VENETIAN HOLIDAYS.
The national character of the Venetians was so largely influenced by the
display and dissipation of the frequent festivals of the Republic, that
it cannot be fairly estimated without taking them into consideration,
nor can the disuse of these holidays (of which I have heretofore spoken)
be appreciated in all its import, without particular allusion to their
number and nature. They formed part of the aristocratic polity of the
old commonwealth, which substituted popular indulgence for popular
liberty, and gave the people costly pleasures in return for the
priceless rights of which they had been robbed, set up national pride in
the place of patriotism, and was as well satisfied with a drunken joy in
its subjects as if they had possessed a true content.
Full notice of these holidays would be history [Footnote: “Siccome,”
says the editor of Giustina Renier-Michiel’s _Origine delle Feste
Veneziane_,--“Siccome l’illustre Autrice ha voluto applicare al suo
lavoro il modesto titolo di _Origins delle Feste Veneziane_, e siccome
questo potrebbe porgere un’ idea assai diversa dell’ opera a chi non ne
ha alcuna cognizione, da quello che è sostanzialmente, si espone questo
Epitome, perchè ognun regga almeno in parte, che quest’ opera sarebbe
del titolo di _storia_ condegna, giacchè essa non è che una costante
descrizione degli avvenimenti più importanti e luminosi della Repubblica
di Venezia.” The work in question is one of much research and small
philosophy, like most books which Venetians have written upon Venice;
but it has admirably served my purpose, and I am indebted to it for most
of the information contained in this chapter.] of Venice, for each one
had its origin in some great event of her existence, and they were so
numerous as to commemorate nearly every notable incident in her annals.
Though, as has been before observed, they had nearly all a general
religious character, the Church, as usual in Venice, only seemed to
direct the ceremonies in its own honor, while it really ministered
to the political glory of the oligarchy, which knew how to manage its
priests as well as its prince and people. Nay, it happened in one case,
at least, that a religious anniversary was selected by the Republic
as the day on which to put to shame before the populace certain of the
highest and reverendest dignitaries of the Church. In 1162, Ulrich, the
Patriarch of Aquileja, seized, by a treacherous stratagem, the city of
Grado, then subject to Venice. The Venetians immediately besieged and
took the city, with the patriarch and twelve of his canons in it, and
carried them prisoners to the lagoons. The turbulent patriarchs of
Aquileja had long been disturbers of the Republic’s dominion, and
the people now determined to make an end of these displeasures. They
refused, therefore, to release the patriarch, except on condition that
he should bind himself to send them annually a bull and twelve fat hogs.
It is not known what meaning the patriarch attached to this singular
ceremony; but with the Venetians the bull was typical of himself,
and the swine of his canons, and they yearly suffered death in these
animals, which were slaughtered during Shrovetide in the Piazza San
Marco amid a great concourse of the people, in the presence of the
Doge and Signory. The locksmiths, and other workers in iron, had
distinguished themselves in the recapture of Grado, and to their guild
was allotted the honor of putting to death the bull and swine. Great art
was shown in striking off the bull’s head at one blow, without suffering
the sword to touch the ground after passing through the animal’s neck;
the swine were slain with lances. Athletic games among the people
succeeded, and the Doge and his Senators attacked and destroyed, with
staves, several lightly built wooden castles, to symbolize the abasement
of the feudal power before the Republic. As the centuries advanced this
part of the ceremony, together with the slaughter of the swine, was
disused; in which fact Mr. Ruskin sees evidence of a corrupt disdain of
simple and healthy allegory on the part of the proud doges, but in which
I think most people will discern only a natural wish to discontinue in
more civilized times a puerile barbarity. Mr. Ruskin himself finds
no evidence of “state pride” in the abolition of the slaughter of the
swine. The festival was very popular, and continued a long time, though
I believe not till the fall of the Republic.
Another tribute, equally humiliating to those who paid it, was imposed
upon the Paduans for an insult offered to St. Mark, and gave occasion
for a national holiday, some fifty years after the Patriarch of Aquileja
began atonement for his outrage. In the year 1214, the citizens of
Treviso made an entertainment to which they invited the noble youth of
the surrounding cities. In the chief piazza of the town a castle of wood
exquisitely decorated was held against all comers by a garrison of the
fairest Trevisan damsels. The weapons of defense were flowers, fruits,
bonbons, and the bright eyes of the besieged; while the missiles of
attack were much the same, with whatever added virtue might lie in
tender prayers and sugared supplications. Padua, Vicenza, Bassano, and
Venice sent their gallantest youths, under their municipal banners, to
take part in this famous enterprise; and the attack was carried on by
the leagued forces with great vigor, but with no effect on the Castle
of Love, as it was called, till the Venetians made a breach at a weak
point. These young men were better skilled in the arts of war than their
allies; they were richer, and had come to Treviso decked in the spoils
of the recent sack of Constantinople, and at the moment they neared
the castle it is reported that they corrupted the besieged by throwing
handfuls of gold into the tower. Whether this be true or not, it is
certain that the conduct of the Venetians in some manner roused the
Paduans to insult, and that the hot youths came to blows. In an instant
the standard of St. Mark was thrown down and trampled under the feet of
the furious Paduans; blood flowed, and the indignant Trevisans drove the
combatants out of their city. The spark of war spreading to the rival
cities, the Paduans were soon worsted, and three hundred of their number
were made prisoners. These they would willingly have ransomed at any
price, but their enemies would not release them except on the payment of
two white pullets for each warrior. The shameful ransom was paid in the
Piazza, to the inextinguishable delight of the Venetians, who, never
wanting in sharp and biting wit, abandoned themselves to sarcastic
exultation. They demanded that the Paduans should, like the patriarch,
repeat the tribute annually; but the prudent Doge Ziani judged the
single humiliation sufficient, and refused to establish a yearly
celebration of the feast.
