Medieval People

by Eileen Power

Is it not true to say that Venice was the proudest city on earth, la noble cite que l'en apele Venise, qui est orendroit la plus bele dou siecle?[[6]] Life was a fair and splendid thing for those merchant princes, who held the gorgeous East in fee in the year of grace 1268. In that year traders in great stone counting-houses, lapped by the waters of the canals, were checking, book in hand, their sacks of cloves, mace and nutmegs, cinnamon and ginger from the Indies, ebony chessmen from Indo China, ambergris from Madagascar, and musk from Tibet. In that year the dealers in jewels were setting prices upon diamonds from Golconda, rubies and lapis lazuli from Badakhshan, and pearls from the fisheries of Ceylon; and the silk merchants were stacking up bales of silk and muslin and brocade from Bagdad and Yezd and Malabar and China. In that year young gallants on the Rialto (scented gallants, but each, like Shakespeare's Antonio, with a ship venturing into port somewhere in the Levant) rubbed elbows with men of all nations, heard travellers' tales of all lands, and at dawn slipped along the canals in gondolas (not black in those days, but painted and hung with silk), saluting the morning with songs; and the red-haired ladies of Venice whom centuries later Titian loved to paint, went trailing up and down the marble steps of their palaces, with all the brocades of Persia on their backs and all the perfumes of Arabia to sweeten their little hands.

It was in that year, too, that one Martino da Canale, a clerk in the customs house, began to busy himself (like Chaucer after him) less with his accounts than with writing in the delectable French language ('por ce que lengue franceise cort parmi le monde, et est la plus delitable a lire et a oir que nule autre') a chronicle of Venice. It is of the water, watery, Canale's chronicle, like Ariel's dirge; he has indeed, 'that intenseness of feeling which seems to resolve itself into the elements which it contemplates.' Here is nothing indeed, of 'the surge and thunder of the Odyssey', but the lovely words sparkle like the sun on the waters of the Mediterranean, and like a refrain, singing itself in and out of the narrative, the phrase recurs, 'Li tens estoit clers et biaus ... et lors quant il furent en mer, li mariniers drecerent les voiles au vent, et lesserent core a ploine voiles les mes parmi la mer a la force dou vent';[[7]] for so much of the history of Venice was enacted upon deck. It is a passing proud chronicle, too, for Canale was, and well he knew it, a citizen of no mean city.

'Now would I,' he says, 'that every one and all know for ever the works of the Venetians, who they were and whence they came and what they are, and how they made the noble city which is called Venice, which is this day the fairest in the world. And I would that all those who are now living and those who are to come know how the noble city is builded and how all good things abound in her, and how the sire of the Venetians, the noble Doge, is powerful, and what nobility is found therein and the prowess of the Venetian people, and how they are all perfect in the faith of Jesu Christ and obedient to holy Church, and how they never disobey the commandment of holy Church. Within this noble Venice there dares to dwell neither heretic, nor usurer, murderer, thief nor robber. And I will tell you the names of all the Doges that have been in Venice, one after the other, and what they did to the honour of holy Church and of their noble City. And I will tell you the names of the noble captains whom the noble Doges sent in their time to lay low their enemies, and concerning the victories that they won I will have you know, for it is fitting.... In the year of the incarnation of our Lord Jesu Christ MCCLXVII years, in the time of Milord Renier Zeno, the high Doge of Venice, I laboured and strove until I found the ancient history of the Venetians, whence they came first and how they builded the noble city called Venice, which is today the fairest and the pleasantest in the world, full of beauty and of all good things. Merchandise flows through this noble city even as water flows from the fountains, and the salt water runs through it and round it and in all places save in the houses and the streets; and when the citizens go abroad they can return to their houses by land or by water, as they will. From all parts there come merchandise and merchants, who buy merchandise as they will and take it back to their own countries. Within this town is found food in great plenty, bread and wine, land fowl and river fowl, fresh meat and salt, and sea fish and river fish.... You may find within this fair town many men of gentle birth, both old men and young damoisaus in plenty, and merchants with them, who buy and sell, and money changers and citizens of all crafts, and therewith mariners of all sorts, and ships to carry them to all lands and galleys to lay low their enemies. And in this fair town is also great plenty of ladies and damsels and maidens, very richly apparelled.'[[8]]

