Salve Venetia, gleanings from Venetian history; vol. II

by F. Marion Crawford

THE STAIR OF GOLD, DUCAL PALACE

in 1314, and it is generally conceded that they did not take the title ‘Inquisitors of State’ and begin to be regarded unofficially as a separate tribunal till 1539. The mass of evidence goes to show that these two dates are, at least, not far wrong, and during more than two hundred years between the two, the members of the committee were called indifferently either the ‘Inquisitors,’ or the ‘Executives’ of the Ten.

They were at first either two, or three; later they were always three, and they were commissioned to furnish proofs against accused persons, and occasionally to make the necessary arrangements for secretly assassinating traitors who had fled the country and were living abroad. At first their commission was a temporary one, which was not renewed unless the gravity of the case required it. Later, when they became a permanent tribunal of three, two of their number were always regular members of the Council of Ten, and were called the ‘Black Inquisitors,’ because the Ten wore black mantles; the third was one of the Doge’s counsellors, who, as will be remembered, were among the persons always present at the meetings of the Ten, and he was called the ‘Red Inquisitor’ from the colour of his counsellor’s cloak.

The fourteenth century was memorable on account of the great conspiracies, and it is at least probable that after 1320 the secret committee of the Ten became tolerably permanent as to its existence, though its members were often changed. Signor Fulin has discovered that during a part of the fifteenth century they were chosen only for thirty days, and that the utmost exactness was enforced on those who vacated the office. A long discussion took place at that time as to whether the month began at the midnight preceding the day of the Inquisitor’s election, or only on the morning of that day; since, in the latter case, an Inquisitor at the end of his term would have the right to act until sunrise on the thirty-first day, whereas, in the other, he would have to resign his seat at the first stroke of midnight. The incident is a good instance of the Venetian manner of interpreting the letter of the law.

So long as the tribunal was merely a committee depending on the Ten it had no archives of its own, and whatever it did appeared officially as the act of the Council, of which the Inquisitors were merely executive agents. They were dismissed at the end of their month of service with a regular formula:—

‘The Inquisitors will come to the Council with what they have found, and the Council will decide what it thinks best with regard to them.’

In those times they received no general authorisation or power to act on their own account, and their office must have been excessively irksome, since a heavy fine was exacted from any one who refused to serve on the committee when he had been chosen. Though they were not, as a rule, men of over-sensitive conscience, they felt their position keenly and served with ill-disguised repugnance, well knowing that they were hated as a body even more than they were feared, and that their lives were not always safe.

In early times their actual permanent power was very limited, though the Ten could greatly extend it for any special purpose. For instance, they could not, of their own will, proceed even to a simple arrest; they could not order the residence of a citizen to be searched; and they could not use torture in examining a witness, without a special authorisation from the Ten on each occasion.

Their work then lay almost wholly in secretly spying upon suspected persons; and it often happened that when such an one was at last arrested the whole mass of evidence against him was already written out and in the hands of the Ten. It also certainly happened now and then that a person was proved innocent by the Inquisitors who had been suspected by the Ten, and who had never had the least idea that he was in danger.