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Title: Salve Venetia, gleanings from Venetian history; vol. II

Author: F. Marion Crawford

Illustrator: Joseph Pennell

Release date: January 13, 2022 [eBook #67156]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: United States: The Macmillan Co, 1906

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SALVE VENETIA,
GLEANINGS FROM VENETIAN HISTORY; VOL. II ***

Contents
Illustrations
The Doges of Venice
Table of The Principal Dates in Venetian History
Index

THE ANGELS OF THE SALUTE

SALVE · VENETIA
GLEANINGS
FROM VENETIAN HISTORY

BY

FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD

WITH 225 ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOSEPH PENNELL

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. II

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1906

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1905,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published December, 1905. Reprinted
January, 1906.

Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

CONTENTS

PAGE
I. The Aristocratic Magistracies at the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century 1
II. Gleaning from Venetian Criminal History 51
III. Venetian Diplomacy 77
IV. The Arsenal, the Glass-Works, and the Lace-Makers 95
V. Concerning some Ladies of the Sixteenth Century 117
VI. A Few Painters, Men of Letters, and Scholars 132
VII. The Triumphant City 168
VIII. The Hose Club—Venetian Legends 189
IX. The Decadence 207
X. The Last Homes—The Last Great Ladies 232
XI. The Last Carnivals—The Last Fairs—The Last Feasts 266
XII. The Last Magistrates 288
XIII. The Last Sbirri 310
XIV. The Last Doges 334
XV. The Last Soldiers 348
XVI. The Last Diplomatists 361
XVII. The Last Hour 380
XVIII. Conclusion 412
The Doges of Venice 421
Table of the Principal Dates in Venetian History 425
INDEX: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, Z 433

ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
PLATES
The Angels of the Salute Frontispiece
The Last Rays, St. Mark’s To face page 35
Palazzo Ressonico “ 72
Steamers coming in “ 96
Afterglow, the Grand Canal “ 134
Venice from the Garden “ 140
Entrance to the Sacristy, Frari “ 149
Campiello delle Ancore “ 208
The Salute from the Riva “ 246
Fondamente Nuove “ 313
From San Georgio to the Salute “ 326
Ponte Canonica “ 356
Out in the Lagoon “ 382
IN TEXT
S. Maria degli Scalzi, Grand Canal “ 1
Hall of the Great Clocks, Ducal Palace “ 7
Hall of the Pictures, Ducal Palace “ 9
The Stair of Gold, Ducal Palace “ 13
Rio S. Atanasio “ 20
S. Samuele “ 30
On the Zattere “ 39
Rio del Rimedio “ 41
Mouth of the Grand Canal “ 51
The Rialto at Night “ 53
From the Balcony of the Ducal Palace “ 54
The Columns, Piazzetta “ 55
The Salute from the Giudecca “ 61
A Garden Wall “ 69
Palazzo Dario “ 83
Calle Beccheria “ 85
Ponte del Cristo “ 95
S. Michele “ 99
Venice from Murano “ 100

The Duomo Campanile, Murano “ 101
Murano, looking towards Venice “ 103
Murano “ 104
The House of Beroviero, Murano “ 105
The Palaces “ 109
The Rialto Steps “ 112
Noon on the Rialto “ 113
At the Rialto “ 115
Evening off S. Georgio “ 117
Casa Weidermann “ 125
The Grand Canal in Summer “ 132
Euganean Hills from the Lagoon, Low Tide “ 135
House of Tintoretto “ 145
House of Aldus “ 147
S. Giacomo in Orio “ 157
Doorway of the Sacristy, S. Giacomo in Orio “ 159
Fondamenta Sanudo “ 161
A Holiday on the Riva “ 168
Door of the Carmine “ 174
Interior of the Carmine “ 177
Campo behind S. Giacomo in Orio “ 181
The Piazza “ 185
Pigeons in the Piazza “ 187
Sotto Portico della Guerra “ 189
Ponte S. Antonio “ 193
S. Zobenigo “ 197
Ponte dell’ Angelo, Giudecca, Old Wooden Bridge “ 202
Rio S. Sofia, Night “ 207
Santa Maria Formosa “ 211
Grand Canal looking towards Mocenigo Palace “ 217
The Fondamenta S. Giorgio, Redentore in Distance “ 222
Steps of the Redentore “ 224
The Nave of S. Stefano “ 229
The Riva from the Dogana “ 232
Campo S. Bartolomeo, Statue of Goldoni “ 233
SS. Giovanni e Paolo “ 243
Night on the Riva “ 244
Rio della Toresela “ 253

A Narrow Street, near the Academy “ 259
Grand Canal “ 266
Church of the Miracle “ 271
The Procession of the Redentore “ 276
Near the Fenice “ 286
Grand Canal from the Fish Market “ 288
S. Barnabò “ 289
Instituto Bon, Grand Canal “ 293
When the Alps show Themselves, Fondamenta Nuove “ 300
Café on the Zattere “ 301
The Dogana “ 303
Rio della Sensa “ 310
Rio S. Stin “ 313
Rio della Guerra “ 318
Via Garibaldi “ 325
The Pesaro Palace, Grand Canal “ 334
Marco Polo’s Court “ 339
Ponte della Pietà “ 344
From the Public Garden at Sunset “ 348
Boat-Builders “ 353
The Vegetable Market “ 355
Fondamenta Weidermann “ 357
The Salute from S. Giorgio “ 361
From the Ponte della Pietà “ 365
On the Way to Fusina, from the Mouth of the Brenta “ 369
A Lonely Canal “ 374
Evening “ 380
The Salute from the Lagoon “ 385
From the Ponte S. Rocco “ 397
Campo SS. Giovanni e Paolo “ 403
So-called House of Desdemona “ 407
Sails “ 412
A Gateway “ 413

SALVE · VENETIA

S. MARIA DEGLI SCALZI, GRAND CANAL

I

THE ARISTOCRATIC MAGISTRACIES AT THE BEGINNING OF THE
SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Like other aristocracies, the Venetian government rarely destroyed or altogether abolished
any office or regulation which had existed a long time. When a change was needed the
duties or powers of one or more of the Councils were extended, or a committee of the
Council of Ten was appointed and presently turned into a separate tribunal, as when the
Inquisitors of State were created.
In one sense the government of Venice had now existed in a rigid and unchangeably
aristocratic form during two centuries, and that form never changed to the very end. But in
another sense no government in the world ever showed itself more flexible under the
pressure of events, or better able to provide a new legislative weapon with which to combat
each new danger that presented itself. This double character of an administration which
inspired awe by its apparent immutability and terror by its ubiquity and energy, no doubt
had much to do with its extraordinarily long life; for I believe that no civilised form of
government ever endured so long as that of Venice.
It is therefore either frivolous or hypocritical to seek the causes of its ultimate collapse.
It died of old age, when the race that had made it was worn out. It would be much more to
the point to inquire why the most unscrupulous, sceptical, suspicious, and thoroughly
immoral organisation that ever was devised by man should have outlasted a number of other
organisations supposed to be founded on something like principles of liberty and justice.
Such an inquiry would involve an examination into the nature of freedom, equity, and truth
generally; but no one has ever satisfactorily defined even one of those terms, for the simple
reason that the things the words are supposed to mean do not anywhere exist; and the study
of that which has no real existence, and no such potential mathematical existence as an
ultimate ratio, is absolutely futile.
The facts we know about the Venetian government are all interesting, however. It had its
origin, like all really successful governments, in the necessities of a small people which
held together in the face of great dangers. It was moulded and developed by the strongest
and most intelligent portion of that people, and the party that modelled it guessed that each
member of the party would destroy it and make himself the master if he could, wherefore
the main thing was to render it impossible for any individual to succeed in that. The
individual most likely to succeed was the Doge himself, and he was therefore turned into a
mere doll, a puppet that could not call his soul his own. The next most probable aspirant to
the tyranny would be the successful native-born general or admiral. A machinery was
invented whereby the victorious leader was almost certain to be imprisoned, fined, and
exiled as soon as his work was done and idleness made him dangerous. Pisani, Zeno, Da
Lezze are merely examples of what happened almost invariably. If a Venetian was a hero,
any excuse would serve for locking him up.

Next after the generals came the nobles who held office, and lastly those who were
merely rich and influential. They were so thoroughly hemmed in by a hedge of apparently
petty rules and laws as to their relations with foreigners, with the people, and with each
other, that they were practically paralysed, as individuals, while remaining active and useful
as parts of the whole. No one ever cared what the people thought or did, for they were
peaceable, contented, and patriotic. Every measure passed by the nobles was directed
against an enemy that might at any moment arise amongst themselves, or against the
machinations of enemies abroad. Of all Italians the Venetians alone were not the victims of
that simplicity of which I have already spoken. They believed in nothing and nobody, and
they were not deceived. They were not drawn into traps by the wiles of the Visconti as
Genoa was, and as many of the principalities were; they were not cheated out of their
money by royal English borrowers as the Florentines were; they were not led away out of
sentiment to ruin themselves in the Crusades as so many were; on the contrary, their
connection with the Crusades was very profitable. For a long time they could be heroes
when driven to extremities, but they never liked heroics; they were good fighters at sea,
because they were admirable merchant sailors, but on land they much preferred to hire other
men to fight for them, whom they could pay off and get rid of when the work was done.
Like other nations, their history is that of their rise, their culmination, and their decline.
Like other nations, Venice also resembled the living body of a human being, of which it is
not possible to define with absolute accuracy the periods of youth, prime, and old age. But
we can say with certainty that each of those stages lasted longer in the life of Venice than in
the life of any other European state, perhaps because no one of the three periods was
hastened or interrupted by an internal revolution or by the temporary presence of a foreign
conqueror.
It can be said, however, that Venice was, on the whole, at the height of her glory about
the year 1500, and it would have needed a gift of prophecy to foretell the probable date of
the still distant end. At that time the Great Council was more than ever the incarnation of
the State, that is, of the aristocracy; and every member of the great assembly had a sort of
‘cultus’ for his own dignity, and looked upon his family, from which he derived his personal
privileges, with a veneration that bordered on worship. The safety and prosperity of the
patrician houses were most intimately connected with the welfare of the country; a member
of the Great Council would probably have considered that the latter was the immediate
consequence of the former. As a matter of fact, under the government which the aristocrats
had given themselves, it really was so; they were themselves the State.
It was therefore natural that they should guard their race against all plebeian
contamination. From time to time it became necessary to open the Golden Book and the
doors of the Great Council to certain families which had great claims upon the public
gratitude, as happened after the war of Chioggia; but the book was opened unwillingly, and
the door of the council-chamber was only set ajar; the newcomers were looked
upon as little better than intruders, and the ‘new men,’ while they were
invested with the outward distinctions of rank before the law, were not Rom. iv.
469.
received into anything like intimacy by their colleagues of the older nobility.
It is a law of the Catholic Church that baptism creates a relationship, and therefore a
canonical impediment to marriage, between the baptized person or his parents on the one

hand, and the godfathers and godmothers on the other, as well as between each of the
godparents and all the rest. But it was the custom of Venice to have a great many godfathers
and godmothers at baptisms, and the nobles were therefore obliged by law to choose them
from the burgher and artisan classes. It was perfectly indifferent that a young patrician
should contract a spiritual relationship with a hundred persons—there were sometimes as
many godparents as that—if these persons were socially so far beneath him that he must
lose caste if he married one of them; but it was of prime importance that the law should
forbid the formation of any spiritual bond whereby a possible marriage between two
members of the aristocracy might be prevented, or even retarded. Every parish priest was
therefore required to ask in a loud voice, when he was baptizing a noble baby, whether there
were any persons of the same social condition as the infant amongst the godparents. If he
omitted to do this, or allowed himself to be deceived by those present, he was liable to a
very heavy fine, and might even be imprisoned for several months.
The Avogadori now replaced their old-fashioned register by the one henceforth
officially known as the Golden Book, in which were entered the marriages of the nobles and
the births of their children. Every noble who omitted to have his marriage registered within
one week, or the birth of his children within the same time, was liable to severe penalties.
But the

HALL OF THE GREAT CLOCKS, DUCAL PALACE

names of women of inferior condition who married nobles were not entered in those
sanctified pages, since the children of a burgher woman could not sit in the Great Council.
Nevertheless, it happened now and then that a noble sacrificed the privileges
of his descendants for the present advantage of a rich dowry; and as this again
constituted a source of anxiety for the State, the amount of a burgher girl’s Molmenti,
Dog.
marriage portion was limited by law to the sum of two thousand ducats.
The young aristocrats received a special education, to fit them for their future duties and
offices. We have already seen that young men not yet old enough to sit in the Great Council
were admitted to its meetings in considerable numbers, though without a
vote. The instruction and education of young nobles were conducted according
to a programme of which the details were established by a series of decrees, Yriarte, Vie
d’un
and especially by one dating from 1443; and in the Senate very young noble Patricien de
boys were employed to carry the ballot-boxes, in which office they took turns, Venise, 67.
changing every three months. There were probably not enough noble children

to perform the same duty for the Great Council, which employed for that purpose a number
of boys from the Foundling Asylum.
The young nobles were brought up to feel that they and their time belonged exclusively
to the State, and when they grew older it was a point of honour with them not to be absent
from any meeting of the Councils to which they were appointed. Marcantonio Barbaro, the
patrician whose life M. Yriarte has so carefully studied, missed only one meeting of the
Great Council in thirty years, and then his absence was due to illness. When one considers
that the Great Council met every Sunday, and on every feast day except the second of
March and the thirty-first of January, which was Saint Mark’s day, such constant regularity
is really wonderful.

HALL OF THE PICTURES, DUCAL PALACE

During the summer the sittings were held from eight in the morning until noon, in
winter from noon to sunset; this, at least, was the ordinary rule, but the Doge’s counsellors

could multiply the meetings to any extent they thought necessary, and we know that when a
doge was to be elected the Great Council sometimes sat fifty times consecutively.
The public were admitted to the ordinary sittings of the Great Council, and in later times
one could even be present wearing a mask, as may be seen in certain old engravings. But no
outsiders were admitted when an important subject was to be discussed, and on those
occasions a number of members were themselves excluded. If, for instance, the question
concerned the Papal Court, all those who had ever avowed their sympathy for the Holy See,
or who had any direct relations with the reigning Pope, or who owed him any debt of
gratitude, were ordered to leave the hall. Such persons were called ‘papalisti,’ and were
frequently shut out of the Great Council in the sixteenth century, a period during which the
Republic had many differences with Rome.
In 1526, for instance, the Patriarch of Venice laid before the Great Council a complaint
against the Signors of the Night, who refused to set at liberty a certain priest arrested by
them, or even to inform the ecclesiastical authorities of the nature of his misdemeanour.
That would have been one of the occasions for excluding the ‘papalisti.’ The Patriarch
seems to have been a hot-tempered person, for on finding that he could get no satisfaction
from the Great Council, he excommunicated the Venetian government and everybody
connected with it, and posted the notice of the interdict on the columns of the ducal palace.
The matter was patched up in some way, however, for on the morrow the notice
disappeared.
The Senate met twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I find among their
regulations a singular rule by which the beginning of every speech had to be delivered in
the Tuscan language, after which the speaker was at liberty to go on in his own Venetian
dialect.
I have already spoken at some length of the Council of Ten; it is now
necessary to say something of the Inquisitors of State, to whom the Ten ceded Fulin,
Studii,
a part of their authority in the sixteenth century. Arch. Ven.
In the first place, the Inquisitors of State never had anything to do with the I. 1871
(unfinished)
‘Inquisition,’ nor with the ‘Inquisitors of the Holy Office,’ a tribunal, oddly .
enough, which was much more secular than ecclesiastic, and which belongs to
a later period.
Secondly, the so-called ‘Statutes of the Inquisitors of State,’ published by the French
historian Daru, in good faith, and translated by Smedley, were
afterwards discovered to be nothing but an impudent forgery, containing
several laughable anachronisms, and a number of mistakes about the nature of Rom. vi.
the magistracies which prove that the forger was not even a Venetian.
Thirdly, the genuine Statutes have been discovered since, and are given at length by
Romanin. They do not bear the least resemblance to the nonsense published by Daru. No
one except Romanin would have attempted to whitewash the Inquisitors and the Council of
Ten, and even he is obliged to admit that for ‘weighty reasons of state’ they did not hesitate
to order secret assassinations; but they were not fools, as the ‘Statutes’ of Daru make them
appear.

The proof that the Statutes published by Romanin are genuine consists in the fact that
two independent copies of them have been found; the one, written out by Angelo Nicolosi,
secretary to the Inquisitors, with a dedication to them dated the twenty-fifth of September
1669; the other, a pocket copy, written out in 1612, with his own hand, by the Inquisitor
Niccolò Donà, nephew of the Doge Leonardo Donà. The Statutes in these two copies are
identical; the earlier one, which belonged to Donà, contains also a number of interesting
memoranda concerning the doings of the tribunal in that year.
Lastly, it is conjectured by Romanin that the author of the forgery that imposed on Daru
and others was no less a personage than Count Francesco della Torre, the ambassador of the
Holy Roman Empire. He died in Venice in 1695.
These facts being clearly stated, we can pass on to inquire how and why the court of the
Inquisitors of State was evoked, it being well understood that although they were not the
malignant fiends described by Daru, who seems to have had in his mind the German tales of
the ‘Wehmgericht,’ yet, in the picturesque language of their native Italy, ‘they were not
shinbones of saints’ either.
Most historians consider that ‘Inquisitors of the Council of Ten’ were first appointed by
that Council

THE STAIR OF GOLD, DUCAL PALACE

in 1314, and it is generally conceded that they did not take the title ‘Inquisitors of State’ and
begin to be regarded unofficially as a separate tribunal till 1539. The mass of evidence goes
to show that these two dates are, at least, not far wrong, and during more than two hundred

years between the two, the members of the committee were called indifferently either the
‘Inquisitors,’ or the ‘Executives’ of the Ten.
They were at first either two, or three; later they were always three, and they were
commissioned to furnish proofs against accused persons, and occasionally to make the
necessary arrangements for secretly assassinating traitors who had fled the country and
were living abroad. At first their commission was a temporary one, which was not renewed
unless the gravity of the case required it. Later, when they became a permanent tribunal of
three, two of their number were always regular members of the Council of Ten, and were
called the ‘Black Inquisitors,’ because the Ten wore black mantles; the third was one of the
Doge’s counsellors, who, as will be remembered, were among the persons always present at
the meetings of the Ten, and he was called the ‘Red Inquisitor’ from the colour of his
counsellor’s cloak.
The fourteenth century was memorable on account of the great conspiracies, and it is at
least probable that after 1320 the secret committee of the Ten became tolerably permanent
as to its existence, though its members were often changed. Signor Fulin has discovered
that during a part of the fifteenth century they were chosen only for thirty days, and that the
utmost exactness was enforced on those who vacated the office. A long discussion took
place at that time as to whether the month began at the midnight preceding the day of the
Inquisitor’s election, or only on the morning of that day; since, in the latter case, an
Inquisitor at the end of his term would have the right to act until sunrise on the thirty-first
day, whereas, in the other, he would have to resign his seat at the first stroke of midnight.
The incident is a good instance of the Venetian manner of interpreting the letter of the law.
So long as the tribunal was merely a committee depending on the Ten it had no archives
of its own, and whatever it did appeared officially as the act of the Council, of which the
Inquisitors were merely executive agents. They were dismissed at the end of their month of
service with a regular formula:—
‘The Inquisitors will come to the Council with what they have found, and the Council
will decide what it thinks best with regard to them.’
In those times they received no general authorisation or power to act on their own
account, and their office must have been excessively irksome, since a heavy fine was
exacted from any one who refused to serve on the committee when he had been chosen.
Though they were not, as a rule, men of over-sensitive conscience, they felt their position
keenly and served with ill-disguised repugnance, well knowing that they were hated as a
body even more than they were feared, and that their lives were not always safe.
In early times their actual permanent power was very limited, though the Ten could
greatly extend it for any special purpose. For instance, they could not, of their own will,
proceed even to a simple arrest; they could not order the residence of a citizen to be
searched; and they could not use torture in examining a witness, without a special
authorisation from the Ten on each occasion.
Their work then lay almost wholly in secretly spying upon suspected persons; and it
often happened that when such an one was at last arrested the whole mass of evidence
against him was already written out and in the hands of the Ten. It also certainly happened
now and then that a person was proved innocent by the Inquisitors who had been suspected
by the Ten, and who had never had the least idea that he was in danger.

The machinery did not always work quickly, it is true, especially after the accused was
arrested and locked up. Trials often dragged on for months, so that when the culprit was at
last sentenced to a term of prison, it appeared that he had already served more than the time
to which he was condemned. This abuse, however, led to a vigorous reform by a series of
stringent decrees, the time of inquiry was limited, for ordinary cases, to three days, and for
graver matters to a month, and ruinous fines were imposed on Councillors and Inquisitors
who were not present at every sitting of the Court.
It was towards the close of the sixteenth century that the Inquisitors, being then elected
for the term of a year, were given much greater power than theretofore. Though they were
still closely associated with the Ten, they now had a sort of official independence, including
the right to a method of procedure of their own, with secret archives quite separate from
those of the Ten. The year 1596 is generally given as the date at which the separate tribunal
was definitely created, with permanent instructions to watch over the public safety, and to
detect all plots and conspiracies that might threaten the ‘ancient laws and government of
Venice.’
It cannot be said that the procedure of the Ten, or of the Inquisitors, was arbitrary, and
the supreme Venetian tribunals have not deserved all the obloquy that has been heaped upon
them; but at a time when the most inhuman methods were used to obtain evidence, they
certainly did not give an example of gentleness.
Signor Fulin, to whose recent researches all students of Venetian history are much
indebted, says, with perfect truthfulness, that torture was by no means used with
moderation. He cites a document signed by the Ten and the Inquisitors, dated the twenty-
fifth of April 1445:—
‘We have received a humble petition from Luigi Cristoforo Spiaciario, sentenced to two
years’ imprisonment and ten years of exile for unnatural crimes. The said convict has passed
two years in prison according to his sentence, and five years more in the corridors of the
prisons, because his feet having been burnt and his arms dislocated by torture, he could not
leave Venice. The said convict petitions that, out of regard for so much suffering, he may be
pardoned the last five years of his condemnation.’
The same writer also tells us that in spite of the precautions which were supposed to be
taken, torture often ended in death; and in the archives of the Ten there are instances of
horrible mutilations besides public decapitations, secret stranglings, and hangings and
poisonings; there are also some cases of death inflicted by drowning, though these were less
frequent than has been supposed; and lastly, the quiet waters of the canals have more than
once reflected the blaze of faggots burning round the stake.
Romanin’s industry has left us an exact list of the official drownings that took place
between 1551 and 1604, a period of fifty-three years. As it is not long, I append it in full.
The list is made out from the register of deaths which is preserved in the church of Saint
Mark’s.

In 1551 there were secretly drowned 2 persons
1554 “ “ 2 “
1555 “ “ 2 “

1556 “ “ 3 “
1557 “ “ 4 “
1558 “ “ 1 “
1559 “ “ 8 “
1560 “ “ 7 “
1569 “ “ 6 “
1571 “ “ 4 “
1573 “ “ 7 “
From 1574 to 1584 “ “ 12 “
1584 to 1594 “ “ 55 “
1594 to 1600 “ “ 50 “
1600 to 1604 “ “ 40 “
Total number of drowned 203 during 53 years

The last person who suffered death by drowning was a glass-blower of Murano in the
eighteenth century.
Before going on to say a word about the prisons in the sixteenth century it is as well to
call attention to the fact that the Inquisitors of State twice found themselves in direct
relations with the English government; once, in 1587, when they called the attention of
England to a conspiracy which was brewing in Spain; and again, a few years later, in
connection with the tragedy of Antonio Foscarini in which they played such a deplorable
part. Is it not possible that there may be some documents in the English Record Office
bearing upon those circumstances, and likely to throw more light upon the tribunal of the
Inquisitors?
In connection with the prisons, I take the following details, among many similar ones,
from documents found by Signor Fulin in the archives of the Inquisitors of State. He says,
in connection with them, that they are by no means exaggerated. One of the most
characteristic is a case dated towards the end of the fifteenth century, and it will serve as an
example, since it is known that no great changes were made in the management of the
prisons until much later.
‘There has been found in the prisons a youth named Menegidio Scutellario, whom the
Council of Ten had sentenced to twenty-five blows of the stick, which he received, and to a
year’s imprisonment. He was transferred from the new prisons to the one called Muzina,
where he contracted an extremely painful inflammatory disease which has produced
running sores. He has several on his head, and his face is much

RIO S. ATANASIO

swollen. Moreover, this boy is shut up in the prison with twenty-five men of all ages, which
is very dangerous for him from a moral point of view. A widow, who says she is his mother,
comes every day to the Palace begging and imploring that her son may not be left in this
abominable prison, lest he die there, or at least learn all manner of wickedness in the
company of so many criminals. We consequently order that in view of the justice of these
complaints the boy be kept in the corridor of the prisons till the end of his year.’
As in the Tower of London, so also in the gloomy dens of the Pozzi, former prisoners
have left short records of themselves. For instance:
‘1576, 22 March. I am Mandricardo Matiazzo de Marostega’; ‘Galeazze
Avogadro and his friends 1584’; and lower down the following misspelt Latin Mutinelli,
Annali Urb.
words, ‘Odie mihi, chras tibi (sic)’—‘My turn to-day, to-morrow yours.’
Occasionally some daring convict succeeded in escaping from those deep and secure
prisons. In his journal, under the fifth of August 1497, Marin Sanudo writes:—
It has happened that in the prisons of Saint Mark a number of convicts who were to remain there till they died have
plotted to escape; they elected for their chief that Loico Fioravante, who killed his father on the night of Good Friday in
the church of the Frari. There was also Marco Corner, sentenced for an unnatural crime; Benedetto Petriani, thief, and
many others. On the evening of the fourth, when the jailers were making their usual rounds, the prisoners succeeded in
disarming and binding them, and went on from one prison to another, their numbers increasing as they went, till they
reached the last (novissima); there they found arrows and other arms, and began to discuss a plan of escape. Now it
chanced that two Saracens who were amongst them wished to get out more quickly, without waiting for the deliberations
of their comrades. One of them was almost drowned in the canal, the other took fright and began to cry out for help. A boat
of the Council of Ten which was just passing picked up the half-drowned man; the fact that he was a Saracen suggested
that he might be a fugitive, and he was frightened into confessing. The plot was now revealed and the guard was
immediately informed. On the following morning the chiefs of the Ten, Cosimo Pasqualigo, Niccolò da Pesaro, Domenico
Beneto, went to the prisons with a good escort, but they could not get in, for the prisoners defended themselves. Then wet
straw was brought, and it was lighted in order that the smoke might suffocate them. And they were advised to yield before
the order of the Council of Ten was repeated thrice, for otherwise they would all be hanged. Marco Corner was the first to
surrender, and after him all the others. They were taken back, each to his prison, under a closer watch.

In Marco Corner’s case the love of liberty must have been strong, for in the same
journal of Sanudo we find that in little more than a year after their unsuccessful attempt at
flight, he and some companions actually succeeded in getting out and made their exit
through the hall of the Piovego, that is to say, through the Doge’s palace. Their numbers
were considerable, and six of them were sentenced to imprisonment for life. During the
night they reached the monastery of Saint George, and at dawn they were already beyond
the confines of Venetian territory.
Having disposed of the Inquisitors of State, I shall now endeavour to explain the
position and duties of the Inquisitors of the Holy Office, with whom the ordinary reader is
very apt to confound them.
In the first place, the Holy Office in Venice was a much milder and more insignificant
affair than it was at that time in other European states. In Venice it seems to have
corresponded vaguely to the modern European Ministry of Public Worship. There are some
amusing stories connected with it, but no very terrible ones so far as I can ascertain.
The Republic had long resisted the desire of the Popes to establish a branch of the Holy
Inquisition in Venice, but by way of showing a conciliatory spirit, while maintaining
complete independence, the government had created a magistracy which was responsible
for three matters, namely, the condition of the canals, the regulation of usury, and—of all

things—cases of heresy. It is perfectly impossible to say why three classes of affairs so
different were placed under the control of one body of men. Considering the gravity of the
Venetian government we can hardly suppose that it was intended as a piece of ironical wit at
the expense of the Holy See. It may, at all events, be considered certain that the Savi all’
Eresia, literally the Wise Men on Heresy, of the thirteenth century, had not accomplished
what was expected of them, since in 1289 the government recognised the necessity of
establishing a special court to deal with affairs of religion, presided over, at least in
appearance, by a person delegated for that purpose from the Vatican. The Holy Office was
thereby accepted in Venice, but with restrictions that paralysed it.
The tribunal was, in principle, composed of three persons, the Apostolic
Nuncio, the Patriarch, and the Father Inquisitor, all three of whom had to be Molmenti,
approved by the Republic. As a first step towards hindering them from acting Stud. e Ric.
rashly, they were strictly forbidden to discuss or decide anything whatsoever, except in the
presence of three Venetian nobles, who were appointed year by year, and preserved their
ancient title of Wise Men on Heresy. Next,
the Holy Office was not allowed to busy itself about any religious matter
except heresy, in the strictest sense; it could not interfere in connection with Rom. ii.
252, and
any violation of the laws of the Church, not even in cases of sorcery or viii. 348.
blasphemy, for magicians fell under the authority of the Signors of the Night,
and blasphemers were answerable to the Executives against Blasphemy.
These laws had not changed in the sixteenth century, and the Holy Office had less to do
than most of the contemporary tribunals. An examination of the documents preserved in its
archives shows that from the year 1541 to the fall of the Republic there were three thousand
six hundred and twenty trials, of which fifteen hundred and sixty-five fell in the sixteenth
century, fourteen hundred and ninety-seven in the seventeenth, and only five hundred and
sixty-one in the eighteenth. In the majority of cases the testimony was declared insufficient;
in others, the accused hastened to abjure their errors. Sometimes, however, we find long
trials in the course of which torture was used as by the other tribunals, and in these cases the
end was frequently a sentence of death or a condemnation to the galleys.
No heretic was ever burned alive in Venice; death was inflicted by
strangling, beheading, or hanging. Each Doge promised, indeed, on his Molmenti,
election, to burn all heretics, but it is amply proved that only their dead bodies Stud.and e Ric.,

or their effigies were really given to the flames. Cecchetti,
Corte di
Roma.

The tribunal of the Holy Office sat in a very low vaulted room in the buildings of Saint
Mark’s, which was reached by a narrow staircase after passing through the Sacristy. The
Court had no prisons of its own. Persons who were arrested by it, or sentenced by it to
terms of imprisonment, were confined in the prisons of the State, probably in those of the
Ponte della Paglia. It is likely that the Court had at its disposal two or three cells near its
place of sitting, for the detention of the accused during the trials. Signor Molmenti has
ascertained precisely how the members of the tribunal were placed, and has published a
diagram which I here reproduce for the benefit of those who like such curious details.
As will be seen by the diagram, one half of the personages used one entrance, and the
rest came in by the other. Until the year 1560, the Inquisitor himself was a Franciscan
monk, but afterwards he was always a Dominican.
The hall was gloomy and ill-lighted, the furniture poor; it did not please the Republic to
spend money for the delectation of a court which it did not like.
It was here that two famous trials took place in the sixteenth century, namely, that of
Giordano Bruno, the renegade monk, dear to Englishmen who have never read the very
scarce volume of his insane and filthy writings, and that of the celebrated painter Paolo
Veronese. The contrast between these two documents is very striking, but both go to prove
that the Holy Office in Venice was seldom more than a hollow sham, and that its
proceedings occasionally degenerated towards low comedy.
Having escaped from Rome, Giordano Bruno left the ecclesiastical career which he had
dishonoured in
every possible way, and wandered about in search of money and glory. In the
course of time he came to London, where his coarseness and his loose life Previti, Vita
di Giordano
made him many enemies. Thence he went on to Oxford, where, by means of

some potent protection, he succeeded in obtaining the privilege of lecturing on Bruno.
philosophy; but the university authorities were soon scandalised by his
behaviour and frightened by the extravagance of his doctrines; in three months he was
obliged to leave. He revenged himself by writing a libel called ‘La Cena delle Ceneri,’ in
which he described England as a land of dark streets in which one stuck in the mud knee-
deep, and of houses that lacked every necessary; the boats on the Thames were rowed by
men more hideous than Charon, the workmen and shop-keepers were vulgar and untaught
rustics, always ready to laugh at a stranger, and to call him by such names as traitor, or dog.
In this pleasing pamphlet the Englishwoman alone escapes the writer’s foul-mouthed
hatred, to be insulted by his still more foul-mouthed praise. One may imagine the sort of
eulogy that would run from the pen of a man capable of describing woman in general as a
creature with neither faith nor constancy, neither merit nor talent, but full of more pride,
arrogance, hatred, falseness, lust, avarice, ingratitude and, generally, of more vices than
there were evils in Pandora’s box; one might quote many amenities of language more or
less senseless, as, for instance, that woman is a hammer, a foul sepulchre, and a quartan
fever; and there are a hundred other expressions which cannot be quoted at all.
Towards 1591, the patrician Giovanni Mocenigo, an enthusiastic collector of books,
found in the shop of a Dutch bookseller a little volume, entitled Eroici Furori, which
contains some astrological calculations and some hints on mnemonics. The purchaser asked
who the author might be, learned from the bookseller that it was Giordano Bruno, entered
into correspondence with him, and at last invited him to Venice.
Bruno, it is needless to say, accepted the invitation eagerly, as he accepted every thing
that was offered to him, but it was not long before Mocenigo regretted his haste to be
hospitable. He had begun by calling his visitor his dear master; before long he discovered
the man to be a debauchee and a blasphemer. Now it chanced that Mocenigo had sat in the
tribunal of the Holy Office as one of the three senators whose business it was to oversee the
acts of the Father Inquisitor, and he was not only a devout man, but had a taste for theology.
He began by remonstrating with Bruno, but when the latter became insolent, he quietly
turned the key on him and denounced him to the Holy Office. A few hours later the
renegade monk was arrested and conveyed to prison. He was examined several times by the
tribunal, but was never tortured, and as the judges thought they detected signs of coming
repentance they granted him a limit of time within which to abjure his errors. But the trial
did not end in Venice, for the Republic made an exception in this case and soon yielded to a
request from the Pope that the accused should be sent to Rome. He was ultimately burnt
there, the only heretic, according to the most recent and learned authorities, who ever died
at the stake in Italy. He was in reality a degenerate and a lunatic, who should have ended his
days in an asylum.
M. Yriarte has published in the appendix to his study of the Venetian noble in the
sixteenth century the verbatim report of the proceedings of the Holy Office on the
eighteenth of July 1573. The prisoner at the bar was Paolo Veronese. I quote the following
from M. Yriarte’s translation:—
Report of the sitting of the Tribunal of the Inquisition on
Saturday July eighteenth, 1573.
This day, July eighteenth, 1573. Called to the Holy Office before the sacred tribunal, Paolo Galliari Veronese residing
in the parish of Saint Samuel, and being asked as to his name and surname replied as above.

Being asked as to his profession:—
Answer. I paint and make figures.
Question. Do you know the reasons why you have been called here?
A. No.
Q. Can you imagine what those reasons may be?
A. I can well imagine.
Q. Say what you think about them.
A. I fancy that it concerns what was said to me by the reverend fathers, or rather by the prior of the
monastery of San Giovanni e Paolo, whose name I did not know, but who informed me that he had been The Supper in
the house of
here, and that your Most Illustrious Lordships had ordered him to cause to be placed in the picture a Simon, Paolo
Magdalen instead of the dog; and I answered him that very readily I would do all that was needful for my Veronese;
reputation and for the honour of the picture; but that I did not understand what this figure of Magdalen Accademia,
could be doing Room IX.

S. SAMUELE

here; and this for many reasons, which I will tell, when occasion is granted me to speak.
Q. What is the picture to which you have been referring?
A. It is the picture which represents the Last Supper of Jesus Christ with His disciples in the house of Simon.
Q. Where is this picture?
A. In the refectory of the monks of San Giovanni e Paolo.
Q. Is it painted in fresco or on wood or on canvas?
A. It is on canvas.
Q. How many feet does it measure in height?
A. It may measure seventeen feet.
Q. And in breadth?
A. About thirty-nine.
Q. In this Supper of our Lord, have you painted (other) persons?
A. Yes.
Q. How many have you represented? And what is each one doing?
A. First there is the innkeeper, Simon; then, under him, a carving squire whom I supposed to have come there for his
pleasure, to see how the service of the table is managed. There are many other figures which I cannot remember, however,
as it is a long time since I painted that picture.
Q. Have you painted other Last Suppers besides that one?
A. Yes.
Q. How many have you painted? Where are they?
A. I painted one at Verona for the reverend monks of San Lazzaro; it is in their refectory. Another is in the refectory
of the reverend brothers of San Giorgio here in Venice.
Q. But that one is not a Last Supper, and is not even called the Supper of Our Lord.
A. I painted another in the refectory of San Sebastiano in Venice, another at Padua for the Fathers of the Maddalena. I
do not remember to have made any others.
Q. In this Supper which you painted for San Giovanni e Paolo, what signifies the figure of him whose nose is
bleeding?
A. He is a servant who has a nose-bleed from some accident?
Q. What signify those armed men dressed in the fashion of Germany, with halberds in their hands?
A. It is necessary here that I should say a score of words.
Q. Say them.
A. We painters use the same license as poets and madmen, and I represented those halberdiers, the one drinking, the
other eating at the foot of the stairs, but both ready to do their duty, because it seemed to me suitable and possible that the
master of the house, who as I have been told was rich and magnificent, should have such servants.
Q. And the one who is dressed as a jester with a parrot on his wrist, why did you put him into the picture?
A. He is there as an ornament, as it is usual to insert such figures.
Q. Who are the persons at the table of Our Lord?
A. The twelve apostles.
Q. What is Saint Peter doing, who is the first?
A. He is carving the lamb in order to pass it to the other part of the table.
Q. What is he doing who comes next?
A. He holds a plate to see what Saint Peter will give him.
Q. Tell us what the third is doing.
A. He is picking his teeth with his fork.
Q. And who are really the persons whom you admit to have been present at this Supper?
A. I believe that there was only Christ and His Apostles; but when I have some space left over in a picture I adorn it
with figures of my own invention.
Q. Did some person order you to paint Germans, buffoons, and other similar figures in this picture?
A. No, but I was commissioned to adorn it as I thought proper; now it is very large and can contain many figures.
Q. Should not the ornaments which you were accustomed to paint in pictures be suitable and in direct relation to the
subject, or are they left to your fancy, quite without discretion or reason?
A. I paint my pictures with all the considerations which are natural to my intelligence, and according as my
intelligence understands them.

Q. Does it seem suitable to you, in the Last Supper of our Lord, to represent buffoons, drunken Germans, dwarfs, and
other such absurdities?
A. Certainly not.
Q. Then why have you done it?
A. I did it on the supposition that those people were outside the room in which the Supper was taking place.
Q. Do you not know that in Germany and other countries infested by heresy, it is habitual, by means of pictures full
of absurdities, to vilify and turn to ridicule the things of the Holy Catholic Church, in order to teach false doctrine to
ignorant people who have no common sense?
A. I agree that it is wrong, but I repeat what I have said, that it is my duty to follow the examples given me by my
masters.
Q. Well, what did your masters paint? Things of this kind, perhaps?
A. In Rome, in the Pope’s Chapel, Michel Angelo has represented Our Lord, His Mother, St. John, St. Peter, and the
celestial court; and he has represented all these personages nude, including the Virgin Mary, and in various attitudes not
inspired by the most profound religious feeling.
Q. Do you not understand that in representing the Last Judgment, in which it is a mistake to suppose that clothes are
worn, there was no reason for painting any? But in these figures what is there that is not inspired by the Holy Spirit? There
are neither buffoons, dogs, weapons, nor other absurdities. Do you think therefore, according to this or that view, that you
did well in so painting your picture, and will you try to prove that it is a good and decent thing?
A. No, my most Illustrious Sirs; I do not pretend to prove it, but I had not thought that I was doing wrong; I had never
taken so many things into consideration. I had been far from imagining such a great disorder, all the more as I had placed
these buffoons outside the room in which Our Lord was sitting.
These things having been said, the judges pronounced that the aforesaid Paolo should be obliged to correct his picture
within the space of three months from the date of the reprimand, according to the judgments and decision of the Sacred
Court, and altogether at the expense of the said Paolo.
Et ita decreverunt omni melius modo. (And so they decided everything for the best!)

The existing picture proves that Veronese paid no attention to the recommendations of
the Court, for I find that it contains every figure referred to.
After this brief review of the more serious offices of the Republic, I pass on to speak of
a tribunal which, though in reality much less serious, gave itself airs of great solemnity, and
promulgated a great number of laws. This was the Court of the ‘Provveditori delle Pompe,’
established in the sixteenth century to deal with matters of dress and fashion. As far back as
the end of the thirteenth century, the ‘Savi,’ the wise men of the government, had feebly
deplored the increase of luxury. Their plaintive remarks were repeated at short intervals, and
on each occasion produced some new decree against foolish and unreasonable expenditure.

THE LAST RAYS, ST. MARK’S

The length of women’s trains, the size and fulness of people’s sleeves, the adornment of
boots and shoes, and all similar matters, had been most minutely studied by these wise
gentlemen, and the avogadors had their hands full to make the regulations properly
respected. One day a lady was walking in the square of Saint Mark’s, evidently very proud
of the new white silk
gown she wore. She was stopped by two avogadors who gravely proceeded to
measure the amount of stuff used in making her sleeves. It was far more than Molmenti,
vita Priv.
the law judged necessary. The lady and her tailor—there were only male
dressmakers in Venice in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries—were both made to pay a
fine heavy enough to make them regret the extravagance of their fancy. I quote this story
from Signor Molmenti. Marin Sanudo tells of another similar regulation in his journal under
the month of December 1491: ‘All those who hold any office from the State, and those who
are finishing their term of service, are forbidden to give more than two dinner-parties to
their relations, and each of these dinners shall not consist of more than ten covers.’

At weddings it was forbidden to give banquets to more than forty guests. Some years
later another regulation was issued on the same subject. It was decreed ‘that at these
wedding dinners there shall not be served more than one dish of roast meats and one of
boiled meats, and in each of these courses there shall not be more than three kinds of meat.
Chicken and pigeons are allowed.’
For days of abstinence, the magistrates take the trouble to inform people what they may
eat, namely, two dishes of roast fish, two dishes of boiled fish, an almond cake, and the
ordinary jams. Of fish, sturgeon and the fish of the lake of Garda are forbidden on such
days, and no sweets are allowed that do not come under one of the two heads mentioned.
Oysters were not allowed at dinners of more than twenty covers. The pastry-cooks who
made jumbles and the like, and the cooks who were to prepare a dinner, were obliged to
give notice to the provveditors, accompanied by a note of the dishes to be served. The
inspectors of the tribunal had a right to inspect the dining-room, kitchen, and pantry, in
order to verify all matters that came under their jurisdiction.
As if all this were not enough, considerable fines were imposed on those who should
adorn the doors and outer windows of their houses with festoons, or who should give
concerts in which drums and trumpets were used. In noting this regulation in his journal,
Sanudo observes that the Council of Ten had only succeeded in framing it after meeting on
three consecutive days in sittings of unusual length. One is apt to connect the Council of
Ten with matters more tragic than these; and one fancies that the Decemvirs may have
sometimes exclaimed with Dante—
Le leggi son, ma chi pon mano ad esse?

(‘There are laws indeed, but who enforces them?’)
The Council judged that there was only one way of accomplishing this, namely, to
create a new magistracy, whose exclusive business it should be to make and promulgate
sumptuary laws. For this purpose three nobles were chosen who received the title of
Provveditori delle Pompe.
M. Armand Baschet, whose profound learning in matters of Venetian law is beyond
dispute, is of opinion that the new tribunal helped Venice to be great, and hindered her from
being extravagant. I shall not venture to impugn the judgment of so learned a writer, yet we
can hardly forbear to smile at the thought of those three grave nobles, of ripe age and
austere life, who sat down day after day to decide upon the cut of women’s gowns, the
articles necessary to a bride’s outfit, and the dishes permissible at a dinner-party.
‘Women,’ said their regulations, ‘shall wear clothes of only one colour, that is to say,
velvet, satin, damask, of Persian silk woven of one tint; but exception is made from this rule
for Persian silk of changing sheen and for brocades, but such gowns must have no
trimming.’
Shifts were to be embroidered only round the neck, and it was not allowed to embroider
handkerchiefs with gold or silver thread. No woman was
allowed to carry a fan made of feathers worth more than four ducats. No
gloves were allowed embroidered with gold or silver; no earrings; no jewellery Mutinelli,
Less.

in the hair. Plain gold bracelets were allowed but must not be worth more than three ducats;
gold chains might be worth ten. No low-neck gowns allowed!
Jewellers and tailors and dealers in luxuries did their best to elude all such laws, but
during a considerable time they were not successful, and it is probable that the temper of the
Venetian ladies was severely tried by the prying and paternal ‘Provveditori.’ The only
women for whom exceptions were made were the Dogess and the other ladies
of the Doge’s immediate family who lived with him in the ducal palace. His Molmenti,
vita
daughters and grand-daughters were called ‘dozete,’ which means ‘little Privata.
dogesses’ in Venetian dialect, and they were authorised to wear what they
liked; but the Doge’s more distant female relations had not the same privilege.
At the coronation of Andrea Gritti, one of his nieces appeared at the palace arrayed in a
magnificent gown of gold brocade; the Doge himself sent her home to put on a dress which
conformed with the sumptuary laws. Those regulations extended to intimate details of
private life, and even affected the furnishing of a noble’s private apartments. There were
clauses which forbade that the sheets made for weddings and baptisms should be too richly
embroidered or edged with too costly lace, or that the beds themselves should be inlaid with
gold, mother-of-pearl, or precious stones.
Then the gondola came into fashion as a means of getting about and at once became a
cause of great extravagance, for the rich vied with each other in adorning their skiffs with
the most precious stuffs and tapestries, and inlaid stanchions, and the most marvellous
allegorical figures.
In the thirteenth century the gondola had been merely an ordinary boat, probably like
the modern ‘barca’ of the lagoons, over which an awning was rigged as a protection against
sun and rain. The gondola was not a development of the old-fashioned

ON THE ZATTERE

boat, any more than the modern racing yacht has developed out of a Dutch galleon or a
‘trabacolo’ of the Adriatic. It had another pedigree; and I have no hesitation in saying, as
one well acquainted with both, and not ignorant of boats in general, that the Venetian
gondola is the caïque of the Bosphorus, as to the hull, though the former is rowed in the
Italian fashion, by men who stand and swing a sweep in a crutch, whereas the Turkish
oarsman sits and pulls a pair of sculls of peculiar shape which slide in and out through
greased leathern strops. The gondola, too, has the steel ornament on her stem, figuring the
beak of a Roman galley, which I suspect was in use in Constantinople before the Turkish
conquest, and which must have been abolished then, for the very reason that it was Roman.
The ‘felse,’ the hood, is a Venetian invention, I think, for there is no trace of it in Turkey.
But the similarity of the two boats when out of water is too close to be a matter of chance,
and it may safely be said that the first gondola was a caïque, then doubtless called by
another name, brought from Constantinople by some Greek merchant on his vessel.
In early times people went about on horses and mules in Venice, and a vast number of
the small canals were narrow and muddy streets; but as the superior facilities of water over
mud as a means of transportation became evident, the lanes were dug out and the islands

were cut up into an immense number of islets, until the footways became so circuitous that
the horse disappeared altogether.
In the sixteenth century there were about ten thousand gondolas in Venice, and they
soon became a regular bugbear to the unhappy Provveditori delle
Pompe, who were forced to occupy themselves with their shape, their
hangings, the stuff of which the ‘felse’ was made, the cushions, the carpets, Mutinelli,
Less.
and the number of rowers. The latter were soon limited to two, and it was
unlawful to have more, even for a

RIO DEL RIMEDIO

wedding. The gondola did not assume its present simplicity and its black colour till the end
of the seventeenth century, but it began to resemble what we now see after the edict of

1562.
As usual, a few persons were exempted from the sumptuary law. The Doge went about
in a gondola decorated with gold and covered with scarlet cloth, and the foreign
ambassadors adorned their skiffs with the richest materials, the representatives of France
and Spain, especially, vying with each other in magnificence. To some extent the youths
belonging to the Compagnia della Calza—the Hose Club before mentioned—were either
exempted from the law, or succeeded in evading it. Naturally enough, the sight of such
display was odious to the rich noblemen who were condemned by law to the use of plain
black; and on the whole, the study of all accounts of festivities held in Venice, down to the
end of the Republic, goes to show that the Provveditori aimed at a most despotic control of
dress, habits, and manners, but that the results generally fell far short of their good
intentions. They must have led harassed lives, those much-vexed gentlemen, not much
better than the existence of ‘Jimmy-Legs’ on an American man-of-war.
Now and then, too, the government temporarily removed all restrictions on luxury, as,
for instance, when a foreign sovereign visited Venice; and then the whole city plunged into
a sort of orgy of extravagance. This happened when Henry III. of France was the guest of
the Republic. Such occasions being known and foreseen, and the nobles being forced by the
Provveditori to save their money, they spent it all the more recklessly when they were
allowed a taste of liberty—like a child that breaks its little earthenware savings-box when it
is full of pennies.
One naturally returns to the Doge after rapidly reviewing such a legion of officials, each
of whom was himself a part of the supreme power. What was the Doge doing while these
hundreds of noble Venetians were doing everything for themselves, from directing foreign
politics to spying upon the wardrobes of each other’s wives and auditing the accounts of
one another’s cooks?
It would be hard to ask a question more embarrassing to answer. It would be as unjust to
say that he did nothing as it would be untrue to say that he had much to do. Yet the
Venetians themselves looked upon him as a very important personage in the Republic. In a
republic he was a sovereign, and therefore idle; but he was apparently necessary.
I am not aware that any other republic ever called its citizens subjects, or supported a
personage who received royal honours, before whom the insignia of something like royalty
were carried in public, and who addressed foreign governments by his own name and title
as if he were a king. But then, how could Venice, which was governed by an oligarchy
chosen from an aristocracy, which was the centre of a plutocracy, call herself a republic? It
all looks like a mass of contradictions, yet the machinery worked without breaking down,
during five hundred years at a stretch, after it had assumed its ultimate form. If a modern
sociologist had to define the government of Venice, he would perhaps call it a semi-
constitutional aristocratic monarchy, in which the sovereign was elected for life—unless it
pleased the electors to depose him.
What is quite certain is that when the Doge was a man of average intelligence, he must
have been the least happy man in Venice; for of all Venetian nobles, there was none whose
personal liberty was so restricted, whose smallest actions were so closely watched, whose
lightest word was subject to such a terrible censorship.

Francesco Foscari was not allowed to resign when he wished to do so, nor was he
allowed to remain on the throne after the Council had decided to get rid of him. Even after
his death, his unhappy widow was not allowed to bury his body as she pleased. Yet his was
only an extreme case, because circumstances combined to bring the existing laws into play
and to let them work to their logical result.
From the moment when a noble was chosen to fill the ducal throne, he was bound to
sacrifice himself to the public service, altogether and till he died, without regret, or possible
return to private life, or any compensation beyond what might flatter the vanity of a vulgar
and second-rate nature. Yet the Doges were very rarely men of poor intelligence or weak
character.
At each election, fresh restrictions were imposed by ‘corrections’ of the ducal oath. M.
Yriarte says very justly that the tone of these ‘corrections’ is often so dry and hard that it
looks as if the Great Council had been taking measures against an enemy rather than editing
rules for the life of the chief of the State. He goes on to say, however, that the principle
which dictated those decrees protected both the Doge and the nobility, and that the object at
which each aimed was the interest of the State. He asks, then, whether those binding
restrictions ever prevented a strong personality from making itself felt, and whether the long
succession of Doges is nothing but a list of inglorious names.
It may be answered, I think, with justice, that the Doges of illustrious memory, during
the latter centuries of the Republic’s existence, had become famous as individual officers
before their elevation to the throne. The last great fighting Doge was Enrico Dandolo, the
conqueror of Constantinople, who died almost a hundred years before the closure of the
Great Council. In the war of Chioggia, Andrea Contarini’s oath not to return into the city till
the enemy was beaten had the force of a fine example, but the man himself contributed
nothing else to the most splendid page in Venetian history.
There were Doges who were good historians and writers, others who have been brave
generals, others like Giovanni Mocenigo who were good financiers; but the fact of their
having been Doges has nothing to do with the reputation they left afterwards. The
sovereignty, when it was given to them, was a chain, not a sceptre, and from the day they
went up the grand staircase as masters, their personal liberty of thought and action was
more completely left behind than if they had entered by another door to spend the
remainder of life in the prisons by the Ponte della Paglia, beyond the Bridge of Sighs.
At the beginning of the fifteenth century the Doge Michel Steno was told in open
Council to sit down and hold his peace. No change in the manners of the counsellors had
taken place sixty years later when
the Doge Cristoforo Moro objected to accompanying Pius the Second’s
projected crusade in person, and was told by Vittor Cappello that if he would Tassini,
under
not go of his own accord he should be taken by force. ‘Moro.’
It is hard to imagine a more unpleasant position than that of the chief of the Rom. iv.
319.
State. Suppose, for instance, that by the choice of the Council some post or
dignity was to be conferred on one of his relatives, or even on one of his friends; he was
literally and categorically forbidden to exhibit the least satisfaction, or to thank the Council,
even by a nod of the head.

He was to preside at this, and at many other ceremonies, as a superbly-
dressed lay figure, as a sort of allegorical representative of that power with Yriarte, Vie
d’un
which every member of the government except himself was invested. And as Patricien,
time went on this part he had to play, of the living allegory, was more and 359, and
more defined. He was even deprived of the title ‘My Lord,’ and was to be Marin
Sanudo.
addressed merely as ‘Messer Doge,’ ‘Sir Doge.’ From 1501 onward he was
forbidden to go out of the city, even for an hour in his gondola, without the consent of the
Council, and if he disobeyed he had to pay a fine of one hundred ducats; he was not allowed
to write a letter, even to his wife or his children, without showing it to at least one of his six
counsellors, and if he disobeyed he was to pay a fine of two hundred ducats, and the person,
his wife or his own child, to whom the letter was addressed, was liable to be exiled for five
years.
After 1521 the Doge was never allowed to speak without witnesses with any
ambassador, neither with the foreign representatives who came to Venice, nor with Venetian
ambassadors at home on business or leave; and when he spoke with any of them in public,
he was warned only to make commonplace remarks.
The Dogess never had any official position in Venice, but during the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries she was made use of as an ornamental personage at public festivals. After
that time she returned to the retirement in which the wives of the early Doges had lived. An
outcry was raised against the custom of crowning her when she entered the ducal palace,
and from that time forth she never appeared beside her husband on state occasions; and if
any foreign ambassador, supposing that he was acting according to the rules of ordinary
court etiquette, asked to be presented to her, she was bound to refuse his visit.
Everything in the life of the Doge was regulated by the Great Council. That august
assembly once even remonstrated with the so-called sovereign because the Dogess bore him
too many children. If any one hesitates to believe these amazing statements he may consult
Signor Molmenti’s recent historical work, La Dogaressa, which is beyond criticism in point
of accuracy.
At certain fixed times the Doge was allowed the relaxation of shooting, but with so
many restrictions and injunctions that the sport must have been intolerably irksome. He was
allowed or, more strictly speaking, was ordered to proceed for this purpose, and about
Christmas time, to certain islets in the lagoons, where wild ducks bred in great numbers. On
his return he was obliged to present each member of the Great Council with five ducks.
This was called the gift of the ‘Oselle,’ that being the name given by the people to the birds
in question. In 1521, about five thousand brace of birds had to be killed or snared in order
to fulfil this requirement; and if the unhappy Doge was not fortunate enough, with his
attendants, to secure the required number, he was obliged to provide them by buying them
elsewhere and at any price, for the claims of the Great Council had to be satisfied in any
case. This was often an expensive affair.
There was also another personage who could not have derived much enjoyment from
the Christmas shooting. This was the Doge’s chamberlain, whose duty it was to see to the
just distribution of the game, so that each bunch of two-and-a-half brace should contain a
fair average of fat and thin birds, lest it should be said that the Doge showed favour to some
members of the Council more than to others.

