Читать книгу Salve Venetia (Vol.1&2) - F. Marion Crawford - Страница 10

Table of Contents

For historical purposes it is best to consider that Venice was really founded in the year 811. From that date till 1032 the ducal throne was occupied, with only three exceptions, by a Partecipazio, a Candiano, or an Orseolo. It is true that every Doge was elected, but the great families would hardly have been human if they had not done their best to make the dignity hereditary.

They were not afflicted by that strange fatality under which the Roman Cæsars almost always died without male issue, and which led the Emperors to adopt their successors and to make them coadjutors in their government, generally with tribunitian powers; and four centuries were to elapse before the race of Hapsburg was to fasten itself at last upon the Holy Roman Empire, never to be shaken off so long as it could beget sons, or even daughters. The great Venetian races were vital and fortunate, and reared generation after generation for ages, with hardly any diminution of strength or wit.

But the principle on which they attempted to secure to themselves the succession to a power which was hereditary was the same which the Romans followed before them and which the Hapsburgs were to adopt long afterwards. They chose their own successors amongst those nearest to them, educated them to government, made them helpers in their rule, and designated them in their wills to succeed in their places.

There was always discontent after each election, and there were often serious riots; several doges of this period were forced to abdicate, or were even exiled, and one of them, at least, was assassinated; but the thirst of the great families for hereditary power was not diminished, and each revolutionary rising was directed by an aristocratic faction which had everything to gain by overthrowing the one in office.

Yet, strange to say, this disturbed condition of things neither hindered nor retarded the growth of national prosperity. The three factions quarrelled about the ducal throne for two hundred years, but their commercial activity was not in the least diminished by their differences. They and the less powerful nobles possessed the financial instinct in the highest degree; the citizen class vied with them as traders and usurers, and though they could not outdo them, having started behind them in the race for wealth, they often rivalled them; and as for the people, they were the ready and willing instruments of their masters, they were intrepid sailors, they were patriotic soldiers, they were hard-working labourers, and they seem to have cared very little who was Doge, so long as every effort they made contributed directly to their own well-being. And this was always the case, as in every young and successful state.

ST. MARK’S

Nevertheless, the continual state of discord between the strongest families of the aristocracy was not without its bad results, and enemies abroad found it easy to strike unexpected blows at the Republic, when she was least prepared to retaliate. Chief among these enemies were the Dalmatian pirates, whose principal stronghold was the city of Narenta, situated at the head of the gulf of that name, almost over against Ancona. The Venetians seem to have been more than a match for the corsairs when actually at sea, for their merchant vessels were fast sailors and were well armed; but the Dalmatians lost no opportunity of descending upon any corner of the Republic’s island territory which chanced to be left unprotected, and they plundered and laid waste the land, and carried off the people into slavery.

Molmenti, Vita Privata.

One of these sudden descents of the corsairs on the day of the yearly marriage ceremonies was not only strikingly dramatic in itself, but became one of the turning-points in the history of the Republic. In order that what happened may be clearly understood, I must in the first place briefly explain how marriages were made and how they were always celebrated in Venice on the thirty-first of January at that time; for I cannot remember that a similar custom ever obtained in any other city ancient or modern. I may add, however, that in their claims to an extravagantly ancient descent the Venetians pretended to have inherited the usage directly from the Babylonians.

A CHAPEL, ST. MARK’S

However that may be, it is quite certain that in those days the brides of Venice were all married on the thirty-first of January, the anniversary of the translation of Saint Mark’s body, in the church of San Pietro d’Olivolo, which was always the cathedral, and which now became the scene of one of the strangest and most romantic events in the history of any nation, rivalled, but certainly not surpassed, by the half-mythic rape of the Sabines in the Forum.

THE PORCH, ST. MARK’S

De Gubernatis e Bernoni.

In old Venice the women were treated very much as they have always been in the East. They were naturally dignified and reserved, or enjoyed that reputation, but the men were jealous, and would not trust in anything so inward and spiritual as good qualities. They held that the equilibrium of feminine virtue, though always admirable, is generally of the kind described in mechanics as unstable; in other words, that it resembles the balance of a pyramid when poised on its apex rather than its security when established on its base. They therefore watched their wives and daughters and kept them at home a great deal, insisting that they should veil themselves when they went to church, and on the rare occasions when they were allowed to go elsewhere. The maidens wore veils of pure white, but the married women were allowed colours. The only exception to the rule of the veil was made on the days of the ‘Sagre,’ the feasts of the patron saints in the different parishes of the city; then even the girls were allowed to wear their beautiful hair floating on their shoulders, and confined only by chaplets of flowers. Those were the only times when the men had a chance of seeing them to judge of their beauty, and perhaps to choose a wife amongst them, and they made the most of it; we may even suppose that the custom had been originally introduced as a necessary one if young men and maidens were ever to be betrothed at all.

