SALVE · VENETIA
[Illustration: THE SALUTE]
SALVE · VENETIA
GLEANINGS
FROM VENETIAN HISTORY
BY
FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD
_WITH 225 ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOSEPH PENNELL_
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1906
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1905,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published December, 1905. Reprinted
January, 1906.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
CONTENTS
PAGE
SALVE VENETIA! 1
I. THE BEGINNINGS 9
II. THE LITTLE GOLDEN AGE 24
III. THE REPUBLIC OF SAINT MARK 35
IV. VENICE UNDER THE FAMILIES OF PARTECIPAZIO, CANDIANO,
AND ORSEOLO 55
V. VENICE AND THE FIRST CRUSADES 93
VI. VENICE AND CONSTANTINOPLE 124
VII. THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY IN VENICE 160
VIII. ON MANNERS AND CERTAIN CUSTOMS IN THE FOURTEENTH
CENTURY 257
IX. THE FEAST OF THE MARIES 278
X. THE DOGES IN THE EARLY PART OF THE FOURTEENTH
CENTURY 288
XI. CONSPIRACY OF MARINO FALIERO 309
XII. THE SUCCESSORS OF MARINO FALIERO 342
XIII. CARLO ZENO 353
XIV. THE WAR OF CHIOGGIA 369
XV. VENICE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 416
THE DOGES OF VENICE 495
TABLE OF THE PRINCIPAL DATES IN VENETIAN HISTORY 499
BOOKS CONSULTED 501
INDEX 507
ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATES
The Salute _Frontispiece_
Evening in the Lagoon _To face page_ 4
Midnight, the Lagoon 6
Hall of the Globes, Ducal Palace 84
The Piazzetta 117
A White Morning from S. Georgio. The Campanile,
1903 179
When the Fishing Boats are in 204
Clouds of Sunset 207
Ponte Veneta Marina 249
The Pulpit, St. Mark’s 296
The Chapel of St. Mark’s 300
A Rainy Night, The Rialto 307
Door of the Treasury, St. Mark’s 308
The Tombs in SS. Giovanni e Paolo 338
The Nave, SS. Giovanni e Paolo 340
The City in the Seas 400
IN TEXT
PAGE
From Outside the Lido 1
Rio della Pace 2
The Mists gather on the Lagoons 3
Looking towards St. George’s 8
The Custom-house, Venice 9
The Lights of the Lido 10
Chioggia 11
Bridge at Chioggia 13
The Cathedral at Murano 16
The Islands 23
The Approach from Mestre 24
Fish Baskets 34
Venice from the Lido 35
Shops near the Rialto 36
Grand Canal, near Rialto 39
A Water Door near S. Benedetto 45
Narrow Water Lane 48
On the Giudecca 50
The Steps of the Salute 53
The Riva at Night 55
St. Mark’s 57
A Chapel, St. Mark’s 59
The Porch, St. Mark’s 60
St. Mark’s 63
Door of St. Mark’s 67
From the Gallery, St. Mark’s 69
The Great Doorway, St. Mark’s 71
The Christ of St. Mark’s 75
A Shrine, St. Mark’s 77
The Great Window, St. Mark’s 81
Fishing Boats at the Riva 92
The Grand Canal from the Ca d’Oro 93
The Post Office 98
Off the Public Gardens 101
The Clock Tower 107
The Dogana and the Salute 115
Chioggia 119
S. Pietro in Castello 122
Ponte Malcantone 124
The Salute 129
Fondamenta S. Girolamo 137
Venice from the Lagoon 142
Campiello S. Giovanni 147
Campo, Santa Ternita 154
The House of Faliero, Ponte dei S. S. Apostoli 160
The Tiepolo Palace 161
Boats off the Public Garden 167
Court of Appeals, Grand Canal 168
The Flags flying in the Piazza 177
The Campanile 178
St. Theodore 182
S. Severo 187
S. Pietro in Castello 193
The Great Lamp, St. Mark’s 195
The Canarreggio 197
The House of the Spirits 198
S. Paolo 199
The Little Fish Market 203
Off the Public Gardens 209
Rio della Pieta 215
Rio S. Agostin 222
Rio Jena Seconda 227
Calle del Spezier 236
Rio di S. Pantaleone 246
The Abbazzia 257
A Campo 262
Rio della Panada 271
Fondamenta Marcotta 278
The Abbazzia 288
Campo S. Maria 290
S. Lorenzo 299
Rio S. Stin 305
Zattere, the Morning Mist 309
Calle Occhialera 313
Campo S. Maria Nova 320
Ponte e Fondamenta di Donna Onesta 327
Ramo della Scuola 331
Campo S. Agnello 342
The Three Bridges 353
Rio della Guerra 359
Rio Pertrin 363
Bridge at Chioggia 369
Street in Chioggia 372
The Shrine at Chioggia 373
The Salute, Night 376
Calle Casalli 383
Calle della Donazella 385
Campo S. Benedetto 389
The Horses over the Great Door, St. Mark’s 397
On the Giudecca 399
Rio S. Polo 403
Moonlight Night, S. M. dell’ Orto 409
The Carmine 416
Rio de S. Pantaleone 421
The Church of the Frari 425
Ponte Fiorenzola 435
Land Gateway, Palazzo Foscari 439
Palazzo Regina di Cipro 446
Ramo Corte della Vida, S. Francesco della Vida 455
The Frari 457
The Choir Screen, Frari 459
S. Rocco 461
Grand Canal looking to Canarreggio 467
Tombs in the Frari 475
Ca d’ Oro 481
Entrance to S. Zaccharia 487
The Piazzetta, Misty Morning 493
[Illustration: FROM OUTSIDE THE LIDO]
SALVE VENETIA!
