Salve Venetia, gleanings from Venetian history; vol. I

by F. Marion Crawford

Elsewhere in Italy the nobles of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, iron-clad, hard-riding, and hard-hitting, were the natural enemies of the people, whom they could kill like flies when they liked. In sea-girt Venice they wore no armour, the people mostly loved them, and the burghers needed their protection and shared in all the sources of their wealth. The nobles’ only possible enemies at home were among themselves.

Rom. iii. 5.

History has not left a very clear account of the conspiracy of Marin Bocconio against the aristocratic Republic in 1300. We know that he was a man who had a great following, chiefly on account of his immense wealth, and Romanin remarks that his intelligence was not equal to the arduous undertaking he had planned. We know that on the discovery of the plot he was taken, that he was first confined in the prison of the ducal palace, and afterwards hanged with ten of his principal accomplices between the two columns, probably those of the Piazzetta, and we have a list of those executed, showing that none of them were noble; but a few noble names appear among those of persons exiled as having been favourable to a revolution. Bocconio was certainly one of those malcontents who were not satisfied with the position and privileges of a

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Venetian burgher, and he was desirous of opening himself a way into the Great Council by means of his fortune. The story that he knocked at the door of the council chamber with the hilt of his sword, and armed to the teeth, is an empty fable. He plotted, like the other conspirators, in the dark, and he was betrayed by an accomplice.

Rom. ii. 323.

The facts as well as the details of the conspiracy of the Tiepolo and the Quirini are better known, and it was this attempt at revolution which first gave the government of the Republic that suspicious and inquisitorial character which it never afterwards wholly lost. Mention has already been made of that popular movement in 1296, which attempted to seat upon the ducal throne Jacopo Tiepolo, son of the former Doge Lorenzo, a man distinguished in the career of arms, and who was therefore thought fit to take charge of affairs at the beginning of the great struggle with Genoa. It will be remembered that the government opposed the popular choice, partly in order not to yield an inch to the popular demand, but also, on the other hand, because it was already suspected that the Tiepolo family, which had previously given Venice two doges, was desirous of making that dignity hereditary.

The doge chosen by the government was Gradenigo, and against him the Tiepolo family and their friends, such as the Quirini, the Badoer, and the Doro, continued afterwards to nourish resentment, and showed themselves sternly opposed to the law of the closure of the Great Council, which they looked upon as the triumph of Gradenigo’s policy. The Tiepolo were very numerous, and so also were the Quirini. They possessed many houses, were provided with vast stores of arms, and had many servants and slaves. The two families were not united by friendship only, for Bajamonte Tiepolo had married a daughter of the Quirini. Her father, Marco, was of that branch which inhabited the palace situated on the island of Rialto, in a little square beyond the Ruga degli Speziali.

Both families belonged by right to the Great Council, and during its meetings they took advantage of the smallest incidents to give vent to their wrath against the Doge and his policy. Sometimes they raised such tumults during the sittings that the meetings had to be adjourned, and on the following days they fanned the embers of disturbance into flame in the public streets. The government showed its anxiety by renewing the prohibition to wear arms abroad, and the greatest vigilance was exercised by the ‘Lords of the Night,’ who were six magistrates, generally nobles, charged with the duty of superintendents of police in the city after dark, and were in command of the armed watch. Orders were issued that no one was to keep fire burning, except in barbers’ shops, after the ringing of the third hour of the night, i.e. three and a half hours after sunset. At that time the streets were only lighted by means of lamps that burned here and there before shrines set up by pious persons, but the government now greatly increased this illumination. In a word, every precaution was taken lest the discontent fostered by the great families should suddenly break out into open revolt.