the same manner in which those who came first had done, they go on
in procession again, and another clerk comes forward, who sits upon
a seat most richly adorned, in the dress of an angel, and he is
carried on the shoulders of four men. When he is near our Lord Doge
he salutes him, and the Lord Doge returns his salute; and then they
go on in the procession, and the clerks go on singing. [It is
amusing to note that until 1328 the priests who figured as the
Madonna and the angel rose in the presence of the Doge, but this
was discontinued from that date as improper.] You must know that
both clerks and laymen have good ‘ramarri’ (?) and they go until
they enter the church of our Lady St. Mary. When the priest who is
arrayed to resemble the angel has entered into the church and sees
the other who is arrayed to resemble the Virgin Mary, he stands up
and says as follows: ‘Hail, Mary, full of grace! The Lord is with
thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy
womb. Thus saith the Lord.’ And the priest who is arrayed to
resemble our Lady answers and says, ‘How can this be, oh thou angel
of God, since I know not a man?’ And the angel answers, ‘The Holy
Spirit descends in thee. Oh, Mary, fear nothing, thou shalt
conceive the Son of God.’ And she answers and says, ‘Behold the
handmaiden of the Lord. Let it be with me according to Thy word.’
What shall I tell you? After these words they leave the church and
go to their own houses, and after they have eaten, the people, men
and women, go into the districts that have made these processions,
and they find in twelve houses the twelve Maries, so beautifully
arrayed as is a wonder to see. Each one has a crown of gold with
precious stones upon her head, and they are dressed in cloth of
gold, and on their robes there are precious stones and pearls
without number. The ladies and maidens sit around them, very richly
dressed, and the men present their friends with confectionery to
eat and with wine to drink. And on the following day they make
other feasts in their twelve houses. And our Lord the Doge wears
the crown of gold on the eve of our Lady, as he wears it at
Pentecost, and after vespers he returns to the palace in the same
manner in which he came. On our Lady’s day, the second of February,
each of the two districts which give the beautiful and rich
festival, as I have narrated, prepare six great barges, and have
them rowed to the head of the city, exactly where the Bishop of
Venice lives; these six barges are very richly draped with cloth of
gold and carpets. And then ladies and maidens are taken on board
four of them, very richly habited, and they put the Maries in the
midst, and in another barge go forty men well armed, with their
drawn swords in their hands; and in another go the clerks arrayed
with the richest treasures of the Church. Then comes the Bishop,
and gives his benediction, and when he has blessed them they all
return into their barges, and the Bishop goes with them, with two
abbots in their great barges, so richly dressed, and they are all
arrayed in copes of cloth of gold. The Lord Bishop has his canons
in his company, and the two abbots have their monks. Then the
barges set forth from the palace of the Lord Bishop, adorned as I
told you, and they meet upon their way two magnificent barges,
which are to be for the same festival next year. They all go thus
before the church of our Lord St. Mark, and there they drop anchor,
and lie to wait for the coming of our Lord the Doge. When the
Bishop and the two abbots have come to the shore they go out upon
dry land with all their company, and go together into the church of
our Lord St. Mark, and find our Lord the Doge at mass; and after
mass they come back to the barges. The Lord Doge comes under the
umbrella, with the Bishop by him on one side and the senior canon
on his other side, and both the abbots before them. The Doge is
crowned with gold, and the Bishop wears his mitre, and the abbots,
the chaplains, and the canons go singing in procession; the
trumpets and the cymbals go before every one, and the crosses
afterwards. In this manner the Lord Doge goes as far as his great
barge, and enters it with the nobility of Venice, and his Judge is
beside him, and behind him is placed in the ship he who carries the
Doge’s sword. When our Lord Doge has entered the great ship in
company with the nobility of Venice, and of many honourable men, he
sits down between the senior canon and his Judge, and they sit down
upon the barge; and the Bishop and the two abbots enter their
barges; then the men of the barges weigh anchor, and they go to the
other end of the city, and you must know that the city is very
long, a league and a half, or more. But if you were there, sirs,
you might well see the water covered with boats, full of men and
women who follow, of whom you must know that you could never tell
the number. And in the windows of the palaces and on the banks
there is a throng of ladies and maidens, as many as there are in
all the city, and so richly dressed that you could see none finer.
