m LIBRARY OF ARCHITECTURE AND ALLIED ARTS Gift of The Heirs of R. Germain Hubby, A.I.A \ A' THE MAKEES OF VENICE. See page 279. LEONARDO LOREDANO. THE MAKERS OF VENICE DOGES, CONQUERORS, PAINTERS AND MEN OF LETTERS MRS. OLIPHANT AUTHOR OF " THE MAKERS OF FLORENCE EXTRA ILLUSTRATED EDITION, WITH PORTRAIT OF LEONARDO LOREDANO ENGRAVED BY O. LACOUR, FORTY-EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS BY H. R. HOLMES, F.S.A., AND THIRTY PLATES OF PALACES, CHURCHES AND OTHER BUILDINGS IN VENICE. & o n fc o n MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1892 The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BUNGAY. First Edition, Medium Svo, printed 1887 New Edition, Crciun Zvt>, May 1888 Reprinted November 1888, July 1889; 1891 Extra Illustrated Edition, 1892. Cloimtrrg, KIND AND DEAR COMPANIONS OF MANY A VENETIAN RAMBLE, THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED. DA CONTENTS. PAGE INTRODUCTION .... 1 PART I. THE DOGES. CHAPTER I. THE ORSEOLI CHAPTER II. THE MICHIELI 40 CHAPTER III. ENRICO DANDOLO 66 CHAPTER IV. PIETRO GRADENIGO 92 CHAPTER V. THE DOGES DISGRACED ......... .120 CONTEXTS. PART II. BY SEA AND LAXD. CHAPTER I. PAGE THE TRAVELLERS: NICCOLO, MATTED, AXD MARCO POLO .... 141 CHAPTER II. A POPULAR HERO 166 CHAPTER III. SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE CARMAGNOLA 206 CHAPTER IV. BARTOLOMMEO COLLEONI 249 PART III. THE PAINTERS. CHAPTER I. THE THREE EARLY MASTERS 262 CHAPTER II. THE SECOND GENERATION 291 CHAPTER IIL TINTORETTO .... . 324 CONTENTS. PART IV. MEN OF LETTERS. CHAPTER I. PAGE THE GUEST OF VENICE 342 CHAPTER II. THE HISTORIANS . 363 CHAPTER III. ALDUS AND THE ALDINES 393 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIOXS. PAGE LEONARDO LOREDANO Front. s. PETER'S CHAIR : SAN PIETRO IN CASTELLO To face 13 INTERIOR OF THE CATHEDRAL OF TORCELLO ,, ,, 30 BISHOP'S THRONE, TORCELLO 30 STONE SHUTTERS, CATHEDRAL, TORCELLO 36 SHRINE OF ORSEOLI " II, SANTO " 39 BRONZE HORSES ON THE FACADE OF S. MARCO To face 44 THE CEMETERY ISLAND ,, ,, 64 ARMS OF THE MICHIELI 64 HIGH ALTAR OF S. MARCO TofttCC 75 DOORWAY, SAN MARCO ,, ,, 88 ARMS OF DANDOLO 91 ARMS OF GRADENIGO 97 PONTE DEL PARADISO TofaCf. 108 NEAR THE SANTI APOSTOLI ., ,, 126 ARMS OF FALIERO 128 ARMS OF FOSCARI 140 DEPARTURE OF MARCO POLO : FROM AN ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT IN THE BODLEIAN 141 DOORWAY, MARCO POLO'S HOUSE 150 INSCRIPTION ON PILLAR IN ARSENAL, THE FIRST ERECTED . . 165 FONDAMENTA ZEN TofttCC 190 DOORWAY OF RUINED CHAPEL OF THE SERVI ,, ,, 229 SWORD HILT 230 COFFIN IN THE CHURCH OF THE FRARI 248 COLLEONI Tofacc 251 xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE POZZO 261 GATEWAY OF THE ABBAZIA DELLA MISERICORDIA . . . To/CKC 266 CLOISTERS OF THE ABBAZIA ,, ., 274 PORTRAIT OF SULTAN: GENTILE BELLINI ,. ., 281 ANGEL FROM CARPACCIO 283 URSULA RECEIVING HER BRIDEGROOM : FROM CARPACCIO . To/OCC 284 HEAD OF ST. GEORGE 285 OUT OF THE GRAND CANAL Tofd-CC 296 GROUP OF HEADS : GENTILE BELLINI 305 GKOUP OF HEADS : GENTILE BELLINI 316 MURANO AND SAN MICHELE To/UCe 316 HEAD FROM TITIAN'S TOMB : BELIEVED TO BE F. PAOLO SARPI . . 321 KNOCKER 323 PALAZZO CAMELLO : HOUSE OF TINTORETTO To face 326 PALAZZO CAMELLO: HOUSE OF TINTORETTO ,, ., 330 THE COURTYARD OF PALAZZO CAMELLO ,, ,, 336 KNOCKER : PALAZZO DA PONTE 340 COURTYARD. SIDE CANAL TofdCe 348 CAMPO DI S. VIO ,, ,, 354 CANAREGGIO ,, ,, 364 CLOISTERS OF 8. GREGORIO ,, ,, 377 GATEWAY OF S. GREGORIO ,, ,, 392 NEAR SAN BIAGIO . . 404 EXTRA PLATES. THE RIALTO BRIDGE To face 10 THE DUCAL PALACE 5) 14 COURTYARD OF THE DUCAL PALACE ,, 16 GALLERY IN THE DUCAL PALACE ,, 18 TORCELLO, CHURCH OF 8. FOSCA AND CATHEDRAL ... ,, ,, 28 FACADE OF 8. MARCO (> }) 42 BASILICA OF 8. MARCO }) )( 7Q CHURCH OF 88. GIOVANNI AND PAOLO ,,118 DOORWAY OF CHURCH OF 88. GIOVANNI AND PAOLO ... ,, 120 MONUMENT OF THE DOGE MOCENIGO ,, ,,129 PALAZZO PISARI '. 160 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. xv PAGE 1'ALAZZO GRIMANI To face 162 PALAZZO MANIN ,, ,, 166 PALAZZO PASARO ,, ,, 170 PALAZZO NANAXEI ,, ; , 171 PALAZZO CONTARINI ,., ,, 188 PALAZZO CA DORO ., ,, 196 DOORWAY OF THE CHURCH OF THE FRARI ,, ,, 232 APSE OF THE CHURCH OF THE FRARI ,, ,, 236 MONUMENT OF COLLEONI ., ,, 240 CHURCH OF ST. MARIA DELLA SALUTE ., ,, 292 MONUMENT OF PESARO IN FRARI ,, ,, 296 MONUMENT OF TITIAN ,, ., 304 CHURCH OF THE MADONNA DELL' ORTO ,, ., 310 INTERIOR OF CHURCH OF THE SCALZI ,, ,, 314 INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH OF THE JESUITS ,, ,, 322 BRIDGE OF SIGHS ,, ,, 328 THE THREE BRIDGES ,, 332 LOGGETTA AND ROYAL PALACE ,, ,, 350 ABBEY OF S. GREGORIO ,, ,, 370 THE MAKERS OF VENICE INTRODUCTION. VENICE has long borne in the imagination of the world a distinctive position, something of the char- acter of a great enchantress, a magician of the seas. Her growth between the water and the sky ; her great palaces, solid and splendid, built, so to speak, on nothing ; the wonderful glory of light and reflection about her ; the glimmer of incessant brightness and movement ; the absence of all those harsh, artificial sounds which vex the air in other towns, but which in her are replaced by harmonies of human voices, and by the liquid tinkle of the waves all these unusual characteristics combine to make her a wonder and a prodigy. While there are scarcely any who are unmoved by her special charm, there are some who are entirely subdued by it, to whom the sight of her is a con- tinual enchantment, and who never get beyond the sense of something miraculous, the rapture of the first vision. Not only does she " shine where she stands," which even the poorest cluster of human habitations will do in the light of love : but all those walls, with the mist of ages like a bloom of eternal youth upon them all those delicate pinnacles and carven-stones, the arches and the pillars and the balconies, the fretted outlines that strike against the B 2 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. sky shine too as with a light within that radiates into the clear sea-air ; and every ripple on the great water-way, and every wave on the lagoon, and each little rivulet of a canal, like a line of light between the piles of masonry, which are themselves built of pearl and tints of ocean shells, shines too with an ever-varied, fantastic, enchanting glimmer of responsive brightness. In the light of summer mornings, in the glow of winter sunsets, Venice stands out upon the blue background, the sea that brims upwards to her very doors, the sky that sweeps in widening circles all around, radiant with an answering tone of light. She is all wonder, enchantment, the brightness and the glory of a dream. Her own children cannot enough paint her, praise her, celebrate her splendours : and to outdo if possible that patriotic enthusiasm has been the effort of many a stranger from afar. When the present writer ventured to put upon record some of the impressions which mediaeval Florence has left upon history, in the lives and deeds of great men, the work was comparatively an easy one for Florence is a city full of shadows of the great figures of the past. The traveller cannot pass along her streets without treading in the very traces of Dante, without stepping upon soil made memor- able by footprints never to be effaced. We meet them in the crowded ways the cheerful painters singing at their work, the prophet-monk going to torture and execution, the wild gallants with their Carnival ditties, the crafty and splendid statesman who subjugated the fierce Republic. Faces start out from the crowd wherever we turn our eyes. The greatness of the surroundings, the palaces, churches, frowning mediaeval castles in the midst of the city, are all thrown into the background by the greatness, the individu- ality, the living power and vigour of the men who are their originators, and, at the same time, their inspiring soul. But when we turn to Venice the effect is very different. After the bewitchment of the first vision, a chill falls upon INTRODUCTION. 3 the inquirer. Where is the poet, where the prophet, the princes, the scholars, the men whom, could we see, we should recognise wherever we met them, with whom the whole world is acquainted ] They are not here. In the sunshine of the Piazza, in the glorious gloom of San Marco, in the great council-chambers and offices of state, once so full of busy statesmen, and great interests, there is scarcely a figure recognisable of all, to be met with in the spirit- no one whom we look for as we walk, whose individual footsteps are traceable wherever we turn. Instead of the men who made her what she is, who ruled her with so high a hand, who filled her archives with the most detailed narratives, and gleaned throughout the world every particular of universal history which could enlighten and guide her, we find everywhere the great image an idealisation more wonderful than any in poetry of Venice herself, the crowned and reigning city, the centre of all their aspirations, the mistress of their affections, for whom those haughty patricians of an older day, with a proud self-abnegation which has no humility or sacrifice in it, effaced themselves, thinking of nothing but her glory. It is a singular tribute to pay to any race, especially to a race so strong, so full of life and energy, loving power, luxury, and pleasantness as few other races have done ; yet it is true. When Byron swept with superficial, yet brilliant eyes, the roll of Yenetian history, what did he find for the uses of his verse ? Nothing but two old men, one condemned for his own fault, the other for his son's, remarkable chiefly for their misfortunes symbols of the wrath and the feebleness of age, and of ingratitude and bitter fate. This was all which the rapid observer could find in the story of a power which was once supreme in the seas, the arbiter of peace and war through all the difficult and dangerous East, the first defender of Christendom against the Turk, the first merchant, banker, carrier, whose emissaries were busy in all the councils and all the markets of the world. In her records the city is 4 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. everything the Republic, the worshipped ideal of a com- munity in which every man for the common glory seems to have been willing to sink his own. Her sons toiled for her, each in his vocation, not without personal glory, far from indifferent to personal gain, yet determined above all that Venice should be great, that she should be beautiful above all the thoughts of other races, that her power and her splendour should outdo every rival. The impression grows upon the student, whether he penetrates no further than the door-ways of those endless collections of historic docu- ments which make the archives of Venice important to all the world, and in which lie the records of immeasurable toil, the investigations of a succession of the keenest observers, the most subtle politicians and statesmen ; or whether he endeavours to trace more closely the growth and development of the Republic, the extension of her rule, the perfection of her economy. In all of these, men of the noblest talents, the most intense vigour and energy, have laboured. The records give forth the very hum of a crowd ; they glow with life, with ambition, with strength, with every virile and potent quality : but all directed to one aim. Venice is the outcome not great names of individual men. The Tuscans also loved their great and beautiful city, but they loved her after a different sort. Perhaps the absence of all those outlets to the seas and traffic with the wider world which moulded Venetian character, gave the strain of a more violent personality and fiercer passions to their blood. They loved their Florence for themselves, desiring an absolute sway over her, and to make her their own unable to tolerate any rivalry in respect to her, turning out upon the world every competitor, fighting to be first in the city, whatever might happen. The Venetians, with what seems a finer purpose in a race less grave, put Venice first in everything. Few were the fuori-wciti, the political exiles, sent out from the city of the sea. Now and INTRODUCTION. 5 then a general who had lost a battle in order that all generals might be thus sharply reminded that the Republic tolerated no failures would be thrust forth into the wilder- ness of that dark world which was not Venice ; but no feud so great as that which banished Dante ever tore the city asunder, no such vicissitudes of sway ever tormented her peace. A grand and steady aim, never abandoned, never even lost sight of, runs through every page of her .story as long as it remains the story of a living and independent power. Perhaps the comparative equality of the great houses which figure on the pages of the golden book of Venice may have had something to do with this result. Their continual poise and balance of power, and all the wonderful system of checks and restraints so skilfully combined to prevent all possibility of the predominance of one family over the other, would thus have attained a success which suspicion and jealousy have seldom secured, and which, perhaps, may be allowed to obliterate the memory of such sentiments, and make us think of them as wisdom and honourable care. As in most human affairs, no doubt both the greater and the lesser motives were present, and the determination of each man that his neighbour should have no chance of stepping on to a higher level than himself, combined with, and gave a keen edge of personal feeling to his conviction of the advantages of the oligarchical-democratic government which suited the genius of the people, and made the Re- public so great. Among the Contarinis, Morosinis, Tiepolos, Dandolos, the Corners and Loredans, and a host of others whose names recur with endless persistency from first to last through all the vicissitudes of the national career, alternating in all the highest offices of state, there was none which was ever permitted to elevate itself permanently, or come within sight of a supreme position. They kept each other down, even while raising each other to the fulness of an aristocratic sway winch has never been equalled in G THE MAKERS OF VENICE. Christendom. And the ambition which could never hope for such predominance as the Medici, the Visconti, the Sculigeri attained in their respective cities, was thus entirely devoted to the advancement of the community, the greater power and glory of the state. What no man could secure for himself or his own house, all men could do, securing their share in the benefit, for Venice. And in generous minds this ambition, taking a finer flight than is possible when personal aggrandisement lies at the heart of the effort, became a passion the inspiring principle of the race. For this they coursed the seas, quenching the pirate tribes that threatened their trade, less laudably seizing the towns of the coast, the islands of the sea which interfered with their access to their markets in the East. For this they carried fire and flame to the mainland, and snatched from amid the fertile fields the supremacy of Padua and Treviso, and many a landward city, making their seaborn nest into the governing head of a great province ; an object which was impersonal giving licence as well as force to their purpose, and relieving their consciences from the guilt of turning Crusades and missionary enterprises alike into wars of conquest. Whatever their tyrannies, as whatever their hard-won glories might be, they were all for Venice, and only in a secondary and subsidiary sense for themselves. The same principle has checked in other ways that flow of individual story with which Florence has enriched the records of the world. Nature at first, no doubt, must bear the blame, who gave no Dante to the state which perhaps might have prized him more highly than his own ; but the same paramount attraction of the idealised and sovereign city, in which lay all their pride, turned the early writers of Venice into chroniclers, historians, diarists, occupied in collecting and recording everything that concerned their city, and indifferent to individuals, devoted only to the glory and the story of the state. In later days this peculiarity indeed gave way, and a hundred piping voices INTRODUCTION. 7 rise to celebrate the decadence of the great Republic ; but by that time she has ceased to be a noble spectacle, and luxury and vice have come in to degrade the tale into one of endless pageantry deprived of all meaning no longer the proud occasional triumphs of a conquering race, but the perpetual occupation of a debased and corrupted people. To the everlasting loss of the city and mankind there was no Yasari in Yenice. Messer Giorgio, with his kindly humorous eyes, peered across the peninsula, through clouds of battle and conflict always going on, and perhaps not without a mist of neighbourly depreciation in themselves, perceived far off the Yenetian men and their works who were thought great painters a rival school in competition with his own. He was not near enough to discover what manner of men the two long-lived brothers Bellini, or the silent Carpaccio, with his beautiful thoughts, or the rest of the busy citizens who filled churches and chambers with a splendour as of their own resplendent air and glowing suns, might be. An infinite loss to us and to the state, yet completing the sentiment of the consistent story, which demands all for Yenice : but for the individual whose works are left behind him to her glory, his name inscribed upon her records as a faithful servant, and no more. Yet when we enter more closely into the often-repeated narrative, transmitted from one hand to another till each chronicler, with sharp, incisive touches, or rambling in garrulous details, has brought it down to his own time and personal knowledge, this severity relaxes somewhat. The actors in the drama break into groups, and with more or less difficulty it becomes possible to discover here and there how a change came about, how a great conquest was made, how the people gathered to listen, and how a doge, an orator, a suppliant stood up and spoke. We begin to discern, after long gazing, how a popular tumult would spring up, and all Yenice dart into fire and flame ; and how the laws and institutions grew which controlled that 8 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. possibility, and gradually, with the enforced assent of the populace, bound them more securely than ever democracy was bound before, in the name of freedom. And among the tire and smoke, and through the mists, we come to perceive here and there a noble figure a blind old doge, with white locks streaming, with sightless eyes aflame, running his galley ashore, a mark for all the arrows ; or another standing, a gentler, less prominent image between the pope and the emperor ; or with deep eyes, all hollowed with age and thought, and close-shut mouth, as in that portrait Bellini has made for us, facing a league of monarchs undaunted, for Venice against the world. And though there is no record of that time when Dante stood within the red walls of the arsenal, and saw the galleys making and mending, and the pitch fuming up to heaven as all the world may still see them through his eyes yet a milder scholarly image, a round smooth face, with cowl and garland, looks down upon us from the gallery, all blazing with crimson and gold, between the horses of San Marco, a friendly visitor, the best we could have, since Dante left no sign behind him, and probably was never heard of by the magnificent Signoria. Petrarch stands there, to be seen by the side of the historian-doge, as long as Venice lasts : but not much of him, only a glimpse, as is the Venetian way, lest in contemplation of the poet we should for a moment forget the Republic, his hostess and protector Venice, the all-glorious mistress of the seas, the first object, the unrivalled sovereign of her children's thoughts and hearts. PART I. THE DOGES. CHAPTER I. THE ORSEOLI. names of the doges, though so important in the old -L chronicles of the Republic, which are in many cases little more than a succession of Vitce Ducum, possess individually few associations and little significance to the minds of the strangers who gaze upon the long line of portraits under the cornice of the Hall of the Great Council, without pausing with special interest on any of them, save perhaps on that corner where, conspicuous by its absence, the head of Marino Faliero ought to be. The easy adoption of one figure, by no means particularly striking or character- istic, but which served the occasion of the poet without giving him too much trouble, has helped to throw the genuine historical importance of a very remarkable succession of rulers into obscurity. But this long line of sovereigns, sometimes the guides, often the victims, of the popular will, stretching back with a clearer title and more comprehensible history than that of most dynasties, into the vague distances of old time, is full of interest ; and contains many a tragic episode as striking and more significant than that of the aged prince whose picturesque story is the one most generally known. There are, indeed, few among them who have been 10 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. publicly branded with the name of traitor ; but, at least in the earlier chapters of the great civic history, there are many examples of a popular struggle and a violent death as there are of the quiet ending and serene magnificence which seem fitted to the age and services of most of those who have risen to that dignity. They have been in many cases old men, already worn in the service of their country, most of them tried by land and sea mariners, generals, legislators, fully equipped for all the various needs of a sovereignty whose dominion was the sea, yet which was at the same time weighted with all the vexations and dangers of a continental rule. Their elevation was, in later times, a crowning honour, a sort of dignified retirement from the ruder labours of civic use ; but, in the earlier ages of the Republic this was not so, and at all times it was a most dangerous post, and one whose occupant was most likely to pay for popular disappointments, to run the risk of all the conspiracies, and to be hampered and hindered by jealous counsellors, and the continual inspection of suspicious spectators. To change the doge was always an expedient by which Venice could propitiate fate and turn the course of fortune ; and the greatest misfortunes recorded in her chronicles are those of her princes, whose names were to- day acclaimed to all the echoes, their paths strewed with flowers and carpeted with cloth of gold, but to-morrow insulted and reviled, and themselves exiled or murdered, all services to the state notwithstanding. Sometimes, no doubt, the overthrow was well deserved, but in other instances it can be set down to nothing but popular caprice. To the latter category belongs the story of the family of the Orseoli, which, at the very outset of authentic history, sets before us at a touch the early economy of Venice, the relations of the princes and the people, the enthusiasms, the tumults, the gusts of popular caprice, as well as the already evident predominance of a vigorous aristocracy, natural leaders of the people. The history of this noble family has H i.] THE DOGES. 11 the advantage of being set before us by the first distinct contemporary narrative, that of Giovanni Sagornino John the Deacon, John of Venice, as he is fondly termed by a recent historian. The incidents of this period of power, or at least of that of the two first princes of the name, incidents full of importance in the history of the rising Republic, are the first that stand forth, out of the mist of nameless chronicles, as facts which were seen and recorded by a trustworthy witness. The first Orseolo came into power after a popular tumult of the most violent description, which took the throne and his life from the previous doge, Pietro Candiano. This event occurred in the year 976, when such scenes were not unusual even in regions less excitable. Candiano was the fourth doge of his name, and had been in his youth associated with his father in the supreme authority but in consequence of his rebellion and evil behaviour had been displaced and exiled, his life saved only at the prayer of the old doge. On the death of his father, however, the young' prodigal had been acclaimed doge by the rabble. In this capacity he had done much to digust and alarm the sensitive and proud Republic. Chief among his offences was the fact that he had acquired, through his wife, continental domains which required to be kept in subjection by means of a body of armed retainers, dangerous for Venice : and he was superbissimo from his youth up, and had given frequent offence by his arrogance and exactions. Upon what occasion it was that the popular patience failed at last we are not told, but only that a sudden tumult arose against him, a rush of general fury. When the enraged mob hurried to the ducal palace they found that the doge had fortified himself there, upon which they adopted the primi- tive method of setting fire to the surrounding buildings. Tradition asserts that it was from the house of Pietro Orseolo that the fire was kindled, and some say by his suggestion. It would seem that the crowd intended only to 12 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. burn some of the surrounding houses to frighten or smoke out the doge : but the wind was high, and the ducal palace, with the greater part of San Marco, which was then merely the ducal chapel, was consumed, along with all the houses stretching upward along the course of the Grand Canal as far as Santa Maria Zobenigo. This sudden conflagration lights up, in the darkness of that distant age, a savage scene. The doge seized in las arms his young child, whether with the hope of saving it or of saving himself by means of that shield of innocence, and made his way out of his burn- ing house, through the church which was also burning though better able, probably, to resist the flames. But when he emerged from the secret passages of San Marco he found that the crowd had anticipated him, and that his way was barred on every side by armed men. The desperate fugitive confronted the multitude, and resorted to that method so often and sometimes so unexpectedly successful with the masses. In the midst of the fire and smoke, surrounded by those threatening fierce countenances, with red reflections glittering in every sword and lance-point, reflected over again in the sullen water, he made a last appeal. They had banished him in his youth, yet had relented and recalled him and made him doge. Would they burn him out now, drive him into a corner, kill him like a wild beast 1 ? And supposing even that he was worthy of death, what had the child done, an infant who had never sinned against them] This scene, so full of fierce and terrible elements, the angry roar of the multitude, the blazing of the fire behind that circle of tumult and agitation, the wild glare in the sky, and amid all, the one soft infantine figure held up in the father's despairing arms might afford a subject for a powerful picture in the long succession of Venetian records made by art. When this tragedy had ended, by the murder of both father and child, the choice of the city fell upon Pietro Orseolo as the new doge. An ecclesiastical historian of the To face page 13. g. PETER'S CHAIR : SAX PIETRO IN CASTELLO. i.] THE DOGES. 13 time speaks of his " wicked ambition " as instrumental in the downfall of his predecessor and of his future works of charity as dictated by remorse ; but we are disposed to hope that this is merely said, as is not uncommon in religious story, to enhance the merits of his conversion. The secular chroniclers are unanimous in respect to his excellence. He was a man in everything the contrary of the late doge- a man laudato di tutti, approved of all men and of whom nothing but good was known. Perhaps if he had any share in the tumult which ended in the murder of Candiano, his conscience may have made a crime of it when the hour of conversion came ; but certainly in Venice there would seem to have been no accuser to say a word against him. In the confusion of the great fire and the disorganisation of the city, " contaminated " by the murder of the prince, and all the disorders involved, Orseolo was forced into the xineasy seat whose occupant was sure to be the first victim if the affairs of Venice went wrong. His first act was to remove the insignia of his office out of the ruins of the doge's palace to his own house, which was situated upon the Riva beyond and adjacent to the home of the doges. It is difficult to form to ourselves an idea of the aspect of the city at this early period. Venice, though already great, was in comparison with its after appearance a mere village, or rather a cluster of villages, straggling along the sides of each muddy, marshy island, keeping the line of the broad and navigable water-way, in dots of building and groups of houses and churches, from the olive-covered isle where San Pietro, the first great church of the city, shone white among its trees, along the curve of the Canaluccio to the Bialto Rive- Alto, what Mr. Ruskin calls the deep stream, where the church of San Giacomo, another central spot, stood, with its group of dwellings round no bridge then dreamed of, but a ferry connecting the two sides of the Grand Canal. Already the stir of commerce was in the air, and the big sea-going galleys, with their high bulwarks, lay at the rude 14 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. wharfs, to take in outward-bound cargoes of salt, salt-fish, wooden furniture, bowls, and boxes of home manufacture, as well as the goods brought from northern nations, of which they were the merchants and carriers and come back laden with the riches of the East with wonderful tissues and carpets, and marbles and relics of the saints. The palace and its chapel, the shrine of San Marco, stood where they still stand, but there were no columns on the Piazzetta, and the Great Piazza was a piece of waste land belonging to the nuns at San Zaccaria, which was, as one might say, the parish church. Most probably this vacant space in the days of the first Orseolo, was little more than a waste of salt-water grasses, and sharp and acrid plants like those that now flourish in such rough luxuriance on the Lido or perhaps boasted a tree or two, a patch of cultivated ground. Such was the scene very different from the Venice of the earliest pictures, still more different from that we know. But already the lagoon was full of boats, and the streets of commotion, and Venice -grew like a young plant, like the quick-spreading vegetation of her own warm, wet marshes, day by day. The new doge proceeded at once to rebuild both the palace and the shrine. The energy and vigour of the man who, with that desolate and smoking mass of ruin around him three hundred houses burned to the ground and all their forlorn inhabitants to house and care for could yet address himself without a pause to the reconstruction on the noblest scale of the great twin edifices, the glorious dwelling of the saint, the scarcely less cared-for palace of the governor, the representative of law arid order in Venice, has something wonderful in it. He was not rich, and neither was the city, which had in the midst of this disaster to pay the dower of the Princess Valdrada, the widow of Candiano, whose claims were backed by the Emperor Otto, and would if refused have brought upon the Republic all the horrors of war. Orseolo gave up a great part of his i.] THE DOGES. 15 own patrimony, however, to the rebuilding of the church and palace ; eight thousand ducats a year for eighty years (the time which elapsed before its completion), says the old records, he devoted to this noble and pious purpose, and sought far and near for the best workmen, some of whom came as far as from Constantinople, the metropolis of all the arts. How far the walls had risen in his day, or how much he saw accomplished, or heard of before the end of his life, it is impossible to tell. But one may fancy how, amid all the toils of the troubled state, while he laboured arid pondered how to get that money together for Yaldrada, and pacify the emperor and her other powerful friends, and how to reconcile all factions, and heal all wounds, and house more humbly his poor burned-out citizens, the sight from his windows of those fair solid walls, rising out of the ruins, must have comforted his soul. Let us hope he saw the round of some lower arch, the rearing of some pillar, a pearly marble slab laid on, or at least the carved work on the basement of a column before he went away. The historian tells us that it was Orseolo also who ordered from Constantinople the famous Palo, d'oro, the wonderful gold and silver work which still on high days and festas is disclosed to the eyes of the faithful on the great altar, one of the most magnificent ornaments of San Marco. It is a pity that inquisitive artists and antiquaries with their in- vestigations have determined this work to be at least two centuries later, -but Sagornino, who was the doge's contem- porary, could not have foreseen the work of a later age, so that he must certainly refer to some former tabulam miro opere ex argento et auro, which Orseolo in his magnificence added to his other gifts. Nor did the doge confine his bounty to these great and beautiful works. If the beauty of Venice was dear to him, divine charity was still more dear. Opposite the rising palace, Avhere now stands the Libreria "Vecchia, Orseolo, taking advantage of a site cleared by the fire, built a hospital, still standing in the time of 16 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. Sabellico, who speaks of it as the " Spedale, II quale e sopra la Piazza dirimpetto al Palazzo" and where, according to the tale, he constantly visited and cared for the sick poor. It must have been while still in the beginning of all these great works, but already full of many cares, the Candiano faction working against him, and perhaps but little response coming from the people to whom he was sacrificing his comfort and his life, that Orseolo received a visit which changed the course of his existence. Among the pilgrims who came from all quarters to the shrine of the evangelist, a certain French abbot, Carinus or Guarino, of the monastery of St. Michael de Cusano, in Aquitaine, arrived in Venice. It was Orseolo's custom to have all such pious visitors brought to his house and entertained there during their stay, and he found in Abbot Guarino a congenial soul. They talked together of all things in heaven and earth, and of this wonderful new Venice rising from the sea, with all her half -built churches and palaces ; and of the holy relics brought from every coast for her enrichment and sanctifica- tion, the bodies of the saints which made almost every church a sacred shrine. And no doubt the cares of the doge's troubled life, the burdens laid on him daily, the threats of murder and assassination with which, instead of gratitude, his self-devotion was received, were poured into the sympathetic ear of the priest, who on his side drew such pictures of the holy peace of monastic life, the tranquillity and blessed privations of the cloister, as made the heart of the doge to burn within him. " If thou wouldst be perfect " said the abbot, as on another occasion a greater voice had said. " Oh, benefactor of my soul ! " cried the doge, beholding a vista of new hope opening before him, a halcyon world of quiet, a life of sacrifice and prayer. He had already for years lived like a monk, putting all the indulgences of wealth and even affection aside. For the moment, however, he had too many occupations on his hands to make retirement possible. He asked for a year in COURTYARD OF THE DUCAL PALACE. i.] THE DOGES. r/ which to arrange his affairs ; to put order in the Kepublic and liberate himself. With this agreement the abbot left him, but true to his engagement, when the heats of September were once more blazing on the lagoon, came back to his penitent. The doge in the meantime had made all his arrangements. No doubt it was in this solemn year, which no one knew was to be the end of his life in the world, that he set aside so large a part of his possessions for the prosecution of the buildings which now he could no longer hope to see completed. When all these preliminaries were settled, and everything done, Orseolo, with a chosen friend or two, one of them his son-in-law, the sharer of his thoughts and his prayers, took boat silently one night across the still lagoon to Fusina, where horses awaited them, and so flying in the darkness over the mainland abandoned the cares of the princedom and the world. Of the chaos that was left behind, the consternation of the family, the confusion of the state, the record says nothing. This was not the view of the matter which occurred to the primitive mind. We are apt to think with reprobation, perhaps too strongly expressed, of the cowardice of duties abandoned, and the cruelty of ties broken. But in the early ages no one seems to have taken this view. The sacrifice made by a prince, who gave up power and freedom, and all the advantages of an exalted position, in order to accept privation and poverty for the love of God. was more perceptible then to the general intelligence than the higher self-denial of supporting, for the love of God, the labours and miseries of his exalted but dangerous office. The tumult and commotion which followed the flight of Orseolo were not mingled with blame or reproach. The doge, in the eyes of his generation, chose the better part, and offered a sacrifice with which God Himself could not but be well pleased. He was but fifty when he left Venice, having reigned a little over two years. Guarino placed his friend under the o 18 THE MAKERS < >F VENICE. [CHAK spiritual rule of a en-tain stem and holy u:aii, the saintly Romoaldo, iu whose life and legend we find the only record of Pietro Orseolo's latter days. St. Romoaldo was the founder of the order of the Camaldolites, practising in hi.s own person the greatest austerity of life, and imposing it upon his monks, to whom he refused even the usual relaxa- tion of better fare on Sunday, which had been their privilege. The noble Venetians, taken from the midst of their liberal and splendid life, were set to work at the humble labours of husbandmen upon this impoverished diet. He who had been the Doge Pietro presently found that he was incapable of supporting so austere a rule. " Wherefore he humbly laid himself at the feet of the blessed Romoaldo, and being- bidden to rise, with shame confessed his weakness. ' Father,' he said, ' as I have a great body, I cannot for my sin& sustain my strength with this morsel of hard bread.' Romoaldo, having compassion on the frailty of his body,, added another portion of biscuit to the usual measure, and thus held out the hand of pity to the sinking brother." The comic pathos of the complaint of the big Venetian, bred amid the freedom of the seas, and expected to live and work upon half a biscuit, is beyond comment. He lived many years in the humility of conventual sub- jection, and died, apparently without any advancement in religious life, in the far distance of France, never seeing his Venice again. In after years, his son, who was only fifteen at the period of the doge's flight, and who was destined in his turn to do so much for Venice, visited his father in his obscure retirement. The meeting between the almost too generous father, who had given so much to Venice, and had completed the offering by giving up himself at last to the hard labours and humility of monastic life and the ambitious youth full of the highest projects of patriotism and courage, must have been a remarkable scene. The elder Pietro in his cloister had no doubt pondered much on Venice and on the career of the boy whom he had left i.] THE DOGES. K> behind him there, and whose character and qualities must have already shown themselves : and much was said between them on this engrossing subject. Orseolo, "whether by the spirit of prophecy or by special revelation, predicted to him all that was to happen. ' I know,' he said, ' my son, that they will make you doge, and that you will prosper. Take care to preserve the rights of the Church, and those of your subjects. Be not drawn aside from doing justice, either by love or by hate.' " Better counsel could no fallen monarch give and Orseolo was happier than many fathers in a son worthy of him. The city deprived of such a prince was very sad, but still more full of longing : " Jfolto trlsta ma piu desiderosa," says Sabellico ; and his family remained dear to Venice for as long as popular favour usually lasts. Pietro died nineteen years after in the odour of sanctity, and was canonised, to the glory of his city. His breve, the inscription under his portrait in the great hall, attributes to him the building of San Marco, as well as many miracles and wonderful works. The miracles, however, were performed far from Venice, and have no place in her records, except those deeds of charity and tenderness which he accomplished among his people before he left them. These the existing corporation of Venice, never unwilling to chronicle either a new or antique glory, have lately celebrated by an inscription, which the traveller will see from the little bay in which the canal terminates, just behind the upper end of the Piazza. This little triangular opening among the tall houses is called the Bacino Orseolo, and bears a marble tablet to the honour of the first Pietro of this name, " il santo," high up upon the wall. In the agitation and trouble caused by Orseolo' s un- expected disappearance, a period of discord and disaster began. A member of the Candiano party was placed in the doge's seat for a short and agitated reign, and he was succeeded by a rich but feeble prince in whose time occurred c 2 ^0 THE MAKERS <>E VENICE. [CHA?. iilmost the worst disorders that have ever been known in Venice a bloody .struggle between two families, one of which had the unexampled baseness of seeking the aid against their native city of foreign arms. The only incident which we need mention of this disturbed period is that the Doge Menimo bestowed upon Giovanni Morosini, Orseolo's com- panion and son-in-law, who had returned a monk to his native city perhaps called back by the misfortunes of his family a certain " beautiful little island covered with olives and cypresses," which lay opposite the doge's palace, and is known now to every visitor of Venice as St. Georgio Maggiore. There was already a chapel dedicated to St. George among the trees. Better things, however, were now in store for the Republic. After the incapable Memmo, young Pietro was called, according to his father's prophecy, to the ducal throne. " When the future historian of Venice comes to the deeds of this great doge he will feel his soul enlarged," says Sagredo, the author of a valuable study of Italian law and economics ; " it is no more a new-born people of whom he will have to speak, but an adult nation, rich, conquering, full of traffic and wealth." The new prince had all the qualities which were wanted for the consolidation and development of the Republic. He had known something of that bitter but effectual training of necessity which works so nobly in generous natures. His father's brief career -in Venice, and his counsels from his cell, were before him, both as example and encouragement. He had been in France ; he had seen the world. He had an eye to mark that the moment had come for larger action and bolder self-assertion, and he had strength of mind to carry his -conceptions out. And he had that touching advantage the stepping-stone of a previous life sacrificed and unfulfilled upon which to raise the completeness of his own. In short, he was the man of the time, prepared to carry out the wishes and realise the hopes of his age ; and when he 1. 1 THE DOGES. :H became, at the age of thirty, in the fullness of youthful strength, the first magistrate of Venice, a new chapter of her history began. It was in the year 991, on the eve of a new century, sixteen years after his father's abdication, that the second Pietro Orseolo began to reign. The brawls of civil conten- tion disappeared on his accession, and the presence of ;i prince who was at the same time a strong man and fully determined to defend and extend his dominion, became instantly apparent to the world. His first acts were directed to secure the privileges of Venice by treaty with the emperors of the East and West, establishing her position by written charter under the golden seal of Constantinople. and with not less efficacy from the imperial chancellorship of the German Otto. On both sides an extension of privilege and the remission of certain tributes were secured. Having settled this, Pietro turned his attention to the great necessity of the moment, upon which the very existence of the Republic depended. Up to this time Venice, to free herself from the necessity of holding the rudder in one hand and the sword in the other, had paid a certain blackmail, such as was exacted till recent times by the corsairs of Africa, to the pirate tribes, who were the scourge of the seas, some- times called Narentani, sometimes Schiavoni and Croats, by the chroniclers, allied bands of sea-robbers who infested the Adriatic. The time had come, however, when it was no longer seemly that the proud city, growing daily in powei and wealth, should stoop to secure her safety by such means. The payment was accordingly stopped, and an encounter followed, in which the pirates were defeated. Enraged but impotent, not daring to attack Venice, or risk their galleys in the intricate channels of the lagoons, they set upon the unoffending towns of Dalmatia, and made a raid along the coast, robbing and ravaging. The result was that from all the neighbouring seaboard ambassadors arrived in haste, asking the help of the Venetians. The cruelties of the -22 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAI-. corsairs had already, more than once, reduced the seaports and prosperous cities of this coast to the point of despe- ration, and they caught at the only practical >k> help with the precipitancy of suffering. The doge thus found tin- opportunity he sought, and took advantage of it without a moment's delay. At once the arsenal was set to work, and a great armata decided upon. The appeal thus made by the old to the new, the ancient cities which had been in existence while she was but a collection of swamp and salt-water marshes seeking deliverance from the new-born miraculous city of the sea, is the most striking testimony to the grow- ing importance of Venice. It was at the same time her opportunity and the beginning of her conquests and victories. When the great expedition Avas ready to set out, the doge went in solemn state to the cathedral church of San Pietro in Castello, and received from the hands of the bishop the standard of San Marco, with which he went on board. It was spring when the galleys sailed, and Dandolo tells us that they were blown by contrary winds to Grado, where Vitale Candiano was now peacefully occupying his see as patriarch. Perhaps something of the old feud still subsisting made Orseolo unwilling to enter the port in which the son of the murdered doge, whom his own father had succeeded, was supreme. But if this had been the case, his doubts must have soon been set at rest by the patriarch's welcome. He came out to meet the storm-driven fleet with his clergy and his people, and added to the armament not only his blessing, but the standard of S. Hermagora to bring them victory. Thus endowed, with the two blessed banners blowing over them, the expedition set sail once more. The account of the voyage that follows is for some time that of a kind of royal progress by sea, the galleys passing in triumph from one port to another, anticipated by processions coming out to meet them, bishops with their clergy streaming forth, and all the citizens, private and i.] THE DOGES. 23 public, hurrying to offer their allegiance to their defenders. Wherever holy relics were enshrined, the doge landed to visit them and pay his devotions : and everywhere he was met by ambassadors tendering the submission of another and another town or village, declaring themselves "willingly" subjects of the Republic, and enrolling their young men among its soldiers. That this submission was not so real as it appeared is proved by the subsequent course of events and the perpetual rebellions of those very cities; but in their moment of need nothing but enthusiasm and delight were apparent to the deliverers. At Trau a brother of the Selavonian king fell into the hands of the doge and sought his protection, giving up his son iStefano as a hostage into the hands of the conquering prince. At last, having cleared the seas, the expedition came to the nest of robbers itself, the impregnable city of Lagosta. " It is said," Sabellico reports with a certain awe, " that its position was pointed out by the precipices on each side rising up in the midst of the sea. The Narentani trusted in its strength, and here all the corsairs took refuge, when need was, as in a secure fortress." The doge summoned the garrison to surrender, which they would gladly have done, the same historian informs us, had they not feared the destruction of their city; but on that account, "for love of their country, than which there is nothing more dear to men," they made a stubborn defence. Daiidolo adds that the doge required the destruction of this place as a condi- tion of peace. After a desperate struggle the fortress was taken, notwithstanding the natural strength of the rocky heights the asprezza de luogJd nell' ascendere difficile and of the liocca or great tower that crowned the whole. The object of the expedition was fully accomplished when the pirates' nest and stronghold was destroyed. " For nearly a hundred and sixty years the possession of the sea had been contested with varying fortune," now once for all the matter was settled. " The army returned victorious to the 24 THE MAKERS < >F VENICE. [.HAI-. sliips. The prince had purged the sea of robbers, and all the maritime parts of Istria, of Liburnia and of Dalmatia. were brought under the power of Venice." With what swelling sails, con venlo prosjwo, the tieet must have swept back to the anxious city which, with no post nor despatch boat to carry her tidings, gazed silent, waiting in that inconceivable patience of old times, with anxious eyes watching the horizon ! How the crowds must have gathered on the old primitive quays when the first faint rumour tiVw from Malamocco and the other sentinel isles of sails at hand ! How many boats must have darted forth., their rowers half distracted with haste and suspense, to meet the returning annata and know the worst ! Who can doubt that then, as always, there were some to whom the good news brought anguish and sorrow ; but of that the chroniclers tell us nothing. And among all our supposed quickening of life in modern times, can we imagine a moment of living more intense, or sensations more acute, than those with which the whole city must have watched, one by one, the galleys bearing along with their tokens of victory, threading their way, slow even with the most pro- sperous wind, through the windings of the narrow channels, until the first man could leap on shore and the wonderful news be told ? " There was then 110 custom of triumphs," says the record, " but the doge entered the city triumphant, surrounded by the grateful people ; and there made public declaration of all the things he had done how all Istria and the sea coast to the furthest confines of Dalmatia with all the neighbouring islands, by the clemency of God and the success of the expedition, were made subject to the Venetian dominion. With magnificent words ho was applauded by the great council, which ordained that not only of Venice but of Dalmatia he and his successors should be proclaimed doge." Thus the first great conquest of the Venetians was ac complished, and the infant city made mistress of the seas. i.| THE DOGES. ^:> It was on the return of Pietro Orseolo from this trium- phant expedition, and in celebration of his conquests, that the great national festivity, called in after days the espousal of the sea, the Feast of La Seiisa, Ascension Day, was first instituted. The original ceremony was simpler but little less imposing than its later development. The clergy in a barge all covered with cloth of gold, and in all possible glory of vestments and sacred ornaments, set out from among the olive woods of San Pietro in Castello, and met the doge in his still more splendid barge at the Lido : where, after litanies and psalms, the bishop rose and prayed aloud in the hearing of all the people, gathered in boat and barge and every skiff that would hold water, in a far-extending crowd along the sandy line of the flat shore. " Grant, O Lord, that this sea may be to us and to all who sail upon it tranquil and quiet. To this end we pray. Hear us. good Lord." Then the boat of the ecclesiastics approached closely the boat of the doge, and while the singers in toned "Aspergi me, tiignor," the bishop sprinkled the doge and his court with holy water, pouring what remained into the sea. A very touching ceremonial, more primitive and simple, perhaps more real and likely to go to the hearts of the seafaring population all gathered round, than the more elaborate and triumphant histrionic spectacle of the Sposalizio. It had been on Ascension Day that Orseolo's expedition had set forth, and no day could be more suitable than this victorious day of early summer, when Nature is at her sweetest, for the great festival of the lagoons. These victories and successes must have spread the name of the Venetians and their doge far and wide ; and it is evident that they had moved the imagination of the young Emperor Otto II., between whom and Orseolo a link of union had already been formed through the doge's third son, who had been sent to the court at Verona to receive there the sacramento della chrisma, the rite of confirmation, under the auspices of the emperor, who changed the boy's 20 THE MAKERS ( )F VENICE. [CHAP. name from Pietro to Otto, in sign of high favour and affec- tion. When the news of the conquest of Dalmatia, the extinction of the pirates, and all the doge's great achieve- ments reached the emperor's ears, his desire to know so remarkable a man grew so strong that an anonymous visit was planned between them. Under the pretext of taking sea-baths at an obscure island, Otto made a sudden and secret dash across the sea and reached the convent of San Servolo, on the island which still bears that name, and which is now one of the two melancholy asylums for the insane which stand on either side of the water-way opposite A'enice. The doge hurried across the water as soon as night had come, to see his imperial visitor, and brought him back to pay his devotions, "according to Otto's habit," at the shrine of San Marco Let us hope the moon was resplendent, as she knows how to be over these waters, when the doge brought the emperor over the shining lagoon in what pi imitive form of gondola was then in fashion, with the dark forms of the rowers standing out against the silvery background of sea and sky, and the little waves in a thousand ripples of light reflecting the glory of the heavens. One can imagine the nocturnal visit, the hasty preparations : and the great dark- ness of San Marco, half built, with all its scaffoldings ghostly in the silence of the night, and one bright illuminated spot, the hasty blaze of the candles flaring about the shrine/ When the emperor had said his prayers before the sacred spot which contained the body of the evangelist, the patron of Venice, he was taken into the palace, which filled him with wonder and admiration, so beautiful was the house which out of the burning and ruins of twenty years before had now apparently been completed. It is said by Sagornino (the best authority) that Otto was secretly lodged in the eastern tower, and from thence made private expeditions into the city, and saw everything ; but later chroniclers, probably deriving these details from traditional sources, increase the romance of the visit by describing him as i.] THE DOGES. '21 recrossing to San Servolo, whither the doge would steal oil' privately every night to sup domesticamente with his guest. In one of the night visits to San Marco the doge's little daughter, newly born, was christened, the emperor himself holding her at the font. Perhaps this little domestic cir- cumstance, which disabled her Serenity the Dogaressa, had something to do with the secrecy of the visit, which does not seem sufficiently accounted for, unless, as some opine, the emperor wanted secretly to consult Orseolo on great plans which he did not live to carry out. Three days after Otto's departure the doge called the people together, and informed them of the visit he had received, and further concessions .and privileges whijsh he had secured for Venice. " Which things," says the record, " were pleasant to them, and they applauded the industry of Orseolo in concealing the presence of so great a lord." Here it is a little difficult to follow the narrator. It would be more natural to suppose that the Venetians, always fond of a show, might have shown a little disappointment at being deprived of the sight of such .a fine visitor. It is said by some, however, that to celebrate the great event, and perhaps make up to the people for not having seen the empefor, a tournament of several days' duration was held by Orseolo in the waste ground which is now the Piazza. At all events the incident only increased his popularity. Nor was this the only honour Avhich came to his house. Some time after the city of Bari was saved by Orseolo's .arms and valour from an invasion of the Saracens ; and the grateful emperors of the East, Basil and Coiistantine, by way of testifying their thanks, invited the doge's eldest son Giovanni to Constantinople, Avbere he was received with a princely welcome, and shortly after married to a princess of the imperial house. When the young couple returned to Venice they were received with extraordinary honours, festi- vities, and delight, the doge going to meet them witha splendid train of vessels, and such rejoicing as had never before been 28 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. beheld in Venice. And permission was given to Urseolo to associate his son with him in his authority a favour only granted to those whom Venice most delighted to honour, and which was the highest expression of popular confidence and trust. 'But since there is no human happiness which is not disturbed by some adversity," says the sympathetic chronicle, trouble and sorrow now burst upon this happy and pros- perous reign. First came a great pestilence, by which the young Giovanni, the hope of the house, the newly-appointed coadjutor, was carried off, along with his wife and infant child, and which carried dismay and loss throughout the city. Famine followed naturally upon the epidemic and the accompanying panic, which paralysed all exertion and mourning and misery prevailed. His domestic grief and the public misfortune would seem to have broken the heart of the great doge. After Giovanni's death he was permitted to take his younger son Otto as his coadjutor, but even this did not avail to comfort him. He made a remarkable will, dividing his goods into two parts, one for his children, another for the poor, " for the use and solace of all in our Republic " a curious phrase, by some supposed to mean entertainments and public pleasures, by others relief from taxes and public burdens. When he died his body was carried to San Zaccaria, j>er la triala citla e fachrimosa, with all kinds of magnificence and honour. And Otto his son reigned in his stead. Otto, it is evident, must have appeared up to this time the favourite of fortune, the flower of the Orseoli. He had been half adopted by the emperor ; he had made a magnificent marriage with a princess of Hungary ; he had been sent on embassies and foreign missions ; and finally, when his elder brother died, he had been associated with his father as his coadjutor and successor. He was still young when Pietro's death gave him the full authority (though his age can scarcely have been, as Sabellico says, nineteen). His character i.] THE DO(JEX. _".) is said to have been as perfect as his position. ".I It- was Catholic in faith, calm in virtue, strong in justice, eminent in religion, decorous in his way of living, great in ric-hes, and so full of all kinds of goodness that by In'.- merits he was judged of all to be the most fit successor of his excellent father and blessed grandfather,'' says J)<>ge Dandolo. But perhaps these abstract virtues were not of the kind to fit a man for the difficult position of doge, in the midst of a jealous multitude of his equals, all as eligible for that throne as he, and keenly on the watch to stop any succession which looked like the beginning of a dynasty. Otto had been much about courts ; he had learned ho\v emperors were served ; and his habits, perhaps, had been formed at that ductile time of life when lie was caressed as the godson of the imperial Otto, and as a near connection of the still more splendid emperors of the East. And it was not only he, whose preferment was a direct proof of national gratitude to his noble father, against Avhom a jealous rival, a (perhaps) anxious nationalist, had to guard. His brother Orso, who during his father's lifetime had been made Bishop of Torcello, was elevated to the higher office of patriarch and transferred to Grado some years after his brother's accession, so that the highest power and place, both secular and sacred, were in the hands of one family -a fact which would give occasion for many an insinuation, and leaven the popular mind with suspicion, and alarm. It was through the priestly brother Orso that the first attack upon the family of the Orseoli came. Otto had reigned for some fifteen or sixteen years with advantage and honour to the Republic, showing himself a worthy son of his father, and keeping the authority of Venice paramount along the unruly Dalmatian coast, where rebellions were things of yearly occurrence, when trouble first appeared. Of Orso, the patriarch, up to this time, little has been heard, save that it was he who rebuilt, or restored, out of the remains of the earlier church, the cathedral of Torcello. 30 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. still the admiration of all beholders. His grandfather had begun, his father had carried on, the great buildings of Venice, the church and the palace, which the Emperor Otto had come secretly to see, and which he had found beautiful beyond all imagination. It would be difficult now to determine what corner of antique work may still remain in that glorious group which is theirs. But Orso's cathedral BISHOP'S THRONE, TORCELLO. still stands distinct, lifting its lofty walls over the low edge of green, which is all that separates it from the sea. His foot has trod the broken mosaics of the floor ; his voice has intoned canticle and litany under that lofty roof. The knowledge that framed the present edifice, the reverence To face rage 30. INTERIOR OF THE CATIIEDKAL OF TOIICELLO. i.] THE DOGES. :;i which preserved for its decoration all those lovely relics of earlier times, the delicate Greek columns, the enrichments of eastern art -were, if not his, fostered and protected by him. Behind the high altar, on the bishop's high cold marble throne overlooking the great temple, he must have sat among his presbyters, and controlled the counsels and led the decisions of a community then active and wealthy, which has now disappeared as completely as the hierarchy of priests which once filled those rows of stony benches. The ruins of the old Torcello are now but mounds under the damp grass ; but Bishop Orso's work stands fast, as his name, in faithful brotherly allegiance and magnanimous truth to his trust, ought to stand. The attack came from a certain Poppo, Patriarch of Aquileia, an ecclesiastic of the most warlike mediaeval type, of German extraction or race, who, perhaps with the desire of reasserting the old supremacy of his See over that of Grado, perhaps stirred up by the factions in Venice, which were beginning to conspire against the Orseoli, began to threaten the seat of Bishop Orso. The records are very vague as to the means employed by this episcopal warrior. He accused Orso before the pope as an intruder not properly elected ; but without waiting for any decision on that point; assailed him in his See. Possibly Poppo's attack on Grado coincided with tumults in the city "great discord between the people of Venice and the doge" so that both the brothers were threatened at once. However that may be r the next event in the history is the flight of both doge and patriarch to Istria an extraordinary event of which no explanation is given by any of the authorities. They were both in the prime of life, and had still a great party in their favour, so that it seems impossible not to conjecture some weakness, most likely on the part of the Doge Otto, to account for this abandonment of the position to their enemies. That there was great anarchy and misery in Venice during the interval of the prince's absence is evident,. \U THE MAKERS < >F VENICE. [I-HAI-. but how long it lasted, or how it came about, we are not informed. All that the chroniclers say (for by this time the guidance of Sagornino has failed vis. and there is no contemporary chronicle to refer to) concerns Grado, which, in the absence of its bishop, was taken by the lawless Poppo. He swore "by his eight oaths,'' says Sanudo, that lie meant nothing but good to that hapless city; but as soon as he got within the gates gave it up to the horrors of a sack, outraging its population and removing the treasure from its churches. A'enice, alarmed by this unmasking of the designs of the clerical invader, repented her own hasty folly, and recalled her doge, who recovered Grado for her with a promptitude and courage which make his flight, without apparently striking a blow for himself, more remarkable still. But this renewed prosperity was of short duration. The factions that had arisen against him were but tem- porarily quieted, and as soon as Grado and peace were restored, broke out again. The second time Otto would not seem to have had time to fly. He was seized by his enemies, his beard shaven off, whether as a sign of contempt, or by way of consigning him. to the cloister that asylum for dethroned princes we are not told : and his reign thus ignoniiniously and suddenly brought to an end. The last chapter in the history of the Orseoli is, however, the most touching of all. Whatever faults Otto may have had (and the chroniclers will allow none), he at least possessed the tender love of his family. The patriarch, Orso, once more followed him into exile ; but coming back as soon as safety permitted, would seem to have addressed himself to the task of righting his brother. Venice had not thriven upon her ingratitude and disorder. A certain Domenico Cent*anico, the enemy of the Orseoli, had been hastily raised to the doge's seat, but could not restore harmony. Things went badly on all sides for the agitated and insubordinate city. The new emperor, Conrad, refused to ratify the usual grant of privileges, perhaps I.] THE DOGES. 33 because he had no faith in the revolutionary government. Poppo renewed his attacks, the Dalmatian cities seized, as they invariably did, the occasion to rebel. And the new doge was evidently, like so many other revolutionists, stronger in rebellion than in defence of his country. What with these griefs and agitations, which contrasted strongly with the benefits of peace at home, and an assured govern- ment, what with the pleadings of the patriarch, the Vene- tians once more recognised their mistake. The changing of the popular mind in those days always required a victim, and Doge Centranico was in his turn seized, shaven, and banished. The crisis recalls the primitive chapters of Venetian history, when almost every reign ended in tumult and murder. But Venice had learned the advantages of law and order, and the party of the Orseoli recovered power in the revulsion of popular feeling. The dishonoured but rightful doge was in Constantinople, hiding his misfortunes in some cloister or other resort of the exile. The pro- visional rulers of the Republic, whoever they might be probably the chief supporters of the Orseoli found nothing so advantageous to still the tempest as to implore the Patriarch Orso to fill his brother's place, while they sent a commission to Constantinople to find Otto and bring him home. The faithful priest who had worked so loyally for the exile accepted the charge, and leaving his bishopric and its administration to his deputies, established himself in the palace where he had been born, and took the government of Venice into his hands. It was work to the routine of which he had been used all his life, and probably no man living was so well able to perform it ; and it might be supposed that the natural ambition of a Venetian and a member of a family which had reigned over Venice for three generations would stir even in a churchman's veins, when he found the government of his native state in his hands ; for the consecration of the priesthood, how- ever it may extinguish all other passions, has never been 34 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. known altogether to quench that last infirmity of noble minds. Peace and order followed the advent of the bishop-prince to power. And meanwhile the embassy set out, with a third brother, Vitale, the Bishop of Torcello at its head, to prove to the banished Otto that Venice meant well by him, and that the ambassadors intended no treachery. Whether they were detained by the hazards of the sea, or whether their time was employed in searching out the retirement where the deposed doge had withdrawn to die, the voyage of the embassy occupied more than a year, coming and going. During these long months Orso reigned in peace. Though he was only vice-doge, says Sanudo, for the justice of his government he was placed by the Venetians in the catalogue of the doges. Not a word of censure is recorded of his peaceful sway. The storm seems changed to a calm under the rule of this faithful priest. In the splendour of those halls which his fathers had built he watched over Venice on one hand, and on the other for the ships sailing back across the lagoons, bringing the banished Otto home. How many a morning must he have looked out, before he said his mass, upon the rising dawn, and watched the blue- ness of the skies and seas grow clear in the east, where lay his bishopric, his flock, his cathedral, and all the duties that were his ; and with anxious eyes swept the winding of the level waters still and gray, the metallic glimmer of the acqua niorta, the navigable channels that gleamed between. When a sail came in sight between those lines, stealing up from Malamocco, what expectations must have moved his heart ! He was, it would appear, a little older than Otto, his next brother, perhaps his early childish caretaker, before thrones episcopal or secular were dreamt of for the boys : and a priest, who has neither wife nor children of his own, has double room in his heart for the passion of fraternity. It would not seem that Orso took more power upon him than was needful for the interests of the people ; there is i.] THE DOGES. 35 no record of war in his brief sway. He struck a small coin, una moneta piccolo, d'argento, called ursiolo, but did nothing else save keep peace, and preserve his brother's place for him. But when the ships came back, their drooping banners and mourning array must have told the news long before they cast anchor in the lagoon. Otto was dead in exile. There is nothing said to intimate that they had brought back even his body to lay it with his fathers in San Zaccaria. The banished prince had found an exile's grave. After this sad end to his hopes the noble Orso showed how magnanimous and disinterested had been his inspira- tion. Not for himself, but for Otto he had held that trust. He laid down at once those honours which were not his, and returned to his own charge and duties. His with- drawal closes the story of the family with a dignity and decorum worthy of a great race. His disappointment, the failure of all the hopes of the family, all the anticipations of brotherly affection, have no record, but who can doubt that they were bitter] Misfortune more undeserved never fell upon an honourable house, and it is hard to tell which is most sad the death of the deposed prince in the solitude of that eastern world where all was alien to him, or, after a brief resurrection of hope, the withdrawal of the faithful brother, his heart sick with all the wistful vicissitudes of a baffled expectation, to resume his bishopric and his life as best he could. It is a pathetic ending to a noble and glorious day. Many years after this Orso still held his patriarchate in peace and honour, and the name of the younger brother, Yitale, his successor at Torcello, appears as a member along with him of an ecclesiastical council for the reform of dis- cipline and doctrine in the Church while their sister Felicia is mentioned as abbess of one of the convents at Torcello. But the day of the Orseoli was over. A member of the family, Domenico, " a near relation," made an audacious D 2 36 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. FCHAP. attempt in the agitation that followed the withdrawal of Orso to seize the supreme power, and was favoured by many, the chroniclers say. But his attempt was un- successful, and his usurpation lasted only a day. The leader of the opposing party, Flabenico, was elected doge STONE SHUTTERS, CAIHEDRAL, TORCELLO. in : the reaction, which doubtless this foolish effort of ambition stimulated greatly. And perhaps it was this reason also which moved the people, startled into a new scare by their favourite bugbear of dynastic succession, to consent to the cruel and most ungrateful condemnation of i.] THE DOGES. 37 the Orseoli family which followed ; and by which the race was sentenced to be denuded of all rights, and pro- nounced incapable henceforward of holding any office under the Republic. The prohibition would seem to have been of little practical importance, since of the children of Pietro Orseolo the Great there remained none except priests and nuns, whose indignation when the news reached them must have been as great as it was impotent. We may imagine with what swelling hearts they must have met, in the shadow of that great sanctuary which they had built, the two bishops, one of whom had been doge in Venice, and the abbess in her convent, with perhaps a humbler nun or two of the same blood behind, separated only by the still levels of the lagoon, from where the towers and spires of Venice rose from the bosom of the waters Venice, their birth- place, the home of their glory, from which their race was now shut out. If any curse of Rome trembled from their lips, if any appeal for anathema and excommunication, who could have wondered ? But, like other wrongs, that great popular ingratitude faded away, and the burning of the hearts of the injured found no expression. The three consecrated members of the doomed family, perhaps sad enough once at the failure of the succession, must have found a certain bitter satisfaction then, in the thought that their Otto, deposed and dead, had left no child behind him. But the voice of history has taken up the cause of this ill-rewarded race. The chroniclers with one voice proclaim the honour of the Orseoli, with a visionary partisanship in which the present writer cannot but share, though eight centuries have come and gone since Venice abjured the family which had served her so well. Sabellico tells with indignant satisfaction, that he can find nothing to record that is worth the trouble, of Flabenico, their enemy, except that he grew old and died. Non ragionam di lor. The insignificant and envious rival, who brings ruin to the last survivors of a great race, is unworthy further comment. 