was Agnello, or Angiolo Partecipazio, a member of one of the most
renowned families of the former tribunes. Sismondi says, I cannot find
with what authority, that this noble house changed its name to Badoer,
in the tenth or eleventh century, under which name it still lives. It
was this Angiolo who persuaded the people to retire to Rialto, by which
measure Pepin was defeated, and when the war was over he was soon
elected Doge.
His first step was to fortify Rialto, which from that day became the
seat of government, and the small neighbouring islands were soon united
to it. Upon them grew up what was the beginning of modern Venice, eleven
hundred years ago, and the waste land was covered with dwellings,
towers, churches and religious houses in a wonderfully short time.
The devout tendencies of the people had changed little since the first
fugitives had placed the islands under the protection of those several
tutelary saints whose relics they had saved, and the descendants of
[Illustration: GRAND CANAL, NEAR RIALTO]
those early emigrants now cast about for a holy patron who should, as it
were, guarantee to them the blessing of heaven. They then remembered the
ancient legend: how Saint Mark the Evangelist was shipwrecked and cast
upon the shores of Rialto, and how he heard a mysterious voice saying,
‘Pax tibi Marce, Evangelista meus’; that is, ‘Peace be with thee, O
Mark, my Evangelist.’ And the words became the motto of the Republic.
The devotion to Saint Mark grew at an amazing rate after the revival of
this old tradition, and it became the dream of every Venetian to obtain
relics of the Evangelist’s body. This precious treasure was at that time
preserved in Alexandria, and was therefore in the power of the
Musulmans; but a strict ordinance of the Emperor Leo, to which the Doge
had been obliged to agree on behalf of the Venetians, forbade all
intercourse with the unbelievers, even for purposes of commerce.
[Sidenote: _Rom. i. 168._]
Two Venetian merchants and navigators, Buono da Malamocco and Rustico da
Torcello, determined to risk their lives and fortunes in disobeying the
imperial decree. They fitted out a very fast vessel and freighted her
with merchandise for the Eastern market and set sail without declaring
their real destination. Reaching Alexandria with a fair wind, they
proceeded at once to the basilica in which the body of the saint was
kept, and obtained possession of it by the simple process of bribing the
men in charge of the church. Here the story says that they placed their
treasure in the bottom of a cart, and heaped salt pork upon it, as much
as the mules could draw, sure that no Musulman would touch the unclean
meat; and so they passed through the city and got on board of their
ship, and put to sea that very night.
When they came near home, sailing with a fair wind and the blessing of
heaven and Saint Mark, they sent
[Sidenote: _About 828 A.D. Translation of the body of St. Mark, mosaic
of the XIIIth century on the façade of the Basilica._]
a light boat into the lagoons to inform the Doge that they were bringing
the Evangelist’s body; for they were sure that he and their
fellow-citizens would gladly forgive them for having disobeyed the
imperial decree. Then all the people gathered on the shore as the ship
came in; and the noblest of Venice took the priceless burden upon their
shoulders and bore it to the private chapel of the ducal palace, where
it was to remain in state until a church could be built for it; and a
great cry of ‘Viva San Marco’ rang from street to street, and from
island to island, even up to Grado and down to Malamocco, and it was
ever afterwards the war-cry of Venice. Thus was Saint Mark proclaimed
protector of the Republic, and the words which he himself had heard
became the nation’s motto; and Saint Theodore took the second rank,
though he had been patron of the lagoons ever since the days of Narses
and Justinian.
It was clear to those simple believers that Saint Mark had not come
among them against his will. Had he been displeased with the change from
Alexandria to Venice a storm would surely have arisen in the night, and
the holy relics would have disappeared in thunder, lightning, and rain,
to return to their former resting-place or to be miraculously
transported to another; for such was the pleasure of the saints in the
dark ages. But Saint Mark remained where he was, pleased, no doubt, with
the homage of that glad young people, and rejoicing already in the
glories they should attain under his patronage; and from this
complaisance the Venetians naturally concluded that a divine blessing
had descended upon them, and they became once more a single family,
bonded as brothers to stand and win together.