One of the most famous occasional festivals of Venice is described by
Petrarch in a Latin letter to his friend Pietro Bolognese. It was in
celebration of the reduction of the Greeks of Candia, an island which
in 1361 had recently been ceded to the Republic. The Candiotes rose in
general rebellion, but were so promptly subdued that the news of the
outbreak scarcely anticipated the announcement of its suppression in
Venice. Petrarch was at this time the guest of the Republic, and from
his seat at the right of the Doge on the gallery of St. Mark’s Church,
in front of the bronze horses, he witnessed the chivalric shows given
in the Piazza below, which was then unpaved, and admirably adapted for
equestrian feats of arms. It is curious to read the poet’s account of
these in a city where there is now no four-footed beast larger than a
dog. But in the age of chivalry even the Venetians were mounted, and
rode up and down their narrow streets, and jousted in their great
campos.
Speaking of twenty-four noble and handsome youths, whose feats formed
a chief part of a show of which he “does not know if in the whole world
there has been seen the equal,” Petrarch says: “It was a gentle sight
to see so many youths decked in purple and gold, as they ruled with
the rein and urged with the spur their coursers, moving in glittering
harness, with iron-shod feet which scarcely seemed to touch the ground.”
And it must have been a noble sight, indeed, to behold all this before
the “golden façade of the temple,” in a place so packed with spectators
“that a grain of barley could not have fallen to the ground. The great
piazza, the church itself, the towers, the roofs, the arcades, the
windows, all were--I will not say full, but running over, walled
and paved with people.” At the right of the church was built a great
platform, on which sat “four hundred honestest gentlewomen, chosen
from the flower of the nobility, and distinguished in their dress and
bearing, who, amid the continual homage offered them morning, noon, and
night, presented the image of a celestial congress.” Some noblemen, come
hither by chance, “from the part of Britain, comrades and kinsmen of
their King, were present,” and attracted the notice of the poet. The
feasts lasted many days, but on the third day Petrarch excused himself
to the Doge, pleading, he says, his “ordinary occupations, already known
to all.”
Among remoter feasts in honor of national triumphs, was one on the Day
of the Annunciation, commemorative of the removal of the capital of the
Venetian isles to Rialto from Malamocco, after King Pepin had burnt the
latter city, and when, advancing on Venice, he was met in the lagoons
and beaten by the islanders and the tides: these by their recession
stranding his boats in the mud, and those falling upon his helpless host
with the fury of an insulted and imperiled people. The Doge annually
assisted at mass in St. Mark’s in honor of the victory, but not long
afterward the celebration of it ceased, as did that of a precisely
similar defeat of the Hungarians, who had just descended from Asia into
Europe. In 1339 there were great rejoicings in the Piazza for the peace
with Mastino della Scala, who, beaten by the Republic, ceded his city of
Treviso to her.
Doubtless the most splendid of all the occasional festivals was that
held for the Venetian share of the great Christian victory at Lepanto
over the Turks. All orders of the State took part in it; but the most
remarkable feature of the celebration was the roofing of the Merceria,
all the way from St. Mark’s to Rialto, with fine blue cloth, studded
with golden stars to represent the firmament, as the shopkeepers
imagined it. The pictures of the famous painters of that day, Titian,
Tintoretto, Palma, and the rest, were exposed under this canopy, at the
end near Rialto. Later, the Venetian victories over the Turks at the
Dardanelles were celebrated by a regatta, in 1658; and Morosini’s
brilliant reconquest of the Morea, in 1688, was the occasion of other
magnificent shows.
The whole world has now adopted, with various modifications, the
picturesque and exciting pastime of the regatta, which, according to
Mutinelli, [Footnote: _Annali Urbani di Venezia_.] originated among the
lagoons at a very early period, from a peculiar feature in the military
discipline of the Republic. A target for practice with the bow and
cross-bow was set up every week on the beach at the Lido, and nobles and
plebeians rowed thither in barges of thirty oars, vying with each other
in the speed and skill with which the boats were driven. To divert
the popular discontent that followed the Serrar del Consiglio and the
suppression of Bajamonte Tiepolo’s conspiracy early in the fourteenth
century, the proficiency arising from this rivalry was turned to
account, and the spectacle of the regatta was instituted. Agreeably,
however, to the aristocratic spirit of the newly established oligarchy,
the patricians withdrew from the lists, and the regatta became the
affair exclusively of the gondoliers. In other Italian cities, where
horse and donkey races were the favorite amusement, the riders were of
both sexes; and now at Venice women also entered into the rivalry of the
regatta. But in gallant deference to their weakness, they were permitted
to begin the course at the mouth of the Grand Canal before the Doganna
di Mare, while the men were obliged to start from the Public Gardens.
They followed the Grand Canal to its opposite extremity, beyond the
present railway station, and there doubling a pole planted in the water
near the Ponte della Croce, returned to the common goal before the
Palazzo Foscari. Here was erected an ornate scaffolding to which the
different prizes were attached. The first boat carried off a red banner;
the next received a green flag; the third, a blue; and the fourth, a
yellow one. With each of these was given a purse, and with the last was
added, by way of gibe, a live pig, a picture of which was painted on the
yellow banner. Every regatta included five courses, in which single and
double oared boats, and single and double oared gondolas successively
competed,--the fifth contest being that in which the women participated
with two-oared boats. Four prizes like those described were awarded to
the winners in each course.
The regatta was celebrated with all the pomp which the superb city could
assume. As soon as the government announced that it was to take place,
the preparations of the champions began. “From that time the gondolier
ceased to be a servant; he became almost an adoptive son;” [Footnote:
_Feste Veneziane_.] his master giving him every possible assistance and
encouragement in the daily exercises by which he trained himself for the
contest, and his parish priest visiting him in his own house, to bless
his person, his boat, and the image of the Madonna or other saint
attached to the gondola. When the great day arrived the Canalazzo
swarmed with boats of every kind. “All the trades and callings,” says
Giustina Renier-Michiel, [Footnote: _Feste Veneziane_] with that pride
in the Venetian past which does not always pass from verbosity to
eloquence, “had each its boats appropriately mounted and adorned; and
private societies filled an hundred more. The chief families among the
nobility appeared in their boats, on which they had lavished their taste
and wealth.” The rowers were dressed with the most profuse and
elaborate luxury, and the barges were made to represent historical and
mythological conceptions. “To this end the builders employed carving and
sculpture, together with all manner of costly stuffs of silk and velvet,
gorgeous fringes and tassels of silver and gold, flowers, fruits,
shrubs, mirrors, furs, and plumage of rare birds.... Young patricians,
in fleet and narrow craft, propelled by swift rowers, preceded the
champions and cleared the way for them, obliging the spectators to
withdraw on either side.... They knelt on sumptuous cushions in the
prows of their gondolas, cross-bow in hand, and launched little pellets
of plaster at the directors of such obstinate boats as failed to obey
their orders to retire....