By and by a means was sought of commuting this annual tribute of ducks. The Doge
Antonio Grimani
requested and obtained permission to coin a medal or the value or a quarter or
a ducat, equal to about four shillings or one dollar, and to call it ‘a Duck,’ Portrait of
Antonio
‘Osella,’ whereby it was signified that it took the place of the traditional bird. Grimani
He engraved upon his medal figures of Peace and Justice, with the motto kneeling
‘Justitia et Pax osculatae sunt,’ ‘Justice and Peace have kissed one another,’ in before
Religion,
recollection of the sentence he had undergone nineteen years previously as Titian; Sala
Admiral of the fleet defeated at Parenzo. In 1575 the Doge Luigi Mocenigo delle
engraved upon his Osella the following inscription referring to the victory of Quattro
Porte.
Lepanto: ‘Magnae navalis victoriae Dei gratia contra Turcos’; the reverse
bears the arms of the Mocenigo family, a rose with five petals. Later, in 1632, the Doge
Francesco Erizzo was the first to replace his own effigy kneeling before Saint Mark by a
lion. In 1688 Francesco Morosini coined an Osella bearing on the obverse a sword, with the
motto ‘Non abstinet ictu,’ and on the reverse a hand bearing weapons, with the motto
‘Quem non exercuit arcus.’ In 1684 Marcantonio Giustiniani issued an Osella showing a
winged lion rampant, bearing in the one paw a single palm, and in the other a bunch of
palms, with the motto ‘Et solus et simul,’ meaning that Venice would be victorious either
alone or joined with allies.
The successor of Antonio Grimani, Andrea Gritti, chose for his Osella to have himself
represented as kneeling
before Saint Mark; the reverse bore his name with the date.
Andrea
But fresh trouble now arose. It came to pass that some nobles sold their Gritti,
medals or used them for money, and disputes even took place as to the true praying,
value of the ducal present. The Council of Ten was obliged to examine Tintoretto;
Sala del
seriously into the affair. As it appeared certain that it would be impossible to Collegio.
avoid the use of medals as money, it was decided to replace them definitely by
a coin having regular currency.

MOUTH OF THE GRAND CANAL

II

GLEANINGS FROM VENETIAN CRIMINAL HISTORY
The records of the different tribunals of Venice are a mine of interesting information, and it
is to be wondered that no student has devoted a separate volume to the subject. I shall only
attempt to offer the reader a few gleanings which have come under my hand, and which
may help to give an impression of the later days of the Republic.
There were two distinct classes of criminals in Venice, as elsewhere—namely,
professional criminals, who helped each other and often escaped justice; and, on the other
hand, those who committed isolated crimes under the influence of strong passions, and who
generally expiated their misdeeds in prison or on the scaffold.
Though the professionals were infinitely more dangerous than the others, it is a
remarkable fact that they enjoyed the same sort of popularity which was bestowed upon
daring highwaymen in England in the coaching days. They were called the ‘Bravi,’ they
were very rarely Venetians by birth, and they had the singular audacity to wear a costume of
their own, which was something between a military uniform and a mediæval hunting-dress.
One might almost call them condottieri in miniature. They sold their services to cautious
persons who wished to satisfy a grudge without getting into trouble with the police, and
they drew round them all the good-for-nothings in the country. ‘Bandits’—that is, in the
true interpretation of the word, those persons whom the Republic had banished from
Venetian territory—frequently returned, and remained unmolested during some time under
the protection of one of these bravi. The most terrible and extravagant crimes were
committed in broad day, and the popular fancy surrounded its nefarious heroes with a whole
cycle of legends calculated to inspire terror.
The government cast about for some means of checking the evil, and hit upon one
worthy of the Inquisitors of State. The simple plan consisted in giving a free pardon for all
his crimes to any bravo who would kill another. We even find that a patrician of the great
house of Quirini, who had been exiled for killing one of Titian’s servants, obtained leave to
come back and live peacefully in Venice by assassinating a

THE RIALTO AT NIGHT

bravo. It is easy to imagine what crimes could be committed under this law, and the
government soon recognised the mistake and repealed it in
1549, in order to protect ‘the dignity of the Republic, and the goods and
lives of its subjects.’ Pinelli,
Raccolta di
Thereafter the bravi and the bandits led more quiet lives, and returned to Leggi Crim.
their former occupations.
There existed at that time a statue of a hunchback modelled by the sculptor Pietro di
Salò, which had been used to support a ladder, or short staircase, by which the public criers
ascended the column of the Rialto, in order to proclaim banns of marriage and other matters

FROM THE BALCONY OF THE DUCAL PALACE

which were to be made public. From 1541 to 1545 thieves were usually sentenced to be
flogged through the city from Saint Mark’s to the Rialto, where the ceremony ended by
their being obliged to kiss the statue of the hunchback. In order to get rid of this degrading
absurdity a small column was set up near by, surmounted by a cross, in order that ‘sinners
might undergo their sentence in a Christian spirit.’
On the sixteenth of December 1560, the Council of Ten met to discuss the question of
the bravi. It was now admitted that the government no longer had isolated criminals to
deal with, but regular bands of ruffians continually

THE COLUMNS, PIAZZETTA

on the look-out for adventures. The Ten published an edict by which all bandits were
formally warned that any one who exercised the profession of a bravo, whether a subject
of the Republic or not, would be taken and led in irons to the place between the columns
of the Piazzetta, where his nose and ears would be carved off. He would then be further
sentenced to five years at the oar on board one of the State galleys, unless some physical
defect made this impossible for him, in which case he was to have one hand chopped off
and to be imprisoned for ten years. In passing, I call
attention to the fact that life between decks on a State galley cannot have
been pleasant, since five years of it were considered equivalent to the loss of Horatio
Brown,
a hand and ten years of imprisonment. Venetian
These terrific penalties inspired little or no fear, for the bravi were Studies.
infinitely quicker and cleverer than the sbirri of the government, and were
very rarely caught. Besides, they had powerful supporters and secure refuges from which
they could defy justice, for they were sheltered and protected in the foreign embassies,
where they knew how to make themselves useful as spies, and occasionally as
professional assassins, and it was not an uncommon thing to see a sbirro standing before
the French or the Spanish embassy and looking up at a window whence some well-known
bravo smiled down on him, waved his hat, and addressed him with ironical politeness.

The picture vividly recalls visions of a cat on top of a garden wall, calmly grinning at the
frantic terrier below.
Then, too, the bravi were patronised by the ‘signorotti’ of the mainland, a set of rich,
turbulent, and licentious land-owners, who could not call themselves Venetian nobles and
would not submit to be burghers, but set themselves up as knights, and lived in more or
less fortified manors from which they could set the police at defiance. They employed the
bravi in all sorts of nefarious adventures, which chiefly tended to the satisfaction of their
brutal tastes.
It was a second period of transition, as Molmenti very justly says, and in the beginning
of the decadence the knight had already ceased to be knightly. Those rough lordlings were
neither without fear nor without reproach, says the learned Italian writer, but were
altogether without remorse, and if they were ever bold it was only in breaking the law.
From time
to time one of them was caught perpetrating some outrageous crime, and was
dragged barefooted, in a long black shirt and black cap, to the scaffold, as an Tassini,
Condanne
awful example, there to be flogged, hanged, and quartered. Such horrors had Capitali.
long ceased to have any effect in an age that saw blood run in rivers. By way
of increasing the disgrace of a shameful death, a gibbet was set up which was so high that
the victim had to mount thirty-two steps, and it was painted scarlet. The first miscreant
who adorned it was one of the chiefs of the sbirri himself, who had used his position to
protect a whole gang of thieves with whom he divided the plunder.
I abridge from Signor Molmenti’s work the following story, in which more than one
type of
the sixteenth-century criminal makes his appearance.
The village of Illasi is situated in a rich valley in the territory of Verona. Molmenti,
Banditi e
At the end of the sixteenth century its castle was inhabited by a certain Count Bravi.
Geronimo and his beautiful lady, Ginevra. From time to time the couple
introduced a little variety into their solitude by receiving Virginio Orsini who, though a
Roman noble, was in the service of Venice as Governor of Verona. He was, I believe, a
first cousin of that Paolo Giordano Orsini who murdered his wife Isabella de’ Medici in
order to marry Vittoria Accoramboni. I have told the story at length in another work.
Virginio, the Governor, fell in love with the Countess Ginevra before long; but she,
though strongly attracted to him, tried hard to resist him, would not read his letters, and
turned a deaf ear to his pleadings.
On a certain Saturday night, when Count Geronimo was away from home and Ginevra
sat by the fire in her own chamber, having already supped and said her prayers, the curtain
of the door was raised and two men came in. The one was Grifo, the man-at-arms whom
the Count trusted and had left to guard her; the other was Orsini. Ginevra sprang to her
feet, asking how the Governor dared to cross her threshold.
‘Madam,’ he said, coming near, ‘as you would not answer my letters, I determined to
tell you face to face that if you will not hear me you will be my ruin.’

‘Sir,’ answered the Countess, ‘that is not the way to address a lady of my condition.
You are basely betraying my noble husband, who entertains for you both friendship and
esteem.’
Here Grifo joined in the conversation and began to persuade the Countess that every
noble lady of the time had her ‘confederate knight.’ No doubt he knew that she loved
Orsini in spite of herself, and when he had done speaking he went away, and the two were
alone together in the night.
An hour later Virginio took his leave of her, and now he told her with words of
comfort that he would presently send her poison by the hand of Grifo, that she might do
away with her husband; for otherwise he must soon learn the truth and avenge himself on
them all three. But Ginevra was already stung by remorse.
‘I have dishonoured my husband for you,’ she answered. ‘But I will not do the deed
you ask of me. It is better that I should myself die than that I should do murder.’
‘In that case,’ answered Orsini, ‘I myself must put him beyond the possibility of
harming you.’
Thereupon he left her; but she was tormented by remorse, until at last she went to her
husband and told him all, and entreated him to kill her. He would not believe her, but
thought she had gone mad, though she repeated her story again and again; and at last he
rose and went and found Grifo, the traitor, and dragged him to her room.
‘Is it true,’ she asked, ‘that you brought the Governor here to my chamber unawares?’
The man denied it with an oath. Then Ginevra snatched up a dagger and set the point
at Grifo’s breast. He saw that he was lost, and told the truth, and then and there the
woman whose ruin he had wrought did justice on him and was avenged, and stabbed him
again and again, that he died.
There ends the story, for that is all we know. After that the chronicle is silent,
ominously silent; and when the castle of Illasi was dismantled a walled niche was found
in one of the towers, and within the niche there was a woman’s skeleton. That is known,
surely; but that the bones were those of the Countess Ginevra there is no proof to show.
I should say that Grifo belonged to the type of the bravi, so that the crimes of passion
which his betrayal
caused were connected, through him, with those of the professional type. But
others were committed, then as now, in passion, quick or slow. As an Molmenti,
Vecchie
example of them, here is a story from another of Signor Molmenti’s Storie.
exhaustive works.
It is first mentioned by the Bishop Pietro Bollani in a letter addressed to his noble
friend Vincenzo Dandolo, in the month of July 1602:—
‘A certain Sanudo, who lives in the Rio della Croce, in the Giudecca, made his wife go
to confession day before yesterday evening; and she was a Cappello by birth. During the
following night, at about the fifth hour (one o’clock in the morning at that season
according to the old Italian sun-time), he killed her with a dagger-thrust in the throat. He
says that she was unfaithful, but every one believes that she was a saint.’

We learn that the poor woman was thirty-six, and that Giovanni Sanudo had been
married to her eighteen years. The Council of Ten ordered his arrest, but he had already
escaped beyond the frontier, and he was condemned to death in default and a prize of two
thousand ducats was offered for his head.

THE SALUTE FROM THE GIUDECCA

He had left five children in Venice, three boys and two girls; and the oldest, a daughter
christened Sanuda, addressed a petition to the Ten which is worth translating:—
Most Serene Prince (the Doge), Most Illustrious Sirs (the Ten), and most merciful my Masters (the Counsellors, the
High Chancellor, and the Avogadors):
Never did unfortunate petitioners come to the feet of your Serenity and of your most excellent and most clement
Council, more worthy of pity than we, Sanuda, Livio, Aloïse, Franceschino and Livio second, the children of Messer
Giovanni Sanudo; misfortune has fallen upon our house because our father having been accused of taking our mother’s
life, the justice of your Serenity and of your most excellent Council has condemned him to death; wherefore we, poor
innocent children, have lost at once our father and our mother, and all our possessions; and we assure you with tears that
we should have to beg our bread unless certain charitable souls helped us. Therefore I, the unhappy Sanuda, who have
reached the age of eighteen years, and my brothers and sisters who are younger than I, shall all be given over to the most
abject poverty and exposed to the greatest dangers unless your Serenity and your most excellent Council will consent to
help us for the love of religion and justice. And so, in order to prevent five poor and honest children of noble blood from
perishing thus miserably, we prostrate ourselves at the feet of your Serenity and of your most Illustrious Lordships,
imploring you, by the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, to allow our unhappy father to come back to Venice for two
years, that he may provide for the safety of his family and especially of his daughters, whose honour is exposed to such
grave peril in that state of neglect in which they are now living. We pray that the good God may grant your Serenity and
your Lordships long and happy life.

The Council of Ten was apparently moved by the appeal. It answered the petition by
the following resolution:—
‘The case of Sanuda, Livio, Aloïse, Franceschino, and Livio second, brothers and
sisters, the children of Giovanni Sanudo, condemned to death by this Council on July
twenty-ninth, is so serious; the petition of these poor children is so humble, so honest and
so reasonable, that it behooves the piety and clemency of our Council to grant the said
Giovanni Sanudo a safe-conduct, good for two years, in order that during this period he
may provide for the future of his family.’
Sanudo came back, and before the two years had expired he obtained a prolongation
of the grace for two years more, at the end of which time he presented another petition
worded in the same manner, which was also granted; and so on from two years to two
years until 1621, nineteen years after the crime, he being still technically under sentence
of death.
Now, however, he obtained a formal pardon from his wife’s family, the Cappello. This
curious document reads as follows:—
In the name of God and of the Holy Trinity, March thirtieth, 1621.
I, Carlo Cappello, son of the late Pietro Cappello, considering the weakness and the lamentable vicissitudes to
which humanity is subject, and desirous of forgiving the shortcomings and misdeeds of others, in order that the Lord our
God may protect me also, and desiring, too, the full pardon of every sin: do forgive my brother-in-law, Giovanni
Sanudo, the offences he may have committed against me, promising henceforth to bear him neither hatred nor malice,
and I pray God to grant us both a good Easter and the pardon of every sin.
(Signed) Carlo Cappello.
Pietro Cappello.
Livio Cappello.

Having obtained forgiveness of his wife’s family, Giovanni Sanudo now looked about
for a means of extorting a final pardon from the Council of Ten. There existed in the
Venetian states a small town, called Sant’ Omobono, which had received, as the reward of
some ancient service rendered to the Republic, the privilege of setting at liberty every
year two outlaws or two bravi. Sanudo succeeded in winning the good graces of the

municipality, and was then presented by the mayor and aldermen to the Signory as one of
the yearly candidates for a free pardon. The Council of Ten then permanently ratified its
decree of immunity, and Giovanni Sanudo was once more a free man. Considering the
usual character of the Council, it is hard not to surmise that it had found some cause for
regretting the sentence it had passed. The poor murdered woman had confessed and
received absolution before death: may we not reasonably suppose that, after all, there had
been something to confess?
There is ground for believing it possible that Shakespeare may have used the original
murder as part of the groundwork of his Othello. If we compare the dates and glance at
the history of Italian literature, we may reasonably conclude that Shakespeare, after
perhaps planning his tragedy on a tale of Giraldi’s, was much struck by the details of
Sanudo’s crime, and especially by the murderer’s wish that his wife should confess before
dying.
Mr. Rawdon Brown supposed the poet to have used another incident, related by Marin
Sanudo in his voluminous journal, but the hypothesis involves an anachronism. Othello is
thought by good authorities to have been first played in London in the autumn of 1602,
only a few months after the crime in the Giudecca; whereas Mr. Rawdon Brown’s heroine
was not murdered until thirteen years later.
The legend of the Fornaretto belongs to the beginning of the sixteenth century, a
hundred years earlier. Travellers will remember being told by their guides how a poor
little baker’s boy, who was carrying bread to a customer on a January morning in 1507,
stumbled over the body of a noble who had been stabbed by an unknown hand. The sheath
of the dagger lay on the pavement, and the boy was imprudent enough to pick it up and
put it into his pocket, for it was richly damascened and very handsome. The police found
it upon him, it was considered to be conducive circumstantial evidence, the poor boy
confessed under torture that he had committed the crime, and he was hanged on his own
confession.
A few days later the real murderer was arrested and convicted; and thereafter, in
recollection of the tragic injustice that had been done, whenever the magistrates were
about to pass a sentence of death, they were admonished to remember the poor Fornaretto.
By way of making the story more complete, the guide usually adds that the little lamp
which always burns before an image of the Blessed Virgin on one side of the Basilica was
lighted as an offering in expiation of the judicial murder, and that it is for the same reason
that a bell is rung during twenty minutes on the anniversary of the baker boy’s execution.
Strangely enough, there is hardly a word of truth in this story. The only record in the
archives of the Ten which faintly suggests it is the trial and execution of a baker named
Pietro Fusiol, who had murdered a man of the people in January 1507, and there is no
reference to any mistake on the part of the court. The ringing of the bell and the little lamp
which burns day and night before the image, are a sort of ex voto offerings left by certain
seamen in recollection of a terrible storm from which they escaped.
I pass on to speak of the political prisoners of the Republic, who were not by any
means all treated alike, since some of them were confined in places of tolerable comfort,
whereas others were treated little better than common criminals.

The story of Cristoforo Frangipane shows that political delinquents were
not judged according to any particular code, and that each case was Dr.
Heinrich
examined as being entirely independent from any other. Thode, Der
I must recall to the reader that during the league of Cambrai the Emperor Ring des
Frangipane
Maximilian was commissioned to win back Friuli, Istria, and other provinces .
annexed by the Republic. Though the league had been formed in great haste,
Venice was not taken by surprise, for it had long been apparent that the European powers
desired her destruction and dismemberment.
During the war which followed the Venetian army was at one time under
the orders of Bartolomeo d’ Alviano, and that of the Emperor was Venice
defying
commanded by Cristoforo Frangipane. Now the Frangipane family held Europe,
lands in fee from Venice as well as from the Emperor, and owed feudal Palma
service to both; so that the Republic was justified in considering Cristoforo Giovane;
Sala dei
as a traitor according to feudal law, since he was in command of a hostile Pregadi,
army. ducal
palace.
A learned German student, Doctor Heinrich Thode, has discovered and
told with great charm the following story concerning the imperial general. In 1892,
Doctor Thode being then in Venice, certain peasants of the village of Osopo, near
Pordenone, showed him a gold ring of marvellous workmanship and in the style of the
sixteenth century, which they had found in a field. The ring consisted of two spirals, one
within the other, which could be taken apart, so that a lock of hair or a relic could be
placed between them. On the outer spiral of the ring were engraved the words, ‘Myt
Wyllen deyn eygen,’ which may be translated, ‘By mine own will thine own.’ Doctor
Thode bought the ring, but for a long time could make nothing of it. At last, however, his
industry was rewarded by the discovery of an interesting passage in the almost
inexhaustible diary of Marin Sanudo, of which I shall abridge the substance as much as
possible.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century the Emperor Maximilian met in Augsburg a
very beautiful girl named Apollonia von Lange, with whom he fell deeply in love. He
caused her to come to the Court of Vienna, where she behaved so admirably that,
according to the chronicler, all the Austrian nobles wished to marry her. As a matter of
fact she was married in 1503 to the Count of Lodron, who happens to be the very person
whom the Cappelletti of Verona wished to marry to their Juliet in spite of her promise to
Romeo Montecchi.
The Count of Lodron died soon after his marriage, leaving no children. The Emperor
continued to extend to the young widow his honourable protection, and in 1514 he
married her to his favourite general Cristoforo Frangipane. It was no doubt on this
occasion that the warrior received from her the ring of which the motto answered a
question that had often been on his lips. He might, indeed, reasonably have supposed that
she was marrying him in deference to the Emperor’s wishes; he must have asked her if
this were true, and no doubt more than once she answered, ‘Of my own will I am thine
own.’ The marriage had scarcely taken place when Frangipane was obliged to take
command of the imperial army and to leave his wife. The first battle of the campaign was

fought near Pordenone in the Venetian territory. Marin Sanudo narrates that on that day
Frangipane lost a precious

A GARDEN WALL

relic, a fact which he considered to be of bad augury for the future.
Only a few days later, when reconnoitring the position of the enemy, he was climbing
over a boulder which overlooked the valley. It either gave way with him, or else some
large piece of stone rolled against him and threw him down. The accident was seen from a
distance, and it was at once reported to Venice that he was dead. But he was only
wounded, and was carried in a litter to Goritz, whither his wife hastened at once. Under
her loving care he soon recovered, but before he was able to ride again the Venetians took
the town and made him prisoner. He was conveyed to Venice, and was confined in the
tower of the ducal palace which overlooked the Ponte della Paglia. In his confinement he
kept up a constant correspondence with his wife, which, it is needless to say, was carefully
examined by the government; every letter which came or went was read aloud before the
Senate, so that Marin Sanudo had ample opportunity to copy the documents for his
journal, as he frequently did.
The beautiful Apollonia was in a state bordering on despair, the grief of the separation
preyed upon her mind, and she fell into a state of terrible languor and depression.
Amongst many tender messages she makes mention of the ring.
‘As for the ring,’ she wrote, ‘most gracious and beloved husband, let me tell you that
the one ordered of John Stephen Maze should be a little smaller than the old one, and on it
must be engraved the words with which I answered the question you asked me, and which
is graved on the ring I always wear on my finger. I wish you to wear the ring in memory
and for love of me, but as we have no good jewellers here, I entreat you to order it
yourself.’
In the face of such evidence it is hardly possible to doubt that the ring found at Osopo
is the identical one given to Frangipane by his bride, and is the ‘relic’ which he lost in his
first engagement with the Venetians.
The correspondence of the loving couple, passionate and sad, continued during six
months, at the end of which time Apollonia wrote to the Signory imploring permission to
share her husband’s prison; but this was refused her, though her request was supported by
the warmest recommendations from the Emperor himself. Exasperated, Frangipane
attempted to escape from prison, but his plan was discovered, and he was only the more
closely watched. Apollonia now requested the favour of a safe-conduct that she might, at
least, come to Venice as a traveller and visit her husband; this also was refused, not once
only, but again when she wrote a second time.
There was now but one thing left for her to do, and she determined to risk coming to
Venice without a safe-conduct. She arrived in the depth of winter in 1516, with four maids
of honour, her chamberlain, her physician, and twenty-two servants. As the Council of Ten
was ashamed to imprison her it placed her in the keeping of the patrician Dandolo, who
was the general inspector of the ducal prisons, and he placed at her disposal his palace on
the Grand Canal, which is now the Hôtel Danieli. She took up her quarters there on the
thirteenth of January with her suite, and on the twentieth she appeared before the Doge
and his counsellors arrayed in a magnificent silk gown and a black satin mantle lined with

sable; a heavy gold chain hung down upon her bosom, and a golden coif was set upon her
hair in the German fashion; three young girls dressed in black cloth followed her, one
after the other, and an old duenna, the physician, and the chamberlain brought up the rear.
The fair Countess addressed the Doge with feminine eloquence and tact. She began by
rendering thanks for the kindness and consideration shown to her husband, and she
requested permission to see him twice a week. She argued that this permission was
absolutely necessary to her, for she said that she was very ill, and that the treatment
ordered by her doctor was of such a nature that she entirely declined to submit to it except
in the presence of her husband. The Doge and his counsellors had never had to face such
arguments before; they felt themselves absolutely powerless, and yielded at once.
But on the morrow old Dandolo, the inspector of prisons, appeared before them in a
condition of indescribable dismay and excitement. He said that when the Countess was at
last in her husband’s prison, on the previous evening, she had made such a scene in order
to be allowed to stay all night that he, Dandolo, had yielded much against his will and had
left the couple together. And now, in the morning, he had found the

PALAZZO RESSONICO

Countess still in bed, declaring that she was dangerously ill, and demanding that her
doctor should be sent to her without delay.
The Doge and his counsellors were in a quandary, and Dandolo was tearing his hair.
Sanudo informs us that ‘there was much noise in the council’ that morning, and it is easy
to believe that he was telling the truth. Almost half of the grave magistrates were in favour
of leaving the Countess with her husband; the rest, with a very small majority, voted that
she must quit the prison. The motion passed, but it was one thing to decide what she
should do, and quite another thing to make her do it. She declared that since she was
inside the tower, no power on earth should get her out of it, and she defied the Doge, the
Council of Ten, and all their works. Before such portentous obstinacy the government of
Venice retired in stupefaction, and she was left in peace.
But she was human, after all, and under prolonged imprisonment her health broke
down, and she was obliged to leave the tower each year to go to the waters of Abano; but
even then she refused to go out until a formal promise had been given her that she should
be allowed to return immediately after the cure.
No doubt it was owing to her presence that Frangipane’s confinement became by
degrees less rigorous, and that he was even allowed to watch the procession of Corpus
Domini from the balcony of the Library.
Apollonia had come in January 1516, and the pair were not liberated till more than
two years later. Germany, France, and Venice signed a truce of five years, and agreed to
exchange prisoners and give hostages on the thirty-first of July 1518. Francis I. asked that
Germany should hand him over Frangipane as security for keeping the peace, promising
that he should not be imprisoned, but should be merely a prisoner of the King on parole. It
was not freedom yet, but such a change was more than welcome, and the negotiations
with the Signory for Frangipane’s delivery were completed on the third of September. The
words he wrote in the embrasure of the window of his prison may still be read, says Dr.
Thode, who copied the inscription which I reproduce:—
Fo inchluso. qua. in. torise ... fina.. terzo
zorno de. setembro. del. M.D. XVIII. io. Christoforo. Frangepanibus
Chonte. de. Veglia. Senia. et Modrusa
Et io. Apollonia. Chonsorte. de sopradicto signor. chonte.
Vene. far. chompagnia. a. quelo. adi. XX. Zenar. MDXVI perfina
sopra dicto setembro. Chi mal. e. ben. non. sa. patir. a. grande
honor. may. poi. venir. anche. ben. ne. mal. de. qui. per.
sempre. non. dura.

I translate literally as follows:—
I was shut up here in the Torrisella till the third
day of September of 1518, Christopher of the
Frangipane, Count of Veglia, Senia, and Modrusa.
And I, Apollonia, wife of the aforesaid lord
Count, came to keep him company on the

twentieth of January 1516 until the said
September. ‘Who cannot bear good and ill fate,
Will never come to honour great.’ Also, Nor good
nor evil lasts for ever here.
Frangipane seems to have written this record during one of his wife’s absences at
Abano, being perfectly sure that he was about to be set at liberty. But there had been a
hitch in the negotiations. Venice was not ready to hand him over, and meanwhile, when
Apollonia came back she was refused admittance. Dandolo again offered her a home in
his palace, and did all he could to help her. Frangipane, deprived of her comforting
presence, fell ill and went almost mad. Even the Doge himself supported his request to be
allowed to be taken to a private dwelling. It was in vain; but Apollonia was at last allowed
to return to her husband. They left no means untried to obtain the fulfilment of the treaty,
and at last Dandolo became so exasperated with the Council of Ten that he resigned his
post of inspector of prisons, telling the councillors to their faces that of twelve thousand
prisoners who had been in his keeping, first and last, Frangipane was the only one who
had been able to complain of injustice.
The Ten accepted his resignation almost without comment, and replaced him by two
nobles. Then the couple tried to escape, but were discovered and again separated. At last
the government consented to ask the King of France what was to be done with his
hostage, whom he seems to have quite forgotten. He answered by requesting that
Frangipane should be sent to Milan and handed over to the French governor, De Lautrec.
The loving pair were allowed to meet in the prison again, two days before the
departure, but Apollonia was not permitted to follow her husband to Milan, and a heart-
rending farewell took place at Lizzafusina, on the frontier. Having reached his destination,
the unlucky Frangipane found himself in a much worse prison than the one he had
occupied so long in Venice. Again his faithful wife succeeded in joining him, to share his
captivity. But her strength was far spent, and she died on the fourth of September 1519, in
the fortress of Milan; and soon afterwards Frangipane succeeded at last in escaping by
sawing through the bars of his window and letting himself down by a rope.

III

VENETIAN DIPLOMACY
Before quitting the subject of Venetian official life, I must devote a few pages to the
diplomacy of the Republic, which has remained famous in history.
The kings of France often confided diplomatic missions to the clergy, but the Venetian
diplomatists were always laymen, without a single exception. The Signory constantly
professed the most devout faith in Catholic dogma, and as constantly exhibited the most
profound distrust of the popes. The Vatican was, indeed, the chief object of the
government’s suspicion. From the fifteenth century onward, any noble who entered holy
orders lost his seat in the Great Council, and I have already explained that during the
discussion of matters relating to Rome,
all the ‘papalisti’ were ordered to withdraw. When Sixtus V. was elected
Pope in 1585, and the Republic sent four ambassadors together to Cecchetti,
Corte
congratulate him, the sixteen nobles who attended the mission were most Romana.
carefully chosen from among those who never could be ‘papalisti.’
In answer to any criticism of her methods, Venice was almost always able to bring
forward the unanswerable argument of success; but the pages which record her diplomatic
relations with other powers are not the fairest in her history. Her dealings with her
neighbours were regulated by strictly business principles; and ‘business’ is, I believe, the
art of becoming legally possessed of that which is not our own.
The marvellous accuracy with which the Venetian ambassadors related to their
government the details of what they observed abroad is proverbial, and has been a
godsend to students of history, such as M. Yriarte, to whom the world is so much indebted
for his study of Marcantonio Barbaro.
The post of foreign representative was a most honourable one, but there were
overwhelming responsibilities connected with it. In early times, when diplomatic relations
were less close and less continuous, the Republic had sent permanent embassies only to
Rome and Constantinople; to other capitals special envoys were only despatched when
some matter was to be discussed. But in the sixteenth century Venice had ambassadors
everywhere, and each week brought long letters from all countries teeming with details,
not only of political or military events, but concerning social festivities, manners,
customs, court intrigues, and every sort of gossip.
These letters were read aloud on Saturday to the Senate, which thus assisted at a sort
of consecutive series of lectures on the history of the times; and as it was customary to
choose the ambassadors from among the senators, it was tolerably sure that when chosen
they would always be well informed, up to the latest moment.
The missions of the Republic were limited to a residence of two years in any one
foreign capital; but this short time was amply sufficient to bring about the financial ruin of
the ambassador if he was not very rich. It was his duty to display the most boundless

magnificence for the greater glory of the Republic, and his expenses bore no proportion to
his salary.
The following instructions, according to M. Yriarte, were given to Marcantonio
Barbaro on his departure for the court of France:—
‘You are to keep eleven horses for your service, including those of your secretary and
his servant, and four mounted messengers. You will
receive for your expenses two hundred gold ducats monthly (about £1800
yearly), of which you are not required to render an account. You will receive Yriarte, Vie
d’un
a thousand gold ducats for presents, and three hundred for the purchase of Patricien.
horses, harness, and saddle cloths.’
The Secretary of Embassy was also named by the Senate, and though the attachés
might be chosen by the ambassador, his choice had to be confirmed by the government.
He was not allowed to take his wife with him, as her presence might have distracted him
from business, and also because it might possibly have been a little prejudicial to the
keeping of secrets; but he was allowed to take his cook. These same instructions appear as
early as the thirteenth century.
Modern diplomatists, and especially Americans, will be interested to know that the
post of ambassador was so little desired as to make it necessary to impose a heavy fine on
any noble who refused it when he was appointed; and it actually happened more than once
that men paid the fine rather than ruin themselves altogether in the service of their sordid
government. Once having left Venice, however, no resignation was allowed, and the
ambassador dared not return unless he was ordered to do so. Requests for leave were very
rare, and were only made under the pressure of some very exceptional circumstances.
Such a petition was considered so serious a matter that when one arrived from abroad all
persons related to the ambassador were ordered to leave the Senate, lest their presence
should interfere with the freedom of discussion; but the request was never granted unless
two members of the family would swear that the reasons alleged in the petition were
genuine.
Legend assures us that each ambassador received, together with his credentials, a box
full of gold coin and a small bottle of deadly poison. This is childish nonsense, of course,
so far as the portable realities were concerned, but ambassadors were instructed to hesitate
at nothing which could accomplish the purpose of the State, neither at spending large
sums which would be placed at their disposal when necessary, nor at what the Senate was
good enough to call measures of exceptional severity—namely, murder.
The most important post in Venetian diplomacy was the embassy at Constantinople,
where the chief of the mission enjoyed the title of Bailo, together with the chance of
making a fortune instead of losing one. The Bailo of Constantinople and the ambassador
to the Pope took precedence over all other Venetian diplomatists, and they were expected
to make an even greater display, especially at the pontifical court. The four ambassadors
sent to congratulate Sixtus V. on his election had each four noble attachés, four armed
footmen, and five-and-twenty horses, and the one of the four who was already the resident
in Rome was indemnified for his expenses in order that he might appear as magnificently
as his three newly arrived colleagues.

On their return from a foreign mission the envoys of the Republic were bound to
appear at the chancery of the ducal palace, and to inscribe their names there in a special
register; and within a fortnight they were required to render an account of what they had
seen and learnt abroad, and of the affairs with which they had dealt. These accounts,
called ‘relazioni,’ were brief recapitulations of their weekly letters to the Senate; the first
phrases were always written in Latin, but the body of the discourse might be in Italian, or
even in dialect. The ambassador presented himself in full dress, wearing his crimson
velvet mantle and bringing the manuscript of his speech, which he afterwards handed to
the High Chancellor; for as early as the fifteenth century all public speeches were required
to be written out, in order that they might be preserved exactly as they had been spoken,
or rather read, for it was not even allowable to recite them by heart. I need hardly add that
no stranger was ever admitted to hear an ambassador’s account of his mission, and the
senators swore a special oath of secrecy for the occasion, even with regard to the most
insignificant details.
Any one who examines a number of these documents will soon see that they all begin
with a portrait of the sovereign to whom the envoy was accredited, and there is often a
great deal about the royal family, its surroundings, tastes, and habits. Almost invariably
also the account ends with a list of the presents and titles or decorations bestowed upon
the ambassador at the close of his mission, and all these he was required to hand over
intact to the Signory. Not uncommonly, however, the presents were returned to him; but as
no foreign titles could be borne by Venetians, the recipient of them was usually created a
Knight of the Golden Stole, the only heraldic order recognised by the Republic and in the
gift of the government.
It would be curious to examine into the first causes

PALAZZO DARIO

of the relations between Venice and the other European states. It was the exchange of
raisins for wool which obliged England and Venice to send each other permanent
diplomatic missions. Up to that time only occasional special envoys had been necessary.
The first time that England addressed a letter to the Signory she employed as her official
agent a Neapolitan monk, the Bishop of Bisaccia, chaplain to King Robert, and this was in
1340. The envoy came to say that King Edward the Third of England had the honour to

inform the Doge Gradenigo that he had defied Philippe de Valois to say that he was the
anointed of the Lord. The envoy further stated that the two rivals were about to invoke the
judgment of God, either by going unarmed into a den of wild beasts, who would of course
respect the Lord’s anointed and promptly devour the pretender, or else by ‘touching for
King’s Evil.’ Beginning in the
fifteenth century there is a long list of English ambassadors and ministers
resident in Venice. The last English diplomatic representative in Venice was Rawdon
Brown,
Sir Richard Worsley, of whom I shall have occasion to speak hereafter. Archives.
All the foreign diplomatists in Venice were constantly on the look-out for
the arrival of the special mounted messengers attached to each foreign embassy. These
were celebrated throughout Europe for their speed and discretion. In the fifteenth century
they were thirty-two in number, and formed a small guild which was under the protection
of Saint Catharine; and they were almost all natives of Bergamo, a city which is still
singularly noted for the honesty and faithfulness of its inhabitants, and which even now
furnishes Venice with trusty house-porters and other servants of whom responsibility is
required.

CALLE BECCHERIA

In the Souvenirs of M. Armand Baschet, I find that the courier who brought the news
of the signing of the treaty of Cambrai from Blois to Venice covered the distance in eight
days, the best previous record to Paris, which is about the same distance, having been

nine, and the usual time employed being fifteen. The employment of State courier could
be bought and could be left by will.
Each ambassador of the Republic seemed to possess a part of the marvellously
universal vision that belonged to the Council of Ten. Mr. Rawdon Brown made a special
study of the weekly letters of the Venetian ambassadors in England, and found, for
instance, that one of the Republic’s representatives succeeded in regularly copying the
letters which Queen Elizabeth wrote to her lovers, which were therefore read aloud to the
Senate with the greatest regularity, together with many other curious details of English
court life.
I shall give two specimens, translated from the weekly letters in the Albèri collection.
In 1531 the patrician Ludovico Falier came to render an account of his mission to the
Court of Henry VIII. He expresses himself as follows, concerning that King and the
English:—
In order that my discourse may be better understood I shall divide it into two chief parts, of which the one concerns
my journey, and the other the most puissant King Henry VIII., and the manners and customs of his country from the
year 1528 to 1531.... On the tenth of December I reached Calais [he had left Venice in the middle of October, but had
travelled by short stages with a numerous suite]; it is a city of the French coast which belongs to the most serene King of
England, as I shall have occasion to repeat hereafter. There I went on board a vessel to cross the ocean, which after
behaving furiously during the passage at last threw me upon the English shore. I therefore arrived at Dover much more
tired by these few hours of navigation than by a journey of ninety days on dry land. Having rested a little at Dover I got
on horseback to go to London. At St. George’s I met my most illustrious predecessor Venier with several personages of
the Court, including the most reverend the Cardinal (Thomas Wolsey), and we all entered the city together, and they
accompanied me to my house. I was ordered almost at once to go to the Cardinal, in order to kiss his hand, for this
ceremony always preceded that of an audience with the King; such is the power of this prince [of the Church]. On
leaving his apartment I was conducted to his most serene Majesty, with whom I then had the interview which I
described in detail in my letter to your Signory and to this glorious Senate.

The ambassador goes on to speak in the past tense of Cardinal Wolsey, who had fallen
into disgrace in the interval. He goes on to speak of the Queen, who was then Catharine of
Aragon.
My lady the Queen is small of stature, and plump, and has an honest face; she is good and just, affable and pious.
She speaks fluently Spanish, Flemish, French, and English. Her subjects love her more than they ever loved any Queen;
she is five and forty years old, and she has already lived thirty-five years in England.

The ambassador speaks of the King next.
God has united in King Henry VIII. beauty of soul with beauty of body, so that every one is astonished by such
wonders ... he has the face of an angel, for it would not be enough to say that he is handsome; he resembles Cæsar, his
look is calm, and contrary to English fashion, he wears his beard; who would not admire so much beauty accompanied
with so much strength and grace? He rides very well, jousts and handles a lance with great skill; he is a very good shot
and an excellent tennis player. He has always cultivated the extraordinary qualities with which nature has adorned him
from his birth, for he thinks that nothing is more unnatural than a sovereign who cannot dominate his people by his
moral and physical qualities.

And here the ambassador seems to have thought that he had gone rather far, for he
finds something to say about Henry’s less admirable characteristics.
Unhappily this prince, so intelligent and reasonable, is given up to idleness, has allowed himself to be led away by
his passions, and has left the government of the State in the hands of a few favourites, the most powerful of whom was
the Cardinal, until he fell into total disgrace. Since then, from having been generous, he has become miserly, and
whereas formerly all those who treated of affairs with him went away satisfied and covered with gifts, he now allows all

to leave the Court with discontent. He makes a show of great piety, hears two low masses every day, and high mass also,
on feast days. He gives to the poor, to orphans, widows, young girls, and infirm persons, and for these charities he gives
his almoner ten thousand ducats yearly. He is beloved by all. He is forty years of age and has reigned twenty-two.

Falier speaks next of the climate of Great Britain and the products of the country, and
gives a long description of a brewery. He briefly but sufficiently describes the Universities
of Oxford and Cambridge, and gives some account of the British Constitution. He gives
also a statement of the King’s sources of income with their amount, and the accuracy of
the figures suggests that he must have got access to papers not intended for his perusal.
His Majesty may count upon over five hundred thousand ducats [£375,000] a year, divided as follows:—

Ducats.
From the Crown (Lands) 190,000
Customs 150,000
Vacant Benefices 40,000
Privy Seal 10,000
Rebels (Confiscations, etc.) 50,000
Lands on the Continent 10,000
Fines for Crimes 25,000
Royal Guards 50,000
Total 525,000

I cannot tell exactly what he gets from taxes, but from information which I have endeavoured to obtain from grave
and experienced persons, His Majesty exacts from his subjects about a million of ducats; for the six millions of ducats
which he had inherited from his father were all spent in the wars with France, Flanders, and Scotland. His Majesty
usually spends 425,000 ducats for his Court, which consists of five hundred men; namely, twenty-six chamberlains, of
whom one is Treasurer of the Chamber [keeper of the privy purse?], one is a Majorduomo called a ‘Steward,’ his
assistant, who carries a little white stick as a sign of his dignity; the Treasurer General, who pays all accounts; the
accountant who distributes [the payments]; the ‘cofferers’ in charge of the said accounts; the Master of the Horse who
has the management of the royal stables. There are three hundred horses, between Arabs, Turkish horses and racers,
hackneys and others. His Majesty has also eight chaplains, of whom one distributes his charities, and there are many
persons for his service of whom I do not speak in detail lest I should fatigue Your Serenity. His Majesty has always in
his pay three hundred halberdiers who are on guard by tens at a time for the King’s person, and pass the night in the
private antechamber.
His Majesty spends as follows:—

Ducats.
For the Maintenance of his Court 100,000
Presents 120,000
Horses 20,000
Parks, and Packs of Hounds 50,000
Soldiers who guard the Fortresses 30,000
His Majesty’s Chamber (Privy Purse) 30,000
Buildings 10,000
Charities 10,000
Embassies and King’s Messengers 40,000
Expenses of the Queen (Catharine of Aragon), and the Princess (Mary) 30,000
Total 440,000

In case of war his Majesty could arm four thousand light horse and sixty thousand infantry. The latter would fight
in the old-fashioned way, with bow, sword, shield, helmet, and with pikes of one or two points which are excellent
against charges of cavalry. They are now beginning to use guns and artillery. The English do not fear death. As soon as

the battle commences, they provoke the enemy and charge furiously; in very quick engagements they are generally
victorious, but they often yield if the war drags on. They have not the slightest fear of Frenchmen, but they are much
afraid of the Scotch.
During forty days they are obliged to serve in the army without receiving pay; after that time they receive three
crowns and a half for a period of service determined beforehand. The fleet consists of one hundred and fifty vessels.
It now only remains for me to tell you who are the friends of the King, and what consequences his divorce might
have, and I shall then add a few words on the most Reverend the Cardinal York.
Since the affair of the divorce has come up [Falier is writing in 1531, and Henry VIII. married Anne Boleyn the
next year] the Pope [Clement VII.] is not in his Majesty’s good graces. If the Holy Father will not grant the King
permission to divorce, the result will be a very great advantage for the English crown, and a great danger to the Roman
Church, for the King will detach himself from the latter, and will seize all the revenues of the ecclesiastical benefices;
this will yield the Crown more than six million ducats [£4,500,000].

Falier was not mistaken, unless, perhaps, in his figures. He proceeds to speak of the
relations between England and all the other European states, after which he returns to the
question of the divorce, expressing himself in a very singular way for a Catholic. It must
be remembered, however, that he was a Venetian, and therefore a man of business first,
and a baptized Christian afterward.
The Englishman [Henry VIII.] must necessarily divorce, for he wishes to have a legitimate son, and he has lost all
hope of one being born to him by the Lady Catharine [of Aragon]. He will therefore marry his favourite [Anne Boleyn]
the daughter of the Earl of Vuilcer (sic) [Wiltshire—note the Venetian’s phonetic spelling!] as soon as possible. He will
have trouble, for the faction that is for the Queen will rise.

It is quite clear that Venetian diplomatists did not indulge themselves in sentiment, and
the information they presented to the Senate was as brutally frank and coldly precise as a
medical diagnosis. They sought for facts and did not philosophise about them. Here is
Falier’s opinion of Cardinal Wolsey:—
The King and the kingdom were in his hands, and he disposed of everything as the King himself might have done,
or the Pope. All the princes were obliged to bow down to him. He received one hundred and fifty thousand ducats yearly
over and above the gifts which he had from the English and the foreign princes. He counted much on France, with
which kingdom he kept up extremely affectionate relations. His court was magnificent, more magnificent than the
King’s. He spent all his income, he was very proud, and he wished to be adored like a god rather than respected as a
prince.

In connection with the great Cardinal, I shall translate a passage of the letter in which
Falier had informed the Senate of his disgrace. The fragment has some value also, from
the light it throws on the comparative values of coins at that time. It must be remembered
that the value of the gold ducat never changed to the last, while that of all other European
coins varied greatly.
The King of England has had the Cardinal put in prison, has deprived him of the government, and has confiscated
all his property. His fortune is valued at forty thousand pounds English, equal to twenty thousand of our grossi [the
silver mark], or two hundred thousand [silver] ducats; in these forty thousand pounds must be included thirty thousand
pounds English in cash, that is, fifteen thousand of ours or one hundred and fifty thousand [silver] ducats. His real estate
has also been confiscated, consisting of his Archbishopric, which brought him a very large sum.

At the risk of wearying my readers I give a short extract from the report of another
ambassador to England, Jacopo Soranzo, which was read before the Senate on the ninth of
August 1554 (Queen Mary then reigning). The Venetian expresses his surprise at the way
in which trials by jury were conducted in England.

Crimes are tried before twelve judges who may not leave the court, nor eat, nor drink, until they all agree, without
one exception, on the sentence to be passed.... When sentence has been passed, the judges execute it immediately, but
without ever resorting to the mutilation of a member or exile. If the accused is innocent, he is acquitted; if he is guilty,
he is condemned to death.
I need not lay stress on the defective form of such trials; your Lordships see for yourselves how reprehensible such
a mode of procedure is, for it often happens that eleven persons who wish to acquit the accused decide to condemn him
to death in order to be of the opinion of the twelfth, who is determined to bear starvation till this verdict is given.

Before closing this chapter it is worth while to note that if the Venetian ambassadors
abroad succeeded in knowing almost everything that was happening, the
government took good care that foreign representatives residing in Venice
should not follow their example. They were never told anything in the way A. Bashet,
Archives.
of news, and though honours and privileges were heaped upon them, they
were kept at arm’s length. As far back as the fourteenth century there was a law
forbidding all patricians to have any acquaintance or social intercourse with any foreign
representative except under the most exceptional circumstances, and M. Baschet has
found material in the Archives sufficient to prove that the foreign ambassadors lived in
something very like the seclusion of exile, and were altogether banished from all
intercourse with the upper classes. The same writer adds that the diplomatists resented this
rude exclusion, and that the practice of it made the Republic not a few enemies.
To such a criticism Venice would have answered, as usual, by the argument of success
on the whole during many centuries. Those who care to examine the point more closely
may read M. Baschet’s interesting work on the Secret Chancery.

PONTE DEL CRISTO

IV

THE ARSENAL, THE GLASS-WORKS, AND THE LACE-MAKERS
The old Arsenal is such a museum of shadows nowadays that it is hard to realise what it
once meant to the Venetians. Six hundred years ago, the sight of it inspired one of Dante’s
most vivid descriptions of activity, and I have sometimes wondered whether in his day the
three dwelling-houses of the Provveditors were already nick-named Heaven, Purgatory,
and Hell, as they were always called at a later date.
The Arsenal was founded in the twelfth century, and from the very first was one of the
institutions most jealously watched over by the government. In the sixteenth century it
had grown to be a vast enclosure of docks and basins, protected by a crenellated wall, and
having but one entrance, which was guarded by sentinels. In the interior, the houses of the
Provveditors had grown to be three great palaces, built round a courtyard, each officer
occupying one of them during the thirty-two months of his term of office.
The Provveditors were nobles, of course, but they must necessarily have been men
who thoroughly understood nautical matters, for it was their duty to oversee all work done
in the place, to the minutest details, and they had absolute control of all the vast stores
accumulated for building and fitting the fleet of the Republic. Every manufactured article
was stamped with the arms of the Republic as soon as it was made or purchased, and not a
nail, not a fathom of rope, not a yard of canvas could be brought out of the storehouses
without the consent of one of the Provveditors. If anything was found outside the walls of
the Arsenal with the public mark on it, the object was considered by law to be stolen, an
inquiry was made, and if the culprit who had committed the misdemeanour could be
caught, he was condemned to the galleys.
In order to enforce the rigid regulations the government not only required all three
Provveditors to inhabit constantly the palaces assigned to them, but insisted that one of
them should remain day and night within the

STEAMERS COMING IN

boundaries of the yard, during a fortnight, without going out at all. This service was taken
in turn, and the official who was on duty was called the ‘Patron di Guardia.’ Into his hands
all the keys were given every evening when work was over.
The artisans of the government ship-yard were the finest set of men in Venice, and
their traditions of workmanship and art were handed down in their families from father to
son for generations, as certain occupations still are in Italy. I know of a man-servant, for
instance, whose direct ancestors have served those of the family in which he is still a
servant for more than two hundred years without a break. In the Venetian Arsenal, it
sometimes happened that an old man was foreman of a department in which his son was a
master smith or carpenter, and his grandson an apprentice.
There was something military in the organisation, which bound the artisans very close
together, for they trained themselves in fencing and gymnastics, and also in everything
connected with extinguishing fires and saving wrecks or shipwrecked crews, for in any
case of public danger it was always the ‘Arsenalotti’ who were called in. They were sober
and courageous and excessively proud of their trade, and the government could always
count on them. Twice, towards the end of the sixteenth century, the ducal palace took fire,

and would have burnt down but for the prodigious energy of the workmen from the
government docks. On the first occasion they proudly refused the present of five hundred
ducats which the Doge offered them, but gratefully accepted an invitation to dine with
him in a body; and as they numbered over fifteen thousand the Doge did not save money
by the arrangement. Three years later, all their efforts could not hinder the hall of the
Great Council from burning, and priceless works of art by such men as the two Bellini,
Titian, Tintoretto, and Pordenone were destroyed in a few moments. But the Arsenalotti
saved the rest of the building, and again refused any recompense for their services.
When Henry III. of France came to Venice, the Arsenal employed about sixteen
thousand men, and could count on a budget of two hundred and twenty-four thousand
gold ducats, of which one hundred and twenty-four went to pay the wages of the
workmen, and the rest was expended for materials. Those were large sums in the sixteenth
century, but Venice looked upon the Arsenal as the mainspring of her power, and spared
nothing to keep it in a state as near perfection as possible. In the long struggle with
Genoa, the enemy used every art to bring about its destruction, but always in vain. The
men who guarded the docks were absolutely incorruptible. In the sixteenth century it
seemed as if the pure blood of the old Venetians ran only in their veins, and as if they
alone still upheld the noble traditions of loyalty and simplicity which the founders of the
Republic had handed down from braver days.
Next to the construction of her war-ships and merchant fleets, one of the most
important matters to the commerce of Venice was the manufacture of glass, which brought
enormous profits to the State and to

S. MICHELE

individuals, as is usually the case when a valuable product is made out of cheap materials
by processes which are secret, and therefore have the effect of a monopoly.

As early as the fourteenth century the government had understood the immense
importance of the art, and the glass-blowers of Murano were protected and favoured in a
most especial way. As in one part of France, a sort of nobility was inherent in the
occupation, and an early law sanctioned the marriage of a master

VENICE FROM MURANO

glass-blower’s daughter with a patrician by allowing their children to be entered in the
Golden Book.
The glass-works were all established in the island of Murano, as their presence in the
city would have caused constant danger of fire at a time when many of the houses were
still built of wood, and the whole manufacture was subject to the direct supervision of the
Council of Ten, under whose supreme authority Murano governed itself as a separate city,
and almost as a separate little republic. Not only were the glass-blowers organised in a
number of guilds according to the special

THE DUOMO CAMPANILE, MURANO

branches of the profession, such as bead-making, bottle-blowing, the making of window-
panes and of stained glass, each guild having its own ‘mariegola’ or charter; but over
these the Muranese had their own Great Council and Golden Book, in which the names of

one hundred and seventy-three families were inscribed, and their own Small Council, or
Senate. The Ten gave Murano a ‘Podestà,’ but he had not the power which similar officers
exercised in the other cities and islands of the Dogato, and it is amusing to see that the
people of Murano treated him very much as the Venetians themselves treated their Doge.
He was required to be of noble blood; he was obliged by law to spend three days out of
four in Murano; he was forbidden to go to Venice when important functions were going
on; he could not interfere in any affair without the permission of both the Councils of
Murano, and altogether he was much the same sort of figure-head as the Doge himself.
On the other hand, Murano supported a sort of consul in Venice with the title of Nuncio,
whose business it was to defend the interests of the island before the Venetian
government.
Neither the Missier Grande, the chief of the Venetian police, nor the ‘sbirri,’ were
allowed to exercise their functions on the island. Offenders were arrested and dealt with
by the officers of the Murano government, and were handed over to the Venetian supreme
government only in extreme cases, most trials taking place on the island.
The heraldic arms of Murano displayed on an azure field a cock with red legs, wearing
a crown of silver.
In the sixteenth century the population was about thirty thousand souls, and the little
city had a great reputation for the beauty of its churches and especially of its gardens, in
which quantities of exotic plants and flowers were cultivated.
The two most powerful families amongst the glass-blowers were those of Beroviero
and Ballarin. I have told at length in the form of a romance the true story

MURANO, LOOKING TOWARDS VENICE

of Zorzi Ballarin and Marietta Beroviero, availing myself only of the romancer’s right to
be the apologist of his hero. The facts remain. Angelo Beroviero, a pupil of Paolo Godi,
the famous mediæval chemist, worked much alone in his laboratory, noting the results of
his experiments in a diary which became extremely valuable. By some means this diary
came into the hands of Zorzi Ballarin, so-called by his comrades on account of his
lameness. He loved Marietta, and she loved him, but he was poor, and moreover, as far as
I have been able to ascertain, he was of foreign birth, and could therefore not become a
master glass-blower. When he found himself in possession of the precious

MURANO

secrets, he used his power to extort Beroviero’s consent, he married Marietta, obtained the
full privileges of a master, lived a highly honourable life, and became the ancestor of a
distinguished family, one of whom was a Venetian ambassador, as may be read in the
inscription on his tomb in Murano. Beroviero’s house, with the sign of the Angel, is still
standing in Murano, and I think the ancient glass-works nearly opposite were probably
his. As for Zorzi Ballarin, I daresay that the process by which he really got possession of
the diary was not strictly legal, but love has excused worse misdeeds than that, and
Beroviero does not seem to have suffered at all in the end. If there had been any
foundation for the spiteful story some chroniclers tell,

THE HOUSE OF BEROVIERO, MURANO

a man of Beroviero’s power and wealth could have had Zorzi imprisoned, tortured, and
exiled without the slightest difficulty.
Venice was almost as famous for her lace as for her glass. On the admittedly doubtful
authority of Daru and Laugier, Smedley gives an anecdote of the Emperor Frederick III.
for what it is worth. It at least illustrates the fact that all foreigners did not esteem
Venetian glass as highly as the Venetians themselves. When Frederick visited the city on
his way to Rome, he was most magnificently entertained, and amongst other presents
offered to him was a very beautiful service of Murano glass. The Emperor was not pleased
with the gift, which, to his barbarous ignorance, seemed of no value; he ordered his dwarf
jester to seem to stumble against the table on which the matchless glass was set out, and it
was all thrown to the ground and smashed to atoms. ‘If these things had been of gold or
silver, they could not have been broken so easily,’ said the imperial boor.
In contrast with this possibly true story of the fifteenth century, I find that the lace
collar worn by Louis XIV. at his coronation was made in Venice, and was valued at an
enormous sum. He afterwards bribed Murano glass-blowers to settle in France.

