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It is not my intention to attempt in these pages an unbroken narrative of early Venetian history. Such attempts have been made by men of great and thorough learning, but they have failed in part or altogether because it is quite impossible to trust the only sources of information which have come down to us. These agree, indeed, more or less; that is, they agree just nearly enough to make it sure that something like the event they narrate in such widely different ways actually took place, in some year to be chosen at will from the several dates they give. But that is all, until nearly the end of the Middle Ages.

One thing must not be forgotten: Venice was not the only maritime republic in Italy, even in the ninth and tenth centuries. There were at least three others, Amalfi, Genoa, and Pisa, which at that time were as prosperous, and seemed likely to be as long-lived, and of which the commerce in the eastern Mediterranean was already much more important than that of Venice. In the end Venice outdid them because she was isolated from Italy; literally ‘isolated,’ since she was built on islands in the sea.

England owes her independence, and the British Empire therefore owes its existence, to twenty-one miles of salt water. A much less formidable water barrier gave Venice a thousand years of self-government. The vast advantage of protection by water was perhaps not evident to the Venetians more than two or three times in their history, any more than the same advantage has been actually felt by Englishmen more than twice or thrice, but those few occasions were most critical; it has been present all the time, and the enemies of Venice, as of England, have always realized with dismay the difficulty of attacking a nation to whose country men cannot walk dry-shod.

The other three great maritime republics did not possess this prime permanent advantage of isolation by water. Amalfi was taken and retaken by land powers; Pisa was ultimately subjugated by the Florentines, the landsmen who lived nearest to her; and Genoa, with a surviving semblance of freedom, became tributary to the House of Savoy in the eighteenth century. Venice alone of the four held her own till the days of Napoleon, protected to some extent, perhaps, by a sort of tacit but general European agreement to consider her a city of pleasure, but also, and always, by that water barrier, which multiplies the strength of a city’s defenders tenfold, and divides to dangerously small fractions the powers of those that assail her.

It may seem fruitless to try to recall in a few words how Pisa and Genoa rose to maritime power; but it is not possible to pass over in silence the period during which Genoa, Venice’s great rival, was growing up on the opposite side of the peninsula, nor the time in which Amalfi and Pisa were becoming powers in the Mediterranean.

Amalfi, most strange to say, though she was the first to disappear, left to the civilised world at large the greatest legacy. To one of her citizens, Flavio Gioia, we owe the mariner’s compass; to her we owe the manuscript of the Pandects of Justinian, by which, as Sismondi justly says, all western Europe came back to the study and practice of Roman law; to Amalfi we owe those laws regulating maritime traffic, which are the foundation of the modern sea-law of civilised nations. And as if this were not enough for her glory, it is to Amalfi that the order of Knights Hospitallers of Saint John of Jerusalem owes its existence, the oldest order of knighthood that still survives, now known as the Sovereign Order of Malta.

At its greatest, the Republic of Amalfi embraced not more than fifteen or sixteen villages besides the little capital itself, scattered along the southern side of the Sorrentine peninsula, some perched on the inaccessible flanks and spurs of a mountain that rises out of the sea to a height of nearly five thousand feet, some built where wild gorges widen at the water’s edge. That breakwaters were built out into the sea before Amalfi and Positano against the terrific south-westerly gales, we partly know and partly guess; that the capital and the dependent villages were strongly fortified may easily be proved. But what is left, though beautiful beyond description, is so little, and that little is so exiguous, that the thoughtful traveller asks with a sort of unbelieving wonder how the Amalfitans can ever have disputed the lordship of the sea with the greatest, and possessed their own rich quarter in every thriving harbour of the East; and how they can have given the maritime world its first rules of the road, or sent out rich and splendid trains of knights to one crusade after another. Yet they did all these things before they sank from power and disappeared and were lost in the turmoil of South Italian history.

