John the Deacon’s tale; they do not doubt the kisses or the tears, but
the unparalleled eccentricity of secrecy seems to demand an urgent
motive. Why this strange coyness of the Emperor? Might he not have
thought more to honour Venice and her Doge by coming with imperial
pomp than by stealing in and out of the triumphant city like a thief
in the night? And why did the persons concerned make public boast
of the success of their freak immediately after its occurrence?
For John tells us that when three days had passed, the people were
assembled by the Doge at his palace to hear of his achievement, “and
praised no less the faith of the Emperor than the skill of their
leader.” The probable solution of the various enigmas rather rudely
shatters the romance. Gfrörer lays on Orseolo the responsibility of
the _incognito_, attributing it partly to a memory of the fate that
overtook the Candiani’s personal relations with an imperial house,
partly to his desire to treat with the Emperor unobserved. He recalls
point by point the precautions taken by Orseolo to preclude Otho from
contact with other Venetians, and comes to the conclusion that in those
private interviews in the tower the “eternal dreamer” was feasted
on the milk and honey of promises, food of which no third person
could have been allowed to partake. “What lies,” he exclaims, “were
invented, what assurances vouchsafed of the most unbounded devotion
to imperial projects in general and the longed-for reconstitution of
the Roman Empire in particular! Never was prince so shamefully abused
as Otho III at Venice.” It is not necessary to abandon our belief in
Otho’s personal feelings for the Doge, augmented by Orseolo’s recent
campaign, to realise that there must have been another side to the
picture. Gulled the royal guest in all probability was, but there
is little doubt that he had an axe of his own to be ground on this
visit to Venice--that the journey had for its aim something beyond
his delectation in a sight of the Doge and his obeisance to the Lion.
For the furtherance of his schemes of empire Otho needed a fleet. He
had, Gfrörer tells us, “an admiral already in view for it. Nothing was
wanted but cables, anchors, equipments; in short there were not even
ships, nor the necessary money, and above all, there were no sailors.
I believe that Otho III undertook the journey to Venice precisely
to procure for himself these necessary trifles. Who knows how many
times already he had urged the Doge to hasten his sending of the
long-promised fleet; but in place of ships nothing had yet come but
letters or embassies carrying specious excuses.” If the historian’s
motivisation is accurate, Otho must have found, like so many after him,
Venice more capable of exercising persuasion than of submitting to it.
For our uses, however, the original or the revised versions of the
tale serve the same purpose. As an act of spontaneous homage or an act
of practical policy, the visit of Otho, full as it is of speculative
possibilities, was an imperial tribute to the position Orseolo had
given to Venice, an imperial recognition of her progress towards
supremacy in the Adriatic.
Orseolo’s achievement and the rite which symbolised it were confirmed
two centuries later when, in the spring and summer of 1177, Venice
was the meeting place of Pope Alexander III and the Emperor Frederick
Barbarossa. Tradition has woven a curious romance round the fact of
the Pope’s sojourn in Venice before the coming of the Emperor. By
a manipulation of various episodes, he is brought as a fugitive to
creep among the tortuous by-ways of the city, sleeping on the bare
ground, and going forward as chance might direct till he is received
as a chaplain--or, to enhance the thrill of agony, as a scullion--in
the convent of Santa Maria della Carità, and after some months have
elapsed is brought to the notice of the Doge, when a transformation
scene of the Cinderella type is effected. It is inevitable that
melodramatic touches should have been added to so important an
episode, and the accounts of the manner of Alexander’s arrival and
his bearing in Venice are many and varied. None the less, it is clear
that splendour and not secrecy, ceremony not intimacy, are the general
colouring of the event. Frederick had shown himself disposed to make
peace and to accept the mediation of Venice, and in the early days
of the Pope’s visit the Venetians had acted as counsellors, pending
the agreement as to a meeting place. Significant terms are used by
the chroniclers to account for the ultimate choice, and the note
which they strike is repeated again and again in the chorus of praise
that throughout the centuries was to wait upon Venice. “Pope and
Emperor sent forth their mandates to divers parts of the world, that
Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots, Ecclesiastics and secular Princes should
repair to Venice; for Venice is safe for all, fertile and abounding
in supplies, and the people quiet and peace-loving.” Secure among the
lagoons, Venice is aloof from the disturbances of the mainland cities,
and though her inhabitants are proved warriors they are peaceable
citizens. Many of the glories of Gentile Bellini’s _Procession of
the Cross_ would be present in the procession in which the Doge
and the magnates of Venice formally conducted Alexander III to the
city--patriarch, bishops, clergy, and finally the Pope himself, all in
their festival robes. Ecclesiastical and secular princes of Germany,
France, England, Spain, Hungary and the whole of Italy were crowding
to Venice. The occasion gave scope for her fascinations, and they were
exerted. No opportunity for display was neglected; ceremony was heaped
upon ceremony.
