Читать книгу Salve Venetia (Vol.1&2) - F. Marion Crawford - Страница 12

Table of Contents

The most conflicting judgments have been formed upon the action of the Venetian Republic at the decisive moments of her career, as well as upon the true sources of her wealth and importance. One writer, for instance, gravely tells us that Venice, like England, grew rich by usury and the slave trade; another, whose good faith cannot be doubted, assures the world that the two great mistakes which led to the final downfall of the Republic were the ‘Serrata del Gran Consiglio,’ which excluded the people from the government, and the unjustifiable sack and seizure of Constantinople. It would be hard indeed to produce any satisfactory proof of the former statement; for though the Venetians undoubtedly supplied themselves and one part of Italy with white slaves from the East, and although the Republic at times lent money at interest to poorer governments in distress, yet I do not think that these sources of income were ever to be compared with that derived from a great and legitimate commerce, and from less justifiable but not less lucrative conquest.

As for the second statement, it is enough to consider the length of time which elapsed between the taking of Constantinople and the closure of the Great Council about a hundred years later, say in 1300, on the one hand, and the final destruction of Venetian independence in 1797 on the other. When, in history, an effect is separated from its supposed cause by an interval of five hundred years or more, I do not hesitate to assert that the connection is a little more than doubtful. As for the exclusion of the people from the government having been a source of danger to the Republic, it is interesting to note that almost in the same year the Republic of Florence adopted precisely the opposite course, that it led directly to internal discord and the wars of the Blacks and Whites, and that in less than two hundred years the city which had adopted the democratic view was under the dominion of tyrants—a striking instance of the truth of some of the most important conclusions reached by Plato in the Republic.

In the year 1198 Pope Innocent III. called upon Christendom to undertake a fourth crusade, and the voice of Fulk of Neuilly preached the delivery of the Holy Sepulchre, and roused to arms the most valiant barons and gentlemen of France.

It was not till 1201 that the new army of crusaders was sufficiently organised to consider the means of reaching Palestine, and they then decided that they must make the journey by sea. Accordingly they sent an embassy to Venice, the only maritime power then able to furnish the ships and transports required.

Enrico Dandolo, the Doge, entertained their request, and, speaking in the name of the Republic, offered to convey to Palestine four thousand five hundred horses and nine thousand squires and grooms on large transports, and to take four thousand five hundred knights and twenty thousand men-at-arms on other vessels, and to furnish provisions for men and horses for nine months; and, further, to send fifty armed galleys to convoy the transports to ‘the shores whither Christianity and the service of God called them.’

For this transportation the Republic required the payment of 85,000 marks of silver before the army embarked, and the promise of an equal division of all conquests and of all spoil, Venice to receive one-half of everything.

To these terms the ambassadors agreed, and they obtained from the Pope a solemn approval of the agreement, which the Republic fulfilled with great exactness, but which many of the crusaders violated in a manner far from honourable; for a large number, deeming that they could make the journey more cheaply on their own account, embarked from other European ports without any regard to the engagements made in their names by the ambassadors they themselves had chosen.

The consequence was that at the time agreed upon for meeting in Venice, the crusaders found their numbers much inferior to those provided for in the contract; and, as was natural, those who presented themselves were not able to produce the sum of money agreed upon for the whole number.

But, according to the agreement signed, if the whole sum was not paid before embarking, whatever was paid in was forfeited to the Republic, which had been put to great expense and trouble in fitting out so large a fleet.

In this extremity Enrico Dandolo pointed out to his countrymen that Venice should play a generous part, rather than exact the letter of the contract; that a compromise should be made on some sound basis; and that the most obvious way of settling the matter was to ask of the crusaders some service, during the voyage to Palestine, which should be accepted instead of the balance of the money still unpaid, amounting to no less than 30,000 marks of silver (about £60,000 sterling). To this proposal the crusaders agreed, though not without considerable opposition on the part of some of their number.

Let it be observed here, in defence of what the Venetians afterwards did, that they were connected with the Fourth Crusade in two totally distinct characters. In the first place, they themselves took the cross in great numbers, and were therefore crusaders in the true sense; secondly, they were a company for the transportation of a great number of other crusaders at stated rates, under a guarantee. Moreover, they did not, as some have supposed, include their own forces amongst those for whom the French were to pay.

According to Sismondi, the estimate they made for the transportation of the French was as follows:—

For	4,500 horses, at 4 marks of silver each	18,000	marks
“	4,500 knights, at 2 marks of silver each	9,000	“
“	9,000 squires and grooms, at 2 marks of silver each	18,000	“
“	20,000 men-at-arms, at 2 marks of silver each	40,000	“
	For 4,500 horses and 33,500 men, total	85,000	marks
	Equal to about	£170,000	sterling.

