Land, but did not assemble at Venice at the time appointed, nor had they
the money ready to pay for their transport. The Venetians, being men of
business, demanded cash down; and so the favourable time for reaching
Syria was allowed to pass without the expedition setting forth.
Provisions and ships had been prepared, and the Venetians, wishing to
use them, with the consent of Doge Enrico Dandolo, proposed to the
French an attack on Zara, part of the booty to be used to pay for their
passage. The attack took place on November 10, 1202, and the French
stayed till April 7, 1203. The Venetians took all the booty, and threw
down the wall on the seaward side, but it was restored shortly after.
They also sent colonists to Zara after a rebellion and a reconquest in
1243.
The Venetian counts were generally citizens of Venice, and had no
defined term of rule. In 1311 the city again returned to the Hungarians,
and the result was the siege of 1312-1313, which ended in the
condottiere Dalmasio, who was besieging, being offered the countship by
the ban of Dalmatia and Croatia. To prevent this the Venetians offered
to leave the Zaratines free to choose their own count, only reserving
the right of confirmation. In 1345 Zara rebelled for the seventh time,
when Andrea Dandolo was doge, and in consequence a long siege commenced
on August 12. The Venetians had at Nona 20,000 men, horse and foot, who
devastated the fields for three days and set fire to the villages; the
countrymen fled to the city, so that there were more than 20,000 within
the walls, of whom 6,000 only were armed. On August 30 they closed the
port with a chain made of thirteen beams, and on September 1 sent an
envoy to Andrew, king of Naples, to ask for aid. On the 8th they
received letters from the King of Hungary promising help, and raised the
Hungarian flag. The king sent the bani of Bosnia and Croatia to help
them, but the Venetian senate bought the rescuers off! In January, 1346,
the Venetians took the Castle of S. Damian and broke the chain of the
port. The Venetian trenches consisted of a bastion 200 yards long and
100 yards broad built of wood on three sides. On the east it had ten
towers, as many on the west, and fourteen on the north, being open on
the south towards the fleet. They now controlled 25,000 men. On June 2,
Ladislas of Hungary came to help the besieged, and encamped at Zemonico,
seven miles away, with 100,000 cavalry. On July 10 he advanced close to
the city with 2,000 of his best men. The citizens welcomed him with much
joy, and the next day sent legates with great solemnity to offer him the
keys of the city. On the 16th he attacked the bastion. On the 20th,
Bernardo, patriarch of Aquileia, entered the city; but the king held
aloof. The Venetians tried in vain to make terms, and the Zaratines
attacked the bastion with good heart, burning one of the towers; but the
Hungarians only looked on while the Venetians repelled the assault. The
king's behaviour is mysterious. On July 30 he returned to Vrana, and so
to Hungary; and, although his promised envoys went to Venice, they went
for other purposes. He appears to have been using Zara as a pawn in some
great game. Famine obliged the Zaratines to surrender, and the
Venetians entered the city on December 21, 1347, the war having lasted
two years and six months, and having cost the Republic from 40,000 to
60,000 ducats a month for soldiers' pay alone, without counting the
shipping. Eleven years later Zara again became Hungarian, but was
finally ceded to Venice in 1413 by the peace of Trieste.
The dialect spoken in the city is pure Venetian, and the municipality is
the only Italian one in Dalmatia. Zara is still the capital, and the
diet meets in the city. Here, too, are the only Italian schools in the
province, the Slav majority in most places exercising its power to veto
everything Italian. The only flourishing industry is the manufacture of
maraschino, of which 300,000 bottles are exported annually. The
cherries, which are the raw material, are imported from Sebenico,
Almissa, and Poljica, near Spalato. The streets are narrow and
impossible for carriage traffic; merchandise is put upon long narrow
carts, with long poles projecting in front and cross-pieces at the end;
the cart is then pushed and pulled by several men. The population is
13,000, and is increased by many country people in the mornings, who
come to market, so that the streets and piazzas are crowded with a most
distracting variety of costumes. Both men and girls from the country
wear little red caps. The men have great light-coloured woollen coats
which they throw over their shoulders without putting their arms in,
light shirts, sometimes with an embroidered jacket, trousers with
embroidery round the pocket-holes (which are in front of the thigh) and
a split at the lower part of the side which is buttoned up. They
sometimes have a sash round the waist with a knife. The women wear
leggings woven roughly in patterns like the wrong side of a tapestry
curtain, and shoes somewhat the shape of gondolas, thick skirts with
patterned aprons, and small waistcoat-like jackets. Their hair is
plaited round the head. The dress of the townspeople is less individual;
the head is covered with a white or coloured kerchief, the dress is
frequently black, and the modern blouse is sometimes seen. It is
interesting to watch the boatloads of country-folk arriving either by
the Porta Terra Ferma, close to which are steps and a small harbour, or
on the quay by the Porta Marina. Lambs and kids are brought alive and
killed and skinned on the quay, the women holding pots or jugs to catch
the blood, which they seem to think valuable. The wall of the quay was
being rebuilt when we were there the second time, and a diver was
working at it. It looked odd to see the stones and buckets of cement
lowered into the water with ropes.