38 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. Such proscriptions, however, are rarely so successful. The Orseoli disappear altogether from history, and their name during all the historic ages scarcely once is heard again in Venice. Domenico, the audacious usurper of a day, died at Ravenna very shortly after. Even their great buildings, with the exception of Torcello, have disappeared under the splendour cf later ornament, or more recent con- struction. Their story has the completeness of an epic they lived, and ruled, and conquered, and made Venice great. Under their sway she became the mistress of the sea. And then it was evident that they had completed their mission, and the race came to an end, receiving its dismissal in the course of nature from those whom it had best served. Few families thus recognise the logic of circumstances ; they linger out in paltry efforts in attempts to reverse the sentence pronounced by the ingratitude of the fickle mob, or any other tyrant with whom they may have to do. But whether with their own will or against it, the Orseoli made no struggle. They allowed their story to be completed in one chapter, and to come to a picturesque and effective end. It will be recognised, however, that Torcello is a powerful exception to the extinction of all relics of the race. The traveller as he stands with something of the sad respect of pity mingling in his admiration of that great and noble cathedral, built for the use of a populous and powerful com- munity, but now left to a few rough fishermen and pallid women, amid the low and marshy fields, a poor standing- ground among the floods -takes little thought of him who reared its lofty walls, and combined new and old together in so marvellous a conjunction. Even the greatest of all the modern adorers who have idealised old Venice, and sung litanies to some chosen figures among her sons, has not a word for Orso, or his race. And no tradition remains to celebrate his name. But the story of this tender brother, the banished doge's defender, champion, substitute, and mourner he who reigned for Otto, and for himself neither I.] THE DOGES. 39 sought nor accepted anything is worthy of the scene. Greatness has faded from the ancient commune as it faded from the family of their bishop, and Torcello, like the Orseoli, may seem to a fantastic eye to look, through all the round of endless days, wistfully yet with no grudge, across the level waste of the salt sea water to that great line of Venice against the western sky which has carried her life away. The church, with its marbles and forgotten inscriptions, its mournful great Madonna holding out her arms to all her children, its profound loneliness and sentinelship through all the ages, acquires yet another not uncongenial association when we think of the noble arid unfortunate race which here died out in the silence of the cloister, amid murmurs of solemn psalms, and whispering amens from the winds and from the sea. SHRINE OF ORSEOLI " IL SANTO." CHAPTER II. THE MICHIELI. IT is of course impossible to give here a continuous history of the doges. To trace the first appearance of one after another of the historic names so familiar to our ears would be a task full of interest, but far too extensive for the present undertaking. All that we can attempt to do is to take up a prominent figure here and there, to mark the successive crises and developments of history and the growth of the Venetian constitution, involved as it is in the action and influence of successive princes, or to follow the fortunes of one or other of the family groups which add an individual interest to the general story. Among these, less for the importance of the house than for the greatness of one of its members, the Michieli find a prominent place. The first doge of the name was the grandfather, the third the son, of the great Domenico Michieli, who made the name illustrious. Vitale Michiel the first (the concluding vowel is cut off according to familiar use in many Venetian names Cornaro being pronounced Cornar ; Loredano, Loredan ; and so forth) came to the dignity of doge in 1096, more than a century later than the accession of the Orseoli to power. In the meantime there had been much progress in Venice. We reach the limits within which general history begins to become clear. Every day the great Republic, though still in infancy, emerges more and more distinct from the ii.] THE DOGES. 41 morning mists. And the accession of Vitale Michieli brings us abreast of information from other sources. He came to the chief magistracy at the time when all Europe was thril- ling with the excitement of the first crusade, and the great maritime towns of Italy began to vie with each other in offering the means of transit to the pilgrims. How it happens that the Venetian chroniclers have left this part of their history in darkness, and gathered so few details of a period so important, is the standing wonder of historical students. But so it is. A wave of new life must have swept through the city, with all its wealth of galleys, which lay so directly in the way between the east and west, and trade must have quickened and prosperity increased. All that we hear, however, from Venetian sources is vague and general ; and it was not until after the taking of Jerusalem that the doge felt himself impelled to join " that holy and praiseworthy undertaking": and assembling the people proposed to them the formation of an Armada, not only for the primary object of the crusade, but in order that A^enice might not show herself backward where the Pisans and Genoese had both acquired reputation and wealth. The expedition thus fitted out was commanded by his son Giovanni, with the aid of a spiritual coadjutor in the person of Enrico Contaririi, Bishop of Castello : but does not seem to have accomplished much except in the search for relics, which were then the great object of Venetian ambition. A curious story is told of this expedition and of the bishop- commodore, who, performing his devotions before his departure at the church on the Lido, dedicated to San Niccolo, made it the special object of his prayers that he might find, when on his travels, the body of the saint. Whether the determination to have this prayer granted operated in other methods more practical cannot be told : but certain it is that Bishop Contarini one fine morning suddenly called upon the fleet to stop in front of a little town which was visible on the top of the cliffs near the city 42 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. of Mira. The squadron paused in full career, no doubt with many an inquiry from the gazing crowds in the other vessels not near enough to see what the admiral would be at, or what was the meaning of the sudden landing of a little band of explorers on the peaceful coast. The little town, una cittct, a place without a name, was found almost abandoned of its inhabitants, having been ravaged by some recent corsair, Turk or Croat. The explorers, joined by many a boat's crew as soon as the other vessels saw that some adventure was on hand, found a church dedicated also to San Niccolo, which they immediately began to examine, not too gently, pulling down walls and altars to find the sacred booty of which they were in search, and even putting to torture the guardians of the church who would not betray its secrets. Finding nothing better to be done, they took at last two bodies of saints of lesser importance. St. Theodore to wit, and a second San Niccoio, uncle of the greater saint and prepared, though with little satisfaction, to regain their ships. The bishop, however, lingered, praying and weeping behind, with no compunction apparently as to the tortured guardians of St. Nicholas, but much dislike to be balked in his own ardent desire : when lo ! all at once there arose a fragrance as of all the flowers of June, and the pilgrims, hastily crowding back to see what wonderful thing was about to take place, found themselves drawn towards a certain altar, apparently overlooked before, where St. Nicholas really lay. One wonders whether the saint w r as nattered by the violence of his abductors, as women are said to be yet cannot but feel that it was hard upon the poor tortured custodians, the old and faithful servants who would not betray their trust, to see the object of their devotion thus favour the invaders. This story Romanin assures us is told by a contemporary. Dandolo gives another very similar, adding that his own ancestor, a Dandolo, was captain of the ship which carried back the prize. This would seem to have been the chief glory, though but ii.] THE DOGES. 43 at second hand, of Vitale Michieli's reign. The due corpt di San Niccolo, the great and small, were placed with great joy in San Niccolo del Lido, and that of St. Theodore deposited in the Church of San Salvatore. The brief account of the Crusade given by Sanudo reveals to us a hungry search for relics on the part of the Venetian contin- gent, varied by quarrels, which speedily came to blows, with the Pisans and Genoese, their rivals at sea, but little more. Nor is it apparent that the life of the Doge Vitale was more distinguished at home. He died, after a reign of about five years, in the end of the first year of the twelfth century, and for a generation we hear of the family no more His successor, Ordelafo, first of the Falieri, was a man of great energy and character. He was the founder of the great arsenal, which has always been of so much importance to Venice, not less now with its great miraculous scientific prodigies of ironclads, and its hosts of workmen, than when the pitch boiled and the hammers rang for smaller craft on more primitive designs. Ordelafo, however, came to a violent end fighting for the possession of the continually rebellious city of Zara, which from generation to generation gave untold trouble to its conquerors. His fall carried dismay and defeat to the very hearts of his followers. The Venetians were not accustomed to disaster, and they were completely cowed and broken down by the loss at once of their leader and of the battle. For a time it seems to have been felt that the Republic had lost ' her hold upon Dalmatia, and that the empire of the seas was in danger : and the dismayed leaders came home, bringing grief and despondency with them. The city was so cast down that ambassadors were sent off to the King of Hungary to sue for a truce of five years, and mourning and alarm filled all hearts. It was at this time of discomfiture and humiliation, in the year 1118, that Domenico Michieli, the second of his name to bear that honour, was elected doge. In these dismal circumstances there seems little augury of the 44 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [riiAi-. splendour and success he was to bring to Venice. His first authentic appearance shows him to us in the act of pre- paring another expedition for the East, for the succour of Baldwin, the second King of Jerusalem, who, the first flush of success being by this time over, had in his straits appealed to the pope and to the Republic. The pope sent on Baldwin's letters to Venice, and with them a standard bearing the image of St. Peter, to be carried by the doge to battle. Michieli immediately prepared upossente armata a strong expedition. " Then the people were called to counsel," the narrative goes on, without any ironical mean- ing : aiid, after solemn service in St. Mark's, the prince addressed the assembly. The primitive constitution of the Republic, in which every man felt himself the arbiter of his country's fate, could not be better exemplified. The matter was already decided, and all that was needful to carry out the undertaking was that popular movement of sympathy which a skilled orator has so little difficulty in calling forth. The people pressed in to the church, where, with all the solemnity of a ritual against which no heretical voice had ever been raised, the patriarch and his clergy, in pomp and splendour, celebrated, at the great altar blazing with light, the sacred ceremonies. San Marco, in its dark splendour, with that subtle charm of colour which makes it unique among churches, was probably then more like what it is now than was any other part of Venice especially when filled with that surging sea of eager faces all turned towards the brilliant glow of the altar. And those who have seen the great Venetian temple of to-day, full of the swaying move- ment and breath of a crowd, may be permitted to form for themselves an image, probably very like the original, of that assembly, where patricians, townsmen, artisans the mariners who would be the first to bear their part, and those sons of the people who are the natural recruits of every army, all met together eager for news, ready to be moved by the eloquence, and wrought to enthusiasm by the &-~^-_-^-^,, To face page 44. BRONZE HORSES ON THE FACADE OF S. MABCO. ii.] THE DOOES. 45 .sentiment of their doge. It is not to be supposed that the speech of Michieli, given by Sabellico in detail, is the actual oration of the doge, verbally reported, in the first half of the twelfth century : but it has no doubt some actual truth of language, handed down by fragments of tradition and anonymous chronicle, and it is very charac- teristic, and worthy of the occasion. " From you, noble Venetians, these things are not hid," he says, " which were done partly by yourselves, and partly by the other peoples of Europe, to recover the Holy Land." Then, after a brief review of the circumstances, of the great necessity and the appeal made to Rome, he addresses himself thus to the popular ear : "Moved by so great a peril, the Roman pontiff has judged the Venetians alone worthy of such an undertaking, and that he might securely confide it to them. Wherefore lie has sent commissions to your prince, and to you, Venetian citizens, praying and supplicating you that in such a time of need you should not desert the Christian cause. Which demand your prince lias determined to refer to you. Make up your minds then, and command that a strong force should be prepared. Which thing not only religion and our care for the Church and all Christians enjoins, but also the inheritance of our fathers, from whom we have received it as a charge : which fulfilling we can also enlarge our own dominion. It is very worthy of the religion of which we make profession, to defend with our arms from the injuries of cruel men that country in which Christ our King chose to be born, to traverse weeping, in which to be betrayed taken, put upon the Cross, and that His most holy body should have sepulture therein : in which place, as testifies Holy Writ, as the great Judge yet once more He must come to judge the human race. What sacred place dedicated to His service, what monastery, what altar, can we imagine will be so grateful to Him as this holy undertaking '( by which He will see the home of His childhood, His grave, and, finally, all the surroundings of His humanity, made free from unworthy bondage. But since human nature is so constituted that there is scarcely any public piety without a mixture of ambition, you, perhaps, while I speak, begin to ask your- selves silently, what honour, what glory, what reward may follow such an enterprise ? Great and notable will be the glory to the Venetian name, since our forces will appear to all Europe alone sufficient to be opposed to the strength of Asia. The furthermost parts of the West will hear of the valour of the Venetians, Africa will talk of it, Europe will wonder at it, and our name will be great and honoured in every- body's mouth. Yours will be the victory in such a war, and yours will be the glory. ..... 46 THE MAKERS ( >F VENICE. [CHAP. " Besides, I doubt not that you are all of one will in the desire that our domain should grow and increase. In what way, and by what method, think you, is this to be done ? Perhaps here seated, or in our boats upon the lagoons I Those who think so deceive themselves. The old Romans, of whom it is your glory to be thought the descen- dants, and whom you desire to emulate, did not gain the empire of the world by cowardice or idleness ; but adding one undertaking to another, and war to war, put their yoke upon all people, and with incredible fighting increased their strength. . . . And yet again, if neither the glory, nor the rewards, nor the ancient and general devotion of our city for the Christian name should move you, this certainly will move you, that we are bound to deliver from the oppression ef the unbeliever that land in which we shall stand at last before the tribunal of the great Judge, and where what we have done shall not be hidden, but made manifest and clear. Go, then, and prepare the armaments, and may it be well with you and with the Venetian name." This skilful mingling of motives, sacred and secular ; the melting touch with which that land which was the place of His childhood " il luogo della sua fanciullezza is presented to their sight ; the desire for glory, which is so sweet to all ; the great civic ambition to make Venice great and hear her praise ; the keen sting of the taunt to those who suppose that fame is to be got by sitting still or by idle exercises upon the surrounding waters returning again with the force of a final argument to " that land " where the final judgment is to be held, and where those who have fought for the Cross will not be hidden, great or small forms an admirable example of the kind of oration which an eloquent doge might deliver to the impetuous and easily-moved populace, who had, after all, a terrible dominant power of veto if they chanced to take another turn from that which was desired. The speaker, however, who had this theme and knew so well how to set it forth, must have felt that he had the heart of the people in his hand and could play upon that great instrument as upon a lute. When he had ended, the church resounded with shouts, mingled with weeping, and there was not one in the city, we are told, who would not rather have been written down in the lists of that army than left to stay in peace and idleness at home. ii.] THE DOGES. 47 Dandolo, the most authentic and trustworthy authority, describes this expedition as one of two hundred ships, large and small, but other authorities reckon them as less numerous. They shone with pictures and various colours, the French historian of the Crusades informs us, and were a delightful sight as they made their way across the brilliant eastern sea. Whether the painted sails that still linger about the lagoons and give so much brilliancy and character to the scene were already adopted by these glorious galleys seems unknown : their high prows, however, were richly decorated with gilding and colour, and it is apparently this ornamentation to which the historian alludes. But though they were beautiful to behold, their progress was not rapid. The doge stopped 011 his way to besiege and take Corfu, where the squadron passed the winter, as was the custom of the time. Even when they set sail again they lingered among the islands, carrying fire and sword for no particular reason, so far as appears, into Rhodes and other places ; until at last evil news from Palestine, arid the information that the enemy's fleet lay in front of Joppa, blockading that port, quickened their steps. Michieli divided his squadron, arid beguiled the hostile ships out to sea with the hopes of an easy triumph ; then falling upon them with the stronger portion of his force won so terrible and complete a victory that the water and the air were tainted with blood, and many of the Venetians, according to Sanudo, fell sick in consequence. It is difficult to decide whether it was after this first incident of the war, or at a later period, that the doge found himself, like so many generals before and after him, in want of money for the payment of his men. The idea of bank- notes had not then occurred even to the merchant princes. But Michieli did what our own valiant Gordon had to do, and with as great a strain no doubt on the faith of the mediaeval mariners to whom the device was entirely new. He caused a coinage to be struck in leather, stamped with 48 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. his own family arms, and had it published throughout the fleet, upon his personal warrant, that these should be con- sidered as lawful money, and should be exchanged for gold zecchins on the return of the ships to A T enice. " And so it was done, and the promise was kept." In memory of this first assignat the Ca' Michieli, still happily existing in Venice, beai-s till this day, and has borne through all the intervening centuries, the symbol of these leathern coins upon the cheerful blue and white of their ancestral coat. On the arrival of the Venetians at Acre they found the assembled Christians full of uncertain counsels, as was unfortunately too common, doubtful even with which city, Tyre or Ascalon, they should begin their operations. The doge proposed an appeal to God under the shape of drawing lots, always a favourite idea with the Venetians, and the two names were written on pieces of paper, and placed in the pyx on the altar, from which one was drawn by a child, after mass had been said. On this appeared the name of Tyre, and the question was decided. Before, however, the expedition set out again, the prudent Venetian, well aware that gratitude is less to be calculated upon after than before the benefit is received, made his conditions with " the Barons " who represented the imprisoned King Baldwin. These conditions were, that in every city of the Christian kingdom the Venetians should have secured to them a church, a street, an open square, a bath, and a bakehouse, to be held free from taxes as if they were the property of the king : that they should be free from all tolls on entering or leaving these cities, as free as if in their own dominion, unless when conveying freight, in which case they were to pay the ordinary dues. Further, the authorities of Baldwin's kingdom pledged themselves to pay to the doge in every recurring year, on the feast of SS. Peter and Paul, 300 bezants ; and consented that all legal differences between Venetian residents or visitors should be settled by their own courts, and that in cases of shipwreck or death at sea ii.] THE DOGES. 49 the property of dead Venetians should be carefully preserved and conveyed to Venice for distribution to the lawful heirs. Finally, the third parts of the cities of Tyre and Ascalon, if conquered by the help of the Venetians in so far at least as these conquered places belonged to the Saracens and not to the Franks -were to be given to the Venetians, to be held by them as freely as the king held the rest. These conditions are taken from the confirmatory charter afterwards granted by Baldwin. The reader will perceive that the doge drove an excellent bargain, and did not, though so great and good a man, disdain to exact the best terms possible from his friends' necessities. These important preliminaries settled, the expedition set out for Tyre, which, being very strong, was assailed at once by land and by sea. The siege had continued for some time without any important result, and the Crusaders were greatly discouraged by rumours of an attack that was being planned against Jerusalem, when it began to be whispered in the host that the Venetians, who were so handy with their galleys, would, in case of the arrival of the army of the King of Damascus, who was known to be on his way to the relief of the city, think only of their own safety, and getting up all sail abandon their allies and make off to sea. This suggestion made a great commotion in the camp, where the knowledge that a portion of the force had escape within their power, made danger doubly bitter to the others who had no such possibility. The doge heard the rumour, which filled him with trouble and indignation. Dandolo says that he took a plank from each of the galleys to make them unseaworthy. "Others write," says Sabellico, "that the sails, oars, and other things needed for navigation were what Michieli removed from his ships." These articles were carried into the presence of Varimondo or Guarimondo, the patriarch, and all the assembly of the leaders. The .astonishment of the council of war, half composed of priests, when these cumbrous articles, smelling of pitch and 50 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [THAI-. salt water, were thrown down before them, may be imagined. The doge made them an indignant speech, asking how they could have supposed the Venetians to be so light of faith ; and, with a touch of ironical contempt, informed them that he took this means to set them at their ease, and show that the men of Venice meant to take Tyre, and not to run away. Another picturesque incident recorded is one which Sabellico allows may be fabulous, but which Sanudo repeats from two different sources the story of a carrier pigeon sent by the relieving army to encourage the people of Tyre in their manful resistance, which the Christian army caught, and to which they attached a message of quite opposite purport, upon the receipt of which the much ti-ied and famished garrison lost heart, and at length, though with all the honours of war, capitulated, and threw open their gates: upon which the besiegers took possession, not without much grumbling on the part of the disappointed soldiers who looked for nothing less than the sacking of the wealthy city. The royal standard of Jerusalem was immediately erected on the highest tower, those of St. Mark and of the Count of Tripoli waving beside it. The siege lasted, according to Dandolo, nearly four months. The doge had spent Christmas solemnly at Jerusalem, and it was in July that the city was entered by the allies : but all the authorities are chary of dates, and even Romanin is not too clear on this point. It was, however, in July, 1123, that the victory was gained. In the portion of the city which fell to the shai*e of the Venetians, true to their instincts, a scheme of government was at once set up. The doge put in a balio eld facease ragione a deputy who should do right seek good and ensue it. Mr. Ruskin, in his eloquent account of this great enterprise (which it would be great temerity on our part to attempt to repeat, were it not necessary to the story of the doges) quotes the oath taken by inferior magistrates under the balio, which is a stringent promise ii.] THE DCKiES. 51 to act justly by all men and " according to the ancient ii.se and law of the city." The Venetians took possession at once of their third of the newly acquired town, with all the privileges accorded to them, and set up their bakeries, their exclusive weights and measures, their laws, their churches, of which three were built without delay, and along with all these, secured an extension of trade, which was the highest benefit of all. It is asserted by an anonymous commentator upon the manuscript of Dandolo, that it was proposed by the Crusaders, after this great success of their arms, to elect the doge King of Jerusalem in place of the imprisoned Baldwin : but of this there seems no confirmation. Michieli was called from the scene of his victories by information of renewed troubles on the Dalmatian coast, and departed, carrying along with him many of the fine things for which Tyre was famous the purple and the goldsmith's work, and many treasures. But among others, one on which Dandolo and Sanudo both agree, a certain great stone which had stood near one of the gates of Tyre since the time when our Lord, weary after a journey, sat down to rest upon it. Such a treasure was not likely to escape the keen scent of the Venetians, so eager for relics. The doge carried it away, a somewhat cumbrous addition to his plunder, and when he reached home placed it in San Marco, where it is still to be seen in the Baptistery, a chapel not built in Michieli's day, where it forms the altar, un enorme mossetto de granito as says the last guide-book. The guide-book, however (the excellent one published by Signori Falin and Molmenti, from the notes of Lazari, and worth a dozen Murrays), says that it was Vitale Michieli, and not Domenico who brought over this stone from Tyre ; just as Mr. Ruskin assures us that it was Domenico who brought home the two famous columns on the Piazzetta, of which the chronicles do not say a word. Who is to decide when doctors disaree ? 52 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. The homeward journey of the Venetians was full of adventure and conflict. Their first pause was made at Rhodes, where the inhabitants, possibly encouraged by the Greek emperor in their insolence to the Venetians, refused to furnish them with provisions : whereupon the doge disembarked his army, and took, and sacked the city. After this swift and summary vengeance the fleet went on to Chios, which not only was treated as Rhodes had been, but was robbed of a valuable piece of saintly plunder, the body of St. Isidore. The other isles of the Archipelago fell in succession before the victorious fleet, which passed with a swelling sail and all the exhilaration of success from one to another. At Cephalonia the body of San Donate was discovered and carried away. Nearer home the expedition executed those continually required re-adjust- ments of the Dalmatian towns which almost every doge in succession, since they were first annexed, had been compelled to take in hand. Trau, Spalatro, and Zara were re-taken from the Hungarians, and the latter city, called by Sanudo Belgrade (Belgrade, doe Zara vecchia), from which the Venetian governor had been banished, and which had cost much blood and trouble to the Republic, the doge is said to have caused to be destroyed, " that its ruin might be an example to the others," a fact which, however, does not prevent it from reappearing a source of trouble and conflict to many a subsequent doge. Here, too, Michieli paused and distributed the spoil, setting apart a portion for God, and dividing the rest among the army. Then, with great triumph and victory, after an absence of nearly three years, the conquerors made their way home. A more triumphant voyage had never been made. The Venetians had, as the doge predicted, covered their name with glory, and at the same time extended and increased their realm. They had acquired the third part of Tyre and settled a strong colony there, to push their trade and afford an outlet for the superfluous energies of the race. ii.| THE DOGES. r,:{ They had impressed the terror of their name and arms upon the Grecian isles. The doge himself had performed some of those magnanimous deeds which take hold upon tilt- imagination of a people, and outlive for centuries all violent victories and acquisitions. The story of the leather coinage and of the disabled galleys are such as make those traditions which are the very life of a people. And Michieli had served his country by seizing upon the imagi- nation and sympathies of other lands. He had almost been made king in Jerusalem. When he passed by Sicily he had again been offered a kingdom. There was nothing- wanting to the perfection of his glory. And when he came home triumphant, and told his story of danger and suc- cesses in the same glowing area of St. Mark's, to the same fervent multitude whose sanction he had asked to the undertaking, it is easy to imagine what his welcome must have been. He had brought with him treasures of cunning workmanship, the jewels of gold and silver, the wonderful embroideries and carpets of the East ; perhaps also the secret of the glass-workers creating a new trade among the existing guilds, things to make all Venice beside itself with delight and admiration. And when the two saintly corpses were carried reverentially on shore one for Murano, to consecrate the newly-erected church, one to remain in Venice and the shapeless mass of the great stone upon which our Lord had sat in His weariness, or which, as another story says, had served Him as a platform from which to address the wondering crowd with what looks of awe and reverential ecstasy must these sacred relics have been regarded, the crown of all the victor's spoil ! The enlightened, or even partially enlightened spectator in Venice, as well as in other places, lias ceased to feel any strong veneration for dead men's bones, except under the decent coverings of the tomb ; but we confess, for our own part, that the stone which stood at the gate of Tyre all those ages, and which the valorous doge haled over the 54 THE MAKERS < >F VENICE. r _ HAI-. seas to make an altar of the stone on which, tradition says, our Lord rested when He passed by those coasts of Tyre and Sidon, where perhaps that anxious woman who would not take an answer first saw Him seated, and con- ceived the hope that so great a prophet might give healing to her child has an interest for us as strong as if we had lived in the twelfth century, and seen the doge come home. The Baptistery of St. Mark's is well worthy examination. There is a beautiful description of it in the second volume of Mr. Raskin's Stones of Venice, to read which is the next best thing to visiting the solemn quiet of the place ; but there is no allusion there to this one veracious relic, Doge Domenico's trophy the mighty bit of Syrian stone. The doge lived but a few years after his return. Mr. Ruskin, following the chroniclers, says that he was the first who lighted the streets of Venice by the uncertain and not very effectual method, though so much better than nothing, of lamps before the shrines which abounded at every corner ; so that the traveller, if he pleases, may find a token of our doge at every Traghetto where a faint little light twinkles before the shrine enclosing the dim print or lithograph which represents the Madonna. Mr. Ruskin would have us believe that he for one would like Venice better if this were the only illumination of the city ; but we may be allowed to imagine that this is only a fond exaggeration on the part of that master. The Venetians were at the same time prohibited from wearing beards according to the fashion of the Greeks a rule which must surely apply to some particular form of beard, and not to that manly ornament itself, on which it is evident the men of Venice had set great store. In the year 1129, having reigned only eleven years, though he had accomplished so much, and achieved so great a reputation, the doge, being old and weary, resigned his crown, and retired to San Giorgio Maggiore, though whether with the intention of joining the brotherhood there, or ii.] THE DOGES. T>5 only for repose, we are not told. It would have been a touching and grand retirement for an old prince who had spent his strength for Venice, to pass his latter days in the island convent, where all day long, and by the lovely moon- light nights that glorify the lagoons, he could have watched across the gleaming waters his old home and all the busy scenes in which he had so lately taken the chief part, and might have received in many an anxious moment the visit of the reigning doge, and given his counsel, and become the best adviser of the city which in active service he could aid no more. But this ideal position was not realised for Doge Domenico. He had been but a few months in San Giorgio when he died, full of years and honours, and was buried in the refuge he had chosen. " The place of his grave," says Mr. Ruskin, " you find by going down the steps on your right hand behind the altar, leading into what was yet a monastery before the last Italian revolution, but is now a finally deserted loneliness. On his grave there is a heap of frightful modern upholsterer's work (Longhena's), his first tomb being removed as too modest and time-worn for the vulgar Venetian of the seventeenth century. The old in- scription was copied on the rotten black slate which is breaking away in thin flakes dimmed by destroying salt." It is scarcely decipherable, but it is given at length by Sanudo : " Here lies the terror of the Greeks, and the glory of the Venetians," says the epitaph: "the man whom Emmanuel feared, and all the world still honours. The capture of Tyre, the destruction of Syria, the desolation of Hungary, proclaim his strength. He made the Venetians to dwell in peace and quiet, for while he flourished the country was safe." We add the concluding lines in the translation given by Mr. Ruskin : " Whosoever thou art who comest to behold this tomb of his, bow thyself down before God because of him." It was probably from an idea of humility that the great doge had himself buried, not in the high places of the 50 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [< HAI-. church, but in the humble corridor which led to the monastery: All that Mr. Kuskiu says with his accustomed force about the hideousness of the tomb is sufficiently just ; yet though nothing may excuse the vulgar Venetian of the seventeenth century for his bad taste in architecture, it is still morally in his favour that he desired in his offensive way to do honour to the great dead a good intention which perhaps our great autocrat in art does not sufficiently appreciate. After Domenico Michieli there intervened two doges, one his son-in-law Polarii, another a Morosini, before it came to the turn of his son Vitale II. to ascend the throne. What may be called the ordinary of Venetian history, the con- tinual conflict on the Dalmatian coasts, w r ent on during both these reigns with unfailing pertinacity : and there had arisen a new enemy, the Norman, who had got possession of Naples, and whose hand was by turns against every man. These fightings came to little, and probably did less harm than appears ; otherwise, if war meant all that it means now, life on the Dalmatian coast, and among the Greek Isles, must have been little worth the living. In the time of Vitale Michieli's predecessor, Sabellico says, the Campanile of San Marco was built, " a work truly beautiful and admirable. The summit of this is of pure and resplendent gold, and rises to such a height that not only can you see all the city, but towards the west and the south can behold great stretches of the sea, in such a manner that those who sail from hence to Istria and Dalmatia, two hundred stadii away and more, are guided by this splendour as by a faithful star." This was the first of the several erections which have ended in the grand and simple lines of the Campanile we know so well, rising straight out of the earth with a self-reliant force which makes its very bareness impressive. Rising out of the earth, however, is the last phrase to use in speaking of this wonderful tower, which, as Sabellico reports, wondering, is ii.] THE DOGES. r>7 so deeply founded in mysterious intricacies of piles and props below, that almost as much is hidden as that which is visible. Vitale Michieli II. has this distinction, that he was the last of the doges elected by that curious version of universal suffrage which is to be found in this primitive age in most republics that is to say, the system by which the few who pull the strings in every human community make it apparent to the masses that the potent suggestion whispered in their ear is their own inspiration. Such had been, up to this period, the manner of electing the doge. The few who were instinctively and by nature at the head of affairs men themselves elected by nobody, the first by natural right, or because their fathers had been so, or because they were richer, bolder, more enterprising, more audacious, than the rest settled among themselves which of them was to be the ruler ; then calling together the people in San Marco, gave them, but with more skill and less frankness than the thing is done in ecclesiastical matters among ourselves, their conge d'elire. The doge elected by this method reigned, with the help of these unofficial counsellors of whom two only seem to have borne that name and he was as easily ruined when reverses came as he had been promoted. But the time of more formal institutions was near, and the primitive order had ceased to bo enough for the rising intelligence, or at least demands, of the people. The third Michieli had, however, the enormous advantage of being the son of the most distinguished of recent doges, and no doubt was received with those shouts of "Provato ! Provato ! " (tha,t is, approvato) which was the form of the popular fiat. One of the first incidents of his reign was a brief but sharp struggle for the independence of the metro- politan church of Grado, once more attacked by the Patriarch of Aquileia. The Venetians overcame the assail- ants, and brought the belligerent prelate and twelve of his canons as prisoners to Venice, whence after a while they 58 THE MAKERS ( >F VENICE. [.-HAP. were sent home, having promised to meddle with Grado no more, and to pay a somewhat humiliating tribute yearly in the exaction of which there is a grim humour. Every year before Lent, in the heat of what we should call the Carnival. a great bull and twelve pigs were to be sent to Venice, representing the patriarch and his twelve canons. On the Thursday, when the mirth was at its height, the bull Avas hunted in the Piazza, and the pigs decapitated in memory of the priestly captives. This curious ironical celebration lasted till the days of Sabellico and Sanudo, the latter of whom entitles it the giobba di Ccvmevale. It shows, not- withstanding all the reverential sentiments of these ages of faith, how a certain contempt for the priest as an adversary tempered the respect of the most pious for all the aids and appurtenances of religion. 1 This, however, was the only victory in the life of a doge so much less fortunate than his father. Italy was in great commotion throughout his reign, all the great northern cities, with Venice at their head, being bound in what was called the Lombard League against the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. But the Venetians were more exposed to attacks from the other side, from the smouldering enmity of the Greeks than from anything Barbarossa could do : and it was from this direction that ruin came upon the third Michieli. Not only were conspiracies continually fostered in the cities of the Adriatic ; but the Greek Emperor Emmanuel seized the opportunity while Venice seemed otherwise occupied to issue a sudden edict by which all the Venetian traders in his realm were seized upon a certain day, their goods confiscated, themselves thrown into prison. His reckoning, however, was premature ; for the excitement in Venice when this news reached the astonished and enraged Republic was furious : and with cries of " War ! 1 Romanin considers the bull to have had nothing to do with this commemoration, the twelve pigs accompanied by twelve cakes being, he says, the tribute exacted. n.J THE DOGES. 00 war ! " the indignant populace rushed together, offering themselves and everything they could contribute, to the avenging of this injury. The great preparations which were at once set on foot demanded, however, a larger outlay than could be provided for by voluntary offerings, and the necessity of the moment originated a new movement of the greatest importance to the world. The best expedient which occurred to the Venetian statesmen was to raise a national loan, bearing interest, to collect which officers were appointed in every district of Venice with all the machinery of an income tux, assessing every family according to its means. These con- tributions, the first, or almost the first, directly levied in Venice, and all the inquisitorial demands necessary to regulate them, passed without offence in the excitement of the great national indignation, but told afterwards upon the fate of the doge. Vitale Michieli set out in September, 1171, six months after the outrage, at the head of a great fleet, to avenge it ; but misfortune pursued this unlucky prince. He was beguiled by his wily adversary into waiting for explanations and receiving embassies, only intended to gain time, or worse, to expose to the dangers of inaction and the chances of pestilence the great and powerful ex- pedition which the Greeks were not able to encounter in a more legitimate way. These miserable tactics succeeded fully ; lingering about the islands, at Chios, or elsewhere, disease completed what discontent and idleness had begun. The Creek emperor, all the chroniclers unite in saying, poisoned the wells so that everybody who drank of them fell ill. The idea that poison is the cause of every such outbreak of pestilence is still, as the reader knows, a rooted belief of the primitive mind one of those original in- tuitions gone astray, and confused by want of understanding, which perhaps the progress of knowledge may set right ; for it is very likely the waters were poisoned, though not by the emperor. The great epidemic which followed was of 60 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [< HAI-. the most disastrous and fatal character ; not only decimat- ing the fleet, but when it returned to Venice broken and discouraged, spreading throughout the city. This great national misfortune gave rise to a curious and romantic incident. The family Giustinian, one of the greatest in Venice, was, according to the story, so strongly represented in the armada that the race became virtually extinct by the deaths, one after another, of its members, in the disastrous voyage homewards. The only man left was a young monk, or rather novice not yet professed, in the convent of San Niccolo, on the Lido. When the plague- stricken crews got home, and this misfortune among so many others was made apparent, the doge sent messengers to the pope, asking that young Niccolo might be liberated from his vows. The old Giustiniani fathers, in the noble houses which were not as yet the palaces we know, must have waited among their weeping women with an anxiety no doubt tempered by the determination, if the pope should refuse, to take the matter into their own hands for the decision of Rome. And it is wonderful that no dramatist or modern Italian romancer, touched by the prevalent passion for moral dissection, should have thought of taking for his hero this young monk upon the silent shores of the Lido, amid all the wonderful dramas of light and shade that go on upon the low horizon sweeping round on every side, a true globe of level long reflections, of breadth and space and solitude, so apt for thought. Had he known, perhaps, before he thought of dedication to the Church, young Anna Michieli, between whose eyes and his, from her windows in the doge's palace to the green line of the Lido, there was nothing but the dazzle of the sunshine and the ripple of the sea ? Was there a simple romance of this natural kind, waiting to be turned into joyful fulfilment by the pope's favourable answer? Or had the novice to give up his dreams of holy seclusion, or those highest, all-engrossing visions of ambition, which were to no man more open than ii.] THE DOGES. ;] to a bold and able priest ? These are questions which might well furnish forth pages of delicate description and discussion. Naturally the old chronicler has no thought of any such refinement. The pope consented, and the doge gave his daughter to young Niccolo, " which thing procured the continuance in the city of the Casa Giustinian, in which afterwards nourished men of the highest intellect and great orators," is all the record says. The resuscitated race gave many notable servants to the state, although no doge until well on in the seventeenth century. When the pair thus united had done their duty to the state, Xiccolo Giustinian re-dedicated himself in his pld convent and resumed his religious profession ; while Anna, his wife, proceeded to her chosen nunnery, and there lived a life so holy as to add to the fame of her family by attaining that- partial canonisation which is represented by the title of Beata. This, one cannot but feel, was an admirable way of making the best of both worlds. "In this year," says Sanudo, "there were brought to Venice from Constantinople, in three great ships, three mighty columns," one of which in the course of disembark- ation fell into the sea, and remains there, it is to be supposed, till this day ; the others are the two well-known pillars of the Piazzetta. We need not repeat the story, so often told, of how it was that, no one being able to raise them to their place, a certain Lombard, Niccolo of the Barterers, succeeded in doing so with wetted ropes, and asked in return for permission to establish a gambling-table in the space between them. Sabellico says that the privilege granted went so far "that every kind of deception" was permitted to be practised there : but it can scarcely be supposed that even a sharp Lombard money-changer would ask so much. This permission, given because they could not help it, having foolishly pledged their word, like Herod, was, by the doge and his counsellors, made as odious as possible by the further law that all public executions should 62 THE MAKERS ( >F VENICE. [< HAP. take place between the columns. It was a fatal place to laud at, and brought disaster, as was afterwards seen ; but its evil augury seems to have disappeared along with the gaming-tables, as half the gondolas in Venice lie at its margin now. The columns would seem to have been erected in the year 1172, but whether by Doge Yitale or his successor is uncertain. Other improvements were done under this doge besides the elevation of the columns in the Piazzetta. He filled up the canal which crossed the broad space of the Piazza, still a green and open ground, partly orchards, and enlivened by this line of water -and thus prepared the way for the work of his successor, who first began to pave it, and surrounded it with buildings and lines of porticoes, suggesting, no doubt, its present form. There must, however, have been a charm in the greenness and trees and sparkling waters grass growing and foliage waving at the foot of the great golden- crowned Campanile, and adding a brightness of nature to the Byzantine splendour of the church and palace. The Camera deyli Imjyrestidi, or great Public Loan Office, however the first National Bank of Europe is more important to history than even the ceaseless improvements of the city. The first loan is said to have carried interest at the rate of four per cent. a high rate for a public debt and the organisation necessary to arrange and regulate it seems to have come into being with wonderful speed and completeness. The time was beginning when the constitu- tion, or rather want of constitution, of the ancient Republic, full of the accidents and hasty expedients of an infant state, would no longer suffice for the gradually rising and developing city. None of these things, however, stood the doge in stead when he came back beaten and humiliated, with the plague in his ships, to face his judges in solemn conclave in San Marco a tumultuous assembly of alarmed and half-mad- dened men, trembling for their lives and for the lives of ii.l THPJ DOGES. 63 those dear to them, and stung by that sense of failure which was intolerable to the haughty Republic. This was in the month of May, 1172. From the first the meeting must have borne an air dangerous to the doge, against whom there began to rise a cry that he was the occasion of all their evils of the war, of enforced military service and compulsory contributions, and, last and greatest, of the pestilence which he had brought back with him. The men who had virtually elected him, who were his friends, and had shared the councils of his reign, would no doubt stand by him so far as their fears permitted : but the harmless assembly called together to give its sanction to the election of a new and popular doge is very different from the same crowd in the traditionary power of its general parliament, assembling angry and alarmed, its pride wounded and its fears excited, to pronounce whose fault these misfortunes were, and what should be done to the offender. The loud outcry of traditore, so ready to the lips of the populace in such circumstances, resounded through San Marco, and there were ominous murmurs that the doge's head was in danger. He tried to clear himself by a touching oration, con piangente parole, says one : then hastily going out of the church and from the presence of the excited assembly took his way towards San Zaccaria, along the Riva, by what would seem to have been a little-frequented way. As he passed through one of the little calli, or lanes, called now, tradition says, Calle delle Rasse, some one who had, or thought he had, a special grievance, sprang out upon him and stabbed him. He was able to drag himself to San Zaccaria and make his confession, but no more : and there died and was buried. The people, horror-stricken perhaps by the sudden execution of a doom which had only been threatened, gave him a great funeral, and his sudden end so emphasised the necessity of a relation more guarded and less personal between the chief ruler and the city, that the leading minds in Venice proceeded at once to take 64 THE MAKERS ( )F VENICE. [CHAP. order for elections more formal and a constitution more exact. There had been, according to primitive rule, two counsellors of permanent character, and an indefinite number of pregadi, or men " prayed" to help the doge a sort of informal council ; but these were called together at the doge's pleasure, and were responsible only to him. The steps which were now taken introduced the principle of elective assemblies, and added many new precautions for the choice and for the safety of the doge. The fact which we have already remarked, that all the names l given ARMS OF THE MICHIELI. belong to families already conspicuous in Venice, continued with equal force under the new rule. No doubt the elec- tions would be made on the primitive principle, one man sug- gesting another, all of the same class as those who, without the forms of election, had hitherto suggested the successive princes, for the sanction of the people. But the mass of the Venetians probably thought with enthusiasm that they had taken a great step towards the consolidation of their liberties when they elected these Dandolos, Faliers, 1 Roraanin informs us that a few names of the people appear in early documents as Stefano Tinctor (dyer), Vitale Staniario (tin-worker), &c. , but these are so few as to prove rather than confute the almost invariable aristocratic rule. ii. 1 THE DOGES. 05 Morosinis, and the rest, to be their representatives, and do authoritatively what they had done all along in more subtle ways. Thus ended the Doges Michieli : but not the family, which is one of the few which has outlived all vicissitudes, and still has a habitation and a name in Venice. And the new regime of elective government began. CHAPTER III. ENRICO DAXDOLO. THE first beginnings of a more formal mode of govern ment thus followed close upon the murder of Yitale Michieli. The troubles of the state under his rule, as well as the prompt vengeance taken upon him by the infuriated multitude, combined to make it apparent that it "was not for the safety or dignity of Venice either to remain so entirely in the hands of her chief magistrate, or to bring the whole business of the state to a standstill, and impair her reputation among foreign countries by his murder. The Republic had thus arrived at a comprehension of the idea which governments of much later date have also had impressed upon them painfully, that the person of the head of the state ought to be sacrosanto, sacred from violence. And no doubt the rising complications of public life, the growth of the rich and powerful community in which personal character was so strong, and so many interests existed, now demanded established institutions, and a rule less primitive than that of a prince with both the legislative and executive power in his hands, even when kept in check by a counsellor or two, and the vague mass of the people, by whom his proceedings had to be approved or non-approved after an oration skilfully prepared to move the popular mind. The Consiglio Maggiore, the great Venetian Parlia- ment, afterwards so curiously limited, came into being at CHAP. in.J THE DOGES. <>7 this crisis in the national history. The mode of its first selection reads like the description of a Chinese puzzle ; and perhaps the subtle, yet artless complication of elections ending at last in the doge, may be taken as a sort of appeal to the fates, by a community not very confident in their own powers, and bent upon outwitting destiny itself. Two men were first chosen by each sestiere or district (a division which had been made only a short time before for the con- venience of raising funds for Doge Vitale's fatal expedition), each of whom nominated forty of the best citizens, thus forming the Great Council, who, in their turn, elected eleven representatives who elected the doge. The latter arrange- ment was changed on several occasions before that which commended itself as the best, and which was more artificial and childishly elaborate still, was chosen at last. The people were little satisfied at first with this con- stitutional change, and there were tumults and threatened insurrections in anticipation of the new body of electors, and of the choice of a prince otherwise than by acclamation of the whole community assembled in San Marco. " It was in consequence ordained," says Romanin, " that the new doge should be presented to the multitude with these words : ' This is your doge, if it pleases you,' and by this means the tumult was stilled." So easy is it to deceive the multitude ! What difference the new rules made in reality it would be difficult to say. The council was made up of the same men who had always ruled Venice. A larger number no doubt had actual power, but there was no change of hands. The same fact we have already noted as evident through all the history of the Republic. New names rarely rise out of the crowd. The families from among whom all functionaries were chosen at the beginning of all things still held power at the end. The power of the doge was greatly limited by these new laws, but at least his person was safe. He might be relieved from his office, as happened sometimes, but save iii F 2 68 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CUAI-. one memorable instance lie was no longer liable to violence. And he was surrounded by greater state and received all the semi-oriental honours which could adorn a pageant. Sebastiano Ziani, the first doge chosen under the new order, was carried in triumph round the Piazza, throwing money to the crowd from his unsteady seat. "Whether this was his own idea (for he was very rich and liberal), or whether it was suggested to him as a way of increasing his popularity, we are not told ; but the jealous aristocrats about him, who had just got hold of the power of law-making, and evidently thought there could not be too detailed a code, seized upon the idea, perceiving at once its picturesque and attractive possibilities and its dangers, and decided that this largesse should always be given by a new doge, but settled the sum, not less than a hundred, nor more than a hundred and fifty ducats, with jealous determination that no wealthy potentate should steal the hearts of the populace with gifts. There came to be in later times a special coinage for the purpose, called Oselle, of which specimens are still to be found, and which antiquarians, or rather those lovers of the curious who have swamped the true antiquarian, "pick up" wherever they appeal-. Sebastiano Ziani, according to some of our chroniclers, was not the man upon whom the eleven electors first fixed their choice, who was, it is said, Aurio, or Orio Mastropiero, the companion of Ziani in a recent ambassage, and his friend who pointed out that Ziani was much older and richer than himself, and that it would be to the greater advantage of Venice that he should be chosen, a magnani- mous piece of advice. This story, unfortunately, is not authenticated ; neither is the much more important one of the romantic circumstances touching the encounter of Pope Alexander III. and the Emperor Barbarossa at Venice? which the too conscientious historian, Romanm (not tc speak of his authorities)* will not hear of, notwithstanding the assertions of Sanudo, Sabellico, and the rest, and the in.] THE DOGES. >9 popular faith and the pictures in the ducal palace, all of which maintain it strongly. The popular tale is as follows. It is painted in the hall of the Maggiore Consiglio, where all the world may see. The pope, driven from Rome by the enmity of the em- peror, after many wanderings about the world, took refuge in Venice, where he concealed himself in the Inimble habit of a friar, acting, some say, as cook to the brethren in the convent of La Carita. The doge, hearing how great a personage was in the city, hurried to visit him, and to give him a lodging worthy of his dignity; then sent ambas- sadors to intercede with Barbarossa on. his behalf. He of the red beard received benignly the orators of the great Republic ; but when he heard their errand, changed coun- tenance, and bade them tell the doge that unless he delivered up the fugitive pope it would be the worse for him that the eagle should fly into the church of San Marco, and that its foundation should be made as a ploughed field. Such words as these were not apt to Venetian ears. The whole city rose as one man, and an armata was immediately prepared to resist any that might be sent against Venice. The doge himself, though an old man over seventy, led the fleet. Mass was said solemnly in San Marco by the pontiff himself, who girded his loyal defender with a golden sword, and blessed him as he went forth to battle. There were seventy-five galleys on the opposite side, commanded by young Prince Otto, the son of Barbarossa, and but thirty 011 that of Venice. It w r as once more the Day of the Ascension that fortunate day for the Republic when the two fleets met in the Adriatic. The encounter ended in complete defeat to the imperial ships, of which forty were taken, along with the commander, Otto, and many of his most distinguished followers. The Venetians went home with natural exultation, sending" before them the glorious news, which was so unexpected, and so speedy, that the whole city rushed to the Riva with 70 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. half-incredulous wonder and joy to see the victors disem- bark with their prisoners, among them the son of the great German prince who had set out with the intention of planting his eagles in San Marco. The pope himself came down to the Riva to meet the victorious doge, and drawing a ring from his linger gave it to his deliverer, hailing him as the lord and master of the sea. It was on Ascension Day that Pietro Orseolo had set out from Venice on the triumphant expedition which ended in the extermination of the pirates, and the extension of the Venetian sway over all the coast of the Adriatic and then it was, according to our chroniclers, that the feast of the Sposalizio, the wedding of the sea, had been first established. But by this time they have forgotten that early hint, and here we have once more, and with more detailed authorities, the institution of this great and picturesque ceremony. Prince Otto was nobly treated by his captors, and after a while undertook to be their ambassador to his father, and was sent 011 parole to Rome to the emperor. The result was that Frederick yielded to his son's representations and the Venetian prowess, and consented to go to Venice, and there be reconciled to the pope. The meeting took place before the gates of San Marco, where His Holiness, in all his splendour, seated in a great chair (grande e honoratissima sedia), awaited the coming of his rival. Popular tradition never imagined a more striking scene : the Piazza outside thronged, every window, balcony, and housetop, with eager spectators, used to form part of every public event and spectacle, and knowing exactly every coign of vantage, and how to see a pageant best. The great Frederick, the story goes, approached the seat where the vicar of Christ awaited him, and subduing his pride to necessity, knelt and kissed the pope's foot. Alexander, on his part, as proud and elated with his victory, raised his foot and planted it on Barbarossa's neck, intoning as he did so, as Sabellico says, that Psalm of David, "Super aspidem et in.] THE DOGES. 71 basilicum ambulabis." The emperor, with a suppressed roar of defiance in his red beard, exclaimed, "Not thee, hut Peter ! " To which the pope, like one enraged, planting his foot more firmly, replied, "Both I and Peter." Oiu- can imagine this brief colloquy carried on, under their breath, fierce and terse, when the two enemies, greatest in all the western hemisphere, met in forced amity ; and how the good doge, amiable peacemaker and master of the ceremonies, and all the alarmed nobles, and the crowds of spectators, ripe for any wonder, must have looked on, marvelling what words of blessing they were saying to each other, while all the lesser greatnesses had to wait. But the later historians refuse their affirmation to this exceedingly circumstantial, most picturesque, and, it must be added, most natural story. Eomanin assures us, on the faith of all the documents, that the meeting was a stately ceremonial, arranged by pope and emperor, without either passion or humiliation in it ; that the pope was not a fugi- tive in Venice, and that the emperor never threatened to fiy his eagles into San Marco ; that Prince Otto never was made prisoner, and that the pontiff received with nothing less satisfactory than a kiss of peace the formal homage of the emperor. The facts are hard to deny, and no doubt fvornanm is right. But there is a depth of human nature in the fable, which the facts do not reveal. It is impossible to imagine anything more likely to be true than that brief interchange of words, the churchman's triumph, and the statesman's unwilling submission. The story goes on to tell .how Doge Ziani escorted his two splendid guests to Ancona, where the pope and the emperor were presented with umbrellas a tribute appar- ently made to their exalted rank ; whereupon the pope requested that a third might be brought : " Afanca la terza pel Doge de Venezia eld ben lo merita," from which incident arose the use of this royal, if unimposing, article by the doges ever after. The pope had previously granted the 72 THE MAKERS < >F VENICE. [(HAP. privilege of sealing with lead instead of wax another imperial attribute. To all this picturesque narrative Romanin again presents an array of chilling facts, proving that the pope and emperor left Venice singly on different dates, and that the Doges of Venice had carried the umbrella and used the leaden hollo long before Ziani all which is very disconcerting. It seems to be true, however, that during the stay of the pope in Venice the feast of the Smsa Ascension Day was held with special solemnity, and its pageant fully recorded for the first time. The doge went forth in the Bucintoro, which here suddenly springs into knowledge, all decorated and glorious, with his umbrella over his head, a white flag which the pope had given him flying beside the standard of St. Mark, the silver trumpets sounding, the clergy with him and all the great potentates of the city, and Venice following, small and great, in every kind of barge or skiff which could venture on the lagoon. It is said to have been with a ring which the pope had given him that old Ziani wedded the sea. Whether the ceremony had fallen into disuse, or if our chroniclers merely forgot that they had assigned it to an earlier date, or if this was the moment when the simpler primitive rite was changed into its later form, it is difficult to say. It must be added that the strange travesty of history thus put together is regarded with a certain doubt by the chroni- clers themselves. Sabellico for one falters over it. He would not have ventured to record it, he says, if he had not found the account confirmed by every writer, both Venetian and foreign. " And," says Sanudo, " Is it not depicted in the hall of the great council 1 Se non fosse stata vera i nostri buoni Venetians noil avrebbero inai fatta depingere : if it had not been true our good Venetians never would have had it painted." It was during the stormy reign of Vitale Michieli, in the midst of the bitter and violent quarrel between the Greek Emperor Emmanuel and the Venetians, when ambassadors in.] THE DOGES. 73 were continually coming and going, that an outrage, which cannot be called other than historical, and yet can be sup- ported by no valid proof, is said to have been inflicted upon one of the messengers of Venice. This was the noble Arrigo or Enrico Dandolo, afterwards one of the most dis- tinguished of the doges, and the avenger of all Venetian wrongs upon the Greeks. The story is that in the course of some supposed diplomatic consultation he was seized and had his eyes put out by red-hot irons according to a plea- sant custom which the Greeks of that day indulged in largely. It is unlikely that this could be true, since it is impossible to believe that the Venetians would have re- sumed peaceable negotiations after such an outrage ; but it is a fact that Dandolo has always been called the blind doge, and even the scrupulous Romanin finds reason to suppose that some injury had been inflicted upon the ambassadors. Dandolo's blindness, however, must have been only comparative. The French chronicler, Villehar- douin, describes him as having fine eyes, which scarcely saw anything, and attributes this to the fact that he had lost his sight from a wound in the head. Dandolo's descendant, successor, and historian, however, says only that he was of weak vision, and as he was at the time eighty-four, there would be nothing remarkable in that. Enrico Dandolo was elected doge in 1193, after the death of Orio Mastropietro, who succeeded Ziani, and whose reign was not marked by any special incident. Dandolo was the first doge, if not to sign the promissione, or solemn ducal oath of fidelity to all the laws and customs of the Republic, at least to reach the period of history when such documents began to be preserved. His oath is full of details, which show the jealousy of the new regime in defining and limiting the doge's powers. He vows not only to rule justly, to accept no bribes, to show no favour- itism, to subordinate his own affairs and all others to the interests of the city, but also not to write letters on his 74 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. own account to the pope or any other prince ; to submit his own affairs to the arbitrament of the common tribunals, and to maintain two ships of war at his own expense stipulations which must have required no small amount of self-control on the part of men scarcely as yet educated to the duties of constitutional princes. The beginning of Dandolo's reign was distinguished by the usual expeditions to clear the Adriatic and re-confirm Venetian supremacy on the Dalmatian coast ; also, by what was beginning to be equally common, certain conflicts with the Pisans, who began to rival Venice in the empire of the seas. These smaller commotions, however, were dwarfed and thrown into the shade by the great expedition, known in history as the Fourth Crusade, which ended in the destruction of Constantinople and great aggrandisement of the Republic, but, so far as the objects of the Crusade were concerned, in nothing. The setting out of this expedition affords one of the most picturesque and striking scenes in Venetian history, though its details come to us rather from the chronicles of the Crusade than from the ancient historians of Venice,who record them briefly with a certain indifference and at the same time with a frankness which sounds cynical. Perhaps the conviction of a later age that the part played by Venice was not a very noble one, may have here restrained the record. " In those days a great occasion presented itself to the Venetians to increase their dominions," Sabellico says, calmly putting aside all pretence at more generous motives. Ville- hardouin, however, has left a succession of pictures which could not be surpassed in graphic force, and which place all the preliminaries before us in the most brilliant day- light. He describes how the French princes who had taken the cross sent an embassy to Venice in order to arrange if possible for means of transport to the Holy Land six noble Frenchmen, in all their bravery and fine manners, and fortunately with that one among them who HIGH ALTAR OF S. MARCO. in.] THE DOGES. 75 carried a, pen as well as a sword. It is evident that this proposal was considered on either side as highly important, and was far from being made or received as merely a matter of business. The French messengers threw them- selves at once upon the generosity, the Christian feeling, of the masters of the sea. Money and men they had in plenty ; but only Venice, so powerful on the seas, so rich, and at peace with all her neighbours, could give them ships. From the beginning their application is an entreaty, and their prayers supported by every argument that earnestness could suggest. The doge received them in the same solemn manner, submitting their petition to the council, and requiring again and again certain days of delay in order that the matter should be fully debated. It was at last settled with royal magnificence not only that the ships should be granted, but that the Republic should fit out fifty galleys of her own to increase the force of the expedi- tion : after which, everything being settled (which again throws a curious side-light upon popular government), the doge called the Venetians together in San Marco ten thousand of them in the most beautiful church that ever was, says the Frenchman and bade the strangers plead their own cause before the people. When we consider- that everything was arranged beforehand, it takes some- thing from the effect of the scene, and suggests uncom- fortable ideas of solemn deceits practised upon the populace in all such circumstances but in itself the picture is magnificent. Mass being celebrated, the doge called the ambassadors, and told them to ask humbly of the people whether the proposed arrangement should be carried into effect. Godfrey de Villehardouin then stood forth to speak in the name of all, with the following result : "'Messieurs, the noblest and most powerful barons of France have sent us to you, to pray you to have pity upon Jerusalem in bondage to the Turk, and for the love of God to accompany us to avenge the shame 76 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [ -HAI-. of Christ ; and knowing that no nation is so powerful on t ho seas as you, they have charged us to implore your aid and not to rise from our knees till you have consented to have ]>ity upon the Holy Kind.' "With this the six ambassadors knelt down weeping. The doge and all the people then cried out with one voice, raising their hands to heaven, ' We grant it. we grant it ! ' And so great was the sound that nothing ever equalled it. The good doge of Venice, who was most wise and brave, then ascended the pulpit and spoke to the people. 'Signori,' he said, 'you see the honour which God has done you that the greatest nation on earth has left all other peoples in order to ask your company, that you should share with them this great undertaking which is the re-conquest of Jerusalem.' Many other fine and wise things were said by the doge which I cannot here recount. And thus the matter was concluded." It must have been a strange and imposing sight for these feudal lords to see the crowd that filled San Marco, and overflowed in the Piazza, the vast trading, seafaring multi- tude tanned with the sunshine and the sea, full of their own importance, listening like men who had to do it, no submissive crowd of vassals, but each conscious (though, as we have seen, with but little reason) that he individually was appealed to, while those splendid petitioners knelt and wept moved no doubt on their side by that wonderful sea of faces, by the strange circumstances, and the rising wave of enthusiasm which began to move the crowd. The old doge, rising up in the pulpit, looking with dim eyes across the heads of the multitude, with the great clamour of the " Concediamo " still echoing under the dome, the shout of an enthusiastic nation, gives the last touch of pictorial effect. His eyes still glowed, though there was so little vision in them ; pride and policy and religious enthusiasm all mingled in his words and looks. The greatest nation of the world had come as a suppliant who could refuse her petition ? This was in the winter, early in the year 1201. It is not difficult to imagine the wintry afternoon, the dim glories of the choir going off into a golden gloom behind, the lights glimmering upon the altars, the confused movement and emotion of the countless crowd, indistinct under the great arches, extending into every corner in.] THE DOGES. 