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THE MAKERS OP 
 
 VENICE 
 
 BY 
 
 MRS. OLIPHANT 
 
 Chicago 
 
 HOMEWOOD PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 
 
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 HCNRY MORSE 8T1 
 
 
 
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TO 
 
 ELIZABETH, LADY CLONCURRY. 
 
 AND 
 
 EMMA FITZMAURICE, 
 
 KIND AND DEAR COMPANIONS 
 
 OF MANY A VENETIAN F AMBLE, 
 
 THIS J300K IS INSCRIBED. 
 
 865923 
 
 Veixlcft 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 The Doges. 
 
 chapter. page. 
 
 I.~The Orseoli 15 
 
 II.— The Michieli 45 
 
 III. — Enrico Dandolo 71 
 
 IV.— Pietro Gradenigo: Change of the Constitution 97 
 
 V. — The Doges Disgraced 126 
 
 PART II. 
 By Sea and by Land. 
 
 I.— The Travelers: Niccolo, Matteo, and Marco Polo. . 147 
 
 II.— A Popular Hero 171 
 
 III. — Soldiers of Fortune: Carmagnola , 212 
 
 IV.— Bartolommeo CoUeoni 256 
 
 PART III. 
 
 The Painters. 
 
 I.— The Three Early Masters , 269 
 
 II.— The Second Generation 297 
 
 III.— Tintoretto 329 
 
 PART IV. 
 
 Men of Letters. 
 
 I.— The Guest of Venice 347 
 
 II.— The Historians 368 
 
 III.— Aldus and the Aldines 400 
 
 5 
 
 BOOK II. 
 a. N. Y. 
 
8 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of responsive brightness. In the light of summer 
 mornings, in the glow of winter sunsets, Venice 
 stands out upon the blue background, the sea that 
 brims upward to her very doors, the sky that sweeps 
 in widening circles all around, radiant with an 
 answering tone of light. She is all wonder, en- 
 chantment, the brightness and the glory of a dream. 
 Her own children cannot enough paint her, praise 
 her, celebrate her splendors; and to outdo, if 
 possible, that patriotic enthusiasm has been the 
 effort of many a stranger from afar. 
 
 When the present writer ventured to put upon 
 record some of the impressions which mediaeval 
 Florence has left upon history, in the lives and 
 deeds of great men, the work was comparatively an 
 easy one — for Florence is a city full of shadows of 
 the great figures of the past. The traveler cannot 
 pass along her streets without treading in the very 
 traces of Dante, without stepping upon soil made 
 memorable by footprints never to be effaced. We 
 meet them in the crowded ways — the cheerful 
 •painters singing at their work, the prophet-monk 
 going to torture and execution, the wild gallants 
 with their Carnival ditties, the crafty and splendid 
 statesman who subjugated the fierce republic. Faces 
 start out from the crowd wherever we turn our 
 eyes. The greatness of the surroundings, the pal- 
 aces, churches, frowning mediaeval castles in the 
 midst of the city, are all thrown into the background 
 by the greatness, the individuality, the living 
 power and vigor of the men who are their orig- 
 inators, and, at the same time, their inspiring soul. 
 
 But when we turn to Venice the effect is very 
 different. After the bewitchment of the first 
 vision, a chill falls, upon the inquirer. Where is 
 the poet, where the prophet, the princes, the 
 scholars, the men whom, could we see, we should 
 recognize wherever we met them, with whom the 
 whole world is acquainted? They are not here. 
 
 In the sunshine of the Piazza, in the glorious 
 
INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 gloom of San Marco, in the great council chambers 
 and offices of state, once so full of busy statesmen 
 and great interests, there is scarcely a figure 
 recognizable of all, to be met with in the spirit — 
 no one whom we look for as we walk, whose 
 individual footsteps are traceable wherever we 
 turn. Instead of the men who made her what she 
 is, who ruled her with so high a hand, who filled 
 her archives with the most detailed narratives, and 
 gleaned throughout the world every particular of 
 universal history which could enlighten and guide 
 her, we find everywhere the great image — an 
 idealization more wonderful than any in poetry — of 
 Venice herself, the crowned and reigning city, the 
 center of all their aspirations, the mistress of their 
 affections, for whom those haughty patricians of an 
 older day, with a proud self-abnegation which has 
 no humility or sacrifice in it, effaced themselves, 
 thinking of nothing but her glory. It is a singu- 
 lar tribute to pay to any race, especially to a race 
 so strong, so full of life and energy, loving power, 
 luxury, and pleasantness as few other races have 
 done; yet it is true. When Byron swept with su- 
 perficial, yet brilliant eyes, the roll of Venetian his- 
 tory, what did he find for the uses of his verse? 
 Nothing but two old men, one condemned for his 
 own fault, the other tor his son's, remarkable 
 chiefly for their misfortunes — symbols of the wrath 
 and the feebleness of age, and of ingratitude and 
 bitter fate. This was all which the rapid observer 
 could find in the story of a power which was once 
 supreme in the seas, the arbiter of peace and war 
 through all the difficult and dangerous East, 
 the first defender of Christendom against the 
 Turk, the first merchant, banker, carrier, whose 
 emissaries were busy in all the councils and 
 all the markets of the world. In her records 
 the city is everything — the republic, the 
 worshiped ideal of a community in which every 
 man for the common glory seems to have been wil- 
 
10 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ling to sink his own. Her sons toiled for her, each 
 in his vocation, not without personal glory, far from 
 indifferent to personal gain, yet determined above 
 all that Venice should be great, that she should be 
 beautiful above all the thoughts of other races, that 
 her power and her splendor should outdo every 
 rival. The impression grows upon the student, 
 whether he penetrates no further than the door- 
 ways of those endless collections of historic docu- 
 ments which make the archives of Venice important 
 to all the world, and in which lie the records of im- 
 measurable toil, the investigations of a succession of 
 the keenest observers, the most subtle politicians 
 and statesmen; or whether he endeavors to trace 
 more closely the growth and development of the re- 
 public, the extension of her rule, the perfection of 
 her economy. In all of these, men of the noblest 
 talents, the most intense vigor and energy, have 
 labored. The records give forth the very hum of 
 a crowd; they glow with life, with ambition, with 
 strength, with every virile and potent quality; but 
 all directed to one aim. Venice is the outcome — n6t 
 great names of individual men. 
 
 The Tuscans also loved their great and beautiful 
 city, but they loved' her after a different sort. Per- 
 haps the absence of all those outlets to the seas and 
 traffic with the wider world which molded Vene- 
 tian character gave the strain of a more violent per- 
 sonality and fiercer passions to their blood. They 
 loved their Florence for themselves, desiring an ab- 
 solute sway over her, and to make her their own — 
 unable to tolerate any rivalry in respect to her, turn- 
 ing out upon the world every competitor, fighting 
 to be first in the city, whatever might happen. The 
 Venetians, with what seems a finer purpose in a 
 race less grave, put Venice first in everything. 
 Few were the fuon-tisciti, the political exiles, sent 
 out from the city of the sea. Now and then a 
 general who had lost a battle — in order that all gen- 
 erals might be thus sharply reminded that the 
 
INTRODUCTION. U 
 
 republic tolerated no failures — would be thrust forth 
 into the wilderness of that dark world which was 
 not Venice, but no feud so great as that which ban- 
 ished Dante ever tore the city asunder, no such 
 vicissitudes of sway ever tormented her peace. A 
 grand and steady aim, never abandoned, never even 
 lost sight of, runs though every page of her story as 
 long as it remains the story of a living and indepen- 
 dent power. 
 
 Perhaps the comparative equality of the great 
 houses which figure on the pages of the Golden 
 Book of Venice may have something to do with this 
 result. Their continual poise and balance of power, 
 and all the wonderful system of checks and re- 
 straints so skilfully combined to prevent all possi- 
 bility of the predominance of one family over the 
 other, would thus have attained a success which 
 suspicion and jealousy have seldom secured, and 
 which, perhaps, may be allowed to obliterate the 
 memory of such sentiments, and make us think of 
 them as wisdom and honorable care. As in most 
 hu^man affairs, no doubt both the greater and lesser 
 motives were present, and the determination of 
 each man that his neighbor should have no chance 
 of stepping on to a higher level than himself, 
 combined with, and gave a keen edge of personal 
 feeling to, his conviction of the advantage of the 
 oligarchical-democratic government which suited 
 the genius of the people and made the republic so 
 great. Among the Contarinis, Morosinis, Tiepolos, 
 Dandolos, the Cornars and Loredans, and a host of 
 others whose names recur with endless persistency 
 from first to last through all the vicissitudes of the 
 national career, alternating in all the highest 
 offices of state, there was none which was ever per- 
 mitted to elevate itself permanently, or come within 
 sight of a supreme position. They kept each other 
 down, even while raising each other to the fullness 
 of an aristocratic sway which has never been 
 equaled in Christendom. And the ambition which 
 
12 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 could never hope for such predominance as the 
 Medici, the Visconti, the Scaligeri attained in their 
 respective cities, was thus entirely devoted to the 
 advancement of the community, the greater power 
 and glory of the state. What no man could secure 
 for himself or his own house, all men could do, secur- 
 ing their share in the benefit, for Venice. And in 
 generotis minds this ambition, taking a finer flight 
 than is possible when personal aggrandizement lies 
 at the heart of the effort, became a passion — the in- 
 spiring principle of the race. For this they coursed 
 the seas, quenching the pirate tribes that threat- 
 ened their trade, less laudably seizing the towns of 
 the coast, the islands of the sea, which interfered 
 with their access to their markets in the East. For 
 this they carried fire and flame to the mainland, and 
 snatched from amid the fertile fields the supremacy 
 of Padua and Treviso, and many a landward city, 
 making their seaborn nest into the governing head 
 of a great province; an object which was imper- 
 sonal, giving license as well as force to their pur- 
 pose, and relieving their consciences from the guilt 
 of turning Crusades and missionary enterprises alike 
 into wars of conquest. Whatever their tyrannies, as 
 whatever their hard-won glories might be, they were 
 all for Venice, and only in a secondary and subsid- 
 iary sense for themselves. 
 
 The same principle has checked, in other ways, 
 that flow of individual story with which Florence 
 has enriched the records of the world Nature at 
 first, no doubt, must bear the blame, who gave no 
 Dante to the state which perhaps might have prized 
 him more highly than his own ; but the same para- 
 mount attraction of the idolized and sovereign city, 
 in which lay all their pride, turned the early writ- 
 ers of Venice into chroniclers, historians, diarists, 
 occupied in collecting and recording everything that 
 concerned their city, and indifferent to individuals, 
 devoted only to the glory and the story of the state. 
 In later days this peculiarity indeed gave way, and 
 
INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 a hundred piping voices rise to celebrate the decad- 
 ence of the great republic; but by that time she has 
 ceased to be a noble spectacle, and luxury and vice 
 have come in to degrade the tale into one of end- 
 less pageantry deprived of all meaning — no longer 
 the proud occasional triumphs of a conquering race, 
 but the perpetual occupation of a debased and cor- 
 rupted people. To the everlasting loss of the city 
 and mankind there was no Vasari in Venice. Mes- 
 ser Giorgio, with his kindly, humorous eyes, peered 
 across the peninsula, through clouds of battle and 
 conflict always going on, and perhaps not without a 
 mist of neighborly depreciation in themselves, per- 
 ceived far off the Venetian men, and their works, 
 who were thought great painters — a rival school in 
 competition with his own. He was not near enough 
 to discover what manner of men the two long-lived 
 brothers Bellini, or the silent Carpaccio, with his 
 beautiful thoughts, or the rest of the busy citizens, 
 who filled churches and chambers with a splendor 
 as of their own resplendent air and glowing suns, 
 might be. An infinite loss to us and to the state, 
 yet completing the sentiment of the consistent story, 
 which demands all for Venice; but for the indivi- 
 dual whose works are left behind him to her glory, 
 his name inscribed upon her records as a faithful 
 servant, and no more. 
 
 Yet when we enter more closely into the often- 
 repeated narrative, transmitted from one hand to 
 another till each chronicler, with sharp, incisive 
 touches or rambling in garrulous details has 
 brought it down to his own time and personal know- 
 ledge, this severity relaxes somewhat. The actors 
 in the drama break into groups, and with more or 
 less difficulty it becomes possible to discover here 
 and there how a change came about, how a great 
 conquest was made, how the people gathered to 
 listen, and how a doge, an orator, a suppliant stood 
 up and spoke. We begin to discern, after along 
 gazing, how a popular tumult would spring up, and 
 
14 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 all Venice dart into fire and flame; and how the 
 laws and institutions grew which controlled that 
 possibility, and gradually, with the enforced assent 
 of the populace, bound them more securely than 
 ever democracy was bound before, in the name of 
 freedom. And among the fire and smoke, and 
 through the mists— we come to perceive here and 
 there a noble figure — a blind old doge, with white 
 locks streaming, with sightless eyes aflame run- 
 ning his galley ashore, a mark for all the arrows; 
 or another standing, a gentler, less prominent im- 
 age between the Pope and the Emperor; or with 
 deep eyes, all hollowed with age and thought, and 
 close-shut mouth, as in that portrait Bellini has 
 made for us, facing a league of monarchs un- 
 daunted, for Venice against the world. And though 
 there is no record of that time when Dante stood 
 within the red walls of the arsenal, and saw the gal- 
 leys making and mending, and the pitch fuming up 
 to heaven, — as all the world may still see them 
 through his eyes, — yet a milder, scholarly image, a 
 round, smooth face, with cowl and garland, looks 
 down upon us from the gallery, all blazing with 
 crimson and gold, between the horses of San Marco, 
 a friendly visitor, the best we could have, since 
 Dante left no sign behind him, and probably was 
 never heard of by the magnificent Signoria. Pe- 
 trarch stands there, to be seen by the side of the 
 historian doge, as long as Venice lasts; but not 
 much of him, only a glimpse, as is the Venetian 
 way, lest in contemplation of the poet we should 
 for a moment forget the republic, his hostess and 
 protector — Venice, the all-glorious mistress of the 
 seas, the first object, the unrivaled sovereign of her 
 children's thoughts and hearts. 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 PART I.—THE DOGES, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE ORSEOLI. 
 
 The names of the doges, though so important in 
 the old chronicles of the republic, which are in 
 many cases little more than a succession of Vttcp- 
 Duciim, possess individually few associations and 
 little sigificance to the minds of the strangers who 
 gaze upon the long line of portraits under the cor- 
 nice of the Hall of the Great Council, without paus- 
 ing with special interest on any of them, save per- 
 haps on that corner where, conspicuous by its 
 absence, the head of Marino Faliero ought to be. 
 The easy adoption of one figure, by no means par- 
 ticularly striking or characteristic, but which served 
 the occasion of the poet without giving him too 
 much trouble, has helped to throw the genuine his- 
 torical importance of a very remarkable succession 
 of rulers into obscurity. But this long line of sov- 
 ereigns, sometimes the guides, often the victims, of 
 the popular will, stretching back with a clearer title 
 and more comprehensible history than that of most 
 dynasties into the vague distances of old time, is 
 full of interest, and contains many a tragic epi- 
 sode as striking and more significant than that of 
 the aged prince whose picturesque story is the one 
 most generally known. There are, indeed, few 
 among them who have been publicly branded with 
 
 15 - 
 
16 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 the naitieof traitpn;;lJi^,, it least in the earlier chap 
 tersof ^he'great 'civic history, there are many exam- 
 ple^ of '.9t;p^pfl.'l^t*|tnig^le :and a violent death as 
 the'fe'ate'cff 'the qUi&t'eftSing and serene magnifi- 
 cence which seem fitted to the age and services of 
 most of those who have risen to that dignity. 
 They have been in many cases old men, already 
 worn in the service of their country, most of them 
 tried by land and sea — mariners, generals, legisla- 
 tors, fully equipped for all the various needs of a 
 sovereignty whose dominion was the sea, yet which 
 was at the same time weighed with all the vexations 
 and dangers of a continental rule. Their elevation 
 was, in later times, a crowning honor, a sort of 
 dignified retirement from the ruder labors of civic 
 use; but in the earlier ages of the republic this was 
 not so, and at all times it was a most dangerous 
 post, and one whose occupant was most likely to 
 pay for popular disappointments, to run the risk of 
 all the conspiracies, and to be hampered and hin- 
 dered by jealous counselors and the continual 
 inspection of suspicious spectators. To change the 
 doges was always an expedient by which Venice 
 could propitiate fate and turn the course of fortune ; 
 and the greatest misfortunes recorded in her chron- 
 icles are those of her princes, whose names were to- 
 day acclaimed to all the echoes, their paths strewed 
 with flowers and carpeted with cloth of gold, but 
 to-morrow insulted and reviled, and themselves 
 exiled or murdered, all services to the state not- 
 withstanding. Sometimes, no doubt, the overthrow 
 was well deserved, but in other instances it can be 
 set down to nothing but popular caprice. To the 
 latter category belongs the story of the family of 
 the Orseoli, which, at the very outset of authentic 
 history, sets before us at a touch the early economy 
 of Venice, the relations of the princes and the 
 people, the enthusiasms, the tumults, the gusts of 
 popular caprice, as well as the already evident pre- 
 dominance of a vigorous aristocracy, natural leaders 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 17 
 
 of the people. The history of this noble family has 
 the advantage of being set before us by the first 
 distinct contemporary narrative, that of Giovanni 
 Sagornino — John the Deacon, John of Venice, as 
 he is fondly termed by a recent historian. The in- 
 cidents of this period of power, or at least of that 
 of the two first princes of the name, incidents full 
 of importance in the history of the rising republic, 
 are the first that stand forth, out of the mist of 
 nameless chronicles, as facts which were seen and 
 recorded by a trustworthy witness. 
 
 The first Orseolo came into power after a popular 
 tumult of the most violent description, which took 
 the throne and his life from the previous doge, 
 Pietro Candiano. This event occurred in the year 
 976, when such scenes were not tmusual, even in 
 regions less excitable. Candiano was the fourth 
 doge of his name, and had been in his youth associ- 
 ated with his father in the supreme authority — but 
 in consequence of his rebellion and evil behavior 
 had been displaced and exiled, his life saved only 
 at the prayer of the old doge. On the death of his 
 father, however, the young prodigal had been 
 acclaimed doge by the rabble. In this capacity he 
 had done much to disgust and alarm the sensitive 
 and proud republic. Chief among his offenses was 
 the fact that he had acquired, through his wife, 
 continental domains which required to be kept in 
 subjection by means of a body of armed retainers, 
 dangerous for Venice, and he was superbissimo from 
 his youth up, and had given frequent offence by his 
 arrogance and exactions. Upon what occasion it 
 was that the poptilar patience failed at last we are 
 not told, but only that a sudden tumult arose 
 against him, a rush of general fury. When the 
 enraged mob hurried to the ducal palace they found 
 that the doge had fortified himself there; upon 
 which they adopted the primitive method of setting 
 fire to the surrounding buildings. Tradition asserts 
 that it was from the house of Pietro Orseolo that 
 
 2 Venice 
 
18 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 the fire was kindled, and some say by his sugges- 
 tion. It would seem that the crowd intended only 
 to burn some of the surrounding houses to frighten 
 or smoke out the doge; but the wind was high, and 
 the ducal palace, with the greater part of San Marco, 
 which was then merely the ducal chapel, was con- 
 sumed, along with all the houses stretching upward 
 along the course of the Grand Canal as far as 
 Santa Maria Zobenigo. This sudden conflagration 
 lights up, in the darkness of that distant age, a 
 savage scene. The doge seized in his arms his 
 young child, whether with the hope of saving it or 
 of saving himself by means of that shield of inno- 
 cence, and made his way out of his burning house 
 through the church, which was also burning, 
 though better able, probably, to resist the flames. 
 But when he emerged from the secret passages of 
 San Marco he found that the crowd had anticipated 
 him, and that his way was barred on every side by 
 armed men. The desperate fugitive confronted 
 the multitude, and resorted to that method so often, 
 and sometimes so unexpectedly, successful with the 
 masses. In the midst of the fire and smoke, sur- 
 rounded by those threatening, fierce countenances, 
 with red reflections glittering in every sword and 
 lance-point, reflected over again in the sullen 
 water, he made a last appeal. They had banished 
 him in his youth, yet had relented and recalled him 
 and made him doge. Would they burn him out 
 now, drive him into a corner, kill him like a'wild 
 beast? And supposing even that he was worthy of 
 death, what had the child done ; an infant who had 
 never sinned against them? This scene, so full of 
 fierce and terrible elements, the angry roar of the 
 multitude, the blazing of the fire behind that circle 
 of tumult and agitation, the wild glare in the sky, 
 and amid all, the one soft, infantine figure held up 
 in the father's despairing arms — might afford a sub- 
 ject for a powerful picture in the long succession of 
 Venetian records made by art. 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 19 
 
 When this tragedy had ended, by the murder of 
 both father and child, the choice of the city fell 
 upon Pietro Orseolo as the new doge. An ecclesi- 
 astical historian of the time speaks of his *' wicked 
 ambition" as instrumental in the downfall of his 
 predecessor and of his future works of charity as 
 dictated by remorse ; but we are disposed to hope 
 that this is merely said, as is not uncommon in 
 religious story, to enhance the merits of his conver- 
 sion. The secular chroniclers are unanimous in 
 respect to his excellence. He was a man in every- 
 thing the contrary of the late doge — a man laudato 
 dt tutti approved of all men — and of whom nothing 
 but good was known. Perhaps if he had any share 
 in the tumult which ended in the murder of Can- 
 diano, his conscience may have made a crime of it 
 when the hour of conversion came; but certainly in 
 Venice there would seem to have been no accuser to 
 say a word against him. In the confusion of the 
 great fire and the disorganization of the city, "con- 
 taminated" by the murder of the prince, and all the 
 disorders involved, Orseolo was forced into the un- 
 easy seat whose occupant was sure to be the first 
 victim if the affairs of Venice went wrong. His 
 first act was to remove the insignia of his office out 
 of the ruins of the doge's palace to his own house, 
 which was situated upon the Riva beyond and adja- 
 cent to the home of the doges. It is difficult to 
 form to ourselves an idea of the aspect of the city at 
 this early period. Venice, though already great, 
 was in comparison with its after appearance a mere 
 village, or rather a cluster of villages, straggling 
 along the sides of each muddy, marshy island, keep- 
 ing the line of the broad and navigable water-way, 
 in dots of building and groups of houses and 
 churches, from the olive-covered isle where San 
 Pietro, the first great church of the city, shone white 
 among its trees, along the curve of the Canaluccio 
 to the Rialto— Rive-Alto— what Mr. Ruskin calls 
 the deep stream, where the church of San Giacomo, 
 
20 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 another central spot, stood, with its group of dwell- 
 ings round; no bridge then dreamed of, but a ferry 
 connnecting the two sides of the Grand Canal. 
 Already the stir of commerce was in the air, and 
 the big seagoing galleys, with their high bulwarks, 
 lay at the rude wharves, to take in outward-bound 
 cargoes of salt, salt fish, wooden furniture, bowls, 
 and boxes of home manufacture, as well as the 
 goods brought from northern nations, of which they 
 were the merchants and carriers — and come back 
 laden with the riches of the East — with wonderful 
 tissues and carpets, and marbles and relics of the 
 saints. The palace and its chapel, the shrine of 
 San Marco, stood where they still stand, but there 
 were no columns on the Piazzetta, and the Great 
 Piazza was a piece of waste land belonging to the 
 nuns at San Zaccaria, which was, as one might say, 
 the parish church. Most probably this vacant 
 space, in the days of the first Orseolo, was little 
 more than a waste of salt-water grasses, and sharp 
 and acrid plants like those that now flourish in 
 such rough luxuriance on the Lido — or perhaps 
 boasted a tree or two, a patch of cultivated ground. 
 Such was the scene — very different from the Venice 
 of the earliest pictures; still more different from 
 that we know. But already the lagoon was full of 
 boats, and the streets of commotion, and Venice 
 grew like a young plant, like the quick-spreading 
 vegetation of her own warm, wet marshes, day by 
 day. 
 
 The new doge proceeded at once to rebuild both 
 the palace and the shrine. The energy and vigor 
 of the man who, with that desolate and smoking 
 mass of ruin around him — three hundred houses 
 burned to the ground and all their forlorn inhabit- 
 ants to house and care for — could yet address him- 
 self without a pause to the reconstruction on the 
 noblest scale of the great twin edifices, the glorious 
 dwelling of the saint, the scarcely less cared-for 
 palace of the governor, the representation of law 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 21 
 
 and order in Venice, has something wonderful in it. 
 He was not rich, and neither was the city;, which 
 had in the midst of this disaster to pay the dower of 
 the Princess Valdrada, the widow of Candiano, 
 whose claims were backed by the Emperor Otto, and 
 would, if refused, have brought upon the republic 
 all the horrors of war. Orseolo gave up a great 
 part of his own patrimony, however, to the rebuild- 
 ing of the church and palace; eight thousand ducats 
 a year for eighty years (the time which elapsed 
 before its completion), say the old records, he de- 
 voted to this noble and pious purpose, and sought 
 far and near for the best workmen, some of whom 
 came as far as from Constantinople, the metropolis 
 of all the arts. How far the walls had risen in his 
 day, or how much he saw accomplished, or heard 
 of, before the end of his life, it is impossible to tell. 
 But one may fancy how, amid all the toils of the 
 troubled state, while he labored and pondered how 
 to get that money together for Valdrada, and pacify 
 the emperor and her other powerful friends, and 
 how to reconcile all factions, and heal all wounds, 
 and house more humbly his poor burned-out citi- 
 zens, the sight from his windows of those fair, solid 
 walls, rising out of the ruins, must have comforted 
 his soul. Let us hope he saw the round of some 
 lower arch, the rearing of some pillar, a pearly 
 marble slab laid on, or at least the carved work on 
 the basement of a column before he went away. 
 
 The historian tells us that it was Orseolo also who 
 ordered from Constantinople the famous Palad'Oro, 
 the wonderful gold and silver work which still on 
 high days and festas is disclosed to the eyes of the 
 faithful on the great altar, one of the most magnifi- 
 cent ornaments of San Marco. It is a pity that in- 
 quisitive artists and antiquaries with their investi- 
 gations have determined this work to be at least 
 two centuries later, but Sagornino, who was the 
 doge's contemporary, could not have foreseen the 
 work of a later age, so that he must certainly refer 
 
22 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 to some former tabidam miro opere ex argento et 
 aurOy which Orseolo in his magnificence added to 
 his other gifts. Nor did the doge confine his bounty 
 to these great and beautiful works. If the beauty 
 of Venice was dear to him, divine charity was still 
 more dear. Opposite the rising palace, where now 
 stands the Libreria Vecchia, Orseolo, taking 
 advantage of a site cleared by the fire, built a hos- 
 pital, still standing in the time of Sabellico, who 
 speaks of it as the Spedale, il quale e sopra la 
 Piazza dirunpetto al Palazzo and where, according 
 to the tale, he constantly visited and cared for the 
 sick poor. 
 
 It must have been while still in the beginning of 
 all these great works, but already full of many cares, 
 the Candiano faction working against him, and per- 
 haps but little response coming from the people to 
 whom he was sacrificing his comfort and his life, 
 that Orseolo received a visit which changed the 
 course of his existence. Among the pilgrims who 
 came from all quarters to the shrine of the evangel- 
 ist, a certain French abbot, Carinus or Guarino, of 
 the monastery of St. Michael de Cusano, in Aqui- 
 taine, arrived in Venice. It was Orseolo's custom to 
 have all such pious visitors brought to his house and 
 entertained there during their stay, and he found 
 in Abbot Guarino a congenial soul. They talked 
 together of all things in heaven and earth, and of 
 this wonderful new Venice rising from the sea, 
 with all her half-built churches and palaces; and of 
 the holy relics brought from every coast for her 
 enrichment and sanctification, the bodies of the 
 saints which made almost every church a sacred 
 shrine. And no doubt the cares of the doge's 
 troubled life, the burdens laid on him daily, the 
 threats of murder and assassination with which, in- 
 stead of gratitude, his self-devotion was received, 
 were poured into the sympathetic ear of the priest, 
 who on his side drew such pictures of the holy peace 
 of the monastic life, the tranquillity and blessed 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 23 
 
 privations of the cloister, as made the heart of the 
 doo^e to burn within him. "If thou wouldst be per- 
 fect" — said the abbot, as on another occasion a 
 greater voice had said. *'Oh, benefactor of my 
 soul!" cried the doge, beholding a vista of new hope 
 opening before him, a halcyon world of quiet, 
 a life of sacrifice and prayer. He had already for 
 years lived like a monk, putting all the indulgences 
 of wealth and even affection aside. For the moment, 
 however, he had too many occupations on his hands 
 to make retirement possible. He asked for a year 
 in which to arrange his affairs; to put order in the 
 republic and liberate himself. With this agree- 
 ment the abbot left him, but true to his engage- 
 ment, when the heats of September were once more 
 blazing on the lagoon, came back to his penitent. 
 The doge in the meantime had made all his arrange- 
 ments. No doubt it was in this solemn year, which 
 no one knew was to be the end of his life in the 
 world, that he set aside so large a part of his pos- 
 sessions for the prosecution of the buildings which 
 now he could no longer hope to see completed. 
 When all these preliminaries were settled, and 
 everything done, Orseolo, with a chosen friend or 
 two, one of them his son-in-law, the sharer of his 
 thoughts and his prayers, took boat silently one 
 night across the still lagoon to Fusina, where horses 
 awaited them; and so, flying in the darkness over 
 the mainland, abandoned the cares of the prince- 
 dom and the world. 
 