Next greater in strength to survive came Pisa, a contrast to Amalfi in almost every condition, and a power which, when at its height, was of more importance in history because history was then less chaotic. Not backed against steep mountains like Amalfi and Genoa, but built in the rich alluvial soil of the delta of the Arno, where the widening stream afforded a safe harbour for ships; not isolated in a natural fortress of rocks, but easy of access by land as well as by sea, and therefore easy to quarrel with and often in danger, Pisa possessed the natural advantages of a modern capital like London or Paris rather than the natural defences of a strong city of the Middle Ages. But the times were not ripe, and Florence was too near, jealous, turbulent, commercial and usurious, a dangerous enemy in war, and a terrible competitor in peace. No country has produced simultaneously so many cities as Italy, any of which might have become the capital of a nation. I can only compare the tremendous vigour of her growth at many points at once to that of a strong oak-tree broken off near the ground by a tornado, and sending up shoots from the stump, so tall, so straight, so vital that each one, if the others were cut away, would grow in a few years to be a tree as tall and robust as the parent. Venice, Palermo, Naples, Pisa, Genoa, Florence, Milan—might not any one of these have grown to be a nation’s capital? And can any other nation of Europe show as much?

The tenth century was not far advanced when Pisa possessed an immense fleet and was already governing herself as a republic. A proof of her importance lies in the fact that when Otho the Second was at war with the South and meditated annexing to his Empire what remained of the old Greek colonies, he applied to Pisa to lend him ships wherewith to transport his troops to Calabria. His sudden death, however, put an end to the negotiations, and the seven nobles whom he had sent to Pisa to represent him were so much delighted with all they saw, as well as with their reception, that they asked to be made citizens themselves, were granted the privilege, and became the founders of that great Ghibelline party by which the destinies of the Pisan Republic were guided so long as she maintained her independence.

THE POST OFFICE

Amalfi sent out traders to the East and knights to fight for the holy sepulchre; but her knights did not fight to win land for her, nor did her traders ever become colonists. Pisa, like Venice, sought to extend her territory. At that time the daring Saracen chief named Mousa—Moses—settled himself on the eastern and southern coast of Sardinia, and carried his depredations far and wide on the Italian shore and through the Tuscan archipelago. Seizing his opportunity when the Pisan fleet had sailed southwards to help the Calabrian Greeks against the Saracens of Sicily, Mousa and his pirates entered the mouth of the Arno by night and landed in the suburbs of Pisa. The terrified citizens were waked by the yells of their assailants amidst the flames of their own dwellings, and if the corsairs had possessed any local knowledge of the city its history might have gone no further than that night. But in their ignorance they had landed on the wrong bank of the river, and had fired the suburb instead of the city itself; a woman, and some say that she was a noble lady, made her way through the confusion across the bridge to the Consul’s dwelling, the church bells were rung backwards and roused the sleeping garrison to arms, and the Saracens, surprised by the prospect of energetic resistance, withdrew hastily to their ships and dropped down the river. The peril was past.

But when the fleet came back from the South vengeance was sworn upon Mousa and his pirates, and the conquest of Sardinia was a foregone conclusion. So Pisa rose to power, and Genoa envied her and Florence too, and those long wars began which ended in her destruction and her absorption. While Venice had been distracted by internal factions, by the feuds of Candiano and Orseolo, Morosini and Caloprini, the ‘Dupes and the Flatterers,’ Pisa had at least enjoyed the honour of fighting and vanquishing a horde of unbelievers. And meanwhile Genoa had risen also to much the same degree of prosperity and strength, so that when Peter the Hermit’s cry rang through the Christian world, rousing the faithful to win back the Holy Land, the four great Italian maritime republics were almost equals in wealth and influence, and in the fleets of which they could dispose.

In what is by no means to be considered a complete history of Venice, my readers will be grateful if I spare them the too untrustworthy details with which the chroniclers fill up their accounts of the eleventh century. In addition to what I have said about the growth of the rival republics, however, it may be mentioned that before the great movement of the first crusade, the Venetians had more than once measured themselves with the Normans in the Levant, and perfectly well understood the position of affairs in the south of Italy and Sicily, where the sons of Tancred of Hauteville had carried everything before them.