77 -while all the light there was concentrated in the white hair and cloth of gold of the venerable figure to which every eve was turned, standing up against the screen at the foot of the great cross. The '.Republic by this bargain was pledged to provide transport for four thousand five hundred cavaliers, and nearly thirty thousand men on foot : along with provisions for a year for this multitude; for which the Frenchmen pledged themselves to pay eighty-five thousand silver marks " according to the weight of Cologne," in four different instalments. The contingent of Venice, apart from this. was to consist of fifty galleys. The ships were to be ready at the feast of SS. Peter and Paul in the same year, when the first instalment of the money was to be paid. In the meantime, however, while the workmen in the arsenal were busily at work, and trade must have quickened throughout Venice, various misfortunes happened to the other parties to the engagement. Young Thibaut of Champagne died in the flower of his youth, and many small parties of Crusaders went off from other quarters in other vessels than those of Venice : so that when at last the expedition arrived it was considerably diminished in numbers, and, what was still more disastrous, the leaders found themselves unable to pay the first instalment of the appointed price. The knights denuded themselves of all their valuables, but this was still insufficient. In these circumstances an arrangement was resorted to which pro- duced many and great complications, and changed altogether the character of the expedition. Venice has been in con sequence reproached with the worldliness and selfishness of her intentions. It has been made to appear that her religious fervour was altogether false, and her desire to push her own interests her sole motive. No one will attempt to deny that this kind of selfishness, which in other words is often called patriotism, was very strong in her. But on the other side it would be hard to say that it 78 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [I-HAP. was with any far-seeing plan of self -aggrandisement that the Republic began this great campaign, or that Dandolo and his counsellors perceived how far they should go before their enterprise was brought to an end. They were led on from point to point like those whom they influenced, and were themselves betrayed by circumstances and a crowd of secondary motives, as well as the allies whom they are believed to have betrayed. The arrangement proposed was, since the Crusaders could not pay the price agreed for their ships, that they should delay their voyage to the Holy Land long enough to help the Venetians in subduing Zara, which turbulent city had again, as on every possible occasion, rebelled. The greater part of the Frenchmen accepted the proposal with alacrity ; though some objected that to turn their arms against Christians, however rebellious, was not the object of the soldiers of the cross. In the long run, however, and notwithstanding the remonstrances of Pope Innocent, of which the independent Venetians made light, the bargain was accepted on all hands, and all the preliminaries con- cluded at last. Another of the wonderful scenic displays with which almost every important step was accompanied in Venice took place before the final start. "One day, upon a Sunday, all the people of the city, and the greater part of the barons and pilgrims, met in San Marco. Before mass began, the doge rose in the pulpit and spoke to the people in this manner : ' Signori, you are associated with the greatest nation in the world in the most important matter which can be undertaken by men. I am old and weak and need rest, having many troubles in the body, but I perceive that none can so well guide and govern you as I who am your lord. If you will consent that I should take the sign of the cross to care for you and direct you, and that my son should, in my stead, regulate the affairs of the city, I will go to live and die with you and the pilgrims.' "When they heard this, they cried with one voice, 'Yes ! we pray you, in the name of God, take it and come with us.' "Then the people of the country and the pilgrims were greatly moved and shed many tears, because this heroic man had so many reasons for remaining at home, being old. But he was strong and of a great heart. He then descended from the pulpit and knelt before the in.] THE DOGES. 70 altar weeping, and the cross was sewn upon the front of his groat cap, so that all might see it. And the Venetians that day in great numbers took the cross." It was in October, 1202, that the expedition finally sailed, a great fleet of nearly three hundred ships : the Frenchmen in their shining mail with their great war-horses furnishing a wonderful spectacle for the Venetians, to whom these noble creatures, led unwillingly on board the galleys, were so little familiar. The whole city watched the em barkation with excitement and high commotion, no doubt with many a woman's tears and wistful looks, anguish of the old, and more impassioned grief of the young, as the fifty galleys which contained the Venetian contingent slowly tilled with all the best in the Republic, the old doge at their head. Bound for the Holy Land, to deliver it from the infidel ! - -that no doubt was what the people believed who had granted with acclamation their aid to the barons in San Marco. And to watch the great fleet which streamed along with all its sails against the sunshine through the tortuous narrow channels that thread the lagoon, line after line of high-beaked painted galleys, with their endless oars, and all their bravery, it must have seemed as if the very sea had become populous, and such a host must carry all before them. Days must have passed in bustle and commotion ere, with the rude appliances of their time, three hundred vessels could have been got under way. They streamed down the Adriatic, a maritime army rather than a fleet, imposing to behold, frightening the turbulent towns along the coast which were so ready when the Venetian galleys were out of sight to rebel and arrived before Zara in crushing strength. The citizens closed the harbour with a chain, and with a garrison of Hungarians to help them, made a brave attempt to defend themselves. But against such an overwhelming force their efforts were in vain, and after a resistance of five days, the city surrendered. It was by this time the middle of November, and to tempt the G 80 THE MAKKRS OF VKNICK. [-HAK wintry sea at that season was contrary to the habits of the time. The expedition accordingly remained at Zara, where many things took place which decided the course of its after movements. It was not a peaceful pause. The French and the Venetians quarrelled in the first place over their booty or their privileges in the sacked and miserable city. When that uproar was calmed, which took the leaders some time, another trouble arrived in the shape of letters from Pope Innocent, which disturbed the French chiefs greatly, though the old doge and his counsellors paid but little attention. Innocent called the Crusaders to account for shedding Christian blood when they ought to have been shedding pagan, and for sacking a city which belonged to their brethren in the faith, to whom he commanded them to make restitution and reparation. Whether the penitent barons gave up their share of the booty is not told us, but they wrote humble letters asking pardon, and declaring that to take Zara was a necessity which they had no power to resist. The pope was moved by their submission, but commanded them to proceed to Syria with all possible speed, "neither turning to the right hand nor to the left," and as soon as they had disembarked on the Syrian shores to separate themselves from the Venetians, who seem to have been excommunicated (which did not greatly disturb them) for their indifference to the papal commands. This correspondence with Rome must have given a certain amount of variety, if not of a very agreeable kind, to the winter sojourn on the Adriatic, confused with tumults of the soldiery and incessant alarms lest their quarrels should break out afresh, quarrels which carried on in the midst of a hostile people bitterly rejoicing to see their conquerors at enmity among themselves, and en- couraged by the knowledge that the pope had interfered on their behalf must have made the invaders doubly uncom- fortable. From the Venetian side there is not a word of the excommunication levelled again themselves, and in.] THE DOGES. si generally so terrible a weapon. Stich punishments perhap.-. were more easily borne abroad than at home, and the Uc- public already stoutly held its independence from all external interference. "While Pope Innocent's letters were thus occupying nil minds, and the French Crusaders chafing at the delay, and perhaps also at the absence of all excitement and occupation in the Dalmatian town, another incident occurred of the most picturesque character, as well as of the profoundest importance. This was first, the arrival of ambassadors from the Emperor Philip of Swabia Avith letters recommend- ing the young Alexius, the son of Isaac, dethroned Emperor of the Greeks, to the Crusaders : and secondly that young prince himself, an exile and wanderer, with all the recom- mendations of injured helplessness and youth in his favour. The ambassadors brought letters telling such a story as was most fit to move the chiA'alrous leaders of the Christian host. The youth for Avhom their appeal Avas made was the true heir of the great house of Comnenus, born in the purple, a young Hamlet Avhose father had been, not killed, but oA r erthroAvn, blinded, and imprisoned by his OAVII brother, and IIOAV lay miserable in a dungeon at Constanti- nople Avhile the usurper reigned in his stead. What tale so likely to move the pity of the knights and barons of France ? And, the suppliants added, Avhat enterprise so fit to promote and facilitate the object of the Crusaders ] For Constantinople had always been a difficulty in the Avay of the conquest of Syria, and IIOAV more than ever, when a false and cruel usurper Avas on the throne ; Avhereas if old Isaac and his young son Avere restored, the Crusaders Avould secure a firm footing, a stronghold of moral as Avell a.=. physical support in the East, Avhich would make their Avork easy. One can imagine the high excitement, the keen discussions, the eagerness of some, the reluctance of others, the heat of debate and diA'erse opinion Avhich arose in the camp. There Avere some among the pilgrims upon Avhom G 2 *2 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. the pope's disapproval lay heavy, ami who longed for nothing so much as to get away, to have the wearisome preliminaries of the voyage over, and to find themselves upon the holy soil which they had set out to deliver ; while there were some, perhaps more generous than devout, to whom the story of the poor young prince, errant through the world in search of succour, and the blind imperial pri.ioner in the -dungeon, was touching beyond description, calling forth every sentiment of knighthood. The Venetians had still another most moving motive ; it seems scarcely possible to believe that they did not at once perceive the immense and incalculable interests involved. They were men of strictly practical vision, and Constantinople was their market-place at once and their harvest ground. To establish a permanent footing there by all the laws of honour and gratitude, what a thing for Venice ! It is not necessary to conclude that they were untouched by other inducements. They, better than .any, knew how many hindrances Constantinople could throw in the way, how treacherous her support was, how cunning her enmity, and what an advantage it would be to all future enterprises if a power bound to the west by solid obligations could be established on the Bosphorus. Nor is it to be supposed that as men they were inaccessible to the pleas of humanity and justice urged by Philip. But at the same time the dazzle of the extraordinary advantages thus set before themselves must have been as a glamour in their eyes. It was while the whole immense tumultuous band, the Frenchmen and knights of Flanders, the barons of the Low Country, the sailor princes of the Republic, were in full agitation over this momentous question, and all was un- certainty and confusion, that the young Alexius arrived at Zara. There w r as a momentary lull in the agitation to receive, as was his due, this imperial wanderer, so young, so high-born, so unfortunate. The Marquis of Montserrato was his near kinsman, his rank was undoubted, and his in.] THE DOGES. :! misfortunes, the highest claim of ;ill, were known to every one. The troops were turned out to receive him with all the pomp of military display, the doge's silver trumpets sounding, and all that the Crusaders could boast of in music and magnificence. The monks who had been pressing hotly from band to band urging Pope Innocent's commands and the woes of Jerusalem ; the warlike leaders who had been anxiously attempting to reconcile their declared purpose with the strong temptations of such a chivalrous undertaking all for the moment arrested their arguments, their self-reasonings, their mutual upbraidings, to hear what their young guest had to say. And Alexius had everything to say that extreme necessity could suggest. He would give subsidies unlimited two hundred thousand marks of silver, all the costs of the expedition, as much as it pleased them to require. He would himself accompany the expedition, he would furnish two thousand men at once, and for all his life maintain five hundred knights for the defence of Jerusalem. Last of all, and greatest, he vowed a bait for Innocent himself, an inducement which must have stopped the words of remonstrance on the lips of the priests and made their eyes glow to renounce for ever the Greek heresy and bring the Eastern Church to the supremacy of Rome ! Whether it was this last motive, or simply a rush of sudden enthusiasm, such as was, and still is, apt to seize upon a multitude, the scruples and the doubts of the Crusaders melted like wax before the arguments of the young prince, and his cause seems to have been taken up by general consent. A few pilgrims of note indeed left the expedition and attempted to find another way to the Holy Land, but it was with very slightly diminished numbers that the expedition set sail in April, 1203, for Constan- tinople. Zara celebrated their departure by an immediate rising, once more asserting its independence, and necessitat ing a new expedition sent by Renier Dandolo, the doge's 84 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAI-. son and deputy, to do all the work of .subjugation over again. But that was an occurrence of every day. The Crusaders went to Corfu first, where they were received with acclamation, the islanders offering at once their homage to Alexius : and lingered thereabouts until the eve of Pentecost, when they set sail directly for Constan- tinople. Over these summer seas the crowd of ships made their way with ensigns waving and lances glittering in the sun, like an army afloat, as indeed they were, making the air resound with their trumpets and warlike songs. The lovely islands, the tranquil waters, the golden shores, tilled these northmen with enthusiasm nothing so beautiful, so luxuriant, so wealthy and fair, had ever been seen. Where was the coward who would not dare to strike a blow for such a land ? The islands, as they passed, received Alexius with joy, all was festal and splendid in the advance. It was the 24th of June, the full glory of midsummer, when the fleet passed close under the walls of Constantinople. We need not enter into a detailed description of the siege. The Venetians would seem to have carried off the honours of the day. The French soldiers having failed in their rirst assault by land, the Venetians, linking a number of galleys together by ropes, ran them ashore, and seem to have gained possession, almost without pausing to draw breath, of a portion of the city. We will quote from Gibbon, whose classical splendour of style is so different from the graphic simplicity of our chroniclers, a description of this extraordinary attack. He is not a historian generally favourable to the Venetians, so that his testimony may be taken as an impartial one. ' ' On the side of the harbour the attack was more successfully conducted by the Venetians ; and that industrious people employed every resource that was known and practised before the invention of gunpowder. A double line, three bowshots in front, was formed by the galleys and ships ; and the swift motion of the former was supported by the weight and loftiness of the latter, whose decks and poops and turrets were the platforms of military engines that discharged their in.] THE DOGES. S5 shot over the heads of the first line. The soldiers who leaped from the galleys on shore immediately planted and ascended their sealing lad- ders, while the Large ships, advancing more slowly into the intervals and lowering a drawbridge, opened a way through the air from their masts to the rampart. In the midst of the conflict the doge's venerable and conspicuous form stood aloft in complete armour on the prow of his galley. The great standard of St. Mark was displayed before him ; his threats, promises, and exhortations urged the diligence of the rowers; his vessel was the first that struck; and Dandolo was the first warrior on shore. The nations admired the magnanimity of the blind old man, without reflecting that his age and infirmities diminished the price of life and enhanced the value of immortal glory. On a sudden, by an invisible hand (for the standard - bearer was probably slain), the banner of the Republic was fixed on the rampart, twenty- five towers were rapidly occupied, and, by the cruel expedient of tire. the Greeks were driven from the adjacent quarter." A finer battle-picture than this of the galleys fiercely driven in shore, the aged prince high on the prow, the Venetians rushing 011 the dizzy bridge from the rigging to the ramparts, and suddenly, miraculously, the lion of St. Mark unfolding in the darkened air full of smoke and fire, and bristling showers of arrows could scarcely be. The chroniclers of Venice say nothing of it all. For once they fail to see the pictorial effect, the force of the dramatic situation. Andrea Daiidolo's moderate description of his ancestor's great deed is all we have to replace the glowing narrative in which the Venetians have recorded other facts in their history. " While they (the French) were," he says, " pressed hard, on account of their small numbers, the doge with the Venetians burst into the city, and he, though old and infirm of vision, yet being brave and eager of spirit, joined himself to the French warriors, and all of them together, fighting with great bravery, their strength reviving and their courage rising, forced the enemy to retire, and at last the Greeks yielding on every side, the city was taken." The results of the victory were decisive, if not lasting. The old blind emperor, Isaac, was taken from his dungeon his usurping brother having fled and replaced upon his throne ; and the young wanderer, Alexius, the favourite and plaything of the crusading nobles, i\\Q fanciullo, as the Venetians persist in calling him, was crowned in St. Sophia 80 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CH.U-. as his father's coadjutor with great pomp and rejoicing. But this moment of glory was shortlived. As soon as tin- work was done, when there began to be talk of the payment, and of all the wonderful things which had been promised, these brilliant skies were clouded over. It appeared that Alexius had neither authority to make such promises, nor any power of fulfilling them. Not even the money could be paid without provoking new rebellions ; and as for placing the Greek Church under the power of Rome, that was more than any emperor could do. Nor was this all ; for it very soon appeared that the throne set up by foreign arms was any- thing but secure. The Crusaders, who had intended to push on at once to their destination, the Holy Land, were again arrested, partly by a desire to secure the recompense promised for their exertions, partly because the young prince, whom his own countrymen disliked for his close alliance with the strangers, implored them to remain till his throne should be more firmly established. But that throne was not worth a year's purchase to its young and unfortunate tenant. Not- withstanding the great camp of the invaders at Galata, and the Venetian galleys in the Bosphorus, another sudden revolution undid everything that had l>een done. The first assault had been made in June, 1203. Sa early as March of the next year, the barons and the doge were taking grim counsel together as to what was to be done with the spoil such spoil as was not to be found in any town in Europe when they should have seized the city, in which young Alexius lay murdered, and his old father dead of misery and grief. The second siege was longer and more difficult than the first, for the new emperor, Marzoufle, he of the shaggy eyebrows, was bolder and more determined than the former usurper. But at last the unhappy city was taken, and sacked with every circumstance of horror that belongs to such an event. The chivalrous Crusaders, the brave Venetians, the best men of their age, either did not think it necessary, or were unable to restrain the lowest in.] THE DOGES. 87 instincts of an excited army. And what was terrible everywhere was worse in Constantinople, the richest of all existing cities, full of everything that was most exquisite in art and able in invention. " The Venetians only, who were of gentler soul," says Komanin, " took thought for the preservation of those marvellous works of human genius, transporting them afterwards to Venice, ns they did the four famous horses which now stand on the farade of the great Basilica, along with many columns, jewels and precious stones, with which they decorated the Pala d'oro and the treasury of San Marco." This proof of gentler soul was equally demonstrated l>y Napoleon when lie carried off those same bronze horses to Paris in tin- beginning of the century, but it was not appreciated either by Italy or the world. Altogether this chapter in the history of the Venetian armaments, as in that of the Crusaders and Western Christendom in general, is a terrible and painful one. The pilgrims had got into a false and miserable vortex, from which they could not clear then feet. All that followed is like some feverish and horrible dream, through which the wild attempts to bring some kind of order, and to establish a new rule, and to convince themselves that they were doing right and not wrong, make the ruinous complications only more apparent. During the whole period of their lingering, of their besieging, of their elections of Latin emperors and arch bishops futile and shortlived attempts to make something 1 of their conquest letters from Pope Innocent were rain- ing upon them, full of indignant remonstrances, appeals, and reproaches ; and little groups of knights were wander ing off" towards their proper destination sick at heart, while the rest appointed themselves lords and suzerains, marshals and constables of a country which they neither understood nor could rule. In less than a year there followed the disastrous defeat of Aclrianople, in which the ranks of the Crusaders were broken, and the unfortunate newly-elected emperor, Bald- 88 THE MAKERS ()F VENICE. [CHAP. win, disappeared, and was heard of no more. The old doge, Enrico Dandolo, died shortly after, having both in success and defeat performed prodigies of valour, which his great age (ninety- seven, according to the chroniclers) makes almost incredible, and keeping to the last a keen eye upon the interests of Venice, which alone were forwarded by all that had happened. But he never saw Venice again. He died in June, 1205 two years after the first attack upon Con- stantinople, three years after his departure from Venice and was buried in St. Sophia. Notwithstanding the royal honours that we are told attended his funeral, one cannot but feel that the dim eyes of the old warrior must have turned with longing to the rest that ought to have been his in his own San Marco, and that there must have echoed in his aged heart something of a pang that went through that of a later pilgrim whose last fear it Avas that he should lay his bones far from the Tweed. We read with a keen perception of the rapidity with which comedy dogs the steps of tragedy everywhere, that one Marino Zeno, hastily appointed after Dandolo as the head of the Venetians, assumed at once as marks of his dignity " a rose-coloured silk stocking on his right foot and a white silk stocking on his left, along with the imperial boots and purse." This was one outcome of all the blood and misery, the dethronements, the sack, the general ruin. The doges of Venice added another to their long list of titles they were now lords of Croatia, Dalmatia, and of the fourth part and the half of the Roman (or Romanian) empire. Dominus quartce partis cum dimidio totius Imperi Romanian. And all the isles, those dangerous and vexatious little com- munities that had been wont to harbour pirates and interrupt traders, fell really or nominally into the hands of Venice. They were a troublesome possession, constantly in rebellion, difficult to secure, still more difficult to keep, as the Venetian conquests in Dalmatia had already proved : but they were no less splendid possessions. Candia alone was a jewel for any emperor. The Republic could not hold these islands, To face page 88. DOORWAY, SAN MARCO. in.] THE DOGES. S!) putting garrisons into them at her own expense and risk. She took the wiser way of granting them to colonists OH a feudal tenure, so that any noble Venetian who had the courage and the means might set himself up with a little sea- borne principality in due subjection to his native state, but with the privilege of hunting out its pirates and subduing its rebellions for himself. " To divide, " says Sabellico. " the public forces of Venice into so many parts would have been very unsafe. The best thing, therefore, seemed that those who were rich should fit out, according to their capabilities, one or more galleys, and other ships of the kind required. And there being no doubt that many would find it to their private advantage to do this, it followed that the Republic in time of need would secure the aid of these armed vessels, and that each place acquired could be defended by them with the aid of the State a thing which by itself the Republic could not have accomplished except with much expense and trouble. It was therefore ordained that they (who under- took this), with their wives and children and all they pos- sessed, might settle in these islands, and that as colonists sent by the city their safety would be under the care and guarantee of the Republic." Many private persons, he adds, armed for this undertaking. The rambling chronicle of Sanudo gives us here a roman- tic story of the conquest of Candia by his own ancestor Marco Sanudo, who, according to this narrative, having swept from the seas a certain corsair (tailed Arrigo or Enrico of Malta, became master of the island. The inhabit- ants, as a matter of course, resisted and rebelled, but not in the usual way. " Accept the kingdom as our sovereign," their envoys said, " or in three hours you must leave Candia." This flattering but embarrassing alternative confounded the Venetian leader. But he accepted the honour thrust upon him, writing at once, however, to the doge, telling the choice that had been given him, and how he had accepted it from necessity and devotion to the Republic, in whose name he meant to hold the island The Venetians at once 90 THE MAKERS .'V.<, the third of the name, was called Cane, according to tradi- tion, because when ambassador to Pope Clement V., thi> noble Venetian, for the love of Venice, humbled himself. and with a chain round his neck and on his knees, ap- proached the pontiff, imploring that the interdict might be raised, and Venice delivered from the pains of excommuni- cation. If this had been to show that men of his race thought nothing too much for the service of their city, whether it were pride or humility, defiance or submission, the circle which included blind Enrico and Francesco the Dog, could scarcely be more complete. The last of the Dandolo doges was Andrea, 1342-1354, a man of letters as well as of practical genius, and the historian of his prede- cessors and of the city ; whom at a later period and in gentler company we shall find again. CHAPTER IV. PIETKO GRADEXIGO : CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION. WE have endeavoured up to this time to trace the development of the Venetian government and terri- tory, not continuously, hut from point to point according to the great conquests which increased the latter, and the growth of system and political order in the former, which became necessary as the community increased and the primitive rule was outgrown. But at the end of the thirteenth century a great revolution took place in the Re- public which had risen to such prosperity, and had extended its enterprises to every quarter of the known world. It was under the Doge Gradenigo, a new type among the rulers of the State, neither a soldier nor a conqueror but a politician, that this change took place a change antagon- istic to the entire sentiment of the eai-ly Venetian institu- tions, but embodying all with which the world is familiar in the later forms of that great oligarchy, the proudest type of republic known to history. The election of Pietro Gradenigo was not a popular one. It is evident that a new feeling of class antagonism had been gathering during the last reign, that of Giovanni Dandolo ; and that both sides were on the alert to seize an advantage. Whether the proposals for the limitation of the Consiglio Maggiore which were already in the air, and the sensation of an approaching attack upon their rights, were sufficiently clear CH. iv.] THE DOGES. us to the populace to stimulate them to an attempt to regain the ancient privilege of electing the doge by acclamation . or whether it was this attempt which drove the other party to more determined action, it is impossible to judge. But at the death of Gradenigo's predecessor there was a rush of the people to the Piazza with " Voci e parole pungent- issime" in a wild and sudden endeavour to push off the yoke of the regular (and most elaborate) laws which had now been in operation for many generations and to reclaim their ancient custom. The crowd coming together from all quarters of the city proclaimed the name of Jacopo Tiepolo, the son or nephew of a former doge and a man of great popularity while still the solemn officers of state were busy in arranging the obsequies of the dead doge and preparing the multitudinous ballot-boxes for the election of his suc- cessor. Had Tiepolo been a less excellent citizen, Romanin says, civil war would almost certainly have been the issue, but he was "a man of prudence and singular goodness," a huomo da bene, who " despising the madness of the crowd " and to avoid the discord which must have followed, left the town secretly, in the midst of the tumult, and took refuge in his villa on the Brenta, the favourite retreat of Venetian nobles. The people were apparently not ripe for anything greater than this sudden and easily baffled effort, and when their favourite stole away, permitted the usual wire-pullers, the class which had so long originated and regulated every- thing, to proceed to the new election in the usual way. No more elaborate machinery than that employed in this solemn transaction could be imagined. The almost ludi- crous multiplicity of its appeals to Providence or fate, de- veloped and increasing from age to age, the continually re- peated drawing of lots, and double and triple elections, seem to evidence the most jealous determination to secure impartiality and unbiassed judgment. The order of the proceedings is recorded at length by Martin da Canale in his chronicle, which is of undoubted authority, and repeated f>4 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CH.U-. by later writers. The six counsellors (augmented from the two of the early reigns) of the doge, according to this historian, called a meeting of the Consiglio Maggiore, hav- ing first provided a number of balls of wax, the same number as the members of the council, in thirty of which was inclosed a little label of parchment inscribed with the- word LECTOR. The thirty who drew these balls were separ- ated from the assembly in another chamber of the palace, first being made to swear to perform their office justly and impartially. There were then produced thirty more waxen balls, in nine of which was the same inscription. The chosen, who were thus reduced to nine, the number of com- pleteness, varied the process by electing forty citizens, whether members or not of the Consiglio Maggiore being left to their discretion. Each of these, however, required to secure the suffrages of seven electors. The reader will hope that by this time at last he has come to the electors of the doge ; but not so. The forty thus chosen were sent for from their houses by the six original counsellors who had the management of the election ; and forty waxen pel- lets with the mystic word LECTOR, this time inclosed in twelve of them, were again provided. These were put into a hat, and, apparently for the first time, a child of eleven was called in to act as the instrument of fate. Another writer describes how one of the permanent counsellors going out at this point, probably in the interval while the forty new electors were being sent for from their houses heard mass in San Marco, and taking hold of the first boy he met on coming out, led him into the palace to draw the balls. The twelve thus drawn were once more sworn, and elected twenty-five, each of whom required eight votes to make his election valid. The twenty -five were reduced once more by the operation of the ballot, to nine, who were taken into another room and again sworn, after which they elected forty-five, reduced by ballot to eleven, who finally elected forty-one, who at the end of all things elected the iv.J THE DOGES. doge. The childish elaboration of this mode of procedure- is scarcely more strange than the absolute absence of novelty in the result produced. No plebeian Tribune ever stole into power by these means, no new man, mounted on the shoulders of the people, or of some theorist or partisan, ever surprised the reigning families with a new name. The elections ran in the established lines without a break or misadventure. If any popular interference disturbed the serenity and self-importance of the endless series of electors it was only to turn the current in the direction of one powerful race instead of another. Even the populace in the Piazza proclaimed no Lanifizio or Tintorio, wool- worker or dyer, but a Tiepolo, when they attempted to take the election into their own hands. Neither from without nor within was there a suggestion of any new name. The doge elected on this occasion was Pietro, called Per- azzo (a corruption of the name not given in a compliment- ary sense) Gradenigo, who was at the time governor of Capo d'Istria, an ambitious man of strongly aristocratic views and no favourite with the people. It can scarcely be supposed that he was individually responsible for the change worked by his agency in the constitution of the Consiglio Maggiore. It was a period of constitutional development when new officers, new agencies, an entire civil service was coming into being, and the great council had not only all the affairs of the State passing through its hands, but a large amount of patronage increasing every day. Althoiigh, as has been pointed out repeatedly, the sovereignty of Venice, under whatever system carried on, had always been in the hands of a certain number of families, who kept their place with almost dynastic regularity undisturbed by any intruders from below the system of the Consiglio Maggiore was still professedly a representative system of the widest kind ; and it would seem at the first glance as if every honest man, all who were da bene and respected by their fellows, must one time or other have been secure of H 2 9f, THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAI* gaining admission to that popular parliament. Itoinaniii, strongly partisan, like all Venetians, of the institution under which Venice flourished, takes pains to point out here and there one or two exceptional names which show that at long intervals such elections did happen : but they were very rare, and the exceptional persons thus elevated never seem to have made themselves notable. However, as the city grew and developed, it is evident that the families who had always ruled over her began to feel that the danger of having her courts invaded by the democracy was becom- ing a real one. The mode of electing the great council was very informal and variable, and it had recently fallen more and more into the hands of the intriguers of the Broglio, the lobbyists as the Americans Avould say : which doubtless gave a pretext for the radical change which was to alter its character altogether. Sometimes its members were chosen by delegates from each sestiere or district of the city, some- times, which was the original idea, by four individuals, " two from this side of the canal, two from that ; " some- times they were elected for six months, sometimes for a year. The whole system was uncertain and wanted regula- tion. But this curious combination of chances which was something like putting into a lottery for their rulers, pleased the imagination of the people in their primitive state, and perhaps nattered the minds of the masses with a continual possibility that upon some of their own order the happy lot might fall. It had been proposed in the previous reign not only that these irregularities should be remedied, which was highly expedient, but also that a certain hereditary principle should be adopted, which was, in theory, a new thing and strange to the constitution of Venice : the sug- gestion being that those whose fathers had sat in the coun- cil should have a right to election, though without altogether excluding others whom the doge or his counsellors should consider worthy of being added to it. When Gradenigo came to power he was probably, like a IV.] THE DOGES. new prime minister, pledged to carry out this policy : and within a few years of his accession the experiment was tried, but very cautiously, in a tentative way. "Venice was profoundly occupied at the time with one of her great wars with her rival Genoa, a war in which she had much the worst, though certain victories from time to time in Eastern waters encouraged her to pursue the struggle ; and it was under cover of this conflict which engaged men's thoughts that the new experiment was made. Instead of the ARMS OF CRADEXIOO ordinary periodical election of the council, nominally open to all, the four chosen electors to whom this duty ordinarily fell, nominated only in the first place such members of the existing Consiglio Maggiore as had in their own persons or in those of their fathers sat in the council during the last four years, who were then re-elected by ballot, taken for each man individually by the Forty, a recently constituted body ; to whom a further number of names from outside were then proposed, and voted for in the same way. Thus the majority of members elected was not only 93 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAI-. confined to those possessing a hereditary claim, but the election was taken out of the hands of the traditional electors, and transferred to those of the existing rulers of the city. The new method was first tried for a year, and then established as the fundamental law of the Kepublic, with the further exclusion of the one popular and traditional element, the nominal four electors, whose work was now transferred to the officials of the State. The change thus carried out wa& great in principle, though perhaps not much different in practice from that which had become the use and wont of the city. " The citizens," says Komanin, " were thus divided into three classes 1st, Those who neither in their own persons nor through their ancestors had ever formed part of the great council ; 2nd, Those whose progenitors had been members of it ; 3rd, Those who were themselves members of the council, both they and their fathers. The first were called New men, and were never admitted save by special grace ; the second class were included from time to time ; finally, the third were elected by full right." This was the law which under the name of the Serrata del Consiglio Maggiore caused two rebellions in Venice and con- firmed for ever beyond dispute her oligai-chical government. Her parliament, so fondly supposed to be that of the people, was no more closed to the New men than is our House of Lords. Now and then an exceptional individual might be nominated, and by means of great services, wealth, or other superior qualities, obtain admission. It was indeed the privilege and reward henceforwai'd zealously striven for by the plebeian class, and unfortunately more often bestowed in recompense for the betrayal of political secrets, and especially of popular conspiracies, than for better reasons. But the right was with those whose fathers had held the position before them, whose rank was already secure and ascertained, the nobles and patrician classes. The hereditary legislator thus arose in the bosom of the State which considered itself the most free in Christendom, in his iv.] THE DOGES. !'. most marked and distinct form. Komanin tells us that the famous Libro d'Oro, the book of nobility, was formed in order to keep clear the descent and legitimacy of all claimants, bastards, and even the sons of a wife not noble, being rigorously excluded. The law itself was strengthened by successive additions so as to confine the electors exclusively to the patrician class. The war with Genoa was still filling all minds when this silent revolution was accomplished. How could Venice give her attention to what was going on in the gilded chambers of the Palazzo, when clay by day the city was convulsed by bad news or deluded by faint gleams of better hope t Once and again the Venetian fleets were defeated, and mournful galleys came drifting up, six or seven out of a hundred, to tell the tale of destruction and humiliation : and ever with renewed efforts, in a rage of despairing energy, the workmen toiling in the arsenal, the boatmen giving up their tranquil traffic upon the lagoons to man the new- appointed ships, and every family, great and small, offering its dearest to sustain the honour of the Republic, the energies of the city were strained to the utmost. In the autumn of 1298, just when the Serrata had been confirmed in the statute-book, the great fleet, commanded by Admiral Andrea Danclolo, sailed from the port, with all the aspect of a squadron invincible, to punish the Genoese and end the war. In one of the ships was a certain Marco Polo, from his home near San Giovanni Chrisostomo, Marco of the Millions, a great travelling merchant, whose stories had been as fables in his countrymen's ears. This great expedition did indeed for the time end the war ; but not by victory. It was cruelly defeated on the Dalmatian coasts after a stubborn and bloody struggle. The admiral Andrea dashed his head against his mast and died rather than be taken to Genoa in chains ; while the humbler sailor Marco Polo with crowds of his countrymen was carried off to prison there, to his advantage and ours, as it turned out. But 100 THE MAKERS < >F VENICE. [-HAI>. Venice was plunged into mourning ami woe, her resources exhausted, her captains lost. Genoa, who had bought the victory dear, was in little less unhappy condition ; and in the following year the rival Republics were glad to make peace under every pledge of mutual forbearance and friendship for as long as it could last. It was only after this conclusion of the more exciting interests abroad that the Venetians at home, recovering tranquillity, began to look within and see in the meantime what the unpopular doge and his myrmidons, while nobody had been looking, had been engaged about. It is difficult to tell what the mass of the people thought of the new position of affairs : for all the chroniclers are on the winning side, and even the careful Romanin has little sympathy with the revolutionaries. The Venetian populace had long been pleasantly deceived as to their own power. They had been asked to approve what their masters had decided upon and made to believe it was their own doing. They had given a picturesque and impressive background as of a unanimous people to the decisions of the doge and his counsellors, the sight of their immense assembly making the noble French envoys weep like women. But whether they had begun to see through those fine pretences of consulting them, and to perceive how little they had really to do with it all, no one tells us. Their attempt to elect their own doge without waiting for the authorities, looks as if they had become suspicious of their masters. And at the same time the arbitrary closing of the avenues of power, to all men whose fortune was not made or their jwsition secure, and the establishment in the council of that hereditary principle so strenuously opposed in the election of the doges, were sufficiently distinct changes to catch the popular eye and disturb the imagination. Accordingly when the smoke of war cleared off and the people came to consider internal politics, discontent and excitement arose. This found vent in a sudden and evidently natural outburst of popular feeling. The leader of the malcontents was " a iv.] THE DOGES. 101 certain Marino whose surname was Bocconio," says Sabellico, "a man who was not noble, nor of the baser sort, but of moderate fortune, bold and ready for any evil," precisely of that class of new men to whom political privileges are most . piazza, and a proclamation was made by order of the Doge that all should return to their homes on pain of punishment; hearing which the crowd, struck with terror, had the gr; Then the corpses of those who were dead we the piazza, with the command that if any 01 be at the risk of his head. And when it \ bold enough to approach, the rulers peivei trough! out and laid in e touched them it should as seen that no one was d that the people, were obedient. And some days after, as they could not tolerate the stench, the bodies were buried. And in this manner ended that sedition, so that no one afterwards ventured to open his mouth on such matters." This legend Sanudo takes, as he tells us, from the chronicles of a certain Zaccaria da Pozzo ; and it does not interfere with his faith in the narrative that he himself has recorded on a previous page the execution of Bocoo and his fellow conspirators "between the columns" in the usual way. Perhaps he too felt that this wild yet matter-of-fact version of the incident, the closed doors, and the mysterious slaughter of the intruders in the hidden courts within, was an effective and natural way of representing the action of a constitutional change so important. The names of the conspirators who died with Bocconio are almost all unknown and obscure names, yet there was a sprinkling of patricians, upholders of the popular party, such as are always to be found on similar occasions, and which reappear in the more formidable insurrection that followed. For the moment, however, the summary extinction of Bocconio's ill-planned rebellion intimidated and silenced the people, while, on the other side, it was made an occasion of tightening the bonds of the Serrata, and making the admission of the homo novus more difficult than ever. This little rebellion, so soon brought to a conclusion, took place in the spring of the year 1300, the year of the jubilee, when all the world was crowding to Rome, and Dante, stand- ing on the bridge of St. Angelo, Avatching the streams of the pilgrims coming and going, bethought himself, like a true penitent, of his own moral condition, .and in the musings of his supreme imagination found himself astray in evil paths, and began to seek through hell and heaven the iv.] THE DOGES. 10:t verace via, the right way which he had lost. This great scene of religious fervour, ill which so many penitents from all quarters of the world renewed the vows of their youth and pledged over again their devotion to the Church and the Faith, conies strangely into the midst of the fierce strife between Guelf and Ghibelline, which then rent asunder the troubled Continent, and especially Italy, where ever}' city took part in the struggle. Venice, in the earlier ages as well as iix later times when she maintained her independence against papal interference, has usually shown much in- difference to the authority of the pope. But in the beginning of the fourteenth century this was impossible, especially when the great Republic of the Sea meddled, as she had no right to do, with the internal policy of that Terra Firma, the fat land of corn and vine, after which she had always a longing. And there now fell upon her in the midst of all other contentions the most terrible of all the catastrophes to which mediaeval States were subject, the curse of Rome. It was, no doubt, rather with that keen eye to her own advantage which never failed her, than from any distinct bias towards the side of the Ghibelline,. that Venice had interposed in the question of succession which agitated the city of Ferrara, and finally made an attempt to establish her own authority in that distracted place. Indeed it seems little more than an accidental appeal on the part of the other faction to the protection of the pope which brought upon her the terrible punishment of the excommunication which Pope Clement launched from Avignon, and which ruined her trade, reduced her wealth, put all her wandering merchants and sailors in danger of their lives, and almost threatened with complete destruction the proud city which had held her head so high. It would have been entirely contrary to the habits of Venice, as of every other republican community, not to have visited tin* great calamity more or less upon the head of the State. And it gave occasion to the hostile families who from 104 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. the time of Gradeiiigo's accession had been seeking an opportunity against him, the house of Tiepolo and its allies, the Quirini who had opposed the war of Ferrara all through and had suffered severely in it, and others, in one way or another adverse to the existing Government. The Tiepoli face page 108. PONTE DEL PARAOISO. iv.] THE DOGES. 109 behind them, taking refuge on the other side, where their headquarters were, in the palace of the Quirini, the remains of which, turned to ignoble use as a poulterer's shop, still exist in the Beccaria. The other half of the insurrectionists, that which had been thrown into confusion and flight by the death of its leader, Marco Quirini, met on its disastrous backward course a band hastily collected by the head of the Scuola della Carita, and increased by a number of painters living about that centre of their art in the Campo San Luca, where the rebels were cut to pieces. Bajamonte and his men, however, arrived safely at their stronghold, having on their way sacked and burnt the office of the customs on that side of the river, thus covering their retreat with smoke and flame. Once there they closed their gates, entrenching their broken strength in the great mediaeval house which was of itself a fortress and defen- sible place. And after all that had happened the fate of Venice still hung in the balance, and such was the gravity of the revolt that it still seemed possible for the knot of desperate men entrenched on the other side of the Hive Alto, the deep stream which sweeps profound and strong round that curve of the bank, to gain, did Badoer come back in time with the aid he had been sent to seek in Padua, the upper hand. Even when Badoer was cut off by Gius- tinian and his men from Chioggia, the doge and his party, though strong and confident, do not seem to have ventured to attack the headquarters of the rebels. On the contrary, envoys were sent to offer an amnesty, and even pardon, should they submit. Three times these envoys were rowed across the canal, the ruined bridge lying black before their eyes, fretting the glittering waves, which no doubt by this time leaped and dashed against the unaccustomed obstacle in all the brightness of June, the thunderstorm over, though not the greater tempest of human passion. From the other bank, over the charred ruins of the houses they had de- stroyed, the rebel Venetians, looking out in their rage, disap- T 2 110 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. pointment, and despair, to see embassy after embassy con- ducted to the edge of the ferry, must have felt still a certain fierce satisfaction in their importance, and in the alarm to which these successive messengers testified. At last, how- ever, there came alone a venerable counsellor, Filippo Belegno, "moved by love of his country" to attempt once more the impossible task of moving these obstinate and desperate men. No doubt he put before them the agitated state of the city, the strange sight it was with the ruins still smok- ing, the streets still full of the wounded and dying ; torn in two, the peaceful bridge lying a great wreck in mid-stream- " And such was his venerable aspect and the force of his eloquence " that he won the rebels at last to submission. Bajamonte and his immediate followers were banished for life from Venice and its vicinity to the distant lands of Slavonia beyond Zara ; others less prominent were allowed to hope that in a few years they might be recalled ; and the least guilty, on making compensation for what they had helped to destroy, were pardoned. Thus ended the most serious revolt that had ever happened in Venice. One can- not help feeling that it was hard upon Badoer and several others who were taken fighting to be beheaded, while Bajamonte was thus able to make terms for himself and escape, with his head at least. The lives thus spared, however, were but little to be envied. The banishment to the East was a penalty which the Republic could not enforce. She could put the rebels forth from her territory, but even her power was unable in those wild days to secure a certain place of banishment for the exiles. Those who are familiar with the life of Dante will remember what was the existence of a fuor-uscito banished from the beloved walls of Florence. Bajamonte Tiepolo was a personage of greater social importance than Dante, with friends and allies no doubt in all the neighbour- ing cities, as it was natural a man should have who belonged to one of the greatest Venetian families. The records of iv.] THE DOGES. Ill the State are full of signs and tokens of his passage through the Italian mainland, and his long wanderings afterwards on the Dalmatian coasts. He was scarcely well got rid of out of Venice before the doge is visible in the records mak- ing a great speech in the council, in which he gives a lively picture of the state of affairs and of the contumacy of Bajamonte and his companions, their visits to Padua and Rovigo, their parleys with the turbulent spirits of the Marshes, and even of Lombardy their perpetual attempts to raise again the standard of revolt in Venice. It may be supposed even that the doge died of this revolt and its consequences, in the passion and endless harassment con- sequent upon the constant machinations of his opponent, whom indeed he had got the better of, but who would not yield. Romance has scarcely taken hold, except in obscure attempts, upon the juxtaposition of these two men : but nothing seems more likely than that some profounder personal tragedy lay at the bottom of this historical episode. At all events the characters of the two opponents, the doge and the rebel, are strongly contrasted, and fit for all the uses of tragedy. Had Venice possessed a Dante, or had Bajamonte been gifted with a poet's utterance, who can tell in what dark cave of the Inferno the reader of those distant ages might not have found the dark unfriendly doge, sternly determined to carry through his plans, to shut out contemptuously from his patrician circle every low-born aspirant, and to betray the beloved city, whose boast had always been of freedom, into the tremendous fetters of a system more terrible than any despotism 1 Gradenigo, so far as he can be identified personally, would seem to have been an excellent type of the haughty aristocrat, scornful of the new men who formed the rising tide of Venetian life, and determined to keep in the place in which they were born the inferior populace. He had been employed in distant dependencies of the Republic where a state of 112 THE MAKERS OF A'ENICE. [CHAP. revolt was chronic, jiml where the most heroic measures were necessary : and it was clear to him that there must be no hesitation, no trifling with the forces below. When he became doge Venice was still to some extent governed by her old traditions, and it was yet possible that the democracy might have largely invaded her sacred ranks of patrician power. She was ruled by an intricate and shifting magistracy of councils, sages, pregadi (the simplest primitive title, men " prayed " to come and help the doge with their advice), among whom it is difficult to tell which was which, or how many there were, or how long any one man held his share of power. But when Pcrazzo, proud Peter, the man whom the commons did not love, of whom no doubt they had many a story to tell, ended his reign in Venice, the Great Council had become hereditary, the old possibilities were all ended, and the Council of Ten sat supreme an institution altogether new, and as terrible as unknown a sort of shifting but permanent Council of Public Safety endowed with supreme and irresponsible power. A. greater political revolution could not be. The armed revolutionaries who carried sword and flame throughout the city could not. had they been successful in their conjectured purpose of making Bajamonte lord of Venice, have accomplished a greater change in the state than was done silently by this determined man. That he was determined and prompt and bold is evident from all his acts. The rapidity and silence of his pre- parations to rout the insurgents ; the trap in which he caught them when, marching under cover of the thunder to surprise him in his palace, they were themselves surprised in the Piazza by a little army more strong because fore- warned than their own ; the brave face he showed at another period, even in front of the pope's excom- munication, proclaiming loudly to his distant envoys " We are determined to do all that is in us, manfully and promptly, to preserve our rights and our honour;" the iv.] THE DOGES. 113 boldness of his tremendous innovations upon the very fabric of the State ; and that final test of success which forcible character and determination are more apt than justice or mercy to win leave no doubt as to his intrinsic qualities. He was successful, and his rival was unfortunate : he was hated, and the other was beloved. Neither of these two figures stand prominent in picturesque personal detail out of the pages of history. We see them only by their acts, and only in so far as those acts affected the great all- absorbing story of their city. But the influence of Perazzo upon that history is perhaps more remarkable than that of any other individual so far as law and sovereignty is concerned, The rebel leader was a very different man. The noble youth whom Venice called the Gran Cavaliero -the young Cavalier, as one might say, like our own Prince Charlie- - fiery and swift, bidding his kinsman not talk but act the hope of the elder men, put forth by Marco Quirini as most worthy of all to be heard when the malcontents first gathered in the palace near the Rialto, and ventured to tell each other what was in their hearts could have been no common gallant, and yet would seem to have hud the faults and weaknesses as well as the noble qualities of the careless, foolhardy cavalier. No doubt he held his life as lightly as any knight errant of the time : yet when his kinsman fell in the narrow entrance of the Merceria in the wild dawning when foes and friends were scarcely to be distinguished, Bajamonte, too, was carried away by the quick imaginary panic and retreated, dragged along in the flight of his dis- couraged followers. He had not that proof of earnestness which success gives, and he had the ill-fortune to escape when other men perished. The narrative which Romanin has collected out of the unpublished records of his after- life, presents a picture of restless exile, never satisfied, full of conspiracies, hopeless plots, everlasting spyings and treacheries, which make the heart sick. We can only 114 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. remember that Bajamonte was no wor.se in this respect than his great contemporary, Dante. And perhaps the two exiles may have met, if not on those stairs which the poet found so hard to climb, yet somewhere in the wild roaming which occupied both their lives, full of a hundred fruitless schemes to get back, this to Florence, that to Venice. Romanin, ever severe to the rebel, argues that all circum- stances and all documents prove the hero of the Venetian tragedy to have been " a man of excessive ambition, a sub- verter of law and order ; in fact, a traitor "- most terrible of all reproaches. But as a matter of fact it was not he but his adversary who subverted the civil order of the Republic, and whether the young Tiepolo had a true sense of patriotism at his heart, and of patriotic indignation against these innovations, or was merely one of the many ambitious adventurers of the day struck with the idea of making himself lord of Venice as the Scaligeri were lords in Padua on no better title there seems no evidence, and probably never will be any evidence, to show. When Bajamonte left Venice he proceeded anywhere but to the distant countries to which he was nominally banished. Evidently all that was done in the way of carrying out such a sentence was to drive the banished men out of the confines of the republic, leaving them free to obey the further orders of the authorities if they chose. In this case the exiles lingered about secretly for some time in neighbouring cities, watched by spies who reported all their actions, and especially those of Bajamonte, to the doge. When at last he did proceed to Dalmatia, he became, according to Romanin, a centre of conspiracy and treason, and at the bottom of the endless rebellions of Zara, which, however, had rebelled on every possible occasion long before Bajamonte was born. It is curious to find that all the chroniclers, and even a writer so recent and so enlightened as Romanin, should remain pitiless towards all rebels against the authority of the republic. The picture this historian iv.] THE DOGES. 115 gives of Bajamonte's obscure and troubled career, pursued from one city to another by the spies and letters of the signoria warning all and sundry to have nothing to do with the rebel, and making his attempts to re-enter life impos- sible, is a very sad one ; but no pity for the exile ever moves the mind of the narrator. For with the Venetian historian, as with all other members of this wonderful commonwealth, Venice is everything, and the individual nothing : nor are any man's wrongs or suffering of any importance in com- parison with the peace and prosperity of the adored city. The traces of this insurrection have in the long progress of years almost entirely disappeared, though at the time many commemorative monuments bore witness to the greatest popular convulsion which ever moved Venice. The Tiepolo Palace, inhabited by Bajamonte, was razed to the ground, and a pillar, una colonna d'infamia, was placed 011 the spot with the following inscription : ' ' Di Baiamonte fo questo terrene, E mo 1 per lo so Iniquo tradimento S'e posto in Chomun per 1'altrui spavento E per mostrar a tutti sempre seno. " " This was the dwelling of Bajamonte : for his wicked treason this stone is set up, that others may fear and that it may be a sign to all." The column was broken, Tassini tells us in his curious and valuable work upon the Streets of Venice, soon after it was set up, by one of the followers of Tiepolo who had shared in the amnesty, but whose fidelity to his ancient chief was still too warm to endure this pub- lic mark of infamy. It was then removed to the close neighbourhood of the parish church of S. Agostino, prob- ably for greater safety ; afterwards it was transferred, no longer as a mark of shame but as a mere antiquity, from one patrician's garden to another, till it was finally lost. In later times, when the question was seriously discussed 1 "Quel MO del secondo verso," says Tassini, " spiegasi per OKA, le quel SENO dell' ultimo per SIENO, sott' intendcndovi, queste parole." 11C THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. whether Bajamonte was not a patriot leader rather than a traitor, proposals were made to raise again the column of shame as a testimony of glory misunderstood. But the convictions of the rehabilitators of the Gran Cavaliero have not been strong enough to come to any practical issue, All that remains of him is (or was) a white stone let into the pavement behind the now suppressed church of S. Agostino with the inscription "Col : Bai : The : MCCCX.," marking the site of his house : but whether a relic of his own age or the work of some more recent sympathiser we are not told. On the other side of the canal in the campo of San Luca stood till very recent times a flagstaff, ornamented on gala days with the standard of the Scuola of the Carita in remembrance of their victory over one party of the insurrectionists ; and in the Merceria, not far from the Piazza, there still exists, or lately existed, a shop with the sign " Delia grazia del morter," being the same out of which Giustina Rossi threw forth the flower-pot, to the destruction of the failing cause. Another singular sign of disgrace and punishment was the condemnation of the families of Quirini and Tiepolo to a change of armorial bearings. Had they been compelled to wear their arms reversed or to bear any other under- stood heraldic symbol of shame this would have been comprehensible : but all that seems to have been demanded of them was a change of their bearings, not any ignominious sign. The authorities went so far as to change the arms upon the shields of the two defunct Tiepoli doges, a most senseless piece of vengeance, since it obliterated the shame which it was intended to enhance. The palaces still standing along the course of the Grand Canal which carry rising from their roofs the two obelisks, erected upon all the houses of the Tiepoli for some reason unknown to us, prove that in latter days the race was little injured or diminished by its disgrace and punishment. A much greater memorial of this foiled rebellion however iv.] THE DOGES. 117 still remains to be noticed. This was the institution of the far-famed Council of Ten, the great tribunal which hence- forward reigned over the republic with a sway which was in sober reality tremendous and appalling, but which is still further enhanced by the mystery in which all its proceedings were wrapped, and the impression made upon an imaginative people by the shadow of this great secret, voiceless tribunal, every man of which was sworn to silence, and before which any Venetian at any moment might find himself arraigned. It was professedly to guard against such a danger as that which the republic had just escaped that this new tribunal was instituted, " Because of the new thing which had happened, and to guard against any repeti- tion of it." Among the many magistratures of the city this was the greatest, most fatal, and important : it held the keys of life and death ; it was responsible to no superior authority, permitted no appeal, and was beyond the reach of public opinion or criticism, its decisions as unquestion- able as they were secret. The system of denunciation, the secret documents dropped into the Bocca di Leone, the mys- terious processes by which a man might be condemned before he knew that he had been accused, have perhaps been exaggerated, and Romanin does his utmost to prove that the dreaded council was neither so formidable nor so mysterious as romance has made it out to be. But his arguments are but poor in comparison with the evident dangers of an institution, whose proceedings were wrapped in secrecy and which was accountable neither to public opinion nor to any higher tribunal. Political offences in our own day are judged more leniently than crime ; in those times they were of deeper dye than anything that originated in private rage or covetousness. And amid the family jealousies of that limited society the opportunity thus given of cutting off an enemy, undermining the repu- tation of any offender, or spoiling the career of a too pros- perous rival, was too tremendous a temptation for human 118 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [ CHA p. nature to resist. This formidable court was, in conformity with the usual Venetian custom, appointed first for a year only, as an experiment, and with the special purpose of forestalling further rebellion by the most suspicious and inquisitive vigilance : but once established it was too mighty a power to be abandoned and soon became an established institution. Thus the two rebellions did nothing but rivet the chains which had been woven about the limbs of the republic. And though there still remained the boast of freedom, and the City of the Sea always continued to vaunt her repub- lican severity and strength, Venice now settled into the tremendous framework of a system which had no room for the plebeian or the poor, more rigid than any individual despotism, in which there are always chances for the new man, more autocratic and irresponsible than the government of any absolute monarch. The Council of Ten completed the bonds which the serrata of the council had made. The greatest splendours if not the greatest triumphs of the state were yet to come, but all the possibilities of political freedom and expansion were finally destroyed. The circumstances which surrounded this new institution were skilfully, almost theatrically disposed to increase the terror with which it was soon regarded. The vow of secrecy exacted from each member and from all who appeared before them, the lion's mouth ever open for denunciations which however well-founded may be Romanin's assertion that those which were anonymous were rarely acted upon, yet bore an impression of the possibility of a dastardly and secret blow, 'which nothing can wipe out the mysterious manner in which a man accused was brought before that tribunal in the dark, to answer to judges only partially seen, with the consciousness of the torture-room and all its horrors near, if his startled wits should fail him all were calculated to make the name of the Ten a name of fear. Nothing could be more grim than the smile of that doge IV.] THE DOGES. 119 who leaving the council chamber in the early sunshine after a prolonged meeting answered the unsuspicious good morrow of the great soldier whom he had been condemning, with the words, "There has been much talk of you in the council." Horrible greeting, which meant so much more than met the ear ! The Doge Gradenigo died little more than a year after the confusion and discomfiture of his adversaries. He was conveyed, without funeral honours or any of the respect usually shown to the dead, to S. Cipriano in Murano, where he was buried. " The usual funeral of princes was not given to him," says Caroldo, " perhaps because he was still under the papal excommunication, perhaps because, hated as he was by the people in his lifetime, it was feared that some riot would rise around him in his death." He who had carried out the serrata, and established the Council of Ten, and triumphed over all his personal opponents, had to skulk over the lagoon, privately, against all precedent, to his grave, leaving the state in unparalleled trouble and dismay. But he had crushed the rebel, whether patriot or con- spirator, and revolutionized Venice, which was work enough and success enough for one man. He died in August 1311, a year and some months after the banishment of Bajamonte and the end of his rebellion. CHAPTER V. THE DOGES DISGRACED. history of the two princes to whom Venice has -L given a lasting place in the annals of the unfortunate, those records which hold a surer spell over the heart than any of the more triumphant chronicles of fame, are of less material import to her own great story than those chapters of self development and self-construction which we have surveyed. But picturesque in all things and with a dramatic instinct which rarely fails to her race, the Republic even in the height of her vengeance, and by means of the deprivation which has banished his image from among those of her rulers, has made the name of the beheaded doge, Marino Faliero, one of the best known in all her records. We pass the row of pictured faces, many of them representing her greatest sons, till we come to the place where this old man is not, his absence being doubly suggestive and carrying a human interest beyond that of all fulfilled and perfect records. Nor is it without significance in the history of the state, that after having finally suppressed and excluded the popular element from all voice in its councils, the great oligarchy which had achieved its proud position by means of doge and people, should have applied itself to the less dangerous task of making a puppet of its nominal prince, converting him into a mere functionary and ornamental head of the state. ' i cu. v.] THE DOGES. 