This represented what may be called the business side of the transaction. As crusaders, the Venetians who accompanied the expedition appeared not as business men but as allies, and provided for themselves in every way; and it was as allies that they claimed an equal share of conquest and spoil.

The weakness of the Pope’s subsequent position lay in the fact that while he could, and did, excommunicate the crusaders for going out of their way, he could not possibly have excommunicated them if the Venetians, as business men, had insisted on the performance of the contract and had refused to start at all.

THE SALUTE

In giving a brief account of the taking of Constantinople, I shall not offer any criticism of a deed which has been generally condemned, and which it is certainly not easy to excuse, but I shall present it very nearly as it appeared to Romanin, himself a Venetian, and one of the greatest and most just of the Venetian historians.

Rom. ii. 154.

1201. Dandolo takes the cross, Giovanni Le Clerc; Hall of the Great Council.

Rom. ii. 97.

It was on a Sunday, and in the year 1201, that the decision was reached which sent a Venetian fleet and army to the East under the aged Doge Enrico Dandolo. A vast crowd filled the basilica of Saint Mark, and was swelled by the foreign knights and their attendants, who had descended from the ducal palace after being received by the Doge. Moreover, there were many pilgrims in the throng, wearing upon their coats and cloaks the emblem of the cross. High mass was to be celebrated, and the high altar was already prepared for the solemn function. Before it began, however, a very old man of venerable aspect, but still preserving something of his earlier energy, appeared in the pulpit of the cathedral. He was almost sightless—so blind, indeed, that he had to be led when he walked. But, in spite of age and infirmity, Enrico Dandolo was still one of the most remarkable men living in an age which produced many characters of wonderful individuality and strength. Even his blindness was not the consequence of weakness or old age, but of the fiendish cruelty of the Emperor Manuel Comnenos, who had almost destroyed his sight when he had been ambassador in Constantinople nearly a quarter of a century earlier. He had now reached the age of ninety-four, and had been Doge already eight years.

He stood up in the pulpit and spoke to the people, not long but earnestly, and though he was nearly a hundred years old his voice rang clear and distinct through the vast church, and the words he spoke were heard and long remembered.

Rom. ii. 154.

‘You are allied,’ he said, ‘with the bravest of living men for the greatest purpose which man can embrace; and I am old and weak and my body has sore need of rest, yet I clearly see that no one can lead you in this enterprise with the authority which is mine as chief of the Republic. I pray you give me leave to take the cross that I may lead you and watch over you, and let my son take my place here to guard the territories of Venice while I go forth to live or die with you and with these pilgrims.’

A great cry went up from all the people, ‘So be it for God’s sake! Take the cross also and come with us.’ And therewith a great wave of enthusiasm moved the whole host—strangers, pilgrims, and Venetians alike; and one who stood in the crowd has recorded that there was something in the bearing of the ancient Doge, in his prayer for permission to take the cross, in the sacrifice he offered of the last strength that was in him, that brought tears to the eyes of them that saw and heard.

Then Enrico Dandolo, laying one hand upon the shoulder of him who went before to lead him, came down and knelt before the high altar; and he asked that the cross should be sewn upon his great cotton bonnet that all might see it, and a great number of Venetians followed his example and took the cross also.

The fleet sailed out of the harbour of Venice on the eighth day of October 1202, a fleet of three hundred sail, the noblest and best equipped that had yet been seen. Three huge vessels led the line—the Aquila, the Paradiso, and the Pellegrina. Above the broad sails the standard of the Republic floated from the masthead, while the flags of other nations that were sending crusaders with the fleet were displayed below it and at the yard-arms. The three hundred vessels were manned by a force of forty thousand men in the bloom of their youth and strength.

The crusade that followed has been too often described for me to describe it. I shall merely endeavour to present a short statement of the main facts and their consequences.

Rom. ii. 155.

Pope Innocent III. had strictly enjoined upon the crusaders to stop nowhere by the way, but to proceed directly to the Holy Land without turning aside to pursue any purpose or undertaking foreign to the end for which they had bound themselves together by solemn oath. The Pope’s command was peremptory; it is hardly necessary to say that it was also prudent, since the first three crusades had shown clearly to what extent the interests of commerce and the desire for gain could thwart the true purpose of the Holy War. Nevertheless the Venetians considered that the Pope’s words could be interpreted with a breadth convenient to their own ends, and in spite of the resistance of the French knights, who wished to obey the Pope to the letter, the fleet anchored off the coast of Dalmatia in order to retake the strongholds which had fallen under the domination of Hungary. Enrico Dandolo’s argument in favour of this was by no means illogical, whatever his real motives may have been, for he pointed out that it was absolutely necessary to take possession of all harbours on the way to the East from which pirates might sail out to harass the fleet.

