was always more or less a temporary affair until the year 1335. Ten
magistrates, who were called together, on the occasion of the
conspiracy, to form a sort of court-martial, gave their judgments, but
by no means in an arbitrary manner. They were elected for a period not
much longer than three months, which was to expire on Saint Michael’s
Day, September 29, a day always kept as a great festival in Venice. But
when that date was reached, it appeared necessary to prolong the time of
their power, as their task was not yet finished; for it consisted not
only in punishing the guilty, but also in closely watching the immediate
consequences of the conspiracy. The same extension was granted again and
again, until the following year, when it was determined to establish the
tribunal for a term of five years, appointing its members anew, however,
on every successive Saint Michael’s Day. These five years being passed,
a further decree prolonged the tribunal’s existence ten years more, and
so on. Finally, in 1335, it was decreed to be permanent, under an
extremely strict code of rules called the ‘Rite,’ well devised for a
body which was to treat of the very important affairs that came before
it. On election, every member of the Ten took an oath, which included
the
[Sidenote: _A. Baschet, Archives, 531._]
following clauses: ‘I, as one of the Council of Ten, do swear upon the
holy Gospels of God to act for the advantage and honour of Venice; and
in good faith and conscience to advise our Lord the Doge and his
[Illustration: PONTE VENETA MARINA]
counsellors such things as I shall believe useful to the honour and
preservation of our country; and I swear to obey our Lord the Doge and
to do what the heads of the Ten shall command me.... I bind myself to
keep secret whatever is said or commanded to me, concerning all matters
which may be proposed by the said Council, communicated or discussed in
the sittings, and concerning any letters or reports which may be
communicated to us, etc., etc.’
[Sidenote: _Rom. iii. 35 sqq._]
The ordinary meetings of the Ten were held by day in the ducal palace;
not in a room hung with black and feebly lighted, as some have written
and believed, but in a hall appointed for that purpose by the Doge,
until one should be properly furnished and decorated for the tribunal.
Under extraordinary circumstances the Council also met by night. All
sittings began with an invocation to the Holy Spirit. These sittings
were never attended by the Ten only; from the time of the institution of
the tribunal, the Doge and his counsellors, one avogador of the
commonwealth and the High Chancellor, who, it should be remembered, was
not a noble, were also obliged to be present. The imagination of
posterity, amused by fantastic tales which have no historic basis, has
lent this tribunal a character of mystery and arbitrary authority which
it never possessed, as is proved by documents still in existence. In all
trials, after the accusation had been read, the defence was heard
immediately, and when the defendant was not able to conduct his own
case, a law of 1443 allowed him to be represented by a
[Sidenote: _Rom. iii. 66, 68._]
lawyer. The avogador put the following question to the Ten: ‘According
to what has been read and said, is it your opinion that the accused
should be condemned?’ Sometimes the following question was asked: ‘Is it
your opinion that the accused, in consequence of what has been already
heard, should be put to the torture, in order to obtain from him the
whole truth, and further details; or that the court should proceed, as
having already sufficient proof of his guilt?’ The Council of Ten could
not impose fines; their sentences necessarily affected the body of the
condemned person. When a vote had decided that the accused was
convicted, each member of the Council could propose the punishment which
he thought fit, but it was not usual to propose any more severe penalty
than that asked for by the avogador. He was the first to make the
proposition, then came the heads of the Ten, then the Doge’s
counsellors, and last of all the Doge himself. Each proposal was
balloted for, every member of the Council retaining the right to propose
a diminution or commutation of the sentence, or to ask for a new trial.
We know that the Council of Ten had a fund for secret service, ever
since the fourteenth century. It also possessed a small armoury.
It cannot be denied that on more than one occasion the execution of the
verdicts of the Ten was performed quickly and in a secret manner; yet it
does not appear that this was done because the sentence had been passed
from any motive of private hatred or vengeance, but only because
prudence required that the public should not be allowed to express an
opinion on the matter. It may be remarked that in European countries the
procedure nowadays is often similar in court-martials. If we take away
the right of torture, the violet cloaks and hoods of the seven, and the
red hoods of the three chiefs--in a word, if we erase from the picture
the mediæval setting of the Council of Ten which looks theatrical to us,
we may find that after all there is not such grave cause for accusing
the famous Venetian tribunal of arbitrary cruelty. The proceedings of a
military court-martial in our own times are often quite as secret and
expeditious, and much more summary.