 Of the chaos that was left behind, the consterna- 
 tion of the family, the confusion of the state, the 
 record says nothing. This was not the view of the 
 matter which occurred to the primitive mind. We 
 are apt to think with reprobation, perhaps too 
 strongly expressed, of the cowardice of duties aban- 
 doned and the cruelty of ties broken. But in the 
 early ages no one seems to have taken this view. 
 The sacrifice made by a prince, who gave up power 
 and freedom, and all the advantages of an exalted 
 
^4 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 position, in order to accept privation and poverty 
 for the love of God, was more perceptible then to the 
 general intelligence than the higher self-denial of 
 supporting, for the love of God, the labors and mis- 
 eries of his exalted but dangerous office. The 
 tumult and commotion which followed the flight of 
 Orseolo were not mingled with blame or reproach. 
 The doge, in the eyes of his generation, chose the 
 better part, and offered a sacrifice with which God 
 Himself could not but be well pleased. 
 
 He was but fifty when he left Venice, 'having 
 reigned a little over two years. Guarino placed his 
 friend under the spiritual rule of a certain stern 
 and holy man, the saintly Romoaldo, in whose life 
 and legend we find the only record of Pietro Orse- 
 olo's latter days. St Romoaldo was the founder of 
 the order of the Camaldolites, practicing in his own 
 person the greatest austerity of life, and imposing 
 it upon his monks, to whom he refused even the 
 usual relaxation of better fare on Sunday, which 
 had been their privilege. The noble Venetians, 
 taken from the midst of their liberal and splendid 
 life, were set to work at the humble labors of hus- 
 bandmen upon this impoverished diet. He who 
 had been the Doge Pietro presently found that he 
 was incapable of supporting so austere a rule. 
 "Wherefore he humbly laid himself at the feet of 
 the blessed Romoaldo, and being bidden to rise, 
 with shame confessed his weakness. 'Father, ' he 
 said, 'as I have a great body, I cannot for my sins 
 sustain my strength with this morsel of hard 
 bread.* Romoaldo, having compassion on the 
 frailty of his body, added another portion of biscuit 
 to the usual measure, and thus held out the hand of 
 pity to the sinking brother." The comic pathos of 
 the complaint of the big Venetian, bred amid the 
 freedom of the seas, and expected to live and work 
 upon half a biscuit, is beyond comment. 
 
 He lived many years in the humility of conven- 
 tual subjection, and died, apparently without any 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 25 
 
 advancement in religious life, in the far distance of 
 France, never seeing his Venice again. In after 
 years, his son, who was only fifteen at the period 
 of the doge's flight, and who was destined, in his 
 turn, to do so much for Venice, visited his father 
 in his obscure retirement. The meeting between 
 the almost too generous father, who had given so 
 much to Venice, and had completed the offering by 
 giving up himself at last to the hard labors and 
 humility of monastic life, and the ambitious youth, 
 full of the highest projects of patriotism and cour- 
 age, must have been a remarkable scene. The 
 elder Pietro in his cloister had, no doubt, pondered 
 much on Venice and on the career of the boy whom 
 he had left behind him there, and whose character 
 and qualities must have already shown themselves; 
 and much was said between them on this engross- 
 ing subject. Orseolo, "whether by the spirit of 
 prophecy or by special revelation, predicted to him 
 all that was to happen. 'I know,* he said, 'my son, 
 that they will make you doge, and that you will 
 prosper. Take care to preserve the rights ot the 
 Church and those of your subjects. Be not drawn 
 aside from doing justice, either by love or by hate." 
 
 Better counsel could no fallen monarch give, and 
 Orseolo was happier than many fathers in a son 
 worthy of him. 
 
 The city deprived of such a prince was very sad, 
 but still more full of longing: Molio trista, ma pm 
 desiderosa, says Sabellico; and his family remained 
 dear to Venice — for as long as popular favor usually 
 lasts. Pietro died, nineteen years after, in the 
 odor of sanctity, and was canonized, to the glory 
 of his city. His breve, the inscription under his 
 portrait in the great hall, attributes to him the 
 building of San Marco, as well as many miracles 
 and wonderful works. The miracles, however, were 
 performed far from Venice, and have no place in 
 her records, except those deeds of charity and ten- 
 derness which he accomplished among his people 
 
26 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 before he left them. These the existing corpora- 
 tion of Venice, never unwilling- to chronicle either 
 a new or antique glory, have lately celebrated by 
 an inscription, which the traveler will see from the 
 little bay in which the canal terminates, just behind 
 the upper end of the Piazza. This little triangular 
 opening among the tall houses is called the Bacino 
 Orseolo, and bears a marble tablet to the honor of 
 the first Pietro of this name, il santo, high upon the 
 wall. 
 
 In the agitation and trouble caused by Orseolo's 
 unexpected disappearance, a period of discord and 
 disaster began. A member of the Candiano party 
 was placed in the doge's seat for a short and agi- 
 tated reign, and he was succeeded by a rich but 
 feeble prince, in whose time occurred almost the 
 worst disorders that have ever been known in 
 Venice — a bloody struggle between two families, 
 one of which had the unexampled baseness of seek- 
 ing the aid against their native city of foreign arms. 
 The only incident which we need mention of this 
 disturbed period is that the Doge Memmo bestowed 
 upon Giovanni Morosini, Orseolo's companion and 
 son-in-law, who had returned a monk to his native 
 city — perhaps called back by the misfortunes of his 
 family — a certain ''beautiful little island covered 
 with olives and cypresses," which lay opposite the 
 doge's palace, and is known now to every visitor of 
 Venice as St. Georgio Maggiore. There was 
 already a chapel dedicated to St. George among the 
 trees. 
 
 Better things, however, were now in store for the 
 republic. After the incapable Memmo, young 
 Pietro was called, according to his father's prophecy, 
 to the ducal throne. "When the future historian 
 of Venice comes to the deeds of this great doge he 
 will feel his soul enlarged," says Sagredo, the 
 author of a valuable study of Italian law and eco- 
 nomics; "it is no more a newborn people of whom 
 he will have to speak, but an adult nation, rich, 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 27 
 
 conquering, full of traffic and wealth. ' ' The new 
 prince had all the qualities which were wanted for 
 the consolidation and development of the republic. 
 He had known something of that bitter but effec- 
 tual training of necessity which works so nobly in 
 generous natures. His father's brief career in 
 Venice, and his counsels from his cell, were before 
 him, both as example and encouragement. He had 
 been in France; he had seen the world. He had 
 an eye to mark that the moment had come for 
 larger action and bolder self-assertion, and he had 
 strength of mind to carry his conceptions out. And 
 he had that touching advantage — the stepping- 
 stone of a previous life sacrificed and unfulfilled — 
 upon which to raise the completeness of his own. 
 In short, he was the man of the time, prepared to 
 carry out the wishes and realize the hopes of his 
 age; and when he became, at the age of thirty, in 
 the fullness of youthful strength the first magis- 
 trate of Venice, a new chapter of her' history began. 
 It was in the year 991, on the eve of a new cen- 
 tury, sixteen years after his father's abdication, that 
 the second Pietro Orseolo began to reign. The 
 brawls of civil contention disappeared on his acces- 
 sion, and the presence of a prince who was at the 
 same time a strong man, and fully determined to 
 defend and extend his dominion, became instantly 
 apparent to the world. His first acts were directed 
 to secure the privileges of Venice by treaty with 
 the emperors of the East and West, establishing her 
 position by written charter under the golden seal 
 of Constantinople, and with not less efficacy from 
 the imperial chancellorship of the German Otto. 
 On both sides an extension of privilege and the 
 remission of certain tributes were secured. Hav- 
 ing settled this, Pietro turned his attention to the 
 great necessity of the moment, upon which the very 
 existence of the republic depended. Up to this 
 time Venice, to free herself from the necessity of 
 holding the rudder in one hand and the sword iu 
 
28 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 the other, had paid a certain blackmail, such as was 
 exacted till recent times by the corsairs of Africa, 
 to the pirate tribes, who were the scourge of the 
 seas, sometimes called Narentani, sometimes Schia- 
 voni and Croats, by the chroniclers, allied bands of 
 sea robbers who infested the Adriatic. The time 
 had come, however, when it was no longer seemly 
 that the proud city, growing daily in power and 
 wealth, should stoop to secure her safety by such 
 means. The payment was accordingly stopped, and 
 an encounter followed, in which the pirates were 
 defeated. Enraged but impotent, not daring to 
 attack Venice, or risk their galleys in the intricate 
 channels of the lagoons, they set upon the unoffend- 
 ing towns of Dalmatia, and made a raid along the 
 coast, robbing and ravaging. The result was that 
 from all the neighboring seaboard ambassadors 
 arrived in haste, asking the help of the Venetians. 
 The cruelties of the corsairs had already, more than 
 once, reduced the seaports and prosperous cities of 
 this coast to the point of desperation, and they 
 caught at the only practicable help with the precip- 
 itancy of suffering. The doge thus found the oppor- 
 tunity he sought, and took advantage of it without 
 a moment's delay. At once the arsenal was set to 
 work, and a great armata decided upon. The appeal 
 thus made by the old to the new — the ancient cities, 
 which had been in existence while she was but a 
 collection of swamp and salt-water marshes, seek- 
 ing deliverance from the newborn, miraculous city 
 of the sea — is the most striking testimony to the 
 growing importance of Venice. It was at the same 
 time her opportunity and the beginning of her con- 
 quests and victories. 
 
 When the great expedition was ready to set out, 
 the doge went in solemn state to the cathedral 
 church of San Pietro in Castello, and received from 
 the hands of the bishop the standard of San Marco, 
 with which he went on board. It was spring when 
 the galleys sailed, and Dandolo tells us that they 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 29 
 
 were blown by contrary winds to Grado, where 
 Vitale Candiano was now peacefully occupying his 
 see as patriarch. Perhaps something of the old 
 feud still subsisting made Orseolo unwilling to 
 enter the port in which the son of the murdered 
 doge, whom his own father had succeeded, was 
 supreme. But if this had been the case, his doubts 
 must have soon been set at rest by the patriarch's 
 welcome. He came out to meet the storm-driven 
 fleet with his clergy and his people, and added to 
 the armament not only his blessing, but the stand- 
 ard of St. Harmagora to bring them victory. Thus 
 endowed, with the two blessed banners blowing 
 over them, the expedition set sail once more. The 
 account of the voyage that follows is for some time 
 that of a kind of ro5^al progress by sea, the galleys 
 passing in triumph from one port to another, antic- 
 ipated by processions coming out to meet them: 
 bishops with their clergy streaming forth, and all 
 the citizens, private and public, hurrying to offer 
 their allegiance to their defenders. Wherever holy 
 relics were enshrined, the doge landed to visit them 
 and pay his devotions; and everywhere he was met 
 by ambassadors tendering the submission of another 
 and another town or village, declaring themselves 
 ''willingly" subjects of the republic, and enrolling 
 their young men among its soldiers. That this 
 submission was not so real as it appeared is proved 
 by the subsequent course of events and the perpe- 
 tual rebellions of those very cities; but in their 
 moment of need nothing but enthusiasm and delight 
 were apparent to the deliverers. At Trau a 
 brother of the Schiavonian king fell into the hands 
 of the doge and sought his protection, giving up 
 his son Stefano as a hostage into the hands of the 
 conquering prince. 
 
 At last, having cleared the seas, the expedition 
 came to the nest of robbers itself, the impregnable 
 city of Lagosta. "It is said," Sabellico reports 
 with a certain awe, "that its position was pointed 
 
30 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 out by the precipices on each side rising up in the 
 midst of the sea. The Narentani trusted in its 
 strength, and here all the corsairs took refuge, 
 when need was, as in a secure fortress. ' ' The doge 
 summoned the garrison to surrender, which they 
 would gladly have done, the same historian informs 
 us, had they not feared the destruction of their city; 
 but on that account, *'for love of their country, than 
 which there is nothing more dear to men," they 
 made a stubborn defense. Dandolo adds that the 
 doge required the destruction of this place as a con- 
 dition of peace. 'After a desperate struggle the 
 fortress was taken, notwithstanding the natural 
 strength of the rocky heights — the ' asprezza de* 
 luoglit neir ascejidere difficile — and of the Rocca or 
 great tower that crowned the whole. The object 
 of the expedition was fully accomplished when the 
 pirates' nest and stronghold was destroyed. "For 
 nearly a hundred and sixty years the possession of 
 the sea had been contested with varying fortune;" 
 now, once for all, the matter was settled. *'The 
 army returned victorious to the ships. The prince 
 had purged the sea of robbers, and all the maritime 
 parts of Istria, of Liburnia and of Dalmatia, were 
 brought under the power of Venice." With what 
 swelling sails, con vento prosper o^ the fleet must have 
 swept back to the anxious city which, with no post 
 nor dispatch boat to carry her tidings, gazed silent, 
 waiting in that inconceivable patience of old times, 
 with anxious eyes watching the horizon! How 
 the crowds must have gathered on the old primitive 
 quays when the first faint rumor flew from Mala- 
 mocco and the other sentinel isles of sails at hand! 
 How many boats must have darted forth, their 
 rowers half distracted with haste and suspense, to 
 meet the returning annata and know the worst! 
 Who can doubt that then, as always, there were 
 some to whom the good news brought anguish and 
 sorrow ; but of that the chroniclers tell us nothing. 
 And among all our supposed quickening of life in 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 31 
 
 modern times, can we imagine a moment of living 
 more intense, or sensations more acute, than those 
 which the whole city must have watched, one by- 
 one, the galleys bearing along with them their 
 tokens of victory, threading their way, slow even 
 with the most prosperous wind, through the wind- 
 ings of the narrow channels, until the first man 
 could leap on shore and the wonderful news be 
 told? 
 
 "There was then no custom of triumphs," says 
 the record, *'but the doge entered the city triumph- 
 ant, surrounded by the grateful people ; and there 
 made public declaration of all the things he had 
 done — bow all Istria and the seacoast to the furthest 
 confines of Dalmatia with all the neighboring 
 islands, by the clemency of God and the success of 
 the expedition, were made subject to the Venetian 
 dominion. With magnificent words he was ap- 
 plauded by the Great Council, which ordained that 
 not only of Venice but of Dalmatia he and his suc- 
 cessors should be proclaimed doge." 
 
 Thus the first great conquest of the Venetians was 
 accomplished, and the infant city made mistress of 
 the seas. 
 
 It was on the return of Pietro Orseolo from this 
 triumphant expedition, and in celebration of his con- 
 quests, that the great national festivity, called in 
 after days the Espousal of the Sea, the Feast of La 
 Sensa, Ascension Day, was first instituted. The 
 original ceremony was simpler, but little less impos- 
 ing than its later development. The clergy in a 
 barge all covered with cloth of gold, and in all pos- 
 sible glory of vestments and sacred ornaments, set 
 out from among the olive woods of San Pietro in 
 Castello, and met the doge in his still more splendid 
 barge at the Lido, where, after litanies and psalms, 
 the bishop rose and prayed aloud in the hearing of 
 all the people, gathered in boat and barge and 
 every skiff that would hold water, in a far-extending 
 crowd along the sandy line of the flat shore. 
 
32 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 "Grant, O Lord, that this sea may be to us and to 
 all who sail upon it tranquil and quiet. To this end 
 we pray. Hear us^ good Lord." Then the boat 
 of the ecclesiastics approached closely the boat of 
 the doge, and while the singers intoned ''Aspergt 
 me, SignofJ* the bishop sprinkled the doge and 
 his court with holy water, pouring what remained 
 into the sea. A very touching ceremonial, more 
 primitive and simple, perhaps more real and likely 
 to go to the hearts of the seafaring population all 
 gathered round, than the more elaborate and tri- 
 umphant histrionic spectacle of the Sposallzio. It 
 had been on Ascension Day that Orseolo's expedi- 
 tion had set forth, and no day could be more suitable 
 than his victorious day of early summer, when 
 Nature is at her sweetest, for the great festival of 
 the lagoons. 
 
 These victories and successes must have spread 
 the name of the Venetians arid their doge far and 
 wide; and it is evident that they had moved the 
 imagination of the young Emperor Otto II., be- 
 tween whom and Orseolo a link of union had already 
 been formed through the doge's third son, who had 
 been sent to the court of Verona to receive there 
 the Sacramento delta chrisma, the rite of confirma- 
 tion, under the auspices of the emperor, who 
 changed the boy's name from Pietro to Otto, in sign 
 of high favor and affection. When the news of the 
 conquest of Dalmatia, the extinction of the pirates, 
 and all the doge's great achievements reached the 
 emperor's ears, his desire to know so remarkable a 
 man grew so strong that an anonymous visit was 
 planned between them. Under the pretext of tak- 
 ing sea-baths at an obscure island. Otto made a sud- 
 den and secret dash across the sea and reached the 
 convent of San Servolo, on the island which still 
 bears that name, and which is now one of the two 
 melancholy asylums for the insane which stand on 
 either side of the water-way opposite Venice. The 
 doge hurried across the water as soon as night had 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 33 
 
 come, to see his imperial visitor, and brought him 
 back to pay his devotions, **according to Otto's 
 habit," at the shrine of San Marco. Let us hope 
 the moon was resplendent, as she knows how to be 
 over those waters, when the doge brought the em- 
 peror over the shining lagoon in what primitive 
 form of gondola was then in fashion, with the dark 
 forms of the rowers standing out against the silvery 
 background of sea and sky, and the little waves in 
 a thousand ripples of light reflecting the glory of 
 the heavens. One can imagine the nocturnal visit, 
 the hasty preparations ; and the great darkness of 
 San Marco, half built, with all its scaffoldings 
 ghostly in the silence of the night, and one bright 
 illuminated spot, the hasty blaze of the candles flar- 
 ing about the shrine. When the emperor had said 
 his prayers before the sacred spot which contained 
 the body of the Evangelist, the patron of Venice, 
 he was taken into the palace, which filled him with 
 wonder and admiration, so beautiful was the house 
 which out of the burning and ruins of twenty years 
 before had now apparently been completed. It is 
 said by Sagornino (the best authority) that Otto 
 was secretly lodged in the eastern tower, and from 
 thence made private expeditions into the city, and 
 saw everything; but later chroniclers, probably 
 deriving these details from traditional sources, in- 
 crease the romance of the visit by describing him as 
 recrossing to San Servolo, whither the doge would 
 steal off privately every night to sup domesticamente 
 with his guest. In one of the night visits to San 
 Marco the doge's little daughter, newly born, was 
 christened, the emperor himself holding her at the 
 font Perhaps this little domestic circumstance, 
 which disabled her Serenity the Dogaressa, had 
 something to do with the secrecy of the visit, which 
 does not seem sufficiently accounted for, unless, as 
 some opine, the emperor wanted secretly to consult 
 Orseolo on great plans which he did not live to 
 carry out. Three days after Otto's departure the 
 8 Venice 
 
S4 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 doge called the people together and informed them 
 ot the visit he had received, and further concessions 
 and privileges which he had secured for Venice. 
 *' Which things," says the record, "were pleasant to 
 them, and they applauded the industry of Orseolo 
 in concealing the presence of so great a lord." 
 Here it is a little difficult to follow the narrator. It 
 would be more natural to suppose that the Vene- 
 tians, always fond of a show, might have shown a 
 little disappointment at being deprived of the sight 
 of such a fine visitor. It is said by some, however, 
 that to celebrate the great event, and perhaps make 
 up to the people for not having seen the emperor, 
 a tournament of several days' duration was held by 
 Orseolo in the waste ground which is now the 
 Piazza. At all events the incident only increased 
 his popularity. 
 
 Nor was this the only honor which came to his 
 house. Some time after the city of Bari was saved 
 by Orseolo's arms and valor from an invasion of the 
 Saracens; and the grateful emperors of the East, 
 Basil and Constantine, by way of testifying .their 
 thanks, invited the doge's eldest son Giovanni to 
 Constantinople, where he was received with a 
 princely welcome, and shortly after married to a prin- 
 cess of the imperial house. When the young couple 
 returned to Venice they were received with extra- 
 ordinary honors, festivities, and delight; the doge 
 going to meet them with a splendid train of vessels, 
 and such rejoicing as had never before been beheld 
 in Venice. And permission was given to Orseolo to 
 associate his son with him in his authority — a favor 
 only granted to those whom Venice most delighted 
 to honor, and which was the highest expression of 
 popular confidence and trust. 
 
 "But since there is no human happiness which is 
 not disturbed by some adversity," says the sympa- 
 thetic chronicle, trouble and sorrow now burst upon 
 this happy and prosperous reign. First came a 
 great pestilence, by which the young Giovanai. the 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 35 
 
 hope of the house, the newly appointed coadjutor, 
 was carried off, along with his wife and infant child, 
 and which carried dismay and loss throughout the 
 city. Famine followed naturally upon the epidemic 
 and the accompanying panic, which paralyzed 
 all exertion — and mourning and misery prevailed. 
 His domestic grief and the public misfortune 
 would seem to have broken the heart of the 
 great doge. After Giovanni's death he was per- 
 mitted to take his younger son Otto as his coadjutor 
 but even this did not avail to comfort him. He 
 made a remarkable will, dividing his goods into 
 two parts, one for his children, another for the poor, 
 *'for the use and solace of all in our republic" — a 
 curious phrase, by some supposed to mean enter- 
 tainments and public pleasures, by others relief 
 from taxes and public burdens. When he died his 
 body was carried to San Zaccaria, per la tnsta citta e 
 lachnmosa^ with all kinds of magnificence and 
 honor. And Otto his son reigned in his stead. 
 
 Otto, it is evident, must have appeared up to 
 this time the favorite of fortune, the flower of the 
 Orseoli. He had been half adopted by the 
 emperor; he had made a magnificent marriage with 
 a princess of Hungary; he had been sent on embas- 
 sies and foreign missions; and finally, when his 
 elder brother died, he had been associated with his 
 father as his coadjutor and successor. He was still 
 young when Pietro's death gave him the full 
 authority (though his age can scarcely have been, 
 as Sabellico says, nineteen). His character is said 
 to have been as perfect as his position. "He was 
 Catholic in faith, calm in virtue, strong in justice, 
 eminent in religion, decorous in his way of living, 
 great in riches, and so full of all kinds of goodness 
 that by his merits he was judged of all to be the 
 most fit successor of his excellent father and blessed 
 grandfather," says Doge Dandolo. But perhaps 
 these abstract virtues were not of the kind to fit a 
 man for the difficult position of doge, in the midst 
 
86 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 of a jealous multitude of his equals, all as eligible 
 for that throne as he, and keenly on the watch to 
 stop any succession which looked like the beginning 
 of a dynasty. Otto had been much about courts; 
 he had learned how emperors were served; and 
 his habits, perhaps, had been formed at that duc- 
 tile time of life when he was caressed as the god- 
 son of the imperial Otto, and as a near connection 
 of the still more splendid emperors of the East. 
 And it was not only he, whose preferment was a 
 direct proof of national gratitude to his noble 
 father, against whom a jealous rival, a (perhaps) 
 anxious nationalist, had to guard. His brother 
 Orso, who during his father's lifetime had been 
 made Bishop of Torcello, was elevated to the higher 
 office of patriarch and transferred to Crado some 
 years after his brother's accession, so that the high- 
 est power and place, both secular and sacred, were 
 in the hands of, one family — a fact which would give 
 occasion for many an insinuation, and leaven the 
 popular mind with suspicion and alarm. 
 
 It was through the priestly brother Orso that the 
 first attack upon the family of the Orseoli came. 
 Otto had reigned for some fifteen or sixteen years 
 with advantage and honor to the republic, showing 
 himself a worthy son of his father, and keeping the 
 authority of Venice paramount along the unruly 
 Dalmatian coast, where rebellions were things of 
 yearly occurrence, when trouble first appeared. Of 
 Orso, the patriarch, up to this time, little has been 
 heard, save that it was he who rebuilt, or restored, 
 out of the remains of the earlier church, the cathe- 
 dral of Torcello, still the admiration of all behold- 
 ers. His grandfather had begun, his father had 
 carried on, the great buildings of Venice, the church 
 and the palace, which the Emperor Otto had come 
 secretly to see, and which he had found beautiful 
 beyond all imagination. It would be difficult now 
 to determine what corner of antique work may still 
 remain in that glorious group which is theirs. But 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 37 
 
 Orso's cathedral still stands distinct, lifting- its lofty 
 walls over the low edge of green, which is all that 
 separates it from the sea. His foot has trod the 
 broken mosaics of the floor; his voice has intoned 
 canticle and litany tinder that lofty roof. The 
 knowledge that framed the present edifice, the rev- 
 erence which preserved for its decoration all those 
 lovely relics of earlier times, the delicate Greek 
 columns, the enrichments of Eastern art — were, if 
 not his, fostered and protected by him. Behind the 
 high altar, on the bishop's high cold marble throne 
 overlooking the great temple, he must have sat 
 among his presbyters, and controlled the counsels 
 and led the decisions of a community then active 
 and wealthy, which has now disappeared as com- 
 pletely as the hierarchy of priests which once filled 
 those rows of stony benches. The ruins of the old 
 Torcello are now but mounds under the damp 
 grass; but Bishop Orso's work stands fast, as his 
 name, in faithful brotherly allegiance and magnani- 
 mous truth to his trust, ought to stand. 
 
 The attack came from a certain Poppo, Patriarch 
 of Aquileia, an ecclesiastic of the most warlike 
 mediaeval type, ot German extraction or race, who, 
 perhaps with the desire of reasserting the old 
 supremacy of his see over that of Grado, perhaps 
 stirred up by the factions in Venice, which v/ere 
 beginning to conspire against the Orseoli, began to 
 threaten the seat of Bishop Orso. The records are 
 very vague as to the means employed by this epis- 
 copal warrior. He accused Orso before the Pope as 
 an intruder not properly elected; but, without wait- 
 ing for any decision on that point, assailed him in 
 his see. Possibly Poppo's attack on Grado coin- 
 cided with tumults in the city, — "great discord 
 between the people of Venice and the doge," — so 
 that both the brothers were threatened at once. How- 
 ever that may be, the next event in the history is 
 the flight of both doge and patriarch to Istria — an 
 extraordinary event, of which no explanation is 
 
38 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 given by any of the authorities. They were both 
 in the prime of life, and had still a great party in 
 their favor, so that: it seems impossible not to con- 
 jecture some weakness, most likely on the part of 
 the Doge Otto, to account for this abandonment of 
 the position to their enemies. That there were 
 great anarchy and misery in Venice during the in- 
 terval of the prince's absence is evident, but how 
 long it lasted, or how it came about, we are not in- 
 formed. All that the chroniclers say (for by this 
 time the guidance of Sagornino has failed us, and 
 there is no contemporary chronicle to refer to) con- 
 cerns Grado, which, in the absence of its bishop, 
 was taken by the lawless Poppo. He swore "by 
 his eight oaths," says Sanudo, that he meant noth- 
 ing but good to that hapless city; but as soon as he 
 got within the gates gave it up to the horrors of a 
 sack, outraging its population and removing the 
 treasure from its churches, Venice, alarmed by 
 this unmasking of the designs of the clerical in- 
 vader, repented her own hasty folly, and recalled 
 her doge, who recovered Grado for her with a 
 promptitude and courage which make his flight, 
 without apparently striking a blow for himself, more 
 remarkable still. But this renewed prosperity was 
 of short duration. The factions that had arisen 
 against him were but temporarily quieted, and as 
 soon as Grado and peace were restored, broke out 
 again. The second time Otto would not seem to 
 have had time to fly. He was seized by his ene- 
 mies, his beard shaven off, — whether as a sign of 
 contempt, or by way of consigning him to the clois- 
 ter, that asylum for dethroned princes, we are not 
 told, — and his reign thus ignominiously and sud- 
 denly brought to an end. 
 
