Europe in the Middle Ages

by Ierne L. Plunket

Sometimes to-day it seems difficult to admire mediaeval Venice because of her selfishness and frank commercialism. She had no sense of patriotism either towards Italy or Christendom; witness the Fourth Crusade,[43] where nothing but her insistent desire to protect her trading position in the East had influenced her diplomacy.

This accusation of selfishness is true; but we must remember that the word ‘patriotism’ has a much wider scope in modern times than was possible to the limited outlook of the Middle Ages. Venice might be unmoved by the words ‘Italy’ or ‘Christendom’, but the whole of her life and ideals was centred in the word ‘Venice’. Her sailors and merchants, who laid the foundations of her greatness, were no hired mercenaries, but citizens willing to lay down their lives for the Republic who was their mother and their queen. Thus narrowing the term ‘patriotism’, we see that of all the Italian Powers Venice alone understood what the word meant, in that her sons and daughters were willing to sacrifice as a matter of course not merely life but family ambitions, class, and even individuality to the interests of their state.

The ambitions of Venice were bound up with the shipping and commerce that had gained for her the carrying-trade of the world. To take, for example, the wool manufacture, of such vital interest to English and Flemings, we find that at one time this depended largely on Venetian merchants, who would carry sugar and spices to England from the East, replace their cargo with wool, unload this in its turn in the harbours of Flanders, and then laden with bales of manufactured cloth return to dispose of them in Italian markets.

Besides the carrying-trade, which depended on her neighbour’s industry, Venice had her own manufactures such as silk and glass; but in either case both her sailors and workmen found one thing absolutely vital to their interests, namely, the command of the Adriatic. Like the British Isles to-day, Venice could not feed her thriving population from home-produce, and yet, with enemies or pirates hiding along the Dalmatian coast, safety for her richly-laden vessels passing to and fro could not be guaranteed. These are some of the reasons why from earliest times the Republic had embarked on an aggressive maritime policy that brought her into clash with other Mediterranean ports, and especially with Genoa, her rival in Eastern waters.

When, at the end of the Fourth Crusade, Venice forced Constantinople to accept a Latin dynasty, she secured for herself for the time being especial privileges in that world-market; Genoa, who adopted the cause of the exiled Greeks, achieved a signal triumph in her turn when in 1261 with her assistance Michael Paleologus, a Greek general, restored the Byzantine Empire amid public rejoicings.

Open warfare was now almost continuous between the republics; there was street-fighting in Constantinople and in the ports of Palestine, sea-battles off the Italian and Greek coasts, encounters in which varying fortunes gave at first the mastery of the Mediterranean to neither Venice nor Genoa, but which disastrously weakened the whole resistance of Christendom to the Mahometans.

At length in 1380 a decisive battle was fought off Chioggia, one of the cities of the Venetian Lagoons, whither the Genoese fleet, triumphant on the open seas, had taken up its quarters determined to blockade the enemy into surrender. ‘Let us man every vessel in Venice and go and fight the foe’, was the general cry; and a popular leader, Pisani, imprisoned on account of his share in a recent naval disaster, was released on the public demand and made captain of the enterprise. ‘Long live Pisani!’ the citizens shouted in their joy, but their hero, true to the spirit of Venice, answered them, ‘Venetians cry only, “Long live St. Mark!”’

With the few ships and men at his disposal, Pisani recognized that it was out of the question to lead a successful attack; but he knew that if he could defer the issue there was a Venetian fleet in the eastern Mediterranean which, learning his straits, would return with all possible speed to his aid. He therefore determined to force the enemy to remain where they were without offering open battle, and this manœuvre he carried out with great boldness and skill, sinking heavy vessels loaded with stones in the channels that led to Chioggia, while placing his own fleet across the main entrance to prevent Genoese reinforcements. The blockaders were now blockaded; and through long winter days and nights the rivals, worn out by their bitter vigil, starving and short of ammunition, watched one another and searched the horizon anxiously. At length a shout arose, for distant sails had been sighted; then as the Venetian flag floated proudly into view the shout of Pisani and his men became a song of triumph: the Republic was saved. Venice was not only saved from ruin, her future as Queen of the Adriatic was assured, for the Genoese admiral was compelled to surrender, and his Republic to acknowledge her rival’s supremacy of the seas.

The sea-policy of Venice was the inevitable result of her geographical position; but as the centuries passed she developed a much more debatable land-policy. Many mediaeval Venetians declared that since land was the source of all political trouble, therefore Venice should only maintain enough command over the immediate mainland to secure the city from a surprise attack. Others replied that such an argument was dictated by narrow-minded prejudice, a point of view suitable to the days when Lombardy had been divided amongst a number of weak city states, but impracticable with powerful tyrants, such as the Visconti, masters of North Italy. Unless Venice could secure the territories lying at the foot of the Alps, and also a wide stretch of eastern Lombardy, she would find that she had no command over the passes in the mountains by means of which she carried on her commerce with Germany and Austria.

The advocates of a land-empire policy received confirmation of their warnings when in the early part of the fourteenth century Mastino della Scala, lord of Vicenza, Padua, and Treviso, attempted to levy taxes on Venetian goods passing through his territories. The Republic, roused by what she considered an insult to her commercial supremacy, promptly formed a league with Milan and Florence against Mastino, and obtained Treviso and other towns as the result of a victorious war.