erser in Candia_,”--“Without a farthing in his pocket!” Such

unequal affairs of the heart, as the world has always called them, are

just where the romance of love runs riot!

It was so when Gerardo and Elena, the originals of Shakespeare’s

“Romeo and Juliet,” plighted their troth secretly, and told nobody but

Elena’s doting old nurse Marta, who contrived the interviews, bore the

messages, and shielded the secret from the Doge and Dogaressa.

Perhaps matters might have gone differently “had not Cupid,” as

the Bard of Avon says, in his “Much Ado About Nothing,” “spent all

his arrows in Venice!” With the very first bud of their rosetree of

happiness, alas, gallant Gerardo was summoned to join his company and

to embark for the Orient. Elena’s mother, noting the girl’s tearful

pallor, decided that matrimony was the only remedy.

“A maiden fretting

Is cured by wedding.”

A very eligible partner appeared duly on the scene, one Messir Vettor

Belegno, a patrician of ripe age and wealthy, whose widowed home looked

for a new mistress. Broken-hearted Elena refused her rich paramour,

but a daughter of the Doge has no will of her own, and the marriage

contract was duly signed, and she, more dead than alive, ever fretting

for her absent Gerardo, was led to her nuptials in San Pietro di

Castello.

The fatal knot was tied, but it had nearly compassed a fatality,

for, no sooner had the ring of the wedded wife been slipped upon her

finger, than poor Elena, clad in her bridal garb of purity, swooned in

Belegno’s arms. A speechless awe pervaded the brilliant wedding party,

for when the beauteous bride came not back again to consciousness, the

Bishop pronounced her dead! The joyous notes of the nuptial ceremony

were abruptly changed to the dirge of burial, and, there, wrapped in

her bridal dress, she lay crowned with fresh spring flowers until a

place was prepared for her cold body in the crypt.

As fate would have it the morrow of her funeral, when the fair

alabaster-like form of the lovely girl lay alone in that dark place,

saw brave Gerardo’s troop of gallant warriors landed at the Lido. News

of the tragedy was swiftly conveyed to the fleet, and the disconsolate

young husband hastened fearfully to the old church on Olivolo. Slipping

aside the heavy marble cover of Elena’s tomb, he kneeled upon his knees

imploring Heaven’s pardon and Heaven’s favour.

Then, in a paroxysm of grief he stretched his body along the silent

form of his beloved one, and, looking into her eyes, he pressed his

breast to hers, and there they lay. Presently he is conscious of a

pulse and a movement in the bridal shrouded corpse, and, joy of joys,

her eyes open, and she knows that her Gerardo has come home to claim

her!

Beside himself with transports of love and sorrow he carries the

unresisting girl to his mother, by whose care and Gerardo’s kisses,

she is nursed back to life and happiness. But who shall break the

news to the Doge and Dogaressa? Gerardo answers the query manfully.

He has gained laurels in the East, and his grateful city has honours

to bestow. Kneeling before the Doge to receive his guerdon he bravely

recounts the story he has to tell. The Doge is incredulous, but

confirmation is ready to hand, when his daughter, running to Gerardo,

takes his hand in hers, and craves her father’s benediction.

The bridegroom of the tragedy gracefully stepping aside renounces,

quite nobly, the marriage dowry, and joins the Doge and Dogaressa

in sanctioning Elena’s secret wedding with Gerardo. As story-books

relate--they lived ever after in perfect happiness and great content.

CHAPTER II

I

The Legends of the Middle Ages were the fruitful source of the Poetry

of the Renascence. Greek mythology and Roman mysticism yielded place

to the humanistic tenets of Platonism and the heroic narratives of

Christianity. Every temple and church and every monument and monastery

became the treasury of moral and religious stories. Traditions of the

past were the foundation of the histories of the present and these

superstructures the forecasts of the future.

Venice, by the reason of her unique environment, gathered all that was

fairest, noblest and most moving of the life above and around her. The

charms of allegory found in the people of the lagunes ready acceptance,

and the halo of romance shed a brilliant light in the homes of every

family.