One sight sufficed, perhaps, and a glance or two exchanged as the long processions of men and women went up into the churches or came out again; and after that, when the nights were fine, the youth took his lute and went and made music under the chosen one’s window. But she never looked out, nor showed him so much as the tips of her white fingers in the moonlight; that would have been unmaidenly and bold. If her heart softened to his appealing song, a single ray of light from between the close-drawn shutters was answer enough; if not, all remained dark, while the unhappy lover sang his heart out to the silent lagoon. But being reassured by the friendly ray, not once but many times, the aspirant went to the girl’s father and begged permission to make her his ‘novice’—that meant his betrothed—until the next feast of blessed Saint Mark.

When the youth and maid were secretly agreed, the course of love generally ran smooth, and the real courtship began. Manners were simple still, dowries were small, the only conditions to be considered were those of rank and faction; and few lovers would have been bold enough to play a Romeo’s part in Venice, while the lines of caste were even then so closely drawn that still fewer would have thought of overstepping them. Therefore, if the young man was of as good a family as the young girl, and if he did not belong to some rival faction, the betrothal was announced at a great dinner, at which the families of both met in the house of the maiden’s parents. Then the youth renewed his request before them all, and the maid was brought to him dressed all in white, and he slipped upon her finger a very plain gold ring, then called the ‘pegno,’ which is to say, the pledge. Sometimes the engagement was presided over by a priest, and became thereby more solemn and unbreakable.

ST. MARK’S

The time of betrothal was called the noviciate, as if marriage were one of the holy orders to enter which a term of trial is exacted; and while it lasted small gifts were exchanged. So, at Easter, the young man brought a special sort of cake; at Christmas, preserves of fruit; on Lady Day, a posy of rosebuds. On her side the young girl gave him a silk scarf, or something made with her own hands. It is told that the daughter of a Doge spent three years in embroidering with silk and gold a shirt which she meant to give to the unknown youth whom she expected to love some day.

When the young people came of rich families they gave each other also small trinkets, notably those little chains of gold called ‘entrecosei,’ which were specially made by Venetian goldsmiths. Moreover, whether the presents were trinkets or silk scarfs, cakes or rosebuds, they all had reference to good luck much more than to anything else, and it would not have been safe for either party to send a gift not included in the old-fashioned list. For the Venetians were superstitious. Like all young races whose fortune lies before them, they saw signs of success or failure in small things at every turn. They judged of the immediate future by the pictures they saw in the coals of their great wood fires, especially in cases of approaching marriage, by the accidental spilling of red wine on the cloth, by the passing of a hunchback on the right or the left. To upset red wine was lucky, to upset olive-oil presaged death; it was thought to indicate a great misfortune if a man going out of his own house came first upon an old woman. Similarly, when young people were betrothed, there were objects which they could on no account give each other as presents. The forbidden things were chiefly such as magicians were supposed to use in their incantations, and among these, strangely enough, nothing was reckoned more certainly fatal to happiness than a comb. If any youth had dared to offer one, however beautiful, to his future bride, she would have unhesitatingly returned his ring.

At that time the church did not require the publication of bans, a regulation which became necessary in order to put a stop to abuses of a less simple age. Instead, a second festive meeting was held at the house of the bride a few days before the marriage; and this time, besides the near relations of both families, the ‘convicini,’ the ‘fellow-neighbours,’ were bidden, as the ancient Romans entertained their clients on great occasions.

The bride now waited in her own room, which was always upstairs, until all the guests were assembled in the ‘hall of the fireplace’ on the ground floor. When the time came, the oldest man of the family went up to fetch her, and she appeared leaning on his arm. She stood still a moment on the threshold of the hall and then made a step and half—neither more nor less—towards the assembly. Next, and leaving her companion’s arm, she made a ‘modest little leap’ forwards, which she followed with a deep courtesy, and then, without saying a single word, she went upstairs to her room and stayed there while the feast proceeded. The only variation in the ceremony occurred in cases where the family was of such high rank that the bride and bridegroom, with their friends and near relations, were expected to visit the Doge.