 The last chapter in the history of the Orseoli is, 
 however, the most touching of all. Whatever faults 
 Otto may have had (and the chroniclers will allow 
 none), he at least possessed the tender love of his 
 family. The Patriarch Orso once more followed 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 89 
 
 him into exile : but coming back as soon as safety 
 permitted, would seem to have addressed himself 
 to the task of righting his brother. Venice had not 
 thriven upon her ingratitude and disorder. A cer- 
 tain Domenico Centranico, the enemy of the Orse- 
 oli, had been hastily raised to the doge's seat, but 
 could not restore harmony. Things went badly on 
 all sides for the agitated and insubordinate city. 
 The new emperor, Conrad, refused to ratify the 
 usual grant of privileges, perhaps because he had no 
 faith in the revolutionary government. Poppo re- 
 newed his attacks, the Dalmatian cities seized, as 
 they invariably did, the occasion to rebel. And the 
 new doge was evidently, like so many other revo- 
 lutionists, stronger in rebellion than in defense of 
 his country. What with these griefs and agita- 
 tions, which contrasted strongly with the benefits 
 of peace at home and an assured government, what 
 with the pleadings of the patriarch, the Venetians 
 once more recognized their mistake. The chang- 
 ing of the popular mind in those days always 
 required a victim, and Doge Centranico was in his 
 turn seized, shaven, and banished. The crisis re- 
 calls the primitive chapters of Venetian history, 
 when almost every reign ended in tumult and mur- 
 der. But Venice had learned the advantages of 
 law and order, and the party of the Orseoli recov- 
 ered power in the revulsion of popular feeling. 
 The dishonored but rightful doge was in Constanti- 
 nople, hiding his misfortunes in some cloister or 
 other resort of the exile. The provisional rulers 
 of the republic, whoever they might be — probably 
 the chief supporters of the Orseoli — found nothing 
 so advantageous to still the tempest as to implore 
 the Patriarch Orso to fill his brother's place, while 
 thev sent a commission to Constantinople to find 
 Otto and bring him home. The faithful priest who 
 had worked so loyally for the exile accepted the 
 charge, and leaving his bishopric and its adminis- 
 tration to his deputies, established himself in the 
 
40 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 palace where he had been born, and took the govern- 
 ment of Venice in his hands. It was work to the 
 routine of which he had been used all his life, and 
 probably no man living was so well able to perform 
 it; and it might be supposed that the natural ambi- 
 tion of a Venetian and a member of a family which 
 had reigned over Venice for three generations 
 would stir even in a churchman's veins, w'hen he 
 found the government of his native state in his 
 hands; for the consecration* of the priesthood, how- 
 ever it may extinguish all other passions, has never 
 been known altogether to quench that last infirmity 
 of noble minds. 
 
 Peace and order followed the advent of the 
 bishop-prince to power. And meanwhile the em^- 
 bassy set out, with a third brother, Vitale, the 
 Bishop of Torcello, at its head, to prove to the ban- 
 ished Otto that Venice meant well by him, and that 
 the ambassadors intended no treachery. Whether 
 they were detained by the hazards of the sea, or 
 whether their time was employed in searching out 
 the retirement where the deposed doge had with- 
 drawn to die, the voyage of the embassy occupied 
 more than a year, coming and going. During these 
 long months Orso reigned in peace. Though he 
 was only vice-doge, says Sanuda, for the justice of 
 his government he was placed by the Venetians in 
 the catalogue of the doges. Not a word of censure 
 is recorded of his peaceful sway. The storm seems 
 changed to a calm under the rule of this faithful 
 priest. In the splendor of those halls which his 
 fathers had built he watched — over Venice on one 
 hand, and on the other for the ships sailing back 
 across the lagoons, bringing the banished Otto 
 home. How many a morning must he have looked 
 out, before he said his Mass, upon the rising dawn, 
 and watched the blueness of the skies and seas grow 
 clear in the east, where lay his bishopric, his flock, 
 his cathedral, and all the duties that were his; and 
 with anxious eyes swept the winding of the level 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 41 
 
 waters, still and gray, the metallic glimmer of the 
 acqua morta, the navigable channels that gleamed 
 between. When a sail came in sight between those 
 lines, stealing up from Malamocco, what expecta- 
 tions must have moved his heart ! He was, it would 
 appear, a little older than Otto, his next brother — 
 perhaps his early childish caretaker, before thrones 
 episcopal or secular were dreamed of for the boys; 
 and a priest, who has neither wife nor children of 
 his own, has double room in his heart for the pas- 
 sion of fraternity. It would not seem that Orso took 
 more power upon him than was needful for the in- 
 terests of the people ; there is no record of war in 
 his brief sway. He struck a small coin, una moneta 
 ptccola d argento, called Orseolo, but did nothing else 
 save keep peace, and preserve his brother's place 
 for him. But when the ships came back, their 
 drooping banners and mourning array must have 
 told the news long before they cast anchor in the 
 lagoon. Otto was dead in exile. There is nothing 
 said to intimate that they had brought back even 
 his body to lay it with his fathers in San Zaccaria. 
 The banished prince had found an exile's grave. 
 
 After this sad end to his hopes the noble Orso 
 showed how magnanimous and disinterested had 
 been his inspiration. Not for himself, but for Otto 
 he had held that trust. He laid down at once those 
 honors which were not his, and returned to his own 
 charge and duties. His withdrawal closes the story 
 of the family with a dignity and decorum worthy of 
 a great race. His disappointment, the failure of all 
 the hopes of the family, all the anticipations of 
 brotherly affection, have no record, but who can 
 doubt that they were bitter? Misfortune more un- 
 deserved never fell upon an honorable house, and 
 it is hard to tell which'is most sad — the death of the 
 deposed prince in the solitude of that eastern world 
 where all was alien to him, or, after a brief resur- 
 rection of hope, the withdrawal of the faithful 
 brother, his heart sick with all the wistful vicissi- 
 
42 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 tudes of a baffled expectation, to resume his bishop- 
 ric and his life as best he could. It is a pathetic 
 ending to a noble and glorious day. 
 
 Many years after this Orso still held his patri- 
 archate in peace and honor, and the name of the 
 younger brother, Vitale, his successor at Torcello, 
 appears as a member along with him of an ecclesi- 
 astical council for the reform of discipline and doc- 
 trine in the Church; while their sister Felicia is 
 mentioned as abbess of one of the convents at Tor- 
 cello. But the day of the Orseoli was over. A 
 member of the family, Domenico, '*a near rela- 
 tion," made an audacious attempt in the agitation 
 that followed the withdrawal of Orso to seize the 
 supreme power, and was favored by many, the 
 chroniclers say. But his attem.pt was unsuccessful, 
 and his usurpation lasted only a day. The leader 
 of the opposing party, Flabenico, was elected doge 
 in the reaction, which doubtless this foolish effort 
 of ambition stimulated greatly. And perhaps it 
 was this reason also which moved the people, star- 
 tled into a new scare by their favorite bugbear of 
 dynastic succession, to consent to the cruel and most 
 ungrateful condemnation of the Orseoli family which 
 followed; and by which the race was sentenced to 
 be denuded of all rights, and pronounced incapable 
 henceforward of holding any office under the re- 
 public. The prohibition would seem to have been 
 of little practical importance, since of the children 
 of Pietro Orseolo the Great there remained none ex- 
 cept priests and nuns, whose indignation, when the 
 news reached them, must have been as great as it 
 was impotent. We may imagine with what swell- 
 ing hearts they must have met, in the shadow ot 
 that great sanctuary which they had built, the two 
 bishops, one of whom had been doge in Venice, and 
 the abbess in her convent, with perhaps a humbler 
 nun or two of the same blood behind, separated only 
 by the still levels of the lagoon, from where the 
 towers and spires of Venice rose from the bosom of 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 43 
 
 the waters — Venice, their birthplace, the home of 
 their glory, from which their race was now shut 
 out. If any curse of Rome trembled from their 
 lips, if any appeal for anathema and excommunica- 
 tion, who could have wondered? But, like other 
 wrongs, that great popular ingratitude faded away, 
 and the burning of the hearts of the injured found 
 no expression. The three consecrated members of 
 the doomed family, perhaps sad enough once at the 
 failure of the succession, must have found a certain 
 bitter satisfaction then, in the thought that their 
 Otto, deposed and dead, had left no child behind 
 him. 
 
 But the voice of history has taken up the cause of 
 this ill-rewarded race. The chroniclers with one 
 voice proclaim the honor of the Orseoli, with a 
 visionary partisanship in which the present writer 
 cannot but share, though eight centuries have come 
 and gone since Venice abjured the family which 
 had served her so well. Sabellico tells, with indig- 
 nant satisfaction, that he can find nothing to record 
 that is worthy the trouble, of Flabenico, their 
 enemy, except that he grew old and died. Non 
 ragioiiain dt lor. The insignificant and envious rival, 
 who brings ruin to the last survivors of a great race, 
 is unworthy further comment. 
 
 Such proscriptions, however, are rarely so success- 
 ful. The Orseoli disappear altogether from history, 
 and their name during all the historic ages scarcely 
 once is heard again in Venice. Domenico, the 
 audacious usurper of a day, died at Ravenna very 
 shortly after. Even their great buildings, with the 
 exception of Torcello, have disappeared under the 
 splendor of later ornament or more recent construc- 
 tion. Their story has the completeness of an epic 
 — they lived, and ruled, and conquered, and made 
 Venice great. Under their sway she became the 
 mistress of the sea. And then it was evident that 
 they had completed their mission, and the race came 
 to an end; receiving its dismissal in the course of 
 
44 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 nature from those whom it had best served. Few 
 families thus recognize the logic of circumstances; 
 they linger out in paltry efforts — in attempts to re- 
 verse the sentence pronounced by the ingratitude of 
 the fickle mob, or any other tyrant with whom they 
 may have to do. But whether with their own will 
 or against it, the Orseoli made no struggle. They 
 allowed their story to be completed in one chapter 
 and to come to a picturesque and effective end. 
 
 It will be recognized, however, that Torcello is a 
 powerful exception to the extinction of all relics of 
 the race. The traveler as he stands with some- 
 thing of the sad respect of pity mingling in his 
 admiration of that great and noble cathedral, built 
 for the use of a populous and powerful community, 
 but now left to a few rough fishermen and pallid 
 women, amid the low and marshy fields, a poor 
 standing ground among the floods, takes little 
 thought of him who reared its lofty walls, and com- 
 bined new and old together in so marvelous a con- 
 junction. Even the greatest of all the modern 
 adorers who have idealized old Venice, and sung 
 litanies to some chosen figures among her sons, has 
 not a word for Orso or his race. And no tradition 
 remains to celebrate his name. But the story of 
 this tender brother, the banished doge's defender, 
 champion, substitute, and mourner — he who 
 reigned for Otto, and for himself neither sought 
 nor accepted anything — is worthy of the scene. 
 Greatness has faded from the ancient commune as 
 it faded from the family of their bishop; and Tor- 
 cello, like the Orseoli, may seem to a fantastic eye 
 to look, through all the round of endless days, wist- 
 fully yet with no grudge, across the level waste of 
 the salt sea water to that great line of Venice 
 against the western sky which has carried her life 
 away. The church, with its marbles and forgotten 
 inscriptions, its mournful, great Madonna holding 
 out her arms to all her children; its profound lone- 
 liness and sentinelship through all the ages, ac- 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 45 
 
 quires yet another not uncongenial association 
 when we think of the noble and unfortunate race 
 which here died out in the silence of the cloister, 
 amid murmurs of solemn psalms, and whispering 
 Amens from the winds and from the sea. 
 
 CHAPTER ir. 
 
 THE MICHIELI. 
 
 It is of course impossible to give here a contin- 
 uous history of the doges. To trace the first 
 appearance of one after another of the historic 
 names so familiar to our ears would be a task full 
 of interest, but far too extensive for the present 
 undertaking. All that we can attempt to do is to 
 take up a prominent figure here and there, to mark 
 the successive crises and developments of history 
 and the growth of the Venetian constitution, in- 
 volved as it is in the action and influence of success- 
 ive princes, or to follow the fortunes of one or 
 other of the famliy groups which add an individual 
 interest to the general story. Among these, less 
 for the importance of the house than for the great- 
 ness of one of its members, the Michieli find a 
 prominent place. The first doge of the name was 
 the grandfather, the third the son, of the great 
 Domenico Michieli, who made the name illustrious. 
 Vitale Michiel the first (the concluding vowel is cut 
 off, according to familiar use in many Venetian 
 names — Cornaro being pronounced Corna; Lore- 
 dano, Loredan ; and so forth) came to the dignity of 
 doge in 1096, more than a century later than the 
 accession of the Orseoli to power. In the meantime 
 there had been much progress in Venice. We 
 reach the limits within which general history 
 begins to become clear. Every day the great 
 republic, though still in infancy, emerges more and 
 more distinct from the morning mists. And the 
 
46 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 accession of Vitale Michieli brings us abreast of in- 
 formation from other sources. He came to the 
 chief magistracy at the time when all Europe was 
 thrilling with the excitement of the first Crusade, 
 and the great maritime towns of Italy began to vie 
 with each other in offering the means of transit to 
 the pilgrims. How it happens that the Venetian 
 chroniclers have left this part of their history in 
 darkness, and gathered so few details of a period so 
 important, is the standing wonder of historical 
 students. But so it is. A wave of new life must 
 have swept through the city, with all its wealth ot 
 galleys, which lay so directly in the way between 
 the east and west, and trade must have quickened 
 and prosperity increased. All that we hear, how- 
 ever, from Venetian sources is vague and general; 
 and it was not until after the taking of Jerusalem 
 that the doge felt himself impelled to join "that 
 hol}^ and praiseworthy undertaking;" and assem- 
 bling the people, proposed to them the formation 
 of an armada, not only for the primary object of the 
 Crusade, but in order that Venice might not show 
 herself backward where the Pisans and Genoese 
 had both acquired reputation and wealth. 
 
 The expedition thus fitted out was commanded 
 by his son Giovanni, with the aid of a spiritual 
 coadjutor in the person of Enrico Contarini, Bishop 
 of Castello; but does not seem to have accomplished 
 much except in the search for relics, which were 
 then the great object of Venetian ambition. A 
 curious story is told of this expedition and of the 
 bishop-commodore, who, performing his devotions 
 before his departure at the church on the Lido, 
 dedicated the San Niccolo, made it the special 
 object of his prayers that he might find, when on 
 his travels, the body of the saint. Whether the 
 determination to have this prayer granted operated 
 in other methods more practical cannot be told; but 
 certain it is that Bishop Contarini one fine morning 
 suddenly called upon the fleet to stop in front of a 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 47 
 
 little town which was visible on the top of the cliffs 
 near the city of Mira. The squadron paused in 
 full career, no doubt with many an inquiry from 
 the gazing- crowds in the other vessels not near 
 enough to see what the admiral would be at, or 
 what was the meaning of the sudden landing of a 
 little band of explorers on the peaceful coast. The 
 little town, una citta a place without a name, was 
 found almost abandoned of its inhabitants, having 
 been ravaged by some recent corsair, Turk or 
 Croat. The explorers, joined by many a boat's 
 crew as soon as the other vessels saw that some 
 adventure was on hand, found a church dedicated 
 also to San Niccolo, which they immediately began 
 to examine, not too gently, pulling down walls and 
 altars to find the sacred booty of which they were 
 in search, and even putting to torture the guardians 
 of the church who would not betray its secrets. 
 Finding nothing better to be done, they took at last 
 two bodies of saints of lesser importance, St. Theo- 
 dore to wit, and a second San Niccolo, uncle of the 
 greater saint — and prepared, though with little 
 satisfaction, to regain their ships. The bishop, 
 however, lingered, praying and weeping behind, 
 with no compunction apparently as to the tortured 
 guardians of St. Nicholas, but much dislike to be 
 balked in his own ardent desire; when lo! all at once 
 there arose a fragrance as of all the flowers of June, 
 and the pilgrims, hastily crowding back to see what 
 wonderful thing was about to take place, found 
 themselves drawn toward a certain altar, apparently 
 overlooked before, where St. Nicholas really lay. 
 One wonders whether the saint was flattered by the 
 violence of his abductors, as women are said to be 
 —yet cannot but feel that it was hard upon the 
 poor tortured custodians, the old and faithful serv- 
 ants who would not betray their trust, to see the 
 object of their devotion thus favor the invaders. 
 This story Romanin assures us is told by a con- 
 temporary. Dandolo gives another very similar 
 
48 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 adding that his own ancestor, a Dandolo, was cap- 
 tain of the ship which carried back the prize. 
 
 This would seem to have been the chief glory, 
 though but at second hand, of Vitale Michieli's 
 reign. The due corpi dt San Niccolo^ the great and 
 small, were placed with great joy in San Niccolo 
 del Lido, and that of St. Theodore deposited in the 
 Church of San Salvatore. The brief account of the 
 Crusade given by Sanudo reveals to us a hungry 
 search for relics on the part of the Venetian con- 
 tingent, varied by quarrels, which speedily came to 
 blows, with the Pisans and Genoese, their rivals at 
 sea, but little more. Nor is it apparent that the 
 life of the Doge Vitale was more distinguished at 
 home. He died, after a reign of about five years, 
 in the end of the first year of the twelfth century, 
 and for a generation we hear of the family no more. 
 
 His successor, Ordelafo, first of the Falieri, was a 
 man of great energy and character. He was the 
 founder of the great arsenal, which has always 
 been of so much importance to Venice, not less 
 now with its great miraculous scientific prodigies 
 of ironclads, and its hosts of workmen, than when 
 the pitch boiled and the hammers rang for smaller 
 craft on more primitive designs. Ordolafo how- 
 ever, came to a violent end fighting for the posses- 
 sion of the continually rebellious city of Zara, which 
 from generation to generation gave untold trouble 
 to its conquerors. His fall carried dismay and de- 
 feat to the very hearts of his followers. The 
 Venetians were not accustomed to disaster, and 
 they were completely cowed and broken down by 
 the loss at once of their leader and of the battle. 
 For a time it seems to have been felt that the re- 
 public had lost her hold upon Dalmatia, and that 
 the empire of the seas was in danger; and the dis- 
 mayed leaders came home, bringing grief and 
 despondency with them. The city was so cast down 
 that ambassadors were sent off to the King of Hun- 
 gary to sue for a truce of five years, and mourning 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 49 
 
 and alarm filled all hearts. It was at this time of 
 discomfiture and humiliation, in the year iii8, that 
 Domenico Michieli, the second of his name to bear 
 that honor, was elected doge. In these dismal cir- 
 cumstances there seems little augury of the 
 splendor and success he was to bring to Venice. 
 His first authentic appearance shows him to us in 
 the act of preparing another expedition for the 
 East, for the succor of Baldwin, the second King of 
 Jerusalem, who, the first flush of success being by 
 this time over, had in his straits appealed to the 
 Pope and to the republic. The Pope sent on Bald- 
 win's letters to Venice, and with them a standard 
 bearing the image of St'. Peter, to be carried by the 
 doge to battle. Michieli immediately prepared a 
 posseiite armata — a strong expedition. "Then the 
 people were called to counsel," the narrative goes 
 on, without any ironical meaning; and, after solemn 
 service in St. Mark's, the prince addressed the 
 assembly. The primitive constitution of the repub- 
 lic, in which every man felt himself the arbiter of 
 his country's tate, could not be better exemplified. 
 The matter was already decided, and all that was 
 needful to carry out the undertaking was that pop- 
 ular movement of sympathy which a skilled orator 
 has so little difficulty in calling forth. The people 
 pressed into the church, where, with all the solem- 
 nity of a ritual against which no heretical voice had 
 ever been raised, the patriarch and his clergy, in 
 pomp and splendor, celebrated, at the great altar 
 blazing with light, the sacred ceremonies. San 
 Marco, in its dark splendor, with that subtle charm 
 of color which makes it unique among churches, 
 was probably then more like what it is now than 
 was any other part of Venice — especially when 
 filled with that surging sea of eager faces all turned 
 toward the brilliant glow of the altar. And those 
 who have seen the great Venetian temple of to-day, 
 full of the swaying movement and breath of a 
 crowd, may be permitted to form for themselves an 
 
 4 Venice 
 
50 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 image, probably very like the original, of that 
 assembly, where pajricians, townsmen, artisans — 
 the mariners who would be the first to bear their 
 part, and those sons of the people who are the nat- 
 ural recruits of every army, all met together eager 
 for news, ready to be moved by the eloquence, and 
 wrought to enthusiasm by the sentiment of their 
 doge. It is not to be supposed that the speech of 
 Michieli, given by Sabellico in detail, is the actual 
 oration of the doge, verbally reported in the first 
 half of the twelfth century; but it has, no doubt, 
 some actual truth of language; handed down by 
 fragments of tradition and a-nonymous chronicle, 
 and it is very characteristic, and worthy ot the 
 occasion. "From you, noble Venetians, these things 
 are not hid," he says, *' which were done partlv by 
 yourselves, and partly by the other peoplos of 
 Europe, to recover the Holy Land." Then, after a 
 brief review of the circumstances, of the great 
 necessity and the appeal made to Rome, he ad- 
 resses himself thus to the popular ear: 
 
 "Moved by so great a peril, the Roman pontiff has judged 
 the Venetians alone worthy of such an undertaking, and that 
 he might securely confide it to them. Wherefore he has sent 
 commissions to your prince, and to you, Venetian citizens, 
 praying and supplicating you that in such a time of need you 
 should not desert the Christian cause. Which demand your 
 prince has determined to refer to you. Make up your minds 
 then, and command that a strong force should be prepared. 
 Which thing not only religion and our care for the Church and 
 all Christians enjoin, but also the inheritance of our fathers, 
 from whom we have received it as a charge ; which fulfilling, 
 we can also enlarge our own dominion. It is very worthy of 
 the religion of which we make profession, to defend with our 
 arms from the injuries of cruel men that country in which 
 Christ our Kmg chose to be born, to traverse weeping, in 
 which to be betrayed, taken, put upon the Cross, and that 
 His most holy body shoud have sepulture therein ; in which 
 place as testifies Holy Writ, as the great Judge yet once more 
 He must come to judge the human race. What sacred place 
 dedicated to His service, what monastery, what altar, can we 
 imagine will be so grateful to Him as this holy undertaking? 
 by which He will see the home of His childhood. His grave, 
 and, finally, all the surroundings of His humanity, made free 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 51 
 
 from unworthy bondage. But since human nature is so con- 
 stituted that there is scarcely any public piety without a 
 mixture of ambition, you, perhaps, while I speak, begin to 
 ask yourselves silently, what honor, what glory, what reward 
 may follow such an enterprise? Great and notable will be the 
 glory to the Venetian name, since our forces will appear to all 
 Europe alone sufiacient to be opposed to the strength of Asia. 
 The furthermost parts of the West will hear of the valor of the 
 Venetians, Africa will talk of it, Europe will wonder at it, 
 and our name will be great and honored in everybody's mouth. 
 Yours will be the victory in such a war, and yours will be 
 the glory. . . . 
 
 "Besides, I doubt not that you are all of one will in the 
 desire that our domain should grow and increase. In what 
 way, and by what method, think you, is this to be done? 
 Perhaps here seated, or in our boats upon ""^e lagoons? Those 
 who think so deceive themselves. The old Romans, of whom 
 it is your glory to be thought the descendants, and whom you 
 desire to emulate, did not gain the empire of the world by 
 cowardice or idleness; but adding one undertaking to another, 
 and war to war put their yoke u pon all people, and with in- 
 credible fighting increased their strength. . . . And yet 
 again, if neither the glory, nor the rewards, nor the ancient 
 and general devotion of our city for the Christian name should 
 move you, this certainly will move you, that we are bound to 
 deliver from the oppression of the unbeliever that land in 
 which we shall stand at last before the tribunal of the great 
 Judge, and where what we have done shall not be hidden, but 
 made manifest and clear. Go, then, and prepare the arma- 
 ments, and may it be well with you and with the Venetian 
 name." 
 
 This skillful mingling of motives, sacred and sec- 
 ular; the melting touch with which that land which 
 was "the place of His childhood' — il luogo della sua 
 fanciidlezza — is presented to their sight; the desire 
 for glory, which is so sweet to all ; the great civic 
 ambition to make Venice great and hear her praise ; 
 the keen sting of the taunt to those who suppose that 
 fame is to be got by sitting still or by idle exercise 
 upon the surrounding waters — returning again with 
 the force of a final argument to ''that land" where 
 the final judgment is to be held, and where those 
 who have fought for the Cross will not be hidden, 
 great or small — forms an admirable example of the 
 kind of oration which an eloquent doge might 
 
52 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 deliver to the impetuous and easily moved popu- 
 lace, who had, after all, a terrible dominant power 
 of veto if they chanced to take another turn- from 
 that which was desired. The speaker, however, who 
 had this theme, andknewso well how to set it forth, 
 must have felt that he had the heart of the people 
 in his hand and could play upon that great instrue 
 ment as upon a lute. When he had ended, tho 
 church resounded with shouts, mingled with weep- 
 ing, and there was not one in the city, we are told, 
 who would not rather have been written down in 
 the lists of that army than left to stay in peace and 
 idleness at home. 
 
 Dandolo, the most authentic and trustworthy 
 authority, describes this expedition as one of two 
 hundred ships, large and small, but other author- 
 ities reckon them as less numerous. They shone 
 with pictures and various colors, the French 
 historian of the Crusades informs us, and were a 
 delightful sight as they made their way across the 
 brilliant eastern sea. Whether the painted sails 
 that still linger about the lagoons and give so much 
 brilliance and character to the scene were already 
 adopted by these glorious galleys seems unknow:n; 
 their high prows, however, were richly decorated 
 with gilding and color, and it is apparently this 
 ornamentation to which the historian alludes. But 
 though they were beautiful to behold, their prog- 
 ress was not rapid. The doge stopped on his way 
 to besiege and take Corfu, where the squadron 
 passed the winter, as was the custom of the time. 
 Even when they set sail again they lingered among 
 the islands, carrying fire and sword for no partic- 
 ular reason, so far as appears, into Rhodes and 
 other places; until at last evil news from Palestine, 
 and the information that the enemy's fleet lay in 
 front of Joppa, blockading that port, quickened their 
 steps. Michieli divided his squadron, and beguiled 
 the hostile ships out to sea wnth the hopes of an 
 easy triumph; then, falling upon them with the 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 53 
 
 Stronger portion of his force, won so terrible and 
 complete a victory that the water and the air were 
 tainted with blood, and many of the Venetians, 
 according to Sanndo, fell sick in consequence. 
 
 It is difficult to decide whether it was after this 
 first incident of the war, or at a later period, that 
 the doge found himself, like so many generals 
 before and after him, in want of money for the 
 payment of his men. The idea of banknotes had 
 not then occurred even to the merchant princes. 
 But Michieli did what our own valiant Gordon had 
 to do, and with as great a strain, no doubt, on the 
 faith of the mediaeval mariners to whom the device 
 was entirely new. He caused a coinage to be struck 
 in leather, stamped with his own family arms, and 
 had it published throughout the fleet, upon his per- 
 sonal warrant, that these should be considered as 
 lawful money, and should be exchanged for gold 
 zecchins on the return of the ships to Venice. 
 '*And so it was done, and the promise was kept." 
 In memory of this first asstgnat the Ca' Michieli, 
 still happily existing in Venice, bears till this day, 
 and has borne through all the intervening centuries, 
 the symbol of these leathern coins upon the cheer- 
 ful blue and white of their ancestral coat. 
 
 On the arrival of the Venetians at Acre they 
 found the assembled Christians full of uncertain 
 counsels, as was unfortunately too common ; doubt- 
 ful even with which city, Tyre or Ascalon, they 
 should begin their operations. The doge proposed 
 an appeal to God under the shape of drawing lots, 
 always a favorite idea with the Venetians, and the 
 two names were written on pieces of paper, and 
 placed in the pyx on the altar, from which one was 
 drawn by a child, after Mass had been said. On 
 this appeared the name of Tyre, and the question 
 was decided. Before, however, the expedition set 
 out again, the prudent Venetian, well aware that 
 gratitude is less to be calculated upon after than 
 before the benefit is received, made his conditions 
 
64 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 with "the Barons" who represented the imprisoned 
 King Baldwin. These conditions were that in 
 every city of the Christian kingdom the Venetians 
 should have secured to them a church, a street, an 
 open square, a bath, and a bakehouse, to be held 
 free from taxes as if they were the property of the 
 king; that they should be free from all tolls on 
 entering or leaving these cities — as free as if in their 
 own dominion — unless when conveying freight, in 
 which case they were to pay the ordinary dues. 
 Further, the authorities of Baldwin's kingdom 
 pledged themselves to pay to the doge in every 
 recurring year, on the feast of SS. Peter and Paul, 
 three hundred bezants; and consented that all legal 
 differences between Venetian residents or visitors 
 should be settled by their own courts, and that, in 
 cases of shipwreck or death at sea, the property of 
 dead Venetians should be carefully preserved and 
 conveyed to Venice for distribution to the lawful 
 heirs. Finally, the third parts of the cities of Tyre 
 and Ascalon, if conquered by the help of the Vene- 
 tians — in so far at least as these conquered places 
 belonged to the Saracens and not to the Franks — 
 were to be given to the Venetians, to be held by 
 them as freely as the king held the rest. These con- 
 ditions are taken from the confirmatory charter 
 afterward granted by Baldwin. The reader will per- 
 ceive that the doge drove an excellent bargain, and 
 did not, though so great and good a man, disdain to 
 exact the best terms possible from his friends' 
 necessities. 
 