For over a fortnight Venice was the centre of correspondence daily
renewed between Emperor and Pope, of embassies hastening to and fro,
of endless postponements and uncertainties. The Pope retires for a
few days to Ferrara; then he is back again to be received as before.
But Venice, the indomitable, is secure of her will, and preparations
for the coming of the Emperor are growing apace. In July the Doge’s
son is despatched to meet the royal guest at Ravenna and conduct him
to Venice by way of Chioggia. No tempests disturbed his arrival. He
was conducted in triumph up the lagoon by the galleys of “honest men”
and Cardinals who had gone forth to Chioggia to meet him. Slowly the
islands of the Lido would unfold themselves to his eyes, Pellestrina
in shining curves, Malamocco with its long reaches of bare shore
and reeds. The group clustered round Venice itself--San Servolo, La
Grazia, San Lazzaro, Poveglia--would be green and smiling then, living
islands, not desolated as now for the most part by magazine or asylum.
San Nicolo del Lido welcomed the guest, and he was borne thence on the
ducal boat to the city and landed at the Riva. Through the acclamations
of an “unheard-of multitude” his way was made to San Marco, where the
Pope in all his robes, amid a throng of gorgeous ecclesiastics and
laymen, was waiting on the threshold. As he passed out of the brilliant
and garish day into the solemn mosaiced glory of San Marco and moved to
the high altar between Pope and Doge singing a Te Deum, “while all gave
thanks to God, rejoicing and exulting and weeping,” even an emperor and
a Barbarossa may well have surrendered his pride. Even we, spectators
removed by time, find ourselves exalted on the tide of colour and of
sound, and crying to the Venetians, with the strangers who thronged in
their streets, “Blessed are ye, that so great a peace has been able
to be established in the midst of you! This shall be a memorial to
your name for ever.” Peace was secured and Venice had accomplished
her task. She had devoted the subtleties of her statecraft to its
performance, but perhaps the splendour of this hour in San Marco was
her crowning achievement. She asked the recognition of a Pope, and she
brought the temporal sovereign to his side in a church which is one of
the wonders of Christendom. She polished and gilded every detail of
her worldly magnificence, and poured it as an oblation at the altar.
Her reinforcements to the cause of Alexander III were drawn from far
back in the ages, from the inspiration of the men who had fashioned her
temple; and may there not be some deeper signification than merely that
of Frederick’s stubbornness in the “Not to thee, but to St. Peter,”
traditionally attributed to him as he prostrated himself at his enemy’s
feet?
[Illustration: THE DOORWAY OF SAN MARCO.]
To Venice there remained, beside the praise of all Christendom, many
tangible tokens of the events of the summer. Emperor and Pope vied
with each other in evincing their gratitude. Alexander formally
sanctioned and confirmed the title of Venice as sovereign and queen
of the Adriatic, and bestowed on the Doge a consecrated ring for use
at the Nuptials. And henceforth the ceremony at San Nicolo del Lido,
the place of arrival and departure for the high seas and for Dalmatia
and the East, was increased in magnificence. No trace now remains
of the church where the rites were performed; but the grassy squares
of San Nicolo and the wooded slopes of its canal, looking on one side
to the city, on the other to the sea, are beautiful still. The ocean
calls to the lagoon, and the calm waters of the lagoon sway themselves
in answer; while, outside the Lido, line beyond line of snowy-crested
waves, ever advancing, bear in to Venice, Bride of the Adriatic, the
will of the high sea.
