Salve Venetia, gleanings from Venetian history; vol. I

by F. Marion Crawford

Petrarch was in the city at the time, and in one of his letters he has left a brilliant and poetic account of the triumph that followed.

Lettere senili di Petrarca (Basle) i. 782, quoted by G. R. Michiel.

It chanced that I was leaning at my window towards the hour of sixte, and mine eyes were turned toward the open sea; and I talked with the Archbishop of Patras, whom I did once love as a brother, and whom now I venerate as it were a well-beloved father. Then I saw entering the harbour a great ship, a galley, all decked with green branches, and it came rowed by many rowers. Now when we saw this, we ceased from talking; for the crew of the ship were of joyous mien, and they swung the oars with such right goodwill that we guessed them to be bearers of glad tidings. The sailors all wore crowns of leaves on their heads, and in their hands they waved banners, and they that stood in the bows shouted joyfully. Then the sentinel who watched on the top of the first tower forthwith made signal to give warning that a ship from abroad was in sight, and all the people together, full of curiosity, went over to Lido. As the ship came nearer we saw also trophies of war set up on her forward part; for surely this was the news of a victory which they were bringing in, but in what war it had been won, or in what battle, or at what stormed city, we knew not.

When the messengers had landed they went before the Great Council, and there we learned that which we had not dared to believe nor even to hope; for our enemies were all dead or taken prisoners or put to flight, and the honest citizens were freed out of slavery, the cities also were won back, and all the island of Candia had submitted to the Republic. So the war was over without striking a blow, and peace had been got with glory.

Petrarch’s logic here evidently went to pieces in the storm of his satisfaction, for he speaks of a bloodless victory immediately after telling his correspondent that all the enemies of the Republic were slain or prisoners.

The Doge Lorenzo Celsi [here the poet indulges in a pun connecting ‘Celsi’ with ‘excelsus’], unless my love for him has deceived me altogether, is a man of most noble heart, of purest life, one who follows all the virtues, most wonderfully pious and devoted to his country; and when he learned the good news he openly gave thanks to God, thereby showing the people that in every happy event man must acknowledge the divine hand, and dispose his own happiness under the protecting shield of faith. And prayers were offered throughout the city, but were especially in the basilica dedicated to the Evangelist Saint Mark....

Now the whole feast ended with two pageants; but I confess that I know not by what name to call them, and so I shall describe them in such manner that thou mayest easily understand them. The one was, as it were, a race and the other a combat; and both were on horseback, the first without reins and only with staves and banners, that it seemed to be some military exercise; but in the second game arms were needed, and it was like unto a real battle. Both in the one and in the other we marvelled at the gifts of the Venetians, who are not only wonderful sailers of ships, but are also very skilled in all those exercises which belong to the art of war.

For they showed such experience of riding and such deep knowledge of the handling of arms, and such endurance of fatigue, that one might set them up for examples to other warlike nations. The two games were held in that square of which I deem there is not the like in the world, that is over against the marble and gold front of the temple of Saint Mark.

No stranger had a share in the first of the games, but four and twenty nobles, the goodliest and most richly clad, kept for themselves this part of the pageants....

It was a good sight to see so many young men, in clothes of purple and gold, curbing and spurring their well-shod steeds, all shiningly caparisoned, that seemed hardly to touch earth in their swift course. These young men obeyed the gesture of their chief with such precision that as the first reached the goal and left the field, a second took his place on the track, and then a third, and so on till the first began again, so well that they kept up the racing all day long, and that at evening one might have believed that there had been but one cavalier who rode; and while they ran thou wouldest have seen now the gilded tips of their staves flying through the air, and now thou couldest have heard their red flags stiffening in the breeze with a sound as of wings.