In those times, more or less as now, women made lace at home, and brought the
results of their long and patient labour to the dealers, who bought and sold it at a fabulous
profit. A few specimens of the finest lace of the sixteenth century are still in existence, and
are worn on great occasions by Italian ladies whose ancestresses wore them more than
three hundred years ago; but the art of making such lace is extinct. Glance only, for
instance, at a picture by Carpaccio, in the Museo Civico of Venice, representing two
patrician ladies of the fifteenth century, one of whom wears white lace on her gown. It is
of the kind known as ‘point coupé’ or cut point, and is the same which Francesco Vinciolo
taught the French a hundred years later when it was no longer thought fine enough, in
Venice, for ornamenting anything but sheets and pillow-cases. It is inimitable now. Or
look at the exquisite lace of network stitch with which Gentile Bellini loved to adorn the
women he portrayed. Yet in the sixteenth century still further progress had been made, and
the ‘air point’ was created, which surpassed in fineness anything imagined before then,
and for which fabulous prices were paid. The collar of Louis XIV. was of this point, and it
is said that as no thread could be spun fine enough for it, white human hair was used.
There is also a story to the effect that the Emperor Joseph II., who ascended the throne in
1765, ordered a set of air point worth the improbable, though not very great price of
77,777 francs. As neither Austrians nor Venetians used the franc, the story is most likely
of French origin.
Another lace greatly valued in Venice was the ‘rose point,’ which is probably the best
known of the ancient laces. It was preferred, for collars, both by high officials and great
ladies, and the Dogesses often used it for their veils. The Doge Francesco Morosini
possessed some wonderful specimens of it, which I am told are still in the possession of
his descendants.
One more stitch was invented in the sixteenth century, which oddly enough obtained
the generic name of ‘Venetian point.’ There is a pretty story about it. A sailor, says the
legend, came home from a long voyage and brought his sweetheart a kind of seaweed
known to botanists by the name of Halimedia Opuntia, of which the little branches were
so fine that the people called the plant ‘Siren’s hair.’ The man sailed again on another
voyage, and the girl, full of loving and anxious thoughts for him, occupied herself by
copying the dried plant with her needle, and in so doing created the Venetian point.
The minister Colbert introduced it into France a century later, under Louis XIV., and
gave it his own name; and the King and the Republic quietly quarrelled about this French
infringement of a Venetian monopoly. In the end, the Inquisitors of State issued a decree
which was intended to recall errant and erring Venetian lace-workers and glass-blowers to
the security of their homes:—
‘All workmen or artisans who carry on their trade in foreign countries shall be ordered
to come back; should they disobey, the members of their families shall be imprisoned, and
if they then return, they shall be freely pardoned and again employed in Venice. But if any
of them persist in living abroad, messengers shall be sent to kill them, and when they are
dead their relations shall be let out of prison.’
The glass-blowers who were to be murdered were men, but the lace-makers were
women, and the decree, which was made about 1673, is a fine instance of Venetian

business principles, since the killing of men and women by assassination was a measure
introduced solely for the protection of trade.
Coloured bobbin lace was also made in Venice, with dyed silk thread and threads of
gold, in the fifteenth century, and Richard III. of England desired his queen to wear it on
her cloak at their coronation in 1483.
The modern Burano lace was first made after the

THE PALACES

end of the Republic, and is almost the only sort which is now manufactured in any
quantity. Some of the finer points are imitated, it is true, and are vastly advertised,
advertisement having taken the place of assassination in business methods as a means of
creating a fictitious monopoly; but in spite of some really good pieces of needlework
wrought with great care—as advertisements—the mass of the work turned out is of a
cheap and commercial character.
The policy of Venice with regard to her manufactures was one of protection, as has
been seen, and the result was on the whole very satisfactory to the people as well as to the

great merchants. Very heavy duties were levied on almost all imported articles, and among
the very few excepted were the silk fabrics from Florence known by the name of
‘ormesini.’ This material was in such common use in Venice that the local silk weavers
could not meet the demand for it. One of the reasons why the working people of Venice
were always satisfied was that they were almost always prosperous; the price of labour
was high, while that of necessities was relatively low, and the people accordingly lived in
comfort without excessively hard work.
On the other hand, some of them were always extravagant, as some of the nobles
were, and some were unfortunate; and though there was no pauperism, there were many
families of hopelessly poor persons. In a measure the hospitals, hospices, and orphan
asylums provided for those in want, but in Venice, as in modern cities, the candidates for
charity were always just a little more numerous than the shares into which charity could
divide herself.
There were also those who, if not exactly poor, were in difficulties, the class that for
ever feeds the pawnbroker and the small money-lender. The Republic exercised the
strictest supervision over these industries, and few cities in the world ever turned a harder
face against the inroads of the Hebrews. It was with the greatest unwillingness and with
many precautions that Jews were ever admitted into the city at all, and a special code
provided the most extraordinary and cruel penalties for the most ordinary misdemeanours
when committed by them. They were forced to wear a special dress with a large patch of
yellow on the chest, and they could only follow the meanest occupations. In mediæval
Rome it was the business of the Jews to bury the Christian dead, but it often happened that
the Pope’s private physician was a Hebrew. I do not find that in Venice they were ever
forced to be gravediggers for the poor, but they were forbidden to act as physicians except
for their own sick. Both Church and State rigorously forbade their intermarriage with
Christians, and, so far as the happy ending of the love story is concerned, Lorenzo and
Shylock’s daughter could never have married. More than once, before the sixteenth
century, the Jews were expelled from Venice and made to live in Mestre, which seems to
have been their regular headquarters, but they were allowed to come into the city during
the time of certain public fairs. If they prolonged their stay beyond the limit, however,
they became liable to fine or imprisonment. Some of these measures had been partly
relaxed by the middle of the sixteenth century, but the Jews never enjoyed anything like
equality with the other citizens.
Oddly enough the money-lender of the lower classes in Venice was the wine-seller,
whom the people called the Bastionero. In the wine-shop it was customary to pawn
objects for wine and money

THE RIALTO STEPS

simultaneously, one-third of the value being given in wine, which was generally watered.
If the pledge were not redeemed within three months, the amount to be paid for getting it
back was increased, and again at the end of the next three months, and so on, until,

NOON ON THE RIALTO

at the end of the year, the original sum lent was doubled. If it was not paid, the wine-seller
had a right to sell the object for what it would bring.

A modern Eastern proverb says that one Greek can cheat any ten Jews, but that one
Armenian can cheat ten Greeks. Considering that Venice had a distinctly oriental character
during the Middle Ages, and since we know that the small money-lending wine-sellers
were not Jews, I suspect that they were principally Greeks and Armenians, the more
probably so as we know that great quantities of Greek and Armenian wine were imported
into Venice, and that those wines will bear a good deal of watering. The latter is an
important point, for it is manifest that when the pledge was redeemed within the first three
months, the lender’s profit was the difference between the nominal and the real value of
the wine which formed one-third of the loan.
The government which tolerated this ignoble occupation exhibited the most
extraordinary prejudice against the government pawnbroking offices which were common
in other Italian cities. Historians have in vain endeavoured to discover why this prejudice
went so far that, in 1524, the Council of Ten published a decree threatening with death on
the scaffold any one who should even propose the creation of such an establishment.
Without entering into any ingenious speculation, it seems possible that the Venetians, who
were wise if not virtuous, considered that while it was impossible to prevent the poor from
borrowing small sums on their little possessions, to authorise such borrowing by making
the government the lender would greatly increase the temptations of that more shiftless
class to whom borrowing seems to be a prime necessity of existence.

AT THE RIALTO

The centre and heart of all this activity, good and bad, was the bridge of the Rialto. We
find it hard to realise that until near the end of the sixteenth century it was still built of
wood with a movable drawbridge in the middle to admit the passage of larger vessels.

Carpaccio, who lived in the fifteenth century, has left us a faithful representation of it as it
remained for nearly a hundred years afterwards. It would be interesting to place beside
that picture Turner’s lost painting of the same subject, a very beautiful canvas which I
have twice had the good fortune to see in the course of its more than mysterious
peregrinations. I last heard of it, though not certainly, as being in the south of France.
The present bridge was begun after infinite hesitation in 1588, and was built after the
designs of Antonio da Ponte, whose name was certainly prophetic of his career. Twelve
thousand elm piles had to be driven into the soil on each side of the canal to a depth of
sixteen feet to make the foundations of the arch. The construction occupied three years,
and is said to have cost 250,000 ducats, presumably of silver. The bridge as it stands is a
remarkable piece of work, and would be beautiful if the hideous superstructure of shops
could be removed. It is interesting to note that fifty years before its completion,
Michelangelo offered the Doge Andrea Gritti a plan for a bridge, as is amply proved by
the existence of a picture in the Casa Buonarotti in Florence representing the subject.

EVENING OFF S. GEORGIO

V

CONCERNING SOME LADIES OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
The clever modern Italian playwright, Signor Martini, makes one of his witty characters
say that there are ‘women,’ but that there is no such thing
as ‘woman’ in the abstract. In other words, ‘women’ are a fact, but ‘woman’
is a myth. Though this may be a little paradoxical, there are certainly distinct Martini,
‘Chi sa il
types of women in each class of life. The smart society woman of to-day and giuoco non
the labourer’s wife, like the Venetian patrician lady of the sixteenth century l’ insegni.’
and the fisher-wives of Chioggia, have in common only their sex, their
weaknesses and their sufferings; there is very little resemblance between their virtues, and
none at all between their joys.
The noble ladies of Venice in the sixteenth century were as idle and frivolous as
Orientals. The fact must be admitted by any one who studies the times; and if it is not of a
nature to please those who idealise that period, it may be partly excused by the
consideration that the Venetian nobleman treated his womankind very much as a Turk
treats his harem. He was not jealous, as lovers understand jealousy; granted a certain
degree of beauty and a dowry of a certain value, he cared very little whom he married.
When Kugler, the famous art critic, says of Titian’s picture of the Schiava, the Slave, in
the Barberini Gallery in Rome, that the name is utterly meaningless, he shows that he
knew nothing of Venetian life. The slave in the sixteenth century not seldom meant
everything, where the wife meant nothing; and if the wives were idle and frivolous, we
must remember that when they were young and good-looking, they often found
themselves in competition with beautiful Georgian and Circassian women for their
masters’ favour. Where women are plentiful, beautiful, and not clever, the men who love
them are rarely jealous. But those grave and magnificent Venetians, who had not a scruple
in politics, nor in matrimony, were excessively sensitive about anything which touched
their technical honour, and it seemed to them altogether safer and wiser to teach their
wives and daughters what they were pleased to call ‘habits of domestic seclusion.’ To be
plain, they encouraged them to stay at home; and sometimes, by way of making obedience
easier, they locked them up. M. Yriarte says with partial truth that their ‘seclusion’ was
that of the harem, not that of the classic gynaeceum; he did not realise that the latter was
nothing but a harem too, and that if the Greeks kept their wives at home, it was that they
might sup undisturbed in the society of Phryne.
The influence of the East on everything connected with private life in Venice increased
with the Renascence, and is even more perceptible then than during the nominal
domination of the Byzantine Empire, when Roman traditions still had great force, and
new currents of thought reached Venice from the Lombards.
Yet in one respect there was nothing oriental about the Venetian noble of the sixteenth
century. When he ordered his women to appear in public at all, he sent them out adorned

like those miraculous images which are covered with ‘ex voto’ offerings, and they mixed
in the crowd that filled the Piazza of Saint Mark’s, shoulder to shoulder with the
shameless free.
The Venetian gentleman, so sensitive about his technical honour, was not even
displeased when the chronicler, the reporter of his day, confounded ladies and courtesans
in pompous praise of their beauty and dress. One of the nobleman’s principles seems to
have been that a woman was never in danger in public, nor when her door was locked on
the outside and the key was in her husband’s pocket, but that any intermediate state of
partial liberty was fraught with peril.
At home the Venetian ladies suffered the pains of boredom in common with the
Georgians and Circassians, who not infrequently lived under the same roof, but who
presumably saw something more of their masters. The young mother had not even a
resource in her children, for it was necessary that the latter should be brought up to be
precisely like their fathers and mothers, and in order to accomplish this the fathers kept
the boys with themselves, and made them serve in the Senate when they were still quite
small; whereas it seems that the girls were brought up largely in convents, such as that of
the Vergini, lest they should learn too well from their mothers what it meant to be the wife
of a member of the Great Council.
Does any one remember, in all the portraits of Venetian ladies by Carpaccio,
Tintoretto, Veronese, or Titian, to have seen a mother accompanied by her little child?
There is the conventional flower, there is the jewel, there is often the lap-dog; but the
child is as conspicuously absent as the effigy of Brutus at Junia Tertia’s funeral. Children
were born and were splendidly baptized; but after that they had no part in their mothers’
lives. And the ladies themselves had no great part in Venetian social life, except on its
great occasions of baptisms, marriages, and funerals, or in public ceremonies, when they
appeared in a body, by order of the Ten, in their richest clothes and as a part of the
decoration. It is no wonder that they had few friends and were bored to extinction.
As a specimen of what a young and noble Venetian girl could become if emancipated,
one cannot do better than take Bianca Cappello. She was
born in 1548 in the magnificent palace which her father, Bartolommeo
Cappello, had built for himself near the Ponte Storto. Her mother died when Mutinelli,
Annali.
Bianca was a little child, a misfortune which probably had no very great
influence on the girl’s education or character, seeing how little the Venetian ladies
occupied themselves with their children. She received the usual teaching, and learned to
read and write after a fashion, and such of her letters as have been preserved show that her
writing was anything but good. No doubt she had the usual number of pet birds and lap-
dogs to play with, and plenty of sweetmeats, and when she was sixteen she was very like
other girls of her class and age.
In Italy young girls are taught not to look out of the window in town. Bianca was
terribly bored, and she looked out of the window. Opposite her father’s palace was a
house occupied by two Florentine burghers, uncle and nephew, Bonaventuri by name,
who represented the great Tuscan banking-house of Salviati.

Bianca looked out of her window, dreaming, no doubt, of the dancing lessons which
she would be allowed to have when she should be married, and of other similar and
harmless frivolities; and young Pietro Bonaventuri also looked out of the window,
neglecting his ledgers.
The girl was very lonely and excessively bored. She never left the palace except to go
with her father
to their villa in Murano for a few weeks in the fine season. She was not even
taken to church, because, some eighty years, earlier, a young girl called Galliccioli,
iii. 210.
Giovanna di Riviera, when going to mass with her mother on the morning of
the third of March 1482, had been picked up and literally carried off by a too enterprising
lover. After that, young girls of good birth were not allowed to go to church, and mass was
said for them in a little chapel at home.
Bianca was so terribly bored that she began to make signs to Pietro from her window.
She had nothing else to do. One of her most important occupations was to sun her hair on
the high ‘altana.’ That was a real pleasure, for the palace was gloomy, though it was new,
and her room felt like a prison cell; but she could not be always sunning her hair.
The young banker’s clerk responded to her signals of distress with alacrity, and a
dumb love affair began, apparently highly approved by the youth’s uncle, who was a man
of business. On the night
between the twenty-eighth and the twenty-ninth of December the two eloped
and got away from Venice without being caught. 1564.

Bartolommeo Cappello’s appeal to the Council of Ten is extant. I give the most
interesting part of it:—
‘I shall here expose, and not without tears, the cruel and atrocious deed of which I was
the victim on the night of December the twenty-ninth. The scoundrel Pietro Bonaventuri,
with the consent of his uncle, Giovanni Battista, and of accomplices whom I know not ...
entered my house, which is almost opposite his, and carried off my only daughter, sixteen
years old; he first took her to his house and then hid her from place to place, to my great
dishonour and that of all my family.’
The document goes on in a strain of lamentation, and ends with the request that the
Council of Ten should set a price on the head of the seducer, and bring the girl back to be
locked up in a convent; and the unhappy father offered a prize of six thousand lire to any
one who would bring him Pietro Bonaventuri, alive or dead. The letter expresses more
hatred of the lover than sorrow for the lost child.
The Ten proceeded in the matter without delay; Pietro’s uncle was thrown into prison,
and died there soon afterwards of a putrid fever. Bianca’s woman-servant and the latter’s
husband, who was a gondolier, and who had, of course, both been acquainted with the
plan of her flight, were arrested and tortured; as for Pietro and Bianca, they had been
already some time in Florence, where they learned that they had both been condemned to
death by default. The Ten had proceeded against the insignificant banker’s clerk with
terrible energy.

But Bianca, who had been so dreadfully bored, now had too much to do. Pietro’s
affairs did not prosper, and after selling the jewels she had brought with her, she was
obliged to work with her hands in his house, which was not at all what she had bargained
for. Chance favoured her, however, and she helped chance as well as she could, and
succeeded in attracting the notice of Francesco de’ Medici. He was the son of Cosmo, the
Grand Duke, and the brother of Isabella, then not yet drowned in her own basin by Paolo
Giordano Orsini, and of Cardinal Ferdinando, who afterwards poisoned his brother and
became Grand Duke. Francesco lost his heart to the beautiful Bianca, and she had no
objection to winning it; Pietro Bonaventuri, who was a man of business instincts, but not
sufficiently cautious, had no objection either. But old Cosmo, the Duke, was much
scandalised by his son’s behaviour, though he himself had been accused of nothing less
than loving his own daughter Isabella, and he remonstrated with Francesco.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘that I do not wish to weary you with preaching, but when things
go too far you must learn what I think of you.’
Francesco learned, but does not seem to have been much affected by the knowledge,
for he presently installed Bianca and her complaisant husband almost under the same roof
with his wife. Pietro, however, was really so superfluous that he was soon suppressed,
after which his widow occupied an official position in

CASA WEIDERMANN

the court of Tuscany as the acknowledged mistress of the heir to the throne. Francesco
now attempted to get a reversal of the sentence passed on Bianca by the Council of Ten,
and employed an influential person to plead the cause; but it was thought improper that
such a case should be treated in the name of old Cosmo while he insisted on ignoring
Bianca’s existence. Cosmo died in 1574, but still nothing was done.
It may be doubted whether any woman in Bianca’s situation ever went to such
extremes of treachery and effrontery. Her victim, the gentle Archduchess Giovanna of
Austria, Francesco’s wife, died at last in 1578, possibly without being helped out of the
world, and Francesco married Bianca secretly two months later; but the marriage was not
announced to the people until the year of mourning was over. Bianca was Grand Duchess
of Tuscany.
The effect of the news in Venice was magical. The Senate made the following curious
declaration:—
‘The Grand Duke of Tuscany having deigned to choose as his consort the lady Bianca
Cappello, of noble Venetian family, endowed with such great qualities that we judge her
worthy of that dignity, it is but right that our Republic should exhibit its satisfaction at the
honour conferred upon it by this important and prudent decision of the said Grand Duke.
We therefore decree that the aforesaid illustrious and puissant lady, Bianca Cappello,
Grand Duchess of Tuscany, be declared the adopted and beloved daughter of our
Republic.’
Bianca’s father, who, being a good Venetian, was almost as good a man of business as
Salviati’s murdered clerk, and much more prudent, wrote a letter full of touchingly tender
feeling to the daughter whom he had cursed so loudly and so long; he and his sons,
Bianca’s brothers, were made Knights of the Golden Stole, and all the records of the
scandalous trial that had taken place fifteen years earlier were burnt. Bianca’s public
marriage and coronation took place on the twelfth of October 1579, and the Republic sent
two ambassadors and the patriarch Grimani to show the Grand Duchess that all old scores
were forgotten. She was thirty-one years old.
We know even more than is necessary of Bianca’s life and intrigues. She survived her
triumph eight years, till she and her ill-gotten husband died of poison within a few hours
of each other; but whether the drug was administered by the Cardinal Ferdinando,
Francesco’s brother, or whether the two meant to give it to him and took it by mistake, is
not clear. He himself declared that he had not poisoned anybody. It is at least certain that
he would not allow Bianca to be interred in the Medici vault, but had her privately buried
in the crypt of San Lorenzo.
The Venetian Republic did not go into mourning for its ‘well-beloved adopted
daughter,’ since it was best not to quarrel with the Cardinal Grand Duke, who had
probably suppressed her, though his physician made an autopsy and assured the public
that she had died of frightful excesses of all sorts.
The moral of this unpleasing tale is that the manner of bringing up Venetian girls in
the sixteenth century was not of a kind to develop their better instincts, for there is
nothing to show that Bianca Cappello was very different from other girls of her time,
except in the great opportunities for doing harm which fell to her share.

Probably the most enjoyable weeks of a noble Venetian girl’s life were those which
preceded her marriage, and were chiefly spent in the preparation of her wedding outfit.
The age was eccentric as to dress; it was the time of the huge Elizabethan ruffle and
hoops; in Venice it was especially the time of clogs.
The latter had been introduced in the fourteenth century on account of the mud in the
still unpaved
streets, and they continued to be worn and grew to monstrous dimensions
after their usefulness had very much decreased. It became the rule that the Urbain de
Gheltof,
greater the lady was, the higher her clogs must be, till they turned into Calzature.
something like stilts, and she could no longer walk except leaning on the
shoulders of two servants. In China, the Chinese men, as distinguished from the Tartars,
encourage the barbarous breaking of girls’ feet, because it makes it impossible for them to
gad about the town when they are older, and still less to run away. The Venetian noblemen
approved of clogs for the same reason.
M. Yriarte tells how a foreign ambassador, who was once talking with the Doge and
his counsellors in 1623, observed that little shoes would be far more convenient than the
huge clogs in fashion. One of the counsellors shook his head in grave disapproval as he
answered: ‘Far too convenient, indeed! Far too much so.’
The civic museum in Venice contains two pairs of clogs, one of which is twenty inches
in height, the other seventeen. Some were highly ornamented, and the Provveditori alle
Pompe made sumptuary regulations against adorning them with over-rich embroidery or
with fine pearls. At the same time, shoemakers were warned that they would be liable to a
fine of twenty-five lire for any pair of clogs not of proper dimensions and becoming
simplicity. Yet they continued to be worn of extravagant size and excessively ornamented
till the end of the seventeenth century, when they suddenly sank to nothing, so that a
clever woman of the time complained that the Venetian ladies were beginning to wear
shoes no thicker than a footman’s.
They were especially affected by the nobles, for the burgher class wore them of much
more moderate size. Altogether the life of the burghers’ wives was far more enjoyable;
they occupied themselves with music and painting; they held gatherings at which men and
women really exchanged ideas, and ‘academies’ at which women with a turn for poetry or
science could compare themselves with the most gifted men of Venice.
The most alive of the noble women of the sixteenth century, the one of whom we have
the most vivid impression, was assuredly Bianca Cappello, who was a monster of iniquity.
The others, who had not her opportunities for great crime, all seem like lay figures, or
common odalisques, who lived a sensuous existence that was never disturbed by an idea.
But the burgher women amused themselves, and thought, and wrote, and sometimes even
allowed themselves a little sentiment.
As for the women of the people, we know nothing about them, as there are no
documents regarding them, but it seems probable that they were, on the whole, both
happy and honest.
There was one more category of women in Venice, as elsewhere, a class that
numbered eleven thousand six hundred and fifty-four members, towards the end of the

century, all young, many of them fair, all desirous of pleasing, and all, strange to say,
present at every public festival—the class of those who were outside of class, the gay and
shameless free. A Venetian of those days made a catalogue ‘of all the chief and most
honoured courtesans of Venice ... their names ... the lodgings where they live ... and also
the amount of the money to be paid by noblemen and others who desire to enter into their
good graces.’ This list is dedicated ‘to the most magnificent and gracious Madam Livia
Azzalina, my most respected patroness and lady ... the princess of all Venetian
courtesans.’ Moreover, at the end of the pompous dedication, the writer, who signs only
his initials, adds that he kisses the gay lady’s ‘honoured hands.’
Some authors, taking this for a catalogue made out by the government, inform us that
the Venetian Senate always gave courtesans the title of ‘deserving.’ Lord Orford refuted
this calumny in a curious pamphlet quoted by Mr. Horatio Brown in his valuable and
delightful Venetian Studies. The catalogue contains two hundred and fifteen names; at
number two hundred and four stands the name of the famous Veronica Franco—‘that
skilled writer of the sonnet and curiously polished verses which say so little and say it so
beautifully,’ says Mr. Brown.
Tassini tells an anecdote in point. Two gentlemen were walking one day over the
bridge near the Church of Saint Pantaleo, and they were confiding to each other their
conjugal troubles. ‘Do you know who is the only honest woman in Venice?’ asked one of
them. ‘There she is!’ He painted to a little marble head which is still visible in the front of
a house below the bridge. The story went the rounds, and the bridge itself was re-
christened ‘Il Ponte di Donna Onesta.’
The elegance of the gay ladies was incredible, and it was in order to be distinguished
from them that respectable women little by little adopted the black silk gown and veil
which they wore to the end of the Republic. The veil was black for married women and
white for young girls.
I find in some statistics for the year 1581 the following statement as to the women of
the better classes. There were 1659 patrician ladies, 1230 noble girls, 2508 nuns, and 1936
women of the burgher class. What could they do against 11,654? The note adds that all the
others were women of the people.

THE GRAND CANAL IN SUMMER

VI

A FEW PAINTERS, MEN OF LETTERS, AND SCHOLARS
According to some trustworthy authorities, Raphael, Martin Luther, and Rabelais were
born in the same year. The fact that they were certainly contemporaries with each other
and with many other men of genius of contradictory types is one of the principal features
of that most contradictory age. Signor Molmenti compares the gifts of Carpaccio and the
two Bellini to rays that warm and gladden, those of Titian and Tintoretto to lights that
dazzle but give no heat. In two centuries that immense change in art had taken place; from
having spoken to the soul it had come to appeal to the eye.
The best painters of the fifteenth century touch us, and remain impersonal to us. What
do we know, for instance, of Carpaccio’s dreams or struggles or sufferings while he was
painting his great picture of Saint Ursula and her maiden company? We gaze upon those
virgin faces, those crowns of martyrdom, those tenderly smiling women’s lips, those
almost childlike gestures, and they touch us deeply. Perhaps we should like to ask them
the secret of Carpaccio’s melancholy soul. But the lips move not, nor do the eyes answer;
the eleven thousand maidens seem rather to beckon us away to that place of refreshment,
light and peace, where we may hope that the great painter’s sadness ended at last. They
tell us not of him, nor of themselves, but of heaven.
A hundred years have gone by, and still artists paint pictures; but they tell us no longer
of anything but their own selves, their own lives, their own passions. It is the world that
has changed; perhaps it is not faith that is gone, faith the evidence of things unseen, but
most assuredly belief has taken flight and left men sceptical, the belief which is the
mother of all bright dreams, and which must see in order to believe, if only in
imagination, and, believing, cannot fail to see.
The time had come when the artists were interesting for their own sakes as well as for
what they did, and when the reporter-chronicler thought it worth while to note every
anecdote of their daily lives, to put down the names of their models, to tell us who sat to
them for their Madonnas. And those names are mostly names of good and honest women,
and we know to a nicety why they chose this face for one purpose and that for another.
There is an end of all the legends of saintly heads begun by the artist and finished before
morning by an angel’s hand. There is an end, too, of dreams of refreshment, light and
peace. The artists of the sixteenth century are the most human of mankind, the most
subject to humanity’s passions, its weaknesses and even its madness, and their works bear
the stamp of the sensuous naturalism in which they lived.
The patrician Alvise Pisani possessed a beautiful house at San Cassian, standing on a
tongue of land called Biri Grande. From the embrasured windows Murano could be seen,
and the island of San Cristoforo, and of Pace; beyond these, in the distance, rose the tall
tower of Torcello, and a dark line along the water marked the forest of the distant island
called Deserto; to the left rose the Euganean Hills, to the right stretched a long beach of

gleaming sand. The fishermen used to say that when the mysterious glow spread over the
waters of the lagoon at night, the Fata Morgana had floated up the Adriatic and was
bathing in the dark.

AFTERGLOW, THE GRAND CANAL

All those things might be seen from the windows of Alvise Pisani’s house; and there
dwelt Titian, no longer the thoughtless gallant of his earlier days, but grave now, stately
and magnificent. Violante is forgotten, he lives honourably with his wife Cecilia, but he

EUGANEAN HILLS FROM THE LAGOON, LOW TIDE

still keeps his love of conversation, his luxurious tastes, his lordly manner; and now he
feels himself the equal of the great of the earth, and it amuses him to exchange letters with
princes. For secretaries he has poets, historians, and even a cardinal; he is the Titian who
will allow an emperor to stoop for the brush that has fallen from his hand. But few men
ever had such grace and winning charm, and his house is ever open to his countless
friends, a place of gathering, of wit and of good talk, where ladies are received, some of
whom a later age will call blue-stockings, ladies who are members of learned academies,
and ladies that play the lute.
Such was Titian, and such the house in which he was rarely alone. He had among
many friends two at least with whom he was really intimate, the sculptor Sansovino, and
Pietro Aretino the man of letters. The former was the friend of his heart and of his artistic
intelligence; the latter he himself regarded as a sort of wild beast whom he had tamed and
whom he kept to frighten his rivals and his enemies. He could not let a day go by without
seeing both, and the three were generally together. If one of them was asked to dinner, he
invariably begged his host to invite the other two.

They certainly did not resemble one another. Aretino was an adventurer who had tried
most things: in his boyhood he had forged and stolen; in his young prime he had been a
renegade monk, and then a courtier; in his maturity, to use one of his own expressions, he
earned his living by the sweat of his ink. The Grand Duke of Tuscany had hired a house
for
him at the Riva del Carbon, for sixty soldi yearly, on the Grand Canal, and it
was there that he followed an occupation which procured him all the Tassini,
under
necessaries and some of the luxuries of life. He made it his business to Carbon.
address the most abjectly flattering panegyrics to eminent persons, and even
to sovereigns like Francis I. and the Emperor Charles V., and they rewarded him with
presents of money or old wine. Or if some unlucky aspirant to office was in need of
popularity or favour, Aretino quietly explained to him that a little article from his own pen
could make or mar success; and there was nothing to be done but to pay, and to pay
handsomely. Between the composition of one libel and the next, the amiable Tuscan lived
riotously on his latest earnings with his two daughters Adria and Austria; in plain
language he was a blackmailer, a voluptuary, a man of the highest taste, and of the lowest
tastes.
No one loved him, but he was generally feared, and was therefore much sought after.
His house was
always full, and it was said that it was impossible to go there without
meeting a scholar, a soldier, and a monk. He himself said pleasantly that the Mutinelli,
Annali.
steps of his house were as much worn by the feet of visitors as the pavement
before the Capitol was by the cars of triumphing Roman generals. Nor was it only those
that could pay blackmail who mounted the stairs. The man was full of contradictions; the
poor crept up to his door and did not return empty-handed. Aretino was charitable.
He could not bear to see a child crying for cold or hunger, nor to see men or women
sleeping shelterless in the streets, and often he took in under his roof pilgrims and poor
wandering gentlemen. On Easter day he never failed to feed eighteen little beggar children
at his table. But when he was tired of his visitors, rich or poor, he took refuge with Titian
at San Cassian, for Titian was the only human being whom he loved sincerely, and all the
resources of his venomous wit and cruel pen were at the disposal of this one friend. As for
Titian’s other friends, Aretino spared them, but the artist’s enemies he harassed without
mercy.
He was a physical coward, of course, as all such men are. He hated Jacopo Tintoretto
for two reasons, first, because his growing reputation was beginning to be a source of
anxiety to Titian, and secondly, because he was too poor to be blackmailed and too proud
to show himself in Titian’s house with the threadbare clothes which his wife, good soul,
made him wear for economy’s sake. Aretino accordingly abused him, and Tintoretto heard
of it and determined to put an end to it in his own way.
One day he met Aretino in the street, stopped him, and proposed to paint his portrait.
The blackmailer was delighted, as the picture would cost him nothing and would certainly
be valuable, and he at once made an appointment to go to Jacopo’s studio. On the
appointed day he appeared punctually, and seeing an empty canvas ready for the portrait,

sat down in a becoming attitude. But the painter’s turn had come. ‘Stand up!’ he said, and
Aretino obeyed. Then Tintoretto pulled out a long horse-pistol. ‘What is this?’ asked
Aretino, alarmed. ‘I am going to measure you,’ replied the artist, and he proceeded to
measure his adversary by the length of the pistol. ‘You are two pistols and a half high,’ he
observed; ‘now go!’ and he pointed to the door. Aretino was badly frightened, and lost no
time in getting out of the house; and from that day he neither wrote nor spoke any word
that was not flattering to Jacopo Tintoretto.
Aretino received another lesson one day from the famous Andrea Calmo. The latter
was an extremely original personage, half man of letters, half actor, whose improvised
speeches in the character of Pantaloon were so remarkable as to give rise to the mistaken
belief that he had invented that mask. He also wrote open letters to prominent men, as
Aretino did, and published them, and as his were quite as libellous as the Tuscan’s, and
sometimes even more witty, they had
an immense success. In fifty years they went through fifty editions, and there
is positive proof that Shakespeare was acquainted with them, for he quotes a Love’s
Labour’s
line and a half from one of Calmo’s works:— Lost, Act iv.
sc. 2
Venetia, Venetia, (Cambridg
Chi non ti vede non ti pretia. e edition,
1863).
Calmo’s chief virtue was neither patience nor forbearance, and it appears
that Aretino irritated him exceedingly. One day his nerves could
bear no longer with the Tuscan, and he gave vent to his feelings in an ironical
open letter addressed to the object of his dislike. Here is a fragment of it:— Molmenti,
Studi, and
‘You are not a rational, natural human being, but aërial, celestial, deified, Nuovi
a devout man and a calm one, esteemed by all, adorned with every treasure Studi.
and with all the virtues that no one being possesses, from the East to the
West. You are the temple of poetry, the theatre of invention, a very sea of comparisons—
and you behave in such a manner as to scare even the dead!’
Titian’s other friend, Jacopo Sansovino, the celebrated architect, was also a Tuscan by
birth, but was of quite another stamp. His youth had been wild, but he had then married a
woman of great beauty and refinement whose name was Paola, and who completely
dominated him. The couple were often seen at the house at San Cassian, as Titian and
Cecilia his wife often visited them in their dwelling in Saint Mark’s Square close by the
clock tower.
Sansovino was handsome still, and rather a fashionable person, but excitable withal
and a brilliant talker; his life had been saddened for some length of time by the wild
doings of his son, but to his great relief the young man at last took to literature and the art
of printing. The Sansovino couple also made their house the general meeting-place of
many friends, as Titian did.
Though Jacopo was a Tuscan, Venice made every effort to monopolise his time and
industry after he had become famous throughout Italy, and he was appointed the official
architect of Saint Mark’s. He was charged with the erection of the Mint and the Library,
and of

VENICE FROM THE GARDEN

a new Loggia to replace the very simple one in which the patricians had been accustomed
to gather before the meetings of the Great Council, ever since the thirteenth century. How
well he succeeded in that, the beautiful construction which fell with the Campanile amply
showed.
While he was at work on the Library, Titian was called to Rome to execute an
important commission, and set out in the certainty that on his return he should find the
building finished and his friend covered with glory. The construction grew indeed, and was
soon finished, with its two stories, of Doric and Ionic architecture, and the balustrade that
crowns the edifice, and the really royal staircase, and all the rest.
But unhappily, on the night of the eighteenth of December 1545, the vault of the main
hall fell in, with no apparent reason. Instantly all Sansovino’s rivals raised a terrific outcry,
accusing him of having neglected the most elementary rules of his art, and asserting that
the accident was altogether due to his negligence and incapacity. The zealous magistrate

whose duty it was to oversee the construction of public buildings did not even wait for a
proper warrant, but seized Sansovino instantly and sent him to prison.
Paola was in despair, and when the news was generally known, early on the following
morning, the indignation of the architect’s friends knew
no bounds. In a few hours Aretino wrote a consoling letter to Paola, another
to Titian, explaining to him what had happened, and a series of libellous Mutinelli,
Annali.
articles against every architect in Venice except Sansovino himself. No one
escaped who could be supposed to have uttered a single word against the reputation of the
artist in trouble. There was a certain architect called Sanmichele, a man of great piety—
greater perhaps than his talent—a frequenter of Titian’s house, a rich man, too, such as
Aretino delighted to fleece. Possibly also the good old artist’s character was irritating to
the evil Tuscan, who could not see why a man should be both distinguished and virtuous,
nor why Sanmichele should have a special mass said when he was about to begin an
important work. One of Aretino’s favourite tricks was to use the most frightful language
before the mild old man, till the latter, having exhausted entreaty and finding reproach
useless, was driven to buy the blasphemer’s silence with a handsome present of rare old
wine.
The occasion of Sansovino’s imprisonment seemed to Aretino an excellent opportunity
for venting his spleen against the devout artist, and at the same time for obtaining a
lucrative return for his industry. He therefore accused Sanmichele of being the direct cause
of his friend’s arrest, and the abuse heaped upon him was so virulent and so persistent that
its victim was obliged to have recourse to the usual bribe, which this time consisted of a
fine basket of fish.
Sansovino’s friends soon triumphed, for they were many and powerful. I do not know
whether a vaulted ceiling only just constructed can suddenly collapse and fall in of itself
without some fault on the part of the architect, but Sansovino was unanimously declared to
be entirely innocent, and the unlucky magistrate who, with some show of reason, had
ordered his arrest was thrown into prison in his place.
His brilliantly successful career continued until he was eighty years of age, when,
being too old for work, he was succeeded in the post of architect to the Republic by the
celebrated Palladio. After that he lived eleven years longer in the society and friendship of
Titian, who was two years older then he. On the register in the church of San Basso is to be
found the following entry: ‘On November the seventh 1570 died Jacopo Sansovino,
architect of the Church of Saint Mark; he was ninety-one years old and he died of old age.’
Aretino’s life had come to an abrupt close fourteen years earlier. I find in Tassini under
the name ‘Carbon,’ Aretino’s place of residence, a statement of the singular fact that
Aretino’s death was predicted a few months before it took place, though he was at that
time perfectly well. The author of the Terremoto, addressing the Tuscan man of letters,
says: ‘In this year LVI thou shalt
die; for the appearance of the star to the Wise Men at the birth of Our Lord
was held to be a great sign, and I now hold the comet of this year to be a little 1556.
sign which comes on thy account, because thou art against Christ.’ In that
year Aretino actually died. It is said that his death was caused by his falling off his chair

when convulsed with laughter at an abominable story, and though there may be some
exaggeration about the tale, the physiognomy of the man might justify it. No one regretted
him. In the State Archives of Florence a letter from a Venetian has been found which says:
‘The mortal Pietro Aretino was taken to another life on Wednesday evening at the third
hour of the night by a (literally) cannonade of apoplexy, without leaving any regret or grief
in any decent person. May God have pardoned him.’
Titian died six years after Sansovino, surviving to be the last of the triad of inseparable
friends. He was then ninety-nine years of age, and was carried off by the plague when,
judging from the picture he was painting at the time of his death, he was still in full
possession of his amazing powers. Of all the victims of the terrible epidemic, amongst tens
of thousands of dead, he was the only one to whom the Republic granted a public funeral.
If we ask what was the ‘social standing’ of Titian and of some of the most famous
Venetians, we shall find that they were simple members of a Guild, and were reckoned
with the working men. The Golden Book was the register of the nobles, the Silver Book
was reserved for the class of the secretaries, that is, of the burghers or original citizens; but
he who exercised an art such as painting, sculpture, or architecture, belonged to the people.
Like the commonest housepainter, or the painter of gondolas and house furniture, Titian
and Tintoretto were subject to the ‘Mariegola,’ or charter of their Guild, and had to pass
through the degrees of apprentice and fellow-craftsman before becoming masters.
The law was that ‘no painter, either Venetian or foreign, should be allowed to sell his
paintings unless he was inscribed on the register of painters and had sworn to conform to
the rules of that art,’ in other words, to the charter of the Guild. Furthermore, if

HOUSE OF TINTORETTO

he sold his work anywhere except in his shop, he was liable to a fine of ten lire.
We know that neither Titian nor any of the great artists of his time rebelled against
these regulations. They were all their lives ‘brethren’ of their Guild, and every one of them
was obliged to obey the chief of the corporation in all matters concerning that fraternity,
though he might be a mere painter of doors and windows. It was not until the eighteenth
century that the artist painters organised themselves in a separate body called the College
of Painters. The examination of Paolo Veronese, which I have translated in speaking of the
Holy Office, shows clearly enough what a poor opinion the authorities had of artistic
inspiration.
Many writers, amongst whom Monsieur Yriarte is an exception, have told us that
literature and the sciences were not cultivated with any success in Venice during the
sixteenth century. It is at least true that the few who occupied themselves with those
matters displayed qualities not far removed from genius.
It was very common for the great Venetian nobles to play patron to poets, painters, and
architects, and almost every name that became famous in the arts and sciences recalls that
of some patrician or secretary who protected the artist, the writer, or the student. The
Republic was often the refuge of gifted men whom political or personal reasons had exiled

from their homes. Roman, Tuscan, and Lombard celebrities spent their lives in Venice and
added their glory to hers. Who remembers that Aldus Manutius was a Roman? Or that
Gaspara Stampa, who is always counted as one of the best of Venetian poets, was born in
Milan? The Venetians, too, showed a wonderful tact in the degree of the hospitality they
accorded. One need only compare the reception Petrarch met with in the fourteenth
century, which was nothing less than royal, with the good-natured toleration shown to
Pietro Aretino two hundred years later. The Republic’s treatment of the two men is the
measure of the distance that separates the immortal poet from the brilliant and vicious
pamphleteer. If the latter spent some agreeable years in Venice, that was due much more to
the protection of a few friends than to any privileges granted him by the government.

HOUSE OF ALDUS

There were certainly a great many intellectual centres in Venice at that time, and one
might fill many pages with the names of the so-called academies that were founded and
that flourished for a time. Almost every special tendency of human thought was
represented by one of them, from the Aldine, devoted enthusiastically to classic Greek, to
those academies which adorned their emptiness with such titles as ‘The Seraphic,’ ‘The
Uranian,’ and the like, and which gave themselves up to the most unbridled extravagance

of taste. Of such follies I shall only quote one instance, which I find in Tassini under the
name ‘Bernardo.’
In the year 1538 the will of that academician was opened. He therein directed his heirs
to have his body washed by three famous physicians with as much aromatic vinegar as
would cost forty ducats, and each physician was to receive as his fee three golden sequins
absolutely fresh from the mint. The body was then to be wrapped in linen clothes soaked
in essence of aloes, before being ‘comfortably’ laid to rest in a lead coffin and enclosed in
one of cypress wood. The coffin was then to be placed in a marble monument to cost six
hundred ducats. The inscription was to enumerate the actions and virtues of the deceased
in eight Latin hexameters, of which the letters were to look tall to a spectator placed at a
distance of twenty-five feet. The poet who composed the verses was to receive one sequin
for each. Moreover, the history of the dead man’s family was to be written out in eight
hundred verses, and seven psalms were to be composed after the manner of the Psalms of
David, and twenty monks were to sing them before the tomb on the first Sunday of every
month.
We read without surprise that this will was not executed to the letter, and the tolerably
reasonable monument erected to Pietro Bernardo by his descendants,

ENTRANCE TO THE SACRISTY, FRARI

twenty years after his death, may still be seen in the church of the Frari.

There were also academies which bore names, devices, and emblems of a nature that
might well shock and surprise us, were they not the natural evidences of that coming
decadence, moral and artistic, whereof all Italy, and Venice in particular, already bore the
germs.
Amongst the great names that belong to the end of the fifteenth century, as well as to
the sixteenth, hardly any has more interesting associations for scholars than that of Aldus
Manutius.
The founder of the great family of scholars and printers was born at Sermoneta in the
Pontifical States in 1449, and was over forty years old when he finally established himself
in Venice.
He had been tutor in the princely family of Pio, where he had educated
the eldest son, and he himself added the name to his own, though he did not Firmin-
Didot, Alde
transmit it to his descendants. Manuce.
One of the legends about the origin of printing tells that it was invented in
the Venetian city of Feltre, by a certain Castaldi, who was robbed of his invention by
Germans, presumably Faust and Guttenberg. There is probably no foundation for this tale,
but it is certain that the Venetians brought the art of printing to something near perfection
within a few years of its creation, and that the government protected it by laws of singular
wisdom and great severity, in an age when the idea of copyright was in its infancy.
Aldus was neither a money-maker nor a man given up to ambition; he was a true artist,
and cared only for perfecting his art. When he first invented the italic type he was almost
beside himself with delight, and instantly applied to the Council of Ten for letters patent to
forbid any imitation of his work during ten years. The petition is curious, for Aldus went as
far as to suggest to the Ten the penalties to be incurred by any one who defrauded him of
his rights, and they were by no means light.
He dreamed of never allowing any work to leave his press which was less than perfect
at all points. When he meditated the printing of a Greek classic, he gathered about him all
the most conscientious men of letters in Venice; such men as Sabellico and Sanudo, the
highly accomplished Cardinal Bembo, and Andrea Navagero all worked at comparing the
best texts, in order to produce one that should be beyond criticism. In the course of such
profound study, learned discussions arose and conclusions were reached which were
destined to influence all scholarship down to modern times. Little by little, and without
any artificial encouragement or intention, the workshop of Aldus became the gravest of
classical ‘academies’; a vast amount of work was done there, and a very small number of
books were very wonderfully well printed.
In two years five publications appeared, among which was the first Greek edition of
Aristotle’s works. That Aldus might have done better is possible, and every reader of
ancient Greek must deplore the selection of type he made for printing in that language. It is
ugly, unpractical, and utterly inartistic, but such was the man’s influence that he imposed it
upon scholars, and it is by far the most commonly used type to this day. Aldus might have
done better; but, on the other hand, the unquestionable fact stands out that no one, in those
days, did half so well, and that if his Greek type is unpleasing, his italic is beautiful and

has never been surpassed; finally, good copies of his best publications bring high prices at
every modern sale.
He and his friends were busy men, and spent whole days shut up together, thereby
rousing much curiosity, and attracting many unwelcome visitors. At last Aldus was
wearied by their importunity, and the loss of time they caused became a serious matter. He
composed the following notice and put it up outside his press:—
‘Quisquis es, rogat te Aldus etiam atque etiam: ut si quid est quod a se velis perpaucis
agas, deinde actutum abeas: nisi tanquam Hercules defesso Atlante, veneris suppositurus
humeros. Semper enim erit quod et tu agas, et quotquot huc attulerunt pedes.’
I quote the Latin from Didot. It is hardly worthy of the editor, printer, and publisher of
Aristotle, but Aldus himself printed it in the preface, addressed to Andrea Navagero, which
precedes the edition of Cicero’s Rhetoric, published in 1514. Here is a translation of it:—
‘Whoever you are, Aldus begs you again and again, if you want anything of him, to do
your business with few words and then to go away quickly; unless, indeed, you come as
Hercules to tired Atlas, to place your shoulders under the burden. For there will always be
something to do even for you, and for as many as bend their steps hither.’
The story even goes so far as to say that Erasmus came one day to Aldus’s door with
the manuscript of his Adagia under his arm, but that he was disconcerted by the notice and
was going away, when the great printer himself caught sight of him and made him come
in.
Aldus, who was not a Venetian, was not a man of business, and did not grow rich by
his work. He gave his time lavishly, for no true artist, such as he was, ever said that time
was money; and his expenses were very heavy, not the least being that incurred for the fine
cotton paper he got from Padua. On the other hand, he hoped to encourage learning and to
disseminate a general love of the classics. Some of his prices, however, were very high; for
instance, a complete Aristotle sold for eleven silver ducats, which Didot considers equal to
over ninety francs in modern French money. But a copy of the Musæus, which would
perhaps sell to-day for forty pounds sterling, could be bought for a little more than one
‘marcello.’
Aldus had established himself in Venice about 1490. Eight years later, a visitation of
the plague decimated the population, and the great printer himself sickened of it. Believing
himself all but lost, he vowed that if he recovered he would abandon his art, which would
be by far the greatest thing he could give up, and would enter holy orders. He recovered,
but the sacrifice was greater than he could make, though he was a good man, of devout
mind. He at once addressed a petition to the Pope, begging to be released from his vow,
and M. Didot discovered in the Archives of the Council of Ten the favourable answer
returned by Alexander VI., who, it will be remembered, was the Borgia Pope, of evil fame.
It was, of course, addressed to the Patriarch, and it reads as follows:—
Venerable Brother:
Our beloved son Aldus Manutius, a citizen of Rome, set forth to us some time ago that when the plague was raging
he, being in danger of death, took an oath that if he escaped he would enter the holy orders of priesthood. Seeing that
since he has recovered his health, he does not persist in his vow, and seeing that in his condition of poverty he cannot
subsist otherwise than by the work of his hands, whereby he earned his living, now therefore he desires to remain a
layman, and we have granted his petition. We commission you therefore and command your fraternity to absolve in our

name the said Aldus from the vow he took, if he humbly requests you to do so, and if things stand as he says, requiring of
him a return by such other acts of piety as it shall seem good to your conscience to impose, and this if there be no other
obstacle.
Given in Rome, August the eleventh, 1498, in the sixth year of our Pontificate.

It is characteristic of the far-reaching power of the Council of Ten that this curious
document should have been found in their Archives.
One year after having been released from his vow, Aldus married Maria, daughter of
Andrea Torresano. I do not knew whether an attachment which perhaps dated from before
the plague could have had anything to do with the great printer’s aversion to fulfilling his
vow; if so, the world is deeply indebted to his wife. There was, however, a considerable
interval in his career after 1498, during which no books were issued by the Aldine press,
and those belonging to the first period have a much higher value than the rest.
Possibly children were born to the couple and died between the time of their marriage
and the birth of their son Paulus Manutius in 1512, three years before the death of his
father Aldus. The dates show the absurdity of the story that Aldus brought up his son to be
a scholar and a printer like himself. He died when that son, who was destined to be famous
also, was less than four years old. He breathed his last on the sixth of January 1516, being
not yet sixty-seven years old, surrounded by his faithful friends and his manuscripts.
Owing to his having married so late, and to his son not having been born till thirteen years
after his marriage, the lives of the father and son cover the period between 1449 and 1574,
no less than one hundred and twenty-five years.
Prince Pio, his former pupil and one of the most distinguished members of the Aldine
Academy, claimed the honour of burying him at Carpi, a feudal holding of the Pio family.
His body was carried thither with great pomp, and he was laid in state in the church of
Saint Patrinian, surrounded by books, and was finally buried in the Prince’s family vault.
Another and very original type of scholar was Marin Sanudo, whose name occurs so
constantly in all writings that deal with the sixteenth century in Venice. He was of a
patrician family, and
was so early predisposed to observe and note everything of interest that when
he was only eight years old he copied the inscriptions which Petrarch had Marin
Sanudo,
written under the pictures in the hall of the Great Council, and it is thanks to Diario;
his childish industry that we know the nature of those great works which Mutinelli,
were destroyed in the fire of 1474. Annali.

As the child grew up he cultivated the habit of making notes of all he saw and heard;
and, though he strictly adheres to the principle of relating daily events briefly and clearly,
he constantly reveals himself to us as a man of broad views and keen sight, cautious,
slightly sceptical, and thoroughly independent. As soon as he had attained the required age
he was admitted to the Council, and he kept a journal of everything that happened there. It
is surprising to find that a government which knew everything should allow any one such
full liberty to make notes. Possibly the value of his work was not at first understood, but
when it was, the manner in which appreciation showed itself was not flattering to the
chronicler.