Chapter Four
VENICE IN FESTIVAL
The treaty signed in 1573 between Venice and Constantinople, though
it marked no real rise in her fortunes, gave her a respite from
the petty and fruitless warfare with the Turk, in which she had so
long been engaged. That conflict had drained the resources of the
Republic without affording compensating gains. The loss and horrors of
Famagosta might seem to have been revenged by the battle of Lepanto,
where the triumph of Venice and her allies was complete; but owing
to the dilatoriness and inaction of Don John of Austria, brother of
Philip of Spain, the opportunity of annihilating the Turkish forces
was allowed to escape, and victory was reduced to little more than
the name. So flagrant had been the character of Don John’s disloyalty
that the Venetians no longer could mistake his intentions. Spain was
an ally of Venice; but Tommaso Morosini was but voicing the general
conviction when he exclaimed, “We must face the fact that there will
be no profitable progress, seeing that the victory already gained by
the forces of the League against the Turk was great in the number of
ships captured, rare in the number of slaves set free, famous by reason
of the power it broke, formidable for the numbers killed by the sword,
glorious for the pride it laid low, terrible in the fame acquired
by it. And, none the less, no single foot of ground was gained. Oh,
incomparable ignominy and shame of the allies, that whatever honour
they obtained in consequence of the victory, they lost by not following
it up!” Though nominally in league with her against the Turk, Spain,
owing to her jealousy of Venice, was unwilling that the war should be
ended. The League of Cambray, formed in 1508 by the European powers
unfriendly to Venice, should have made it clear to the Republic that
she had over-reached her own interests by interference in the politics
of Europe. Moreover, a severe blow had been dealt to the commerce of
Venice by the discovery of the Cape route to the East. Yet, though her
decline had begun, she still formed a subject for envy, and there is
justice in Morosini’s conclusion as to the causes of the growing enmity
of Spain. “Ruling,” he says of the Spaniards, “a good part of Europe,
having passed into Africa, having discovered new territory, dominating
most of Italy, and seeing the Republic, the single part, the only
corner of Italy, to be free and without the least burden of slavery,
they envy it, envying it they hate it, and hating it they lay snares
for it.”
Though the terms of the peace with Constantinople were humiliating
in the extreme (Venice relinquished the whole of Cyprus, a fortress
in Albania, and agreed within three years to pay an indemnity of one
hundred thousand ducats) it set her hands free for awhile and gave
her a breathing space in which to return to her pageants. And for the
next few years she laid herself out more completely than ever before
to impress the world by her splendour. It is not easy to determine the
beginnings of decadent luxury in Venetian history. Venice had always
been a pleasure-house, a place of entertainment for kings and emperors,
a temple of solemn festival. Perhaps the broad difference between the
splendours of the early and late Renaissance is that one achieved that
perfection of taste which robes luxury in apparent simplicity, while
the other was more obvious and expansive--the difference between the
Madonnas of Bellini and of Titian, between the interiors of Carpaccio
and Paul Veronese. There is a real and discernible difference in
aspect between Venice of the fifteenth and Venice of the sixteenth
century, but it is not the difference between asceticism and luxury.
Venice was never ascetic, no prophet ever drew her citizens round a
sacrificial bonfire on the Piazza. On the other hand it is said that
a Venetian merchant was burnt in effigy on Savonarola’s pile because
he had attempted to purchase some of the doomed Florentine treasures.
In the course of the fifteenth century isolated voices were indeed
raised in protest against the luxury of Venice, and the authorities
themselves, as the State coffers grew empty, tried by oratorical appeal
and detailed legislation to curb the extravagance of private citizens.
But their protests were, in the main, quite ineffectual. Venice could
not resist the influences that wove for her each day a magical dress;
she could not refuse the treasures of the East: it was her function to
be beautiful, to accept and love every wonder, to turn her face against
nothing that could glorify. She had always appeared as a miracle to
men, she had always lavished her treasures on her guests; the vital
difference between the period of her decline and that of her greatness
lies in the gradual relaxation of the ties binding her to the sources
of her wealth. With the ebbing of her trade her citizens begin to
barter their landed estates and their treasures. Morosini’s acute and
interesting prophecy as to the private banks into which Venetian money
began to be diverted provides us with a background to some of the
almost fabulous expenditure of the Cinquecento--“The banker,” he says,
“with a chance of obliging many friends in their need, and acquiring
others by such a service, and with power to do so without spending
money, simply by making a brief entry, is easily persuaded to satisfy
many. When the opportunity arises of buying some valuable piece of
furniture or decoration, clothes, jewels and similar things of great
price, he is easily persuaded to please himself, simply ordering a line
or two to be written in his books--reassuring, or rather, deceiving
himself with the thought that one year being passed in this way, he can
carry time forward, and pass many years in the same manner, scheming
that such an affair or such an investment as he has in hand, when it
has come to perfection, ought to prove most useful, and that through
its means he may be able to remedy other disorders; which hope proving
fallacious shows with how little security walks one who places his
thoughts and hopes in the uncertain and inconstant issues of events.”