“If to-day be another’s, to-morrow is yours,” was a sentiment deep down

in the hearts and minds of every man, woman, and child. Venice was the

apple of each eye; each individual cared for her before self-interest.

“_La Campagna me consola,

Me Venegia ze la sola

Che me posa contenter

O Venegia benedetta

Nole vogio pia la sar!_”--

So ran the popular barcarolle.

Each family had its own legends and its peculiar characteristics,--the

very names were indicative of an eventful past--each had its symbol and

its story.

* * * * *

The family of Ursoilo or the Orseoli, “Little Bears!” was one of the

four great ruling families in the early days of the Venetian Republic.

They originally came from Aquileia when the Huns devastated Veneto.

Their arms were two dancing brown bears, shaggy and obese, upon a blue

field. With the Badoeri, Candiani and Michieli they shared the unique

distinction of supplying Doges for full two hundred years.

Pietro dal’ Orseolo (976–978) was the first representative of the

family to mount the ducal Chair of State. He succeeded upon the

assassination of Pietro Candiano IV., in which atrocious act he was

reported to have a share, although probably, it was another Pietro, a

namesake, who plotted against the Candiani.

The new Doge was an excellent man, “_laudato di tutti_” as it was

said of him,--but hardly the sort of ruler needed in such turbulent

times. His first work was to remedy the excesses of the popular

outbreak, and next he set himself the task of rebuilding both the

basilica and the palace. To him is due the unique _Pala d’oro_ or

Altar-front of beaten and embossed silver-gilt, made at Constantinople.

His spouse, of a gentle loving nature like his own, was Donna Felicia

Malipiero, by whom he had two sons--Pietro and Domenigo. The Doge

and Dogaressa were devoted to the exercises of religion and their

modest home during the rebuilding of the Ducal palace was thronged by

ecclesiastics, both regular and secular, native and foreign-born.

Everything which had to be done was laid before these clerical

advisers--quite naturally exciting the resentment of the nobles of the

Council. The Ducal _mênage_ was very staid and meagre, and the

merry maidens and modish matrons of the city had no countenance from

devout Donna Felicia.

By degrees the Doge and Dogaressa altogether withdrew from State

affairs: partly because they were weary of the importunities of Dowager

Dogaressa Valdrada, whose dowry the Doge at length paid out of his

privy purse, and partly because they had ceased to be in touch with

the worldly occupations of their fellow-citizens. To pious works they

addressed themselves, and first, in memory of Doge Pietro Tradonico,

who, in 837, was murdered on the patronal festival of Saint Mark,

they founded a hospital for poor pilgrims on their way to Palestine.

The site chosen was a piece of waste ground (now included in the

Piazza) belonging to the nuns of San Zaccaria. Whilst the Doge spent

his leisure in devotions before the shrine, the Dogaressa visited the

patients in the hospital and performed the most menial of offices.

After two years of dignity Doge Pietro Orseolo abdicated his high

office, and, accompanied by the Abbot Guarino of the Monastery of

Saint Michele de Cassano in Aquitaine--a priest, of whom he had made a

personal confidant--he withdrew secretly to France, and died many years

after in his lonely cell at Longuedére near Cassano.

A characteristic story is told of the cloistered Doge, who had placed

himself under the guidance of the far-famed and ascetic Abbot Romoaldo,

the founder of the strictest rule of the Camaldolites. Being unable

to bear the austerity of his life, and suffering from hunger and the

hardships of heavy manual labour, Brother Pietro Orseolo asked the holy

man for some relaxation.

“Father,” said he, “I have a gross body and I cannot, for my many sins,

support my strength upon the daily morsel of hard biscuit, grant me, I

pray thee, a more generous fare.”

“My son,” replied Romoaldo, “thy body must be kept under, nevertheless

I will allow thee one half biscuit more a day.”

Dogaressa Felicia survived her husband many years--cloistered in

the convent of San Zaccaria. She was much comforted by the filial

devotion of her two sons, to whom she was never tired of repeating

their father’s pious advice:--“Take care to preserve the rights of the

Church, and be drawn aside from doing justice neither by love nor hate.”