The manner in which the members of the Council were elected shows
clearly enough that the abuse of authority was always feared on their
part. In the year 1310 it was decreed that no two persons who were
relatives might sit together in the Council, and that when a relative of
any member was to be tried, that member should be excluded from the
sitting. The members soon ceased to be elected on Saint Michael’s Day;
and in order that greater prudence might be exercised in choosing them,
they were elected one at a time at the meetings of the Great Council as
each one’s term expired. Until 1356, when a place was to be filled, two
candidates were proposed, and sometimes there were even three
nominations. No member of the Council of Ten might receive gifts under
pain of immediate death, nor was any salary attached to the office. At
the end of their term they went back into private life, and were not
protected in any way from such accusations as might be brought against
them for their actions during their administration.
[Sidenote: _Rom. iii. 57._]
Nearly fifty years after the date of the Tiepolo-Quirini conspiracy,
August 9, 1356, a number of rules were introduced, to increase the
severity with which the powers of the Council of Ten might be exercised,
and at the same time to ensure justice in their dealings with criminal
cases. It is amply proved by documents of the fourteenth century that in
the majority of cases, though possibly in those which were considered of
minor importance, there was neither mystery nor secrecy about the
meetings of the Ten, and that, on the contrary, the door of their place
of meeting was sometimes open to the public. No other meaning can be
attached to the law of 1575, which was passed in order to limit the too
great facility of ingress to the hall of their meetings, on the ground
that the proceedings might be prejudiced by too much publicity, as they
were constantly interrupted by the persons present, so that practically
any one might watch the trials, as Romanin says, even in cases of the
highest importance. There was never at any time the least tendency to
diminish the legal character of the tribunal in order to confer upon it
an arbitrary power, since it disposed of weapons so powerful as to place
it above the need of intrigue. As has been said, although the Ten were
all chosen from the nobility, the High Chancellor was present at the
sittings, albeit he had no right of voting, and his presence alone
sufficed to remind the councillors that the citizens, whose chief
representative he was, were all witnesses of whatsoever the Ten
accomplished. On the whole, M. Baschet is right in saying that the
Council’s activity was chiefly exercised against the nobles themselves
for the protection of the people.
[Sidenote: _Rom. iii. 54, note 3._]
It undoubtedly disposed of great powers, and no one could expect a
tribunal to be infallible in those times, or perhaps in any other; but
though the Ten were no doubt sometimes guilty of grave mistakes, they
were never at any time the instrument of a tyrannical government for
oppressing the poor and innocent.
[Sidenote: _A. Baschet, Archives, 536. Rom. ii. 359._]
They elected three heads every month, whose duty it was to conduct the
affairs of the Council, to study the cases it was to try, and to see to
the execution of its judgments. The Council had under its immediate
control the executives of its justice, which consisted of a large force
of police, controlled by six principal officers, and by the so-called
‘Missier Grande,’ who was the head of the whole body.
[Sidenote: _Rom. ii. 359._]
The criminal and political prisons were under the special supervision of
the Doge himself during the first half of the fourteenth century, and it
was the duty or two or his counsellors to visit them once every month,
and to make inquiry of the prisoners confined there concerning their
wants and wishes. During the second half of the century this supervision
and the duty of visiting became a part of the office of the heads of the
Ten. I shall attempt to describe in passing the state of the prisons in
which criminals and persons accused of grave crimes were confined in the
fourteenth century, these only having been under the supervision of the
Ten.
