about to enter the Trevisan province, to which some of the French
troops may also move, and it being according to the zealous
forethought of the government to remove all inducements which give
individuals of the troops the desire to come still nearer to these
lagoons, the Council of Ten, considering that one inducement might
be the reopening of the theatre, orders you to put it off as long
as may seem best to the prudence of the Heads of the said Council.
Given in our Ducal Palace on the twenty-seventh of September in the
fifteenth year of the Indiction, 1796. [I find that the year of the
Indiction does not correspond with the date.]
There was another magistracy which also had to do with the theatres. The
‘Provveditori di Commun’
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Lessico, ‘Teatro.’_]
fixed the price of the libretto of the play. It was Council of Ten,
however, that named the hour at which the performance was to begin and
end.
The lighting of the theatres was wretched and the boxes were completely
dark, which appears to have
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Nuovi Studi._]
given the ladies a considerable sense of security, for I find that in
1756 the noble dame Pisani Grimani, who owned the theatre of San
Benedetto, was forbidden by the Inquisitors of State to stand at the
door of her box in a costume which might ‘produce grave disorder.’
In 1776 the government made an effort to limit such extreme views of
comfort in warm weather, and an edict was issued commanding ladies to
wear modest dresses, with domino and hood, at the theatre. The noble
ladies Maria Bon Toderini and Elisabetta Labia Priuli were put under
arrest in their own houses in the following year for having, in their
boxes, thrown back their hoods and allowed them to slip down upon their
shoulders.
The musicians’ desks were lighted with candles of Spanish wax, from
Segovia in Castile. The stage was illuminated by lamps fed with olive
oil. In the dim house there seems to have been a good deal of rough
play, and the patricians in the boxes occasionally threw
‘projectiles’--possibly hard sweet-meats are meant--at the people in the
pit. The lights were put out as soon as the curtain fell on the last
act, and the spectators groped their way out in the dark as they could,
helped by the big brass lanterns which the gondoliers brought to the
door when they came to wait for their masters.
Plays were not advertised at all. A small bill giving the name of the
play and the names of the authors was pasted up in the Piazzetta, and
another was to be seen at the Rialto, but that was all. It was the
business of the State to provide foreign ambassadors and ministers with
boxes, and a vast deal of care was bestowed on this matter, which was
full of difficulties; for the boxes were generally the property of
private families that did not at all like to give them up. But the
government always reserved the right to take any boxes it chose for the
use of the Diplomatic Corps. In Venice, the smallest affairs were always
conducted according to a prescribed method, and there was a regular rule
by which the boxes were distributed. The document has been found by
Signor Molmenti in the Archives of the Inquisitors of State, docketed
and labelled: ‘Theatres. Foreign Ambassadors. Boxes.’ Here it is:--
The Ambassadors present themselves with a formal request
(memoriale) to the Most Excellent Council. By the latter, through a
Secretary of the Senate, His Serenity is requested to draw the lots
for the boxes of each. He puts into the ballotbox the numbers of
all the boxes on that row which corresponds to the rank of the
Minister who applies, and he draws one number. The proscenium boxes
are excepted, and the balcony, the boxes occupied by other
Ministers, and the one that belonged to the Minister who last went
away. Afterwards, by the method explained hereinafter, notice (of
the number drawn) is sent to the Minister, the owner (of the box),
and the Council.
When the Minister does not like the box drawn for him, he lays
before the Council his request that it may be changed, and by the
same method His Serenity is requested to draw again. In that case
he only puts in the numbers of the boxes opposite which are free,
he draws again and sends the notices to that effect, informing the
owner of the second box that he may use the one first drawn.
When the box was at last drawn and had been accepted by the Minister,
the owner of it received a notice in the following form:--
This day ... (date). By order of the Most Excellent Savi
(literally, ‘Wise Men’) notice is given to Your Excellency the
Noble Sir, etc., etc.... (or Noble Dame, or Your Illustrious
Worship, or other proper title), that His Serenity has drawn Box
No.... Row ... in the ... theatre belonging to Your Excellency (or
other title) for His Excellency the Ambassador (or Minister) of
..., and this notice is sent you for your guidance.
