everything for the best!)
The existing picture proves that Veronese paid no attention to the
recommendations of the Court, for I find that it contains every figure
referred to.
After this brief review of the more serious offices of the Republic, I
pass on to speak of a tribunal which, though in reality much less
serious, gave itself airs of great solemnity, and promulgated a great
number of laws. This was the Court of the ‘Provveditori delle Pompe,’
established in the sixteenth century to deal with matters of dress and
fashion. As far back as the end of the thirteenth century, the ‘Savi,’
the wise men of the government, had feebly deplored the increase of
luxury. Their plaintive remarks were repeated at short intervals, and on
each occasion produced some new decree against foolish and unreasonable
expenditure.
[Illustration: THE LAST RAYS, ST. MARK’S]
The length of women’s trains, the size and fulness of people’s sleeves,
the adornment of boots and shoes, and all similar matters, had been most
minutely studied by these wise gentlemen, and the avogadors had their
hands full to make the regulations properly respected. One day a lady
was walking in the square of Saint Mark’s, evidently very proud of the
new white silk
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, vita Priv._]
gown she wore. She was stopped by two avogadors who gravely proceeded to
measure the amount of stuff used in making her sleeves. It was far more
than the law judged necessary. The lady and her tailor--there were only
male dressmakers in Venice in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries--were both made to pay a fine heavy enough to make them regret
the extravagance of their fancy. I quote this story from Signor
Molmenti. Marin Sanudo tells of another similar regulation in his
journal under the month of December 1491: ‘All those who hold any office
from the State, and those who are finishing their term of service, are
forbidden to give more than two dinner-parties to their relations, and
each of these dinners shall not consist of more than ten covers.’
At weddings it was forbidden to give banquets to more than forty guests.
Some years later another regulation was issued on the same subject. It
was decreed ‘that at these wedding dinners there shall not be served
more than one dish of roast meats and one of boiled meats, and in each
of these courses there shall not be more than three kinds of meat.
Chicken and pigeons are allowed.’
For days of abstinence, the magistrates take the trouble to inform
people what they may eat, namely, two dishes of roast fish, two dishes
of boiled fish, an almond cake, and the ordinary jams. Of fish, sturgeon
and the fish of the lake of Garda are forbidden on such days, and no
sweets are allowed that do not come under one of the two heads
mentioned. Oysters were not allowed at dinners of more than twenty
covers. The pastry-cooks who made jumbles and the like, and the cooks
who were to prepare a dinner, were obliged to give notice to the
provveditors, accompanied by a note of the dishes to be served. The
inspectors of the tribunal had a right to inspect the dining-room,
kitchen, and pantry, in order to verify all matters that came under
their jurisdiction.
As if all this were not enough, considerable fines were imposed on those
who should adorn the doors and outer windows of their houses with
festoons, or who should give concerts in which drums and trumpets were
used. In noting this regulation in his journal, Sanudo observes that the
Council of Ten had only succeeded in framing it after meeting on three
consecutive days in sittings of unusual length. One is apt to connect
the Council of Ten with matters more tragic than these; and one fancies
that the Decemvirs may have sometimes exclaimed with Dante--
Le leggi son, ma chi pon mano ad esse?
(‘There are laws indeed, but who enforces them?’)
The Council judged that there was only one way of accomplishing this,
namely, to create a new magistracy, whose exclusive business it should
be to make and promulgate sumptuary laws. For this purpose three nobles
were chosen who received the title of Provveditori delle Pompe.
M. Armand Baschet, whose profound learning in matters of Venetian law is
beyond dispute, is of opinion that the new tribunal helped Venice to be
great, and hindered her from being extravagant. I shall not venture to
impugn the judgment of so learned a writer, yet we can hardly forbear to
smile at the thought of those three grave nobles, of ripe age and
austere life, who sat down day after day to decide upon the cut of
women’s gowns, the articles necessary to a bride’s outfit, and the
dishes permissible at a dinner-party.
‘Women,’ said their regulations, ‘shall wear clothes of only one colour,
that is to say, velvet, satin, damask, of Persian silk woven of one
tint; but exception is made from this rule for Persian silk of changing
sheen and for brocades, but such gowns must have no trimming.’