When the long-expected day, the thirty-first of January, came at last, every house in which there was a novice was astir hours before daybreak, and the friends of each were waiting under the windows in their boats long before the sun was up. Meanwhile the bride was dressed for the day, more or less richly according to her fortune, but always in a long white gown, and with fine threads of gold twined amongst her flowing hair.

She then came down from her own room to the hall of the fireplace, where her father awaited her, and she knelt meekly before him and her mother to receive their solemn blessing and her dowry, which it was customary that the bride should carry to the church herself, enclosed in a casket called the ‘arcella’—the ‘little ark.’ The historians tell us that it was never a very heavy burden in those days.

This little ceremony took place at early dawn in every house where there was to be a wedding, and before the sun was up the brides were all gathered in the cathedral, where they ranged themselves round the altar, holding their caskets in their hands. Then at last the bridegrooms made their appearance, arrayed in the richest of their clothes and accompanied by their best men, as we should say—their ‘sponsors of the ring’ in their own phrase. But I find no mention of any bridesmaids.

DOOR OF ST. MARK’S

The bishop blessed all the young couples, and each bridegroom slipped upon his lady’s finger the symbolic ring, which was the same for all. After that, gifts of virgin wax were left for the candles of the cathedral, and each newly-married man was expected to give a sum of money ‘in proportion with his opinion of his wife’s beauty’—probably the most elastic measure ever ordained for the giving of alms. This money formed a fund out of which poor brides of the people received a dowry in the following year. A malicious writer even hints that this secret fund was sometimes misapplied to compensate for such ugliness as would otherwise have been a bar to marriage altogether.

The Doge himself was invariably present in state during the ceremony, which therefore had a distinctly official character.

On leaving the cathedral sweetmeats and small cakes were showered upon the crowd that waited without, and the respective wedding parties returned to the homes of the brides to spend the rest of the day in the rather noisy gaiety and uproarious feasting that belonged to those times, and to which each bridegroom’s best man was expected to contribute with a present of rare liquors and rich old wines.

When evening came at last the brides were led to their new homes with song and playing of many instruments; and on the next morning each young couple received from the best man a symbolical gift of fresh eggs and of certain aromatic pastilles of which the composition is unfortunately forgotten. Last of all, the bride was given a work-basket, containing a needle-case, a thimble, and similar useful objects, to symbolise the industry she was expected to display in her household duties.

FROM THE GALLERY, ST. MARK’S

Rom. i. 234.

Now it came to pass, in the reign of the Doge Pietro Candiano III., about the year 959, that a gang of Istrian pirates conceived the bold idea of descending upon the cathedral on the marriage morning, and of carrying off bodily the brides and their dowries.

At that time the Arsenal was not built, and the little island on which it stands, and which lies close to Olivolo, was still uninhabited. During the night between the thirtieth and the thirty-first of January the corsairs ran their light vessels under the shelter of this island, and stole ashore while it was yet dark, to lie in wait in the shadow near the cathedral.

As usual the brides came first, with their families, and ranged themselves round the high altar, with their caskets in their hands, to wait for their affianced husbands. At that moment the pirates rushed into the church, armed to the teeth and brandishing their drawn swords in the dim light of the lamps and candles. There was no struggle, no resistance; the unarmed men, most of them elderly and at best no match for the daring robbers, were paralysed and rooted to the spot, the women screamed, the children fled in terror to the dark corners of the church, and in a moment the daring deed was done. It had been so well planned, and was executed with such marvellous rapidity, that the robbers reached their vessels, carrying the girls and their caskets in their arms, and succeeded in pushing off almost without striking a blow; and doubtless they laughed grimly as the light breeze filled their sails and bore them swiftly out through the channels of the lagoons.

THE GREAT DOORWAY, ST. MARK’S

One may guess at the faces of the cheated bridegrooms when they reached the cathedral and came upon the hysterical confusion that followed upon the robbery. There was no loss of time then, and there was little waste of words. The Doge headed them, dressed as he was in his robe of state, men found weapons where they could, and all made for the nearest boats, and sprang in and rowed like demons; for the pirates were still in sight. Then the breeze that had sprung up at sunrise failed all at once, and the Istrians tugged at their long sweeps with might and main; but the men of Venice gained on them and crept up nearer and nearer, and nearer still, and overtook them, and boarded them in the Caorle lagoon, and slew them to a man, themselves almost unhurt. Also the chronicler says, that of all those fair and frightened girls not one received so much as a scratch in that awful carnage; but the men’s hands were red with the blood, and they could not wash them clean in the sea because it was red too; and so, red-handed and victorious, they brought their brides back to land and married them before the sun marked noon, and the rejoicing was great.