With such joy and festivity they go to the other end of the city,
and then return to their own districts, and the Lord Doge with all
his company returns to his palace, and finds the tables set, and he
eats with all those who have been with him.
It is worth noting that in the fourteenth century the Doge’s vessel was
no longer called the principal barge, but the Bucentaur, the name being
probably, as some say, derived from ‘Buzeus aureus,’ and so called in
some documents. It was a rich vessel, adorned with carvings, stuffs,
carpets, and paintings. Up to 1311 it was not rowed, but was towed by
another boat, which was draped and rowed by men of Murano; but after
that year it had its own rowers.
[Sidenote: _G. R. Michiel, Origini._]
It is easy to understand that such a festival as Martin da Canal
describes might be the ruin of more than one great house, and it cost
even the State enormous sums, which is one reason why it was not always
celebrated with equal magnificence. In 1350, when the plague had greatly
reduced the budget, it was decided to substitute painted wooden statues
for the twelve young girls, but the public strongly opposed this
innovation. The recollection of these wooden dolls has never been wholly
effaced; it is still common in Venice to call a woman who is thin, cold,
stupid, and pretentious, ‘a wooden Mary.’
The feast was given up at the end of the fourteenth century, at the time
of the final struggle with Genoa. The treasury was empty, and excessive
anxiety kept the public spirits in a state of nervous tension; moreover,
the age of the ideal Venetian woman was past, and she no longer inspired
profound and chivalrous devotion as in the old days when she had been
more modest, more retiring, and more gentle.
Of all that splendid show and pageant nothing remained but the Doge’s
visit to the church of Santa Maria Formosa, and his largess of small
coins to the street boys at the moment of loosing the line with which
the rector of the church pretended to bar the way to the bridge.
[Illustration: THE ABBAZZIA]
X
THE DOGES IN THE EARLY PART OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY
Pietro Gradenigo reigned twenty-two years, during a very eventful
period. In 1298 he had placed the aristocratic supremacy on a permanent
basis, and a few months later he crushed the sedition of Marin Bocconio;
eight years afterwards he put down the much more dangerous insurrection
of Tiepolo and the Quirini; but he was less fortunate abroad than at
home, and his foreign policy resulted in the wholesale excommunication
of the Venetian people and government, as the direct consequence of the
attempt to annex Ferrara, a step which had also led to the organisation
of the Tiepolo conspiracy. When Gradenigo died the papal interdict was
still in full force.
The forty-one patricians who were to elect his successor were duly
chosen and shut up in the ducal palace, though not yet with any great
precautions to prevent them from communicating with their friends. They
understood well enough that the interests of the State required a Doge
whose genuine piety should move the Pope to forgiveness; such a man was
found in the senator Stefano Giustiniani, and in a short time the
majority of votes was in his favour. He was not only a man of
irreproachable life, but also a first-rate statesman, and he was
personally well known and liked in Rome, where he had once resided as
Venetian ambassador. The choice was a good one, but the patrician was
too virtuous, or too wise, or both, to accept the supreme office at such
a moment, foreseeing clearly that his conscience and reputation would be
simultaneously at stake, and in such a way that to save the one would
probably have been to imperil the other.
He had long nourished the hope of retiring from the world, and when he
knew that he was elected he lost no time in carrying out his pious
design. Instead of going from his house to the ducal palace, he
disappeared within the doors of the monastery of Saint George, and on
the same day put on the habit and took the obligations of a novice.
The stupefaction and embarrassment of the electors may be imagined; it
was perhaps within the powers of the all-powerful government to drag
Giustiniani from the refuge of his cell, and to place him by force upon
[Illustration: CAMPO S. MARIA]
the ducal throne, but such a course would certainly not have improved
the relations of the Republic with the Pope, a result which had been the
sole object of the election. On the other hand, it seemed impossible
even to agree upon the names of candidates, in order to proceed to an
election. The electors fell into a state of apathy of which there is
probably no example in history; they moved about in an objectless way,
talking listlessly of anything that occurred to them; they even lingered
at the open windows of the palace, to watch the people passing in the
street.
