§ IX. It seems that the alarm given by the attack of the pirates put an end to the custom of fixing one day for all marriages: but the main objects of the institution were still attained by the perfect publicity given to the marriages of all the noble families; the bridegroom standing in the Court of the Ducal Palace to receive congratulations on his betrothal, and the whole body of the nobility attending the nuptials, and rejoicing, “as at some personal good fortune; since, by the constitution of the state, they are for ever incorporated together, as if of one and the same family.”[33] But the festival of the 2nd of February, after the year 943, seems to have been observed only in memory of the deliverance of the brides, and no longer set apart for public nuptials.
§ X. There is much difficulty in reconciling the various accounts, or distinguishing the inaccurate ones, of the manner of keeping this memorable festival. I shall first give Sansovino’s, which is the popular one, and then note the points of importance in the counter-statements. Sansovino says that the success of the pursuit of the pirates was owing to the ready help and hard fighting of the men of the district of Sta. Maria Formosa, for the most part trunkmakers; and that they, having been presented after the victory to the Doge and the Senate, were told to ask some favor for their reward. “The good men then said that they desired the Prince, with his wife and the Signory, to visit every year the church of their district, on the day of its feast. And the Prince asking them, ‘Suppose it should rain?’ they answered, ‘We will give you hats to cover you; and if you are thirsty, we will give you to drink.’ Whence is it that the Vicar, in the name of the people, presents to the Doge, on his visit, two flasks of malvoisie[34] and two oranges; and presents to him two gilded hats, bearing the arms of the Pope, of the Prince, and of the Vicar. And thus was instituted the Feast of the Maries, which was called noble and famous because the people from all round came together to behold it. And it was celebrated in this manner:....” The account which follows is somewhat prolix; but its substance is, briefly, that twelve maidens were elected, two for each division of the city; and that it was decided by lot which contrade, or quarters of the town, should provide them with dresses. This was done at enormous expense, one contrada contending with another, and even the jewels of the treasury of St. Mark being lent for the occasion to the “Maries,” as the twelve damsels were called. They, being thus dressed with gold, and silver, and jewels, went in their galley to St. Mark’s for the Doge, who joined them with the Signory, and went first to San Pietro di Castello to hear mass on St. Mark’s day, the 31st of January, and to Santa Maria Formosa on the 2nd of February, the intermediate day being spent in passing in procession through the streets of the city; “and sometimes there arose quarrels about the places they should pass through, for every one wanted them to pass by his house.”
§ XI. Nearly the same account is given by Corner, who, however, does not say anything about the hats or the malvoisie. These, however, we find again in the Matricola de’ Casseleri, which, of course, sets the services of the trunkmakers and the privileges obtained by them in the most brilliant light. The quaintness of the old Venetian is hardly to be rendered into English. “And you must know that the said trunkmakers were the men who were the cause of such victory, and of taking the galley, and of cutting all the Triestines to pieces, because, at that time, they were valiant men and well in order. The which victory was on the 2nd February, on the day of the Madonna of candles. And at the request and entreaties of the said trunkmakers, it was decreed that the Doge, every year, as long as Venice shall endure, should go on the eve of the said feast to vespers in the said church, with the Signory. And be it noted, that the vicar is obliged to give to the Doge two flasks of malvoisie, with two oranges besides. And so it is observed, and will be observed always.” The reader must observe the continual confusion between St. Mark’s day the 31st of January, and Candlemas the 2nd of February. The fact appears to be, that the marriage day in the old republic was St. Mark’s day, and the recovery of the brides was the same day at evening; so that, as we are told by Sansovino, the commemorative festival began on that day, but it was continued to the day of the Purification, that especial thanks might be rendered to the Virgin; and, the visit to Sta. Maria Formosa being the most important ceremony of the whole festival, the old chroniclers, and even Sansovino, got confused, and asserted the victory itself to have taken place on the day appointed for that pilgrimage.
§ XII. I doubt not that the reader who is acquainted with the beautiful lines of Rogers is as much grieved as I am at the interference of the “casket-makers” with the achievement which the poet ascribes to the bridegrooms alone; an interference quite as inopportune as that of old Le Balafré with the victory of his nephew, in the unsatisfactory conclusion of “Quentin Durward.” I am afraid I cannot get the casket-makers quite out of the way; but it may gratify some of my readers to know that a chronicle of the year 1378, quoted by Galliciolli, denies the agency of the people of Sta. Maria Formosa altogether, in these terms: “Some say that the people of Sta. M. Formosa were those who recovered the spoil (“predra;” I may notice, in passing, that most of the old chroniclers appear to consider the recovery of the caskets rather more a subject of congratulation than that of the brides), and that, for their reward, they asked the Doge and Signory to visit Sta. M. Formosa; but this is false. The going to Sta. M. Formosa was because the thing had succeeded on that day, and because this was then the only church in Venice in honor of the Virgin.” But here is again the mistake about the day itself; and besides if we get rid altogether of the trunkmakers, how are we to account for the ceremony of the oranges and hats, of which the accounts seem authentic? If, however, the reader likes to substitute “carpenters” or “house-builders” for casket-makers, he may do so with great reason (vide Galliciolli, lib. ii. § 1758); but I fear that one or the other body of tradesmen must be allowed to have had no small share in the honor of the victory.