[Sidenote: _Rom. iii. 74._]
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Less._]
[Sidenote: _Rom. iii. 77._]
In the first place, there were certain narrow but not unhealthy prisons
in the tower which formerly existed at the east end of the ducal palace,
and these were on the same floor as the hall where the Council of Ten
met, and were called the ‘upper’ prisons. Accused persons were generally
kept here during their trial. In 1321 an order was issued for the
construction of the so-called ‘Lower’ prisons, which the common people
afterwards called ‘pozzi,’ wells; and these were undoubtedly hideous and
narrow cells, though probably not worse than those in use at that time
in other countries. They are not below the level of the ground, or
rather of the water, as novelists have described them; but the fact that
criminals descended to them from the hall of the tribunal by means of a
little staircase less than a yard wide, which soon became quite dark,
and the sound of the lapping water outside, helped to give the prisoner
the impression that he was being taken down alive into a tomb dug deep
in the earth, although he was actually on the level of the courtyard. A
small door in the wall of the courtyard was opened in 1407, in order
that the family of Vittor Pisani might enter the prison when he was
lying there ill, and it was afterwards closed at his expense. On the
side of the canal was a
[Sidenote: _Rom. iii. 75._]
corridor, little more than a yard wide, and faced with marble, through
which escape was impossible. Upon this opened the doors of certain very
small cells, marked with Roman numerals, in which, for some reason now
impossible to explain, the ‘V’ was always turned upside down. The cells
were completely lined with deal, but received air only from the dark
corridor through an aperture in the door about eight inches square. The
prisons on the other side, towards the harbour, had various names, among
which we may mention that of ‘Mosina’ and ‘Liona’; then such names as
‘The Refreshing Joy,’ ‘The Vulcan,’ ‘The Strong,’ ‘The Lightless,’ and
other similar epithets, probably suggested by the grim humour of the
gaolers. Until 1357 the counsellors of the Doge went down into these
places every month; and at that time the heads of the Ten inquired into
the state of each individual prisoner, and gave an account thereof to
the Doge and to the Council. There also the prisoner was allowed to
speak, probably through the little aperture in the door, with his
attorney, if he feared lest he should be unable to defend himself when
called to justice. To this place came also at night the monk whose duty
it was to comfort the last hours of such unfortunates as had received
sentence of death, either by hanging between the columns of the
Piazzetta, or, as frequently happened, at the place where the crime was
committed, or in the cell, if the tribunal had decreed that the prisoner
should be strangled. Sometimes, though more rarely, the sentence was
this, ‘that to-night So-and-so be conducted to the Orfano Canal, with
his hands tied behind his back and weights fastened to his body, and let
him be drowned, and let him die.’
I shall have occasion to speak further of the prisons as they were in
the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.
[Illustration: THE ABBAZZIA]
VIII
ON MANNERS AND CERTAIN CUSTOMS IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY
In the natural order of things it is now time to say a few words about
the manners and customs of the Venetians in the fourteenth century.
Owing to lack of documents the subject is by no means an easy one. An
ideal history would be a careful account of the daily doings and habits
of a nation, concisely told and not out of proportion with the greater
events of which an account is due. Such a history would be a
fascinating tale, though it might be an almost interminable one. As in
an endless gallery, the writer would show his readers an unbroken series
of pictures, and the mind would be led without surprise, but without a
moment’s dulness or boredom, from the beginning to the end of a people’s
career.
Unhappily no such method can ever be even attempted where the remote
past is concerned. The men and women of those times lived their own
daily lives, found them not always interesting, and passed away without
leaving us a single true record of twenty-four hours in the life of a
man or a woman. Yet how intensely interesting even one such record would
be! How the weary historian, seeking for the simple details of some
simple life six hundred years ago, longs to discover a Horace Walpole, a
Madame de Sévigné, or most of all a Paston family, amongst the yellow
and dusty archives! Something, however, may still be got together to
give an idea of what the non-political, non-historical Venice was in the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
To begin with, though the Republic never showed much inclination to
submit to any dictation from the popes, the Venetians were a practically
religious people and extremely charitable. With the possible exceptions
of Rome and Florence, no city of Italy possessed at that time so many
hospices for the poor and hospitals for the sick; and considering the
necessary limitations of all philanthropy at that early period, those
institutions were managed and kept up with astonishing intelligence and
care. I have no intention of compiling a catalogue of the buildings in
which old people, invalids, widows, and pilgrims found a temporary or a
permanent refuge, as the case might be; but it is worth while to notice
here and there the sensitive delicacy with which charity was often
exercised, and which seems so little in harmony with the nature of the
more important historical events of the period.