Venice is the most personal of all cities in the world, the most
feminine, the most comparable to a woman, the least dependent, for her
individuality, upon her inhabitants, ancient or modern. What would Rome
be without the memory of the Cæsars? What would Paris be without the
Parisians? What was Constantinople like before it was Turkish? The
imagination can hardly picture a Venice different from her present self
at any time in her history. Where all is colour, the more brilliant
costumes of earlier times could add but little; a general exodus of all
her inhabitants to-day would leave almost as much of it behind. In the
still canals the gorgeous palaces continually gaze down upon their own
reflected images with placid satisfaction, and look with calm
indifference upon the changing generations of men and women that glide
upon the waters. The mists gather upon the mysterious lagoons and sink
[Illustration: RIO DELLA PACE]
away again before the devouring light, day after day, year after year,
century after century; and Venice is always there herself, sleeping or
waking, laughing, weeping, dreaming, singing or sighing, living her own
life through ages, with an intensely vital personality which time has
hardly modified, and is altogether powerless to destroy. Somehow it
would not surprise those who know her, to come suddenly upon her and
find that all human life was extinct within her, while her
[Illustration: THE MISTS GATHER ON THE LAGOONS]
own went on, strong as ever; nor yet, in the other extreme, would it
seem astonishing if all that has been should begin again, as though it
had never ceased to be, if the Bucentaur swept down the Grand Canal to
the beat of its two hundred oars, bearing the Doge out to wed the sea
with gorgeous train; if the Great Council began to sit again in all its
splendour; if the Piazza were thronged once more with men and women
from the pictures of Paris Bordone, Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, and
Titian; if Eastern shipping crowded the entrance to the Giudecca, and
Eastern merchants filled the shady ways of the Merceria. What miracle
could seem miraculous in Venice, the city of wonders?
[Sidenote: _Mut. Less._]
It is hard indeed to recall the beginnings of the city, and the time
when a few sand-ridges just rose above the surface of the motionless
lagoon, like the backs of dozing whales in a summer sea. The fishermen
from the mainland saw the resemblance too, and called them
‘backs’--‘dorsi’--giving some of them names which like ‘Dorso duro’ have
clung to them until our own time, and will perhaps live on, years hence,
among other generations of fishermen when Venice shall have disappeared
into the waste of sand and water, out of which her astonishing
personality grew into being, and in which it has flourished and survived
nearly fifteen centuries.
We are not concerned scientifically with the origin of the Venetian
people or of their name; we need not go back with Romanin to the
legendary days of the first great struggle between Asia and Europe, in
the hope of proving that the Venetians were of the great Scythian race
and took the side of Troy against the injured Atrides; it matters not at
all whether the Venetians were the same as the Eneti, whether Eneti was
a Greek name signifying those that ‘went in,’ the ‘Intruders,’ or
whether it came from the Syriac Hanida, meaning a ‘Pilgrim.’ Venice did
not begin under the
[Illustration: EVENING IN THE LAGOON]
walls of Troy, nor even in the great Roman consular province of the
mainland that bore the name and handed it down. Venice began to exist
when Europe rang with the cry of fear--‘The Huns are upon us!’--on the
day when the first fugitives, blind with terror, stumbled ashore upon
the back of one of the sand whales in the lagoon, and dared not go back.
Venice was Venice from the first, and is Venice still, a person in our
imagination, almost more than a place. To most people her name does not
instantly suggest names of great Venetians, as ‘Florence’ suggests the
Medici, as ‘Rome’ suggests the Cæsars and the Popes, as ‘Paris’ suggests
Louis XIV. and Bonaparte, as ‘Constantinople’ suggests the Sultan and
‘Bagdad’ the Caliphs. ‘Venice’ calls up a dream of colour, of rich
palaces and of still water, and at the name there are more men who will
think of Shylock and Othello than of Enrico Dandolo, or Titian, or Carlo
Zeno, or Vittor Pisani. Without much reading and some study it is almost
impossible to realise that Venice was once a great European power and a
weighty element in the alternating equilibrium and unrest of nations;
Venice seems to-day a capital without a country, an empress without an
empire, and one thinks of her as having always existed simply in order
to be always herself, a Venice for Venice’s sake, as it were, and not
for the purpose of exercising any power, nor as the product of
extraneous forces concentrated at a point and working towards a result.
These considerations may explain the charm felt by all those who know
her, and the attraction, also, which is in most books that treat her as
an artistic and romantic whole, complete in herself, to be studied,
admired, and perhaps worshipped, with only an occasional allusion to her
political history. So, too, one may account for the dry dulness and
uncharming prosiness of most books that profess to tell the history of
Venice impartially and justly. There is no such thing as impartial
history, and impartial justice is an empty phrase, as every lawyer
knows. It is only the second-rate historian, or the compiler of school
primers, who does not take one side or the other in the struggles he
describes; and a judge who feels no instinctive sympathy for right
against wrong, while as yet but half proved, can never be anything but a
judicial hack and a legal machine.