The feelings of the box-owner, dispossessed by this formal nonsense, may
be guessed, for the indemnity paid by the ambassadors was very small.
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Lessico._]
It seems that even the Council anticipated that he would use bad
language, for the underling who took him the notice was a
Comandator-Portier, and was made to wear a red cap with the arms of the
Republic as a badge ‘to protect him against abuse’!
In 1791, when a company formed of nobles undertook to build the Fenice
Theatre, using part of the ruins of the old theatre of San Benedetto,
they presented to the Doge a memorandum concerning the boxes for the
Diplomatic Corps, of which I give an extract for the sake of its
monumental absurdity, translating the terms quite literally:--
The reverend Company of the New Theatre is disposed to meet the
public commands with submissive obedience, and will therefore at
all times venerate whatsoever Your Serenity may be pleased to
prescribe....
In order to continue the building begun, it is necessary to sell
the new boxes which have been added to those which formed the last
theatre, and the greatest profit that may be hoped for lies in
those situated in the first and second rows; but, as those places
are subject to the dispositions above alluded to, which take from
the owners the use of their own boxes, without fixing the measure
of the corresponding indemnity, the sale of those boxes would be
rendered impossible in the present state of things, to the
incalculable damage of the sinking company, which would thus see
removed the hope of soon finishing the building begun, or else
would be put to new and enormous expense which would cause to
vanish those expectations of profit which the Sovereign Clemency
of the Most Excellent Council of Ten had benignly permitted the
Company to entertain.
[Illustration: NEAR THE FENICE]
The memorandum ends with the rather startling statement that the
pretensions of the ambassadors, if admitted, would cause the Company to
lose eleven thousand ducats.
The Doge, who afterwards showed small alacrity to act when the country
was in mortal danger, was apparently much moved on receiving the
Company’s petition, and forthwith summoned the Senate to consider the
weighty matter; it is true that if he had done anything for the
petitioners without appealing to that body, he would have been naturally
suspected of being a shareholder.
The Senate decided that, without making any change in the method of
drawing boxes, and without prejudice to the existing system in any other
theatre, ambassadors should pay owners one hundred and sixty’ ducats for
boxes in the first row, and that ministers should pay eighty ducats for
those in the second; whereby, said the Senate, which still preserved
traditions of business, the owners of the said boxes would be getting
four per cent on the money they had invested.
The construction of the famous Fenice lasted twenty months, and the new
theatre opened with an opera by Paisiello on a libretto by Alessandro
Pepoli.
[Illustration: GRAND CANAL FROM THE FISH MARKET]
XII
THE LAST MAGISTRATES
The philosophical reader will naturally ask what elements composed the
Great Council of the Venetian Republic at a time when France was on the
brink of the Revolution, and all Europe was about to be shaken by the
explosion of the first new idea that had dawned on mankind since
Christianity. I shall try to answer the question.
[Illustration: S. BARNABÒ]
There were three classes of men in the Council: first, the ancient
aristo-plutocracy which, though with a few
[Sidenote: _Rom. ix. 7._]
additions to its numbers, and though itself divided into two parties,
had on the whole steered the Republic through eleven hundred years of
history; secondly, a number of families, mostly of ‘new men,’ though
they had sat in the Council four hundred years and more, but who had all
been more or less occupied with the legal profession since they had
existed; thirdly and lastly, the poor nobles called the ‘Barnabotti,’
from the quarter of San Barnabò, where most of them were lodged at the
public expense.
The first category generally held the posts of highest dignity, many of
which implied a salary by no means small, but never sufficient to pay
for the display which the position required, according to accepted
customs. The traditional splendour which the Venetian ambassadors of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had inaugurated was dear to the
Senate, and had come to be officially required, if not actually
prescribed in so many words. These great families had long been
accustomed to play the leading parts, and as the business spirit which
had made Venice the richest power in Europe died out, their pride was
often greater than their sense of responsibility. These and many other
causes lowered the standard according to which young Venetians had been
brought up during centuries to understand the administration of their
country; and the result was that they were not fit to fill the offices
to which they were called, and therefore handed over their work to
private secretaries, who were generally ambitious and intriguing men.