Venice, Genoa, and Pisa played almost equal parts in the general European movement that followed, and the Venetians need not be greatly blamed if they derived profit from a source that should have yielded only honour to those who sought it. The Venetians combined glory with business, it is true, but, on the other hand, no one expected them to transport men and horses to the East for nothing; and, since they were the best provided with vessels suitable for that purpose, it was a foregone conclusion that a large part of the transportation should be done by them. Moreover, when all is told, there were few indeed amongst all those hundreds of thousands who wore the cross who had the right to reproach their fellows and companions for hoping to combine the salvation of their souls with some improvement in their earthly fortunes.

OFF THE PUBLIC GARDENS

It was, of course, natural that the Italians, who are the least sentimental people in Europe, should understand the worldly advantages which were sure to follow in the wake of that great tidal wave of sentiment which rose from the depths of Europe at Peter the Hermit’s cry, advanced, tremendous and irresistible, over land and sea to the most eastern limits of Christian civilisation, to topple and break at last upon Jerusalem itself in a thunderous chaos of disaster and success.

The confused history of the wars in which Venice was engaged during the twelfth century is intimately connected with that of the first and second crusades, though it cannot be said that the Venetians played a very great part in either as fighting crusaders. It is hard to follow exactly what took place when the whole world that surrounded the Mediterranean was in a state of ferment and wild confusion; but it cannot be denied that the Venetians made the most of the new opportunities presented to them, and they never neglected a chance of enriching themselves at a time when a vast amount of money was brought into circulation to pay for the transportation and victualling of armed hosts. The Republic, even at the outset, was in possession of a fleet that elicited the admiration of Europe. No other nation owned ships of such varied types well suited to different purposes. They had vessels called ‘hippogogi,’ intended, as the name indicates, for the transportation of horses, of which each was able to carry a considerable number. They had fast vessels called also by a Greek name, ‘dromi,’ some of which are stated to have been a hundred and seventy-five feet over all; and though of light draught, such ships can hardly have been of less than three hundred tons register and over. They had a main deck and an upper deck, which the chronicler, who was totally ignorant of nautical matters, presumes to have been assigned respectively to the fighting men and the seamen who worked the ship. Several of these vessels carried timber, so fitted as to be rapidly built up into a turret, reaching to the battlements of sea-girt fortresses and towns, and they were provided with engines for throwing stones, heavy wooden bolts with iron heads, and boiling pitch.

1099. Defeat of the Pisans off Rhodes, A. Vicentino; ceiling of Sala dello Scrutinio, Ducal Palace.

It was undoubtedly at this time that the great rivalry rose between Venice and Genoa, when both were supposed to be helping the Christian cause in the East. It happened more than once that a convenient pretext for these quarrels presented itself in the shape of sacred relics of saints, coveted alike by Pisans, Genoese, and Venetians; and to obtain such precious spoil they slew each other without hesitation or remorse. They not only trusted that the saint, when bodily in their possession, would bestow his richest blessings upon those who had fought for him, but they were also well aware that his shrine would without doubt attract numerous pilgrims to their city, and thereby prove a permanent source of gain. It was in this way that the Venetians succeeded in carrying off from the island of Rhodes the body of Saint Nicholas, in order to exhibit it to the veneration of the faithful in the church they had already built to him on the Lido; not many years passed before they succeeded in stealing from Constantinople the body of Saint Stephen the martyr, and in the course of the century they possessed themselves of numerous treasures of the same kind.

It must not be supposed, however, that they confined themselves to the discovery and seizure of such pious plunder. The end they pursued was of a more practical nature, and the whole result of their activity during their first wars in the East is found in the establishment of flourishing colonies throughout the Levant, and in the gradual, but in the end surprising subjection of the Byzantine Empire to their commercial interests. They made enormous sacrifices, they shed blood like water and spent money without stint, in order to establish themselves as the masters of the Ionian islands.

Rom. ii. 42.

