Salve Venetia, gleanings from Venetian history; vol. I

by F. Marion Crawford

Among the nobles who went into exile beyond Zara after the affair at Rialto was Niccolò Quirini, Marco’s son, surnamed ‘the Lame.’ His wife, who was, as we have said, the daughter of Giovanni Soranzo, joined him in his exile. At the end of four years, says Molmenti, she felt an irresistible longing to see her family again, and asked permission to return home, but it was not granted to her. Her father, however, had been made Doge in 1311, and she began the journey, trusting to his influence. No sooner had she reached Venice than she was arrested and condemned to perpetual confinement in the convent of Sta. Maria delle Vergini, in one of the most distant districts of the city.

Galliccioli, vi. 58.

Giustina Renier Michiel, Origini ii. 73.

In connection with this story it should be noted that the convent in which she was imprisoned was not one of cloistered nuns. Until the end of the fifteenth century they bore the title of ‘canonesses’; they were under the government of an abbess, but took no solemn vows, wore no veils, and could even leave the convent and marry. The convent itself was under a sort of tutelage of the Doge. It had been founded and endowed at the beginning of the thirteenth century by the Doge Pietro Ziani, together with a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and became the common residence of many noble ladies, and of many noble girls who were educated there. The Doge conferred the investiture upon the abbess, according to the custom of those times, by means of a golden ring, and once a year he went to visit the convent. This was in the month of May; and after hearing mass the Doge went into the parlour, where the abbess received him, being dressed in a magnificent white mantle, with two veils upon her head, one white and the other black. She presented the Doge with a small bunch of flowers, set in a golden handle, for which the Doge expressed his thanks in a set form. The Doge Soranzo must have gone through this function many times while his own daughter was a prisoner in the nunnery, and not allowed to assist in the ceremony. The old building of the Vergini was destroyed by fire in 1375, but was restored with greater splendour than before as a place for educating noble Venetian girls.

It must not be supposed that the convent had barred windows, nor that there were gratings at the parlour door, from behind which the novice never returned again to the outer world. Gratings and bars and the strict cloister were not introduced into the rules of Italian nuns until much later, when the Church was obliged to check the grave abuses which had gradually crept into convent life. In the time of Soranza, and particularly in the convent of the Vergini, there was much freedom, and any reasonable excuse was admitted for allowing the canonesses to go out into the city; they not infrequently visited their relations, and even stopped with them in the country.

Soranza had been placed in custody in a little house that was built against the wall of the convent; its door had two different keys, one of which was given to the abbess, and the other to the housekeeper sister, so that the two were obliged to enter together, and while guarding their prisoner they watched each other. Soranza was allowed one woman servant, who was allowed to go out in order to wash linen, but she was warned that she would be condemned to a heavy fine if the smallest bit of writing were ever found upon her.

Four years Soranza languished uncomplaining in her narrow dwelling. Then she appealed to the Council of Ten for permission to walk in the convent garden. The Council allowed her this liberty for only four months. Fearing that it would not be continued to her she wrote again before the term expired, to beg that it might be extended, representing that she could not live without a little air; and the Council made the permission permanent.

At last it was known that Niccolò was dead, stabbed by an unknown hand, and Soranza was a widow; nevertheless, for the sake of the name she yet bore, the Republic still treated her as a prisoner. Amongst the archives of the Council of Ten are found more than sixty documents concerning her, and there are letters from her entreating to be allowed to visit her father, the Doge, at the ducal palace, or to go and take care of a sick friend. Sometimes she obtained what she asked, sometimes the most innocent indulgences were refused her, and it is clear that the Republic did not mean her to think that she could have anything otherwise than as a special favour.

When Soranza breathed her last in the little house that had been her prison, she had occupied it for twenty-five years. During the last ten years, however, the wife of Andreolo Quirini was confined with her.

She was not the last of those unhappy ladies who had been exiled with their husbands. In 1320 a man called Riccio arrived in Venice, bringing the head of Pietro Quirini who had been treacherously assassinated by an ‘unknown’ hand—possibly the hand of Riccio himself, who brought the victim’s head in order to claim his fee. Pietro left a widow, still young, who at once asked permission to come home to Venice. She was told plainly that if she had no children and expected none she might return, but that otherwise she must remain in exile ‘at the disposal of the Ten.’