“To augment the brilliancy of the regatta the nature of the place
concurred. Let us imagine that superb canal, flanked on either side by
a long line of edifices of every sort; with great numbers of marble
palaces,--nearly all of noble and majestic structure, some admirable
for an antique and Gothic taste, some for the richest Greek and Roman
architecture,--their windows and balconies decked with damasks, stuffs
of the Levant, tapestries, and velvets, the vivid colors of which were
animated still more by borders and fringes of gold, and on which leaned
beautiful women richly dressed and wearing tremulous and glittering
jewels in their hair. Wherever the eye turned, it beheld a vast
multitude at doorways, on the rivas, and even on the roofs. Some of the
spectators occupied scaffoldings erected at favorable points along the
sides of the canal; and the patrician ladies did not disdain to leave
their palaces, and, entering their gondolas, lose themselves among the
infinite number of the boats....
“The cannons give the signal of departure. The boats dart over the
water with the rapidity of lightning.... They advance and fall behind
alternately. One champion who seems to yield the way to a rival suddenly
leaves him in the rear. The shouts of his friends and kinsmen hail his
advantage, while others already passing him, force him to redouble his
efforts. Some weaker ones succumb midway, exhausted.... They withdraw,
and the kindly Venetian populace will not aggravate their shame with
jeers; the spectators glance at them compassionately, and turn again to
those still in the lists. Here and there they encourage them by
waving handkerchiefs, and the women toss their shawls in the air. Each
patrician following close upon his gondolier’s boat, incites him with
his voice, salutes him by name, and flatters his pride and spirit....
The water foams under the repeated strokes of the oars; it leaps up in
spray and falls in showers on the backs of the rowers already dripping
with their own sweat.... At last behold the dauntless mortal who seizes
the red banner! His rival had almost clutched it, but one mighty stroke
of the oar gave him the victory.... The air reverberates with a clapping
of hands so loud that at the remotest point on the canal the moment of
triumph is known. The victors plant on their agile boat the conquered
flag, and instead of thinking to rest their weary arms, take up the oars
again and retrace their course to receive congratulations and applause.”
The regattas were by no means of frequent occurrence, for only forty-one
took place during some five centuries. The first was given in 1315,
and the last in 1857, in honor of the luckless Archduke Maximilian’s
marriage with Princess Charlotte of Belgium. The most sumptuous and
magnificent regatta of all was that given to the city in the year 1686,
by Duke Ernest of Brunswick. This excellent prince having sold a great
part of his subjects to the Republic for use in its wars against
the Turk, generously spent their price in the costly and edifying
entertainments of which Venice had already become the scene. The
Judgment of Paris, and the Triumph of the Marine Goddesses had been
represented at his expense on the Grand Canal, with great acceptance.
And now the Triumph of Neptune formed a principal feature in the
gayeties of his regatta. Nearly the whole of the salt-water mythology
was employed in the ceremony. An immense wooden whale supporting a
structure of dolphins and Tritons, surmounted by a statue of Neptune,
and drawn by sea-horses, moved from the Piazzetta to the Palazzo
Foscari, where numbers of Sirens sported about in every direction till
the Regatta began. The whole company of the deities, very splendidly
arrayed, then joined them as spectators, and behaved in the manner
affected by gods and goddesses on these occasions. Mutinelli [Footnote:
_Annali Urbani._] recounts the story with many sighs and sneers and
great exactness; but it is not interesting. The miraculous recovery of
the body of St. Mark, in 1094, after it had been lost for nearly two
centuries, created a festive anniversary which was celebrated for a
while with great religious pomp; but the rejoicings were not separately
continued in after years. The festival was consolidated (if one may
so speak) with two others in honor of the same saint, and the triple
occasions were commemorated by a single holiday. The holidays annually
distinguished by civil or ecclesiastical displays were twenty-five in
number, of which only eleven were of religious origin, though all were
of partly religious observance. One of the most curious and interesting
of the former was of the earliest date, and was continued till the last
years of the Republic. In 596 Narses, the general of the Greek Emperor,
was furnished by the Venetians with means of transport by sea from
Aquileja to Ravenna for the army which he was leading against the
Ostrogoths; and he made a vow that if successful in his campaign, he
would requite their generosity by erecting two churches in Venice.
Accordingly, when he had beaten the Ostrogoths, he caused two votive
churches to be built,--one to St. Theodore, on the site of the present
St. Mark’s Church, and another to San Geminiano, on the opposite bank
of the canal which then flowed there. In lapse of time the citizens,
desiring to enlarge their Piazza, removed the church of San Geminiano
back as far as the present Fabbrica Nuova, which Napoleon built on the
site of the demolished temple, between the western ends of the New and
Old Procuratie. The removal was effected without the pope’s leave, which
had been asked, but was refused in these words,--“The Holy Father
cannot sanction the commission of a sacrilege, though he can pardon
it afterwards.” The pontiff, therefore, imposed on the Venetians for
penance that the Doge should pay an annual visit forever to the church.
On the occasion of this visit the parish priest met him at the door,
and offered the holy water to him; and then the Doge, having assisted
at mass, marched with his Signory and the clergy of the church to its
original site, where the clergy demanded that it should be rebuilt, and
the Doge replied with the promise,--“Next year.” A red stone was set
in the pavement to mark the spot where the Doge renewed this
never-fulfilled promise. [Footnote: As the author of the _Feste
Veneziane_ tells this story it is less dramatic and characteristic. The
clergy, she says, reminded the Doge of the occasion of his visit, and
his obligation to renew it the following year, which he promised to do.
