Venice and Its Story

by Thomas Okey

In 1343 Andrea Dandolo was raised to the Dogeship. The first patrician who had taken a doctor’s degree at Padua, he had already served on the Ten, and filled the office of Procurator of St Mark, when at thirty-six years of age he was elected Doge. Plague, earthquake and war scourged the Venetians during the scholar Doge’s reign. Zara, tempted by the Hungarians, tried another fall with her Venetian masters for independence. Marin Faliero, a member of one of the most ancient and illustrious families of Venice, who had served as podestà of Padua and of Treviso, was placed in command of a land force: forty galleys set forth under Pietro da Canale to attack by sea. Faliero met the Hungarians forty thousand strong about eight miles from Zara, and won a decisive victory. Meanwhile Canale had forced the harbour, and in a few months the tough old fortress again surrendered. The walls were dismantled, and this time a strong Venetian garrison was left to overawe the Zarantines.

For a century Genoese and Venetians had been rivals in the Crimea for the control of the fur trade with Tartary. In 1346 Marin Faliero was sent to Genoa to complain of certain piratical acts by the Genoese. The latter retorted by accusing the Signory of bad faith in dealing with the Tartars. But the ravages of the Black Death in 1348, when two-fifths of the people of Venice are said to have perished, and fifty noble families to have become extinct, absorbed for a time the attention of the Republic. In 1349 friction with the Genoese led to a definite breach, and another act in the tragedy of Christendom was begun. Two years of naval warfare passed with little advantage to either power. In 1353, in alliance with Peter of Aragon and the Emperor of Constantinople, the Venetians sailed up the Bosphorus and came upon the enemy under Paganino Doria, off Pera. Two hours before sunset the engagement began and a long and bloody struggle raged through the night, illumined only by the lurid glare of burning ships. The Venetians were defeated, and Nicolo Pisani, their commander, retired to Crete to recruit and await reinforcements. In February 1353 he was able to join the Aragonese fleet in Sardinian waters and attack the Genoese under Ant. Grimaldi off Lojera. The enemy were outmanœuvred, their armament utterly destroyed, and Grimaldi, with a few shattered galleys, reached Genoa crushed and humiliated. Panic seized the city. In the despair engendered by defeat a momentous step was taken. The cowed Genoese surrendered their independence and implored the protection of Giov. Visconti, Lord Bishop of Milan. Time for recuperation was, however, needed, and Visconti sought peace for his new vassal by sending Petrarch to Venice as his envoy. The poet had already, by an epistle to Dandolo, which reads like an echo of his pathetic canzone All’Italia, besought the rivals to exchange the kiss of peace and not persist in a war which must end in one of the eyes of Italy being quenched, the other dimmed. As well appeal to two eagles fighting for their quarry. After some weeks at Venice, honoured as a poet but unheeded as a messenger of peace, he returned sorrowing to Milan. A year passed, and a new fleet left Genoa under Doria, who cleverly slipped by Pisani, sailed up the Adriatic, devastated Lesena, Curzola and Parenza, and anchored within striking distance of the lagoons. It was now the turn of Venice to feel alarm. The channels were fortified, a new fleet was equipped, a war tax levied. The Doge, prostrated by the news, never recovered, and died of a broken heart on September 7th, 1354. He lies in the Baptistery that he did so much to beautify, and under his noble and simple monument there still remains the Latin epitaph composed for him by Petrarch, his friend. Andrea Dandolo is remembered as a Venetian historian and an accomplished legist, a lover of the arts, and a great humanist.

On October the 4th the Bucintoro was sent to Chioggia to meet Marin Faliero, recalled from the Roman legation to assume the ducal cap. The great State barge set forth, but so dense a fog enveloped Venice that it was deemed prudent to land in small boats. The gondola bearing Faliero failed to make the usual stage by the Ponte della Paglia, and, sinister augury, landed the Doge between the red columns of the Piazzetta.