1202. Zara attacked by the crusaders, A. Vicentino; Hall of the Great Council.

No sooner had he taken the city of Zara, however, than the French knights were perplexed and terrified by a message from the Pope, who threatened to excommunicate all who had fought in this incidental war unless they made honourable amends. Ambassadors were at once sent to Rome to explain Dandolo’s specious argument to the Pope and humbly to implore the latter’s pardon. Innocent granted his absolution readily enough, on condition that the crusaders should not turn aside again on their way to the Holy Land.

Rom. ii. 160-1.

But meanwhile a still greater temptation presented itself to attract the crusaders out of their straight course. For a long time past the Empire of the East had been distracted by civil wars. At the time when the crusaders set sail from Venice the Emperor Isaac had been dethroned and blinded by his brother Alexis, who had seized the power. But Isaac’s son, the younger Alexis, had succeeded in eluding his uncle’s vigilance, and had escaped from Constantinople. He had visited Rome with the intention of obtaining assistance from Pope Innocent

Quadri, 117.

III., but only to find that his purpose had been forestalled by his uncle, the reigning Emperor. The latter, fearing the Pope’s interference, had already sent an embassy to him with instructions to beguile him with promises of a reconciliation between the Greek and Latin Churches. As this reconciliation, or submission, was the principal inducement which the younger Alexis had to offer in return for help, the Pope considered that it would be wiser to treat with the uncle, who was in possession, rather than with the nephew who was a fugitive. Deceived in his hopes, the younger Alexis proceeded to Germany, to the court of King Philip of Swabia, who had set himself up as Emperor against Otho IV., and had married a sister of the young Prince.

Alexis Comnenos asks help of the Venetians, A. Vicentino; same Hall.

It is not clear whether it was Philip himself who suggested to Alexis the possibility of attracting the crusaders to Constantinople, but he appears to have recommended the plan and to have strongly urged the Venetians to agree to it. At all events Alexis now proceeded to Zara and soon interested the aged Dandolo in his cause. He made great promises if the crusaders would help him to get back the throne; he would bear the whole expenses of the crusade for one year; he would divide amongst the crusaders a sum of two hundred thousand silver marks; he would guarantee for all future time that five hundred knights should be supported by the Greek Empire in the Holy Land to guard it from the attacks of unbelievers; and finally, he promised to bring the Eastern Church back to the spiritual dominion of the popes. These magnificent offers on the one hand, and the moving picture which, on the other, he drew of his father Isaac’s sufferings, produced a profound impression upon his hearers, and especially, perhaps, upon those who had already been in Constantinople and had formed an opinion as to the value of such a prize. In the eyes of the Venetians, too, there was even another object to be accomplished, namely, the destruction of the power of Pisa and of her commerce in the East.

Rom. ii. 162.

It was in vain that the Pope, who wished to manage matters himself, and who was more than half pledged to the usurper of the throne, raised his voice in threats and protestations; it was in vain that he insisted on the wretched condition of the Christians in Palestine and the extremities to which they were reduced, pointing out that their welfare was to be considered rather than a blind prisoner’s claims to the throne from which he had been ousted, no matter how unjustly. Nothing that the Pope could say had the slightest effect upon men whose conscience agreed to an act of justice in which their ruling passion for gain anticipated an opportunity for almost unbounded plunder. Those who feared to displease the Pope, or were terrified by the menace of excommunication, were told that they were free to leave the ranks if they chose. A few French knights took advantage of this alternative and left the army; amongst these was Simon de Montfort. But the principal French nobles espoused the cause of the younger Alexis, including Boniface of Montferrat, Baldwin of Flanders, Louis of Blois, and Hugh the Count of Saint Paul. These and the great majority, with their followers, threw in their lot with Enrico Dandolo, and looked on with indifference when the Pope’s cardinal legates left the crusade and proceeded to the East by themselves.

Sismondi considers that the subsequent attitude of Venice towards the Holy See throughout her history had its origin at this time; for when, before the expedition sailed, Cardinal San Marcello arrived in Venice, as the Pope’s legate, to take command of the crusading fleet, he was informed that if he shipped as a Christian preacher he should be treated with the highest honours, but that if he came with the slightest idea of giving orders he could not be allowed on board; whereupon, having thoroughly understood the situation, he returned to Rome.