 These important preliminaries settled, the expe- 
 dition set out for Tyre, which, being very strong, 
 was assailed at once by land and by sea. The siege 
 had continued for some time without any important 
 result, and the Crusaders were greatly discouraged 
 by rumors of an attack that was being planned 
 against Jerusalem, when it began to be whispered 
 in the host that the Venetians, who were so handy 
 with their galleys, would, in case of the arrival of 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 55 
 
 the army of the King of Damascus, who was known 
 to be on his way to the relief of the city, think only 
 of their own safety, and getting up all sail abandon 
 their allies and make off to sea. This suggestion 
 made a great commotion in the camp, where the 
 knowledge that a portion of the force had escaped 
 within their power made danger doubly bitter to 
 the others who had no such possibility. The doge 
 heard the rumor, which filled him with trouble and 
 indignation. Dandolo says that he took a plank 
 from each of the galleys to make them unseaworthy. 
 "Others write," says Sabellico, "that the sails, oars, 
 and other things needed for navigation were what 
 Michieli removed from his ships." These articles 
 were carried into the presence of Varimondo or 
 Guarimondo, the patriarch, and all the assembly of 
 the leaders. The astonishment of the council of 
 war, half composed of priests, when these cumbrous 
 articles, smelling of pitch and salt water, were 
 thrown down before them, may be imagined. The 
 doge made them an indignant speech, asking how 
 they could have supposed the Venetians to be so 
 light of faith ; and, with a touch of ironical con- 
 tempt, inform^ed them that he took this means to set 
 them at their ease, and show that the men of 
 Venice meant to take Tyre, and not to run away. 
 
 Another picturesque incident recorded is one 
 which Sabellico allows may be fabulous, but which 
 Sanudo repeats from two different sources — the 
 story of a carrier pigeon sent by the relieving army 
 to encourage the people of Tyre in their manful 
 resistance, which the Christian army caught, and 
 to which they attached a message of quite opposite 
 purport, upon the receipt of which the much tried 
 and famished garrison lost heart, and at length, 
 though with all the honors of war, capitulated, and 
 threw open their gates; upon which the besiegers 
 took possession, not without much grumbling on the 
 part of the disappointed soldiers, who looked for 
 nothing less than the sacking of the wealthy city. 
 
5^ THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 The royal standard of Jerusalem was immediately 
 erected on the highest tower, those of St. Mark and 
 of the Count of Tripoli waving beside it. The 
 siege lasted, according to Dandolo, nearly four 
 months. The doge had spent Christmas solemnly 
 at Jerusalem, and it was in July that the city was 
 entered by the allies: but all the authorities are 
 chary of dates, and even Romanin is not too clear 
 on this point. It was, however, in July, 1123, that 
 the victory was gained. 
 
 In the portion of the city which fell to the share 
 of the Venetians, true to their instincts, a scheme 
 of government was at once set up. The doge put 
 in a balio cht facesse ragioiie — a deputy who should 
 do right — seek good and ensure it. Mr. Ruskin, in 
 his eloquent account of this great enterprise (which 
 it would be great temerity on our part to attempt 
 to repeat, were it not necessary to the story of the 
 doges), quotes the oath taken by inferior magis- 
 trates under the balio^ which is a stringent promise 
 to act justly by all men and "according to the 
 ancient use and law of the city. " The Venetians 
 took possession at once of their third of the newly 
 acquired town, with all the privileges accorded to 
 them, and set up their bakeries, their exclusive 
 weights and measures, their laws, their churches, 
 of which three were built without delay, and along 
 with all these, secured an extension of trade, which 
 was the highest benefit of all. 
 
 It was asserted by an anonj^mous commentator 
 upon the manuscript of Dandolo, that it was pro- 
 posed by the Crusaders, after this great success of 
 their arms, to elect the doge King of Jerusalem in 
 place of the imprisoned Baldwin: but of this there 
 seems no confirmation. Michieli was called from 
 the scene of his victories by information of renewed 
 troubles on the Dalmatian coast, and departed, 
 carrying along with him many of the fine things 
 for which Tyre was famous — the purple and the 
 goldsmith's work, and many treasures — but among 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 67 
 
 others, one on which Dandolo and Sanudo both 
 agree, a certain great stone which had stood near 
 one of the gates of Tyre since the time when our 
 Lord, weary after a journey, sat down to rest upon 
 it. Such a treasure was not likely to escape the 
 keen scent of the Venetians, so eager for relics. 
 The doge carried it away, a somewhat cumbrous 
 addition to his plunder, and when he reached home 
 placed it in San Marco, where it is still to be seen 
 in the Baptistry, a chapel not built in Michieli's 
 day, where it forms the altar, un enorme mossetto 
 de granito — as says the last guidebook. The guide- 
 book, however (the excellent one published by 
 Signori Falin and Molmenti, from the notes of 
 Lazari, and worth a dozen Murray s), says that it 
 wasVitale Michieli, and not Domenico who brought 
 over this stone from Tyre: just as Mr. Ruskin 
 assures us that it was Domenico who brought home 
 the two famous columns on the Piazzetta, of which 
 the chroniclers do not say a word. Who is to decide 
 when doctors disagree? 
 
 The homeward journey of the Venetians was full 
 of adventure and conflict. Their first pause was 
 made at Rhodes, where the inhabitants, possibly 
 encouraged by the Greek emperor in their insolence 
 to the Venetians, refused to furnish them with 
 provisions: whereupon the doge disembarked his 
 army, and took and sacked the city. After this 
 swift and summary vengeance the fleet went on to 
 Chios, which was not only treated as Rhodes had 
 been, but was robbed ot a valuable piece of saintly 
 plunder, the body of St. Isadore. The other isles 
 of the Archipelago fell in succession before the 
 victorious fleet, which passed with a swelling sail 
 and all the exhilaration of success from one to 
 another. At Cephalonia the body of San Donate 
 was discovered and carried away. Nearer home 
 the expedition executed those continually required 
 readjustments of the Dalmatian towns which 
 almost every doge in succession, since they were 
 
68 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 first annexed, had been compelled to take in hand. 
 Trau, Spalatro, and Zara were retaken from the 
 Hungarians, and the latter city, called by Sanudo 
 Belgrado {Bel^rado aoe Zara vecchm), from which 
 the Venetian governor had been banished, and 
 which had cost much blood and trouble to the 
 republic, the doge is said to have caused to be de- 
 stroyed, *'that its ruin might be an example to the 
 others," a fact which, however, does not prevent it 
 from reappearing, a source of trouble and conflict 
 to many a subsequent doge. Here, too, Michieli 
 paused and distributed the spoil, setting apart a 
 portion for God, and dividing the rest among the 
 army. Then, with great triumph and victory, after 
 an absence of nearly three years, the conquerors 
 made their way home. 
 
 A more triumphant voyage had never been made'. 
 The Venetians had, as the doge predicted, covered 
 their name with glory, and at the same time ex- 
 tended and increased their realm. They had 
 acquired the third part of Tyre and settled a strong 
 colony there, to push their trade and afford an 
 outlet for the superfluous energies of the race. 
 They had impressed the terror of their name and 
 arms upon the Grecian isles. The doge himself had 
 performed some of those magnanimous deeds which 
 take hold upon the imagination of a people, and 
 outlive for centuries all violent victories and acqui- 
 sitions. The stories of the leather coinage and of 
 the disabled galleys are such as make those tradi- 
 tions which are the very life of a people. And 
 Michieli had served his country by seizing upon the 
 imagination and sympathies of other lands. He 
 had almost been made king in Jerusalem. When 
 he passed by Sicily he had again been offered a 
 kingdom. There was nothing wanting to the per- 
 fection of his glory. And when he came home 
 triumphant, and told his story of danger and suc- 
 cesses in the same glowing area of St. Mark's, to 
 the same fervent multitude whose sanction he had 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 59 
 
 asked to the undertaking, it is easy to imagine 
 what his welcome must have been. He had brought 
 with him treasures of cunning workmanship, the 
 jewels of gold and silver, the wonderful embroid- 
 eries and carpets of the East; perhaps also the 
 secret of the glass- workers, creating a new trade 
 among the existing guilds, things to make all Venice 
 beside itself with delight and admiration. And 
 when the two saintly corpses were carried reveren- 
 tially on shore — one for Murano to consecrate the 
 newly erected church, one to remain in Venice — 
 and the shapeless mass of the great stone upon 
 which our Lord had sat in His weariness, or which, 
 as another story says, had served Him as a platform 
 from which to address the wondering crowd, with 
 what looks of awe and reverential ecstasy must these 
 sacred relics have been regarded, the crown of all 
 the victor's spoil! The enlightened, or even par- 
 tially enlightened, spectator in Venice, as well as 
 in other places, has ceased to feel any strong ven- 
 eration for dead men's bones, except under the 
 decent coverings of the tomb ; but we confess, for 
 our own part, that the stone which stood at the 
 gate of Tyre all those ages, and which the valorous 
 doge haled over the seas to make an altar of, — the 
 stone on which, tradition says, our Lord rested 
 when He passed by those coasts of Tyre and Sidon, 
 where perhaps that anxious woman who would not 
 take an answer first saw Him seated, and conceived 
 the hope that so great a prophet might give healing 
 to her child, — has an interest for us as strong as if 
 we had lived in the twelfth century and seen the 
 doge come home. The Baptistry of St. Mark's is 
 well worth examination. There is a beautiful de- 
 scription of it in the second volume of Mr. Ruskin's 
 **Stones of Venice," to read which is the next best 
 thing to visiting the solemn quiet of the place ; but 
 there is no allusion there to this one veratious relic. 
 Doge Domenico's trophy — the mighty bit of Syrian 
 stone. 
 
60 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 The doge lived but a few years after his return. 
 Mr. Ruskin, following the chroniclers, says that he 
 was the first who lighted the streets of Venice by 
 the uncertain and not very effectual method, though 
 so much better than nothing, of lamps before the 
 shrines which abounded at every corner; so that 
 the traveler, if he pleases, may find a token of our 
 doge at every Traghetto where a faint little light 
 twinkles before the shrine inclosing the dim print 
 or lithograph which represents the Madonna. Mr. 
 Ruskin would have us believe that he for one would 
 like Venice better if this were the only illumination 
 of the city ; but we may be allowed to imagine that 
 this is only a fond exaggeration on the part of that 
 master. The Venetians were at the same time 
 prohibited from wearing beards according to the 
 fashion of the Greeks — a rule which must surely 
 apply to some particular form of beard, and not to 
 that manly ornament itself, on which it is evident 
 the men of Venice had set great store. 
 
 In the year 1 1 29, having reigned only eleven years, 
 though he had accomplished so much, and achieved 
 so great a reputation, the doge, being old and 
 weary, resigned his crown and retired to San 
 Giorgio Maggiore, though whether with the inten- 
 tion of joining the brotherhood there, or only for 
 repose, we are not told. It would have been a 
 touching and grand retirement for an old prince 
 who had spent his strength for Venice, to pass his 
 latter da5^s in the island convent, where all day 
 long, and by the lovely moonlight nights that 
 glorify the lagoons, he could have watched across 
 the gleaming waters his old home and all the busy 
 scenes in which he had so lately taken the chief 
 part, and might have received in many an anxious 
 moment the visit of the reigning doge, and given his 
 counsel, and become the best adviser of the city 
 which in active service he could aid no more. But 
 this ideal position was not realized for Doge Dom- 
 enico. He had been but a few months in San 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 61 
 
 Giorgio when he died, full of years and honors, 
 and was buried in the reftige he had chosen. "The 
 place of his grave," says Mr. Ruskin, **yon find by 
 going down the steps on your right hand behind 
 the altar, leading into what was yet a monastery 
 before the last Italian revolution, but is now a finally 
 deserted loneliness. On his grave there is a heap 
 of frightful modern upholsterer's work (Long- 
 hena's), his first tomb being removed as too modest 
 and time-worn for the vulgar Venetian of the 
 seventeenth century. The old inscription was 
 copied on the rotten black slate which is breaking 
 away in thin flakes dimmed by destroying salt." It 
 is scarcely decipherable, but it is given at length 
 by Sanudo: ''Here lies the terror of the Greeks, 
 and the glory of the Venetians," says the epitaph; 
 *'the man whom Emmanuel feared, and all the world 
 still honors. The capture of Tyre, the destuction of 
 Syria, the desolation ot Hungary, proclaim his 
 strength. He made the Venetia;ns to dwell in peace 
 and quiet, for while he flourished the country was 
 safe." We add the concluding lines in the transla- 
 tion given by Mr. Ruskin: "Whosoever thou art 
 who comest to behold this tomb of his, bow thyself 
 down before God because of him." 
 
 It was probably from an idea of humility that the 
 great doge had himself buried, not in the high 
 places of the church, but in the humble corridor 
 which led to the monastery. All that Mr. Ruskin 
 says with his accustomed force about the hideous- 
 ness of the tomb is sufficiently juct; yet, though 
 nothing may excuse the vulgar Venetian of the 
 seventeenth century for his bad taste in architecture, 
 it is still morally in his favor that he desired in his 
 offensive way to do honor to the great dead — a 
 good intention which perhaps our great autocrat 
 in art does not sufficiently appreciate. 
 
 After Domenico Michieli there intervened two 
 doges, one his son-in-law Polani, another a Moro- 
 sini, before it came to the turn of his son, Vitale 
 
62 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 II., to ascend the throne. What may be called the 
 ordinary of Venetian history, the continual conflict 
 on the Dalmatian coasts, went on during both these 
 reigns with unfailing pertinacity; and there had 
 arisen a new enemy, the Norman, who had got pos- 
 session of Naples, and whose hand was by turns 
 against every man. These fightings came to little, 
 and probably did less harm than appears; other- 
 wise, if war meant all that it means now, life on the 
 Dalmatian coast, and among the Greek Isles, must 
 have been little worth the living. In the time of 
 Vitale Michieli's predecessor, Sabellico says, the 
 Campanile of San Marco was built, '*a work truly 
 beautiful and admirable. The summit of this is of 
 pure and resplendent gold, and rises to such a 
 height that not only can you see all the city, but 
 toward the west and the south can behold great 
 stretches of the sea, in such a manner that those 
 who sail from hence to Istria and Dalmatia, two 
 hundred stadii away and more, are guided by this 
 splendor as by a faithful star." This was the first 
 of the several erections which have ended in the 
 grand and simple lines of the Campanile we know 
 so well, rising straight out of the earth with a self- 
 reliant force which makes its very bareness impres- 
 sive. Rising out of the earth, however, is the last 
 phrase to use in speaking of this wonderful tower, 
 which, as Sabellico reports, wondering, is so 
 deeply founded in mysterious intricacies of piles 
 and props below that almost as much is hidden as 
 that which is visible. 
 
 ' Vitale Michieli II. has this distinction, that he 
 was the last of the doges elected by that curious 
 version of universal suffrage which is to be found 
 in this primitive age in most republics — that is to 
 say, the system by which the few who pull the 
 strings in every human community make it appar- 
 ent to the masses that the potent suggestion whis- 
 pered in their ear is their own inspiration. Such 
 had been, up to this period, the manner of electing 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 63 
 
 the doge. The few who were instinctively and by 
 nature at the head of affairs — men themselves 
 elected by nobody, the first by natural right, or be- 
 cause their fathers had been so, or because they 
 were richer, bolder, more enterprising, more auda- 
 cious, than the rest — settled among themselves 
 which of them was to be the ruler; then calling to- 
 gether the people in San Marco, gave them, but with 
 more skill and less frankness than the thing is done 
 in ecclesiastical matters among ourselves, their co7ige 
 d elite. The doge elected by this method reigned 
 with the help of these unofficial counsellors, — of 
 whom two only seem to have borne that name, — 
 and he was as easily ruined when reverses came as 
 he had been promoted. But the time of more for- 
 mal institutions was near, and the primitive order 
 had ceased to be enough for the rising intelligence, 
 or at least demands, of the people. The third 
 Michieli had, however, the enormous advantage of 
 being the son of the most distinguished of recent 
 doges, and no doubt was received with those shouts 
 of ''Provato! Provatof (that is, Approvatd) which 
 was the form of the popular fiat. One of the first 
 incidents of his reign was a brief but sharp struggle 
 for the independence of the metropolitan church of 
 Grado, once more attacked by the Patriarch of 
 Aquileia. The Venetians overcame the assailants, 
 and brought the belligerent prelate and twelve of 
 his canons as prisoners to Venice, whence, after a 
 while, they were sent home, having promised to 
 meddle with Grado no more, and to pay a some- 
 what humiliating tribute yearly — in the exaction of 
 which there is a grim humor. Every year before 
 Lent, in the heat of what we should call the Car- 
 nival, a great bull and twelve pigs were to be sent 
 to Venice, representing the patriarch and his 
 twelve canons. On the Thursday, when the mirth 
 was at its height, the bull was hunted in the Piazza, 
 and the pigs decapitated in memory of the priestly 
 captives. This curious ironical celebration lasted 
 
64 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 till the days of Sabellico and Sanudo, the latter of 
 whom entitles it the giobba di Carnevale. It shows, 
 notwithstanding all the reverential sentiments of 
 these ages of faith, how a certain contempt for the 
 priest as an adversary tempered the respect of the 
 most pious for all the aids and appurtenances of re- 
 ligion."^ 
 
 This, however, was the only victory in the life of 
 a doge so much less fortunate than his father. Italy 
 was in great commotion throughout his reign, all 
 the great northern cities, with Venice at their head, 
 being bound in what was called the Lombard 
 League against the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. 
 But the Venetians were more exposed to attacks from 
 the other side, from the smoldering enmity of the 
 Greeks, than from anything Barbarossa could do; 
 and it was from this direction that ruin came 
 upon the third Michieli. Not only were conspira- 
 cies continually fostered in the cities of the Adri- 
 atic; but the Greek Em^peror Emmanuel seized the 
 opportunity, while Venice seemed otherwise occu- 
 pied, to issue a sudden edict by which all the Vene- 
 tian traders in his realm were seized upon a certain 
 day, their goods confiscated, themselves thrown 
 into prison. His reckoning, however, was prema- 
 ture ; for the excitement in Venice when this news 
 reached the astonished and enraged republic was 
 furious; and with cries of "War! war!" the indig- 
 nant populace rushed together, offering themselves 
 and everything they could attribute, to the aveng- 
 ing of this injury. 
 
 The great preparations which were at once set on 
 foot demanded, however, a larger outlay than could 
 be provided for by voluntary offerings, and the 
 necessity of the moment originated a new movement 
 of the greatest importance to the world. The best 
 expedient which occurred to the Venetian states- 
 
 *Romanin considers the bull to have had nothing to do with 
 this commemoration, the twelve pigs accompanied by twelve 
 caKes being, he says, the tribute exacted. 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 65 
 
 men was to raise a national loan, bearing interest, 
 to collect which, officers were appointed in every 
 district of Venice with all the machinery of an in- 
 come tax, assessing every family according to its 
 means. These contributions, the first, or almost 
 the . first, directly levied in Venice, and all the in- 
 quisitorial demands necessary to regulate them, 
 passed without offense in the excitement of the great 
 national indignation, but told afterward upon the 
 fate of the doge. Vitale Michieli set out in Sep- 
 tember, 1 17 1, six months after the outrage, at the 
 head of a great fleet, to avenge it ; but misfortune 
 pursued this unlucky prince. He was beguiled by 
 his wily adversary into waiting for explanations and 
 receiving embassies, only intended to gain time; or 
 worse, to expose to the dangers of inaction and the 
 chances of pestilence the great and powerful expe- 
 dition which the Greeks were not able to encounter 
 in a more legitimate way. These miserable tactics 
 succeeded fully; lingering about the islands, at 
 Chios, or elsewhere, disease completed what discon- 
 tent and idleness had begun. The Greek emperor, 
 all the chroniclers unite in saying, poisoned the 
 wells so that everybody who drank of them fell ill. 
 The idea that poison is the cause of every such 
 outbreak of pestilence is still, as the reader knows, 
 a rooted belief of the primitive mind — one of those 
 original intuitions gone astray, and confused by 
 want of understanding, which perhaps the progress 
 of knowledge may set right; for it is very likely 
 the waters were poisoned, though not by the em- 
 peror. The great epidemic which followed was of 
 the most disastrous and fatal character; not only 
 decimating the fleet, but when it returned to Venice 
 broken and discouraged, spreading throughout the 
 city. 
 
 This great national misfortune gave rise to a curi- 
 ous and romantic incident. The family Giustinian, 
 one of the greatest in Venice, was, according to the 
 story, so strongly represented in the armada that 
 
 6 Venico 
 
66 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 the race became virtually extinct by the deaths one 
 after another, of its ii.einbers, in the disastrous voy- 
 age homeward. The only man left was a young 
 monk, or rather novice not yet professed, in the 
 convent of San Niccolo, on the Lido. When the 
 plague-stricken crews got home, and this misfor- 
 tune among so many others was made apparent, the 
 doge sent messengers to the Pope, asking that 
 young Niccolo might be liberated from his vows. 
 The old Giustiniani fathers, in the noble houses 
 which were not as yet the palaces we know, must 
 have waited among their weeping women — with an 
 anxiety no doubt tempered by the determination, 
 it the Pope should refuse, to take the matter into 
 their own hands — for the decision of Rome. And 
 it is wonderful that no dramatist or modern Italian 
 romancer, touched by the prevalent passion for 
 moral dissection, should have thought of taking for 
 his hero this young monk upon the silent shores of 
 the Lido, amid all the wonderful dramas of light 
 and shade that go on upon the low horizon sweep- 
 ing round on every side, a true globe of level, long 
 reflections, of breadth and space and solitude, so 
 apt for thought. Had he known, perhaps, before 
 he thought of dedication to the Church, young 
 Anna Michieli, between whose eyes and his, from 
 her windows in the doge's palace to the green line 
 of the Lido, there was nothing but the dazzle of the 
 sunshine and the ripple of the sea? Was there a 
 simple romance of this natural kind, waiting to be 
 turned into joyful fulfillment by the Pope's favor- 
 able answer? Or had the novice to give up his 
 dreams of holy seclusion, or those highest, all- 
 engrossing visions of ambition, which were to no 
 man more open than to a bold and able priest? 
 These are questions which might well furnish forth 
 pages of delicate description and discussion. 
 Naturally the old chronicler has no thought of any 
 such refinement. The Pope consented, and the 
 doge gave his daughter to young Niccolo, "which 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. fit 
 
 thing procured the continuance in the city of the 
 Casa Giustinian, in which afterward flourished men 
 ot the highest intellect and great orators," is all the 
 record says. The resuscitated race gave many 
 notable servants to the state, although no doge un- 
 til well on in the seventeenth century. When the 
 pair thus united had done their duty to the state, 
 Niccolo Giustinian rededicated himself in his old 
 convent and resumed his religious profession ; while 
 Anna, his wife, proceeded to her chosen nunnery, 
 and there lived a life so holy as to add to the fame 
 of her family by attaining that partial canonization 
 which is represented by the title of Beata. This, 
 one cannot but feel, was an admirable way of mak- 
 ing the best of both worlds. 
 
 "In this year," says Sanudo, "there were brought 
 to Venice from Constantinople, in three great ships, 
 three mighty columns," one of which in the course 
 of disembarkation fell into the sea, and remains 
 there, it is to be supposed, till this day; the others 
 are the two well-known pillars of the Piazzetta. 
 We need not repeat the story, so often told, of how 
 it was that, no one being able to raise them to their 
 place, a certain Lombard, Niccolo of the Barterers, 
 succeeded in doing so with wetted ropes, and asked 
 in return for permission to establish a gambling- 
 table in the space between them. Sabellico says 
 that the privilege granted went so far "that every 
 kind of deception" was permitted to be practiced 
 there ; but it can scarcely be supposed that even a 
 sharp Lombard money-changer would ask so much. 
 This permission, given because they could not help 
 it, — having foolishly pledged their word, like 
 Herod, — was, by the doge and his counsellors, made 
 as odious as possible by the further law that all 
 public executions should take place between the 
 columns. It was a fatal place to land at, and 
 brought disaster, as was afterward seen ; but its evil 
 augury seems to have disappeared along with the 
 gaming-tables, as half the gondolas in Venice lie at 
 
68 THE MAKERS OF VENICM; 
 
 its margin now. The columns would seem to have 
 been erected in the year 1172, but whether by Doge 
 Vitale or his successor is uncertain. 
 
 Other improvements were don<5^ under this doge 
 besides the elevation of the columns in the Piazzetta. 
 He filled up the canal which crossed the broad space 
 of the Piazza, still a green and open ground, partly 
 orchards and enlivened by this line of water — and 
 thus prepared the way for the work of his successor, 
 who first began to pave it, and surrounded it with 
 buildings and lines of porticoes, suggesting, no 
 doubt, its present form. There must, however, 
 have been a charm in the greenness and trees and 
 sparkling waters — grass growing and foliage wav- 
 ing at the foot of the great golden-crowned Cam- 
 panile, and adding a brightness of nature to the 
 Byzantine splendor of the church and palace. The 
 Camera degli Impreshdz, or great Public Loan Office, 
 however, — the first National Bank of Europe, — is 
 more important to history than even the ceaseless 
 improvements of the city. The first loan is said to 
 have carried interest at the rate of four per cent. — 
 a high rate for a public debt — and the organization 
 necessary to arrange and regulate it seems to have 
 come into being with wonderful speed and com- 
 pleteness. The time was beginning when the con- 
 stitution, or rather want of constitution, of the 
 ancient republic, full of the accidents and hasty ex- 
 pedients of an infant state, would no longer suffice 
 for the gradually rising and developing city. 
 
 None of these things, however, stood the doge in 
 stead when he came back beaten and humiliated, 
 with the plague in his ships, to face his judges in 
 solemn conclave in San Marco — a tumultuous 
 assembly of alarmed and half-maddened men, trem- 
 bling for their lives and for the lives of those dear to 
 them, and stung by that sense of failure which was 
 intolerable to the haughty republic. This was in 
 the month of May, 1172. F'rom the first the meet- 
 ing must have borne an air dangerous to the doge. 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 6d 
 
 against whom there began to rise a cry that he was 
 the occacion of all their evils — of the war, of en- 
 forced military service and compulsory contribu- 
 tions, and, last and greatest, of the pestilence which 
 he had brought back with him. The men who had 
 virtually elected him, who were his friends, and had 
 shared the councils of his reign, would, no doubt, 
 stand by him so far as their fears permitted; but 
 the harmless assembly called together to give its 
 sanction to the election of a new and popular doge 
 is very different from the same crowd in the tradi- 
 tionary power of its general parliament, assembling 
 angry and alarmed, its pride wounded and its fears 
 excited, to pronounce whose fault these misfortunes 
 were, and what should be done to the offender. 
 The loud outcry of tradttore, so ready to the lips of 
 the populace in such circumstances, resounded 
 through San Marco, and there were ominous mur- 
 murs that the doge's head was in danger. He tried 
 to clear himself by a touching oration, co?i pmngente 
 parole^ says one; then hastily going out of the 
 church, and from the presence of the excited 
 assembly, took his way toward San Zaccaria, along 
 the Riva, by what would seem to have been a little- 
 frequented way. As he passed through one of the 
 little calk, or lanes, called now, tradition says, Calle 
 delle Rasse, someone who had, or thought he had, 
 a special grievance, sprang out upon him and 
 stabbed him. He was able to drag himself to San 
 Zaccaria and make his confession, but no more; and 
 there died and was buried. The people, horror- 
 stricken perhaps by the sudden execution of a doom 
 which had only been threatened, gave him a great 
 funeral, and his sudden end so emphasized the 
 necessity of a relation more guarded and less per- 
 sonal between the chief ruler and the city that the 
 leading minds in Venice proceeded at once to take 
 order for elections more formal and a constitution 
 more exact. There had been, according to primi- 
 tive rule, two counsellors of permanent character, 
 
70 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 and an indefinite number of pregadt^ or men 
 "prayed" to help the doge — a sort of informal coun- 
 cil; but these were called together at the doge's 
 pleasure, and were responsible only to him. The 
 steps which were now taken introduced the prin- 
 ciple of elective assemblies, and added many new 
 precautions for the choice and for the safety of the 
 doge. The fact which we have already remarked, 
 that all the names* given belong to families already 
 conspicuous in Venice, continued with equal force 
 under the new rule. No doubt the elections would 
 be made on the primitive principle; one man sug- 
 gesting another, all of the same class as those who, 
 without the forms of election, had hitherto sug- 
 gested the successive princes, for the sanction of the 
 people. But the mass of the Venetians probably 
 thought with enthusiasm that they had taken a 
 great step toward the consolidation of their liberties 
 when they elected these Dandolos, Falieris, 
 Morosinis, and the rest, to be their representatives, 
 and do authoritatively what they had done all along 
 in more subtle ways. 
 