Faliero, however, began his term of office happily by signing a truce with the Genoese. The breathing time was used in concentrating the fleet, and scarcely was the term ended when Nicolo Pisani, with his son Vettore, sailed for the Ionian Isles in search of Doria. But the Genoese refused to be drawn, and Pisani went into winter quarters at Portolungo in the Morea behind the island of Sapienza. Doria saw an opportunity to trap his enemy. By a brilliant manœuvre he got part of his fleet between the Venetians and the shore, and attacking front and rear routed them with terrible loss, no less than six thousand being made prisoners. Pisani and his lieutenant, Quirini, escaped with the remnant of the armament to be impeached and degraded in Venice. Under the shadow of this disaster Venice displayed her wonted fortitude. With admirable self-control the Signory exhorted all their podestà, consuls and agents to be of good courage, and called for men and ships in defence of the fatherland. Eight thousand ducats were despatched to Genoa to soften the lot of the captives. Before, however, the spring made further operations possible, a truce was effected by the mediation of the Emperor; and while negotiations were pending for a definite peace, Europe was shocked by the news of the trial and execution of a Doge of Venice. The chroniclers give very circumstantial details of the drama, but to Petrarch, who was on terms of closest intimacy with the Doge, and to other contemporaries the whole business was shrouded in mystery. No record of the trial exists.

Faliero was of a proud and fiery temper. While podestà at Treviso he is said to have boxed the bishop’s ears for having kept him waiting at a religious procession. After the usual bull-fight and festivities in the Piazza on Carnival Thursday the Doge gave a sumptuous banquet and dance in the palace. Among the guests was a young noble, Michel Steno, who, heated with wine, misconducted himself and was by the Doge’s orders expelled from the hall. Steno, furious with rage, pencilled on the ducal chair, as he passed through the Doge’s apartment, an insulting reflection on the Doge’s honour: Marin Falier della bella mujer tu la mantien e altri la galde. Steno was accused before the Quarantia and let off with a punishment which the Doge regarded as derisory. On the morrow it befell that a choleric noble, Marco Barbaro, went to demand certain things of the Arsenal authorities, and being refused struck the Admiral Ghisello with his clenched fist. He was wearing a ring and an ugly wound was left. The Admiral, with bloody face went straightway to the Doge and prayed to be avenged. “What would you?” said the Doge; “Look at the shameful words written of me and the way that ribald Steno has been treated.” “Messer lo dose,” answered Ghisello, “if you will make yourself lord of Venice and get all those cuckold nobles cut in pieces I am prepared to help you.” The tempter spoke to willing ears. A vast conspiracy was formed to make Faliero despot of Venice. Secret meetings were held in the palace, and it was arranged that sixteen leaders should each prepare an armed force of forty men, who, however, were not to be told for what purpose they were wanted. On Wednesday, April 15th, a rumour was to be spread that the Genoese were in the lagoons, and the alarm-bell of St Mark’s to be rung. The leaders with their men were to converge on the Piazza and cut down the nobles and influential citizens who would hasten to answer the call. Faliero was then to be acclaimed lord of Venice. To incite the people to hatred of the nobles, hired roysterers were sent by night about the city doing violence to and insulting the women of the people, calling each other by well-known names of nobles as they mockingly rioted through the streets. “But the Lord God who hath ever watched over this most glorious city,” says Sanudo, “inspired Beltrame Bergamasco, one of the leaders, to go secretly to a beloved patron, Nicolo Lioni, and warn him as he valued his life not to leave his house on the 15th.” Lioni’s suspicions were aroused; he questioned Beltrame and finally locked him in a room while he went to seek Giov. Gradenigo, dubbed Nasone (big nose) and Marco Cornaro in order to take counsel together. They returned to Lioni’s house and after again questioning Beltrame decided to send messengers with an urgent summons to the Ten and the chief Councillors and officers of the State to a meeting in the sacristy of S. Salvatore. Blanched with terror they hurried together. Up to that time the complicity of the Doge was not known, but the immediate arrest of two other conspirators discovered the full danger of the situation. The Ten were equal to the emergency. The chief police officials and heads of the wards were sent for and asked to take good men and true, and arrest the leading conspirators. Armed forces were summoned from Chioggia. All means of egress from the palace were guarded; the bell-ringer forbidden to stir. On the dawn of the 16th the Ten summoned a Zonta of twenty of the wisest, best and most ancient of the nobles of Venice to join them in trying the Doge. He made no attempt to defend himself and was sentenced to death. On the 17th, the biretta removed, stripped of his ducal robes and clothed in a black gown, he was led to the spot on the landing of the staircase[39] in the courtyard where seven months before he had sworn to defend the Constitution. At one stroke his head was severed from his body. A capo of the Ten then went to the arcade of the palace over the Piazza and showed the executioner’s bloody sword to the assembled people, crying: “The great judgment has been done on the traitor.” The gates were opened and the people rushed in to see the body. At night all that remained of Marin Faliero was placed in a boat with eight lighted torches and carried to burial at S. Zanipolo. No record of the sentence is found in the acts of the Ten. On the unfilled space where the minutes should be entered are the words Ñ. Sc̄batur, “Let it not be written.” A year later his portrait was blotted out and the place covered with a black veil with the inscription: Hic est locus Marini Faletro decapitati pro criminibus. Meanwhile the leaders of the plot as they were captured were hanged in a row, with iron gags in their mouths, from the columns of the palace. St Isidore’s Day, April 16th, was made a public festival and as late as 1520 Sanudo saw carried in procession the white damask cloth bespattered with blood which was used at the execution.