121 Such words have been applied often enough to the consti- tutional monarch of our own highly refined and balanced system, and it is usual to applaud the strict and honourable self-restraint of our English sovereign as the brightest of royal qualities : but these were strange to the mediaeval im- agination, which had little understanding of a prince who was no ruler. Whether it was in accordance with some tremendous principle of action secretly conceived in the minds of the men who had by a series of skilful and cautious movements made the parliament of Venice into an assembly of patricians, and then neutralised that assembly by the still more startling power of the Council of Ten- that this work was accomplished, it is impossible to tell. It is difficult indeed to imagine that such a plan could be carried from generation to generation tnough it might well be conceived, like Strafford's " Thorough," in the subtle intellect of some one far-seeing legislator. Probably the Venetian statesmen were but following the current, of a tendency such as serves all the purpose of a foregone deter- mination in many conjunctures of human affairs a tendency which one after another leader caught or was caught by, and which swept towards its logical conclusion innumerable kindred minds with something of the tragic cumulative force of those agencies of nature against which man can do so little. It was however a natural balance to the defeat of the people that the doge also should be defeated and bound. And from the earliest days of recognised statesmanship this had been the subject of continual effort, taking first the form of a jealous terror of dynastic succession, and gradually growing, through oaths more binding and pro- itiissioni more detailed and stringent, until at length the doge found himself less than the master, a little more than the slave, of those fluctuating yet consistent possessors of the actual power of the state, who had by degrees gathered the entire government into their hands. Marino Faliero had been an active servant of Venice 122 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAI-. through a long life. He had filled almost all the great offices which were entrusted to her nobles. He had gov- erned her distant colonies, accompanied her armies in that position of proveditore, omnipotent civilian critic of all the movements of war, winch so much disgusted the generals of the republic. He had been ambassador at the courts of both Emperor and Pope, and was serving his country in that capacity at Avignon when the news of his election reached him. It is thus evident that Faliero was not a man used to the position of a lay figure, although at seventy- six the dignified retirement of a throne, even when so encircled with restrictions, would seem not inappropriate. That he was of a haughty and hasty temper seems apparent. It is told of him that after waiting long for a bishop to head a procession at Treviso where he was podesta, he astonished the tardy prelate by a box on the ear when he finally ap- peared, a punishment for keeping the authorities waiting which the churchman would little expect. Old age to a statesman however is in many cases an advantage rather than a defect, and Faliero was young in vigour and character, and still full of life and strength. He was married a second time to presumably a beautiful wife much younger than himself, though the chroniclers are not agreed even on the subject of her name, whether she was a Gradenigo or a Contarini. The well-known story of young Steno's insult to this lady and to her old husband has found a place in all subsequent histories but there is no trace of it in the unpublished documents of the state. The story goes, that Michel Steno, one of those young and insubordinate gallants who are a danger to every aristocratic state, having been turned out of the presence of the dogaressa for some unseemly freedom of behaviour, wrote upon the chair of the doge in boyish petulance an insulting taunt, such as might well rouse a high-tempered old man to fury. Accord- ing to Sanudo, the young man on being brought before the Forty, confessed that he had thus avenged himself in a fit of v.] THE DOGES. 12,3 passion : and regard having been had to his age and the "heat of love " which had been the canse of his original misdemeanour (a reason seldom taken into account by the tribunals of the state) he was condemned to prison for two months, and afterwards to be banished for a year from Venice. The doge took this light punishment greatly amiss, considering it indeed as a further insult. Sabellico says not a word of Michel Steno, or of this definite cause of offence, and Romanin. quotes the contemporary records to show that though "Alcuni zovanelli, fioli de gentiluomini di Venetia " are supposed to have affronted the doge, 110 such story finds a place in any of them. But the old man thus translated from active life and power, soon became bitterly sensible in his new position that he was senza parentado, with few relations, and flouted by the giovinastri, the dis- solute young gentlemen who swaggered about the Broglio in their finery, strong in their support of fathers and uncles among the Forty or the Ten. That he found himself at the same time shelved in his new rank, powerless, and regarded as a nobody in the state where hitherto he had been a potent signior mastered in every action by the Secret Tribunal, and presiding nominally in councils where his opinion was of little consequence is evident. And a man so well acquainted and so long, with all the proceedings of the state, who had been entering middle age in the days of Bajamonte, who had seen consummated the shutting out of the people, and since had watched through election after election a gradual tightening of the bonds round the feet of the doge, would naturally have many thoughts when he found himself the wearer of that restricted and diminished crown. He could not be unconscious of how the stream was going, nor unaware of that gradual sapping of privilege and de- creasing of power which even in his own case had gone further than with his predecessor. Perhaps he had noted with an indignant mind the new limits of the promissione, a narrower charter than ever, when he was called upon to K 124 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CH.U>. sign it. He had no mind, we may well believe, to retire thus from the administration of affairs. And when these giovinastri, other people's boys, the scum of the gay world, flung their unsavoury jests in the face of the old man, who had no son to come after him, the silly insults so lightly uttered, so little thoiight of, the natural scoff of youth at old age, stung him to the quick. And it so happened that various complaints were at this moment presented to the doge in which his own cause of offence was repeated. A certain Barbaro, one of the reign- mg class, asking something at the arsenal of an old sailor, an admiral high in rank and in the love of the people, but not a patrician, who was not of his opinion, struck the officer on the cheek, and wounded him with a great ring he wore. A similar incident occurred between a Dandolo and another sea captain, Bertuccio Isarello ; and in both cases the injured men, old comrades very probably of Faliero, men whom he had seen representing the republic on stormy seas or boarding the Genoese galleys, carried their complaints to the doge. " Such evil beasts should be bound, and when they cannot be bound they are killed ! " cried one of the irritated seamen. Such words were not unknown to the Venetian echoes. Not long before, a wealthy citizen, who in his youth had been of Bajamonte's insurrection, had breathed a similar sentiment in the ears of another rich plebeian, after both had expressed their indignation that the consiglio was shut against them. The second man in this case betrayed the first ; and got the much-coveted admis- sion in consequeuce : he and his, while his friend made that fatal journey to the Piazzetta between the columns, from which no man ever came back. Old Faliero' s heart burned within him at his own injuries and those of his old comrades. How. he was induced to head the conspiracy, and put his crown, his life, and honour on the cast, there is no further information. His fierce tem- per, and the fact that he had no powerful house behind him v.J THE DOGES. 125 to help to support his case, probably made him reckless. It was in the April of 1355, only six months after his arrival in Venice as doge, that the smouldering fire broke out. As happened always, two of the conspirators were seized with a compunction on the eve of the catastrophe and betrayed the plot one with a merciful motive to serve a patrician he loved, the other with perhaps less noble intentions ; and without a blow struck the conspiracy collapsed. There was no real heart in it, nothing to give it consistence : the hot passion of a few men insulted, the variable gaseous excite- ment of those wronged commoners who were not strong enough or strenuous enough to make the cause triumph under Bajamonte ; and the ambition, if it was ambition, of one enraged and affronted old man, without an heir to follow him or anything that could make it worth his while to conquer. Did Faliero ever expect to conquer, one wonders, when he embarked at seventy-seven on such an enterprise 1 And if he had, what good could it have done him save vengeance upon his enemies 1 An enterprise more wild was never undertaken. It was the passionate stand of despair against a force so overwhelming as to make mad the helpless yet not submissive victims. The doge, who no doubt in former days had felt it to be a mere affair of the populace, a thing with which a noble ambassador and proveditore had nothing to do, a struggle beneath his notice, found himself at last, with fury and amazement, to be a fellow-sufferer caught in the same toils. There seems no reason to believe that Faliero consciously staked the remnant of his life on the forlorn hope of overcoming that awful and pitiless power, with any real hope of establishing his own supremacy. His aspect is rather that of a man betrayed by passion, and wildly forgetful of all possibility in his fierce attempt to free himself and get the upper hand. One cannot but feel, in that passion of helpless age and unfriendedness, some- thing of the terrible disappointment of one to whom the K 2 126 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. real situation of affairs had never been revealed before : who had come home triumphant to reign like the doges of old, and only after the ducal cap was on his head and the palace of the state had become his home, found out that the doge, like the unconsidered plebeian, had been reduced to bondage, his judgment and experience put aside in favour of the deliberations of a secret tribunal, and the very boys, when they were nobles, at liberty to jeer at his declining years. The lesser conspirators, all men of the humbler sort Calendario, the architect, who was then at work upon the palace, a number of seamen, and other little-known persons were hung, not like greater criminals, beheaded between the columns, but strung up, a horrible fringe along the side of the palazzo, beginning at the two red pillars now forming part of the loggia, then apparently supporting the arches over a window from which the doge was accustomed to be- hold the performances in the Piazza. The fate of Faliero himself is too generally known to demand description. Calmed by the tragic touch of fate, the doge bore all the humiliations of his doom with dignity, and was beheaded at the head of the stairs where he had sworn the promissione on first assuming the office of doge. (Not however it need hardly be said, at the head of the Giants' Staircase, which was not then in being.) What a contrast from that trium- phant day when probably be felt that his reward had come to him after the long and faithful service of years ! Death stills disappointment as well as rage : and Faliero is said to have acknowledged the justice of his sentence. He had never made any attempt to justify or defend himself, but frankly and at once avowed his guilt, and made no attempt to escape from its penalties. His body was conveyed privately to the church of SS. Giovanni and Paolo, the great " Zanipolo " with which all visitors to Venice are sc familiar, and was buried in secrecy and silence in the atrio of a little chapel behind the great To face page 126. NEAR THE SAXTI APOSTOLI. v.] THE DOGES. 127 church ; where no doubt for centuries the pavement was worn by many feet with little thought of who lay below. Even from that refuge in the course of these centuries his bones have been driven forth; but his name remains in that corner of the Hall of the Great Council which every- body has seen or heard of, and where, with a certain dramatic affectation, the painter-historians have painted a black veil across the vacant place. " This is the place of Marino Faliero, beheaded for his crimes," is all the record left of the doge disgraced. Was it a crime 1 The question is one which it is difficult to discuss with any certainty. That Faliero desired to establish, as so many had done in other cities, an indepen- dent despotism in Venice, seems entirely unproved. It was the prevailing fear, the one suggestion which alarmed everybody, and made sentiment unanimous. But one of the special points which are recorded by the chroniclers as working in him to madness, was that he was senza parentado, without any backing of relationship or allies sonless, with no one to come after him. How little likely, then, was an old man to embark on such a desperate venture for self- aggrandisement merely ! He had, indeed, a nephew who was involved in his fate, but apparently not so deeply as to expose him to the last penalty of the law. The incident altogether points more to a sudden outbreak of the rage and disappointment of an old public servant coming back from his weary labours for the state, in triumph and satis- faction to what seemed the supreme reward : and finding himself no more than a puppet in the hands of remorseless masters, subject to the scoffs of the younger generation supreme in no sense of the word, and with his eyes opened by his own suffering, perceiving for the first time what justice there was in the oft-repeated protest of the people, and how they and he alike were crushed under the iron heel of that oligarchy to which the power of the people and that of the prince was equally obnoxious. The chroniclers of 128 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. his time were so much at a loss to find any reason for such an attempt on the part of a man non abbiando alcum propinquo that they agree in attributing it to diaboli- cal inspiration. It was more probably that fury which springs from a sense of wrong, which the sight of the wrongs of others raised to frenzy, and that intolerable im- patience of the impotent which is more rash in its hopeless- ness than the greatest hardihood. He could not but die for it ; but there seems no more reason to characterise this impossible attempt as deliberate treason than to give the same name to many an alliance formed between prince and people in other regions the king and commons of our early Stuarts for one against the intolerable exactions and cruelty of an aristocracy too powerful to be faced by either alone. ARMS OF FALIEUO. FRANCESCO FOSCARI was a more innocent sufferer, and his story is a most pathetic and moving tale. Seventy years i MONUMENT OF THE DOCK MOCENIGO. v.] THE DOGES. 129 had elapsed since the dethronement and execution of Faliero, the fifteenth century was in its first quarter, and all the com- plications and crimes of that wonderful period were in full operation when the old Doge Tommaso Mocenigo on hi, s death-bed reviewed the probable competitors for his office, and warned the Republic specially against Foscari. The others were all men da bene, but Foscari was proud and deceitful, grasping and prodigal, and if they elected him they would have nothing but wars. He was at the same time, gravely adds one of the electors in the severe contest for his election, a man with a large family, and a young wife who added another to the number once a year ; and therefore was likely to be grasping and covetous so far as money was concerned. Notwithstanding these evil prognostications the reign of Foscari was a great one and full of important events. He fulfilled the prophecy of his predecessor in so far that war was perpetual in his time, and the Republic under him involved itself in all the contentions which tore Italy asun- der, and, joining with the Florentines against the victorious Lord of Milan, Fillipo Maria "Visconti, and having the good fortune to secure Carmagnola for its general, became in its turn aggressive, and conquered town after town, losing, re- taking, and in one or two instances securing permanently the sovereignty of great historic cities. The story of the great soldiers of fortune, which is to a large extent the story of the time, will be told in another chapter, and we need not attempt to discover what was the part of the doge in the tragedy of Carmagnola. From the limitations of the prince's power which we have indicated it will however be evident enough that neither in making war nor in the remorseless punishment of treach- ery, whether real or supposed, could the responsibility rest with the doge, who could scarcely be called even the most important member of the courts over which he presided. It is not until the end of his brilliant career that Francesco 130 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. Foscari separates himself from the roll of his peers in that tragic distinction of great suffering which impresses an image upon the popular memory more deeply than the great- est deeds can do. Notwithstanding the reference quoted above to the alarming increase of his family, there was left within a few years, of his five sons, but one, Jacopo, who was no soldier nor statesman, but an elegant young man of his time, full of all the finery, both external and internal, of the Renaissance, a Greek scholar and collector of manuscripts, a dilettante and leader of the golden youth of Venice, who Avere no longer as in the stout days of the republic trained to encounter the clang of arms and the uncertainties of the sea. The battles of Terra Fir-ma were conducted by mer- cenaries, under generals who made of war a costly and long-drawn- out game ; and the young nobles of the day haunted the Broglio under the arches of the palazzo, or schemed and chattered in the ante-chambers, or spread their gay plumes to the sun in festas and endless parties of plea- sure. When Jacopo Foscari was married the splendour of his marriage feast was such that even the gravest of historians, amid all the crowding incidents of the time, pauses to describe the wedding procession. A bridge was thrown across the canal opposite the Foscari Palace, over which passed a hun- dred splendid young cavaliers on horseback, making such a show as must have held all Venice breathless, caracolling cautiously over the temporary pathway not adapted for such passengers, and making their way, one does not quite under- stand how, clanging and sliding along the stony ways, up and down the steps of the bridges to the Piazza, where a tourna- ment was held in honour of the occasion. They were all in the finest of clothes, velvets and satins and cloth of gold, with wonderful calze, one leg white and the other red, and various braveries more fine than had ever been seen before. The bride went in all her splendour, silver brocade and jewels sparkling in the sun, in a beautiful and graceful procession of boats to San Marco. She was a Contarini, a v.] THE DOGES. 131 neighbour from one of the great palaces on the same side. The palace of the Foscari as it now stands in the turn of the canal ascending towards the Rialto, had just been rebuilt by Doge Francesco in its present form, and was the centre of all these festivities, the house of the bride being near, in the neighbourhood of San Barnaba. No doubt the hearts of the Foscari and all their retainers must have been up- lifted by the glories of a festa more splendid than had ever been given in Venice on such an occasion. But this brilliant sky soon clouded over. Only three years after Jacopo fell under suspicion of having taken bribes to promote the interests of various suitors, and to have obtained offices and pensions for them per broylio : that is to say in the endless schemes, consultations, exchanges, and social conspiracies of the general meeting-place, the Broglio, a name which stood for all the jobbing and backstairs influ- ences which flourish not less in republics than in despotisms. Against this offence when found out the laws were very severe, and Jacopo was sentenced to banishment to Naples, where he was to present himself daily to the representative of the republic there a curious kind of penalty according to our present ideas. Jacopo however fled to Trieste, where, happily for himself, he fell ill, and after some months was allowed to change his place of exile to Treviso, and finally on a pathetic appeal from the doge was pardoned and allowed to return to Venice. Three years afterwards however a fatal event occurred, the assassination of one of the Council of Ten who had con- demned Jacopo, Ermolao Donate, who was stabbed as he left the palace after one of its meetings. The evidence which connected Jacopo with this murder seems of the slightest. One of his servants, a certain Olivieri, met on the road to Mestre almost immediately after one of the house of Gritti, and being asked " what news " replied by an account of this assassination, a fact which it was barely possible he could have heard of by common report before he left Venice. 132 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. This was considered sufficient to justify the man's arrest and examination, by torture, which made him confess every- thing, Ganudo tells us. Jacopo, too, was exposed to this method of extorting the truth, but " because of his bodily weakness, and of some words of incantation employed by him, the truth could not be obtained from his mouth, as he only murmured between his teeth certain unintelligible words when undergoing the torture of the rack." In these cir- cumstances he had a mild sentence and was banished to the island of Candia. Here the exile, separated from all he loved and from all the refinements of the life he loved, was not long at rest. He took, according to one account, a singular and complicated method of further incriminating himself and thus procuring his return to Venice, if even to fresh examination and torture by writing a letter to the Duke of Milan, against whom the republic had fought so long, asking his intercession with the signoria, a letter which he never intended to reach the person to whom it was addressed, but only to induce the jealous council to whom it was artfully betrayed, to recall him for further question : which at least in the middle of whatever sufferings would give his impatient heart a sight of those from whom he had been separated. That it should have been possible even to invent such a story of him conveys a kind of revelation of the foolish, hot-headed yet tender-hearted being, vainly struggling among natures so much too strong for him which sheds the light of many another domestic tragedy upon this. The matter would seem however to have been more serious, though Roinanin's best investigations bring but very scanty proof of the graver accusation brought against the banished man : which was that of an attempt on Jacopo's part to gain his freedom by means of the Sultan and the Genoese, the enemies of the republic. The sole document given in proof of this is a letter written by the council to the Governor of Candia, in which the account of the attempt, given in his own communication to them, is v.] THE DOGES. 133 repeated in detail, of itself a somewhat doubtful proceeding. To say " You told us so and so," is seldom received as inde- pendent proof of alleged facts. There are, however, letters in cipher referred to, which may have given authentication to these accusations. Romanin, however, is so manifestly anxious to justify the authorities of Venice and to sweep away the romance which he declares to have gathered about these terrible incidents, that the reader can scarcely avoid a certain reaction of suspicion against the too great warmth of the defence. Some personal touches may no doubt have been added by adverse historians to heighten the picture. But it would be wiser for even the patriotic Venetian to admit that, at least three times in that cruel century in the case of the Carrari murdered in their prison, in that of Carmagnola beguiled into the cell from which he came out only to die, and in that of the unfortunate Foscari that remorseless and all-powerful Council of Ten, responsible to no man, without any safeguard even of publicity, who were too much feared to be resisted and all whose proceedings were wrapped in seeming impenetrability, stands beyond the possibility of defence. There are few historians who do not find it necessary to acknowledge at some points that the most perfect of human governments has failed : but this the Venetian enthusiast and all Venetians are enthusiasts is extremely reluctant to do. Poor Jacopo; with his weak mind and his weak body, and the lightness of nature which both friends and foes admitted, perhaps rejoicing in the success of his stratagem, perhaps troubled in the consciousness of guilt, but yet with a sort of foolish happiness anyhow in coming home, and hoping, as such sanguine people do, in some happy chance that might make all right, was brought back in custody of one of the Ten, a Loredano, the enemy of his house, who had been sent to fetch him. It would seem that when the unfortunate prisoner was brought before this awful tribunal, he con- fessed everything, de piano, says Sanudo, spontaneamente 134 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. adds Eoruanin, probably forgetting the horrible torture- chamber next door, which Jacopo had too good reason to remember, and to avoid which, this easy-going and light- minded sinner, intent only upon seeing once again those whom he loved, would be ready enough to say whatever their illustrious worships pleased. The stern Loredano would have had him beheaded between the columns ; but even the Ten and their coadjutors were not severe enough for that : and his sentence was only after all to be re-trans- ported to Candia and to spend a year in prison there a sentence which makes any real and dangerous conspiracy on his part very unlikely. When the sentence was given, his prayer to make which he had, as some say, thus risked his head that he might see his family, was laid before the court. The doge and all other relations had been during the proceedings against him excluded, according to the law, from the sittings of the Council : so that the statement that he was sentenced by his father is pure romance. His petition w r as granted, and father and mother, wife and children were permitted to visit the unfortunate. When the moment of farewell came, it was not in his prison, but in the apartments of the doge, that the last meeting took place. Poor Jacopo, always light-minded, never able apparently to persuade himself that all this misery was in earnest, and could not be put aside by the exertions of somebody, made yet one more appeal to his father in the midst of the sobs and kisses of the unhappy family. " Father, I beseech you make them let me go home," he said to the poor old doge, who knew too well how little he could do to help or succour. " Padre, vi prego procure per mi che ritorni a casa mia :" as if he had been a school-boy caught in some trifling offence, with that invincible igno- rance of the true meaning of things which the Catholic Church with fine human instinct acknowledges as a ground of salvation. But it is not an argument which tells with men. " Jacopo, go, obey the will of the country, and try v.] THE DOGES. 135 no more," said the doge with the simplicity of despair. No romance is needed to enhance the pathos of this scene. When the exile had departed pity would seem to have touched the hearts of various spectators, and by their exertions, six months later his pardon was obtained. But too late. Before the news could reach him the unhappy Jacopo had gone beyond the reach of all human recall. The aged doge, the father of this unfortunate young man, had been the head of the Venetian state through one of the most brilliant and splendid periods of its history. He had been always at war, as his predecessor had prophesied : but his wars had been often victorious for the Republic, and had added greatly, for the time at least, to her territories and dominion. Whether these acquisitions were of any real advantage to Venice is another question. They involved a constant expenditure of money such as is ruinous to most states, but the glory and the triumph were always delight- ful to her. Foscari had held the place of a great prince in the estimation of the world, and his life had been princely at home in every way that can affect the imagination and stimulate the pride of a nation ; he had received the greatest personages in Christendom, the emperors of the east and of the west, and entertained them royally to the gratification and pride of all Venice ; he had beautified the city with new buildings and more commodious streets, he had made feasts and pageants more magnificent than ever had been seen before. But for the last dozen years of this large, princely, and splendid life a cloud had come over all its glory arid prosperity. There are no lack of parallels to give the interested spectator an understanding of what a son such as Jacopo, so reckless, so light-minded, so incapable of any serious conception of the meaning of life and its risks and responsibilities, yet with so many claims in his facile, affectionate nature upon those who loved him must have been to the father, proud of his many gifts, bowed down by his follies, watching his erratic course with sicken- ing terrors, angry, tender, indignant, pitiful, concealing his 136 THE MAJvERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. own disappointment and misery in order to protect and excuse and defend the son who was breaking his heart. The spectacle is always a sad one, but never rare : and the anguish of the father's silent watch, never knowing what folly might come next, acutely feeling the fault and every reproof of the fault, his pride humbled, his name dis- graced, his every hope failing, but never the love that underlies all is one of the deepest which can affect humanity. Foscari was over seventy when this ordeal began. Perhaps he had foreseen it even earlier : but when he made that most splendid of feasts at his son's bridal, and saw him established with his young wife in the magnificent new palace, with his books and his manuscripts, his chival- rous and courtly companions, his Greek, the crown of accom- plishment and culture in his time, who could suppose that Jacopo would so soon be a fugitive and an exile ? The years between seventy and eighty are not those in which a man is most apt to brave the effects of prolonged anxiety and sorrow, and Foscari was eighty-four when, after the many vicissitudes of this melancholy story, he bade Jacopo go and bear his sentence and try no more to elude it. When the new s came six months after that his only son was dead dead far away and alone, among strangers, just when a troubled hope had arisen that he might come back, and be wiser another time the courage of the old doge broke down. He could no longer give his mind to the affairs of the state, or sit, a venerable image of sorrow, patience, and self-control, at the head of the court which had persecuted and hunted to the death his foolish, beloved boy. One can imagine how the very touch of the red robe of Loredano brushing by would burn to the heart of the old man who could not avenge him- self, but in whom even the stillness of his age and the habit of self-command could not take away the recollection that there stood the man who had voted death between the columns for poor Jacopo's follies ! Who could wonder that he forbore to attend their meetings, and that in the bitter- ness of his heart it seemed not worth while to go on appear- v.J THE DOGES. l.'!7 ing to fulfil an office, all the real power of which had boon taken from his hands 1 Thereupon there got up a low fierce murmur among the Ten ; not too rapidly developed. They waited a month or two, marking all his absences and slackness before gathering together to talk of matters secretissime concerning Messer o lo Doge : they said to each other that it was a great incon- venience to the state to have a doge incapable of attending the councils and looking after the affairs of the republic : and that it was full time they should have a zonta or junta of nobles to help them to discuss the question. The law- had been that in case of the absence (which often happened on state affairs) or illness of the doge, a vice-doge should be elected in his place ; but of this regulation no heed was taken, and the issue of their deliberations was that a deputa- tion should be sent to the doge to desire him " spontaneamente e libramente " to resign his office. Foscari had more than once in his long tenure of office proposed to retire, but his attempt at resignation had never been received by the Council. It is one thing to make such an offer, and quite another to have it proposed from outside : and when the deputation suddenly appeared in the sorrowful chamber where the old man sat retired, he refused to give them any immediate answer. For one thing it was not their business to make such a demand, the law requiring that the Consiglio Maggiore should be consulted, and should at least agree in, if not originate, so important an act. But the Ten had per- haps gone too far to draw back, and when the deputation returned without a definite reply, the ceremonial of waiting for the spontaneous and free dimission of the disgraced prince was thrown aside, and an intimation was made to him that his resignation was a matter of necessity, and that if within eight days he had not left the palace his property would be confiscated. When this arbitrary message was conveyed to him the old man attempted no further resistance. His ducal ring was drawn from his finger and broken to pieces in the presence of the deputation who had brought him these final 138 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [. IUP. orders, headed by his enemy Loredauo not, says the apolo- getic historian, because he was Foscari's enemy, which was a cruelty the noble Ten were incapable of, but because he was, after Foscari himself, the finest orator of the republic and most likely to put things in a good light ! The ducal cap with its circlet of gold, the historical Corno, was taken from his tremulous old head, and a promise extracted that he would at once leave the palace. The following incident is too touching not to be given in the words quoted by Romanin from the unpublished chronicles of Delfino. As the procession of deputies filed away, the discrowned doge saw one of them, Jacopo Memmo, one of the heads of the Forty, look at him with sympathetic and compassionate eyes. The old man's heart, no doubt, was full, and a longing for human fellowship must have been in him still. He called the man who gave him that friendly look and took him by the hand. " l Whose son art thou ? " (It is the Venetian vernacular that is used, not ceremonious Italian, " Di chi es tu no? ") I answered, " I am the son of Mariu Memmo." To which the doge " He is my dear friend ; tell him from me that it would be sweet to me if he would come and pay me a visit, and go with me in my bark for a little pleasure. We might go and visit the monasteries." It is difficult to read this simple narrative without a sympa- thetic tear. Despoiled of the vestments of his office which he had worn for thirty-four years, amid all the magnificence of one of the richest and most splendid states in the world, the old man pauses with a tremulous smile more sad than weeping, to make his last gracious invitation, the habit of his past sovereignty exercised once more, at once with sorrow- ful humour, and that wistful turning to old friends which so often comes with trouble. If it had ever been accom- 1 " Di chi es tu fio ? Rispose, lo son figlio di Messere Marin Memmo. Al chi il doxe, L'e mio caro compagno ; dilli da mia parte che avero caro ch'el mi vegna a visitar, accio el vegna con mi in barca a solazzo : andaremo a visitare i monastieri." v.] THE DOGES. 13! plished, what a touching party of pleasure ! the two old ruen in their barca going forth a solazzo, making their way across the shining waters to San Giorgio, perhaps as far as San Servolo if the weather were fine : for it was October, and no time to be lost before the winter set in for the two old companions, eighty and more. But that voyage of pleasure never was made. The same clay the doge left the palace where he had spent so many years of glory and so many of sorrow, accompanied by his old brother Marco, and followed sadly by his house- hold and relations. " Serenissimo," said Marco Foscari, " it is better to go to the boat by the other stair, which is covered." But the old doge held on in the direction he had first taken. " I will go down by the same stair which I came up when I was made doge," he said, much as Faliero had done. And then the mournful procession rode away along the front of the palace, past all ^he boats that lay round the dogana, between the lines of great houses on either side of the canal, to the new shining palace scarcely faded from its first splendour where Jacopo sixteen years before had taken his bride. The house that has seen so many generations since and vicissitudes of life still stands there at its corner, the water sweeping round two sides of it, and the old gate- way, merlato, in its ancient bravery, on the smaller canal behind. This was on the 24th October, 1357. The new doge was elected on the 31st, and on the 1st November Francesco Foscari died. The common story goes that the sound of the bell which announced the entry of his successor was the old man's final death blow, but it is unnecessary to add this somewhat coarse touch of popular effect to the pathetic story. The few days which elapsed between the two events were not too much for the operation of dying, which is sel- dom accomplished in a moment. When the new prince and his court assembled in San Marco on All Saints' Day to mass, Andrea Donato, the old doge's son-in-law, came in and announced, no doubt with a certain solemn satisfaction L 2 140 THE MAKERS OF VEXICK. [C'H. V. and consciousness of putting these conspirators for ever in the wrong, the death of Foscari. The councillors who had pursued him to his end looked at each other mute, with eyes, let us hope, full of remorse and shame. And he had a magnificent funeral, which is always so easy to bestow. The Corno was taken again from the head of the new doge to be put on the dead brows of the old, and he lay in state in the hall from which he had been expelled a week before, and was carried, with every magnificence the republic could give, to the noble church of the Frari, with tapers burning all the way, and every particular of solemn pomp that custom authorised. There he lies under a weight of sculptured marble, his sufferings all over for five hundred years and more ; but never the story of his greatness, his wrongs, and sorrows, which last gave him such claims upon the recollection of mankind as no magnificence nor triumph can bestow ARMS OF FOSCARI. DEPARTURE OF MARCO POLO : FROM AN ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT IN THE BODLEIAN. PART II. BY SEA AND BY LAND. CHAPTER I. THE TRAVELLERS : NICCOLO, MATTED, AND MARCO POLO. IN the middle of the thirteenth century, two brothers of the Venetian family of Polo, established for a long time in the parish of San Giovanni Grisostomo, carrying on their business in the midst of all the tumults of the times as if there had been nothing but steady and peaceful commerce in the world, were at the head of a mercantile house at Constantinople, probably the branch establishment of some great counting-house at Venice. These seem prosaic 142 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [.HAP. terms to use in a story so full of adventure and romance ; yet no doubt they represent, as adequately as the changed aspect of mercantile life allows, the condition of affairs under which Niccolo and Matteo Polo exei-cised their vocation in the great Eastern capital of the world. Many Venetian merchants had established their warehouses and pursued the operations of trade in Constantinople in the security which the repeated treaties and covenants fre- quently referred to in previous chapters had gained for them, and which, under whatsoever risks of convulsion and rebellion, they had held since the days when first a Vene- tian Bailo an officer more powerful than a consul, with something like the rights and privileges of a governor was settled in Constantinople. But the ordinary risks were much increased at the time when the Latin dynasty was drawing near its last moments, and Paleologus was thun- dering at the gates. The Venetians were on the side of the falling race : their constant rivals the Genoese had taken that of the rising : and no doubt the position was irksome as well as dangerous to those who had been the favoured nation, and once the conquerors and all-potent rulers of the great capital of the East. Many of the bolder spirits would no doubt be urged to take an active part in the struggle which was going on : but its effect upon Niccolo and Matteo Polo was different. The unsatisfactory state of affairs prompted them to carry their merchandise further East, where they had, it is supposed, already the standing-ground of a small establishment at Soldachia, on the Crimean peninsula. Perhaps, however, it is going too far to suppose that the commotions in Constantinople, and not some previously arranged expedition with milder motives, determined the period of their departure. At all events the dates coincide. The two brothers set out in 1260, when the conflict was at its height, and all the horrors of siege and sack were near at hand. They left behind them, it would appear, an i.] BY SEA AND BY LAND. 14:5 elder brother still at the head of the family counting-house at Constantinople and taking with them an easily carried stock of jewels, went forth upon the unknown but largely inhabited world of Central Asia, full, as they Avere aware, of wonders of primitive manufacture, carpets and rich stuffs, ivory and spices, furs and leather. The vast dim empires of the East, where struggles and conquests had been going on, more tremendous than all the wars of Europe, though under the veil of distance and barbarism uncompreheiided by the civilised world, had been vaguely revealed by the messengers of Pope Innocent IT., and had helped the Crusaders at various points against their enemies the Saracens. But neither they nor their countries were otherwise known when these two merchants set out. They plunged into the unknown from Soldachia, crossing the Sea of Azof, or travelling along its eastern shores, and working their way slowly onward, sometimes lingering in the tents of a great chief, sometimes arrested by a bloody war which closed all passage, made their way at last to Bokhara, where all further progress seemed at an end, and where they remained three years, unable either to advance or to go back. Here, however, they had the good fortune to be picked up by certain envoys on their way to the court of "the Great Khan, the lord of all the Tartars in the world" sent by the victorious prince who had become master of the Levant, to that distant and mysterious potentate. These ambassadors, astonished to see the Frankish travel- lers so far out of the usual track, invited the brothers to join them, assuring them that the Great Khan had never seen any Latins, and would give them an eager welcome. "With this escort the two Venetians travelled far into the depths of the unknown land until they reached the city of Kublai Khan, that great prince shrouded in distance and mystery, whose name has been appropriated by poets and dreamers : but who takes immediate form and shape in the brief and abrupt narrative of his visitors, as a most cour- 144 THE MAKERS ( >E VENICE. [THAI-. teous and gentle human being, full <->f endless curiosity and interest in all the wonders which these sons of Western civilisation could tell him. The Great Khan received them with the most royal courtesy, and questioned them closely about their laws and rulers, and still more about their religion, which seems to have excited the imagination and pleased the judgment of this calmly impartial inquirer. No doubt the manners and demeanour of the Venetians, devout Catholics in all the fervour habitual to their age and city, recommended their faith. So much interested indeed was the Tartar prince that he determined to seek for himself and his people moi-e authoritative teaching, and to send his merchant visitors back with a petition to this purpose addressed to the pope. No more important mission was ever entrusted to any ambassadors. They were com- missioned to ask from the head of the Church a hundred missionaries to convert the Tartar multitudes to Chris- tianity. These were to be wise persons acquainted with the " Seven Arts," well qualified to discuss and convince all men by force of reason that the idols whom they wor- shipped in their houses were things of the devil, and that the Christian law was better than those, all evil and false, which they followed. And above all, adds the simple narrative, " he charged them to bring back with them some of the oil from the lamp which burns before the sepulchre of Christ at Jerusalem." The letters which were to be the credentials of this embassy were drawn out "in the Turkish language," in all likelihood by the Venetians themselves : and a Tartar chief r " one of his barons," was commissioned by the Great Khan to accompany them : he, however, soon shrank from the fatigues and perils of the journey. The Poli set out carry- ing with them a royal warrant, inscribed on a tablet of gold, commanding all men wherever they passed to serve and help them on their way. Notwithstanding this, it took them three years of travel, painful and complicated, before i.] BY SEA AND BY LAND. 145 they reached Acre on their homeward or rather Home- ward journey. There they heard, to their consternation, that the pope was dead. This was terrible news for the ambassadors, who doubtless felt the full importance of their mission. In their trouble they appealed to the highest ecclesiastic near, the pontifical legate in Egypt, who heard their story with great interest, but pointed out to them that the only thing they could do was to wait till a new pope was elected. This suggestion seems to have satisfied their judgment, although the conflict over that election must have tried any but a very robust faith. The Poli then concluded an idea which does not seem to have struck them before that having thus certain time vacant on their hands, they might as well employ it by going to see their family in Venice. They had quitted their home apparently some fifteen years before, Niccolo having left his wife there, who gave birth to a son after his departure and subsequently died : Colonel Yule suggests that the wife was dead before Niccolo left Venice, which would have given a certain explanation of the slight interest he showed in revisiting his native city. But at all events the brothers went home ; and Niccolo found his child, whether born in his absence or left behind an infant, grown into a sprightly and interesting boy, no doubt a delightful discovery. They had abundant time to renew their acquaintance with all their ancient friends and associations, for months went by and still no pope was elected, nor does there seem to have been any ecclesiastical authority to whom they could deliver their letters. Probably, in that time, any enthusiasm the two traders may have had for the great work of converting those wild and wonderful regions of the East had died away. Indeed, the project does not seem to have moved any one save to a passing wonder ; and all ecclesiastical enterprises were apparently suspended while conclave after conclave assembled and no result was attained. At length the brothers began to tire of inaction, and to- 146 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. remember that through all those years of silence Kublai Khan was looking for them, wondering perhaps what delayed their coming, perhaps believing that their return home had driven all their promises from their memory, and that they had forgotten him and his evangelical desires. Stirred by this thought, they determined at last to return to their prince, and setting out, accompanied by young Marco, Niccolo's son, they went to Acre, where they betook themselves once more to the pious legate, Tebaldo di Piacenza, whom they had consulted on their arrival. They first asked his leave to go to Jerusalem to fetch the oil from the holy lamp, the only one of the Great Khan's com- missions which it seemed possible to carry out ; and then, Avith some fear apparently that their word might not be believed, asked him to give them letters, certifying that they had done their best to fulfil their errand, and had failed only in consequence of the strange fact that there was no pope to whom their letters could be delivered. Provided with these testimonials they started on their long journey, but had only got as far as Lagos, on the coast of the then kingdom of Armenia, which was their point of entrance upon the wild and immense plains which they had to traverse, when the news followed them that the pope was at last elected, and "was no other than their friend, the legate Tebaldo. A messenger, requesting their return to Acre, soon followed, and the brothers and young Marco returned with new hopes of a successful issue to their mission. But the new pope, Gregory X., though he received them with honour and great friendship, had not apparently a hundred wise men to give them, nor the means of sending out a little Christian army to the conquest of heathenism. All that he could do for them was to send with them two brothers of the order of S. Dominic, frail predicatori, to do what they could towards that vast work. But when the Dominicans heard that war had broken out in Armenia, and that they had to encounter not only a i.j BY SEA AND BY LAND. 147 fatiguing journey but all the perils of perpetual fighting along their route, they went no further than that port of Lagos beyond which lay the unknown. The letters of privilege, indulgences, no doubt, and grants of papal favour to be distributed among the Tartar multitude, they trans- ferred hastily to the sturdy merchants who were used to fighting as to most other dangerous things, and had no fear and ignominiously took their flight back to the accustomed and known. It is extraordinary, looking back upon it, to think of the easy relinquishment of such a wonderful chance as this would seem to have been. Pope and priests were all occupied with their own affairs. It was of more im- portance in their eyes to quell the Ghibellines than to convert and civilise the Tartars. And perhaps, considering that even an infallible pope is but a man, this was less wonderful than it appears : for Kublai Khan was a long way off, and very dim and undiscernible in his unknown steppes and strange primeval cities whereas the emperor and his supporters were close at hand, and very sensible thorns in consecrated flesh. It seems somewhat extra- ordinary however that no young monk or eager preacher caught fire at the suggestion of such an undertaking. Some fifty years before Fra Francisco from Assisi, leaving his new order and all its cares, insisted upon being sent to the Soldan to see whether he could not forestall the Crusaders and make all the world one, by converting that noble infidel which seemed to him the straightforward and simple thing to do. If Francis had but been there with his poor brothers, vowed to every humiliation, the lovers of poverty, what a mission for them ! a crusade of the finest kind, with every augury of success, though all the horrors of the steppes, wild winters and blazing summers, and swollen streams, and fighting tribes lay in their way. And had the hundred wise men ever been gathered together, what a pilgrimage for minstrel to celebrate and story-teller 148 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [.HAP, to write, a new expedition of the saints, a holier Israel in the desert ! But nothing of the kind came about. The two papal envoys, who had been the first to throw light upon those kingdoms beyond the desert, had no successors in the later half of the century. And with only young Marco added to their band, the merchant brothers returned, perhaps a little ashamed of their Christian rulers, perhaps chiefly interested about the reception they would meet with, and whether the great Kublai would still remember his luckless ambassadors. The journey back occupied once more three years and a half. It gives us a strange glimpse into the long intervals of silence habitual to primitive life to find that these mes- sengers, without means of communicating any information of their movements to their royal patron, were more than eight years altogether absent on the mission, from which they returned with so little success. In our own days their very existence would probably have been forgotten in such a long lapse of interest. Let us hope that the holy oil from the sepulchre, the only thing Christianity could send to the inquiring heathen, was safely kept, in some precious bottle of earliest glass from Murano, or polished stone less brittle than glass, through all the dangers of the journey. Thus the Poli disappeared again into the unknown for many additional years. Letters were not rife anywhere in those days, and for them, lost out of the range of civilisa- tion, though in the midst of another full and busy world, with another civilisation, art, and philosophy of its own, there was no possibility of any communication with Venice or distant friends. It is evident that they sat very loose to Venice, having perhaps less personal acquaintance with the city than most of her merchant adventurers. Niccolo and Matteo must have gone to Constantinople while still young and Marco was but fifteen when he left the lagoons. They had apparently no ties of family tenderness to call them back, and custom and familiarity had made the i.] BY SEA AND BY LAND. 149 strange world around, and the half savage tribes, and the primitive court with its barbaric magnificence, pleasant and interesting to them. It was nearly a quarter of a century before they appeared out of the unknown again. By that time the Casa Polo in San Grisostomo had ceased to think of its absent members. In all likelihood they had no very near relations left. Father and mother would be dead long ago : the elder brother lived and died in Constan- tinople : and there was no one who looked with any warm expectation for the arrival of the strangers. When there suddenly appeared at the gate of the great family house full of cousins and kinsmen one evening in the year 1295, about twenty-four years after their departure, three wild and travel-worn figures, in coats of coarse homespun like those worn by the Tartars, the sheep-skin collars mingling with the long locks and beards of the wearers, their complexions dark with exposure, their half-forgotten mother tongue a little uncertain on their lips who could believe that these were Venetian gentlemen, members of an important family in the city which had forgotten them 1 The three unknown personages arrived suddenly, without any warning, at their ancestral home. One can imagine the commotion in the courtyard, the curious gazers who would come out to the door, the heads that would gather at every window, when it became known through the house that these wild strangers claimed to belong to it, to be in some degree its masters, the long disappeared kinsmen whose portion perhaps by this time had fallen into hands very unwilling to let it go. The doorway which still exists in the Corte della Sabbionera, in the depths of the cool quadrangle, with its arch of Byzantine work, and the cross above which every visitor in Venice may still see when he will, behind San Grisostomo, is, as tradition declares, the very door at which the travellers knocked and parleyed. The house was then according to the most authentic account we have, that of Ramusio un bellissimo e molto alto palazzo. Absolute authenticity it 150 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. is perhaps impossible to claim for the story. But it was told to Rarnusio, who flourished in the fifteenth century, by an old man, a distinguished citizen who, and whose race, had been established for generations in the same parish in DOORWAY, MARCO POLO'S HOUSE. the immediate vicinity of the Casa Polo, and who had heard it from his predecessors there, a very trustworthy source of information. The family was evidently well off and important, and, in all probability, noble. " In those days," says Colonel Yule, making with all his learning i.j BY SEA AND BY LAND. 151 a mistake for ouce, " the demarcation between patrician and non-patrician at Venice, where all classes shared in commerce, all were (generally speaking) of one race, and where there were neither castles, domains, nor trains of horsemen, formed no very wide gulf." This is an astound- ing statement to make in the age of Bajamoiite's great conspiracy: but as Marco Polo is always spoken of as noble, no doubt his family belonged to the privileged class. The heads of the house gathered to the door to question the strange applicants, " for, seeing them so transfigured in countenance and disordered in dress, they could not believe that these were those of the Ca' Polo who had been believed dead for so many and so many years." The strangers had great trouble even to make it understood who they claimed to be. " But at last these three gentlemen conceived the plan of making a bargain that in a certain time they should so act as to recover their identity and the recognition of their relatives, and honour from all the city." The expedient they adopted again reads like a scene out of the Arabian Nights. They invited all their relatives to a great banquet which was prepared with much magnifi- cence "in the same house," says the story-teller : so that it is evident they must already have gained a certain credence from their own nearest relations. When the hour fixed for the banquet came, the following extraordinary scene occurred : "The three came out of their chamber dressed in long robes of crimson satin, according to the fashion of the time, \vhich touched the ground. And when water had been offered for their hands, they placed their guests at table, and then taking off their satin robes put on rich damask of the same colour, ordering in the meanwhile that the first should be divided among the servants. Then after eating some- thing (no doubt a first course), they rose from table and again changed their dress, putting on crimson velvet, and giving as before the damask robes to the servants, and at the end of the repast they did the same with the velvet, putting on garments of ordinary cloth such as their guests wore. The persons invited were struck dumb with astonishment at these proceedings. And when the servants had left the hall, Messer Marco, the youngest, rising from the table, went into 152 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. '.HAP. his chamber and brought out the thm 1 coarse cloth smvoats in \vhicli they had come home. And immediately tin- three began with sharp knives to cut open the seams, and tear oil' the lining, upon which there poured forth a great quantity of precious stones, rubies, sapphires, carbuncles, diamonds, and emeralds, which had been sewed into each coat with great care, so that nobody could have suspected that anything was there. For on parting with the Great Khan they had changed all the wealth he bestowed upon them into precious stones, knowing certainly that if they had done otherwise they never could by so long and difficult a road have brought their property home in safety. The exhibition of such an extraordinary and infinite treasure of jewels and precious stones which covered the table, once more filled all present with such astonishment that they were dumb and almost beside them- selves with surprise : and they at once recognised these honoured and venerated gentlemen of the Ca' Polo, whom at first they had doubted, and received them with the greatest honour and reverence. And when the story was spread abroad in Venice, the entire city, both nobles and people, rushed to the house to embrace them, and to make every demonstration of loving kindness and respect that coidd be imagined. And Messer Matteo, who was the eldest, was created one of the most honoured magistrates of the city, and all the youth of Venice resorted to the house to visit Messer Marco, who was most humane and gracious, and to put questions to him about Cathay and the Great Khan, to which he made answer with so much benignity and courtesy that they all remained his debtors. And because in the continued repetition of his story of the grandeur of the Great Khan he stated the revenues of that prince to be from ten to fifteen millions in gold, and counted all the other wealth of the country always in millions, the surname was given -him of Marco Millione, which may be seen noted in the public books of the republic. And the courtyard of his house from that time to this has been vulgarly called the Corte Millione." It is scarcely possible to imagine that the narrator of the above wonderful story was not inspired by the keenest humorous view of human nature and perception of the character of his countrymen when he so gravely describes the effectual arguments which lay in the gioie preciosissime, the diamonds and sapphires which his travellers had sewed up in their old clothes, and which according to all the laws of logic were exactly fitted to procure their recognition " as honoured and venerated gentlemen of the Ca' Polo." The scene is of a kind which has always found great acceptance in primitive romance : the cutting asunder of the laden garments, the ripping up of their seams, the drawing forth of one precious little parcel after another amid the wonder and exclamations of the gazing spectators, are all familiar i.] BY SEA AND BY LAND. 15S incidents in traditionary story. But in the present case this was a quite reasonable and natural manner of convey- ing the accumulations of a long period through all the perils of a three years' journey from far Cathay ; and there is nothing at all unlikely in the miraculous story, which no doubt would make a great impression upon the crowded surrounding population, and linger, an oft-repeated tale, in the alleys about San Giovanni Grisostomo and along tho Rio, where everybody knew the discreet and sensible family which had the wit to recognise and fall upon the necks of their kinsmen, as soon as they knew how rich they were. The other results that ensued the rush of golden youth to see and visit Marco, who, though no longer young, was the young man of the party, and their questions, and the jeer of the new mocking title Marco Millione follow the romance with natural human incredulity and satire and laughter. It is true, and proved by at least one public document, that the gibe grew into serious use, and that even the gravest citizens forgot after a time that Marco of the Millions was not the traveller's natural and sober name. There was at least one other house of the Poli in Venice, and perhaps there were other Marcos from whom it was well to distinguish him of San Grisostomo. It would seem clear enough however, from this, that these travellers' tales met with the fate that so often attends the marvellous narratives of an explorer. Marco's Great Khan, far away in the distance as of another world, the barbarian purple and gold of Kublai's court, the great cities out of all mortal ken, as the young men in their mirth supposed, the incredible wonders that peopled that remote and teeming darkness, which the primitive imagination could not believe in as forming part of its own narrow little universe must have kept one generation at least in amuse- ment. No doubt the sunbrowned traveller had all that desire to instruct and surprise his hearers which came natural to one who knew so much more than they, and M 154 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [THAI-. was capable of being endlessly drawn out by any group of young idlers who might seek his company. They would thread their way through the labyrinth of narrow passages with all their mediaeval bravery, flashing along in parti- coloured hose and gold-embroidered doublets on their way from the Broglio to get a laugh out of Messer Marco who was always so ready to commit himself to some new prodigy. But after awhile the laugh died out in the grave troubles that assailed the republic. The most dreadful war that had ever arisen between Venice and Genoa had raged for some time, through various vicissitudes, when the city at last determined to send out such an expedition as should at once overwhelm all rivalry. This undertaking stirred every energy among the population, and both men and money poured in for the service of the commonwealth. There may not be any authentic proof of Colonel Yule's suggestion, that Marco Polo fitted out, or partially fitted out, one of the boats, and mounted his own flag at the masthead, when it went into action. But the family were assessed at the value of one or more galleys, and he was certainly a volunteer in the fleet, a defender of his country in the terrible warfare which was draining all her resources. The battle of Curzola took place in September, 1298, and it ended in a complete and disastrous defeat for the Venetians. Of the ninety-seven galleys which sailed so bravely out of Venice, only seventeen miserable wrecks found refuge in the shelter of the lagoons, and the admiral and the greater part of the survivors, men shamed and miserable, were carried prisoners to Genoa with every demonstration of joy and tri- umph. The admiral, as has already been said, was chained to his own mast in barbarous exultation, but managed to escape from the triumph of his enemies by dashing his head against the timber, and dying thus before they reached port. Marco Polo was among the ranlc and file who do not permit themselves such luxuries. Among all the wonderful i.J BY SEA AND BY LAND. 1T.5 things lie had seen, he could never have seen a sight at once so beautiful and so terrible as the great semicircle of the Bay of Genoa, crowded with the exultant people, gay with every kind of decoration, and resounding with ap- plause and excitement when the victorious galleys with their wretched freight sailed in. No doubt in the Tartar wastes he had longed many a time for intercourse witli his fellows, or even to see the face of some compatriot or Christian amid all the dusky faces and barbaric customs of the countries he had described. But now what a revelation to him must have been the wild passion and savage delight of those near neighbours with but the width of a European peninsula between them, and so much hatred, rancour, and fierce antagonism ! Probably however Marco, having been born to hate the Genoese, was occupied by none of these sentimental reflections ; and knowing how he himself and all his countrymen would have cheered and shouted had Doria been the victim instead of Dandolo, took his dungeon and chains, and the intoxication of triumph with which he and his fellow prisoners were received, as matters of course. He lay for about a year, as would appear, in this Genoese prison ; and here, probably for the first time, his endless tales of the wonders he had seen and known first fulfilled the blessed office of story-telling, and became to the crowded prison a fountain of refreshment and new life. To all these unfortunate groups, wounded, sick, especially sick for home, humiliated and forlorn, with scarcely anything wanting to complete the round of misery, what a solace in the tedium of the dreary days, what a help to get through the lingering time, and forget their troubles for a moment, must have been this companion, burned to a deeper brown than even Venetian suns and seas could give, whose memory was inexhaustible, who day by day had another tale to tell, who set before them new scenes, new people, a great, noble open-hearted monarch, and all the quaint habits and modes of living, not of one, but of a hundred tribes and nations. M 2 Io6 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. all different, endless, original ! All the poor expedients to make the time pass, such games as they might have, such exercises as were possible, even the quarrels which must have risen to diversify the flat and tedious hours, could bear no comparison with this fresh source of entertainment. the continued story carried on from day to day, to which the cramped and weary prisoner might look forward as he stretched his limbs and opened his eyes to a new unwelcome morning. If any one among these prisoners remembered then the satire of the golden youth, the laughing nickname of the Millione, he had learned by that time what a public- benefactor a man is who has something to tell : and the traveller who perhaps had never found out how he had been laughed at had thus the noblest revenge. Among all these wounded, miserable Venetians however there was one whose presence there was of more immediate importance to the world a certain Pisan, an older inhabit- ant than they of these prisoners, a penniless derelict, for- gotten perhaps of his own city, with nobody to buy him out Rusticiano, a poor poetaster, a rusty brother of the pen, who had written romances in his day, and learned a little of the craft of authorship. What a wonderful treasure was this fountain of strange story for a poor mediaeval literary man to find in his dungeon ! The scribbler seems to have seized at once by instinct upon the man who for once in his life could furnish him with something worth telling. Rusticiano saw his opportunity in a moment with an exultation which he could not keep to himself. It was not in his professional nature to refrain from a great fan- fare and flourish, calling upon heaven and earth to listen. " Signori imperatori e re, duchi e marchesi, conti, cavalieri, j'inci}ri, baroni," he cries out, as he did in his romances. " Oh, emperors and kings, oh, dukes, princes, marquises, barons and cavaliers, and all who delight in knowing the different races of the world, and the variety of countries, take this book and read it ! " This was the proper way, 1. 1 BY SEA AND BY LAND. 157 ad-cording to all his rules, to present himself to the public. He makes his bow to them like a showman in front of his menagerie. He knows, too, the language in which to catch the ear of all these fine people, so that every noble may desire to have a copy of this manuscript to cheer his house- hold in the lingering winter, or amuse the poor women at their embroidery while the men are at the wars. For, according to all evidence, what the prisoner of Pisa took down from the lips of the Venetian in the dungeons of Genoa was written by him in curious antique French, corrupted a little by Italian idioms, the most universal of all the languages of the Western world. Nothing can be more unlike than those flourishes of Rusticiano by way of preface, and the simple strain of the unvarnished tale when Messer Marco himself begins to speak. And the circum- stance of these two Italians employing another living language in which to tell their wonderful story is so curious that many other theories have been set forth on the subject, though none which are accepted by the best critics as worthy of belief. One of the earliest of these, liamusio, pronounces strongly in favour of a Latin version. Marco had told his stories over and over again, this historian says, with such effect that " seeing the great desire that everybody had to hear about Cathay and the Great Khan, and being compelled to begin again every day, he was advised that it would be well to commit it to writing "- which was done by the dignified medium of a Genoese gentleman, who took the trouble to procure from Venice all the notes which the three travellers had made of their journeys : and then compiled in Latin, according to the custom of the learned, a continuous narrative. But the narrative itself and everything that can be discovered about it are wholly opposed to this theory. There is not the slightest appearance of notes worked into a permanent record. The story has evidently been taken down from the lips of a somewhat discursive speaker, with all the breath 158 THE MAKERS < >F VENICE. [CHAP and air in it of oral discourse. "This is enough upon that matter ; now I will tell you of something else." " Now let us leave the nation of Mosul and I will tell you about the great city of Baldoc." So the tale goes on, with interrup- tions, with natural goings back "But lirst I must tell you "Now we will goon with the other." AVhile we read we seem to sit, one of the eager circle, listening to the story of these wonderful unknown places, our interest quickened here and there by a legend some illustration of the prolonged conflict between heathen and Christian, or the story of some prodigy accomplished : now that of a grain of mustard-seed which the Christians were defied to make into a tree, now a curious Eastern version of the story of the Three Magi. These episodes have all the characteristics of the ordinary legend ; but the plain and simple story of what Messer Marco saw and heard, and the ways of the unknown populations among whom he spent his youth, are like nothing but what they are a narrative of facts, with no attempt to throw any fictitious interest or charm about them. No doubt the prisoners liked the legends best, and the circle would draw closer, and the looks become more eager, when the story ran of Prester John and Genghis Khan, of the Old Man of the Mountain, or of how the Calif tested the faith of the Christians. When all this began to be committed to writ- ing, when Rusticiano drew his inkhorn, and pondered his French, with a splendour of learning and wisdom which no doubt appeared miraculous to the spectators, and the easy narrative flowed on a sentence at a time, with half-a-dozen eager critics ready no doubt to remind the raconteur if he varied a word of the often told tale, what an interest for that melancholy crowd ! How they must have peered over each other's shoulders to see the miraculous manuscript, with a feeling of pleased complacency as of a wonderful thing in which they themselves had a hand ! No doubt it was cold in Genoa in those sunless dungeons the weary i.] BY SEA AND BY LAND. i5'-> winter through ; but so long as Messer Marco went on with his stories and he of Pisa wrote, with his professional artifices, and his sheet of vellum on his knee, what endless entertainment to beguile dull care away ! The captivity lasted not more than a year, and our traveller returned home, to where the jest still lingered about the man with the millions, and no one mentioned him without a smile. He would not seem to have disturbed himself about this indeed, after that one appearance as a fighting man, with its painful consequences, he would seem to have retired to his home as a peaceful citizen, and awoke no echoes any more. He might perhaps be dis- couraged by the reception his tale had met with, even though there is no evidence of it ; or perhaps that tacit assent to a foolish and wrong popular verdict, which the instructors of mankind so often drop into, with a certain indulgent contempt as of a thing not worth their while to contend against, was in his mind, who knew so much better than his critics. At all events it is evident that he did nothing more to bring himself to the notice of the world. It was in 1299 that he returned to Venice on the eve of all those great disturbances concerning the serrata of the Council, and of the insurrections which shook the republic to its foundation. But in all this, Marco of the Millions makes no appearance. He who had seen so much, and to whom the great Kublai was the finest of imperial images, most likely looked on with an impartiality beyond the reach of most Venetians at the internal strife, knowing that revolutions come and go, while the course of human life runs on much the same. And besides, Marco was noble, and lost no privilege, probably indeed sympathised with the effort to keep the canaille down. He married in these peaceful years, in the obscurity of a quiet life, and had three daughters only, Faustina, Bellela, and Moretta : no son to keep up the tradition of the adventurous race, a thing which happens so often when KiO THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAI>. a family has come to its climax and can do no more. He seems to have kept up in some degree his commercial character, since there is a record of a law-suit for the re- covery of some money of which he had been defrauded by an agent. But only once does he appear in the character of an author responsible for his own story. Attached to two of the earliest manuscript copies of his great book, one preserved in Paris and the other in Berne, are MS. notes, apparently quite authentic, recording the circumstances under which he presented a copy of the work to a noble French cavalier who passed through Venice while in the service of Charles of Valois in the year 1307. The note is as follows : " This is the book of which my Lord Thiebault, Knight and Lord of Cepoy (whom may God assoil !), requested a copy from Sire Marco Polo, citizen and resident in the City of Venice. And the said Sire Marco Polo, being a very honourable person of high character and report in many countries, because of his desire that what he had seen should be heard throughout the world, and also for the honour and reverence he bore to the most excellent and puissant Prince, my Lord Charles, son of the King of France, and Count of Valois, gave and presented to the aforesaid Lord of Cepoy the first copy of his said book that was made after he had written it. And very pleasing it was to him that his book should be carried to the noble country of France by so worthy a gentle- man. And from the copy which the said Messire Thiebault, Sire de Cepoy above-named, carried into France, Messire John, who was his eldest son and is the present Sire de Cepoy, had a copy made after his father's death, and the first copy of the book that was made after it was brought to France he presented to his very dear and dread Lord, Monseigneur de Valois ; and afterwards to his friends who wished to have it This happened in the year of the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ one thousand three hundred and seven, and in the month of August." This gives a pleasant opening through the mist of obscurity which had fallen over the Ca' Polo. If Messer Marco was illustrious enough to be sought out by a young stranger of Thiebault' s rank and pretensions, then his labours had not been without their reward. It is possible however that the noble visitor might have been taken to see one of the amusing personages of the city, and with the keenness of an unaccustomed eye might have found out for i.] BY SEA AND BY LAND. 101 himself that Messer Marco of the Millions was no braggart!. but a remarkable man with a unique history. In any case, the note is full of interest. One can imagine how the great traveller's eye and his heart would brighten when he saw that the noble Frenchman understood and believed, and how he would turn from the meaning smile and mock respect of his own countrymen to the intelligent interest of the new comer who could discriminate between truth and falsehood. " Et moult lui estoit ayreable qnant par si preudomme estoit avanciez et portez es nobles parties F VENICE. [CHAP. which the conspirators were entirely subdued. The Genoese meanwhile, watching from their walls for the concerted signal, and perplexed by the sounds of battle, soon learned by flying messengers that the plot was discovered and their allies destroyed. An unconditional surrender followed, and the invaders, who had for ten months been masters of Chioggia, and for half that time at least had held Venice in terror and had her in their power, driving the mistress of the seas to the most abject despair, were now hurried off ignominiously in every available barge and fisherman's coble, rude precursors of the gondola, to prison in Venice five thousand of them, Bishop Jacopo says. He adds, that after their long starvation they ate ravenously, and that the greater part of them died in consequence, a statement to be received with much reserve. Sabellico tells us that four thousand men altogether fell into the hands of the republic, three thousand of whom were Genoese. The soldiers among them, mercenaries no doubt and chiefly foreigners, had their arms taken from them and were al- lowed to go free. The plunder was taken to the church of S. Maria, and there sold by auction, the Venetians fixing the price, which was handed over to the soldiers, the chroniclers say. One wonders if the bargains to be had under these circumstances satisfied the citizens to whom this siege had cost so much. It would be interesting, though sad, to follow the fate of these prisoners, shut up in dungeons which it is not at all likely were much better than the pozzi at present exhibited to shrinking visitors, though these prisons did not then exist. They had no Marco Polo, no chosen scribe among them to make their misery memorable. The war lasted another year, during which there w y ere moments in which their lives were in extreme peril. At one time a rumour rose of cruelties practised by the Genoese upon the Vene- tian prisoners, many of whom were reported to have died of hunger and their bodies to have been thrown into the ii.] BY HE A AND BY LAND l'J5 sea news which raised a great uproar in Venice, the people breaking into the prisons and being with difficulty prevented from a general massacre of the prisoners, who were punished for the supposed sin of their compatriots by losing all comforts and conveniences and being reduced to bread and water, the women who had cooked their food 'for pity " being ordered away. Afterwards however the city, according to ancient custom, had compassion, and restored to them everything of which they had been deprived. On the conclusion of the war, when peace wa.s made and the prisoners exchanged, there is a little record which shows, however far behind us were these mediaeval ages, that charity to our enemies is not, as some people think, an invention of the nineteenth century. " The Venetian ladies (matrone) collected among themselves money enough to supply the Genoese, who were almost naked, with coats, shirts, shoes, and stockings, and other things necessary tor their per- sonal use before their departure, that they might not have any need to beg by the way, and also furnished them with provisions for their journey. And those who were thus sent back to their homo were of the number of fifteen hundred." Half of the prisoners, it would thus appeal-, perished within the year. The war with Genoa did not end with the restoration of Chioggia, but it was carried on henceforward in distant waters and among the Dalmatian towns and islands. Carlo Zeno himself was sent to take at all hazards a certain Castle of Marano, against his own will and judgment and failed, as he had previously assured his masters he must fail : and there were many troubles on the side of Treviso, which Venice presented to Duke Leopold of Austria, in order to preserve it from the Carrarese, now the obstinate enemies of the republic. Here the difficulties with the Condottieri reappeared again, but in a less serious way. The soldiers whose pay was in arrears, and who, hearing of the proposed transfer, felt themselves in danger of falling between two stools, and getting pay from neither side, 19G THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [.