pageants that the pigeons of Saint Mark’s owe their immunity. As early
as the end of the fourteenth century it was the custom to make a great
procession on Palm Sunday, in the neighbourhood of Saint Mark’s. A canon
of the Cathedral deposited great baskets on the high altar, containing
the artificial palms prepared for the Doge, the chief magistrates, and
the most important members of the clergy. The Doge’s palm was prepared
by the nuns of Sant’ Andrea, and was a monument of patience. The leaves
were plaited with threads of palm, of gold, of silver, and of silk; and
on the gilded handle were painted the arms of the Doge. According to the
appointed service the procession began immediately after the
distribution of the palms; and while the choir chanted the words
‘Gloria, laus et honor’ of the sacred hymn, a great number of pigeons
were sent flying from different parts of the façade down into the
square, having little screws of paper fastened to their claws to prevent
them from flying too high. The people instantly began to catch the
birds, and a great many were actually taken; but now and then, one
stronger than the rest succeeded in gaining the higher parts of the
surrounding buildings, enthusiastically cheered by the crowd. Those who
had once succeeded in making their escape were regarded as sacred for
ever with all their descendants. The State provided them with food from
its granaries, and before long, lest by some mistake any free pigeons
should be caught on the next Palm Sunday, the Signory decreed that other
birds than pigeons must be used on the occasion.
[Illustration: SOTTO PORTICO DELLA GUERRA]
VIII
THE HOSE CLUB--VENETIAN LEGENDS
In the fourteenth century, life in Venice was simple and vigorous, and
found its civic expression in the formation of the Guilds which united
in
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Vita Privata. Sansovino. Galliccioli, ii. 267,
269. Mutinelli, Lessico._]
close and brotherly bonds men of grave and energetic character, devoted
to their country and to its advantage. In the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries the tendencies of the later Venetians took visible shape in
brotherhoods of joyous and not harmless amusement, and chiefly in that
known as the ‘Compagnia della Calza,’ in plain English the ‘Hose Club.’
The learned Professor Tomassetti of the University of Rome, whose
authority in all that concerns the Middle Ages in Italy is indisputable,
informs me that he believes the right of wearing hose of two or more
colours, as one leg white and one leg red, or quartered above and below
the knee, belonged exclusively to free men, and that the fashion was
adopted by them in order that they might be readily distinguished from
the serf-born, in crowds and in public places. This is, indeed, the only
reasonable explanation of the practice which has ever been offered, and
is borne out by a careful examination of the pictures of the time. The
‘Hose Club’ distinguished themselves and recognised one another by their
hose, which were of two colours, one leg having at first a peacock
embroidered on it, whence the whole company was sometimes nicknamed ‘The
Peacocks.’
The Doge Michel Steno, who painted his four hundred horses yellow, and
had been concerned in the libel against the nephew of Marin Faliero,
[Sidenote: _1400._]
had been counted among the gayest youths of his day; and when he was
elected the rich young men of Venice, knowing by hearsay from their
fathers that he had been wild in his youth, determined to celebrate the
accession of a former dandy in a manner suited to their own tastes. They
agreed upon the dress which afterwards became famous, and each paid a
sum of two thousand ducats into a general fund which was entirely spent
in pageantry, banqueting, and masquerades.
They had not at first intended the Club to be permanent, but when the
anniversary of the Doge’s coronation came round in the following year,
they met again to consider the advisability of prolonging an institution
which made such an agreeable contrast to the general gravity of Venetian
life.
They now composed a sort of charter or constitution, which would have
made the heads of the artisan Guilds tremble with indignation, and might
[Sidenote: _1401._]
well have caused the fathers of Venetian families to look even more
grave than usual.
The Club was to be always a Company of twenty members, chosen for four
years only; for as soon as a young Venetian married, or took his seat in
the Great Council, he put on the long gown of older years and more
dignified habits, which effectively eclipsed his brilliant legs from the
public gaze. Each Company was to choose its name, an emblem, and a
motto. There were to be officers, a president, a secretary, and a
treasurer; and as the Venetians had a mania for sanctioning even the
most frivolous doings by means of some religious exercise, each Company
was to have a chaplain to celebrate a solemn mass at the admission of
each young scapegrace who joined. The chaplain also administered the
oath which every Companion was bound to take on admission.
The smallest infraction of the rules entailed a heavy fine, and the
fines were, of course, periodically spent in riotous amusements. As for
the dress, the hose always remained a part of it, but the greatest
latitude was allowed in the matter of colour and embroidery, or other
ornamentation.