It happened that there was a new Doge that year, our year 1268, Lorenzo Tiepolo by name, and a great procession of the gilds took place before the palace on the Piazza of St Mark to welcome his accession. Martino da Canale was watching it and wrote it all down in his chronicle. First came the navy sailing past in the harbour, fifty galleys and other ships, with their crews cheering and shouting on deck. Then came the gilds on foot: first the master smiths, with garlands on their heads and banners and trumpets; then the furriers apparelled in samite and scarlet silk, with mantles of ermine and vair; then the weavers richly bedight, and the ten master tailors in white with crimson stars. Then the master clothworkers passed, carrying boughs of olive and wearing crowns of olive on their heads; then the fustian makers in furred robes of their own weaving, and the quilt makers with garlands of gilt beads and white cloaks sewn with fleurs-de-lis, marching two by two, with little children singing chansonettes and cobles before them. Then came the makers of cloth of gold, all in cloth of gold, and their servants in cloth of gold or of purple, followed by the mercers in silk and the butchers in scarlet, the fish sellers robed and furred and garlanded, and the master barbers, having with them two riders attired as knights-errant, and four captive damsels, strangely garbed. Then came the glass-workers in scarlet furred with vair, and gold-fringed hoods, and rich garlands of pearls, carrying flasks and goblets of the famous Venetian glass before them, and the comb and lantern makers, with a lantern full of birds to let loose in the Doge's presence, and the goldsmiths wearing wreaths and necklaces of gold and silver beads and sapphires, emeralds, diamonds, topazes, jacinths, amethysts, rubies, jasper, and carbuncles. Master and servants alike were sumptuously clad, and almost all wore gold fringes on their hoods, and garlands of gilded beads. Each craft was accompanied by its band of divers instruments, and bore with it silver cups and flagons of wine, and all marched in fair order, singing ballads and songs of greeting, and saluted the Doge and Dogaressa in turn, crying 'Long live our lord, the noble Doge Lorenzo Tiepolo!' Gild after gild they marched in their splendour, lovely alike to ear and eye; and a week fled before the rejoicings were ended and all had passed in procession. Canale surpasses himself here, for he loved State ceremonies; he gives a paragraph to the advance of each gild, its salutation and withdrawal, and the cumulative effect of all the paragraphs is enchanting, like a prose ballade, with a repeated refrain at the end of every verse.[[9]]

What, they lived once thus in Venice, where the merchants were the kings,
Where St Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings?

Listening to the magnificent salutation of the Doge by the priests of St Mark's, 'Criste, vince, Criste regne, Criste inpere. Notre signor Laurens Teuples, Des gracie, inclit Dus de Venise, Dalmace atque Groace, et dominator de la quarte partie et demi de tot l'enmire de Romanie, sauvement, honor, vie, et victoire. Saint Marc, tu le aie,'[[10]] who, hearing, could have doubted that Venice, defier of Rome and conqueror of Constantinople, was the finest, richest, most beautiful, and most powerful city in the world?

But was she? Listen and judge. Thousands of miles away from Venice, across the lands and seas of Asia, a little south of the Yangtze River and close to the sea stood the city of Kinsai or Hangchow, the capital of the Sung emperors, who ruled Southern China, not yet (in 1268) conquered by the Tartars.[[11]] Like Venice, Kinsai stood upon lagoons of water and was intersected by innumerable canals. It was a hundred miles in circuit, not counting the suburbs which stretched round it, and there was not a span of ground which was not well peopled. It had twelve great gates, and each of the twelve quarters which lay within the gates was greater than the whole of Venice. Its main street was two hundred feet wide, and ran from end to end of the city, broken every four miles by a great square, lined with houses, gardens, palaces, and the shops of the artisans, who were ruled by its twelve great craft gilds. Parallel with the main street was the chief canal, beside which stood the stone warehouses of the merchants who traded with India. Twelve thousand stone bridges spanned its waterways, and those over the principal canals were high enough to allow ships with their tapering masts to pass below, while the carts and horses passed overhead. In its market-places men chaffered for game and peaches, sea-fish, and wine made of rice and spices; and in the lower part of the surrounding houses were shops, where spices and drugs and silk, pearls and every sort of manufactured article were sold. Up and down the streets of Kinsai moved lords and merchants clad in silk, and the most beautiful ladies in the world swayed languidly past in embroidered litters, with jade pins in their black hair and jewelled earrings swinging against their smooth cheeks.[[12]]

On one side of this city lay a beautiful lake (famous in Chinese history, and still one of the fairest prospects upon earth), studded with wooded islands, on which stood pavilions with charming names: 'Lake Prospect', 'Bamboo Chambers', 'The House of the Eight Genii', and 'Pure Delight'. Here, like the Venetians, the men of Kinsai came for pleasure parties in barges, nobly hung and furnished, the cabins painted with flowers and mountain landscapes, and looking out they saw on one side the whole expanse of the city, its palaces, temples, convents, and gardens, and on the other the stretch of clear water, crowded with coloured pleasure boats, over which came echoing the high, clear voices and the tinkling instruments of the revellers. There is no space in which to tell of the King's palace, with its gardens and orchards, its painted pavilions, and the groves where the palace ladies coursed the game with dogs, and, tired of the pastime, flung off their robes and ran to the lake, where they disported themselves like a shoal of silver fishes. But a word must be said of the junks, which came sailing into the harbour four and twenty miles away, and up the river to the city; and of the great concourse of ships which came to Zaiton (perhaps the modern Amoy), the port of the province. Here every year came a hundred times more pepper than came to the whole of Christendom through the Levantine ports. Here from Indo China and the Indies came spices and aloes and sandalwood, nutmegs, spikenard and ebony, and riches beyond mention. Big junks laded these things, together with musk from Tibet, and bales of silk from all the cities of Mansi[C], and sailed away in and out of the East India Archipelago, with its spice-laden breezes billowing their sails, to Ceylon. There merchants from Malabar and the great trading cities of southern India took aboard their cargoes and sold them in turn to Arab merchants, who in their turn sold them to the Venetians in one or other of the Levantine ports. Europeans who saw Zaiton and the other Chinese seaports in after years were wont to say that no one, not even a Venetian, could picture to himself the multitude of trading vessels which sailed upon those eastern seas and crowded into those Chinese harbours. They said also with one accord that Kinsai was without doubt the finest and richest and noblest city in the world. To the men of Kinsai, Venice would have been a little suburb and the Levant a backyard. The whole of the east was their trading field, and their wealth and civilization were already old when Venice was a handful of mud huts peopled by fishermen.