-HAP. confided their cause to a certain Borato Malaspina. who presented himself before the Venetian magistrates of Treviso, and set his conditions before them. '' We have decided," he said, " in consideration of the dignity of the Venetian name and the good faith of the soldiers, to take our own affairs in hand, and in all love and friendship to ask for our pay. We have decided to remain each man at. his post until one of you goes to Venice for the money. During this interval everything shall be faithfully defended and guarded by us. But we will no longer delay, nor can we permit our business with the Senate to be conducted by letter. Your presence is necessary in order that every- thing may go well. And we will await the return of him who shall be sent to Venice, with a proper regard to the time necessary for his coming and going. There is no need for further consultation in the crise, for what we ask is quite reasonable." The astounded magistrates stared at this bold demand, but found nothing better for it than to obey. And at last the war was over, and peace, in which to heal her wounds, and restore her half-ruined trade, and put order in her personal affairs, came to Venice. According to the promise made in her darkest hour, thirty families from among those who had served the republic l>est were added to the number of the nobles. " Before they went to the palazzo they heard the divine mass, then, presenting themselves before the prince and Senate, swore to the republic their faith and silence." The last is a remarkable addition to the oath of allegiance, and curiously charac- teristic of Venice. " Giacomo Cavallo, Veronese," adds Sabellico, " for his strenuous and faithful service done during this war, obtained the same dignity." It was the highest which the republic could bestow. The subsequent history of Carlo Zeno we have entirely upon the word of his descendant and biographer, who, like most biographers of that age, is chiefly intent upon putting ii.] BY SEA AND BY LAND. 197 every remarkable act accomplished in his time to the credit of his hero. At the same time, we have every reason to trust Bishop Jacopo, whose work is described by Foscarini as the most faithful record existing of the war of Chioggia : the author, as that careful critic adds, " being a person of judgment and enlightenment, and living at a period not far removed from these acts." He was indeed born before the death of his grandfather, and must have had full command of all family memorials, as well as the evidence of many living persons, for the facts he records. We may accord- ingly take his book, with perhaps a little allowance for natural partiality, as a trustworthy record of the many wonderful vicissitudes of Carlo's life. And whether tin- bold pirate-like countenance which serves as frontispiece to Quirini's translation, of the bishop's book be taken from any authentic portrait (which is little likely), there can be at least no doubt of the family tradition, which describes the great soldier-seaman thus : " He was square-shouldered, broad-chested, solidly and strongly made, with large and speaking eyes, and a manly, great, arid full countenance ; his stature neither tall nor short, but of a middle size. Nothing was wanting in his appearance which strength, health, decorum, and gravity demanded." With the exception perhaps of the gravity and decorum, which are qualities naturally attributed by a clergyman to his grandfather, the description is true to all our ideas of a naval hero. At the time of the struggle before Chioggia, which he conducted at once so gallantly and so warily, he was forty-five, in the prime of his strength : and that solid and steadfast form which nothing could shake, those eyes which met undaunted the glare of so many mutinous troopers, always full of the keenest observation, letting nothing escape them, stand out as clearly among the crowd as if, forestalling a century, Gentile Bellini had painted him, strongly planted upon those sturdy limbs to which the rock of the hisrh seas had given a sailor's double 198 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. security of balance, confronting the heavy, furious Germans, the excited Frenchmen, the revengeful Italians of other states, scarcely less alien to his own than the forest ieri with their strange tongues whose sole bond of allegiance to their momentary masters was the double pay, or occasional donaiivo, which they exacted as the price of their wavering faith. A. truer type of the ideal Venetian, strong, subtle, ready-witted, prompt in action and prepared for everything, the patriot, pirate, admiral, merchant, general, whichever character was most needed at the moment, could not be. Carlo did not return to his merchandise after this absorb- ing struggle. He was made captain-general of the forces on the death, not long after, of Yittor Pisani : and when the old Doge Contarini died he was for a time the favourite candidate for that honour. The electors indeed had all but decided in his favour, the bishop tells us, when a certain Zaccaria Contarini, " a man of great authority and full of eloquence and the art of speech," addressed an oration to them on the subject. His argument was a curious one. Against Carlo Zeno, he allowed, not a word could be said : there was no better man, none more worthy, nor of higher virtue in all "Venice, none who had served the republic better, or to whom her citizens were more deeply indebted ; but these were the very reasons why he should not be made doge for should another war arise with Genoa, who could lead the soldiers of Venice against her rival but he who was the scourge of the Genoese, a man with whom no other could compare for knowledge of things naval and military : for prudence, judgment, fidelity to the country, greatness and good fortune ? " If you should bind such a man to the prince's office, most noble fathers, to stay at home, to live in quiet, to be immersed in the affairs of the city, tell me what other have you 1 " Thus Carlo's fame was used against him, " whether with a good intention for the benefit of the republic, or from envy of Carlo," Bishop Jacopo does not undertake to say. Neither does he tell us whether his ii.] BY .SEA AXD BY LAXD. 1M'. illustrious ancestor was disappointed by the issue. But when peace was proclaimed, and there was no more work for him nor further promotion possible, Carlo left Venice and went forth upon the world " to see and salute various princes throughout Italy with whom he was united by no common friendship." A man so celebrated was received with open arms everywhere, especially where fighting wa< going on, and made himself useful to his princely friends in various emergencies. He served Galeazzo Visconti of Milan in this way, and was governor of that city for several years and also of the province of Piedmont, which was under Visconti's sway : and absorbed in such occupations was absent from Venice for ten years, always with in- creasing honour and reputation. While thus occupied, what seemed a very trifling incident occurred in his career. At Asti he encountered Francesco da Carrara, the son of the lord of Padua, sometime the enemy but at that moment at peace with Venice, an exile and in great straits and trouble ; and finding him sad, anxious and unhappy, and in want of every comfort, per tion mancare all' ttfficio di gentiluomo, not to fail in the duty of a gentleman, did his best to encourage and cheer the exile, and lent him four hundred ducats for his immediate wants. Some years after, when Francesco had been restored to Padua, and regained his place, Carlo passed through that city on his way to Venice, and was repaid the money he had lent. The incident was a very simple one, but not without disastrous consequences. On his return to Venice Carlo was again employed successfully against the Genoese under a French general, that proud city having fallen under the sway of France and covered the Venetian name once more with glory. This to all appearance was his last independent action as the commander of the forces of Venice. He was growing old, and civil dignities, though never the highest, began to be awarded to him. When the war with the house of p 200 THE MAKKHS i F VENICE. [( HAI-. Carrara broke out, Carlo ..Malatesta of JJimini, one of the great Condottieri of the time, held tlie chief command, and Carlo Zeno accompanied the army only in the capacity of Provveditore. A strong military force was by this time in the pay of the republic ; but again as ever it was as hard a task to keep them from fighting among themselves as to overcome the enemy. Alalatesta threw up his commission in the midst of the campaign, and Paolo Savello was appointed in his stead ; but either this did not please the mercenaries, or personal feuds among them breaking out suddenly on the occasion of the change, the camp was immediately in an uproar, and the different factions began to cut each other in pieces. Carlo forced his way into the middle of the fight, and when he had sxtcceeded in calming it for the moment, called before him the chiefs of the factions, and after his usual custom addressed them. His speech is no longer that of a general at the head of an army, but of an old man much experienced and full of serious dignity, before the restless and ferocious soldiers. " I thought," he said, " that the uses and customs of war would have moderated your minds and delivered you from passion ; for there is true nobleness where prudence is con- joined with courage, and nothing so becomes a generous man as a tranquil modesty and gravity in military opera- tions. The shedding of blood becomes a sordid business if not conducted and accompanied by a decorous dignity." He then points out to them that their work is nearly accomplished : all the difficulties have been overcome : Padua is closely besieged and famishing, the end is at hand : " We have come, oh captains, to the conclusion of the war, a fortunate end is near to your toils and watches, and nothing remains but the prize and the victory. What then would you have, oh signori ? What do you desire ] What fury moves you ? Why are these arms, which should subdue the enemy, turned against each other ? Will you make your own labours, your vigils, your great efforts, and all the difficulties you have overcome but useless pains, and the hope of success in so hard a fight as vain as they ? And can you endure, n.] BY SEA AND BY LAND. i'(H oil strongmen, to see the work of so many months destroyed in one, hour ' I pray you then, generous captains, it' any sense of lofty mind, of valour, and of fidelity is in yon, come, lay down your arm-:, calm your rage, conciliate and pacify the offended, make; an end of the there was 110 possibility in Venice. No Whites and Black.- ever struggled in the canals. The only rebellions Iliat touched her were those made by men or parties endeavour- ing to get a share of the power which by this time had been gathered tightly beyond all possibility of moving in patrician hands. Neither the Pope nor the Emperor. was ever the watchword of a party in the supreme and inde- pendent city, which dealt on equal terms witli both. There was no reason, however, why Venice should not take advantage of these endless contentions : and there was one existing in full force which helped to make the wars of the mainland more easy to the rich Venetians than war had ever been before. All their previous expeditions of con- quest, which had been neither few nor small, were at the cost of the blood as well as the wealth of Venice, had carried off the best and bravest, and even, as in the roman- tic story of the Giustiniani, swept whole families away. But this was no longer the case when she strode upon terra jirma with an alien general at her elbow, and mercenary soldiers at her back. Though they might not turn out very satisfactory in the long run, no doubt there must have been a certain gratification in hiring, so to speak, a ready- made army, and punishing one's enemy and doubling one's possessions without so much as a scratch on one's own person or the loss even of a retainer. The Condottieri, conductors, leaders, captains of the wild spirits that were to be found all over the world in that age of strife and warfare, were, if not the special creation of, at least most specially adapted for the necessities of those rich towns, always tempting to the ambitious, always by their very 208 THE MAKERS <)F VENICE. [< HAT. nature exposed to assault, ami at once too Imsy and too luxurious at this advanced stage of their history to do their fighting themselves which divided Italy among them, and which were each other's rivals, competitors, and enemies, to the sad hindrance of all national life, but to the growth, by every stimulus of competition, of arts and industries and ways of getting rich- in which methods each endeavoured with the zeal of personal conflict to outdo the rest. The rights, the liberties and independence of those cities were always more or less at the mercy of any adventurous neighbouring prince fflio had collected forces enough to assail them, or of the stronger among their own fellows. AVe must here add that between the horrors of the first mercenaries, the Grande Compagnia, which carried fire and sword through Italy, and made Petrarch's blood run cold, and even the endless turbu- lence and treachery of the men whom Carlo Zeno had so much ado to master, and the now fully organised and re- organised armies, under their own often famous and some- times honourable leaders, there was a great difference. The Free Lances had become a sort of lawful institution, appropriate and adapted to the necessities of the time. The profession of soldier of fortune is not one which commends itself to us nowadays : and yet there was nothing necessarily in it dishonourable to the generals who carried on their game of warfare at the expense of the quarrelsome races which employed them, but at wonderfully little cost of human life. No great principle lay in. the question whether Duke Philip of Milan or the republic of Venice should be master of Cremona. One of them, if they wished it, was bound to have the lesser city ; and what did it matter to a general who was a Savoyard, coming down to those rich plains to make his fortune, which of these wealthy paymasters he should take service under ? His trade was perhaps as honest as that of the trader who buys in the cheapest market and sells in the dearest all the world over. He obeyed the same law of supply and demand. He in.] BY SEA AND BY LAND. -JO'.r acted ou the same lively sense of his own interests. ]f he transferred himself in the midst of the war from out- side to the other there was nothing very remarkable in it, since neither of the sides was his side ; and it was a flourishing trade. One of its chief dangers was the unlucky accident that occurred now and then, when a general, who failed of being successful, had his head taken off by the Signoria or Seigneur in whose employment he was, probably on pretence of treason. But fighting of itself was not dangerous, at least to the troops engaged, and spoils were plentiful and the life a merry one. Italy, always so rich in the bounties of nature, had never been so rich as in these days, and the troops had a succession of villages always at their command, with the larger morsel of a rich town to sack now and then, prisoners to ransom, and all the other chances of war. Their battles were rather exercises of skill than encounters of personal opponents, and it was not unusual to achieve a great feat of arms without shedding a drop of blood. The bloodshed was among the non-combatants the villngers, the harmless townsfolk who were mad enough to resist them and not among the fighting men. Such was the profession, when a wandering Savoyard trooper perhaps come home with his spoils in filial piety, or to make glad the heart of a rustic love with trinkets dragged from the ears or pulled bloody from the throat of some Lombard maiden took note among the fields of a keen-eyed boy, who carried his shaggy locks with such an ariajiera, so proud an air, that the soldier saw something beyond the common recruit in this young shepherd lad. Romance, like nature, is pretty much the same in all regions : and young Francesco, the peasant's son, under the big frontier tower of Carmagnola, makes us think with a smile of young Norval " on the Grampian Hills "- that noble young hero whose history has unfortunately fallen into derision. But in those distant days, when the fifteenth century had just begun, and through all the Continent 210 THE MAKERS (>F VENICE. [T"*''- there was nothing heard l>ut the clatter of mail and the tread of the war-horse, there was nothing ridiculous in the idea that the boy, hearing of battles, should long "to follow to the field some warlike lord," or should leave the sheep to shift for themselves, and go off with the bold companion who had such stories of siege and fight to tell. He appears to have entered at once the service of Facino fane, one of the greatest generals of the time, under whom he rose, while still quite young, to some distinction. Such, at least, would seem to have been the case, since one of the first notices in the history of the young Piedmontese is the record in one of the old chronicles of a question put to Facino Why did he not promote him] To which the great Condottiere replied that he could not do so the rustic arrogance of Francesco being such that if he got one step he would never be satisfied till he was chief of all. For this reason, though his military genius was allowed full scope, he was kept in as much subjection as possible, and had but ten lances under him, and small honour as far as could be seen ; yet was noted of the captains as a man born to be something beyond the ordinary level when his day should come. The Italian world was as usual in a state of great disturbance in these days. Giovanni or Gian Galeazzo, the Duke of Milan, in his time as masterful an invader as any, had died, leaving two sons the one who succeeded him, Gian Maria, being a feeble and vicious youth, of whose folly and weakness the usual advantages were soon taken. When the young Duke was found to be unable to restrain them, the cities of Lombardy sprang with won- F VENICE. [CHAP. men had known each other, perhaps hern comrades more or less, when Carmagnola was a young captain under Facino's orders and Philip an uneasy loiterer about his noisy court. At all events Carmagnola at once embraced the prince's cause. He took Milan for him, killing an illegitimate rival, and overcoming all rival factions there ; and afterwards, as commander-in-chief of the Duke of Milan's forces, reconquered one by one the revolted cities. This was a slow process, extending over several seasons for those were the days when everything was done by rule, when the troops retired into Avinter quai'ters, and a cam- paign was a leisurely performance executed at a time of year favourable for such operations, and attended by little danger except to the unfortunate inhabitants of the district in which it was carried on. The services thus rendered were largely and liberally rewai'ded. A kinswoman of Philip's, a lady of the Visconti family, whose first husband had been high in the Duke's confidence, became Carmagnola's wife, and the privilege of bearing the name of Visconti and the arms of the reigning house was conferred upon him. He was not only the commander-in-chief of the troops, but held a high place at Court, and was one of the chief and most trusted of Philip's counsellors. The Piedmontese soldier was still a young man when all these glories came upon him, with accompanying wealth, due also to Philip's favour, as well as to the booty won in Philip's cause. He seems to have lived in Milan in a state conformable to these high preten- sions and to the position of his wife, and was in the act of building himself a great palace, now known as the Broletto, and appropriated to public use, when the usual fate of a favourite began to shadow over him. This was in the year 1424, twelve years after he had thrown in his fate with the prince in Pavia. The difference in Philip's position by this time was wonderful. He- had then possessed nothing save a doubtful claim on the city where he was an exile in.] BY SEA AND BY LAND. :_'i:; the prisoner. He was now one of the greatest powers in Italy, respected and feared by his neighbours, the master of twenty rich cities, and of all the wealthy Lombard plains. To these Carmagnola had lately added the richest prize of all, in the humiliation and overthrow of Genoa, superbest of northern towns, with her seaboard and trade, and all her proud traditions of independence, the equal and rival of the great republic of Venice. Perhaps this last feat bad unduly exalted the soldier, and made him feel himself as a con- queror something more than the Duke's humble kinsman and counsellor : at all events, the eve of the change had come. The tenure of a favourite's favour is always uncertain and precarious. In those days there were many who rose to the heights of fame only to be tumbled headlong in a moment from that dazzling eminence. Carmagnola was at the very height of fortune when clouds began to gather over his career. Though no idea of treachery was then imputed to him, he had been if anything too zealous for his Duke, to whose service in the meantime, as to that of a great and conquering prince, full of schemes for enlarging his own territory and affording much occupation for a brave soldiery, many other commanders had nocked. The enemies of Carmagnola were many. Generals whom he had beaten felt their downfall all the greater that it had been accomplished by a fellow without any blood worth speaking of in his veins ; and others whom it would have pleased Philip to secure in his service Avere too proud to serve under a man who had thus risen from the ranks. The first sign which the doomed general received of his failing favour was a demand from Philip for the squadron of horsemen, 300 in number, who seem to have been Car- magnola's special troop, and for whom the Duke declared that he had a particular use. The reply of the general is at once picturesque and pathetic. He implored Philip not to take the weapons out of the hands of a man born and bred in the midst of arms, and to whom life would be 214 THE MAKERS OF VEXK'E. [CHAT. bare indeed without hi> soldier.-. As a matter of fact, it is to be presumed that this was hut the thin end of the wedge, and that other indignities were prepared to follow. The clique at Milan which was furthering his downfall was led by two courtiers, Kiccio and Lampugnano. "Much better," says Bigli, the historian of Milan, who narrates diffusely the whole course of the quarrel, ' would it have been for our State had such men as these never been born. They kept everything from the L>uke except what it pleased him to learn. And it was easy for them to fill the mind of Philip with suspicions, for he himself began to wish that Francesco Carmagnola should not appear so great a man." Oarmagnola received no answer to his remonstrance, and by and by discovered, what is galling in all circumstances, and in his especially so, that the matter had been decided by the gossips of the Court, and that it was a conspiracy of his enemies which was settling his fate. Fierce and full of irritation, a man who could never at any time restrain his masterful temper, and still, no doubt, with much in him of the arrogant rustic whom Facino covdd not make a captain of, lest he should at once clutch at the baton, Carmagnola determined to face his enemies and plead his own cause before his prince. The Duke was at Abbiate-grasso, on the borders of Piedmont, a frontier fortress, within easy reach of Genoa, where Carmagnola was governor : and thither he rode with few attendants, no doubt breathing fire and flame, and, in his consciousness of all he had done for Philip, very confident of turning the tables upon his miserable assailants, and making an end of them and their wiles. His letters had not been answered no notice whatever had been taken of his appeal ; but still it seemed impossible to doubt that Philip, with his trusty champion before him, would re- member all that had passed between them, and all that Francesco had done, and do him justice. His swift setting out to put all right, with an angry contempt of his as- in.] BY SEA AND BY LAND. 215 sailants, but absolute confidence in the renewal of his old influence as soon as Philip should see him, might be paral- leled in many a quarrel. For nothing is so difficult as to teach a generous and impxilsive man that the friend for whom he has done too much may suddenly become incapable of bearing the burden of obligation and gratitude. Arrived at Abbiate, he was about to ride over the bridge into the castle, when he was stopped by the guards, whose orders were to hinder his entrance. This to the commander - in-chief was an extraordinary insult ; but at first astonish- ment was the only feeling Carmagnola evidenced. He sent word to Philip that he was there desiring an audience, and waited with his handful of men, the horses pawing the ground, their riders chafing at the compulsory pause, which no one understood. But instead of being then admitted with apologies and excuses, as perhaps Carmagnola still hoped, the answer sent him was that Philip was busy, but that he might communicate what he had to say to Riccio. Curbing his rage, the proud soldier sent another message to the effect that he had certain private matters for the Duke's ear alone. To this no reply was given. The situation is wonderfully striking, and full of dramatic force. Car- magnola and his handful of men on one side of the bridge ; the castle rising on the other with all its towers and bastions dark against the sky ; the half-frightened yet half-insolent guards trembling at their own temerity, yet glad enough to have a hand in the discomfiture of the rustic commander, the arrogant and high-handed captain, who of his origin was no bettei than they. The parley seems to have gone on for some time, during which Carmagnola was held at bay by the attendants, who would make him no answer other than a continual reference to Riccio, his well- known enemy. Then as he scanned the dark, unresponsive towers with angry eyes, he saw, or thought he saw, the face of Philip himself at a loophole. This lit the smouldering fire of passion. He raised his voice no small voice it may well Q 216 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. be believed and shouted forth his message to his ungrate- ful master. " Since I cannot speak before my lord the Duke," he cried, "I call God to witness my innocence and faithfulness to him. I have not been guilty even of imagining evil against him. I have never taken thought for myself, for my blood or my life, in comparison with the name and power of Philip." Then, " carried on in the insolence of his words," says the chronicle, " he accused the perfidious traitors, and called God to witness that in a short time he would make them feel the want of one whom the Duke refused to hear." So speaking Carmagnola turned his horse, and took his way towards the river. When the conspirators in the castle saw the direction he was taking, a thrill of alarm seems to have moved them, and one of them, Oldrado, dashed forth from the gate with a band of followers to prevent Carmagnola from crossing the Ticino, which was then the boundary of Savoy. But when he saw the great captain " riding furiously across the fields " towards Ticino, the heart of the pursuer failed him. Carmagnola would seem never to have paused to think which was not the fashion of his time but, carried along in headlong impulse, wild with the thought of his dozen years of service, all for- gotten in a moment, did not draw bridle till he reached the castle of the Duke of Savoy, his native prince, to whom he immediately offered himself and his services, telling the story of his wrong. Notwithstanding his fury, he seems to have exonerated Philip a doubtful compliment, since he held him up to the contempt of his brother potentate as in- fluenced by the rabble of his Court, " the singers, actors, and inventors of all crimes, who make use of the labours of others in order to live in sloth." Mere vituperation of Philip's advisers however was not to the purpose, and Carmagnola artfully suggested to Duke Amadeo certain towns more justly his than Philip's : Asti, Alessandria, and others, which it would be easy to withdraw from the yoke of in.] BY SEA AND BY LAND. 217 Milan. It must have been difficult for a fifteenth century prince to resist such an argument, but Amadeo, though strongly tempted, was not powerful enough to declare war by himself against the great Duke of Milan ; and the fiery visitor, leaving excitement and commotion behind him, con- tinued his journey, making his way across a spur of the Pennine Alps, by Trient and Treviso (but as secretly as possible, lest the Swiss, whom he had beaten, should hear of his passage and rise against him), till he reached Venice, to stir up a still more effectual ferment there. We are now brought back to our city, where for some time past the proceedings of Philip, and the progress he was making, especially the downfall of Genoa, had filled the Signoria with alarm. The Venetians must have looked on with very mingled feelings at the overthrow of the other re- public, their own great and unfailing enemy, with whom over and over again they had struggled almost to the death, yet who could not be seen to fall under the power of a conqueror with any kind of satisfaction. The Florentines, too, had begun to stir in consternation and amaze, and communications had passed between the two great cities even in the time of the Doge Mocenigo, the predecessor of Foscari, who was the occupant of the ducal throne at the time of Carmagnola's sudden appearance on the scene. Old Mocenigo had not favoured the alliance with the Florentines. There is a long speech of his recorded by Sanudo which reminds us of the pleadings in Racine's comedy, where the sham advocates go back to the foundation of the world for their arguments and which affords us a singular glimpse of the garrulous and vehement old man, who hated his probable successor, and the half of whose rambling discourse is addressed, it would seem, personally to Foscari, then junior procurator, who had evidently taken up the cause of the neighbouring republics. " Our junior procurator (procuralore giovanc), Ser Francesco Foscari, Savio del Consiglio, has declared to the public (sopra I'arringo) all that Q 2 218 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. the Florentines have said to the Council and all that we have said to your Excellencies in reply. He says that it is wt-11 to succour the Florentines, because their good is our good, and, in consequence, their evil is our evil. In due time and jilace we reply to this. Procuratore giovane : God created and made the angelical nature, which is the most noble of all created things, and gave it certain limits by which it should follow the way of good and not of evil. The angels chose the bad way that leads to evil. God punished them and banished them from Paradise to the Inferno, and from being good they became bad. This same thing we say to the Florentines who come here seeking the evil way. Thus will it happen to us if we consent to that which our junior procurator has said. But take comfort to yourselves that you live in peace. If ever the Duke [of Milan] makes unjust war against you, God is with you, Who sees all. He will so arrange it that you shall have the victory. Let us live in peace, for God is peace ; and he who desires war, let him go to perdition. Procuratore giovane : God created Adam wise, good, and perfect, and gave him the earthly Paradise, where was peace, with two commandments, saying : ' Enjoy peace with all that is in Paradise, but eat not the fruit of a certain tree.' And he was disobedient and sinned in pride, not being willing to acknowledge that lie was merely a creature. And God deprived him of Paradise, where peace dwells, and drove him out and put him in war, which is this world, and cursed him and all human generations. And one brother killed the other, going from bad to worse. Thus it will happen to the Florentines for their fighting which they have among themselves And if we follow the counsel of our junior procurator thus will it happen also to us. Procuratore giovaue : After the sin of Cain, who knew not his Creator nor did His will, God punished the world by the flood, excepting Xoah, whom He preserved. Thus will it happen to the Florentines in their determination to have their own way, that God will destroy their country and their ]x>ssessions, and they will come to dwell here, in the same way as families with their women and children came to dwell in the city of Noah, who obeyed God and trusted in Him. Otherwise, if we follow the counsel of our junior procurator, our people will have to go away and dwell in strange lands. Procuratore giovaue : Noah was a holy man elect of God, and Cain departed from God : the which slew Japhet (Abel ?) and God punished him : of whom were born the giants, who were tyrants and did whatever seemed good in their own eyes, not fearing God. God made of one language sixty-six, and at the end they destroyed each other, so that there remained no one of the seed of the giants. Thus will it happen to the Florentines for seeking their own will and not fearing God. Of their language sixty- six languages will be made. For they go out day by day into France, Germany, Languedoc, Catalonia, Hungary, and throughout Italy : and they will thus be dispersed, so that no man will be able to say that he is of Florence. Thus will it be if we follow the advice of our junior procurator. Therefore, fear God and hope in Him. " We can almost see the old man, with fiery eyes and moist mouth, stammering forth these angry rnaunderings, leaning across the council-table, with his fierce personal designation in.] BY SEA AND BY LAND. 219 of the Procurator Giovaiie, the proud young man in his strength, whom not all the vituperations of old Mocenigo, or his warnings to the council, could keep out of the ducal chair so soon as death made it vacant. And there is some- thing very curious in this confused jumble of arguments, so inconsequent, so earnest the old man's love of peace and a quiet life mingled with the cunning of the aged mediaeval statesman who could not disabuse his mind of the idea that the destruction of Florence would s\ve?l the wealth of Venice. In the latter part of the long, rambling discourse, mixed up with all manner of Scripture parallels not much more to the purpose than those above quoted, the speaker returns to and insists upon the advantage to be gained by Venice from the influx of refugees from all the neighbour- ing cities. " If the Duke takes Florence," cries the old man, " the Florentines, who are accustomed to live in equality, will leave Florence and come to Venice, and bring with them the silk trade, and the manufacture of wool, so that their country will be without trade, and Venice will grow rich, as happened in the case of Lucca when it fell into the hands of a tyrant. The trade of Lucca and its wealth came to Venice, and Lucca became poor. Wherefore, remain in peace." Romanin, always watchful for the credit of Venice, attempts to throw some doubt upon this wonderful speech, which, however, is given on the same authority as that which gives us old Mocenigo's report of the accounts of the republic and his words of warning against Foscari, which are admitted to be authentic. It gives us a remarkable view of the mixture of wisdom and folly, astute calculation of the most fiercely selfish kind, and irrelevant argument, which is characteristic of the age. It was in the year 1421 that Mocenigo thus discoursed. He died two years later at the age of eighty, and the Procurator Giovane, whom he had addressed so fiercely, succeeded as the old man foresaw. He was that Francesco 220 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAI-. Foscari whose cruel end we have already seen, but at this time in all the force and magnificence of his manhood, and with a great career before him or at least with a great episode of Venetian history, a period full of agitation, victory, and splendour before the city under his rule. When Carmagnola, in hot revolt, and breathing nothing but pro- jects of vengeance, arrived within the precincts of the republic, a great change had taken place in the views of the Venetians. The Florentine envoys had been received with sympathy and interest, and as Philip's troops approached nearer and nearer, threatening their very city, the Venetian government, though not yet moved to active interference, had felt it necessary to make a protest and appeal to Philip, to whom they were still bound by old alliances made in Mocenigo's time, in favour of the sister republic. Rivalships there might be in time of peace ; but the rulers of Venice could not but regard " with much gravity and lament deeply the adversity of a free people, determining that whosoever would retain the friendship of Venice should be at peace with Florence." The envoy or orator, Paolo Cornaro, who was sent with this protest, presented it in a speech reported by the chronicler Sabellico, in which, with much dignity, he enjoins and urges upon Philip the determination of the republic. Venetians and Florentines both make short work with the independence of others ; but yet there is something noble in the air with which they vindicate their own. "Nothing (says Cornaro) is more clear to the Venetians than freedom : to the preservation of which they are called by justice, mercy, religion, and every other law, both public and private, counting nothing more praiseworthy than what is done to this end. And neither treaties nor laws, nor any other reason, divine or human, can make them depart from this, that before everything freedom must be secured. And in so far as regards the present case, the Venetians hold themselves as much bound to bestir themselves when Florence is in danger as if the army of Phi'.ip was on the frontier of their own dominion ; for it becomes those who have freedom themselves to be careful of that of others : and as the republican forms of government possessed by Florence resemble greatly their own, their case is like that cf those who suffer no less in the sufferings of their brethren and in.] BY SEA AND BY LAND. 221 relations than if the misfortune was theirs. Xor is there any doubt that he who in Tuscany contends against freedom in every other place will do the same, as is the custom of tyrants who have ever the name of freedom in abhorrence." The speaker ends by declaring that if Philip carries on his assaults against the Florentines, Venit-e, for her own safety, as well as for that of her sister city, will declare war against him as a tyrant and an enemy. " This oration much disturbed the soul of Philip." But he was full of the intoxication of success, and surrounded by a light- hearted Court, to whom victory had become a commonplace. The giovanotti disJtonestissimi, foolish young courtiers who, from the time of King Rehoboam, have led young princes astray, whose jeers and wiles had driven Carmagnola to despair, were not to be daunted by the grave looks of the noble Venetian, whom, no doubt, they felt themselves capable of laughing and flattering out of his seriousness. The next scene of the drama takes place in Venice, to which Philip sent an embassy to answer the mission of Cor- naro, led by the same Oldrado who had made that ineffectual rush after Carmagnola from the castle gates, and who was one of his chief enemies. An embassy from Florence arrived at the same time, and the presence of these two opposing bands filled with interest and excitement the City of the Sea, where a new thing was received with as much delight as in Athens of old, and where the warlike spirit was always so ready to light up. The keen eyes of the townsfolk seized at once upon the difference so visible in the two parties. The Milanese, ruffling in their fine clothes, went about the city gaily, as if they had come for no other purpose than to see the sights, which, says Bigli, who was himself of Milan, and probably thought a great deal too much fuss was made about this wonderful sea-city, seemed ridicul- ous to the Venetians, so that they almost believed the Duke was making a jest of them. The Florentines, on the con- trary, grave as was their fashion", and doubly serious in the 222 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. dangerous position of their affairs, went about the streets " as if in mourning," eagerly addressing everybody who might be of service to them. Sabellico gives a similar account of the two parties. "There might then be seen in the city divers ambassadors of divers demeanour," he says. " Lorenzo (the Florentine), as was befitting, showed the sadness and humble condition of his country, seeking to speak with the senators even in the streets, following them to their houses, and neglecting nothing which might be to the profit of the embassy. On the other hand, those of Philip, not to speak of their pomp, and decorations of many kinds, full of hope and confidence, went gazing about the city so marvellously built, such as they had never seen before, full of wonder how all these things of the earth could be placed upon the sea. And they replied cheerfully to all who saluted them, showing in their faces, in their eyes, by all they said, and, in short, by every outward sign of satisfaction, the prosperity of their Duke and country." The dark figure of the Florentine, awaiting anxiously the red-robed senator as he made his way across the Piazza, or hurrying after him through the narrow thoroughfares, while this gay band, in all their finery, swept by, must have made an impressive comment upon the crisis in which so much was involved. While the Milanese swam in a gondola, or gazed at the marbles on the walls, or here and there an early mosaic, all blazing, like themselves, in crimson and gold, the ambassador, upon whose pleading hung the dear life of Florence, haunted the bridges and the street-corners, letting nobody pass that could help him. '' How goes the cause to- day, illustrious signer? " one can hear him saying. ""What hope for my country, la patria mia ? Will the noble Signoria hear me speak ? Will it be given me to plead my cause before their MagniBcences ? " Or in a bolder tone, " Our cause is yours, most noble sir, though it may not seem so now. If Philip sets his foot on the neck of Florence, which never shall be while I live, how long will it be, think you, before his trumpets sound at Mestre over the marshes, before he has stirred your Istrians to revolt ? " The senators passing to and fro, perhaps in the early morn- in.] BY SEA AND BY LAND. 223 ing after a long night in the council-chamber, as happened sometimes, had their steps waylaid by this earnest advocate. The Venetians were more given to gaiety than their brothers from the Arno, but they were men who before everything else cared for their constitution, so artfully and skilfully formed for their freedom, such as it was, and the proud independence which no alien force had ever touched ; and the stranger with his rugged Tuscan features and dark dress, and keen inharmonious accent, among all their soft Venetian talk, no doubt impressed the imagination of a susceptible race. Whereas the Milanese gallants, in their gaiety affecting to see no serious object in their mission, commended themselves only to the light-minded, not to the fathers of the city. And when Carmagnola, the great soldier, known of all men he who had set Philip back upon his throne as everybody knew, and won so many battles and cities with all the romantic interest of a hero and an injured man, came across the lagoon and landed at the Piazzetta between the fated pillars, how he and his scarred and bearded men-at-arms must have looked at the gay courtiers with their jests and laughter, who on their side could scarcely fail to shrink a little when the man whose ruin they had plotted went past them to say his say before the Signoria, in a sense fatally different from theirs, as they must have known. The speeches of these contending advocates are all given at length in the minute and graphic chronicle. The first to appear before the Doge and Senate was Lorenzo Bidolfi, the Florentine, who conjoins his earnest pleading for aid to his own State with passionate admonitions and warnings, that if Venice gives no help to avert the consequences, her fate will soon be the same. " Serene Prince and illustrious senators," he cries, " even if I were silent you would understand what I came here to seek. ' ' And those also would understand who have seen us leave Tuscany and come here in haste, ambassadors from a free citv. to ask your 224 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAI-. favour, and help for the protection of our liberties, from a free people like yourselves. The object of all my speaking is this, to induce you to grant safety to my country, which has brought forth ami bred me, and given me honour and credit which if I can attain, and that you should join the confederation and friendship of the Florentines, and join your army with our Tuscans against the cruellest tyrant, enemy of our liberties, and hating yours, happy shall be my errand, and my country will embrace me with joy on my return. And our citizens, who live in this sole hope, will hold themselves and their city by your bounty alone to be saved from every peril. ... I tremble, noble Prince, in this place to say that which I feel in my soul : but because it is necessary I will say it. If you will not make this alliance with us, Philip will find himself able without help, having overthrown Florence, to secure also the dominion of Venice. If it should be answered me that the Venetians always keep their promises and engagements, I pray and implore the most high God that, having given you goodness and faith to keep your promises, He would give you to know the arts and motives of this tyrant, and after discovering them, with mature prudence to restrain and overrule them. . . . That tyrant himself, who has so often broken all laws, both divine and human, will himself teach you not to keep that which he, in his perfidy, has not kept. But already your tacit consent gives me to understand that I have suc- ceeded in convincing you that in this oration I seek not so much the salvation of my republic as the happiness, dignity, and increase of your own. " This speech moved the senators greatly, but did not settle the question, their minds being divided between alarm, sympathy, and prudence fear of Philip on the one hand and of expense on the other so that they resolved to hear Philip's ambassadors first before coming to any decision. Time was given to the orator of the Milan party to prepare his reply to Ridolfi, Avhich lie made in a speech full of bravado, declaring that he and h5s fellows were sent, not to make any league or peace with Venice, since their former treaties were still in full force, and any renewal was un- necessary between such faithful allies but simply to salute the illustrious Signoria in Philip's name. " But .since these people, who have by nature the gift of speech, delicate and false, have not only to the Senate, but in the Piazza and by the streets, with pitiful lamentations, wept their fate, declaring that the war which they have carried on so badly was begun by Philip ; he desires to leave it to youi judgment, not refusing any conditions which you may prescribe. What they say is false and vain, unheard-of things, such as they are accustomed to study in order to abuse your in ] BY SEA AND BY LAND. 225 gravity, your constancy, the ancient laws of friendship, ami all tin- treaties made with Philip. They bid you fear him and the increase of his power. But you know they are our enemies who speak. They u-11 you that kings hate the name of republics. ... It is true that King Louis was a cruel enemy of the Venetian name, and all the hou.se ot Carrara were your enemies. But the Visoonti, who for a hundred years have flourished in the noble duchy of Milan, were always friends of the Venetian republic. . . . Philip has had good reasons to war against the Florentines, and so have all the Visconti. They ought to accuse themselves, their pride and avarice, not Philip, who is the friend of peace and repose, the very model of liberality and courtesy. Let them therefore cease to abuse and injure our noble Duke in your presence. Being provoked we have answered in these few words, though we might have said many more ; which are so true that they themselves (although they are liars) do not venture to contradict them." This address did not throw much light upon the subject, and left the Senate in as much difficulty as if it hud been an English Cabinet Council at certain recent periods of our own history. "Diverse opinions and various decisions were agitated among the senators. Some declared that it was best to oppose in open war the forces of Philip, who would otherwise deceive them with fair words until he had over- come the Florentines. Others said that to leap into such an undertaking would be mere temerity, adding that it was an easy thing to begin a war, but difficult to end it." The Senate of Venice had, however, another pleader at hand, whose eloquence was more convincing. "When they had confused themselves with arguments for and against, the Doge, whose views were warlike, called for Carmagnola, who had been waiting in unaccustomed inaction to know what was to happen to him. All his wrongs had been revived by an attempt made to poison him in his retreat at Treviso by a Milanese exile who was sheltered there, and who hoped by this good deed to conciliate Philip and purchase his recall a man who, like Carmagnola, had married a Visconti, and perhaps had some private family hatred to quicken his patriotic zeal. The attempt had been tinsuccessful, and the would-be assassin had paid for it by his life. But the result had been to light into wilder flame 220 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. than ever the fire of wrong in the fierce heart of the great captain, whose love had been turned into hatred by the ingratitude of his former masters and friends. He appeared before the wavering statesmen, who, between their ducats and their danger, coiild not come to any decision, flaming with wrath and energy. " Being of a haughty nature, una natura sdegnosa, he spoke bitterly against Philip and his ingratitude and perfidy," describing in hot words his own struggles and combats, the cities he had brought under Philip's sway, and the fame he had procured him, so that his name was known not only throughout all Italy, but even through Europe, as the master of Genoa. The rewards which Carmagnola had received, he declared proudly, were not rewards, but his just hire and no more. And now quell' ingrato, whom he had served so well, had not only wounded his heart and his good name, for the sake of a set of lying youths giovanotti dishonestissimi and forced him into exile, but finally had attempted to kill him. But yet he had not been without good fortune, in that he was preserved from this peril ; and though he had lost the country in which he had left wife and children and much wealth, yet had he found another country where was justice, bounty, and every virtue where every man got his due, and place and dignity were not given to villains ! After this outburst of personal feeling, Carmagnola entered fully into the weightier parts of the matter, giving the eager senators to understand that Philip was not so strong as he seemed ; that his money was exhausted, his citizens impoverished, his soldiers in arrears ; that he himself, Carmagnola, had been the real cause of most of his triumphs ; and that with his guidance and knowledge the Florentines themselves were stronger than Philip, the Venetians much stronger. He ended by declaring himself and all his powers at their service, promising not only to conquer Philip, but to increase the territory of the Venetians. Greater commanders they might have, and in.] BY SEA AND BY LAND. 227 names more honoured, but none of better faith towards Venice, or of greater hatred towards the enemy. Carmagnola's speech is not given in the first person like the others. By the time the narrative was written his tragic history was over, and the enthusiasm with which lie was first received had become a thing to be lightly dwelt upon, where it could not be ignored altogether ; but it is easy to see the furious and strong personal feeling of tho man, injured and longing for revenge, his heart torn with the serpent's tooth of ingratitude, the bitterness of love turned into hate. So strong was the impression made by these hoarse and thrilling accents of reality that the doubters were moved to certainty, and almost allpronounced for war. At the risk of over-prolonging this report of the Venetian cabinet council and its proceedings, we are tempted to quote a portion of the speech of the doge, in which the reader will scarcely fail to see on the contrary side some reflection or recollection of old Mocenigo's argument which had been launched at his successor's head only a few years before. "There are two things in a republic, noble fathers, which by name and effect aro sweet and gentle, but which are oi'ten the occasion of much trouble to the great and noble city these are peace and economy. For there are dangers both distant and under our eyes, which either we do not see, or seeing them, being too much devoted to saving money, or to peace, esteem them little, so that almost always we are drawn into very evident peril before we will consider the appalling name of war, or come to manifest harm to avoid the odious name of expense. This fact, by which much harm and ruin has been done in our times, and which has also been recorded for us by our predecessors, is now set before us in an example not less useful than clear in the misfortunes of the Florentines, who, when they saw the power of Philip increasing, might many times have restrained it, and had many occasions of so doing, but would not, in order to avoid the great expense. But now it has come to pass that the money which they acquired in peace and repose must be spent uselessly ; and what is more to be lamented, they can neither attain peace, save at the cost of their freedom, nor put an nd to their expenditure. I say, then, that such dangers ought to be considered, and being considered, ought to be provided for by courage and counsel. To guide a republic is like guiding a ship at sea. I ask if any captain, the sea being quiet and the wind favourable, ceases to steer the ship, or gives himself up to sleep and repose without thinking of the dangers that may arise, without keeping in order the sails, the 228 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. masts, the cordage, or taking into consideration the sudden changes to which the sea is subject, the season of the year, l>y what wind and in what part of the sea lies his course, what depth of water and what rocks his vessel may encounter ? If these precautions are neglected, and he is assailed by sudden misfortune, does he not deserve to lose his ship, and with it everything? A similar misfortune has happened to the Florentines, as it must happen to others who do not take pre- cautions against future dangers to the republic. The Florentines (not to have recourse to another example) might have repressed and over- come the power of Philip when it was growing, if they had taken the trouble to use their opportunities. But by negligence, or rather by avarice, they refrained from doing so. And now it has come about that, beaten in war, with the loss of their forces, they are in danger of losing their liberty. And to make it worse, they are condemned everywhere, and instead of being called industrious are called vile, and held in good repute by none ; instead of prudent are called fools ; and instead of getting credit for their wariness are esteemed to be without intelligence. These evils, therefore, ought to be provided against when far off, which when near can cause such serious evil." Words so plain and honest, and which are so germane to the matter, come to us strangely from under the gilded roofs of the ducal palace, and from the midst of the romance and glory of mediaeval Venice. But Venice was the nation of shopkeepers in those days which England is said to be now, and was subject to many of the same dangers which menace ourselves though wrath was more prompt, and the balance of well-being swayed more swiftly, both towards downfall and recovery, than is possible in our larger concerns. " The energetic speech and great influence of the doge, which was greater than that of any prince before him," says the chronicler (alas I though this was that same Francesco Foscari who died in downfall and misery, deposed from his high place), settled the matter. The league was made with the Florentines, war declared against the Duke of Milan, and Carmagnola appointed general of the forces. The Senate sent messengers, we are told, through all Italy to seek recruits, but in the meantime set in movement those who were ready ; while Carmagnola, like a valorous captain, began to contrive how he could begin the war with some great deed. It does not quite accord with our ideas To face page 229. DOORWAY OF RUINED CHAPEL OF THE SEHVI. in.] BY SEA AND BY LAND. _>:>'. I that the first great deed which he planned was to secure the assassination of the Governor of Brescia and betrayal of that city, which is the account given by Sabellico. Bigli. however, puts the matter in a better light, explaining that many in the city were inclined to follow Carmagnola, who had once already conquered the town for Philip, who had always maintained their cause in Milan, and whose wrongs had thus doubly attracted their sympathy. The city was asleep, and all was still, when, with the aid from within of two brothers, huomini di anima granJe, the wall was breached, and Carmagnola got possession of Brescia. t; It was about midnight, in the month of March, on the last day of Lent, which is sacred to St. Benedict," when the Venetian troops marched into the apparently unsuspecting town. The scene is picturesque in the highest degree. They marched into the Piazza, the centre of all city life, in the chill and darkness of the spring night, and there, with sudden blare of trumpets and illumination of torches, pro claimed the sovereignty of Venice. It is easy to imagine the sudden panic, the frightened faces at the windows, the glare of the wild light that lit up the palace fronts, and showed the dark mass of the great cathedral rising black and silent behind, while the horses pawed the ringing stones of the pavement and the armour shone. The historian goes on to say : " Though at first dismayed by the clang of the trumpets and arms," the inhabitants, " as soon as they perceived that it was Carmagnola, remained quiet in their houses, except those who rushed forth to welcome the besiegers, or who had private relations with the general. No movement was made from the many fortified places in the city." The transfer from one suzerain to another was a matter of common occurrence, which perhaps accounts for the ease and composure with which it was accomplished. This first victory, however, was but a part of what had to be done. The citadel, high above on the crown of the hill which overlooks the city, remained for R 230 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 'CHAP. some time unconscious of what had taken place below. Perhaps the Venetian trumpets and clang of the soldiery scarcely reached the airy ramparts above, or passed for some sudden broil, some encounter of enemies in the streets, such as were of nightly occurrence. The town was large, and rich, and populous upon the slopes underneath, surrounded with great walls descending to the plains walls " thicker than they were high," with fortifications at every gate ; and was divided into the old and new city, the first of these swoun HILT. only being in Carmagnola's hands. It seems a doubtful advantage to have thus penetrated into the streets of a town while a great portion of its surrounding fortifications and the citadel above were still in other hands ; but the warfare of those times had other laws than those with which we are acquainted. The fact that these famous forti- fications were of little use in checking the attack is devoutly explained by Bigli as a proof that God was against them " because they were erected with almost unbearable expense in.] BY SEA AND BY LAND. ittl and toil," " the very blood of the Brescians constrained by their former conqueror to accomplish this work, which was marvellous, no man at that time having seen the like." The Brescians themselves, he tells us, were always eager for change, and on the outlook for every kind of novelty, so that there was nothing remarkable in their quiet acceptance of, and even satisfaction in, the new sway. The reduction of the citadel was, however, a long and desperate task. The means employed by Carmagnola for this end are a little difficult to follow, at least for a lay reader. He seems to have surrounded the castle with an elaborate double work of trenches and palisades, with wooden towers at intervals ; and wearing out the defenders by continued assault, as well as shutting out all chance of supplies, at last, after long vigilance and patience, attained his end. Brescia fell finally with all its wealth into the hands of the Venetians, a great prize worthy the trouble and time which had been spent upon it a siege of seven months after the first night attack, which had seemed so easy. This grave achievement accomplished Carmagnola secured with little trouble the Brescian territory ; most of the villages and castles in the neighbourhood, as far as the Lago di C4arda, giving themselves up to the conqueror without waiting for any assault of arms. The tide of ill fortune seems to have been too much for Philip ; and by the good offices of the Pope's legate, a temporary peace was made at the cost, to the Duke, of Brescia, with all its territory, and various smaller towns and villages, together with a portion of the district of Cremona on the other bank of the Oglio, altogether nearly forty miles in extent. Philip, as may be supposed, was furious at his losses now accusing the bad faith of the Florentines, who had begun the war ; now the avarice of the Venetians, who were not content with having taken Brescia, but would have Cremona too. The well-meant exertions of the legate, however, were of so little effect that before his own departure he saw the R -2 232 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. magistrates sent by the Venetians to take possession of their new property on the Cremona side driven out with insults, and Philip ready to take arms again. The cause of this new courage was to be found in the action of the people of Milan, who, stung in their pride by the national down- fall, drew their purse-strings and came to their prince's aid, offering both men and money 011 condition that Philip would give up to them the dues of the city so that they might reimburse themselves. Thus the wary and subtle Italian burghers combined daring with prudence, and secured a great municipal advantage, while undertaking a patriotic duty. It would be hopeless to follow the course of this long- continued, often-interrupted war. On either side there was a crowd of captains many Italians, men of high birth and great possessions, others sprung from the people like Carmagnola : a certain John the Englishman, with a hundred followers, figured in the special following of the commander, like William the Cock in the train of Zeno. The great battles which bulk so largely in writing, the names and numbers of which confuse the reader who attempts to follow the entanglements of alliances and treacheries which fill the chronicle, were in most cases almost bloodless, and the prisoners who were taken by the victors were released immediately, "according to the usage of war," in order that they might live to fight another day, and so prolong and extend the profitable and not too laborious occupation of soldiering. Such seems to have been the rule of these endless combats. The men-at-arms in their complete mail were very nearly invulnerable. They might roll off their horses and be stifled in their own helmets, or at close quarters an indiscreet axe might hew through the steel, or an arrow find a crevice in the armour ; but such accidents were quite unusual, and the bloodless battle was a sort of game which one general played against another, in ever renewed and changing combinations. The danger that the different IP. Were it not that the bloodless character of the combat involves a certain ridicule, what a good thing it would be could we in our advanced civilisation carry on our warfare in this innocent way, and take each other prisoners with polite regret, only to let each other go to-morrow ! Such a process would rob a battle of all its terrors : and if in certain eventualities it were understood that one party must accept defeat, how delightful to secure all the pomp arid circumstance of glorious war at so easy a cost ! There is indeed a great deal to be said in favour of this way of fighting. This great success was, however, the beginning of Car- magnola's evil fortune. It is said that lie might, had he followed up his victory, have pushed on to the walls of Milan and driven Philip from his duchy. But no doubt this would have been against the thrifty practices of the Condottieri, and the usages of war. He returned to his headquarters after the fight without any pursuit, and all the prisoners were set free. This curious custom would seem to have been unknown to the Venetian commis- sioners, and striick them with astonishment. In the morn- ing, after the din and commotion of the battle were over, they came open-mouthed to the general's tent with their complaint. The prisoners had in great part been dis- charged. Was Carmagnola aware of it ? " What then," cried those lay critics with much reason, " was the use of war? when all that was done was to prolong it endlessly the fighting men escaping without a wound, the prisoners going back to their old quarters in peace ? " Carmagnola, ever proud, would seem to have made them no reply ; but when they had done he sent to inquire what had been done with the prisoners, as if this unimportant detail was un- known to him. He was answered that almost all had been set free on the spot, but that about four hundred still remained in the canip their captors probably hoping for ransom. " Since their comrades have had so much good 236 THE MAKERS < >F VENICE. [CHAP. fortune," said Carmagnola, u by the kindness of my men, i -desire that the others should be released by mine, according to the custom of war." Tims the haughty general proved how much regard he paid to the remonstrances of his civilian masters. "'From this," says Sabellico, "there arose great suspicion in the minds of the Venetians. And there are many who believe that it was the chief occasion of his death." But no hint was given of these suspicions at the time ; and as Carmagnola's bloodless victory deeply impressed the surrounding countries, brought all the smaller fortresses and castles to submission, and, working with other misfortunes, led back Philip again with the ever- convenient legate to ask for peace, the general returned with glory to Venice, and was received apparently with honour and delight. But the little rift within the lute was never slow of appearing, and the jealous Signoria feasted many a man whom they suspected, and for whom, under their smiles and plaudits, they were already concocting trouble. The curious " usage of war," thus discovered by the Venetian envoys, is frankly accounted for by a historian, who had himself been in his day a Condottiere, AS arising from the fear the soldiers had, if the war finished quickly, that the people might cry, " Soldiers, to the spade ! " A curious evidence of how human expedients are lost .and come round into use again by means of that whii-li- gig of time which makes so many revolutions, is to be found in Carmagnola's invention for the defence of his amp, of a double line of fche country carts which carried his provisions, standing closely together with three archers, one authority says, to each. Notwithstanding what seems the very easy nature of his victories, and the large use of treachery, it is evident that his military genius impressed the imagination of his time above that of any of his com- petitors. He alone, harsh and haughty as he was, kept his forces in \inity. His greatness silenced the feudal lords, APSE OF THE CHURCH OF THE FKARI. in.] BY SEA AND BY LAND. _>:;: who could not venture to combat it, and he had the art of command, which is a special gift. The peace lasted for the long period of three years, during which time Carmagnola lived in great state and honour in Venice, in a palace near Han Eustachio which had been bestowed upon him by the Htate. His wife and children had in the former interval of peace been restored to him, and all seemed to go at his will. A modern biographer (Lomonaco), who does not cite any authorities, informs us that Carmagnola was never at home in his adopted city that he felt suspicions and unfriendliness in the air- and that the keen consciousness of his low origin, which seems to have set a sharp note in his character, was more than ever present with him here. " He specially abhorred the