Shifts were to be embroidered only round the neck, and it was not
allowed to embroider handkerchiefs with gold or silver thread. No woman
was
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Less._]
allowed to carry a fan made of feathers worth more than four ducats. No
gloves were allowed embroidered with gold or silver; no earrings; no
jewellery in the hair. Plain gold bracelets were allowed but must not be
worth more than three ducats; gold chains might be worth ten. No
low-neck gowns allowed!
Jewellers and tailors and dealers in luxuries did their best to elude
all such laws, but during a considerable time they were not successful,
and it is probable that the temper of the Venetian ladies was severely
tried by the prying and paternal ‘Provveditori.’ The only
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, vita Privata._]
women for whom exceptions were made were the Dogess and the other ladies
of the Doge’s immediate family who lived with him in the ducal palace.
His daughters and grand-daughters were called ‘dozete,’ which means
‘little dogesses’ in Venetian dialect, and they were authorised to wear
what they liked; but the Doge’s more distant female relations had not
the same privilege.
At the coronation of Andrea Gritti, one of his nieces appeared at the
palace arrayed in a magnificent gown of gold brocade; the Doge himself
sent her home to put on a dress which conformed with the sumptuary laws.
Those regulations extended to intimate details of private life, and even
affected the furnishing of a noble’s private apartments. There were
clauses which forbade that the sheets made for weddings and baptisms
should be too richly embroidered or edged with too costly lace, or that
the beds themselves should be inlaid with gold, mother-of-pearl, or
precious stones.
Then the gondola came into fashion as a means of getting about and at
once became a cause of great extravagance, for the rich vied with each
other in adorning their skiffs with the most precious stuffs and
tapestries, and inlaid stanchions, and the most marvellous allegorical
figures.
In the thirteenth century the gondola had been merely an ordinary boat,
probably like the modern ‘barca’ of the lagoons, over which an awning
was rigged as a protection against sun and rain. The gondola was not a
development of the old-fashioned
[Illustration: ON THE ZATTERE]
boat, any more than the modern racing yacht has developed out of a Dutch
galleon or a ‘trabacolo’ of the Adriatic. It had another pedigree; and I
have no hesitation in saying, as one well acquainted with both, and not
ignorant of boats in general, that the Venetian gondola is the caïque of
the Bosphorus, as to the hull, though the former is rowed in the
Italian fashion, by men who stand and swing a sweep in a crutch, whereas
the Turkish oarsman sits and pulls a pair of sculls of peculiar shape
which slide in and out through greased leathern strops. The gondola,
too, has the steel ornament on her stem, figuring the beak of a Roman
galley, which I suspect was in use in Constantinople before the Turkish
conquest, and which must have been abolished then, for the very reason
that it was Roman. The ‘felse,’ the hood, is a Venetian invention, I
think, for there is no trace of it in Turkey. But the similarity of the
two boats when out of water is too close to be a matter of chance, and
it may safely be said that the first gondola was a caïque, then
doubtless called by another name, brought from Constantinople by some
Greek merchant on his vessel.
In early times people went about on horses and mules in Venice, and a
vast number of the small canals were narrow and muddy streets; but as
the superior facilities of water over mud as a means of transportation
became evident, the lanes were dug out and the islands were cut up into
an immense number of islets, until the footways became so circuitous
that the horse disappeared altogether.
In the sixteenth century there were about ten thousand gondolas in
Venice, and they soon became a regular bugbear to the unhappy
Provveditori delle
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Less._]
Pompe, who were forced to occupy themselves with their shape, their
hangings, the stuff of which the ‘felse’ was made, the cushions, the
carpets, and the number of rowers. The latter were soon limited to two,
and it was unlawful to have more, even for a
[Illustration: RIO DEL RIMEDIO]
wedding. The gondola did not assume its present simplicity and its black
colour till the end of the seventeenth century, but it began to
resemble what we now see after the edict of 1562.