[Sidenote: _Preface Chron. Alt._]
Who seeks true poetry, said Rossi, writing on Venice, will find it most
abundantly in the early memories of a Christian nation; and indeed the
old chronicles are full of it, of idyls, of legends, and of heroic
tales. Only dream a while over the yellow pages of Muratori, and
presently you will scent the spring flowers of a thousand years ago, and
hear the ripple of the blue waves that lent young Venice their purity,
their brilliancy, and their fresh young music. You may even enjoy a
pagan vision of maiden Aphrodite rising suddenly out of the sea into the
sunshine, but the dream dissolves only too soon, grace turns into
strength, the lovely smile of the girl-goddess fades from the commanding
features of the
[Illustration: MIDNIGHT, THE LAGOON]
reigning queen, and heavenly Venus is already earthly Cleopatra.
It is better to open our arms gladly to the beautiful when she comes to
us, than to prepare our dissecting instruments as soon as we are aware
of her presence. Phidias and Praxiteles were ignorant of medical
anatomy; Thucydides knew nothing of ‘scientific’ methods in history; the
Rhapsodists were not grammarians. No man need be a grammarian to love
Homer, nor a scientific historian if he would be thrilled with interest
over the siege of Syracuse, nor an anatomist when he elects to dream
before the Hermes of Olympia.
And so with Venice; she is a form of beauty, and must be looked upon as
that and nothing else; not critically, for criticism means comparison,
and Venice is too personal and individual, and too unlike other cities
to be fairly compared with them; not coldly, for she appeals to the
senses, and to the human heart, and craves a little warmth of sympathy;
above all, not in a spirit of righteous severity, for he who would
follow her story must learn to forgive her almost at every step.
She has paid for her mistakes with all save her inextinguishable life;
she has expiated her sins of ill-faith, of injustice and ingratitude, by
the loss of everything but her imperishable charm; the power and the
will to do evil are gone from her with her empire, and her name stands
on the subject-roll of another’s kingdom; she is a widowed and dethroned
queen, she is a lonely and lovely princess; she is the Andromeda of
Europe, chained fast to her island and trembling in fear of the monster
Modern Progress, whose terrible roar is heard already from the near
mainland of Italy, across the protecting water. Will any Perseus come
down in time to save her?
[Illustration: LOOKING TOWARDS ST. GEORGE’S]
[Illustration: THE CUSTOM-HOUSE, VENICE]
I
THE BEGINNINGS
In the beginning the river washed sand and mud out through the shallow
water at the two mouths of the Brenta; and the tide fought against the
streams at flood, so that the silt rose up in bars, but at ebb the salt
water rushed out again, mingled with the fresh, and strong turbid
currents hollowed channels between the banks, leading out to seaward,
until the islands and bars took permanent shape and the currents
acquired regular directions, in and out, between and amongst them. In
the beginning the spirit of unborn Venice seemed to say, more truly than
Archimedes, ‘Give me a place whereon to stand, and I will move the
world’;
[Illustration: THE LIGHTS OF THE LIDO]
and the rivers and the tides heaped up the sand and made a dry place for
her in the midst of the sea.
The lagoon is a shallow basin, roughly shaped like a crescent, its
convexity making a bay in the mainland, its concave side bounded against
the open sea by the curving banks, called ‘Lidi,’ beaches, which are
long and narrow islands, to distinguish them from the islets of less
regular shape that rise above the surface here and there within the
confines of the lagoon, those on which Venice stands, and Torcello and
Murano, and others which make a miniature archipelago, ending with
Chioggia, at the southern point of the crescent.
[Illustration: CHIOGGIA]
This archipelago contains twelve principal islands, some of which were
inhabited by families that got a living by trading, by hunting and by
fishing, selling both fish and game to the ships that plied between
Ravenna and Aquileia.
Very early the people of the latter city had made a harbour for their
vessels on the island of Grado, which was nearest to them, and the
Paduans made small commercial stations on the islands of Rialto and
Olivolo. Now and then some rich man from the mainland built himself a
small villa on one of the wooded islets, and came thither for his
pleasure and for sport. For some of these islands were covered with
pine-trees and cane-brakes, while some were muddy, naturally sterile,
and inhospitable; but the early settlers had soon solidified and
modified the soil, and reduced it to the cultivation of fodder for
cattle, and of vines.
The archipelago was therefore not so much a barren solitude as a quiet
corner in very troubled times, and while the small farmers and fishermen
knew nothing of Italy’s miserable condition, the rich sportsmen who
spent a little time there were glad to forget the terrible state of
things in their own great world.
[Sidenote: _Rom. i. 26._]
For since the capital of the Empire had been transferred to
Constantinople, Italy had fallen a prey to the greed of barbarians, and
the province of Venetia had been left under the very intermittent
protection of a few paid troops supposed to be commanded by a Count or
‘Corrector’ appointed by the Emperor.
On the rich mainland stood the cities of Venetia, Aquileia, Altinum,
Padua, and many more; and the wealthy citizens built villas by the sea,
with groves of noble trees, trim gardens and wide fishponds, and marble
steps leading down to the water’s edge; and they hunted the wild boar
and the stag in the near forests, all the way to the foot of the Julian
hills. The land was rich, and far removed from turbulent Rome and
intriguing Constantinople, and many a Roman noble took sanctuary from
politics on the enchanting shore, to dream away his last years in a
luxurious philosophy that was based on wealth but was fed on every
requirement of culture, and was made sweet by the past experience of
danger and unrest.