Rom. i. 240.

These things happened as I have told, and though the chroniclers do not all agree precisely as to the year, the differences between their dates are not important, and all tell how the event was commemorated down to the last days of the Republic. For it appears that a great number of those men who so bravely pursued the pirates were box-makers, ‘casseleri,’ of the parish of Santa Maria Formosa, and when that famous day was over the Doge asked them what reward they desired. But they, being simple men, asked only that the Doge of Venice should come every year to their church on the second day of February, which is the Feast of the Purification. ‘But what if it rains?’ asked the Doge, for that is the rainy season. ‘We will give you a hat to cover you,’ they answered. ‘And what if I am thirsty?’ the Doge asked, jesting. ‘We will give you drink,’ said the box-makers. So it was agreed, and so it was done, and the feast that was kept thereafter was called the Feast of the Maries, and it was one of the most graceful festivities of all the many that the Venetian imagination invented and kept. I shall describe elsewhere more fully how the Doge came to Santa Maria Formosa every year on the appointed day, and how, in memory of the bargain, the people of that quarter made him each year a present of straw hats and Malmsey wine. It was a sort of public homage to the women of Venice until the war of Chioggia, towards the end of the fourteenth century, and it is only fair to say that the lovely objects of such a splendid tribute did much to deserve it. But after that time many things were changed, and there remained of the beautiful Feast of the Maries nothing more than the Doge’s annual visit to the church, instituted by Pietro Candiano III.

The immediate result of the bold attempt and condign punishment of the Istrian pirates was a series of punitive expeditions against them which laid the foundation of Venice’s power on the mainland, and in this struggle, if in nothing else, the Doge was fortunate in his last years. But an evil destiny was upon him at home.

In his old age he associated one of his sons with him in the ducal authority, also called Pietro, ‘at the suggestion of the people,’ says Dandolo in his chronicle. As I have said, this was the usual plan followed by the families that sought to make the dogeship hereditary. The younger Pietro was wild, ambitious, turbulent, and wholly without scruple, and he at once took advantage of his position to plot against his father, in the hope of reigning alone. But he was found out and hindered by the people, who rose suddenly in stormy anger and laid violent hands upon him, to kill him without trial. Yet his father was generous and succeeded in saving him from death, and tried him for his deeds, and sent him into exile.

Mol. Dogaressa.

Then Pietro the younger turned pirate himself, and armed six fast vessels and harassed the Venetian traders all down the Adriatic. But meanwhile he still had a strong party of friends for him in Venice, and their influence grew quickly, even with the people, and many secret influences which we can no longer trace were brought to bear for him; until at last the Venetians themselves, who had tried to murder him, decreed him the ducal crown and the supreme power, and recalled him and deposed his aged father. The old man died within a few weeks, and all he could bequeath to his wife was ‘a vineyard surrounded by walls’ on the shore of San Pietro; and Pietro Candiano IV. ruled alone.

He did outrageous deeds to strengthen his power. To win the protection of the Emperor Otho he forced his wife to take the veil in the convent of Saint Zacharias, and obliged his only son by her, Vitale, to become a monk. Having thus disposed of them, he took to wife Gualdrada, the sister of the Marquis of Tuscany, a princess of German origin, of great wealth, a subject and a relative of the Emperor himself.

THE CHRIST OF ST. MARK’S

Trusting in this great alliance, Pietro no longer concealed the designs he entertained for himself and his family, branches of which were established in Padua and Vicenza, where they enjoyed, and certainly exacted, the highest consideration. Indeed, most of the Candiano men seem to have married women allied to reigning princes.

The Doge, their head, now garrisoned with German soldiers a number of fortresses in the neighbourhood of Ferrara, which had come to him with his wife; lastly, he did what every tyrant has done since history began, he surrounded himself with a mercenary bodyguard of desperate men who had everything to gain by his success, and everything to lose if he fell. After this he showed plainly enough that he meant to emancipate himself altogether from those counsellors which the Republic imposed upon him in all the important affairs of state.

He might have succeeded in any other state, but in Venice his was not the only family that aspired to the supreme power. His deeds had been violent, high-handed, outrageous, such as would condemn the chief of any community that called itself free; the Orseolo watched him, lay in wait for him, trapped him, and compassed his end. Following their lead, the people formed themselves into a vast conspiracy, and at a signal the ducal palace was surrounded on all sides.

