Salve Venetia, gleanings from Venetian history; vol. I

by F. Marion Crawford

PONTE VENETA MARINA

counsellors such things as I shall believe useful to the honour and preservation of our country; and I swear to obey our Lord the Doge and to do what the heads of the Ten shall command me.... I bind myself to keep secret whatever is said or commanded to me, concerning all matters which may be proposed by the said Council, communicated or discussed in the sittings, and concerning any letters or reports which may be communicated to us, etc., etc.’

Rom. iii. 35 sqq.

The ordinary meetings of the Ten were held by day in the ducal palace; not in a room hung with black and feebly lighted, as some have written and believed, but in a hall appointed for that purpose by the Doge, until one should be properly furnished and decorated for the tribunal. Under extraordinary circumstances the Council also met by night. All sittings began with an invocation to the Holy Spirit. These sittings were never attended by the Ten only; from the time of the institution of the tribunal, the Doge and his counsellors, one avogador of the commonwealth and the High Chancellor, who, it should be remembered, was not a noble, were also obliged to be present. The imagination of posterity, amused by fantastic tales which have no historic basis, has lent this tribunal a character of mystery and arbitrary authority which it never possessed, as is proved by documents still in existence. In all trials, after the accusation had been read, the defence was heard immediately, and when the defendant was not able to conduct his own case, a law of 1443 allowed him to be represented by a

Rom. iii. 66, 68.

lawyer. The avogador put the following question to the Ten: ‘According to what has been read and said, is it your opinion that the accused should be condemned?’ Sometimes the following question was asked: ‘Is it your opinion that the accused, in consequence of what has been already heard, should be put to the torture, in order to obtain from him the whole truth, and further details; or that the court should proceed, as having already sufficient proof of his guilt?’ The Council of Ten could not impose fines; their sentences necessarily affected the body of the condemned person. When a vote had decided that the accused was convicted, each member of the Council could propose the punishment which he thought fit, but it was not usual to propose any more severe penalty than that asked for by the avogador. He was the first to make the proposition, then came the heads of the Ten, then the Doge’s counsellors, and last of all the Doge himself. Each proposal was balloted for, every member of the Council retaining the right to propose a diminution or commutation of the sentence, or to ask for a new trial.

We know that the Council of Ten had a fund for secret service, ever since the fourteenth century. It also possessed a small armoury.

It cannot be denied that on more than one occasion the execution of the verdicts of the Ten was performed quickly and in a secret manner; yet it does not appear that this was done because the sentence had been passed from any motive of private hatred or vengeance, but only because prudence required that the public should not be allowed to express an opinion on the matter. It may be remarked that in European countries the procedure nowadays is often similar in court-martials. If we take away the right of torture, the violet cloaks and hoods of the seven, and the red hoods of the three chiefs—in a word, if we erase from the picture the mediæval setting of the Council of Ten which looks theatrical to us, we may find that after all there is not such grave cause for accusing the famous Venetian tribunal of arbitrary cruelty. The proceedings of a military court-martial in our own times are often quite as secret and expeditious, and much more summary.