As the fleet proceeded eastwards it was very naturally obliged to put in at a number of Greek harbours, not only to obtain provisions, but because it was absolutely necessary to land the crusaders’ horses from time to time for exercise; and when we consider the conditions of navigation and the dimensions of vessels in those days, we are surprised that such a body of cavalry could have been successfully transported at all from the Venetian islands to the very walls of Constantinople. It was generally considered at that period that Constantinople shared the dominion of the sea with Venice, but it appears that the Emperor’s brother-in-law, who was high admiral of the fleet, had deliberately sold for his own advantage the sails, rigging, cables, and even anchors of the ships of war, and that the vessels themselves had been allowed to rot in the Bosphorus till even the hulks were unfit for sea. It is easy to understand why the magnificently-equipped fleet of the Venetians could proceed from one imperial harbour to another without meeting even a show of opposition. Moreover, wherever the crusaders went they found the cities they visited well disposed towards the younger Alexis. In this way they touched at Durazzo, Corfu, Cape Malea, Negroponte, Andros and Abydos, and came at last, on the eve of Saint John’s day (twenty-third of June) to the town and abbey of San Stefano, famous in many a later war, to our own times, and well within sight of the city. Here, says Geoffrey de Villehardouin, the Marshal of Champagne, and the eyewitness and chronicler of the whole expedition, the masters of the ships, galleys, and transports took harbour and anchored their vessels: ‘Now you may know that long they looked upon Constantinople who had never seen it yet, and they could not believe that so rich a city could be in all the world. When they saw those lofty walls and those rich towers which close it in all round about, and those rich palaces and tall churches of which there were so many as no one could have believed if he had not seen them with his eyes, through all the length and breadth of that city, which among all others was sovereign; know ye well that then there was none so brave but that his heart trembled, and this was no wonder, for never was so great a matter undertaken ... then each looked to his arms, considering that in them soldiers must trust when they shall soon have need of them.’

FONDAMENTA S. GIROLAMO

Rom. ii. 170.

Attack on Constantinople, Palma, Giovane, Hall of the Great Council.

I shall not attempt to describe the memorable events which followed. Here, as in many passages of his history, it may be said of Gibbon, as of Titian by Taine, that ‘he absorbed his forerunners and ruined his successors.’ It is enough to say that the city was fortified with double walls and four hundred towers, and that the garrison was estimated by Villehardouin at no less than four hundred thousand men. The resistance was obstinate, but the attack was irresistible. The French, judging at first that they could fight better on land, concentrated their strength against the northern wall; the Venetians, from their ships, scaled the fortifications that rose from the edge of the sea. The aged Dandolo led the general assault himself, twenty-five of the towers were captured, and the fall of Constantinople was a foregone conclusion. But the whole siege, with intermissions, lasted from June until the following April. During that time the deposed and imprisoned Emperor Isaac, surnamed Angelos, succeeded through his friends in organising a revolution in his favour, in regaining the throne, which he divided with his son Alexis, and finally in quarrelling with his liberators, the Venetians and the French crusaders, after considerable demonstrations of friendship, because he could not carry out the clause in the agreement relative to the subjection of the Greek Church to the popes. He, and even his son, the younger Alexis, though not to blame for this, seem to have been very little better than his brother, the elder Alexis, who had fled for safety, and the student is not sorry to learn that they were put to death by such patriots as remained in the corrupt capital before the final assault.

The besiegers, on their side, had made a treaty among themselves for the division of the spoil, with the following conditions:—

Rom. ii. 177. Quadri, 122.

First, after the taking of Constantinople, a new emperor was to be elected from among the crusaders by a body consisting of six Venetians and six of the French barons.

Secondly, whichever nation should be the one from which the emperor was chosen was to leave to the other the church of Saint Sophia, with the right of designating the patriarch.

Thirdly, the other churches of the city were to be equally divided between Venice and the French.

Rom. ii. 182.

Fourthly, all future conquests, including the city itself, were to be so divided that the elected emperor should receive one-quarter of the whole, while the remaining three-quarters were to be divided equally between the French and the Venetians. It was, however, provided that Venice was to receive the balance of the sum due for transporting the crusaders before any division of the spoil took place.

1204. Storming of Constantinople, Domenico Tintoretto; Hall of the Great Council.

The city was finally taken on the twelfth of April 1204, the final assault having lasted three days, but as it was late in the day when the allies got possession of the fortifications they did not venture into the interior of the city until the following morning. It has been estimated that nearly one-half of the city with all the treasures it contained had been destroyed by the three great fires which had taken place during the preceding months, yet the spoil that remained far exceeded anything recorded in history, and it is not to be denied that both the French and the Venetians committed frightful excesses in the first intoxication of their immense triumph.

Election of Baldwin, A. Vicentino; same Hall.