I cling to the version in the text, for it seems to me that the Doge’s
perpetual promise to rebuild the church was a return in kind for the
pope’s astute answer to the petition asking him to allow its removal. So
good a thing ought to be history.] The old church was destroyed by fire,
and Sansovino built, in 1506, the temple thrown down by Napoleon to make
room for his palace.
The 31st of January, on which day in 828 the body of St. Mark was
brought from Alexandria to Venice, is still observed, though the
festival has lost all the splendor which it received from civil
intervention. For a thousand years the day was hallowed by a solemn mass
in St. Mark’s, at which the Doge and his Signory assisted.
The chief of the State annually paid a number of festive visits, which
were made the occasion of as many holidays. To the convent of San
Zaccaria he went in commemoration of the visit paid to that retreat by
Pope Benedict III., in 855, when the pontiff was so charmed by the piety
and goodness of the fair nuns, that, after his return to Rome, he sent
them great store of relics and indulgences. It thus became one of the
most popular of the holidays, and the people repaired in great multitude
with their Doge to the convent, on each recurrence of the day, that
they might see the relics and buy the indulgences. The nuns were of the
richest and noblest families of the city, and on the Doge’s first visit,
they presented him with that bonnet which became the symbol of his
sovereignty. It was wrought of pure gold, and set with precious stones
of marvelous great beauty and value; and in order that the State might
never seem forgetful of the munificence which bestowed the gift, the
bonnet was annually taken from the treasury and shown by the Doge
himself to the Sisters of San Zaccaria. The Doge Pietro Tradonico,
to whom the bonnet was given, was killed in a popular tumult on this
holiday, while going to the convent.
There was likewise a vast concourse of people and traffic in indulgences
at the church of Santa Maria della Carita (now the Academy of Fine
Arts), on the anniversary of the day when Pope Alexander III., in 1177,
flying from the Emperor Barbarossa, found refuge in that monastery.
[Footnote: Selvatico and Lazari in their admirable _Guida Artistica e
Storica di Veneza_, say that the pope merely lodged in the monastery on
the day when he signed the treaty of peace with Barbarossa.] He bestowed
great privileges upon it, and the Venetians honored the event to the end
of their national existence.
One of the rare occasions during the year when the Doge appeared
officially in public after nightfall, was on St. Stephen’s Day. He then
repaired at dusk in his gilded barge, with splendid attendance of nobles
and citizens, to the island church of San Giorgio Maggiore, whither, in
1009, the body of St. Stephen was brought from Constantinople. On the
first of May the Doge visited the Convent of the Virgins, (the convent
building now forms part of the Arsenal,) where the abbess presented
him with a bouquet, and graceful and pleasing ceremonies took place in
commemoration of the erection and endowment of the church. The head of
the State also annually assisted at mass in St. Mark’s, to celebrate the
arrival in Venice of St. Isidore’s body, which the Doge Domenico Michiel
brought with him from the East, at the end of twenty-six years’ war
against the infidels; and, finally, after the year 1485, when the
Venetians stole the bones of San Rocco from the Milanese, and deposited
them in the newly finished Scuola di San Rocco, a ducal visit was
annually paid to that edifice.
Two only of the national religious festivals yet survive the
Republic,--that of the church of the Redentore on the Giudecca, and that
of the church of the Salute on the Grand Canal,--both votive churches,
built in commemoration of the city’s deliverances from the pest in 1578
and 1630. In their general features the celebrations of the two holidays
are much alike; but that of the Salute is the less important of the two,
and is more entirely religious in its character. A bridge of boats
is annually thrown across the Canalazzo, and on the day of the
Purification, the people throng to the Virgin’s shrine to express their
gratitude for her favor. This gratitude was so strong immediately after
the cessation of the pest in 1630, that the Senate, while the architects
were preparing their designs for the present church, caused a wooden
one to be built on its site, and consecrated with ceremonies of singular
splendor. On the Festa del Redentore (the third Sunday of July) a bridge
of boats crosses the great canal of the Giudecca, and vast throngs
constantly pass it, day and night. But though the small tradesmen who
deal in fried cakes, and in apples, peaches, pears, and other fruits,
make intolerable uproar behind their booths on the long quay before the
church; though the venders of mulberries (for which the gardens of the
Giudecca are famous) fill the air with their sweet jargoning (for
their cries are like the shrill notes of so many singing-birds); though
thousands of people pace up and down, and come and go upon the bridge,
yet the Festa del Redentore has now none of the old-time gayety it wore
when the Venetians thronged the gardens, and feasted, sang, danced,
and flirted the night away, and at dawn went in their fleets of
many-lanterned boats, covering the lagoon with fairy light, to behold
the sunrise on the Adriatic Sea.
Besides the religious festivals mentioned, there were five banquets
annually given by the State on the several days of St. Mark, St. Vitus,
St. Jerome, and St. Stephen, and the Day of the Ascension, all of which
were attended with religious observances. Good Friday was especially
hallowed by church processions in each of the campos; and St. Martha’s
Day was occasion for junketings on the Giudecca Canal, when a favorite
fish, being in season, was devotionally eaten.
The civil and political holidays which lasted till the fall of the
Republic were eleven. One of the earliest was the anniversary of
the recapture of the Venetian Brides, who were snatched from their
bridegrooms, at the altar of San Pietro di Castello, by Triestine
pirates. The class of citizens most distinguished in the punishment
of the abductors was the trade of carpenters, who lived chiefly in the
parish of Santa Maria Formosa; and when the Doge in his gratitude bade
them demand any reasonable grace, the trade asked that he should pay
their quarter an annual visit. “But if it rains?” said the Doge. “We
will give you a hat to cover you,” answered the carpenters. “And if I am
hungry?” “We will give you to eat and drink.” So when the Doge made his
visit on the day of the Virgin’s Purification, he was given a hat of
gilded straw, a bottle of wine, and loaves of bread. On this occasion
the State bestowed dowers upon twelve young girls among the fairest and
best of Venice (chosen two from each of the six sections of the city),
who marched in procession to the church of Santa Maria Formosa. But as
time passed, the custom lost its simplicity and purity: pretty girls
were said to make eyes at handsome youths in the crowd, and scandals
occurred in public. Twelve wooden figures were then substituted, but the
procession in which they were carried was followed by a disgusted
and hooting populace, and assailed with a shower of turnips.