As usual, a few persons were exempted from the sumptuary law. The Doge
went about in a gondola decorated with gold and covered with scarlet
cloth, and the foreign ambassadors adorned their skiffs with the richest
materials, the representatives of France and Spain, especially, vying
with each other in magnificence. To some extent the youths belonging to
the Compagnia della Calza--the Hose Club before mentioned--were either
exempted from the law, or succeeded in evading it. Naturally enough, the
sight of such display was odious to the rich noblemen who were condemned
by law to the use of plain black; and on the whole, the study of all
accounts of festivities held in Venice, down to the end of the Republic,
goes to show that the Provveditori aimed at a most despotic control of
dress, habits, and manners, but that the results generally fell far
short of their good intentions. They must have led harassed lives, those
much-vexed gentlemen, not much better than the existence of ‘Jimmy-Legs’
on an American man-of-war.
Now and then, too, the government temporarily removed all restrictions
on luxury, as, for instance, when a foreign sovereign visited Venice;
and then the whole city plunged into a sort of orgy of extravagance.
This happened when Henry III. of France was the guest of the Republic.
Such occasions being known and foreseen, and the nobles being forced by
the Provveditori to save their money, they spent it all the more
recklessly when they were allowed a taste of liberty--like a child that
breaks its little earthenware savings-box when it is full of pennies.
One naturally returns to the Doge after rapidly reviewing such a legion
of officials, each of whom was himself a part of the supreme power. What
was the Doge doing while these hundreds of noble Venetians were doing
everything for themselves, from directing foreign politics to spying
upon the wardrobes of each other’s wives and auditing the accounts of
one another’s cooks?
It would be hard to ask a question more embarrassing to answer. It would
be as unjust to say that he did nothing as it would be untrue to say
that he had much to do. Yet the Venetians themselves looked upon him as
a very important personage in the Republic. In a republic he was a
sovereign, and therefore idle; but he was apparently necessary.
I am not aware that any other republic ever called its citizens
subjects, or supported a personage who received royal honours, before
whom the insignia of something like royalty were carried in public, and
who addressed foreign governments by his own name and title as if he
were a king. But then, how could Venice, which was governed by an
oligarchy chosen from an aristocracy, which was the centre of a
plutocracy, call herself a republic? It all looks like a mass of
contradictions, yet the machinery worked without breaking down, during
five hundred years at a stretch, after it had assumed its ultimate form.
If a modern sociologist had to define the government of Venice, he
would perhaps call it a semi-constitutional aristocratic monarchy, in
which the sovereign was elected for life--unless it pleased the electors
to depose him.
What is quite certain is that when the Doge was a man of average
intelligence, he must have been the least happy man in Venice; for of
all Venetian nobles, there was none whose personal liberty was so
restricted, whose smallest actions were so closely watched, whose
lightest word was subject to such a terrible censorship.
Francesco Foscari was not allowed to resign when he wished to do so, nor
was he allowed to remain on the throne after the Council had decided to
get rid of him. Even after his death, his unhappy widow was not allowed
to bury his body as she pleased. Yet his was only an extreme case,
because circumstances combined to bring the existing laws into play and
to let them work to their logical result.
From the moment when a noble was chosen to fill the ducal throne, he was
bound to sacrifice himself to the public service, altogether and till he
died, without regret, or possible return to private life, or any
compensation beyond what might flatter the vanity of a vulgar and
second-rate nature. Yet the Doges were very rarely men of poor
intelligence or weak character.
At each election, fresh restrictions were imposed by ‘corrections’ of
the ducal oath. M. Yriarte says very justly that the tone of these
‘corrections’ is often so dry and hard that it looks as if the Great
Council had been taking measures against an enemy rather than editing
rules for the life of the chief of the State. He goes on to say,
however, that the principle which dictated those decrees protected both
the Doge and the nobility, and that the object at which each aimed was
the interest of the State. He asks, then, whether those binding
restrictions ever prevented a strong personality from making itself
felt, and whether the long succession of Doges is nothing but a list of
inglorious names.