[Sidenote: _Rom. iii. 83._]
As they looked down, they saw an aged nobleman slowly walking toward the
postern gate of the prisons, followed by a servant who carried a big
sack of bread, so full that the loaves protruded from the open mouth. It
was Marin Zorzi, a charitable and devout person, on his way to
distribute food to the poor prisoners. He was the very man. Before he
had left the prisons, he was elected Doge.
Unhappily this hasty choice did not improve matters. An old chronicler
sums up in a few words the short reign that followed: Zorzi lived ten
months, during which he never saw the sea calm nor the sun without
clouds. All that remained to mark his reign was an asylum for poor
children, the earliest foundation of the kind in the world.
In less than a year, therefore, another election took place, and as the
experiment of looking out of the palace windows in the hope of seeing
the right man pass in the street had been a failure, the electors were
shut up, windows and balcony doors were closely sealed, and the
forty-one were driven to look at each other. In a short time they
elected Giovanni Soranzo by a considerable majority.
[Sidenote: _Rom. iii. 89, 103, and notes._]
So far as I can ascertain, he was born in 1240, and was therefore about
seventy-one years old in 1311; but the longevity of the Venetian nobles
was always remarkable, and he was destined to reign seventeen years. He
had rendered the Republic very eminent service on more than one
occasion, and was a man of astounding activity. To mention only a few
incidents of his busy life, in its later years, he had commanded a fleet
of twenty-five galleys against the Genoese when already fifty-six years
old, had taken possession of the port of Caffa and had defended it
during a whole winter against the combined attacks of the Genoese and
the Tartars, and had captured a goodly number of richly laden Genoese
vessels. On his return to Venice he had been received with honours
resembling those of a triumph, and had soon found himself in arms again,
but on land this time, against Padua first, and then against Ferrara,
which he had already governed as Podestà. When at last recalled to
Venice he had occupied the important position of a procurator of Saint
Mark, from which post he was elected Doge to succeed Marin Zorzi.
Soranzo was undeniably one of the most illustrious men elected to the
Dogeship in the course of its existence of exactly eleven hundred years.
It is enough to say that he reconciled the Republic with the Pope, and
reconquered Dalmatia; and that, in spite of the vast sums of money which
both these undertakings cost, he protected and developed Venetian
manufacture and commerce so diligently as to increase the public wealth
instead of diminishing it. It was during his reign that the weaving of
silk stuffs in Venice reached a perfection hitherto undreamt of,
surpassing, according to the taste of the day, the fabrics of the Levant
and driving them out of the market. Under Soranzo the glass-works of
Murano produced mirrors that outdid the very best that could be made in
Germany, for clearness and brilliancy. At the same time, the Arsenal of
Venice was greatly extended by the addition of new basins, windmills
were set up all over the islands, many like improvements, then modern,
were introduced, a general condition of ease and well-being extended
through all classes, and the population increased more quickly than ever
before. The State could count forty thousand men between the ages of
twenty and sixty years who were able to bear arms. For a silver ducat a
man could buy enough meat and flour to support him for a week, with as
much wine as he needed, and wood to cook with and to warm him.
So Giovanni Soranzo reigned in success and plenty and honour to the very
end of his long life. Yet in all those seventeen years he cannot have
counted one day truly happy, and many must have been profoundly saddened
by the knowledge of his own daughter’s sufferings in her captivity at
the convent of the Vergini. Time and again she poured out her heart to
him, in letters which he was not even allowed to answer without
permission of his counsellors, and probably of the recently elected
Council of Ten; and the old captain, whose commanding voice had been
heard above many storms at sea, and many a fight on land, had to humble
himself before the Power, and humbly beg a little sunshine, an hour’s
liberty, for the daughter he adored.