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Calli e Canali._]
There is something very touching, for instance, in the origin of the Ca’
di Dio--literally, ‘The House of God,’ as the old building is called to
this day. In the year 1272, one of those pious souls that feel the true
and natural intuitions of charity came across that saddest sort of
misery which exists here and there in the world, hiding itself as far as
possible from every eye, and preferring actual starvation and death to
the humiliation of asking alms. These poor people were ladies of good
birth, reduced to a condition in which they positively had neither a
crust to eat nor a place to lay their heads. The charitable person who
found them here and there gathered them at first into a refuge with
other poor women where they could at least live and die in peace, but,
even in the simplicity of those days, he soon understood that it was
moral torture for a starving patrician woman, or the widow of some high
magistrate of the Republic, to share bed and board with the poor widows
of sailors, fishermen, and artisans, and he created for them, out of
sheer delicacy and kindness of heart, a separate refuge in the Ca’ di
Dio, where they could enjoy something more than the illusion of a home,
and where they were at least blessed with that privacy which is almost
the first and last necessity of the well-born.
One is reminded of the rules of that Florentine Confraternity for the
relief of the ‘poor who felt shame,’ a body to which Dante belonged. By
those rules the brethren were bound to give assistance without lifting
the hood that covered their faces, or giving their names, or in any way
betraying their individuality, lest the poor person whom they helped
should be in some degree humiliated. This really exquisite delicacy of
feeling showed itself in the very midst of the worst and fiercest
quarrels of Guelph and Ghibelline, and the rule of the Confraternity
expressly commanded the brothers to help their foes as freely as their
friends, and to be especially careful never to do anything which could
humiliate an enemy in distress.
The chronicles of Florence say nothing of that, and if the Venetian
historians mention the Ca’ di Dio at all, it is only in the most passing
way. But the historical writers of both cities carefully record the
murders, poisonings, and stabbings which brought disaster on their
citizens. Should not a true history of civilisation sometimes count also
the tears that charity has dried and the anguish she has helped to
soothe? The chroniclers abound in accounts of the trials, the sentences,
and the executions of the fourteenth century; they can scarcely spare a
line to tell us how the Doge and many other devout persons heard mass
daily at dawn and recited the Office for the Dead in Saint Mark’s. We
[Sidenote: _Galliccioli, vi. 150._]
know with the utmost exactness the precise number of light ladies who
were living in Venice just then: there were eleven thousand six hundred
and fifty--a respectable, or rather a disreputable, number for a city of
two hundred thousand inhabitants. The quarter of the Castelletto, which
had originally been given over to them, no longer sufficed for their
needs, and they lived very much where they pleased.
[Sidenote: _Bembo, Beneficenza._]
We know these things, but few remember that at that very time a gentle
beseeching voice was heard every evening in the streets and squares of
Venice, crying out ‘Pity, pity!’ It was the voice of a poor monk slowly
pursuing his way under the balconies of the great palaces, and through
the narrower ways where the rich middle class had chosen its abode, for
ever asking alms for the poor little children whom he found nightly
thrust out, new-born, to die in the streets before morning, even as is
done to this day in China. And though it was Venice that cast her
children out to perish thus, yet Venice poured alms into the poor monk’s
hands so abundantly that his labours prospered beyond his highest hopes.
A lady of the Delfini family gave him no less than seventeen houses for
his foundlings, and yet these were not enough; he appealed to the
government for more room; and this same government, which seems in our
view of its history to be for ever deep in politics, in commerce, and
above all in spying upon its own citizens, answered Fra Pieruzzo della
Pietà, as the monk was called, with a decree that has a very human and
tender note in it. It was declared therein that the little foundlings
should bring blessings and fortune to all honest people who would offer
them a home; and whosoever adopted one of the children was thereby
freely licensed to open a shop or to exchange a mean and vulgar
occupation for one of the nobler arts. Besides this, the State settled
upon
[Illustration: A CAMPO]
the Hospice of the Pietà one-half of the fines imposed upon blasphemers,
which amounted to a very large sum.