The fabric of sixteenth-century Venice was too largely founded on the
“uncertain and inconstant issues of events,” but none the less it was
as radiant a fabric as any that man has yet fashioned. Something
at least of its nature may be learned from the details of the
entertainment of Henry III in Venice, and his lodging and reception
in the then fashionable suburb of Murano. Henry came to Venice in
the early summer of 1574, on his way from Poland to take possession
of the throne of France vacated by the death of his brother Charles
IX. He came at a moment when Venice was rich in artists to do him
honour--Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, Palladio and Claudio Merulo: he was
crowned with the laurels of war; while the Republic was able to clothe
herself in the glory of Lepanto and the respite of her newly concluded
peace with the Turk and, superficially at least, appeared peculiarly
fitted to welcome him. The young King was gracious, and greedy to drink
his fill of life, and Venice was unique in her celebration. The visit
was one of the most spontaneous, the most joyful to host and guest, of
any that are recorded in her annals. All the territory of Venice was
prepared to honour him, and his journey was a triumphal progress. There
is something joyous still about the little inland cities of his route,
echoes of festival still linger in their streets, romance still dwells
in their hearts. At Treviso, where the young King was welcomed with
peculiar pomp, the Lion of St. Mark, portrayed by three successive
ages, rules still, his majesty sustained by the sturdiness of life that
moves in the city. The winding cobbled streets are full of bustle and
interchange, the arcades are full of people, vital and busily employed.
Treviso is not a museum. Its ancient palace of the Cavallieri is still
in use, though its loggia with traces of rich fresco is filled with
lumber. But we are not critical of small details at Treviso; we thank
it for its winding streets and for its leaping azure river; we thank
it for its countless ancient roofs and painted rafters; for its houses
high and low, harmonious though endless in variation, for the remnants
of fresco, shadows no doubt of what once they were, but companionable
shadows--horses with still distinguishable motions, graceful maidens
both of land and sea. These glories are fading but they have substance
still, and on a day of mid-autumn we are well able to imagine a kingly
procession on the road from Treviso to Mestre. It seems a pageant,
a progress of pomp and colour, as we pass between the vineyards and
maize fields and the great gardens and pastures of the villas, down
the avenue of plane trees set like gold banners on silvery flagstaffs
with carpets of fallen leaves at their feet. Behind them are ranked
dark cypresses, pale groups of willow, or companies of poplar. And
these are often garlanded to their very summits by crimson creepers,
and interspersed with statues, not perhaps great in workmanship, but
tempered and harmonised into beauty by the seasons. Here and there is
a lawn flanked by dark shrubbery, or a terrace ablaze with dahlias and
salvia. And, among them, Baron Franchetti of the Cà d’Oro has a home
even more worthy of the golden title than is his palace on the shores
of the Grand Canal--a place where the sun reveals miraculous hangings
in the shrubberies, sumptuously furnished with scarlet and crimson and
gold.
[Illustration: VIEW FROM CÀ D’ORO.]
Some such festival of colour, in banners and trappings, would be
Henry’s preparation for the pageant of the lagoons. For he was met at
Marghera, half way between Mestre and Venice, by a troop of senators
and noblemen and ambassadors, and escorted to the palace of Bartolomeo
Capello at Murano. Of the young King’s lodging at Murano we have spoken
elsewhere--of the hall hung with gold brocade, with golden baldaquin,
green velvet and silk, its entrance guarded by sixty halberdiers armed
for the occasion with gilt spears borrowed from the chambers of the
Council of Ten. Forty noble youths, in glorious attire, had been told
off to wait on the King. But, “although a most sumptuous supper was
prepared, none the less His Majesty, when the senators were gone,
showed himself a short while at the windows dressed in cloth of gold
and silk; after which he went to supper, and the princes arrived, so
that it was most glorious with abundant supply of exquisite viands
and most delicate foods.” The hearts of the Venetians were won by the
King’s beauty and youth, by his delicate person and grave aspect, by
his majestic bearing and his eagerness to please and be pleased. He was
in mourning for his brother, but his mourning did not shadow Venice by
its gloom. “His Majesty appeared in public dressed all in purple (which
is his mourning) with a Flemish cloak, a cap on his head in the Italian
mode, with long veil and mantle reaching to his feet, slashed jerkin,
stockings and leather collar, and a large shirt-frill most becomingly
worn, with perfumed gloves in his hand, and wearing on his feet shoes
with heels _à la mode française_.”