 Thus ended the Doges Michieli: but not the fam- 
 ily, which is one of the few which have outlived all 
 vicissitudes and still have a habitation and a name 
 in Venice. And the new regtine of elective govern- 
 ment began. 
 
 ♦Romanin informs us that a few names of the people appear 
 in early documents, as Stefano Tiuctor (dyer), Vitale Staniario 
 (tin-worker), etc., but these are so few as to prove rather than 
 confute the almost invariable aristocratic rule. 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 71 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ENRICO DANDOLO. 
 
 The first beg-innings of a more formal mode of 
 government thus followed close upon the murder 
 of Vitale Michieli, The troubles of the state under 
 his rule, as well as the prompt vengeance taken 
 upon him by the infuriated multitude, combined to 
 make it apparent that it was not for the safety or 
 dignity of Venice either to remain so entirely in the 
 hands of her chief magistrate, or to bring the 
 whole business of the state to a standstill, and im- 
 pair her reputation among foreign countries, by his 
 murder. The republic had thus arrived at a com- 
 prehension of the idea which governments of much 
 later date have also had impressed upon them pain- 
 fully, that the person of the head of the state ought 
 to be sacrosanto, sacred from violence. And, no 
 doubt, the rising complications of public life, the 
 growth of the rich and powerful community in 
 which personal character was so strong, and so 
 many interests existed, now demanded established 
 institutions and a rule less primitive than that of a 
 prince with both the legislative and executive power 
 in his hands, even when kept in check by a coun- 
 sellor or two, and the vague mass of the people, by 
 whom his proceedings had to be approved or non- 
 approved after an oration skilfully prepared to move 
 the popular mind. The Consiglio Maggiore, the 
 great Venetian Parliament, afterward so curiously 
 limited, came into being at this crisis in the na- 
 tional history. The mode of its first selection reads 
 like the description of a Chinese puzzle; and per- 
 haps the subtle, yet artless complication of elec- 
 tions, ending at last in the doge, may be taken as a 
 sort of appeal to the fates, by a community not 
 very confident in its own powers, and bent upon 
 
72 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 outwitting destiny itself. Two men were first 
 chosen by each sestiere or district (a division which 
 had been made only a short time before for the con- 
 venience of raising funds for Doge Vitale's fatal ex- 
 pedition), each of whom nominated forty of the best 
 citizens, thus forming the Great Council, who, in 
 their turn, elected eleven representatives who 
 elected the doge. The latter arrangement was 
 changed on several occasions before that which com- 
 mended itself as the best — and which was more ar- 
 tificial and childishly elaborate still — was chosen at 
 last. 
 
 The people were little satisfied at first with this 
 constitutional change, and there were tumults and 
 threatened insurrections in anticipation of the new 
 body of electors, and of the choice of a prince other- 
 wise than by acclamation of the whole community, 
 assembled in San Marco. "It was in consequence 
 ordained," says Romanin, *'that the new doge 
 should be presented to the multitude with these 
 words: *This is your doge, if it pleases you,' and 
 by this means the tumult was stilled." So easy is 
 it to deceive the multitude! What difference the 
 new rules made in reality it would be difficult to 
 say. The council was made up of the same men 
 who had always ruled Venice. A larger number, 
 no doubt, had actual power, but there was no 
 change of hands. The same fact we have already 
 noted as evident through all the history of the re- 
 public. New names rarely rise out of the crowd. 
 The families from among whom all functionaries 
 were chosen at the beginning of all things still held 
 power at the end. 
 
 The power of the doge was greatly limited by 
 these new laws, but at least his person was safe. 
 He might be relieved from his office, as happened 
 sometimes, but, save in one memorable instance, 
 he was no longer liable to violence. And he was 
 surrounded by greater state and received all the 
 semi-oriental honors which could adorn a pageant. 
 
THE MAKERS OP VENICE. 73 
 
 Sebastiano Ziani, the first doge chosen under the 
 new order, was carried in triumph round the 
 Piazza, throwing- money to the crowd from his un- 
 steady seat. Whether this was his own idea (for he 
 was very rich and liberal), or whether it was sug- 
 gested to him as a way of increasing his popularity, 
 we are not told; but the jealous aristocrats about 
 him, who had just got hold ot the power of law- 
 making, and evidently thought there could not be 
 too detailed a code, seized upon the idea, perceiv- 
 ing at once its picturesque and attractive possibili- 
 ties and its dangers, decided that this largesse 
 should always be given by a new doge, but settled 
 the sum, not less than a hundred nor more than a 
 hundred and fifty ducats, with jealous determina- 
 tion that no wealthy potentate should steal the hearts 
 of the populace with gifts. There came to be in 
 later times a special coinage for the purpose, called 
 Oselle^ of which specimens are still to be found, 
 and which antiquarians, or rather those lovers of 
 the curious who have swamped the true antiqua- 
 rian, *'pick up" wherever they appear^ 
 
 Sebastiano Ziani, according to some of our chron- 
 iclers, was not the man upon whom the eleven elec- 
 tors first fixed their choice, who was, it is said, 
 Aurio, or Orio Mastropiero, the companion of Ziani 
 in a recent embassage, and his friend; who 
 pointed out that Ziani was much older and richer 
 than himself, and that it would be to the greater 
 advantage of Venice that he should be chosen — a 
 magnanimous piece of advice. This story unfortun- 
 ately is not authenticated; neither is the much 
 more important one of the romantic circumstances 
 touching the encounter of Pope Alexander III. and 
 the Emperor Barbarossa at Venice, which the too 
 conscientious historian, Romanin (not to speak of 
 his authorities), will not hear of, notwithstanding 
 the assertions of Sanudo, Sabellico, and the rest, 
 and the popular faith and the pictures in the 
 ducal palace, all of which maintain it strongly. 
 
74 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 The popular tale is as follows. It is painted in the 
 hall of the Maggiore Consiglio, where all the world 
 may see it. 
 
 The Pope, driven from Rome by the enmity of 
 the emperor, after many wanderings about the 
 world, took refuge in Venice, where he concealed 
 himself in the humble habit of a friar; acting, 
 some say, as cook to the brethren in the convent 
 of La Carita. The doge, hearing how great a per- 
 sonage was in the city, hurried to visit him, and to 
 give him a lodging worthy of his dignity; then sent 
 ambassadors to intercede with Barbarossa on his 
 behalf. He of the red beard received benignly the 
 orators of the great republic ; but when he heard 
 their errand, changed countenance, and bade them 
 tell the doge that unless he delivered up the fugi- 
 tive Pope it would be the worse for him — that the 
 eagle should fly into the church of San Marco, and 
 that its foundation should be made as a plowed 
 field. Such words as these are not apt to Venetian 
 ears. The whole city rose as one man, and an 
 armata was immediately prepared to resist any that 
 might be sent against Venice. The doge himself, 
 though an old man over seventy, led the fleet. 
 Mass was said solemnly in vSan Marco by the Pontiff 
 himself, who girded his loyal defender with a 
 golden sword, and blessed him as he went forth to 
 battle. There were seventy-five galleys on the op- 
 posite sided, commanded by young Prince Otto, the 
 son of Barbarossa, and but thirty on that of Ve- 
 nice. It was once more the day of the Ascension — 
 that fortunate day for the republic — when the two 
 fleets met in the Adriatic. The encounter ended in 
 complete defeat to the imperial ships, of which 
 forty were taken, along with the commander, Otto, 
 and many of his most distinguished followers. The 
 Venetians went home with natural exultation, send- 
 ing before them the glorious news, which was so un- 
 expected, and so speedy, that the whole city rushed 
 to the Riva, with half-incredulous wonder and joy 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. IB 
 
 to see the victors disembark with their prisoners, 
 among them the son of the great German prince, 
 who had set out with the intention of planting his 
 eagles in San Marco. The Pope himself came 
 down to the Riva to meet the victorious doge, and 
 drawing a ring from his finger gave it to his deliv- 
 erer, hailing him as the lord and master of the sea. 
 It was on Ascension Day that Pietro Orseolo had 
 set out from Venice on the triumphant expedition 
 which ended in the extermination of the pirates, 
 and the extension of the Venetian sway over all the 
 coast of the Adriatic — and then it was, according 
 to our chroniclers, that the feast of the Sponalizio^ 
 the wedding of the sea, had been first established. 
 But by this time they have forgotten that early 
 hint, and here we have once more, and with more 
 detailed authorities, the institution of this great 
 and picturesque ceremony. 
 
 Prince Otto was nobly treated by his captors, and 
 after a while undertook to be their ambassador t© 
 his father, and was sent on parole to Rome to the 
 emperor. The result was that Frederick yielded 
 to his son's representations, and the Venetian pro- 
 wess, and consented to go to Venice, and there be 
 reconciled to the Pope. The meeting took place 
 before the gates of San Marco, where His Holiness, 
 in all his splendor , seated in a great chair {grande 
 e honoratissima 5^^^^), awaited the coming of his rival. 
 Popular tradition never imagined a more striking 
 scene : the Piazza outside thronged, every window, 
 balcony, and housetop, with eager spectators, used 
 to form part of every public event and spectacle, 
 and knowing exactly every coign of vantage, and 
 how to see a pageant best. The great Frederic!:, 
 the story goes, approached the seat where the vicar 
 of Christ awaited him, and subduing his pride to 
 necessity, knelt and kissed the Pope's foot. Alex- 
 ander, on his part, as proud and elated with his vic- 
 tory, raised his foot and planted it on Barbarossa's 
 
76 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 neck, intoning as he did so, as Sabellico says, that 
 Psalm of David, ''Super esptdem et basthscum am- 
 bulabts.'' The emperor, with a suppressed roar of 
 defiance in his red beard, exclaimed: "Not thee, 
 but Peter!*' To which the Pope, like one enraged, 
 planting his foot more firmly, replied: "Both I 
 and Peter." One can imagine this brief colloquy 
 carried on, under their breath, fierce and terse, 
 when the two enemies, greatest in all the western 
 hemisphere, met in forced amity ; and how the good 
 doge, amiable peacemaker and master of the cere- 
 monies, and all the alarmed nobles, and the crowds 
 of spectators, ripe for any wonder, must have looked 
 on, marveling what words of blessing they were 
 saying to each other, while all the lesser greatnesses 
 had to wait. 
 
 But the later historians refuse their affirmation to 
 this exceedingly circumstantial, most picturesque, 
 and, it must be added, most natural story. Ro- 
 manin assures us, on the faith of all the documents, 
 that the meeting was a stately ceremonial, arranged 
 by Pope and emperor, without either passion or 
 humiliation in it; that the Pope was not a fugitive 
 in Venice, and that the emperor never threatened to 
 fly his eagles into San Marco; that Prince Otto 
 never was made prisoner, and that the Pontiff 
 received with nothing less satisfactory than a kiss 
 of peace the formal homage of the emperor. The 
 facts are hard to deny, and no doubt Romanin is 
 right. But there is a depth of human nature in the 
 fable which the facts do not reveal. It is impossi- 
 ble to imagine anything more likely to be true than 
 that brief interchange of words, the churchman's 
 triumph and the statesman's unwilling submis- 
 sion. 
 
 The story goes on to tell how Doge Ziani escorted 
 his two splendid guests to Ancona, where the Pope 
 and the emperor were presented with umprellas — a 
 tribute apparently made to their exalted rank; 
 whereupon the Pope requested that a third might 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 77 
 
 be brought: " Manca la terzapel Doge de Veiiezia 
 chi ben lo rnenta^'" from which incident arose the 
 use of this royal, if u.nimposing, article by the 
 doges ever after. The Pope had previously granted 
 the privilege of sealing with lead instead of wax — 
 another imperial attribute. To all this picturesque 
 narrative Romanin again presents an array of chill- 
 ing facts, proving that the Pope and emperor left 
 Venice singly on different dates, and that the doges 
 of Venice had carried the umbrella and used the 
 leaden bollo long before Ziani — all which is very 
 disconcerting. It seems to be true, however, that 
 during the stay of the Pope in Venice the feast of 
 the Sensa — Ascension Day — was held with special 
 solemnity, and its pageant fully recorded for the 
 first time. The doge went forth in the Bucintoro, 
 which here suddenly springs into knowledge, all 
 decorated and glorious, with his umbrella over his 
 head, a white flag which the Pope had given him 
 flying beside the standard of St. Mark, the silver 
 trumpets sounding, the clergy with him and all the 
 great potentates of the city, and Venice following, 
 small and great, in every kind of barge or skifl: 
 which could venture on the lagoon. It is said to 
 have been with a ring which the Pope had given 
 him that old Ziani wedded the sea. Whether the 
 ceremony had fallen into disuse, or if our chron- 
 iclers merely forgot that they had assigned it to an 
 earlier date, or if this was the moment when the sim- 
 pler primtive rite was changed into its later form, it 
 is diflicult to say. It must be added that the strange 
 travesty of history thus put together is regarded 
 with a certain doubt by the chroniclers themselves. 
 Sabellico for one falters over it. He would not 
 have ventured to record it, he says, if he had not 
 found the account confirmed by every writer, both 
 Venetian and foreign. *'And," says Sanudo, "Is it 
 not depicted in the hall of the great council? Se 
 non fosse stata vet a i nostri buo?it Venettam noil avreb- 
 bero mat fatta depingere'' — (if it had not been true 
 
78 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 our good Venetians never would have had it 
 painted). 
 
 It was during the stormy reign of Vitale Mich- 
 ieli, in the midst of the bitter and violent quarrel 
 between the Greek Emperor Emmanuel and the 
 Venetians, when ambassadors were continually- 
 coming and going, that an outrage, which cannot 
 be called other than historical, and yet can be sup- 
 ported by no valid proof, is said to have been in- 
 flicted upon one of the messengers of Venice. This 
 was the noble Arrigo or Enrico Dandola, after- 
 ward one of the most distinguished of the doges, 
 and the avenger of all Venetian wrongs upon the 
 Greeks. The story is that in the course of some 
 supposed diplomatic consultation he was seized and 
 had his eyes put out by red-hot irons — according to 
 a pleasant custom which the Greeks of that day in- 
 dulged in largely. It is unlikely that this could be 
 true, since it is impossible to believe that the 
 Venetians would have resumed peaceable negotia- 
 tions after such an outrage ; but it is a fact that 
 Dandola has always been called the blind doge, and 
 even the scrupulous Romanin finds reason to sup 
 pose that some injury had been inflicted upon the 
 ambassadors. Dandolo's blindness, however, must 
 have been only comparative. The French chron- 
 icler Villehardouin describes him as having fine 
 eyes, which scarcely saw anything, and attributes 
 this to the fact that he had lost his sight from a 
 wound in the head. Dandolo's descendant, suc- 
 cessor, and historian, however, says only that he 
 was of weak vision, and as he was at the time 
 eighty- four, there would be nothing remarkable in 
 that. Enrico Dandolo was elected doge in 1193, af- 
 ter the death of Orio Mastropietro, who succeeded 
 Ziani, and whose reign was not marked b)^ any 
 special incident. 
 
 Dandolo was the first doge, if not to sign the 
 promtssioney or solemn ducal oath of fidelity to all 
 the»laws and customs of the republic, at least to 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE/ 79 
 
 reach the period of history when such documents 
 began to be preserved. His oath is full of details, 
 which show the jealousy of the new regime in de- 
 fining and limiting the doge's powers. He vows 
 not only to rule justly, to accept no bribes, to show 
 no favoritism, to subordinate his own affairs and 
 all others to the interests of the city, but also not 
 to write letters on his own account to the Pope or 
 any other prince ; to submit his own affairs to the 
 arbitrament of the common tribunals, and to mam- 
 tain two ships of war at his own expense — stipula- 
 tions which must have required no small amount of 
 self-control on the part of men scarcely as yet 
 educated to the duties of constitutional princes. 
 The beginning of Dandolo'sreign was distinguished 
 by the usual expeditions to clear the Adriatic and 
 reconfirm Venetian supremacy on the Dalmatian 
 coast; also, by what was beginning to be equally 
 common, certain conflicts with the Pisans, who 
 began to rival Venice in the empire of the seas. 
 These smaller commotions, however, were dwarfed 
 and thrown into the shade by the great expedition, 
 known in history as the Fourth Crusade, which ended 
 in the destruction of Constantinople and the aggran- 
 dizement of the republic, but, so far as the objects 
 of the Crusade were concerned, in nothing. 
 
 The setting out of this expedition affords one of 
 the most picturesue and striking scenes in Vene- 
 tian history, though its details come to us rather 
 from the chronicles of the Crusade than from the 
 ancient historians of Venice, who record them 
 briefly with a certain indifference and at the same 
 time with a frankness which sounds cynical. Per- 
 haps the conviction of a later age, that the part 
 played by Venice was not a very noble one, may 
 have here restrained the record. "In those days a 
 great occasion presented itself to the Venetians to 
 increase their dominions," Sabellico says, calmly 
 putting aside all pretense at more generous motives. 
 Villehardouin, however, has left a succession of pic- 
 
80 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 tures which could not be surpassed in graphic force, 
 and which place all the preliminaries before us in 
 the most brilliant daylight. He describes how the 
 French princes who had taken the cross sent an 
 embassy to Venice in order to arrange, if possible, 
 for means of transport to the Holy Land — six noble 
 Frenchmen, in all their bravery and fine manners, 
 and fortunately with that one among them who 
 carried a pen as well as a sword. It is evident that 
 this proposal was considered on either side as highly 
 important and as far from being made or received 
 as merely a matter of business. The French mes- 
 sengers threw themselves at once upon the gener- 
 osity, the Christian feeling, of the masters of the 
 sea. Money and men they had in plenty ; but only 
 Venice, so powerful on the seas, so rich, and at 
 peace with all her neighbors, could give them 
 ships. From the beginning their application is an 
 entreaty, and their prayers supported by every 
 argument that earnestness could suggest. The 
 doge rceived them in the same solemn manner, sub- 
 mitting their petition to the council, and requiring 
 again and again certain days of delay in order that 
 the matter should be fully debated. It was at last 
 settled with royal magnificence not only that the 
 ships should be granted, but that the republic 
 should fit out fifty galleys of her own to increase 
 the force of the expedition ; after which, everything 
 being settled (which again throws a curious side- 
 light upon popular government), the doge called 
 the Venetians together in San Marco — ten thousand 
 of them in the most beautiful church that ever was, 
 says the Frenchman — and bade the strangers plead 
 their own cause before the people. When we con- 
 sider that everything was arranged beforehand, it 
 takes something from the effect of the scene and 
 suggests uncomfortable ideas of solemn deceits 
 practiced upon the populace in all such circum- 
 stances — but in itself the picture is magnificent. 
 Mass being celebrated, the doge called the am- 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 81 
 
 bassadors, and told them to ask humbly of the 
 people whether the proposed arrangem.ent should 
 be carried into effect. Godfrey de Villehardouin 
 then stood forth to speak in the name of all, with 
 the following result : 
 
 "Messieurs, the noblest and most powerful barons of France 
 have sent us to you, to pray you to have pity upon Jerusalem 
 in bondage to the Turk, and for the love of God to accompany 
 us to avenge the shame of Christ ; and knowing that no nation 
 is so powerful on the sea as you, they" have charged us to im- 
 plore your aid and not to rise from our knees, till you have 
 consented to have pity upon the Holy Land." 
 
 With this the six ambassadors knelt down, weeping. The 
 doge and all the people then cried out with one voice, raising 
 their hands to heaven, "We grant it, we grant it!" And so 
 great was the sound that nothing ever equaled it. The good 
 doge of Venice, who was most wise and brave, then ascended 
 the pulpit and spoke to the people. Signori," he said, you 
 see the honor that God has done you, that the greatest 
 nation on earth has left all other peoples in order to ask your 
 company, that you should share with them this great under- 
 taking which is the reconquest of Jerusalem." Many other 
 fine and wise things were said by the doge which I cannot 
 here recount. And thus the matter was concluded." 
 
 It must have been a strange and imposing sight 
 for these feudal lords to see the crowd that filled 
 San Marco, and overflowed in the Piazza, the vast 
 trading, seafaring multitude tanned with the sun- 
 shine and the sea, full of their own importance, list- 
 ening like men who had to do it, no submissive 
 crowd of vassals, but each conscious, though, as we 
 have seen, with but little reason, that he individ- 
 ually was appealed to, while those splendid peti- 
 tioners knelt and wept — moved, no doubt, on their 
 side by that wonderful sea of faces, by the strange 
 cirumstances, and the rising wave of enthusiasm 
 which began to move the crowd. The old doge, 
 rising up in the pulpit, looking with dim eyes 
 across the heads of the multitude, with the great 
 clamor of the "' Concedtomo" still echoing under the 
 dome, the shout of an enthusiastic nation, gives the 
 last touch ot pictorial effect. His eyes still glowed, 
 
 6 Venice 
 
82 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 though there was so little vision in them; pride and 
 policy and religious enthusiasm all mingled in his 
 words and looks. The greatest nation of the world 
 had come as a suppliant — who could refuse her 
 petition? This was in the winter, early in the year 
 I20I. It is not difficult to imagine the wintry 
 afternoon, the dim glories of the choir going off 
 into a golden gloom behind, the light glimmering 
 upon the altars, the confused movement and emo- 
 tion of the countless crowd, indistinct under the 
 great arches, extending into every corner — while 
 all the light there was concentrated in the white 
 hair and cloth of gold of the venerable figure to 
 which every eye was turned, standing up against 
 the screen at the foot of the great cross. 
 
 The republic by this bargain was pledged to pro- 
 vide transport for four thousand five hundred cava- 
 liers, and nearly thirty thousand men on foot ; along 
 with provisions for a year for this multitude; for 
 which the Frenchmen pledged themselves to pay 
 eighty-five thousand silver marks "according to the 
 weight of Cologne," in four different installments. 
 The contingent of Venice, apart from this, was to 
 consist of fifty galleys. The ships were to be ready 
 at the feast of SS. Peter and Paul in the same year, 
 when the first installment of the money was to be 
 paid. 
 
 In the meantime, however, while the workmen 
 in the arsenal were busily at work, and trade must 
 have quickened throughout Venice, various misfor- 
 tunes happened to the other parties to the engage- 
 ment. Young Thibaut of Champagne died in the 
 flower of his youth, and many small parties of 
 Crusaders went off from other quarters in other ves- 
 sels than those of Venice ; so that when at last the 
 expedition arrived it was considerably diminished in 
 numbers, and, what was still more disastrous, the 
 leaders found themselves unable to pay the first 
 installment of the appointed price. The knights 
 denuded themselves of all their valuables, but this 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 83 
 
 was still insufficient. In these circumstances an 
 arrangement was resorted to which produced many 
 and great complications, and changed altogether 
 the character of the expedition. Venice has been 
 in consequence reproached with the worldliness and 
 selfishness of her intentions. It has been made to 
 appear that her religious fervor was altogether 
 false, and her desire to push her own interests her 
 sole motive. No one will attempt to deny that this 
 kind of selfishness, which in other words is often 
 called patriotism, was very strong in her. But on 
 the other side it would be hard to say that it was 
 with any far-seeing plan of self-aggrandizement that 
 the republic began this great campaign, or^that Dan- 
 dolo and his counselors perceived how far they 
 should go before their enterprise was brought to an 
 end. They were led on from point to point like 
 those whom they influenced, and were themselves 
 betrayed by circumstance and a crowd of secondary 
 motives, as well as the allies whom they are be- 
 lieved to have betrayed. 
 
 The arrangement proposed was, since the Cru- 
 saders could not pay the price agreed for their ships, 
 that they should delay their voyage to the Holy 
 Land long enough to help the Venetians in sub- 
 duing Zara, which turbulent city had again, as on 
 every possible occasion, rebelled. The greater part 
 of the Frenchmen accepted the proposal with alac- 
 rity; though some objected that to turn their arms 
 against Christians, however rebellious, was not the 
 object of the soldiers of the cross. In the long run, 
 however, and notwithstanding the remonstrances of 
 Pope Innocent, of which the independent Venetians 
 made light, the bargain was accepted on all hands, 
 and all the preliminaries concluded at last. An- 
 other of the wonderful scenic displays with which 
 almost every important step was accompanied *n 
 Venice took place before the final start. 
 
84 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 One day, upon a Sunday, all the peoj le of the city, and the 
 greater part of the barons and pilgrims, met in San Marco. 
 Before Mass began the doge rose in the pulpit and spoke to 
 the people in this manner: "Signori, you are associated with 
 the greatest nation in the world in the most important matter 
 which can be undertaken by men. I am old and weak and 
 need rest, having many troubles in the body, but I perceive 
 that none can so well guide and govern you as I who am vour 
 lord. If you will consent that I shouli take the sign of the 
 cross to care for you and direct you, and that my son should 
 in my stead regulate the affairs of the city, I will go to live 
 and die with you and the pilgrims." 
 
 When they heard this, they cried with one voice, "Yes! we 
 pray you, in the name of God, take it and come with us." 
 
 Then the people of the country and the pilgrims were 
 greatly moved and shed many tears, because this heroic man 
 had so many reasons for remaining at home, being old. But 
 he was strong and of a great heart. He then descended from 
 the pulpit and knelt before the altar, weeping, and the cross 
 was sewn upon the front of his great cap, so that all might see 
 it. And the Venetians that day in great numbers took the 
 cross. 
 
 It was in October, 1202, that the expedition fin- 
 ally sailed, a great fleet of nearly three hundred 
 ships; the Frenchmen in their shining mail with 
 their great warhorses furnishing a wonderful spec- 
 tacle for the Venetians, to whom these noble creat- 
 ures, led unwillingly on board the galleys, were so 
 little familiar. The whole city watched the em- 
 barkation with excitement and high commotion ; no 
 doubt with many a woman's tears and wistful looks, 
 anguish of the old, and more impassioned grief of 
 the young, as the fifty galleys which contained the 
 Venetian contingent slowly filled with all the best 
 in the republic, the old doge at their head. Bound 
 for the Holy Land, to deliver it from the infidel! 
 That, no doubt, was what the people believed who 
 had granted with acclamation their aid to the bar- 
 ons in San Marco. And to watch the great fleet 
 which streamed along, with all its sails, against the 
 sunshine through the tortuous, narrow channels 
 that thread the lagoon; line after line of high- 
 beaked painted galleys, with their endless oars, and 
 all their bravery; it must have seemed as if the 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 85 
 
 very sea had become populous, and such a host 
 must carry all before if. Days must have passed 
 in bustle and commotion ere, with the rude appli- 
 ances of their time, three hundred vessels could 
 have been got under way. They streamed down 
 the Adriatic, a maritime army rather than a fleet, 
 imposing to behold; frightening the turbulent 
 towns along the coast which were so ready, when 
 the Venetian galleys were out of sight, to rebel — 
 and arrived before Zara in crushing strength. The 
 citizens closed the harbor with a chain, and with a 
 garrison of Hungarians to help them, made a brave 
 attempt to defend themselves. But against such 
 an overwhelming fore their efforts were in vain, 
 and after a resistance of five days the city surren- 
 dered. It was by this time the middle of Novem- 
 ber, and to tempt the wintry sea at that season was 
 contrary to the habits of the time. The expedi- 
 tion accordingly remained at Zara, where many 
 things took place which decided the course of its 
 after movements. It was not a peaceful pause. 
 The French and the Venetians quarreled in the first 
 place over their booty or their privileges in the 
 sacked and miserable city. When that uproar was 
 calmed, which took the leaders some time, another 
 trouble arrived in the shape of a letter from Pope 
 Innocent, which disturbed the French chiefs 
 greatly, though the old doge and his counsellors 
 paid but little attention. Innocent called the 
 Crusaders to account for shedding Christian blood 
 when they ought to have been shedding pagan, and 
 for sacking a city which belonged to their brethren 
 in the faith, to whom he commanded them to make 
 restitution and reparation. Whether the penitent 
 barons gave up their share of the booty is not told 
 us, but they wrote humble letters asking pardon, and 
 declaring that to take Zara was a necessity which 
 they had no power to resist. The Pope was moved 
 by their submission, but commanded them to pro- 
 ceed to Syria with all possible speed, *' neither turn- 
 
86 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 ing to the right hand nor to the left, ' ' and as soon 
 as they had disembarked on the Syrian shores to 
 separate themselves from the Venetians, who seem 
 to have been excommunicated (which did not 
 greatly disturb them) for their indifference to the 
 papal commands. 
 