The fame of Pietro Orseolo’s renunciation and good works reached the

ears of the Sovereign Pontiff, who authorised the necessary steps to

be taken for his canonisation; and thus Saint Pietro Orseolo took his

place among the many venerated saints of Venice. In the year 1732, his

right arm was brought back from Cassano, and was deposited in San Marco

among the holy relics.

In the Museo Civico, in Venice, is a quaint painting, quite Byzantine

in style, by the Venetian painter Giovanni Santacroce of the Madonna

and Bambino attended by a choir of cherubs. Upon either side of

Saint Mary kneel Pietro and Felicia Orseolo. He is clad in an ermine

cape over a monkish habit and upon his head he wears a plain horned

bonnet. The Dogaressa is attired in the rochet of a nun and wears the

close-fitting wimple of the cloister.

The ordinary dress for nobles and men of commanding talent and wealth

consisted of long stuff tunics or cassocks with leather belts, full

cloaks of silk lined with fur and fastened on the left shoulder, in the

Greek fashion, by a plain gold brooch. Upon their heads they wore caps

or bonnets of a Phrygian pattern with a band of interlaced coloured

silk ribbons. Full beards and flowing locks were worn by all classes

of the community until the middle of the tenth century, when the Roman

mode of clean-shaven faces and short cropped hair became universal.

The gentlewomen of Venice had long trailing skirts of coloured stuff

or silk,--blue most favoured,--the bodices were cut square and low

exposing the breast. In winter they superimposed silken mantles,

generally of light blue--much like their lords’ cloaks. A cincture

with a jewelled clasp made of metal, beads, or amber kept the folds

of the garment in position. The hair was well combed out, not plaited

but worn loose beneath natty light blue caps of silk cord or chenille.

Girls had _tonde_,--circular white veils,--in public and matrons

black _ninziolette_--mantillas. Jewels were sparingly worn,--a

single row of pearls round the throat, one ruby or red-stone ring, and

a tortoiseshell comb. The richer ladies added chains of gold with cameo

pendants of Greek origin.

[Illustration: A NOBLE VENETIAN FAMILY.

Lorenzo Lotto.

NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON.]

Pietro Orseolo II. was the second “Grand” Doge of Venice. The son of

pious, if misguided, parents who sought the good of others rather

than their own, he learnt, at his mother’s knee, lessons of

self-restraint and generosity. He was but seventeen years old when the

abdication of his father left the Ducal office vacant.

Too young of course to succeed he was placed under able tutors who

inculcated the duties appertaining to the _rôle_ of a leader and

ruler of men. The hereditary principle was constantly and repeatedly

affirmed in Venice notwithstanding the universal fear of a personal

rule. Given a wise father and a good mother, the child was bound to be

a worthy citizen--so they held.

The dogado of Tribolo Memo (979–991) was disturbed by the feuds of the

Morosini and Caloprini. The former supported by the Orseoli were in

favour of a democratic alliance with the Empire of the East, whilst the

latter, aided by the Candiani desired an aristocratic arrangement with

the Emperor of the West.

The Doge was much too weak a man and far too feeble a ruler to deal

effectively with the situation, they stigmatised him in Venice as “a

stupid man!” Matters came to a head in 983 when, one day Domenigo

Morosini was found stripped of his clothes and dead in a ditch near

the Piazza of San Pietro di Castello. His followers accused Stefano

Caloprini of being privy to the deed. He fled to the Court of the

Emperor Otto and sought protection from the Imperial Court sitting at

Verona, and he gained the ear of the gracious old Empress Adelheid, she

who had befriended the imperious Valdrada.

A truce was effected and the two parties joined in the deposition of

the Doge. As by convention bound he sought the repose of religion and

Dogaressa Marina, the daughter of Pietro Candiano IV.--who had escaped

almost miraculously with her mother Valdrada from the fire at the Ducal

Palace,--assumed the nun’s veil in the convent of S. Trinita.

It was in the dogado of Memo that seven unmarried sisters--a prodigious

number of spinsters as Venice society went--lived together in their own

house opposite the Ponte della Maravigie just below the Palazzo Bembo.