1123. Defeat of the Turks at Jaffa, Sante Peranda; same ceiling.

Though they hardly fought at all as crusaders, they derived immense advantages from the conquest of the Holy Land. In the kingdom of Jerusalem they acquired the right to own a street, a square, a bakery, and a public bath in every city; in the cities of Sidon and Acre, the ancient Ptolemais, they obtained even more ample privileges; finally, in the year 1123, they had made themselves masters of one-third of the city of Tyre, while leaving the other two-thirds in the possession of the king. They immediately established there an ambassador to represent the Republic, with the title of Bailo, and a consul to protect their financial interests.

1123. Fall of Tyre, Aliense; same ceiling.

The taking of Tyre was largely due to the personal courage and firmness of the Doge Domenico Michiel. Under apparently hopeless conditions, and when his troops were thoroughly discouraged, without money to pay their wages or supplies to feed them, he succeeded in maintaining his influence over them, and ultimately led them to victory. One of the most extraordinary devices to which he had recourse in the absence of coin was the creation of a leather currency. He actually had vast quantities of leather cut into tokens and stamped with a sign that promised redemption if they were presented to the treasury in Venice when the expedition reached home; and these tokens circulated as notes do nowadays, and were ultimately redeemed in gold. It is to this circumstance that the arms of the Michiel family make allusion, displaying one-and-twenty pieces of money upon alternate bends, azure and argent.

Rom. ii. 61.

Rom. ii. 49, 61.

The influence which the Venetians acquired in Constantinople during the first half of the twelfth century showed itself in the construction of churches and convents in the city itself, and in the establishment of great commercial storehouses and markets, where they used their own Venetian weights, measures, and money, as if they were in Venice itself. Their wares paid no duty on entering the Greek Empire; they required the Greeks to speak of the Doge under the title of Protospartos, or august prince, and the patriarch of Venice was designated as ‘Hypertimos,’ and derived considerable fees from the Eastern capital, while the basilica of Saint Mark enjoyed a tribute from the Byzantine Empire. In fact, during a certain length of time, the importance of the Republic was almost as great in Constantinople as in Venice itself, and was a source of considerable anxiety to the emperors. They did their best to oppose the growing power of the Venetians, but the assistance of the latter was absolutely necessary to them in order to repulse the attacks of the Normans of Sicily, who even succeeded in penetrating into the suburbs of Constantinople; and for some time the Greeks were obliged to bear with the official pretensions of the Republic, as well as with the insults and humiliations suffered by the Greek soldiers at the hands of their foreign allies.

1148. Defeat of Roger, Marco Vecellio; same ceiling.

Rom. ii. 82-87.

Under the reign of the Emperor Manuel, however, the affairs of the Republic in the East suffered a severe check. During an expedition, of which the real object was nothing less than the conquest of Greece, an outbreak of the plague brought terror and confusion upon the Venetian fleet. The attacking force consisted largely of volunteers, who lost heart as the terrible sickness spread amongst them. A mere remnant of what had seemed a brilliant army reached Venice with the remains of the fleet, and the arrival of these few spread mourning and desolation amongst the citizens. Outraged at the weakness and lack of wisdom displayed by the Doge during the expedition, the people united to wreak their vengeance upon him, and he was promptly assassinated. Amongst the many families whose youngest and bravest were victims of this fruitless expedition, none was more nearly exterminated than the Giustiniani. One hundred men of their name and race had sailed away to Greece; not one came back.

THE CLOCK TOWER

Rom. ii. 89.

Lazzarini, Guida, 270.

The Venetians felt that the city itself was bereaved by their loss. One man of marriageable age alone survived in Venice to stand between the name of Giustiniani and its extinction, and he was a monk in the monastery of Saint Nicholas. Thither the people proceeded in a body, they claimed him from the order, they brought him home to his ancestral palace, they besought the Pope to free him from his vows. Alexander III. readily acceded to a request so unanimous; at the same time, as if to provide him with a wife whose position should be somewhat similar to his own, the pontiff liberated also from her nunnery the daughter of the former Doge, Vital Michiel II. The former monk and the former nun were united in bonds of matrimony, and became the parents of no less than twelve children, nine of whom were sons. When the twelve were all grown up, Giustiniani founded in the island of Amiano a convent, to which his wife and their three daughters retired while he returned to his monastery of Saint Nicholas on the Lido.