literary coteries," says this doubtful authority, " calling them vain as women, punctilious as boys, lying and feigning like slaves," which things have been heard before, and are scarcely worth putting into the fierce lips of the Pied- montese soldier, whose rough accent of the north was probably laughed at by the elegant Venetians, and to whom their constant pursuit of novelty, their mental activity, politics, and commotions of town life, were very likely nauseous and unprofitable. He who was conversant with more primitive means of action than speeches in. the Senate, or even the discussions of the Coiisiglio Maggiore, might well chafe at so much loss of time ; and it was the fate of a general of mercenaries, who had little personal motive beyond his pay, and what he could gain by his services, to be distrusted by his masters. The occasion of the third war is sufficiently difficult to discover. A Venetian cardinal Gabriele Condulmero- had been made Pope, and had published a bull, admonishing both lords and people to keep the peace, as he intended himself to inquire into every rising, and regulate the affairs of Italy. This declaration alarmed Philip of Milan, to whom it seemed inevitable that a Venetian Pope should be 238 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. his enemy ; and thus, Avith no doubt a thousand secondary considerations on all hands, the peninsula was once more set on fire. "When it became apparent that the current of events was setting towards war, Carmagnola, for no given reason, but perhaps because his old comrades and associates had begun to exercise a renewed attraction, notwithstanding ull the griefs that had separated him from Philip, wrote to the Senate of Venice, asking to resign his appointments in their service. This, however, the alarmed Sigrtoria would by no means listen to. They forced upon him instead the command in general of all their forces, with 1,000 ducats a month of pay, to be paid both in war and peace, and many extraordinary privileges. It seems even to have been con- templated as a possible thing that Milan itself, if Philip's powers were entirely crushed, as the Venetians hoped, might be bestowed upon Carmagnola as a reward for the destruc- tion of the Visconti. Nevertheless, it is evident that Carmagnola had by this time begun a correspondence with his former master, and received both letters and messengers from Philip while conducting the campaign against him. And that campaign was certainly not so successful, nor was it carried 011 with the energy which had marked his previous enterprises. He was defeated before Soncino, by devices of a similar character to those which he had himself employed, and here is said to have lost a thousand horses. But that shedding of innocent blood was soon forgotten in the real and terrible disaster which followed. The Venetians had fitted out not only a land army, but what ought to have been more in consonance with their habits and character, an expedition by sea under the Admiral Trevisano, whose ships, besides their crews, are said to have carried 10,000 fighting men, for the capture of Cremona. The fleet went up the Po to act in concert with Carmagnola in his operations against that city. But Philip on his side had also a fleet in the Po, though inferior to the Venetian,, under the command of a Genoese, Grimaldi, and manned in in.] BY SEA AND BY LAND. 2.">! great part by Genoese, the hereditary opponents and rivals of Venice. The two generals on land. Hforza and Pic cinino, then both in the service of Philip -men whose ingenuity and resource had been whetted by previous defeats, and who had thus learned Carinagnola's tactics- - amused and occupied him by threatening his camp, which was as yet imperfectly defended, piutosto alleggiamento cite ripari : but in the night stole away, and under the walls of Cremona were received in darkness and silence into Grimaldi's ships, and flung themselves upon the Venetian fleet. These vessels being sea-going ships, were heavy and difficult to manage in the river those of their adversaries being apparently of lighter build ; and Grimaldi's boats seem to have had the advantage of the current, which carried them " very swiftly " against the Venetians, who, iu the doubtful dawn, were astonished by the sight of the glittering armour and banners bearing down upon them with all the impetus of the great stream. The Venetian admiral sent off a message to warn Garmagnola ; but before he could reach the river-bank, the two fleets, in a disastrous jumble, had drifted out of reach. Carmagnola, roused at last, arrived too late, and, standing on the shore, hot with ineffectual haste, spent his wrath in shouts of encouragement to his comrades, and in cries of rage and dismay as he saw the tide of fortune drifting on, carrying the ships of Philip in wild concussion against the hapless Venetians. When things became desperate, Trevisano, the admiral, got to shore in a little boat, and fled, carrying with him the treasure of 60,000 gold pieces, which, was one of the great objects of the attack. But this was almost all that was saved from the rout. Bigli says that seventy ships were taken, of which twenty-eight were ships of war ; but in this he is probably mistaken, as he had himself described the fleet as one of thirty ships. " The slaughter," he adds, " was greater than any that was ever known in Italy, more than 2,500 men being said to have perished, in witness of which 240 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAK the Po ran red, a great stream of blood, for many miles." A few ships escaped by night, and many fugitives, nodonbt, 111 boats and by the banks, Avhero they were assailed by the peasants, who taking advantage of their opportunity, and with many a wrong to revenge, killed a large number. Such a disastrous defeat had not happened to Venice for many a day. The Venetian historian relates that Carmagnola received the warning and appeal of the admiral with contempt " as he was of a wrathful nature, di natura iraconda, and with a loud voice reproved the error of the Venetians, who, despising his counsel, refused the support to the army on land which they had given to their naval expedition ; nor did he believe what the messengers told him, but said scornfully that the admiral, fearing the form of an armed man, had dreamt that all the enemies in their boats were born giants." This angry speech, no doubt, added to the keen dissatisfaction of the Venetians in knowing that their general remained inactive on the bank while their ships were thus cut to pieces. The truth probably lies between the two narratives, as so often happens ; for Carmagnola might easily express his hot impatience with the authorities who had refused to be guided by his experience, and with the admiral who took the first unexpected man in armour for a giant, when the messengers roused him with their note of alarm in the middle of the night, and yet have had no traitorous purpose in his delay. He himself took the defeat profoundly to heart, and wrote letters of such dis- tress excusing himself, that the senators were compelled in the midst of their own trouble to send ambassadors to soothe him " to mitigate his frenzy, that they might not fall into greater evil, and to keep him at his post " with assurances that they held him free of blame. It is evident, we think, that the whole affair had been in direct opposition to his .advice, and that, instead of being in the wrong, he felt himself able to take a very high position with the ill-advised in.] BY SEA AND BY LAND. 241 Signoria, and to resent the catastrophe which, with greater energy on his part, might perhaps have been prevented altogether. The Venetians avenged the disaster by sending a fleet at once to Genoa, where, coursing along the lovely line of the eastern Riviera, they caught in a somewhat similar way the Genoese fleet, and annihilated it. But this is by the way. Carmagnola, meanwhile, lay like Achilles sullen in his tent. Philip himself came in his joy and triumph to the neighbourhood, but could not tempt the disgusted general to more than a languid passage of arms. An attempt to take Cremona by surprise, made by one of his officers, a, certain Cavalcabo, or as some say by Colleoni, seemed as if it might have been crowned with success had the general bestirred himself with sufficient energy "if Carmagnola had sent more troops in aid." As it was, the expedition, being unsupported, had to retire. If he were indeed con- templating treachery, it is evident that he had a great struggle with himself, and was incapable of changing his allegiance with the light-hearted ease of many of his con- temporaries. He lay thus sullen and disheartened in his leaguer even when spring restored the means of warfare, and though his old enemy Piccinino was up and stirring, picking up here and there a castle in the disturbed precincts of the Cremonese. " The marvel grew," cries Sabellico, " that Carmagnola let these people approach him, and never moved." The Signoria, in the meantime, had been separately and silently turning over many thoughts in their mind on the subject of this general who was not as the others, who would not be commanded nor yet dismissed, too great to be dispensed with, too troublesome to manage. Ever since the memorable incidents of the battle of Maclodio, doubts of his good faith had been in their minds. Why did he liberate Philip's soldiers if he really wished to overthrow Philip ] It was Philip himself so the commissioners had said in 242 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. their indignation -whom he had set free; and who could tell that the treachery at Soncino was not of his contriving, or that he had not stood aloof of set purpose while the .ships were cut in pieces 1 Besides, was it not certain that many a Venetian had been made to stand aside while this northern mountaineer, this rude Piedmontese, went swagger- ing through the streets, holding the nol>lest at arm's-length? A hundred hidden vexations came up when some one at last introduced his name, and suddenly the senators with one consent burst into the long-deferred discussion for which every one was ready. " There were not a few," says Sabellico, " who, from the beginning, had suspected Carmagnola. These now openly in the Senate declared that this suspicion not only had not ceased but increased, and was increasing every day ; and that, except his title of commander, they knew nothing in him that was not hostile to the Venetian name. The others would not believe this, nor consent to hold him in such suspicion until some manifest signs of his treachery were placed before them. The Senate again and again referred to the Avogadori the question whether such a man ought to be retained in the public service, or whether, if convicted of treachery, he ought to be put to capital punishment. This deliberation, which lasted a very long time, ought to demonstrate how secret were the proceedings of the Senate when the affairs of the country were in question, and how profound the good faith of the public counsellors. For when the Senate was called together for this objeat, entering into counsel at the first lighting of torches, the consultation lasted till it was full day. Carmagnola him- self was in Venice for some time while it was proceeding ; and going one morning to pay his respects to the doge, he met him coming out of the council-chamber to the palace, and with much cheerfulness asked whether he ought to bid him good morning or good evening, seeing he had not slept since supper. To whom that prince replied, smiling, that among the many serious matters which had been talked of in that long discussion, nothing had been oftener mentioned than his (Carmagnola's) name. But in order that no suspicion might be awakened by these words, he immediately turned the conversation to other subjects. This was nearly eight months before- there was any question of death ; and so secret was this council, holding everything in firm and perpetual silence, that no suggestion of their suspicions reached Cannagnola. And though many of the order of the senators were by long intimacy his friends, and many of them poor, who might have obtained great rewards from Carmagnola had they betrayed this secret, nevertheless all kept it faithfully." There is something grim and terrible in the smiling reply of the doge to the man whose life was being played for in.] BY SEA AND BY LAND. _'4: > , between these secret judges, that his name had been one of those which canie oftenest uppermost in their discussions. With what eyes must the splendid Venetian in his robes of state, pale with the night's watching, have looked at the soldier, ei'ect and cheerful, con fronte motto alleyra, who came across the great court to meet him in the first light of the morning, which after the dimness of . the council chamber and its dying torches, would dazzle the watcher's eyes? The other red-robed figures, dispersing like so many ghosts, pale-eyed before the day, did they glanc"e at each other with looks of baleful meaning as the unsuspicious general passed with many salutations and friendly words and greeting "Shall it be good even or good morrow, illustrious gentlemen, who watch for Venice while the rest of the world sleeps'?" Would there be grace enough among the secret councillors to hurry their steps as they passed him, or was there a secret enjoyment in Foscari's double entendre in that fatal smile with which he met the victim 1 ? The great court which has witnessed so much has rarely seen a stranger scene. At what time this curious encounter can have happened it is "difficult to tell perhaps on the occasion of some flying visit to his family, which Carmagnola may have paid after laying up his army in winter quarters after the fashion of the time. The Signoria had sent messengers to remonstrate with him upon his inaction to no avail ; and that he still lingered in camp doing little or nothing added a sort of exasperation to the impatience of the city, and gave their rulers a justification for what they were about to do. The Venetian senators had no thought of leaving their general free to carry over to Philip the help of his great name in case of another war. Carmagnola' s sword thrown suddenly into the balance of power, which was so critical in Italy, might have swayed it in almost any conceivable direction and this was a risk not to be lightly encountered. Had he shaken the dust from his feet at Mestre, and, 244 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. instead of embarking upon the lagoon, turned his horse round upon the beach and galloped off, as he had done from Philip's castle, to some other camp the Florentines', perhaps, or his own native Duke Amadeo of Savoy- -what revolutions might happen 1 He had done it once, but the magnificent Signoria were determined that he should not do it again. Therefore the blow, when finally resolved upon, had to be sharp and sudden, allowing no time for thought. Thanks to that force of secrecy of which the historian" brags, Carmagnola had no thought of any harm intended to him. He thought himself the master of the situation he to whom only a year before the rulers of Venice had sent a deputation to soothe and caress their general, lest he should throw up his post. Accordingly, when he received the fatal message to return to Venice in order to give his good masters advice as to the state of affairs, he seems to have been without suspicion as to what was intended. He set out at once, accompanied by one of his lieutenants, Gonzaga, the lord of Mantua, who had also been summoned to advise the Signoria, and rode along the green Lombard plains in all the brilliancy of their spring verdure, received wherever he halted with honour and welcome. When he reached the Brenta he took boat ; and his voyage down the slow-flowing stream, which has been always so dear to the Venetians, was like a royal progress. The banks of the Brenta bore then, as now, long lines of villas, inhabited by all that was finest in Venice ; and such of the noble inhabitants as were already in vitteggiatura, " according to their habit," Sabellico says, received him, as he passed, con molta festa. And so he went to his fate. At Mestre he was met by an escort of eight gentlemen from Venice those, no doubt, to whom the historian refers as bound to him by long intimacy, who yet never breathed to him a word of warning. With this escort he crossed the lagoon, the towers and lofty roofs of Venice vising from out the rounded line of sea, his- in.] BY SEA AND BY LAND. 245 second home, the country of which he had boasted, where every man received his due. How did they talk with him, those silken citizens who knew but would not by a look betray whither they were leading their noble friend ] Would they tell him the news of the city, what was thought of the coming peace, what intrigues were afloat, where Trevisano, the unlucky admiral, had gone to hide his head in his banishment 1 or would the conversation flow on the last great public show, or some rare conceit in verse, or the fine fleet that followed the Bucentoro when last the Serenest Prince took the air upon the lagoon 1 But Carmagnola Avas not lettered, nor a courtier, so that such subjects would have little charm for him. When the boats swept past San Stai, would not a waving scarf from some balcony show that his wife and young daughter had come out to see him pass, though well aware that the business of the Signoria went before any in- dulgence at home ] Or perhaps he came not by Canereggio but up the Giudecca, with the wind and spray from the sea blowing in his face as he approached the centre of Venetian life. He was led by his courtier-attendants to the palace direct the senators having, as would seem, urgent need of his counsel. As he entered the fatal doors, those complacent friends, to save him any trouble, turned back and dismissed the retainers, without whom a gentleman never stirred abroad, informing them that their master had much to say to the doge, and might be long detained. Here romance comes in with unnecessary aggravations of the tragic tale, relating how, not finding the doge, as he had expected, awaiting him, Carmagnola turned to go to his own house, but was stopped by his false friends, and led, on pretence of being shown the nearest exit, another gloomy way a way that led through bewildering passages into the prisons. No sentimental Bridge of Sighs existed in these days. But when the door of the strong-room which was to be his home for the rest of his mortal life was opened, and the lively voices of his conductors sank in the shock of S 246 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. surprise and horror, and all that was about to be rushed on Carmagnola's mind, the situation is one which requires no aid of dramatic art. Here, in a moment, betrayed out of the air and light, and the freedom which lie had used so proudly, this man, who had never feared the face of men, must have realised his fate. At the head of a great army one day, a friendless prisoner the next, well aware that the light of day would never clear up the proceedings against him, or common justice, such as awaits a poor picker and stealer, stand between him and the judges whose sentence was a foregone conclusion. Let us hope that those intimates who had accompanied him thus far slunk away in confusion and shame from the look of the captive. So much evil as Car- magnola had done in his life and there is no reason to suppose, and not a word to make us believe, that he was a sanguinary conqueror, or abused the position he held must have been well atoned by that first moment of enlightenment and despair. During the thirty days that followed, little light is thrown upon Carmagnola's dungeon. He is swallowed up in the darkness, " examined by torture before the Secret Council," a phrase that chills one's blood until they have the evidence they want, and full confirmation in the groans of the half-conscious sufferer of all imagined or concocted accusations. Sabellico asserts that the proof against him was " in letters which he could not deny were in his own hand, and by domestic testimony," whatever that may mean ; and does not mention the torture. It is remarkable that Romanin, while believing all this, is unable to prove it by any document, and can only repeat what the older and vaguer chronicler says. "The points of the accusation were these," Sabellico adds : " succour refused to Trevisano, and Cremona saved to Philip by his treacherous abstinence." The fact, however, is more simply stated by Navagero before the trial, that " the Signoria were bent on freeing themselves " from a general who had apparently ceased to be always victorious after the excellent habit of republics, in.] BY SEA AND BY LAND. 247 which was to cut off the head of every unsuccessful leader thus effectually preventing further failure, 011 his part at least. Carmagnola was not a man of words. Yet he might have launched with his dying breath some ringing defiance to catch the echoes, and leave in Venetian ears a recollection, a watchword of rebellion to come. The remorseless Council thought of this, with the vigilance and subtle genius which inspired all the proceedings of their secret conclave ; and when the May morning dawned which was to be his last, a crowning indignity was added to his doom. He was led out con uno sbadocchio in bocca, gagged, " in order that he might not speak " to the Piazzetta, now so cheerful and so gay, which then had the most dreadful associations of any in Venice. " Between the columns," the blue lagoon, with all its wavelets flinging upward their countless gleams of reflection in the early sun ; the rich hued sails standing out against the blue ; the great barges coming serenely in, as now, with all their many-coloured stores from the Lido farms and fields the gondolas crowding to the edge of the fatal pavement, the populace rushing from behind. No doubt the windows of the ducal palace, or so much of the galleries as were then in existence, were crowded with spectators too. Silent, carrying his head high, like him of whom Dante writes who held great Hell itself in despite sdegnoso even of that gag between his lips the great soldier, the general whose praises had rung through Venice, and whose haughty looks had been so familiar in the streets, was led forth to his death. By that strong argument of the axe, unanswer- able, incontestable, the Signoria managed to liberarsi of many an inconvenient servant and officer, either unsuccessful or too fortunate. Carmagnola had both of these faults. He was too great, and for once he had failed. The people called " Sventura ! Sventura ! " "Misfortune! Misfor- tune ! " in their dark masses, as they struggled to see the wonderful sight. Their sympathies could scarcely be against the victim on that day of retribution ; and perhaps, had his s 2 248 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CH. in. voice been free to speak to them, they might have thought of other things to shout, which the Signoria had been less content to hear. Thus ended the great Carmagnola, the most famous of all Italian soldiers of fortune. Over one of the doors of the noble church of the Frari there has hung for generations a coffin covered with a pall, in which it was long supposed that his bones had been placed, suspended between heaven and earth per infamia, as a romantic Custode says. This, however, is one of the fables of tradition. He was buried in San Francesco delle Vigne (not the present church) ; whence at a later period his remains were transferred to Milan. His wife and daughter, or daughters, were banished to Treviso with a modest pension, yet a penalty of death registered against them should they break bounds so determined, it is evident, were the Signoria to leave no means by which the general could be avenged. And what became of these poor women is unknown. Such uncon- sidered trifles drop through the loopholes of history, which has nothing to do with hearts that are broken or hopes that cannot be renewed. COt FIN IN THE CHURCH OF THE FKABl. CHAPTER IV. BAETOLOMMEO COLLEONI. THE lives of the other Gondottieri who tore Lombardy in pieces among them and were to-day for Venice and to-morrow for Milan, or for any other master who might turn up with a reasonable chance of fighting, have less of human interest, as they have less of the tragic element in their lives, and less of what we may call modern characteristics in their minds than the unfortunate general who ended his days " between the columns," the victim of suspicion only, leaving no proof against him that can satisfy posterity. If Carmagnola was a traitor at all, he was such a one as might be the hero of an analytical drama of our own day, wavering between truth and falsehood, worked upon by old associations and the spells of relenting affection, but never able to bring himself to the point of renouncing his engagements or openly breaking his word. Such a traitor might be in reality more dangerous than the light- hearted deserter who went over with his lances at a rousing gallop to the enemy. But modern art loves to dwell upon the conflicts of the troubled mind, driven about from one motive or object to another, now seized upon by the tender recollections of the past, and a longing for the sympathy and society of the friends of his youth, now sternly called back by the present duty which requires him to act in the service of their enemy. 250 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. It is difficult to realise this nineteenth century struggle as going on under the corslet of a mediaeval soldier, a fierce illiterate general, risen from the ranks, ferocious in war and arrogant in peace, according to all the descriptions of him. But there is nothing vulgar in the image that rises before us as we watch Carmagnola lying inactive on those devastated plains, letting his fame go to the winds, paralysed between the subtle wooings of old associations, the horror of Philip's approaching ruin wrought by his hands of Philip who had been his playfellow when they were both youths at Pavia, the cousin, perhaps the brother, of his wife and the demands of the alien masters who paid him so well, and praised him so loudly, but scorned with fine ridicule his rough military ways. Philip had wronged him bitterly, but had suffered for it : and how was it possible to keep the rude heart from melting when the rage of love offended had passed away, and the sinner pleaded for forgiveness ? Or, who could believe that the woman by his side, who was a Visconti, would be silent, or that she could see unmoved her own paternal blazon sink ing to the earth before the victorious Lion of the Venetians 1 The wonder is that Carmagnola did not do as at one time or another every one of his compeers did go over cheerfully to Philip, and thus turn the tables at once. Some innate nobility in the man, who was not as the others were, could alone have prevented this very usual catastrophe. Even if we take the view of the Venetian Signoria, that he was in his heart a traitor., we must still allow the fact, quite wonderful in the circumstances, that he was not so by any overt act and that his treachery amounted to nothing more than the struggle in his mind of two influences which paralysed and rendered him wretched. The ease with which he fell into the snare laid for his feet, and obeyed the Signoria's call, which in reality was his death-warrant, does not look like a guilty man. The others were all of very different mettle. Gonzaga, iv.] BY SEA AND BY LAND. 251 Marquis of Mantua, who with a few generations of fore- fathers behind him, might have been supposed to have learned the laws of honour better than a mere Savoyard trooper, went over without a word, at a most critical moment of the continued war, yet died in his bed com- fortably, no one thinking of branding him with the name of traitor. Sforza acted in the same manner repeatedly, without any apparent criticism from his contemporaries, and in the end displaced and succeeded Philip, and estab- lished his family as one of the historical families of Italy. None of these men seem to have had any hesitation in the matter. And neither had the lesser captain who has so identified himself with Venice that when we touch upon the mainland and its wars, and the conqviests and losses of the republic, it is not possible to pass by the name of Colleoni. This is not so much for the memory of anything he has done, or from any characteristics of an impressive nature which he possessed, as from the wonderful image of him which rides and reigns in Venice, the embodiment of martial strength and force unhesitating, the mailed captain of the middle ages, ideal in a tremendous reality which the least observant cannot but feel. There he stands as in iron nay, stands not, but rides upon us, unscrupulous, unswerving, though his next step should be on the hearts of the multitude, crushing them to pulp with remorseless hoofs. Man and horse together, there is scarcely any such warlike figure left among us to tell in expressive silence the tale of those days when might was right, and the sword, indifferent to all reason, turned every scale. Colleoni played no such emphatic part in the history of Venice as his great leader and predecessor. But he was mixed up in all those wonderful wars of Lombardy, in the confusion of sieges, skirmishes, surprises ever repeated, never decisive, a phantasmagoria of moving crowds, a din and tumult that shakes the earth, thundering of horses, cries and shouts of men, and the glancing of armour, and the blaze of swords, 252 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. reflecting the sudden blaze of burning towns, echoing the more terrible cries of sacked cities. From the miserable little castello, taken again and again, and yet again, its surrounding fields trampled do\vn, its poor inhabitants drained of their utmost farthing, to such rich centres as Brescia and Verona, which lived for half their time shut up within their walls, besieged by one army or the other, and spent the other half in settling their respective ransoms, changing their insignia, setting up the Lion and Serpent alternately upon their flags, what endless misery and con- fusion, and waste of human happiness ! But the captains who changed sides half-a-dozen times in their career, and were any man's men who would give them high pay and something to fight about, pursued their trade Avith much impartiality, troubling themselves little about the justice or injustice of their cause, and still less, it would appear, about any bond of honour between themselves and their masters. Colleoni alone seems tc have had some scrupu- lousness about breaking his bond before his legal time was up. The others do not seem to have had conscience even in this respect, but deserted when it pleased them, as often as not in the middle of a campaign. Bartolommeo Colleoni, or Coglioni, as his biographer calls him, was born in the year 1400, of a family of small rustic nobility near Bergamo, but was driven from his home by a family feud, in the course of which his father was displaced from the fortress which he seems to have won in the good old way by his spear and his bow by a conspiracy headed by his own brothers. This catastrophe scattered the children of Paolo Colleoni, and threw into the ranks of the free lances (which probably, however, would have been their destination in any case) his young sons as soon as they were old enough to carry a spear. The first service of Bartolommeo was under the Condottiere Braccio, in the service of the Queen of Naples, where he is said by his biographer, Spine, to have acquired, from his iv. J BY SEA AND BY LAND. 253 earliest beginnings in the field, singular fame and reputa- tion. It is unfortunate that this biographer, throughout the course of his narrative, adopts the easy method of attributing to Colleoni all the fine things done in the war, appropriating without scruple acts which are historically put to the credit of his commanders. It is possible, no doubt, that he is right, and that the young officer suggested to Gattamelata his famous retreat over the mountains, and to the engineer who carried it out the equally famous transport overland to the Lago di Garda of certain galleys to which we shall afterwards refer. Colleoni entered the service of Venice at the beginning of Carmagnola's first campaign, with a force of forty horsemen, and his biographer at once credits him on the authority of an obscure his- torian with one of the most remarkable exploits of that war, the daring seizure of a portion of the fortifications of Cremona, before which Carmagnola's army was lying. He was at least one of the little party which executed this feat of arms. ' Bartolommeo, accompanied by Mocimo da Lugo, and by Cavalca- bue, the son of Ugolino, once Lord of Cremona, both captains in the army, the latter having friends in the city, approached the walls by night, with great precaution, and on that side where they had been informed the defences were weakest, placed their ladders. Bartolom- meo was the first, con intrcpidissimo animo, to ascend the wall and to occupy the tower of San Luca, having killed the commander and guards. News was sent at once to Carmagnola of this success, upon which, had he, according to their advice, hastened to attack, Cremona without doubt would have fallen into the hands of the Venetians." The ycung adventurers held this tower for three days, as Quentin Durward, or the three Mousquetaires of Dumas might have done but finally were obliged to descend as they had come up, and return to the army under cover of night, with nothing but the name of a daring feat to reward them though that, no doubt, had its sweetness, and also a certain value in their profession. The curious complication of affairs in that strange distracted country, may be all the 254 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. more clearly realised, if we note that one of the three and most probably the leader of the band was a Creinouese, familiar with all the points of vantage in the city, and the son of its former lord, with no doubt partisans, and a party of his own, had he been able to push his way out of the Rocca to the interior of the city. Thus there was always some one, who even in the subjection of his native place to the republic, may have hoped for a return of his own family, or at least for vengeance upon the neighbouring despot which had cast it out. We hear of Colleoni next in a rapid night march to Bergamo, which was the original home of his own race, and which was threatened by the Milanese forces under Picci- nino. Knowing the city to be without means of defence, though apparently still in a state of temporary independence, Colleoni proposed to his commanders to hurry thither and occupy and prepare it for the approaching attack, with the condition, however, that the affairs of the city, le cose de Bergamaschi, at least within the walls, should receive no damage another consolatory gleam of patriotism in the midst of all the fierce selfishness of the time. With his usual promptitude, and what his biographer calls animositd,, impetuosity, he rushed across the country while Piccinino was amusing himself with the little independent castles about, " robbing and destroying the country, having given orders that whatever could not be carried away should be burned, so that in a very short time the villages and castles of the valleys Callepia and Trescoria were reduced to the semblance and aspect of a vast and frightful solitude." Colleoni had only his own little force of horsemen and three hundred infantry, and had he come across the route of the Milanese would have been but a mouthful to that big enemy. But he carried his little band along with such energy and inspiration of impetuous genius, that they reached Bergamo while still the foe was busy with the blazing villages : and had time to strengthen the fortifica- iv.] BY SEA AND BY LAND. 255 tions and increase both ammunition and men before the approach of Piccinino, who, finally repulsed from the walls of the city in which he had expected to find an easy prey and harbour for the stormy season and exposed to that other enemy, which nobody in those days attempted to make head against, the winter, with its chilling forces of rain and snow streamed back disconsolate to Milan al suo Duca, who probably was not at all glad to see him, arid expected with reason that so great a captain as Piccinino would have kept his troops at the expense of Bergamo, or some other conquered city, until he could take the field again, instead of bringing such a costly and troublesome following home. We cannot, however, follow at length the feats which his biographer ascribes to Colleoni's animosita and impetuous spirit, which was combined, according to the same authority, with a prudence and foresight '' above the captains of his time." One of these was the extraordinary piece of engineering by which a small fleet, including one or two galleys, was transported from the Adige to the Lago di Garda over the mountain pass, apparently that between Mori and Riva. Near the top of the pass is a small lake called now the Lago di Loppio, a little mountain tarn, which afforded a momentary breathing space to the workmen and engineers of this wonderful piece of work. The galleys, " two of great size and three smaller," along with a number of little boats which were put upon carts, were dragged over the pass, with infinite labour and pains, and it was only in the third month that the armata, the little squadron painfully drawn down hill by means of the channel of a mountain stream, found its way to the lake at last. This wonderful feat was the work, according to Sabellico, of a certain Sorbolo of Candia. But the biographer of Colleoni boldly claims the idea for his hero, asserting with some appearance of justice that the fathers of Venice would not have con' 256 THE MAKERS OF A'ENICE. I CHAP. sented to such a scheme upon the word of an altogether un- known man, who was simply the engineer who carried it out. It was for the purpose of supplying provisions to Brescia, then closely besieged, that this great work was done. Sabellico gives a less satisfactory but still more imposing reason. " It was supposed," he says, "that the intention of the Venetian senators was rather to encourage the Brescians, than for any other motive, as they were aware that these ships were of no use, the district being so full of the enemy's forces that no one could approach Brescia, and great doubts being entertained whether it would be possible to retain Yerona and Vicenza." On the other hand, Spino declares that the armata fulfilled its purpose and secured the passage of provisions to Brescia. It was, at any rate, a magnificent way of keeping the beleaguered city, and all the other alarmed dependencies of Venice, in good heart and hope. None of our historians have, however, a happy hand in their narratives of these wars. They are given in endless repetitions, and indeed were without any human interest, even that of bloodshed, an eternal see-saw of cities taken and retaken, of meaningless movements of troops, and chess-board battles gained and lost. One of the greatest of these, in which Colleoni was one of the leaders against Sforza, who led the troops of Milan, bore a strong resem- blance to that battle of Maclodio, in which Carmagnola won so great but so unfortunate a victory. Sforza had estab- lished himself, as his predecessor had done, among the marshes ; and although at the first onset the Venetians had the best of it, their success was but momentary, and the troops were soon wildly flying and floundering over the treacherous ground. Colleoni, who led the reserve and who made a stand as long as he could, escaped at last on foot, Sanudo says, who writes the woful news as it arrives at the fifteenth hour of the 15th of September, 1448. "The Proveditori Almoro Donato and Guado iv.] BY SEA AND BY LAND. 257 Dandolo were made prisoners," he says, " which Provediton were advised by many that they ought to fly and save themselves, but answered that they would rather die beside the ensigns than save themselves by a shameful flight. And note," adds the faithful chronicler, " that in this rout only one of our troops was killed, the rest being taken prisoners and many of them caught in the marshes." The flight of the mercenaries on every side, while the two proud Venetians stood by their flag, perhaps the only men of all that host who cared in their hearts what became of St. Mark's often triumphant lion, affords another curious picture in illustration of surely the strangest warfare ever practised among men. "But not for this," Sanudo goes on, "was the Doge discouraged, but came to the Council with more vigour than ever, and the question was how to reconstruct the army, so that having plenty of money they should establish the camp again as it was at first." Thus Venetian pride and gold triumphed over misfortune. The most energetic measures were taken at once with large offers of pay and remittances of money, and the broken bands were gradually re-gathered together. Sforza, after his victory, pushed on, taking and ravaging everything till he came once more to the gates of Brescia, where again the sturdy citizens prepared themselves for a siege. In the meantime pairs of anxious Proveditori with sacks of money went off at once to every point of danger ; 30,000 ducats fell to the share of Brescia alone. At Verona, these grave officials " day and night were in waiting to enrol men, and very shortly had collected a great army by means of the large payments they made." While these tremendous efforts were in the course of making, once more the whole tide of affairs was changed as by a magician's wand. The people of Milan had called Sforza back on their duke's death, but had held his power in constant suspicion, and were now seized with alarm lest, flushed with victory as he was, he should take that duke's- 258 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. place which was indeed his determination. They seized the occasion accordingly, and now rose against his grow ing power, " desiring to maintain themselves in freedom. ' Sforza no sooner heard of this than he stopped fighting, and by the handy help of one of the Proveditori who had been taken in the battle of the marshes, and who turned out to be a friend of his secretary Simonetta, made overtures of peace to Venice, which were as readily accepted. So that on the 18th of October of the same year, little more than a month after the disastrous rout above recorded, articles of peace were signed, by which the aid of 4,000 horsemen and 2,000 foot were granted to Sforza, along with a subsidy of 13,000 ducats a month, according to Sanudo, though one cannot help feeling that an extra cypher must have crept into the statement. Venice regained all she had lost ; and the transformation scene having thus once more taken place, our Colleoni among others, so lately a fugitive before the victorious Milanese, settled calmly down in his saddle once more as a lieutenant of Sforza' s army, as if no battle nor hostility had ever been. A curious domestic incident appears in the midst of the continued phantasmagoria of this endless fighting. The Florentines, more indifferent to consistency than the Venetians, and always pleased to humiliate a sister state, not only supported Sforza against the Milanese, but pre- sumed to remonstrate with the Signoria when after a time, getting alarmed by his growing power, they withdrew from their alliance with him. This was promptly answered by a decree expelling all Florentine inhabitants from Venice, and forbidding them the exercise of any commercial trans- actions within the town. Shortly before, King Alfonzo of Naples had made the same order in respect to the Venetians in his kingdom. These arbitrary acts probably did more real damage than the bloodless battles which with constant change of combinations Were going on on every side. iv.] BY SEA AND BY LAND. 2f><) The remaining facts of Colleoni's career were few. Not- withstanding a trifling backsliding in the matter of aiding Sforza, he was engaged as Captain General of the Venetian forces in 1455, and remained in this office till the term of his engagement was completed, which seems to have been ten years. He then, Sanudo tells us, " treated with Madonna Bianca, Duchess of Milan" (Sforza being just dead) " to procure the hand of one of her daughters for his son. But the marriage did not take place, and he resumed his engagements with our Signoria." It is difficult to understand how this proposal could have been made, as to all appearance Colleoni left no son behind him, a fact which is also stated in respect to most of the generals of the time a benevolent interposition of nature one cannot but think for cutting off that seed of dragons. The only other mention of him in the Venetian records is the announce- ment of his death, which took place in October, 1475, in his castle of Malpaga, surrounded by all the luxury and wealth of the time. He was of the same age as the century, and a completely prosperous and successful man, except in that matter of male children with which, his biographer naively tells us, he never ceased to attempt to provide himself, but always in vain. He left a splendid legacy to the republic which he had served so long with aberrations, which no doubt were by that time forgotten no less than 216,000 ducats, Sanudo says, besides arms, horses, and other articles of value. The grateful Signoria, overwhelmed by such liberality, resolved to make him a statue with a portion of the money. And accordingly, there he stands to this day, by the peaceful portals of San Zanipolo ready at any moment to ride down any insolent stranger who lifts a finger against Venice. Appropriately enough to such a magnificent piece of work it is not quite clear who made it, and it is impossible to open a guide-book without lighting upon a discussion as to how far it is Verocchio's and how far Leopardi's. He of the true eye at all events had a large 200 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. hand in it, and never proved his gift more completely than in the splendid force of this wonderful horseman. The power and thorough-going strength in him has impressed the popular imagination, as it was very natural they should, and given him a false importance to the imaginative spec tator. It is a great thing for a man when he has some slave of genius either with pen or brush or plastic clay to make his portrait. Sforza was a much greater general than Colleoni, but had no Verocchio to model him. Indeed our Bartolornmeo has no pretensions to stand in the first rank of the mediaeval Condottieri. He is but a vulgar swordsman beside Carmagnola, or Sforza or Piccinino. But perhaps from this fact he is a better example than either of them of the hired captains of his time. The possessions of Venice were but little increased by the seventy years of fighting which ensued after Carmagnola had won Brescia and Bergamo for her, and involved her in all the troubles and agitations of a continental principality. She gained Cremona in the end of the century, and she lost nothing of any importance which had been once acquired. But her province of terra firma cost her probably more than it was worth to her to be the possessor even of such fertile fields and famous cities. The unfailing energy, the wealth, the determined purpose of the great republic were, however, never more conspicuous than in the struggle which she maintained for the preservation of the province. She had the worst of it in a great number of cases, but the loss was chiefly to her purse and her vanity. The pawns with which she played that exciting game were not of her own flesh and blood. The largo jxtgamento with which she was prepared was always enough to secure a new army when the other was sped, and notwithstanding all her losses at sea and in the East, and the idleness which began to steal into the being of the new generation, she was yet so rich and over- flowing with wealth that her expenditure abroad took nothing from the lavish magnificence of all her festivals and iv.] BY SEA AND BY LAND. 2(51 holidays at home. Her ruler during all the period at which we have here hurriedly glanced was Francesco Foscari, he against whom his predecessor had warned the Signoria as a man full of restlessness and ambition, whose life would be a constant series of wars. Never did predic- tion come more true ; and though it seems difficult to see how, amid all the stern limits of the doge's privileges, it could matter very much what his character was, yet this man, in the time of his manhood and strength must have been able, above others, to influence his government and his race. The reader has already seen amid what reverses this splendid and powerful ruler, after all the conflicts and successes in which he was the leading spirit, ended his career. PART III. THE PAINTERS. CHAPTER I. THE THREE EARLY MASTERS. IT is one of the favourite occupations of this age to trace every new manifestation of human genius or force through a course of development, and to prove that in reality no special genius or distinct and individual impulse is wanted at all, but only a gradual quickening, as might be in the development of a grain of corn or an acorn from the tree. I am not myself capable of looking at the great sudden advances which, in every department of thought and invention, are made from time to time, in this way. "Why it should be that in a moment by the means of two youths in a Venetian house, not distinguishable in any way from other boys, nor especially from the sons of other poor painters, members of the scuola of 8. Luca, which had long existed in Venice, and produced dim pictures not without merit the art of painting should have sprung at once into the noblest place, and that nothing which all the genera- tions have done since with all their inventions and appliances, should ever have bettered the Bellini, seems to me one of those miraculous circumstances with which the world abounds, and which illustrate this wayward, splendid CH. i.] THE PAINTERS. 20:? and futile humanity better than any history of development could do. The art of painting had nourished dimly iu Venice for long. The love of decorative art seems indeed to have been from its very beginning characteristic of the city. Among the very earliest products of her voyages, as soon as the infant state was strong enough to have any thought beyond mere subsistence, were the beautiful things from the East with which, first the churches, and then the houses were adorned. But the art of painting, though its earliest productions seem to have been received with eager- ness and honour, lingered and made little progress. In Murano where glass-making had been long established, and where fancy must have been roused by the fantastic art, so curious, so seemingly impossible of blowing liquid metal into forms of visionary light, like bubbles, yet hard, tenacious, and clear the first impulse of delineation arose, but came to no remarkable success. There is much indeed that is beautiful in the pictures of some of these dim and early masters amidst the mists of the lagoons. But with the Bellini the pictorial art came like Athene, full arrayed in maturity of celestial godhood, a sight for all men. It is a doubtful explanation of this strange difference to say that their father had foregathered in the far distance, in his little workshop, with Donatello from Florence, or studied his art under the instructions of Gentile da Fabriano. The last privilege at least was not special to him, but must have been shared with many others of the devout and simple workmen who had each his little manu- factory of Madonnas for the constant consumption of the Church. But when Jacopo Bellini with his two sons came from Padua and settled near the Rialto, the day of Venice, so far as the pictorial art is concerned, had begun. They sprang at once to a different standing-ground altogether, as far beyond the work of their contemporaries as Dante was above his. No theory has ever explained to the human 204 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. intelligence how such :i thing can be. It is ; and in the sudden bound which Genius takes out of all the trammels of the ordinary an unaccountable, unreasonable, inimitable initiative of its own arise the epochs and is summed up the history of Art. It must have been nearly the middle of the fifteenth century when the Bellini began to make themselves known in Venice. Mediaeval history does not concern itself with dates in respect to such humble members of the common- wealth, and about the father Jacopo, it is impossible to tell how long he lived or when he died. He was a pupil, as has been said, of Gentile da Fabriano, and went with him to Florence in his youth, and thus came in contact with the great Tuscan school and its usages ; and it is known that he settled for some time at Padua, where his sons had at least a part of their education, and where he married his daughter to Andrea Mantegna ; therefore the school of Padua liad also something to do with the training of these two young men : but whether they first saw the light in Venice, or when the family returned there, it is not known. Jacopo, the father, exercised his art in a mild, mediocre way, no better or worse than the ordinary mem- bers of the ncuola. Probably his sons were still young when he returned to the Rialto, where the family house was : for there is no indication that Gentile or Giovanni were known in Padua, nor can we trace at what period it began to be apparent in Venice that Jacopo Bellini's modest workshop was sending forth altar-pieces and little sacred pictures such as had never before been known to come from his hand. That this fact would soon appear in such an abundant and ever-circulating society of artists, more than usually brought together by the rules of the scuola and the freemasonry common to artists everywhere, can scarcely be doubted : but dates there are few. It is difficult even to come to any clear understanding as to the first great public undertaking in the way of art the decoration of the i.] THE PAINTERS. 265 hall of the Consiglio Maggiore. It was begun, we are told, in the reign of Marco Cornaro, in the middle of the previous century : but both the brothers Bellini were engaged upon it when they first come into sight, and it seems to have given occupation to all the painters of their age. Kugler mentions 1456 as the probable date of a picture of Giovanni Bellini : but though this is conjectural, Bellini (he signs him- self Juan in the receipt preserved in the Sala Margherita at the Archivio, which is occasionally altered into Zuan in the documents of the time) would at that date be about thirty, and no doubt both he and his brother were deep in work and more or less known to fame before that age. It was not till a much later period however that an event occurred of the greatest importance in the history of art the arrival in Venice of Antonello of Messina, a painter chiefly, it would seem, of portraits, who brought with him the great discovery of the use of oil in painting which had been made by Jan van Eyck in Bruges some time before. Antonello had got it, Vasari says, from the inventor him- self ; but a difficulty of dates makes it more probable that Hans Memling was the Giovanni di Bruggia whose con- fidence the gay young Sicilian gained, perhaps by his lute and his music and all his pleasant ways. Antonello came to Venice in 1473, and was received as a stranger, especially a stranger with some new thing to show, seems to have always been in the sensation-loving city. But when they first saw his work, the painter brotherhoods, the busy and rising scuole, received a sensation of another kind. Up to this time- the only known medium of painting had been distemper, and in this they were all at work, getting what softness and richness they could, and that morbidezza, the melting roundness which the Italians loved, as much as they could, by every possible contrivance and exertion out of their difficult material. But the first canvas which the Sicilian set up to show his new patrons and professional emulators, was at once a revolution and a wonder. Those 26G THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. dark and glowing faces which still look at us with such a force of life, must have shone with a serene superiority upon the astonished gazers who knew indeed how to draw from nature and find the secret of her sentiment and ex pression as well as Antonello, but not how to attain that lustre and solidity of texture, that bloom of the cheek and light in the eye which were so extraordinarily superior to anything that could be obtained from the comparatively dry and thin colours of the ancient method. This novelty created such a nutter in the workshops as no wars or com- motions could call forth. How could that warmth and glow of life be got upon a piece of canvas ? One can imagine the painters gathering, discussing in storms of soft Venetian talk and boundless argument, the Vivarini hurry- ing over in their boats from Murano and every lively cena and moonlight promenade upon the lagoon apt in a moment to burst into tempests of debate as to what was this new thing. And on their scaffoldings in the great hall of the palazzo, where they were dashing in their great frescoes, what a hum of commotion would run round. How did he get it, that light and lustre, and how could they discover what it was, and share the benefit ? The story which is told by Ridolfi, but which the his- torians of a more critical school reject as fabulous, is at all events in no way unlikely or untrue to nature, or the eager curiosity of the artists, or Venetian ways. These were the days, it must be recollected, when craftsmen kept the secret of their inventions and discoveries jealously to them- selves, and it was a legitimate as well as a natural effort, if one could, to find them out. The story goes that Giovanni Bellini, by this fcime at the head of the painters in Venice, the natural and proper person to take action in any such matter, being unable to discover Antonello's secret by fair means, got it by what we can scarcely call foul, though it was a trick. But the trick was not a very bad one, and doubtless among men of their condition might be laughed To face page 1'fi GATEWAY OF THE ABP.AZIA DKLLA MISERICOP.DIA. i.] THE PAINTERS. 2(17 over as a good joke when it was over. What Bellini did, " feigning to be a gentlemen," was to commission Antonello to paint his portrait an expedient which gave him the best opportunity possible for studying the stranger's method. If it were necessary here to examine this tale rigorously, we should say that it was highly unlikely so distinguished a painter as Bellini could be unknown to the new comer, who must, one would think, have been eager to make acquaintance on his first arrival with the greatest of Venetian artists. But at all events it is a picturesque incident. One can imagine the great painter " feigning to be a gentleman," seating himself with a solemnity in which there must have been a great deal of grim humour, in the sitter's chair he had put on " the Venetian toga " for the occasion, Ridolfi says, evidently something different from the usual garb of the artist, and no doubt felt a little embarrassment mingling with his professional sense of what was most graceful in the arrangement of the unaccustomed robe. But this would not prevent him from noting all the time, under his eyelids, with true professional vision, the colours on the palette, the vials on the table, the sheaf of brushes losing no movement of the painter, and quick to note what compound it was into which he dipped his pencil " osservando Giovanni che di quando in quando inten- geva il pennello nell' oglio di lin, venne in cognizione del modo," " seeing him dip his brush from time to time in oil " which perhaps was the primitive way of using the new method. One wonders if Antonello ever finished the por- trait, if it was he who set forth the well-known image of the burly master with his outspreading mop of russet hair ; or if the Venetian after a while threw off his toga, and with a big laugh and roar of good-humoured triumph announced that his purpose was served and all that he wanted gained. There is another version of the manner in which An- tonello's secret was discovered in Venice. Of this later 208 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. story it is Vasari who is the author. He, on his side, develops out of the dim crowd of lesser artists a certain Domenico Yeniziano who was the first to make friends with the Sicilian. Antonello, for the love he bore him, com- municated his secret, Vasari says, to this young man, who for a time triumphed over all competitors ; but afterwards coining to Florence was in his turn cajoled out of the much- prized information by a Florentine painter, Andrea del Castegna, who, envious of Domenico's success, afterwards waylaid him, and killed him as he was returning from their usual evening diversions. This anecdote has been taken to pieces as usual by later historians jealous for exactness who have discovered that Domenico of Venice outlived his sup- posed murderer by several years. Vasari is so very certain on the point however, that we cannot help feeling that something of the kind he describes, some assault must have been made, a quarrel perhaps sharper than usual, an attempt at vengeance for some affront, though it did not have the fatal termination which he supposes. Vasari however in telling this story affords us an in- teresting glimpse of the condition of Venice at the period. Politically, it was not a happy moment. While the republic exhausted her resources in the wars described in our last chapters, her dominion in the East, as well as her trade, had been greatly impaired. The Turk, that terror of Christendom, had cruelly besieged and finally taken several towns and strong places along the Dalmatian coast : he had been in Friuli murdering and ravaging. The interrupted and uncertain triumphs of the terra-firma wars, were but little compensation for these disasters, and the time was approaching when Venice should be compelled to withdraw from many more of her Eastern possessions, leaving a town here, an island there, to the Prophet and his hordes. But within the city it is evident nothing of the kind affected the general life of pleasure and display and enjoyment that was going on. The doges were less powerful, but more splendid i.] THE PAINTERS. 2GC than ever ; the canals echoed with song and shone with gay processions : the great patrician houses grew more imposing and their decorations more beautiful every day. The ducal palace had at last settled, after many changes, into the form we now know : the great public undertaking which was a national tribute to the growing importance of art, was being pushed forward to completion : and though the great Venetian painters, like other painters in other ages, seem to have found the state a shabby paymaster, and to have sometimes shirked and always dallied in the exe- cution of its commissions, yet no doubt public patronage was at once a sign of the quickened interest in art, and a means of increasing that interest. The frescoes in the hall of the Great Council were in full course of execution when the Sicilian Antonello with his great secret came to seek his fortune in the magnificent and delightful city of the seas a place where every rich man was the artist's patron, and every gentleman a dilet- tante, and a new triumphant day of art was dawning, and the streets were full of songs and pleasure, and the sttidios of enthusiasm, and beauty and delight were supreme everywhere : notwithstanding that, in the silence, to any one who listened, the wild and jangled bells might almost be heard from besieged cities that were soon no longer to be Venetian, calling every man to arms within their walls, and appealing for help to heaven and earth. Such vulgar external matters do not move the historian of the painters, and are invisible in his record. The account of Antonello is full of cheerfulness and light. "Being a person much given to pleasure he resolved to dwell there for ever, and finish his life where he had found a mode of existence so much according to his mind. And when it was understood that he had brought that great discovery from Flanders, he was loved and caressed by those magnificent gentlemen as long as he lived." His friend Domenico is also described as " a charming and attractive person who delighted in music 270 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. and in playing the lute : and every evening they found means to enjoy themselves together" (far buon tempo literally, have a good time, according to the favourite custom of our American cousins) "serenading their sweethearts; in which Doiuenico took great delight." Thus the young painters lived, as still in Venice the young and gay, as far as the habits of a graver age permit, love to live roaming half the night among the canals or along the silvery edge of the lagoon, intoxicated with music and moonlight and the delicious accompaniment of liquid movement and rhythmic oars ; or amid the continual pageants in the piazza, the feast of brilliant colour and delighful groups which made the painters wild with pleasure ; or with a cluster of admir- ing and splendid youths at every hand caressed and flattered by all that was noblest in Venice. We scarcely think of this high-coloured and brilliant life as the proper background for those early painters, whose art, all the critics tell us, derives it excellence from their warmer faith and higher moral tone ; but we have no reason to believe that any great social revolution took place between the day of the Bellini and Carpaccio, and that of Titian. Vasari's description, corroborated as it is by many others, refers to a period when the Bellini were in the full force of life. Nor are we led to suppose that they were distinguished by special devotion, or in any way separated from their class. Venice had never been austere, but always gay. There was the light and glow of a splendid careless exuberant life in her very air, a current of existence too swift and full of enjoyment to be subdued even by public misfortunes which were distant, and intensified by the wonderful spring, superior to every damping influence, of a new and magnificent development of art. The two Bellini lived and laboured together during their father's lifetime, but when he died, though never losing their mutual brotherly esteem and tender friendship, separated, each to his own path. Giovanni, the youngest i.] THE PAINTERS. 271 but greatest, continued faithful to the subjects and methods in which he had been trained, and which, though all the habits of the world were changing, still remained most perfectly understood and acceptable to his countrymen. The Divine Mother and Child, with their attendant saints and angels, were the favourite occupation of his genius. He must have placed that sweet and tender image over scores of altars. Sometimes the Virgin Mother sits, simple and sweet, yet always with a certain grandeur of form and natural nobility, not the slim and childish beauty of more conventional painters, with her Child upon her knees : sometimes enthroned, holding the Sacred Infant erect, offering Him to the worship of the world : sometimes with reverential humility watching Him as He sleeps, attended on either side by noble spectator figures, a little court of devout beholders, the saints who have suffered for His sake ; often with lovely children seated about the steps of her throne, piping tenderly upon their heavenly flutes, thrilling the chords of a stringed instrument, with a serious sweetness and abstraction, unconscious of anything but the infant Lord to whom their eyes are turned. No more endearing and delightful image could be than that of these angel children. They were a fashion of the age, growing in the hands of Florentine Botticelli into angelic youths, gravely meditating upon the wonders they foresaw. In Rafael, though so much later, they are more divine, like little kindred gods, waiting in an unspeakable awe till the great God should be revealed ; but in Bellini more sweet and human, younger, all tender interest and delight, piping their lovely strains if perhaps they might give Him pleasure. One cannot but conclude that he who painted these children at the foot of every divine group in twos and threes, small exquisite courtiers of the Infant King, first fruits of humanity, must have found his models in children who were his own, whose dimpled, delightful limbs were within reach of his kiss, and whose unconscious grace of movement 272 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. and wondering sweet eyes were before him continually. The delightful purity and gravity, and at the same time manliness, if we may use such a word, of these pictures, is beyond expi-ession. There is no superficial grace or orna- ment about them, not even the embrace and clinging together of mother and child, which in itself is always so touching and attractive, the attitude of humanity which perhaps has a stronger and simpler hold on the affections than any other. Bellini's Madonna, raising the splendid column of her throat, holding her head high in a noble and simple abstraction, offers not herself but her Child to our eager eyes. She too is a spectator, though blessed among women in holding Him, presenting Him to our gaze, making of her own perfect womanhood His pedestal and support, but all unconscious that prayer or gaze can be attracted to herself, in everything His first servant, the handmaid of the Lord. The painter who set such an image before us could scarcely have been without a profound and tender respect for the woman's office, an exquisite adoration for the Child. While the younger brother kept in this traditional path, giving to it -all the inspiration of his manly and lofty genius, his brother Gentile entered upon a different way. Probably he too began in his father's workshop with mild Madonnas : but ere long the young painter must have found out that other less sacred yet noble subjects were better within his range of power. His fancy must have strayed away from the primitive unity of the sacred group into new com- positions of wider horizon and more extended plan. The life that was round him with all its breadth and rich variety must have beguiled him away from the ideal. The pictures he has left us set Venice before us in the guise she then wore, as no description could do. In the two great examples which remain in the Venetian Accademia there is a sacred motive : they are chapters in the story of a miraculous lioly cross. In one, the sacred relic is being carried across i.] THE PAINTERS. !>?:) the piazza, attended by a procession of wonderful figures in every magnificence of white arid red, and gilded canopy and embroidered mantle. And there stands S. Marco in a softened blaze of gold and colour, with all the fine lines of its high houses and colonnades, the Campanile not standing detached as now, but forming part of the line of the great square ; and in the midst, looking at the pro- cession, or crossing calmly upon their own business, such groups of idlers and busy men, of Eastern travellers and merchants, of gallants from the Broglio, with here and there a magistrate sweeping along in his toga, or a woman with her child, as no one had thought of painting before. We look, and the life that has been so long over, that life in which all the offices and ceremonies of religion occupy the foreground, but where nothing pauses for them, and business and pleasure both go on unconcerned, rises before us. The Venice is not that Venice which we know ; but it is still most recognisable, most living and lifelike. No .such procession ever sweeps now through the great piazza ; but still the white mitres and glistening copes pour through the aisles of S. Marco, so that the stranger and pilgrim may still recognise the unchangeable accompaniments of the true faith. The picture is like a book, more absolutely true than any chronicle, representing not only the looks and the customs of the occasion, but the very scene. How eagerly the people must have traced it out when it first was made public, finding out in every group some known faces, some image all the more interesting because it was met in the flesh every day ! Is that perhaps Zuan Bellini himself, with his hair standing out round his face, talking to his companions about the passing procession, pointing out the curious effects of light and shade upon the crimson capes and birettas, and watching while the line defiles with its glimmer of candles and sound of psalms against the majestic shadow of the houses 1 Still more characteristic is the other great picture. The same procession, but more r 274 THK MAKKUS <>F VENK'K. [..-HAP. in evidence, drawn ont before us with the light in their faces as they wind along over the bridge, with draperies hung at every window and the women looking ont, at every opening one or two finely ornamented heads in elaborate coiffes and hoods ; while along the Fondamenta, on the side of the canal, a row of ladies in the most magnificent costumes, pilgrims or votaries kneeling close together, with all their ornaments jewelled necklaces and coronets, and light veils of transparent tissue through which the full matronly shoulders and countenances appear unobscured look on, privileged spectators, perhaps wait- ing to follow in the procession. It is a curious instance of the truth of the picture that this is no file of youthful beauties such as a painter would naturally have chosen, but, with scarcely an exception, consists of buxom and full- blown mothers with here and there a child thrust in between. It is said by tradition that the first of those figures, she with the crown, is Catherine Cornaro, the ex-queen of Cyprus, probably come from her retirement at Asolo to view the procession and see a little life and gaiety, as a variation on the cultured retirement of that royal villa. The object of the picture is to show how the cross, which has fallen into the canal by much pushing and crowding of the populace, floats upright in the water and is miraculously rescued by its guardian in full priestly robes, notwithstanding the eager competition of all manner of swimmers in costumes more handy for the water who have dashed in on every side ; but this, though its pious purpose, is not its most interesting part. It is difficult as has been said to find any guidance of dates in the dimness of distance, in respect to matters so unimportant as pictures : and accordingly we are unable to trace the progress of the decoration in the great hall. It was delayed by many causes, the indifference of the Signoria and the lukewarm interest of the painters. Gentile Bellini received permission from the Signoria to go to the East in To face page 274. CLOISTERS OF THE ABIiAZIA. i.j THE PAINTERS. 