It may be answered, I think, with justice, that the Doges of illustrious
memory, during the latter centuries of the Republic’s existence, had
become famous as individual officers before their elevation to the
throne. The last great fighting Doge was Enrico Dandolo, the conqueror
of Constantinople, who died almost a hundred years before the closure of
the Great Council. In the war of Chioggia, Andrea Contarini’s oath not
to return into the city till the enemy was beaten had the force of a
fine example, but the man himself contributed nothing else to the most
splendid page in Venetian history.
There were Doges who were good historians and writers, others who have
been brave generals, others like Giovanni Mocenigo who were good
financiers; but the fact of their having been Doges has nothing to do
with the reputation they left afterwards. The sovereignty, when it was
given to them, was a chain, not a sceptre, and from the day they went up
the grand staircase as masters, their personal liberty of thought and
action was more completely left behind than if they had entered by
another door to spend the remainder of life in the prisons by the Ponte
della Paglia, beyond the Bridge of Sighs.
At the beginning of the fifteenth century the Doge Michel Steno was told
in open Council to sit down and hold his peace. No change in the manners
of the counsellors had taken place sixty years later when
[Sidenote: _Tassini, under ‘Moro.’ Rom. iv. 319._]
the Doge Cristoforo Moro objected to accompanying Pius the Second’s
projected crusade in person, and was told by Vittor Cappello that if he
would not go of his own accord he should be taken by force.
It is hard to imagine a more unpleasant position than that of the chief
of the State. Suppose, for instance, that by the choice of the Council
some post or dignity was to be conferred on one of his relatives, or
even on one of his friends; he was literally and categorically forbidden
to exhibit the least satisfaction, or to thank the Council, even by a
nod of the head.
[Sidenote: _Yriarte, Vie d’un Patricien, 359, and Marin Sanudo._]
He was to preside at this, and at many other ceremonies, as a
superbly-dressed lay figure, as a sort of allegorical representative of
that power with which every member of the government except himself was
invested. And as time went on this part he had to play, of the living
allegory, was more and more defined. He was even deprived of the title
‘My Lord,’ and was to be addressed merely as ‘Messer Doge,’ ‘Sir Doge.’
From 1501 onward he was forbidden to go out of the city, even for an
hour in his gondola, without the consent of the Council, and if he
disobeyed he had to pay a fine of one hundred ducats; he was not allowed
to write a letter, even to his wife or his children, without showing it
to at least one of his six counsellors, and if he disobeyed he was to
pay a fine of two hundred ducats, and the person, his wife or his own
child, to whom the letter was addressed, was liable to be exiled for
five years.
After 1521 the Doge was never allowed to speak without witnesses with
any ambassador, neither with the foreign representatives who came to
Venice, nor with Venetian ambassadors at home on business or leave; and
when he spoke with any of them in public, he was warned only to make
commonplace remarks.
The Dogess never had any official position in Venice, but during the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries she was made use of as an ornamental
personage at public festivals. After that time she returned to the
retirement in which the wives of the early Doges had lived. An outcry
was raised against the custom of crowning her when she entered the ducal
palace, and from that time forth she never appeared beside her husband
on state occasions; and if any foreign ambassador, supposing that he was
acting according to the rules of ordinary court etiquette, asked to be
presented to her, she was bound to refuse his visit.
Everything in the life of the Doge was regulated by the Great Council.
That august assembly once even remonstrated with the so-called sovereign
because the Dogess bore him too many children. If any one hesitates to
believe these amazing statements he may consult Signor Molmenti’s recent
historical work, _La Dogaressa_, which is beyond criticism in point of
accuracy.
At certain fixed times the Doge was allowed the relaxation of shooting,
but with so many restrictions and injunctions that the sport must have
been intolerably irksome. He was allowed or, more strictly speaking, was
ordered to proceed for this purpose, and about Christmas time, to
certain islets in the lagoons, where wild ducks bred in great numbers.
On his return he was obliged to present each member of the Great Council
with five ducks. This was called the gift of the ‘Oselle,’ that being
the name given by the people to the birds in question. In 1521, about
five thousand brace of birds had to be killed or snared in order to
fulfil this requirement; and if the unhappy Doge was not fortunate
enough, with his attendants, to secure the required number, he was
obliged to provide them by buying them elsewhere and at any price, for
the claims of the Great Council had to be satisfied in any case. This
was often an expensive affair.