[Illustration: BRIDGE AT CHIOGGIA]
[Sidenote: _About 406 A.D._]
Then came the first Goths, with fire and sword--‘more fell than anguish,
hunger or the sea’--and then a score of years later fair-haired Alaric,
the Achilles of the North, and, like Pelides, untiring, wrathful,
inexorable, bold, yet just, according to his lights, and high-souled if
not high-minded, destined first to terrible defeat at Pollentia, but
next to still more awful victory, and soon to death and a mysterious
grave.
Before the Goths men scattered and fled, the rich to what seemed safety,
in Rome, the poor to the woods, to the hills, to the wretched islets of
the lagoon. Back they came to their villas, their sea-baths and their
groves, when it was surely known that great Alaric was dead and laid to
his royal rest in the bed of the southern river.
They came back, the poor and the rich, while the world-worn, luxurious,
highly-cultivated men of the last days of the Empire enjoyed their
hunting and fishing in peace; and over their elaborate dishes and their
cups of spiced Greek wine they quoted to each other Martial’s lines:--
‘Ye shores of Altinum, ye that vie with Baiae’s villas--thou grove, that
sawest Phaëthon’s fiery end--and Maiden Sola, fairest of wood-nymphs
thou, espoused beside the Euganean lakes with Faunus of Antenor’s Paduan
land--and thou, Aquileia, that rejoicest in Tamavus, thine own river,
sought by Leda’s sons where Castor’s steed drank of the seven waters--Ye
shall be unto mine old age a haven and resting-place, if but mine ease
may have the right to choose.’
But while they repeated the fluent elegiacs they remembered the Goths
uneasily, for the Empire was in its last years and weak, and Venetia was
protected against the barbarians north and east by a handful of
Sarmatian mercenaries. What had happened once might happen again, and as
the years slipped by, each one seemed to bring it nearer; and in half a
century after Alaric’s first descent, there came another conqueror more
terrible than the first, whom men called Attila, the Scourge of God; but
he told the Christians that he was the dreadful Antichrist, and the
people cried out, ‘The Huns are upon us,’ and they fled for their lives
into the cities. Aquileia, at that time the second city of Italy, and
Padua, Altinum and others, defended themselves and fell, and the people
who could not escape perished miserably.
[Sidenote: _D’ Ancona._]
This is history, single and clear. But here springs up legend and says
that Attila, who never crossed the Po, laid waste all Tuscany, and his
name is a byword of terror, for blood and massacre, and destruction and
all bestial ferocity. Legend says, too, that while he was besieging
Aquileia, the Hun king saw the need of a fort on high ground, where
there was none; and that in three days his hordes piled up the hill on
which Udine stands, bringing earth in their helmets and shields and
stones on their backs. Then the Aquileians attempted to flood the
country and drown out their besiegers, and they broke through the dykes
that kept out the waters of the Piave; but the Huns cut down the grove
of Phaëthon and made a vast dam of the trees.
It is also told by Paul the Deacon how on a certain day Attila came too
near the walls, spying for a weak point, and a party of the besieged
folk fell upon him unawares; but he escaped, with his bow in his hand
and his crooked sword, the sword of a Scythian war-god, between his
teeth, ‘dire flame flashing from his eyes,’ and all that his enemies had
of him was his crest.
So Aquileia resisted him long, and the Huns were discouraged, until
Attila saw a flight of storks flying from the walls and knew thereby
that there was famine within.
Then, says the legend, the king of the Aquileians, Menappus, who seems
to be quite mythical, took
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL AT MURANO]
counsel with his brother Antiochus, how the people might escape over the
lagoon before the city fell. So they set up wooden images as soldiers
with helmet and shield on the ramparts, to represent sentinels, and the
Huns were deceived. But one of Attila’s chief warriors flew his hawk at
the walls, and it settled upon the head of one of the wooden soldiers.
So, when the Huns saw that the sentinel was an image and not a man, they
scaled the battlements and sacked the almost deserted city and burned
it.
It is told also, and the fishermen of those waters still believe the
tale, that before they escaped the Aquileians dug a deep well and hid
their treasures in it; and deeds of sale of land are extant, dated as
late as the year 1800, in which the seller of the property reserved his
right to the legendary treasure well, if it should ever be found. The
truth is, however, that after the destruction of the great city and the
disappearance of the Huns, many of the fugitives went back and recovered
what they had hidden.
The tide of legend sweeps down the coast with the wild riders to
Altinum, where mythical King Janus fights, like a Roland, on a steed
that has human understanding and that bears him out of Attila’s reach,
half dead of his wounds. And inland, then, towards Padua, and up to its
very walls, the heroes fight; this time Attila is wounded and is saved
only by his horse’s marvellous speed, but on the next day the two kings
meet again in the presence of their armies to decide the war in single
combat.
Janus unhorses Attila, and strikes off his ear, and would cut off his
head too, but five hundred Hunnish knights rush to the rescue of their
king, and Janus is prisoner. But Attila’s anger is roused against them.
They have broken the laws of knightly combat. His honour is tarnished
because his life is saved. To clear it, he sets King Janus free and
hangs his five hundred knights as a vast sacrifice for atonement. Then
Padua is overpowered and sacked and burned.