Mol. Dogaressa, 75.

Rom. ii. 118.

The immediate result of the disastrous expedition to Greece seems to have been that Venice momentarily lost her hold upon the Levant, and was obliged to retire from the strong commercial position she had acquired in Constantinople; but an alliance with William, the king of Sicily and the son of Roger, soon turned the scale in favour of the Republic. The Emperor Manuel Comnenos, terrified at the thought of a coalition between Sicily and Venice, paid the latter a large sum of money by way of indemnity.

Rom. ii. 77.

Such, on the whole, were the principal events in the foreign history of Venice, which were more or less connected with the First Crusade and its consequences. But it must not be supposed that while Venice was doing everything in her power to extend her commerce and influence in eastern Europe and in Asia, she was neglecting to improve her opportunities in Italy. As early as 1101 the Venetians had installed themselves as masters in the city of Ferrara, which they had helped the great Countess Matilda to recover from her imperial enemy. At the same time the Republic required all its prodigious energy to maintain its hold upon Dalmatia, the possession of which was contested by the king of Hungary. One of the numerous expeditions to the Dalmatian coasts cost the life of the Doge Ordelafo Falier; this was in 1116, and fifty years elapsed before the Republic recovered possession of all the fortresses on that coast. Stephen III. of Hungary now thought only of winning the good graces of his country’s former rivals, and married two princesses of his family, the one to Niccolò, a son of the Doge Michiel, who had been created Count of the island of Arbo in Dalmatia, and the other to the Count of Ossero. Venice had become a European power, and foreign sovereigns sought alliance with her by marriage.

Much interest attaches to the relations between the Doges, the Emperors, and the Popes in the twelfth century, more especially as the long quarrel ended in the institution of the memorable feast of the Ascension, which was kept in Venice to the very last year of the Republic.

The Emperor Conrad died in the year 1152, leaving an only son who was a mere boy. The electors of the Empire, judging that the times required a strong hand and a sovereign who should not be under the control of any regency, elected the late Emperor’s nephew, Frederick of Hohenstaufen, surnamed Barbarossa. Brave, ambitious, and energetic, Frederick’s object from the first was to bring all Italy under the direct rule of the Empire. By a piece of good fortune which rarely befell any of the Emperors, he found himself supported by the Pope, who, according to the amiable traditions of those times, should have been his natural enemy. Nicholas Brakespeare, the Englishman who reigned under the name of Pope Hadrian IV., was at that time in considerable anxiety owing to the progress made in Rome by the revolutionary teachings of Arnold of Brescia, and viewed with satisfaction the Emperor’s intention of descending into Italy at the head of an imposing army. For such an expedition a pretext was soon found. Frederick convoked a general diet of the Empire at Roncaglia, not far from Piacenza, which had generally been the official residence of his predecessors when they visited the peninsula.

The Venetian Republic does not appear to have been at all alarmed by what was known of the Emperor’s intentions, and sent three patricians to represent her at the diet. The Emperor was indeed chiefly opposed by the Lombards, who entirely refused to acknowledge the claims he now made, and he was accordingly obliged more than once to resort to arms to enforce them, even after his coronation in Rome.

Rom. ii. 73.

A dangerous epidemic which broke out in Italy obliged him to return to Germany for a short time, but he soon came back and convoked a second diet at Roncaglia, the prime object of which was to define exactly what the situation of the Italian states ought to be with regard to the Empire. The diet fully supported the Emperor in the claims he made upon Lombardy, and that province, having been placed under the ban of the Imperial Diet, broke out in open revolt. In the war which followed immediately a number of the Lombard cities were besieged, including Milan and Crema. When the latter place was starved to a surrender, and was obliged to open its gates to the Germans, it is recorded that the whole population emigrated in a body, preferring exile to submission.