They saw each other rarely enough for a long time. It was not till the
great old man’s strength was breaking down beneath the weight of nearly
ninety years that his daughter was allowed to leave her prison more
frequently that she might tend him and cheer his declining days. He died
in her arms in the end, on the last day of December in the year 1328,
eighty-eight years old; and the unhappy woman must have found some small
comfort in the universal grief that rose to meet her own. She went back
to her cell; but the body of the great Doge was laid out in a hall of
the palace, dressed in the mantle of state and the ducal cap. He was
borne thence to Saint Mark’s, whither the Dogess had gone before with
her ladies, and when the last requiem had been sung Giovanni Soranzo was
laid in the chapel of the baptistery. His simple tomb bears the arms of
his family and little else that tells of his glory, as all may see to
this day.
The great bell had scarcely ceased to toll for him, when it rang out the
summons to elect his successor, and the Council met to this end. But
Soranzo’s reign had made changes, which, as they came gradually, were
not noticed, but which were plain enough now that a new Doge was to be
chosen. Prosperity had increased vastly, and with it luxury, and the
magnificence of all that represented the Republic’s power. Soranzo had
been very rich, but his successor might be poor. Soranzo had filled the
ducal palace with his own plate, his own array of servants and footmen,
and all his rich belongings. Ambassadors had come and gone, and had seen
how the Doge lived; it might not be that they should come again, and
find a poor man living under the same roof, dining off earthenware
dishes and served by a few threadbare retainers. Venice had many faults,
and Venice, as a city, loved money, but Venice, the Republic, was never
sordid, nor miserly, nor mean. Before the Council elected the next Doge,
a large provision was settled upon his office for ever; his salary was
increased from four thousand ducats to five thousand two hundred, which
is far more, considering the value of money, than the President of the
United States receives to-day; the ducal palace was amply furnished with
vessels of gold and silver; it was made a rule that the Doge was
henceforth to keep five-and-twenty servants, neither more nor less, and
that each should have two new liveries every year. In case the new
sovereign should not have ready means at hand to defray the expenses of
his coronation and of his change of domicile, it was decreed that a loan
(for business was business) of three thousand lire should be placed at
his disposal out of State funds; and, finally, a jeweller was ordered to
make a very rich crown, which the Doge was to wear on great occasions,
and which was to be in the keeping of the procurators of Saint Mark.
When Soranzo had been elected, an ancient custom still prevailed by
which the population was allowed to joyously plunder the house of the
new Doge of all it contained that was movable, precisely as the
populace of Rome plundered the house of the cardinal who was elected
Pope, until a much later date. This half-civilised practice was now
forbidden in Venice under heavy penalties.
All this was agreed upon, set down and made law, before beginning the
process of balloting by which the forty-one electors of the Doge were
chosen.
Their choice fell upon Francesco Dandolo, the skilful diplomatist by
whose efforts Clement V. had been induced to remove the excommunication
of Venice, and the enthusiasm of the people on learning the result was
in proportion to what they had suffered during the period of the
interdict, not yet forgotten. The multitude moved with one will towards
his dwelling, and were for carrying him in triumph to the ducal palace;
but he strongly protested against any such show, though the throng
pressed upon him on his way to Saint Mark’s. There he knelt before the
high altar and received the investiture of his high dignity, and took
the oath of fidelity before the headmen of the districts as
representatives of the people of the city and of all the Venetian
territory. Himself bearing the standard of Saint Mark in his right hand,
he entered the ducal palace, ascended the great staircase--not yet the
‘Giants’ Staircase’ of our time--and on the highest step took oath to
observe all the obligations contained in the ‘Ducal Promise.’ The senior
member of his own Council made a solemn acknowledgment of this oath, and
the people listened in breathless silence to Dandolo’s short but
brilliant speech, breaking out in
[Illustration: THE PULPIT, ST. MARK’S]
renewed and yet more enthusiastic applause when he had finished.
[Sidenote: _Rom. iii. 109._]
During the following days festivities were organised for the coronation
of the Dogess, much more various and of longer duration than those which
greeted her husband’s elevation to the throne. In older times, when the
head of the Republic still possessed real power, his wife played no
official part in State ceremonies. She lived as before, and the Doge
could retire to her apartments and be in his home as if he were a
private person, much as the modern Turk takes refuge in his harem. At
most, the Dogess, as the first matron of the city, might outdo other
patrician women in assisting public and private charities; but when the
Doge’s personal authority was almost gone, and he was required, in a
degree, to compensate its loss by a certain amount of display and
ceremony, intended to please the people and impose upon the
representatives of foreign powers, the presence and influence of a woman
became temporarily necessary. The Dogess then received a court of her
own, and was required to wear a special dress, and for her a complete
ceremonial was devised, from which she could not withdraw herself
without incurring the displeasure of her husband and of the State
itself.
