Salve Venetia, gleanings from Venetian history; vol. I

by F. Marion Crawford

On the evening of the fifth of November 1450 an atrocious murder was committed, and the fact that the victim, the noble Ermolao Donato, had been one of the heads of the Ten during Jacopo’s trial, and that he was killed just after he had left the ducal palace, cast suspicion upon the younger Foscari. It was not until two months later that a formal accusation was laid against him and he was arrested. There was certainly strong evidence to prove the crime. Foscari had long made no secret about his hatred of the murdered man; a servant of Jacopo’s had been seen hanging about the palace as if waiting for some one just before Donato had come out; and a good many minor pieces of testimony were adduced.

There is not the slightest truth in the story that Jacopo Loredan ever held the Foscari family responsible for the death of his father, who was probably poisoned by Visconti, nor that he entered the crime as a debt in his ledger, and wrote ‘paid’ opposite the entry when the elder Foscari was deposed. Yet it is true that a sort of feud had long existed between the two families, that Pietro Loredan had been the unsuccessful candidate when Foscari had been elected, and that Jacopo Loredan now took an active part in the proceedings against Jacopo Foscari.

The trial was not in any way a secret one. The evidence was only circumstantial, and even under torture Jacopo confessed nothing. In modern England or America he would not have been tortured, but he would in all probability have been hanged for the murder. The Ten must have felt the difficulty in which they were placed, and they met it by condemning him to exile in Crete, not allowing his wife and children to accompany him. Foscari was then taken from the ducal palace and placed on board a ship, which conveyed him to his destination. He remained in Crete unmolested during five years.

1456.

Here, again, dramatists and writers of fiction have invented an extraordinary tale. It is narrated that Jacopo, being unable to bear the loneliness of exile, deliberately wrote a letter, in which he appealed for help, to Francesco Sforza, then Duke of Milan, intending that the missive should fall into the hands of the Ten, in order that the Council might have him brought back to Venice to be tried; and we are asked to believe that he risked the agonies of torture for the sake of once more seeing his own people. What actually happened seems to be that Jacopo had become intimate in his exile with certain Genoese, through whom he attempted to establish a correspondence with Mohammed II., the conqueror of Constantinople, in the hope that the Sultan would send a galley on which he might escape from Crete. If he had succeeded, the Turkish vessel would certainly not have brought him to Venetian waters.

Venice had suffered much in her commerce by the Mohammedan conquest; a number of her citizens had fought in the last defence of Constantinople, and some had been afterwards murdered in cold blood by the Sultan’s orders. An agreement had subsequently been reached, it is true, but the Ten could hardly be expected to look with leniency on a secret correspondence between the son of her Doge and the despot of the Osmanlis.

Jacopo Foscari was brought back to Venice and tried again. He now confessed everything immediately, without compulsion. The story of his having been horribly tortured during this second trial appears to be a pure invention, for in the records of the Council of Ten the fact that the cord was used is invariably stated on each occasion, and in this case there is no mention of any such matter. I refer the incredulous reader to Romanin’s fourth volume, in which abundant proof of this will be found, with the most minute reference to existing documents. Smedley wrote at a time when those papers had not been found, and confessed, moreover, to having largely used Daru.

Jacopo was condemned to return to Crete and to be confined there in prison during one year; he was told, however, that if he again wrote letters to foreign princes, he should end his life under lock and key.

He was allowed to see his family and his father once more, before his departure, and the aged Doge took leave of his only son with tears and deep emotion; but to Jacopo’s entreaties that the Doge would endeavour to procure his return, the old man could only answer, ‘Go, Jacopo, obey and ask no more.’

None the less, after his final departure, the Doge made every effort to obtain his pardon, and was seconded by several of the great patricians; but Jacopo died in January 1457, long before his year of imprisonment was out.