At this time Hadrian IV., Frederick’s friend and ally, died, and the conclave elected as his successor Cardinal Bandinelli, who assumed the name of Alexander III., and became one of the Emperor’s bitterest enemies. Even before his election this Pope had been well known for his strong Guelph sympathies, and his election was a source of profound displeasure to the Emperor. The latter could not easily accomplish his purpose in Italy during the reign of a Pope whose patriotic object it was to liberate his country from all foreign influence. Following the astonishing custom which prevailed in those times, Barbarossa immediately proclaimed a Pope of his own, known to us as the Antipope Victor IV., who united the suffrages and enjoyed the support of that very numerous party which desired to see the Germanic influence of the Empire prevalent south of the Alps.

Rom. ii. 75.

There was therefore throughout Italy a condition of schism in which the Pope and the patriotic party were opposed to the Antipope and the Imperialists. The Venetians with their patriarch did not hesitate to espouse the cause of Alexander III. At that time the patriarch was still the Bishop of Grado, and as it chanced that he was at odds with the Archbishop of Aquileia about certain questions connected with the Dalmatian bishoprics since that province had passed into the hands of the Venetians, Aquileia very naturally joined the Imperial standard, and proceeded to sack the diocese of the rival bishop. The Doge interfered in person, and with the help of a few faithful troops succeeded in capturing the hot-headed Bishop of Aquileia, a dozen of his canons, and a number of Friulese country gentlemen who had joined the quarrel in the hope of plunder. These prisoners were all brought to Venice, but were set at liberty when the bishop and his canons had signed a treaty or perpetual agreement, whereby they bound themselves and their successors for ever to pay a yearly tribute consisting of twelve loaves of white bread and twelve fat pigs. The Republic judged that the memory of this victory of the rightful Pope’s party over his adversaries should be preserved, and as a means of doing so decreed that the aforesaid fattened swine should be handed over to the populace on the Thursday before Lent, to be hunted to death in the piazza of Saint Mark. This carnival diversion was so highly appreciated by the people that when in the year 1420 the Pope abolished the two patriarchates of Grado and Aquileia, and created instead the patriarchate of Venice, the government was obliged to provide the pigs at its own expense.

It is only fair to say here that the patriarch of Aquileia made act of submission to Pope Alexander III. himself.

Meanwhile, in the year 1162, that Pope was forced to take refuge in France to escape from the dangers that beset him in Rome; and the bishops and cardinals who were faithful to him, and who now found themselves fugitives, received a hospitable welcome with promises of protection in Venice. It was but natural that this should irritate the Emperor, and foreseeing that there was to be trouble the Republic hastened to conclude alliances with the Greek Emperor and the king of Naples, whose interest it was to check the growth of German influence in Italy.

Rom. ii. 81.

On his side Barbarossa assured himself of the support of Genoa, and returned to Germany to raise fresh troops, while Alexander III. took advantage of his enemy’s absence to come back to Rome. It was in the midst of these party struggles that the Lombard League first took shape and began to grow; in 1167 a congress was held at which were present deputies from the cities of Venice, Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Treviso, Ferrara, Brescia, Bergamo, Mantua, Cremona, Milan, Lodi, Parma, Modena, Bologna, Novara, Vercelli, Reggio, Asti and Tortona. The representatives of these powerful towns met together and swore a solemn oath in a great fortress which they had built for the common defence, and around which a city had already sprung up. The city and fortress were named Alessandria, in honour of Pope Alexander III., who was the soul of the patriotic Italian ‘Concordia.’ It is worth noting that the city of Piacenza, which up to this time had been considered the central focus of Germanic influence in Italy, sent representatives to the congress of Alessandria, and afterwards took an active part in the alliance which was formed there.

Rom. ii. 100.

The Emperor spared no effort to obtain possession of the stronghold of the League; but while the garrison opposed the most determined resistance from within, the cities of the League harassed the Germans from without, and forced them to raise the siege within four months. Not very much later, though too late, the Imperial army received considerable reinforcements; but during that time the army of the League had been able to make every preparation for a decisive battle. The armies met at Legnano on May 19, 1176, and the encounter resulted in a disastrous defeat for Frederick. He himself was thrown from his horse, the great standard of the Empire was captured, and the Imperialists were driven to ignominious flight. The Venetians had no troops in this battle, which was fought at a considerable distance from their territory, but they had contributed large sums of money as well as munitions of war to the cause.