The festivities, which used to last eight days, with incredible
magnificence, fell into discredit, and were finally abolished during the
war when the Genoese took Chioggia and threatened Venice, under Doria.
This was the famous Festa delle Marie.
In 997 the Venetians beat the Narentines at sea, and annexed all Istria,
as far as Dalmatia, to the Republic. On the day of the Ascension, of
the same year, the Doge, for the first time, celebrated the dominion of
Venice over the Adriatic, though it was not till some two hundred years
later that the Pope Alexander III. blessed the famous espousals, and
confirmed the Republic in the possession of the sea forever. “What,”
cries Giustina Renier-Michiel, turning to speak of the holiday
thus established, and destined to be the proudest in the Venetian
calendar,--“what shall I say of the greatest of all our solemnities,
that of the Ascension? Alas! I myself saw Frenchmen and Venetians, full
of derision and insult, combine to dismantle the Bucintoro and burn it
for the gold upon it!” [Footnote: That which follows is a translation
of the report given by Cesare Cantù, in his _Grande Illustrazione
del Lombardo-Veneto_, of a conversation with the author of _Feste
Veneziane_. It is not necessary to remind readers of Venetian history
that Renier and Michiel were of the foremost names in the Golden Book.
She who bore them both was born before the fall of the Republic which
she so much loved and lamented, and no doubt felt more than the grief
she expresses for the fate of the last Bucintoro. It was destroyed, as
she describes, in 1796, by the French Republicans and Venetian Democrats
after the abdication of the oligarchy; but a fragment of its mast yet
remains, and is to be seen in the museum of the Arsenal.].... (This
was the nuptial-ship in which the Doge went to wed the sea, and the
patriotic lady tells us concerning the Bucintoro of her day): “It was
in the form of a galley, and two hundred feet long, with two decks.
The first of these was occupied by an hundred and sixty rowers, the
handsomest and strongest of the fleet, who sat four men to each oar, and
there awaited their orders; forty other sailors completed the crew. The
upper deck was divided lengthwise by a partition, pierced with arched
doorways, ornamented with gilded figures, and covered with a roof
supported by caryatides--the whole surmounted by a canopy of crimson
velvet embroidered with gold. Under this were ninety seats, and at the
stern a still richer chamber for the Doge’s throne, over which drooped
the banner of St. Mark. The prow was double-beaked, and the sides of
the vessel were enriched with figures of Justice, Peace, Sea, Land, and
other allegories and ornaments.
“Let me imagine those times--it is the habit of the old. At midday,
having heard mass in the chapel of the Collegio, the Doge descends the
Giant’s Stairs, issues from the Porta della Carta, [Footnote: The gate
of the Ducal Palace which opens upon the Piazzetta next St. Mark’s.] and
passes the booths of the mercers and glass-venders erected for the fair
beginning that evening. He is preceded by eight standard-bearers with
the flags of the Republic,--red, blue, white, and purple,--given by
Alexander III. to the Doge Ziani. Six trumpets of silver, borne by as
many boys, mix their notes with the clangor of the bells of the city.
Behind come the retinues of the ambassadors in sumptuous liveries, and
the fifty Comandadori in their flowing blue robes and red caps; then
follow musicians, and the squires of the Doge in black velvet; then the
guards of the Doge, two chancellors, the secretary of the Pregadi, a
deacon clad in purple and bearing a wax taper, six canons, three parish
priests in their sacerdotal robes, and the Doge’s chaplain dressed
in crimson. The grand chancellor is known by his crimson vesture. Two
squires bear the Doge’s chair and the cushion of cloth of gold. And
the Doge--the representative, and not the master of his country; the
executor, and not the maker of the laws; citizen and prince, revered and
guarded, sovereign of individuals, servant of the State--comes clad in
a long mantle of ermine, cassock of blue, and vest and hose of _tocca
d’oro_ [Footnote: A gauze of gold and silk.] with the golden bonnet on
his head, under the umbrella borne by a squire, and surrounded by the
foreign ambassadors and the papal nuncio, while his drawn sword is
carried by a patrician recently destined for some government of land or
sea, and soon to depart upon his mission. In the rear comes a throng of
personages,--the grand captain of the city, the judges, the three chiefs
of the Forty, the Avogodori, the three chiefs of the Council of Ten,
the three censors, and the sixty of the Senate with the sixty of the
Aggiunta, all in robes of crimson silk.
“On the Bucintoro, each takes the post assigned him, and the prince
ascends the throne. The Admiral of the Arsenal and the Lido stands in
front as pilot; at the helm is the Admiral of Malamacco, and around him
the ship-carpenters of the Arsenal. The Bucintoro, amid redoubled clamor
of bells and roar of cannon, quits the riva and majestically plows the
lagoon, surrounded by innumerable boats of every form and size.