The myth goes on to the end in a blaze of impossibilities. Before Rimini
Attila disguises himself as a French pilgrim, hides a poisoned knife
under his robe, and steals into the besieged city to murder Janus. He
finds him playing at dice with one of his knights, and armed from head
to foot. He interrupts the game, asks questions, forgets himself, shows
his wolfish teeth, and Janus recognises him by the absence of the one
ear lopped off at Padua. In an instant the king and the knight overpower
the great Hun and slay him on the spot; and so ends Attila, and the
myth.
* * * * *
Of all this legend little enough remains, and that is best summed up in
the now almost forgotten line quoted by Professor d’Ancona in his
_Leggende_:--
... nata ella sola
Di serve madri libera figluola.
‘The only daughter--among many--of enslaved mothers that was ever born
free.’ Truly well said of Venice.
The chronicles tell the true story of the first beginnings, and how the
people of the pillaged cities found a precarious refuge in the little
archipelago. They crossed in their light boats and landed safely,
[Sidenote: _Rom. i. 56-57._]
[Sidenote: _554-564 A.D._]
[Sidenote: _568 A.D._]
and forthwith made huts and tabernacles of branches to shelter the
relics of the saints which they had saved as possessions more precious
than their household goods or little hoards of gold and silver. But the
people themselves beached their boats high and dry and lived in them,
sheltered from the weather only by awnings, just as the last of the
sailor traders still live wherever they find a market on the Calabrian
shore; for they hoped to go back to their homes. And so indeed they did,
when the Huns departed at last; they returned to their cities and
rebuilt the battered walls of Aquileia and Altinum, trusting to dwell in
peace. But the second destruction was not far off: the Ostrogoths came,
and the Lombards, and the people fled once more, never to return.
The unknown author of the Chronicle of Altinum carries on the tale in a
most amazing compound of history, fiction, poetry and statistics. More
than one scholar has indeed been tempted to surmise that this document
is the work of several writers.
From them, or from the one, we learn something of the circumstances
which drove the inhabitants of Altinum to take to their boats and seek a
final refuge in the lagoons; and the story of the second flight, like
that of the first, is fantastically illuminated by the writer’s poetic
imagination.
‘In the days of the Bishop Paul’ is the only date the Chronicle gives,
and doubtless that was very clear to the first monk who took down the
manuscript
[Sidenote: _Chron. Altin._]
from its place in the convent library and first pored over its contents.
In the days, therefore, when Paul was bishop in Altinum, there came out
of the west a pestilence of cruel pagans, fierce Lombards, who destroyed
cities in their path as the flame licks up dry grass, and who would
surely have made an end of the peaceful people of Altinum if Heaven had
not sent signs warning them to escape.
For one day Bishop Paul looked up to the towers and turrets of the city
and saw that the birds which had their nests therein were flying round
and round in agitation, and were chirping and chattering and cawing,
each after his kind, as if they were gathered together in consultation.
But suddenly, as Paul looked, the birds all took their flight
southwards; and those that had young which could not yet fly, carried
them in their beaks.
The good Bishop knew at once that this portent was a warning, and he
called his flock together and told what he had seen. Then many of the
people, never doubting but that he was right, fled at once towards
Ravenna, and to Istria, and to the cities of the Pentapolis; but the
rest fasted three days and prayed that God, by another sign, would show
them the path of safety.
On the third day, therefore, a strong and clear voice was heard, saying,
‘Go up into the great tower and look towards the stars.’ And they went
up; and the stars’ reflections made paths upon the water, towards the
islands of the lagoons. Then the people who had remained filled their
boats with their possessions; and the good Bishop Paul led them, and the
two holy priests Geminianus and Maurus, and two noble knights, Arius
and Arator; and they came safely to the island of Grado, and landed
there, and were saved. But soon afterwards they spread over some of the
other islands and gave names to these, which recalled memories of their
old home.
Now, as has been pointed out already in speaking of the first flight,
the little archipelago was by no means uninhabited. Fishermen lived on
the islands, and small farmers and some herdsmen, none of whom, it may
be supposed, were inclined to give the newcomers a warm welcome. In
plain fact the people of the mainland, well provided and well armed,
made an easy conquest of the islands; but in the fiction of the
Chronicle it seemed necessary to account for the high-handed deed on
grounds of virtue and religion, and the author forthwith launches into
legend, showing us how Arius and Arator set at rest the scruples of the
conquerors, if peradventure they had any.
God and the saints intervened. One day the holy Maurus looked towards
one of the islands, and behold, two bright stars stood together above
it, and a great voice was heard saying, ‘I am the Lord, the master and
the Saviour of the world. Raise thou here a temple to my glory.’ But
from the other star came a soft clear voice which said, ‘I am Mary, the
mother of God. Build unto me a church.’
There was no possibility of questioning such a form of investiture, or
of disputing the right of invaders who received their orders audibly
from heaven.
A little farther on there was a very beautiful island, covered with
grass, whereon pastured great flocks of cattle and sheep; and Maurus
asked whether perchance these herds belonged to any man, and received
answer immediately. For suddenly there appeared in a rosy brightness
like the dawn two figures of divine beauty; and one was that of an old
man, but the other was young and little more than a lad. Then spake the
old man and said, ‘I am Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, who am set
over all flocks, and have power to forgive all sins. I give unto thee
this island, and thou shalt build a temple in honour of my name.’ Also
the youth spake, saying, ‘I am the servant of God. I am called
Autolinus, and I gave my life for Christ’s sake. Build me a little
church. My name is nowhere spoken in the liturgy with those of the
martyrs; I enjoin upon thee to name me in thy prayers, both night and
day, and I will pray God to grant all that thou shalt ask, for thee and
thine.’ Moreover, the two saints, before they vanished, traced on the
ground the plans of the churches they desired for themselves.