The formation of the joyous Companies was a natural reaction after the
huge efforts, the strenuous labours, the awful dangers that had filled
the fourteenth century, and had placed Venice high among the European
powers. From the foundation of the first of the Company, that of the
‘Peacocks,’ to the dispersion of the ‘Accesi,’ the ‘Ardent,’ which was
the last, a hundred and eighty-six years went by, which may be called
six generations, during which forty-three Companies succeeded each
other, and the ‘Hose Club’ became famous throughout Europe for its
extravagance, and for the fertility of its festive inventions.
It made it its especial business to adorn with its presence in a body
the public baptisms of noble children, and important weddings, the
visits of illustrious personages, and even elections where there was
much at stake. When a foreign sovereign stopped in Venice, he asked to
be made an honorary member of the Company, he sometimes adopted its
dress, and he took home with him its emblem and its motto.
The most famous of all the Companies was that of the ‘Reali,’ the
‘Royals,’ which was in existence about the year 1530. The members wore a
red
[Sidenote: _Cicogna, Iscr. iii. 366._]
stocking on the right leg, and a blue one on the left, which was
embroidered on one side with large flowers of violet colour, and on the
other the emblem of the Company, which was a cypress, over which ran
the motto, ‘May our glorious name go up
[Illustration: PONTE S. ANTONIO]
to heaven.’ The members wore a vest of velvet embroidered with gold and
fine pearls, and the sleeves were fastened on by knots of ribband of
different colours, a fashion permitting the wearer to display his shirt
of gossamer linen, exquisitely embroidered.
A leathern or a gilded girdle was worn too, ornamented with precious
stones, and over the shoulder was carelessly thrown a short mantle of
cloth of gold, or damask, or brocade, with a hood thrown back, in the
lining of which was seen again the emblematic cypress.
Last of all the ‘toga,’ the great cloak, was red, and was fastened at
the neck by a small golden chain, from the end of which a handsome jewel
hung down below the ear, over one shoulder. The boots were of
embroidered or cut leather, and were made with very thin soles.
Venice had to thank the Companions of the Hose Club for some of the
first real theatrical performances ever given, which gradually led to
the creation of the ‘ridotti,’ and were more or less aristocratic
gambling clubs in connection with the theatres. We read that in 1529 the
Companions played a comedy with immense success in the house of one of
the Loredan family. In the following year the Duke of Milan visited the
city, and the Club determined to out-do all its previous festivities. A
Giustiniani was then the president of the ‘Royals,’ and he appeared with
a deputation before the Doge and the Signory. After announcing that the
Club had determined to produce the spectacle of a naval combat, he
requested the government to lend for the purpose forty of the light
war-pinnaces from the Arsenal. As if this were nothing unusual, he went
on to ask for the use of the hall of the Great Council for a dance, of
the Library for a supper, and of the Square of Saint Mark’s for a
stag-hunt.
The Hose Club evidently had large ideas. The Doge, however, granted all
that was necessary for the naval show, but said that he should have to
think over the other requests!
It is needless to say that the ladies of Venice had their share in the
gay doings of the Club, first as invited guests only, but later as
honorary Companions, wearing the emblem embroidered on their sleeves and
on the scarlet ‘felse’ of their gondolas, until the sumptuary laws
interfered.
There were times when the Signors of the Night and the Council of Ten
thought fit to limit the Club’s excessive gaiety, and it was found
necessary to issue a decree which strictly prohibited any of the eleven
thousand light ladies of the city from being received as Companions, or
asked to its entertainments; for, oddly enough, the reputables do not
seem to have resented the presence of the disreputables in the sixteenth
century.
Now and then the Companions fell out among themselves. Marin Sanudo, in
his diary, mentions that in February 1500 the Companions
[Sidenote: _Marin Sanudo, iii. I, 39._]
dined in the house of Luca Gritti, son of late Omobono; and after dinner
Zuan Moro, the treasurer of the Club, went out with Angelo Morosini,
Andrea Vendramin, and Zacaria Priuli; and they quarrelled about a
matter concerning which I refer my scholarly reader to his Muratori, and
Zuan Moro was wounded in the face, and turned and gave his assailants as
good as he had got, to the infinite scandal of the whole city, for these
Companions were all the young husbands of beautiful women, and they
disfigured each other!