But before pursuing the great story of what came afterwards, let us
stand a while on the threshold of the tenth century and look at Venice
as she was a few years after Saint Mark had taken her under his special
protection.
In the first place, the alternate currents caused by the tide and the
rivers were not yet completely controlled by stone-faced canals, and in
many places the soil still consisted of long stretches of unstable mud,
upon which the tide threw up masses of seaweed that lay rotting in the
sun. The only means of obtaining a firm foundation for a stone building
on such ground lay in laboriously driving piles, side by side, and so
close that each one touched the next, and the whole formed a solid
surface. It was a slow method, it was costly and required considerable
skill; but the result was good, and has stood the test of a thousand
years, for there are buildings standing to-day on piles driven in the
year 900.
It follows that in the tenth century the majority of dwelling-houses
were still only light constructions of wood, which could stand upon the
mud without danger of sinking. There were many stone buildings already,
however, but like their humbler neighbours they mostly had only one
story above the ground floor, with small windows on the outside, and
larger ones on the inner court, and all alike were roofed with thatch.
It is hard to imagine Venice a thatched city, of all cities in the
world; yet the reason of the peculiarity is plain enough. Neither brick
nor tiles could be made from the soft mud of the lagoons, a wooden house
cannot have a flat roof, and the construction of a vaulted roof upon a
stone house requires a greater skill in building than the Venetians then
possessed.
[Sidenote: _Sagredo._]
In building ordinary dwellings, Sagredo tells us that the usual method
was to lay down a floor of heavy planks, upon which a thick layer of
mortar and small pebbles was spread out and beaten down to a hard
surface; upon this again a second layer of cement mixed with pounded
bricks was spread, and this was beaten with heavy wooden beaters till it
was perfectly hard and even. Precisely the same method is employed
to-day in southern Italy; and it was from this beginning that the
so-called ‘Venetian pavement’ soon developed. For rich people caused
small pieces of coloured marbles, and even of mother-of-pearl, to be set
into the cement of the second layer, which was then no longer beaten,
but rolled with a ponderous stone roller and then rubbed down with a
smooth stone and sand and water, and at last polished to a brilliant
surface. To this day the ‘Venetian pavement’ is made in this way in all
parts of the world. The Venetians had probably inherited the art
directly from the Romans, together with some knowledge of mosaic, which
it roughly resembles. The polished floor of the main room was an
especial object of pride in the eyes of good housekeepers.
The Venetian houses resembled those of the Romans in many respects. A
covered portico, surrounding a closed court, gave access to the ‘hall of
the fireplace,’ as the principal place of gathering for the family was
named, and to the kitchens and offices. The upper story consisted
entirely of bedrooms, and had a wide balcony called the ‘liago’--a word
corrupted from the Greek _heliacon_, ‘a place of sunshine.’ Here in warm
weather the family spent the evening. Higher still, a rustic wooden
platform was built over a part of the gabled and thatched roof, and was
called the ‘altana.’ It was here that the linen was dried after washing,
and later, in Titian’s day, it was here that the Venetian ladies exposed
their hair to the sun after moistening it with the fashionable dye.
[Sidenote: _Mut. Costumi._]
The ‘hall of the fireplace’ was more than any other part of the house a
special feature of Venetian dwellings, and was as necessary to them as
the balcony that ran round the inner court. To this day the Venetians
boast that their ancestors invented the modern chimney flue, and that
while King Egbert still warmed himself like a savage before a fire of
which the smoke escaped through a hole in the roof, the poorest Venetian
fisherman had a civilised fireplace before which he could warm his toes
as comfortably, and with as little annoyance from smoke, as any fine
lady of the twentieth century.
Another peculiarity of the early Venetian house which has come down to
our day was that it almost always had two entrances, the one opening
upon the
[Illustration: A WATER DOOR NEAR ST. BENEDETTO]
water, and the other, at the back, upon land. In those days this back
door almost always gave access to a bit of garden, in which flowers and
a few kitchen vegetables were carefully cultivated, but these gardens
were soon crowded out of existence by the necessity for larger and more
numerous houses.