From the moment when the joyful multitude pressed to the doors of
Dandolo’s palace, his wife remained within, according to the new laws of
conduct laid down for her. Then came the High Chancellor, as
representative of the people, and the Doge’s six counsellors, to
present their congratulations and to ‘request’--or require--her strict
observance of such clauses in the Ducal Promise as directly concerned
herself. When these personages withdrew, she presented each with a
magnificent gold-embroidered purse.
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Dogaressa, 123._]
[Sidenote: _Rom. iii. 109 sqq._]
A few days later, when all was ready for the ceremony, they came to
fetch her with the Bucentaur, and in her honour was renewed the
spectacle which had been given half a century earlier for the wife of
Lorenzo Tiepolo. The vast and splendid barge had but a few times its own
length to move from Dandolo’s palace to the landing of the Piazzetta. An
immense crowd was gathered there, from the borders of the canal to the
door of the Basilica, a sufficient space being kept open in its midst
for the display of the Dogess’s pageant.
The guilds of the arts and trades had been privileged to escort the wife
of Lorenzo Tiepolo to the church: first the blacksmiths with flying
banner; then the merchants of fur, dressed in their richest garments and
most priceless sables, and wearing ermines fit for an emperor; the
weavers next, singing at the top of their voices to the music of
trumpets and cymbals, and bearing both silver cups and flagons full of
wine. After the weavers the tailors came in the dress of their trade
guild, white robes embroidered with red stars; and the wool-merchants
bore olive branches in their hands and had crowns of olive leaves on
their heads; also the makers of quilts and coverlets were crowned with
gold beads, and wore on their shoulders white cloaks embroidered with
fleur-de-lis; and there
[Illustration: S. LORENZO]
were the sellers of cloth of gold, and the shoemakers, the mercers, the
pork-butchers, the glass-blowers, the jewellers and the barbers, all
displaying the rich and fantastic costumes of their guilds in the great
procession, a very splendid sight.
Thus escorted the Dogess entered Saint Mark’s, and knelt at the high
altar, and before she went away she deposited thereon an offering of ten
ducats. Then she was led to the throne-room of the palace and took her
seat beneath a canopy beside her husband the Doge. The ceremony ended
with a huge and sumptuous banquet, to which were invited all the heads
of the guilds who had appeared in the procession.
Francesco Dandolo was a man of wit and of many resources. It is related,
though without serious proof, that he had moved Clement V. to pity by
appearing, as ambassador, in a penitent’s dress, and wearing an iron
collar, weeping and moaning, and remaining prostrate at the pontiff’s
feet. It has even been said that one or more of the cardinals kicked him
as he lay there, called him a dog, and otherwise insulted him; but that
he bore all patiently for his country’s sake. One authority explains,
however, that the nickname of ‘dog,’ or ‘watch-dog,’ had been bestowed
upon his family long before that time, as ‘Cane,’ dog, and ‘Mastino,’
mastiff, were actually used as baptismal names in the great family of
Scala.
He reigned ten years, with fortune good and evil, but chiefly good. More
than once, in his time, the safety of the State was gravely menaced, but
all ended well, and the sum of his administration was a gain to Venice.
Since the beginning of the fourteenth century the
[Illustration: THE CHAPEL OF ST. MARK’S]
[Sidenote: _Rom. iii. 115_]
city of Padua had been a prey to faction and internal strife. The
aristocratic party fought for the family of the Scala, while the
citizens and people were devoted to the house of Carrara. By turns the
two families got the advantage and held the power, but the Carrara were
really the stronger, for the Venetians helped them, on the ground that
one of them, Jacopo, had married a daughter of the Doge Pietro
Gradenigo.