THE DOGANA AND THE SALUTE

During the six years which had preceded this decisive battle, Alexander III. had led a life of hardship and danger. Beset and pursued by his enemies, he wandered and sometimes fled from Benevento to Veroli, and thence to Anagni, feeling himself safer anywhere than in Rome, where party feeling ran high and took the side of Frederick. But the latter’s signal defeat at Legnano convinced Barbarossa at last that his true interest lay in making peace with the sovereign pontiff, in spite of the great difficulty which must attend any negotiations towards such an end; for Frederick dreamt of nothing less than reconciling himself with Alexander III. without abandoning the Antipope whom he had set up in opposition. The first point agreed upon was that a meeting should take place in some city of northern Italy, and that the Pope should attend it in person.

1177. Departure of the Doge’s ambassadors and Papal legates for Pavia, school of Paolo Veronese; arrival of the envoys before Barbarossa, Tintoretto; Hall of the Great Council.

As a preliminary step the Pope proceeded to Venice, being conveyed thither by the galleys of the king of Sicily, and visiting on his way the principal cities of Dalmatia. He was received in Venice with the most profound respect and with demonstrations of the greatest joy by the Doge, the clergy, and the people. During his stay in the city there was a constant exchange of messages between him and the Emperor regarding the city to be chosen for a congress to discuss the peace. Then the Pope himself was obliged to travel to Ferrara, a town which the cities of the League would have preferred, though it was too small to lodge the great number of persons who would have to be present. The Pope returned to Venice after discussing the question with the envoys of Milan, and called together the ambassadors of the Empire, the legates of Sicily, and the principal Lombard chiefs. All these personages presented themselves in answer to the pontifical summons, and proceeded to discuss the situation at great length. The result of the congress was that the Emperor agreed to recognise the legitimate election of Alexander III., to renounce his own Antipope, to sign a truce of six years with the Lombard League, and of fifteen years with the king of Sicily.

THE PIAZZETTA

These preliminaries having been properly and minutely established, the Emperor was invited to meet the Pope in Venice. It was his Canossa. He arrived in Chioggia in 1177, and was met at the entrance of the lagoons by a deputation of bishops, who exhorted him to abjure his schism before entering upon Venetian territory. Barbarossa complied with good grace and was forthwith freed from the ban of excommunication. On the following day he proceeded to the capital. The Doge, the patriarch of Grado, and all the bishops of the Venetian state went out to meet him in their barges. The whole company landed at the Piazzetta amidst the acclamations of the crowd, and the Emperor was at once conducted to the Basilica. Here the Pope, in full pontificals, awaited him under the porch, surrounded by his cardinals and numerous representatives of the Venetian clergy. When he saw before him the august pontiff whom he had so long and so cruelly persecuted, the

Barbarossa kneeling before Alexander III., Federigo Zuccaro; Hall of the Great Council.

Emperor seems to have felt a sudden impulse of penitence, for he threw himself upon his knees and bowed down to kiss the Pope’s feet; but Alexander would not allow him to go so far, and raising him to his feet bestowed upon him the kiss of peace. Side by side the temporal and the spiritual sovereigns of the world went up the ancient aisle together to the steps of the high altar, and with the clergy and people intoned the ‘Te Deum Laudamus.’

On the first of August of that year the truce with the Lombard League was signed, and at the same time the Venetians obtained for themselves certain especial promises from the Emperor, one of which was that no imperial ships should navigate the waters of the Adriatic Gulf, which Venice now looked upon as her exclusive property, without the consent of the Republic. On his side the Pope accorded numerous privileges to the city which had given him such abundant proof of its fidelity.

A great part of the importance which was attached to the Doge’s annual visit to the Lido on Ascension Day had its origin in the fact that Alexander III. was present in Venice at that feast. It is true that the custom of the visit dated from the days of Pietro Orseolo II., but the ceremony of espousing the sea was first performed in 1177, when the Pope, on presenting the Doge Sebastian Ziani with a magnificent ring, accompanied the gift with the words: ‘Take this as a token of the sovereignty which you and your successors shall exercise over this sea for ever.’ In memory of this speech the Doge afterwards dropped a golden wedding-ring into the sea every year with imposing ceremonies.