Again, a little white cloud appeared to the holy Maurus, and it was the
footstool under the feet of a most fair maiden, who spake and said, ‘I
am Justina, whom they put to death in Padua because I confessed the name
of Christ. I beseech thee, thou priest of the Lord, that thou wilt raise
upon this island a little church, to honour me; wherein thou shalt sing
praises to me every day and every night, as a Martyr and a Virgin, and I
will grant whatsoever thou askest of me.’
Afterwards many other heavenly visions came to comfort the people of
Altinum, and, amongst other saints, Saint John the Baptist also received
the promise of a fair temple.
By heavenly or earthly means, therefore, the fugitives had now obtained
for themselves a home, and they began to consider how they should
establish themselves in it conveniently, so that it should not be taken
from them. Then, such of the people as had occupied a high position in
Altino were charged by the leaders to take each the command of one
island--here a Marcello, there a Faliero, and farther on a Calciamiro;
all names which appear again and again throughout the history of the
maritime state which was then and there founded and began to live, while
the Lombards were tearing down the walls of the old homes on the
mainland and burning what could not be destroyed in any other way.
[Illustration: THE ISLANDS]
[Illustration: THE APPROACH FROM MESTRE]
II
THE LITTLE GOLDEN AGE
As soon as the fugitives had given up all hope of returning to the
mainland, they began that tremendous struggle with nature which built up
the Venice we still see, and which, in some degree, will end only when
it shall have finally disappeared again in the course of ages. The
beginners displayed an almost incredible activity, which their
descendants sustained without a break for centuries.
They strengthened the muddy islands with dykes and rows of driven piles;
they dug canals and lined them first with timber and then with stone;
they straightened the course of the currents, lest these should wash
away the least fragment of land, where there was so little; they worked
like beavers to win a few poor yards of earth from the restless flood.
The different tribes led strangely independent existences, though living
so near together in the islands they had seized. Each one endeavoured to
model the new home as much as possible upon the old, celebrating the
same feasts in honour of the same saints, upon altars that enshrined the
same long-treasured relics, and clinging with the affection and tenacity
of unwilling exiles to the traditions and customs of the fatherland.
[Sidenote: _Rom. i. 73._]
Though living almost within a stone’s throw the one from the other, the
people of Aquileia, of Altinum and of Padua held at first hardly any
communication, and had little in common; but they all clung to the
patriarchal life, as is easily proved by very ancient documents. It is
quite certain that each group had a chief, chosen to govern the little
colony on account of his superior experience, riches, and authority. He
was the guardian of the old home traditions, and strove to preserve them
ever young, and to him appeal was made in all questions of justice and
equity.
It is most important to remember that all these early settlers were
descended from people who had been subject for centuries to Roman
influence, as well as to
[Sidenote: _Rom. i. 95._]
Roman government; and it was only natural that they should long
afterwards show traces of such early national training, if I may use the
expression. Their society almost instinctively sifted itself into
castes: there were nobles--that is, the rich; there were the burghers,
and there were the ‘little people,’ as they were called--‘minori.’ It
was the duty of the nobles to provide all the rest with the means of
living, as well as to govern and protect them. Custom required
[Sidenote: _Rom. i. 60._]
that every rich man should entertain under his protection a certain
number of families of lower rank, who were called the ‘convicini,’ that
is, ‘fellow-neighbours,’ a usage which recalled the Roman system of
patron and client. The father of the family, as in Rome, had almost
unlimited power over his children. All meetings of importance were
presided over by the clergy.
[Sidenote: _Rom. i. 76._]
[Sidenote: _Chron. Altin._]
It was, in fact, an assembly of the clergy and of fathers of families
which, in each group of emigrants, had given the leader of the
expedition the Roman title of Tribune; and after a leader’s death his
successor was elected in the same way, very generally from amongst his
direct descendants. If this occurred during three or four successive
generations, his family became naturally invested with a real hereditary
authority. The relation between the head of the family and the
‘fellow-neighbours’ consisted of generosity on the one hand and of
gratitude on the other, a species of exchange of sentiments not likely
to produce undue tension. But where the head of the colony was
concerned, an ambitious tribune, who showed signs of trying to turn
himself into an autocrat, was held in check by the necessity of being
re-elected to his office every year. For in each island, on the feast of
its particular patron saint, the people met together, either in the
church or on the shore, to choose the chief for the next twelve months,
and they often elected the same tribune again and again; but if he had
done the slightest thing to displease them, they had it in their power
to choose a better man in his place.
During his term of office the tribune took for himself tithes on game
that was killed, fish that was caught, and crops that were harvested.
Properly speaking, there were neither magistrates nor tribunals at that
time, for the tribune himself judged all causes in public, most often in
the church. A few fragments of written law existed, no doubt, but they
were wholly inadequate; and though it was attempted to supply their
deficiencies by adding some articles from the Lombard code, the real law
was tradition. Such was the good faith of that little golden age, that
the sworn evidence of two respectable persons was enough to convict any
misdoer without any further form of trial, and condign punishment
followed directly upon conviction.
