The Battisterio is a gloomy chapel, and as little clean as it is bright. It has more the appearance of a lumber-chamber than a place of worship. But the relics are priceless—the rubbish unique. The bronze font, big enough for a carp-pond, dates from the 16th century, and is presided over by John the Baptist. His head was cut off upon the stone one sees at the left of the altar. Above the latter is another bit of precious quartz or granite, from Mt. Tabor. St. Mark’s has drawn heavily upon the Holy Land, if one-half the valuables stored within the Cathedral are genuine. Sturdy old Doge Dandolo, who pensioned the pigeons after the capitulation of Candia; who, old and purblind, led the Venetians in the recapture of rebellious Zara, and to victory in the siege of Constantinople; who accomplished what Pietro Doria, two hundred years later, boasted that he would do after humbling the arrogant Republic,—bridled the bronze horses and led them whithersoever he would—is entombed in the Baptistery.
With all of what some call its barbaric redundance of ornament and color, and the neglected richness that seems incompatible with the reputed veneration of the Venetians for their renowned Basilica, St. Mark’s works powerfully upon those who are conversant with its history and can appreciate the charm of its quaint magnificence. Talk of “restoration” in this connection is a project to coat the dusky bloom of a Cleopatra with “lily-white.”
One hundred-thirty-and-four years was this thousand-year-old temple in building, and, pending its erection, all homeward-bound vessels were compelled to bring some tribute to the rising structure. The five hundred columns of the façade are of rare marbles thus imported, principally from the Orient. The wall between these is gorgeous with mosaics—not frescos. The domes are begirt with a frontlet of pinnacles. Sultana of the Sea, to whom all kingdoms have paid tribute, she sits upon the shore in calm imperiousness befitting the regal estate confirmed by a decade of centuries. The hack of chisel, the corrosion of acids here will be sacrilege. Yet they say it is ordained that she shall endure the outrage. They may smite,—they cannot belittle her.
We disbelieved in the fragment of the true cross set in a silver column exhibited in the “Treasury;” were disposed to smile at the splinter, or chip, of St. John’s frontal bone “adorning” an agate goblet. We shook our heads over St. Mark’s Episcopal throne as we had at St. Peter’s in Rome, and would not look at the crystal urn said to contain some of the Saviour’s blood. Nor were we credulous as to the authenticity of the capitals brought from the Temple at Jerusalem crowning the pillars of the Entrance-Hall.
But we always stayed our steps at the red porphyry slabs embedded in the floor of the vestibule. Here, Frederic Barbarossa, Emperor of Germany, and twice-crowned King of Italy,—once by Pope, again by the anti-pope of his own setting-up; Conqueror of Poland and Lombardy; the most accomplished, as he was the most heroic warrior in an era when heroism was knightly duty,—knelt to Pope Alexander III., at the pacific instance of Sebastiano Ziani, Doge of Venice. Ten years of excommunication; the disastrous battle on Lake Como, desertion, treachery and disease had tired out, not quelled the haughty spirit. A twenty years’ war, resulting in irrevocable defeat, probably wrought more potently upon reason and will than the Doge’s arguments. His face was of a more burning red than the hair and beard that earned his nickname, as his knee touched the ground.
Schiller makes Marie Stuart protest, after her betrayal into the like act of subserviency to Elizabeth, that she “knelt not to her, but to God!” The poet may have borrowed the equivocation from Barbarossa’s kingly growl—“Non tibi—sed Petro!”
Alexander was pontiff, diplomatist and magnanimous.
“Et mihi, et Petro!” he said,—raising the humbled monarch and giving him the kiss of peace.
Ah! the languorous noons, when we loitered among the shadows of the great Entrance-Hall, the “court of the Gentiles,” “thinking it all over,” the pigeons cooing and strutting on the hot stones outside, while St. Theodore, on his tall shaft, the Winged Lion of S. Marco on his, stood guard over the deserted Piazzetta, and the breeze came up past them from the Adriatic, the Bride of the Doges!
“In signum veri perpetuique dominii!” Thus ran the ceremony of espousal. The King of all Italy, Vittorio Emmanuele, paid a flying visit to the royal palace on the Grand Canal while we were in the city, and the wedded Adriatic took the event as quietly as she had regarded the usurpation of Austrian and French conquerors. “Perpetual” is a term of varied meanings in this world and life.