275 1479, and is there described as engaged on the restoration of a picture in this magnificent room, originally painted or begun by his namesake (or, as we should say in Scotland, his name- father Jacopo Bellini having named his eldest son after his master) Gentile da Fabriano a work which the magnificent Signoria consider his brother Giovanni may well be deputed to finish in his place. Nor is it more easy to discover what the principle was which actuated the &iF VENICE. [CHAP. Imagine celeste shining like the sun, which made Beinbo, though a cardinal, burst into song : - "Credo i-lie il mio Bcllin con la figura, T'habbia dato il costume anehe ill lei, Che m'ardi s'io ti inira, e pur tu sei, Freddo smalto a cui giouse alta Ventura." In the meantime the elder brother, Gentile, had met with adventures more remarkable. In the year 1479, as has been noted, the Signoria commissioned him to go to Constantinople at the request of the sultan, who had begged that a painter might be sent to exhibit his powers, or as some say who had seen a picture by one of the Bellini carried thither among the stores of some Venetian merchant, and desired to see how such a wonderful thing could be done. This is, we may point out by the way, a thing well worthy of remark as a sign of the wonderful changes that had taken place in the East without seriously altering the long habit of trade, and the natural alliance, in spite of all interruptions, between buying and selling communities. Even within these simple pages we have seen the Venetians fighting and struggling, making a hundred treaties, nego- tiating long and anxiously for charters and privileges from the Greek empire in the capital of the East, then helping to destroy that imperial house, seizing the city, setting up a short-lived Latin empire, making themselves rich with the spoils of Constantinople. And now both these races and dynasties are swept away, and the infidel has got possession of the once splendid Christian city, and for a time has threatened all Europe, and Venice first of all. But the moment the war is stopped, however short may be the truce, and however changed the circumstances, trade indomitable has pushed forward with its cargoes, sure that at least the Turk's gold is as good as the Christian's, and his carpets and shawls perhaps better, who knows ? There is nothing so impartial as commerce so long as money is to be made. Scutari had scarcely ceased to smoke when To face page 2S1. PORTRAIT OF SULTAN : GENTILK BELLINI. i.j THE PAINTERS. -_'81 Gentile Bellini was sent to please the Turk, and prove that the republic bore no malice. One can imagine that the painter went, not without trepidation, among the proud and hated invaders who had thus changed the face of the earth. The grim monarch before whom Europe trembled received him with courtesy and favour, and Gentile painted his portrait, and that of his queen no doubt some chosen member of the harem whom the Venetian chose to represent as the sharer of Mahommed's throne. The portrait of the sultan, formally dated, has been brought back to Venice, after four hundred years and many vicissitudes, by Sir Henry Layard. It represents no mur- derous Turk, but a face of curious refinement, almost feeble, though full of the impassive calm of an unquestioned despot. The Venetian as the story goes had begun to be at his ease, cheered, no doubt, by the condescension of the autocrat before whom all prostrated themselves, but who showed no pride to the painter, and by the unanimous mar- velling surprise, as at a prodigy, of all beholders, when a horrible incident occurred. He would seem to have gone on painting familiar subjects notwithstanding the inappro- priateness of his surroundings, and had just finished the story of John the Baptist " who was reverenced by the Turks as a prophet." But when he exhibited the head of the Baptist on the charger to the sultan, that potentate began to criticise, as a man who at last finds himself on familiar ground. He told the painter that his anatomy was wrong, and that when the head was severed from the body, the neck disappeared altogether. No doubt with modesty, but firmly, the painter would defend his work, probably forgetting that the sultan had in this particular a much greater experience than ho. But Mahommed was no man to waste words. He called a slave to him on the spot, and whether with his own ready sword or by some other hand, swept off in a trice the poor wretch's head, that the painter might be no longer in any doubt as to the effect. This 282 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. horrible lesson iu anatomy was more than Gentile's nerves could bear, and it is not wonderful that from that moment he never ceased his efforts to get his dismissal, " not know- ing," says Ridoifi, " whether some day a similar jest might not be played on. him." Finally he was permitted to return home with laudatory letters and the title of Cavaliere, and a chain of gold of much value round his neck. The Vene- tian authorities either felt that a man who had risked so much to please the sultan and keep up a good understand- ing with him was worth a reward, or they did not venture to neglect the recommendation of so great a potentate for they gave the painter a pension of 200 ducats a year for his life. And he was in time to resume his pencil in the great hall where Ridolfi gives him the credit of five of the pictures, painted in great part after his return. All this no doubt splendid series was destroyed a hundred years after by fire ; but as has been already noted, the subjects were repeated in the subsequent pictures which still exist, al- though these, with the exception of one by Tintoretto and one by Paolo Veronese, were executed by less remarkable hands. Gentile Bellini died in 1507 at the age of eighty, his brother nearly ten years after : they were both laid with so many others of their brotherhood in the great church of San Giovanni e Paolo, where the traveller may see their names upon the pavement in all humility and peace. The nearest to these two brothers in the meaning and sentiment of his work is Victor Carpaccio. His place would almost seem to lie justly between them. He is the first illustrator of religious life and legend in Venice, as well as the most delightful story-teller of his time, the finest poet in a city not given to audible verse. The extreme devotion which Mr. Ruskin has for this painter has perhaps raised him to a pedestal which is slightly factitious at least so far as the crowd is concerned, who follow the great writer without comprehending him, and are apt to i.] THE PAINTERS. 2*3 make the worship a little ridiculous. But there is enough in the noble series of pictures which set forth the visionary life of St. Ursula to justify a great deal of enthusiasm. >7 reason one fails to see, had forbidden the use of architectural ornamentation in the new building, which, all the same, was their own building, not the property of the Germans. Had it belonged to the foreigner there might have been a- sup- posable cause in the necessity for keeping these aliens down, and preventing any possible emulation with native born Venetians. We can only suppose that this was actually the reason, and that, even in the house which Venice built for them, these traders were not to be permitted to look as line or feel as magnificent as their hosts and superiors. But a great house with four vast walls, capable of endless decora- tion, and nothing done to them, would probably have raised a rebellion in the city, or at least among the swarms of painters on the other side of the Rialto, gazing at it with hungry eyes. So it was conceded by the authorities that this square tindecorated house, a singularly uninteresting block of buildings to stand on such a site, should be painted at least to harmonise it so far with its neighbours. It is not to be supposed that this was the first piece of work on which Titian had been engaged. No doubt he had already pro- duced his tale of Madonnas, with a few portraits to make him known. But he steps into sight for the first time publicly when we hear that the wall on the land side, the street front, of the building was allotted to him, while the side toward the canal was confided to Giorgione. Perhaps the whole building was put into Giorgione' s hands, and part of the work confided by him to his comrade ; at all events they divided it between them. Every visitor to Venice is aware of the faint and faded figure high np in the right-hand corner, disappearing, as all its neighbouring glories have disappeared, which is the last remnant of Giorgione's work upon the canal front of this great gloomy house. Of Titian's group over the great doorway in the street there remains nothing at all : the sea breezes and the keen air have carried all these beautiful things away. In respect to these frescoes, Vasari tells one anecdote, Y 298 THK MAKERS OF VENICE. [I.-HAI-. which is natural and characteristic, and may indicate the point at which these two young men detached themselves, and took each his separate way. He narrates how ' many gentlemen," not being aware of the division of labour, met Giorgione on the evening of the day on which Titian had uncovered a portion of his work, and crowded round him with their congratulations, assuring him that he had never done anything so fine, and that the front towards the Mer- ceria quite excelled the river front ! Giorgione was so indignant, senliva tanto sdegno, at this unlucky compliment, that until Titian had finished the work and it had become well known which portion of it was his, the sensitive painter showed himself no more in public, and from that moment would neither see Titian nor acknowledge him as a friend. Ridolfi tells the same story, with the addition that it was a conscious mistake made maliciously by certain comrades who feigned not to know who had painted the great Judith over the door. This is not a history of the Venetian painters, nor is it necessary to follow the life and labours of these two brilliant and splendid successors of the first masters in our city. Whether it was by the distinct initiative of Giorgioue in painting his own house that the habit of painting Venetian houses in general originated, or vrhether it was only one of the ever increasing marks of luxury and display, we do not pretend to decide. At all events it was an expedient of this generation to add to the glory of the city, and the splendid aspect which she bore. The nobler dignity of the ancient architecture had already been partially lost, or no longer pleased in its gravity and stateliness the race which loved colour and splendour in all things. A whole city glowing in crimson and gold, with giant forms starting up along every wall, and sweet groups of cherub boys trac- ing every course of stone, and the fables of Greece and Rome taking form upon every facade, must have been no doubt a wonderful sight. The reflections in the Grand ii.] THE PAINTERS. 29!) Canal as it flowed between these pictured palaces must have left little room for sky or atmosphere in the midst of that dazzling confusion of brilliant tints and images. And every campo must have lent its blaze of colour, to put the sun himself to shame. But we wonder whether it is to be much regretted that the sun and the winds have triumphed in the end, and had their will of those fine Venetian houses. Among so many losses this is the one for which I feel the least regret. It is recorded among the expenses of the repxiblic in December, 1508, that 150 ducats were paid to Zorzi da (Jastel Franco for his work upon the Fondaco, in which, according to this businesslike record, Victor Carpaccio had also some share : but this is the only indication of the fact, and the total disappearance of the work makes all other inquiry impossible. By this time, however, Giorgione's brief and gay life was approaching its end. That stormy, joyous existence, so full of work, so full of pleasure, as warm in colour as were his pictures, and pushed to a hasty perfection all at once with- out the modesty of any slow beginning, ended suddenly as it had begun. Vasari has unkindly attributed his early death to the disorders of his life ; but his other biographers are more sympathetic. Ridolfi gives two different accounts, both popularly current : one that he caught the plague from a lady he loved : the other, that being deserted by his love he died of grief, non trovando altro remedio. In either case the impetuous young painter, amid his early successes more celebrated than any of his compeers, the leader among his comrades, the only one of them who had struck into an individual path, developing the lessons of Bellini died in the midst of his loves and pleasures at the age of thirty- four, not having yet reached the mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, which Dante had attained when his great work began. This was in the year 1511, only three years after the completion of his work at the Fondaco, and while old Zuan v 2 yOO THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAI>. Bellini was still alive and at work, in his robust old age, seeing his impetuous pupil out. It was one of the many years in which the plague visited Venice, carrying conster- nation through the gay and glowing streets. It is said that Giorgione was working in the hall of the Great Council, among the other painters, at the picture in which the emperor is represented as kissing the pope's foot, at the time of his death. At all events he had lived long enough to make his fame great in the city, and to leave examples of his splendid work in many of the other great cities of Italy, as well as in his own little borgo at Castel Franco, where still they are the pride and glory of the little town. It would almost seem as if it were only after the death of Giorgione that Titian began to be estimated at his just value. The one had given the impulse, the other had received it, and Vasari does not hesitate to call Titian the pupil of his contemporary, though not in the formal sense attached to the word by modern writers, notwithstanding the fact that they were of the same age. Ridolfi's formal yet warm enthusiasm for the painter " to whom belongs perpetual praise and honour, since he has become a light to all those who come after him," assigns to Giorgione a higher place than that which the spectator of to-day will probably think justified. His master, Bellini, appeals more warmly to the heart ; his pupil, Titian, filled a much greater place in the world and in art. But, " it is certain," says the historian and critic of the sixteenth century, with a double affirmation, " that Giorgio was without doubt the first who showed the good way in painting, fitting himself (approssi- mandosi) by the mixture of his colours to express with facility the works of nature, concealing as much as possible the difficulties to be encountered in working, which is the chief point ; so that in the flesh tints of this ingenious painter the innumerable shades of grey, orange, blue, and other such colours customarily used by some, are ab- sent The artificers who followed him, with the ii.] THE PAINTERS. 301 example before them of his works, acquired the facility and true method of colour by which so much progress wa> made." The works of Giorgione however are comparatively few : his short life, and perhaps the mirth of it, the sounding of the lute, the joyous company, and all the delights of that highly-coloured existence restrained the splendid productive 1 -, ness which was characteristic of his art and age. And yet perhaps this suggestion does the painter injustice : for amid all those diversions, and the ceaseless round of loves and festivities, the list of work done is always astonishing. Many of his works however were frescoes, and the period in which he and Titian were, as Mr. Ruskin says, house painters, was the height of his genius. The sea air and the keen tramontane/, have thus swept away much that was the glory of the young painter's life. The moment at which Titian appears publicly on the stage, so to speak, of the great hall, called to aid in the work going on there, was not till two years after the death of his companion. Whether Giorgione kept his hasty Avord, and saw no more of him after that unfortunate compliment about the Judith over the doorway of the Fondaco, we are not told : but it was not until after the shadow of that impe- tuous youthful genius had been removed, that the other, the patient and thoughtful, who had not reached perfection in a burst, but by much consideration and comparison and exercise of the splendid faculty of work that was in him, came fully into the light. Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle make much of certain disputes and intrigues that seem to have surrounded this appointment, and point out that it was given and withdrawn, and again conferred upon Titian, according as his friends or those of the older painters were in the ascendant in the often-changed combinations of power in Venice. Their attempt to show that old Zuan Bellini, the patriarch of the art, schemed against his younger rival, and endeavoured to keep him out of state 302 THE MAKERS < >F VENICE [C-HAI-. patronage are happily supported by no document*, but are merely an inference from the course of events, which show certain waverings and uncertainties in the bargain between the Signoria and the painter. The manner in which this bargain was made, and in which the money was provided to pay for the work of Titian and his associates, is very characteristic and noticeable. After much uncertainty as to what were the intentions of the Signoria, the painter received an invitation to go to Rome through Pietro Bembo, which, however bond fide in itself, was probably intended to bring matters to a crisis, and show the autho- rities, who had not as yet secured the services of the most promising of all the younger artists then left in Venice, that their decision must be made at once. Titian brings the question before them with much firmness will they have him or not 1 must he turn aside to the service of the pope instead of entering that of the magnificent Signoria, which, "desirous of fame rather than of profit," he would prefer 1 Pressing for a decision, he then sets forth the pay and position for which he is willing to devote his powers to the public service. These are : the first brokership that shall be vacant in the Fondaco de' Tedeschi, " irrespective of all promised reversions of such patent," and the main- tenance of two pupils as his assistants, to be paid by the Salt Office, which also is to provide all colours and neces- saries required in their work. The curious complication of state affars which thus mixes up the most uncongenial branches, and defrays the expenses of this, the supremest luxury of the state, out of the tarry purse of its oldest and rudest industry, is very remarkable : and the bargain has a certain surreptitious air, as if even the magnificent Signoria did not care to confess how much their splendours cost. If oui- own Government, ashamed to put into their straight- forward budget the many thousands expended on the pur- chase of the Blenheim Madonna, had added it in with the accounts of the Inland Revenue, it would be an operation ii.] THE PAINTERS. :',03 .somewhat similar. But such balancings and mutual com- pensations, robbing Peter to pay Paul, were common in those days. The brokership however is about as curious an expedient for the pay of a painter as could be devised. The German merchants were forbidden to trade without the assistance of such an official, and the painter of course fulh'lled the duties of the office by deputy. It affords an amazing suggestion indeed to think of old Bellini, or our magnificent young Titian, crossing the Kialto by the side of some homely Teuton with his samples in his pocket, to drive a noisy bargain in the crowded piazza round San Giacomo where all the merchants congregated. But the expedient was perfectly natural to the times in which they lived, and indeed such resources have not long gone out of use even among ourselves. Titian's proposal was accepted, then modified, and finally received and established, with the odious addition that the broker's place to be given to him was not simply the first vacancy, but the vacancy Avhich should occur at the death of Zuan Bellini, then a very old man, and naturally in- capable of holding it long. This brutal method of indicating that one day Avas over, and another begun, and of pushing the old monarch from his place, throws an unfavourable light upon the very pushing and practical young painter, who was thus determined to have his master's seat. When Bellini died in 1516, it is gratifying to know that there was still some difficulty about the matter, other promises apparently having been made, and other expecta- tions raised as to the vacant brokership. Finally however Titian's claim was allowed, and he entered into possession of the income about which he had been so eager. He then established himself at San Samuele, abandoning, it would seem, the old centre of life at the Rial to where all the others had been content to live and labour. It was like a migration from the business parts of the town to those of fashion, or at least gentility : and perhaps this change 304 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAI-. showed already a beginning of pretension to the higher social position which Titian, in his later days at least, evidently enjoyed. They were noble in their rustic way np at Cadore, and he who was presently to stand before kings probably assumed already something more of dignity than was natural to the sons of painters, or to the village genius who is known to posterity only by his Christian name. Another day had now dawned upon the studios and workshops. The reign of the Bellini was over and that of Titian had begun. Of his contemporaries and disciples we cannot undei-take any account. The nearest in association and influence to the new master was the gentle Pal ma, with all the silvery sweetness of colour which so far as the critics know he had found for himself in his village on the plains, or acquired somehow by the grace of heaven, no master having the credit of them. Some of these authorities believe that, from this modest and delightful painter, Titian, all acquisitive, gained something too, so much as to be almost a pupil of the master who is so much less great than himself. And that is possible enough, for it is evident that Titian, like Moliere, took his goods where he found them, and lost no occasion for instruction, whoever supplied it. He was at all events for some time much linked with Palma, whose daughter was long supposed to be the favourite model of both these great painters. The splendid women whom they loved to paint, and who now stepped in, as may be said, into the world of fancy, a new and radiant group, with the glorious hair upon which both these masters expended so much skill, so that " every thread might be counted," Vasari says, represent, as imagination hopes, the women of that age, the flower of Venice at her highest perfaction of physical magnificence. So at least the wor- shipper of Venice believes, finding in those grand forms and in their opulence of colour and natural endowment some- thing harmonious with the character of the race and time. From the same race, though with a higher inspiration, W. & S. Ltd. MONUMENT OF TITIAN. ii.] THE PAINTERS. .W> Bellini had drawn his Madonnas, with stately throats like columns and a noble amplitude of form. There is still much beauty in Venice, but not of this splendid kind. The women have dwindled if they were ever like Violante. But she and her compeers have taken their place as the fit representa oner? OF READS: GENTILE BELLINI. tives of that age of splendour and luxury. When we turn to records less imaginative however, the ladies of Venice appear to us under a different guise. They are attired in cloth of gold, in brocaded silks and velvets, with cords, fringes, pendents and embroidery in gold, silver, pearls, and 300 THE MAKERS ( >F VENICE. [. HAI-. precious stones, " even their shoes richly ornamented with gold," Sanudo tells us : but they are feeble and pale, pro- bably because of their way of living, shut up indoors the greater part of their time, and when they go out, tottering upon heels so high that walking is scarcely possible, and the unfortunate ladies in their grandeur have to lean upon the shoulders of their servants (or slaves) to avoid accident. Their heels were at least half the Milanese brace iu in height (more than nine inches), says another authority. Imagination refuses to conceive the wonderful lady who lives in Florence, the Bella of Titian, in all her magnificent apparel, thus hobbling on a species of stilts about the .streets, supported by one of those grinning negroes whose memory is preserved in the parti-coloured figures in black and coloured marble which pleased the taste of a later age. Such however were the shoes worn in those very days of Bellini and Carpaccio which the great art critic of our time points out as so much nobler than our own, even pausing in his beautiful talk to throw a little malicious dart aside at modern English (or Scotch) maidens in high-heeled boots. The nineteenth century has not after all deteriorated so very much from the fifteenth, for the veriest Parisian abhorred of the arts has never yet attempted to poise upon heels half a braccio in height. These jewelled clogs however, which if memory does not deceive us are visible on the floor in Carpaccio's picture of the two Venetian ladies in the Museo Correr, so much praised by Mr. Buskin, were part of the universal orna- mentation of the times. The great wealth of Venice showed itself in every kind of decorative work, designed in some cases rather by skill than by common sense. The Venetian houses were not only painted without, throwing abroad a surplus splendour to all the searching of the winds, but were all glorious within as in the Psalms. The furniture carved and gilded, the curtains made of precious stuff, the chimney-pieces decorated with ji.] THE PAINTERS. :i07 the finest pictures, the beds magnificent with golden em- broidery and brocaded pillows, the very sheets edged with delicate work in gold thread. When Giorgione opened his studio, setting up in business so to speak, he painted wardrobes, spinning wheels, and more particularly chests, the wedding coffers of the time, of which so many examples remain : and a fact which takes away the hearer's breath -when Titian painted that noble pallid Christ of the Tribute money, he did it, oh heavens ! 011 a cabinet, a fact which, though the cabinet was in the study of Alfonso of Ferrara, strikes us with a sensation of horror. Only a prince could have his furniture painted with such a work ; but no doubt in Titian's splendid age there might be many annari, armoires aumries as they were once called in Scotland with bits of his youthful work, and glowing panels painted by Giorgione on the mantelpieces to be found in the Venetian houses. This was the way of living of the young painters, by which they came into knowledge of the world. Perhaps the doors of the ward- robe in a friend's house, or the panels over the fireplace, might catch the eye of one of the Savii, now multiplied past counting in every office of the state, who would straightway exert himself to have a space in the next church allotted to the young man to try his powers on : when if there was anything in him he had space and .opportunity to show it, and prove himself worthy of still higher promotion. It would seem, however, that Titian was not much appre- ciated by his natural patrons during all the beginning of his career. There is no name of fondness for him such as there was for Giorgio of Castel Franco. Was it perhaps that these keen Venetians, who, notwithstanding that failure of religious faith with which they are suddenly discredited,, and which is supposed to lie at the root of all decadence in art, had still a keen eye and insight for the true and real, perceived that in the kind of pictures they most desired 308 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [. HAI-. something was wanting which had not been wanting either in the Madonnas of Bellini or the saints of Carpaccio a something higher tha't manipulation, more lovely than the loveliest colour of the new method '? These sacred pictures might be beaiv iful, but they were not divine. The soul had gone out of them. That purity and wholesome grace which was in every one of old Zuan's Holy Families had stolen miraculously out of Titian, just as it had stolen miraculously in, no one knowing how, to the works of the elder generation. If this was the case indeed it was an effect only partially produced by the works of the young master, for his portraits were all alight with life and mean- ing, and in other subjects from his hand there was no lack of truth and energy. Whatever the cause might be, it is clear however that he was not popular, though the acknowledged greatest of all the younger painters. It was only the possibility of seeing his services transferred to the pope that procured his admission to the privileges of state employment : and it was after hi' fame had been echoed from Ferrara and Bologna and Rome, and by the great emperor himself the magnificent patron who picked up his brush, and with sublime condescension declared that a Titian might WP!! be served by Csesar that the more critical .and fastidious Venetians, or perhaps it might only be the more prejudiced and hardly-judging, gave way to the strong current of opinion in his favour, and began to find him a credit to Venice. As soon as this conviction became general the tide of public feeling changed, and the republic became proud of the man who, amid all the disasters that began to disturb her complacence and interrupt her pros- perity, had done her credit and added to her fame. It is evident however that even when he finally got his chance, and painted, for the church of the Frari, the magni- ficent Assumption which occupies now a kind of throne in the Accademia as if in some sort the sovereign of Venice, doubts pursued him to the end of his work. Fra Marco ii.] THE PAINTERS. 301) Jerraan or Germane, the head of the convent, who had ordered it at his own expense and fitted it when completed into a fine framework of marble for the high altar, had many a criticism to make during the frequent anxious visits he paid to the painter at his work. Titian was troubled indeed by all the ignorant brethren coining and going, molestato dalle frequKnti visile loro, and by il poco loro inteu- dimento, their small understanding of the necessities of art. They were all of the opinion that the Apostles in the fore- ground were too large, di troppo smisurata grandezza, and though he cook no small trouble to persuade them that the figures must be in proportion to the vastness of the space, and the position which the picture was to occupy, yet nevertheless the monks continued to grumble and shake their heads, and make their observations to each other under their hoods, doubting even whether the picture was good enough to be accepted at all, after all the fuss that had been made about it. and the painter-fellow's occupation of their church itself as his painting room. The ignorant are often the most difficult to please. But the condition of the doubting convent, with no confidence in its own judg- ment, and a haunting terror lest Venice should sneer or jeer when the picture was uncovered, is comprehensible enough. Titian, it is evident, had not even now attained such an assured position as would justify his patrons in any cer- tainty of the excellence of his work. He was still on his promotion, with no settled conviction in the minds of the townsfolk as to his genius and power. No doubt the breth- ren all thought that their guardiano had done a rash thing in engaging him, and Fra Marco himself trembled at the thought of the mistake he might perhaps have made. It was not until the emperor's envoy, already, it is evident, a strong partisan of Titian, and bringing to his work an eye unclouded by local prepossessions, declared that the picture was a marvellous picture, and offered a large sum if they would give it up, in order that he might send it to his mas- 310 THE MAKERS < >F VENICE. [CHAP. ter, that tliej'rafi began to think it might be better perhaps to hold by their bargain. " Upon which offer," says RidolH, " the fathers in their chapter decided, after the opinion of the most prudent, not to give up the picture to any one, recognising finally that art was not their profession, and that the use of the breviary did not convey an understand, ing of painting." It is curious to find that Vasari makes no particular note of this picture except to say that it cannot be well seen (that is in its original position in the Frari), and that Marco Sanudo, in recording its first exhibition, mentions the frame as if it was a thing quite as important as the picture. Such is the vagueness of contemporary opinion. It seems at all events to have been the first picture of Titian's which at all struck the imagination of his time. By this time, however, he had begun to be courted by foreign potentates, and it is evident that his hands were very full of commissions, and that some shiftiness and many of the expedients of the dilatory and unpunctual were in his manner of dealing with his patrons, to whom he was very humble in his letters, but not very faithful in his promises. And now that he has reached the full maturity of power, Titian unfolds to us a view, not so much of Venice, as of a corrupt and luxurious society in Venice, which is of a very different character from the simplicities of his predecessors in art. Even young Gior- gione's gay dissipations, his love of lute and song, his pretensions to gallantry and finery, mischiante sempre amore with all his doings, have a boyish and joyous sweetness, in comparison with the much more luxurious life in which we now find his old companion, the vile society of the Aretino who flattered and intrigued for him, and led Titian, too, not unwilling, to intrigue and flatter and sometimes betray. Perhaps at no time had there been much virtue and purity to boast of in the career of the painter who had half forced the Signoria into giving him his appointment, and seized CHURCH OF THE MADONXA DELL' OHTO. ii.] THE PAINTERS. fill upon old ZU.IH Bellini's office before he \vus dead : tlien dallied with the work he seemed so eager to undertake, and left it hanging on hand for years. But the arrival of Pietro Aretino in Venice seems to have been the signal for the establishment there of a society such as the much- boasted Renaissance of classical learning and art seems everywhere to have brought with it, shaming the ancient gods which were thus proved so little capable of re-inspiring mankind. There is no one in all the sphere of history and criticism who has a good word to say of Aretino. He was the very type of the base-born adventurer, the hanger-on of courts, the entirely corrupt and dazzlingly clever parasite, whose wit and cunning and impudence and unscrupulous- ness, his touch of genius and cynical indifference to every law and moral restraint, gave him a power which it is very difficult to understand, but impossible to deny. That such a man should be able to recommend the greatest painter of the day to the greatest potentate, Titian to Charles V., is amazing beyond description, but it would seem to have been directly or indirectly the case. Aretino had an im- mense correspondence with all the cultured persons of his time, and in the letters which were a sort of trade to him, and by which he kept himself and his gifts and pretensions before the great people who ministered to his wants, he had it in his power to spread the fame of a friend, and let the dukes and princes know the young men who were proud of a correspondent so clever and wise and learned in all depravity as well as all the sciences of the beautiful ; and the old men who liked his gossip and his pungent com- ments, and thought they could keep a hold upon the world by such means that here was another accomplished vassal ready to serve their pleasure. How such a mixture of the greatest and the basest is practicable, and how it has so often happened that the lovers of every beautiful art should be in themselves so unbeautiful, so low in all the true loveliness of humanity, while so sensitive to its external 312 THE MAKERS < )F VENICE. [CHAP. refinements, is a question of far too much gravity and intricacy to be discussed here. Titian found a better market for his Venuses and Ariadnes among the Hellenised elegants of the time, at the courts of those splendid princes who were at the summit of fashion and taste, and a far more appre- ciative audience (so to speak) than he ever found at home for the religious pictures which his countrymen felt to be with- out any soul, beautiful though their workmanship might be. In another region of art, however, he was now without a rival. The splendid power of portraiture, in. which no painter of any age has ever surpassed him, conducted him to other triumphs. It was this which procured him the patronage of Charles V., who not only sat to him repeatedly, but declared him to be the only painter he would care to honour, and called him an Apelles, and all the other fine things of that classical jargon which was so conventional and so meaningless. Certainly nothing can be more mag- nificent than the portraits with which Titian has helped to make the history of his age. The splendour of colour in them is not more remarkable than that force of reality and meaning which is so wanting in his smooth Madonnas, so unnecessary to his luxurious goddesses. The men whom Titian paints are almost all worthy to be senators or emperors : no trifling coxcomb, 110 foolish gallant, ever looks out upon us from his canvas, but a series of noble personages worthy their rank and importance in the world. It is difficult to overrate the power which has this fine effect. Even in the much discussed decorative tableau of the Presentation, with its odious old woman and her eggs which are tanto naturale according to the vulgar, the group of gentlemen at the foot of the stair are noble every one, requiring no pedigree. It was only just that in recompense of such a power the great emperor should have ennobled Titian and made him Cavalier and Count Palatine and every other splendid thing. Such rewards were more appropriate in his case than they would have been in almost any other. ii.] THE PAINTERS. :U3 It was in his power to confer the splendour thoy loved upon the subjects of his pencil, and hand them down to posterity as if they all were heroes and philosophers. The least the emperor could do was to endow the painter with some share of that magnificence which he bestowed. And when we look back upon him where he still reigns in Venice, it is not with any thought of his matronly Madonna among her cherubs, notwithstanding all the im- portance which has been locally given to that imposing composition, any more than, when we turn to the mag- nificent picture painted for the same church, the altar-piece of the Pesaro chapel, known as the Madonna of the Pesaro family, it is the sacred personages who attract our regard. In vain is the sacred group throned on high : the Virgin with her Child is without significance, no true Queen of Heaven, with no mission of blessing to the world ; but the group of Venetian nobles beneath, kneeling in proud humility, their thoughts fixed on the grandeur of their house and the accomplishment of their aims, like true sons of the masterful republic not negligent of the help that our Lady and the saints may bestow if properly propitiated, and snatching a moment accordingly to lay their ambitions and keen worldly desires distinctly before her and her court live for ever, genuine representatives of one of the most powerful civilisations of the mid-ages, true men of their time. And with a surprise of art, a sudden human gleam of interest, an appeal to our kindred and sympathy which it is impossible to withstand, there looks out at us from the canvas a young face careless of all, both the Madonna and the family, a little weary of that senseless kneeling, a little wondering at the motive of it, seeking in the eyes of the spectator some response more human, full of the abstraction of youth, to which the world is not yet open, but full of dreams. If our practical, money-making, pleasure-loving painter had found in his busy life any time for symbols, we might take this beautiful face as a representation of that new undeveloped life seen only to be different from the old, 314 THE MAKERS <>F VENICE. [.-HAI-. which, with a half weariness and half disdain of the anti- quated practices of its predecessors, kneels there along with them in physical subordination but mental superiority, not sufficiently awakened to strain against the curb as yet, with opposition only nascent, an instinctive separation and abstraction rather than rebellion of thought. But Titian, we may be sure, thought of none of these things. He must have caught the look, half protest, half appeal, that the tired youth (at the same time partially overawed by his position) turned towards him as he knelt : and with tin- supreme perception of a great artist of meanings more than he takes the trouble to fathom, save for their effect, have secured the look, for our admiration and sympathy evermore. In the full maturity of his age and fame, Titian removed from his dwelling at San Samuele, where he had lived amid his workshops midway between the two centres of Venetian life, the Rialto and the Piazza, to a luxurious and delightful house in San Cassiano, on that side of Venice which faces Murano and the wide lagoon with all its islands. There io no trace to be found now of that home of delights. The water has receded, the banks have crept outward, and the houses of the poor now cover the garden where the finest company in Venice once looked out upon one of the most marvellous scenes in the world. The traveller may skirt the bank and linger along the lagoon many a day without seeing the sea fog lift, and the glorious line of the Dolomite Alps come out against the 'sky. But when that revelation occurs to him he will understand the splendour of the scene, and why it was that the painter chose that house, looking out across the garden and its bosquets upon the marvellous line of mountains coming sheer down as appears to the water's edge, soaring clear upward in wild yet harmonious variety of sharp needles and rugged peaks, here white with snow, there rising in the sombre grandeur of the living rock, glistening afar with reflections, the lines of torrents, and every tint that atmosphere and distance give. When INTERIOR OF CHUKCH OF THE SCAL/I. ii.] THE PAINTERS. :!ir> the atmosphere, so often heavy with moisture ;uul bunked with low-lying cloud, clears, and the sun brings tint triumphantly like a new discovery that range of miraculous hills, and the lurid line of the lagoon stretches out and brims over upon the silvery horizon, and the towers of Torcello and Burano in the distance, with other smaller isles stand up out of the water, miraculous too, with no apparent footing of land upon which to poise themselves, the scene is still beautiful beyond description, notwith- standing the frightful straight lines of red and white wall which enclose San Michele, the burial place of Venice, and the smoke and high chimneys of the Murano glass- works. The walls of San Michele did not exist in Titian's day : but I wonder whether Mr. Ruskin thinks there was no smoke over Murano even in the ages of primal simplicity and youth. There is nothing now but a crowd of somewhat diludipated houses in these inferior parts of the city, sadly mean and common on close inspection, amid the bewildering maze of small streets through which the traveller is hurried now to see what is left (which is nothing) of the house of Titian : and very squalid along the quays of the Fondamenta Nuova, with obvious signs everywhere that this is the back of the town, and freed from all necessity for keeping up appear- ances. In Titian's day it was a retired suburban quarter, with green fields edging the level shore, and stretching on each side of that garden in which grew the trees, and over which shone the sky which formed the back-ground of the great Peter Martyr, the picture which was burnt in 1867, and which everybody is free to believe was Titian's chef- d'oeuvre. Here the painter gathered his friends aboiit him, and supped gaily in the lovely evenings, while the sun from behind them shot his low rays along the lagoon, and caught a few campaniles here and there gleaming white in the dim line of scarcely visible country at the foot of the hills. If the sun were still too high when the visitors arrived there was plenty to see in the house, looking over the pictures z 2 316 THE MAKERS < >F VENICE. [rn.u>. with which it was crowded, the wonderful glowing heads of dukes and emperors, great Charles in all his splendour, or. more splendid still, the nymphs and goddesses without any aid of ornament, which were destined for all the galleries in Europe. A famous grammarian from Rome. Priscian by name, in the month of August, 1540, describes such a party, the convives being Aretino, ("a new miracle of OROUP OK HEADS : GEXTII.K BELLINI. nature "), Sausovino the architect of San Marco, Nardi the Florentine historian, and himself. "The house," he says, "Is situated in the extreme part of Venice on the sea, and from it one sees the pretty little island of Murano and other beautiful places. This part of the sea, as soon as the sun went down, swarmed with gondolas, adorned with beautiful women, and resounding with the varied harmony and music of voices and instruments which till mid- night accompanied our delightful supper, which was no less beautiful and well arranged than copious and well provided. Besides the most delicate viands and precious wines there were all those pleasures and amusements that were suited to the season, the guests and the feast." While they were at their fruit letters arrived from Rome, and there suddenly rose a discussion upon the superiority of Latin to Italian, very exciting to the men of letters though the painters no doubt took it more quietly, or looked ii.] THE PAINTERS. :;i? iiside through the trees to where the wonderful silvery gleaming of the .sea and sky kept light and life in the evening landscape, or a snowy peak revealed itself like a white cloud upon the grey : while the magical atmosphere, sweet and cool with the breath of night after the fervid day. a world of delicious space about them, thrilled with the soft rush of the divided water after every gondola, the tinkle of the oar, the subdued sounds of voices from the lagoon, and the touching of the lute. Round the table in the garden the sounds of the discussion were perhaps less sweet : but no doubt the Venetian promenaders, taking their evening row along the edge of the lagoon, kept as close to the shore as courtesy permitted, heard the murmur of the talk with admiration, and pointed out where Messer Tiziano the great painter feasted and entertained his noble guests in the shade. For doubtless Titian, Knight, Count Palatine, with jewelled collar and spurs at heel, was by this time a person- age who drew every eye, notwithstanding that the Signoria were but little pleased with him, and after a hundred fruit- less representations about that picture in the great hall, took the strong step at last of taking his brokership from him, and calling upon him in the midst of his careless superiority to refund the money which he had been drawing all these years in payment of work which he had never executed. This powerful appeal made him set aside his royal commissions for a time and complete the picture in the hall, which was that of a battle, very immaterial to any one now, as it perished with all the rest in the fire. This, however, was a most effectual way of recalling the painter to his duties, for he never seems throughout his life to have had enough of money, though that indeed is not an unusual case. His letters to his patrons are however, full to an un- dignified extent with this subject. The emperor had granted him a certain income from the revenues of Naples, which how- ever turned out a very uncertain income, and is the subject of endless remonstrance and appeals. To the very end of 318 THK MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAI-. his life there is scarcely one of his letters in which the failure of this, or of a similar grant upon Milan, or of some other mode in which his royal and imperial patrons had paid for their personal acquisitions by orders upon somebody else's treasury, is not complained of. Titian it would seem eventually got his money, but not without a great deal of trouble, fighting for it strenuously by every means that could be thought of. And he pursued his laboiirs ceaselessly, producing pictures of every kind, a Christ one day, a Venus the next, with a serene impartiality. Anything is to be got from Titian for money, says the envoy of King Philip after the great days of Charles are over. He pleads for a benefice for his son who is a priest, for the enforcement of his claims upon state revenues because of the betrothal of his daughter, and because he is growing old, and for a number of reasons, always eager to have the money at any cost. " He is old and therefore avaricious," says Philip's ambassador. But to the last he could paint his Venuses, though coarsely, and in the midst of all these studies from the nude suddenly would produce a Last Supjier, credited once more among so many, by the busy coteries and critics, as likely to be Titian's best. At the same time this great and celebrated painter, who thought no harm to fleece the dukes, and to insist upon their money, had and, alas ! forgot, it seems, the honour and glory of being Titian, and aimed at a rich man's substance and estimation this magnificent Venetian, with his feudal powers and title, never forgot little Cadore among the hills, towards which his windows looked, and where his kindred dwelt. There is a letter extant from his cousin, another Titian, but so different, thanking him for his good offices, which among all those letters about money is a refresh- ment to see. The Tiziano of the village regrets deeply to have been absent when his " all but brother " the great Titian, he whose name was known over all the world, visited Cadore, and therefore to have been prevented from " making proper return for all we ewe you, in respect of numerous ii.] THE PAINTERS. 31 '. proofs of friendship shown to our community at l:irge, and in special to our envoys, for all of which you may be assured we have a grateful memory." He then informs his kinsman that two citizens have been appointed as orators or spokesmen of the city to the Signoria of Venice, and implores for them Titian's " favour and assistance, which must ensure success." " My son Vecello," continues the writer, '* bogs you to give him your interest in respect of the place of San Francesco, and this byway of an exchange of services, as I am ready at all times to second your wishes and consult your con- venience " : and finally requests to know when the money is to be paid " which you so courteously lent to the com munity." " In conclusion we beg of you to command us all : and should this exchange of services be carried out on both sides it will be a proof of the utmost kindness and charity, in which it is our wish that God should help you for many years." It would be curious to imagine what the little highland borgo could do for Titian in exchange for his kindnesses. He painted them a picture at a later date for which they paid him in a delightful way, granting him a piece of land upon which he built a cottage. This house was pitched on a marvellous mount of vision on the side of one of those magnificent hills, so that his dwelling above and his home below must have exchanged visions, so to speak, in the vast space of blue that lay between. But notwithstanding all this glory and honour, there were critics in his own craft and a prevailing sentiment underneath the admiration extorted from Venice, which detracted a little from the fame of Titian. The common people would not love his goddesses, though the princes adored them. The commonalty, with a prejudice which no doubt shows their ignorance, yet has its advantages, never out of Greece approves the nude, whatever connoisseurs may say. And the ambassadors were wanting in respect, yet true to fact, when they said that for money anything could be got from the great painter who never had enough for his needs. 320 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [.HAP. Another criticism, which would have affected him more than either of these, was that <>f sonic of his great rivals in art. who with all their admiration had still something to * ~ find fault with in the method of his work. When Titian visited Rome it was the good fortune of Vasari, who had already some acquaintance with him, to show him the great sights of that capital of the world. And one day while Titian was painting his portrait of the pope, ^lesser Giorgio the good Florentine, accompanied by a great countryman of his, no less a personage than Michel Angelo, paid the Venetian painter a visit at his studio in the Belvedere, where they saw the picture of Danae under the rain of gold, a wonderful piece of colour and delicate flesh-painting, which they applauded greatly. But afterwards as they came away talking together in their grave Tuscan style, the great master of design shook his serious head while he repeated his praises. What a pity, die peccato f that these Venetian painters did not learn to draw from the beginning and had not a more thorough method of teaching for, said he, " if this man were aided by art, and laws of design, as he is by nature, and by his power of counterfeiting life, no one could attain greater excellence than he, having such a noble genius and such a fine and animated manner of working." In almost the same words Sebastian del Piombo lamented to Messer Giorgio the same defect : which certainly must have lieen Vasari's opinion too, or his friends would not have remarked it so freely. But they all allowed that he was il piu bello e tnaggiore i mi tat ore delta datura that had ever been seen : and perhaps this was praise enough for ohe man. He lived till ninety, a splendid, successful, prosperous, but not very elevated or noble life, working on till the very end, not from necessity, or from any higher motive, but apparently from a love of gain, and tradesmanlike instinct against refusing any order, as well as no doubt from a true love of the beautiful art, to which his life had been devoted from childhood up. The boy of ten who had come down from his mountains to clean Znan Bellini's palette, and II.] THE PAINTERS. pick up the secrets of the craft in his botteya before he was old enough for serious teaching, had a long career from that beginning until the day when he was carried to the Frari in hasty state, by special order of the Signoria, to lie buried there against all law and rule, while the other victims of the plague were taken in secret to out-lying islands and piit into the earth out of the way, in the hideous panic which that horrible complaint brought with it. But never during all this long interval, three parts of a century, had he given up the close pursuit of his art. And what changes during that time had pass- ed over Art in Venice ! The timid tempera period ' was altogether extinct- the disciples of the old school all gone : and of the first generation which revolutionised the Venetian botteyas, and brought nature and the secret of lustrous modern colour, and ease and humanity into Art, none were left. Bellini and Carpaccio and all the throng of lesser masters had been swept away in the long inevitable procession of the generations. And their principles had been carried into the sensuous brilliancy of a development which loved colour and the dimpled roundness of flesh, and the beauty which is of the body rather than the mind. When Titian began, his teachers and masters applied all their faculties to the setting forth of a noble ideal, of perfect devotion and purity of manhood and womanhood, with the pic- turesque clothing and sentiment of their century, yet con- secrated by some higher purpose, something in which all the generations should sympathise and be of accord. When HEAD FROM TITIAN S TOMB I BELIEVED TO BE F. PAOLO SARPI. 322 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CIIAI-. he ended, the world was full of images lovely in their manner, in which the carnagione of the naked limbs, the painting of a dimple, were of more importance than all the emotions that touch the soul. It is none of our business to make moral distinctions between the one method and the other. This was the result in Venice of that new in- spiration which the older painters had first turned to every pious and noble use. And it was Titian in his love of beauty, in his love of money, in his magnificent faculty of work and adaptability to the wishes of the time that brought it about. His associates of youth all dropped from him, the gentle Palma, now called il Vecchio, dying mid- way in the career of the robuster companion, as Giorgione had fallen at its beginning. In his long life and endless labours, as well as in his more persevering and steady power, Titian, whatever hints and instructions he may have taken, as his later prosaic biographers suggest from each of them, outdid them both. And there can be no doubt that he still stands above them all, at least in the general estimation, dwelling in a supremacy of skill and strength upon the side of the deep flowing stream that divides Venice, dominating everything that came after him, like the white marble moun- tain of the Salute, but never learning the heavenly secret of the elder brotherhood who first instructed his youth. There are some picturesque anecdotes of Titian which every- body knows, as for instance that of the astounding moment in which the painter having dropped a brush, great Charles, the lord of so many kingdoms, a Spaniard and accustomed to the utmost rigidity of etiquette, the Roman Emperor at the apex of human glory, made the hair stand on end of every courtly beholder by picking it up. " Your servant is unworthy of such an honour," said Titian, in words that might have been addressed to something divine. " A Titian is worthy to be served by Caesar." replied his imperial majesty, not undervaluing the condescension, as perhaps a friendly English prince who had acted on impulse, or a more light- hearted Frenchman with the de rien of exquisite courtesy, INTEBIOK OF THE CHUHCH OF Till-: JKSUITS. II.] THE PAINTERS. 823 might have done. Charles knew it was an incident for history, and conducted himself accordingly. There is a prettier and more pleasant suggestion in the scene recorded by Ridolfi, which describes how Titian, while painting Alfonso of Este, the Duke of Ferrara, was visited by Ariosto with the divino suo poema in his pocket, which he was still in the course of writing who read aloud his verses for the delight of both sitter and painter, and afterwards talked it over, and derived much advantage from Titian's criticisms and remarks, which helped him " in the description of land- scapes and in setting forth the beauty of Alcina, Angelica, and Bradamante." "Thus," Ridolfi adds, "Arb held the office of mute poetry, and poetry of painting eloquent." CHAPTER III. TINTORETTO. WHEN Titian was at the height, or rather approaching the height, of his honours, a certain little dyer, or dyer's son, a born Venetian, from one of the side canals where the tintori are still by times to be seen, purple-limbed from the dye-houses, was brought to his studio. The lad had daubed with his father's colours since he could walk, tracing figures upon the walls and every vacant space, and no doubt with his sjririto stravagante making himself a nuisance to all his belongings. Robusto, the father, was a man of sense, no doubt, and saw it was vain to strive against so strong a natural impulse : besides, there was no reason why he should do so, for he had no position to forfeit, and the trade of a painter was a prosperous trade, and not one to be despised by any honest citizen. We are not told at what age young Jacopo, the tintorettino, the little dyer, came into the great painter's studio. But he was born in 1512, and if we suppose him to be fifteen or so, no doubt that would be the furthest age which he was likely to have reached before being set to his apprenticeship by a prudent Venetian father. The story of his quickly interrupted studies there is told by Ridolfi with every appearance of truthfulness. " Not many days after, Titian came into the room where his pupils worked, and seeing at the foot of one of the benches certain papers upon which figures were drawn, CH. in.] THE PAINTERS. :ur> asked who had done them. Jacopo, who was the author of the same, afraid to have done wrong, timidly said that thev were from his hand. Titian perceiving from these begin- nings that the boy would probably become a great man, and give him trouble in his supremacy of art, had no sooner gone up stairs and laid aside his mantle than he called Girolamo, his pupil (for in human breasts jealousy works like a canker), to whom he gave orders to sond Jacopo away." "Thus," adds Ridolii, "without hearing the reason, ho was left without a master." The story is an ugly one for Titian : though it is insinuated of other masters that they have regarded the progress of their pupils with alarm, there has been no such circumstantial account of profes- sional jealousy in the very budding of youthful powers. Vasari, who was a contemporary of both, and a friend of Titian, though he does not mention this incident, gives in his sketch of the younger painter a picture which accords in every respect with Ridolfi's detailed biography, though the criticism of Vasari has all the boldness of a contem- porary, and that lively, amused appreciation with which a calm looker-on beholds the eccentricities of a passionate genius which he admires but cannot understand. Tinto- retto's violence and extravagance had become classical by Ridolfi's time. They were still half ridiculous, a thing to talk about with shrugged shoulders and shaken head, in the days Avhen Messer Giorgio of Florence had the story told to him, or perhaps saw- with his own eyes the terrible painter rushing with the force of a giant at his work. "In the same city of Venice," says Vasari, suddenly bursting into this lively narrative in the midst of the laboured record of a certain Battista Franco who was nobody, " there lived and lives still a painter called Jacopo Tintoretto, full of worth and talent, especially in music and in playing divers instruments, and in other respects amiable in all his actions : but in matters of art, extravagant, capricious, swift and resolute ; and the most hot- headed (il piu tcrribile ccrvcllo) that ever has taken painting in hand, as may be seen in all his works and in the fantastic composition which he puts together in his own way, different 32G THE MAKERS ( >F VENICE. [rn.u-. from the use and custom of other painters, surpassing extravagance with new and capricious inventions, and .strange whims of intellect, working on the spur of the moment and without design, almost as it' Art was a mere pleasantry. Sometimes he will put forth sketches as finished pictures, so roughly dashed in that the strokes of the brush are dearly visible, as if done by accident or in defiance rather than by design and judgment. He has worked almost in every style, in fresco, in oil. portraits from nature, and at every price : in such a way that according to their different modes, he has painted and still paints the greater number of pictures that are executed in Venice. And as in his youth lie showed much understanding in many tine works, if lie had known the great principle which there is in nature, and aided it with study and cool judgment, as those have done who have followed the fine methods of their predecessors, and had not, as he has done, abandoned this practice, he would have been one of the best painters who have ever been known in Venice not that it should be understood by this that he is not actually a fine and good painter, of a vivid, fanciful, and gracious spirit." How this swift, imperious, masterful genius was formed, Ridolfi tells us with much more detail than is usual, and with many graphic touches, himself waking up in the midst of his somewhat dry biographies with a quickened interest, and that pleasure in coming across a vigorous, original human being amid so many shadows which none but a writer of biographical sketches can fully know. No one of all our painters stands out of the canvas like the dyer's son, robust as his name, a true type, perhaps the truest of all, of his indomitable race. When he was turned out of Titian's studio, " every one may conceive," says Ridolfi, " what disgust he felt in his mind." " But such affronts become sometimes powerful stimulants to the noble spirit, and afford material for generous resolutions. Jacopo, excited by indignation, although still but a boy, turned over in his mind how to carry on the career he had begun and not allowing him- self to be earned away by passion, knowing the greatness of Titian, whose honours were predicted by all, he considered in every way how, by means of studying the works of that master, and the relievos of Michel Angelo Buonarotti, reputed father of design, he might become a painter. Thus, with the help of these two divine lights, whom Paint- ing and Sculpture have rendered so illustrious in modern times, he went forward towards his desired end : well advised to provide himself with secure escort to point out the path to him in difficult passages. And in order not to deviate from his proposed course he inscribed the To face purje 326. PAiAZZO CAM1-.IJ.O : HOVSK UK TJN'l-OKF.TTU. in.] THE PAINTERS. :W7 laws which were to regulate his studies upon the walls of the cabinet in which he pursued them, as follows : "!L DESEGXO DI MICHEL ANGELO, K'L C'OLORITO DI TITIANU. "Upon this he set himself to collect from all quarters, not without great expense, casts of ancient marbles : and procured from Florence the miniature models done by Daniele Volterrano from the figure upon the tombs of the Medici, in San Lorenzo in that city : that is, the, Aurora, the Twilight, the Day and the Night, of which he made a special study, making drawings of them from every side, and by the light of a lamp, in order, by the strong shadows thrown from this light, to form in himself a powerful and effective manner. In the same way, every arm, hand, and torso which he could collect he drew over and over agai?i on coloured paper with charcoal, in water-colours, and every other way in which he could teach himself what was necessary for tin- uses of art. . . . Nor did he give up copying the pictures of Titian, upon which he established an excellent method of colour, so that many things painted by him in the flower of his age retain all the advantages of that style, to which he added those of much observation from his continual studies, and thus following the traces of the best masters, advanced with great steps towards perfection." We need not follow Eidolfi in his detailed account of all the experiments of the self-instructed painter how he "departed from the study of nature alone, which for the most part produces things imperfect, not conjoining, except rarely, all the parts of corresponding beauty " ; how he im- provised for himself a course of anatomy ; how he fore- stalled the lay figures of modern times by models of wax and plaster, upon which he hung his draperies ; how he arranged his lights, both by day and night, so as to throw everything into bold relief. His invention seems to have been endless : in his solitary workshop, without the aid of any master, the young man faced by himself all the diffi- culties of his art, and made for himself many of the aids which the ingenuity of later ages has been supposed to con- trive for the advantage of the student. Nor did he confine himself to his studio, or to those endless expedients for seeing his models on every side, and securing the effect of them in every light. "He also continued, in order to practise himself in the management of colour to visit every place where painting was going on and it is A A 2 328 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. said that, drawn by the desire of work, lie went with the builders to Cittadella, where round the rays of the clock he painted various fanci- ful matters, solely to relieve his mind of some of the innumerable thoughts that filled it. He went much about also among the painters of lower pretensions who worked in the piazza of San Marco on the painters' benches, to learn their method too." The painters' benches, le Ixtuche per depintori, were, as Ridolfi tells us in another place, under the porticoes in the Piazza, where, according to an ancient privilege granted by the Senate, the poorer or humbler members of the profession plied their trade, painting on chests and probably other articles of furniture " histories, foliage, grotesques, and other bizarre things." They would seem to have worked in the open air, unsheltered save by the arches of the colonnade, where now tourists sip their ices, and gossiping politicians congregate ; and to have sold their wares as they worked, a lowly but not unprofitable branch of an already too much followed profession. The depintori da banche seem to have been a recognised section of artists, and such a painter as Schiavone was fain by times in his poverty, we are told, to get a day's work from a friend of this humble order. The dyer's son, it is evident, had no such need. He went but to look on, to watch how they got those bold effects which told upon the cassettone for a bour- geois bride, or the finer ornamentation of the coffer which was to inclose the patrician lady's embroideries of gold. He scorned no instruction wherever he could find it, this determined student, whom Titian had refused to teach. And it adds a new feature to that ancient Venice which was so like, yet unlike, the present city of the sea, to be- hold thus clearly in the well-known scene the painters on their benches, with their long panels laid out for sale, and admiring groups lingering in their walk to watch over the busy artist's shoulder the progress he was making, or to cheapen the fine-painted lid of a box which was wanted for some approaching wedding. The new porticoes were not yet quite completed, and the drippings of the stones, and all BRIIX;K OF SIGHS. in.] THE PAINTERS. 32 f f the dust of the mason's work, must have disturbed the painters, who were of too little account to trouble Sansovino, the fine architect, who was then piling up the Procuratie N"uove in those dignified masses, over the heads of all the gay and varied life going on below. "In those days," adds Ridolfi, "which may be called the happy days of painting, there abounded in Venice many youths of fiin- genius, who, full of talent, made great progress in art, exhibiting in emulation one with another the result of their labours in the Merceria in order to know the opinions of the spectators : where also Tintoretto with his inventions and fancies did not fail to show the effects which God and nature had worked in him. And among the things which he thus exhibited were two portraits, one of himself with a relievo in his hand, the other of his brother playing the harp, represented by night with such tremendous force, con si terrible manicra, that every beholder was struck with amazement : at sight of which a gentle bystander, moved by the sight of so much poetic rapture, sung thus : " 'Si Tinctorettus noctes sic lucet in umbris Exorto faciet quid vadiante Die ? ' "He exhibited also in Rialto a history with many figures, the fame of which reached the ears of Titian himself, who, going up to it in haste, could not contain his praises, though he wished no good to his despised scholar : genius (la virtu} being of that condition that even when full of envy it cannot withhold praise of true merit though in an enemy." With all this, however, Tintoretto did not prosper in the exercise of his profession. He got no commissions like the other young men. The cry was all for Palma Vecchio, for Pordenone, for Bonifazio, says Ridolfi, perhaps not too exact in his dates : but above all for Titian, who received most of the commissions of importance. Titian himself, however, was at the probable time referred to, about 1530, the earliest date at which Tintoretto could possibly match himself against the elder painters, much pressed by Por- denone, to whom the Senate were anxious to hand over his uncompleted work. In short, it is evident that the brother- hood of Art was already suffering from too much competi- tion. The dyer's energetic son, who seems to have had no pinch of necessity forcing him to paint cassettoni like the other poor painters, moved heaven and earth, with the 330 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAI-. high-handed vigour which pecuniary independence gives, to get work for himself, and to mako himself known. If it was work which did not pay, no matter ; the determined painter took it in hand all the same : and to poor churches in need of decoration his advent would be a godsend. Whether it was an organ that wanted painting, or the front of a house, or an altai^-piece for a little out-of-the way chapel, he was ready for all. On one occasion a house which was being built near the Ponte dell' Angelo seemed to him to afford a fitting opportunity for the exhibition of his powers. He addressed himself accordingly to the builders with whom it seems to have been the interest of the painters to keep a good understanding, and who were often intrusted with the responsibility of ordering such frescoes as might be required who informed him that the master of the house did not want any frescoes painted. But Tintoretto, intoxicated no doubt with the prospect of that fine fair wall all to himself, to cover as. he would, " determined in one way or another to have the painting of it," and pi-oposed to the master mason to paint the house for nothing, for the price of the colours merely. This offer being submitted to the proprietor was promptly accepted, and the painter had his way. Something of the same kind happened, according to Ridolfi, in a more serious undertaking at the church of the Madonna dell' Orto. With his many thoughts " boiling in his fruitful brain," and with an overwhelming desire to prove himself the boldest painter in the world, he suddenly proposed to the prior of this convent to paint the two sides of the chief chapel behind the great altar. The frescoed house-fronts are visible no longer, but the two vast pictures in this chapel remain to tell the tale. The spaces were fifty feet in height, and the prior laughed at the mad suggestion, thinking that for such a work the whole year's income of the convent would scarcely be enough : and, with- out taking any notice of the proposal, bade the painter good To face page 330. PALAZZO c'AMELLO : HOUSE OF TINTORETTO. in.] THE PAINTERS. :j:u day. But Tintoretto, taking no heed of this dismissal, went on to say that he would ask nothing for the work, but only the cost of the material, giving his own time and labour as a gift. These words made the prior pause : for who could doubt that to have two such huge illustrations, superior to all around, without paying anything for them, would be balm to any Venetian's thoughts 1 Finally the bargain was made and the work begun, the painter flinging himself upon it with all his strength. The two great pictures, one representing the return of Moses after receiv- ing the Tablets of the Law, to find that all Israel was worshipping the golden calf, the other the Last Judgment, were promptly executed, and still remain, gigantic, to the admiration of all spectators. The fame of this strange bargain ran through the city, and attracted the attention of all classes. The critics and authorities shook their heads and lamented over the decay of art which had to resort to such measures. " But little cared Tintoretto for the dis- cussions of the painters, proposing to himself 110 other end than self-satisfaction and glory little useful as these things are." Both Vasari and Ridolfi concur in the story of a certain competition at the school of San B.OCCO, in which Tintoretto was to contend with Schiavone, Salviati and Zucchero for the ornamentation of a portion of tho ceiling. While the others prepared drawings and designs, this tremendous com- petitor had the space measured, and with all his fire of rapid execution, in which nobody could touch him so that Vasari says, when the others thought he had scarcely begun, he had already finished set to work to paint a picture of the subject given. When the day of the com- petition arrived he conveyed his canvas to the spot, and had it secretly fixed up in its place and covered and after the other competitors had exhibited their drawings he, to the consternation of all, snatched away the linen which covered his picture and revealed it completed. A great 332 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAI-. uproar, as might be supposed, arose. What the feelings of his rivals were, seeing this inarch which he had stolen upon them, may be imagined : but the authorities of the confraternitti, solemnly assembled to sit upon the merits of the respective designs, were no less moved. They told him with indignation that they had met to inspect designs and choose one which pleased them for after-execution, not to have a finished picture thrust upon them. To which Tintoretto answered that this was his method of designing, that he could not do otherwise, and that designs and models ought to be so executed, in order that no one should be deceived as to their ultimate effect ; and finally, that if they did not wish to pay him he willingly made a present of the picture to the saint. "And thus saying," adds Vasari, "though there was still much opposition, he pro- duced such an effect that the work is there to this day." Ridolfi, enlarging the tale, describes how the other painters, stupefied by the sight of so great a work executed in so few days and so exquisitely finished, gathered up their drawings and told the fraternity that they withdrew from the competition, Tintoretto by the merit of his work having fairly won the victory. Notwithstanding which the heads of the corporation still insisted that he should take away his picture ; declaring that they had given him no commission to paint it, but had desired only to have sketches submitted to them that they might give the work to whoever pleased them best. When, hoAvever, he flung the picture at their heads, so to speak, and they found themselves obliged to keep it, whether they liked it or not (for they could not by their law refuse a gift made to their saint) milder counsels prevailed, and finally the greater part of the votes were given to Tintoretto, and it was decided that he should be paid a just price for his work. He was afterwards formally appointed to do all that was necessary for the future adornment of the scuola, and received from the society a grant of a hundred ducats yearly for his whole life, in ] THE PAINTERS. 