According to the accounts they have left of themselves, these primitive
Venetians were a simple and devout people, who divided their time
between honest labour, the singing of psalms and devout hymns, and the
narration to each other of beatific visions of Apostles and Virgin
Martyrs, who appeared for the purpose of ordering themselves churches.
The churches were undoubtedly built in great numbers, largely out of the
better fragments which could still be gathered amidst the ruins of the
old forsaken cities on the mainland. The nobles of Padua, who were
probably the best of the colonists, brought enough old material to build
themselves the whole town of Heraclea, on the island of that name; but
even there the best and most artistic pieces of stone and marble were
used in the construction of the churches and monasteries.
The people worked in the fields, cultivated the vine, bred cattle, and
dealt in salt, which latter was one of their chief resources. They were
not yet rich, but they were already economical, and their gains more
than sufficed for their needs, so that the slow accumulation of wealth
began at a very early period.
[Sidenote: _Rom. i. 67._]
The ancient Venetian type, described in Roman times, continued to
dominate even beyond the fourteenth century. The men were large,
fair-haired, and strong; the women were rather inclined to be stout, and
it was noticed that their hair turned grey comparatively early.
[Sidenote: _Vecellio._]
Both sexes dressed with great simplicity, and for a long time clung to
the old Roman fashions. They had always shown a remarkable liking for
blue clothes; during many centuries the inhabitants of Venetia had been
known as the ‘Blues,’ and long after the division of the Empire one
faction in the games of the circus went by that name.
[Sidenote: _Dalmedico._]
Their speech was still Latin at that early time, but soon afterwards the
influence of the Greeks and Lombards began to make itself felt in their
language, as well as in their dress and ornaments, and even in their
architecture.
[Sidenote: _Mut. Costumi._]
They lived in a certain abundance, and ate much meat, after the manner
of all young nations. One may dig almost anywhere and come upon layers
of the bones of wild boar and other game, as well as of cattle and
sheep. Among fish they are known to have thought the turbot the best,
and they preferred wild ducks to all other birds. The vine throve also,
and produced good wines which soon gained a reputation on the mainland.
At first the emigrants needed no occupations beyond husbandry, fishing,
and the preparation of salt; but as the population increased and prices
rose accordingly, since saving had begun, the need of a wider field of
activity was felt, and the Venetians rapidly developed the seafaring
instincts of all healthy and active island peoples. Two hundred years
had not elapsed since the raid of the Huns before the small archipelago
at the head of the Adriatic was in possession of the finest fleet of
vessels that Italy could yet boast.
Such a golden age as the chroniclers describe could not last long. In
every newly-peopled country the rule is good faith, mutual help and
charity between man and man, so long as there is a common adversary to
be overcome, whether in the shape of natural difficulties, as was the
case in the Venetian islands, or of wild
[Sidenote: _Rom. i. 68._]
beasts, or of human enemies, as in North America. So long as the
settlers in the archipelago had to fight against the elements to win a
stable foundation for their towns against the changeful, hungry
currents; so long as they had to work hard to break and plough the land,
to plant the vine, to build habitations for themselves and temples for
their protecting saints, just so long did they abstain from coveting
their neighbours’ goods. There was even a sort of rough-and-ready
federation between the islands for the joint protection of their
commerce and their ships, and now and then, in exceptional
circumstances, the tribunes of the different isles had met together in
debate for the common welfare. Their improvised parliament even received
a name; it was called the Maritime University.
But as the general wealth increased, and the energetic struggle with
nature settled into a steady and not excessive effort, the people of
each island very naturally began to think less about themselves and more
about their neighbours. Leisure bred vanity, vanity bred envy, and envy
brought forth violence of all sorts.
The evil began at the top of the communities and spread downwards. The
families of the tribunes became jealous one of another, and tried to
outdo each other in wealth and display and power; and the poorer sort of
the people took sides with their leaders and vied with each other,
island with island, so that before the end of the seventh century much
blood had dyed the lagoons.
Naturally enough, such internal discord laid the communities open to
attacks from without; and the Slav pirates came sailing in their swift
vessels from the Dalmatian coast, and gathered rich booty in the
archipelago. In the face of a common danger home quarrels were once more
forgotten, and the people of the islands met to consider the general
safety.
[Sidenote: _697-717 A.D._]
It was soon decided that internal peace could only be maintained by
electing a single leader over all, a Dux, a Duke, a Doge, and the first
choice fell on Paulus Lucas Anafestus, of Heraclea. Each island was to
preserve its own tribune, its own laws, and its own judges, if it had
any, and the Doge was to meddle with nothing that did not concern the
common welfare of the whole federation. Moreover, no measure proposed by
him was to become law until the people had voted upon it in general
assembly called the Arengo.
Such was the remedy proposed, and in it lay the germ of the future form
of government. But at first it produced a result the contrary of what
was expected. The families of the different tribunes had envied and
hated one another; they united to envy and hate the family of which the
head was in power as Doge.
[Sidenote: _Rom. i. 107._]
A violent dispute between the partisans of Anafestus and those of the
tribune of Equilio brought about the first conflict. Equilio was in part
overgrown with pine-trees, and the angry adversaries met in the dusky
grove and fought to the death; and it is recorded that the small canal,
which drained the land under the trees, ran red that day, wherefore it
was afterwards called ‘Archimicidium,’ which I take to mean ‘the
beginning of killing’; but it is now the Canal Orfano, in which
criminals were drowned during many centuries.