976 A.D.

The Doge would have fled, but it was too late, for every door was watched and strongly guarded. In his despair he attempted to take sanctuary in Saint Mark’s church, which was connected with the palace by a dark and narrow entry. Thither he hastened, with his wife, their little child, and a few of his faithful bodyguard; but the conspirators had remembered the secret corridor and were there, and they hewed him down, him and the child and every man of his attendants. The women they suffered to go unhurt.

A SHRINE, ST. MARK’S

Then they dragged out the dead bodies, even the child’s, and gave them over to the rage of the furious populace to be spurned and insulted, until one just man, Giovanni Gradenigo, stood forth and claimed them, by what right I know not except that of decency, and buried them in the convent of Saint Hilary. Meanwhile the rabble had fired the palace, and the flames devoured it and spread to the church of Saint Mark; and further, a great number of houses were burnt down on that day, whereby the chiefs of the conspiracy were brought into discredit with those whose property was destroyed. But Pietro Orseolo was chosen to be Doge.

Now the dogess Gualdrada, breathing vengeance on them that had murdered her husband and her little son, took refuge on the mainland and came to Piacenza, to the court of the Empress Adelaide, who was the widow of Otho I. and the mother of Otho II., then reigning. There Gualdrada cast herself at Adelaide’s feet and told her grief, imploring justice and righteous vengeance; and her cry was heard, for soon the young Emperor summoned Venice to account, not for the assassination of the Doge, but for violence done against Gualdrada and for the murder of her son.

Venice was in no state to face the Holy Roman Empire alone, and she obeyed the summons by sending the patrician Antonio Grimani to Piacenza, with orders to explain to the Empress that the Republic was not altogether responsible for the cruel deeds done by a handful of her citizens. The ambassador spoke long and well, setting forth the iniquities of the Doge Pietro Candiano, and promising to make full reparation to Gualdrada.

Rom. i. 252. Mol. Dogaressa.

There they sat, in the hall of the castle of Piacenza, the old Empress in her robes, surrounded by the flower of her northern knights, and before them Antonio Grimani, the ambassador, representing the person of the Doge Orseolo; and Gualdrada was not there, but the envoy of her brother, the Marquis of Tuscany, came to speak for her, appealing to the just sense of the court.

At a gesture from the Empress this personage came forward, bearing a sealed letter as his brief, written with Gualdrada’s own hand, and he broke the seal, and presented to the ambassador of Venice the note of her demands. Then and there an inventory was made out of all the property, both personal and real estate, which had either composed her dowry, or which had been promised to her by her husband, or which should have been hers as the heiress of her murdered child; and Antonio Grimani did not hesitate, but promised for the Republic that everything should be restored.

On her side Gualdrada then declared that she gave up all thoughts of vengeance against the state of Venice, the reigning Doge or his successors, and she signed with her own hand the solemn act which the imperial notary drew up, and by which the mutual engagement was ratified. So the grim business ended; and Gualdrada took lands and gold for her child’s blood and her husband’s, as was the manner in the Middle Ages, and went back to her Tuscan home, and lived finely, and married, for aught I know, and was happy for ever afterwards.

Here, on the heels of tragedy, follows romance, in the same family of Candiano; or perhaps it is only legend, of the kind the old chroniclers loved so well.

Elena, the lovely daughter of a Pietro, we know not which, fell deep in love with Gherardo Guoro; and this love of hers was a great secret, for he was neither rich nor noble, and had small hope of being accepted as a son-in-law by a Doge who was always intriguing to make brilliant marriages for his family. But Elena had a nurse who loved her dearly and pitied the pair, and helped them to meet again and again, till at last they were married, and none but the old nurse knew it. Now, therefore, Gherardo sought fortune and set out on a voyage to the East; and while he was away, Pietro Candiano told his daughter that he would betroth her to Vittor Belegno. In her terror the girl’s heart stood still, and she fell into a trance so death-like that it was mistaken for death itself, and on the same day, according to the immemorial custom of Italy, she lay in her coffin in the cathedral. But within a few hours, as love and fate would have it, Gherardo Guoro came sailing back, only to learn of her sudden death. Wild with grief he rushed to the cathedral, and by prayers, entreaties, and bribes prevailed upon the sacristan to open the tomb, and help him to wrench off the lid of the coffin. When he saw her face his passionate tears broke out, and, lifting the beloved head, he kissed her again and again; and his kisses brought the colour to her cheek, for she was not dead, and he held her in his arms, and she grew warm, and he took her alive out of the place of death, in a dream of wonder and joy. So when Pietro the Doge saw that his daughter was alive again, he was glad, and forgave them both and blessed them; and afterwards they lived happily.