The articles of the treaty the victors had made among themselves were strictly observed. The spoil was divided in the manner and proportions stipulated, electors were chosen, and they proceeded to the choice of an emperor. It was but natural that the majority should agree at once upon the Doge Enrico Dandolo, to whose judgment, determination, and personal courage the success of an apparently impossible enterprise was largely due. A force of between thirty and forty thousand men, coming in ships from a distant country and facing every possible strategic disadvantage, had destroyed the Eastern Empire in a few months, and had captured the most strongly fortified city in the world against odds of more than ten to one. From first to last they had been counselled, directed, and led by the aged Doge; assuredly no one was more worthy than he to receive the highest reward and the greatest share of honour. One Frenchman and one Venetian, however, dissented, and it was the Venetian who argued convincingly against Dandolo’s election.

Dandolo crowns Baldwin, Aliense; same Hall.

He pointed out clearly that the chief magistrate of a free republic could not in conscience be at the same time the despot of an empire, and he advised that Baldwin of Flanders should be chosen instead. The Venetians themselves were easily persuaded of the justice and good sense of this view, and it was forthwith unanimously adopted.

VENICE FROM THE LAGOON

Quadri, 127.

The conquerors proceeded next without delay to the dismemberment of the Empire, dividing amongst themselves provinces and cities of which they barely knew, and could not correctly write the names, and omitting many of the very existence of which they were in ignorance. Amongst the lands and strongholds which fell to the share of the Venetians may be mentioned Lacedaemon, Durazzo, the Islands of the Cyclades and Sporades, and the Island of Crete, or Candia, taken over in a friendly exchange from the Marquis of Montferrat, and all the eastern coast of the Adriatic. The Doge of Venice added to his titles the one of ‘Lord and Master of a quarter and a half-quarter of the Roman Empire,’ and in official acts the new Emperor was to address him as ‘Carissimus Socius nostri Imperii.’

This vast and sudden extension of territory, while it at once placed the Republic on an equal footing with the greatest European powers, had many disadvantages, and was fraught with dangers. Venice consisted properly of nothing more than the city and the duchy, with a population which Sismondi estimates at two hundred thousand souls; the partition of the Empire conferred upon Venice, by a stroke of the pen, many thousand square miles of land and seven or eight millions of subjects, and Venice, as the author I am quoting very pithily says, though not able to annex Padua, only twenty miles from the lagoons, was now undertaking to subdue what constituted a powerful kingdom, and to defend it against Turks, Bulgarians, Wallachians, and possibly even against the Latins of Constantinople.

Rom. ii. 183.

It was clear that though the commerce of the Republic might gain immensely by this extension of her dominions, the responsibility assumed by the Republic was far beyond that which so limited a population could bear, and that the expenses of administering and defending the distant provinces would be enormous. Nor could the Venetians afford to overlook the fact that their great rivals, Genoa and Pisa, would spare no effort to drive them from their new possessions by fair means or foul. Before the taking of Constantinople the rich citizens either lived at home altogether or returned after each voyage to fit their ships for another; but so soon as the Republic became the possessor of important colonies in the East, it was manifestly necessary that a considerable number of the most experienced and bravest Venetians should remain constantly abroad to administer and defend those new possessions.

The position of Venice at this time may be not inaptly compared with that of Rome when, after the annexation of Sicily, she found herself obliged to inaugurate that system of provincial government which she ever afterwards followed. But Venice was not Rome, and even if the Venetians had possessed the qualities of the Romans in addition to their own, they could not have succeeded as the Romans did, since in Genoa and Pisa they had competitors as civilised and as wealthy as themselves and far more numerous. Rome went on and conquered the world; Venice drew back in the face of a manifest impossibility, retiring, with much common sense and not a little dignity, from a career of successful conquest to the less brilliant but more stable condition of a commercial people.

The Venetian senate after due deliberation gave up all idea of retaining possession of the new conquests, and in the year 1207 issued an edict authorising all Venetian citizens to fit out at their own expense armed expeditions to seize anything they could in the Greek archipelago or on the Greek coast; the Republic bound itself to leave each individual adventurer the lands or cities he was able to take, as his property in perpetual fee, reserving itself only the right of sovereign protection. It is true that the coast and the islands named in this edict formed a part of Venice’s share in the division of the Eastern Empire, yet I doubt whether at any time in the history of nations any government has ventured to issue such a wholesale charter to piracy, and none was ever more literally interpreted.

As for the short-lived Empire of the Latins in Constantinople, it was brought to an end by the family of the Paleologi with the assistance of the Genoese, whose principal object was to procure the expulsion of the Venetians from the East. But Michael Paleologos had the good sense to understand that the ruin of Venetian commerce would entail serious damage to his own, and he did his utmost to maintain good relations between the two Italian Republics. In this he did not altogether succeed, as he found himself under the necessity of irritating Genoa by confirming many of the ancient privileges of Venice. On these conditions the Venetians consented to turn a deaf ear to the complaints and entreaties of Baldwin II., the dethroned Latin emperor, who wandered about Europe in the vain hope of obtaining help.