It would be tedious to relate the details of the splendid
entertainments that each day were provided for his delectation; of
salutes that made the earth and water tremble, of fireworks glowing
all night beneath the windows of the Cà Foscari, of the blaze of light
from the candles set in every window and cornice and angle of the
buildings along the Grand Canal, of the gilded lilies and pyramids and
wheels reflected in the water, “so that the canal seemed like another
starry sky.” It was a veritable gala for Henry; he paid a private
visit to the Doge to the great satisfaction of that prince and his
senate, he went about _incognito_ in a gondola alone with the Duke of
Ferrara, “so that when they thought he was in his room, he was in some
other part of the city, returning home at an exceedingly late hour
accompanied by many torches, and immensely enjoying the liberty of this
town; and on account of his charm and courtesy, the whole place gave
vent to the lasting joy and satisfaction it felt in continually seeing
him.” He spent three hours in the Arsenal, engrossed in viewing the
vast preparation for war and the spoils won from the Turk “in the sea
battle on the day of the great victory”; and then in the chamber of the
Council of Ten, within the Arsenal, he was provided with a Sugar Feast,
with sugar dishes, knives and forks, so admirably counterfeit that His
Majesty only realised their nature when his sugar napkin crumbled and
a piece of it fell to the ground. Is there not something contributive
to our picture of Venice the entertainer, in this feast of sugar given
by the terrible Council of Ten within the walls of the Arsenal itself?
There is naturally much vague repetition in the chronicles of the time,
but here and there are vital touches which bring the young King to life
before our eyes. At the banquet given in his honour in the Sala del
Gran Consiglio, having eaten sufficiently himself, he brought the meal
to an end before half of the courses had appeared, by adroitly causing
the Dukes of Savoy and Ferrara to rise in their places at his side, and
calling for water for his hands during the disturbance caused by the
lords and ambassadors as they followed the example of the dukes. He
told Giovanni Michele that of all the entertainments he had witnessed
in Venice none had pleased him more than the “Guerra dei Ponti,” and
that if he had known of it earlier he would have prayed to have had
the spectacle repeated several times, for he “could have asked nothing
better than this.” The Guerra dei Ponti were wrestling matches that
took place on certain bridges over the canals, and pages of description
might not have told us as much of the nature of the man who lived
behind the scented gloves and purple mantle, as this single expression
of preference.
Two episodes in the visit of Henry that seem worthy of fuller record
stand out from the rest: his reception at the Lido and the Ball in
the Ducal Palace; and they represent the achievements in his honour
of two departments of Venetian activity, the City Guilds and the
Court. While he was still in his lodging at Murano barges of immense
splendour, vying with each other in symbolism and ingenuity of design,
and each representing one of the trades of Venice, had arrived to
accompany him to the Lido. If we imagine the Lord Mayor’s Procession,
with splendour a thousandfold enhanced and with drapery and design of
artistic excellence, removed from the streets to the glittering surface
of the lagoon, we may have some idea of the spectacle. Among the most
splendid of the barges was that of the Druggists, with an ensign of the
Saviour riding on the world. “The outer coverings themselves were of
cloth of gold, and below them and below the oars were painted canvases.
The poop was hung within with most beautiful carpets, and on the four
sides four pyramids were erected of sky blue with fireworks inside
them, at the feet of which were four stucco figures representing four
nymphs, and there were set two arquebuses and a musket and two flags
white and red and a flag of battle. And on the outside were divers
sorts of arms, spears and shields and six arquebuses. On the prow was
a pyramid with fireworks, on the top of which was an angel--for this
and the Golden Head were the badges of the two honoured druggists who
had decked the said vessel--and in the midst of it was a design of a
pelican with a motto round it in letters of gold, _Respice Domino_,
representing the pelican as wounding its breast to draw blood from it
to nourish its offspring, just as they, the druggists, faithful and
devoted to their prince and master, gave and offered to him, not only
their faculties but their blood itself, which is their own life in his
service; and at the foot of the pyramid was a little boy beating a
drum.” The Looking-Glass Makers also had prepared a magnificent barge
glittering with symbols of their profession. But perhaps the device of
the Glass-Workers of Murano out-rivalled all others in ingenuity and
pomp. “On two great barges, chained together and covered with painted
canvases, they had erected a furnace in the form of a sea-monster;
and following the train of vessels, flames were seen issuing from its
mouths, and, the masters having given their consent, the Glass-Workers
made most beautiful vases of crystal, which were cause of great
pleasure to the King.”