THE GREAT WINDOW, ST. MARK’S

In point of age I think this is the oldest existing version of the story of Romeo and Juliet, and the one from which all the other forms of the legend were afterwards derived. It would be interesting to pursue the inquiry further, to find out how many different shapes the tale has assumed in the course of ages, and in how many instances it has been founded on fact; for that some of the stories are more than half-true I have not the slightest doubt.

976 A.D.

The power of the Candiano family was broken when Pietro IV. and his little son were murdered, and the strong race of the Orseolo now seized the ducal throne, and tried to make it hereditary with themselves. They had cleared the way by violence, and they pursued their way to power without scruple. It was Pietro Orseolo who had been the soul of the revolution against the last Candiano, and it might have been expected that his supporters would set him up as Doge; but it seemed wiser to proceed more cautiously, and with singular foresight they put forward another member of the family, also called Pietro, a man of the most profound religious convictions, and who had led such a holy life that he was regarded as a saint on earth.

The family were not mistaken in proposing his candidacy, a parallel to which may be found in the election of the saintly hermit, Pietro da Morrone, to be pope, by way of solving the difficulties which had produced a long vacancy of the papal see. Pietro Orseolo was acclaimed Doge without opposition.

But piety is not always energy, and virtue has little or nothing to do with the greatness of princes. The holy man felt himself weak in the face of the troubles caused by the hatred of his own family for that of its predecessors in power, and when he saw what great responsibilities were accumulating upon his shoulders, and what dangers menaced the state, he quietly made up his mind to leave the world behind him and to end his life in a Camaldolese monastery in Aquitaine. I find the best account of this extraordinary vocation in Mr. Hazlitt’s recent work (published in 1900); and incidentally I feel bound to say that this writer, whose original book has now developed to very solid dimensions, has searched the chronicles and later authorities upon Venetian history with a care and a conscientious thoroughness quite unequalled by any other historian who has treated of the same subject. We are free to differ with Mr. Hazlitt as to some of his conclusions, and as to the particular stories he has preferred to follow where the legends are many and contradictory; but for thorough and detailed accounts, according to the different chronicles, the English reader must go to him.

Rom. i. 256.

Hazlitt, i. 90.

In the late summer of the year 977 the good Doge Orseolo received the visit of a learned and holy Frenchman, Warin, who was the Superior of the Abbey of Saint Michel de Cuxac in Aquicaine, and who had come to Venice to see for himself the place where the Evangelist was laid. The Doge received him as became his rank in the church, and the two good men were drawn to each other by that profound though instantaneous sympathy which most of us have felt at least once in life. Of the two, Warin had the stronger nature, and recognising the true monk in the devout Doge, he bade him give up the world, to which he had never really belonged, and follow his manifest vocation.

Pietro Orseolo had been married at the age of eighteen to a maiden as virtuous as himself, and when one son had been born to the pair they had exchanged vows of chastity, and had afterwards given up their lives to the care of the poor, and to visiting the hospices and hospitals.

And now, long after that, Warin argued with Pietro and urged him more and more to renounce the world altogether; but Pietro was as wise as he was good, and he knew that it was his duty to leave everything in order for his successor, and he accordingly claimed a year in which to prepare for his retirement.

The monk Warin had to admit that he was right, and they parted on the first of September. On that same day, one year later, Warin returned and waited for the Doge in the monastery of Sant’ Ilario. Pietro left his house alone in the night and joined him, dressed as a pilgrim; at midnight they mounted swift horses and set out upon their long journey westwards, and the fugitive was not missed till late on the following morning. Some accounts say that Orseolo’s wife had already taken the veil in the nunnery of Saint Zacharias; others assure us that she was dead. It matters little, for the one fact stands undenied, that Pietro Orseolo fled from the dogeship of Venice to be a novice in France, in one of the most rigid religious orders of that time. There he lived in peace for nineteen years till he died in the odour of sanctity; but over seven hundred years passed before he was officially canonised and took his place in the calendar, after which the French king returned his bones to Venice. There is a picture in the Museo Civico representing him and his wife dressed as monk and nun, and kneeling before a Madonna.