That day was indeed the beginning of murder between the people of
Equilio and those of Heraclea, and their hatred for each other was
handed down afterwards from generation to generation, to our own times,
so that even when the two islands were both included in the city of
Venice, and both governed by the same municipal laws, the people still
formed two hostile factions, of which more will be said hereafter.
[Sidenote: _737-742 A.D._]
After having elected three doges, the people concluded from the result
that they had been mistaken in choosing such a form of government, and
by common agreement the power was placed in the hands of a military
head, who was called the Chief of Militia; but as this experiment proved
a failure after a trial of five years, the federation went back to the
election of a Doge.
During all this period, and up to the ninth century, the islands were
nominally under the protection of the Eastern Empire, if not under its
domination; but a little study of the subject shows that the actors more
than once changed parts, and that the protected were as often as not
besought to become the protectors. For instance, the Exarch Paul, the
viceroy of the Emperor, could never have re-entered his city of Ravenna,
after the Lombards had taken it, unless the Venetians had helped him;
and when the Doge Orso received of the Emperor the title of ‘Hypatos,’
it must have been given to him rather as the acknowledgment of a debt of
gratitude to an ally than as a recompense granted to a faithful subject.
In such a difference there is something more than a shade that
distinguishes two similar formalities; and historians have interpreted
the Emperor’s brief, and other acts of the Court of Constantinople,
according to their varying pleasure. Yet the truth is clear enough. The
new-born Republic possessed a real independence, based on the good
relations she maintained with her neighbours in general. She was
satisfied with her power of governing herself, and was not inclined to
quarrel with the Court of Constantinople, or with her nearer neighbours
on the peninsula, about such trifles as words and forms. Her early
policy was rather to escape notice than to boast of her liberty; yet it
cannot be denied that during the seventh and eighth centuries the Greek
influence predominated, both in the spirit of the laws and in the
commercial activity of the Republic.
Meanwhile the more discontented citizens, and notably the more powerful
families, which were jealous of each other, did their best to stir up
faction and to bring about a revolutionary change which would have been
ruinous. In the hope of internal quiet, the capital was transferred from
Heraclea to Malamocco, of which the inhabitants were considered the most
peaceful and law-abiding in all the lagoons; but the remedy was not a
serious one, and the doges were successively murdered, or exiled, or
forced to abdicate.
The Republic was on the point of perishing in these inglorious struggles
when an unforeseen danger from abroad saved it from ruin by forcing all
the Venetians to forget their differences and unite against a common
enemy.
The year 810 marks the beginning of a new era.
[Illustration: FISH BASKETS]
[Illustration: Venice From The Lido]
III
THE REPUBLIC OF SAINT MARK
During some time the influence of the Franks had been felt in the
islands, and was beginning to counter-balance that of the Greeks. The
great families now separated into two distinct parties, one of which
favoured the rising Empire of the West, while the sympathies of the
other remained firmly attached to the Court of Constantinople. These
opposite leanings, however, were caused by questions of trade and
money-making much more than by any political tendency, and neither side
had any inclination to accept a master.
Yet one man seems to have seriously meditated betraying the Republic to
Pepin, the son of Charlemagne, who had received the Kingdom of Italy as
his
[Illustration: SHOPS NEAR THE RIALTO]
portion, and desired to extend his dominions by wresting Dalmatia and
Istria from Nicephoros,
[Sidenote: _Rom. i. 140._]
the Emperor of the East. The traitor was the Doge Obelerio, who had
spent a part of his youth at Pepin’s court, and is said to have married
his daughter.
The army of the Franks appeared on the mainland, by a secret agreement
with the Doge, and before preparations could be made for opposing it.
But the common danger became at once a bond of union; the Venetians
forgot their discords and their quarrels, and rose as one man to defend
their liberty. Almost from the first the Doge was suspected of
treachery; he was watched, he was convicted by his own acts, he was
taken, and he paid for his treason with his life. His severed head was
set up on a pike on the beach of Malamocco, where the enemy could watch
how the carrion birds came daily and picked it to a skull.
[Sidenote: _Mol. Dogaressa, 29._]
[Sidenote: _809 A.D._]
[Sidenote: _Pepin at the siege of Rialto, A. Vicentino; Pepin’s defeat,
by the same; Ducal Palace, Sala dello Scrutinio._]
But the Franks took the nearer islands one by one, till at last the
Venetians left Malamocco and sought refuge on the Rialto and Olivolo,
which were the more easy to defend, as it was harder for the enemy to
reach them. A legend says that one poor old woman stayed behind,
resolved to save Venice or perish in the attempt, and we are told that
she went to meet Pepin and counselled him to build a wooden bridge that
should extend all the way from Malamocco to Rialto, and that Pepin
followed her advice; but the horses of his army were scared by the
dancing lights on the water, and by the swaying of the light bridge, and
they plunged and reared and fell off into the lagoon, and they and
their riders were drowned by thousands, like Pharaoh and his host in the
Red Sea.
A more likely story tells us that the Franks had no light boats of
shallow draft, and that in pursuing the Venetians their heavier vessels
got aground in the intricate channel, so that the Venetians surrounded
them, ship by ship, and did them to death conveniently and at leisure.
Be that as it may, Pepin was defeated and forced to give up the attempt,
and when he had burned everything on the islands he had taken, he went
away, in anger and humiliation, towards Ravenna. Thereafter, when peace
was made between him and the Eastern Empire, Venice was reckoned with
the East.