A Golden Book of Venice

by Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

"Thou mayest well ask! Fra Paolo also would not hear of it at first, foreseeing where it might lead. But from urgency of the Senate he yielded—if the consent of the general of the Servi were first won. Wherefore it was granted one knows not; but the purple robe had, perchance, some weight in the argument,—being a pleasing honor,—though one may dare assert that Fra Paolo himself gave it not a thought, having gathered honors all his life with no care for any greatness they might bring."

"Nay, it was not this that won them," said the Lady Laura, with decision, "but their hope that Fra Paolo would support the claims of the Holy Father; it could have been nothing else."

"A hope most reasonable, were he a man of less remarkable force," Giustinian answered confidently. "But, as if he held a divining-rod, he findeth at once the heart of a matter, and Venice hath no fears."

No, Venice had no fears. If there had been heartburnings, they were all forgotten; her rulers were one in determination while they calmly weighed the balance between Church and State, and confidently awaited the issue. The briefs had been opened and the chief Counsellor, the new Teologo Consultore, had given an opinion which filled the Senate with admiration.

"Two remedies might be found: one, material, by forbidding the publication of the censures and preventing the execution of them, thus resisting illegitimate force by force clearly legitimate, so long as it doth not overpass the bounds of natural right of defense; and the other moral, which consisteth in an appeal to a future council. But," continued this sagacious Counsellor, after a word explanatory of the "future council," "it were better to avoid this appeal in order not to irritate the Pope more than ever; and also because he who appealeth admiteth that the goodness of his cause is doubtful, whereas that of the Republic is indubitable."

Such was the opinion, brief as positive, to which the senators listened in undisguised satisfaction on that memorable day in January, 1606; and although those briefs, "Given in Saint Peter's, in Rome, under the Ring of the Fisherman, on the 10th of December, 1605," darkly threatened excommunication unless these dearly beloved sons of Venice withdrew from the stand they had taken, yet with a Doge who "would laugh at an excommunication," and a learned Counsellor who assured them that the cause of the Republic was indubitable, well might the shadows lessen in the Senate Chamber; while in calm assurance the Savii[7] prepared the reply to these communications from his Holiness, which the Signor Agostino Nani presently delivered in an audience at Rome.

[7] These Savii, or wise men, had charge of the diplomatic despatches of the Republic.

But the task of the courtly Nani was not an enviable one, deferent as was the form of the epistle in which these devoted sons declared that nothing could have been further from the thoughts of Venice than to prejudice the rights of the Church—humbly as they implored the Holy Father to recall the many acts of loyalty by which Venice had shown her love and reverence. Had she not been foremost in the Crusade? Was the Church anywhere more magnificently supported in temporal weal? Earnestly as they assured him of the harmlessness of those laws which he condemned as hurtful to their souls, quietly announcing that the Republic had transgressed no right in making laws for her own independent civil government,—and gracious and diplomatic as were the ways of Nani,—his Holiness declared the letter to be "frivolous and vain," and dismissed the ambassador with temper, assuring him that unless the Republic found means to retract those laws "the gates of hell should not prevail" to deter him from inflicting the utmost threatened penalty.

It was a frank contest of wills, in which each opponent conscientiously believed himself in the right; but it was, nevertheless, not an equal contest; for Paul, conceiving that his duty in the exalted position of head of the Church which had been so unexpectedly thrust upon him, lay in its mere temporal aggrandizement, while consciously turning all his powers in that direction, misnamed the struggle a spiritual one. But Venice not only believed but confessed it to be merely a question of civil rights of rulers, and, strong in the sense of the justice of her cause, used every grace of trained diplomacy in asserting it—upon an understanding of civil law which was beyond the attainment of the lawyer Camillo Borghese, and with the aid of specialists whose knowledge of canon law equaled that of his Holiness.

Among the important matters touched upon in those days in the Senate the question had been broached, not without anxiety, as to whether Rome would have recourse to force of a less spiritual nature, and a secret commission had been appointed to examine and report from the frontiers any accession of papal troops, while envoys were sent to Ferrara on the same furtive errand: and the more serious Venetians were already discussing the possibility of war as one of the aspects of this quarrel with the Holy See.