[Illustration: MORLACCA GIRL, ZARA]
There are two antique columns still erect: one, fluted, is in the Piazza
S. Simeone, set up in 1729, and the other is in the Piazza dell' Erbe;
it was used as a pillory, and the chains with the iron collars still
hang to it, having, by centuries of friction, cut deep-curved grooves in
the marble with swinging to and fro. This column also has sockets for
the insertion of flagstaffs, and attached to it is a much-worn piece of
eighth-century sculpture, with the motif of an ornamented cross beneath
an arch fastened with clamps. The chroniclers of the seventeenth century
record that near this place several drums of columns projected from the
earth, and that two entire pillars were erect and united by a piece of
the architrave. One was moved to S. Simeone, near to which Mr. T.G.
Jackson saw in 1884 the base of a Roman arch excavated beneath the level
of the piazza. Other similar fragments have been used in the foundations
of S. Donato.
[Illustration: GOING TO MARKET, ZARA]
In the year 380 a bishop of Zara (Felix) is mentioned for the first
time. S. Donatus is reckoned the fourth bishop, Andrew and Sabinianus
(who are shown on a reliquary with Felix) traditionally preceding him.
As his episcopate lasted into the ninth century it is evident that the
list is not complete. His diplomatic mission took him either to
Diedenhofen or Aachen and then to Constantinople, where he had the
relics of S. Anastasia given him. It is probable that the sight of the
great churches which he saw during his journeys suggested the plan of S.
Donato, which was originally dedicated to the Holy Trinity.
Porphyrogenitus compares it to S. Sophia, Constantinople, which seems
strange in a Byzantine. It is circular in plan, about 60 ft. in
diameter. Six gigantic piers, wider than the arches which rest upon
them, placed ten feet from the wall, sustain a barrel vault, about 28
ft. high, over the ambulatory, which has strengthening arches. The piers
of the upper story sustained the drum of a cupola which no longer
exists. Opposite the entrance are three vaulted apses, the central one
larger and deeper than the others and with four windows, the others
having but one each; and these apses are repeated above, without the
windows. In front of them are two smooth columns of Oriental yellow
marble 7 ft. round, in place of piers, and thinner columns cut short
occupy the same relative place above. The caps are antique and a good
deal damaged. Three are composite like the arch of Septimius Severus,
and one is Corinthian. The roof is now tiled. A Roman inscription on the
fourth pilaster seems to indicate that there was a great temple to
Augusta Livia, wife of Augustus, here; and when the floor level was
lowered in 1888 a number of inscriptions were found, and portions of
carved friezes and pillars used as foundation material and simply laid
on the pavement of the Roman forum. Among these were portions of columns
resembling both of the two still upright. Part of a flight of steps was
also found, which may have been part of the sub-structure of the temple.
Fragments of four different buildings have been recognised. Two stairs
have served the upper story of the church--an early one with carved hood
mould of the ninth century to the external door, now blocked up, and a
second from the interior, which lands in a vestibule where some early
mediæval carvings are arranged. The upper portion is a double flight,
arranged, perhaps, to use when this stair was a "Scala Santa" ascended
by the faithful on their knees, whereby they gained the same indulgences
as were attached to the Scala Santa at Rome. The building was a military
magazine in 1649, again from 1798 to 1877, and then a wine-store till,
in 1888, the museum was founded. In 1890-1891 the ancient entrance-door
was found behind the eighteenth-century additions. It is a simple
square-headed door with semicircular opening above, made of Roman
uncarved material, with consecration-crosses sunk in the lintel and base
of the right-hand jamb; to the right and left of the lintel a little
above it are two simple brackets with crosses on them. The lintel itself
is double, and treated as if it were wood. The cill was two feet below
the ground level.