There was also another personage who could not have derived much
enjoyment from the Christmas shooting. This was the Doge’s chamberlain,
whose duty it was to see to the just distribution of the game, so that
each bunch of two-and-a-half brace should contain a fair average of fat
and thin birds, lest it should be said that the Doge showed favour to
some members of the Council more than to others.
By and by a means was sought of commuting this annual tribute of ducks.
The Doge Antonio Grimani
[Sidenote: _Portrait of Antonio Grimani kneeling before Religion,
Titian; Sala delle Quattro Porte._]
requested and obtained permission to coin a medal or the value or a
quarter or a ducat, equal to about four shillings or one dollar, and to
call it ‘a Duck,’ ‘Osella,’ whereby it was signified that it took the
place of the traditional bird. He engraved upon his medal figures of
Peace and Justice, with the motto ‘Justitia et Pax osculatae sunt,’
‘Justice and Peace have kissed one another,’ in recollection of the
sentence he had undergone nineteen years previously as Admiral of the
fleet defeated at Parenzo. In 1575 the Doge Luigi Mocenigo engraved upon
his Osella the following inscription referring to the victory of
Lepanto: ‘Magnae navalis victoriae Dei gratia contra Turcos’; the
reverse bears the arms of the Mocenigo family, a rose with five petals.
Later, in 1632, the Doge Francesco Erizzo was the first to replace his
own effigy kneeling before Saint Mark by a lion. In 1688 Francesco
Morosini coined an Osella bearing on the obverse a sword, with the motto
‘Non abstinet ictu,’ and on the reverse a hand bearing weapons, with the
motto ‘Quem non exercuit arcus.’ In 1684 Marcantonio Giustiniani issued
an Osella showing a winged lion rampant, bearing in the one paw a single
palm, and in the other a bunch of palms, with the motto ‘Et solus et
simul,’ meaning that Venice would be victorious either alone or joined
with allies.
The successor of Antonio Grimani, Andrea Gritti, chose for his Osella
to have himself represented as kneeling
[Sidenote: _Andrea Gritti, praying, Tintoretto; Sala del Collegio._]
before Saint Mark; the reverse bore his name with the date.
But fresh trouble now arose. It came to pass that some nobles sold their
medals or used them for money, and disputes even took place as to the
true value of the ducal present. The Council of Ten was obliged to
examine seriously into the affair. As it appeared certain that it would
be impossible to avoid the use of medals as money, it was decided to
replace them definitely by a coin having regular currency.
[Illustration: MOUTH OF THE GRAND CANAL]
II
GLEANINGS FROM VENETIAN CRIMINAL HISTORY
The records of the different tribunals of Venice are a mine of
interesting information, and it is to be wondered that no student has
devoted a separate volume to the subject. I shall only attempt to offer
the reader a few gleanings which have come under my hand, and which may
help to give an impression of the later days of the Republic.
There were two distinct classes of criminals in Venice, as
elsewhere--namely, professional criminals, who helped each other and
often escaped justice; and, on the other hand, those who committed
isolated crimes under the influence of strong passions, and who
generally expiated their misdeeds in prison or on the scaffold.
Though the professionals were infinitely more dangerous than the others,
it is a remarkable fact that they enjoyed the same sort of popularity
which was bestowed upon daring highwaymen in England in the coaching
days. They were called the ‘Bravi,’ they were very rarely Venetians by
birth, and they had the singular audacity to wear a costume of their
own, which was something between a military uniform and a mediæval
hunting-dress. One might almost call them condottieri in miniature. They
sold their services to cautious persons who wished to satisfy a grudge
without getting into trouble with the police, and they drew round them
all the good-for-nothings in the country. ‘Bandits’--that is, in the
true interpretation of the word, those persons whom the Republic had
banished from Venetian territory--frequently returned, and remained
unmolested during some time under the protection of one of these bravi.
The most terrible and extravagant crimes were committed in broad day,
and the popular fancy surrounded its nefarious heroes with a whole cycle
of legends calculated to inspire terror.