The Republic always employed a regular official historian whose business it was to
narrate the deeds and misdeeds of the government in a manner uniformly pleasant to
Venetian vanity. One of the most successful writers in this manner was the untrustworthy
Sabellico, and when he died Marin Sanudo aspired to succeed him, being in poor
circumstances, and having on several occasions rendered services to the Republic. But to
his infinite mortification Cardinal Bembo was appointed to the post, and, as if to add insult
to injury, Sanudo was requested to place his valuable diaries at the disposal of the new
public historian. Sanudo was deeply hurt, as may be imagined, but he was poor and in
debt, and the paternal government of his business-like country easily drove him to the
wall. For the use of his diary, and for his promise to bequeath it to the State at his death, he
accepted a pension of one hundred and fifty ducats (£112) yearly. This small stipend was
not enough to lift him out of poverty. The expense of the paper which he used for his notes
was a serious item in his little budget, and the binder’s bill was a constant source of
anxiety. He was often obliged to borrow money, and once he was imprisoned for debt. On
the latter occasion he made the following entry in his journal:—
‘December eighteenth, 1516.—On this day in the morning a dreadful thing happened
to me. I was going to Saint Mark’s to hear mass as usual when I was recognised by that
traitor Giovanni Soranzo, to whom I have owed a hundred ducats for ten years, and forty-
seven for a debt before that. Now I had solemnly promised that I would pay him the
money, but in order to shame me he had me imprisoned till next day in San Cassian. I vow
to be avenged upon him with my own hands.’
Having vented his wrath on paper, Sanudo promptly forgot his sombre vows of
vengeance. For many years afterwards he went backwards and forwards

S. GIACOMO IN ORIO

between the ducal palace and his own house at San Giacomo in Orio, where he had
collected books and prints to a very great value. He was almost forgotten until very recent

times, when he was rediscovered in his diary, and treated with the honour he deserves by
his own countrymen.
There was no university in Venice, but the government encouraged those teachers who
established themselves in the city and gave instruction in their own homes. In this way
they formed little schools which quarrelled with each other over definitions, syllogisms,
and etymologies in the most approved fashion. There is a good instance of one of these
miniature civil wars in connection with the historian Sabellico. He was
ferociously jealous of a certain learned priest called Ignatius, who taught
literature, as he did, and had many more scholars. In his lectures Sabellico Cicogna,
Iscrizioni, i.
attacked Ignatius furiously, and did his best to destroy his reputation. The 341.
priest on his side held his tongue, and waited for a chance of giving his hot-
headed adversary a lesson. At last Sabellico published a very indifferent work, of which
the priest wrote such a keen criticism that the book was a dead failure. The State
historian’s rage broke out in the most violent invectives, and from that time Ignatius was
his nightmare, and the mere mention of his name drove him into uncontrollable fury, until,
dying at last, Sabellico realised that his hatred of the priest had been the mortal sin of his
life, and on his deathbed he sent for him and asked for a reconciliation. Ignatius freely
pardoned him, and even delivered a very flattering funeral oration over his body a few
days later.
A distinguished man of this period who deserves mention was Federigo Badoer, who
may almost be said

DOORWAY OF THE SACRISTY, S. GIACOMO IN
ORIO

to have been educated in the printing press of Aldus, and afterwards became the friend of
Paulus Manutius. Like all Venetian nobles, he learned from his boyhood how he was to
serve the State, and became acquainted with the working of its administration, and he was
soon struck by the condition of the Code. The laws had multiplied too much, and were
often obscure, and the whole system was in great need of revision. Badoer conceived the
idea of founding an academy for the purpose of editing and printing the whole body of
Venetian Law; the Council of Ten gave him their approval, and he
founded the Academy of ‘La Fama’—of Fame—with the singularly Mutinelli,
Annali.
inappropriate motto, ‘I fly to heaven and rest in God.’ The printing of the new
Code was entrusted to Paulus Manutius.
My perspicuous reader, having recovered from his astonishment at the unexpected
liberality of the Council of Ten, has already divined that such a fit could not last long, and
that Badoer and his noble academy were doomed to failure. Badoer was not rich enough to
bear the expense of such an undertaking alone, and the Ten had no intention of helping
him. Moreover, he and the scholars of his academy kept up a continual correspondence
with doctors of law in other countries. It would have seemed narrow-minded, however, to
suppress the academy by a decree; it was more in accordance with the methods of the
Council to accuse Badoer of some imaginary misdeed for which he could be brought to
trial. Accordingly, though he had sacrificed his own fortune in the attempt, he was accused
of having embezzled the academy’s funds, and in three years from the time of his setting to
work the

FONDAMENTA SANUDO

academy was crushed out of existence, and he was a ruined man.
Another shortlived but celebrated literary society was that of the ‘Pellegrini,’ the
‘Pilgrims,’ whose pilgrimage led them only from their solemn palaces in Venice to the
pleasant groves of Murano, and was performed by moonlight when possible. The pilgrims
were Titian, Sansovino, Navagero, Gaspara Stampa, the old Trifone, Collaltino di Collalto,
and some others, and it is very unlikely that their evening meetings had any object except

pleasant converse and intellectual relaxation. We know something about the lovely
Gaspara and Collalto, at all events, and it can be safely said that they were more pleasantly
occupied than in conspiracy, and that what they said to each other concerned neither the
Doge nor the Council of Ten.
Though there was no university in Venice, the Republic possessed one of the most
renowned in Europe by right of having conquered and annexed Padua; and it is interesting
to note that because that great institution of learning was not situated in Venice itself, it
was allowed a degree of liberty altogether beyond Venetian traditions.
Padua was temporarily obliged to submit to Louis XII. of France at the beginning of
the sixteenth century, but the Republic took it again in 1509, and from that date until 1797
there was never the least interruption in the academic courses. The only influence
exercised upon the university by the Venetian government was intended to give it a more
patriotically Venetian character. In earlier times the Bishop of Padua had been ex officio
the Rector of the university; he was now deprived of this dignity, which was conferred
jointly on three Venetian nobles, who were elected for two years, and were required to
reside in Venice and not in Padua, lest they should be exposed to influences foreign to the
spirit of the Republic. Their title was ‘Riformatori dell’ Università,’ and great care was
exercised in choosing them. They were also the official inspectors of the Venetian schools
and of the national libraries, and it was their business to examine candidates for the
position of teachers in any authorised institution.
They were no doubt terrible pedants, inwardly much dignified by a sense of their great
responsibilities, and to this day, in northern Italy, it is said of a man who wearies his family
and his acquaintances with perpetual ‘nagging’—there is no dictionary word for it—that
he is like a ‘Riformatore’ of the University of Padua, though the good people who use the
phrase have no clear idea of what it means.
These three patricians had an official dress of their own, which was a long robe,
sometimes black and
sometimes of a violet colour, changing according to some regulation which is
not known, but always made with sleeves of the ‘ducal’ pattern; and they put Yriarte,
Vie; Rom.
on a black stole over it. If one of them was a Knight of the Golden Stole, as iv. 449.
often happened, his robe was of velvet and his stole was of cloth of gold.
The Holy See was not much pleased by the way in which the Republic treated the
Bishop of Padua, and constantly complained that the students of the University were
allowed too much license to express opinions that ill accorded with Catholic dogma. Like
all commercial countries, Venice was Protestant in so far as any direct interference of the
Vatican was concerned. Mr. Brooks Adams was, I think, the first to point out the
inseparable connection between Protestantism and commercial enterprise, in his
extraordinary study, The Law of Civilization and Decay. The peculiarity of Venice’s
religious position was that it combined an excessive, if not superstitious, devotion to the
rites of the Church with something approaching to contempt of the Pope’s power.
The University of Padua was resorted to by students of all nations, including many
English gentlemen. In the Archives of the Ten a petition has been found signed by a
number of foreign students in Padua to be allowed to wear arms, and we find that the

necessary permission for this was granted in 1548 to Sir Thomas Wyatt, ‘a
Knight of the English Court,’ Sir—— Cotton, Sir John Arundel, Christopher Rom. iv.
449, note 5.
Mayne, Henry Williams, and John Schyer (?).
It is amusing to find that the French students in Padua excelled in fencing, riding,
dancing, and music, but apparently not in subjects more generally considered academic.
I cannot close this chapter without saying a few words about Galileo Galilei, who was
for some time in the employ of the Republic. I quote from his life, written by his pupil
Viviani, but not published till 1826.
After lecturing in Pisa for three years Galileo was appointed by the Venetian
government to be professor of mathematics in Padua for a term of six years, during which
he invented several
machines for the service of the Republic. Copies of his writings and lectures
of this time were scattered by his pupils throughout Italy, Germany, France, 1592.
and England, often without his name, for he thought them of such little
importance that he did not even protest when impostors claimed to be the authors of them.
During this period, says Viviani, he invented ‘the thermometers (sic) ... which wonderful
invention was perfected in modern times by the sublime genius of our great Ferdinand II.,
our most serene reigning sovereign ...,’ the Cardinal Grand Duke who poisoned his brother
and Bianca Cappello.
At the end of his term Galileo was re-appointed for six years more, and during this
time he observed a comet in the Dragon, and made experiments
with the magnet. He was re-appointed again and again with an increase of
salary. 1599.

In April or May, in 1609, when he was in Venice, it was reported that a certain
Dutchman had presented Maurice of Nassau with a sort of eyeglass which made distant
objects seem near. This was all that was known of the invention, but Galileo was so much
interested by the story that he returned to Padua at once, and in the course of a single night
succeeded in constructing his first telescope, in spite of the poor quality of the lenses he
had, and on the following day he returned to Venice and showed the instrument to his
astonished friends. After perfecting it he resolved to present it to the reigning Doge,
Leonardo Donà, and to the whole Venetian Senate.
I translate literally the letter he wrote to the Doge to accompany the gift.
Most Serene Prince: Galileo Galilei, your Serenity’s most humble servant, labouring assiduously and with all his
heart not only to do his duty as lecturer on mathematics in the University of Padua, but also to bring your Serenity some
extraordinary advantage by means of some useful and signal discovery, now appears before you with a new device of
eyeglass, the result of the most recondite theories of perspective; the which [invention] brings objects to be visible so
near the eye and shows them so large and distinct, that what is distant, for instance, nine miles, seems as if it were only
one mile away, a fact which may be of inestimable service for every business and enterprise by land and sea; for it is thus
possible, at sea, to discover the enemy’s vessels and sails at a far greater distance than is customary, so that we can see
him two hours and more before he can see us, and by distinguishing the number and nature of his vessels, we can judge
of his forces and prepare for a pursuit, or a battle, or for flight. In the same manner, on land, the quarters and the defences
of the enemy within a strong place can be descried from an eminence, even if far away; and even in the open country, it
is possible with great advantage to make out every movement and preparation; moreover, every judicious person will
clearly perceive many uses [for the telescope]. Therefore, deeming it worthy to be received and considered very useful
by your Serenity, he [Galileo] has determined to present it to you, and to leave it to your judgment to determine and
provide concerning this invention, in order that, as may seem best to your prudence, others should or should not be

constructed. And this the aforesaid Galilei presents to your Serenity as one of the fruits of the science which he has now
professed in the University of Padua during more than seventeen years, trusting that he is on the eve of offering you still
greater things, if it please the Lord God and your Serenity that he, as he desires, may spend the rest of his life in the
service of your Serenity, before whom he humbly bows, praying the Divine Majesty to grant you the fulness of all
happiness.

The letter is not dated, but on the twenty-fifth of August 1609 the Signory appointed
the astronomer professor for life, with ‘three times the highest pay ever granted to any
lecturer on mathematics.’
It was in Padua that Galileo invented the microscope, observed the moon’s surface, and
the spots on the sun, discovered that the milky way and the nebulæ consist of many small
fixed stars, discovered Jupiter’s moons, Saturn’s rings, and the fact that Venus revolves
round the sun, ‘and not below it, as Ptolemy believed.’
Much has been written of late about Galileo, but most of what has appeared seems to
be founded on this life by his pupil Viviani.

VII

THE TRIUMPHANT CITY
When Philippe de Commines came to Venice in 1495 as ambassador of Charles VIII. he
wrote: ‘This is the most triumphant city that ever I saw.’
He meant what he said figuratively, no doubt, for in that day there was something
overwhelming about the wealth and splendour, and the vast success of the Republic. But
he meant it literally too, for no state or city of the world celebrated its own victories with
such pomp and magnificence as Venice.
The Venetians had never been altogether at peace with the Turks, in spite of the treaty
which had been made soon after the fall of Constantinople;
but when Venice herself was threatened by all the European powers together,
it was with the highest satisfaction that she saw the Moslems attack her old Daru; Rom.
enemies the Hungarians. Yet her joy was of short duration, for the Emperor
soon made peace with the Sultan. It will be remembered that the Imperial throne had then
already been hereditary in the Hapsburg family for many years.
The character of Turkish warfare in the Mediterranean was always piratical, of the very
sort most certain to harass and injure a maritime commercial nation like Venice, and the
latter began to lose ground steadily in the Greek archipelago, and now found herself
obliged to defend the coasts of the Adriatic against the Turks as she had formerly defended
them against the pirates of Narenta. From time to time a Turkish vessel was captured, and
hundreds of Christian slaves were found chained to the oar.
There were also other robbers along the Dalmatian coast, who exercised their
depredations against Turks
and Christians alike, with admirable equity. These were the so-called
‘Usocchi,’ a name derived from a Slav root meaning to ‘leap out’—hence, Niccolò da
Ponte
those who had escaped and fled their country and were outlaws. triumphs
About this time the island of Cyprus had fallen in part under Turkish over the
Usocchi;
domination. The Turks had Tintoretto,
made a piratical descent upon Nicosia, and had carried off all the women who Hall of the
Great
were still young enough for the Eastern market. But one of these, a heroine Council.
whose name is lost, fired the ship’s powder-magazine and saved herself and
her companions from outrage by causing the instant death of every soul on
Cicogna,
board. This was in the latter half of the sixteenth century. Iscr. Ven.
Thirsting for vengeance, the Venetians now eagerly joined Philip II. of iii. 134.
Spain in the league proposed by the Pope. The three fleets were to meet at
Messina, and much precious time was lost, during which the Turks completed their
conquest of Cyprus, which was heroically defended by Marcantonio Bragadin. His fate
was horrible. His nose and ears were cut off, and he was obliged to witness the death of his
brave companions, Tiepolo, Baglione, Martinengo, and Quirini. They were stoned, hanged,

and carved to shreds before his eyes, and a vast number of Venetian soldiers and women
and children were massacred before him during the following ten days. At last his turn
came to die; he was hung by the hands in the public square and slowly skinned alive. It is
said that he died like a hero and a saint, commending his soul to God, and forgiving his
enemies.
The ferocious Mustapha, by whose orders these horrors were perpetrated, ordered his
skin to be stuffed and had it carried about the streets, under a red umbrella, in allusion to
the arms of the Bragadin family. The hideous human doll
was then hoisted to the masthead of Mustapha’s ship as a trophy and taken in
that way to Constantinople. Molmenti,
Seb. Venier.
But in his lifetime Bragadin had ransomed a certain man of Verona from
the Turks, and had earned his undying gratitude. This Veronese, hearing of his benefactor’s
awful end, swore to bring home his skin, since nothing else remained, and with incredible
skill and courage actually entered the Turkish arsenal at Constantinople, where the trophy
was kept, stole it and brought it home. It is related that the skin was found as soft as silk
and was easily folded into a small space; it is preserved in the church of San Giovanni e
Paolo.
The vengeance of the league was slow, but it was memorably terrible; in 1571 Don
John of Austria, a stripling of genius, scarcely six and twenty years of age, commanded the
three fleets and led Christianity to victory at Lepanto.
One of the decisive battles of the world checked the Mohammedan power
for ever in the Gulf of Corinth, and the blood of eighty thousand Turks Lepanto, A.
Vicentini;
avenged the inhuman murder of Bragadin and the self-destruction of the ducal
captive Venetian women. palace.
Not many days later, on the eighteenth of October 1571, the great ‘Angel
Gabriel,’ a galley of war, came sailing into the harbour of Venice, full
dressed with flags, and trailing in her wake long line of Turkish standards,
and turbans and coats. Then the cannon thundered, and the crew cried Molmenti,
‘Victory! Victory!’ and the triumphant note went rolling over Venice, while Seb. Venier.
Onofrio Giustiniani, the commander of the man-of-war, went up to the ducal palace. Then
the people went mad with joy, and demanded that all prisoners should be set free in honour
of the day; and the Council allowed at least all those to be liberated who were in prison for
debt. Then, too, the people cried ‘Death to the Turks!’ and would have massacred every
Mussulman in the Turks’ quarter; but to the honour of Venice it is recorded that the
government was strong enough to hinder that.
And then the Doge, Aloise Mocenigo, found his way through the closely packed crowd
to the Basilica,
and fifty thousand voices sang ‘Te Deum laudamus Domine,’ till the
triumphant strain must have been heard far out on the lagoon. During four Aloise
Mocenigo,
days processions marched through the streets and hymns of victory and praying,
thanksgiving were sung; the greatest battle of the age had been fought and Tintoretto;
won on the feast of Saint Justina, who was one of the patrons of Venice. In Sala del
Collegio.
return for her military assistance an enthusiastic and devout people resolved

to set up a statue of her in the Arsenal and to build her a church in Padua, as she already
had one in Venice.
Religious obligations being thus cancelled, the universal rejoicing manifested itself in
civic pageantry,
and, to use a modern expression, the Venetians held a general exhibition of
their treasures. The square of the Rialto was draped with scarlet cloth, on Rom. vi.
317.
which were hung the pictures of the most famous masters, at a time when
some of the greatest that ever lived were alive in Venice and at the height of their glory. In
the midst of the square a trophy was raised, composed of Turkish arms and banners,
turbans, slippers, jewels, and all sorts of ornaments taken from the slain. From the
jewellers’ lane to the bridge a canopy of blue cloth covered with golden stars was spread
high across the way, the most precious tapestries were hung on the walls of the houses, the
shops showed all their most artistic wares in their windows. The German quarter was so
crammed with beautiful objects that it seemed one great enchanted palace. To increase the
general gaiety, the government made a special exception and allowed masks in the streets.
When it is remembered that Venice really obtained little or no immediate advantage
from the battle of Lepanto, her frenzy of triumph may seem exaggerated; yet it was
moderate compared with the reception Rome gave to the commander of the Papal fleet,
Marcantonio Colonna. The Venetian captain, Sebastian Venier, was not present, and there
was not the least personal note in the rejoicings; that, indeed, would have been very
contrary to the usual behaviour of the Republic towards her own sons, for if they failed she
disowned them or put them to death, and if they succeeded it was her motherly practice to
disgrace them as soon as possible, and generally to find an excuse for imprisoning them,
lest they should grow dangerous to herself.
We cannot help reproaching her for that; yet out of her magnificent past comes back
ever that same answer: she succeeded, where others failed. She bred

DOOR OF THE CARMINE

such men as Enrico Dandolo, Vittor Pisani, Carlo Zeno, and Sebastian Venier, yet she was
never enslaved by one of her own children. Rome served her Cæsar, and her many Cæsars;
France, her Bonaparte; Russia, her Ivan Strashny, the Terrible; Spain, her Philip II.;

England, her Richard III.—and her Cromwell, Protector and Tyrant. But Venice was never
subject to any one Venetian man beyond the time needed to compass his destruction and
death, which was never long, and sometimes was awfully brief.
Venier did not return to Venice till long after the battle of Lepanto, and his presence
was necessary in the Archipelago in order to protect such colonies as were left to the
Republic.
For though the Turks had suffered a disastrous defeat, final in the sense
that their advance westwards was checked as effectually as the spreading of Venier
returns in
the Moorish conquest had been by Charles Martel at Poitiers, yet they were triumph,
still at the height of their power in Constantinople, and were strong on the Palma
eastern side of the dividing line which was now drawn across the Giovane;
Sala dei
Mediterranean, and which marked the eastern limit of Christian domination. Pregadi.
When Venier returned, the Turks were absolute masters of the island of
Cyprus, and Venice was already beginning to pay what was really a war indemnity,
destined to reach the formidable sum of three hundred thousand ducats. As Montesquieu
truly says, it looked as if the Turks had been the victors at Lepanto.
Three years after that battle Venice was again adorned in her best to greet Henry III. of
France, who visited the city in July 1574, the year of his accession. The
King was to make his entry on the eighteenth, and he was requested to stop at Rom. vi.
341.
Murano on the previous evening, in the
Palazzo Cappello, which was all hung with silk and cloth of gold in his
honour. Forty young nobles were attached to his person and sixty halberdiers Horatio
Brown,
mounted guard, dressed in yellow and blue, which were regarded by the Venetian
Venetians as his colours, and wearing a studies.
cap with a white tuft for a cockade. Their weapons were taken from the
armoury of the Council of Ten. There were also eighteen trumpeters and Henry III.
twelve drummers dressed in the King’s colours. visits
Venice, A.
Henry III. was still in mourning for his brother Charles IX., and appeared Vicentino;
very plainly clad in the midst of all this display. The chronicles have Sala delle
Quattro
preserved the details of his costume; he wore a brown mantle that fell from Porte.
his neck to his feet, and beneath it a violet tunic of Flemish cloth with a white
lace collar. He also wore long leathern boots, perfumed gloves, and an Italian hat.
The night was passed in feasting, during which the French and the Venetians
fraternised most closely, and on the following morning a huge galley was ready to take the
King to Venice by way of the Lido.
On the high poop-deck a seat was placed for the King, covered with cloth of gold; on
his right sat the Papal Nuncio, who was the Cardinal San Sisto, then came the Dukes of
Nevers and Mantua; on his left the Doge and the Ambassadors. Four hundred rowers
pulled the big vessel over, and fourteen galleys followed bringing the Senators and many
others. To amuse the King during the short passage, the glass-blowers of

Murano had constructed on rafts a furnace in the shape of a marine monster that
belched flames from its jaws and nostrils, while the most famous workmen blew beakers
and other vessels in the beast’s body, of the finest crystal glass, for the King and his suite.

Just when he might be thought to be weary of this spectacle a long array of decorated
boats began to manœuvre before his eyes, with sails set and banners flying. These
belonged to the various guilds and were wonderfully adorned. One represented a huge
dolphin; on its back stood Neptune driving two winged steeds, while four aged boatmen in
costume stood for the four rivers of the Republic, Brenta, Adige, Po, and Piave. Some of
the boats had arrangements for sending up fireworks, others were floating exhibitions of
the richest and most marvellous tapestries and stuffs.
The royal vessel, instead of proceeding straight to Venice, went round by the Lido to
the landing of Saint Nicholas, where the State architect Palladio had erected a triumphal
arch which Tintoretto and Paolo Veronese had covered with ten beautiful paintings. Here
the King was invited to leave his galley in order to go on board the Bucentaur. Tintoretto
was in the crowd, looking out for a chance of sketching the King, precisely as a modern
reporter hangs about the docks and railway stations to get a snapshot at royalty. Tintoretto
did not disdain the methods of a later time either; he succeeded in exchanging his
threadbare cloak for the livery of one of the Doge’s squires or footmen, by which trick he
managed to get on board the Bucentaur. Once there he made a sketch in pastels of the King
which pleased the royal treasurer, De Bellegarde, and the latter persuaded his master to sit
to the artist for a full-length portrait, which was presented to the Doge on the King’s
departure, in recollection of the visit.
During the following days nothing was omitted which might amuse the Sovereign or
tend to strengthen the pleasant impression he had already received. Every sort of Venetian
game was played, and all the traditional contests of strength and skill between Niccolotti
and Castellani were revived, and with such earnestness on both sides as to lead to a fresh
outbreak of their hereditary hate. Two hundred men fought with sticks at the Ponte del
Carmine, as savagely as if the safety and honour of their wives and children depended on
the result. At the most critical moment the fisherman Luca, the famous chief of the
Niccolotti, fell into the canal, his followers were momentarily thrown into disorder by the
accident, and the Castellani won the day.
Afterwards a banquet was given to the King, of which the remembrance remains alive
amongst the people to our own time. The gondoliers and fishermen of to-day describe the
feast, its magnificence, the beauty of the patrician ladies, the splendour of the service, as if
they were speaking of something that happened yesterday instead of more than ten
generations ago.
The tables were set in the hall of the Great Council for three thousand persons. The
King sat in the middle of the hall under a golden canopy. We are told that the bill of fare
set forth twelve hundred different dishes, and that all the company ate off solid silver
plates, of which there were enough for all without having recourse to the reserve which
had been set up for show on a huge sideboard at the end of the hall. After the feast, the
King assisted at the performance of the first opera ever given in Italy, composed by the
once famous master Zarlino da Chioggia.
The banquet and the music must have occupied several hours; yet we are amazed to
learn that so short a time sufficed for putting together a whole galley, of which Henry had
seen the pieces, all taken apart, just before sitting down to table. When he left the ducal

palace, he saw to his stupefaction the vessel launched into the canal on rollers, and towed
away towards the Lido.
Not surfeited by the official amusements offered him by the Republic, the King
diverted himself on his own account and went about the city in disguise,
like Otho of old. The government had directed the jewellers and merchants to
have in readiness their finest wares in order that when the King sent for them, Mut.
Annali.
he might buy objects worthy of the reputation of the Venetian shops; and the
shopkeepers inquired with feverish anxiety when they were to go to the Palazzo Foscari.
But Henry preferred to go out shopping himself. One morning the jeweller at the Sign
of the Old Woman on the Rialto Bridge was visited by a noble stranger, who inquired the
price of a marvellously chiselled golden sceptre: apparently the Venetian jewellers kept
sceptres in stock in case a king should look in. The price of this one was twenty-six
thousand ducats, or between eighteen and nineteen thousand pounds, which seems dear,
even for a sceptre. But the noble stranger was not at all surprised, thought the matter over
for a few seconds, nodded quietly, and ordered the thing to be sent to the Foscari palace, to

CAMPO BEHIND S. GIACOMO IN ORIO

the inexpressible joy of the jeweller, who knew the address well enough.
At that time there dwelt in Venice a branch of the famous Fugger family of Augsburg,
the richest bankers of the sixteenth century. They owned all
the district of the city round the church of San Giacomo, and had even
protected themselves by a sort of wall. There they had built a bank, a hospital, Mutinelli,
Annali.
and houses for their numberless retainers, and they lived in a kind of
unacknowledged principality of their own which was respected both by the State and the
people.
The family had the most magnificent traditions of hospitality. When the Emperor
Charles V. passed through Augsburg in the earlier part of the same century, he lodged in
the Fuggers’ house, and as it was winter, his hosts caused his fires to be made only of
aromatic wood imported as a perfume from Ceylon. Henry III. visited the Fuggers in
Venice, and they were neither surprised by his unannounced visit nor unprepared to
receive a royal guest.
While in Venice the King spent much of his time with Veronica Franco, the celebrated
poetess and courtesan. She, on her side, fell deeply in
love with the man who was to be the worst of all the French kings. But he
was only twenty-three years old then, he was half a Medici by blood, and all Tassini.
of one by his passionate nature. Veronica loved him with all her heart, and
amidst all the evil he did there was at least one good result, for when he was gone she
would not be consoled, nor would she ever look on another man, but mended her life and
lived in a retirement to which she sought to attract other penitent women.
She had a picture of the King painted, and no doubt he was vividly present in her
thoughts when she wrote the following sonnet, which is attributed to her, and which I do
into prose for greater accuracy:—
Begone, deceiving thoughts and empty hope,
Greedy and blind desires, and bitter cravings,
Begone, ye burning sighs and bitter woes,
Companions ever of my unending pain.

Go memories sweet, go galling chains,
Of a heart that is loosed from you at last,
That gathers up again the rein of reason,
Dropped for a while, and now goes forth in freedom.

And thou, my soul, entangled in so many sorrows,
Unbind thyself and to thy divine Lord
Rejoicing turn thy thoughts;

Now bravely force thy fate,
Break through thy bonds; then, glad and free,
Direct thy steps in the securer way!

In order to give my readers some idea of what was done to furnish the Palazzo Foscari
for Henry’s visit, I quote some items of the expenditure from the Souvenirs of Armand
Baschet:—

‘Crimson silk and gold hangings, fifty-eight pieces making three hundred and seven
braccia and a half at a ducat for each braccio and twelve inches. White silk and silver stuff;
shot-silk and silver stuff; white satin with gold lines, etc. Cushions of brocade embroidered
with gold and of blue velvet with gold and fringes etc. at forty ducats each. A bed quilt
with gold lines and scarlet checks, twenty ducats. Yellow damask with little checks at one
ducat the braccio. A rep rug of gold edged with blue velvet and lined with red silk, sixty
ducats. A tablecloth of silver and gold brocade with white and gold fringe, thirty-four
ducats. Green and blue velvet for the floor, at one ducat the braccio. Complete hangings
for a room of yellow satin with gold and silver fringe and gold lace, over seven hundred
and thirty ducats.’
Further, we find for the royal gondolas the following items:—
‘Felse of scarlet satin, one hundred and fifty-six ducats. A boat’s carpet of violet
Alexandria velvet; a felse of the same velvet lined with silk, fifty-five ducats. Another
velvet carpet of the same colour, two canopies, one of violet satin fringed and embroidered
with gold, the other of white satin, and two cushions of scarlet satin and gold.’
These things were put away in boxes, an inventory was taken, and they were valued at
four thousand two hundred sequins, or more than three thousand pounds. The King on his
side was generous. When he went away he presented each of the young noblemen who had
attended him with a chain worth a hundred ducats, and gave a collar worth three hundred
to his host, Foscari. The captain of his guard received a silver basin and ewer worth a
hundred crowns. For the halberdiers of the guard there were three hundred crowns, eighty
for the trumpeters and sixty for the drummers. His Majesty left a thousand crowns for the
workmen of the Arsenal, two hundred for the rowers of the Bucentaur, one hundred for the
major-domo, and fifty to the chief steward of the house.
The Duke of Savoy, who accompanied the King of France, also left some splendid
presents. To the wife

THE PIAZZA

of Luigi Mocenigo, in whose house he had been staying, he gave a belt composed of thirty
gold rosettes, ornamented with fine pearls and valuable precious stones. The Duke was
doubtless unaware that as soon as he was gone the handsome ornament would have to be
handed over to the Provveditori delle Pompe, not to be worn again unless a special and
elaborate decree could be obtained for the purpose.
In the first year of the reign of Sixtus V. Japan sent ambassadors to the Pope ‘to
recognise him officially as Christ’s vicar on earth.’ These
personages, who were converts to Christianity, were received with
demonstrations of the greatest joy and esteem when they visited Venice, and 1585. Rom.
vi. 387.
were regaled with spectacles which were partly religious in character and
partly secular. A procession was organised against which the Pope himself protested in the
most formal manner; but the Republic paid no more attention than usual to this expression
of papal displeasure. It was always the dream of Venice to be Roman Catholic without
Rome.
The Japanese envoys looked on while all the clergy of the city passed in review before
them, as well as all the guilds bearing the images of their
patron saints and their standards; these were followed by cars carrying
enormous erections of gold and silver vessels, built up in the form of Giustina
Renier
pyramids, and of columns, stars, eagles, lions, and symbolic beasts. Other Michiel,
cars came after these with platforms, on which actors represented scenes from Origini.
the lives of saints, even including martyrdom. The

PIGEONS IN THE PIAZZA

Japanese may have been more amazed than edified by these performances.
The Venetians always loved processions, and it is to one of these pageants that the
pigeons of Saint Mark’s owe their immunity. As early as the end of the fourteenth century

it was the custom to make a great procession on Palm Sunday, in the neighbourhood of
Saint Mark’s. A canon of the Cathedral deposited great baskets on the high altar,
containing the artificial palms prepared for the Doge, the chief magistrates, and the most
important members of the clergy. The Doge’s palm was prepared by the nuns of Sant’
Andrea, and was a monument of patience. The leaves were plaited with threads of palm, of
gold, of silver, and of silk; and on the gilded handle were painted the arms of the Doge.
According to the appointed service the procession began immediately after the distribution
of the palms; and while the choir chanted the words ‘Gloria, laus et honor’ of the sacred
hymn, a great number of pigeons were sent flying from different parts of the façade down
into the square, having little screws of paper fastened to their claws to prevent them from
flying too high. The people instantly began to catch the birds, and a great many were
actually taken; but now and then, one stronger than the rest succeeded in gaining the
higher parts of the surrounding buildings, enthusiastically cheered by the crowd. Those
who had once succeeded in making their escape were regarded as sacred for ever with all
their descendants. The State provided them with food from its granaries, and before long,
lest by some mistake any free pigeons should be caught on the next Palm Sunday, the
Signory decreed that other birds than pigeons must be used on the occasion.

SOTTO PORTICO DELLA GUERRA

VIII

THE HOSE CLUB—VENETIAN LEGENDS
In the fourteenth century, life in Venice was simple and vigorous, and found its civic
expression in the formation of the Guilds which united in
close and brotherly bonds men of grave and energetic character, devoted to
their country and to its advantage. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the Molmenti,
Vita
tendencies of the later Venetians took visible shape in brotherhoods of joyous Privata.
and not harmless amusement, and chiefly in that known as the ‘Compagnia Sansovino.
della Calza,’ in plain English the ‘Hose Club.’ Galliccioli,
ii. 267, 269.
The learned Professor Tomassetti of the University of Rome, whose Mutinelli,
authority in all that concerns the Middle Ages in Italy is indisputable, informs Lessico.
me that he believes the right of wearing hose of two or more colours, as one
leg white and one leg red, or quartered above and below the knee, belonged exclusively to
free men, and that the fashion was adopted by them in order that they might be readily
distinguished from the serf-born, in crowds and in public places. This is, indeed, the only
reasonable explanation of the practice which has ever been offered, and is borne out by a
careful examination of the pictures of the time. The ‘Hose Club’ distinguished themselves
and recognised one another by their hose, which were of two colours, one leg having at
first a peacock embroidered on it, whence the whole company was sometimes nicknamed
‘The Peacocks.’
The Doge Michel Steno, who painted his four hundred horses yellow, and had been
concerned in the libel against the nephew of Marin Faliero,
had been counted among the gayest youths of his day; and when he was
elected the rich young men of Venice, knowing by hearsay from their fathers 1400.
that he had been wild in his youth, determined to celebrate the accession of a
former dandy in a manner suited to their own tastes. They agreed upon the dress which
afterwards became famous, and each paid a sum of two thousand ducats into a general
fund which was entirely spent in pageantry, banqueting, and masquerades.
They had not at first intended the Club to be permanent, but when the anniversary of
the Doge’s coronation came round in the following year, they met again to consider the
advisability of prolonging an institution which made such an agreeable contrast to the
general gravity of Venetian life.
They now composed a sort of charter or constitution, which would have made the
heads of the artisan Guilds tremble with indignation, and might
well have caused the fathers of Venetian families to look even more grave
than usual. 1401.

The Club was to be always a Company of twenty members, chosen for four years only;
for as soon as a young Venetian married, or took his seat in the Great Council, he put on
the long gown of older years and more dignified habits, which effectively eclipsed his

brilliant legs from the public gaze. Each Company was to choose its name, an emblem,
and a motto. There were to be officers, a president, a secretary, and a treasurer; and as the
Venetians had a mania for sanctioning even the most frivolous doings by means of some
religious exercise, each Company was to have a chaplain to celebrate a solemn mass at the
admission of each young scapegrace who joined. The chaplain also administered the oath
which every Companion was bound to take on admission.
The smallest infraction of the rules entailed a heavy fine, and the fines were, of course,
periodically spent in riotous amusements. As for the dress, the hose always remained a part
of it, but the greatest latitude was allowed in the matter of colour and embroidery, or other
ornamentation.
The formation of the joyous Companies was a natural reaction after the huge efforts,
the strenuous labours, the awful dangers that had filled the fourteenth century, and had
placed Venice high among the European powers. From the foundation of the first of the
Company, that of the ‘Peacocks,’ to the dispersion of the ‘Accesi,’ the ‘Ardent,’ which was
the last, a hundred and eighty-six years went by, which may be called six generations,
during which forty-three Companies succeeded each other, and the ‘Hose Club’ became
famous throughout Europe for its extravagance, and for the fertility of its festive
inventions.
It made it its especial business to adorn with its presence in a body the public baptisms
of noble children, and important weddings, the visits of illustrious personages, and even
elections where there was much at stake. When a foreign sovereign stopped in Venice, he
asked to be made an honorary member of the Company, he sometimes adopted its dress,
and he took home with him its emblem and its motto.
The most famous of all the Companies was that of the ‘Reali,’ the ‘Royals,’ which was
in existence about the year 1530. The members wore a red
stocking on the right leg, and a blue one on the left, which was embroidered
on one side with large flowers of violet colour, and on the other the emblem Cicogna,
Iscr. iii.
of the Company, which was a cypress, over which ran the motto, ‘May our 366.
glorious name go up

PONTE S. ANTONIO

to heaven.’ The members wore a vest of velvet embroidered with gold and fine pearls, and
the sleeves were fastened on by knots of ribband of different colours, a fashion permitting
the wearer to display his shirt of gossamer linen, exquisitely embroidered.

A leathern or a gilded girdle was worn too, ornamented with precious stones, and over
the shoulder was carelessly thrown a short mantle of cloth of gold, or damask, or brocade,
with a hood thrown back, in the lining of which was seen again the emblematic cypress.
Last of all the ‘toga,’ the great cloak, was red, and was fastened at the neck by a small
golden chain, from the end of which a handsome jewel hung down below the ear, over one
shoulder. The boots were of embroidered or cut leather, and were made with very thin
soles.
Venice had to thank the Companions of the Hose Club for some of the first real
theatrical performances ever given, which gradually led to the creation of the ‘ridotti,’ and
were more or less aristocratic gambling clubs in connection with the theatres. We read that
in 1529 the Companions played a comedy with immense success in the house of one of the
Loredan family. In the following year the Duke of Milan visited the city, and the Club
determined to out-do all its previous festivities. A Giustiniani was then the president of the
‘Royals,’ and he appeared with a deputation before the Doge and the Signory. After
announcing that the Club had determined to produce the spectacle of a naval combat, he
requested the government to lend for the purpose forty of the light war-pinnaces from the
Arsenal. As if this were nothing unusual, he went on to ask for the use of the hall of the
Great Council for a dance, of the Library for a supper, and of the Square of Saint Mark’s
for a stag-hunt.
The Hose Club evidently had large ideas. The Doge, however, granted all that was
necessary for the naval show, but said that he should have to think over the other requests!
It is needless to say that the ladies of Venice had their share in the gay doings of the
Club, first as invited guests only, but later as honorary Companions, wearing the emblem
embroidered on their sleeves and on the scarlet ‘felse’ of their gondolas, until the
sumptuary laws interfered.
There were times when the Signors of the Night and the Council of Ten thought fit to
limit the Club’s excessive gaiety, and it was found necessary to issue a decree which
strictly prohibited any of the eleven thousand light ladies of the city from being received as
Companions, or asked to its entertainments; for, oddly enough, the reputables do not seem
to have resented the presence of the disreputables in the sixteenth century.
Now and then the Companions fell out among themselves. Marin Sanudo, in his diary,
mentions that in February 1500 the Companions
dined in the house of Luca Gritti, son of late Omobono; and after dinner Zuan
Moro, the treasurer of the Club, went out with Angelo Morosini, Andrea Marin
Sanudo, iii.
Vendramin, and Zacaria Priuli; and they quarrelled about a matter concerning I, 39.
which I refer my scholarly reader to his Muratori, and Zuan Moro was
wounded in the face, and turned and gave his assailants as good as he had got, to the
infinite scandal of the whole city, for these Companions were all the young husbands of
beautiful women, and they disfigured each other!
We learn also from Sanudo that the Companions frequented the parlours of nunneries
as well as the palaces of their noble relations and friends, and that in 1514, for instance,
they played a comedy by Plautus in the convent of Santo Stefano. The Company of the
‘Sempiterni,’ the ‘Eternals,’ wished to give a performance of Pietro Aretino’s ‘Talanta’ in

one of the monasteries, but this was more than the monks could endure, which will not
surprise any one who has read Aretino’s works; they might as well have proposed to give
one of Giordano Bruno’s obscene comedies; and perhaps they would, if he had then
already lived and written. Refused by the monks, the Companions hired a part of an
unfinished palace on the Canarregio for their performance.
At first sight, what surprises us is the impunity enjoyed by these young gentlemen of
pleasure, and we ask what the three ‘Wise Men on Blasphemy’ were doing. They were the
Censors of the Republic, and it is amusing to note that they acted in regard to licensing
plays precisely as the modern English government censorship does, for whereas they
allowed a scandalous piece by Aretino to be performed unchallenged, they most strictly
forbade the presentation of any biblical personage or subject on the stage. The stories of
Judith, of Jephthah’s daughter, and of Samson were those of which the wise magistrates
most particularly disapproved, I know not why.
The first theatre Venice had was built by the Companions

S. ZOBENIGO

in 1560 after the designs of Palladio, of wood, in the court of the monastery of the Carità,
but after a few years it took fire, and the monastery itself was destroyed with it.

I find that the Companions were great ‘racket’ players; but I apprehend that by
‘rackets’ the chroniclers intended to describe court tennis, which was played in Venice,
whereas in most other Italian cities the game of ‘Pallone’ was the favourite, and has
survived to our own time. It is played with a heavy ball which the player strikes with a sort
of wooden glove, studded with blunt wooden pins and covering most of the forearm.
To return to the question of the large freedom and impunity granted to the Club by the
government, the reason of such license is not far to seek. Young men who spend their time
in a ceaseless round of amusement do not plot to overthrow the government that tolerates
them. The Signory, on the whole, protected the Companions even in their wildest excesses,
and no doubt believed them to be much more useful members of society than they thought
themselves, since their irrepressible gaiety and almost constant popularity helped to keep
the people in a good humour in times of trouble and disturbance.
At the time of the league of Cambrai, for instance, when Pope Julius II., the Emperor
Maximilian, Louis XII. of France, and Ferdinand of Aragon agreed to destroy the Venetian
Republic, and when it looked as if they must succeed, the Company of the ‘Eternals’
produced a mummery which was highly appreciated both by the government and the
population.
They gave a sumptuous feast, after which the dining-hall was, as by magic, turned into
an improvised theatre. In the middle of the stage
sat a young noble who personated the King, splendidly arrayed in the
Byzantine fashion, and attended by his counsellors, his chancellor, and his 1510. Rom.
v. 246.
interpreter. Before him there came in state one who played the Papal Legate,
dressed as a bishop in silk of old-rose colour, and he presented a brief and his credentials;
whereupon, after crowning and blessing the King, he observed that he should like to see a
little dancing, and two of the Companions at once danced for him with two of the fairest
ladies. The Legate was followed by the Ambassador of the Holy Roman Empire, and the
Ambassadors of France, Spain, Hungary, and Turkey arrived in turn; each spoke in the
language of his country, and his speech was interpreted to the King. Last of all came the
Ambassador of the Pigmies mounted on a tiny pony accompanied by four dwarfs and the
professional buffoon Zanipolo. We must suppose the speeches to have been very witty, and
the dwarfs and buffoons highly comic, since this incomprehensible nonsense was a
stupendous success and was talked of long afterwards.
The taste for these ‘momarie,’ literally ‘mummeries,’ grew in Venice. Marin Sanudo
describes one which was produced in the Square of Saint Mark’s on the Thursday before
Lent in 1532. I translate a part of the list of the masks, to give an idea of the whole.
First, the goddess Pallas Athene with her shield and a book in her hand, riding on a
serpent.
Second, Justice riding on an elephant, with sword, scales, and globe.
Third, Concord, on a stork with sceptre and globe.
Fourth, Victory on horseback, with sword, shield, sceptre, and palm.
Fifth, Peace riding a lamb, and holding a sceptre with an olive branch.

And so on. Then Ignorance, riding an ass, and holding on by the tail, met Wisdom and
fought and was beaten. And Violence appeared on a serpent, and Mars on a horse, and
Want on a dog with a horn full of straw for its emblem. And Violence was soundly beaten
by Justice, Discord by Concord, and Mars by Victory, and Abundance drove Want from the
field.
Such were the shows that amused the Venetians, while written comedy was slowly
growing out of infancy.
The Companions of the Hose Club revenged themselves cruelly on any one of their
own number who
showed signs of meanness. Sanudo tells the following anecdote. Alvise
Morosini, one of the ‘Eternals,’ on the occasion of his marriage with a Tassini,
under
daughter of the noble house of Grimani, gave his fellow-Companions a very Osteria
meagre dinner. Not long afterwards they got into the Grimani palace and della
carried off two magnificent silver basins; these were placed in the hands of Campana.
professional buffoons who paraded the city with them, informing the public
that the bridegroom meant to pawn them to pay for the dinner which the Companions were
going to eat at the sign of the Campana instead of the dinner which they should have eaten
at the Palazzo Morosini, and also to pay for wax torches for taking home the fair ladies
who were to be asked to the feast.
The paternal and business-like government of Venice, seeing how much the
Companions contributed to the national gaiety, allowed them to transgress the sumptuary
laws which were so binding on every one else. For instance, ordinary mortals were
forbidden to ask guests to more than one meal in the twenty-four hours, but the
Companions eluded the law—with the consent of the police—by keeping an open table all
night, so that breakfast appeared to be only the end of supper. Even in the matter of the
gondolas, the rule was that the ‘felse’ should be of black cloth, yet the Companions
covered theirs with scarlet silk and the Provveditori delle Pompe had nothing to say.
Then, suddenly, the government had a fit of morality, and in 1586 the Hose Club was
abolished by law, all privileges were revoked, and the decree was enforced. Venice lost
some amusement and much beautiful pageantry, and gained nothing in morality. It was not
very long before the grave senators who objected to the Companions were seen in their
scarlet togas presiding over authorised gambling establishments in the ‘ridotti.’
The Venetians were an imaginative people who delighted in fables, amusing, terrible,
or pious, as the case might be. Their stories differ from those of other European races in
the Middle Ages by the total absence of the element of chivalry upon which most other
peoples largely depended for their unwritten fiction. One can make almost anything of a
business man except a knight.
Near the Ponte dell’ Angelo in the Giudecca stands a house which shows great age in
spite of much

PONTE DELL’ ANGELO, GIUDECCA, OLD WOODEN BRIDGE

modern plastering. The windows are gothic, of the
ogival design, and on the façade there is an image of the Virgin with the
infant Christ in her arms. Higher up, a bas-relief represents an angel standing Tassini,
under
with outstretched wings as if he were about to fly away after blessing with his ‘Angelo.’
right hand the globe he holds in his left.
In the year 1552 this house was inhabited by a barrister of the ducal court who
professed unbounded devotion to the Madonna, and practised the most indelicate methods
of improving his fortunes.
One day the lawyer asked to dinner a holy Capuchin monk who enjoyed the highest
reputation for sanctity. Before sitting down to table he explained to the good friar that he
had a most wonderful servant in the shape of a learned ape, that kept his house clean,
cooked for him, and did his errands. The holy man at once perceived that the ape was no
less a personage than the Devil in disguise, and asked to see him; but Satan, suspecting
trouble, hid himself till at last he was found curled up in his master’s bed, trembling with
fright.
‘I command thee,’ said the monk, ‘in the name of God, to say why thou hast entered
this house.’

‘I am the Devil,’ answered the ape, seeing that prevarication would be useless, ‘and I
am here to take possession of this lawyer’s soul, which is mine on several good grounds.’
The monk inquired why the Devil had not flown away with the soul long ago, but the
fiend replied that so far it had not been possible, because the lawyer said ‘Hail, Mary,’
every night before going to bed. Thereupon the Capuchin bade the Devil leave the house at
once; but the Devil said that if he went he would do great damage to the building, as the
heavenly powers had authorised him to do. But the monk was a match for him.
‘The only damage you shall do,’ said the friar, ‘shall be by making a hole in the wall as
you leave, which shall be a witness of the truth of what we have seen and heard and of the
story we shall tell.’
The Devil obeyed with alacrity and disappeared through the wall with a formidable
crash, after which the lawyer and his guest sat down to table, and the monk discoursed of
leading a good life; and at last he took the table-cloth and wrung it with both hands, and a
quantity of blood ran out of it which he said was the blood the lawyer had wrung from his
clients. Then the sinner began to shed tears and promised to make full reparation, and he
told the monk that if the hole in the wall were not stopped up, he feared the Devil would
come in by it again. So the friar advised him to place a statue of the Madonna before the
hole and an angel over it, to scare the Devil away. And so he did.
Another Venetian legend of slightly earlier date tells how there was once in the
confraternity of Saint John
the Evangelist a man who led a bad life, to the great scandal of all who knew
him. One of the brethren having died, the Superior hoped to touch the heart of Tassini,
under ‘San
that wicked man by asking him to bear the Cross in the funeral procession. ‘I Lio.’
will neither walk in the procession to-day,’ answered the sinner, ‘nor do I
wish to be so accompanied when the Devil carries me off.’ After some time he died, and
the brethren proceeded to bury him, walking in procession after the Cross; but when they
reached the bridge of San Lio it became so heavy that it was impossible to lift it from the
ground, much less to carry it. The Superior now remembered the words of the blasphemer,
and told the story to the brethren while
they halted. So they all decided that the Cross must not follow the procession,
and thereupon it instantly became light again, and was carried back to the Picture
representin
chapel of Saint John the Evangelist. g the scene,
The fireside is the natural place for telling stories, and there is certainly Mansueti;
some connection in the human mind between firelight and the fabulous. Accademia delle belle
Dante tells that in his time the women of Venice consulted the fire in order to Arti.
know the future. When a girl was engaged to be married she appealed to one
of the burning logs, and decided from the augury whether she was to be happy or unhappy.
Those who wanted money struck the log with the tongs, calling out softly, ‘Ducats!
ducats!’ If the sparks flew out abundantly there was some hope that a rich relation might
die and leave the inquirer a legacy. When the sparks were few and faint, poverty was
prophesied.
Unlike all other Italians, who believe that hunchbacks bring good luck, the Venetians
feared them excessively. A Venetian proverb says, ‘Leave three steps between thyself and

those whom God has marked, eight if it is a hunchback, and twenty-eight if the man be
lame.’
One of the pretty superstitions of Venetian mothers was that if they took their little
children out before dawn on Saint John’s Day, the twenty-fourth of June, so that the
morning dew might dampen their cheeks and hair, they would have lovely complexions
and golden locks. There are old Venetian lullabies that promise babies the midsummer
dew.

RIO S. SOFIA, NIGHT

IX

THE DECADENCE
The seventeenth century, like the fourteenth, was one of transition; but whereas the earlier
period was one of improvement, the latter was one of decay. When time at last began to do
its work upon the Republic, Venice had been independent nine hundred years; she was still
at the height of her glory, still in the magnificence of her outward splendour, but the long-
strained machinery of government was beginning to wear out. At the commencement of
the seventeenth century all Italy seemed to be threatened by war; the peace
patched up between Philip II. of Spain and Henry IV. of France at Vervins had
been of an unsatisfactory and precarious nature; the Holy See was more and 1598. Rom.
vii. 5.
more on its guard against the Protestant powers, and Spain took advantage of
this in order to sow discord between the court of Rome and other governments. Venice was
especially involved in these difficulties, because she had signed in 1589 a commercial
treaty with the Grisons which had greatly displeased Spain, the latter being then in
possession of Milan. The Republic was accused of being too obliging to
Protestants, and her enemies assured the Pope that she had seriously Rom. vi.
412.
endangered the safety of the Catholic Church by allowing the English
ambassador to have an Anglican Church service in his private oratory. The complaints of
Clement VIII. and Paul V. were received with stony indifference by the Republic, which
never had the slightest respect for Rome. The latter had many causes of complaint. Venice
had been granted in former times the privilege of trying priests for ordinary crimes in the
ordinary courts, on condition that the Patriarch should sit among the judges. Little by little
the Venetian government stretched this privilege to make it apply to all suits whatsoever
brought
against ecclesiastics, and in most cases the Patriarch was not even
represented. It chanced, at the very time when the Pope had Rom. vii.
43, notes.

CAMPIELLO DELLE ANCORE

complained of the liberty granted to the English ambassador, that two priests were accused
of an abominable crime, and were tried like ordinary delinquents. This encroachment upon

the bulls of Innocent VIII. and Paul III. took place just when the Senate was passing a law
which greatly restricted the holding of property by the clergy. As if these facts were not
enough to show the Pope that the Venetian flock intended to manage its own corner of the
Catholic fold in its own way, the government, on the death of the Patriarch, named as his
successor a member of the house of Vendramin, and merely announced the fact to the court
of Rome, although the old canonical law required that in cases where governments were
authorised to appoint their bishops, the latter should be examined and approved by the
Pope’s delegates.
Spain took advantage of all these circumstances to bring about a complete rupture
between Venice and
the Holy See. Paul V. now hesitated no longer, and discharged a major
excommunication against the whole Venetian State. This measure produced Rom. vii.
45, 50-51.
little impression on the Senate, and none at all on the Doge Leonardo
Dandolo. He declared openly that the sentence was unjust, and therefore null and void.
The Capuchin, Theatin, and Jesuit orders closed their churches in obedience to the Pope,
and were immediately expelled from Venetian territory by the government. The Pope’s
wrath was as tremendous as it was futile, and it is impossible to say how far matters might
have gone if Henry IV. had not used his influence to bring about a reconciliation. It was his
interest to do so in order that Venice, being friendly to him, might in a measure balance the
power of hostile Spain, and he sent the Cardinal de Joyeuse to Italy to try and obtain from
the Pope some concession which
might facilitate an act of submission on the part or the Republic. Spain was
playing a double game as usual, but the Cardinal was too much for the Rom. vii.
53.
Spanish diplomatists, and he brought about an arrangement by which Venice
handed over to the Pope the two priests who were on trial, and
permitted the Patriarch to undergo the examination required by the canonical
law. On his side the Pope exempted from that examination all future Rom. vii.
64.
Patriarchs.
It is a singular fact that the usually docile Venetian population greatly resented the
attitude taken by the government towards the Holy See. The Doge himself was hissed and
howled at when he went to the church of Santa Maria Formosa on the Feast of Candlemas.
‘Long live the Doge Grimani, the father of the poor,’ yelled the rabble, for Grimani had
been a man of exemplary piety and had been dead and buried for some time. ‘The day will
come when you shall wish to go to church and shall not be able!’ screamed others. Even
after the reconciliation with the Pope,
Spain did not cease to conspire against the Republic, and while
persecuting the Catholics in Valtellina tried to make out that the Republic was Rom. vii.
251.
allied with the Protestant powers because it opposed those persecutions.
It is impossible to speak of the quarrels between Venice and Rome without mentioning
the monk Paolo Sarpi who played so large a part in them. At the

SANTA MARIA FORMOSA

time when the attitude of the Pope made it clear that serious trouble was at hand, the
Signory felt the need of consulting a theologian in order to give her resistance something
like an orthodox shape. There was at that time in Venice a monk well known for his
profound learning and austere life. He had entered the order of the Servites as a novice at
the age of thirteen, and was now fifty-four years old. In more than forty years
his love of retirement and study and his profound devotion had suffered no
change. He was brought from his seclusion by an order from the Senate to Rom. vii.
73, 77.
give his opinions on the burning questions of the moment. Fra Paolo Sarpi
vigorously sustained the cause of the Republic, and was at once denounced to the Pope as
a sectarian and a secret partisan of the Protestants. Fanatics attempted to assassinate him,
and the government spread the report that the murder
had been attempted by the court of Rome. These reports further exasperated
the Vatican against him, while the Republic supported him all the more Statue of
Fra Paolo
obstinately and consulted him on every occasion. He was installed in a little Sarpi
house in the Square of Saint Mark’s in order to be within easy reach of the erected in
1812 in the

ducal palace, and the severest penalties were threatened for any attempt church of
Santa
against his life. Fosca, near
In spite of these precautions two more attempts were made to assassinate the spot
where he
him, and he was heard to say that death would be preferable to the existence narrowly
which the government obliged him to lead. Nevertheless he lived sixteen escaped
years in the service of the Republic. The unbounded confidence which was assassinati
on, Marsili.
placed in him is amply proved by the fact that he, and he only, in the history
of the Council of Ten, was allowed free access to its archives, a privilege which, oddly
enough, proved fatal to him; for it was while working on his own account amongst those
documents that he caught a cold from which he never recovered, and he died three months
afterwards in the winter of 1622. On the fourteenth of January he felt his end approaching,
and the news was at once known throughout the city. The Signory at once sent for Fra
Fulgenzio, his most intimate friend. ‘How is Fra Paolo?’ inquired the Ten. ‘He is at the last
extremity,’ answered the monk. ‘Has he all his wits?’ ‘As if he were quite well,’ answered
Fra Paolo’s friend.
Immediately three questions regarding an important affair were sent to the dying man,
who concentrated his mind upon them and dictated the answers with marvellous clearness
and precision. His last words were a prayer for his country’s enduring greatness. ‘Esto
perpetua!’ he prayed as he closed his eyes for ever.
The government gave him a magnificent funeral, and ordered the sculptor Campagna
to make a marble bust of him for the church of the Servites; but the Venetian ambassador
in Rome advised the Republic not to rouse the Pope’s anger again by such a tribute to the
great monk’s memory. We are not called upon to decide upon the orthodoxy of Fra Paolo’s
opinions, but he was undeniably one of the greatest and most gifted Italians of the
seventeenth century.
The troubles with Rome, and the general excommunication which had brought them to
a crisis, had disturbed the confidence of the Venetian people in their government more than
anything that had happened for years; and soon afterwards matters were made worse by
the terrible judicial murder of Antonio Foscarini, in which England was deeply concerned.
Foscarini was a fine specimen of the patriotic Venetian noble, devoted to his country,
imbued with the most profound respect for the aristocratic caste to which he belonged,
haughty and contemptuous towards most other people, as the following anecdote shows.
He was in Paris as ambassador when Maria de’ Medici, the wife of Henry IV., was
crowned, and as he had only recently arrived he was not acquainted with all his diplomatic
colleagues when he met them in the church of Saint Denis. After the ceremony he bowed
to the Spanish Ambassador, who inquired who the stranger was who saluted him. Foscarini
introduced himself. ‘Oh,’ exclaimed the Spaniard, ‘the Ambassador of the Pantaloons!’
‘Pantaloon’ was a Venetian theatrical mask, and the word had become a contemptuous
nickname for the Venetians. But the Spaniard
had counted without his host, for Foscarini fell upon him then and there. He
described what he did in a letter to his government: ‘I loaded the Spanish Molmenti,
St. e Ric.
Ambassador with vigorous blows and kicks, as he deserved.’