The palace of the Doge differed from other Venetian dwellings chiefly by
its size and its battlemented walls, and was very far from resembling
what we see to-day in its place. It was destroyed by fire again and
again, and only here and there some fragment of the original walls was
incorporated in the new buildings which the doges were so often obliged
to construct for themselves. A high battlemented wall joined the island
of Olivolo with Rialto and enclosed the ducal palace.
The churches were out of all proportion richer and better cared for than
the private dwellings, and were generally built after the model of the
Roman basilica, with an apse and a portico for worshippers, which
frequently served as a shelter for all sorts of little shops and
money-changers’ booths, very much like the temple in Jerusalem. These
churches have been rebuilt and repaired again and again till there is
little left of the originals; but many fragments of them have been used
again, here a light column, there a bit of mosaic, a carved capital, a
piece of early sculpture or a delicate marble tracery--all of them, more
often than not, of better workmanship and in purer taste than the later
buildings they now help to adorn.
The centre and focus of Venetian life was Saint Mark’s Square, but it
was altogether a different place in those days. It was, indeed, nothing
but an irregular open space, a field of mud in winter, a field of dust
[Sidenote: _Monumenti artistici ecc. 1859._]
in summer, divided throughout its length by a small dyked canal called
the Rivo Battario. On opposite sides of the latter, and opposite to each
other, there were then still standing the chapels dedicated by Narses to
Saint Theodore and to the holy martyrs Geminianus and Menus.
Furthermore, the foundations of the Campanile, which fell in 1902, were
already laid, but the work was not advancing quickly, and the
surrounding space was obstructed by the heaps of materials which had
been prepared for the construction. As for the church of Saint Mark, the
one that was then standing must have strongly resembled the next, which
was built on its ruins by the Doge Pietro Orseolo after it had been
burnt down in 975. It was in the shape of a Greek cross, and was
approached by a portico like almost all churches of that time. We know
also that it was roofed with thatch.
There were as yet no bridges across the canals, though we may perhaps
suppose that there was a single one, built of wood, between Rialto and
Olivolo, and at that time there was no great number of boats, and there
were none that resembled the gondola for its lightness and speed. Many
of the smaller canals were afterwards dug for the convenience of getting
about by water, where in the tenth century there were narrow lanes, dark
and muddy, and the receptacles of whatever people chose to throw out of
their windows. Then, and long afterwards, men went about on foot if they
were poor, or on horses and mules if they were rich. When water had to
be crossed there were flat-bottomed ferry-boats
[Illustration: NARROW WATER LANE]
for man and beast. The word ‘gondola’ seems to have been applied
indiscriminately to several kinds of boats, at least by writers, and
even included the heavy barges, manned by many oars, which towed
sea-going vessels in and out of the harbour, through the intricate
channels of the lagoons.
[Sidenote: _Mut. Costumi._]
There were trees in Venice in those days, both scattered here and there,
and also growing in little groves, where young people gathered in the
fine season to pass an hour in singing and dancing and story-telling,
and in making music on stringed instruments of fashions and shapes now
long forgotten. The most common trees were the oak, the cypress, and the
‘umbrella’ pine, which latter is believed to be indigenous in Italy; but
there were cork-trees, too, and one of them afterwards played a part in
the tragedy of Bajamonte Tiepolo, the great conspirator.
Venice had charm even then, in spite of her narrow and unsavoury lanes,
her winter’s mud, and the dust of her summer heat. The pretty little
thatched houses, side by side along the water’s edge; the handsome
churches gleaming with mosaic fronts; the dark cypress-trees and stone
pines, and the vividly green oaks; the battlemented towers reared here
and there against the clear blue sky; the rippling waters of the lagoon;
the vessels great and small, with sails pure white or dyed a rich madder
brown--there was colour everywhere, then as now, there was air, there
was sunshine; and there was then, what now there is no more, the
movement, the elastic youth, the gladness of a people’s life just ready
to bloom for the first time.