To be a member of the Great Council had now only a social value, like
those hereditary coats of arms in which there had once been such deep
meaning. Throughout ages the aristocracy of Venice had differed
altogether from the nobility of other countries, but as decadence
advanced to decay, and decay threatened destruction, the Venetian
senator grew more and more like the French marquis of the same period.
In an access of greatness Louis XIV. is reported to have said, ‘L’état
c’est moi!’ but the State continued to exist without him. The Venetian
nobles might have said with much more truth, and perhaps with more
reasonable pride, ‘We nobles are the Republic!’ For when they
degenerated into dolls, the Republic soon ceased to exist.
The second category of nobles comprised by far the sanest and most
intelligent part of the aristocracy, and it was generally from their
ranks that the Quarantie were chosen, as well as the ‘Savi,’ and those
magistrates from whom special industry and intelligence were required,
or at least hoped.
The Barnabotti had nothing in common with the two other classes, except
their vanity of caste, which was so infinitely far removed from pride.
As I have said, they owed their name to the parish
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Nuovi Studi, 308._]
which most of them inhabited. Their nobility was more or less recent and
doubtful, and almost all had ruined themselves in trying to rival the
richer families. The majority of them had nothing but a small pension,
paid them by the government, and barely sufficient to lift them out of
actual misery. It was especially for them
[Sidenote: _Horatio Brown, Venice, 109; Rom. ix. 7._]
that the College of Nobles had been founded, in which their sons were
educated for nothing, with all the usual imperfections of gratuitous
education. Like the ‘New Men’ of the fourteenth century, they felt that
an insurmountable barrier separated them from the older and richer
classes, and the humiliations to which they were often exposed by the
latter kept alive in them the sort of hatred which was felt in other
parts of Europe by the agricultural population for the owners of the
land. Their poverty and rancorous disposition made them especially the
objects of bribery when any party in the Great Council needed the
assistance of their votes against another.
The better sort of Venetians were well aware of the evils that were
destroying the governing body. In 1774 a member of the Council made a
speech on the subject, in which he said that the greatest damage the
Republic had suffered had been caused by the action of time; it lay in
the already very sensible diminution in the numbers of the Great
Council, which was, in fact, the government itself. He pointed out that
within one century a large number of patrician families had become
[Sidenote: _Cecchetti, quoting Arch. Ven. iii. 435._]
extinct, and that the condition of the aristocracy must clearly continue
to go from bad to worse. It could not be otherwise, since marriages were
yearly becoming less numerous. A family was looked upon as a calamity,
because it meant a division of fortune, and therefore interfered with
those ancient traditions of almost royal
[Illustration: INSTITUTO BON, GRAND CANAL]
magnificence which appealed to the vanity of younger men.
The speech to which I have alluded was delivered not very many years
after the time when a number of seats in the Grand Council had been sold
in order to meet the expenses of the Turkish war. In 1775, in order to
increase the numbers of the Council, it was proposed to admit to it
forty noble families from the provinces, provided they could prove that
they had a yearly income of ten thousand ducats. The proposal was
energetically opposed by a Contarini. If the sons of ancient families
showed so little zeal for the public welfare, he argued, what could be
expected of strangers? Was it wise to display to all Europe the evils
from which the Republic was suffering? Moreover, even if the bill were
passed, would it be easy to find forty families willing to leave their
homes and establish themselves in the capital to the great damage of
their fortunes? And if they were found, would their admission not result
in impoverishing the provinces by the amount of their incomes which
would be spent in Venice? It was luxury and extravagance that were
ruining the country, he said.
A lively discussion followed. ‘Beloved sons,’ cried one old noble, ‘for
us who are old there may be a little of the Republic left, but for you
children it is completely finished!’ The bill passed, but Contarini had
been right; only about ten families asked to be inscribed in the Golden
Book.