HALL OF THE GLOBES, DUCAL PALACE

The policy of the Orseolo family in putting forward a saint to represent them had not been very successful, for after Pietro’s flight they found themselves deserted by the factions they had led against Pietro Candiano IV.; and in the election which followed the holy man’s sudden abdication, one more Candiano was chosen Doge in the person of Vitale, of that name. At the same time two powerful alliances were formed, the one between the Candiano and the Caloprini, of which the object seems to have been to set up some sort of despotic government under the protection of the Holy Roman Empire; the other between the Orseolo and the Morosini, who held to the old alliance with Byzantium and the East. Sismondi and others seriously derive the names of these two families from Greek words signifying, for Morosini, the ‘Friends of Fools,’ and for Caloprini, the ‘People who bow themselves skilfully’—in other words, perhaps, the dupes and their flatterers. Of the two it was the flatterers that came to grief, however, whereas the Morosini have continued to flourish even to our own time. I know not whether these derivations have any value. Victor Hugo, who did not know Greek, once suggested that the French word ‘ironie’ might be derived from the English word ‘iron.’

Many bloody encounters took place, in which the nobles of Venice took sides with one party or the other, as their personal interests suggested, and at last the Caloprini, who were hated by the people, were forced to leave Venice. Yet trusting to the support of the Empress Adelheid, or Adelaide, in an evil hour they ventured to come back a few years later; but the Morosini, who had grown stronger in the meantime, fell upon them and put them all cruelly to death, so that of that great house only three widowed women remained alive to mourn the dead.

It was time that some strong hand should grasp the reins and drive the car of state through the slough of chaos and blood in which it was stuck fast, out upon the broad highway of fame. The hand was ready, and the time had come; in the year 991 Pietro Orseolo II. mounted the ducal throne.

From the first he threw all his energy into a systematic campaign against the pirates of the Adriatic, whose fathers had carried off the Venetian brides. They had paid for their rashness with their lives, and their descendants had never again come so near the city, yet the affront was not forgotten, and an expedition which had their destruction for its object appealed to the men of Venice as few other incentives could.

With a strong fleet the Doge set sail, and visited the coast cities of Istria and Dalmatia one by one. They hailed him as a liberator, for they were especially exposed to the attacks of the corsairs, and in return for the protection of the Republic they placed their liberty in Pietro Orseolo’s hands. He wisely received them as federal allies rather than as subjects of Venice, though they, in their haste to be protected, would not have refused to submit themselves to him as conquered cities. He received them indeed under the shadow of the standard of Saint Mark, but he left to each one full and unhampered liberty to govern itself as it should see fit, requiring only a small yearly tribute in acknowledgment of what was to be a feudal supremacy. The town of Arbo was to pay ten pounds of silk, for instance, while Pola paid two thousand pounds’ weight of olive-oil yearly to feed the lamps of Saint Mark’s church, and so on, through a long list; and so, by token of a few skins of oil, of a handful of silk, Venice first got supremacy over the eastern Adriatic cities, with all the vast advantage to her commerce that lay in owning harbours and warehouses all along the coast almost as far as Greece. From that time Trieste, Capo d’ Istria, Rovigno, and all the sea-coast cities of Istria became Venetian, and Zara, long an ally, and Salone, and Spalatro and Ragusa; and the islands too, Coronota, Brazza, and many others, down to the islets of Corsola and Lazina, which stood firm for the pirates, guarding the approach to Narenta, their chief city. But there, as all the chronicles agree, the Doge put forth his strength, and he took those places in hard-fought battle and smote them, and utterly wasted them with fire and the sword, so that from that day their strength was gone, and the Adriatic was for many centuries freed from the terror of their deeds.

Then, turning homeward, Pietro Orseolo visited the vast provinces he had annexed to Venice, and because he had destroyed the corsairs the people everywhere received him with great joy, and acclaimed him Duke of Dalmatia by common consent; and the Doges who came after him bore the well-earned title during many hundreds of years.

998 A. D. Rom. i. 284. Zanetti.

Now it came to pass that when the young Emperor Otho III., mystic, fiery, enthusiastic, heard of all this success, he felt a very great longing to visit Pietro Orseolo and to see the wonderful water-city of which all the world was beginning to talk; and he secretly told his wishes to his privy councillors, but they would not hear of such a thing, and he, being very young, would not act openly against their advice. Yet he persisted in his intention, while he held his peace.