“The Patriarch, who had already sent several vases of flowers to do
courtesy to the company in the Bucintoro, joins them at the island of
Sant’ Elena, and sprinkles their course with holy water. So they reach
the port of Lido, whence they formerly issued out upon the open sea;
but in my time they paused there, turning the stern of the vessel to the
sea. Then the Doge, amid the thunders of the artillery of the fort, took
the ring blessed by the Patriarch,--who now emptied a cup of holy water
into the sea,--and, advancing into a little gallery behind his throne,
threw the ring into the waves, pronouncing the words, _Desponsamus te,
mare, in signum veri perpetuique dominii_. Proceeding then to the
church of San Nicoletto, they listened to a solemn mass, and returned to
Venice, where the dignitaries were entertained at a banquet, while
the multitude peacefully dispersed among the labyrinths of the booths
erected for the fair.” [Footnote: One of the sops thrown to the populace
on this occasion, as we learn from Mutinelli, was the admission to the
train of gilded barges following the Bucintoro of a boat bearing
the chief of the Nicolotti, one of the factions into which from time
immemorial the lower classes of Venice had been divided. The distinction
between the two parties seems to have been purely geographical; for
there is no apparent reason why a man should have belonged to the
Castellani except that he lived in the eastern quarter of the city,
or to the Nicolotti, except that he lived in the western quarter. The
government encouraged a rivalry not dangerous to itself, and for a long
time the champions of the two sections met annually and beat each other
with rods. The form of contest was afterwards modified, and became a
struggle for the possession of certain bridges, in which the defeated
were merely thrown into the canals. I often passed the scene of the
fiercest of these curious battles at San Barnaba, where the Ponte de
Pugni is adorned with four feet of stone let into the pavement, and
defying each other from the four corners of the bridge. Finally, even
these contests were given up and the Castellani and Nicolotti spent
their rivalry in marvelous acrobatic feats.] This fair, which was
established as early as 1180, was an industrial exhibition of the
arts and trades peculiar to Venice, and was repeated annually, with
increasing ostentation, till the end, in 1796. Indeed, the feasts of the
Republic at last grew so numerous that it became necessary, as we have
seen before, to make a single holiday pay a double or triple debt of
rejoicing. When the Venetians recovered Chioggia after the terrible war
of 1380, the Senate refused to yield them another _festa_, and merely
ordered that St. Mark’s Day should be thereafter observed with some
added ceremony: there was already one festival commemorative of a
triumph over the Genoese (that of San Giovanni Decollate, on whose day,
in 1358, the Venetians beat the Genoese at Negroponte), and the Senate
declared that this was sufficient. A curious custom, however, on the
Sunday after Ascension, celebrated a remoter victory over the same
enemies, to which it is hard to attach any historic probability. It
is not known exactly when the Genoese in immense force penetrated to
Poveglia (one of the small islands of the lagoons), nor why being there
they stopped to ask the islanders the best way of getting to Venice.
But tradition says that the sly Povegliesi persuaded these silly Genoese
that the best method of navigating the lagoons was by means of rafts,
which they constructed for them, and on which they sent them afloat.
About the time the Venetians came out to meet the armada, the withes
binding the members of the rafts gave way, and the Genoese who were not
drowned in the tides stuck in the mud, and were cut in pieces like so
many melons. No one will be surprised to learn that not a soul of them
escaped, and that only the Povegliesi lived to tell the tale. Special
and considerable privileges were conferred on them for their part in
this exploit, and were annually confirmed by the Doge, when a deputation
of the islanders called on him in his palace, and hugged and kissed the
devoted prince.
People who _will_ sentimentalize over the pigeons of St. Mark’s, may
like to know that they have been settled in the city ever since 877.
After the religious services on Palm Sunday, it was anciently the custom
of the sacristans of St. Mark’s to release doves fettered with fragments
of paper, and thus partly disabled from flight, for the people to
scramble for in the Piazza. The people fatted such of the birds as they
caught, and ate them at Easter, but those pigeons which escaped took
refuge in the roof of the church, where they gradually assumed a certain
sacredness of character, and increased to enormous numbers. They were
fed by provision of the Republic, and being neglected at the time of its
fall, many of them were starved. But they now flourish on a bequest left
by a pious lady for their maintenance, and on the largess of grain
and polenta constantly bestowed by strangers. Besides the holidays
mentioned, the 6th of December was religiously observed in honor of the
taking of Constantinople, the Doge assisting at mass in the ducal chapel
of St. Nicholas. He also annually visited, with his Signory in the state
barges, and with great concourse of people, the church of San Vito
on the 15th of June, in memory of the change of the government from a
democracy to an oligarchy, and of the suppression of Bajamonte Tiepolo’s
conspiracy. On St. Isidore’s Day he went with his Signory, and the
religious confraternities, in torchlight procession, to hear mass at St.
Mark’s in celebration of the failure of Marin Falier’s plot. On the 17th
of January he visited by water the hospital erected for invalid soldiers
and sailors, and thus commemorated the famous defence of Scutari
against the Turks, in 1413. For the peace of 1516, concluded after the
dissolution of the League of Cambray, he went in his barge to the
church of Santa Marina, who had potently exerted her influence for the
preservation of the Republic against allied France, Austria, Spain, and
Rome. On St. Jerome’s Day, when the newly-elected members of the Council
of Ten took their seats, the Doge entertained them with a banquet, and
there were great popular rejoicings over an affair in which the people
had no interest.
It is by a singular caprice of fortune that, while not only all the
Venetian holidays in anywise connected with the glory of the Republic,
but also those which peculiarly signalized her piety and gratitude, have
ceased to be, a festival common to the whole Catholic world should still
be observed in Venice with extraordinary display. On the day of Corpus
Christi there is a superb ecclesiastical procession in the Piazza.
The great splendor of the solemnization is said to date from the times
when Enrico Dandolo and his fellow-Crusaders so far forgot their purpose
of taking Palestine from the infidels as to take Constantinople from the
schismatics. Up to that period the day of Corpus Christi was honored by
a procession from what was then the Cathedral of San Pietro di Castello;
but now all the thirty parishes of the city, with their hundred
churches, have part in the procession, which is of such great length as
to take some two hours in its progress round the Piazza.
Several days before the holiday workmen begin to build, within the Place
of St. Mark, the colonnade through which the procession is to pass; they
roof it with blue cotton cloth, and adorn it with rolls of pasteboard
representing garlands of palm. At last, on the festive morning,
the dwellers on the Grand Canal are drawn to their balconies by the
apparition of boat-loads of facchini, gorgeous in scarlet robes,
and bearing banners, painted candles, and other movable elements of
devotion, with which they pass to the Piazzetta, and thence into St.
Mark’s. They re-appear presently, and, with a guard of Austrian troops
to clear the way before them, begin their march under the canopy of the
colonnade.