A Venetian, Pietro Gritti, who was in Foscarini’s suite, wrote a letter at the same time
in which he said that his chief kicked the Spanish Ambassador down the whole length of
the court.
Foscarini was afterwards ambassador in England, and the long series of circumstances
which led to his tragic end dates from that period. He was still young, he was inclined to
be fond of amusement, and for some unknown reason the secretaries of embassy who were
sent with him hated him and calumniated him in the basest manner, accusing him to the
Council of Ten of being a Protestant in secret, and of carrying on a treacherous
correspondence with the Spanish government. But there was worse than this. A famous
French spy, La Forêt, bribed Foscarini’s valet, Robazza, got access to the ambassador’s
rooms when he was out, and copied his most important letters for the French government.
His second secretary of embassy, Muscorno, obtained leave to return to Venice on
pretence of visiting his father who was ill, and when Foscarini was suddenly recalled he
found the ground prepared for an abominable action against him. He himself, his valet, and
his chaplain were all imprisoned, and his trial for high treason began. It proceeded very
slowly, but he was acquitted after having been in prison three years, for Robazza confessed
his treachery without being tortured. Having been declared innocent of high treason,
Foscarini had little difficulty in disproving some minor accusations that were brought
against him; and a few weeks after his release he appeared before the Senate to give an
official account of his embassy in England. Muscorno, who had accused him falsely, was
condemned to two years’ imprisonment in a fortress; Robazza, the valet who had been
bribed, had his right hand struck off and was exiled for twenty years.
James I. of England sent Foscarini especial congratulations, and he was again
employed in important affairs. Unhappily, however, Muscorno had a successor worthy of
him in the person of Girolamo Vano, a professional spy in the service of the Republic. If
by any chance the smallest State secret was known abroad, it was always insinuated by
Foscarini’s enemies that he was responsible for divulging it, and it was quite in keeping
with the ordinary practice of the Venetian government to employ spies to watch a man who
had been once suspected, even though he had been declared innocent and was again in
high office.
The spy Vano took advantage of Foscarini’s friendship, or affection, for the English
Countess of Arundel, as a means of making out a strong case
against him. Foscarini had known her in London, and she had afterwards
made long visits to Venice, in order to be near her sons, who were making Rom. vii.
183.
their studies at the university of Padua. At her house Foscarini often met the
Envoy of Florence and the secretaries of the Spanish and Austrian embassies.
She did not spend all her time in Venice, however, but was often many months in
England. It was when she was returning to Venice after one of these absences that she was
stopped at some distance from the city by a messenger from the English ambassador, Sir
Henry Wotton, who entreated her to turn back. The unfortunate Foscarini had been
convicted of high treason and strangled, and his corpse was that very morning hanging
between the two red columns of the fatal window in the ducal palace. Lady Arundel’s

name had been connected during the trial with that of the condemned man, and the
ambassador was anxious to save her any possible trouble.
But she was not of the sort that turns back from danger at such times, and that very
evening she reached

GRAND CANAL, LOOKING TOWARDS MOCENIGO PALACE

the English Embassy and demanded an audience of the Doge; it was with the greatest
difficulty that she could be made to understand the impossibility of being admitted until
the next morning, and she reluctantly retired for the night to her hired house, that
Mocenigo palace which was afterwards successively inhabited by Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu and by Lord Byron.
On the morrow the ambassador went with her to the ducal palace, and she must have
passed below the window from which the body of her friend had hung all the previous day.
She was admitted to the presence of the Signory, and the Doge made her sit on his right
hand. She now learned that she was believed to have allowed Foscarini to use her house as
a place from which to carry on intrigues with foreign courts. Sir Henry Wotton spoke in

the Countess’s defence, and proved that her relations with Foscarini had always been of
the most honourable character, and that the two had not met for many months. England’s
star was in the ascendant, Elizabeth had reigned, and it was not good to contradict an
English ambassador nor to speak lightly of an English lady. The Doge made the Countess
his most humble excuses and promised to send them to her husband, the Earl Marshal,
through the Venetian ambassador in London.
The Senate took cognisance of the affair also, and voted a small sum of money to be
expended in a present of comfits and wax to the Countess, this being the custom for all
persons of quality who appeared before the Signory. But that was all. Lady Arundel had
exculpated herself, but so far Foscarini’s guilt seemed to be so incontrovertibly proved,
that Fra Paolo Sarpi refused to accept a legacy which the unhappy patrician had left him in
his last will.
But as time went on the whole of Vano’s fabricated evidence began to go to pieces. The
Inquisitors of State themselves seem to have been the first to suspect that they had made a
mistake, and before long the dreadful truth was only too clear. Foscarini
had been perfectly innocent and had been murdered by justice. It was not a
case that could be hushed and put out of the way, either, for too many people Rom. vii.
196;
knew what had happened. Armand
The Council of Ten made amends: let us give them such credit as we can Baschet,
Arch. 631.
for their public repentance, without inquiring too closely what pressure was
brought to bear upon them by the public, and not improbably by England. Monsieur
Baschet becomes lyric in his praise of their magnanimity. For my part, I do not think it
would have been safe for the Council to try and hide its mistake. The Ten apologised
amply before the world: that is the important matter. Monsieur Baschet gives the original
text of the apology, of which I translate a part from the Italian:—
‘Since the Providence of our Lord God has disposed, by means truly miraculous and
incomprehensible to human intelligence, that the authors and promoters of the lies and
impostures machinated against our late beloved and noble Antonio Foscarini should be
discovered ..., it behoves the justice and mercy of this Council, whose especial business it
is, for the general quiet and safety to protect the immunity of the honour and reputation of
families, to rehabilitate as far as possible those who lie under the imputation of an
infamous crime ...,’ and so on.
The Ten also decreed that an inscription should be set up in the church of Sant’
Eustachio, recording the error of the court, a unique example of such a public and enduring
retractation.
Other circumstances occurred to prove that organisation of the Venetian tribunals was
beginning to wear out. Too many conflicting regulations had been introduced, and there
were too many magistracies. Venice was ‘over-administered,’ as generally happens to old
countries, and sometimes to new ones that are too anxious to be scientifically governed.
The jurisdictions of the different officials often encroached upon one another. The three
Inquisitors of State were frequently at odds with the other seven members of the Council
of Ten, and in the confusion which this caused it was impossible that the laws should be as
well administered as formerly.

About this time a grave case enlightened the public as to certain abuses of which the
existence had not
been previously suspected. The Council of Ten was always charged with the
duty of seeing that the Doge performed to the letter the promises of the Rom. vii.
210, 215,
‘Promission ducale.’ These solemn engagements were several times violated 223, 229.
by the Doge Corner for the advantage of his sons. He allowed one of them to
accept the dignity of the Cardinalate while two others were made senators, but as the
Council of Ten did not like to interfere, one of its heads, Renier Zeno, took upon himself to
impeach the Doge. The latter was accused of illegal acts in contradiction with the
‘Promission,’ and the question was taken up by the whole aristocracy and discussed before
all the different Councils. The opposite parties were fast reaching a state of exasperation,
when one of the Doge’s sons attempted the life of Renier Zeno. He and his accomplices
were merely exiled to Ferrara, and the lenity of the sentence sufficiently shows the
weakness of the government.
At the same time Renier Zeno was arbitrarily forbidden, contrary to all law, to call into
question the conduct of the courts in general, but he was too proud and energetic to submit
to such despotism, and what it pleased the Council of Ten to call his ‘pride’ served his
adversaries as a pretext for accusing him. The Council had the imprudence to condemn
him to ten years’ imprisonment in the fortress of Cattaro; but this was too much, and the
Ten were soon forced to revoke the sentence as completely as they had annulled that of the
unfortunate Foscarini. But the world saw, and the prestige of the Council was gone; the
government cast about in vain for some means of restoring it, and could find nothing to do
except to make a few reforms and changes in its old system of spying and repression.
Ever since the fourteenth century there had been a locked box with a slit in it, placed in
a public part of the ducal palace, into which any one might drop an anonymous written
accusation against any one else, from the Doge down. Little by little the use of this means
of ‘informing’ developed, until it had now become common to try cases on the mere
strength of such unsupported accusations. The boxes were called the Lions’ Mouths on
account of the shape they had taken, and there was much talk about them when it was
attempted to reform the Code of Laws in the seventeenth century. A decree of the year
1635 restored the old regulations as to the nature of the misdeeds which might be thus
denounced.

THE FONDAMENTA S. GIORGIO, REDENTORE IN DISTANCE

It was decided that if the accusation was signed, four-fifths of the judges must agree
before the case could be brought to trial; if the information was anonymous there could be
no trial without the consent of the Doge, his counsellors, and the chiefs of the Ten to bring
the case before the Great Council, and the trial could not be opened unless it were voted
necessary by five-sixths of the assembly. These measures were no doubt prudent, but it
was the system itself that was at fault; any Venetian was authorised by it to take upon
himself the duties of a detective, and was encouraged to spy on his neighbours, because
the courts generally rewarded the informer after a conviction.
It is always a fault in a government to make laws unchangeable like those of the Medes
and Persians, and some authors have said that the Venetian Republic never looked upon
any of its decrees as immutable. This is true as regards the form, for no government ever
remodelled its laws more often in their text. Sometimes the same decree appears in more
than one hundred shapes, but neither the spirit nor the point of view is modified. A law
passed against the freemasons in the eighteenth century is conceived in precisely the same
spirit as the decrees against the conspirators in the days of Baiamonte Tiepolo and Marin
Faliero; the last Missier Grande of the police was very like the sbirri of the Middle Ages in

character and in methods. The Republic was growing old; the tree might still bear fruit, but
the fruit it bore had no longer within it the seeds of future life.
It cannot be denied that Venetian diplomacy was better of its kind than Venetian
magistracies. During the thirty years’ war, for instance,

Venice never once lost sight of the great object it had in view, which was to
abase the closely related powers of Spain and Austria, while skilfully avoiding Rom. vii.
275.
any action which might bring about reprisals.
On the other hand, it was impossible to remain neutral in the war of succession to the
Duchy of Mantua, in which Carlo Gonzaga, Duke
of Nevers, was supported by France, and Ferrante Gonzaga by the Emperor. As
Austria’s Rom. vii.
276.

STEPS OF THE REDENTORE

enemy, Venice naturally backed the former. Venice furnished him abundantly with money
and soldiers, and between the month of November 1629 and the month of March following,
spent six hundred and thirty-eight thousand ducats to support the party which was defending
the cause of Italian independence against the Empire. Austria nevertheless succeeded, and
got the better of the formidable coalition; but though the Imperials took possession of
Mantua at the time, they were obliged to give it up to Carlo Gonzaga soon afterwards, in
April 1631, by the treaty of Cherasco.

About the same time Venice suffered another terrible visitation of the plague, and more
than thirty-six thousand persons perished in the city
alone. On a similar occasion in 1575 the Venetians had vowed a church to the
Redeemer if the plague was stayed, and the church they built is that of the Rom. vii.
302.
Redentore; in 1630 a church was vowed to the Blessed Virgin, under the name
of the Madonna della Salute. This was at first only a wooden
building, in which a great thanksgiving took place on the first of November.
The present church was not finished until 1687. Rom. vii.
306.
Amongst the many circumstances which hastened the decadence of the
Republic during the seventeenth century was the terrible war in Crete. In
that memorable struggle with the Turks for the possession of the island the
Venetians displayed much of their old heroism and good generalship, but the Quadri,
275.
Republic was no longer young, and could not make such gigantic efforts with
impunity; Venice was permanently weakened by that last great war. It originated in a piece
of rash imprudence on the part of the Knights of Malta, who seized a number of Turkish
vessels; it lasted twenty-five years, and it cost the Republic her best generals and her bravest
soldiers, besides vast sums of money. Yet the enthusiasm was boundless; mindful of Enrico
Dandolo and Andrea Contarini, the aged Doge Francesco Erizzo determined to take
command himself, but death overtook him on the eve of his departure.
Prodigies of valour were performed. Tommaso Morosini, with a single ship, victoriously
resisted the attack of forty-five Turkish galleys, but lost his life in the engagement. Lorenzo
Marcello took eighty-four Turkish vessels and their crews with a far inferior force, but like
Morosini he was killed in the fight. Ten thousand Turks were slain and five thousand were
taken prisoners.
Europe looked on in amazement and admiration, and many brave captains and soldiers
thought it an honour to serve under the standard of Saint Mark. There were more Germans
and Frenchmen among these volunteers than soldiers of other nations, and Louis XIV.
himself hoped to associate his name with the campaign. He sent the Duc de Beaufort with a
considerable fleet, twelve of his best regiments, and a detachment of the Guards, besides a
great number of volunteers under the command of the Duc de Noailles. Yet all was in vain,
and after a quarter of a century of fighting Venice was obliged to yield Crete to the Turks.
The peace was of no long duration, for the Turks attacked Austria next, and, though the
brave Sobieski drove them away from Vienna, they allied themselves with the Hungarians,
and became so dangerous to the Empire that the Pope himself was in anxiety for the safety
of Christianity in general. Exhausted by her long war in Crete, the Republic attempted to
decline all requests that she should join a league against the Turks, but was at last obliged to
yield, and war was renewed in the Archipelago and the Peloponnesus.
Francesco Morosini, the same general who a few years earlier had been obliged to
evacuate Crete after the most heroic efforts, was placed in
command of the Venetian forces and commissioned to drive the Turks from the
islands of Santa Maura and other strong places in the Ionian Sea. On the Rom. vii.
490.
eleventh of August 1687 a swift felucca brought to Venice news that Morosini
had taken Patras and Corinth, besides Santa Maura. In joyful

enthusiasm the Senate forthwith voted the victor a bronze bust, which was
placed in hall of the Council of Ten, with the standard taken from the Turks. It Bust of
Francesco
bears the inscription:— Morosini,
Francisco Mauroceno Hall of the
Council of
Peloponnesiaco adhuc viventi Ten.
Senatus.
Another monument in Venice recalls the glorious war of the Peloponnesus. After having
taken Athens, Morosini hastened to the Parthenon, for he
appears to have been a man of highly cultivated tastes. To his inexpressible
disappointment he found the temple half ruined, for the Turks had used it as a Quadri,
302; Rom.
powder magazine, and a Venetian bomb had blown it up. Morosini was so vii. 491.
much overcome that he broke out into lamentations over a loss which nothing
could replace. But there amidst piles of ruins he saw two splendid lions of marble from
Pentelicus, which he at once caused to be placed on board his vessel, rather to save them,
perhaps, than to exhibit them as trophies. In Venice they were set up on each side of the gate
of the Arsenal.
Morosini was one of the few Venetian generals who was not made to suffer for his
success. When
at the very height of his triumph he learnt that he was elected Doge, and
though he had little success in the campaign after that, and was even 1688. Rom.
vii. 504.
dangerously ill, he was magnificently received when he returned to Venice.
Pope Alexander VIII., Ottoboni, sent him the staff and military hat which it was customary
to give to generals who had distinguished themselves in war against infidels. But it was
clear that in his absence nothing could be accomplished, and he soon obtained permission of
the government to take command of the Venetian forces once more. His departure on the
twenty-fourth of May 1693 was a sort of national festivity. The Senate went to fetch him in
his own apartment, and a long procession accompanied him to Saint Mark’s. Preceded by
halberdiers, singers, files of servants in liveries of scarlet velvet and gold, many priests,
canons, and the Patriarch himself, besides the traditional silver trumpets, the Doge walked
between the Pope’s nuncio and the French ambassador. He wore the full dress of a Venetian
commander-in-chief, which was of gold brocade with a long train. But even in his glory the
Venetians noticed with displeasure and suspicion that he carried in his hand the staff of the
General, which he evidently preferred to the sceptre of the Doge, and which suggested to the
crowd the thought that he might seize the supreme power.

THE NAVE OF S. STEFANO

On the following day he embarked upon the Bucentaur, which took him on board his
flagship amidst the applause of the crowd, the pealing of the church bells, and a salute of
artillery from the fort of Saint Nicholas on the Lido, as his vessel got under way.
The expedition proved of little advantage to the Republic, and cost Morosini his life, for
his health was undermined by the fatigues of his previous campaigns, and he died in the
Greek province of Romania, where he had hoped to rest for a few weeks. His body was
brought back to Venice, and buried with great pomp in the church of Santo Stefano.
The war went on under his successor, Silvestro Valier, but it now entered upon a new
phase, for the Czar Peter the Great threatened the Turks on their northern frontier, while the
Venetian fleet held them in check in the south. A treaty of peace was signed at Carlowitz in
1699, by which the Republic kept her conquests in the Morea as far as the isthmus of
Corinth, including the islands of Egina, Santa Maura, and other less important places.
Dalmatia was also left to her, but she was obliged to withdraw her troops from Lepanto and
Romania on the north side of the Gulf of Corinth.

From all this it is clear that the military spirit was still alive in Venice, when the
administration had almost
completely broken down. Nothing gives the measure of the situation better
than the fact that in order to meet the expenses of the war in Crete any Rom. vii.
370, 371,
Venetian who would engage to support a thousand soldiers for one year, or any 487;
foreigner who would support twelve hundred for the same period, was allowed Quadri,
thereby to have and hold all the privileges of nobility. This speculation was 293.
never sanctioned by law, and was even rejected by the Great Council when
proposed, but it was nevertheless actually practised, and a number of seats in the Great
Council were sold to the highest bidder. The government went one step farther, and sold the
office of procurator of Saint Mark. The decadence had reached the point of decay.

THE RIVA FROM THE DOGANA

X

THE LAST HOMES—THE LAST GREAT LADIES
Two men, a painter and a dramatist, have left us the means of knowing exactly what the
eighteenth century
was in Venice. It is not a paradox to say that Longhi painted comedies, and that
Goldoni wrote portraits. Both were Venetians, and they had the courage to Pictures of
Venetian
depict and describe respectively the glaring faults of their own people, not life by
realising, perhaps, that the general corruption was beyond remedy, and that the Longhi;
end was at hand. Accademia,
Room XIV.,
and Museo
Correr,
Rooms II.
and IX.

CAMPO S. BARTOLOMEO, STATUE OF GOLDONI

Look at Longhi’s ‘Fortune-Teller’ or ‘Dancing-Master,’ at his ‘Tailor,’ his ‘Music-
Master,’ or his ‘Toilet,’ and you may see precisely what the Republic was when it died of
old age; there are all the successions of light colours, as in a pastel-painter’s box; you can

hear the high running laughter that rings from rosy lips, you can guess what dreams of
pleasure fill those pretty heads, and yet there is something sad about it all; unless one
belongs to that little band of human beings who love the eighteenth century, it sets one’s
teeth on edge—like the dance music in the ‘Ballo in Maschera,’ danced while Riccardo is
dying. Something rings false; I think there is too much discrepancy between what we see or
read and what we really know about that time. About other centuries, even the nineteenth
and twentieth, we can still have illusions, but the eighteenth was all a sham that went to
pieces with the French Revolution.
As for the position of women at that time, it was never lower. They were dolls, and
nothing more. They were perhaps more neglected in the sixteenth century, but, at least in
theory, there was still some respect for them. In the eighteenth they existed only to adorn
places of amusement, theatres, and gambling houses. The biographer of that remarkable
woman, Giustina Renier Michiel, says they were so little esteemed that it seemed useless to
teach them anything, and he adds that the Signory looked upon an educated woman as a
being dangerous to society and the State.
Most young girls of noble family were brought up in convents, where the most crass
ignorance accompanied the loosest ideas of morality. The greater number of these convents
were only nominally connected with the ecclesiastical authorities. In practice
they were controlled by lay inspectors, ‘Provveditori sopra Monasteri,’ who
were commissioned by the government to superintend the morals of convents Rom. viii.
351.
in general, but found it much more diverting to help in undermining them.
While the girls were being brought up in such places, their father was chiefly
preoccupied in assuring and increasing the fortune which was to be inherited by his eldest
son. The natural consequence of this was that the marriage portions of the daughters became
smaller and smaller, so that it was found hard to marry them at all, and much less
troublesome to leave them in their convents for life. Each of the fashionable convents was a
little court of noble ladies; in the one, Her Most Reverend Excellency the Mother Abbess
was a Rezzonico; in another, the Noble Dame Eleonora Dandolo was Mistress of the Larder.
The scholars did not leave the convent at all while their education lasted, but nothing
was neglected which could amuse them, and their principal lessons were in dancing,
singing, and reciting verses. In Carnival, the convent parlours were turned into theatres or
ballrooms; dames and cavaliers danced the minuet or the ‘furlana’; ‘Punch,’ ‘Pantaloon,’
and ‘Pierrot’ vied with each other to make the bevies of aristocratic young ladies laugh at
jests they should never have understood.
Even during the rest of the year the convents were what would now be called brilliant
social centres, to
which married women came accompanied by their officially recognised
‘cicisbei,’ while young gentlemen of leisure flirted with the Mutinelli,
Ult. 92.
scholars. It was even common for the girls to keep up a regular correspondence
with their admirers.
Mutinelli,
Take the following passage which I translate from Goldoni’s Ult. 61-62.
autobiography, a book which may

be trusted and is singularly free from exaggeration. The adventure happened to
him in Chioggia. Goldoni,
vol. i. chap.
I had always cultivated the acquaintance of the nuns of Saint Francis, where there were some very xix.
beautiful scholars, and the Signora B. (one of the nuns) had one under her direction who was very lovely
and very rich and amiable. She would have been exactly to my taste, but my youth, my condition, and my want of fortune
did not allow me to entertain any illusions.
However, the nun did not refuse me hope, and when I went to see her she always made the young lady come down to
the parlour. I felt that I should become attached to her in good earnest, and the governess (the nun) seemed glad of it; and
yet I could not believe it possible. But one day I spoke to her of my inclination and of my timidity; she encouraged me and
confided the secret to me. This young lady had good qualities and property, but there was something doubtful about her
birth. ‘This little defect is nothing,’ said the veiled lady; ‘the girl is well behaved and well brought up, and I will be surety
to you for her character and conduct. She has a guardian,’ she continued, ‘and he must be won over, but leave that to me. It
is true that this guardian, who is very old and ruined in health, has some pretensions as to his ward, but he is wrong, and—
well, as I am also interested in this—leave it to me,’ she repeated, ‘and I will manage for the best.’ I confess that after this
talk, after this confidence and this encouragement, I began to think myself happy. The Signorina N. did not look unkindly
on me, and I considered the matter as settled. All the convent had noticed my inclination for the pupil, and there were some
young ladies who knew the intrigues of the parlour and had pity on me, and explained to me what was happening; and this
is how they did it. The windows of my room were precisely opposite the belfry of the convent. In building it there had been
placed in it several casements of cloudy glass through which one could vaguely make out the outlines of people who came
near them. I had several times noticed at those apertures, which were oblong, both figures and gestures, and in time I was
able to understand that the signs represented letters of the alphabet, and that words were formed, and that one could talk at
a distance: almost every day I had half an hour of this mute conversation, in which, however, we conversed properly and
decently.
By means of this hand-alphabet I learned that the Signorina N. was very soon to be married to her guardian. Angry at
the Signora B.’s way of acting, I went to see her during the day in the afternoon, quite determined to show her all my
displeasure. She is sent for, she comes, she looks steadily at me, and perceiving that I am angry, guessing what had
happened, she does not give me time to speak but is the first to attack me vigorously, with a sort of transport.
‘Well, sir,’ she said to me, ‘you are displeased, I see it in your face’—I tried to speak, but she does not hear me, raises
her voice and goes on—‘Yes, sir, the Signorina N. is to be married, and she is going to marry her guardian.’ I tried to raise
my voice too. ‘Hush, hush,’ she cries, ‘listen to me; this marriage is my doing: after having reflected upon it, I helped it on,
and on your account I wished to hasten it.’ ‘On my account?’ I said. ‘Hush,’ she replied, ‘you shall understand the conduct
of a prudent woman who has a liking for you. Are you,’ she went on, ‘in a position to take a wife? No, for a hundred
reasons. Was the Signorina to wait your convenience? No, she had not the power to do so; it was necessary to marry her;
she might have married a young man and you would have lost her forever. She marries an old man, a man in his decline
and who cannot live long; and though I am not acquainted with the joys and disappointments of marriage, yet I know that a
young wife must shorten the life of an old husband, and so you will possess a beautiful widow who will have been a wife
only in name. Be quite easy on this point, therefore; she will have improved her own affairs, she will be much richer than
she is now, and in the meantime you will make your journey. And do not be in any anxiety about her; no, my dear friend,
do not fear; she will live in the world with her old fellow and I shall watch over her conduct. Yes, yes! She is yours, I will
be surety to you for that, and I give you my word of honour——’
And here comes in the Signorina N. and approaches the grating. The nun says to me with an air of mystery,
‘Congratulate the young lady on her marriage!’ I could bear it no longer; I make my bow and go away without saying
more. I never saw either the governess or her pupil again, and thank God it was not long before I forgot them both.

After reading such stories and looking into the archives of the ‘Superintendents of
Convents,’ it is easy to understand that Pope Gregory XIII.
should have exclaimed bitterly, ‘I am Pope everywhere except in Venice’; and
more than one of his successors in the eighteenth century had cause to repeat Rom. vi.
360.
his words. The Church protested in vain against the abuse of the veil by
Venetian ladies, for the State protected them on the specious pretext of superintending their
morals, and the remonstrances of the popes and of the patriarchs of Venice were not even
heard within the walls of those sham cloisters. With such a system of education and such
examples the bankruptcy of morality was merely a question of time. The number of
marriages diminished amongst the aristocracy, and when a young man made up his mind to
matrimony he consulted nothing but his financial interests.

The expenses of a fashionable marriage were considerable. There were always several
festive ceremonies in the bride’s house. The first was the
signature of the contract; the second, which followed soon afterwards, was a
gathering of all the relations and friends of the two families with a sort of Mutinelli,
Ult. 86;
standing collation, and it was on this occasion that the future bridegroom gave Goldoni,
his betrothed the first present, which was generally a big diamond set in other vol. i. chap.
stones, and was called the ‘ricordino,’ the ‘little remembrance.’ xxvi.

A few days before the wedding the two families and their friends met again, and if the
man’s mother was still alive it was she who gave the bride a pearl necklace; otherwise the
duty fell to one of his near female relations. This pearl necklace was thought absolutely
indispensable for the honour of the family, and the bride was bound to put it on at once and
to wear it till the end of the first year of her marriage. Where it would have caused financial
difficulty it was simply hired for the time, and was returned to the jeweller at the end of the
year.
After her marriage every well-born woman took a ‘cicisbeo’ or ‘cavalier servente.’
These cavaliers were in most cases, especially at the beginning
of the century, neither young, nor handsome, nor the least lover-like, though
there were Rom. ix. 13.

exceptions to the rule. The choice of them was often the occasion of the first
conjugal dispute, and a lady of the Condulmer family retired to a convent for Tassini,
under
life because her husband objected to the cavalier whom she wanted. ‘Grassi.’
The serving cavalier accompanied his lady on all occasions, for the
husband never did, and the two were
seen everywhere together, and especially under the felse of the gondola; for
ladies never used the gondola uncovered, even on beautiful summer evenings. Rom. viii.
207, 303,
And they were perpetually out, so that grave historians inform us that they only and ix. II;
spent a few hours of the night in their palaces, and during the day the time they Molmenti,
needed for dressing. When required, the ‘cicisbeo’ waited on his lady instead Vita Priv.
of her maid; her smallest caprices were his law, and she dragged him after her
everywhere, to mass, benediction, and the sermon. ‘The object of mass is to go to walk,’
said Businallo in one of his satires, after saying that the proper purpose of pilgrimages was
to make a great deal of noise.
Not unfrequently the cicisbei were mere adventurers who pretended to be great nobles
from other Italian cities, and to have left their homes in consequence of some misfortune.
Goldoni wrote a comedy called ‘Il Cavaliere e la Dama’ on the subject of the ‘cicisbei,’
whom he calls ‘singular beings, martyrs to gallantry, and slaves to the caprices of the fair
sex.’ In speaking of this piece, in his autobiography, he observes that he could not have
printed the word ‘cicisbeatura’ on the bill for fear of offending the numerous class whom he
intended to satirise.
He goes on to say of his play that a man is presented who is the husband of one lady and
the serving cavalier of another, and the mutual satisfaction of the two women is exhibited.
‘A married woman,’ Goldoni says, ‘complains to her cicisbeo that one of her lacqueys has
been disrespectful to her; the cavalier answers that the man should be punished. “And whose

business is it but yours to see that I am obeyed and respected by my servants?” cries the
lady.’
The playwright no doubt heard the speech in actual life. The cavalier was the real master
of the house in many families, yet now and then a husband could be jealous, though not in
the least in love.
Goldoni says that there were husbands who put up with their wives’ cavaliers in a
submissive spirit, but that there were others who were enraged
by those strange beings, who were like second masters of the house in
disorganised families. Goldoni,
vol. ii.
It is certain that the Venetian ladies cared more for gambling than for chap. x.
adornment, or anything else. In the morning they wore a dress of more or less
rich stuff, but always black, and when they went out they wore a long scarf, also black,
which they disposed with much grace upon their heads, crossed upon their bosom, and
knotted loosely behind the waist. This dress went by the general name of ‘Cendaleto,’ and it
was the custom to apply the appellation also to those who wore it. They said, for instance,
that there were so many ‘Cendaleti’ at a ceremony, meaning that number of ladies. Giustina
Renier Michiel, the historian of all that was left of grace and beauty in Venice, says that the
scarf had the magic power of making the plainest women pretty.
Though dress was simple enough on ordinary occasions, conforming to certain rules, yet
on gala occasions the latest fashions were consulted.
In earlier times Venice had set the fashion for the world, and beautifully
dressed dolls had been sent by the Venetian women’s tailors as models to Paris. Rom. viii.
303.
In the eighteenth century Paris sent dolls to Venice. These dolls were exhibited
at the fair of the Ascension, near the entrance to the Merceria, and took the place of fashion-
plates and dressmakers’ journals. The men wore the cut-away coat, breeches, silk stockings,
shoes with buckles, wigs, and three-cornered hats, then common throughout Italy and
France; but they had invented a singular fashion of their own, which was that of throwing a
light mantle of velvet, satin, or cloth over their hat and wig. It was called the ‘velada,’ and
was adorned with embroidery, lace, or a fringe. In the end, it was sometimes made of lace
only. As the law did not allow any member of the Great Council to appear in public without
his toga, the nobles introduced a fashion which soon became common in all classes; they
wore a black or white mask,

SS. GIOVANNI E PAOLO

and covered themselves entirely with a black silk mantle having a hood, on the top of which
they
placed the three-cornered hat. This garment was nothing, in fact, but a domino.
Of course the women soon discovered the advantages of a dress in which they Mutinelli,
Lessico; G.
could not only disguise themselves but could even pass for men. The R. Michiel,
‘Cendaleto’ remained as the proper dress for going out in the morning, but in i. 283.
the afternoon and evening, at

NIGHT ON THE RIVA

the theatre, at the ridotti, or in the piazza, the mask and domino became indispensable, and
men and women wore precisely the same three-cornered hat.
It was soon noticed, however, that the domino did not tend to improve the public morals,
and a decree was issued limiting its use to the period between the first Sunday in October

and Advent Sunday, and during Carnival and the festivities which took place at the
Ascension.
The women, no doubt, amused themselves in various ways, not excepting that form of
diversion in which women have such marked advantages over men; but their chief
enjoyment, if not their principal occupation, was gambling. Games of chance were played
for very high stakes in the ridotti, which were gaming-clubs, not much better than the ‘hells’
of modern cities. The most celebrated was that connected with the theatre of San Moisè,
which the government protected as a useful social institution. A patrician, generally a
senator, presided in his toga at the tables, in order to see that there was no cheating. The
singular rule of admission was that one must be either noble or masked, and the
consequence was that the Venetian ridotti were frequented not only by the Venetians
themselves, but by half the gamblers, adventurers, and blacklegs in Europe.
King Frederick IV. of Denmark once visited San Moisè disguised in a domino, and won
a large sum of money from a Venetian noble who was
risking the last remains of his fortune. On being told the circumstances, he
pretended to stumble, upset the table with all the money on it, and disappeared, Tassini,
under
leaving the embarrassed gentleman to pick up his gold again, which he did ‘Ridotto.’
with marvellous alacrity. The number of players at San Moisè was so great that
in 1768 the government enlarged the place, using for the purpose the proceeds of property
confiscated from the nuns, which terribly scandalised the population and provoked some
bitter epigrams. At the ridotto the most illustrious patrician ladies quarrelled for places at the
table with ladies of no character at all, and a contemporary observes that in order to pay
their gambling debts and continue to
amuse themselves, they were reduced to the last extremity. He adds that they
played from the hour of tierce, which is half-way between dawn and noon at Mutinelli,
Ult. 54.
all times of the year.
In 1780, when the Republic had but a few years more to live, the two ridotti of San
Moisè and San
Cassian, which had been protected and superintended by the government,
were suppressed, but the only result was that a new class of gaming-houses Rom. viii.
303, and ix.
came into existence called Casini, which were much worse in character than II.
the old establishments. Ruined nobles borrowed enormous sums from usurers,
and even from plebeians, sharing the winnings with the lender when successful, and being
entirely at his mercy if they lost. Some women kept private Casini of their own, to which
they invited
men and women; and while they played at Pharaoh, Basset, and Biribissi
within, the gondoliers played Morra at the landing outside. Mutinelli,
Ult.
Venice slept little, and was devoured day and night by the fever of
pleasure. The lighting of the city

THE SALUTE FROM THE RIVA

was paid for by the proceeds of the lotto, which had been introduced in 1734. Goldoni says
that the shops were always open until ten o’clock
at night, while a great many did not close till midnight, and some never shut at
all. In Venice, he continues, you would find eatables exposed for sale at Goldoni,
vol. i. chap.
midnight exactly as at midday, and all the eating-houses were open. It was not xxxv.
the custom to give many dinners or suppers in Venetian society, but a few such
occasions have remained famous, and the invited guests appear to have behaved with as
little restraint as if they had been in a common eating-house. A certain noble, of the Labia
family, once gave a supper at which he showed all his finest plate, and the guests could not
refrain from admiring the magnificent chiselled pieces of gold and silver that covered the
table. Suddenly, as the gaiety increased, the master of the house jumped up and began to
throw the plates and dishes through the open windows into the canal, accompanying this
mad proceeding with one of the worst puns ever made in the Italian
language, or rather in the Venetian dialect: ‘L’abia o non l’abia, sarò sempre Labia’—the
words mean, ‘Whether I have it or not I shall always be Labia.’

The conditions of married life in the decadence were such amongst the
nobles that it is best not to inquire too closely as to what went on. In Tassini,
under
a great number of cases husband and wife were like strangers to each other, ‘Labia.’
and the children were utterly neglected, when there were any. When divorce
becomes common, the family, which is the first of social institutions, soon Rom. viii.
ceases to exist, and no country has ever shown vitality or long endurance 303;
where society was not based on the relations of father, mother, and children to Mutinelli,
Ult. 86.
each other. There never was any divorce law in Italy, but there was, and is,
such a thing as the annullation of marriage. In Venice, between 1782 and 1796, the Council
of Ten registered two hundred and sixty-four applications for annullation, and the great part
of them were admitted.
As generally happens when a form of government is exhausted and is about to go to
pieces, the Venetian
people retained ideas of morality longer than the wealthy burghers or the worn-
out nobility; the wives of the artisans necessarily lived more at home than their Mutinelli,
Ult. 71.
richer sisters, and were generally able to keep their husbands. The love of
pleasure was too universal to admit of excepting a whole class from its influence, and to the
last the working people seem to have been very prosperous under the old government; but
their amusements were harmless and their pleasures innocent compared with those of the
upper thousands. The women of the people organised their diversions with a good deal of
system, forming groups among themselves, each of which had a presidentess and a
treasuress, who collected the subscriptions, kept the money in safety, and made out the
accounts when, at intervals, the little fund was drawn upon for excursions and parties of
pleasure, to which men were not invited.
On the morning of one of those appointed days, the women and girls met at the landing
from which they were to start, all dressed very much alike. Those who belonged to the class
of the better artisans wore a rather dark cotton skirt, a blouse of scarlet cloth, a chintz apron
with a design of large flowers, and lastly, a white linen kerchief called the ‘niziol,’ which
was to them what the black ‘cendal’ was to the Venetian ladies; and from ‘niziol’ the word
‘nizioleto’ was formed, like ‘cendaleto,’ and meant a pretty woman or girl of the people. Of
course, when they met for a day’s pleasure they wore whatever ornaments they possessed.
The women of the poorest class wore over the dark skirt a very wide apron which
covered it entirely when let down, but which they pulled up over their heads like a sort of
hood when they went out.
The fathers, husbands, and brothers of the women came with them as far as the boat, but
left them then, as the people would have thought it highly
improper that decent women should amuse themselves in the company of the
other sex. Yet for their protection two elderly men of unexceptionable Rom. ix. 18.
character went with them, as well as the necessary rowers, and it was a
common practice to be rowed about for a time before leaving the city, singing songs
together.
The principal diversions of the day were the picnic, which was a solid affair, a dance,
generally the country ‘villotta,’ accompanied by the singing of couplets, and the return to
Venice in the boat, illuminated with festoons of little coloured lanterns. At the landing they

parted, dividing what was left of the provisions, lest anything should be lost, and no doubt
each good wife did her best to bring home a few titbits for the men of her household, if only
to make them envy her for being a woman. I find no record of what the men did with
themselves on picnic days, but it must have been very quiet in the house, and they may have
felt that there were compensations even for being left at home.
Another time of gaiety was the evening after a regatta. Then the houses of the winners
were decked with garlands of green, and the doors were open to every friend; the silk flag,
which was the token of victory, was hung in a conspicuous place for all visitors
to admire, and when it grew late they all sat down to a plentiful supper, which
on those occasions generally consisted principally of several dishes of fish Molmenti,
Nuovi Studi,
washed down with copious draughts of the island wine. The last homes of 318.
Venice, in any real sense, were the homes of the working people.
Life in the country did little to bring the members of a noble family nearer together, but
there was a good deal of it, such as it was. At a time when France set the fashions, which she
was before long to impose on the greater part of Europe, every rich Venetian noble dreamt
of making a little Versailles of his own villa. The residences of the Marcello, the Corner, the
Gradenigo, the Foscarini, and the Pisani, on the road to Treviso and on the banks of the
Brenta, were so many little courts, in which every element was represented from the
sovereign to the parasite, from the parasite to the buffoon, and the lesser nobles imitated the
greater throughout a scale which descended from the sublime to the ridiculous. The villas
themselves were often decorated by the greatest artists. In the hall of the Pisani’s country-
house at Strà, for instance, Tiepolo had painted a wonderful picture representing the
reception of Henry III. in Venice.
In going from the city to the villas, people went by water as far as it was possible, and
each family had a sort of light house-boat for this purpose,
called a ‘burchiello,’ and fitted with all possible comfort. The travellers dined
and supped sumptuously on board, and spent most of their time in playing Molmenti,
Ult. 112,
cards; and when the end of the journey was reached a long round of pleasures 116.
and amusements began, in which the ‘cicisbei’ played an important and, one
would think, a terribly fatiguing part. They were assisted by regular relays of parasites who
were invited for a few days at a time, and who were expected to pay with ready flattery and
story-telling for the hospitality they received.
Eating then played a much larger part in what was called pleasure than we moderns can
well understand. We are ourselves no great improvement
on our fathers, in respect of manly virtue, faith in things divine, or honesty
when it does not happen to be the best policy; but as an age of men we are not Molmenti,
Vita Priv.
greedy of food. The Venetians were. Not only did they employ French cooks
and spend much time in considering what things to eat, but their dinners were so
interminably long, and the courses they ate were so numerous, that they found it convenient
to use three dining-rooms in succession for the same meal, the first being for the soup and
the beef, the second for the roast meats and vegetables, and the third for the pudding and
dessert.
The Venetians were near their end when they ceased to be men of business and turned
into gamblers and spendthrifts. All this extravagance, especially in the country, led to

financial embarrassment at the end of the season; and in order to satisfy the creditors who
then appeared in force, it was necessary to rackrent the peasants or to sell property and
produce at ruinous prices. In one of his comedies Goldoni makes a ruined nobleman say
again and again to his steward, ‘Caro vecchio, fè vu’—‘My dear old man, manage it
yourself.’ The expression was so true to life that not one but a number of nobles complained
to the government that they were being publicly libelled by a playwright.
Everything was in a state of decay already approaching ruin. When the Princess
Gonzaga came to Venice
she had such an abominable reputation that no Venetian lady had the courage
to present her to the society of the capital. At last, however, the Signora Tron, Archivio
Stor. Ital.
the wife of a procurator of Saint Mark, offered to do so. She introduced the fourth
Princess with these historic words: ‘Ladies, this is the series, vol.
xvi. p. 180.

RIO DELLA TORESELA

Princess Gonzaga. She belongs to an illustrious family. As for the rest, I will not answer
for her, nor for you, nor for myself.’
She was wise in refusing to answer for herself, at all events, for she was accused of
setting a higher price on
her box at the theatre than on herself. ‘That is true,’ she answered, ‘for I
sometimes give myself for nothing.’ Horatio
Brown,
It is comprehensible that where great ladies talked like this, a burgher dame Sketches.
should have put up her
daughter’s honour at a lottery, for which the tickets were sold at a sequin,
about fifteen shillings, each. Mutinelli,
Ult. 82.
The decadence was turning into final degeneration, and everything morbid
was hailed with enthusiasm.
Two lovers committed suicide, for instance, and immediately
handkerchiefs were sold everywhere adorned with a death’s head in one Carrer,
Annali, 34.
corner, and embroidered in the middle with the lovers’ initials surrounded with
stains of the colour of blood.
The average Venetian lady was at once ignorant and witty, yet here and there one
succeeded in cultivating her mind by reading and intercourse with the famous foreigners
who spent much time in Venice at the end of the eighteenth century. Giustina Renier Michiel
was undoubtedly the most remarkable and admirable Venetian woman of her times. She was
born in 1755, the daughter of Andrea Renier, afterwards Doge, and the niece of Marco
Foscarini. At the age of three she was sent to a convent of Capuchin nuns at Treviso; at nine
she was brought back to Venice and placed in a fashionable boarding-school kept by a
Frenchwoman, where she learned French badly, and Italian not at all. But the girl was a born
bookworm, and even in her school succeeded in reading a vast number of books, and in
filling her girlish imagination with a vast store of ideals. She naturally hated complication
and prejudice, and aspired to be simple and just. Like many women of independent mind,
she could not help associating dress with moral qualities and defects; and when she was old
enough to please herself, she always wore a long straight garment of woollen or white linen,
according to the season, and adorned her beautiful hair with a crown of roses. Such a
costume might surprise us nowadays, but she loved flowers, and deemed that to wear them
brought her nearer to nature. If she was obliged to wear fashionable clothes for some public
occasion, she spoke of them as a disguise, and hastened to ‘take off her mask and domino,’
as she expressed it, as soon as she reached home. ‘Molière may say that a Countess is
certainly something,’ she wrote in French to a friend; ‘he should have written that a
Countess is very little, or a Count either!’ She often used to say: ‘I should like to know why
every one does not try to please me, since it would take so little to succeed!’ One of her
hobbies was not to give trouble, and she pushed this admirable virtue so far that one day,
when her frock caught fire, she would not call any one, but rolled herself on the carpet till
the flames were extinguished.
She had a great admiration for the Cavalier Giustiniani, the same who faced Bonaparte
so bravely a few years later, but she did not marry him.

She is said to have been very beautiful, but short, a fact which disturbed her
unnecessarily, to judge by a note found in one of the commonplace books in which she
copied passages from her reading and wrote out her own reflections. ‘A monarch who was
rather famous in the last century,’ she wrote with child-like simplicity, ‘forbade his soldiers
to marry short women; on the other hand, he rewarded them if they married gigantic
women. Can it be because people fear that short women will turn out more mischievous
than tall ones?’
At the age of twenty she was married to Marcantonio Michiel, and a few months later
she accompanied him to Rome, where her father, Andrea Renier, was ambassador. She made
a profound impression on Roman society, and soon went by the name of ‘Venerina
Veneziana,’ the little Venetian Venus. In Rome she met the genial poet Monti, then very
young, and recommended to the Venetian ambassador by Cardinal Braschi. To fill her idle
hours, the industrious little lady studied engraving on wood.
Not long after her return from Rome her paternal uncle was elected Doge. He was not a
very estimable personage, and as he had married a dancer whom the people refused to
accept as the Dogess, his niece Giustina did the honours of the ducal palace when occasion
required.
In her early youth she began several literary works, among which a rather inaccurate
translation of some of Shakespeare’s plays has come down to us. She was a literary
personage, however, when still young, and the drawing-rooms of the Palazzo Michiel were
frequented by all that was most distinguished in Venice, as well as by the best of the foreign
element. Giustina, like all women who succeed in gathering intellectual people about them,
encouraged the discussion of all sorts of subjects from the broadest point of view. At that
time she was slightly inclined towards the new order of ideas, and boasted of being
somewhat democratic; but if this was true, it did not prevent her from sincerely lamenting
the fall of the Republic a few years later.
On the twelfth of May 1797, after the fatal session which ended the history of Venice, a
few nobles gathered at her house to mourn over the sudden end. While they sat together,
heavy-hearted and conversing in broken sentences, they heard the rabble in the street below,
howling at those whom it called the assassins of Saint Mark. The little group upstairs
understood the danger, and after a moment’s silence Giustina called upon them to save the
city at least, if they could no longer save the Republic. Her cousin Bernardino Renier was
there, and was temporarily charged with seeing to the safety of the city. The only means he
could think of for preventing pillage was violence, and he swept the streets with artillery.
For a while Giustina cherished the vain hope that Bonaparte would help Venice to rise
from her ashes. That fact explains why she was willing to receive in her house the
handsome, fair-haired Marina Benzon, who danced round the tree of liberty in the Square of
Saint Mark’s with the ‘Carmagnola’ on her head, on the day that saw the Venetian flag
replaced by the Phrygian cap of liberty. It explains, too, why Giustina was in
the square ten years later, when Napoleon came to Venice a second time. It was
a singular meeting enough. 1809.

When the Emperor was passing his troops in review in the square, Bernardino Renier
pointed out his cousin Giustina, who was in the crowd looking on, and Napoleon at once

sent two officers to bring her to him. The story is that the Emperor planted himself before
her with his arms crossed and his legs apart.
‘What are you celebrated for?’ he asked roughly.
‘I, sire? Celebrated?’ cried the lady.
‘Yes, you. But to what do you owe your celebrity?’
‘To friendship, no doubt, which attributes to me an importance I do not possess.’
‘What have you written?’ demanded the Emperor.
‘Little things not worth mentioning,’ answered Giustina.
‘Verse or prose?’
‘In prose, sire. I never was able to write a verse in my life.’
‘Ah, then you improvise, you improvise, do you?’
‘I wish I could, sire! for I should have an excellent opportunity to-day of covering
myself with glory!’
‘Come, what have you written?’ asked the Emperor impatiently.
‘A few translations.’

A NARROW STREET, NEAR THE ACADEMY

‘Translations?’
‘Of tragedies,’ answered Giustina.
‘The tragedies of Racine, I suppose?’
‘I beg your majesty’s pardon, I have translated from the English.’
The eye-witnesses of this meeting say that when the Emperor received this answer he
turned on his heel and left the high-born lady standing there.
The final state of Giustina’s mind was somewhat contradictory, for her frankly
democratic dreams had faded away, yet there remained an unlimited indulgence for the most
contradictory opinions which were sometimes expressed in her presence, together with the
greatest indignation against those who judged Venice by modern standards, whether they
were Venetians or foreigners. She seemed to make it her duty to prevent anything from
disturbing the ghost of the defunct Republic.
When Chateaubriand made his first visit to Venice
he had the bad taste to write an article in the Mercure de France, from which I
translate a few extracts:— 1806.

Trieste, July thirtieth, 1806.—In Venice there had just been published a new translation of the Génie du
Christianisme. This Venice, unless I am mistaken, would please you as little as it pleases me. It is a city against nature; one
cannot take a step without being obliged to get into a boat, or else one is driven to go round by narrow passages more like
corridors than streets! The Square of St. Mark alone is by its general effect worthy of its reputation. The architecture of
Venice, which is almost altogether Palladio’s, is too capricious and too varied; it is as if two or three palaces were built one
upon the other. And the famous gondolas, all black, look like boats that carry coffins; I took the first one I saw for a corpse
on the way to burial. The sky is not our sky beyond the Apennines. Rome and Naples, my dear friend, and a bit of
Florence, there you have all Italy. There is, however, one remarkable thing in Venice, and that is the number of convents
built on the islands and reefs round the city, just as other maritime cities are surrounded with forts which defend them; the
effect of these religious monuments seen at night over a calm sea is picturesque and touching. There are a few pictures left
by Paolo Veronese, Titian....

Giustina was filled with indignation on reading these lines, which were signed by an
author whose sentimentalism had found an echo in her heart. A lady who admired Foscolo’s
Jacopo Ortis would naturally be pleased with the Génie du Christianisme. The attack on her
beloved native city seemed all the more unkind for that, and she hastened to reply in a long
letter written in French, which she published in Pisa in the Giornale dei Letterati. She
answered Chateaubriand categorically, concluding with the following words:—
I know that you have promised to return here; come then, but come in a mood less sad, in a spirit less weary, with
feelings less cold.... I do not flatter myself that you will exclaim with that Neapolitan poet that Venice was built by the
gods, but I hope at least that you will find here something more interesting than the convents on the islands and the
translation of your works.

Giustina had been in her grave eighteen years when Chateaubriand returned to Venice,
with a spirit indeed less weary, and allowed himself to grow enthusiastic, and wrote a
beautiful description of the city in his Mémoires d’Outre Tombe.
At one time Napoleon ordered a species of inquiry to be made on the following and
similar questions:—What are the prejudices of the Venetians? What are their political
opinions? What are their dominant tastes? The well-known and learned writers, Filiasi and
Morelli, were commissioned to answer these inquiries, but they refused on the ground that
such questions admitted no answer. Giustina’s interest and ambition were roused at once,
and during several weeks she worked hard at a book on moral statistics which has never

been published, but which, no doubt, suggested to her the excellent work she afterwards
produced on the origin of Venetian feasts, a book which I have often quoted in these pages.
She worked at this with enthusiasm, bent on evoking in the minds of future generations the
memory of beautiful and touching ceremonies long disused when the Republic fell. In that
age which loved epithets and classic parallels, the lady who had been nicknamed in Rome
the little Venetian Venus was now called the Venetian Antigone. Indeed, she made it her
business to defend Venice and Venetian history too. But as she grew old her enthusiasm got
the better of her, and she wrote such terrible answers to people who made small mistakes
that she could not always get her articles printed. In particular, the tragedian Niccolini
published in 1827 a tragedy upon the story of Antonio Foscarini, in which he held up the
court that condemned and executed that innocent man to execration, but by methods not
honestly historical. Giustina was now over seventy years of age, but she wrote such a
furious article on Niccolini’s play that no one dared to publish it.
She was fond of Englishmen, and called them the Swallows, because they came back to
Venice at regular intervals, and she used to say that England seemed to her the sister of the
ancient Republic of Venice. She had known the Duke of Gloucester when he was a mere
child, and when he returned to Venice in 1816 his first visit was for her. I translate the note
she wrote in answer to his message announcing his visit:—
A message from H.R.H. the Duke of Gloucester, delivered at the theatre last night, and saying that he wished to
honour the Michiel with his presence, has filled her with lively exaltation. She much desired to see him again. If H.R.H.
had not become the great Prince he is in virtue of his birth; if he were still that amiable little boy whom she so often
embraced, she would have let him know by this time that she desired to embrace him affectionately. And indeed she might
have said so now, since the difference of ages is always the same. Then he was a child and she was young and pretty; now
he is young and charming and she is a little old woman, and also somewhat deaf. There might therefore still be the purest
innocence in the sweetest embrace. But setting aside this jesting, which is indeed too familiar, H.R.H. will please to accept
in advance the thanks of Giustina Renier Michiel for the honour which he intends to do her this evening, and she is
impatiently awaiting that desired moment.

Though Giustina had begun life by giving signs of being emancipated, she behaved with
the greatest devotion to her daughter and her grandchildren. ‘I have hardly any company but
that of children,’ she wrote to a friend. ‘I think very highly of their patience, since there is
between me and them the same distance of age which exists between them and me. I find I
have nothing in common with them but the taste for “anguria,” and this is a good argument
for the truth of what I say.’
Her most intimate friend was Isabella Teodochi Albrizzi. This lady was born in Greece,
and was a passionate worshipper of the beautiful; her taste in all matters seems to have been
more delicate than Giustina’s and her character was much more gay and forgetful. Giustina
lived in the past, Isabella in the present. Everything about Giustina was Venetian, the
mantilla she wore on her head, the furniture she had in her house, the refreshments she
offered her friends; to the very last everything connected with her belonged to the eighteenth
century. With Isabella Albrizzi nothing, on the contrary, was Venetian, nothing was durable;
at one moment the French taste ordered her furniture, her bibelots, and her books, and
provided her with subjects of conversation; at another, everything about her was English.
‘When you left the Michiel’s drawing-room you had learned to love Venice,’ says her
biographer; ‘when you left Madame Albrizzi’s drawing-room you had learned to love
Madame Albrizzi.’

They died nearly at the same time. Giustina breathed her last at the age of seventy-seven
on April sixth, 1832, surrounded by her grandchildren and her friends. Andrea Maffei wrote
that the death of Giustina Michiel was indeed a public loss. ‘To the excellence of her mind
she united in a high degree the beauty of her character, and I know of no writer who more
dearly loved his country than she.’