Six were plain and one was fair, the youngest--and their spinsterhood

was regarded with suspicion. One day there chanced along the Rivo di

San Trovaso a gondolier who had just gained laurels at the regatta.

Something constrained the stalwart youth to linger by the iron-grilled

window of the spinsters’ home, but strange sensations pervaded his

whole anatomy so that he became weak and incapable of movement.

His companions chided him and threw the name of the least prepossessing

of the sextet, Dulcina, in his teeth, and they said he was bewitched!

No face was shown at the lattice, and no sound issued from the darkened

room, still poor Giovanni was rooted to the spot. At last with a fierce

effort he threw off the enchantment, if such it was, and determined to

unfathom the mystery, and if the sisters were witches to out upon them!

Good Friday came round and Giovanni sought once more the mysterious

dwelling. It was broad daylight and climbing up the grille he peered

into a room, and there beheld not Dulcina, but Marina, the pretty

sister, upon her knees before a crucifix!

The athlete entered the room, and, as he did so, he beheld in the water

of the canal the reflection of seven brilliant stars,--all paled, as he

looked up, but one,--and that one flashed its beams upon the kneeling

girl. She was astounded at his presence, and, when he straightly

charged her with witchcraft, she weepingly replied:--“My art is not

that of a witch, goodly youth, but of Cupid. I have prayed for thee,

that Heaven would make thee strong and true. See, my star is shining

o’er thy head--”

“And my arms,” exclaimed the enraptured Giovanni, “are around thy

breast, witch or no witch thou hast gained me for thine own.” With that

he held her tightly to his bosom, and, unresisted planted hot kisses

upon her lips and with his finger removed her tears.

No doubt there was a wedding, and possibly the six plain bridesmaids

were transformed into comely brides as well: but the story has no such

ending. No,--alas,--brave Giovanni was stabbed in a night affray and

beauteous Marina drowned herself in the canal! Sometimes they say,

an eerie sound comes round the corner of the bridge--people call it

“Marina’s Wail.”

Young Orseolo, now grown into man’s estate, was hailed as sole Doge of

Venice. At once he showed his mettle by crushing party differences.

Such feuds never assumed the terrible proportions which made Florence,

Siena and other Tuscan towns the scenes of fraternal bloodshed times

out of mind. The new ruler proclaimed a strong policy abroad, and set

to work to equip a navy of armed vessels, wherewith to make the name of

Venice feared in all seas.

The Dogaressa was Maria the only daughter of Vitale Candiano, brother

of Pietro Candiano IV. Very diplomatic was this union, linking, as

it did, the two most renowned families in Venice, and offering a

safeguard to the ambitions of the rival Caloprini and Morosini. Seven

children were the offspring of this marriage, and their baptisms and

marriages the Doge tactfully made the occasions of adding to the

honours of the family and to the renown of Venice.

Giovanni, the first born, was betrothed to the Princess Maria, daughter

of the younger brother of the Emperors Basil and Constantine,--Prince

Agroupoulos. The wedding was celebrated in Constantinople with great

pomp, the bride’s dowry was rich and rare, and upon the groom was

bestowed the rank and privilege of a Prince of Byzantium. The two were

crowned, at their nuptials, with imperial diadems of gold. A Venetian

navy escorted the bridal pair to the lagune city, where royal honours

were rendered. It was an auspicious home-coming, and the pigeons,

which had already made their home in the Piazza, flew round the young

couple’s heads in emulation of the popular ovation.

They were a remarkably handsome couple: Giovanni possessed all the good

looks for which his family was famed, and Princess Maria, according

to old Giovanni Diacono,--the busy chronicler of Venice and the

Venetians,--was “a lovely bride.” Her effigy, if not her portrait, is

preserved upon the Ten of Spades in the suit of playing-cards preserved

at the Museo Civico with the following legend:--

“Dogaressa Maria Orseolo, niece of two Emperors of the East, Basil

and Constantine, wife of Giovanni Orseolo, son of the Doge of Venice,

fair and compassionate, a goddess who is so beautiful can never be

hard-hearted!”