By the end of the thirteenth century the political influence of Venice in the Greek Empire had dwindled to insignificance compared with her great commercial importance. As the latter increased, the jealousy of Genoa grew more and more dangerous, and the colonies held by Venetian vassals were in constant peril.

It was the misfortune of Venice that her last development had been too sudden. The slightest matter might compromise the safety of her colonies, and through them her own.

Rom. ii. 186.

Yet her position was brilliant, and her strength was not fictitious. The terms of the treaty concluded with Michael Paleologos were such as might well flatter even the pride and vanity of a Venetian, and the Doge continued to call himself Lord and Master of a quarter and a half-quarter of the Roman Empire, while the permanent ambassador of Venice at Constantinople continued to be treated by the Paleologi as an ally and a friend.

Before leaving the thirteenth century I shall say a few words about the early laws and those who made them, as an appropriate introduction to the story of the great conspirators who attempted to grasp the supreme power in spite of them.

From what has gone before, it must be clear that the Venetian Republic, as it was when it first took its place among the European powers, was the result of circumstances rather than of the growth of a race; and it is much easier to trace a result to its cause than a growth to its primitive type. Having got so far, the student will naturally be curious as to the internal mechanism of a government which began so early, lasted so long, and worked, on the whole, with such wonderful precision and certainty.

CAMPIELLO S. GIOVANNI

It will not be necessary to recapitulate the attempts and experiments of the first fugitives after they reached the islands. I need only recall to my reader the ‘University of the Tribunes,’ by which the different tribes were represented and were respectively governed, the first doges, the short return to the system of tribunes, and the second and final establishment of a doge as head of the Republic. At this point in history two main facts stand out at once: on the one hand, the unlimited power of the doges, whose authority was not restrained by any positive law, still less by any body of men in the shape of senate or council, whose chief aim was generally to make their dignity hereditary, and who were to all intents and purposes the absolute masters of their country’s destiny while they lived; on the other hand, we find an assembly of the clergy and people, generally very far from exacting as to the doge’s conduct, but ready and able to wrest the sovereignty from him if he pushed his absolutism too far for their taste. In those days a great simplicity prevailed. The chosen chief used his position unhesitatingly for his own advantage; the clergy were simple-minded; the people were very busy with their own affairs.

When these reactions led to bloodshed, it was usually because one or more of the great families had interests at stake and aimed at the supreme power; and one of the most common causes of discord was removed when the Doge Domenico Flabianico caused the popular assembly to pass a law forbidding the doges to associate any one with them in the sovereignty. This reform checked the tendency of the government to turn into an hereditary monarchy, and another law passed at the same time gave the Doge two permanent counsellors, with power to add to their numbers others, chosen from the prominent citizens, when any very important matter presented itself. The latter measures had no practical result, for the Doge was left free to call in these ‘notabili pregadi,’ or ‘invited notables,’ or not to do so at his pleasure, and he invariably forgot their existence. As for the two counsellors, they might as well not have existed for any mention of them that is to be found in the documents of the twelfth century.

It gradually became clear that the rights and powers of the Doge must be more exactly defined, and that some means must be found for subjecting him to the will of the people without constantly calling together a general assembly, which was not a slight matter. This need seems to have found expression for the first time about the year 1172.

Six months were spent in deliberations before an institution was agreed upon which should represent the nation. The general assembly then determined upon the election of a certain number of councillors, who were to serve only for one year, and were to have the management of all affairs of state. They were to be eighty in number for each of the six ‘sestieri’ of the city, and therefore in all four hundred and eighty.

1172.

This was the origin of the ‘Great Council,’ of which the duties were to distribute the offices of government amongst those who were best able to fill them honourably and to the advantage of the state; to frame laws, which were submitted to the approval of the General Assembly; and to examine all proposals that came from the Pregadi, with the consent and collaboration of the Doge and the six counsellors whose assistance, or guidance, was now imposed upon him without consulting his wishes.

Rom. ii. 137.

In order to lighten the labours of the Great Council, another assembly of forty citizens was created, whose business it was to prepare the material for the Council’s sessions. Little by little this assembly acquired more and more importance, till it shared with the Pregadi an authority which weighed perceptibly upon the decisions of the Great Council. The Pregadi, who became the Senate, and the Quarantine, or Council of Forty, were two similar and parallel powers, which it might have been to the advantage of the Republic to turn into one.

The position of the Doge was now clearly defined. Under no circumstances could he any longer exercise absolute authority; and if he desired any reform, or had any law to propose, he was constrained to obtain, before acting, the approbation of his counsellors and of the Pregadi in the first place, and afterwards to get his measure accepted by the Forty, which then had to obtain the sanction of the Great Council, which, in its turn, if the matter were important, was bound to bring the bill before the General Assembly, to be voted on by the clergy and the people.

