Salve Venetia, gleanings from Venetian history; vol. I

by F. Marion Crawford

On the tenth of November 1354 a request came before the Council of Forty to proceed against the authors of certain words written in the Hall of the Hearth in the ducal palace against the Doge’s nephew. There is no mention of the Dogess. Amongst those cited to appear before the tribunal within eight days we find the name of a Steno called Micheletto, the diminutive of Michel, and son of the late Giovanni, coupled with that of Piero Bollani, as the principal authors of the insulting lines, and a certain Rizzardo Marioni is accused of having scrawled obscene symbols beside what his companions had written. Besides these, certain other noble youths were cited to appear, but were acquitted for lack of proof that they had taken part in the deed. It must be taken for granted that Romanin was not acquainted with the document cited by Lazzarini, since he says that no proofs exist that Steno was either accused or punished.

Micheletto Steno was condemned to be imprisoned during a few days in the lower dungeon; Piero Bollani and Rizzardo Marioni got off with less than a week’s confinement.

Tradition, as corroborated by the Doge’s own words afterwards, justifies us in believing that Faliero complained of the lenity shown to the culprits; but though he might have been displeased, it would have been impossible that he should be astonished. Since the insult was directed against the Doge or his nephew as private individuals, and not against the head of the Republic, a discriminating tribunal of Venice could only treat the affair as if it had happened between any other members of the nobility. Venice never incarnated any ‘divine right’ in the person of her Doge, and Faliero must have known that though a single word of slight against the honour of the ‘Lord Duke’ might cost him who uttered it both his eyes and his tongue, as happened in the same year to a certain Niccolò Cestello and to another Micheletto of Murano, even a grave insult against the person of the Doge was never legally punished by more than two months’ imprisonment, and generally by a shorter term and a small fine. The legend built up upon the later accounts says that Micheletto Steno was the head of the Forty, i.e. President of the Senate, when he wrote the insult of which he was convicted; but we have clear proof that at the time he was hardly more than twenty years of age, so that he had not even the right to vote at the meetings of the Great Council; and no one could belong to the Senate who was under thirty, much less be the head of that formidable body. So far as the Dogess is concerned, chroniclers and novelists have described her as taking part in a dance at the time, whereas she was a woman already of middle age, and her name is never mentioned in any of the numerous documents regarding the famous trial. There is one more argument against the fable that the insult was directed against her. The Venetian tribunals were extremely severe in all cases where the honour of a woman was touched. The mere fact of laying a hand on the shoulder of a woman not the man’s own wife or relative might be punished with a very heavy fine and many months of imprisonment, and a libellous writing against a noble lady was punished with two months in the pozzi and a fine of one hundred ducats. It would seem to follow that if Steno’s offence had been committed against the first matron in Venice, the tribunal would not have treated the matter with that indulgence of which the Doge complained on his own account. Moreover, it should be noted that Marino Faliero was elected on the eleventh of September 1354, and that the date of the trial was the tenth of November of the same year; but the legendary account says it was on the Thursday before Lent, which cannot come earlier than February and may be as late as March, that the insulting words were written. The scandal must have taken place very early in November, and probably happened during the festival held in the ducal palace on the occasion of the marriage of Santino Faliero and Regina Dandolo, a nephew and niece of the Doge, a marriage, consequently, for which the papal dispensation would have been necessary. This hypothesis would in some measure explain the fact that the writing was directed against the Doge and one of his nephews.

Whatever the true facts were in the Steno-Faliero trials, it is certain that the Doge entertained feelings of the strongest resentment against the aristocracy, against the judges, and, on the whole, against all the decrees of the government. There is no doubt but that the young nobles of that day deserved the indignation they excited in the minds of sensible people, for during several years past their insolence had become boundless, and they went to all lengths of violence, and worse, sometimes even making use of false keys to get into houses that were closed against them, and sparing neither matron nor maid. The lower classes especially suffered by their outrageous conduct in word and deed, and when the Doge conceived the idea of breaking down the power of the aristocrats, he fully believed he might count upon the sympathy and help of the people.

Now when the war with the Genoese was still raging, a certain Bertuccio Isarello, a sea-captain, and Giovanni Dandolo, a patrician, who was one of the superintendents charged with getting war-vessels ready for sea, got into a violent discussion. To be a sea-captain in those days not only indicated great energy and personal courage, but also implied a certain amount of consideration. Isarello had reached his present position after a life of many labours and adventures. He had been a merchant in the Rialto for a year; he had then been the navigating officer of a vessel trading to the East, belonging to a certain Jacopello Lombardo, and after that he had been promoted to be captain, or ‘patrono,’ of a galley, the property of Marin Michiel, with a salary of five lire of grossi monthly (about twenty-five shillings), and permission to take with him on his voyages three families as passengers. Like most other sea-captains of whom we have any account in the archives, Isarello owned several houses in Venice, and possessed considerable prestige among the seafaring class. The account of the incident here given is taken from the contemporary chronicle of de’ Monaci. It happened that in the course of manning a number of ships of war Dandolo had business with this Captain Isarello, and, finding him unexpectedly obstinate upon some point of which we have no account, proceeded to enforce his arguments with a box on the ear. The offended captain left the office where this took place, and told his friends what had happened. They promised at once to support him if he wished to be avenged. Accompanied by them, Isarello thereupon went at once to the square before the ducal palace, and walked up and down nursing his wrath until Dandolo himself should pass. The Doge and his counsellors, being apprised of the matter, sent for the captain and had from his own lips an account of the injury he had

PONTE E FONDAMENTA DI DONNA ONESTA

suffered; but while they promised him every satisfaction which the law would allow, they severely reproved him for having dared to think of taking vengeance in person.

The Doge, however, on hearing Isarello’s story, recognised in him an instrument that might be useful against the aristocracy; and sending for him privately on the following night, received him in his own apartment, and laid before him the plan which he had been maturing for some time.

The most reliable accounts say that within a few hours Isarello gathered twenty conspirators, each of whom promised to furnish forty armed men; but of these twenty heads, only Isarello himself, Filippo Calendario, his father-in-law, erroneously stated to have been the architect who restored the ducal palace, but who was in reality only a master stone-cutter in the work, and two or three other trusty friends, were aware that the Doge himself was the prime mover in the conspiracy, the others supposing that the only object of the movement was to punish the nobles for their overbearing conduct, and to force the government to the better administration of justice. During a few days the principal conspirators came by night to the ducal palace, in order to prepare their plan of action. Meanwhile, in order to increase the unpopularity of the aristocracy, they practised a singular deceit. Two or three of them wandered about the city in the evening, apparently disguised as nobles, insulting the plebeians whom they met, and singing low songs under the windows of honest artisans’ wives; then separating, they loudly bade each other good-night, calling each other by the names of the most illustrious Venetian houses, so that the offended persons supposed they had been annoyed by the fashionable young good-for-nothings of the highest nobility. Meanwhile the conspirators discussed various means for getting possession of the city, and it was finally agreed that they should all meet, fully armed, on the night of the fifteenth of April 1355 in the Square of Saint Mark, before the ducal palace, when the Doge would cause the great bell to ring the alarm, and news would be bruited abroad among the people that the Genoese were at the mouth of the harbour with fifty galleys. Thereupon it was expected that the nobles would flock to the palace, as they always did in cases of danger, to meet in council, and the conspirators would be able to kill them without difficulty as they arrived. After the massacre, they intended to proclaim the absolute sovereignty of the Doge, who bound himself to confer all the important offices of the State upon men belonging to the working-classes. The plan failed, apparently for two reasons.