 This correspondence with Rome must have given 
 a certain amount of variety, if not of a very agree- 
 ably kind, to the winter sojourn on the Adriatic, 
 confused with tumults of the soldiery and incessant 
 alarms lest their quarrels should break out afresh ; 
 quarrels which — carried on in the midst of a hostile 
 people bitterly rejoicing to see their conquerors at 
 enmity among themselves, and encouraged by the 
 knowledge that the Pope had interfered on their 
 behalf — must have made the invaders doubly un- 
 comfortable. From the Venetian side there is not 
 a word of excommunication leveled against them- 
 selves, and generally so terrible a weapon. Such 
 punishments perhaps were more easily borne 
 abroad than at home, and the republic already 
 stoutly held its independence from all external in- 
 terference. 
 
 While Pope Innocent's letters were thus occupy- 
 ing all minds, and the French Crusaders chafing at 
 the delay, and perhaps also at the absence of all ex- 
 citement and occupation in the Dalmatian town, 
 another incident occurred of the most picturesque 
 character, as well as of the protoundest importance. 
 This was — first, the arrival of ambassadors from the 
 Emperor Philip of Swabia with letters recommend- 
 ing the young Alexius, the son of Isaac, dethroned 
 Emperor of the Greeks, to the Crusaders, and se- 
 condly that young prince himself, an exile and wan- 
 derer, with all the recommendations of injured help- 
 lessness and youth in his favor. The ambassadors 
 brought letters telling such a story as was most fit 
 to move the chivalrous leaders of the Christian host. 
 The youth for whom their appeal was made was the 
 true heir of the great house of Comnenus, born in 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 87 
 
 the purple ; a young Hamlet whose father had been, 
 not killed, but overthrown, blinded, and imprisoned 
 by his own brother, and now lay miserable in a 
 dungeon at Constantinople while the usurper 
 reigned in his stead. What tale so likely to move 
 the pity of the knights and barons of France? 
 And, the suppliants added, what enterprise so fit to 
 promote and facilitate the object of the Crusaders? 
 For Constantinople had always been a difficulty in 
 the way of the conquest of Syria, and now more 
 than ever, when a false and cruel usurper was on 
 the throne : whereas, if old Isaac and his young son 
 were restored, the Crusaders would secure a firm 
 tooting, a stronghold of moral as well as physical 
 support in the East, which would make their work 
 easy. One can imagine the high excitement, the 
 keen discussions, the eagerness of some, the reluct- 
 ance of others, the heat of debate and diverse 
 opinion which arose in the camp. There were some 
 among the pilgrims upon whom the Pope's dis- 
 approval lay heavy, and who longed for nothing so 
 much as to get away, to have the wearisome prelimi- 
 naries of the voyage over, and to find themselves 
 upon the holy soil which they had set out to deliver; 
 while there were some, perhaps more generous than 
 devout, to whom the story of the poor young pnnce, 
 errant through the world in search of succor, and the 
 blind imperial prisoner in the dungeon, was touching 
 beyond description, calling forth every sentiment of 
 knighthood. The Venetians had still another most 
 moving motive; it seems scarcely possible to be- 
 lieve that they did not at once perceive the immense 
 and incalculable interests involved. They were 
 men of strictly practical vision, and Constantinople 
 was their market-place at once and their harvest 
 ground. To establish a permanent footing there 
 by all the laws of honor and gratitude — what a 
 thing for Venice! It is not necessary to conclude 
 that they were untouched by other inducements. 
 They, better than any, knew how many hin- 
 
88 THE MAKERS OF VENICE, 
 
 drances Constantinople could throw in the way; 
 how treacherous her support was; how cunning her 
 enmity, and what an advantage it would be to all 
 future enterprises if a power bound to the west by 
 solid obligations could be established on the Bos- 
 phorus. Nor is it to be supposed that as men they 
 were inaccessible to the pleas of humanity and 
 justice urged by Philip. But at the same time the 
 dazzle of the extraordinary advantages thus set be- 
 fore themselves must have been as a glamour in 
 their eyes. 
 
 It was while the whole immense, tumultuous 
 band, the Frenchmen and knights of Flanders, the 
 barons of the Low Country, the sailor princes of the 
 republic, were in full agitation over this momentous 
 question, and all was uncertainty and confusion, 
 that the young Alexius arrived at Zara. There was 
 a momentary lull in the agitation to receive as was 
 his due this imperial wanderer, so young, so high- 
 born, so unfortunate. The Marquis of Montserrato 
 was his near kinsman, his rank was undoubted, and 
 his misfortunes, the highest claim of all, were 
 known to every one. The troops were turned out 
 to receive him with all the pomp of military display, 
 the doge's silver trumpets sounding, and all that 
 the Crusaders could boast of in music and magnifi- 
 cence. The monks, who had been pressing hotly 
 from band to band, urging Pope Innocent's com- 
 mands and the woes of Jerusalem; the warlike 
 leaders, who had been anxiously attempting to 
 reconcile their declared purpose with the strong 
 temptations of such chivalrous undertaking — all for 
 the moment arrested their arguments, their self- 
 reasonings, their mutual upbraidings, to hear what 
 their young guest had to say. And Alexius had 
 everything to say that extreme necessity could sug- 
 gest. He would give subsidies unlimited — two hun- 
 dred thousand marks of silver, all the costs of the 
 expedition, as much as it pleased them to require. 
 He would himself accompany the expedition, he 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 89 
 
 would furnish two thousand men at once, and for all 
 his life maintain five liundred knights for the de- 
 fense of Jerusalem. Last of all, and greatest, he 
 vowed — a bait for Innocent himself, an inducement 
 which must have stopped the words of remon- 
 strance on the lips of the priests and made their 
 eyes glow — to renounce forever the Greek heresy 
 and bring the Eastern Church to the supremacy at 
 Rome ! 
 
 Whether it was this last motive, or simply a rush 
 of sudden enthusiasm, such as was, and still is, apt 
 to seize upon a multitude, the scruples and the 
 doubts of the Crusaders melted like wax before the 
 arguments of the young prince, and his cause seems 
 to have been taken up by general consent. A few 
 pilgrims of note indeed left the expedition and 
 attempted to find another way to the Holy Land, 
 but it was with very slightly diminished numbers 
 that the expedition set sail in April, 1203, for Con- 
 stantinople. Zara celebrated their departure by an 
 immediate rising, once more asserting its independ- 
 ence, and necessitating a new expedition sent by 
 Renier Dandolo, the doge's son and deputy, to do 
 all the work of subjugation over again. But that 
 was an occurrence of every day. 
 
 The Crusaders went to Corfu first, where they 
 were received with acclamation, the islanders offer- 
 ing at once their homage to Alexius; and lingered 
 thereabouts until the eve of Pentecost, when they 
 set sail directly for Constantinople. Over these 
 summer seas the crowd of ships made their way with 
 ensigns waving and lances glittering in the sun, like 
 an army afloat, as indeed they were, making the air 
 resound with their trumpets and warlike songs. 
 The lovely islands, the tranquil waters, the golden 
 shores, filled these northmen with enthusiasm — 
 nothing so beautiful, so luxuriant, so wealthy and 
 fair, had ever been seen. Where was the coward 
 who would not dare to strike a blow for such a 
 land? The islands, as they passed, received Ale^c- 
 
9a THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 ius with joy; all was festal and splendid in the ad- 
 vance. It was the 24th of June, the full glory of 
 midsummer, when the fleet passed close under the 
 walls of Constantinople. We need not enter into a 
 detailed description of the siege. The Venetians 
 would seem to have carried off the honors of the 
 day. The French soldiers having failed in their 
 first assault by land, the Venetians, linking a num- 
 ber of galleys together by ropes, ran them ashore, 
 and seem to have gained possession, almost without 
 pausing to draw breath, of a portion of the city. 
 We will quote from Gibbon, whose classical splen- 
 dor of style is so different from the graphic simpli- 
 city of our chroniclers, a description of this extraor- 
 dinary attack. He is not a historian generally 
 favorable to the Venetians, so that his testimony 
 may be taken as an impatrial one. 
 
 On the side of the harbor the attack was more successfully 
 conducted by the Venetians; and that industrious people 
 employed every resource that was known and practiced before 
 the invention of gunpowder. A double line, three bowshots 
 in front, was formed by the galleys and ships ; and the swift 
 motion of the former was supported by the weight and lofti- 
 ness of the latter, whose decks and poops and turrets were the 
 platforms of military engines that discharged their shot over 
 the heads of the first line. The soldiers who leaped from the 
 galleys on shore immediately planted and ascended their scal- 
 ing ladders, while the large ships, advancing more slowly into 
 the intervals and lowering a drawbridge, opened a way through 
 the air from their masts to the rampart. In the midst of the 
 conflict the doge's venerable and conspicuous form stood 
 aloft in complete armor on the prow of his galley. The great 
 standard of St. Mark was displayed before him; his threats, 
 promises, and exhortations urged the diligence of the rowers ; 
 his vessel was the first that struck ; and Dandolo was the 
 first warrior on shore. The nations admired the magnanimity 
 of the blind old man, without reflecting that his age and in- 
 firmities diminished the price of life and enhanced the value 
 of immortal glory. On a sudden, by an invisible hand ,'for 
 the standard bearer was probably slain), the banner of the 
 republic was fixed on the rampart, twenty-five towers were 
 rapidly occupied, and, by the cruel expedient of fire, the 
 (Jreeks were drawn from the adjacent quarter. 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 91 
 
 A finer battle-picture than this — of the galleys 
 fiercely driven in shore, the aged prince high on the 
 prow, the Venetians rushing on the dizzy bridge 
 from the rigging to the ramparts, and suddenly, 
 miraculously, the lion of St. Mark unfolding in the 
 darkened air full of smoke and fire, and bristling 
 showers of arrows — could scarcely be. The chron- 
 iclers of Venice saw nothing of it all. For once 
 they fail to see the pictorial effect, the force of the 
 dramatic situation. Andrea Dandolo's moderate 
 description of his ancestor's great deed is all we 
 have to replace the glowing narrative in which the 
 Venetians have recorded other facts in their history. 
 "While they [the French] were," he says, ** pressed 
 hard, on account of their small numbers, the doge 
 with the Venetians burst into the city, and he, 
 though old and infirm of vision, yet being brave 
 and eager of spirit, joined himself to the French 
 warriors, and all of them together, fighting with 
 great bravery, their strength reviving and their 
 courage rising, forced the enemy to retire, and at 
 last, the Greeks yielding on every side, the city 
 was taken." 
 
 The results of the victory were decisive, if not 
 lasting. The old blind emperor Isaac was taken 
 from his dungeon — his usurping brother having 
 fled — and replaced upon his throne; and the young 
 wanderer Alexius, the favorite and plaything of the 
 Crusading nobles, the fanciullo, as the Venetians 
 persist in calling him, was crowned in St. Sopliia 
 as his father's coadjutor with great pomp and rejoic- 
 ing. But this moment of glory was short-lived. As 
 soon as the work was done, when there began to 
 be talk of the payment, and of all the wonderful 
 things which had been promised, these brilliant 
 skies were clouded over. It appeared that Alexius 
 had neither authority to make such promises nor 
 any power of fulfilling them. Not even the money 
 could be paid without provoking new rebellions; 
 and as for placing the Greek Church under th^ 
 
92 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 power of Rome, that was more than any emperor 
 could do. Nor was this all; tor it very soon ap- 
 peared that the throne set up by foreign arms was 
 anything- but secure. The Crusaders, who had 
 intended to push on at once to their destination, 
 the Holy Land, were again arrested, partly by a 
 desire to secure the recompense promised for their 
 exertions, partly because the young prince, whom 
 his own countrymen disliked for his close alliance 
 with the strangers, implored them to remain till 
 his throne should be more firmly established. But 
 that throne was not worth a year's purchase to its 
 young and unfortunate tenant. Notwithstanding 
 the great camp of the invaders at Galata, and the 
 Venetian galleys in the Bosphorous, another sudden 
 revolution undid everything that had been done. 
 The first assault had been made in June, 1203. So 
 early as March of the next year, the barons and the 
 doge were taking grim counsel together as to what 
 was to be done with the spoil — such spoil as was 
 not to be found in any town in Europe — when they 
 should have seized the city, in which young Alexius 
 lay murdered, and his old father dead of misery 
 and grief. 
 
 The second siege was longer and more difficult 
 than the first, for the new emperor, Marzoufle, he 
 of the shaggy eyebrows, was bolder and more de- 
 termined than the former usurper. But at last the 
 unhappy city was taken, and sacked with every cir- 
 cumstance of horror that belongs to such an event. 
 The chivalrous Crusaders, the brave Venetians, the 
 best men of their age, either did not think it neces- 
 sary, or were unable to restrain the lowest instincts 
 of an excited army. And what was terrible every- 
 where was worse in Constantinople, the richest of 
 all existing cities, full of everything that was most 
 exquisite in art and able in invention. '*The Vene- 
 tians only, who were of gentler soul," says Ro- 
 manin, *'took thought for the preservation of those 
 jnarvelous works of human genius, transporting 
 
tHE MAKERS OF VENICE. 93 
 
 them afterward to Venice, as they did the tour 
 famous horses which now stand on the facade of the 
 great Basilica, along with many columns, jewels, 
 and precious stones, with which they decorated the 
 Pala d' oro diVid. the treasury of San Marco." This 
 proof of gentler soul was equally demonstrated by 
 Napoleon when he carried off those same bronze 
 horses to Paris in the beginning of the century, but 
 it was not appreciated either by Italy or the world. 
 Altogether this chapter in the history of the Vene- 
 tian armaments, as in that of the Crusaders and 
 Western Christendom in general, is a terrible and 
 painful one. The pilgrims had got into a false and ' 
 miserable vortex, from which they could not clear 
 their feet. All that followed is like some feverish 
 and horrible dream, through which the wild at- 
 tempts to bring some kind of order, and to establish 
 a new rule, and to convince themselves that they 
 were doing right and not wrong, make the ruinous 
 complications only more apparent. During the 
 whole period of their lingering, ot their besieging, 
 of their elections of Latin emperors and arch- 
 bishops, — futile and short-lived attempts to make 
 something ot their conquest, — letters from Pope 
 Innocent were raining upon them, full of indignant 
 remonstrances, appeals, and reproaches; and little 
 groups of knights were wandering off toward their 
 proper destination sick at heart, while the rest 
 appointed themselves lords and suzerains, marshals 
 and constables of a country which they neither un- 
 derstood nor could rule. 
 
 In less than a year there followed the disastrous 
 defeat of Adrianople, in which the ranks of the 
 Crusaders were broken, and the unfortunate newly 
 elected emperor, Baldwin, disappeared, and was 
 heard of no more. The old doge, Enrico Dandolo, 
 died shortly after, having both in success and defeat 
 performed prodigies of valor, which his great age 
 (ninety-seven, according to the chroniclers) makes 
 almost incredible, and keeping to the last a keen 
 
94 THE MAKERS OF VEl^ICfi. 
 
 eye upon the interests of Venice, which alone were 
 forwarded by all that had happened. But he never 
 saw Venice again. He died in June, 1205, — two 
 years after the first attack upon Constantinople, 
 three years after his departure from Venice, — and 
 was buried in St. Sophia. Notwithstanding the 
 royal honors that we are told attended his funeral, 
 one cannot but feel that the dim eyes of the old 
 warrior must have turned with longing to the rest 
 that ought to have been his in his own San Marco, 
 and that there must have echoed in his aged heart 
 something of a pang that went through that of a 
 later pilgrim whose last fear it was that he should 
 lay his bones far from the Tweed. 
 
 We read, with a keen perception of the rapidity 
 with which comedy dogs the steps of tragedy every- 
 where, that one Marino Zeno, hastily appointed after 
 Dandolo as the head of the Venetians, assumed at 
 once as marks of his dignity *'a rose-colored silk 
 stocking on his right foot and a white silk stocking 
 on his left, along with the imperial boots and 
 purse." This was one outcome of all the blood and 
 misery, the dethronements, the sack, the general 
 ruin. The doges of Venice added another to their 
 long list of titles — they were now lords of Croatia, 
 Dalmatia, and of the fourth part and the half of 
 the Roman (or Romanian) empire. Domt?ius qtiartcB 
 partis cum dimidio totiuslmperi Romanice. And all 
 the Isles, those dangerous and vexatious little com- 
 munities that had been wont to harbor pirates and 
 interrupt traders, fell really or nominally into the 
 hands of Venice. They were a troublesome posses- 
 sion, constantly in rebellion, difficult 10 secure, still 
 more difficult to keep, as the Venetian conquest in 
 Dalmatia had already proved; but they were no 
 less splendid possessions. Candia alone was a jewel 
 for any emperor. The republic could not hold 
 these islands, putting garrisons into them at her 
 own expense and risk. She took the wiser way of 
 granting them to colonists on a feudal tenure, so 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENIC£. 9S 
 
 that any noble Venetian who had the courage and 
 the means might set himself up with a little sea- 
 borne principality in due subjection to his native 
 state, but with the privilege of hunting out its 
 pirates and subduing its rebellions for himself. 
 "To divide," says Sabellico, "the public forces of 
 Venice into so many parts would have been very 
 unsafe. The bes t thing, therefore, seemed that 
 those who were rich should fit out, according to 
 their capabilities, one or more galleys, and other 
 ships of the kind required And there being no 
 doubt that many would find it to their private 
 advantage to do this, it followed that the republic 
 in time of need would secvire the aid of these armed 
 vessels, and that each place acquired could be 
 defended by them with the aid of the State — a thing 
 which by itself the republic cpuld not have accom- 
 plished except with much expense and trouble. It 
 was therefore ordained that they (who undertook 
 this), with their wives and children and all they 
 possessed, might settle in these islands, and that, as 
 colonists sent by the city, their safety would be 
 under the care and guarantee of the republic." 
 Many private persons, he adds, armed for this un- 
 dertaking. 
 
 The rambling chronicle of Sanudo gives us here 
 a romantic story of the conquest of Candia by his 
 own ancestor Marco Sanudo, who, according to this 
 narrative, having swept from the seas a certain 
 corsair called Arrigo or Enrico of Malta, became 
 master of the island. The inhabitants, as. a matter 
 of course, resisted and rebelled, but not in the usual 
 way, "Accept the kingdom as our sovereign," 
 their envoys said, "or in three hours you must leave 
 Candia. " This flattering but embarrassing alterna- 
 tive confounded the Venetian leader. But he 
 accepted the honor thrust upon him, writing at 
 once, however, to the doge, telling the choice that 
 had been given him, and how he had accepted it 
 from necessity and devotion to the republic, in 
 
m THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 whose name he meant to hold the island. The 
 Venetians at once sent twelve ships of war, on pre- 
 tense of congratulating him, whom he received with 
 a royal welcome ; then, handing over his govern- 
 ment to the commander of the squadron, took to 
 his ships and left the dangerous glory of the inse- 
 cure throne behind him. It is a pity that the docu- 
 ments do not bear out this pleasant story. But if 
 a man's own descendant does not know the rights 
 of his ancestor's actions, who should? Sanudo goes 
 on to relate how, as a reward for this magnanimous 
 renunciation, his forefather was allowed the com- 
 mand of the fleet for a year, and with this scoured 
 the sea and secured island after island, placing his 
 own kinsmen in possession ; but at last, being out- 
 numbered, was taken prisoner in a naval engage- 
 ment by the admirals of the Emperor of Constanti- 
 nople (which emperor is not specified). "But,** 
 says his descendant, "when the said emperor saw 
 his valorosity and beauty, he set him tree, and 
 gave him one of his sisters in marriage, from which 
 lady are descended almost all the members of the 
 Ca' Sanudo." The historian allows with dignified 
 candor that this story is not mentioned by Marc 
 Antonio Sabellico, but it is to be found, he says, 
 in the other chroniclers. We regret to add that the 
 austere Romanin gives a quite difi;erent account of 
 the exploits of Marco Sanudo, the lord of Naxos. 
 It would have been pleasant to have associated so 
 magnanimous a seaman with the name of the 
 chronicler of the Crusades and the indefatigable 
 diarist to whom later Venetian history is so deeply 
 indebted. 
 
 These splendid conquests brought enormous in- 
 crease of wealth, of trade, ot care, and endless occu- 
 pation to the republic. Gained and lost, and 
 regained and lost again ; fairly fought for, strenu- 
 ously held; a source perhaps at all times of more 
 weakness than strength, they had all faded out of 
 the tiara of the republic long before she was her- 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 91 
 
 self discrowned. But there still remains in Venice 
 one striking evidence of the splendid, disastrous 
 expedition, the unexampled conquests and victor- 
 ies, yet dismal end, of what is called the Fourth 
 Crusade. And that is the four great bronze horses 
 — curious, inappropriate, bizarre ornaments that 
 stand above the doorways of San Marco. This was 
 the blind doge's lasting piece of spoil. 
 
 The four doges of the Dandolo family who appear 
 at intervals in the list of princes of the republic are 
 too far apart to be followed here. Francesco Dan- 
 dolo, 1328-39, the third of the name, was called 
 Cane, according to tradition, because when ambas- 
 sador to Pope Clement V. , this noble Venetian, for 
 the love of Venice, humbled himself, and with a 
 chain round his neck and on his knees, approached 
 the Pontiff, imploring that the interdict might be 
 raised and Venice delivered from the pains of ex- 
 communication. If this had been to show that men 
 ot his race thought nothing too much for the service 
 of their city, whether it were pride or humility, 
 defiance or submission, the circle which included 
 blind Enrico and Francesco the Doge could scarcely 
 be more complete. The last of the Dandolo doges 
 was Andrea, 1342-54, a man of letters as well as of 
 practical genius, and the historian ot his predeces- 
 sors and of the city : whom at a later period and in 
 gentler company we shall find again. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PIETRO GRADENIGO: CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION. 
 
 We have endeavored up to this time to trace the 
 development of the Venetian government and ter- 
 ritory, not continuously, but from point to point, 
 according to the great conquests which increased 
 the latter, and the growth of system and political 
 order in the former, which became necessary as the 
 
 . 7 Venico , - - - 
 
98 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 community increased and the primitive rule was 
 outgrown. But at the end of the thirteenth cen- 
 tury a great revolution took place in the republic 
 which had risen to such prosperity, and had ex- 
 tended its enterprises to every quarter of the known 
 world. It was under the Doge Gradenigo, a new 
 type among the rulers of the state, neither a soldier 
 nor a conqueror, but a politician, that this change 
 took place — a change antagonistic to the entire 
 sentiment of the early Venetian institutions, but 
 embodying all with which the world is familiar in 
 the later forms of that great oligarchy, the proud- 
 est type of republic known to history. The election 
 of Pietro Gradenigo was not a popular one. It is 
 evident that a new feeling of class antagonism 
 had been gathering during the last reign, that of 
 Giovanni Dandolo; and that both sides were on the 
 alert to seize an advantage. Whether the proposals 
 for the limitation of the Consiglio Maggiore which 
 were already in the air, and the sensation of an 
 approaching attack upon their rights, were suffi- 
 ciently clear to the populace to stimulate them to 
 an attempt to regain the ancient privilege ot elect- 
 ing the doge by acclamation; or whether it was this 
 attempt which drove the other party to more deter- 
 mined action, it is impossible to judge. But at the 
 death of Gradenigo's predecessor there was a rush 
 of the people to the Piazza with Voct e parole 
 pungentisstme in a wild and sudden endeavor to push 
 off the yoke of the regular (and most elaborate) 
 laws, which had now been in operation for many 
 generations, and to reclaim their ancient custom. 
 The crowd coming together from all quarters of the 
 city proclaimed the name of Jacopo Tiepolo, the 
 son or nephew of a former doge and a man of great 
 popularity, while still the solemn officers of state 
 were busy in arranging the obsequies of the dead 
 doge and preparing the multitudinous ballot-boxes 
 for the election of his successor. Had Tiepolo been 
 a less excellent citizen, Romanin says, civil war. 
 
THE MAKERS*bF VENICE. 99 
 
 would almost certainly have been the issue, but he 
 was "a man of prudence and singular goodness," a 
 huomo da bene, who, "despising the madness of the 
 crowd," and to avoid the discord which must have 
 followed, left the town secretly, in the midst of the 
 tumult, and took refuge in his villa on the Brenta, 
 the favorite retreat of Venetian nobles. The peo- 
 ple were apparently not ripe for anything greater 
 than this sudden and easily baffled effort, and, when 
 their favorite stole away, permitted the usual wire- 
 pullers, the class which had so long originated and 
 regulated everything, to proceed to the new election 
 in the usual way. 
 
 No more elaborate machinery than that employed 
 in this solemn transaction could be imagined. The 
 almost ludicrous multiplicity of its appeals to Prov- 
 la^iice or fate, developed and increasing from age 
 to age, the continually repeated drawing of lots, 
 and double and triple elections, seem to evidence 
 the most jealous determination to secure impartial- 
 ity and unbiased judgment. The order of the pro- 
 ceedings is recorded at length by Martin da Canale 
 in his chronicle, which is of undoubted authority, 
 and repeated by later writers. The six counsellors 
 (augmented from the two of the early reigns) of the 
 doge, according to this historian, called a meeting 
 of the Consiglio Maggiore, having first provided a 
 number of balls of wax, the same number as the 
 members of the council, in thirty of which was in- 
 closed a little label of parchment inscribed with the 
 word Lector. The thirty who drew these balls were 
 separated from the assembly in another chamber of 
 the palace, first being made to swear to perform their 
 office justly and impartially. There were then 
 produced thirty more waxen balls, in nine of which 
 was the same inscription. The chosen, who were 
 thus reduced to nine, the number of completeness, 
 varied the process by electing forty citizens, 
 whether members or not of the Consiglio Maggiore 
 being left to their discretion. Each of these, how- 
 
/do THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 ever, required to secure the suffrages of seven 
 electors. The reader will hope that by this time 
 at last he has come to the electors of the doge ; but 
 not so. The forty thus chosen were sent for from 
 their houses by the six original counselors, who had 
 the management of the election ; and forty waxen 
 pellets with the mystic word Lector, this time in- 
 closed in twelve of them, were again provided. 
 These were put into a hat, and, apparently for the 
 first time, a child of eleven was called in to act as 
 the instrviment of fate. Another writer describes 
 how one of the permanent counsellors, going out at 
 this point, probably in the interval while the forty 
 new electors were being sent for from their houses, 
 heard Mass in San Marco, and taking hold of the 
 first boy he met on coming out, led him into the 
 palace to draw the balls. The twelve thus drawn 
 were once more sworn, and elected twenty-five, 
 each of whom required eight votes to make his 
 election valid. The twenty-five were reduced once 
 more, by the operation of the ballot, to nine, who 
 were taken into another room and again sworn, after 
 which they elected forty-five, reduced by ballot to 
 eleven, who finally elected forty-one, who, at the 
 end of all things, elected the doge. The childish 
 elaboration of this mode of procedure is scarcely 
 more strange than the absolute absence of novelty 
 in the result produced. No plebeian tribune ever 
 stole into power by these means, no new man, 
 mounted on the shoulders of the people, or of some 
 theorist or partisan, ever surprised the reigning 
 families with a new name. The elections ran in the 
 established lines without a break or misadventure. 
 If any popular interference disturbed the serenity 
 and self-importance of the endless series of electors 
 it was only to turn the current in the direction of 
 one powerful race instead of another. Even the 
 populace in the Piazza proclaimed no Lanifizio or 
 Tintorio, wool-worker or dyer, but a Tiepolo, when 
 they attempted to take the election into their own 
 
THE MAKERS OP YEI^ICE. tOl 
 
 hands. Neither from without nor within was there 
 a suggestion of any new name. 
 