XI

THE LAST CARNIVALS—THE LAST FAIRS THE LAST FEASTS
No people ever combined business with pleasure so advantageously as the Venetians, and
few governments have understood as well as theirs how to make use of amusement in
managing the people; indeed, the method was so convenient that at last the Signory
preferred it to all others, and took most pains to promote the public gaiety just when the
Republic was on the verge of dissolution. There is something unnatural
in the contrast between the outward life and the inward death of Venice in
those last years; something that reminds one of the strangest tales ever told by Rom. ix.
213.
Hoffmann or Edgar Poe.
Never dull, even at the last, all Venice went mad with delight at the feast of the
Ascension, when the great fair was held. It will be remembered that Pope
Alexander III., on the occasion of his visit to Venice, issued a brief granting
numerous indulgences to all persons who would pray in the basilica of Saint 1177.
Mark between the hour of Vespers on the eve of Ascension Day and Vespers on
the day itself; and the brief concluded by invoking the malediction of heaven on any one
who should oppose this practice or destroy the document itself.
With their usual keen eye for business, the Venetians saw at once that while their souls
were profiting by the much-needed indulgence, their pockets could be conveniently filled
without vitiating that state of grace which is especially necessary during such religious
exercises. Many strangers from the mainland would visit the city on the anniversary, and by
holding out a rational and sufficient inducement they could be made to come again, in
greater numbers, year after year. Nothing was so sure to attract a rich class of pilgrims as a
great annual fair, and to make their coming absolutely certain it was only necessary to
suspend the duties on imported wares during eight days.
The first Ascension Fair was held in the year 1180, when Orio Mastropiero was Doge,
and it was a vast financial and popular success. Merchants of all the nations of the earth
spread out their merchandise for sale in booths and tents, and under every sort of improvised
shelter. For more than a week the Square of Saint Mark’s was a vast bazaar of little shops,
following the most irregular and winding lanes, just wide enough for two persons. Every
merchant, foreign or Venetian, was free to set up his booth as he pleased and where he
pleased, and there were thousands of them, in each of which at least one person had to sleep
at night. The effect of it all must have been vastly picturesque, as many things were when
effect was never thought of.
The annual fair was held in this same way for about five hundred years, during which
time it did not occur to any of the Signory that the contrast between the amazing irregularity
of the bazaar and the solemn symmetry of the surrounding architecture was disagreeable.
Then in the Barocco age came artificial taste and set things to rights, and
the Senate issued a decree ordering that the shops should be set up in straight 1678.
lines, and by squares, like Chicago; and it seems to me that about that time the

Ascension Fair turned itself into the first Universal Industrial Exhibition. From that time
there was a commission established to which all exhibitors were required to send a detailed
list of their merchandise. There were no prizes and no medals, yet I have no doubt but that
the result was much the same, and that certain houses of merchant-manufacturers made their
reputations and their fortunes on the strength of the impression they created at the Venetian
Fair.
It was destined to be still more like a modern exhibition. In 1776 the Signory
commissioned an architect to put up a vast oval building of wood, like a double portico,
looking both inwards and outwards, and almost filling the Square of Saint Mark’s. It was
very practically arranged, for to those who sold the more valuable objects shops were
assigned on the inside of the oval, where they were better protected, and the shops on the
outside, facing the porticoes of the Procuratie, were filled with the more ordinary wares,
which would naturally attract more buyers from the lower classes.
On this occasion painters and sculptors exhibited their work, and Canova, who was then
but nineteen years old, is said to have shown one of
his earliest groups. But we learn without surprise that the products offered for
sale by Venetians G. R.
Michiel,
were of inferior quality, and that there was a bad contrast between the showy vol. i. 279.
architectural shops and the poor wares they contained. The end was at hand,
and Venetian manufacture was dead. Marble
But the people cared not for that, and were as gay and happy over the Fair Group,
Daedalus
as their ancestors had been hundreds of years ago. It mattered nothing to them; and Icarus,
if the wares were poor, the charlatans who cried them up were wittier than Accademia,
ever. There was one in particular, a certain Doctor Buonafede Vitali of Parma, Room XVII.
who employed four celebrated actors, one of whom was Rubini, famous in
Goldoni’s companies; they were dressed in the four Italian theatrical masks, and by their
clever improvisations and witty sallies they advertised the doctor’s miracles, and amused the
clients that waited to be cured by him.
There were professional jesters, too, who joked on their own account, and there was
usually somewhere a black African buffoon-contortionist; and there were long-legged
tumblers, called ‘guaghe,’ absurdly dressed as women, who kept the crowd laughing, and
while the people looked on they chewed the pods of carobs, which were sold off trays with
nuts and other things by the Armenians who moved about in the throng. In the motley
multitude nobles and magistrates
and foreign ambassadors elbowed each other, and great ladies and light ladies,
all effectually disguised under the ‘tabarro,’ the ‘bauta,’ and the mask, which Mutinelli,
Ult.
were allowed in public during the Fair.
The Espousal of the Sea was the great ceremony of the week, and the one which most
directly recalled the visit of Alexander III. It was last performed by the last Doge in 1796,
the six-hundred-and-eighteenth time, I believe, since its institution, and all the ancient
ceremonial was carefully followed.
On the eve of the Ascension, the Bucentaur was hauled out of the Arsenal and anchored
off the Piazzetta

in full view of the delighted population. It was no longer the ‘Busus aureus,’
built by the Senate in 1311, and towed by a small boat from Murano, called the Mutinelli,
Lessico.
‘peota.’ In four hundred years new ones had been constructed several times,
and the last

CHURCH OF THE MIRACLE

Bucentaur was built in 1728. It was about one hundred and fifteen feet over all, with
twenty-two feet beam, and was twenty-six feet deep from upper poop-deck to keel. In length
and beam it had therefore about the dimensions of a fair-sized schooner yacht, but it was
vastly higher out of water, and was flat-bottomed, so as to draw very little. The consequence
was that even in smooth water it might have been laid over by a squall, and it was never
used except in absolutely fine weather. It was rowed by one hundred and seventy-eight free
artisans from the Arsenal, who swung forty-two oars, each of which, however, according to
the model now preserved, consisted of three, linked and swung together in one rowlock. The
rowers occupied what we should call the main deck, and the upper deck was fitted up
as one long cabin or saloon, taking the whole length of the vessel, but rising by
a step at the after end, and having a small window at the stern from which the G. R.
Michiel,
Doge threw out the ring in the course of the ceremony. His throne was further Origini, i.
raised by two steps. Over the cabin were spread enormous draperies of crimson 197.
velvet, ornamented with gold fringe, gold lace, and gold tassels. In the stern,
within the cabin, was figured a marine Victory with appropriate trophies, and two carved
babies, of the rotund and well-creased breed dear to the eighteenth century, supported a
huge shell as a canopy over the throne. The fair Giustina Michiel’s description of the
decorations makes one’s blood run cold. Prudence and Strength stood sentinels at the
Doge’s elbows. In the ceiling of the saloon Apollo smiled upon the nine Muses, pleased to
consider the Bucentaur as his temple; the Virtues were inappropriately present, too, and with
more reason the Arts, or Occupations, of Shipbuilding, Fishing, Hunting, and the like. The
saloon had no less than forty-eight windows, from which the numerous party of
ambassadors, magistrates, and distinguished strangers who accompanied the Doge could see
all that went on. Lastly, the vessel’s figurehead was a colossal wooden statue of Justice,
‘protecting goddess of every well-regulated government,’ says the lady Giustina, and
therefore as inappropriate there as the Virtues themselves.
At the hour of tierce, which was somewhere near eight o’clock in the morning at
Ascension, all the bells began to ring, except, I think, that solemn one that tolled while
condemned men were being led to death; and excepting, too, that one of lighter tone, the
‘Bankrupt’s Bell,’ which was rung every day for half an hour about noon, during which time
debtors might walk abroad and sun themselves without being arrested.
Then the Doge came from his palace preceded by his squires, and the silver trumpets,
and the standards, and the bearer of the ducal sword, and the
Missier Grande, who was nothing more nor less than the head constable of
Venice; and after his Serenity came the High Chancellor, the Pope’s Nuncio, Carrer,
Annali.
the ambassadors, and the principal magistrates. When all were on board the
Bucentaur, a salute of artillery gave the signal of departure, and the huge oars began to
swing and dip; and after the big barge came the smaller one of the ‘Doge’ of the fishermen,
the Niccolotti, the little ‘peota’ of the Murano glass-blowers, and the barges and boats of the
Signory, and all the gondolas of Venice, richly draped for that one day. So all moved slowly
out; and when they passed the statue of the Virgin before the Arsenal all the people sang,
and sent up prayers and invocations with suppliant gestures ‘to the Great Mother of
Victories,’ and the sailors cheered and yelled. Then they went on to Saint Helen’s island.

There the Patriarch was waiting with his flat boat, and the monks of Saint Helen served
him a collation of chestnuts and red wine, which, at eight or nine o’clock in the morning,
was cruelly ungastronomic; and the Patriarch gave his sailors bread and fresh broad beans in
the shell.
The Patriarch sent acolytes to the Doge with a nosegay of Damascus roses; and his flat
boat having been taken in tow by the Bucentaur, and another boat in which a choir sang the
hymns composed for the occasion, they all moved out towards the open sea.
Then, in profound silence, the Doge opened the little stern window behind his throne,
and the Patriarch,
who had come on board, poured holy water into the sea and prayed, saying,
‘Lord, vouchsafe calm and quiet weather to all them that journey by sea’; after Horatio
Brown,
which prayer the Patriarch handed the ring to the Doge, who dropped Venice.
it into the sea just where the holy water had been poured, saying, ‘We espouse
thee, O Sea, in token of perpetual sovereignty.’ Carrer,
The guns of the fortresses thundered out a salute, and all the thousands of Annali.
spectators cheered for Saint Mark, and all the young men waved flags; then the
whole company began to throw flowers, freshly cut, from boat to boat, and the Patriarch
presented great silver dishes full of flowers to the Doge; and all went ashore at San Nicola
on the Lido to hear the pontifical high mass, after which every man went home to his own
house.
That was the ceremony at which the Venetians assisted in 1796, little guessing that they
saw it for the last time. A few months later a vandal mob
beached the Bucentaur on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, and stripped it
of all its ornaments, to burn them and get the gold. The hull was then armed Rom. x.
305;
with four heavy old guns, and was turned into a sort of floating battery and Mutinelli,
sailors’ prison at the entrance of the harbour. On her stern was painted her new Lessico and
name ‘Idra,’ the Hydra, and there she rotted for years. A few fragments of the Ult.
old vessel are now preserved in the Arsenal. More than two hundred men
worked at reducing the Bucentaur and the two big carved boats of the Signory to the
democratic standard of beauty.
The last pilot of the Bucentaur was Andrea Chiribini, who, like all his predecessors,
called himself ‘admiral,’ and was a ruffian not worth the rope with
which he should have been hanged when he was young. He was one of the
worst types in the Venetian revolution; and after living all his life on the Mutinelli,
Ult.;
bounty of the Signory, he was the first to help in breaking up the Bucentaur, Bembo,
and in sacking the Arsenal. In order to reward him for these noble acts of Ben. 265.
patriotism, and in the absence of appropriate funds, he was given a magnificent
carved jewel of oriental chalcedony from the treasure of Saint Mark. The talisman did not
bring the fellow luck. After wandering about for nearly thirty years, living more or less
dishonestly by his wits,

THE PROCESSION OF THE REDENTORE

he presented himself one day in 1826 at one of the asylums for the poor, where he spent a
day; but when towards evening he was requested to put on the dress of the establishment, he
flew into such a terrible rage that he had fever all night, and had to be watched. On the
following morning he shook the dust from his feet and departed, declaring that a gentleman
like himself could not live among such brigands. During two years the workmen of the
Arsenal subscribed to give him a pittance; at the end of that time, feeling that his days were
numbered, he consented to enter the little hospice of Saint Ursula, which a pious person of
the fourteenth century had founded for the perpetual support of three poor old men.
It is said that the last Carnival of Venice was the gayest in all her history, and fully
realised the condition of things described by Goldoni some years earlier in his comedy La
Mascherata. I translate the couplet into prose:—
Here the wife and there the husband,
Each one does as best he likes;
Each one hastens to some party,
Some to gamble, some to dance.
Provided every one in Carnival
May do exactly as he chooses,
It would not seem a serious matter
Even to go raving mad.

A good many different traditional and legendary feasts amused the Venetians in old
times, but the only one that has survived to our own day is
the Festa del Redentore, the feast of the Redeemer, which was instituted as a
thanksgiving after the cessation of the plague in 1576, and is kept even now G. R.
Michiel, iii.

both as a civil and religious holiday. The serenades, illuminations, and feasts in 389.
the island of the Giudecca certainly delight the Venetian populace of to-day as
much as in the times when the old flag of Saint Mark floated over everything, and the little
movable kitchens on wheels were adorned with the symbols of the Evangelist prettily
outlined with flowers on a ground of green leaves.
The central point of all amusement in Carnival was the theatre, for the Venetians always
had a passion for spectacles, and, at a time when the worst possible taste debased the stage
throughout Italy, the reform which has since raised the Italian theatre so high began in
Venice with Goldoni’s comedies. Properly speaking, there was no dramatic art in Italy
before him. As I have explained in speaking of the sixteenth century, the Hose Club founded
the first theatre, but most of the performances were what we still call mummeries, in which
more or less symbolic personages said anything witty or profound that occurred to them, or
talked nonsense in the absence of inspiration. Pantaloon was the national mask of Venice,
and was always supposed to be a doctor who became involved in the most astonishing
adventures. Valaresso, a man of taste in those days, produced a play that ended with a battle
supposed to be fought behind the scenes. In his satire the poet makes the prompter appear
upon the stage carrying a little lamp. ‘Ladies and
gentlemen,’ he says, ‘I see that you are expecting some one to bring you news
of the battle; but it is of no use to wait, for every one is dead.’ Thereupon he Aureli, Vita
del
blows out his lamp, and goes off to bed. Pergolesi.
In his memoirs Goldoni explains the rules then followed by dramatic
authors. He had occasion to
learn them himself when he read his first piece, Amalasunta, to Count Prata,
director of one of the large theatres in Milan. Goldoni, i.
xxviii.
‘It seems to me,’ said the Count, ‘that you have studied tolerably well the Poetics of Aristotle and
the Ars Poetica of Horace, and that you have written your composition according to the true principles of tragedy. Then
you did not know that a musical drama is an imperfect work, subject to rules and traditions which have no common sense,
it is true, but which must be followed to the very letter. If you had been in France you might have thought more of pleasing
the public, but here you must please actors and actresses, you must satisfy the composer of the music, you must consult the
scene-painter; everything has its rules, and it would be a crime of lèse majesté against the art of playwriting to dare to
break them or not to submit to them. Listen to me,’ he continued, ‘I am going to point out to you some rules which are
unchangeable, and which you do not know. Each of the three principal characters in the drama must sing five airs—two in
the first act, two in the second act, and one in the third. The second actress and the second “man” soprano can only have
three, and the third parts must be satisfied with one, or two at the most. The author of the words must provide the musician
with the different shades which form the chiaroscuro of the music, taking good care that two pathetic airs shall not follow
each other. It is also necessary to separate with the same care showy airs, airs of action, of undefined character, minuets,
and rondeaux. One must be especially careful to give no airs of affection or movement nor showy airs nor rondeaux to the
second parts. These poor people must be contented with what is assigned to them, for they are not allowed to make a good
figure.’

Count Prata would have said more, but Goldoni stopped him, for he had heard quite
enough. He went home in that state of mind which some young authors have known, and
obtained a sort of morbid satisfaction from burning his manuscript.
‘As I was poking the pieces of my manuscript together to complete the burning,’ he says, ‘it occurred to me that in no
case had any disappointment made me sacrifice my supper. I called the waiter, and told him to lay the cloth and bring me
something to eat at once.... I ate well, drank better, went to bed and slept with the most perfect tranquillity.’

Goldoni was of the strong, to whom is the race.

From the ashes of his Amalasunta rose comedies that reformed the Italian
stage. Portrait of
Goldoni, P.
The composers were not much better off than the playwrights. Longhi;
Museo
‘The modern master,’ says Marcello, ‘must make his manager give him a large orchestra of violins, Civico,
hautboys, horns, Room IX.
and so forth, saving him rather the expense of the double basses, as he need not use these except for
giving the chords at the beginning. The Symphony is to consist of a French time, or prestissimo of Teatro alla
semiquavers in major, which as usual must be succeeded by a piano of the same key in minor, closing moda,
finally in a minuet, gavotte, or jig, again in the major, thus avoiding fugues, legature, themes, etc., etc., as Benedetto
old things outside of the modern fashion. He will endeavour to give the best airs to the prima donna, and if Marcello,
quoted by
he has to shorten the opera he will not allow the suppression of airs or roundels.’ Molmenti in
Nuovi Studi.
The same master observes wittily that the authors of the words to
accompany this sort of music generally excused themselves from reading the works of older
writers, on the ground that the latter had not been able to read their successors, but had,
nevertheless, done very well. When the playwright or musician had succeeded in pleasing
the actors, the actresses, the manager, the scene-painter, and all the rest of the company, he
still had to please the Council of Ten, not to mention the Inquisitors of State and the
Inquisitors of the Holy Office, for they all had something to say in the censorship of the
theatre.
The infamous Jacopo Casanova, who amongst a number of ignoble occupations acted as
a confidant or spy to the Council of Ten, called attention
in 1776 to a piece called Coriolanus, which was being given in the theatre of
San Benedetto. It appears to have been a sort of pantomime, which presented Molmenti,
Nuovi Studi,
on the stage a starving population, a cruel nobility, the unjust condemnation of 300.
Coriolanus, the tears of Virgilia and Volumnia, everything, in short, which,
according to the scrupulous Casanova, could pervert the Venetian people; and the Inquisitors
accordingly suppressed the piece.
Sometimes these gentlemen shut up the provincial theatres altogether for a time with a
view to stopping the advance of modern ideas. Here is an edict relating to these measures of
prudence, signed by the Doge one year before the fall of the Republic. The first paragraph is
in Latin, the rest is in Italian.
Ludovicus Manin, by the grace of God Doge of Venice,
to the noble and wise man, Federicus Bembo, by his commission Podestà and Captain of Mestre, Fid. Dil.
Sal. et Dil. Aff. [Fideli dilecto salutem et dilectionis affectum.] Molmenti,
Nuovi Studi.
Seeing that the Austrian troops now coming down from Friuli are about to enter the Trevisan
province, to which some of the French troops may also move, and it being according to the zealous forethought of the
government to remove all inducements which give individuals of the troops the desire to come still nearer to these lagoons,
the Council of Ten, considering that one inducement might be the reopening of the theatre, orders you to put it off as long
as may seem best to the prudence of the Heads of the said Council.
Given in our Ducal Palace on the twenty-seventh of September in the fifteenth year of the Indiction, 1796. [I find that
the year of the Indiction does not correspond with the date.]

There was another magistracy which also had to do with the theatres. The ‘Provveditori
di Commun’
fixed the price of the libretto of the play. It was Council of Ten, however, that
named the hour at which the performance was to begin and end. Mutinelli,
Lessico,

The lighting of the theatres was wretched and the boxes were completely ‘Teatro.’
dark, which appears to have
given the ladies a considerable sense of security, for I find that in 1756 the
noble dame Pisani Grimani, who owned the theatre of San Benedetto, was Molmenti,
forbidden by the Inquisitors of State to stand at the door of her box in a Nuovi Studi.
costume which might ‘produce grave disorder.’
In 1776 the government made an effort to limit such extreme views of comfort in warm
weather, and an edict was issued commanding ladies to wear modest dresses, with domino
and hood, at the theatre. The noble ladies Maria Bon Toderini and Elisabetta Labia Priuli
were put under arrest in their own houses in the following year for having, in their boxes,
thrown back their hoods and allowed them to slip down upon their shoulders.
The musicians’ desks were lighted with candles of Spanish wax, from Segovia in
Castile. The stage was illuminated by lamps fed with olive oil. In the dim house there seems
to have been a good deal of rough play, and the patricians in the boxes occasionally threw
‘projectiles’—possibly hard sweet-meats are meant—at the people in the pit. The lights
were put out as soon as the curtain fell on the last act, and the spectators groped their way
out in the dark as they could, helped by the big brass lanterns which the gondoliers brought
to the door when they came to wait for their masters.
Plays were not advertised at all. A small bill giving the name of the play and the names
of the authors was pasted up in the Piazzetta, and another was to be seen at the Rialto, but
that was all. It was the business of the State to provide foreign ambassadors and ministers
with boxes, and a vast deal of care was bestowed on this matter, which was full of
difficulties; for the boxes were generally the property of private families that did not at all
like to give them up. But the government always reserved the right to take any boxes it
chose for the use of the Diplomatic Corps. In Venice, the smallest affairs were always
conducted according to a prescribed method, and there was a regular rule by which the
boxes were distributed. The document has been found by Signor Molmenti in the Archives
of the Inquisitors of State, docketed and labelled: ‘Theatres. Foreign Ambassadors. Boxes.’
Here it is:—
The Ambassadors present themselves with a formal request (memoriale) to the Most Excellent Council. By the latter,
through a Secretary of the Senate, His Serenity is requested to draw the lots for the boxes of each. He puts into the
ballotbox the numbers of all the boxes on that row which corresponds to the rank of the Minister who applies, and he
draws one number. The proscenium boxes are excepted, and the balcony, the boxes occupied by other Ministers, and the
one that belonged to the Minister who last went away. Afterwards, by the method explained hereinafter, notice (of the
number drawn) is sent to the Minister, the owner (of the box), and the Council.
When the Minister does not like the box drawn for him, he lays before the Council his request that it may be changed,
and by the same method His Serenity is requested to draw again. In that case he only puts in the numbers of the boxes
opposite which are free, he draws again and sends the notices to that effect, informing the owner of the second box that he
may use the one first drawn.

When the box was at last drawn and had been accepted by the Minister, the owner of it
received a notice in the following form:—
This day ... (date). By order of the Most Excellent Savi (literally, ‘Wise Men’) notice is given to Your Excellency the
Noble Sir, etc., etc.... (or Noble Dame, or Your Illustrious Worship, or other proper title), that His Serenity has drawn Box
No.... Row ... in the ... theatre belonging to Your Excellency (or other title) for His Excellency the Ambassador (or
Minister) of ..., and this notice is sent you for your guidance.

The feelings of the box-owner, dispossessed by this formal nonsense, may be guessed,
for the indemnity paid by the ambassadors was very small.
It seems that even the Council anticipated that he would use bad language,
for the underling who took him the notice was a Comandator-Portier, and was Mutinelli,
Lessico.
made to wear a red cap with the arms of the Republic as a badge ‘to protect
him against abuse’!
In 1791, when a company formed of nobles undertook to build the Fenice Theatre, using
part of the ruins of the old theatre of San Benedetto, they presented to the Doge a
memorandum concerning the boxes for the Diplomatic Corps, of which I give an extract for
the sake of its monumental absurdity, translating the terms quite literally:—
The reverend Company of the New Theatre is disposed to meet the public commands with submissive obedience, and
will therefore at all times venerate whatsoever Your Serenity may be pleased to prescribe....
In order to continue the building begun, it is necessary to sell the new boxes which have been added to those which
formed the last theatre, and the greatest profit that may be hoped for lies in those situated in the first and second rows; but,
as those places are subject to the dispositions above alluded to, which take from the owners the use of their own boxes,
without fixing the measure of the corresponding indemnity, the sale of those boxes would be rendered impossible in the
present state of things, to the incalculable damage of the sinking company, which would thus see removed the hope of soon
finishing the building begun, or else would be put to new and enormous expense which would cause to vanish those
expectations of profit which the Sovereign Clemency of the Most Excellent Council of Ten had benignly permitted the
Company to entertain.

NEAR THE FENICE

The memorandum ends with the rather startling statement that the pretensions of the
ambassadors, if admitted, would cause the Company to lose eleven thousand ducats.

The Doge, who afterwards showed small alacrity to act when the country was in mortal
danger, was apparently much moved on receiving the Company’s petition, and forthwith
summoned the Senate to consider the weighty matter; it is true that if he had done anything
for the petitioners without appealing to that body, he would have been naturally suspected of
being a shareholder.
The Senate decided that, without making any change in the method of drawing boxes,
and without prejudice to the existing system in any other theatre, ambassadors should pay
owners one hundred and sixty’ ducats for boxes in the first row, and that ministers should
pay eighty ducats for those in the second; whereby, said the Senate, which still preserved
traditions of business, the owners of the said boxes would be getting four per cent on the
money they had invested.
The construction of the famous Fenice lasted twenty months, and the new theatre opened
with an opera by Paisiello on a libretto by Alessandro Pepoli.

GRAND CANAL FROM THE FISH MARKET

XII

THE LAST MAGISTRATES
The philosophical reader will naturally ask what elements composed the Great Council of
the Venetian Republic at a time when France was on the brink of the Revolution, and all
Europe was about to be shaken by the explosion of the first new idea that had dawned on
mankind since Christianity. I shall try to answer the question.

S. BARNABÒ

There were three classes of men in the Council: first, the ancient aristo-plutocracy
which, though with a few
additions to its numbers, and though itself divided into two parties, had on the
whole steered the Republic through eleven hundred years of history; secondly, Rom. ix. 7.
a number of families, mostly of ‘new men,’ though they had sat in the Council
four hundred years and more, but who had all been more or less occupied with the legal
profession since they had existed; thirdly and lastly, the poor nobles called the ‘Barnabotti,’
from the quarter of San Barnabò, where most of them were lodged at the public expense.
The first category generally held the posts of highest dignity, many of which implied a
salary by no means small, but never sufficient to pay for the display which the position
required, according to accepted customs. The traditional splendour which the Venetian
ambassadors of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had inaugurated was dear to the Senate,
and had come to be officially required, if not actually prescribed in so many words. These
great families had long been accustomed to play the leading parts, and as the business spirit
which had made Venice the richest power in Europe died out, their pride was often greater
than their sense of responsibility. These and many other causes lowered the standard
according to which young Venetians had been brought up during centuries to understand the
administration of their country; and the result was that they were not fit to fill the offices to
which they were called, and therefore handed over their work to private secretaries, who
were generally ambitious and intriguing men. To be a member of the Great Council had now
only a social value, like those hereditary coats of arms in which there had once been such
deep meaning. Throughout ages the aristocracy of Venice had differed altogether from the
nobility of other countries, but as decadence advanced to decay, and decay threatened
destruction, the Venetian senator grew more and more like the French marquis of the same
period.
In an access of greatness Louis XIV. is reported to have said, ‘L’état c’est moi!’ but the
State continued to exist without him. The Venetian nobles might have said with much more
truth, and perhaps with more reasonable pride, ‘We nobles are the Republic!’ For when they
degenerated into dolls, the Republic soon ceased to exist.
The second category of nobles comprised by far the sanest and most intelligent part of
the aristocracy, and it was generally from their ranks that the Quarantie were chosen, as well
as the ‘Savi,’ and those magistrates from whom special industry and intelligence were
required, or at least hoped.
The Barnabotti had nothing in common with the two other classes, except their vanity of
caste, which was so infinitely far removed from pride. As I have said, they owed their name
to the parish
which most of them inhabited. Their nobility was more or less recent and
doubtful, and almost all had ruined themselves in trying to rival the richer Molmenti,
families. The majority of them had nothing but a small pension, paid them by Nuovi Studi,
308.
the government, and barely sufficient to lift them out of actual misery. It was
especially for them
that the College of Nobles had been founded, in which their sons were
educated for nothing, with all the usual imperfections of gratuitous education. Horatio
Brown,
Like the ‘New Men’ of the fourteenth century, they felt that an insurmountable

barrier separated them from the older and richer classes, and the humiliations Venice, 109;
Rom. ix. 7.
to which they were often exposed by the latter kept alive in them the sort of
hatred which was felt in other parts of Europe by the agricultural population for the owners
of the land. Their poverty and rancorous disposition made them especially the objects of
bribery when any party in the Great Council needed the assistance of their votes against
another.
The better sort of Venetians were well aware of the evils that were destroying the
governing body. In 1774 a member of the Council made a speech on the subject, in which he
said that the greatest damage the Republic had suffered had been caused by the action of
time; it lay in the already very sensible diminution in the numbers of the Great Council,
which was, in fact, the government itself. He pointed out that within one century a large
number of patrician families had become
extinct, and that the condition of the aristocracy must clearly continue to go
from bad to worse. It could not be otherwise, since marriages were yearly Cecchetti,
quoting
becoming less numerous. A family was looked upon as a calamity, because it Arch. Ven.
meant a division of fortune, and therefore interfered with those ancient iii. 435.
traditions of almost royal

INSTITUTO BON, GRAND CANAL

magnificence which appealed to the vanity of younger men.
The speech to which I have alluded was delivered not very many years after the time
when a number of seats in the Grand Council had been sold in order to meet the expenses of

the Turkish war. In 1775, in order to increase the numbers of the Council, it was proposed to
admit to it forty noble families from the provinces, provided they could prove that they had
a yearly income of ten thousand ducats. The proposal was energetically opposed by a
Contarini. If the sons of ancient families showed so little zeal for the public welfare, he
argued, what could be expected of strangers? Was it wise to display to all Europe the evils
from which the Republic was suffering? Moreover, even if the bill were passed, would it be
easy to find forty families willing to leave their homes and establish themselves in the
capital to the great damage of their fortunes? And if they were found, would their admission
not result in impoverishing the provinces by the amount of their incomes which would be
spent in Venice? It was luxury and extravagance that were ruining the country, he said.
A lively discussion followed. ‘Beloved sons,’ cried one old noble, ‘for us who are old
there may be a little of the Republic left, but for you children it is completely finished!’ The
bill passed, but Contarini had been right; only about ten families asked to be inscribed in the
Golden Book.
Satirists and lampooners made merry with the proceedings of the Great Council. After
the stormy sittings just referred to, the caricatures of the five patricians entrusted with
framing measures of reform were to be seen everywhere in the city, and a copy of the cut is
still in the Archives. It
represents the most eloquent and zealous of the committee, Alvise Emo, urging
his horse against an enormous marble column; two of his colleagues follow Rom. viii.
211.
him in a post-chaise and observe his movements with a spy-glass; a fourth,
who is lame, is trying to follow the carriage on foot, and the fifth comes after him, beating
him to make him mend his pace.
On the twenty-second of May 1779 the secretary of the Inquisitors of State wrote to his
brother Giuseppe Gradenigo, then in France: ‘If these gentlemen do not seriously think of
taking measures to meet the events which are brewing, if they do not introduce some order
into the affairs of the army and navy, the Republic will be lost as soon as an enemy appears
on land or by sea.’
This letter was prophetic. The idleness and indolence of the nobility were such that it
was hard to obtain an attendance at meetings of the Great Council or the Senate. The
members were accustomed to spend their nights in gambling-dens and cafés, and it was a
hard matter for them to get up in the morning. Their physicians recommended rest, which
they indeed needed; and as they could not take any at night, they devoted a large part of the
day to following the doctor’s advice. Yet as it was necessary that the government should go
on in some way, it became habitual to leave everything to the Savi of the Council, who on
their part fell into the habit of not always rendering an account of what they did. By
obligingly saving their colleagues the trouble of getting out of bed, they made themselves
the arbiters of the Republic’s final destiny.
With regard to the other magistracies, a few anecdotes will give a good idea of what they
had become. My readers know that the Avogadori enjoyed very great consideration, and that
it was their business to see that all the tribunals did their work smoothly and regularly. One
of these important officers, Angelo Quirini, who was at the same time one of the most
distinguished members of the Senate, exhibited his power and courage by banishing from
Venice a little milliner who had made a mistake in trimming certain caps for a great lady in

whom he was interested. From her exile the woman wrote a protest to the Inquisitors of
State, who did her justice and recalled her. Quirini now lost his temper with these gentlemen
and swore that they were encroaching upon his rights, just at this time a
rich member of the parish of San Vitale departed this life, and the sacristans
prepared to bury his body; but the deceased belonged to a confraternity called Rom. viii.
104.
La Scuola Grande della Carità, and his brethren claimed the right of burying
him to the exclusion of the parish sacristans. The Inquisitors of State and the Council of Ten
took the matter up; the Provveditori alla Sanità, who were the health officers, declared that
the matter concerned them only; the elders and judges of the guilds and corporations took
part in the discussion, and a general quarrel ensued, which was only brought to a close by
the authority of the Council of Ten. But this did not please Angelo Quirini, who violently
attacked the Council and began to give himself the airs of a popular tribune, though not
possessing the popularity which is essential for the position. The people, in fact, would have
none of him. One night the Council of Ten caused him to be quietly taken from his palace
and carried off under a good escort to the fortress of Verona. The matter now had to be
brought before the Great Council, and a regular trial was held to ascertain how the Council
of Ten and the Inquisitors were in the habit of performing their duties.
During several days the Corregitori received all the complaints that were
handed in, and examined the archives of the two tribunals. Those of the Ten Rom. viii.
108.
were found to be in perfect order, but those of the Inquisitors were in the
utmost confusion.
The whole city discussed the affair excitedly, and nothing else was spoken
of in the streets, in the cafés, and in drawing-rooms. It was the first time in Rom. viii.
114.
history that the tribunal of the Inquisitors of State had been put under an
inquiry, and this tremendous result had been produced because a little milliner had made a
cap that did not fit.
Endless discussions followed. A number of patricians declared that if the Council of Ten
and the Inquisitors of State were abolished, they themselves would not stay another day in
Venice, as there would no longer be any check on the violence and the intrigues of men of
their own class: a confession which suddenly exhibits the whole aristocracy in its true light.
Others proved beyond all question that a tribunal which was particularly charged with
the preservation of the State from danger could not always
do its work with the miserable tardiness of the other magistracies, and they
recalled the many cases in which the Ten had saved Venice. 1762.

One of the debates was prolonged for five consecutive hours. At last the
Conservative party carried the day. Rom. viii.
136-137.
The wild enthusiasm of the population, on learning that the Ten and the
Inquisitors were to remain in existence, shows well enough what the people thought; their
only protection against the nobles lay in the two tribunals. Six thousand persons waited in
the Square of Saint Mark’s to learn the result of the contest, and when it was known
proceeded to burn fireworks before the palaces of the nobles who had been the chief
speakers in defence of the Ten—Foscarini, Marcello, and Grimani. The populace then
declared that it would set fire to the houses of the nobles who had tried to do away with the
only institution they still feared, and the palaces of the Zen and the Renier were only saved

from fire and pillage by the energetic intervention of the Inquisitors of State, whose office
those aristocrats had attempted to abolish.
I know of no more convincing answer to the numerous dilettante historians who have
accused the Council of Ten of oppressing the people.
If the Council and the Inquisitors were in need of an excuse for occasionally
overstepping their powers in order to act quickly, they had a good one in the absurdly
cumbrous system of the magistracies, as they existed in the eighteenth century. As a
curiosity,
I give a list or the principal magistracies, taken by Romanin from an
almanack of 1796, the last year of the Republic:— Rom. viii.
399.
The Doge’s Counsellors 6
Savi of the Council 16
Procurators of Saint Mark 9
‘Criminal’ Quarantia 40
‘Old’ Civil Quarantia 40
‘New’ Civil Quarantia 40
Colleges of the XXV. and the XV. 40
Senate 60
‘Zonta,’ supplementary to Senate 60
Council of Ten 10
Inquisitors (of Ten) 3
Avogadori of the Commonwealth 3
Total 327

besides the whole of the Great Council, which consisted of all nobles over twenty-five years
of age, and of the younger men chosen by lot to sit without a vote.
And these are only the principal magistracies. The secondary ones comprised over five
hundred officials, divided between something like one hundred and thirty offices, such as
Provveditors, or inspectors of some forty different matters, from artillery to butchers’ shops,
from ‘Ancient and Modern Justice’ to oats: Savi, Inquisitors of all matters except religion,
Auditors, Executors, Correctors, Reformers, Deputies, and Syndics; a perfect ant-hill of
officials who were perpetually in one another’s way.
Here is an instance of the manner in which ordinary justice was administered, even by
the Council of Ten.

WHEN THE ALPS SHOW THEMSELVES, FONDAMENTA NUOVE

On the sixth of March 1776 a patrician called Semitecolo, who was a member of one of
the Quarantie, and therefore a magistrate, was walking in the Fondamenta Nuove when he
saw a big butcher named Milani unmercifully beating a wretched peddler of old books. He
stopped and expostulated; the butcher took his interference ill, and delivered a blow with his
fist which caused the blood to gush abundantly from the magistrate’s nose. Semitecolo was
taken into a neighbouring house, and the butcher walked off.
Still covered with blood, Semitecolo hastened to lay the matter before the Council of
Ten, demanding the

CAFÉ ON THE ZATTERE

arrest of Milani. But Pier Barbarigo, who was one of the Capi for the week, while
sympathising deeply, excused himself from arresting the culprit, on the ground that a
detailed account of the affair signed by witnesses must be laid before the Council; and,
moreover, the Council was busy just then, he said, owing to the arrival of the Pope’s
Nuncio, and there would be no meeting on the next day. Semitecolo could not even get an
order to have the butcher watched by the police, and the culprit had full time and liberty to
leave Venice before anything was done. Note that he himself did not expect impunity, but
only a very long delay before his arrest was ordered.
The public followed the affair and was indignant, and freely criticised the Ten in public
places; whereupon the Inquisitors ordered all the cafés to be closed two hours after dark.
This was especially galling to the Venetians, who were fond of sitting up late, and loved the
bright lights of the cafés.
One morning a notice appeared on the walls, drawn up in the following terms:—
‘The Guild of the Night-Thieves wishes to thank his Excellency the “Capo” Barbarigo
for having provided them with much more sufficient and convenient
means of earning their bread during the present hard times.’

The Inquisitors’ ordinance was soon modified so as to allow the cafés to
remain open till midnight. Rom. viii.
399.
As for the minor courts, Goldoni, who was brought up to be a lawyer, says
that there were nearly as many different ones as there were different kinds of suits possible.
They paralysed each other, and could not have worked well even if they had been honest.
But they were not. An Avogador acquitted a man accused of theft. The Signors of the
Night—the chiefs of police—who had committed the accused for trial
believed him guilty and determined to examine the papers relating to the trial. Mutinelli,
Ult. 143.

THE DOGANA

With this intention they made a search in the house of the Avogador and confiscated the
private accounts in which he set down the profit and loss of his judicial industry; for he was
a very careful man. Surely enough, the Signors found an entry of one hundred and fifty
sequins (£112. 10s.) received for acquitting the thief.
About the same time there was a very beautiful dancer called the Cellini at the theatre of
San Cassian.

A magistrate who exercised the righteous functions of an ‘Executor
against Blasphemy’ became anxious to get into her good graces, but as she Mutinelli,
Ult. 144.
would have nothing to do with him, he brought an accusation against her in
his own court, tried her, and condemned her to a severe penalty. But she appealed to the
Council of Ten, proved her innocence, and was acquitted. Thereupon the Venetians began
to swear ‘by the holy Virgin Cellini.’
With such a state of things in Venice, it was only to be expected that the condition of
justice in the provinces should be still worse. When
Goldoni was Secretary to the Chancery of Feltre, in the Venetian territory,
there was a huge scandal about a whole forest cut down and sold without any Mut. Ult.
order or authority from the government. An inquiry was attempted and begun;
it was found that more than two hundred persons were implicated, and as it soon became
apparent that the same thing had been done before them, within the century, it was judged
better to draw a veil over the whole affair.
This naturally encouraged others. In 1782 the Provveditor Michiel informed the Senate
that the Podestà of the city of Usmago had calmly pocketed the price of an oak forest,
which he had asked leave to cut down on pretence of using the funds for repairing his
official residence.
Finally, a number of posts, especially in the ducal household, were openly sold; in the
last years of the Republic even the office of a procurator of Saint Mark could be bought.
In close connection with the magistracies and the legal profession generally, I give the
following amusing extract from Goldoni’s memoirs.
He begins by telling us that although he had been entered at a lawyer’s office for two
years, he left it fitted for the profession in eight months,
because the administration interpreted the two years to mean the dates of two
consecutive years, without any regard to the months. Young Goldoni then Goldoni, i.
23.
took a lodging in the lawyers’ quarter near San Paterniano, and his mother
and aunt lived with him.
I put on the toga belonging to my new station (he continues), and it is the same as that of the Patricians; I smothered
my head in an enormous wig and impatiently awaited the day of my presentation in the Palace. The novice must have
two assistants who are called in Venice Compari di Palazzo [‘Palace godfathers’]. The young man chooses them amongst
those of the old lawyers who are most friendly to him....
So I went between my two sponsors to the foot of the grand staircase in the great courtyard of the Palace, and for an
hour and a half I made so many bows and contortions that my back was broken and my wig was like a lion’s mane. Every
one who passed before me gave his opinion of me; some said, Here is a youth of good character; others said, Here is
another Palace sweeper; some embraced me, some laughed in my face. To be short, I went up the stairs and sent the
servant to find a gondola, so as not to show myself in the street in such a dishevelled state, naming as a place of meeting
the Hall of the Great Council, where I sat down on a bench whence I could see every one pass without being seen by any
one. During this time, I reflected on the career I was about to embrace. In Venice there are generally two hundred and
forty lawyers entered on the register; there are ten or twelve of the first rank, about twenty who occupy the second; all the
others are hunting for clients; and the poorer Procurators gladly act as their dogs on condition of sharing the prey....
While I was thus alone, building castles in the air, I saw a woman of about thirty approaching me, not disagreeable
in face, white, round, and plump, with a turned-up nose and wicked eyes, a great deal of gold on her neck, her ears, her
arms, her fingers, and in a dress which proclaimed that she was a woman of the common class, but pretty well off. She
came over and saluted me.
‘Sir, good day!’
‘Good day, Signora!’

‘Will you allow me to offer you my congratulations?’
‘For what?’
‘On your entrance into the Forum; I saw you in the courtyard when you were making your salaams. Per Bacco! Sir,
your hair is nicely done.’
‘Isn’t it? Am I not a handsome young fellow?’
‘But it makes no difference how your hair is done; Signor Goldoni always cuts a good figure.’
‘So you know me, Signora?’
‘Did I not see you four years ago in the land of the lawyers, in a long wig and cloak?’
‘True; you are right, for I was then in the house of the Procurator.’
‘Just so; in the house of Signor Indrie’ [Goldoni’s uncle].
‘So you know my uncle too?’
‘In this part of the world I know every one, from the Doge to the last copyist of the Courts.’
‘Are you married?’
‘No.’
‘Are you a widow?’
‘No.’
‘Oh—I do not dare ask more!’
‘All the better.’
‘Have you any business?’
‘No.’
‘From your appearance I took you for a well-to-do person.’
‘I really am.’
‘Then you have investments?’
‘None at all.’
‘But you are very well fitted out; how do you manage to do it?’
‘I am a daughter of the Palace, and the Palace supports me.’
‘That is very strange! You say you are a daughter of the Palace?’
‘Yes, sir; my father had a position in it.’
‘What did he do?’
‘He listened at the doors and then went to take good news to those who were expecting pardons, or verdicts, or
favourable judgments; he had capital legs and always got there first. As for my mother, she was always here, as I am. She
was not proud, she took her fee, and undertook some commissions. I was born and brought up in these gilded halls, and,
as you see, I also have gold on me.’
‘Yours is a most singular story. Then you follow in your mother’s footsteps?’
‘No, sir. I do something else.’
‘That is to say?’
‘I push lawsuits.’
‘Push lawsuits? I do not understand.’
I am as well known as Barabbas. It is very well understood that all the lawyers and all the Procurators are my
friends, and a number of people apply to me to obtain advice for them and counsel for defence. Those who come to me
are generally not rich, and I look about amongst the novices and the unemployed [lawyers] who want nothing but work in
order to make themselves known. Do you know, sir, that though you see me as I am, I have made the fortunes of a round
dozen of the most famous lawyers in the profession. Come, sir, courage, and if you are willing, I shall make yours too.’
It amused me to listen to her, and as my servant did not come, I continued the conversation.
‘Well, Signorina, have you any good affairs on hand now?’
‘Yes, sir, I have several, indeed I have some excellent ones. I have a widow who is suspected of having occultated
her monkey; another who wishes to prove a marriage contract got up after the fact; I have girls who are petitioning for a
dowry; I have women who wish to bring suits for annulment of marriage; I have sons of good families who are
persecuted by their creditors; as you see, you need only choose.’
‘My good woman,’ I said, ‘so far I have let you talk; now it is my turn. I am young, I am about to begin my career,
and I desire occasions for showing myself and obtaining occupation; but no love of work nor fancy for litigation could
make me begin with the disgraceful suits you offer me.’

‘Ha, ha!’ she laughed, ‘you despise my clients because I warned you that there was nothing to earn; but listen! My
two widows are rich, you will be well paid, and shall be even paid in advance, if you wish.’
I saw my servant coming in the distance; I rose and answered the chattering woman in a fearless and resolute tone.
‘No, you do not know me, I am a man of honour....’
Then she took my hand and spoke gravely.
‘Well done! Continue always in the same mind.’
‘Ah!’ I exclaimed, ‘you change your tone now?’
‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘and the tone I take now is much better than the one I have been using. Our conversation has been
somewhat mysterious; remember it and see that you speak to no one about it. Good-bye, sir. Always be wise, be always
honourable, and you will be satisfied with the result.’
She went away, and I was left in the greatest astonishment. I did not know what all this meant; but I learned later
that she was a spy and had come to sound me; yet I never knew, nor wished to know, who sent her to me.

RIO DELLA SENSA

XIII

THE LAST SBIRRI
It is worth while to glance at the agents of the police, of the Council of Ten, and of the
Inquisitors of State
at the end of the Republic. The two Councils had six in their service, called
the Fanti de’ Cai, the footmen of the Heads, and one of them was at the beck Mutinelli,
Lessico.
and call of the Inquisitors. This particular one was the famous Cristofolo de’
Cristofoli, whose name is connected alike with all the tragedies and the comic adventures
of the last days.
He was a sort of general inspector of freemasons, rope-dancers, circus-riders,
antiquaries, bravi, and gondoliers, and he exercised in his manifold functions all the
civility of which a detective can dispose. He was a giant in body, a jester and a wit by
nature, a combination certainly intended for the stage rather than the police.
His especial bugbear was freemasonry, together with all the secret societies which were
then largely in the pay of France, employed by her to promote general revolution. A
manuscript preserved in the Museo Correr gives an account of the first discovery of a
Lodge.
A patrician named Girolamo Zulian, says this document, when returning one night
from a meeting of the Lodge left upon the seat of his gondola a piece of paper on which
were drawn certain incomprehensible signs. The gondoliers found the paper, and supposed
that the symbols were those of some kind of witchcraft. One of the men took the scrap to a
monk he knew and begged him to decipher the signs, or at least to give his advice as to
what should be done with the thing, as it might be fatal even to destroy a spell of black
magic. The monk told the gondolier to take it to the Inquisitors of State. The man did so,
and one of them kept him in a garret of his house, to protect him against any possible
vengeance on the part of the secret society, and Cristofolo de’ Cristofoli was commissioned
to clear up the mystery. On the following night he raided the house indicated by the
gondolier with thirty Sbirri, and found there assembled a large meeting of the brethren, one
of whom had the presence of mind to throw into the canal the heavy register containing a
complete list of their names. Cristofoli took a quantity of papers, however, together with
the paraphernalia of the Lodge, and he afterwards, says the manuscript, dictated from
memory the names of the persons he had seen at the meeting. But he must have made
mistakes, since several of the persons he designated are known to have been absent from
Venice on foreign missions at the date of the raid, May sixth, 1785.
Another manuscript, published by Dandolo, gives a different account of the affair,
under the same date. It was copied by the famous Cicogna, and is amusing for its
language:—
It was the anniversary of the feast of the principal Protector of this most serene dominion, Saint Mark the
Evangelist, April the twenty-fifth, 1785, when it was discovered that the public Arsenal of Venice had been treacherously
set on fire; the fire was eventually discovered by a certain woman, who was rewarded for life [i.e. with a pension] by the

public munificence; and by the discovery of it, a fire was prevented which might have been fatal to a large part of the
city, and which was not to have broken out till the night following the twenty-fifth, but which showed itself after noon on
account of an extraordinary wind which had temporarily arisen from the east and which blew with fury all day.
Such an accident, as fatal as its prevention by the Evangelist

FONDAMENTE NUOVE

Saint Mark was miraculous, not only moved the public vigilance to guard that public edifice under more jealous
custody, but also [to watch] all the quarters of the city; to this end multiplying watchmen and spies, in order to discover,
if that

RIO S. STIN

might be possible, the perpetrators of such an horrible and terrifying felony.
In the inquiries, it was observed by trustworthy spies on the night of the [date omitted in the original] May, that a
certain palace situated in Riomarin, in the parish of San Simon Grande, was entered from time to time after midnight by
respectable-looking persons, for whom the door was opened at the simple signal of a little tap. Information of this being
given to the Supreme Tribunal, the latter ordered the most circumspect inquiries; when, on the same morning,
information was given to the Secretary of the said Supreme Magistracy by a certain ship’s carpenter that having, on
commission of N. N., finished making a large wardrobe, he inquired of that cavalier where he was to bring it in order to
set it up properly; and that he had been told to bring it to a certain palace in Riomarin and to leave it in the entrance
(gateway) of the same, and that he would be sent for later to place it where it was to go; that seeing several days go by
without receiving that notice, and yielding to curiosity, he stole near in the night to see if the wardrobe were still in the
entrance of the palace, where he had placed it, and he convinced himself that it had been taken elsewhere; and being

displeased with this, because some other workman might have handled his work, and guessing from a hint of the
gentleman’s that the wardrobe had been intended to be placed against the windows of a balcony, and observing in this
palace a balcony of just about the length of the wardrobe made by him, he tried to get into the apartment above the one
where the balcony was [let to some one], explaining to the people who lived in that house that his suspicion induced him
to ask their permission to make a hole with a gimlet, in order to see whether his wardrobe had been put up where he
guessed it must be; and that he had obtained consent to this request, because the lodgers in that second apartment had
conceived some curiosity to know who the persons might be who met there only at night time; that therefore he betook
himself to that dwelling on the night of the fourth of May, having previously made a hole, and stopped there till the first-
floor apartment was opened, and he saw that after midnight a hall was lighted up which was hung with mourning and
furnished with a throne covered with blue cloth and with other symbols of death, and here and there were disposed small
lanterns, and persons also sitting here and there, dressed in black robes; so that at this horrid sight he was terrified, and he
heard him who sat on the throne say these very words: ‘Brethren, let us suspend our meeting, for we are watched’; and in
that room he saw indeed his wardrobe placed against a balcony.
And that he left the lodgers in that second apartment in consternation, and he himself, full of amazement and terror,
and still surprised by the novelty of the things, and supposing, in his simplicity, that witchcraft was practised there and
the works of the devil, he was scandalised, and went to the parish priest of San Simon Grande, his confessor, and that
having told him all he had seen, heard, and observed, he (the priest) advised him to quickly lay before the government all
that he had chanced to see and hear.
The good man did so, and told all to the Secretary of the Inquisitors of State. A warrant was therefore issued on that
same morning of the sixth of May by the Supreme Tribunal to its own officer Cristofoli, to go thither (to Riomarin),
accompanied by the Capitan Grande and twenty-four men. Having entered that apartment, where he surprised a
nobleman who guarded the place, he (Cristofoli) discovered a lodge of freemasons.
Emanuele Cicogna [the distinguished historian] copied this on the twenty-fourth of August 1855, from two codices
existing in his collection.