We learn also from Sanudo that the Companions frequented the parlours of
nunneries as well as the palaces of their noble relations and friends,
and that in 1514, for instance, they played a comedy by Plautus in the
convent of Santo Stefano. The Company of the ‘Sempiterni,’ the
‘Eternals,’ wished to give a performance of Pietro Aretino’s ‘Talanta’
in one of the monasteries, but this was more than the monks could
endure, which will not surprise any one who has read Aretino’s works;
they might as well have proposed to give one of Giordano Bruno’s obscene
comedies; and perhaps they would, if he had then already lived and
written. Refused by the monks, the Companions hired a part of an
unfinished palace on the Canarregio for their performance.
At first sight, what surprises us is the impunity enjoyed by these young
gentlemen of pleasure, and we ask what the three ‘Wise Men on Blasphemy’
were doing. They were the Censors of the Republic, and it is amusing to
note that they acted in regard to licensing plays precisely as the
modern English government censorship does, for whereas they allowed a
scandalous piece by Aretino to be performed unchallenged, they most
strictly forbade the presentation of any biblical personage or subject
on the stage. The stories of Judith, of Jephthah’s daughter, and of
Samson were those of which the wise magistrates most particularly
disapproved, I know not why.
The first theatre Venice had was built by the Companions
[Illustration: S. ZOBENIGO]
in 1560 after the designs of Palladio, of wood, in the court of the
monastery of the Carità, but after a few years it took fire, and the
monastery itself was destroyed with it.
I find that the Companions were great ‘racket’ players; but I apprehend
that by ‘rackets’ the chroniclers intended to describe court tennis,
which was played in Venice, whereas in most other Italian cities the
game of ‘Pallone’ was the favourite, and has survived to our own time.
It is played with a heavy ball which the player strikes with a sort of
wooden glove, studded with blunt wooden pins and covering most of the
forearm.
To return to the question of the large freedom and impunity granted to
the Club by the government, the reason of such license is not far to
seek. Young men who spend their time in a ceaseless round of amusement
do not plot to overthrow the government that tolerates them. The
Signory, on the whole, protected the Companions even in their wildest
excesses, and no doubt believed them to be much more useful members of
society than they thought themselves, since their irrepressible gaiety
and almost constant popularity helped to keep the people in a good
humour in times of trouble and disturbance.
At the time of the league of Cambrai, for instance, when Pope Julius
II., the Emperor Maximilian, Louis XII. of France, and Ferdinand of
Aragon agreed to destroy the Venetian Republic, and when it looked as if
they must succeed, the Company of the ‘Eternals’ produced a mummery
which was highly appreciated both by the government and the population.
They gave a sumptuous feast, after which the dining-hall was, as by
magic, turned into an improvised theatre. In the middle of the stage
[Sidenote: _1510. Rom. v. 246._]
sat a young noble who personated the King, splendidly arrayed in the
Byzantine fashion, and attended by his counsellors, his chancellor, and
his interpreter. Before him there came in state one who played the Papal
Legate, dressed as a bishop in silk of old-rose colour, and he presented
a brief and his credentials; whereupon, after crowning and blessing the
King, he observed that he should like to see a little dancing, and two
of the Companions at once danced for him with two of the fairest ladies.
The Legate was followed by the Ambassador of the Holy Roman Empire, and
the Ambassadors of France, Spain, Hungary, and Turkey arrived in turn;
each spoke in the language of his country, and his speech was
interpreted to the King. Last of all came the Ambassador of the Pigmies
mounted on a tiny pony accompanied by four dwarfs and the professional
buffoon Zanipolo. We must suppose the speeches to have been very witty,
and the dwarfs and buffoons highly comic, since this incomprehensible
nonsense was a stupendous success and was talked of long afterwards.
The taste for these ‘momarie,’ literally ‘mummeries,’ grew in Venice.
Marin Sanudo describes one which was produced in the Square of Saint
Mark’s on the Thursday before Lent in 1532. I translate a part of the
list of the masks, to give an idea of the whole.
First, the goddess Pallas Athene with her shield and a book in her hand,
riding on a serpent.
Second, Justice riding on an elephant, with sword, scales, and globe.
Third, Concord, on a stork with sceptre and globe.
Fourth, Victory on horseback, with sword, shield, sceptre, and palm.
Fifth, Peace riding a lamb, and holding a sceptre with an olive branch.