Satirists and lampooners made merry with the proceedings of the Great
Council. After the stormy sittings just referred to, the caricatures of
the five patricians entrusted with framing measures of reform were to
be seen everywhere in the city, and a copy of the cut is still in the
Archives. It
[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 211._]
represents the most eloquent and zealous of the committee, Alvise Emo,
urging his horse against an enormous marble column; two of his
colleagues follow him in a post-chaise and observe his movements with a
spy-glass; a fourth, who is lame, is trying to follow the carriage on
foot, and the fifth comes after him, beating him to make him mend his
pace.
On the twenty-second of May 1779 the secretary of the Inquisitors of
State wrote to his brother Giuseppe Gradenigo, then in France: ‘If these
gentlemen do not seriously think of taking measures to meet the events
which are brewing, if they do not introduce some order into the affairs
of the army and navy, the Republic will be lost as soon as an enemy
appears on land or by sea.’
This letter was prophetic. The idleness and indolence of the nobility
were such that it was hard to obtain an attendance at meetings of the
Great Council or the Senate. The members were accustomed to spend their
nights in gambling-dens and cafés, and it was a hard matter for them to
get up in the morning. Their physicians recommended rest, which they
indeed needed; and as they could not take any at night, they devoted a
large part of the day to following the doctor’s advice. Yet as it was
necessary that the government should go on in some way, it became
habitual to leave everything to the Savi of the Council, who on their
part fell into the habit of not always rendering an account of what
they did. By obligingly saving their colleagues the trouble of getting
out of bed, they made themselves the arbiters of the Republic’s final
destiny.
With regard to the other magistracies, a few anecdotes will give a good
idea of what they had become. My readers know that the Avogadori enjoyed
very great consideration, and that it was their business to see that all
the tribunals did their work smoothly and regularly. One of these
important officers, Angelo Quirini, who was at the same time one of the
most distinguished members of the Senate, exhibited his power and
courage by banishing from Venice a little milliner who had made a
mistake in trimming certain caps for a great lady in whom he was
interested. From her exile the woman wrote a protest to the Inquisitors
of State, who did her justice and recalled her. Quirini now lost his
temper with these gentlemen and swore that they were encroaching upon
his rights, just at this time a
[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 104._]
rich member of the parish of San Vitale departed this life, and the
sacristans prepared to bury his body; but the deceased belonged to a
confraternity called La Scuola Grande della Carità, and his brethren
claimed the right of burying him to the exclusion of the parish
sacristans. The Inquisitors of State and the Council of Ten took the
matter up; the Provveditori alla Sanità, who were the health officers,
declared that the matter concerned them only; the elders and judges of
the guilds and corporations took part in the discussion, and a general
quarrel ensued, which was only brought to a close by the authority of
the Council of Ten. But this did not please Angelo Quirini, who
violently attacked the Council and began to give himself the airs of a
popular tribune, though not possessing the popularity which is essential
for the position. The people, in fact, would have none of him. One night
the Council of Ten caused him to be quietly taken from his palace and
carried off under a good escort to the fortress of Verona. The matter
now had to be brought before the Great Council, and a regular trial was
held to ascertain how the Council of Ten and the Inquisitors were in the
habit of performing their duties.
[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 108._]
During several days the Corregitori received all the complaints that
were handed in, and examined the archives of the two tribunals. Those of
the Ten were found to be in perfect order, but those of the Inquisitors
were in the utmost confusion.
[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 114._]
The whole city discussed the affair excitedly, and nothing else was
spoken of in the streets, in the cafés, and in drawing-rooms. It was the
first time in history that the tribunal of the Inquisitors of State had
been put under an inquiry, and this tremendous result had been produced
because a little milliner had made a cap that did not fit.
Endless discussions followed. A number of patricians declared that if
the Council of Ten and the Inquisitors of State were abolished, they
themselves would not stay another day in Venice, as there would no
longer be any check on the violence and the intrigues of men of their
own class: a confession which suddenly exhibits the whole aristocracy
in its true light.
Others proved beyond all question that a tribunal which was particularly
charged with the preservation of the State from danger could not always
[Sidenote: _1762._]
do its work with the miserable tardiness of the other magistracies, and
they recalled the many cases in which the Ten had saved Venice.