On the following day, the Inquisitors publicly burned the black garments, the utensils,
the ‘conjuring books,’ as they are described, and
all the booty Cristofoli had confiscated, while the populace, believing that it
was all a case of witchcraft, danced round the fire and cheered for Saint Mutinelli,
Ult.
Mark.
The persons implicated were treated with the greatest indulgence, and Malamani
observes that in the whole affair it was the furniture that got the worst of it.
About the same time Cristofoli made a vain attempt to arrest the notorious Cagliostro.
This man, whose real name was Giuseppe Balsamo, was born in Palermo on the eighth
of June 1743. His youth was wild and disreputable. He tried being a monk, but soon tired
of it, and threw his frock to the nettles, as the French say, in Caltagirone, in Sicily; after
that he lived by theft, by coining false money, and by every sort of imposture. In Rome he
married a girl of singular beauty, Lorenza Feliciani, who became his tool in all his
intrigues.
The French freemasons made use of the singularly intelligent couple to propagate the
doctrines of the revolution. Pretending to change hemp into silk, and every metal into gold,
and selling marvellous waters for restoring the aged to youth and beauty, the two got into
many excellent houses, changing their names and their disguises whenever they were
compromised.
Balsamo arrived in Venice in 1787 or 1788, under the name of Count Cagliostro, and
began an active revolutionary campaign, to the great annoyance
of the Inquisitors, who fancied they had suppressed the whole movement
when Cristofoli had discovered the famous Lodge. He was less fortunate this Mutinelli,
Ult. 31.
time. He tracked the Count everywhere, but could get no substantial evidence

against him, till he suddenly came upon positive proof that the impostor had stolen a
thousand sequins from a rich merchant of the Giudecca. And then, at the very moment
when the great policeman was sure of his game, the man disappeared as into thin air and
was next heard of beyond the Austrian frontier.
The chief of the Sbirri had better luck when he raided the Café Ancilotto, which was a
favourite place of meeting for the revolutionaries. They
tried to open a reading-room there, furnished with all the latest revolutionary
literature, but Cristofoli got wind of the plan, called on the man who kept the Tassini,
under
café, and informed him that the first person who entered the ‘reading-room’ ‘Ancilotto.’
would be invited to pay a visit to the Inquisitors of State. After that, no one
showed any inclination to read the French papers. In connection with Cristofoli, we also
come upon the curious fact that he arrested, at the Café
of the Ponte dell’ Angelo, a number of Barnabotti, who were preaching
suspicious doctrines. As usual, the poor nobles were the class most easily Tassini,
under
bribed and most ready to betray their country. ‘Caffetero.’
Cristofoli was occasionally entrusted with missions more diplomatic than
the arrest of revolutionaries. He was sometimes sent to present his respects to great nobles
who did not guess that they had attracted the eyes of the police.
It was the business of the Inquisitors to watch over the artistic treasures of the capital.
During the last year of the Republic a number of nobles sold precious

RIO DELLA GUERRA

objects to strangers, such as paintings and statues, of which the government much regretted
the loss to the city. A few measures were passed for preventing this dispersion of private

collections, but it happened only too often that priceless things were suddenly gone,
leaving no trace of their destination, except in the pockets of the former owners.
The Grimani family possessed some magnificent statues and a wonderful library of
rare books, inherited from Cardinal Domenico Grimani, who died in 1523. Shortly before
the fall of
the Republic a foreigner bought the statue of Marcus Agrippa; the boat which
was to take it on board an outward bound ship was at the door of the palace, Statue of M.
Agrippa;
and the men who were to take it down from its pedestal and box it were Museo
ready, when Cristofolo Cristofoli appeared at the entrance, gigantic and Correr.
playful.
He walked straight to the statue, took off his cap to it and bowed gravely before he
delivered his message to the marble: ‘The Supreme Tribunal of the Inquisitors, having
heard that you wish to leave this city, sends me to wish a pleasant journey, both to you and
his Excellency Grimani.’
‘His Excellency Grimani’ did not relish the idea of exile; the workmen disappeared, the
boat was sent away, and the statue remained. It was destined to be left as a gift to the city
by another Grimani, less avaricious than ‘His Excellency.’
In spite of his good-humour, Cristofoli inspired terror, and his mere name was often
used to lend weight to practical jokes. It is related, for instance, of the famous
Montesquieu, the author of the Esprit des Lois and the friend of King Molmenti,
Studi e
Stanislaus Leczinski, that when he was making notes in Venice his friend Ricerche.
Lord Chesterfield managed to cause a mysterious message to be conveyed to
him, warning him to be on his guard, as the Chief of the Ten employed spies to watch him,
and Cristofoli was on his track. And thereupon, says the story, the excellent Montesquieu
burned all his most compromising notes, and fled straight to Holland with the remainder of
his manuscripts.
The Council of Ten and their Sbirri had not yet done with the Bravi. They were
numerous in the provinces, and when they were caught they were tried and hanged in
Venice. The ‘Signorotti’—the rich landowners, who were not Venetian nobles, but called
themselves ‘knights’—were many and prosperous, and were the professional murderers’
best clients. Indeed, the Venetian mainland provinces and much of Lombardy presented a
case of arrested development; at the end of the eighteenth century they had not emerged
from the barbarism of the early fifteenth.
The lordlings entertained Bravi, and when there was no more serious business on hand,
they laid wagers with each other as to the courage of their hired assassins. A bet of this
kind was made and settled in 1724 between an Avogadro and a Masperoni, two country
‘knights’ who lived on their estates in the province of Brescia. One evening the two were
discussing the character of a ruffian whom Masperoni had just taken into his service. His
new master maintained that the fellow was the bravest man in the ‘profession.’ Avogadro,
on the other hand, wagered that he would not be able to traverse the road between his
master’s castle and Lumezzane, which belonged to Avogadro. Masperoni took the bet, and
explained the situation to the man. The latter, feeling that his reputation was at stake,
started at once, carrying on his shoulder a basket of fine fruit as a present from Masperoni

to his friend, and he took his way across the hills of Valtrompia. When he was a few miles
from Lumezzane he was met by two well-armed fellows, who ordered him to turn back,
but he was not so easily stopped. He set down his basket, and in the twinkling of an eye
killed both his adversaries, after which he quietly pursued his journey.
Avogadro was very much surprised to see him, and asked with curiosity what sort of
trip he had made.
‘Excellent,’ he answered. ‘I met a couple of good-for-nothings who wanted to stop me,
but I killed them, and here I am.’
Avogadro, filled with admiration, gave him a purse of gold and sent him back to
Masperoni with a letter of congratulation.
Incidents of this kind occurred long afterwards, even after the fall of the
Republic. The name of Cristofoli is associated with that of Count Alemanno Molmenti,
Banditi,
Gambara in a story which could not be believed if the documents that prove it 289.
were not all preserved in the various archives, and principally in those of the
Inquisitors.
The Gambara family was of Lombard origin, and had always been very influential in
the neighbourhood of Brescia. The race had produced fine specimens of all varieties—
soldiers, bishops, cardinals, murderers, and one woman poet, besides several bandits,
traitors, and highwaymen. In the late sixteenth century two brothers of the family, Niccolò
and Lucrezio, had a near relative, Theodora, an orphan girl of fourteen years and an
heiress, who was in charge of a guardian. On the twenty-second of January 1569 the two
brothers went to the guardian and ordered him to give up the girl. On his refusal they threw
him down his own stairs, wounded his people who tried to defend him, broke down the
door of the girl’s room, and carried her off.
I only quote this as an instance of the family’s manners. The last scion of the race who
lived under the Republic, and who outlived it, was Count Alemanno, a young monster of
perversity. He was born after his father’s death at the castle of Pralboino, on a feudal
holding belonging to his house. His mother was soon married again to Count Martinengo
Cesaresco, and she took the boy with her to her new home. He was naturally violent and
unruly; at fifteen he was an accomplished swordsman, and was involved in every quarrel
and evil adventure on the country side. When still a mere boy his conduct was such as to
give the government real trouble, and the authorities imposed a guardian upon him in the
person of a priest of his family, who was instructed to teach him the ordinary precepts of
right and wrong; but the clergyman soon announced that he was not able to cope with his
young relative, and the Council of Ten learned that the boy’s violent character showed no
signs of improvement.
He was now arrested, brought to Venice, and confined in one of the Piombi, his
property being administered under the direction of the government. The Inquisitors of
State examined the record of the complaints laid against him, and concluded that his faults
were due to his extreme youth; they therefore ordered him to reside within the fortress of
Verona, but gave him control of his fortune.
The Captain of Verona, knowing the sort of prisoner he had to deal with, and being
made responsible for him, sent for an engineer and asked his opinion as to the possibilities

of escape for a prisoner who was not locked up in a cell. The engineer wrote out a careful
criticism of the fortress, concluding with an extremely practical remark: ‘With good means
of escape,’ he observed, ‘a man may escape from any place, but without means it is not
possible to escape at all.’
The Captain, only partially reassured, set to work to convert his prisoner, and sent him
a good priest to teach him his Catechism and exhort him to the practices of Christianity;
but the young Count would have neither exhortation nor religious instruction. The Council
of Ten now sent him to the fortress of Palma for a change of air, and the commander of that
place inherited the feverish anxiety about his charge which had tormented the Captain of
Verona. He did not consult an engineer, however, and one morning the prisoner was not in
his room, nor in the fortress, nor anywhere in the neighbourhood of Palma.
The Inquisitors now sent Sbirri in all directions throughout the Venetian territory. They
could not catch Alemanno, but he wearied of eluding them, and judged that he could get
better terms by submitting to the Inquisitors. He did so, using the offices of his aunt,
Countess Giulia Gambara, who was married to a gentleman of Vicenza. The Podestà of the
latter city sent an officer and six soldiers to the place designated by Alemanno, and he
surrendered, and was taken first to Padua, and then to Venice. As soon as he landed at the
Piazzetta he was put in charge of Cristofoli and the Sbirri, who took him before the
Inquisitors.
They exiled him to Zara, and wrote to the Governor of Dalmatia: ‘We desire him to
have a good lodging.... See that he frequents persons of good habits, thanks to whom he
may not wander from the right path on which he has entered, and in which we wish him to
continue.’
The Inquisitors, good souls, so mildly concerned for the wild boy’s moral welfare,
were soon to learn what Alemanno considered the ‘right path,’ for the Governor of
Dalmatia kept them well informed. Before long they learned that a certain fisherman, who
had refused to let the Count’s butler, Antonio Barach, have a fine fish which was already
sold to another client, had been seized, taken into the Count’s house, and severely beaten.
But the Inquisitors were inclined to be clement and paid no attention to the accounts of
his doings. In 1756 he was authorised to return to his domains of

VIA GARIBALDI

Pralboino and Corvione, and his real career began. His first care was to engage as
many desperate Bravi as he could find. One of these having had a little difficulty with the
police, and having been killed during the argument, Alemanno captured a Sbirro, and so
handled him that he sent him back to his post a cripple for life.

Scarcely a year after his return from Zara, he rode through the town of Calvisano, and
without answering the Customs officer, whose duty it was to ascertain if he were carrying
anything dutiable, he galloped on and escaped recognition. His servant, who followed him
at a little distance, was stopped, and as he answered the Customs men very rudely he was
locked up in jail. But when the officer in charge learned who the man was, his fright was
such that he not only set him at liberty at once, but conversed with him and treated him in
the most friendly manner.
The young Count was of course delighted to learn that his name spread terror amongst
government officials, and by way of showing what he could do, he sent fifteen of his Bravi
to Calvisano with orders to besiege the Customs men. In the fighting that followed, one of
the latter was killed and their officer narrowly escaped.
The Council of Ten now interfered, and summoned Count Alemanno Gambara to
appear before them, and if he refused, the local authorities were ordered to take him and
send him by force. Instead of obeying, he fortified his two castles, increased the numbers
of his band of Bravi, and defied the law. With his ruffians at his back he rode through the
length and breadth of the Brescian territory as he pleased, and once even traversed

FROM SAN GEORGIO TO THE SALUTE

the city itself with his formidable escort. No one dared to meddle with him. His neighbours
in the country were completely terrorised, and he and his head ruffian, Carlo Molinari,
committed the wildest excesses.

Alemanno seems to have especially delighted to watch the effect of fright on his
victims. One day his men chased a priest of Gottolengo and three friends, who had been
shooting in the woods not far beyond the boundary of the estate of Corvione. The fugitives
succeeded in reaching the church of Gottolengo, in which they took refuge, barricading the
door against their pursuers. But the Bravi starved them out, and they were obliged to
surrender unconditionally. They were then led out to a lonely field and were exhorted to
commend their souls to God, as they were about to be killed and buried on the spot.
Alemanno watched their agony with delight, concealed behind a hedge. When he was tired
of the sport, he came out of concealment and ordered his men to beat and kick them back
to Gottolengo.
A retired colonel lived quietly on a small estate near one of Gambara’s. His servants
accidentally killed one of the Count’s dogs; he had them taken, cruelly beaten, and sent
back to their master after suffering every indignity. The colonel thought of lodging a
complaint with the Council of Ten, but on reflection he gave up the idea as not safe, for
Gambara’s vengeance would probably have been fatal to any one who ventured to give
information of his doings. No one was safe within his reach, neither man, nor woman, nor
child. A volume might be filled with the list of his crimes.
At last, in 1762, the municipality of the town of Gambara, from which he took his title,
resolved to petition the Council of Ten for help and protection against him. When he
learned that this was their intention, he rode into the town with his escort, and halting in
the market-place addressed the citizens; his threats of vengeance were so frightful, and he
was so well able to carry them out, that the chief burghers fell upon their knees before him,
weeping and imploring his forgiveness.
One day several Sbirri traversed some of his land in pursuit of a smuggler who sought
his protection. He met them smiling, and cordially invited them to spend a night under his
roof. With the childlike simplicity which is one of the most endearing characteristics of
most Italians, they fell into the trap. On the next day, a cart loaded with greens entered
Brescia, and stopped opposite the house of the Venetian Podestà. The horses were taken
out and led away, without exciting any remark, and the cart remained where it had been
left, till the foul smell it exhaled attracted attention. It was unloaded, and underneath the
greens were found the bloody corpses of the Sbirri who had accepted Gambara’s
hospitality.
This time the Inquisitors of State took matters seriously, and sent a squadron of
cuirassiers and a detachment of Sbirri, under the command of an officer called Rizzi, to
arrest him and his henchman Molinari. Rizzi came to Pralboino and broke down the gates,
but the two men were already gone, and the expedition ended in the confiscation of a few
insignificant letters found in Alemanno’s desk.
He had understood that he must leave Venetian territory for a time, and riding down
into the Duchy of Parma he sought the hospitality of his friend, the Marchese Casali, at
Monticelli. He next visited Genoa, and judging that it was time to settle in life, he married
the Marchesa Carbonare, whom he judged, with some reason, to be a woman worthy of his
companionship.

They returned together to Monticelli, where they led a riotous existence for some time.
Being one day short of money, Alemanno stopped the messengers who were conveying to
Venice the taxes raised in Brescia, and sent them on after giving them a formal receipt for
the large sum he had taken from them. But this was too much for the Duke of Parma, who
now requested the couple to spend their time elsewhere than in his Duchy.
They consulted as to their chances of getting a free pardon for the crimes the Count had
committed on Venetian territory and against the Republic, and the Countess addressed a
petition to the Doge which begins as follows: ‘Every penitent sinner who sincerely
purposes to mend his life obtains of God mercy and forgiveness; shall I, Marianna
Carbonare, the most afflicted wife of Count Alemanno Gambara, not feel thereby
encouraged to fall upon my knees before the august Throne of your Serenity?...’ And much
more to the same effect.
Another petition signed by both was addressed to the Inquisitors, and a third, signed
only by Alemanno, to the Doge and the Inquisitors together. In this precious document he
calls them ‘the most perfect image of God on earth, by their power.’
The object of these petitions was that the Count might be sent into exile, anywhere, so
long as he were not shut up in a fortress, a sentence which would soon kill him, as he was
in bad health.
He had certainly committed many murders and had killed several servants of the
Republic in the performance of their duties; and he had stolen the taxes collected in
Brescia. Amazing as it may seem, his petition was granted, and he was exiled to Zara for
two years, after which he was allowed to come to Chioggia on the express condition that
he should not set foot outside the castle, and should see no one but his wife and son. He
remained in Chioggia just a year, from the twenty-fifth of September 1777, to the twenty-
sixth of September 1778, after which the Inquisitors were kind enough to give him his
liberty if he would present himself before their Secretary, which he did with alacrity.
My readers need not be led into a misapprehension by the touching unanimity which
the loving couple exhibited in the petitions they signed. They never agreed except when
their interests did, and were soon practically separated in their private life. The Countess
took Count Miniscalchi of Verona for her lover, while Alemanno showed himself
everywhere with the Countess of San Secondo. In the end they separated altogether, and
the son, Francesco, remained with his father, who educated him according to his own
ideas.
So far as can be ascertained, the man never changed the manner of his life. After his
pardon he returned to his estates in the province of Brescia, where he found his old friends,
who were few, and the recollections of his youth, which were many. In a short time
Pralboino and Corvione were once more dens of murderers and robbers as of old, and as in
former days he had been helped in his blackest deeds by Carlo Molinari, his chief Bravo,
so now he was seconded by his steward, Giacomo Barchi, who kept the reign of terror
alive in the country when it pleased the Count to reside in Venice.
He was sleeping soundly in his apartment in the capital one morning towards the end
of March 1782, after having spent most of the night at a gambling house by the Ponte dell’
Angelo—he never slept more than four hours—when he was awakened by an unexpected

visit from Cristofolo de’ Cristofoli, who requested him to appear at once before the
Secretary of the Inquisitors. An examination of conscience must have been a serious affair
for Alemanno, and not to be undertaken except at leisure; and it appears that on this
occasion he really did not know what he was to be accused of doing. The Secretary of the
Inquisitors merely commanded him not to leave the city on pain of the Tribunal’s anger,
and on the morrow he learned that his steward Barchi had also been arrested.
For some reason impossible to explain, nothing was done to either, and before long
even the steward was set at liberty. The Inquisitors confined themselves to threatening the
two with ‘the public indignation’ and their own severest measures, if the Count did not
dismiss his Bravi and ‘reform his conduct.’
After that, history is silent as to his exploits. He was no longer young, and even the zest
of murder and rapine was probably beginning to pall on his weary taste. We know that he
sincerely mourned the fall of the Republic which had been so consistently kind to him, and
he never plotted against the government. He could not but feel that it would have been an
exaggeration to accuse it of having been hard on him.
His son Francesco, on the contrary, turned out to be one of the most turbulent of
revolutionaries, and helped to lead the insurrection at Bergamo. But for the intervention of
Bonaparte himself, he would have been killed by the inhabitants of Salò, who remained
faithful to the Republic, when they repulsed the insurgents. He was one of the five
delegates whom the city of Brescia sent to Bonaparte, to name him president of the
Cisalpine Republic. He died in 1848, after having written a life of his father, which was
published eleven years later in Trieste. One cannot but feel that in composing a memoir of
his parent, filial piety led him too far.
In concluding this chapter, which has dealt with criminals, I shall take the opportunity
of observing that the places in which criminals were confined in Venice shared in the
general decay of everything connected with the government. In the seventeenth century
and earlier all prisoners had been carefully kept separate according to their misdeeds; in
the eighteenth, mere children were shut up with adult criminals, and debtors were confined
with thieves. In the women’s prisons lunatics were often imprisoned with the sane, a state
of things that led to the most horrible scenes.
The gaolers of the Pozzi and the Piombi did not even keep the prisons clean, and the
state of the cells was such that I do not care to disgust the reader by describing it. In the
other prisons, or attached to them, a regular tavern was tolerated and perhaps authorised, as
a place of gathering for the prisoners, and here games of chance were played, even
such as were forbidden elsewhere in the city. The archives of the Ten show
how many crimes were committed in the very places where men were Mutinelli,
Ult.
confined to expiate earlier offences. As for the gaolers, they were one and all
corruptible. One of the Savi, the patrician Gritti, denounced to the Senate, in 1793, a gaoler
who let the healthiest and most airy cells to the highest bidders.

THE PESARO PALACE, GRAND CANAL

XIV

THE LAST DOGES
Between the beginning of the eighteenth century and the end of the Republic eleven Doges
occupied the throne. Of these the only one who might
have saved the government or retarded its fall was the very one who reigned
the shortest time. Let us say that if he had lived, he might have so far restored 1700-1797.
the strength of the ancient aristocracy as to admit of its perishing in a struggle
instead of dying of old age.
This Doge was Marco Foscarini, who was elected on the thirty-first of May 1762, and
died on the thirty-first of the following March. He was a man whose integrity was never
questioned, even by
the revolutionaries, and he accepted the Dogeship with the greatest regret. He
was a man of letters, and the endless empty ceremonial of the ducal existence Rom. viii.
142.
obliged him to leave unfinished his noble work on Venetian literature. Even
had the Doge’s action not been hopelessly paralysed by the hedge of petty regulations that
bristled round him, Foscarini’s experience of affairs in the course of occupying many
exalted posts had left him few illusions as to the
future of his country. ‘This century will be a terrible one for our children and
grandchildren,’ he wrote some time after his election. Rom. viii.
302.
Like many of the Doges he was a very old man when he was elected, and
was over eighty-eight years of age when he died, apparently much surprised at finding
himself at his end, though not unprepared for it. He complained that his physicians had not
told him how ill he was, and he asked for a little Latin book, De modo bene moriendi,
which had been given him by his friend Cardinal Passionei; presently he tried to dictate a
few reflections to his doctor, but was too weak, and expired whispering, ‘My poor
servants!’ He had apparently not provided for them as he would have done if he had not
been taken unawares.
His successor was Aloise IV. Mocenigo, who had been Ambassador to Rome and to
Paris. His election was celebrated in a manner that recalled the festivities of the sixteenth
century. A secretary was sent to the Mocenigo palace to announce the news to
his family, and the Dogess took four days in which to complete her
preparations, after which she came to the ducal palace accompanied by her 1763.
two married nieces, her sisters, her mother, all her own female cousins, and
all those of her husband; and this battalion of noble women in their gondolas was followed
down the Grand Canal by an innumerable fleet of gondolas and boats. All the male
relations were waiting at the landing of the Piazzetta to escort the ladies to the palace,
where the Dogess, seated on a throne, received the homage of the electors and of all the
nobility. She did not wear the ducal insignia on that day. In the evening there was a ball,
which she opened with one of the Procurators of Saint Mark.

A series of festivities began on the following day, at which she appeared in a
memorably magnificent dress: a long mantle of cloth of gold, like the Doge’s own, with
wide sleeves lined with white lace, opened to show a skirt and body all of gold lace-work;
a girdle of diamonds encircled her waist; her head-dress was a veil, arranged like a cap, but
the two ends hung down to her shoulders, and were picked up and fastened to her back hair
by two diamond clasps.
On three consecutive evenings there were balls at the palace, and at each the Dogess
danced only one minuet, with a Procurator of Saint Mark,
as etiquette required when there were no foreign princes in Venice.
Rom. viii.
This reminds one of old times; it is even true that in some ways the 148.
display at the ducal palace was greater than it had ever been. The banquets
especially took the importance of
public spectacles, and were always five in number, given at the feasts of Saint
Mark, the Ascension, Saint Vitus, Saint Jerome, and Saint Stephen, after the G. R.
Michiel, i.
last of which the distribution of the ‘oselle’ took place, representing the ducks 289.
of earlier days, as the reader will remember. At these great dinners there were
generally a hundred guests; the Doge’s counsellors, the Heads of the Ten, the Avogadors
and the heads of all the other magistracies had a right to be invited, but the rest of the
guests were chosen among the functionaries at the Doge’s pleasure.
In the banquet-hall there were a number of sideboards on which was exhibited the
silver, part of which belonged to the Doge and part to the State, and this was shown
twenty-four hours before the feast. It was under the keeping of a special official. The glass
service used on the table for flowers and for dessert was of the finest made in Murano.
Each service, though this is hard to believe, is said to have been used in public only once,
and was designed to recall some important event of contemporary history by trophies,
victories, emblems, and allegories. I find this stated by Giustina Renier Michiel, who was a
contemporary, was noble, and must have often seen these banquets.
The public was admitted to view the magnificent spectacle during the whole of the first
course, and the ladies of the aristocracy went in great numbers. It was their custom to walk
round the tables, talking with those of their friends who sat among the guests, and
accepting the fruits and sweetmeats which the Doge and the rest offered them, rising from
their seats to do so. The Doge himself rose from his throne to salute those noble ladies
whom he wished to distinguish especially. Sovereigns passing through Venice at such
times did not disdain to appear as mere spectators at the banquets, which had acquired the
importance of national anniversaries.
Between the first and the second courses, a majestic chamberlain shook a huge bunch
of keys while he walked round the hall, and at this hint all visitors disappeared. The feast
sometimes lasted several hours, after which the Doge’s squires presented each of the
guests with a great basket filled with sweetmeats, fruits, comfits, and the like, and adorned
with the ducal arms. Every one rose to thank the Doge for these presents, and he took
advantage of the general move to go back to his private apartments. The guests
accompanied him to the threshold, where his Serenity bowed to them without speaking,
and every one returned his salute in silence. He disappeared within, and all went home.

During this ceremony of leave-taking, the gondoliers of the guests entered the Hall of
the banquet and each carried the basket received by his master
to some lady indicated by the latter. ‘One may imagine,’ cries the good Dame
Michiel, ‘what curiosity there was about the destination of the baskets, but the G. R.
Michiel,
faithful gondoliers regarded mystery as a point of honour, though the basket Origini i.
was of such 302.

MARCO POLO’S COURT

dimensions that it was impossible to take it anywhere unobserved; happy were they who
received these evidences of a regard which at once touched their feelings and flattered
their legitimate pride! The greatest misfortune was to have to share the prize with another.’

The reign of Aloise Mocenigo was the one in which the question of reforms was the
most fully discussed, but many of the discussions turned on theories, and though a few led
to the passage of measures which somewhat affected commerce and public instruction, no
real result was produced. The Republic, I repeat, was dying of old age, which is the only ill
that is universally admitted to be incurable.
At the death of Mocenigo, three candidates were proposed for the ducal throne,
namely, Andrea Tron, Girolamo Venier, and Paolo Renier. If the people had been
consulted, Venier would have been acclaimed, though I do not pretend to say that his
election would have retarded the end. Nothing is easier than to speculate about what ‘the
people’ might have done at any given point in history; nothing is harder than to guess what
they are going to do; nothing, on the whole, is more certain than that the voice of the
people never yet turned the scale at a great moment in a nation well out of its infancy. No
one pretends nowadays that the French revolution was made by ‘the people.’
The many in Venice were vastly surprised to hear of Paolo Renier’s candidacy, for he
had a very indifferent reputation; to be accurate, the trouble was that it was not indifferent,
but bad. He was, indeed, a man of keen penetration, rarely eloquent, and a first-rate
scholar. He knew Homer by heart, and he had translated Plato’s Dialogues, which latter
piece of work might partly explain, without excusing,
his deplorable morals; but it was neither from Plato nor from Homer that he
had learned to plunder the government of his country. One of his R. viii. 240,
241;
contemporaries, Gratarol, described him as possessing ‘the highest of talents, Mutinelli,
the most arrogant of characters, and the most deceptive of faces.’ Ult.
It was commonly reported in Venice that when he had been Bailo at
Constantinople he had taken advantage of the war between Turkey and Russia, under
Catherine the Great, to enrich himself in a shameful manner, and the ninety thousand
sequins he made on that occasion afterwards served him, according to popular report, for
bribing the Barnabotti in the Great Council in order that the forty-one electors chosen
might be favourable to him. He was certainly not the inventor of this plan, but he is
generally said to have just outdone his predecessors in generosity, without overstepping the
limits of strict economy. The general belief is that he bought three hundred votes at fifteen
sequins each, which was certainly not an excessive price. It appears, too, that he
distributed money to the people in order to soothe the irritation his candidacy caused. If all
these accusations were not clearly proved, they were at least the subject of contemporary
satire.
A certain priest in particular wrote biting verses on him, in Venetian dialect, describing
the righteous anger of the late Marco Foscarini’s ghost at the election of such a successor.
The shade of the honourable
man tears off the ducal insignia in disgust, and bitterly reproaches Venice.
‘Ah, foolish Venice!’ it exclaims, ‘a Renier is Doge of our country, one Malamani.
who with ribald heart and iniquitous words sought to undo that tribunal which defends our
country from all evil! Ah, mad Venice! Now indeed I do repent me of having been Doge
one year! Strike my name from the series of the Doges, for I disdain to stand among
traitors.’

After his election Paolo Renier had his first ‘osella’ coined with a peculiarity in the
superscription which irritated the public. The words ran: ‘Paulus Reinerius principis
munus,’ his name being in the nominative case, a grammatical mistake which had always
been regarded as the special privilege of kings and emperors.
He made money of everything, by selling posts, franchises, and licenses to beg at the
door of the Basilica of Saint Mark. The Dogess was
not a person likely to increase her husband’s popularity, for she had been a
rope-dancer, and never appeared at public ceremonies. As I have explained Mutinelli,
Ult.
elsewhere, it was the Doge’s niece who did the honours of the palace, Dame
Giustina, who was beloved and esteemed by all Venetians, but ‘the Delmaz,’ as the Doge’s
wife was called, interfered in a hundred details of the administration.
It is told, for instance, that the priest of the church of San Basso used to have the bell
rung for mass very early in the morning, and that it had a peculiarly harsh and shrill tone
which disturbed the Dogess’s slumbers. She sent for
him and promised to make him a canon of Saint Mark’s if he would only have
the bell moved, or not rung. The good man promised and went away Tassini,
under ‘San
delighted, but when, after a time, the canonry was not given to him, he began Basso’;
ringing again, and doubtless enjoyed the thought that every stroke set the also
faithless Dogess’s teeth on edge. Molmenti,
Vecchie
The people revenged themselves on the Renier family for its many Storie.
misdeeds in scathing epigrams, and when at last the Doge lay dying in long
agony, the
gondoliers said that his soul refused to leave without being paid. The truth is
that as his death took place in Carnival week, on February eighteenth, 1789, it Mutinelli,
Ult.
was decided to keep his death a secret not only over Ash Wednesday, but until
the first Monday in Lent, in order not to disturb the merrymaking,
nor the reaction which was supposed to follow it; and he was buried without
much ceremony and with no display in the church of the Tolentini. Rom. viii.
300.
The candidates proposed for election to succeed him were numerous, but
not of good quality. One of them, Sebastiano Mocenigo, was such a bad
character that when he had been in Vienna as Ambassador the Empress Maria
Teresa had asked the Republic to recall him. The truth was that the few who Rom. viii,
301.
were fit for the Dogeship would not accept it, or were opposed by the whole
body of the corruptible.

PONTE DELLA PIETÀ

As a specimen of what went on during the election of the last Doge of Venice, I subjoin
an official list of what were considered the legitimate expenses of the electors. The figures

are from Mutinelli
and may be trusted. They are given in Venetian ‘lire,’ one of which is
considered to have been equal to half a modern Italian ‘lira,’ or French franc. Mutinelli,
Ult.
Ven.
Lire.
Bread, wine, oil, and vinegar 29,421
Fish 24,410
Meat, poultry, game 20,370
Sausages, large and small 3,980
Preserved fruits and candles 47,670
Wines, liquors, coffee 63,845
Spices, herbs, fruit, flowers 6,314
Wood and charcoal 31,851
Utensils hired, worn, and lost 41,624
Small expenses 45,327
Given to footmen and to workmen of the guilds 63,583
Tobacco and snuff 4,931
Poem ‘La Scaramuccia’ (The Skirmish) 48
Almanacks 8
Game of Rocambole (said to have been a kind of Ombre) 550
Nightcaps 450
Felt caps 56
Socks 16
Black silk wig-bags 48
French, German, and Spanish snuff-boxes 3,077
Combs ‘à la royale,’ for wigs, and for caps 2,150
Essence of rose, carnation, lavender, and vanilla; olive gum and
173
gold powder;
Rouge 9
One rosary 15
Total 389,926

Romanin, probably with another copy of the account which he does not give in items,
and writing earlier than Mutinelli, makes the sum a little smaller. In any case it is certainly
one of the most extraordinary bills ever brought in by a Republic for electing its chief.
In view of modern methods it will interest some
of my readers to see how the expenses of Venetian elections increased
towards the end, according to Romanin:— Rom. viii.
302, note.

Ven. Lire.
Election of Carlo Ruzzini in 1732 68,946
“ Aloise Pisani “ 1734 70,629
“ Pietro Grimani “ 1741 70,667
“ Francesco Loredan “ 1752 134,290
“ Marco Foscarini “ 1762 120,868
“ Aloise Mocenigo “ 1763 125,234
“ Paolo Renier “ 1779 222,410
“ Ludovico Manin “ 1789 378,387

Greatly increased expenditure for successive elections during half a century can only
mean one of two things, the approach of a collapse, or the imminence of a tyranny. The
greater the proportionate increase from one election to the next, the nearer is the
catastrophe. The election of the last Doge of Venice cost five and a half times as much as
that of Carlo Ruzzini. It would be interesting to know what proportion Julius Cæsar’s
enormous expenses, when he was elected Pontifex Maximus, bore to those of a
predecessor in the same office fifty years earlier.
The Venetian electors who managed to consume, or make away with, nearly eight
thousand pounds’ worth of food, drink, tobacco, and rose-water in nineteen days, chose an
honest man, though a very incompetent one, and the public showed no enthusiasm for the
new Doge, in spite of the great festivities held for his coronation. The Venetian people, too,
preserved their artistocratic tendencies to the very last, and always preferred a Doge of
ancient lineage to one who, like Manin, came of the ‘New men.’
He was not fortunate in his choice of a motto for his first ‘osella.’ He, who was to dig
the grave of Venetian liberty, chose the single word ‘Libertas’ for the superscription on his
first coin; and on that which appeared in the last year but one of the independence of
Venice were the words ‘Pax in virtute tua,’ which, as Mr. Horatio Brown has pointedly
observed, ‘reads like a mocking epitaph upon the dying Republic.’
Manin was a weak and vacillating man, though truthful, generous to a fault, and not a
coward. As Doge, he was bound hand and foot, and only a man of great character could
have broken through such bonds to strike out an original plan that might have prolonged
his country’s life. He gave his fortune without stint, but the idea of giving anything else did
not occur to him. Before the tremendous storm of change that broke with the French
revolution and raged throughout Europe for years, he bowed his head, and Venice went
down. No man is to be blamed for not being born a hero; nor is the mother of heroes in
fault when she is old and can bear them no more.

FROM THE PUBLIC GARDEN AT SUNSET

XV

THE LAST SOLDIERS
During the eighteenth century Venetian diplomacy succeeded in preserving the Republic’s
neutral position in spite of the great wars that agitated Europe. Her only war was with the
Turks, and it was disastrous.
Early in the century the Turks attacked the Peloponnesus, and Venice lost her richest
colonies in rapid
succession. Her navy was no longer a power, and she was almost without
allies, for the European powers were exhausted by the recent war of the 1715.
Spanish succession, and though Malta and the Pope befriended her, the help
they could give was insignificant. It was not until the Turks attacked Hungary that she
received any efficient assistance; by uniting her forces with those of the Empire she
obtained some success, and the desperate courage of Marshal Count von Schulenburg, a
Saxon general in the Venetian service, saved Corfu. The Turks, beaten at sea by the
Venetians, and on the Danube by the Hungarians at Temesvar, made peace, and the treaty
of Passarowitz put an end to the war.
But Venice had for ever lost the Peloponnesus, Crete, and other valuable
possessions. 1718.

After this disastrous struggle, it was impossible to preserve any further illusions as to
the future. Venice felt that she was in full decadence, and only endeavoured to hide its
outward signs. Instead of trying to beat against the current, she allowed herself to drift;
things went from bad to worse, and before long the army, the navy, and the Arsenal were
completely disorganised, though their expenses had not in the least diminished. A
contemporary says that a regiment looked like a company, and a
company like a corporal’s guard, whereas the Republic was paying for
regiments with their full complement of men. Mutinelli,
Ult. 150
The service of the hired troops was beneath contempt. In Padua the sqq.
students of the
University defied the garrison. On one occasion, in a hideous orgy, they
accidentally or intentionally did to death a pretty beggar girl; but when a Mutinelli,
Ult. 176.
detachment of Croatian soldiers attempted to arrest the culprits, the students
treated them with such utter contempt that their commander was terrified, fled with his
men to the safety of the barracks, and bolted and barred the doors.
If such things happened on Venetian territory one may fancy what the state of things
was in the colonies. Corfu was supposed to be defended by a company of Venetian soldiers
and two companies of Albanians. From 1724 to 1745 the latter were represented by two
men, a major and a captain, whose sole business was to draw the pay of the whole force.
The two officers embezzled the sums allowed for the men’s food and uniforms, and the
pay was sent to the soldiers, who lived in their own homes in the mountains. No trouble

was taken even to identify them, and when one died it was customary for another to take
his name and receive his pay. The two companies thus literally earned immortality, and the
names on the rolls never changed. Several Albanians who drew their pay as Venetian
mercenaries enrolled themselves also in the so-called ‘Royal Macedonian’ regiment, in the
service of the King of Naples, and were never found out by the Republic. In twenty-one
years these imaginary troops cost Venice 54,300 sequins, or over £40,000.
The colonial garrisons economised their gunpowder by abolishing all target practice,
and consisted chiefly of utterly untrained old men who were absent most of the time. The
fortresses were not more serviceable than the troops that were supposed to defend them.
On the mainland, the frontier fort of Peschiera was half dismantled, the drawbridges had
long rusted in their positions and could, not be raised, and the ramparts were
so overgrown with trees and shrubs as to be impassable; at one time the fort Mutinelli,
Ult. and
did not even possess a flag to show its nationality. Ninety of its guns had no Tassini,
carriages; the gunners lived quietly at their homes in Venice, and if they ever under
remembered that they were supposed to be soldiers it was because the ‘Bombardie
re.’
government dressed them up on great occasions as a guard of honour for the
ducal palace. Their number was between four and five hundred.
As for the fort of Corfu, it was robbed by a common thief. In 1745, a certain Vizzo
Manducchiollo promised the Turks two good guns, one of
bronze and one of iron. With the help of his gang he scaled the wall of the
Raimondo Fort one night, carried off the cannon, and sold them to the Turks Mutinelli,
Ult. 169.
for twenty-seven sequins.
The workmen of the Arsenal in Venice, who had formerly been the best-organised body
of men in the Republic, had completely come to grief in the eighteenth century. The
Arsenal was supposed to be governed by a voluminous code of laws, most of which were
now either altogether disregarded, or were administered with culpable leniency. The
disorder was incredible. Every son of a workman in the Arsenal had an hereditary right to
be employed there, but the officials who were in command did not take any means of
checking the men’s attendance; they paid so much a head for every workman on the
payroll, according to his age, whether he ever appeared except on pay-days or not. In this
way the State paid out vast sums to men who only entered the gates once a month to draw
their wages for doing nothing. Many of them had other occupations, at which they worked
regularly and industriously. Some were even actors, and one of the cleverest ‘Pantaloons’
was officially known as one of the best-paid Arsenal hands. The six hundred apprentices
who were supposed to attend the technical schools attached to the different departments of
the yard, only looked in now and then. When the time came for them to pass for the
certificate of master workman they paid the sum of thirty-four Venetian lire, in
consideration of which the Examiners pronounced them competent. In this way, as
Mutinelli
truly says, ignorance became hereditary, as employment in the Arsenal
already was, and the yard became a mere monument of former generous Mutinelli,
Ult. 145,
initiative, very expensive to maintain. 153.

At the fall of the Republic, Bonaparte seized and sent to France a large number of
vessels. When the Arsenal was sacked in 1797 it was
found to contain 5293 pieces of artillery, of which 2518 were of bronze, and
the rest of iron; and at the last there were brought from the docks ten ships of Rom. x.
162, note 2,
seventy guns, eleven of seventy-six, one of fifty-five, thirteen of forty-two, and 304.
two of thirty-two, twenty-three galleys, one floating howitzer battery, two
‘cutters,’ whatever the Italian writer may have meant,

BOAT-BUILDERS

twelve gunboats, three brigs of sixteen to eighteen guns, one fore-and-aft schooner, seven
galleons and as many ‘zambecchi,’ five feluccas, many boats armed with grenade mortars,

ten floats with two guns, and one floating-battery of seven guns.
If these vessels were not all badly built, they were certainly badly fitted out and badly
sailed when they went to sea. The Provveditori and Inquisitors Extraordinary, sent from
time to time by the Senate to inspect the fleet, complained that they found neither good
carpenters nor good sailors. One frigate, which had a nominal crew of one hundred and
fifty-seven men, the Concordia, was found to have barely thirty, and not able seamen at
that. As for the convicts who pulled the oars on the war-galleys, they were kept half-
clothed and shelterless when ashore; but being only carelessly guarded they often ran
away, and not unfrequently succeeded in finding employment, under assumed names, in
the smaller ports of the Republic. Some are known to have become house-servants.
Nevertheless the overseer of each gang regularly pocketed the money allowed for their
food and clothing.
In 1784 it was proved that for a long time from sixty to seventy thousand fagots of
wood and an immense number of barrel staves had disappeared yearly, no one knew how.
The workmen of the Arsenal did not think it necessary to buy firewood when it could be
had for nothing.
In 1730, the Provveditor Erizzo was ordered to one of the Eastern colonies on an
important mission, with several large vessels. Almost at the moment of starting, the
officers of one of these galleys came and begged him to give them a captain not belonging
to the

THE VEGETABLE MARKET

navy, as they should not otherwise feel safe to go to sea.
Yet at this very time Goldoni wrote that every one sang in Venice: ‘They sing in the
squares, in the streets, on the canals; the shopkeepers

sing as they sell their wares; the workmen sing as they leave their work; the
gondolier sings while he waits for his master. The characteristic of the nation Goldoni, i.
chap. xxxv.
is its gaiety.’
In the midst of this laughing decadence, in the very depth of this gay and careless
disintegration of a country’s body and soul, we come across one devoted, energetic
character, a fighting man of the better days, who reminds us of what Venice was in her
greatness.
Angelo Emo was great, considering the littleness of Venice in his time. If we compare
him with Vittor Pisani, Carlo Zeno, or Sebastian Venier, he seems small as a leader; but as
a plain, brave man, he is not dwarfed by comparison with men who were colossal in an age
of giants.
He was born in 1731, and was brought up by his father to dream of older and greater
times, and to know more of his country’s history than most
youths of his day. He travelled early and far, often employed on business of
the State, and he was able to compare the condition of Venice with that of Rom. viii.
289.
other European countries, especially England and France, in regard to
military and naval matters.
He was not yet thirty years old when the government sent him to Portugal to study the
means of reviving the commercial relations between that kingdom and Venice. Sailing
down the Adriatic, he put into Corfu, probably for fresh provisions; but on learning

PONTE CANONICA

that many intrigues were already on foot to deprive

FONDAMENTA WEIDERMANN

him of his mission, he set sail again at once for the Mediterranean in order to be beyond
reach of recall. He passed the Straits of Gibraltar, but fell in with a gale of wind in the
ocean which nearly put an end to his sailing for ever. The Venetian vessels were not

remarkable for their seaworthiness at best, and ocean weather was almost too much for
Emo’s ship. He himself describes the frightful confusion in the storm, and the difficulty he
had in managing his men. To make matters worse, the freshwater tanks were sprung and
most of the supply was lost, so that water was served out in rations, while the food
consisted principally of what the British sailor terms ‘salt horse.’ Then the vessel lost her
rudder, and things looked badly; but the gale moderated and died out at last, and the ship
brought to near a wooded coast, whence Emo was able before long to get a tree, which was
rough hewn to serve as a rudder, and he got his vessel into port at last, ‘with the admiration
and applause of every one,’ says Romanin, after describing the affair of the jury-rudder as
only a landsman can describe an accident at sea.
His mission to Portugal was successful, and Emo returned to Venice; but when he tried
to direct the attention of the government to reforms of which the army and navy stood in
urgent need, he could obtain no practical result, so that when he was
placed in command of a fleet, with orders to punish the Bey of Tunis and the
Algerian pirates, he was well aware that his force was by no means what it 1784.
appeared to be to the inexperienced public. In the course of the campaign his
largest ship, La Forza, ill-equipped and worse officered, sank before his eyes off Trapani,
and none of the other vessels could be relied on to do any better. Yet with such material
and such men he sustained a conflict that lasted three years, and if he was unable to
destroy the Bey of Tunis, he at least humbled him, brought
him to terms, and obtained from him a formal treaty engaging to put down
piracy on the African coast. France profited much by the result of this Mutinelli,
Ult. 150,
expedition, and one of the last documents signed by Louis XVI. before he fell and Rom.
was a letter to the Doge Manin, in which Angelo Emo was praised to the skies viii. 294.
for the good work he had done.
The Admiral was rewarded with the title of Cavaliere, the only one the Republic ever
conferred, and with the office of Procurator of Saint Mark’s, but I cannot find that his
advice as to reforms was ever listened to. A few years later, the Bey of Tunis broke his
promise in regard to piracy, and Emo was again sent with a fleet to chastise him, but was
suddenly taken ill in Malta, and died in a few days. He was poisoned, it is said, by
Condulmer, his principal lieutenant, who at once succeeded him as admiral.
The last Venetian fighting man was of average height and lean, and stooped a little; he
was pale, his forehead was broad, and he had blue eyes and black eyebrows,
particularly thick and bushy. His mouth was strong, but the lips were thick Statue of
Emo,
and coarse. Canova;
His remains were carefully embalmed in Malta and were brought home to Arsenal.
Venice on his flagship, the Fama—‘fame’—which came to anchor on the
twenty-fourth of May 1792. The body was followed from the mole to Saint Mark’s by the
clergy, the schools, the magistracies, and a vast concourse of people. The funeral mass was
sung in the presence of the Doge, and the vast procession wended its way to the church of
the Serviti. To the martial sound of drums and the solemn roar of the minute gun, Venice
laid her last captain to rest beside his fathers.

THE SALUTE FROM S. GIORGIO

XVI

THE LAST DIPLOMATISTS
During the seventeenth century the Republic had no doubt of her own military strength,
but nevertheless trusted much to her diplomacy; in the eighteenth the latter was the last
good weapon left her of the many that had once been in her armoury, and skilled as her
diplomatic agents were, their efforts could not prevent her from spoliation by the Turks,
whose simple rule was to take first and to talk about rights afterwards.
In a measure, too, Venice’s position as a neutral power was dearly bought, and more
than once in the war of the Spanish succession her territory was the
scene of fighting between French and Germans. The same skill kept her out
of the field during the quarrels for the succession of Parma, of Tuscany, of Rom. viii. 5,
sqq.
Poland, and of Austria, and obtained for Venetian Ambassadors a place of
honour in the congresses that resulted in the treaties of Utrecht, Vienna, and Aix-la-
Chapelle.
During the American war of independence, there were constant diplomatic relations
between the Republic and the American deputies who came to France for the congress of
Versailles. The Venetian archives contain a letter signed by John Adams, Benjamin
Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson, by which the Americans hoped to lay the foundations of a
commercial treaty; but owing to the excessive caution of Venice the attempt had no result.
The Republic of the Adriatic had almost always looked eastward for her trade, and
distrusted the new world which she had declined to help to discover. The original letter,
written in the English language, and addressed to the Venetian Ambassador in Paris,
Daniele Dolfin, has not been published, I believe; and I shall not insult the memory of such
writers by attempting to turn Romanin’s
translation back into their language. The letter explains that the three signers
are fully empowered by their government to negotiate a friendly treaty of Rom. viii.
229, 230.
commerce, and will be glad to enter upon the negotiation as soon as the
Venetian Ambassador is properly authorised to do so; in signing they use the form, ‘your
most obedient, humble servants.’ For the benefit of any American who may wish to get at
the original, I may add that Romanin found the letter in the Archives of the Senate, with
the despatches from France of Daniele Dolfin, envelope 261.
A letter from another Venetian Ambassador in Paris, Cappello, prophetically dated July
fourteenth, 1788, exactly one year before the destruction
of the Bastille, to the very day, sounds the first warning alarm of the
approaching revolution; few writers have better summed up the condition of Rom. ix.
153.
the French monarchy when it was on the brink of the abyss, and no
diplomatist could have given his own country better advice.
The Committee of the Savi, who concentrated all power into their own hands, did not
even communicate this letter to the Senate. Cappello spoke still more clearly when he

made his formal report in person, on returning from his mission and after leaving Paris just
when the King was to be asked to sign the Constitution, a document for which the
Ambassador confesses that he can find no name. ‘It is not a monarchy,’ he says, ‘for it
takes everything from the monarch; it is not a democracy, because the people are not the
legislators; it is not that of an aristocracy, for the mere name is looked upon in France not
as treason against the King, but as treason against the nation.... The National Assembly
began by encroaching upon all powers, and by confounding within itself all the attributes
of sovereignty, usurping the administrative functions from the executive power, and from
the judiciary the right of judging criminal cases.’
It is easy to understand the impression made by such a report, in the course of which
the Ambassador narrated the scenes that took place in Versailles and at the Tuileries after
the night of October sixth, 1789. The aristocratic Venetian Republic sympathised
profoundly with the dying French monarchy; but it was impossible to believe that such a
state of things would last long, and the government was painfully surprised by the letter in
which Louis XVI. announced that he accepted the situation. That letter is in existence. In it
the King declares that he has accepted the new form of government ‘of his own free will;
that the National Assembly is only a reform of the ancient States General, and will ensure
the happiness of the nation and the monarchy.’ The King adds, as if to hide his weakness
from himself, that what is called a ‘revolution’ is mostly only the destruction of a mass of
prejudices and abuses which endanger the public wealth, and that he was therefore proud
to think that he should leave his son something; better
than the crown as he had inherited it from his ancestors, namely, a
constitutional monarchy. Rom. ix.
178.
This letter, with its artificial enthusiasm, is dated March fourteenth, 1791,
three months before the King’s flight and his arrest at Varennes, and less than two years
before his murder on the scaffold.

FROM THE PONTE DELLA PIETÀ

Cappello’s successor as Ambassador in Paris, Alvise Pisani, continued to keep his
government informed of what occurred. On the twenty-fifth of September 1791, Louis
XVI. addressed another letter to his ‘most dear friends, allies, and confederates,’ the
Venetians, in which he expresses the certainty that they will be rejoiced to hear of his
having signed the Constitution, which had so greatly shocked Cappello. In spite of the
painful impression produced by these documents, it was necessary to answer them, if only
as a matter of etiquette.
The position of the Republic was a difficult one. Prudence required the strictest
neutrality as to the affairs of other nations; but the mere fact that every one recognised this
as Venice’s only possible position exposed her to perfidious and secret attacks of all sorts.
France maintained a vast number of secret agents to propagate revolutionary doctrines in
the Venetian territory, and at the same time lost no opportunity of trying to pick a quarrel
with the Republic, by insulting her flag. On the twenty-ninth of November 1792, the
captain of a French man-of-war, bearing a Spanish name, the Buenos Ayres, asked
permission to land with eight men on the Venetian shore, but refused to submit to the
regulations of the Health Office. His request was refused. Thereupon he proceeded to
abuse the Venetian government from the deck of his ship. He wound up by declaring that
there was no such thing existing as a Sovereign Government, that all men were equal, and
that he was a magistrate, as good as any senator. He chose to land, and he would land if he
chose. A Venetian galley hindered him
from doing so, but as he made off he cried out: ‘You will change your minds
in a year!’ Rom. ix.
219.
Poor France! She herself was to learn a century later that all men are equal
—in the eyes of German Jews.
At that time Austria allied herself with Piedmont to oppose the French invasion which
was imminent, and the Venetian Envoy at the court of Turin continually advised his
government to join this league, which alone could save the Republic and the other Italian
powers.
The Committee of the Savi who had absorbed the government of Venice simply by
saving trouble to all the other officials, allowed the Senate to
discuss this proposition, probably because they understood its vast
importance. But the Senate declared for strict neutrality, and the Savi felt that Rom. ix.
195.
after this they were free to do as they pleased, and from that time they
decided according to their own judgment as to the question of showing any despatch to the
Councils or of suppressing it in order to avoid public discussions.
Nevertheless, they felt the danger of the moment enough to recall the Venetian vessels
stationed at Malta and Corfu, in order to defend the approaches to Venice, a measure which
displeased France on the ground that it was a preparation for hostilities. Thus the success
of the French army in Savoy obliged the Savi to call in the Senate again, to discuss the
public safety. The ‘fathers of their country’ were at that time mostly in their country places,
thoroughly enjoying themselves; but they too must have felt that there was danger in the
air, for they answered the summons of Francesco Pesaro, the presiding Savio for the week.
A lively discussion took place, but once more neutrality was voted by a strong majority,

and the government of the Savi now entered upon a course of half measures more
dangerous in reality than any one mistake could have been. Permission was granted to the
Imperial troops to transport provisions from Trieste to Goro, and with a last revival of the
business spirit the Republic violated the neutrality she had voted by selling corn and oats
to the Austrians. At this the Venetian Ambassador withdrew to London for safety, leaving
his secretary in charge.
An incident now occurred in Venice
which was calculated to bring matters to a crisis.
Rom. ix.
The French Ambassador, who had quitted Venice, had left in charge of the 203.
Embassy a certain Monsieur Henin, who had taken as his private secretary a
priest called Alessandri. On the twenty-ninth of December 1792 this priest was sent for in
haste by the Superior of the bare-footed Carmelites of the monastery of San Geremia, close
to the palace occupied by the French Embassy. He was introduced with some mystery, but
with no loss of time, and was conducted to the Superior’s room, where he was warned that
unless he left Venice by the sixth of January, he would be assassinated. There was a plot to
kill him, but one of the intended murderers had confessed to the Superior himself, and
under the seal of confession had begged the monk to save Alessandri’s life.
The priest, who does not seem to have been timid, was much surprised, but promised
nothing as to leaving the city, though he appears to have at once considered

ON THE WAY TO FUSINA, FROM THE MOUTH OF THE BRENTA

the means of getting away. But on that same evening the Superior received an anonymous
note with these words: ‘Either the Abbé Alessandri will leave Venice to-morrow, and at
once quit Venetian territory, or something serious will happen to him.’ The Superior sent
for Alessandri again. The note, strange to say, had been delivered together with fifteen gold
sequins, which the unknown writer sent to help the priest’s flight.

The priest now lost no time, but left at once for Fusina on the mainland, and finding no
means of getting on at once, pursued his journey on foot. He had left with the monk a
written receipt for the money, which he had been forced to accept, and he had also
informed his employer, Monsieur Henin, of the cause of his sudden departure.
Monsieur Henin was furious, and not without some reason. He wrote a violent letter to
the Venetian Government, inquiring how an unknown person could dare anything so
outrageous in a well-regulated community. Who was instigating the outrageous crime?
What monster had paid fifteen sequins to have the murder committed? What was the
meaning of the pretended confession? Why did the villainous author of the abominable
plan drag a monk into the plot? This was the gist of Monsieur Henin’s letter, and he ended
by demanding the immediate arrest and condign punishment of the murderer, or murderers,
and the recall of his fugitive secretary, who, he insisted, must be so well guarded by the
government as not to be in fear of his life.
The Secretary of Embassy certainly had right on his side so far, but he followed up his
letter in an interview with one of the Inquisitors, in which he declared his belief that it was
the government itself that threatened Alessandri. The Inquisitors might have answered that
they disposed of much simpler and surer means than the hand of a hired assassin whenever
they wished to be rid of an obnoxious person. Henin suggested, too, that the outrage was
instigated by Austria in order to exasperate France, an idea which seems deficient in logic.
Henin appears to have been a violent sort of person, and anything but a diplomatist. Of
course he had right on his side, but Alessandri, on inquiry, turned out to be a bad character,
and anything but the ‘mild, tranquil, reticent, and retiring’ creature of fifty-six, whom the
Frenchman represented him to be. He had been obliged to leave his native city, Trent, for
debt and various misdemeanours; he was a violent revolutionary, and in his ‘tranquil
retirement’ he dwelt with a disreputable woman of the people, whom he had enticed away
from her family; from which facts it was easy to argue that he had made himself the object
of some private vengeance.
Nevertheless, and although Henin had not at that time any proper credentials as Chargé
d’Affaires, the Inquisitors thought it best to avoid disturbance, and Alessandri was brought
back and properly protected. Almost immediately upon this Henin received credential
letters from his government, and asked to present them to the Senate.
The Savi, who detested the man, were much disturbed; and as the Senate and the Great
Council left the matter to them, they asked the assistance
of those of their colleagues who had served their time and retired. As they
wore black cloaks the people nicknamed them the ‘Consulta Nera,’ the ‘Black Rom. ix.
207.
Cabinet.’
Not to receive the official representative of the new French government would have
been contrary to the policy of strict neutrality adopted by the Venetian Republic; to receive
him was to irritate Austria and to expose Venice to an attack from that side. She had
pursued a policy of half measures, and the end of half measures is always a fall between
two stools. The fall was precipitated by the soothing eloquence of one of the speakers, who
assured his colleagues that all Europe would understand and forgive them for yielding to
necessity.