When you have seen the Place of St. Mark by night your eye has tasted
its most delicate delight, but then it is the delight given by a
memory only, and it touches you with sadness. You must see the Piazza
to-day,--every window fluttering with rich stuffs and vivid colors; the
three great flag staffs [Footnote: Once bearing the standards of Cyprus,
Candia, and Venice.] hanging their heavy flags; the brilliant square
alive with a holiday population, with resplendent uniforms, with Italian
gesture and movement, and that long glittering procession, bearing
slowly on the august paraphernalia of the Church--you must see all this
before you can enter into the old heart of Venetian magnificence, and
feel its life about you.
To-day, the ancient church of San Pietro di Castello comes first in the
procession, and, with a proud humility, the Basilica San Marco last.
Before each parochial division goes a banner displaying the picture
or distinctive device of its titular saint, under the shadow of which
chants a priest; there are the hosts of the different churches, and
the gorgeous canopies under which they are elevated; then come facchini
dressed in scarlet and bearing the painted candles, or the long
carved and gilded candlesticks; and again facchini delicately robed
in vestments of the purest white linen, with caps of azure, green, and
purple, and shod with sandals or white shoes, carrying other apparatus
of worship. Each banner and candlestick has a fluttering leaf of tinsel
paper attached to it, and the procession makes a soft rustling as
it passes. The matter-of-fact character of the external Church walks
between those symbolists, the candle-bearers,--in the form of persons
who gather the dropping fatness of the candles, and deposit it in a vase
carried for that purpose. Citizens march in the procession with candles;
and there are charity-schools which also take part, and sing in the
harsh, shrill manner, of which I think only little boys who have their
heads closely shorn are capable.
On all this we looked down from a window of the Old Procuratie--of
course with that calm sense of superiority which people are apt to have
in regarding the solemnities of a religion different from their own.
But that did not altogether prevent us from enjoying what was really
beautiful and charming in the scene. I thought most of the priests, very
good and gentle looking,--and in all respects they were much pleasanter
to the eye than the monks of the Carmelite order, who, in shaving their
heads to simulate the Saviour’s crown of thorns, produce a hideous
burlesque of the divine humiliation. Yet many even of these had earnest
and sincere faces, and I could not think so much as I ought, perhaps, of
their idle life, and the fleas in their coarse brown cloaks. I confess,
indeed, I felt rather a sadness than an indignation at all that
self-sacrifice to an end of which I could but dimly see the usefulness.
With some things in this grand spectacle we were wholly charmed, and
doubtless had most delight in the little child who personated John the
Baptist, and who was quite naked, but for a fleece folded about him: he
bore the cross-headed staff in one small hand, and led with the other
a lamb much tied up with blue ribbon. Here and there in the procession
little girls, exquisitely dressed, and gifted by fond mothers with wings
and aureoles, walked, scattering flowers. I likewise greatly relished
the lively holiday air of a company of airy old men, the pensioners of
some charity, who, in their white linen trousers and blue coats, formed
a prominent feature of the display. Far from being puffed up with their
consequence, they gossiped cheerfully with the spectators in the pauses
of the march, and made jests to each other in that light-hearted,
careless way observable in old men taken care of, and with nothing
before them to do worth speaking of but to die. I must own that the
honest facchini who bore the candles were equally affable, and even
freer with their jokes. But in this they formed a fine contrast to here
and there a closely hooded devotee, who, with hidden face and silent
lips, was carrying a taper for religion, and not, like them, for money.
I liked the great good-natured crowd, so orderly and amiable; and I
enjoyed even that old citizen in the procession who, when the Patriarch
gave his blessing, found it inconvenient to kneel, and compromised by
stretching one leg a great way out behind him. These things, indeed,
quite took my mind off of the splendors; and I let the canopy of the
Scuola di San Rocco (worth 40,000 ducats) go by with scarce a glance,
and did not bestow much more attention upon the brilliant liveries of
the Patriarch’s servants,--though the appearance of these ecclesiastical
flunkies is far more impressive than that of any of their secular
brethren. They went gorgeously before the Patriarch, who was surrounded
by the richly dressed clergy of St. Mark’s, and by clouds of incense
rising from the smoking censers. He walked under the canopy in his
cardinal’s robes, and with his eye fixed upon the Host.
All at once the procession halted, and the Patriarch blessed the crowd,
which knelt in a profound silence. Then the military band before him
struck up an air from “Un Ballo in Maschera;” the procession moved on to
the cathedral, and the crowd melted away.
The once-magnificent day of the Ascension the Venetians now honor by
closing all shop-doors behind them and putting all thought of labor
out of their minds, and going forth to enjoy themselves in the mild,
inexplosive fashion which seems to satisfy Italian nature. It is the
same on all the feast-days: then the city sinks into profounder quiet;
only bells are noisy, and where their clangor is so common as in
Venice, it seems at last to make friends with the general stillness, and
disturbs none but people of untranquil minds. We always go to the Piazza
San Marco when we seek pleasure, and now, for eight days only of all the
year, we have there the great spectacle of the Adoration of the Magi,
performed every hour by automata within the little golden-railed gallery
on the facade of the Giant’s Clock Tower. There the Virgin sits above
the azure circle of the zodiac, all heavily gilded, and holding the
Child, equally splendid. Through the doors on either side, usually
occupied by the illuminated figures of the hours, appears the procession
and disappears. The stately giant on the summit of the tower, at the
hither side of the great bell, solemnly strikes the hour--as a giant
should who has struck it for centuries--with a grand, whole-arm
movement, and a slow, muscular pride. We look up--we tourists of the
red-backed books; we peasant-girls radiant with converging darts of
silver piercing the masses of our thick black hair; we Austrian soldiers
in white coats and blue tights; we voiceful sellers of the cherries
of Padua, and we calm loafers about the many-pillared base of the
church--we look up and see the Adoration. First, the trumpeter, blowing
the world news of the act; then the first king, turning softly to the
Virgin, and bowing; then the second, that enthusiastic devotee,--the
second who lifts his crown quite from his head; last the Ethiopian
prince, gorgeous in green and gold, who, I am sorry to say, burlesques
the whole solemnity. His devotion may be equally heart-felt, but it is
more jerky than that of the others. He bows well and adequately, but
recovers his balance with a prodigious start, altogether too suggestive
of springs and wheels. Perhaps there is a touch of the pathetic in this
grotesque fatality of the black king, whose suffering race has always
held mankind between laughter and tears, and has seldom done a fine
thing without leaving somewhere the neutralizing absurdity; but if
there is, the sentimental may find it, not I. When the procession has
disappeared, we wait till the other giant has struck the hour, and then
we disperse.