The religious spirit of Venice in the thirteenth century is reflected
not only in the public charities of the times, but also in the legends
that have come down to us, founded on some small original basis of
truth, concrete or abstract. There is one in particular which it is
impossible to overlook, though it has been told by many writers of all
nations during many hundred years. I mean the story of the little
Countess Tagliapietra.
[Sidenote: _Vita della Contessa Tagliapietra, Anonymous._]
In the year 1288 a noble couple dwelt in their palace, not far from the
home of Bajamonte Tiepolo, the great conspirator, in the central parish
of Saint Agostino, which is one of those most cut up by the numberless
lanes and canals which cross it in all directions. It pleased heaven to
send a little girl child to Count Pier Nicola Tagliapietra and his wife
Elena, one only, but she was of such exquisite beauty and rare
loveliness of character that her parents esteemed themselves more
blessed than those who could boast often stalwart sons. From her
earliest years the child seemed destined to saintliness, and her
chiefest pleasure was to follow her mother to church, for in the
thirteenth century it had not yet become the custom to keep girls
closely shut up at home from year’s end to year’s end.
The title of Countess was unheard of in Venice at that time, and yet
every account of the legend assigns it to the little saint. Her
favourite church was that of San Maurizio, and the little Countess
seized every possible occasion for going there; sometimes she even went
alone, for every one knew her, and she was perfectly safe in the
streets; but in order to get there she was obliged to cross the canal in
a boat--gondolas did not exist in that day. Now her father entertained
ambitious projects for the marriage of his only daughter; and from
having been at first merely surprised by her extreme devoutness, he now
became seriously anxious for her future, and forbade the child to go to
church except on feast-days and with her mother. She replied with quiet
decision that he had no right to impose such a sacrifice upon her, and
she continued going to San Maurizio every day. Her father did not wish
to seem harsh or unkind, and he imagined that he could gain his end by
simply forbidding the boatmen to take her across the canal. Having done
so, and having doubtless enforced his wishes by giving the men money,
Pier Nicola felt perfectly at ease, for he could not see that the girl
had any chance of getting to San Maurizio without a boat.
On the following morning she went down to the ‘traghetto’ as usual, and
called to one of the boatmen. One after the other they all refused to
take her over, explaining that they were acting under her father’s
orders. The little girl looked at them all sweetly with deep and
innocent eyes; then, without the least hesitation, she took off her
little apron, spread it upon the smooth water of the canal, and stepped
upon it securely as if it had been the largest of the boats.
It not only carried her weight, but began to move of its own accord, and
bore her swiftly across to the opposite bank; and when the boatmen and
those who passed by saw what was done they raised a loud cry and praised
God for the miracle they had seen, and it was noised abroad throughout
all the city.
The first consequence seems to have been that a vast number of very
eligible noble youths asked for the young saint in marriage, and her
father had only to choose amongst so many brilliant matches the one
best suited to his taste; but the child steadfastly refused matrimony,
and declared that she would never live in the world. As she grew older
it became harder and harder to sustain the struggle, and at the age of
twenty she daily implored God to deliver her from this wicked world. And
so, indeed, it pleased heaven, for she departed this life on the Feast
of All Saints, in the year 1308. The whole city followed her to the
grave, numberless wax candles were lit before her tomb, and no man dared
to extinguish them. Is not the voice of the people the voice of God? The
clergy would not interfere, and from the day of her death the little
Countess received the title of Beata, and the church of San Vito, where
she was buried, became the goal of constant pilgrimages. It was not
until the sixteenth century that the Church interfered to put limits to
a veneration which had degenerated to a superstition. It was no longer
enough to invoke the prayers and aid of the blessed little Countess; it
had become the custom to open her coffin at stated intervals, and
mothers laid their infant children upon her bones to preserve them from
the danger of drowning.
But now the sepulchre was sealed, the little Countess was officially
admitted to be a saint, and those who should dare to profane her relics
with any superstitious practice were threatened with immediate
excommunication.
Another legend, of a slightly later date, has been gloriously handed
down to us by the genius of Paris
[Sidenote: _Rom. iii. 143._]