[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 136-137._]
One of the debates was prolonged for five consecutive hours. At last the
Conservative party carried the day.
The wild enthusiasm of the population, on learning that the Ten and the
Inquisitors were to remain in existence, shows well enough what the
people thought; their only protection against the nobles lay in the two
tribunals. Six thousand persons waited in the Square of Saint Mark’s to
learn the result of the contest, and when it was known proceeded to burn
fireworks before the palaces of the nobles who had been the chief
speakers in defence of the Ten--Foscarini, Marcello, and Grimani. The
populace then declared that it would set fire to the houses of the
nobles who had tried to do away with the only institution they still
feared, and the palaces of the Zen and the Renier were only saved from
fire and pillage by the energetic intervention of the Inquisitors of
State, whose office those aristocrats had attempted to abolish.
I know of no more convincing answer to the numerous dilettante
historians who have accused the Council of Ten of oppressing the
people.
If the Council and the Inquisitors were in need of an excuse for
occasionally overstepping their powers in order to act quickly, they had
a good one in the absurdly cumbrous system of the magistracies, as they
existed in the eighteenth century. As a curiosity,
[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 399._]
I give a list or the principal magistracies, taken by Romanin from an
almanack of 1796, the last year of the Republic:--
The Doge’s Counsellors 6
Savi of the Council 16
Procurators of Saint Mark 9
‘Criminal’ Quarantia 40
‘Old’ Civil Quarantia 40
‘New’ Civil Quarantia 40
Colleges of the XXV. and the XV. 40
Senate 60
‘Zonta,’ supplementary to Senate 60
Council of Ten 10
Inquisitors (of Ten) 3
Avogadori of the Commonwealth 3
---
Total 327
besides the whole of the Great Council, which consisted of all nobles
over twenty-five years of age, and of the younger men chosen by lot to
sit without a vote.
And these are only the principal magistracies. The secondary ones
comprised over five hundred officials, divided between something like
one hundred and thirty offices, such as Provveditors, or inspectors of
some forty different matters, from artillery to butchers’ shops, from
‘Ancient and Modern Justice’ to oats: Savi, Inquisitors of all matters
except religion, Auditors, Executors, Correctors, Reformers, Deputies,
and Syndics; a perfect ant-hill of officials who were perpetually in one
another’s way.
Here is an instance of the manner in which ordinary justice was
administered, even by the Council of Ten.
[Illustration: WHEN THE ALPS SHOW THEMSELVES, FONDAMENTA NUOVE]
On the sixth of March 1776 a patrician called Semitecolo, who was a
member of one of the Quarantie, and therefore a magistrate, was walking
in the Fondamenta Nuove when he saw a big butcher named Milani
unmercifully beating a wretched peddler of old books. He stopped and
expostulated; the butcher took his interference ill, and delivered a
blow with his fist which caused the blood to gush abundantly from the
magistrate’s nose. Semitecolo was taken into a neighbouring house, and
the butcher walked off.
Still covered with blood, Semitecolo hastened to lay the matter before
the Council of Ten, demanding the
[Illustration: CAFÉ ON THE ZATTERE]
arrest of Milani. But Pier Barbarigo, who was one of the Capi for the
week, while sympathising deeply, excused himself from arresting the
culprit, on the ground that a detailed account of the affair signed by
witnesses must be laid before the Council; and, moreover, the Council
was busy just then, he said, owing to the arrival of the Pope’s Nuncio,
and there would be no meeting on the next day. Semitecolo could not
even get an order to have the butcher watched by the police, and the
culprit had full time and liberty to leave Venice before anything was
done. Note that he himself did not expect impunity, but only a very long
delay before his arrest was ordered.
The public followed the affair and was indignant, and freely criticised
the Ten in public places; whereupon the Inquisitors ordered all the
cafés to be closed two hours after dark. This was especially galling to
the Venetians, who were fond of sitting up late, and loved the bright
lights of the cafés.
One morning a notice appeared on the walls, drawn up in the following
terms:--