Rom. ii. 244.

In time the custom was introduced according to which the Doge took an oath before the people on the day of his coronation, called the ‘promission ducale,’ the ‘ducal promise.’ At first this oath was simply a promise to obey scrupulously the laws of the Republic, but little by little clauses were added to it which went so far as to deprive the Doge even of certain rights common to all other citizens of Venice. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the ‘ducal promise’ reached a stage of development at which it destroyed the liberty of the chief of the state, and became almost an insult to his dignity. During the interregnum between the death of each doge and the coronation of his successor, three grave magistrates were chosen by the Great Council, called the ‘Inquisitors upon the deceased Doge,’ who held a solemn trial of the dead man’s actions and of his whole life; at the same time five other personages studied the wording of the next ‘ducal promise,’ of which they were termed the ‘Correctors,’ their business being to examine the situation, and to ascertain how it might be possible for the future sovereign to advance his own fortunes at the expense of the public interests; to judge, or merely guess, what matters he might be able to influence too much, and thereby to decide in what way his actions and powers could be still further restrained and limited by introducing new clauses into the promise.

The first law which was elaborated and passed by the Great Council was one which reformed the election of the doges. The Council wished to reserve the electoral right to eleven of its own members, but the people protested against this encroachment on ancient traditions. The legislators then went to work to prove, with all the eloquence at their command, that the law they wished to pass did not in any way infringe the rights of the national assembly, but that it was simply a wise and paternal effort on the part of the Council to help the people in their choice; for the law provided that eleven electors were to appear before the assembly and present their candidate with the words, ‘Here is your Doge, if this choice pleases you.’

Rom. ii. 95.

Incredible as it seems, the people were prevailed upon to accept this proposal, not seeing that in so doing they were forfeiting their most valuable privilege. They even acclaimed with enthusiasm the first Doge who was elected under the new law in 1172. He was Sebastian Ziano. ‘Long life to the Doge,’ the people cried, ‘and may he bring us peace!’

Rom. ii. 123.

On this occasion, it is true, the popular enthusiasm was justified, for the rule of Ziano was just and honourable. But, in spite of the success of the experiment, the Great Council introduced a further change in the law, and at the next election the number of electors was increased to forty, and later still to forty-one, in order to prevent a tie.

Looking back on the labours of the Great Council in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, one cannot help being struck by the unchangeable purpose which runs through all the laws it passed, from the time it came into existence till it shut its doors in the face of the people, never to open them during the five hundred years of history which then lay before the Republic. One cannot but acquire the conviction that the aristocracy set to work very early to get possession of the supreme power, to the exclusion even of the Doge himself, and that they worked out their plan in the course of a hundred and fifty years—say, five generations—without ever hesitating or turning aside after new ideas; and, moreover, that during that time the eyes of the people were never once really open to what was going on.

As soon as the relations between the Doge and the government were established, the Great Council, always paternally ‘guiding’ the popular assembly, set to work upon laws affecting the administration, and the conditions and relations of commerce. And here it must be said that several of the doges who reigned in the thirteenth century exhibited remarkable talents for legislation; the names of Orio Mastropiero, Enrico Dandolo, and Jacopo Tiepolo mark so many stages in Venetian progress and civilisation.

Rom. ii. 241.

The first of these, Orio Mastropiero, the successor of Sebastian Ziano, occupied himself actively in drawing up a criminal code, which should render less arbitrary the sentences of judges who were often incompetent and were always elected provisionally. This code received the name of ‘Promission del Maleficio,’ the ‘promise to, or with regard to, crime,’ and it was frequently improved upon during the years that followed its promulgation. It provided for almost all possible crimes, and established for each one a punishment which seemed just according to the spirit of the times. These penalties in many cases seem barbarous to us, though it was not the Venetians who invented strangulation, or the cutting off of the hand, or torture by red-hot iron, or the tearing out of the eyes and the tongue. The tribunals of all nations had long ago adopted these punishments, and it is certain that there was no country where fuller proofs were required than in Venice before any severe penalties could be inflicted on a citizen. One of the chief merits of the Venetian code of that period, as compared with the codes of other countries, is that it points out to the judge the causes of crime, and the small misdeeds which may lead to great ones, as distinguished from those which are not likely to leave any results. Thus, for instance, the smallest act of disrespect to a respectable woman was punished almost as severely as an assault upon her.

CAMPO, SANTA TERNITA

Rom. ii. 137.

