Salve Venetia, gleanings from Venetian history; vol. I

by F. Marion Crawford

CAMPO S. MARIA

the ducal throne, but such a course would certainly not have improved the relations of the Republic with the Pope, a result which had been the sole object of the election. On the other hand, it seemed impossible even to agree upon the names of candidates, in order to proceed to an election. The electors fell into a state of apathy of which there is probably no example in history; they moved about in an objectless way, talking listlessly of anything that occurred to them; they even lingered at the open windows of the palace, to watch the people passing in the street.

Rom. iii. 83.

As they looked down, they saw an aged nobleman slowly walking toward the postern gate of the prisons, followed by a servant who carried a big sack of bread, so full that the loaves protruded from the open mouth. It was Marin Zorzi, a charitable and devout person, on his way to distribute food to the poor prisoners. He was the very man. Before he had left the prisons, he was elected Doge.

Unhappily this hasty choice did not improve matters. An old chronicler sums up in a few words the short reign that followed: Zorzi lived ten months, during which he never saw the sea calm nor the sun without clouds. All that remained to mark his reign was an asylum for poor children, the earliest foundation of the kind in the world.

In less than a year, therefore, another election took place, and as the experiment of looking out of the palace windows in the hope of seeing the right man pass in the street had been a failure, the electors were shut up, windows and balcony doors were closely sealed, and the forty-one were driven to look at each other. In a short time they elected Giovanni Soranzo by a considerable majority.

Rom. iii. 89, 103, and notes.

So far as I can ascertain, he was born in 1240, and was therefore about seventy-one years old in 1311; but the longevity of the Venetian nobles was always remarkable, and he was destined to reign seventeen years. He had rendered the Republic very eminent service on more than one occasion, and was a man of astounding activity. To mention only a few incidents of his busy life, in its later years, he had commanded a fleet of twenty-five galleys against the Genoese when already fifty-six years old, had taken possession of the port of Caffa and had defended it during a whole winter against the combined attacks of the Genoese and the Tartars, and had captured a goodly number of richly laden Genoese vessels. On his return to Venice he had been received with honours resembling those of a triumph, and had soon found himself in arms again, but on land this time, against Padua first, and then against Ferrara, which he had already governed as Podestà. When at last recalled to Venice he had occupied the important position of a procurator of Saint Mark, from which post he was elected Doge to succeed Marin Zorzi.

Soranzo was undeniably one of the most illustrious men elected to the Dogeship in the course of its existence of exactly eleven hundred years. It is enough to say that he reconciled the Republic with the Pope, and reconquered Dalmatia; and that, in spite of the vast sums of money which both these undertakings cost, he protected and developed Venetian manufacture and commerce so diligently as to increase the public wealth instead of diminishing it. It was during his reign that the weaving of silk stuffs in Venice reached a perfection hitherto undreamt of, surpassing, according to the taste of the day, the fabrics of the Levant and driving them out of the market. Under Soranzo the glass-works of Murano produced mirrors that outdid the very best that could be made in Germany, for clearness and brilliancy. At the same time, the Arsenal of Venice was greatly extended by the addition of new basins, windmills were set up all over the islands, many like improvements, then modern, were introduced, a general condition of ease and well-being extended through all classes, and the population increased more quickly than ever before. The State could count forty thousand men between the ages of twenty and sixty years who were able to bear arms. For a silver ducat a man could buy enough meat and flour to support him for a week, with as much wine as he needed, and wood to cook with and to warm him.