CHIOGGIA

Alexander III. recognised in the monastery of the Carità, school of P. Veronese; Hall of the Great Council.

These are the simple facts upon which is founded the amazing legend of Alexander’s arrival in Venice. Tracked and pursued, the story says, by his imperial enemies, the fugitive Pope reached Venice in disguise and at night. After wandering for hours through the dark and winding ways of the city, he sank down at last upon the steps of a church, worn out with fatigue and sleep, to wait for the day. At dawn he took up his staff again, and on seeing a building which was evidently a monastery, he knocked at the door and asked for shelter. The house was that of Santa Maria della Carità. He was admitted, and, according to at least one chronicler, was installed in the kitchen as a scullion. In this humble office he lived uncomplaining for six months, until a French traveller, who had often seen him in France, recognised him, and hastened to inform the Doge of his presence. The emotion created by the intelligence may easily be imagined. The ducal palace and the whole city were in a ferment of excitement, and a vast procession proceeded at once to fetch the sovereign pontiff from the convent kitchen and conduct him to the palace of the patriarch of Grado. Strong in the support of the Venetians, the Pope now sent ambassadors to Frederick requiring him to restore peace to Church and State. The Emperor, according to the story, sent an arrogant reply, and swore that he would plant his victorious standard before the very door of Saint Mark’s. The natural result of such a reply could only be a war, and the legend did not fail to invent one of the most dramatic nature. Sixty galleys from the Empire, from Genoa, and from Pisa, entered the Adriatic under the command of the young Otho, the Emperor’s son, a boy of eighteen years, endowed with superhuman strength, courage, and experience.

Alexander III. presents the Doge with the sword, Francesco Bassano; same Hall.

Against this powerful fleet the Venetians could only send a force of thirty ships. But right was on their side, and especially the right of legend to give the victory to its favourites. The Doge knelt before the Pope, the Pope blessed him, presented him with a golden sword and promised him the victory.

Battle of Salvore, Domenico Tintoretto; same Hall.

On Ascension Day a great and bloody sea-fight was fought off Salvore, not far from Parenzo, and the Venetians utterly discomfited their enemies, taking from them forty-eight galleys and a vast number of prisoners, including the Prince Otho himself. Like all legendary people, these legendary Venetians were noble and generous beyond words, and at once sent the Prince back to his father with twelve ambassadors.

The Venetians present Prince Otho to the Pope, A. Vicentino; and other pictures representing scenes from the same legend, in the same Hall.

Touched by so much kindness, the Emperor requested a safe-conduct for himself to visit Venice, and having arrived there he was kept waiting an unconscionable time while the terms of a treaty of peace were drawn up. When he was at last admitted to the presence of Alexander III. Frederick was made to lay aside all the insignia of royalty, and was forced to lie down flat upon his face while the Pope placed one foot upon the back of his neck and recited from Psalm xci. verse 13, ‘The young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample underfoot.’ Frederick answered, ‘I bow not before thee, but before Peter.’ ‘Both before Peter and before me,’ insisted the Pope.

The historian Romanin is justified in declaring that it would be hard to accumulate a greater number of absurdities in a single tale, and the most elementary historical criticism has sufficed to destroy all such fables.

S. PIETRO IN CASTELLO

They are, indeed, so manifestly imaginary that the so-called proofs of the dramatic events they describe have been allowed to remain untouched, and they exist to the present day. They consist of an inscription cut in marble, which recalls to the inhabitants of Salvore the victory of the Doge Sebastian Ziani, over the fleet of Otho of Hohenstaufen; of an inscription on the outside of the church of Sant’ Apollinare informing the public that Pope Alexander III. passed a bad night on the steps of that church; and of similar inscriptions upon the churches of Santa Sofia, San Salvatore, San Giacomo, and some other churches, which dispute with Sant’ Apollinare the honour of having offered the pontiff the hospitality of the doorstep.

PONTE MALCANTONE