§ XIII. But whatever doubt attaches to the particular circumstances of its origin, there is none respecting the splendor of the festival itself, as it was celebrated for four centuries afterwards. We find that each contrada spent from 800 to 1000 zecchins in the dress of the “Maries” entrusted to it; but I cannot find among how many contrade the twelve Maries were divided; it is also to be supposed that most of the accounts given refer to the later periods of the celebration of the festival. In the beginning of the eleventh century, the good Doge Pietro Orseolo II. left in his will the third of his entire fortune “per la Festa della Marie;” and, in the fourteenth century, so many people came from the rest of Italy to see it, that special police regulations were made for it, and the Council of Ten were twice summoned before it took place.[35] The expense lavished upon it seems to have increased till the year 1379, when all the resources of the republic were required for the terrible war of Chiozza, and all festivity was for that time put an end to. The issue of the war left the Venetians with neither the power nor the disposition to restore the festival on its ancient scale, and they seem to have been ashamed to exhibit it in reduced splendor. It was entirely abolished.
§ XIV. As if to do away even with its memory, every feature of the surrounding scene which was associated with that festival has been in succeeding ages destroyed. With one solitary exception,[36] there is not a house left in the whole Piazza of Santa Maria Formosa from whose windows the festa of the Maries has ever been seen: of the church in which they worshipped, not a stone is left, even the form of the ground and direction of the neighboring canals are changed; and there is now but one landmark to guide the steps of the traveller to the place where the white cloud rested, and the shrine was built to St. Mary the Beautiful. Yet the spot is still worth his pilgrimage, for he may receive a lesson upon it, though a painful one. Let him first fill his mind with the fair images of the ancient festival, and then seek that landmark the tower of the modern church, built upon the place where the daughters of Venice knelt yearly with her noblest lords; and let him look at the head that is carved on the base of the tower,[37] still dedicated to St. Mary the Beautiful.
§ XV. A head,—huge, inhuman, and monstrous,—leering in bestial degradation, too foul to be either pictured or described, or to be beheld for more than an instant: yet let it be endured for that instant; for in that head is embodied the type of the evil spirit to which Venice was abandoned in the fourth period of her decline; and it is well that we should see and feel the full horror of it on this spot, and know what pestilence it was that came and breathed upon her beauty, until it melted away like the white cloud from the ancient fields of Santa Maria Formosa.
§ XVI. This head is one of many hundreds which disgrace the latest buildings of the city, all more or less agreeing in their expression of sneering mockery, in most cases enhanced by thrusting out the tongue. Most of them occur upon the bridges, which were among the very last works undertaken by the republic, several, for instance, upon the Bridge of Sighs; and they are evidences of a delight in the contemplation of bestial vice, and the expression of low sarcasm, which is, I believe, the most hopeless state into which the human mind can fall. This spirit of idiotic mockery is, as I have said, the most striking characteristic of the last period of the Renaissance, which, in consequence of the character thus imparted to its sculpture, I have called grotesque; but it must be our immediate task, and it will be a most interesting one, to distinguish between this base grotesqueness, and that magnificent condition of fantastic imagination, which was above noticed as one of the chief elements of the Northern Gothic mind. Nor is this a question of interesting speculation merely: for the distinction between the true and false grotesque is one which the present tendencies of the English mind have rendered it practically important to ascertain; and that in a degree which, until he has made some progress in the consideration of the subject, the reader will hardly anticipate.
§ XVII. But, first, I have to note one peculiarity in the late architecture of Venice, which will materially assist us in understanding the true nature of the spirit which is to be the subject of our inquiry; and this peculiarity, singularly enough, is first exemplified in the very façade of Santa Maria Formosa which is flanked by the grotesque head to which our attention has just been directed. This façade, whose architect is unknown, consists of a pediment, sustained on four Corinthian pilasters, and is, I believe, the earliest in Venice which appears entirely destitute of every religious symbol, sculpture, or inscription; unless the Cardinal’s hat upon the shield in the centre of the impediment be considered a religious symbol. The entire façade is nothing else than a monument to the Admiral Vincenzo Cappello. Two tablets, one between each pair of flanking pillars, record his acts and honors; and, on the corresponding spaces upon the base of the church, are two circular trophies, composed of halberts, arrows, flags, tridents, helmets, and lances: sculptures which are just as valueless in a military as in an ecclesiastical point of view; for, being all copied from the forms of Roman arms and armor, they cannot even be referred to for information respecting the costume of the period. Over the door, as the chief ornament of the façade, exactly in the spot which in the “barbarous” St. Mark’s is occupied by the figure of Christ, is the statue of Vincenzo Cappello, in Roman armor. He died in 1542; and we have, therefore, the latter part of the sixteenth century fixed as the period when, in Venice, churches were first built to the glory of man, instead of the glory of God.
§ XVIII. Throughout the whole of Scripture history, nothing is more remarkable than the close connection of punishment with the sin of vain-glory. Every other sin is occasionally permitted to remain, for lengthened periods, without definite chastisement; but the forgetfulness of God, and the claim of honor by man, as belonging to himself, are visited at once, whether in Hezekiah, Nebuchadnezzar, or Herod, with the most tremendous punishment. We have already seen, that the first reason for the fall of Venice was the manifestation of such a spirit; and it is most singular to observe the definiteness with which it is here marked,—as if so appointed, that it might be impossible for future ages to miss the lesson. For, in the long inscriptions[38] which record the acts of Vincenzo Cappello, it might, at least, have been anticipated that some expressions would occur indicative of remaining pretence to religious feeling, or formal acknowledgement of Divine power. But there are none whatever. The name of God does not once occur; that of St. Mark is found only in the statement that Cappello was a procurator of the church: there is no word touching either on the faith or hope of the deceased; and the only sentence which alludes to supernatural powers at all, alludes to them under the heathen name of fates, in its explanation of what the Admiral Cappello would have accomplished, “nisi fata Christianis adversa vetuissent.”