And so on. Then Ignorance, riding an ass, and holding on by the tail,
met Wisdom and fought and was beaten. And Violence appeared on a
serpent, and Mars on a horse, and Want on a dog with a horn full of
straw for its emblem. And Violence was soundly beaten by Justice,
Discord by Concord, and Mars by Victory, and Abundance drove Want from
the field.
Such were the shows that amused the Venetians, while written comedy was
slowly growing out of infancy.
The Companions of the Hose Club revenged themselves cruelly on any one
of their own number who
[Sidenote: _Tassini, under Osteria della Campana._]
showed signs of meanness. Sanudo tells the following anecdote. Alvise
Morosini, one of the ‘Eternals,’ on the occasion of his marriage with a
daughter of the noble house of Grimani, gave his fellow-Companions a
very meagre dinner. Not long afterwards they got into the Grimani palace
and carried off two magnificent silver basins; these were placed in the
hands of professional buffoons who paraded the city with them, informing
the public that the bridegroom meant to pawn them to pay for the dinner
which the Companions were going to eat at the sign of the Campana
instead of the dinner which they should have eaten at the Palazzo
Morosini, and also to pay for wax torches for taking home the fair
ladies who were to be asked to the feast.
The paternal and business-like government of Venice, seeing how much the
Companions contributed to the national gaiety, allowed them to
transgress the sumptuary laws which were so binding on every one else.
For instance, ordinary mortals were forbidden to ask guests to more than
one meal in the twenty-four hours, but the Companions eluded the
law--with the consent of the police--by keeping an open table all night,
so that breakfast appeared to be only the end of supper. Even in the
matter of the gondolas, the rule was that the ‘felse’ should be of black
cloth, yet the Companions covered theirs with scarlet silk and the
Provveditori delle Pompe had nothing to say.
Then, suddenly, the government had a fit of morality, and in 1586 the
Hose Club was abolished by law, all privileges were revoked, and the
decree was enforced. Venice lost some amusement and much beautiful
pageantry, and gained nothing in morality. It was not very long before
the grave senators who objected to the Companions were seen in their
scarlet togas presiding over authorised gambling establishments in the
‘ridotti.’
The Venetians were an imaginative people who delighted in fables,
amusing, terrible, or pious, as the case might be. Their stories differ
from those of other European races in the Middle Ages by the total
absence of the element of chivalry upon which most other peoples
largely depended for their unwritten fiction. One can make almost
anything of a business man except a knight.
Near the Ponte dell’ Angelo in the Giudecca stands a house which shows
great age in spite of much
[Illustration: PONTE DELL’ ANGELO, GIUDECCA, OLD WOODEN BRIDGE]
modern plastering. The windows are gothic, of the
[Sidenote: _Tassini, under ‘Angelo.’_]
ogival design, and on the façade there is an image of the Virgin with
the infant Christ in her arms. Higher up, a bas-relief represents an
angel standing with outstretched wings as if he were about to fly away
after blessing with his right hand the globe he holds in his left.
In the year 1552 this house was inhabited by a barrister of the ducal
court who professed unbounded devotion to the Madonna, and practised the
most indelicate methods of improving his fortunes.
One day the lawyer asked to dinner a holy Capuchin monk who enjoyed the
highest reputation for sanctity. Before sitting down to table he
explained to the good friar that he had a most wonderful servant in the
shape of a learned ape, that kept his house clean, cooked for him, and
did his errands. The holy man at once perceived that the ape was no less
a personage than the Devil in disguise, and asked to see him; but Satan,
suspecting trouble, hid himself till at last he was found curled up in
his master’s bed, trembling with fright.
‘I command thee,’ said the monk, ‘in the name of God, to say why thou
hast entered this house.’
‘I am the Devil,’ answered the ape, seeing that prevarication would be
useless, ‘and I am here to take possession of this lawyer’s soul, which
is mine on several good grounds.’
The monk inquired why the Devil had not flown away with the soul long
ago, but the fiend replied that so far it had not been possible, because
the lawyer said ‘Hail, Mary,’ every night before going to bed. Thereupon
the Capuchin bade the Devil leave the house at once; but the Devil said
that if he went he would do great damage to the building, as the
heavenly powers had authorised him to do. But the monk was a match for
him.
‘The only damage you shall do,’ said the friar, ‘shall be by making a
hole in the wall as you leave, which shall be a witness of the truth of
what we have seen and heard and of the story we shall tell.’
