"Venite all' agile, Barchetta mia,
Santa Lucia, Santa Lucia!"
CHAPTER XV.
GLORY, HUMILIATION, FREEDOM.
All historians agree that the fifteenth century was the period of the greatest luxury and magnificence of Venice. In 1457 it seemed that the Republic would march on to greater power over a larger territory than had yet been held by any one of the North Italian States. Brescia, Bergamo, and Ravenna were securely hers. She was attempting to cross the Adda to the west, and to encroach upon the Romagna on the south. Could there have been peace anywhere,—at home or abroad,—could she have had a respite in which to think and plan her policy, she might have succeeded in becoming a powerful territorial State; but no such breathing-spell was possible. All Italy was in a ferment. Each power sought to lessen the strength of its neighbor. Political combinations were made, apparently only to be broken. Everything was in dire confusion, and Venice would have had more than she could do to carry herself advantageously in her own nation, when the Turks, by their conquest of Constantinople, threatened her with the death of her commerce, which was essentially her death as a Republic, since on that she depended for her revenue to enable her to maintain herself against all enemies at home and abroad.
For sixteen years Venice was continually at war in the East. While, in fact, all Europe was vitally interested in the outcome of this struggle, yet all Europe failed to offer any aid to Venice. It was assumed that since the Republic had so largely profited by her relations in the Levant, she alone must bear the burden of the struggle. In the beginning she had promises of support, but all these failed her at the outset. She spent men and money, and fought with her accustomed bravery until she had no more to give. Then, in 1479, she made the best terms for peace that were possible, only to be cursed for perfidy to Christianity, and to be accused of cowardly submission to the Turks, in order to use all her strength to increase her territory on the mainland of Italy.
Unfortunately this accusation seemed to be well founded, when, in 1481, the Republic declared war against Ferrara, whose territory separated Venice from her own dependency of Ravenna. The Venetians were most patriotic in the support of this war. They wished to reinstate themselves in their own good opinion after all their humiliation in the East, and with the support of the Pope all went to their advantage in the beginning. But soon Sixtus IV. not only abandoned them, but placed them under an interdict because they did not lay down their arms at his request; and in the end the peace of Bagnolo was made in 1484, the Republic having gained very little in return for the vast expense of 1,200,000 ducats, great losses of men and ships, and a mortification of her pride which vastly increased the bitterness of the result. All these misfortunes occurred at the time when travellers and chroniclers who wrote of Venice failed to find words rich enough in their meaning to convey the just impression of the magnificence of the "Queen of the Adriatic,"—the time of which Brown says:—
"And yet, while the Republic was really hurling headlong to its ruin, the outward pomp, the glory, the splendor of Venice were just beginning to attract the eyes of Europe, blinding many Venetians and all foreigners to the real aspect of the situation. Venice was acquiring her reputation as the city of magnificent private life, the city of 'masks and balls begun at midnight, burning ever to midday;' the city, too, of sfrenata lasciva, the 'Gehenna of the Waters.' This is the period when her great palaces arose, in all their pomp of balcony and pillared windows and frescoed façades, along the Grand Canal; when Vivarini, Carpaccio, and Bellini were preluding to Titian, Giorgione, Tintoret; when Bessarion presented his priceless codices to the Marician Library; when the colony of Greek Scribes was endeavoring to hold its own against the new invention of printing, against John of Speyer's 'Epistolæ Familiares' and Jenson's 'Ad Atticum;' when Aldus, by his brilliant, earnest, passionate scholarship, and his practical acumen in the conduct of his press, began to render the Greek classics the common property of mankind.
"It would seem that just as the rapid extension of Venice on the mainland under Francesco Foscari was the blossom of all her long centuries of physical and constitutional growth, so the sudden artistic expansion of the later fifteenth century was the flowering of Venice in the intellectual and emotional region. The bloom presaged decay. Death was already at the roots before the flower had opened to its fullest splendor."
Before the end of this century another event—unfortunate for Venice, but a blessing to all the world besides—was added to the misfortunes which had followed her in the Levant and on the mainland. In 1486 Diaz rounded the Cape of Good Hope; and two years later, when the news of Vasco di Gama's voyage was received, all intelligent Venetians knew that a fatal blow had fallen on their commerce. Its death might be a lingering one, but it was sure. Of this Brown says:—