They led easy lives, those early Venetians, compared with the existence
of the Italians on the peninsula, easy and even luxurious, and their
constant intercourse had given them the love of jewels and silk and all
rich and rare things. Even in the days of Charlemagne, the
[Illustration: ON THE GIUDECCA]
dames of Venice wore robes and mantles and veils which an empress would
not have disdained.
[Sidenote: _Mut. Costumi._]
Charlemagne himself, on his way to Friuli, once halted at Pavia just
when the great fair was held which best of all others displayed the
wealth and industry of all Italy; and the Venetians had brought thither
the rich merchandise with which they had loaded their ships in the East,
and had spread out their splendid stuffs, their soft Persian carpets,
and their costly furs.
Then the rough Franks were ashamed of their coarse garments, and began
to buy all manner of fine woven materials to take the place of their
woollen tunics and their leathern coats. But not long afterwards, when
they were all hunting in the deep forest, a great storm came up and
broke upon them, and the rain beat through their silks and the thorns
tore their finery to shreds, and they were in a sad plight. Then the
giant Emperor laughed aloud at their mishap, and asked them whether the
goatskin jerkin he wore was not worth ten of their soft Venetian dresses
when the rain was pelting down and the winter wind was howling through
the wild-boar’s lair.
The old paintings leave us in no doubt as to the Venetian fashions of
the tenth century. The nobles wore a long tunic tightened to the waist
by a belt or girdle, and over this they threw a mantle of rich material
which in winter was lined with fur, and which was fastened on one
shoulder with a golden pin, like the fibula of the Romans or the brooch
of the Highlander. On his head the noble wore a cap oddly adorned with
two ribbands which made a Saint Andrew’s cross in front.
The dress of the matrons was not very different, but the cloak was
pinned together on the breast instead of on one shoulder, and was cut
with a train. The ladies, moreover, wore tunics cut low at the neck,
even in winter and out of doors, which seems strange enough, though it
accounts for the quantities of rich fur they used. Their splendid hair
fell loose upon their shoulders from beneath a little gold-embroidered
cap, instead of which young girls often wore a very fine gauze veil.
The labouring people seem to have confined their taste for variety to
the selection of colours suitable to the occupations they followed, and
therefore least likely to show wear and tear and stain.
[Sidenote: _Mut. Costumi._]
Every one worked hard in those young days, from the Doge downwards, at
the administration of the Republic, at beautifying the city, at commerce
and the development of navigation; and as for play, they were passionate
lovers of the chase and of grebe-shooting. The latter sport was the
delight of rich and poor alike, apparently without much regard to the
time of year, but its strict rules hindered any wholesale slaughter. The
sportsman dressed himself in green in order that his figure might not
scare the grebes, as he poled his narrow punt--the ‘fisolara’--amongst
the sedge and reeds at the mouths of the rivers. If he had boatmen to
help him, they wore green too. Now it seems to have been the rule that
no weapon should be used in this sort of shooting but the cross-bow,
charged with clay bullets or with small bolts, and it would have been
thought as unsportsmanlike to snare the birds as it is nowadays to catch
trout with worms; and as the grebe is a great diver, when in danger, and
is by no means easy to hit with a good shot-gun, it must have required
remarkable skill to shoot him with such a poor weapon as the cross-bow
of the tenth century. The Venetians used to fasten the heads of the
birds they killed upon doors and windows as trophies, just as a Bavarian
gentleman or a Black Forester of our own time mounts the horns of every
roebuck he shoots and hangs them in his hall.
If I have dwelt too long upon these details it is
[Illustration: THE STEPS OF THE SALUTE]
because I am inclined to think that a sportsmanlike spirit has
characterised all young nations; and the spirit of the true sportsman is
not to kill wantonly, but to measure himself in strength, or skill, or
speed, against his fellow-man, and against wild things, and often
against nature herself, with fairplay on both sides; and the true
delight of his sport lies in doing for pleasure what his ancestors were
forced to do in the original struggle for life.
And so after this brief glance at early Venice, I go on to speak of the
circumstances and the men that presently directed the young state to a
form of development which was without example in the past history of
nations, and was destined to have no imitators in the future.