For a long time the only permanent tribunal in Venice had been the ‘Magistrato del Proprio,’ which dealt with civil questions. The quarrels of the common people were judged by five ‘wise men’—‘savii.’ Orio Mastropiero succeeded in passing a law for the institution of a court to deal with differences arising between Venetians and foreigners, or amongst the latter, and this was named ‘Magistrato del Forestiero,’ the ‘foreigners’ court,’ so to say. In addition to these courts, which were subject to the authority of the Great Council, there were the ‘Avogadori del Comun,’ the municipal advocates, as we should probably say, who had authority in fiscal questions, and the list is complete. The state of Venice was directed and judged by the bodies I have enumerated.

In matters of commerce all Europe recognised the superiority of Venice at that time, and long afterwards. A single illustration of the practical sense of Venetian merchants will suffice: they invented percentage, and the word that expresses it. Before them, the world had always said, ‘so many pence in the pound,’ or ‘four-fifths,’ or ‘seven-eighths.’ The Venetians first conceived the idea, and introduced the practice, of reducing all commercial fractions to the common denominator, one hundred.

Orio Mastropiero further enriched the state with a permanent source of income by giving it a regular monopoly of salt and the salt trade.

Jacopo Tiepolo, elected Doge in 1229, was undoubtedly one of the most enlightened and intellectually well-balanced men of his age, and he seems to have embraced at a glance all those questions which his predecessors had examined one by one, and often only from a single side. He conceived the idea of compiling a complete code which should be a sort of permanent charter for the Republic, and he entrusted the execution of his plan to four ‘learned, noble, and discreet persons,’ for that is all that is to be learned of them, through the note that precedes the original text of their work. That text consisted of five books destined to become famous in the history of European legislation.

This is no place to discuss a legal code, but no one who glances at Tiepolo’s body of laws can fail to be struck by the many provisions it contains for the protection of women and their property. I do not know whether we ought to think that this speaks well or ill for the condition of Venetian ethics at a time when the slave trade was already thriving, and when there were a great number of Eastern female slaves in the capital. On the whole, the laws may have been made with a view to protecting honest matrons from being plundered, directly or indirectly, by their handsome and perfectly unscrupulous rivals, whose influence was already becoming great, and was destined to be portentous.

At any rate, the honour and the lives of honourable women were not more carefully protected than their material interests. Every husband was obliged to render an account to his wife of the dowry she had brought him, and she could dispose of it by will as she pleased. A widow enjoyed the whole income left by her husband during a year and a day from his death, and during that time no one could by any means drive her from his house. If she declared her intention of not marrying again she preserved her right of residence all her life. Nevertheless, an unfaithful wife, if proved guilty, forfeited her dowry to her husband, and he could turn her out of his home.

Tiepolo’s civil code provided also for a case which seems to have been not uncommon—namely, that in which a married couple, like the Doge Pietro Orseolo and his wife, agreed to take vows and part, each entering a religious order. The law here introduced the form of a separation of goods, leaving each party free thereafter to administer his or her fortune at will.

In addition to the immense labour connected with his body of laws, Tiepolo also occupied himself with the nautical regulations which had obtained authority by long use. I have no doubt that in so doing he used the Amalfi marine code, as in his laws he made use of the Pandects of Justinian, discovered in Amalfi about a hundred years earlier.

Some of the clauses are curious. Captains and owners of ships are forbidden, for instance, to delegate their authority ‘to a pilgrim, a soldier, or a servant.’ In case of shipwreck, the whole crew was bound to work fifteen full days, but no more, at saving the cargo, of which they could then claim three per cent. Every ordinary vessel was to carry two trumpets, presumably as foghorns. Very large ships were to carry a sort of orchestra, consisting of two bass drums, one drum and one trumpet. The marine code has some interest also, as indicating the general nature of the merchandise carried by Venetian vessels: woven stuffs, pepper, incense, indigo, sugar in the loaf, myrrh, gum arabic, aloes, camphor, rice, almonds, apples, wine and oil are to be found mentioned, with many more articles of commerce.

Tiepolo’s code bears the stamp of a sort of generous but not foolish simplicity, which really survived in the Republic until dreams of foreign conquest brought her into danger, and she awoke to find that dangerous enemies had wormed their way even into the ducal palace. It was then that she began to multiply magistracies and to frame innumerable laws that interfered with and neutralised each other; and so she lost in strength what her system gained in details. There was far more wisdom in the five books of Jacopo Tiepolo’s ‘Statuto’ than in the innumerable volumes of laws that were put together from the fifteenth century to the eighteenth. It may be asked whether Tiepolo’s code sufficed because the people in his time were virtuous and law-abiding, or whether virtue and the love of law declined as the number of laws increased. The latter hypothesis can certainly be defended.

THE HOUSE OF FALIERO, PONTE DEI S. S. APOSTOLI