If it is six o’clock, and the sea has begun to breathe cool across the
Basin of St. Mark, we find our account in strolling upon the long Riva
degli Schiavoni towards the Public Gardens. One would suppose, at first
thought, that here, on this magnificent quay, with its glorious lookout
over the lagoons, the patricians would have built their finest palaces;
whereas there is hardly any thing but architectural shabbiness from the
Ponte della Paglia at one end, to the Ponte Santa Marina at the other.
But there need be nothing surprising in the fact, after all. The feudal
wealth and nobility of other cities kept the base at a respectful
distance by means of lofty stone walls, and so shut in their palaces and
gardens. Here equal seclusion could only be achieved by building flush
upon the water, and therefore all the finest palaces rise sheer from
the canals; and caffè, shops, barracks, and puppet-shows occupy the
Riva degli Schiavoni. Nevertheless, it is the favorite promenade of the
Venetians for the winter sunshine, and at such times in the summer as
when the sun’s rage is tempered. There is always variety in the throng
on the Riva, but the fashionable part of it is the least interesting:
here and there a magnificent Greek flashes through the crowd, in
dazzling white petticoats and gold-embroidered leggings and jacket;
now and then a tall Dalmat or a solemn Turk; even the fishermen and
the peasants, and the lower orders of the people, are picturesque; but
polite Venice is hopelessly given to the pride of the eyes, and commits
all the excesses of the French modes. The Venetian dandy, when dressed
to his own satisfaction, is the worst-dressed man in the world. His
hat curls outrageously in brim and sides; his coatsleeves are extremely
full, and the garment pinches him at the waist; his pantaloons flow
forth from the hips, and contract narrowly at the boot, which is
square-toed and made too long. The whole effect is something not to
be seen elsewhere, and is well calculated to move the beholder to
desperation. [Footnote: These exaggerations of the fashions of 1862 have
been succeeded by equal travesties of the present modes.] The Venetian
fine lady, also, is prone to be superfine. Her dress is as full of color
as a Paolo Veronese; in these narrow streets, where it is hard to expand
an umbrella, she exaggerates hoops to the utmost; and she fatally hides
her ankles in pantalets.
In the wide thoroughfare leading from the last bridge of the Riva to the
gate of the gardens there is always a clapping of wooden shoes on the
stones, a braying of hand-organs, a shrieking of people who sell fish
and fruit, at once insufferable and indescribable. The street is a _rio
terrà_,--a filled-up canal,--and, as always happens with _rii terrai_,
is abandoned to the poorest classes who manifest themselves, as the
poorest classes are apt to do always, in groups of frowzy women, small
girls carrying large babies, beggars, of course, and soldiers. I spoke
of fruit-sellers; but in this quarter the traffic in pumpkin-seeds is
the most popular,--the people finding these an inexpensive and pleasant
excess, when taken with a glass of water flavored with anise.
The Gardens were made by Napoleon, who demolished to that end some
monasteries once cumbering the ground. They are pleasant enough, and
are not gardens at all, but a park of formally-planted trees--sycamores,
chiefly. I do not remember to have seen here any Venetians of the better
class, except on the Mondays-of-the-Garden, in September. Usually the
promenaders are fishermen, Austrian corporals, loutish youth of
low degree, and women too old and too poor to have any thing to do.
Strangers go there, and the German visitors even drink the exceptionable
beer which is sold in the wooden cottage on the little hillock at the
end of the Gardens. There is also a stable--where are the only horses
in Venice. They are let at a florin an hour, and I do not know why the
riders are always persons of the Hebrew faith. In a word, nothing can be
drearier than the company in the Gardens, and nothing lovelier than the
view they command,--from the sunset on the dome of the church of the
Salute, all round the broad sweep of lagoon, to the tower at the port of
San Nicolò, where you catch a glimpse of the Adriatic.
The company is commonly stupid, but one evening, as we strolled idly
through the walks, we came upon an interesting group--forty or fifty
sailors, soldiers, youth of the people, gray-haired fishermen and
contadini--sitting and lying on the grass, and listening with rapt
attention to an old man reclining against a tree. I never saw a manner
of sweeter or easier dignity than the speaker’s. Nature is so lavish of
her grace to these people that grow near her heart--the sun! Infinite
study could not have taught one northern-born the charm of oratory as
this old man displayed it. I listened, and heard that he was speaking
Tuscan. Do you guess with what he was enchanting his simple auditors?
Nothing less than “Orlando Furioso.” They listened with the hungriest
delight, and when Ariosto’s interpreter raised his finger and said,
“Disse l’imperatore,” or, “Orlando disse, Carlomano mio,” they hardly
breathed.
On the _Lunedì dei Giardini_, already mentioned, all orders of the
people flock thither, and promenade, and banquet on the grass. The trees
get back the voices of their dryads, and the children fill the aisles
with glancing movement and graceful sport.
Of course, the hand-organ seeks here its proper element, the
populace,--but here it brays to a peculiarly beautiful purpose. For
no sooner does it sound than the young girls of the people wreathe
themselves into dances, and improvise the poetry of motion. Over the
grass they whirl, and up and down the broad avenues, and no one of all
the gentle and peaceable crowd molests or makes them afraid. It is a
scene to make you believe in Miriam dancing with Donatello there in that
old garden at Rome, and reveals a simple beauty in the nature of the
Italian poor, which shall one day, I hope, be counted in their favor
when they are called to answer for lying and swindling.