Some historians say that the Princess Maria took after her aunt, the

Empress Teofanea, wife of Otto II., Emperor of the West, who introduced

into Germany the luxury and extravagance of her brother’s court at

Constantinople. She was greatly admired for her beauty, her grace,

and her erudition. German chroniclers speak of Teofanea’s “modesty

and strong compassionate character,” and praise her as “a woman of

unsullied virtue.”

Giovanni’s imperial consort probably prepared the way for a still more

luxurious and attractive Greek Dogaressa, Teodora, the consort of Doge

Domenigo Selvo. Alas, both Giovanni and Maria Orseolo, with their only

child, died of the plague in 1006.

Doge Pietro Orseolo’s conduct of state affairs, in spite of the

limitations placed upon the Ducal prerogatives by the jealousies of

the nobles, was marked by a vigour quite new to the Venetians. His

enthusiasm fired their imaginations for they saw that the favourable

commercial treaties he contracted, both in the East and in the West,

opened out new possibilities of aggrandisement and opulence.

The flag of Venice was unfurled in every foreign port and was accorded

a respect shown to no other national emblem. Pirates of the Gulf alone

braved the displeasure of the Lion of San Marco, and, to overawe

them, a punitive expedition was despatched to the coast of Istria

and Dalmatia,--the first actual fleet of battleships sent forth from

Venice. The Doge took command in person and Bishop Gradenigo, in the

church of San Pietro di Castello, delivered into his hand the great

red oriflamme of the Patron Saint, which had been embroidered by the

skilful hands of the Dogaressa and her ladies. Upon the finial of the

pole she tied, with a great bow of blue silk ribbon, a floral wreath of

sea-pinks and carnations.

The expedition was an unqualified success. Everywhere Venice triumphed,

and, when Lesina, the pirate capital, capitulated, the climax was

reached. The Doge forthwith annexed the whole littoral to the dominions

of Venetia, assuming for himself and his successors the title of “Duke

of Dalmatia and the Islands of the East.”

The conquered towns were laid under heavy contributions:--Pola in two

thousand pounds’ worth of purest olive oil, and one thousand yards of

fine spun linen, twenty sables and a bale of thinnest silver gauze,

for the Dogaressa’s use. Thus Doge Pietro Orseolo laid the foundation

of Venetian greatness abroad just as Doge Agnello Badoero had done at

home, at Rivo-Alto a hundred and twenty years before.

The home-coming of the fleet was a magnificent triumph, the first of

those splendid aquatic pageants which became so remarkable in the

annals of Venice. Among those who hastened to welcome the Venetian Doge

was the Emperor Otto III. who spent seven days as the guest of the Doge

and Dogaressa.

Peace with honour having now placed laurel leaves around the heads

of the Ducal pair they addressed themselves to the pleasant task of

decorating the new basilica of San Marco and adorning the new ducal

palace; but, alas, whilst superintending these undulatings, Doge Pietro

Orseolo “fell ill of a fever” and died on the tenth anniversary of the

fall of Lesina, at the early age of forty-nine. By his will he divided

his property into three parts:--one third for the one observance of

the “_Festa delle Marie_,” one third to the Church and certain

monasteries, and one third for his widow and his children.

“Pietro Orseolo has come down to us as a good prince, beloved by his

fellow-citizens and feared by the enemies and the rivals of Venice.”

The Dogaressa Maria took, as it behoved her to do, the vow of chastity

and became an inmate of the convent of the nuns of San Zaccaria. In

the crypt of the monastic church was laid the body of her husband,

“buried,” as chroniclers have related, “_per la trista Citta e

lachrimosa_”; and she found a last resting-place by his side--“a

good woman and a great Dogaressa.”

The Doge’s second son named Pietro,--but renamed Otto or Ottone, in

honour of the visit of the Emperor of the West,--married Grimelda,

sister of Geiso, King of Hungary, in 1003, and succeeded to the ducal

Estate on the death of his father. Little is recorded of him save that

he had been created by his father Count of Ragusa after the Venetian

conquest of Dalmatia. He and his consort were not made of their

parents’ grit, for, alas, when the rising family of Gradenigo preferred

claims to the dogado, they fled to Constantinople, and there they died.