On the 21st the vacant chair was filled by the election of Gradenigo il nasone, who had been largely instrumental in frustrating the plot. The Genoese negotiations dragged on, and not until the June following was the treaty of peace signed at Milan. Venetian statesmen had short rest from foreign complications. The defeat of Sapienza and the supposed laming of the executive by the miserable end of Doge Faliero, tempted the Hungarians, who were rapidly increasing in population and civilisation, to achieve their purpose of acquiring possession of a sea-board. War was declared and Francesco Carrara, who held Padua under Venetian tutelage, was called to aid his suzerain. But the Carraras aimed at founding a dynasty and gave secret assistance to King Louis of Hungary, who was besieging Treviso. The defence of Treviso and of Dalmatia was beyond the power of the Republic. After a two years’ struggle and bitter hours of humiliation, Dalmatia, bought with so much blood of Doges, patricians and people, was surrendered by the peace of Zara, in February 1358, to the King of Hungary in exchange for the retention of Treviso. Meantime Gradenigo had died (in 1356) and left to Giov. Delfino the signing of the great renunciation. Delfino was stoutly defending Treviso when elected, and being refused a permit to pass the Hungarian lines broke through by night and met the Senate at Mestre. Broken-hearted, his sight failing, he died of the plague in 1361. Under Delfino’s successor Lorenzo Celsi, Crete, never wholly subjugated, burst into revolt and terror reigned in the island. At this time Petrarch, seeking peace and security, had settled in Venice, the “only nest of liberty and sole refuge of the good.” He lived simply, at the sign of the Two Towers on the Riva degli Schiavoni, where it was his delight to stand at his window watching the huge galleys, big as the house he lived in, and with masts taller than towers, passing and repassing. The poet, honoured and cherished, was on intimate terms with the Signory and advised the employment of the famous Veronese condottiero Lucchino del Verme to subdue the island. On the 4th of June about the sixth hour the poet was at his window chatting with the Archbishop of Patras when the friends saw a galley gliding swiftly up the lagoons, her masts wreathed with flowers; her deck crowded with men waving flags; hostile banners trailed in the waters behind her. She brought the news that Lucchino, falling upon the insurgents, weakened by divided counsels, had defeated them and punished the leaders. A thanksgiving festival was ordered which lasted three days. “The Doge,” writes Petrarch, “with a numerous train took his place to watch the sports over the vestibule of St Mark’s, where stand the four bronze horses (a work of ancient and excellent art) that seem to challenge comparison with the living and raise their hoofs to tread the ground. An awning of tapestry in many colours kept off the heat of the sun and I myself was invited to sit by the right hand of the Doge.” The great Piazza, the church, the Campanile, the roofs, the arcades, the windows, were a mass of people. A magnificent pavilion next the church was filled with more than four hundred gaily dressed ladies.

English knights took part in the jousts. The poet, bored by the length of the festivities, pleaded pressure of business on the second day and came no more. But the rejoicings were premature, the revolt soon flamed forth again, and a costly campaign of twelve months was needed to quench it. Petrarch, to show his gratitude to the Venetian State, offered to make over his great collection of books to found a public library if the Republic would house them. The procurators of St Mark accepted the charge, but the ultimate fate of this priceless gift is unknown. During the short and peaceful reign of Marco Corner, Guariento of Verona was employed to paint on the walls of the Hall of the Great Council the story of Alexander III. and Barbarossa, for which Petrarch composed inscriptions. In 1368 a deputation from the Great Council headed by Vettor Pisani went in search of the procurator, Andrea Contarini, who had been chosen Doge, and found him grafting fruit trees on his farm by the Brenta. Contarini had been warned against accepting the Dogeship by a Syrian sooth-sayer, and threats of confiscation were necessary to force him from his retreat.