So at last, on a warm and moonlight night in the year 998, a boat manned by eight men silently approached the little island of San Servolo, not far from the city; and two men stepped out upon the shore and went up and knocked at the door of a half-ruined building, once a monastery of Benedictines. A man of imposing stature opened and let them in; but soon three fishermen came out by the same way and got into a skiff that lay waiting hard by, with two of their companions, for the larger boat had disappeared; and they pulled over to the city.

Then in the moonlight the skiff was quietly rowed all about the city, stopping here and there, wherever there was something worthy to be seen; and if any of the belated townsfolk noticed the little boat and its crew, no one guessed that it bore the young Emperor Otho himself, and the Doge, and the Secretary, Paul the Deacon, who himself tells the tale of the nocturnal visit. Having succeeded once, the Emperor came again, less secretly, and spent days in the Doge’s palace, but still he preferred not to be openly known, so that he might be the more free to go about the city. There was a romantic strain in his short life, in his intense enthusiasm, in his profound belief in a divine right to reign; there was a faint foreshadowing of a stronger Emperor who is come in our own day to claim what he claimed, and to do, perhaps, what he could not do. With the strenuous reaching out after higher things Otho felt youth’s longing to know, in an age when it was possible for one man to master all the knowledge of his time, and it was surely this desire that most of all brought him over to Venice that first time. Doubtless, too, because Venice was counted with the East, his advisers foresaw trouble in a too open friendship between him and the Doge. But his early death ended such danger, if it ever existed, and all that remains is the story of his wanderings by night, in fisherman’s dress, through the still and moonlit waterways of the young city.

Like the Partecipazio and the Candiano houses which had ruled before him, Pietro Orseolo now took measures to make the sovereignty hereditary in his family, by associating his own son Giovanni in the ducal honour, and further by marrying him to a Princess Mary, who was the daughter of one of the joint Emperors of the East and the niece of the other. The pair were united in Constantinople according to the Greek rite, and with the utmost pomp and magnificence, and Giovanni was given the rank of an imperial patrician. On their return to Venice, he and his beautiful bride were received by the people with demonstrations of enthusiastic joy, and, according to Sansovino, it was on this occasion, and at the express request of the Venetians themselves, that Giovanni was invited by his father to share in the power. It may well be, and it matters little.

Mol. Dogaressa.

Orseolo was much preoccupied by the still smouldering hatred of the Candiano family, and he sought to satisfy their ambition by marrying his second son, Domenico, to Imelda, grand-daughter of Pietro Candiano IV. and Richelda. His third son, Ottone, when still very young, he married to Geiza, sister of Saint Stephen, King of Hungary; and his daughter Hicela was given to the King of Croatia.

Strong in these alliances, still young in years, and richly endowed with the health and beauty that were hereditary in his family, Orseolo II. might well have looked forward to a long and happy career, and to the certainty of leaving the sovereignty to his descendants throughout centuries to come. Then, about the year 1009, a comet suddenly appeared in the sky, and famine and plague ravaged Venice and the world. Amongst the very first victims were Giovanni and his young wife, and Orseolo himself did not long survive them. The mortality was such, according to old Dandolo, that there was not time to dig graves for all who died, and such tombs as were not full were opened and crammed with dead.

Ottone Orseolo succeeded his father, when the power of the name seemed at its height; but under him came the fall and exile of his family, and the end of the period during which the dogeship was more or less hereditary in the houses of Partecipazio, Candiano, and Orseolo. That period is a labyrinth of uncertainties and a maze of conflicting anachronisms. Scarcely two chroniclers place the same events in the same year, and they are rarely agreed as to matters even more important. Unmistakable history does not make its appearance in Venice till the eleventh century, and not till the descendants of Pietro Orseolo II., the greatest Doge who had yet reigned, were exiled from Venice, and excluded for ever, by a special law, from holding office under the Republic. They may have found some consolation in the fact that one of their house inherited the throne of Saint Stephen.

About 1032.

A few years later, the Doge Domenico Flabianico, or Flobenigo, sustained by an assembly of the clergy and the people, introduced a law by which the chief of the Republic was forbidden to associate any one with himself in the power, and by which he was constrained to accept the ‘assistance’ of two counsellors. The nomination of these was the first step towards the creation of those many offices by which the Doge’s action was limited little by little, till he became the mere figure-head, if not the scapegoat, of the Republic he was supposed to govern.

FISHING BOATS AT THE RIVA

THE GRAND CANAL FROM THE CA D’ ORO