The Devil obeyed with alacrity and disappeared through the wall with a
formidable crash, after which the lawyer and his guest sat down to
table, and the monk discoursed of leading a good life; and at last he
took the table-cloth and wrung it with both hands, and a quantity of
blood ran out of it which he said was the blood the lawyer had wrung
from his clients. Then the sinner began to shed tears and promised to
make full reparation, and he told the monk that if the hole in the wall
were not stopped up, he feared the Devil would come in by it again. So
the friar advised him to place a statue of the Madonna before the hole
and an angel over it, to scare the Devil away. And so he did.
Another Venetian legend of slightly earlier date tells how there was
once in the confraternity of Saint John
[Sidenote: _Tassini, under ‘San Lio.’_]
the Evangelist a man who led a bad life, to the great scandal of all who
knew him. One of the brethren having died, the Superior hoped to touch
the heart of that wicked man by asking him to bear the Cross in the
funeral procession. ‘I will neither walk in the procession to-day,’
answered the sinner, ‘nor do I wish to be so accompanied when the Devil
carries me off.’ After some time he died, and the brethren proceeded to
bury him, walking in procession after the Cross; but when they reached
the bridge of San Lio it became so heavy that it was impossible to lift
it from the ground, much less to carry it. The Superior now remembered
the words of the blasphemer, and told the story to the brethren while
[Sidenote: _Picture representing the scene, Mansueti; Accademia delle
belle Arti._]
they halted. So they all decided that the Cross must not follow the
procession, and thereupon it instantly became light again, and was
carried back to the chapel of Saint John the Evangelist.
The fireside is the natural place for telling stories, and there is
certainly some connection in the human mind between firelight and the
fabulous. Dante tells that in his time the women of Venice consulted the
fire in order to know the future. When a girl was engaged to be married
she appealed to one of the burning logs, and decided from the augury
whether she was to be happy or unhappy. Those who wanted money struck
the log with the tongs, calling out softly, ‘Ducats! ducats!’ If the
sparks flew out abundantly there was some hope that a rich relation
might die and leave the inquirer a legacy. When the sparks were few and
faint, poverty was prophesied.
Unlike all other Italians, who believe that hunchbacks bring good luck,
the Venetians feared them excessively. A Venetian proverb says, ‘Leave
three steps between thyself and those whom God has marked, eight if it
is a hunchback, and twenty-eight if the man be lame.’
One of the pretty superstitions of Venetian mothers was that if they
took their little children out before dawn on Saint John’s Day, the
twenty-fourth of June, so that the morning dew might dampen their cheeks
and hair, they would have lovely complexions and golden locks. There are
old Venetian lullabies that promise babies the midsummer dew.
[Illustration: RIO S. SOFIA, NIGHT]
IX
THE DECADENCE
The seventeenth century, like the fourteenth, was one of transition; but
whereas the earlier period was one of improvement, the latter was one of
decay. When time at last began to do its work upon the Republic, Venice
had been independent nine hundred years; she was still at the height of
her glory, still in the magnificence of her outward splendour, but the
long-strained machinery of government was beginning to wear out. At the
commencement of the seventeenth century all Italy seemed to be
threatened by war; the peace
[Sidenote: _1598. Rom. vii. 5._]
patched up between Philip II. of Spain and Henry IV. of France at
Vervins had been of an unsatisfactory and precarious nature; the Holy
See was more and more on its guard against the Protestant powers, and
Spain took advantage of this in order to sow discord between the court
of Rome and other governments. Venice was especially involved in these
difficulties, because she had signed in 1589 a commercial treaty with
the Grisons which had greatly displeased Spain, the latter being then in
[Sidenote: _Rom. vi. 412._]
possession of Milan. The Republic was accused of being too obliging to
Protestants, and her enemies assured the Pope that she had seriously
endangered the safety of the Catholic Church by allowing the English
ambassador to have an Anglican Church service in his private oratory.
The complaints of Clement VIII. and Paul V. were received with stony
indifference by the Republic, which never had the slightest respect for
Rome. The latter had many causes of complaint. Venice had been granted
in former times the privilege of trying priests for ordinary crimes in
the ordinary courts, on condition that the Patriarch should sit among
the judges. Little by little the Venetian government stretched this
privilege to make it apply to all suits whatsoever brought
[Sidenote: _Rom. vii. 43, notes._]
against ecclesiastics, and in most cases the Patriarch was not even
represented. It chanced, at the very time when the Pope had
[Illustration: CAMPIELLO DELLE ANCORE]