333 he cm his side binding himself to paint a picture for them every year." This proceeding proves the justice of what Vasari says, always with a certain half-amusement. "These works and many others which he left behind him were done by Tin- toretto so rapidly, that when others scarcely believed him to have begun he had finished : and the wonderful thing was that though he had adopted the most extravagant methods in the world to secure commissions yet when he failed to do so by interest or friendship he was ready to sacrifice all gain and give his work at a small price, or for nothing, so as to force its acceptance, in order that one way or other he should succeed in getting the work to do." Ridolfi adds that the Scoula of San Rocco when completed became in itself a sort of Accademia, "The resort of the studious in painting, and in particular of all the foreigners from the other side of the Alps who came to Venice at that time : Tintoretto's works serving as examples of composition, of grace, and harmony of design, of the management of light and shade, and force and freedom of colour : and in short of all that can be called most accurate and can most exhibit the gifts of the ingenious Painter." The pilgrim from beyond the Alps, who follows his pre- decessors into the echoing halls of San Rocco, can judge for himself still of the great works thus eulogised, and .see the picture which Tintoretto fixed upon the roof, while his rivals prepared their drawings, and which he flung as it were, at the brotherhood when they demurred. His foot- steps are all over Venice, in almost every church and wherever pictures are to be seen from the great Paradiso in the Council Hall, the greatest picture in one sense in the world, down to the humblest chapels, parish churches, sacristies, there is scarcely an opportunity which he has neglected to make himself seen and known. According to the evidence of the historians of art, Titian never forgave the boy whose greatness he had foreseen, and there is at least one subject, that of the Presentation, which the two 334 THE MAKKRS < >F VENICE. [CHAP. painters have treated with a certain similarity, with what one cannot but feel must, in the person of the younger at least have been an intended rivalry. These two splendid examples of art remain, if not side by side, as the pictures of Turner hang beside the serene splendour of the Claudes in our own National Gallery, yet with an emulation not dissimilar, which in some minds, will always militate against the claims of the artist whose aim is to prove that he is the better man. The same great critic who has been the life-long champion of Turner against the claims of his long dead rival has in like manner espoused those of the later master in Venice. And in respect to these particular pictures, they are, we believe, a sort of test of art under- standing by which the Illuminati judge the capacity of the less instructed according to the preference they give. How- ever that may be, Tintoretto's greatness, the wonderful sweep and grandeur which his contemporaries call strava- gante, the lavish power with which he treats every subject, nothing too great, too laborious, for his hand, cannot fail to impress the beholder. He works like a giant, flinging himself abroad " upon the wings of all the winds : " with something of the immortal Bottom in him, determined to do the lion too, at which a keen observer like Vasari can- not but smile : and yet no clown but a demi-god, full of power, if also full of emulation and determination to be the best. But the man is still more remarkable than his work, and to the lover of human nature more interesting, an ideal Venetian, rather of the fifteenth than of the sixteenth century, in his imperious independence and self-will and resolution to own no master. All the arrogance of the well-to-do citizen is in him ; he who will take the wall of any man, and will not yield a jot or tittle of his own pre- tensions for the most splendid gallant, or the greatest genius in Christendom : one who is not to be trifled with or condescended to nor will submit to any parleying about his work or undervaluing of his manhood. No fine patrician, in.] THE PAINTERS. 335 no company even of his townsfolk he was resolved should play patron to him. He did not require their money one large ingredient in such a character : he could afford to do without them, to fling his pictures at their heads if need were, to execute their commissions for love, or, at least, for glory, not for their pay, or anything they could do for him : but all the same not to be shut out from any competition that was going, not to be thrust aside by the foolish preference of the employer for any other workman : determined that he, and he only, should have every great piece of work there was to do. Riclolfi, who lingers upon every incident with the pleasure of an enthusiast, and who is entirely on Tintoretto's side against Titian and all his fine company of critics, tells how the painter once inquired with the naivete of an ignorance which he was rather proud to show of all court practices and finery what was the meaning of a certain act which he saw performed by King Henry of France on the occasion of his visit to Venice. Tintoretto had made up his mind to paint a portrait of the king, with a sort of republican sentiment, half admiration, half contempt, for that strange animal, and in order to do this threw aside his toga (which his wife had persuaded him to wear, though he had no real right to that patrician garment), and, putting on the livery of the doge, mingled in the retinue by which his majesty was attended, and hung about in the antechambers, mark- ing the king's individuality, his features and ways until his presence and object were discovered, and he was ad- mitted to have a formal sitting. The painter observed that from time to time certain personages were introduced to the king, who touched them lightly on the shoulder with his sword, adding divers ceremonies. What did it mean, he asked with simplicity, probably somewhat affected, as the courtier-chamberlain, who was his friend, approached him in all the importance of office 1 The Polonius of the moment explained with pompous fulness, and added that 336 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [,H.U>. Tintoretto must prepare to go through the same ceremony in his own person, since the king intended to make a knight of him. Ridolfi says that the painter modestly declined the honour more probably strode off with sturdy contempt and a touch of unrestrained derision, very certain that whatever Titian and the others might think, no king's touch upon his shoulder, or patent of rank conferred, could make any difference to him ! And notwithstanding that all the historians are anxious to record as a set-off against these wild ways, the fact that he was very amiable in his private life, and fond of music, and to suonare il liuto, here is a little story which makes us feel that it must have been somewhat alarming, if he had any grievance against one, to be left alone with Tin- toretto. On some occasion not explained, the painter met Pietro Aretino, the infamous but much-courted . man of letters, who \vas the centre of the fine company, the friend of Titian, the representative of luxury and corruption in Venice, and invited him to his house, under pretence of painting his portrait. " When Aretino had come in and disposed himself to sit, Tintoretto with much violence drew forth a pistol from under his vest. Aretino, in alarm, fearing that he was about to be brought to account, cried out, 'What are you doing, Jacopo ?' 'I am going to take your measure,' said the other. And beginning to measure from the head to the feet, at last said sedately, 'Your height is two pistols and a half.' 'Oh, you mad fellow, ' cried the other, recovering his courage. But Aretino spoke ill of Tintoretto no more." Perhaps it is the absence of what we may call the literary faculty in these great painters that makes their appeal so much more exclusively to the connoisseur in art, to the critic qualified to judge on technical and classical grounds, to the expert in short than to the amateur who seeks in pictures and in books the sympathy of humanity, the fine suggestion which rouses the imagination, the touch that goes to the heart. The earlier masters perhaps in all regions (after they have a little surmounted the difficulties THF. COUKTYAED OF r.VJ To face paye ( AMEI.LO. in.] THE PAINTERS. :7 of pictorial expression) possess this gift in higher develop- ment than their successors, who, carrying art to its per- fection of design and colour, not unusually leave the heart and the imagination of the spectator altogether out of the reckoning. The Bellini and Carpaccio are all strong in this impulse, which is common to poet and storyteller, Avhether in the graver paths of history or in the realms of fiction. They appeal to something in us which is more than the eye : they never lose touch of human sentiment, in the Venetian streets all full of a hundred histories, in the legends of love and martyrdom which are of universal potency, in tho sweetest ideal of life, the consecrated women and children. Ursula wrapped in maiden sleep, with the winged Angel- Knight touching the sweet edge of her dreams : or throned in a simple majesty of youth and sacred purity and love divine, the Mother holding up to men and Angels the Hope and Saviour of mankind : or with a friendly glow of sym- pathetic nature diffused all around, the group ef neighbours gazing at the procession in the piazza, the women kneeling on the edge of the water-way to see the sacred relic go by. Such visions do not come to us from the magnificence of Titian, or the gigantic power, stravagaate, of Tintoretto. A few noble heads of senators are all that haunt our memory, or enter into our friendship from the hand of the latter painter ; and even they are too stern sometimes, too authori- tative and conscious of their dignity that we should venture to employ such a word as friendship. Titian's senators are more suave, and he leaves us now and then a magnificent fair lady to fill us with admiration but except one or two of such fine images, how little is there that holds possession of our love and liking, and, as we turn away, insists on being remembered ! Not anything certainly in the great Assumption, splendid as it is, and perfect as it may be. Light, shade, colour, science, and beauty, are all there, but human feeling has been left out in the magnificent com- position. I return for my part with a great and tender B B 338 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. pleasure to the silence and vast solemnity of the Frari where that one young serious face in the great Pesaro picture looks out of the canvas .suddenly, wistfully, asking the meaning of many things, into the spectator's heart with a feeling that this is about the one thing which the great Titian has ever said to me. It is impossible and unnecessary for us, standing in the place of the unlearned, to go into full detail of the painters of Venice, or discuss the special qualities of Cima in all his silvery sweetness, or the gentle Palma, or the bolder Por- denone, or the long list of others who through many glow- ing and beautiful pieces of painting conducted art from perfection to decay. The student knows where to find all that can be said on the subject, which has indeed produced an entire literature of its own. When all is said that can be said about the few inaccurate dates, and mistaken stories, with which he is credited. Messer Giorgio of Florence, the graphic and delightful Yasari, remains always the best guide. But, alas, "he was not a Venetian, and his histories of the painters of Venice are generally modified by the reflection, more or less disguised, that if they had but had the luck to be Florentines they might have been great : or at least must have been much greater even the great Titian himself. We have ventured to speak of some of the works of Titian as decorative art. The productions of the last great painter whose name will naturally recur to every lover of Venice, the splendid and knightly Paul Veronese, claim this character still more distinctively as if the great republic, unapproachable in so many ways, had seized a new splendour, and instead of tapestries or humbler mural adornments, had contented herself with nothing less than the hand of genius to ornament her walls. These wonder- ful halls and balconies, those great banquets spread as upon a more lordly dais of imagination and exquisite skill, those widening vistas of columns and balustrades thronged in.] THE PAINTERS. 339 with picturesque retainers, the tables piled with glowing fruit and vessels of gold and silver, in a mimic luxury more magnificent than any fact, transport the spectator with a sense of greatness, of wealth, of width and space, and ever beautiful adornments, which perhaps impairs our appreciation of the art of the painter in its purer essence. No king ever enlarged and furnished and decorated his palace like the Veronese : the fine rooms in which these pictures are hung are but antechambers to the grander space which opens beyond in the painter's canvas. It is scarcely enough, though magnificent in its way, to see them hanging like other pictures in a gallery, among the works of other masters for then their purpose is lost, and half their grandeur. The Marriage of Cana is but a picture in the Louvre : but in Venice, as we walk into such a presence and see the splendid party serenely banqueting, with the sky opening into heavenly blue behind them, the servants bringing in the courses, appearing and disappearing behind the columns, the carpet flung in all its Oriental wealth of colour upon the cool semi-transparence of the marble steps, the room of which this forms one side, is. transformed for ever. Were it the humblest chamber in the world it would be turned into a palace before our eyes. Never were there such noble and princely decorations : they widen the space, they fill the far-withdrawing anterooms with groups worthy the reception of a king. Mr. Ruskin gives a lively account, from the records of Venice, of how Messer Paolo was had up before the Inquisition, no less, on the charge of having introduced unbecoming and undignified figures, negro pages, and even little dogs, into pictures meant for the church where, indeed, such details were no doubt out of place. But Paul of Verona was not the man to paint religious pictures, having no turn that way. He is a painter for palaces, not for churches. Mind of man never devised presence chamber or splendid hall that he could not have rendered more splendid. Notwithstanding the prominence B B 2 340 THE MAKERS ( >E VENICE. [("'UAl'. of the negro pages, and many an attendant beside, his lords of the feast are all the finest gentlemen, his women courtly and magnificent. It is the be/;t of company that sits at that table, whether the wine is miraculous or only V ^3BI^ KNOCKER : PALAZZO DA POXTE. the common juice of the grape : even should the elabora- tion of splendid dress be less than that which Titian loves. The effect is a more simple one than his, the result almost more complete. So might the walls of heaven be painted, the vestibules and the corridors : still leaving, as poor in.] THE PAINTERS. .541 Florentine Andrea sighs in Mr. Browning's poem, '-four great walls in the New Jerusalem " for a higher emulation. "For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo, and me " to try their best upon. The fashion of fresco painting on the outsides of the houses still continued, and was largely practised also by Paolo Veronese : but let us hope that the far more splendid internal decoration supplied by his pictures had some effect. along with the good sense native to the Venetians and their sound practical faculty, in putting an end to so great a waste of power and genius as these outside pictures proved. They were already fading out by Paolo's time, sinking into pale shadows of what they had been, those pictured images with which Giorgione and young Titian had made the ugly German factory for a moment glorious : and the art which had been so superb in their hands had sunk also to the execution of pictured colonnades and feigned architecture, such as still lingers about Italy, not to any one's advantage. Upon such things as these, false perspectives and fictitious grand facades with imitation statues in unreal relief, even Paolo spent much of his time, though he could do so much better. And thus the fashion wore itself into poverty and decadence, as fashions have a way of doing, going out in ridicule as well as in decay. PART IV. MEN OF LETTERS. CHAPTER I. THE GUEST OF VENICE. "VTOTHING can be more difficult to explain than the -L i manner in which the greater gifts of human genius are appropriated to some regions lavishly, to some scarcely at all, notwithstanding that the intellectual qualities of the race may be as good, possibly indeed may reach a higher average in the one neglected than in the one favoured. We fear that no theory that has ever been invented will suffice to explain why the great form of Dante, like a mountain shadowing over the whole peninsula, should have been given to Florence, and nothing to Venice, not so much as a minor minstrel to celebrate the great deeds of the republic which was the most famous and the greatest of all Italian re- publics, and which maintained its independence when all its rivals and sisters lost theirs. Petrarch, too, was a Floren- tine by origin, only not born there because of one of the accidents of her turbulent history. Boccaccio, the first of Italian story-tellers, belonged to the same wonderful city. But to Venice on her seas, with the charm of a great poem in every variation of her aspect, with the harmonies of the sea in her very streets, not one. We have to find her reflected in the mild eyes of a temporary visitor, in the en. i.] MEN OF LETTERS. 34.'j learned and easy yet formal talk of the friendly Canon, half French, half Italian, who, all the vagaries of his youth over, came, elderly and famous, and never without an eye to his own comfort and interests, to visit the great Mistress of the Seas, taking refuge there, " in this city, true home of the human race," from trouble and war and pestilence outside. The picture given by Dom Francesco, the great poet, laureate of all the world, the friend of kings and princes, is in some ways very flattering to our city. He was received with great honour there as everywhere, and found himself in the centre of an enlightened and letter-loving society. But his residence was only temporary, and, save Petrarch, no poet of a high order has ever associated himself with the life of Venice, much less owed his birth or breeding to her. The reader will not fail to recollect another temporary and recent visitor, whose traces are still to be seen about Venice, and whose record remains, though not such as any lover of poetry would love to remember, in all the extravagance and ostentatious folly natural to the character of Lord Byron : but that was in the melancholy days when Venice had almost ceased to be. Save for such visitors and for certain humble breathings of the nameless, such as no homely village is entirely without, great Venice has no record in poetry. Her powerful, vigorous, subtle, and imaginative race have never learned how to frame the softest dialect of Italy, the most musical of tongues, into any linked sweetness of verse. The reason is one which we cannot pretend to divine, and which no law of development or natural selection seems capable of accounting for. Petrarch was not only a poet, but a patriot in the larger sense of the word a sense scarcely known in his day. Perhaps the circumstances that he was an exile from his birth, and that his youth had been sheltered in a neighbour- ing country, from which he could see in all the force of perspective the madness of those Italian states which spent all their strength in tearing each other in pieces, had 344 THE MAKERS OF VEXICK. [CIIAI-. elevated him to that pitch of enlightenment, unknown to the fierce inhabitants of Genoa, Venice, and Florence, each determined to the death that his own city should be the first. Petrarch is worthy of a higher niche for this than for his poetry, a civic wreath above his laurel. His first appearance in connection with Venice is in a most earnest and eloquent letter addressed to his friend Andrea Dandolo, the first serious chronicler of Venice, and a man learned in all the knowledge of the time, whom the poet, who probably had made acquaintance with*the noble Venetian at learned Padua, or in some neighbouring court or castle whither scholars and wits loved to resort, addresses with an im- passioned pleading for peace. One of the endless wars with Genoa was then beginning, and Petrarch adduces every argument, and appeals to every motive above all, " Italian as I am," to the dreadful folly which drives to arms against each other "the two most powerful peoples, the two most flourishing cities, thu two most splendid stars of Italy, which, to my judgment, the great mother nature has placed here and there, posted at the doorway of the Italian race. Italians for the ruin of Italians invoke the help of barbarous allies," he adds. "And what hope of aid can remain to un- happy Italy when, as if it were a small matter to see her sons turn against her, she is overrun also by strangers called by them to help in the parricide ? " But not even the enlightened Dandolo, the scholar-doge, thought of Italy in those days, and though the poet's protest does not seem to have alienated his friend, it was entirely without avail. Two years after, in 1353, an embassy, of which Petrarch was one of the principal members, was sent from Milan on the part of the Visconti to attempt to negotiate a peace. This was not his first visit to Venice, and it cannot have been an agreeable one. One of the chroniclers indeed says that much as Doge Andrea loved the poet, and strong as was the attraction of such a visitor to a man of his tastes, the occasion was so painful that he refused to see Petrarch. It does not seem, however, that i.] MEN OF LETTERS. :545 this was the rase, for the poet, in a subsequent letter to Dandolo, reminds the doge of his visit and its object. After two battles after the Hellespont and the Ionian sea had twice been reddened by such a lake of blood as might well extinguish the flames of cruel war " as mediator of peace, I was sent by our greatest among great Italians to you, the most wise of all the doges, and to your citizens. Such ami so many things I said in the council over which you presided, such and so many in your private rooms, as must still remain in your ears. But all was in vain : for neither your great men, nor, what was more wonderful, yourself, could be moved by any salutary counsel or just prayer the im- petuosity of war, the clamour of arms, the remains of ancient hatred having closed the way." The letter in which Petrarch repeats this fruitless attempt at mediation was written in May, 1354, a year after, and still with the same object. The Venetians had been conquerors on the first occasion, but the fortune of war had now turned, and in September of the same year Doge Andrea died, just before one of those final and crushing defeats which Venice over and over again had to submit to from Genoa, without ever ceasing to seize the first opportunity of beginning again. It was not, however, till several years after that it occurred to the much-wandering poet to fix his habitation in Venice. This was in the latter portion of Petrarch's life. Romance and Laura had long departed out of it. He was already the crowned poet, acknowledged the greatest, and, save for an occasional sonnet or two, cul- tivated divine poetry no more. He was a person of ease and leisure, much courted by the most eminent persons in Europe, accustomed to princely tables and to familial- intercourse with every magnate within reach, accustomed, too, to consider his own comfort and keep danger and trouble at a distance. Disorder and war and pestilence drove him from one place to another from Milan to Padua, 340 THE MAKERS <>F VENICE. [CHAP. from Padua to Venice. He had fulfilled many dignified missions as ambassador to various courts, and he was not a man who could transfer himself from one city to another without observation. It would seem that when, driven by the fear of the plague, and by the horror of those continued conflicts which were rending Italy from day to day that Italy which he was almost alone in considering as one country he turned his eyes towards Venice, it was with some intention of making it his permanent home : for the preliminary negotiations into which he entered show a desire to establish himself for which he does not seem to have taken any such precautions before. One of the best known of all facts in the history of literature is that the poet left his library to the republic, and the unworthy manner in which that precious bequest was received. But it has not been noted with equal distinctness that the prudent poet made this gift, not as a legacy because of his love for Venice, which is the light in which it has generally been regarded, but as an offer of eventual advantage in order to procure from the authorities a fit lodging and reception for himself. This, however, is the true state of the case. He puts it forth in a letter to his friend and agent Benintendi, the" chancellor of the republic, in whose hands it would seem he had placed his cause. A certain plausible and bland insistence upon the great benefit to Venice of a public library, of which the poet's books should be the foundation, discreetly veils the important condition that the poet's own interests should be served in the meantime. "If the effort succeeds," he says, "I am of opinion that your posterity and your republic will owe to you, if not their glory, yet at least the opening of the way to glory. And oh ! " he adds piously, '' if it had but been thought of when the commonwealth was governed by that most holy spirit to whom, as you who knew him well will understand, it would have afforded so much delight. For my part, I do not doubt than even in the heavens he is glad of our design, and anxiously awaits its success. I believe also that, looking down lifvingly without a grudge, it will greatly please him, having himself earned i.] MEN OF LETTERS. :U7 such glory and honour as no other Venetian doge did before- him, that the glory of instituting a public library should have been reserved for the fourth of his successors, a man also so excellent, a noble doge and zealous of the public good." This invocation of the sainted shade of Andrea Dandolo the much-lamented doge, to sanctify an effort the immediate object of which was the acquisition of a handsome house for Dom Francesco the poet, has a flavour of Tartuffe, or at least of Pecksniff, which may make the reader smile. It was however a perfectly legitimate desire, and no doubt Petrarch's books were valuable, and the suggestion of a public library an admirable thing : and it was to the credit of the republic that the bargain was at once made, and the poet got his house, a palace upon the PJva degli Schiavoni the Palazzo delle due Torri, now no longer in existence, but which is commemorated by an inscription upon the house which replaces it. It was situated at the corner of the Ponte del Sepolcro. In the curious illumination, taken from a manuscript in the Bodleian Library, which the reader will find at the head of a preceding chapter, the two towers are visible, rising from among the picturesque roofs, over the quay from which the Eastern merchants, the Poli, are to be seen setting out upon their voyage. This was in the year 1362. He had visited Venice in his youth when a student at Bologna. He had returned in the fulness of his fame as the ambassador of the Prince of Milan to negotiate peace with Genoa, though the attempt was vain. He was now approaching his sixtieth year, full of indignation and sorrow for the fate of his country, denouncing to earth and heaven the horrible bands of mercenaries who devastated Italy, bringing rapine and pestilence and for his own part intent upon finding a peaceful home, security, and health. His letters afford us a wonderfully real glimpse of the conditions of the time. In one of them, written soon after his settlement in Venice, to an old friend, he defends himself for having fallen into 348 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. the weakness of age, the laudator teinporis acti. He reviews in this epistle the scenes in which his youth and that of his friend were passed, the peace, the serenity, the calm of these early days, comparing them with the uni- versal tumult and misery of the existing time, denying that the change was in himself or his ideas, and painting a dismal picture of the revolution everywhere the wars, the bands of assassins and robbers let loose on the earth, the universal wretchedness. "This same city," he adds, " from which I write, this Venice which by the far-sighted- ness of her citizens and by the advantage of her natural position appears more powerful and tranquil than any other part of the world, though quiet and serene, is no longer festive and gay as she once was, and wears an aspect very different from that prosperity and gladness which she presented when first I came hither with my tutor from Bologna." But these words are very different from the phrases he employs in speaking of other cities. Venice, as has been seen in previous chapters, had trouble enough with the mercenary armies of the time when they were in her pay : but she was safe on her sea margin with the wide lagoons around her, unapproachable by the heavy-mailed troopers who might appear any day under the walls of a rich inland city and put her to sack or ransom. With all the force of his soul the poet loathed these barbarous invaders, the terror of his life and the scourge of Italy, into whose hands the Italian states themselves had placed weapons for their own destruction ; and it is with a sense of intense repose and relief that he settles down in his stately house looking out upon the wide harbour, upon San Giorgio among its trees, and the green line of the Lido, and all the winding watery ways, well defended by fort and galley, which led to the sea. The bustle of the port under his windows, the movement of the ships, would seem at once to have caught, with the charm of their novelty and wonder, his observant eyes. Shortly after his settlement on the 'J'o face page 34S. COUETYA11D. SIDE CAXAL. i.] MEN OF LETTERS. 340 Riva lie wrote a letter full of wise and serious advice to another friend, who had been appointed secretary to the pope an office not long before offered to himself. But in the very midst of his counsels, quoting Aristotle on the question of art, he bursts forth into comment upon In nautica, to which, he says, "after justice, is owing the wonderful prosperity of tins famous city, in which, as in a tranquil port, I have taken refuge from the storms of the world. See," he cries, "the innumerable vessels which set forth from the Italian shore in the desolate winter, in the most variable and stormy spring, one turning its pro\v to the east, the other to the west ; some carrying our wine to foam in British cups, our fruits to natter the palates of the Scythians, and, still more hard of credence, the wood of our forests to the Egean and the Achaian isles ; some to Syria, to Armenia, to the Arabs and Persians, carrying oil and linen and saffron, and bringing back all their diverse goods to us." " Let mo persuade you to pass another hour in my company. It was the depth of night and the heavens were full of storm, and I, already weary and half asleep, had come to an end of my writing, when sud- denly a burst of shouts from the sailors penetrated my ear. Aware of what these shouts should mean from former experience, I rose hastily and went up to the higher windows of this house, which look out upon the port. Oh, what a spectacle, mingled with feelings of pity, of wonder, of fear, and of delight ! Resting on their anchors close to tin marble banks which serve as a mole to the vast palace which this free and liberal city has conceded to me for my dwelling, several vessels have passed the winter, exceeding with the height of their masts and spars the two towers which flank my house. The larger of the two was at this moment though the stars were all hidden by the clouds, the winds shaking the walls, and the roar of the sea filling the air leaving the quay and setting out upon its voyage. Jason and Hercules would have been stupefied with wonder, and Tiphys, seated at the helm, would have been ashamed of the nothing which won him so much fame. If you had seen it, you would have said it was no ship but a mountain swimming upon the sea, although under the weight of its immense wings a great part of it was hidden in the waves. The end of the voyage was to be the Don. beyond which nothing can navigate from our seas ; but many of those who were on board, when they had reached that point, meant to prosecute their journey, never pausing till they had reached the Ganges or the Caucasus, India and the Eastern Ocean. So far does love of gain stimulate the human mind. Pity seized me, I 350 THE MAKERS OF VEMCK. [THAI-. confess, for these unfortunates, and J pen-rived how right the poet was who called sailors wretched. And heing uMc. no longer to follow them with my eyes into the darkness, with much emotion I took up my pen again, exclaiming within myself, 'Oh, how dear is life to all men. and in how little account they hold it ! '" It is evident that the beginning of his stay in Venice was very agreeable to the poet. He had not been long established in the palace of the two towers when Boccaccio, like himself seeking refuge from the plague and from the wars, came to visit him, and remained three months, enjoy- ing the calm, the lovely prospect, the wonderful city, and, what was still more, the learned society which Petrarch had already gathered around him. The scholars and the AVits of those days were sufficiently few to be known to each other, and to form a very close and exclusive little republic of letters in every centre of life. But in Venice even these learned personages owned the charm of the locality, and met not only in their libraries among their books, or at the classic feasts, where the gossip was of Cicero and Cato, of Virgil and of Ovid, and not of nearer neighbours where every man had his classical allusion, his quotations, his talk of Helicon and Olympus but on the soft and level waters, the brimming wide lagoon, like lesser men. When Petrarch invites the great story-teller of Florence to renew his visit, he reminds him of those " elect friends " with whom he had already made acquaintance, and how the dignified Benintendi, though devoted to public business all day, yet in the falling of the evening, with light-hearted and friendly countenance, would come in his gondola to refresh himself with pleasant talk from the fatigues of the day. " You know by experience," he says, " how delightful were those nocturnal rambles on the sea, and that conver- sation enlightened and sincere." To think of Boccaccio stepping forth with Petrarch upon the Biva, taking a boat in those soft summer nights, in sul far della sera, in the making of the evening, when the swift shadows fell across i.] MEN OF LETTERS. .'551 the glimmering distance, and the curves of the lagoon caught the first touches of the moonlight, comes upon us with a delightful contrast, yet likeness to the scenes more associated with their names. The fountain, of Vaucluse and Laura's radiant image, the gardens and glades of the Decameron, with all their youths and maidens, were less suitable now to the elderly poets than that talk of all things in earth and heaven, which in the dusk, upon the glistening levels of the still water, two friendly gondolas, softly gliding on in time, would pass from one to another in interchanges sometimes pensive, sometimes playful, in gentle arguments long drawn out, and that mutual com- parison of the facts of life and deductions from them which form the conversation of old men. There were younger companions too, like that youth of Ravenna of whom Petrarch writes, " whom you do not know, but who knows you well, having seen you in this house of mine, which, like all that belongs to me, is yours, and, according to the use of youth, watched you daily," who would join the poets in their evening row, and hang about the gondola of the great men to catch perhaps some word of wisdom, some classical comparison : while, less reverential, yet not with- out a respectful curiosity, the other boats that skimmed across the lagoon would pause a minute to point out, the lover to his lady, the gondolier to his master, the smooth and urbane looks of him who had been crowned at Rome the greatest of living poets, and the Florentine at his side, the romancer of his age two such men as could not be equalled anywhere, the guests of Venice. No doubt neither lute nor song were wanting to chime in with the tinkle of the wave upon the boats and the measured pulsa- tion of the oars. And as they pushed forth upon the lagoon, blue against the latest yellow of the sunset would rise the separate cones and peaks of the Euganeans, amongst which lay little Arqua, still unnoted, where the laureate of the world was to leave his name for ever. The c c: 352 THE MAKERS < >F VENICE. [CHAP. grave discussions of that moment to come, of the .sunset of life, and how each man endured or took a pensive pleasure in its falling shadows, would be dismissed with a smile as the silvery ferro glided slowly round like a swan upon the water, and the pleased companions turned to where the two towers rose over the bustling Riva, and the lighted windows shone, and the table was spread. " Vieni dunque ini'ocato," says the poet as he recalls these delights to the mind of his friend. "The gentle season invites to where no other cares await you but those pleasant and joyful occupations of the muses, to a house most healthful, which I do not describe because you know it." It is strange, however, to remember that these thoughtful old men in the reflective leisure of their waning years are the lover of Laura and the author of the Decameron. On another occasion the poet puts before us a picture of a different character, but also full of interest. It is on the 4th of June, 1364, a memorable day, and he is seated at his window with a friend, looking out over the ampio mare, the full sea which spreads before him. The friend was one of his oldest and dearest companions, his schoolfellow, and the comrade of his entire life, now Archbishop of Patras, and on his way to his see, but pausing to spend the summer in that most healthful of houses with the happy poet. The two old friends, newly met, sat together looking out upon that lively and brilliant scene as they talked and ex- changed remembrances, when their conversation was disturbed by a startling incident. "Suddenly and without warning there rose upon our sight one of those long vessels which are called galleys, crowned with green branches, and with all the force of its rowers making for the port. At this unexpected sight we broke off our conversation, and felt a hope springing in our hearts that such a ship must be the bearer of good news. As the swelling sails drew near the joyful aspect of the sailors became visible, and a handful of young men, also crowned with green leaves and with joyous countenances, standing on the prow, waving flags over their heads, and saluting the victorious city as yet unaware of her own triumph. Already from the highest tower the approach of i.J MEN OF LETTERS. 353 a strange ship had been signalled, and not by any command, but moved by the most eager curiosity, the citizens from every part of the town rushed together in a crowd to the shore. And as the ship came nearer and everything could be seen distinctly, hanging from the poop we perceived the flag of the enemy, and there remained no doubt that this was to announce a victory." A victory it was, one of the greatest which had been gained by Venetian arms, the re-capture of Candia (Crete) with little bloodshed and great glory to the republic though it is somewhat difficult to understand Petrarch's grand assumption that it was the triumph of justice more than of Venice which intoxicated the city with delight. He rises into ecstatic strains as he describes the rejoicings of the triumphant state. " "What finer, what more magnificent spectacle could be than the just joy which fills a city, not for damage done to the enemy's possessions or for the gains of civic rivalry such as are prized elsewhere, but solely for the triumph of justice ? Venice exults ; the august city, the sole shelter in our days of liberty, justice, and peace, the sole refuge of the good, the only port in which, beaten down everywhere else by tyranny and war, the ships of those men who seek to lead a tranquil life may find safety and restoration : a city rich in gold but more rich in fame, potent in strength but more in virtue, founded upon solid marble, but upon yet more solid foundations of concord and harmony and, even more than by the sea which girds her, by the prudent wisdom of her sons defended and made secure. Venice exults, not only over the regained sovereignty of Crete, which, howsoever great in antique splendour, is but a small matter to great spirits accustomed to esteem lightly all that is not virtue : but she exults in the event with good reason, and takes pleasure in the thought that the right is victorious that is to say, not her proper cause alone, but that of justice." It is clear from this that the triumph in the air had got into the poet's head, and the great contagion of popular enthusiasm had carried him away. He proceeds to relate r as well as " the poverty of my style and my many occupa- tions" will permit, the joyful progress of the thanksgivings and national rejoicing. "When the orators landed and recounted everything to the Great Council, every hope and anticipation were found to fall short of the truth ; the enemy had been overcome, taken, cut to pieces, dispersed in hopeless flight : the citizens restored to freedom, the city subdued ; Crete brought again under the ancient dominion, the victorious arms. C C 2 354 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. laid down, the war finished almost without bloodshed, and glory and peace secured at one blow. When all these tilings were made known to the Doge Lorenzo, to whose greatness his surname of Celso l agrees per- fectly, a man distinguished for magnanimity, for courtesy, and every fine virtue, but still more for piety towards God and love for his country well perceiving that nothing is good but that which begins with heaven, he resolved with all the people to render praise and homage to God ; and accordingly, with magnificent rites through all the city, but specially in the basilica of San Marco Evangelista, than which I know nothing in the world more beautiful, were celebrated the most solemn thanksgivings which have ever taken place within the memory of man ; and around the temple and in the piazza a magnifi- cent procession, in which not only the people and all the clergy, but many prelates from foreign parts, brought here by curiosity, or the great occasion, or the proclamation far and near of these great cere- monies, took part. When these demonstrations of religion and piety were completed, every soul turned to games and rejoicings." Our poet continues at length the record of these festivi- ties, especially of those with which the great festival terminated, two exercises of which he cannot, he says, give the Latin name, but which in Italian are called, one corsa, a race, the other giostra, a tournament. In the first of these, which would seem to have been something like the ancient riding at the ring, no strangers were allowed to compete, but only twenty-four Venetian youths of noble race and magnificently clad, under the direction of a famous actor, Bombasio by name (from whence, we believe " Bombast"), who arranged their line in so delightful a manner that one would have said it was not men who rode but angels who flew, " so wonderful was it to see these young men, arrayed in purple and gold, with bridle and spurs, restraining at once and exciting their generous steeds, which blazed also in the sun with the rich ornaments with which their harness was covered." This noble sight the poet witnessed in bland content and satisfaction, seated at the right hand of the doge, upon a splendid balcony shaded with rich and many- tinted awnings, which had been erected over the front of San Marco behind the four bronze horses. Fortunate poet ! thus throned on high to the admiration of all the beholders, 1 Eccelso, excellent. i.] MEN OF LETTERS. ::55 who crowded every window and roof and portico, and wherever human footing was to be found, and filled every corner of the piazza so that there was not room for a grain of millet -an "incredible, innumerable crowd," among which was no tumult or disorder of any kind, nothing but joy, courtesy, harmony, and love ! It is curious to note that among the audience were certain "very noble English personages, in office and kindred near to the King of England," who, " taking pleasure in wandering on the vast sea," faithful to the instincts of their race, had been attracted by the news of these great rejoicings. Among all the splendours of Venice there is none which is more attractive to the imagination than this grand tournay in the great piazza, at which the mild and learned poet in his black hood and gown, half clerical and always courtly, accustomed to the best of company, sat by the side of the doge in his gold- embroidered mantle, with all that was fairest in Venice around, and gazed well pleased vipon the spectacle, not without a soothing sense that he himself in the ages to come would seem amid all the purple and gold the most notable presence there. In the year 1366, when Petrarch had been established for about four years in Venice, an incident of a very different kind occurred to disturb his peace, and did, according to all the commentaries, so seriously disturb it, and offend the poet so deeply, that when he next left the city it was to return no more. Among the stream of visitors received by him with his usual bland courtesy in the place of the two towers, were certain young men whom the prevailing fashion of the time had banded together in a pretence of learning and superior enlightenment, not uncommon to any generation of those youthful heroes whose only wish it is that their fathers were more wise. Four in particular, who were specially given to the study of such Greek philosophy as came to them broken by translators into fragments fit for their capacity, had been among the visitors 356 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. of the poet. Deeply affronted as Petrarch was by the occurrence which followed, he was yet too magnanimous to give their names to any of his correspondents : but he describes them so as to have made it possible for commen- tators to hazard a guess as to who they were. " They are all rich, and all studious by profession, devouring books, notwithstanding that the first knows nothing of letters : the second little : the third not much : the fourth, it is true, has no small knowledge, but has it confusedly and without order." The first was a soldier, the second a merchant (simplex mercator), the third a noble (simplex nobilis), the fourth a physician. A. mere noble, a mere merchant significant words ! a soldier, and one who probably led them with his superior science and information, the only one who had the least claim to be called a philosopher, the young professional to whom no doubt those would-be learned giovinastri looked up as to a shining light. They were disciples of Averrhoes or most likely it was the young physician who was so, and whose re-interpretation charmed the young men : and by consequence, in that dawn of the Renaissance, they were all infidels, believers in Aristotle and nothing else. Petrarch himself narrates with much naivete the method he employed with one of these irreverent and disdainful youths. The poet, in his argument with the young unbeliever, had quoted from the New Testament a saying of an apostle. 'Your apostle/ he replied, 'was a mere sower of words, and more than that, was mad.' ' Bravo ! ' said I, ' oh, philosopher. These two things have been laid to the charge of other philosophers in ancient times ; and of the second Festus, the Governor of Syria, accused him whom I quote. But if he was a sower of words, the words were very useful, and the seed sown by him, and cultivated by his successors and watered by the holy blood of martyrs, has grown into the great mass of believers whom we now see. ' At these words he smiled, and ' Be you, if you like it, a good Christian,' he said : ' I don't believe a word of all that : and your Paul and Augustine and all the rest whom you vaunt so much, I hold them no better than a pack of gossips. Oh, if you would but read Averrhoes ! then you would see how much superior he is to your fable-mongers. ' I confess that, burning with indignation, i.] MEN OF LETTERS. 357 it was with difficulty that I kept my hands off that blasphemer. 'This contest with heretics like you,' I said, 'is an old affair for me. Go to the devil, you and your heresy, and come no more here.' And taking him by the mantle with less courtesy than is usual to me, but not less than his manners deserved, I put him to the door. ' ' This summary method of dealing with the young sceptic is not without its uses, and many a serious man Aveariecl with the folly of youthful preachers of the philosophy fashionable in our day, which is not of Aristotle or Aver- rhol-s, might be pardoned for a longing to follow Petrarch's example. Perhaps it was the young man described as simplex nobilis who, indignant, being thus turned out, hurried to his comrades with the tale : upon which they immediately formed themselves into a bed of justice, weighed Petrarch in the balance, and found him wanting. " A good man, but ignorant," was their sentence after full discussion dabben uomo, ma ignorante. The mild yet persistent rage with which the poet heard of this verdict, magnanimous, restraining himself from holding up the giovinastri to the contempt of the world, yet deeply and bitterly wounded by their boyish folly, is very curious. The effect produced upon Lord Tennyson and Mr. Browning at the present day by the decision of a tribunal made up of, let us say, a young guardsman, a little lord, a millionaire's heir, led by some young professional writer or scientific authority, would be very different. The poets and the world would laugh to all the echoes, and the giovinastri would achieve a reputation such as they would little desire. But the use of laughter had not been discovered in Petrarch's days, and a poet crowned in the Capitol, laureate of the universe, conscious of being the first man of letters in the world, naturally did not treat these matters so lightly. He talks of them in his letters with an offended dignity which verges upon the comic. " Four youths, blind in the eyes of the mind, men who consider themselves able to judge of ignorance as being themselves most ignorant si tengcmo competenti a giudicare della ignoranza perche son essi ignorantissimi attempting to rob me of my fame, since they well know that they can 358 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CKAP. never hope for fame in their own persons," lit- says : and at last, in the bitterness of his offence, Venice herself, the hospitable and friendly city, of which he had lately spoken as the peaceful haven and refuge of the human spirit, falls under the same reproach. In every part of the world, he says, such a sentence would be received with condemnation and scorn : " except perhaps in the city where it was given forth, a city truly great and noble, but inhabited by so great and so varied a crowd that many therein take men without knowledge for judges and philosophers." And when the heats of summer came, sending him forth on the round of visits which seems to have been as necessary to Petrarch as if he had lived in the nineteenth century, the offended poet did not return to Venice. When his visits were over he withdrew to Arqua, on the soft skirts of the Euganean hills, where all was rural peace and quiet, and no presump- tuous giovinastri could trouble him more. This incident however would seem to point to an element of tumult and trouble in Venice, to which republics seem more dangerously exposed than other states. It was the insults of the giovinastri, insolent and unmannerly youths, which drove Marino Faliero to his doom not very many years before. And Petrarch himself implores Andrea Dan- dolo, the predecessor of that unfortunate doge, to take counsel with the old men of experience, not with hot-headed boys, in respect to the Genoese wars. The youths would seem to have been in the ascendant, idle for it was about this period that wise men began to lament the abandonment at once of traditional trade and of the accompanying war- like spirit among the young patricians, who went to sea no more, and left fighting to the mercenaries and luxurious, spending their time in intrigues on the Broglio and else- where, and taking upon them those arrogant airs which make aristocracy detestable. A Dandolo and a Contarini are in the list (supposed to be authentic) of Petrarch's assailants, and no doubt the support of fathers in the Forty or the Ten would embolden these idle youths for i.] MEX OF LETTERS. 35l> every folly. Their foolish verdict would by this means cut deeper, and Petrarch, like the old doge, was now soilless, and had the less patience to support the insolence of other people's boys. He retired accordingly from the ignoble strife, and on his travels, as he says, having nothing else to do, on the banks of the Fo, began his treatise on " the ignorance of himself and many others " de sui ipsius et multorum ignorantia, which was, let us hope, a final balsam to the sting which the giovinastri, unmannerly and pre- sumptuous lads, had left in his sensitive mind. The books which he had offered to the republic as the foundation of a public library were left behind, first in the hands of a friend, afterwards in the charge of the State. But Venice at that time had other things to do than to think of books, and these precious manuscripts were placed in a small chamber on the terrace of San Marco, near the four great horses of the portico and there forgotten. Half a century later the idea of the public library revived : and this was confirmed by the legacy made by Cardinal Bessarione of all his manuscripts in 1468 a hundred years after the gift of Petrarch ; but nearly two centuries more had passed, and the splendid Biblioteca de San Marco had come into being, a noble building and a fine collection, before it occurred to some stray citizens and scholars to inquire where the poet's gift might be. Finally, in 1634, the little room was opened, and there was discovered a mass of damp decay, as they had been thrown in nearly three centuries before the precious parchments, the books which Petrarch had collected so carefully, and which he thought worthy to be the nucleus of a great public library. Some few were extracted from the mass of corruption, and at last were placed where the poet had intended them to be. But this neglect will always remain a shame to Venice. Perhaps at first the giovinastri had something to do with it, throw- ing into contempt as of little importance the gift of the poet a suggestion which has been made with more gravity by a recent librarian, who points out that the most valuable of 360 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAI-. Petrarch's books remained in his possession until his death, and were sold and dispersed at Padua after that event. So that it is possible, though the suggestion is somewhat un- generous, that after all the loss to humanity was not so very great. At all events there is this to be said, that Petrarch did not lose by his bargain, though Venice did. The poet got the dignified establishment he wanted a vast palace, as he himself describes it, in which he had room to receive his friends and from which he could witness all the varied life of Venice. He had not, we think, any great reason to complain he had received his equivalent. His hosts were the losers by their own neglect, but not the poet. It was but a short episode in his learned and leisurely and highly successful life ; but it is the only poetical association we have with Venice. He shows us something of the cultured society of the time, with its advantages and its drawbacks, a society more " precious " than original, full of commentaries and criticisms, loving conversation and mutual comparison and classical allusion, not so gay as the painters of an after age, with less inclination to suonar il liuto, or indeed introduce anything which could interfere with that talk which was the most beloved of all entertainments. Boccaccio, one cannot but feel, must have brought some- thing livelier and more gay with him when he was one of those who sat at the high windows of the Palazzo delle due Torri and looked out upon all the traffic of the port, and the ships going out to sea. But the antechambers of the poet were always crowded as if he had been a prince, the doge ever ready to do him honour, and all the great persons deeply respectful of Dom Francesco, though the young ones might scoff, not without a smile aside from their fathers, at the bland laureate's conviction of his own greatness. No other poet has ever illustrated Venice. Dante passed through the great city and did not love her, if his supposed letter on the subject is real at all events brought no image out of her except that of the pitch boiling in the Arsenal, and the seamen repairing their storm-beaten ships. Name- i ] MEN OF LETTERS. 301 less poets no doubt there were whose songs the mariners bellowed along the Eiva, and the maidens sang at their work. The following anonymous relic is so pure and tender that, though far below the level of a laureated poet, it may serve to throw a little fragrance upon the name of poetry in Yenice, so little practised and so imperfectly known. It is the lament of a wife for her husband gone to the wars alia Crociata in Oriente a humble Crusader-seaman no doubt, one of those perhaps who followed old Enrico Dau- dolo, with the cross on his rough cap, ignorant of all the wiles of statesmanship, while his wife waited wistfully through many months and years. " Donna Frisa, in your way, You give me good advice, to lay By this grieving out of measure, Saying to see me is no pleasure, Since my husband, gone to war, Carried my heart with him afar ; But since he's gone beyond the sea This alone must comfort me. I have no fear of growing old, For hope sustains and makes me bold While I think upon my lord : In him is all my comfort stored, No other bearing takes my eye, In him does all my pleasure lie ; Nor can I think him far, while he Ever in love is near to me. Lone in my room, rny eyes are dim, Only from fear of harm to him. Nought else I fear, and hope is strong He will come back to me anon ; And all my plaints to gladness rise, And into songs are turned my sighs, Thinking of that good man of mine ; No more I wish to make me fine, Or look into the glass, or be Fair, since he is not here to see. In my chamber alone I sit, Thefcsta may pass, I care not for it, Nor to gossip upon the stairs outside, Nor from the window to look, nor glide Out on the balcony, save 't may be To gaze afar, across the sea, Praying that God would guard my lord In Paganesse, sending His word 362 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. To give the Christians the victory, And home in health ami prosperity To bring him buck, auage 377. CLOISTERS OF 8. GBKGORIO. ii.] MEN OF LETTERS. .'577 though his education had been so good and classical refer- ences abound in his writings, yet his style is never so elevated as his culture. It is indeed very disjointed, entirely unstudied, prolix, though full of an honest .sim- plicity and straightforwardness which perhaps commends itself more to the English taste than to the Italian. In his after life Sanudo's power of production seemed indeed endless. Besides his published works, he left behind him fifty-six volumes of his diary, chiefly of public events, a record day by day of all the news that came to Venice, and all that happened there. It was by the loving care of the Englishman already referred to, Mr. Rawdon Brown, a kindred spirit, that portions of those wonderful diaries were first given to the world. They are now in course of publication, a mass of minute and inexhaustible informa- tion, from the first aspect of which I confess to have shrunk appalled. This sea of facts, of picturesque incidents, of an eye-witness's sketches, and the reports of an immediate actor in the scenes described affords to the careful student an almost unexampled guide, and assistance to the under- standing of the years between 1482 and 1533, from Sanudo's youth to the end of his life. The Vitce Ducum, from which we have already quoted largely, is full of the defects of style which were peculiar to this voluminous writer : they are charged with repetitions and written without regard to any rules of composition or prejudices of style but their descriptions are often exceed- ingly picturesque in unadorned simplicity, and the reflections of popular belief and the report of the moment give often, as the reader will observe on turning back to our earlier chapters, an idea of the manner in which an incident struck the contemporary mind which is exceedingly instructive, even though as often happens, it cannot be supported by documents or historical proof. To my thinking it is at least quite as interesting to know what account was given among the people of a great event, and how it shaped itself in the E E 378 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. general mind, a* to understand I lie form it takes in the archives of the country when it lias fallen into perspective and into the inevitable subordination of individual facts to the broader views of history. At the same time Sanudo's story, while keeping this popular character, is supported by the citation of innumerable public documents to which he had access in his character of politician and magistrate : so that the essentially different characteristics of the legendary and the documentary history are combined in this loosely written, quaintly expressed, most real and interesting chronicle. The work is said to have been composed by Sanudo between his eighteenth and his twenty-seventh year. The garrulous tone and rambling narrative are more like an old man than a young one : but it is evident that the instinct of the chronicler, the minute and constant observation, the ears open and eyes intent upon everything small and great which could be discussed, with a certain absence of discrimi- nation between the important and the unimportant which is the characteristic defect of these great qualities, was in him from the beginning of his career. The great printer, Aldus, dedicated one of his publications to Sanudo in the year 1498, when our Marino was but thirty-two in which already mention is made as of com- pleted works of the Magistrates Urbis 'Venetae, the Vitif Principium, and the De Edlo Gallico, all then ready for publication "both in Latin and the vulgar tongxie, that they may be read by learned and unlearned alike." From this it is apparent that Sanudo had also already begun his wonder- ful diaries, the collection of his great library, and the public life which would seem in its many activities incompatible with these ceaseless toils. He followed all these pursuits however through the rest of his life. His diaries became the greatest storehouses of minute information perhaps existing in the world : his library was the wonder of all visitors to Venice : and the record of his own acts and occu- pations chronicled along with everything else in his daily ii.] MEN OF LETTERS. ,37!) story of the life of the city, shows a perpetual activity which takes aw r ay the beholder's breath. His speeches in the Senate, generally recorded as " lo Mar in Sanudo contradixi," were numberless. He was employed in all kinds of public missions and work. He was in. succession a Signore di Notte, a Savio degli Ordini, one of the Pregadi, one of the Zonta, a member of the Senate, Avvogadore : exercising the functions of magistrate, member of Parliament, statesman and taking a part in all great discussions upon state affairs whether in the Senate or in the Great Council. He was, as Mr. Rawdon Brown, using the terms natural to an Englishman, describes, almost always in opposition " con- tradicting," to use his own expression ; and for this reason was less fortunate than many obscure persons whose only record is in his work. Again and again he has to tell us that the votes are given against him, that he comes out last in the ballot, that for a time he is no longer of the Senate, and excluded from public office. But he never loses heart nor withdraws from the lists. " lo Marino Sanudo e di la Zonta," he describes himself, always proud of his position and eager to retain, or recover it when lost. A man of such endless industry, activity of mind and actions, universal in- terest and intelligence, would be remarkable anywhere and at any time. His first entry into public life was in March, 1498 " a day to be held in eternal memory : " a few months later he was elected Senator, and passed through various duties and offices, always actively employed. The first break in this busy career he records on the 1st April, 1503 : "Having accomplished my term of service in the Ordini (Savii degli Ordini), in which I have had five times the reward of public approba- tion, and having passed out of the college, I now determine that, God granting it, I will let no day pass without writing the news that comes from day to day, so that I may the better, accustoming myself to the strict truth, go on with my true history, which was begun several years ago. Seeking no eloquence of composition, I will thus note down everything as it happens." E E 2 380 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. This retirement however does not last long : for within a few months we read : " Having been, in the end of September, without any application on my part, or desire to re-enter, elected by the grace of the fathers of the Senate, in a council of the 1'regadi, for the sixth time, Savio degli Ordini, I have decided not to refuse office for two reasons. First, because I desire always to do what I can for the benefit of our republic ; the second, because my former service in the college was always in times of great tribulation during the Turkish war, in which I endured no little fatigue of mind. But now that peace with the Turk has been signed, as I have recorded in the former book, I find myself again in the college in a time of tranquillity ; therefore, with the Divine aid, fol- lowing my first determination, I will describe here day by day the things that occur, the plain facts, leaving for the moment every attempt at an elaborate style aside. " Other notices of a similar kind follow at intervals. Now and then there occur gaps, and on several occasions Marino puts on a little polite semblance of being rather pleased than otherwise when these occur ; but gradually as the tide of public life seizes him, becomes more and more impatient of exclusion, and ceases to pretend that he likes it, or that it suits him. His time of peace did not last long. The league of Cambi-ai rose like a great storm from west and south and north, threatening to overwhelm the republic, which, as usual in such great dangers, was heavy with fears, and torn with intrigues within, when most seriously threatened from without. Sanudo tells us of an old senator long retired from public life for whom the doge sent in the horror of the first disasters, and who, beginning to weep, said 4 to his wife, " Give me my cloak. I will go to the Council to say four words, and then die." The troubled Council, where every man had some futile expedient to advise, a change of the Proveditori, or the sending of a new commissioner to the camp of the defeated, is put before us in a few words. Sanudo himself was strongly in favour of two things that the doge himself should take the field, and that an embassy should be sent to the Turk to ask for help. He gives a melancholy description of the great Ascension Day, the holiday of the year, which fell at this miserable ii.] MEN OF LETTERS. 381 moment when the forces of the republic were in full rout, retreating from point to point. "17 May, 1509. It was Ascension Day (La Sensa\ but there was nothing but weeping. Xo visitors were to be heard of, no one was visible in the Piazza ; the fathers of the College were broken down with trouble, and still more our doge, who never spoke, hut looked like a dead man. And much was said for this last time of sending the doge in person to Verona, to encourage our army and our people there, ami to send five hundred gentleman with his Serenity, at their own expense. Thus the talk went in the Piazza and on the benches of the Pregadi, but those of the College (of Senators) took no action, nor did the doge offer himself. He said, however, to his sons and dependants, ' The doge will do whatever the country desires. ' At the same time he is more dead than alive ; he is seventy-three. Thus those evil days go on ; we see our own ruin, and do nothing to prevent it. God grant that what I proposed had been done. I had desired to re-enter as a Savio degli Ordini, but was advised against it, and now I am very sorry not to have carried out my wish, to have procured five or six thousand Turks, and sent a secretary or ambassador to the Sultan ; but now it is too late. " Sanudo's project of calling in the Turks, their ancient enemies, to help them against the league of Christian princes, seemed a dangerous expedient, but it must be remembered that the republic was in despair. The poor old doge, who was more dead than alive, yet ready to do whatever the country wished, was Leonardo Loredano, whose portrait is so notable an object in our own National Gallery, and forms our frontispiece. In the midst of all these troubles, how- ever, while the Venetian statesmen were making anxious visits to their nearest garrison, and reviewing and collecting every band they could get together, the familiar strain of common life comes in with such a paragraph as the following : "17 July, 1509. On the way to my house I met a man having a beautiful Hebrew Bible in good paper, value twenty ducats, who sold it to me as a favour for one marzello : which I took to place it in my library." We are unable to say what was the value of a marzello : but it is evident that he got his Bible a great bargain, taking in this case a little permissible advantage of the troubles of the time. 382 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. [CHAP. There is something calming and composing to the mind in a long record like this extending over many years. There occurs the episode of a great war, of many privations, mis- fortunes, and bereavements, such as seem to cover the whole world with gloom : but, we have only to turn a few pages, however agitated, however moving may be the record, and we find the state, the individual sufferer, whosoever it may be, going on calmly about the ordinary daily businesses of life, and the storm gone by. These storms and Avars and catastrophes are after all but accidents in the calmer career which fills all the undistinguished nights and days, only opening here and there to reveal one which is full of trouble, which comes and departs again. History, indeed, makes more of these episodes than life does, for they are her mile- stones by which to guide her path through the dim multi- tude of uneventful days. Our historian, however, in his endless record, gives the small events of peace almost as much importance as the confusion and excitement of the desperate moment when Venice stood against all Europe, holding her own. Sanudo's public life was one of continual ups and downs. He would seem to have been a determined Conservative, opposing every innovation, though at the same time, like many men of that opinion, exceedingly daring in any sugges- tion that approved itself to his mind ; as for instance in respect to asking aid from the Turks, which was not a step likely to commend itself to a patriot of his principles. And he would not seem to have been very popular even among his own kindred, for there are various allusions to family intrigues against him, as well as to the failure of his hopes in respect to elections and appointments. But that extra- ordinarily limited intense life of the Venetian oligarchy, a world pent up within a city, with all its subtle trains of diplomacy, determined independence on its own side, and equally determined desire to have something to say in every European imbroglio, was naturally a life full of intrigue, of ii.J MEN OF LETTERS. 383 perpetual risings and fallings, where every man had to sustain discomfiture in his day, and was ready to trip up his neighbour whenever occasion served. Marino's inclina- tion to take in all matters a side of his own was not a popular quality, and it is evident that, like many other obstinate and clear-sighted protesters, he was often, right, often enough at least to make him an alarming critic and troublesome disturber of existing parties, being at all times, like the smith of Perth, for his own hand. " I, Marino Sanudo, moved by my conscience, w r ent to the meeting and opposed the new proposals," andai in renga et coutradixi a qunt rank of Scottish artists, and we have seen nothing finer from his pencil than the illustrations in the present volume." SPECTATOR. "Between letterpress and illustration-;, Royal Edinburgh repro- duces the tragedy, the glory, and the picuires^ueness of Scotch history as no other work has done." AGNES HOPETOUN'S SCHOOLS AND HOLIDAYS. Illustrated. Globs 8vo, 2S. 6d. S. FRANCIS OF ASSISI. Crown 8vo, 6^. 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