[Illustration: THE RIVA AT NIGHT]
IV
VENICE UNDER THE FAMILIES OF PARTECIPAZIO, CANDIANO, AND ORSEOLO
For historical purposes it is best to consider that Venice was really
founded in the year 811. From that date till 1032 the ducal throne was
occupied, with only three exceptions, by a Partecipazio, a Candiano, or
an Orseolo. It is true that every Doge was elected, but the great
families would hardly have been human if they had not done their best
to make the dignity hereditary.
They were not afflicted by that strange fatality under which the Roman
Cæsars almost always died without male issue, and which led the Emperors
to adopt their successors and to make them coadjutors in their
government, generally with tribunitian powers; and four centuries were
to elapse before the race of Hapsburg was to fasten itself at last upon
the Holy Roman Empire, never to be shaken off so long as it could beget
sons, or even daughters. The great Venetian races were vital and
fortunate, and reared generation after generation for ages, with hardly
any diminution of strength or wit.
But the principle on which they attempted to secure to themselves the
succession to a power which was hereditary was the same which the Romans
followed before them and which the Hapsburgs were to adopt long
afterwards. They chose their own successors amongst those nearest to
them, educated them to government, made them helpers in their rule, and
designated them in their wills to succeed in their places.
There was always discontent after each election, and there were often
serious riots; several doges of this period were forced to abdicate, or
were even exiled, and one of them, at least, was assassinated; but the
thirst of the great families for hereditary power was not diminished,
and each revolutionary rising was directed by an aristocratic faction
which had everything to gain by overthrowing the one in office.
Yet, strange to say, this disturbed condition of things neither hindered
nor retarded the growth of national prosperity. The three factions
quarrelled about the ducal throne for two hundred years, but their
commercial activity was not in the least diminished by their
[Illustration: ST. MARK’S]
differences. They and the less powerful nobles possessed the financial
instinct in the highest degree; the citizen class vied with them as
traders and usurers, and though they could not outdo them, having
started behind them in the race for wealth, they often rivalled them;
and as for the people, they were the ready and willing instruments of
their masters, they were intrepid sailors, they were patriotic
soldiers, they were hard-working labourers, and they seem to have cared
very little who was Doge, so long as every effort they made contributed
directly to their own well-being. And this was always the case, as in
every young and successful state.
Nevertheless, the continual state of discord between the strongest
families of the aristocracy was not without its bad results, and enemies
abroad found it easy to strike unexpected blows at the Republic, when
she was least prepared to retaliate. Chief among these enemies were the
Dalmatian pirates, whose principal stronghold was the city of Narenta,
situated at the head of the gulf of that name, almost over against
Ancona. The Venetians seem to have been more than a match for the
corsairs when actually at sea, for their merchant vessels were fast
sailors and were well armed; but the Dalmatians lost no opportunity of
descending upon any corner of the Republic’s island territory which
chanced to be left unprotected, and they plundered and laid waste the
land, and carried off the people into slavery.
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Vita Privata._]
One of these sudden descents of the corsairs on the day of the yearly
marriage ceremonies was not only strikingly dramatic in itself, but
became one of the turning-points in the history of the Republic. In
order that what happened may be clearly understood, I must in the first
place briefly explain how marriages were made and how they were always
celebrated in Venice on the thirty-first of January at that time; for I
cannot remember that a similar custom ever obtained in any other city
ancient or modern. I may add, however, that in their claims to an
extravagantly ancient descent the Venetians pretended
[Illustration: A CHAPEL, ST. MARK’S]
to have inherited the usage directly from the Babylonians.
However that may be, it is quite certain that in those days the brides
of Venice were all married on the thirty-first of January, the
anniversary of the translation of
[Illustration: THE PORCH, ST. MARK’S]
Saint Mark’s body, in the church of San Pietro d’Olivolo, which was
always the cathedral, and which now became the scene of one of the
strangest and most romantic events in the history of any nation,
rivalled, but certainly not surpassed, by the half-mythic rape of the
Sabines in the Forum.
[Sidenote: _De Gubernatis e Bernoni._]