[Illustration: PLANS OF S. DONATO, ZARA]
The museum contains Roman and pre-Roman antiquities, inscriptions,
lamps, carved fragments, coins, bronze and glass vessels, pottery, &c.;
mediæval fragments, carved and gilded panels, lanterns and ensigns from
Venetian galleys, a crozier of Limoges work of the thirteenth century
found under the pavement of S. Crisogono, arms and carvings of the
Renaissance period, &c. But perhaps the most interesting things are the
plans of the early churches which have either been destroyed or very
much altered, and the early mediæval carvings; among these are two very
curious slabs with figures under arches, one of which was found under
the pavement of S. Crisogono, while the other, closely resembling it in
style, came from S. Domenico. The former shows the Flight into Egypt and
the Massacre of the Innocents; the latter the Nativity and Adoration of
the Kings. They probably formed part of a chancel enclosure. There are
also fragments of ciboria, altar frontals, or sarcophagi, while a column
sawn in two has furnished decorated jambs to the door of the upper
church. On a lintel of the early church of S. Lorenzo is a Christ in a
mandorla, supported by angels with a sacred tree on each side and a
griffin beyond; a rough astragal moulding surrounds the subject. The
jambs have a rough arabesque scroll, terminating in a two-headed bird.
These carvings are all of the ninth century.
[Illustration: SECTION OF S. LORENZO, ZARA
_To face page 217_]
The church of S. Lorenzo is in the courtyard of the military command
building on the Piazza dei Signori. The sides are in courts entered from
the Calle Larga and Via del Teatro Vecchio. It has a nave and aisles
about 21 ft. long and about 14 ft. broad, with four pillars, springing
from which are three unmoulded arches. The arches are stilted, and at
the height of the real springing an impost projects in profile. The
central compartment has a wagon vault, the other two quadripartite
vaults. The aisles have semi-domes running north and south, resting on
cross arches, with squinches in the corners. The choir has two stories,
the lower with three square-ended apses, and entered by a door flanked
by pillars. The walls which separate the apses ran up to a tower. The
vault is a transverse wagon pierced by wagon vaults at right angles. The
architecture is very simple, and shows Byzantine influence, but the
construction is hidden by plastering. The nave caps are debased
Corinthian, with ornamented volutes and one row of flat acanthus-leaves,
the abacus being square. The front leaf in each shows a half-length of a
male figure with nimbus, his arms raised as if in prayer, the body
hidden by a shorter loaf. The columns are of different sizes, but the
caps are all the same. The entrance door towards the Calle Larga has a
simply moulded round arch; the other has been mentioned as being in S.
Donato. The upper story of the choir has pillars with carved caps
supporting an arch of two orders, now built up, formerly no doubt an
oratory. The church is mentioned in a document of 919.
[Illustration: S. LORENZO, ZARA]
[Illustration: S. LORENZO, ZARA--TOP STORY
_Between pages 216 and 217_]
[Illustration: PLAN OF FOUNDATIONS DISCOVERED ON THE RIVA NUOVA, ZARA]
S. Domenico (which no longer exists) was of somewhat the same character;
but the choir was without dividing walls, and thus became an upper
church. It was only 21 ft. square and had three columns on each side,
the last close to the wall. The vaults were domically quadripartite,
springing from pilasters which rested on the caps. The arcade was
round-arched, the central and right-hand apses were square-ended, and
the left had a semicircular niche. The under church was wagon-vaulted
without architectural features. The foundation of a chapel was found on
the Riva Nuova with five niches of a six-niched circle and an entrance
passage in the sixth, which turned at right angles to the north to reach
the street. In the angle thus formed between the entrance and the main
building a sarcophagus stood. This circular-niched plan occurs
elsewhere in Dalmatia, as in the baptistery here, and SS. Trinita at
Spalato, and the dimensions are generally so nearly the same as to
suggest some common original design. S. Pietro Vecchio is considered to
be the oldest church in Zara. It is now desecrated, but was used as a
sacristy to the fourteenth-century church of S. Andrea, belonging to the
Fishers' Confraternity, the sixteenth-century apse of which projected
into the nave as far as the first pillar. It was cleared out by order of
the Central Commission in 1886. It is about 38 ft. long by 19 ft. broad,
and is built of ancient fragments with very little architectural
character. One of the two columns bears a Roman inscription, and both
have crosses cut in them. One of the caps is a damaged antique; the
other is an antique base upside down; neither column has any base. The
church is an irregular rectangle in plan, divided into two naves which
end in apses by two pillars and a pier. The pilasters are not upright,
the arches are deformed, and the two altar niches have half-cupola
vaults on a rectangular plan, with arches thrown across the corners.