Dandolo, the historian, says:--“The Dogaressa Grimelda was a woman

of sweet disposition, of considerable attainments and of remarkable

nobility of character.”

The third son of Pietro Orseolo II. and Maria was christened Orso and

early dedicated to a monastic career. Domenigo, the youngest of the

family married Imelda, granddaughter of Pietro Candiano III. and

Richielda. The three daughters were, Icella married in 999 to Stefan,

son of Surigno, Prince of Croatia; Imelda who died young and unmarried;

and Felicia, Abbess of Sant’ Antonio di Torcello.

With the death of Pietro,--grandson of the “Great” Pietro, son of

the fugitive Ottone, in 1038 ended the famous family of Orseolo. The

“dancing bears” ceased their gambols but the blue sky of Venice still

cast its effulgence upon the mirrored waters of the canals.

II

The long reign of Doge Domenigo Contarini (1043–1076)--the longest on

record--was uneventful. It presented no special features--for Venice

was at peace both at home and abroad. Family feuds were hushed, though

doubtless the Morosini ill-brooked the elevation of a rival house.

Those were days of repose and plenty when it was boastfully said by

her citizens:--“Venice wants for nothing!” Such seasons of rest are

occasionally granted to States, when leisure is found to apply the

lessons of the past and to prepare for the developments of the future.

Contarini was the premier of a triumvirate of Doges--the “Tribunal

system”--as it was called,--being again enforced to limit personal

autocracy. His co-Doges were Domenigo Selvo and Vitale Faliero--the

former being especially the representative of the democratic section of

the community.

Selvo belonged to an ancient family of Greek extraction. In the eighth

century his ancestors the Dorsoduri, or, in the Venetian vernacular,

Spinalunge, were exiled by the Emperor Emmanuel from Byzantium and

settled at Aitino in Veneto. By the time, however, of Domenigo, all

such antecedents were forgotten, and he was received cordially as

the Ambassador of Venice by the Emperor Constantine Ducas. Upon the

death of the venerated Doge in 1071, Domenigo Selvo was unanimously

chosen by the Council and vociferously acclaimed by the citizens as

his successor. The cry was raised upon the Piazzetta:--“_Noi volemo

Dose Domenigo Selvo, e lo laudiano!_” and hoisted upon the shoulders

of his friends he was borne in riotous procession to his coronation.

Passing the open doors of the grand basilica he leaped out of the arms

of his bearers, and, kneeling humbly upon the tesselated pavement, he

devoutly implored the help of Heaven and the blessing of the Church.

The dogado of Selvo was perhaps less remarkable for the potentiality of

the new Doge--strong man as he was no doubt--than for the personality

of the haughty princess he brought to Venice to share the honours of

the ducal State.

Dogaressa Teodora Ducas was the daughter of the Emperor Constantine and

her betrothal to the Doge of Venice was brought about by her brother

Michael, who in 1067 succeeded his father as Emperor of the East. She

landed on the Lido first for Mass, and then at the Piazzetta, wearing

the imperial diadem with which her brother had crowned her at the

nuptials in Constantinople.

At the same time everybody noted that His Serenity the Doge’s bonnet

of Estate was encircled by a richly wrought band of pure red Grecian

gold, encrusted with precious stones! No Doge had ever worn such a

conspicuous mark of royalty, and many a noble lord looked askance at

the wearer--doubting in his mind whether it was intended as an emblem

of sovereignty! Feelings of alarm filled the minds of the citizens and

the welcome accorded to the ducal pair was cold and formal.

The new Dogaressa was accompanied by a very numerous retinue, such as

no previous consort of the Chief Magistrate had presumed to gather

round her. Secretly the Venetians liked well their Doges and their

nobles to contract splendid foreign marriages, and no “Brides of

Venice” were more thoroughly admired than the “_donne Greche fonte di

cortesia at amorevolezza_!”

