The Story of Marino Falieri
Falieri, who had passed his fifteenth lustre, had married a young lady of great beauty and elegance, and the union was naturally, perhaps inevitably, accompanied by suspicions on the part of the doting husband. They chiefly fell on the president of the old or “criminal forty” (so called to distinguish that tribunal from two others of less dignity, which took cognisance of minor matters), whom he somewhat rudely expelled from his house at an entertainment he had given to the nobility. The president felt the insult the more deeply, as his attentions had not been devoted to the wife of the doge, but to one of her women. In the impulse of the moment he wrote on the throne of the doge a verse which, whether founded on truth or not, he knew must sorely wound him, as reflecting on his honour and the fidelity of his consort. It ran:
“Marin Falieri dalla bella moglie,
Altri la gode ed egli mantiene”
(Marino Falieri of the beautiful wife; others enjoy her, he maintains her). Falieri discovered the writer, and denounced him to the public advocates; but, contrary to his expectation, those men, considering the offence a venial one, carried the cause, not before the tremendous Council of Ten, but the Criminal Forty—the very tribunal of which the accused was president. The culprit met with favour; he was condemned only to one month’s imprisonment.
From this moment the doge indulged uncontrolled animosity against the tribunal, and even the whole order of nobles, whom he regarded as the betrayers of his honour. It was followed by the hope of revenge. He knew the dissatisfaction entertained by both the plebeians and the less privileged nobles towards the government, and he artfully endeavoured to foment it. His reply to a citizen who one day complained before him that a wife or daughter had been dishonoured or insulted by a member of the grand council, produced great impression: “You will never obtain justice. Have not I myself been insulted, without the hope of adequate redress?” In a short time he organised a conspiracy, the object of which was to open the grand council to the nobility and the election of the members of all the public functionaries, of the doge himself, to the citizens at large. The evening before the day fixed for its execution, it was denounced by one of the conspirators; others were arrested and tortured; numbers were executed.[b]
But the demands of justice were not yet satisfied, and the law claimed a larger sacrifice, a nobler victim. The process against Marino Falieri followed. On the morning of Thursday, the 16th of April, 1355, the old man was led from his apartments, attired in his robes of state, to the great council chamber, where he was confronted with his accusers and his judges. The bench was composed of the six privy councillors, nine of the decemvirs, and a giunta of twenty sages, which had been specially convoked to meet the extreme gravity of the occasion. The latter had a deliberative voice merely, and no vote.
The articles of arraignment were no sooner read than Falieri made a candid and unreserved confession. He avowed all. He stigmatised himself as the worst of criminals, and as one deserving of the highest penalty which it was in the power of the laws to inflict. Without further preamble it was then put to the vote, whether the accused should suffer death. Five of the privy council and the nine decemvirs recorded their suffrages in the affirmative. It was a majority of fourteen to one. One voice alone, it seemed, asked mercy for him who had in the eyes of the aristocracy aggravated the crime of treason by fraternising with tradesmen and plebeians. After the delivery of the verdict the condemned was led back to the palace. It had been ordered that “Marino Falieri, being convicted of conspiring against the constitution, should be taken to the head of the grand staircase of St. Mark’s, and there, being stripped of the ducal bonnet and the other emblems of his dignity, should be decapitated.” The sentence was one which could not fail to strike an icy chill into every heart. But it was received by the doge with a placid equanimity worthy of the hero of Lucca.
Venice from San Giorgio