The Venetians cherished the memory of Dandolo. His genius had long added lustre to the Republic, and the news of his death plunged the whole city into sincere mourning. His achievements and the exploits of his army aroused the pride of the Venetians to its highest pitch, and they desired to perpetuate in some stable manner the fame of what is known as the Fourth Crusade. Fortunately the time was propitious to their wishes; the close of the thirteenth century brought a revival of art and literature which, among its many glorious results, numbers the rehearsal of the deeds of Dandolo and his allies by the historians, and the picturing of their immortal achievements upon the walls of the Ducal Palace.
CHAPTER V.
MODERN PROCESSIONS AND FESTIVALS.
Mediæval Venice was a city of imposing spectacles. Its church was a national church, and its Patriarch, the heir of Saint Mark, was, from the Venetian point of view, the peer of the heir of Saint Peter. It being a strictly Venetian or State church, the Doge was its head equally with the Patriarch, and indeed in a certain way was more important; for the chief church of Venice was not that of the Patriarch, but the Chapel of the Doge, while the Chapter of San Marco was far more powerful than the Bishop, who was officially its superior.
But it pleased the State to make its church prominent in its public ceremonies; and each great event in its history—be it the deliverance from the plague or a conspiracy, or a success in having proved a plague to any foe—was commemorated by a religious function. Some of these splendid processions corresponded to those of other Catholic countries and cities, such as those of the Corpus Domini and Palm Sunday; and Gentile Bellini's pictures of religious processions now in the Academy still impress us with the unequalled pomp and magnificence with which the Venetians loved to dazzle themselves and the strangers within their gates.
The festivals which were peculiar to Venice were important. The procession of the Doge to the smallest and perhaps the oldest church in Venice, San Vio, founded in 917, celebrated the deliverance of the city from the conspiracy of Tiepolo in 1310; and as it occurred on the 15th of June, that lovely season in Venice, we can but regret its discontinuance. But the deliverance from the plague in 1576 and in 1631 is still celebrated each year. The ravages of the plague in Venice at various times were almost beyond belief. That of 1171 is curiously associated with the Giustiniani. A hundred or more members of this most noble house were cut off by this scourge, and its very name was in danger of extinction, since the young Niccolo, who now represented the family, was a novice in the convent of San Niccolo, on the Lido. The Doge Michieli, under these circumstances, thought it not wrong to send at once to the Pope, asking that Niccolo Giustiniani might be released from his vows, and married to Anna Michieli, the daughter of the Doge. Mrs. Oliphant pictures the interval between the departure of the messenger and his return:—
"The old Giustiniani fathers, in the noble houses which were not as yet the palaces we know, must have waited among their weeping women for the decision from Rome. And it is wonderful that no dramatist or modern Italian romancer 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 favorable 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 to a bold and able priest?"