Teodora unfortunately did nothing to propitiate the insular

prejudice of the men and women of Venice. Her autocratic bearing

and her ill-disguised contempt for the “women of the Rialto” caused

head-shakings and tongue-waggings in every circle of society. From the

first she was as unpopular as her consort, the Doge, was beloved.

In the Ducal Palace the Dogaressa set up an Imperial Court and required

the nobles and state officials to render the honours to which she had

been accustomed at Constantinople. She had her ladies of honour, her

chamberlains, her pages and her slaves. Superbly robed and glittering

with precious ornaments, Teodora Selvo offered an amazing contrast to

Elena--the homely consort of the first “Grand” Doge--Agnello Badoero!

Teodora was an Athenian of the Athenians, with all the predilections

of a Sultana of the harem. Pomp and pettiness were strongly mingled in

her character. The corruption of the Byzantine Court, in which she had

been reared, had laid their indelible marks upon her: she shocked the

susceptibilities of the simple, homely Venetians by her voluptuousness,

her petulance, and her extravagance.

Still, there was something about the Dogaressa which attracted

sympathy, for were not the people of Rialto and her linked-up islets,

descendants of Greek colonists in Veneto, and did they not preserve

many traits and idiosyncrasies of their ancestors! Then, too, many a

sea-faring Venetian, conquered by the artifices of Cupid in the Orient,

had brought home a Greek bride to be the mother of his children, so the

ways of the Dogaressa were not altogether without appeal.

Teodora lived delicately: the plain fare and simple service of her

consort’s establishment, which also obtained too in the casas of the

nobles, were not to her liking. She introduced exquisite cooking--the

Greek cuisine in place of the crude joints and inartistic concoctions

of the Roman menu. Costly wines and liqueurs from Syria and the remote

East supplanted the heavier beverages of the lagunes. Her table service

was of pure gold and costly rock-crystal.

Unlike the primitive ways of the unsophisticated Venetians, who were

content to convey their food to their mouths with their fingers or

with ladles, and to share cup and plate, the Dogaressa introduced a

Grecian fork--an entirely new instrument in Western Empire--which

was of solid gold, two-pronged, and beautifully chased, with which

she ate dainty morsels, neatly carved and arranged by the eunuchs

of the table. Moreover, she made constant use of fingerglass and

finger-napkin--things which were unknown in Venice. Great wax candles

were lighted after dark, and stuck into costly sconces--in spite of the

archaic regulations of the curfew.

Teodora Selvo rarely walked in the Piazza--the gondola was for her

an ideal conveyance, it ministered to her love of ease and admirably

served her secret flirtations. In public she always wore gloves,

scented with aromatic herbs, and in this she set a fashion, which, no

Venetian noble or simple of to-day, fails to observe.

Into the mysteries of the Dogaressa’s toilet we may also most

fortunately be admitted, through the grace of those who kept her

diaries. The air of her apartments was perfumed each day before she

rose for her _levée_. Beautiful scent-scatterers of blown grass,

and elegant pastille stands were carried up and down by her attendants.

This little bit of extravagance we may all thoroughly endorse, for

doubtless, in her day, the odours of the canals were as bad if not

worse, than in our own!

The morning bath was administered with perfumed water, or white wine,

and sometimes with freshly-gathered dew from the flower petals and

green sward of her garden. If the Latins were especially careful as

to washing their feet, the Greeks were equally particular about their

heads: they found the douche healthful and invigorating. The more

exquisite Athenians had a special perfume and wash for each portion of

the body. It was said that simple-minded peasant Paris was directly

influenced, in the bestowal of his golden apple, by the seductive

odours exhaled by the massaged, painted, powdered, well-laved person

of the fascinating Queen of Beauty!

No doubt Teodora carried with her into the Ducal Palace a full battery

of toilet requisites and delicacies--for example: for her arms,

sweetened mint, clearest oil of palms for her lips and breast, sweet

marjoram mixed with the pomades for hair and eyebrows, and for knees

and neck essence of ground-ivy--such was the custom of her people.