There are two original doors, both built up. The pier between the two
apses has a round-arched niche in it. The church is mentioned in 918 in
the will of Prior Andrea.
There was a cathedral here in very early times, referred to in a will of
908 as S. Anastasia. It was originally S. Pietro, and the dedication was
changed when the relics of S. Anastasia which S. Donato brought from
Constantinople and placed in the church of the Holy Trinity were
transferred to the cathedral. This church was destroyed by the Venetians
in 1202, but probably portions of it were worked up in the new building
which the Crusaders are said to have erected as a votive church after
the pope had excommunicated them all for the sack of Zara. This seems,
however, a legend, since the new building was not consecrated till May
27, 1285, the Archbishop Lorenzo Periandro officiating, assisted by the
Metropolitan of Spalato and the suffragan bishops of both dioceses. On
the vault of the ciborium and on the jamb of the main door are
inscriptions, dated respectively 1332 and 1324, recording their erection
by "Joannis de Bvtvane, archiep: Jadren." Certain portions show by their
style that additions and alterations were made, still later. The length
is 170 ft. and the width 65 ft.
The façade has three doors, and is divided by pilaster strips which
emphasise the width of the nave; at either side of the central door is a
shallow recess filling the space between it and the pilaster strips. The
door itself has spiral and simple colonnettes in the jambs, with
corresponding arch moulds of four orders. In the tympanum is a later
relief of the Virgin and Child enthroned, with two saints, beneath a
pointed trefoil arcade; and on brackets at the sides are four figures of
Apostles. On the side doors the tympana have the Agnus Dei, and that to
the left has the Annunciation on brackets, one figure on each side of
the door. The colonnettes and arch moulds are both twisted in this door;
in that to the right they are plain; the figures on brackets are
similar. The lintels and jambs have elaborate arabesque scrolls, which
remind one of Provençal Romanesque ornament. The lower part of the wall
has courses of pinkish marble among the white, and bands of inlaid
ornament decorate both the wall and the campanile. Above the string
course over the doorways is a Romanesque-looking arcade with another
which fills the slope of the aisle walls, with animals standing at the
ends. The central portion has a restored wheel-window with radiating
colonnettes and round arches, and above it in the gable is another with
cusped tracery of a later date; round this an arcading ramps as at
the end of the aisles, and the lower rose is flanked by arcading in two
stages arched only in the upper one. Both of these arcadings have
coupled colonnettes, and are manifestly much later than the lower part
of the façade. The walls of the north aisle have an arcading separated
into groups by pilasters, echoing the internal divisions, with a gallery
above, like S. Nicola, Bari, and others of the Apulian churches. A
cornice of corbelled arches crowns the nave wall. The campanile was
commenced in 1449 by Archbishop Lorenzo Venier, and carried up by
Archbishop Matteo Valaresso in 1460 to the height from which Mr. T.G.
Jackson completed it. It has five stories and an octagonal pyramidal
termination. The three upper stories have two window openings in each,
the lowest being single lights, while the upper two have a central
colonnette and two stilted round arches beneath a containing arch. A
string with corbelled arches below divides the stories, and the square
portion terminates with a balustrade in the usual manner.