 The doge elected on this occasion was Pietro, 
 called Perazzo (a corruption of the name not given 
 in a complimentary sense) Gradenigo, who was at 
 the time Governor of Capo d'Istria, an ambitious 
 man of strongly aristocratic views, and no favorite 
 with the people. It can scarcely be supposed that 
 he was individually responsible for the change 
 worked by his agency in the constitution of the 
 Consiglio Maggiore. It was a period of consti- 
 tional development when new officers, new agen- 
 cies, an entire civil service were coming into being, 
 and the Great Council had not only all the affairs 
 of the State passing through its hands, but a large 
 amount of patronage, increasing every day. Al- 
 though, as has been pointed out repeatedly, the 
 sovereignty of Venice, under whatever system car- 
 ried on, had always been in the hands of a certain 
 number of families, who kept their place with 
 almost dynastic regularity, undisturbed by any in- 
 truders from "beloW' — the system of the Consiglio 
 Maggiore was still professedly a representative 
 system of the widest kind; and it would seem at the 
 first glance as if every honest man, all who were 
 da bene and respected by their fellows, must one 
 time or other have been secure of gaining admission 
 to that popular parliament, Romanin, strongly 
 partisan, like all Venetians, of the institution under 
 which Venice flourished, takes pains to point out 
 here and there one or two exceptional names which 
 show that at long intervals such elections did hap- 
 pen; but they were very rare, and the exceptional 
 persons thus elevated never seem to have made 
 themselves notable. However, as the city grew 
 and developed, it is evident that the families who 
 had aways ruled over her began to feel that the 
 danger of having her courts invaded by the democ- 
 racy was becoming a real one. The mode of elect- 
 ing the Great Council was very informal and vari^- 
 
102 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 ble, and it had recently fallen more and more into 
 the hands of the intriguers of the Broglio — the lob- 
 byists, as the Americans would say — which doubt- 
 less gave pretext for the radical change which 
 was to alter its character altogether. Some times 
 its members were chosen by delegates from each 
 sestiere or district of the city, sometimes, which was 
 the original idea, by four individuals, "two from 
 this side of the canal, two from that;" sometimes 
 they were elected for six months, sometimes for a 
 year. The whole system was uncertain and wanted 
 regulation. But this curious combination of 
 chances, which was something like putting into a 
 lottery for their rulers, pleased the imagination of 
 the people in their primitive state, and perhaps 
 flattered the minds of the masses with a continual 
 possibility that upon some of their own order the 
 happy lot might fall. It had been proposed in the 
 previous reign not only that these irregularities 
 should be remedied, which was highly expedient 
 but also that a certain hereditary principle should 
 be adopted, which was, in theory, a nev/ thing and 
 strange to the constitution of Venice; the sugges- 
 tion being that those whose fathers had sat in the 
 council should have a right to election, though with- 
 out altogether excluding others whom the doge or 
 his counsellors should consider worthy of being 
 added to it. 
 
 When Gradenigo came to power he was probably, 
 like a new prime minister, pledged to carry out this 
 policy; and within a few years of his accession the 
 experiment was tried, but very cautiously, in a 
 tentative way. Venice was profoundly occupied 
 at the time with one of her great wars with her rival 
 Genoa, a war in which she had much the worst, 
 though certain victories from time to time in East- 
 ern waters encouraged her to pursue the struggle; 
 and it was under cover of this conflict, which en- 
 gaged men's thoughts, that the new experiment 
 was made. Instead of the ordinary periodical elec- 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 103 
 
 tion of the council, nominally open to all, the four 
 chosen electors, to whom this duty ordinarily fell, 
 nominated only, in the first place, such members 
 ot the existing Consiglio Maggiore as had in their 
 own persons or in those of their fathers sat in the 
 council during the last four years, who were then 
 re-elected by ballot, taken for each man individually 
 by the Forty, a recently constituted body ; to whom 
 a further number of names from outside were then 
 proposed, and voted for in the same way. Thus 
 the majority of members elected was not only con- 
 fined to those possessing a hereditary claim, but 
 the election was taken out of the hands of the tradi- 
 tional electors and transferred to those of the exist- 
 ing rulers of the city. The new method was first 
 tried for a year, and then established as the funda- 
 mental law of the republic, with the further exclus- 
 ion of the one popular and traditional element, the 
 nominal four electors, whose work was now trans- 
 ferred to the officials of the' state. The change thus 
 carried out was great in principle, though perhaps 
 not much different in practice from that which had 
 become the use and wont of the city. *'The 
 citizens," says Romanin, "were thus divided into 
 three classes — first, those who neither in their own 
 persons nor through their ancestors had ever 
 formed part of the great council; second, those 
 whose progenitors had been mxcmbers of it; third, 
 those who were themselves members of the council, 
 both they and their fathers. The first were called 
 New men, and were never admitted save by special 
 grace; the second class were included from time to 
 time; finally, the third were elected by full right. 
 
 This was the law which, under the name of the 
 Serrata del Consigho Maggiore, caused two rebellions 
 in Venice and confirmed forever beyond dispute her 
 oligarchical government. Her parliament, so 
 fondly supposed to be that of the people, was no 
 more closed to the New men than is our House of 
 Lords. Now and then an exceptional individual 
 
104 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 might be nominated, and by means of great serv- 
 ices, wealth, or other superior qualities,obtain admis- 
 sion. It was indeed the privilege and reward 
 henceforward zealously striven for by the plebeian 
 class, and, unfortunately, more often bestowed in 
 recompense for the betrayal of political secrets, and 
 especially of popular conspiracies, than for better 
 reasons. But the right was with those whose fath- 
 ers had held the position before them, whose rank 
 was already secure and ascertained, the nobles and 
 patrician classes. The hereditary legislator thus 
 arose in the bosom of the state which considered 
 itself the most free in Christendom, in his most 
 marked and distinct form. Romanin tells us that 
 the most famous Libro d'Oro, the book of nobility, 
 was formed in order to keep clear the descent and 
 legitimacy of all claimants; bastards, and even the 
 sons of a wife not noble, being rigorously excluded. 
 The law itself was strengthened by successive addi- 
 tions, so as to confine the electors exclusively to the 
 patrician class. 
 
 The war with Genoa was still filling all minds 
 when this silent revolution was accomplished. 
 How could Venice give her attention to what was 
 going on in the gilded chambers of the Palazzo, 
 when day by day the city Vas convulsed by bad 
 news or deluded by faint gleams of better hope? 
 Once and again the Venetian fleets were defeated, 
 and mournful galleys came drifting up, six or seven 
 out of a hundred, to tell the tale of destruction and 
 humiliation; and ever with renewed efforts, in a 
 rage of despairing energy, the workmen toiling in 
 the arsenal, the boatmen giving up their tranquil 
 traffic upon the lagoons to man the new appointed 
 ships, and every family, great and small, offering 
 its dearest to sustain the honor of the republic, the 
 energies of the city were strained to the utmost. In 
 the autumn of 1298, just when the Serrata had been 
 confirmed in the statute-book, the great fleet, com- 
 manded by Admiral Andrea Dandolo. sailed from 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 105 
 
 the Port, with all the aspect of a squadron invinc- 
 ible, to punish the Genoese and end the war. In 
 one of the ships was a certain Marco Polo, from his 
 home near San Giovanni Chrisostomo, Marco of the 
 Millions, a great traveling merchant, whose stories 
 had been as fables in his countrymen's ears. This 
 great expedition did indeed for the time end the 
 war ; but not by victory. It was cruelly defeated 
 on the Dalmatian coasts after a stubborn and bloody 
 struggle. The admiral Andrea dashed his head 
 against his mast and died rather than be taken to 
 Genoa in chains; while the humbler sailor Marco 
 Polo, with crowds of his countrymen, was carried off 
 to prison there, to his advantage and ours, as it 
 turned out. But Venice was plunged into mourn- 
 ing and woe, her resources exhausted, her captains 
 lost. Genoa, who had bought the victory dear, was 
 in little less unhappy condition ; and in the follow- 
 ing year the rival republics were glad to make peace 
 under every pledge of mutual forbearance and 
 friendship for as long as it could last. It was only 
 after this conclusion of the more exciting interests 
 abroad that the Venetians at home, recovering tran- 
 quillity, began to look within and see in the mean- 
 time what the unpopular doge and his myrmidons, 
 while nobody had been looking, had been engaged 
 about. 
 
 It is difficult to tell what the mass of the people 
 thought of the new position of affairs; for all the 
 chroniclers are on the winning side, and even the 
 careful Romanin has little sympathy with the rev- 
 olutionaries. The Venetian populace had long been 
 pleasantly deceived as to their own power. They 
 had been asked to approve what their masters had 
 decided upon and made to believe it was their own 
 doing. They had given a picturesque and impres- 
 sive background as of a unanimous people to the 
 decisions of the doge and his counsellors, the sight 
 of their immense assembly making the noble French 
 envoys weep like women. But whether they had 
 
lOB THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 begun to see through those fine pretenses of con- 
 sulting them, and to perceive how little they had 
 reall)^ to do with it all, no one tells us. Their 
 attempt to elect their own doge, without waiting for 
 the authorities, looks as if they had become sus- 
 picious of their masters. And at the same time the 
 arbitrary closing of the avenues of power to all men 
 whose fortune was not made or their position secure, 
 and the establishment in the council of that hercr 
 ditary principle so strenuouslyopposed in the election 
 of the doges, were sufficiently distinct changes to 
 catch the popular eye and disturb the imagination. 
 Accordingly, when the smoke of war cleared off and 
 the people came to consider internal politics, dis- 
 content and excitement arose. This found vent in 
 a sudden and evidently natural outburst of popular 
 feeling. The leader of the malcontents was "a cer- 
 tain Marino whose surname was Boconio," says 
 Sabellico, *'a man who was not noble, nor of the 
 baser sort, but of moderate fortune, bold and ready 
 for any evil," precisely of that class of new men to 
 whom political privileges are'most dear, one on the 
 verge of a higher position, and doubtless hoping to 
 push his way into parliament and secure for his 
 sons an entry into the class of particians. "He was 
 much followed for his wealth, " says another writer. 
 Sanudo gives an account of Bocconio's (or Bocco's) 
 rebellion, which the too well informed Romanin 
 summarily dismisses as a fable, but which as an 
 expression of popular feeling, and the aspect which 
 the new state of affairs bore to the masses, has a 
 certain value. The matter-of-f^ct legend of shut- 
 ting out and casting forth embodies in the most forc- 
 ible way the sense of an exclusion which was more 
 complete than could be effected by the closing of 
 any palace doors. Bocconio and his friends, accord- 
 ing to vSanudo, indignant and enrao^ed to be shut 
 out from the council, crowded into the Piazza with 
 many followers, at the time when they supposed the 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 107 
 
 elections to be going on, and found the gates closed 
 and the Genttlhuoimni assembled within. 
 
 Then beating at the door they called'out that they desired to 
 form part of the council, and would not be excluded ; upon 
 which the doge sent messengers to tell them that the council 
 was not engaged upon the election but was discussing other 
 business. As they continued, however, to insist upon coming 
 in, the doge, seeing that he made no advance but that the 
 tumult kept increasing in the Piazza, deliberated with the 
 council how to entrap these seditious persons, to call forth 
 against them ultimum de potentia, the severest penalty of the 
 law. Accordingly he sent to tell them that they should be 
 called in separately in parties of five, and that those who suc- 
 ceeded in the ballot should remain as members of the council, 
 on condition that those who failed should disperse and go 
 away. The first called were Marino Bocco, Jacopo Boldo, 
 and three others. The doors were then closed and a good 
 guard set, after which the five were stripped and thrown into 
 a pit, the Trabucco della Toresella, and so killed ; and the 
 others being called in, in succession, and treated in the same 
 way, the chief men and ringleaders were thus disposed of to 
 the number of a hundred and fifty or sixty men. The crowd 
 remaining in the Piazza persuaded themselves that all those 
 who were called in, of whom none came back, had been made 
 nobles of the Great Council. And when it was late in the 
 evening the members of the council came down armed into the 
 Piazza, and a proclamation was made by order of the doge 
 that all should return to their homes on pain of punishment ; 
 hearing which the crowd, struck with terror, had the grace to 
 disperse in silence. Then the corpses of those who were dead 
 were brought out and laid in the Piazza, with the command 
 that if anyone touched them it should be at the risk of his 
 head. And when it was seen that no one was bold enough to 
 approach, the rulers perceived that the people were obedient. 
 And some days after, as they could not tolerate the stench, 
 the bodies were buried. And in this manner ended that sedi- 
 tion, so that no one afterward ventured to open his mouth on 
 such matters. 
 
 This legend Sanudo takes, as he tells us, from the 
 chronicles of a certain Zeccaria da Pozzo; and it 
 does not interfere with his faith in the narrative tha^ 
 he himself has recorded on a previous page the ex- 
 ecution of Bocco and his fellow conspirators **be- 
 tween the columns" in the usual way. Perhaps he 
 too felt that this wild yet matter-of-fact version of 
 the incident, the closed doors and the mysterious 
 
108 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 slaughter of the intruders in the hidden courts 
 within, was an effective and natural way of repre- 
 senting the action of a constitutional change so im- 
 portant. The names of the conspirators who died 
 with Bocconio are almost all unknown and obscure 
 names, yet there was a sprinkling of patricians, up- 
 holders of the popular party, such as are always to 
 be found on similar occasions, and which reappear 
 in the more formidable insurrection that followed. 
 For the moment, however, the summary extinc- 
 tion of Bocconio's ill-planned rebellion intimidated 
 and silenced the people, w^hile, on the other side, it 
 was made an occasion of tightening the bonds of 
 the Serrata, and making the admission of the 
 homo 710V0US more difficult than ever. 
 
 This little rebellion, so soon brought to a conclu- 
 sion, took place in the spring of the year 1300, the 
 year of the jubilee, when all the world was crowding 
 to Rome, and Dante, standing on the bridge of St. 
 Angelo, watching the streams of the pilgrims com- 
 ing and going, bethought himself, like a true peni- 
 tent, of his own moral condition, and in the 
 musings of his supreme imagination found himself 
 astray in evil paths, and began to seek through hell 
 and heaven the verace via, the right way which he 
 had lost. This great scene of religious fervor, in 
 which so many penitents from all quarters of the 
 world renewed the vows of their youth and pledged 
 over again their devotion to the Church and the 
 Faith, comes strangely into the midst of the fierce 
 strife between Guelt and Ghibelline, which then 
 rent asunder the troubled Continent, and especially 
 Italy, where every 'city took part in the struggle. 
 Venice, in the earlier ages as well as in later times 
 when she maintained her independence against 
 papal interference, has usually shown much indif- 
 ference to the authority of the Pope. But in the 
 beginnmgof the fourteenth century this was impos- 
 sible, especially when the great Republic of the Sea 
 meddled, as she had no right to do, with the inter- 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE 109 
 
 nal policy of that Terra Firma, the fat land of corn 
 and vine, after which she had always a longing. 
 And there now fell upon her, in the midst of all 
 other contentions, the most terrible of all catas- 
 trophes to which mediaeval States were subject, the 
 curse of Rome. It was, no doubt, rather with that 
 keen eye to her own advantage which never failed 
 her, than from any distinct bias toward the side of 
 the Ghibelline, that Venice had interposed in the 
 c^estion of succession which agitated the city of 
 Ferrara, and finally made an attempt to establish 
 her own authority in that distracted place. Indeed 
 it seems little more than an accidental appeal on 
 the part of the other faction to the protection of the 
 Pope which brought upon her the terrible punish- 
 ment of the excommunication which Pope Clement 
 launched from Avignon, and which ruined her 
 trade, reduced her wealth, put all her wandering 
 merchants and sailors in danger of their lives, and 
 almost threatened with complete destruction the 
 proud city which had held her head so high. It 
 would have been entirely contrary to the habits of 
 Venice, as of every other republican community, 
 not to have visited this great calamity more or less 
 upon the head of the state. And it gave occasion to 
 the hostile families who from the time of Graden- 
 igo's accession had been seeking an opportunity 
 against him — the house of Tiepolo and its allies, 
 the Quirini, who had opposed the war of Ferrara all 
 through and had suffered severely in it, and others, 
 in one way or another adverse to the existing Gov- 
 ernment. The Tiepoli do not seem to have been 
 generally of the mild and noble character of him 
 who had refused to be elected doge by the clamor 
 of the Piazza. They had formed all through a bit- 
 ter opposition partly to the doge who had displaced 
 their kinsman. Perhaps even Jacopo Tiepolo, him- 
 self, while retiring from the strife to save the peace 
 of the republic, had a natural expectation that the 
 acclamation of the populace would be confirmed by 
 
110 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 the votes of the electors. At all events his family 
 had throughout maintained a constitutional feud, 
 keeping a keen eye upon all proceedings of the Gov- 
 ernment, and eager to find a sufficient cause for 
 interference more practical. 
 
 It would seem a proof that the popular mind had 
 not fully awakened to the consequences of the 
 change of laws at the moment of Bocconio's insur- 
 rection that the patrician opposition did not seize 
 that opportunity. The occasion they sought came 
 later, when the disastrous war and the horrors of 
 the interdict, events more immediately perceptible 
 than any change of constitution, had excited all 
 minds and opened the eyes of the people to their 
 internal wrongs by the light of those tremendous 
 misfortunes which the ambition or the unskillful- 
 ness of their doge and his advisers had brought 
 upon them. The rebellious faction took advantage 
 of all possible means to fan the fiatne of discontent; 
 stimulating the stormy debates of tlie Consiglio 
 Maggiore, which was not more but less easy to man- 
 age since it had been restricted to the gentry, while 
 at the same time stirring up the people to a sense 
 of the profound injury of exclusion from its ranks. 
 The Quirini, the Badoeri, and vari9us others, con- 
 nected by blood and friendship with the Tiepoli, 
 among whom were hosts of young gallants always 
 ready for a brawl, and ready to follow any warlike 
 lead, to quicken the action of their seniors, increased 
 the tension on all sides. How the excitement grew 
 in force and passion day by day; how one incident 
 after another raised the growing wrath ; how scuffles 
 arose in the city and troubles multiplied, it is not 
 difficult to imagine. On one occasion a Dandolo 
 took the wall of a Tiepolo and a fight ensued; on 
 another, "the devil, who desires the destruction of 
 all government," put it into the head of Marco 
 Morosini, one of the Signori di Notte (or night mag- 
 istrates), to inquire whether Pietro Quirini of the 
 elder branch (della Ca' Grande) was armed, and to 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. Ill 
 
 order him to be searched; on which Quirini, 
 enraged, tripped up the said Morosini with his foot, 
 and all the Rialto was forthwith in an uproar. 
 The houses of the chiefs of the party, both Tiepoli 
 and Quirini, were in the quarter of the Rialto, and 
 close to the bridge. 
 
 At length the gathering fire burst into flame. No 
 doubt driven beyond patience by some incident, 
 trifling in itself, Marco Quirini, one of the heads of 
 his house, a man who had suffered much in the 
 war with Ferrara, called his friends and neighbors 
 round him in his palace, and addressed the assem- 
 bled party; attacking the doge as the cause of all 
 the troubles of the country, the chief instrument in 
 changing the constitution, in closing the Great 
 Council to the people, in carrying on the fatal war 
 with Ferrara, and bringing down upon the city the 
 horrors of the excommunication. To raise a party 
 against the doge for private reasons, however valid, 
 would not be, he said, the part of a good citizen. 
 But how could they stand cold spectators of the ruin 
 of their beloved and injured country, or shut their 
 eyes to the fact that the evil passions of one man 
 were the chief cause of their misery, and that it 
 was he who had not only brought disaster from 
 without, but, by the closing of the council, shut out 
 from public affairs so many of the worthiest citi- 
 zens? He was followed by a younger and still more 
 ardent speaker in the person of Bajamonte Tiepolo, 
 the son of Jacopo, with whose name henceforward 
 this historical incident is chiefly connected, at that 
 time one of the most prominent figures in Venice, 
 the Gran Cavaliero ot the people, who loved him, 
 and among whom he had inherited his father's 
 popularity. *'Let us leave words and take to ac- 
 tion, " he said, "nor pause till we have placed on the 
 throne a good prince, who will restore the ancient 
 laws, and preserve and increase the public free- 
 dom. " The struggle was probably in. its essence 
 much more a family feud than a popular outbreak, 
 
112 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 but it is a sign of the excitement ot the time that 
 the wrongs of the people were at every turn ap- 
 pealed to as the one unquestionable argument. 
 
 Never had there been a more apt moment for a 
 popular rising. *'In the first place," says Caroldo, 
 "the city was very ill content with the illustrious 
 Pietro Gradenigo, who in the beginning of his reign 
 had the boldness to reform the Consiglio Maggiore ; 
 admitting a larger number of families who were 
 noble, and few of those who ought to have been the 
 principal and most respected ot the city, taking from 
 the citizens and populace the ancient mode of 
 admission into the council; the root of this change 
 being the hatred he bore to the people, wh^, before 
 his election, had proclaimed Jacopo Tiepolu doge, 
 and afterward had shown little satisfaction witi. the 
 choice made of himself. And not only did he bear 
 rancor against Jacopo Tiepolo, but against the 
 whole of his family. ' ' 
 
 Notwithstanding this rancor Jacopo Tiepolo him- 
 self, the good citizen, was the only one who now 
 raised his voice for peace and endeavored to calm 
 the excitement of his family and their adherents. 
 But the voice of reason was not listened to. On 
 the night of the 14th of June, 1310, ten years after 
 Bocconio's brief and ill-fated struggle, the fires of 
 insurrection were again lighted up in Venice. The 
 conspirators gathered during the night in the Quir- 
 ini Palace, meeting under cover of the darkness in 
 order to burst forth with the early dawn, and with 
 an impeto a sudden rush from the Rialto to the 
 Piazza, to gain possession of the center of the city 
 and seize and kill the doge. The night, however, 
 was not one of thor>e lovely nights of June which 
 make Venice a paradise. It was a fit night for such 
 a bloody and fatal undertaking as that on which 
 these muffied conspirators were bound. A great 
 storm of thunder and lightning, such as has no- 
 where more magnificent force than on the lagoons, 
 burst forth while their bands were assembling, and 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 113 
 
 torrents of rain poured from the gloomy skies. It 
 was in the midst of this tempest, which favored 
 while it cowed them, the peals of the thunder mak- 
 ing their cries of ''Death to the doge!" and "Free- 
 dom to the people!" inaudible, and muffling the 
 tramp of their feet, that the insurrectionists set 
 forth. One half of the little army, under Marco 
 Quirini, kept the nearer way along the canal by 
 bridge 2in^ fond amenta ; the other, led by Bajamonte 
 himself, threaded their course by the narrow streets 
 of the Merceria to the same central point. The 
 sounds of the march were lost in the commotion of 
 nature, and the dawn for which they waited was 
 blurred in the stormy tumults of the elements. 
 The dark line of the rebels pushed on, however, 
 spite of storm and rain ; secure, it would seem, that 
 their secret had been kept and that their way was 
 clear before them. 
 
 But in the meantime the doge, who, whatever 
 were his faults, seems to have been a man of energy 
 and spirit, had heard, as the authorities always 
 heard, of the intended rising; and taking his meas- 
 ures as swiftly and silently as if he had been the 
 conspirator, called together all the officers of state, 
 with their retainers and servants, and sending off 
 messengers to Chioggia, Torcella, and Murano for 
 succor, ranged his little forces in the Piazza under 
 the flashing of the lightning and the pouring of the 
 rain, and silently awaited the arrival of the rebels. 
 A more dramatic scene could not be conceived. The 
 two lines of armed men stumbling on in the dark- 
 ness, waiting for a flash to show them the steps of 
 a bridge or the sharp corner of a narrow calle^ 
 pressed on in mutual emulation, their hearts hot for 
 the attack, and all the points of the assault decided 
 upon. When lo! as the first detachment, that led 
 by Quirini, debouched into the great square, a sud- 
 den wild flash, lighting up earth and heaven, 
 showed them the gleaming swords and dark files of 
 the defenders of San Marco awaiting their arrival. 
 
 8 Venice 
 
114 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 The surprise would seem to have been complete; 
 but it was not the doge who was surprised. This 
 unexpected revelation precipitated the fight, which 
 very shortly, the leaders being killed in the first 
 rush, turned into a rout. Bajamonte appearing 
 with his men by the side of the Merceria made a 
 better stand, but the advantage remained with the 
 doge's party, who knew what they had to expect, 
 and had the superior confidence of law and author- 
 ity on their side. 
 
 By this time the noise of the human tumult sur- 
 mounted that of the skies, and the peaceful citizens 
 who had slept through the storm woke to the sound 
 of the cries and curses, the clash of swords and 
 armor, and rushed to their windows to see what 
 the disturbance was. One woman, looking out, in 
 the mad passion of terror seized the first thing that 
 came to had, a stone vase of mortar on her window- 
 sill, and flung it down at hazard into the midst of the 
 tumult. This trifling incident would seem to have 
 been the turning-point of the struggle. The heavy 
 flower- pot or mortar descended upon the head of the 
 standard-bearer who carried Bajamonte's flag with 
 its inscription of Liberta, and struck hiiTi to the 
 ground. When the rebels, in the gray of the 
 stormy dawn, saw their banner waver and fall, a 
 panic seized them. They thought it was taken by 
 the enemy, and even the leader himself, the Gran 
 Cavaliero, turned with the panic-stricken crowd and 
 fled. Pursued and flying, fighting, making here 
 and there a stand, they hurried through the tor- 
 tuous ways to the Rialto, which, being then no more 
 than a bridge of wood, they cut down behind them 
 taking refuge on the other side, where their head- 
 quarters were, in the palace of the Quirini, the 
 remains of which, turned to ignoble use as a poul- 
 terer's shop, still exists in the Beccaria. The other 
 half of the insurrectionists, that which had been 
 thrown into confusion and flight by the death of its 
 leader Marco Quirini, met on its disastrous back- 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 115 
 
 ward course a band hastily collected by the head of 
 the Scuola della Carita, and increased by a number 
 of painters living about that center of their art — in 
 the Campo San Luca, where the rebels were cut to 
 pieces. 
 
 Bajamonte and his men, however, arrived safely 
 at their stronghold, having on their way sacked and 
 burned the office of the customs on that side of the 
 river, thus covering their retreat with smoke and 
 flame. Once there they closed their gates, intrench- 
 ing their broken strength in the great mediaeval 
 house which was of itself a fortress and defensible 
 place. And after all that had happened the fate of 
 Venice still hung in the balance, and such was the 
 gravity of the revolt that it still seemed possible for 
 the knot of desperate men intrenched on the other 
 side of the Rive Alto, the deep stream which sweeps 
 profound and strong round that curve of the bank, 
 to gain — did Badoer come back in time with the aid 
 he had been sent to seek in Padua — the upper hand. 
 Even when Badoer was cut off by Giustinian and his 
 men from Chioggia, the doge and his party, though 
 strong and confident, do not seem to have ventured 
 to attack the h<^-adquarters of the rebels. On the 
 contrary, envoys were sent to offer an amnesty, 
 and even pardon, should they submit. Three times 
 these envoys were rowed across the canal, the 
 ruined bridge lying black before their eyes, fretting 
 the glittering waves, which, no doubt, by this time 
 leaped and dashed against the unaccustomed ob- 
 stacle in all the brightness of June, the thunder- 
 storm over, though not the greater tempest of 
 human passion. From the other bank, over the 
 charred ruins of the houses they had destroyed, the 
 rebel Venetians, looking out in their rage, dis- 
 appointment, and despair, to see embassy after em- 
 bassy conducted to the edge of the ferry, must have 
 felt still a certain fierce satisfaction in their impor- 
 tance, and in the alarm to which these successive 
 messengers testified. At last, however, there came 
 
116 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 alone a venerable counsellor, Filippo Belegno, 
 "moved by love of his country" to attempt once 
 more the impossible task of moving these obstinate 
 and desperate men. No doubt he put before them 
 the agitated state of the city, the strange sight it 
 was with the ruins still smoking, the streets still full 
 of the wounded and dying; torn in two, the peace- 
 ful bridge lying a great wreck in mid-stream. 
 "And such was his venerable aspect and the force 
 of his eloquence" that he won the rebels at last to 
 submission. Bajamonte and his immediate followers 
 were banished for life from Venice and its vicinity 
 to the distant lands of Slavonia beyond Zara; others 
 less prominent were allowed to hope that in a few 
 years they might be recalled; and the least guilty, 
 on making compensation for what they had helped 
 to destroy, were pardoned. Thus ended the most 
 serious revolt that had ever happened in Venice. 
 One cannot help feeling that it was hard upon 
 Badoer and several others who were taken fighting 
 to be beheaded, while Bajamonte was thus able to 
 make terms for himself and escape, with his head 
 at least. 
 
 The lives thus spared, however, were but little to 
 be envied. The banishment to the East was a pen- 
 alty which the republic could not enforce. She 
 could put the rebels forth from her territory, but 
 even her power was unable in those wild days to 
 secure a certain place of banishment for the exiles. 
 