At the peace of Zara, Louis of Hungary had shielded Carrara from Venetian vengeance, but the erection of two forts on the Brenta now gave the Venetians a pretext for paying off old scores. Louis again stood by his ally until the lucky capture of the King’s nephew by the Venetians enabled them to exact the abandonment of the war as the price of his ransom, and Carrara was made to pay heavily for disloyalty. Petrarch accompanied the Paduan peace envoys—a grateful task to the poet of peace and concord.[40] It was his last mission to Venice.

The final act in the struggle with Genoa now draws nigh. A quarrel for precedence took place at the Coronation of the King of Cyprus between the Venetian and Genoese envoys, Malipiero and Paganino Doria, in which the latter, “being full of anger and venom,” made use of coarse and unseemly words towards the Venetians. The quarrel was renewed at the banquet that followed, and loaves of bread and other meats were used as missiles. The Cypriotes sided with the Venetians, and many of the Genoese present were flung out of the window and dashed to pieces. But it was a dispute for the possession of the classic Tenedos notissima famæ insula which made war inevitable. The Signory offered the Greek Emperor for the cession of the island (which by its position south of the Dardanelles was of great strategical importance) the sum of three thousand ducats and the return of the Imperial jewels which were held in pledge at Venice. The offer was made a demand by a threat to treat with the Turks if the Emperor refused the bargain. Paleologus had emptied his treasury to meet the cost of the Ottoman wars, and accepted the offer. The Genoese retaliated by taking in hand Andronicus, the Emperor’s rebellious and renegade son, who in return for their support promised to make them masters of the island. The islanders confronted by the rival claims, came forth bearing crosses in their hands to welcome the Venetians, and the Governor declared for St Mark. A Venetian garrison was accepted and an attempted landing by the Genoese was defeated with great slaughter. Each of the powers prepared for the struggle: Genoa by allying herself with the King of Hungary and the Carraras of Padua; Venice with Barnabo Visconti, lord of Milan, for the Milanese patronate of Genoa was of brief duration. Carlo Zeno, whose varied career and charmed life form one of the romances of history, was sent to harass the Genoese in the Mediterranean, and Vettor Pisani given command of the home fleet. After some minor successes Pisani was ordered by the Senate to go into winter quarters at Pola. While resting his exhausted crews and refitting his ships, the enemy appeared in the offing. Pisani, whose better judgment was overruled by the civil Commissioners, was compelled to give battle. Stung by a reflection on his courage he grasped a banner and led the onslaught, crying, “Who loves Messer S. Marco, let him follow me.” Luciano Doria the Genoese admiral was slain, and victory inclined at first to the Venetians, but a clever feint broke their formation. The Genoese turned and the whole Venetian fleet, save six galleys that escaped to Parenzo, was annihilated. Pisani on his arrival at Venice was accused of defective scouting, impeached, and punished by degradation and imprisonment. Venice reeled under the blow. Zeno was far away. The enemy was reinforced by Pietro Doria’s command, and for the first time during many centuries a hostile fleet swept down on the lagoons. But Venice never lost faith in herself or in her destiny. With grim determination she set her teeth and tightened her armour. The approved measures were taken to fortify the city and block the channels. Messengers were dispatched to recall Carlo Zeno. A Franciscan friar was sent to learn the price of the King of Hungary’s neutrality. But the Genoese and Paduan envoys at Buda were already singing the dirge of Venetian independence. A garrison was to be planted at St Mark’s and a castle built at Cannareggio. Her inviolable bulwark the sea was to be breached and indomitable Venice chained by a causeway to the mainland. The attempt to detach the King from his ally failed. The miserable remnant of the fine fleet was entrusted to Taddeo Giustiniani, who to hearten the men decided to attack some Genoese galleys that were hovering off Lido. As he sailed forth, a prisoner leapt from one of the enemy’s ships and swam towards the Venetian fleet. A Genoese bowman took aim and shot him in the head, but he pressed on, and when picked up warned his compatriots that the whole Genoese fleet under Pietro Doria was following. Giustiniani turned back, and his little armament was saved.