The Senate accordingly voted with the Black Cabinet that Henin should be received,
but instructed its ambassadors at the various European courts to convey information of the
fact with all the circumspection possible, and in such a way as to palliate the action of the
Venetian government in the eyes of the world.
While this was going on, the secretary whom the Venetian Ambassador Pisani had left
in charge at Paris, wrote an eloquent letter describing the
death of Louis XVI., and he sent at the same time a scrap of the cloak which
the King had worn on his way to the scaffold. This caused the most profound 1793.
emotion. In the Senate, Angelo Quirini loudly declared that all diplomatic
relations with a government of hangmen and executioners must be instantly broken off.
The matter was still in discussion when Henin demanded, in the name of his
government, the authorisation to place the arms of the French Republic over the door of
his residence. As his credentials had been accepted it was impossible to refuse this request,
but the general indignation of the better sort of the people was unbounded.
There were now two parties in Venice. On the one hand, the secret emissaries of France
preached revolutionary doctrines, and stirred up the criminal classes; on the other, a vast
literature of pamphlets, articles, satires, and caricatures, all attacking the French, were
openly circulated throughout the city. In the hope of diverting the attention of the whole
population from political matters the Savi made frantic and extravagant efforts to amuse
everybody. The very last carnival before the end was the most magnificent ever
remembered.
In the year of the French King’s murder, Bonaparte was a captain of artillery, and
France was about to face the first coalition of the powers, after putting down the royalists
in Vendée.
Henin continued to annoy the Signory in every possible way, and made the smallest
incidents the subjects of official complaint and protest. He was at last recalled, but his
successor was a man called Noël, who was such a notoriously bad character that the
Venetian Senate put off receiving his credentials again and again on all sorts of grounds,
doubtless believing, too, that the French revolutionary government was not going to last
even so long as it did. To gain time was to save dignity, thought the Senators. But Noël
grew tired of waiting, and abruptly returned to Paris in a very bad humour, to stir up
against Venice the resentment of the Committee of Public Safety.
It was now no longer an easy matter to keep up

A LONELY CANAL

appearances of neutrality. England, especially, lost no opportunity of urging Venice to join
the European League, and Worsley, the last English Minister, was perpetually insisting on
a rupture with France.
Another circumstance occurred to increase the difficulty of Venice’s position. The
Comte de Lille, afterwards Louis XVIII., who styled himself Regent of France during the
captivity of his nephew, the unfortunate child Louis XVII., being obliged to leave
Piedmont, asked permission to reside in Verona, and the Signory, anxiously hoping for a
restoration in France, received him with the honours due to his rank and the welcome a
friend might expect. At this the French Republic took umbrage and protested violently, but
the Venetians answered that the presence of the Comte de Lille in Verona, where he led a
retired life, was no violation of neutrality.
The Savi now had more on their hands than they could manage, for they were obliged
at one and the same time to watch the movements of the revolutionary propaganda and to
keep themselves informed of the doings of the royalist party who plotted in Venice to
restore the French monarchy. And meanwhile, in spite of a nominal press censorship, the
Postiglione newspaper satirised the French Republic in the bitterest manner, giving
Robespierre constant cause of complaint.
Diplomatic relations were now strained almost to the breaking point. Pisani was still
supposed to be the Venetian Ambassador in Paris, though
he resided in London, and the French Envoy in Venice had left in disgust at
not being received. On the latter point the French yielded, and sent another Rom. ix.
231-239.
and more respectable representative, a certain Lallement, whom the Signory
consented to receive in spite of the objections of the English Minister.
The question now arose, who was to succeed Pisani in Paris, and how the new envoy
was to be styled. Lallement had brought very simply worded credentials, and had agreed to
assume any designation which the Signory desired. The Savi were much distressed about
this matter, but they selected Aloise Quirini for the mission, and at last decided that he
should be addressed neither as Ambassador nor Minister, but simply as ‘the Noble
Quirini.’ They could hardly have chosen a title better calculated to irritate a government
which held that nobility was a worse crime than forgery or assassination.
The Noble Quirini accordingly went to Paris with a very magnificent salary, and with
instructions to keep up the splendid traditions of former Venetian representatives abroad.
But meanwhile the child Louis XVII. had disappeared from the scene, and the Comte
de Lille, or the Comte de Provence as he was called
when not travelling incognito, was a source of much anxiety to Venice. He
was now undoubtedly the legitimate King of France, and his modest Rom. ix.
252.
residence in Verona had become a court at which every point of etiquette was
most rigorously observed. The European powers encouraged him in his efforts to restore
the monarchy in his own person, and England, Austria, and Russia sent envoys to him in
Verona without in the least considering the difficulties which their action might cause the
Venetian government.
At this juncture France invented another form of government, and Lallement appeared
before the Senate with an entirely new set of credentials as

the Envoy of the Directory, which, he declared, was no less disposed than its
predecessors in power to remain ‘in perfect understanding and on the most 1796.
friendly terms’ with the Venetian Republic. The man who was to end the
hideous and grotesque succession of butcheries and farces which had lasted seven years
was in favour with this last-hatched and half-fledged government, and his dominating
influence was beginning to be felt. Bonaparte was now twenty-six years old; he was grown
up.
A few months earlier Lallement had read before the Venetian Senate a proclamation
which the ‘Representatives of the People’ sent to the army
of the Alps, as a general warning against the Genoese, the Tuscans, and the
Venetians, who, in spite of their protestations of friendship, allowed their 1795.
ships to capture and plunder French vessels on the high seas. By the end of
1795 the French were masters of the Riviera, having beaten the Austrians very badly.
Venice was now accused of having violated her neutrality by allowing the passage of
Austrian troops through her dominions. She answered that she had acted in accordance
with a very ancient treaty which accorded the Empire the use of the road to Gambara, and
that she was as neutral as ever; but this the French found it hard to believe. When further
accused of favouring royalist intrigues, the Signory made a show of punishing the authors
of a few libels on the Directory.
As for Louis XVIII., as the Comte de Lille was now called by his adherents, Venice
was reluctantly obliged to ask him to leave her territory, as the Directory threatened war if
he remained.
He departed, shaking the dust from his feet. He demanded that the name of his family
should be
erased from the Golden Book, and that the armour of his ancestor Henry IV.
should be given back to him. This armour Smedley rightly conjectures to Smedley,
Sketches
have been the sword worn by Henry IV. at the battle of Ivry, with which he from
had knighted the Venetian Ambassadors after his accession, and which he Venetian
then presented to the Treasury of Saint Mark’s. History, ii.
chap. xx.
The Signory entirely refused to accede to the Comte de Lille’s demands. It note.
could not deprive itself, it replied, of the satisfaction of counting the royal
family of France amongst its nobility, and it could not bring itself to part with such a
valuable gift as it had received from Henry IV.; and with this quiet answer to the Russian
envoy who represented him the Comte de Lille had to be satisfied.
But France was not, and the Inquisitors received many private warnings to the effect
that the French government would seize upon any pretext for attacking Venice. ‘Arm, if
you hope not to be trodden under foot!’ Such was the burden of these fruitless messages.
Austria, Sardinia, Naples, and Pius VII. openly allied themselves together, and the
Duchies of Parma and Modena secretly promised their help. Genoa was paralysed by the
vicinity of the French army; Tuscany was playing the game of neutrality, like Venice.
The Signory had great confidence in the army of the allies and in its chief, Bonaparte
was only a boy; the old general Beaulieu would easily beat him.

But the Signory was mistaken. The boy had grown up—‘Napoleon, Apollyon,
destroyer of Cities, being a Lion roaming about,’ as the barbarous Greek jest on his name
has it.

EVENING

XVII

THE LAST HOUR
The end was at hand when Bonaparte crossed the river Po. One is apt to forget that he had
already showed himself to be much more than a victorious
general, and that throughout the campaign he displayed that marvellous skill
in dealing with men which so often ensured him an enthusiastic reception in 1796. Rom.
ix. 284.
places where he could not have been expected to be welcome.
He had soon realised the horrible impression produced everywhere outside of France
by the Revolution, the Terror, and the Committee of Public Safety, and he hastened, by his
numberless agents, to exalt the virtues of the Directory. They were not a herd of
bloodthirsty ruffians, he taught, but an assemblage of the future saviours of mankind, who
were to emancipate the world from all those ancient political and social prejudices which
had so long held it in bondage.
He could not unteach the scum of the Italian populace what the agents of the
Revolution had taught it with such lavish expenditure in disreputable taverns and worse
resorts, but he could control the teachers and gradually change the direction of the
education. The Venetian gondoliers could be taught something, too, and the Venetian
Barnabotti could be bribed to learn anything, and to impart what they learned.
‘No organisation,’ says Bonnal, ‘was ever superior to his (Bonaparte’s), no
revolutionary organisation was ever more formidable. We mean “revolutionary” as regards
the legitimate governments
existing in Italy, with which we were not at war, and as regards the means
used.... It was at Milan that his system became a definite official service, both Bonnal,
Chute
political and military. Thence arose two principal offices exactly answering d’une
the aim he was pursuing, that is, the political propaganda and the military République,
propaganda. By means of the political propaganda he sought to bring about 273-274.
either the substitution of one domination for another, or the modification of
the forms of government.... Lombardy is an example of the first case, the Italian Duchies
of the second. By his military propaganda he roused the populations to arms, sometimes
against the legitimate sovereign, as happened in Venice and Parma, sometimes against a
foreign power, as at Milan.’
Once more, as in the war of the Spanish succession, the Venetian territory became a
refuge and a provision market for two hostile armies. The fortresses, as has been seen,
were really at the mercy of any one who chose to occupy them. On the ninth of May the
Imperial troops, yielding to the request of Contarini the Governor of Crema, and supposing
the place to be capable of defence, consented to pass by the city without entering it. If they
had insisted no one could have hindered them, and the letter Contarini afterwards wrote to
the Venetian government disturbed even the astounding optimism of the Savi. The latter
were shocked when they thought of the risk they had run, and by way of getting rid of all

further responsibility they appointed a Provveditor to watch over the safety of the Venetian
territory. More than this their worst enemies could not have expected them to do. They
selected a Foscarini for the office, and were particularly careful to admonish him that he
must ‘preserve intact the tranquillity of the Republic, and administer comfort and
consolation to its subjects.’ I translate literally the phrase, which sounds like the drivelling
of an old man in second childhood.
The imperial troops were barely out of sight of

OUT IN THE LAGOON

Crema when the French appeared, and Contarini renewed his request that the city
might not be entered. Berthier consented, but requisitioned provisions and forage. Soon
afterwards came Bonaparte himself and he also consented to pass on, but not until he had
squeezed every particle of available information out of the governor, whose letter narrating
the interview gives a remarkably clear idea of the great young man’s conversation.
The Senate wrote to the Commander of the fortress of Peschiera not to allow any
foreign soldiers to enter under any circumstances. I have described the condition of the

place elsewhere, and the unlucky colonel at once answered, inquiring what in the world he
was to do in order to prevent the passage of the Imperial troops.
The Austrian general Liptay found it convenient to install himself in Peschiera for
some time, and when the Republic protested, he answered with admirable coolness and
much truth that the place was not a fortress at all, and that he was encamped there as the
French were in the fields towards Brescia.
Even Bonaparte understood the absurdity of this case. ‘The truth about the affair of
Peschiera,’ he wrote to the Directory, ‘is that the Venetians
have been duped by Beaulieu; he asked leave to pass with fifty men and then
made himself master of the city.’ Rom. ix.
297-299.
In spite of this conviction, Bonaparte took advantage of the incident to
declare to the Provveditor Foscarini that he would burn Verona to punish the Venetians for
having favoured the Austrian troops; and Foscarini, obliged to act on the spur of the
moment and without consulting the government, opened the gates of Verona to Masséna on
receiving the latter’s assurance that the city should not be burned. He probably fancied that
he had obtained a great concession, and did not understand that Verona was absolutely
necessary to the French as a base from which to advance on Mantua, held by the Imperial
troops.
The news of the occupation of Verona produced the utmost alarm in Venice, yet the
Great Council was not summoned, nor was there a regular sitting of the Senate. The days
had gone by when the great bell of Saint Mark’s was rung backward to call every fighting
man to arms, and every aged Senator to the Council. The handful of scared and vacillating
men who had steered Venice to her end met stealthily by night in the Casino Pesaro, more
like conspirators than defenders of their country. Most of them fancied the French already
in the lagoons, if not in the city; some, forgetting that they had neither troops nor captains,
were for defence to the death; some, who had secretly adopted revolutionary ideas and
principles, rejoiced at heart because the end was so near.
Such a meeting of such men could come to nothing; and nothing was decided except
that Foscarini, the Provveditor, should be assisted by two other nobles, commissioned to
negotiate with Bonaparte.
They went and found him apparently in the mildest and most friendly humour, but the
report of their interview with him reached the Senate together with a communication from
the Inquisitors explaining Bonaparte’s plan for taking possession of the fort of

THE SALUTE FROM THE LAGOON

Legnago, making sure of the free navigation of the Adige, and threatening to destroy
Venice in order to extort a sum of five or six millions of francs.
So Venice, still theoretically neutral, was driven to collect such poor forces as she had
by land and sea, in order to defend herself against the depredations of the combatants. She
had not a single general to direct her men, or to plan a defence. Three nobles were in
charge of her boundaries on the mainland; another was made responsible for the capital,

and two were placed in charge of the lagoons. A war-tax was levied, too, and it is due to
the citizens of the dying State to say that they were generous to their country to the last.
Many citizens of all classes gave large sums of their own free will to help the defence, and
not in Venice only; the cities of Friuli and Dalmatia, and even small communities at a great
distance, made heavy sacrifices spontaneously for the public safety.
The historian Romanin was of opinion that even at that moment, if the government had
found resolution enough to sacrifice all her possessions on
the mainland, as at the time of the League of Cambrai, a clever diplomacy
might yet have saved the State. But he was a Venetian and a most patriotic Rom. ix.
321.
one, and he could not understand that it needed something more than skill to
keep Venice alive, that it needed life itself, the life that was all spent, at last, after more
than a thousand years.
The Provveditor for the lagoons, Giacomo Nani, wrote to the Doge the courageous
words: ‘A State has not the right to possess provinces which it cannot defend.’ He, too,
remembered the League of Cambrai. But the Doge was not to be roused; it was no longer
vacillation, it was paralysis of the will that made him follow the Senate. Yet Nani’s letters
determined the Savi to look about for some general into whose hands the whole defence
might be given. It was the old tradition of employing the condottiero; but there was only
one man alive just then who had the genius and the conviction that save a cause all but
lost; he was a man who could have stopped a host with Falstaff’s ragged company, and he
was at the gates of Venice. The Savi hit upon the Prince of Nassau as a possible captain,
but Austria stepped in and forbade that he should be called.
The King of Naples now signed an armistice with the French, and Bonaparte made
himself at home on the Venetian mainland, quartering his troops at Bergamo, Brescia, and
Crema without ceremony, and merely notifying the Venetian Senate that he did so, as if no
excuse were needed. He took the Venetian guns he found at Legnago and used them at the
siege of Mantua as if they were his own. Bonaparte was well aware of the truth of what
Nani had written to the Doge, and he took full advantage of the axiom. If the governors of
the cities in which he chose to stop did not please him, he wrote them notes like the
following:—
... I beg you, Sir, to let me know what game we are playing, for I do not believe you will allow your brothers in
arms [the French soldiers!] to die without help
within the walls of Brescia, or to be murdered on the highroad. If you are not able to keep order in your
country, and to make the city of Brescia furnish what is needed for establishing hospitals and for the Rom. ix. 341.
wants of the troops, I shall have to take more efficient measures.—Believe me, with feelings of esteem
and consideration,
Bonaparte.

Bonnal says of him that he avenged legitimate complaints with a host of accusations
and denials, and with unmistakable threats; and the Venetians
made excuses. Whereupon Bonaparte answered that he would ‘beat the
Austrians and make the Venetians pay for the war.’ Which he did. Bonnal,
275.
At the same time he was writing to the Directory:—

... I am obliged to be indignant with the Provveditor, to exaggerate the number of assassinations, etc., in order that
he, to calm my fury, may furnish me everything I
need; they will continue to give us what we want, willingly or by force, until Mantua is taken, after
which I shall demand of them such contribution as you may order me, which will not be in the least Rom. ix. 351.
difficult.

If Bonaparte could find pretexts for accusing the Venetians of helping the Austrians,
the latter had excellent reasons for complaining that Venice helped the French. Austria and
France were the two stools between which half measures had led the Republic, and
between which she fell.
The position of the French army was not enviable at that time, and the alliance of
Venice would really have been worth having, which was the reason why her obstinate
efforts at neutrality exasperated Bonaparte to such a degree. At last his patience gave out
and he ordered General Baraguay d’Hilliers, the father of the marshal of that name who
died in 1878,
to occupy Bergamo, not as a guest, but as master. The Austrians at once
replied by seizing Palma and Osopo. Twenty-fifth
of
The peasants and the small communities were now driven to extremities; December
for the Government had left them to their fate, and they were plundered alike 1796.
by the French and the Austrians. Discontent spread rapidly, and the rural
population may be supposed to have been in the best possible disposition to receive the
revolutionary doctrines by which Bonaparte had already called into existence the
Cispadane Republic. That short-lived affair was made up of the cities and territories of
Ferrara, Bologna, Modena, and Reggio d’Emilia, and was momentarily the headquarters of
republicanism. In spite of all that the remnant of government in Venice could do against it,
its influence was felt on Venetian territory. Behind all, the propaganda of Milan worked
steadily to carry out Bonaparte’s plan under General Landrieux, whom he had
deputed to take charge of that end of it. Rom. x. 12.

Bergamo was the first city to rise and drive out the Venetian governor, in order to join
the Cispadane Republic; the city of Brescia followed,
naturally enough. But the country people of the two provinces still remained
faithful to the Republic, and the peasants about Brescia were so indignant Molmenti,
Nuovi
with the city for its defection that they would have marched upon it to burn it Studi, 356.
down if they had not been hindered by their Bishop, Dolfin. At Vallesabbia,
certain emissaries of the republicans from the city were so ill received that they fled
precipitately in fear of their lives.
Two days after the latter incident, the inhabitants of the villages of the valley met in a
field
near Nozze, and drew up the following declaration, which was approved with
absolute unanimity. March
1797.
Vallesabbia, March 27th, 1797.
In order to record its own fidelity and obedience to its beloved Prince of Venice, and taking oath of perpetual loyalty
and adherence to the said Prince, this body votes that if persons of any class or condition are found in this Valley having
the cockade of rebels against the Prince of Venice, and actually having that cockade on their hats, any one shall be free to
arrest them, and let him have a prize of three hundred lire piccole for each one, of [the funds of] the Valley.

And let this present vote be made known in every commune and put up in the usual and habitual places for public
notices; and it is not to go into effect for three days, within which the parish priests in their parishes shall publicly give
notice of it to the people. And if gangs of rebels against the Prince of Venice, or troops of theirs, enter the Valley, the
communities comprising the Valley shall ring the bells with a hammer [meaning to ring them out, and not to ‘chime’
them only]; and whosoever is between sixteen and sixty years old, and whosoever else will volunteer, is to take arms in
the name of the Valley to arrest them [rebels or troops], and may also kill them; and whoever refuses shall be punished
by confiscation of all his goods.

The government might have done something to encourage people capable of such
devotion; it might at least have ordered them to send deputations to the capital to give
information of the state of the country. This the province of Verona asked to be allowed to
do, through the Marchese Scipione Maffei, in a petition which the Savi suppressed,
without even
presenting it to the Great Council, because they considered that it might lead
to dangerous discussion. They confined themselves to recommending every Rom. x. 32.
subject of the most Serene Republic to act with the greatest circumspection
towards all the French, as the Venetians had no means of defending themselves against the
latter’s pretensions.
In spite of the bad impression made by such weakness, more than thirty thousand men
from the provinces volunteered to put down the republican rising, but they had to be sent
home for lack of funds and weapons. One hundred young men of the burgher class offered
to arm and support themselves at their own expense. From all this it is clear enough that, at
the very last, the descendants of the nobles who had made Venice were responsible
for her fall. Ippolito Nievo said pithily, that the Venetian aristocracy was a
corpse that could not revive, while the Venetian people were a living race Nievo,
Memorie
shut up with it in the tomb. d’un
The republican revolution thus progressed almost without finding any ottuagenari
o, 262.
resistance and practically aided and abetted by the French troops. Bonaparte
was so sure of his plan that he did not even make a mystery of it to the envoys of the
Venetian Republic who met him at Goritz. He actually offered to pacify the Venetian
provinces for the modest sum of a million of francs monthly for six months, which was
generous, considering that he alone had caused all the disturbance. A Venetian noble of the
fifteenth century would certainly have got the better of him in such a matter of business,
but he was too much for the two nobles with whom he had to deal. The monthly million
was granted, but on condition that he was not to interfere in the civil discord that distracted
the Republic, and not to hinder the government in its efforts to reduce the rebellious cities
to subordination.
Such an attempt was made, and the insurgents were beaten more than once, and some
of the ringleaders were brought to Venice. In other times
they would have been tried by the Council of Ten and hanged within twenty-
four hours; now they were merely confined in the fort on the Lido, in charge Rom. x. 56.
of two nobles, Tommaso Soranzo and Domenico Tiepolo, who were
recommended ‘to treat them charitably.’
But these successes so greatly encouraged the reaction against the insurrection that
Bonaparte feared lest he should lose some of the fruits of

his industrious propaganda. Accordingly, by his instructions, General
Landrieux accused the Venetian troops of threatening the French army in the Molmenti,
Nuovi St.
valleys of Bergamo, and ordered the Venetian Governor, Battaglia, to be put 356, 357.
in irons, and his ‘accomplices’ to be hanged. These were mere threats, of
course, but after that the rebels were openly supported by the French. On the other hand,
the communities that meant to remain faithful to the Republic invoked its help a last time
before returning the weapons they had taken from the insurgents, and swore that if they
were only given a leader they would die to a man in defence of Venice. Even after the
French had occupied the whole Venetian territory the Senate still received loyal letters
from Vallesabbia; one of these ended with these words: ‘Our hearts will always be for
Saint Mark, and we therefore swear to break any promise that may be before long got from
us by force, at the first sight of the Venetian standard we love.’
The truce of Judenburg between France and Austria was destined in Bonaparte’s
opinion to decide the destinies of the Republic. Junot appeared suddenly in Venice on
Good Friday, bringing a despatch from Bonaparte dated the ninth of April. A more violent
and theatrical document can hardly be imagined. The general accuses the Venetians of
rousing the country people to murder the French and ordering a perfect Massacre of the
Innocents. His magnificent generosity has met with ‘impious perfidy’ on the part of the
Senate. His adjutant offers peace or war, and war is declared if the authors of the
massacres are not delivered. Observe, that as there had been no massacres, no authors of
them could be given up, and therefore the declaration of war was made; Bonaparte was
always logical. He was ‘not a Turk,’ he adds; he was not even an enemy. These were ‘not
the days of Charles VIII.,’ and he gave the Venetians twenty-four hours to realise the fact
or perish. But he would not come like their ‘assassins,’ to ‘lay waste the lands of an
innocent and unhappy people.’ He came to protect. The people would ‘one day bless even
the crimes which had obliged the French army to free them from the tyranny of Venice.’
Bonaparte’s name is still execrated throughout Italy, and in a large part of the south
‘French’ means ‘abominable.’ Even the southern sailors call a dangerous storm ‘French
weather.’
Junot had been informed that the government could transact no business till after Holy
Week, but he insisted on being received, and read the despatch before the Doge and the
Signory in an imperious tone. Bonaparte possessed a marvellous dramatic sense, and he
trained his men to act his comedies to perfection. In the part of the Avenging Angel, Junot
was terribly impressive.
It may be supposed that even then Venice had a choice: she might submit, or perish
bravely in self-defence. But such men as Ludovico Manin and the Savi were not free to
choose. No weak man is when the strong man has him by the collar. The Signory was used
to humiliation, and was past shame, and it followed to the end the path it had chosen.
The truce between France and Austria continued, but only the possession of Venice
could be the basis of a durable peace. Bonaparte’s plan was to exasperate the Venetians till
they really violated their neutrality, and then to seize the city. No one ever comments on
the morality of conquerors nowadays. Virtue has nothing to do with the greatness of
princes. Bonaparte’s scheme was odious, of course, but it succeeded.

It had been part of the comedy to christen a ship of the French fleet ‘the Liberator of
Italy.’ With this vessel a certain commander, Laugier,
was despatched to carry out Bonaparte’s stratagem. The ship sailed up
towards the Lido, stopped a fishing-boat, and took an old Rom. x. 112
sqq.
fisherman for a pilot. The man protested that foreign war vessels were not
allowed to enter the harbour. Laugier threatened to hang him, and set him to
April
con the wheel, after asking him many questions as to the vessels of which twentieth,
Venice disposed. 1797.
When the ship was opposite the Lido she saluted, and the guns of the San
Nicola Fort answered; as Laugier did not bring to, the commander of the fort, Domenico
Pizzamano, sent two boats alongside him to warn him not to enter, yet the French captain
took no notice. Other French vessels were following at a distance; Pizzamano fired two
shots to warn them off, and they bore away. Laugier now said he was going to anchor,
though he did not clew up his top-gallant sails nor otherwise shorten sail; it is clear that
there was only a very light breeze on that day.
A Venetian galley lay at her moorings in the Lido harbour, and Laugier proceeded to
foul her, intentionally without doubt, for he evidently knew his business. This was enough.
The two vessels were close alongside, and their crews were fighting one another in an
instant. At the same time the cannon from Fort Sant’ Andrea chimed in, and an
indescribable confusion followed. Laugier was killed by a ball; the old fisherman who had
steered him in was wounded, and died soon afterwards. The Venetians got the better of the
fight, and plundered the French war vessel in spite of Pizzamano’s desperate efforts to
prevent it. The French officers and crew were handed over to the ‘benevolent custody’ of
Tommaso Soranzo and Domenico Tiepolo.
The account of the affair sent by the Minister, Lallement, to the Directory was wholly
untrue, of course; but Bonaparte had what he wanted.
He was so sure of it that by the preliminary treaty of Leoben, preceding the treaty of
Campo-Formio, he had already ceded to Austria all the
Venetian provinces that lay between the Po, the Oglio, and the Adriatic; it
was pretended that in compensation for these she was to receive the three April
eighteenth.
legations of Romagna, Ferrara, and Bologna. Rom. x.
Much of this preliminary agreement had been kept secret; but the 121, and
Venetian Ambassador in Vienna, Grimani, knew of the general tenor of the Document at 377.
document, and warned the Senate that it was intended to dismember the
Venetian territory.
The Senate was roused from its apathy when it was

FROM THE PONTE S. ROCCO

too late, and now sat permanently. Orders were given that no stranger was to be allowed to
enter the city unless bearing official letters, and no ship was to pass into the lagoons that
did not fly the Venetian flag. Some attempt was made to get more vessels ready for sea.
The French had not wasted time, and a general insurrection had broken out under their
management in all the cities of the mainland. Within twenty-four hours the governors of
Padua, Verona, and other important places came in for refuge, as also the Provveditors of
the army, whose occupation was gone.
Meanwhile two nobles, Francesco Donà and Leonardo Giustiniani, had been sent in
haste to Gratz, after Junot’s appearance, and they were received by Bonaparte on the
twenty-fifth of April. The interview that followed is highly characteristic of the man when
it suited his ends to work himself into a fury. The political prisoners were to be liberated,
or he would ‘come and break down the Piombi; he would have no Inquisition, no antique
barbarities.’ He spoke of the imaginary massacre of his innocent troops. ‘His army cried
vengeance, and he could not refuse it.’ ‘If all the culprits were not punished, if the English
Minister were not driven away, if the people were not disarmed, if all the prisoners were
not set free, if Venice would not choose between France and England, he declared war.’
‘He would have no Inquisition, no Senate, he would be an Attila to the Venetian State.’
And much more to the same effect, all of which is on record. The two Venetians answered
sensibly, when they could get in a word, but Bonaparte meant war, and when he meant that
he would listen to no one.
Having acted his scene, he asked the two to dinner and proceeded to extract
information from them, after his manner. His inquiries chiefly concerned the horrors
attributed to the aristocratic government by the very imaginative French democratic mind;
for the lower classes, being nearer to nature, have always had much more imagination than
their social betters, which explains their belief in ghost stones, hidden treasures, and the
rights of man.
After dinner Bonaparte condescended to state his demands. He wanted twenty-two
millions from the Venetian mint and all English drafts deposited in Venice. That was all.
There was no mention of the Duke of Mantua’s treasure, from which the envoys suspected
that it was included in the secret treaty of Leoben, but I find no mention of it in that
curious document, though it may have been tacitly included in Article VI. which provided
for the restitution of Mantua and other places to Austria.
Having thus expressed himself, Bonaparte left the envoys to their reflections and went
off to Bruck. Almost at the same time they received news of the fighting at the Lido, with
instructions to inform Bonaparte of the death of Laugier, with all the caution possible; they
did so by letter, and probably congratulated themselves on not being materially able to
convey the news by word of mouth; but they nevertheless really asked another audience.
He answered in a fury, called Laugier’s death an assassination, and spoke of them and the
Venetian Senate as ‘dripping with French blood.’ If they had anything new to tell him, he
would receive them, he said, after writing on the same page that he would not.
They went before him again, poor men, and listened once more to his furious language.
‘Not a hundred millions of money, not all the gold of Peru, would now prevent him from

avenging the blood of his men,’ and so forth, and so on. This was the truth, as he had
purposely risked shedding it for the very purpose of being revenged.
On the twenty-ninth of April, French troops occupied the Venetian frontiers, and
General Baraguay d’Hilliers entered the capital with perfect assurance—and, it must be
added, with perfect fearlessness—and installed himself in the best hotel. The Senate tried
in vain to ascertain from him Bonaparte’s intentions; the soldier answered that he was
accustomed to obey his chiefs without question and that he knew nothing of their plans.
He had been told to come to Venice and he had come.
On learning that Bonaparte so very particularly detested them, the Savi agreed that it
was no longer safe to meet publicly, and they held their sittings in the Doge’s private
apartments in the presence of the Counsellors, and the ‘Savi of the Mainland,’ ‘Savi of
Orders,’ ‘Savi of Writings,’—Savi of every species. To all these were added the three
Heads of the Ten. This last assembly was a sort of amplification of the Black Cabinet
already explained.
They have been described as the sextons of the Republic, met together to arrange the
details of the funeral. Their acts and resolutions can only excite pity. The first question
discussed on the night of April thirtieth was whether a supposed intimate friend of
Bonaparte’s (Haller, at one time French Minister of Finance) should be treated with in
order to calm his master’s anger. The next question was, whether this proposition might be
discussed at once, or whether eight days must be allowed to pass before beginning the
debate, according to the law. A third question asked what measures should be taken to
inform the Great Council of what was happening.
Several hours had been consumed in these miserable quibbles, during which no
attention was paid to the distant booming of guns from the direction
of Fusina, when a messenger brought a letter for the ‘Savio on Writings.’ He
passed it on anxiously to the Savio of the week, who opened it with evident Rom. x.
138.
emotion. It was a message from Condulmer, in command of the flotilla of the
lagoons, to say that the French had begun operations for improving the approaches to
Venice, and that he was going to attempt to destroy what they did as fast as they worked. It
was at this moment that the Assembly first noticed the sound of artillery. In the frightened
silence the Doge walked up and down the room. ‘To-night we are not safe even in our
beds,’ he said.
The Procurator, Pesaro, turned to the Secretary: ‘I see that it is all over with my
country,’ he said, in broad Venetian dialect. ‘I can certainly be of no assistance. To an
honest man, every place is his country; one may easily occupy oneself in Switzerland.’
He rose as he finished this remarkable speech, apparently with the intention of
proceeding to Switzerland at once, but his colleagues ‘comforted’ him, he took snuff, and
sat down again to help Valeressi in framing a measure for calling the Great Council
together on the morrow. These curious details can be trusted. Pesare was afterwards, in
fact, the first to make his escape to Istria and Vienna.
During the remainder of the meeting it was debated whether it might not be possible
and advisable to give Venice a democratic form of government likely to please Bonaparte,

and the majority adopted the idea of introducing any modifications which he might
suggest.
It was hoped by this means that he would be moved to forgive the Inquisitors and the
captain of the Lido, whose punishment he had demanded, and to excuse the Venetian
banks from handing over the English drafts.
The next day was the first of May, the anniversary on which the Doge had always paid
his annual visit to the Convent of the Vergini, since the days of Pier Candiano, a ceremony
which was always the occasion of great festivities in the city. But to-day, instead, the bell
of the Grand Council was ringing, and the nobles assembled anxiously. The Doge
explained in broad dialect the situation of the Republic with regard to France. Peace, he
said, must be made with Bonaparte

CAMPO SS. GIOVANNI E PAOLO

at any price, and the best thing the members of the Council could do was to say their
prayers and ask the help of Heaven in their supreme danger.
Heaven, as usual in such circumstances, did not help those who would not help
themselves. The Council thought it had done wonders when it voted by 598 to 21 that two

deputies should be sent to Bonaparte with power to discuss radical changes in the Venetian
constitution. The envoys chosen were Angelo Giacomo Giustiniani, who had been
Provveditor extraordinary in Treviso since the second of April, Alvise Mocenigo, the
Governor of Udine, and Francesco Donà. They were given regular credentials, and were,
as usual, exhorted to use the utmost caution in all they said.
On the same day Bonaparte declared war against Venice in his most furiously
bombastic style. The document must be read, not to be believed, as most of the statements
it contains were totally untrue, but to appreciate the marvellous gifts of the man of genius
who composed it. It is long, and I have not space for it; I can only say that it altogether
outdid the former letters and speeches I have referred to.
The deputation found Bonaparte in Treviso. To the eternal glory of the family that had
lost an hundred of its name in one campaign, Giustiniani quietly faced Bonaparte on every
point, reproached him with the shallowness of the pretexts under which he justified his
acts of violence, swore to the sincerity of the Venetian government when it had protested
that it had no intention of doing any injury to the French, and concluded by saying that if
Bonaparte required a hostage or a victim he, Giustiniani, was there to give his life.
Bonaparte was everything except a coward. He was a conqueror and a comedian, a
brutal dictator and a subtle diplomatist; he was a great commander and he was the Little
Corporal. He was also as brave as the bravest man in any of his armies. Giustiniani’s
speech affected him strangely, for he well knew what terror he inspired in most people. His
sudden admiration for the Venetian patriot was as boundless as everything else in his
nature, and broke out in words of praise. He concluded by promising that even if he
confiscated the property of every noble in Venice, whatsoever belonged to Giustiniani
should be respected. There spoke the man of the middle class that Bonaparte always was.
The gentleman answered proudly that he had not come to promote his own interests when
those of his country were so desperately at stake.
A truce of four days was signed, within which time the three Inquisitors of State and
the commander of the Lido fort were to be arrested and punished, and all political
prisoners were to be set at liberty.
On the fourth of May the Doge had the courage, or the cowardice, to propose to the
Great Council the arrest of the Inquisitors and their impeachment as required by
Bonaparte. There
was no hope for Venice in any other course, he said.
Rom. x.
This dastardly measure was voted by 704 votes to 27. The Inquisitors and 159.
the commander of the Lido were arrested and taken to San Giorgio Maggiore,
and all the political prisoners were released from the Piombi, the Pozzi, and the other
prisons of the city. On the following day, two hundred and eighty-eight Frenchmen who
had been taken with weapons in their hands during the insurrections in the provinces were
handed over to Baraguay d’Hilliers in Venice.
Bonaparte was now sure that he had only to show himself in order to be master of the
city. The Venetians also made haste to present Bonaparte’s ‘friend,’ Haller, with a little
present of six thousand sequins in bullion, in the hope that he would use his kind offices
with the great man.

‘I beg you,’ Bonaparte wrote about that time to the Directory, ‘to order the citizen
Haller, a scoundrel who
has come here to steal, to present his accounts to the head manager’
(‘ordonnateur en chef’). Bonnal,
Chute, 287.
So much for Bonaparte’s ‘friend.’ The Republic also offered the most
profuse hospitality to Madame Baraguay d’Hilliers, in the hope that she would soften her
husband’s harsh temper.
By this time Bonaparte knew as well as Condulmer himself that the Venetian fleet was
miserably manned, and that the city must yield at once if besieged, and he thought it quite
useless to receive any more envoys. Besides, he knew that his propaganda had succeeded
in the capital itself; his paid agents had done their work well, and it had been bravely
seconded by the manifest incompetence of the government which had exasperated all
classes. It is said that there were fifteen thousand republicans ready to answer the first
signal as soon as it should be given by Villetard, the Secretary of the French Legation.
These were not by any means all of the people, for many ladies of the nobility had been

SO-CALLED HOUSE OF DESDEMONA

spending their time in making tricolour cockades, and the government knew it.

The French no longer took the trouble to conceal the preparations they were making
for a revolution. A wholesale grocer who played a very suspicious part in the whole affair,
Tommaso Zorzi, was dining with Villetard, and heard several Frenchmen speaking of the
revolution that was arranged for the next day; it was intended to set up a tree of liberty in
the Square of Saint Mark’s and to declare the fall of the aristocratic government. When
every one else was gone, Zorzi implored Villetard to put off firing the train, and explained
that a large part of the populace would side with their old masters. The French Secretary
would promise nothing, and on leaving him Zorzi hastened to the ducal palace and was
received by the Doge in spite of the late hour.
He told what he had heard. The Doge sent at once for Pietro Donà, and the two bade
Zorzi obtain from Villetard a written declaration of the conditions on which he would
consent to give up the revolution. On the following day Zorzi and his friend Spada
appeared before the Savi with a paper which they said they had drawn up in the presence
of Villetard, who had refused to write anything himself.
The impression one gets in reading this document is that Zorzi and his shadow were in
the trick with Villetard. The paper calls them ‘mediators,’
talks of ‘pacifically changing the aristocratic forms of government,’ ‘leaving
open to the sight of the public the prisons called the Piombi and Pozzi,’ Rom. x. 386
abolishing capital punishment, setting up a tree of liberty in the Square of for the text.
Saint Mark’s, publicly burning the insignia of the old government, a universal amnesty,
and a Te Deum in Saint Mark’s, where the image of the Virgin Mary was to be exhibited.
The paper also named the provisional government, in which the grocer and his shadow
were to occupy high positions.
This stuff was not read by Zorzi before the assembly. The Doge deputed Pietro Donà
and Francesco Battagia to hear him in a neighbouring room. Donà dismissed him with the
remark that the government would wait to discuss such propositions until they were
officially laid before the Venetian envoys by Bonaparte himself.
Then Donà returned to the hall and communicated the contents of Zorzi’s paper to the
government. The effect was terrific. A few voices protested that no attention should be
paid to such an informal proposition, but terror prevailed, and Donà and Battagia were
charged to go at once to Villetard to ask him to put off his revolution till the envoys should
return from their interview with Bonaparte. Villetard, for reasons known to himself,
granted the government a respite of four days.
Meanwhile it was thought wise to dismiss the Slavonic troops, yielding in this to one
of the demands expressed in Zorzi’s paper. Their presence ‘irritated’ Villetard. They were
accordingly ordered home under the command of Niccolò Morosini, but they did not leave
at once.
On the twelfth of May the Great Council met. Early in the morning Villetard had
informed Battagia that the Venetian envoys sent to Bonaparte had refused to accept a
democratic and representative government, but that the French meant to obtain it by force
unless the aristocracy would resign its powers. It was Haller who had brought the news to
Villetard after accepting a bribe of six thousand sequins a few days earlier. An American
politician once defined a scoundrel as ‘a man who will not stay bought.’

Donà came back with an official letter from Villetard to the Doge, which contained
Bonaparte’s ultimatum. The city was in a state of nervous excitement that must break into
action before long; the members of the Council were already in terror of their lives while
they stood waiting for the hour of meeting. Even then, everything had to be done
according to tradition. The patricians were, no doubt, devising more concessions to be
made to Bonaparte, as they moved towards the ducal palace, and most of them were ready
to sacrifice everything, including their honour, in exchange for personal safety. The last of
the Slavonic soldiers were embarking under the direction of the Arsenal men; there were
republican conspirators everywhere, and they found their way even to the Doge’s private
apartments.
The Council met at the usual hour, and the roll was called. Only 537 members were
present, whereas 600 constituted a quorum. It is possible that the many absent members
had hoped to obstruct all proceedings by keeping away, for to the last the minutest rules
had been observed. But the members who had assembled decided that they had a right to
act.
The Doge opened the sitting, pale and overcome. Painfully, and in his Venetian dialect,
he recapitulated the acts of the Consulta of Savi and others, who had taken charge of
affairs on the thirtieth of April. His miserable speech was followed by the reading of the
report of Donà and Battagia, Haller’s letter, and other documents.
The Secretary, Valentin Marin, then read the measure which was brought before the
Council.
The Bill had the old sanctimonious tone. ‘The principal purpose of preserving
religion,’ etc., were the first words; the measure was, that the Great Council should accept
‘the proposed provisional representative government.’
The Secretary had finished reading the Bill, and was just beginning his comments on
it, when the sound of a discharge of musketry rang sharply through the ancient hall. The
patricians rushed to the doors. One voice called them back.
‘Divide! Divide!’ it cried, above the din.
To the last gasp formality bound them. Hastily, but not informally, they went through
the form of voting. The Bill to accept the democratic government was passed by 512 yeas
to 30 nays and 5 blanks.
Then, in the twinkling of an eye, the
hall was silent and empty.
1797, May
twelfth.

SAILS

XVIII

CONCLUSION
The discharge of musketry which had frightened the Great Council out of its senses had
been only the parting salute of the Slavonic soldiers as they
sailed out of the harbour. It was the last mark of respect the Venetians of
Venice received, and it was by a dramatic coincidence that it was offered at Tassini,
under ‘San
the very instant when the Republic ended. Every one has read how the Doge Bartolomeo
went back to his own room and .’

A GATEWAY

handed his ducal bonnet to his servant, saying that he should not need it again.
What has been less noticed by historians is that General Salimbeni, who knew that the
crowd was waiting to know what had taken place, put his head out of a window and
shouted ‘Viva la Libertà’; and that when no one broke the silence that followed, he took
breath again and shouted ‘Viva San Marco,’ whereupon the multitude took up the cry and
cheered till they were hoarse, and the old flag of Saint Mark was hoisted everywhere, and
the populace took it into its head to burn down the houses of Donà and Battagia and the
grocer Zorzi, and though they were hindered, they did plunder and burn the dwellings of a
number of burgher families that had played a double game and had helped to bring on the
final catastrophe.
In the midst of this confusion well-armed republican gangs appeared in all directions,
and during the night between the twelfth and the thirteenth of May there was a hideous
tumult. The last time that Venetian cannon was fired by Venetian orders, it was pointed at
Venetians.
On the fifteenth, the French occupied the city as conquerors. On the sixteenth, two
notices were put up in the Square of Saint Mark’s. The
first simply announced that the aristocratic government yielded up its powers
to a provisional Municipality which would sit in the hall of the Great Molmenti,
Nuovi
Council; and this was the last public document which began with the words, Studi.
‘The Most Serene Prince announces,’ etc.
The other informed the public that the provisional Municipality of Venice declared the
Great Council to have ‘deserved well of the nation’ because it had abdicated; it thanked
particularly the members of the late government which had put down the riot on the night
of the twelfth; and it went on to declare a ‘solemn amnesty’ for all political misdeeds, and
so forth, and so on.
Then came the usual French nonsense about liberty, equality, brotherhood, peace, the
rights of man, and the like; all of which might, perhaps, be excused on the ground of
mistaken and foolish sentiment, if we did not know that Bonaparte was even then almost
in the act of selling his newly found, free, and equal brothers into slavery to Austria, then
the most really absolute despotism in Europe.
The whole affair was a horrible farce. The new Municipality decided to preserve the
Lion of Saint Mark as the national symbol, but for the words ‘Pax tibi Marce’ inscribed on
the book under the Lion’s paw were substituted the words ‘Rights and Duties of Man and
Citizen.’ The gondoliers observed that Saint Mark had at last turned over a new leaf.
The Lion, however, was soon thrown down from his column, and was broken into
more than eighty pieces on the pavement. On the fourth
of June the tree or liberty was raised in the middle of the Square. Around it
were grouped emblems of the sciences and arts. Fagots were heaped up near Rom. x.
219.
by, to make a fire in which the Golden Book and the ducal insignia were
solemnly burned between two statues representing Freedom and Equality. Inane verses
were inscribed on the pedestals of

these images. Lest I should be thought to exaggerate their atrociously bad
literary quality I give the original Italian. Molmenti,
Nuovi
One ran:— Studi.

Depono la tirannide,
Sollevo l’innocente,
Ognor lieto e ridente
Il popol mio sarà.

The other said:—
Il libro d’ oro abbruciasi
L’accende il reo delitto,
All’ uom resta il suo dritto
La dolce libertà.

The Procuratie, both the old and the new, were renamed, according to the revolutionary
dictionary, ‘Gallery of Liberty,’ ‘Gallery of Equality.’
In the course of the month of June began the trial of the three Inquisitors,
Agostino Barbarigo, Angelo Maria Gabrieli, and Catterino Corner, and of Mutinelli,
Ult. 218;
Pizzamano, the commander of the Lido fort. Even Bonaparte was obliged to also
admit that there was nothing against them, but he would not allow them to be Tassini,
acquitted; he thought it better policy to pardon them ‘in consideration of their 591.
advanced age.’ His letter on the subject is dated the fourth of October. But
Pizzamano, though declared free, was still kept in prison at Bonaparte’s pleasure, and on
the twenty-sixth of October sent a petition directly to the latter. Bonaparte sent it on to
General Serrurier, in Venice, with an order for the man’s liberation written in the margin.
Bonaparte had kept up his comedy to the very last. On the eighth of October, General
Balland had given the Venetians, in his chief’s name, the most ample assurances of
attachment and devotion.
On the seventeenth, nine days later, by the treaty of Campo-Formio, Bonaparte sold
Venice and the whole Venetian territory to the Emperor of Austria, including Dalmatia and
Istria, in exchange for the Ionian Islands, the Cisalpine Republic, the Duchy of Modena,
and the provinces of Lombardy as far as the Adige and Mantua.
Having got his price for the dead body, Bonaparte proceeded to strip it of everything
valuable, so far as he could, before handing it over. The horses of Saint Mark’s were taken
down from the façade of the basilica, the most valuable pictures, parchments, and books
were packed, and all was sent to Paris.
The farce of freedom was over, and the bitterness of reality came back, harder to bear,
perhaps, but as much more honourable, as suffering is more dignified than drunken rioting.
On the eighteenth of January 1798 the Austrian garrison took possession of Venice.
Before closing these pages, I shall go back a few months and shall translate Giustina
Renier Michiel’s touching account of the scene which took place in Dalmatia, in the
preceding month of August, when the Austrians came by sea to take possession of the
country.

On the twenty-second of August, Rukavina [the Austrian general] arrived with a fleet and a thousand soldiers and
landed at Pettana, a mile and a half from Perasto. The
Dalmatians, taken by surprise, and seeing that they had nothing more to hope, resolved to render the
last honours to the great standard or Saint Mark. To this end the people of Perasto, and of the G. R. Michiel,
Origini.
neighbouring country, and others, assembled before the palace of the Captain in command; and he, with Compare also
twelve soldiers armed with sabres, and two colour-sergeants, went to the hall where the standard was, Rom. x. 249.
and the colours carried in the field, which Venice had entrusted many centuries ago to the valour and
loyalty of the brave Dalmatians. They were now to take away those dearly loved flags; but in the very moment of doing
what it broke their hearts to do, their strength failed them, and they could only shed a flood of tears.
The throng of people who waited in the Square, not seeing any one come out again, knew not what to think. So one
of the judges of the town was sent up to ascertain the cause; but he, too, was so much moved that his presence [in the
hall] only increased the grief of the others. At last the Captain, controlling himself of sheer necessity, made the painful
effort; he took down the flags from the place where they were hung and attached them to two pikes; and he handed them
to the two colour-sergeants, and they and the soldiers, led by the lieutenant, marched out of the hall; and after them the
Captain, the Judge, and all the rest. As soon as the well-beloved standard was seen, the grief and tears of the multitude
were universal. Men, women, and children all sobbed and their tears rolled down; and nothing was heard but the
complaint of mourning, no doubtful proof of the hereditary devotion of that generous nation to its Republic.
When the sad procession reached the Square, the Captain unfastened the flags from the pikes and at the same time
the ensign of Saint Mark on the fort was hauled down, and a salute of twenty guns was fired. Two armed vessels that
guarded the port answered with eleven guns, and all the merchant vessels saluted also; this was the last good-bye of
sorrowing glory to the valour of a nation. The sacred colours were placed upon a metal salver and the lieutenant received
them in the presence of the Judge, of the Captain, and of the people. Then all marched with slow and melancholy steps to
the cathedral. There they were received by the clergy and its chief, to whom the sacred trust was delivered, and he placed
it on the high altar. Then the Captain commanding spoke the following words, which were again and again interrupted by
quick sobbing, and streaming tears that came from men’s hearts more truly than from their eyes:—
‘In this cruel moment,’ he said, ‘that rends our hearts for the fatal destruction of the Most Serene Venetian
Government, in this last expression of our love and faith, with which we do honour to the colours of the Republic, let us
at least find some consolation, dear fellow-citizens, in the thought that neither our past deeds, nor those we have done in
these recent times, have led to this sad office, which, for us, is now become a good deed. Our sons will know from us,
and history will teach all Europe, that Perasto upheld to the last breath the glory of the Venetian flag, honouring it and
bathing it in universal and most bitter tears. Fellow-citizens, let us freely pour out our grief; but amidst the last solemn
thoughts with which we seal the glorious career that has been ours under the Most Serene Government of Venice, let us
turn to these well-loved colours and cry out to them, in our sorrow, “Dear flag that has been ours three hundred and
seventy-seven years without a break, our faith and courage have ever kept you unstained both on the sea and
wheresoever you were called to face your enemies, which were the enemies of the Church also. For three hundred and
seventy-seven years our goods, our blood, and our lives have always been devoted to you, and since you have been with
us, and we with you, we have ever been happy, and famous on the sea, and victorious on land. No man ever saw us put to
flight with you; with you none were ever found to overcome us. If these most wretched times of rash action, of corrupt
manners, of dissensions and of lawless opinions that offend nature and the law of nations had not ruined you in Italy, our
goods, our blood, our lives should still be yours; and rather than have seen you overcome and dishonoured, our courage
and our faith would have chosen to be buried with you. But since we can do nothing more for you than this, let your
honoured grave be in our hearts, let our desolation be your highest praise.” ’
Then the Captain went up and took a corner of the flag and put it to his lips as if he could not let it leave them; and
all thronged to kiss it most tenderly, washing it with their hot tears. But as the sad ceremony had to come to an end at
last, these dear colours were laid in a chest, which the Rector placed in a reliquary beneath the high altar.

THE DOGES OF VENICE
(ACCORDING TO ROMANIN)
Note.—The Venetian year began on March first, whence the frequent discrepancies
between the dates given by different writers. In this work every effort has been made to
bring all dates under the usual reckoning.
I. Paolo Lucio Anafesto elected 697 d. 717 Seat in Heraclea.
II. Marcello Tegaliano “ 717 “ 726
III. Orso Ipato “ 726 “ 737 (murdered). Seat in Malamocco.
(From 737 to 742, military governors called ‘Magistri Militum.’)
IV. Teodato Orso elected 742 — 755 (blinded and deposed).
V. Galla Gaulo “ 755 — 756 (blinded and exiled).
VI. Domenico Monegario “ 756 — 764 (blinded and deposed).
VII. Maurizio Galbaio “ 764 d. 787
Giovanni Galbaio and his son
VIII. “ 787 — 804 (both deposed).
Maurizio
Obelerio with his sons Beato and
IX. “ 804 d. 811 (the father put to death as a traitor).
Costantino
X. Agnello Partecipazio “ 811 “ 827 Seat henceforth in Rialto.
XI. Giustiniano Partecipazio “ 827 “ 829
XII. Giovanni Partecipazio I. “ 829 — 836 (deposed).
XIII. Pietro Tradonico “ 836 d. 864 (murdered).
XIV. Orso Partecipazio I. “ 864 “ 881
XV. Giovanni Partecipazio II. “ 881 — 888 (abdicated).
XVI. Pietro Candiano I. “ 888 d. 888 (killed in battle with pirates).
XVII. Pietro Tribuno “ 888 “ 912
XVIII. Orso Partecipazio II. (Badoer) “ 912 — 932 (abdicated and died a monk).
XIX. Pietro Candiano II. “ 932 d. 939
XX. Pietro Partecipazio (Badoer) “ 939 “ 942
XXI. Pietro Candiano III. “ 942 “ 959
XXII. Pietro Candiano IV. “ 959 “ 976 (murdered).
(abdicated and died a monk, with the reputation
XXIII. Pietro Orseolo I. “ 976 — 978
of a saint).
XXIV. Vital Candiano “ 978 — 979 (abdicated and became a monk).
XXV. Tribuno Memmo “ 979 d. 991
XXVI. Pietro Orseolo II. “ 991 “ 1008
XXVII. Ottone Orseolo “ 1008 — 1026 (exiled to Constantinople).
XXVIII. Pietro Centranigo “ 1026 — 1032 (driven out).
XXIX. Domenico Flabianico “ 1032 d. 1043
XXX. Domenico Contarini “ 1043 “ 1071
XXXI. Domenico Selvo “ 1071 “ 1085
XXXII. Vital Falier “ 1085 “ 1096
XXXIII. Vital Michiel I. “ 1096 “ 1102
XXXIV. Ordelafo Falier “ 1102 “ 1118 (died in the Hungarian war).
XXXV. Domenico Michiel “ 1118 “ 1130
XXXVI. Pietro Polani “ 1130 “ 1148
XXXVII. Domenico Morosini “ 1148 “ 1156
XXXVIII. Vital Michiel II. “ 1156 “ 1172 (killed).
XXXIX. Sebastian Ziani “ 1172 “ 1178

XL. Orio Mastropiero “ 1178 — 1192 (abdicated and became a monk).
XLI. Enrico Dandolo “ 1192 d. 1205 (died in Constantinople).
XLII. Pietro Ziani “ 1205 — 1229 (abdicated).
XLIII. Jacopo Tiepolo “ 1229 — 1249 (abdicated).
XLIV. Marin Morosini “ 1249 d. 1253
XLV. Renier Zeno “ 1253 “ 1268
XLVI. Lorenzo Tiepolo “ 1268 “ 1275
XLVII. Jacopo Contarini “ 1275 — 1280 (abdicated).
XLVIII. Giovanni Dandolo “ 1280 d. 1289
XLIX. Pietro Gradenigo “ 1289 “ 1311
L. Marin Zorzi “ 1311 “ 1312
LI. Giovanni Soranzo “ 1312 “ 1329
LII. Francesco Dandolo “ 1329 “ 1339
LIII. Bartolommeo Gradenigo “ 1339 “ 1343
LIV. Andrea Dandolo “ 1343 “ 1354
LV. Marin Falier “ 1354 d. 1355 (beheaded April 17).
LVI. Giovanni Gradenigo “ 1355 “ 1356
LVII. Giovanni Dolfin “ 1356 “ 1361
LVIII. Lorenzo Celsi “ 1361 “ 1365
LIX. Marco Corner “ 1365 “ 1368
LX. Andrea Contarini “ 1368 “ 1383
LXI. Michel Morosini “ 1383 “ 1384
LXII. Antonio Venier “ 1384 “ 1400
LXIII. Michel Steno “ 1400 “ 1413
LXIV. Tommaso Mocenigo “ 1413 “ 1423
LXV. Francesco Foscari “ 1423 — 1457 (deposed, and died a few days later).
LXVI. Pasquale Malipiero “ 1457 d. 1462
LXVII. Cristoforo Moro “ 1462 “ 1471
LXVIII. Niccolò Tron “ 1471 “ 1474
LXIX. Niccolò Marcello “ 1474 “ 1474
LXX. Pietro Mocenigo “ 1474 “ 1476
LXXI. Andrea Vendramin “ 1476 “ 1478
LXXII. Giovanni Mocenigo “ 1478 “ 1485
LXXIII. Marco Barbarigo “ 1485 “ 1486
LXXIV. Agostino Barbarigo “ 1486 “ 1501
LXXV. Leonardo Loredan “ 1501 “ 1521
LXXVI. Antonio Grimani “ 1521 “ 1523
LXXVII. Andrea Gritti “ 1523 “ 1538
LXXVIII. Pietro Lando “ 1538 “ 1545
LXXIX. Francesco Donato “ 1545 “ 1553
LXXX. Marcantonio Trevisan “ 1553 “ 1554
LXXXI. Francesco Venier “ 1554 “ 1556
LXXXII. Lorenzo Priuli “ 1556 “ 1559
LXXXIII. Girolamo Priuli “ 1559 “ 1567
LXXXIV. Pietro Loredan “ 1567 “ 1570
LXXXV. Aloise (Luigi) Mocenigo “ 1570 “ 1577
LXXXVI. Sebastian Venier “ 1577 “ 1578
LXXXVII. Niccolò Da Ponte “ 1578 “ 1585
LXXXVIII. Pasquale Cicogna “ 1585 “ 1595
LXXXIX. Marin Grimani “ 1595 “ 1606
XC. Leonardo Donà “ 1606 “ 1612
XCI. Marcantonio Memmo “ 1612 “ 1615
XCII. Giovanni Bembo “ 1615 “ 1618
XCIII. Niccolò Donà “ 1618 “ 1618