S. PIETRO IN CASTELLO
They are, indeed, so manifestly imaginary that the so-called proofs of the dramatic events they describe have been allowed to remain untouched, and they exist to the present day. They consist of an inscription cut in marble, which recalls to the inhabitants of Salvore the victory of the Doge Sebastian Ziani, over the fleet of Otho of Hohenstaufen; of an inscription on the outside of the church of Sant’ Apollinare informing the public that Pope Alexander III. passed a bad night on the steps of that church; and of similar inscriptions upon the churches of Santa Sofia, San Salvatore, San Giacomo, and some other churches, which dispute with Sant’ Apollinare the honour of having offered the pontiff the hospitality of the doorstep.
PONTE MALCANTONE
VI
VENICE AND CONSTANTINOPLE
The most conflicting judgments have been formed upon the action of the Venetian Republic at the decisive moments of her career, as well as upon the true sources of her wealth and importance. One writer, for instance, gravely tells us that Venice, like England, grew rich by usury and the slave trade; another, whose good faith cannot be doubted, assures the world that the two great mistakes which led to the final downfall of the Republic were the ‘Serrata del Gran Consiglio,’ which excluded the people from the government, and the unjustifiable sack and seizure of Constantinople. It would be hard indeed to produce any satisfactory proof of the former statement; for though the Venetians undoubtedly supplied themselves and one part of Italy with white slaves from the East, and although the Republic at times lent money at interest to poorer governments in distress, yet I do not think that these sources of income were ever to be compared with that derived from a great and legitimate commerce, and from less justifiable but not less lucrative conquest.
As for the second statement, it is enough to consider the length of time which elapsed between the taking of Constantinople and the closure of the Great Council about a hundred years later, say in 1300, on the one hand, and the final destruction of Venetian independence in 1797 on the other. When, in history, an effect is separated from its supposed cause by an interval of five hundred years or more, I do not hesitate to assert that the connection is a little more than doubtful. As for the exclusion of the people from the government having been a source of danger to the Republic, it is interesting to note that almost in the same year the Republic of Florence adopted precisely the opposite course, that it led directly to internal discord and the wars of the Blacks and Whites, and that in less than two hundred years the city which had adopted the democratic view was under the dominion of tyrants—a striking instance of the truth of some of the most important conclusions reached by Plato in the Republic.
In the year 1198 Pope Innocent III. called upon Christendom to undertake a fourth crusade, and the voice of Fulk of Neuilly preached the delivery of the Holy Sepulchre, and roused to arms the most valiant barons and gentlemen of France.
It was not till 1201 that the new army of crusaders was sufficiently organised to consider the means of reaching Palestine, and they then decided that they must make the journey by sea. Accordingly they sent an embassy to Venice, the only maritime power then able to furnish the ships and transports required.
Enrico Dandolo, the Doge, entertained their request, and, speaking in the name of the Republic, offered to convey to Palestine four thousand five hundred horses and nine thousand squires and grooms on large transports, and to take four thousand five hundred knights and twenty thousand men-at-arms on other vessels, and to furnish provisions for men and horses for nine months; and, further, to send fifty armed galleys to convoy the transports to ‘the shores whither Christianity and the service of God called them.’