The inside was altered in the eighteenth century and the beginning of
the nineteenth. The nave arcade, which continues to the apse, consists
of ten round arches on each side resting alternately on columns and
piers with columns attached which have cushion caps. Some of the columns
are spirally fluted and have decadent antique caps. Some are cipollino,
and two are apparently cut from antique columns, one having four shafts
attached to the central cylindrical mass, and the corresponding one on
the other side being panelled, with octagonal colonnettes attached. The
pier at the choir steps has two small columns instead of one. Two bays
of the aisles equal one bay of the nave, and pilasters run up from the
piers, dividing the triforium arches into groups of six, on the tops of
which figures stand. The triforium arcade has round arches with coupled
colonnettes of red marble on the face and varied caps; the voussoirs are
alternately red and grey; and a string with carved leaf pattern, much
like that at Traù, runs along the triforium, between the nave arcade and
the balustrade. The nave arcade terminates at each end with a single
arch. The apse has a marble seat running round it, with the bishop's
seat in the centre raised on several steps. It has exactly the same
ornament on its sides as is on the font in the baptistery. The wall is
sheeted with red marble. The ciborium has pointed arches resting upon
Corinthianising caps and columns of cipollino carved in coffered
patterns or spiral and zigzag channelling; a cornice of acanthus-leaves
runs above the arches. It was erected by Archbishop Butuane, consecrated
in 1332, and restored in 1901-1902. The presbytery pavement is of 1336.
The stalls, once painted and gilt, are very fine examples of
Venetian-Gothic wood carving, and were partly made for Archbishop Biagio
Molin in 1420-1427, whose arms are carved on them; but those of his
predecessor and successor, and those of Valaresso, under whom the work
was probably completed, also appear. Between the stalls, elaborately
pierced and carved scroll-work runs up to the canopy level, where little
figures stand in niches. Above the canopies, which are slightly pointed
fluted shells, and separated from them by curious ogee-shaped gables,
are thirty-six half-length figures of prophets, emergent from scrolls
and holding labels. Above one of the side altars are six small
Carpaccios on panel much repainted--the one with the figure of S. Martin
bears his signature; also a Palma Giovine and an Andrea Schiavone.
[Illustration: NORTH DOOR OF WESTERN FAÇADE, CATHEDRAL, ZARA
_To face page 220_]
[Illustration: PLAN OF THE CATHEDRAL, ZARA]
Beneath the step of the high-altar is the sarcophagus of Oriental
marble, with porphyry cover, of the three saints, Agape, Chionia, and
Irene, whose remains are interred in the crypt. The crypt is entered by
two flights of stairs from the sides of the choir. It is of an
irregular shape, about 70 ft. long, 23 ft. broad, and 15 ft. high.
Eastwards it suddenly broadens out to a width of 33 ft. and terminates
in a semicircle. In this apse there are three windows. Two rows of nine
columns extend to just above the point where the change in width begins,
and four more follow the external curve of the wall. These support
quadripartite vaulting. The columns have heavy square caps and square
bases. In one is a grated aperture as if for relics. The sarcophagus
altar has a much worn representation of the Martyrdom of Sant'
Anastasia, with her name inscribed in Lombardic letters between two
foliage scrolls. Fragments of early work are visible here and there,
pointing to the reconstruction of the crypt. It is very dark, and is now
used as a store, having become too damp for ritual purposes.
[Illustration: PLAN OF CATHEDRAL CRYPT, ZARA]
The treasury contains some exceedingly interesting objects, and is rich
in reliquaries. It is kept in the wall between the body of the
cathedral and the baptistery in a rather evil-smelling vault, which
opens into the latter building. The most ancient reliquary, once
belonging to the cathedral at Grado, is that of Sant' Orontius; it
contains a portion of his head, and is work of the eleventh century,
material of an earlier date having been used in its construction. Upon
the sides and front is an arcade with alternate twisted and fluted
columns, beneath which are figures of saints robed in the Greek manner,
and holding Benedictional crosses. The names of the saints, inscribed in
mixed Latin and Greek letters, are Sabinianus, Felix, Vitalis, Satorus,
Repositus, Septimus, Januarius, Arotatius, Onoratus, and Fortunatianus.
On the back is a plate inscribed in Roman letters: "[Symbol: maltese
cross] Sergivs F. Mai Nepos zallae fecit hanc capsam sco capiti Arontii
Martins."[1]
[Illustration: ALTAR OF SANT' ANASTASIA, ZARA]