 Those who are familiar with the life of Dante 
 will remember what was the existence of Sifuor-usato 
 banished from the beloved walls of Florence. Baja- 
 monte Tiepolo was a personage of greater social im- 
 portance than Dante, with friends and allies no doubt 
 in all the neighboring cities, as it was natural a man 
 should have who belonged to one of the greatest 
 Venetian families. The records of the state are full 
 of signs and tokens of his passage through the 
 Italian mainland and his long wanderings after- 
 ward on the Dalmatian coasts. He was scarcely 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 117 
 
 1^rell got rid of out of Venice before the doge is vis- 
 ible in the records making a great speech in the 
 council, in which he gives a lively picture of the 
 state of affairs and of the contumacy of Bajamonte 
 and his companions, their visits to Padua and Ro- 
 vigo, their parleys with the turbulent spirits of the 
 Marshes, and even of Lombardy — their perpetual 
 attempts to raise again the standard of revolt in 
 Venice. It may be supposed even that the doge 
 died of this revolt and its consequences, in the pas- 
 sion and endless harassment consequent upon the 
 constant machinations of his opponent, whom in- 
 deed he had got the better of, but who would not 
 yield. 
 
 Romance has scarcely taken hold, except in ob- 
 scure attempts, upon the- juxtaposition of these two 
 men ; but nothing seems more likely than that some 
 profounder personal tragedy lay at the bottom of 
 this historical episode. At all events the characters 
 of the two opponents, the doge and the rebel, are 
 strongly contrasted, and fit for all the uses of tra- 
 gedy. Had Venice possessed a Dante, or had Baja- 
 monte been gifted with a poet's utterance, who can 
 tell in what dark cave of the Inferno the reader of 
 these distant ages might not have found the dark, 
 unfriendly doge, sternly determined to carry through 
 his plans, to shut out contemptuously from his patri- 
 cian circle every low-born aspirant, and to betray 
 the beloved city, whose boast had always been of 
 freedom, into the tremendous fetters of a system 
 more terrible than any despotism? Gradenigo, so 
 iar as he can be identifiied personally, would seem 
 1o have been an excellent type of the haughty aris- 
 tocrat, scornful of the new men who formed the ris- 
 ing tide of Venetian life, and determined to keep in 
 the place in which they were born the inferior popu- 
 lace. He had been employed in distant dependencies 
 of the republic where a state of revolt was chronic, 
 and where the most heroic measures were necessary; 
 and it was clear to him there must be no hesitation, 
 
118 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 no trifling with the forces below. When he became 
 doge Venice was still to some extent governed by 
 her old traditions, and it was yet possible that the 
 democracy might have largely invaded her sacred 
 ranks of patrician power. She was ruled by an in- 
 tricate and shifting magistracy of councils, sages, 
 pregadi (the simplest primitive title, men "prayed" 
 to come and help the doge with their advice),, 
 among whom it is difficult to tell which was which, 
 or how many there were, or how long any one man 
 held his share of power But when Perazzo, Proud 
 Peter, the man whom the commons did not love, of 
 whom, no doubt, they had many a story to tell, 
 ended his reign in Venice, the Great Council had 
 become hereditary, the old possibilities were all 
 ended, and the Council of Ten sat supreme— an in- 
 stitution altogether new, and as terrible as unknown 
 — a sort of shifting but permanent Council of Public 
 Safety endowed with supreme and irresponsible 
 power. A greater political revolution could not be. 
 The armed revolutionaries who carried sword and 
 flame throughout the city could not, had they been 
 successful in their conjectured purpose of making 
 Bajamonte lord of Venice, have accomplished a 
 greater change in the state than was done silently 
 by this determined man. 
 
 That he was determined and prompt and bold is 
 evident from all his acts. The rapidity and silence 
 of his preparations to rout the insurgents ; the trap 
 in which he caught them when, marching under 
 cover of the thunder to surprise him in his palace, 
 they were themselves surprised in the Piazza by 
 a little army more strong, because forewarned, than 
 their own; the brave face he showed at another 
 period, even in front of the Pope's excommunica- 
 tion, proclaiming loudly to his distant envoys, **We 
 are determined to do all that is in us, manfully and 
 promptly, to preserve our rights and our honor;" 
 the boldness of his tremendous innovations upon 
 the very fabric of the State; and that final test of 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 119 
 
 success which forcible character and determination 
 are more apt than justice or mercy to win — leave 
 no doubt as to his intrinsic qualities. He was suc- 
 cessful, and his rival was unfortunate ; he was hated, 
 and the other was beloved. Neither of these two 
 figures stands prominent in picturesque personal 
 detail out of the pages of history. We see them 
 only by their acts, and only in so far as those acts 
 affected the great all-absorbing story of their city. 
 But the influence of Perazzo upon that history is 
 perhaps more remarkable than that of any other 
 individual, so far as law and sovereignty are con- 
 cerned. 
 
 The rebel leader was a very different man. The 
 noble youth whom Venice called the Gran Cav- 
 aliero, — the young Cavalier, as one might say, like 
 our own Prince Charlie — fiery and swift, bidding 
 his kinsman not talk but act —the hope of the elder 
 men, put forth by Marco Quirini as most worthy of 
 all to be heard when the malcontents first gathered 
 in the palace near the Rialto, and ventured to tell 
 each other what was in their hearts, — could have 
 been no common gallant, and yet would seem to 
 have had the faults and weaknesses as well as the 
 noble qualities of the careless, foolhardy cavalier. 
 No doubt he held his life as lightly as any knight- 
 errant of the time ; yet when his kinsman fell in 
 the narrow entrance of the Merceria, in the wild 
 dawning when foes and friends were scarcely to 
 be distinguished, Bajamonte, too, was carried 
 away by the quick, imaginary panic and retreated, 
 dragged along in the flight of his discouraged fol- 
 lowers. He had not that proof of earnestness which 
 success gives, and he had the ill fortune to escape 
 when other men perished. The narrative which 
 Romanin has collected out of the unpublished 
 records of his after life presents a picture of restless 
 exile, never satisfied, full of conspiracies, hopeless 
 plots, everlasting spyings and treacheries, which 
 make the heart sick. We can only remember that 
 
120 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 Bajamonte was no worse in this respect than his 
 great contemporary, Dante. And perhaps the two 
 exiles may have met, if not on those stairs which the 
 poet found so hard to climb, yet somewhere in the 
 wild roaming which occupied both their lives, full 
 of a hundred fruitless schemes to get back, this to 
 Florence, that to Venice. Romanin, ever severe 
 to the rebel, argues that all circumstances and all 
 documents prove the hero of the Venetian tragedy 
 to have been *'a man of excessive ambition, a sub. 
 verter of law and order; in fact, a traitor" — most 
 terrible of all reproaches. But as a matter of fact 
 it was not he but his adversary who subverted the 
 civil order of the republic, and whether the young 
 Tiepolo had a true sense of patriotism at his heart, 
 and of patriotic indignation against these innova.- 
 tions, or was merely one of the many ambitious 
 adventurers of the day, struck with the idea of mak- 
 ing himself Lord of Venice as the Scaligeri were 
 lords in Padua on no better title — there seems no 
 evidence, and probably never will be any evidence, 
 to show. 
 
 When Bajamonte left Venice he proceeded any- 
 where but to the distant countries to which he was 
 nominally banished. Evidently all that was done 
 in the way of carrying out such a sentence was to 
 drive the banished men out of the confines of the 
 republic, leaving them free to obey the further 
 orders of the authorities if they chose. In this case 
 the exiles lingered about secretly for some time in 
 neighboring cities, watched by spies who reported 
 all their actions, and especially those of Bajamonte, 
 to the doge. When at last he did proceed to Dal- 
 matia, he became, according to Romanin, a center 
 of conspiracy and treason, and at the bottom of the 
 endless rebellions of Zara, which, however, had 
 rebelled on every possible occasion long before 
 Bajamonte was born. It is curious to find that all 
 the chroniclers, and even a writer so recent and so 
 enlightened as Romanin, should remain pitiless 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 121 
 
 toward all rebels against the authority of the repub- 
 lic. The picture this historian gives of Bajamonte's 
 obscure and troubled career, pursued from one 
 city to another by the spies and letters of the Sig- 
 noria warning all and sundry to have nothing to do 
 with the rebel, and making his attempts to re-enter 
 life impossible, is a very sad one; but no pity tor 
 the exile, ever moves the mind of the narrator. For 
 with the Venetian historian, as with all other mem- 
 bers of this wonderful commonwealth, Venice is 
 everything, and the individual nothing; nor are any 
 man's wrongs or suffering of any importance in 
 comparison with the peace and prosperity of the 
 adored city. 
 
 The traces of this insurrection have in the long 
 progress of years almost entirely disappeared, 
 though at the time many commemorative monu- 
 ments bore witness to the greatest popular convul- 
 sion which ever moved Venice. The Tiepolo palace, 
 inhabited by Bajamonte, was razed to the ground, 
 and a pillar, unacolojina duiiamia^ was placed on the 
 spot with the following inscription: 
 
 "Di Baiamonte fo questo terreno, 
 E mo* per lo so Iniqtio tradimento 
 S'e posto in Chomun per I'altrui spavento 
 E per mostrar a lutti sempre seno. ' ' 
 
 '*This was the dwelling of Bajamonte; for his 
 wicked treason this stone is set up, that others may 
 fear and that it may be a sign to all. " The column 
 was broken, Tassini tells us in his curious and 
 valuable work upon the Streets of Venice, soon 
 after it was set up, by one of the followers of Tie- 
 polo who had shared in the amnesty, but whose 
 fidelity to his ancient chief was still too warm to 
 endure this public mark of infamy. It was then 
 removed to the close neighborhood of the parish 
 
 *''Quelmo del secondo verso r ^stys Tassini, '' spiegasi per 
 ORA, le quel Seno delV ultimo per Sieno, sotf intendendovi, 
 queste parole,'* 
 
122 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 church of St. Agostino, probably for greater safety; 
 afterward it was transferred, no longer as a mark 
 of shame but as a mere antiquity, from one patri- 
 cian's garden to another, till it was finally lost. In 
 later times, when the question was seriously dis- 
 cussed whether Bajamonte was not a patriot leader 
 rather than a traitor, proposals were made to raise 
 again the column of shame as a testimony of glory 
 misunderstood. But the convictions of the rehabil- 
 itators of the Gran Cavaliero have not been strong 
 enough to come to any practical issue. All that 
 remains of him is (or was) a white stone let into the 
 pavement behind the now suppressed church of St. 
 Agostino with the inscription — "Col: Bai: The: 
 MCCCX.," marking the site of his house; but 
 whether a relic of his own age or the work of some 
 more recent sympathizer we are not told. On the 
 other side of the canal in the campo of San Luca 
 stood till very recent times a flagstaff, ornamented 
 on gala days with the standard of the Scuola of the 
 Carita in remembrance of their victory over one 
 party of the insurrectionists;- and in the Merceria, 
 not far fiiom the Piazza, there still exists, or lately 
 existed, a shop with the sign '"Delia grazia del 
 morter^'' being the same out of which Giustina Rossi 
 threw forth the flower-pot, to the destruction of the 
 failing cause. 
 
 Another singular sign of disgrace and punishment 
 was the condemnation of the families of Quirini 
 and Tiepolo to a change of armorial bearings?^ Had 
 they been compelled to wear their arms reversed, 
 or to bear any other understood heraldic symbol of 
 shame, this would have been comprehensible ; but 
 all that seems to have been demanded of them was 
 a change of their bearings, not any ignominious 
 sign. The authorities went so far as to change the 
 arms upon the shields of the two defunct Tiepoli 
 doges; a most senseless piece of \'engeance, since 
 it obliterated the shame which it was intended to 
 enhance. The palaces still standing along thQ> 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 123 
 
 course of the Grand Canal which carry, rising from 
 their roofs, the two obelisks erected upon all the 
 houses of the Tiepoli for some reason unknown to 
 us, prove that in latter days the race was little 
 injured or diminished by its disgrace and punish- 
 ment. 
 
 A much greater memorial of this foiled rebellion, 
 however, still remains to be noticed. This was 
 the institution of the far-famed Council of Ten, the 
 great tribunal which henceforward reigned over the 
 republic with a sway which was in sober reality 
 tremendous and appalling, but which is still further 
 enhanced by the mystery in which all its proceed- 
 ings were wrapped, and the impression made upon 
 an imaginative people by the shadow of this great 
 secret, voiceless tribunal, every man of which was 
 sworn to silence, and before which any Venetian at 
 any moment might find himself arrainged. It was 
 professedly to guard against such a danger as that 
 which the republic had just escaped that this new 
 tribunal was instituted, *' Because of the new thing 
 which had happened, and to guard against any 
 repetition of it. " Among the many magistratures 
 of the city this was the greatest, most fatal, and 
 important: it held the keys of life and death; it was 
 responsible to no superior authority, permitted no 
 appeal, and was beyond the reach of public opinion 
 or criticism, its decisions as unquestionable as they 
 were secret. The system of denunciation, the secret 
 documents dropped into the Bocca di Leone, the 
 mysterious processes by which a man might be con- 
 demned before he knew that he had been accused, 
 have perhaps been exaggerated, and Romanin does 
 his utmost to prove that the dreaded council was 
 neither so formidable nor so mysterious as romance 
 has made it out to be. But his arguments are but 
 poor in comparison with the evident dangers of an 
 institution, whose proceedings were wrapped in 
 secrecy and which was accountable neither to public 
 opinion nor to any higher tribunal Political 
 
124 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 offences in otir own day are judged more leniently 
 than crime; in those times they were of deeper dye 
 than anything that originated in private rage or 
 covetousness. And amid the family jealousies of 
 that limited society the opportunity thus given of 
 cutting off an enemy, undermining the reputation 
 of any offender, or spoiling the career of a too pros- 
 perous rival, was too tremendous a temptation for 
 human nature to resist. This formidable court was. 
 in conformity with the usual Venetian custom, ap- 
 pointed first for a year only, as an experiment, and 
 with the special purpose of forestalling further 
 rebellion by the most suspicious and inquisitive 
 vigilance ; but once established it was too mighty a 
 power to be abandoned, and soon became an estab- 
 lished institution. 
 
 Thus the two rebellions did nothing but rivet the 
 chains which had been woven about the limbs of the 
 republic. And though there still remained the 
 boast of freedom, and the City of the Sea always 
 continued to vaunt her republican severity and 
 strength, Venice now settled into the tremendous 
 framework of a system which had no room for the 
 plebeian or the poor ; more rigid than any individual 
 despotism, in which there are always chances for 
 the new man ; more autocratic and irresponsible 
 than the government of any absolute monarch. The 
 Council of Ten completed the bonds which the 
 Serrata of the council had made. The greatest 
 splendors, if not the greatest triumphs of the state 
 were yet to come, but all the possibilities of poli- 
 ical freedom and expansion w«re finally destroyed. 
 
 The circumstances which surrounded this new in- 
 stitution were skillfully, almost theatrically disposed 
 to increase the terror with which it was soon regard- 
 ed. The vow of secrecy exacted from each member 
 and from all who appeared before them, the lion's 
 mouth ever open for denunciations — which, however 
 well-founded may be Romanin's assertion that those 
 which were anonymous were rarely acted upon, 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 125 
 
 yet bore an impression of the possibility of a das- 
 tardly and secret blow, which nothing can wipe 
 out — the mysterious manner in which a man accused 
 was brought before that tribunal in the dark, to 
 answer to judges only partially seen, with con- 
 sciousness of the torture room and all its horrors 
 near, if his startled wits should fail him — all were 
 calculated to make the name of the Ten a name to 
 fear. Nothing could be more grim than the smile 
 of that doge who, leaving the council chamber in 
 the early sunshine after a prolonged meeting, 
 answered the unsuspicious good-morrow of the 
 great soldier whom he had been condemning, with 
 the words, "There has been much talk of you in the 
 council." Horrible greeting, which meant so much 
 more than met the ear! 
 
 The Doge Gradenigo died little more than a year 
 after the confusion and discomfiture of his adversa- 
 ries. He was conveyed, without funeral honors or 
 any of the respect usually shown to the dead, to St. 
 Cipriano in Murano, where he was buried. *'The 
 usual funeral of princes was not given to him," 
 says Caroldo, '* perhaps because he was still under 
 the papal excommunication, perhaps because, hated 
 as he was by the people in his lifetime it was feared 
 that some riot would rise around him in his 
 death." He who had carried out the Serrata^ and 
 established the Council of Ten, and triumphed over 
 all his personal opponents, had to skulk over the 
 lagoon, privately, against all precedent, to his 
 grave, leaving the state in unparalleld trouble and 
 dismay. But he had crushed the rebel, whether 
 patriot or conspirator, and revolutionized Venice, 
 which was work enough and success enough for one 
 man. He died in August, 131 1, a year and some 
 months after the banishment of Bajamonte and the 
 end of his rebellion. 
 
126 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE DOGES DISGRACED. 
 
 The history of the two princes to whom Venice 
 has given a lasting place in the annals of the unfor- 
 tunate, those records which hold a surer spell over 
 the heart than any of the more triumphant chron- 
 icles of fame, are of less material import to her own 
 great story than those chapters of self-development 
 and self-construction which we have surveyed. 
 But picturesque in all things, and with a dramatic 
 instinct which rarely fails to her race, the republic, 
 even in the height of her vengeance, and by means 
 of the deprivation which has banished his image 
 from among those of her rulers, has made the name 
 of the beheaded doge, Marino Faliero, one of the 
 best known in all her records. We pass the row of 
 pictured faces, many of them representing her 
 greatest sons, till we come to the place where this 
 old man is not, his absence being doubly suggestive 
 and carrying a human interest beyond that of all 
 fulfilled and perfect records. Nor is it without 
 significance in the history of tho state, that after 
 having finally suppressed and excluded the popular 
 element from all voice in its councils, the great 
 oligarchy which had achieved its proud position by 
 means of doge and people, should have applied 
 itself to the less dangerous task of making a puppet 
 of its nominal prince, converting him into a mere 
 functionary and ornamental head of the state. Such 
 words have been applied often enough to the con- 
 stitutional monarch of our own highly refined and 
 balanced system, and it is usual to applaud the strict 
 and honorable self-restraint of our English sover- 
 eign as the brightest of royal qualities; but these 
 were strange to the mediaeval imagination, which 
 had little understanding of a prince who was no 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. W 
 
 ruler. Whether it was in accordance with some 
 tremendous principle of action secretly conceived 
 in the minds of the men who had by a series of 
 skillful and cautious movements made the parlia- 
 ment of Venice into an assembly of patricians, and 
 then neutralized that assembly b}'- the still more 
 startling power of the Council of Ten, that this work 
 was accomplished, it is impossible to tell. It is 
 difficult indeed to imagine that such sl plan could be 
 carried from generation to generation, though it 
 might well be conceived, like Strafford's ** Thor- 
 ough," in the subtle intellect of some one far-seeing 
 legislator. Probably the Venetian statesmen were 
 but following the current of a tendency such as 
 serves all the purpose of a foregone determination 
 in ma,ny conjunctures of human affairs — a tendency 
 which one after another leader caught or was caught 
 by, and which swept toward its logical conclusion 
 innumerable kindred minds with something of the 
 tragic cumulative force of those agencies of nature 
 against which man can do so little. It was, how- 
 ever, a natural balance to the defeat of the people 
 that the doge also should be defeated and bound. 
 And from the earliest days of recognized states- 
 manship this had been the subject of continual 
 effort, taking first the form of a jealous terror of 
 dynastic succession, and gradually growing, through 
 oaths more binding and promissiom more detailed 
 and stringent, until at length the doge found him 
 self less than the master, a little more than the 
 slave, of those fluctuating yet consistent possessors 
 of the actual power of the state, who had by degrees 
 gathered the entire government into their hands. 
 
 Marino Faliero had been an active servant of 
 Venice through a long life. He had filled almost 
 all the great offices which were intrusted to her 
 nobles. He had governed her distant colonies, 
 accompanied her armies in that position of provedt- 
 tore, omnipotent civilian critic of all the movements 
 of war, which so much disgusted the generals of 
 
128 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 the republic. He had been ambassador at the 
 courts of both emperor and Pope, and was serving 
 his country in that capacity at Avignon when the 
 news of his election reached him. It is thus 
 evident that Faliero was not a man used to the posi- 
 tion of a lay figure, although at seventy-six the dig- 
 nified retirement of a throne, even when so encir- 
 cled with restrictions, would seem not inappropriate. 
 That he was of a haughty and hasty temper seems 
 apparent. It is told of him that, after waiting 
 long for a bishop to head a procession at Treviso 
 where he was podesta he astonished the tardy 
 prelate by a box on the ear when he finally ap- 
 peared, a punishment for keeping the authorities 
 waiting which the church man would little expect. 
 
 Old age to a statesman, however, is in many 
 cases an advantage rather than a defect, and Faliero 
 was young in vigor and character, and still full of 
 life and strength. He was married a second time 
 to presumably a beautiful wife much younger than 
 himself, though the chroniclers are not agreed ever 
 on the subject of her name, whether she was a 
 Gradenigo or a Contarini. The well known story 
 of young Steno's insult to this lady and to her old 
 husband has found a place in all subsequent histo- 
 ries — but there is no trace of it in the unpublished 
 documents of the state. The story goes that 
 Michel Steno, one of those young and insubordi- 
 nate gallants who are a danger to every aristocratic 
 state, having been turned out of the presence of 
 the dogaressa for some unseemly freedom of behav- 
 ior, wrote upon the chair of the doge in boyish 
 petulance an insulting taunt, such as might well 
 rouse a high-tempered old man to fury. According 
 to Sanudo, the young man, on being brought 
 before the Forty, confessed that he had thus 
 avenged himself in a fit of passion ; and regard 
 having been had to his age and the '*heat of love" 
 which had been the cause of his original misde- 
 meanor, a reason seldom taken into account by the 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. m 
 
 tribunals of the state, he was condemned to prison 
 for two months, and afterward to be banished for 
 a year from Venice. The doge took this light pun- 
 ishment greatly amiss, considering it indeed, as a 
 further insult. Sabellico says not a word of 
 Michael Steno, or of this definite cause of offense, 
 and Romanin quotes the contemporary records to 
 show that though Alcufit zovanelh fioh de genitluomim 
 dt VeneUo are supposed to have affronted the doge, 
 no such story finds a place in any of them. But the 
 old man thus translated from active life and power, 
 soon became bitterly sensible in his new position 
 that he was senza pareniado, with few relations, and 
 flouted by the gtovinastri, the dissolute young gen- 
 tlemen who swaggered about the Broglio in their 
 finery, strong in the support of fathers and uncles 
 among the Forty or the Ten. That he found him- 
 self at the same time shelved in his new rank, pow- 
 erless, and regarded as a nobody in the state 
 where hitherto he had been a potent signior — 
 mastered in every action by the Secret Tribunal, 
 and presiding nominally in councils where his opin- 
 ion was of little consequence — is evident. And a 
 man so well acquainted, and so long, with all the 
 proceedings of the state, who had been entering 
 middle age in the days of Bajamonte, who had seen 
 consummated the shutting out of the people, and 
 since had watched through election after election a 
 gradual tightening of the bonds round the feet of 
 the doge, would naturally have many thoughts when 
 he found himself the wearer of that restricted and 
 diminished crown. He could not be unconscious 
 of how the stream was going, nor unaware of that 
 gradual sapping of privilege and decreasing of 
 power which even in his own case had gone further 
 than with his predecessor. Perhaps he had noted 
 with an indignant mind the new limits of the 
 promissione^ a narrower charter than ever, when he 
 was called upon to sign it. He had no mind, we 
 may well believe, to retire thus from the adrainis- 
 
 Venice 
 
130 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 tration of affairs. And when these giovinastri, 
 other people's boys, the scum of the gay world, 
 flung their unsavory jests in the face of the old 
 man, who had no son to come after him, the silly 
 insults so lightly uttered, so little thought of the 
 natural scoff of youth at old age stung him to the 
 quick. 
 
 And it so happened that various complaints were 
 at this moment presented to the doge in which his 
 own cause of offense was repeated. A certain 
 Barbaro, one of the reigning class, asking some- 
 thing at the arsenal of an old sailor, an admiral 
 high in rank and in the love of the people, but not 
 a patrician, who was not of his opinion, struck the 
 officer on the cheek, and wounded him with a 
 great ring he wore. A similar incident occurred 
 between a Dandolo and another sea captain, Ber- 
 tuccio Isarello; and in both cases the injured men, 
 old comrades very probably of Faliero, men whom 
 he had seen representing the republic on stormy 
 seas or boarding the Genoese galleys, carried their 
 complaints to the doge. "Such evil beasts should 
 be bound, and when they cannot be bound they are 
 killed!" cried one of the irritated seamen. Such 
 words were not unknown to the Venetian echoes. 
 Not long before, a wealthy citizen, who in his youth 
 had been of Bajamonte's insurrection, had breathed 
 a similar sentiment in the ears of another rich 
 plebeian, after both had expressed their indignation 
 that the consiglio was shut against them. The 
 second man in this case betrayed the first, and got 
 the much-coveted admission in consequence — he 
 and his; while his friend made that fatal journey to 
 the Piazzetta between the columns, from which no 
 man ever came back. 
 
 Old Faliero's heart burned within him at his own 
 injuries and those of his old comrades. How he 
 was induced to head the conspiracy, and put his 
 crown, his life, and honor on the cast, there is no 
 further information. His fierce temper, and the 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. M 
 
 fact that he had no powerful house behind him to 
 help to support his case, probably made him reck- 
 less. It was in April of 1355, only six months after 
 his arrival in Venice as doge, that the smoldering 
 fire broke out. As happened always, two of the 
 conspirators were seized with a compunction on the 
 eve of the catastrophe and betrayed the plot — one 
 with a merciful motive to serve a patrician he 
 loved, the other with perhaps less noble intentions 
 and, without a blow struck, the conspiracy col- 
 lapsed. There was no real heart in it, nothing to 
 give it consistence, the hot passion of a few men 
 insulted, the variable gaseous excitement of those 
 wronged commoners who were not strong enough 
 or strenuous enough to make the cause triumph 
 under Bajamonte ; and the ambition, if it was ambi- 
 tion, of one enraged and affronted old man, without 
 an heir to follow him or anything that could make 
 it worth his while to conquer. 
 
 Did Faliero ever expect to conquer, one wonders, 
 when he embarked at seventy-seven on such an en- 
 terprise? And if he had, what good could it have 
 done him save vengeance upon his enemies? An 
 enterprise more wild was never undertaken. It 
 was the passionate stand of despair against a force 
 so overwhelming as to make mad the helpless, yet 
 not submissive victims. The doge, who no doubt 
 in former days had felt it to be a mere affair of the 
 populace, a thing with which a noble ambassador 
 and proveditore had nothing to do, a struggle 
 beneath his notice, found himself at last, with fury 
 and amazement, to be a fellow sufferer caught in 
 the same toils. There seems no reason to believe 
 that Faliero consciously staked the remnant of his 
 life on the forlorn hope of overcoming that awful 
 and pitiless power, with any real hope of establish- 
 ing his own supremacy. His aspect is rather that 
 of a man betrayed by passion, and wildly forgetful 
 of all posibility in his fierce attempt to free himself 
 and get the upper hand. One cannot but feel, in 
 
132 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 that passion of helpless age and unfriendliness, 
 something of the terrible disappointment of one to 
 whom the real situation of affairs had never been 
 revealed before; wh9 had come home triumphant to 
 reign like the doges of old, and only after the ducal 
 cap was on his head and the palace of the state had 
 become his home, found out that the doge, like 
 the unconsidered plebeian, had been reduced to 
 bondage, his judgment and experience put aside in 
 favor of the deliberations of a secret tribunal, and 
 the very boys, when they were nobles, at liberty to 
 jeer at his declining years. 
 
 The lesser conspirators, all men of the humbler 
 sort, — Calendario, the architect, who was then at 
 work upon the palace, a number of seamen, and 
 other little-known persons, — were hung, not like 
 greater criminals, beheaded between the columns, 
 but strung up, a horrible fringe, along the side of 
 the palazzo, beginning at the two red pillars now 
 forming part of the loggia, then apparently sup- 
 porting the arches over a window from which the 
 doge was accustomed to behold the performances 
 in the Piazza. The fate of Faliero himself is too 
 generally known to demand description. Calmed 
 by the tragic touch of fate, the doge bore all the 
 humiliations of his doom with dignity, and was be- 
 headed at the head of the stairs where he had sworn 
 the promissione on first assuming the office of doge. 
 (Not, however, it need hardly be said, at the head 
 of the Giants' Staircase, which was not then in 
 being.) What a contrast from that triumphant day 
 when probably he felt that his reward had come to 
 him after the long and faithful service of years! 
 
 Death stills disappointment as well as rage; and 
 Faliero is said to have acknowledged the justice ot 
 his sentence. He had never made any attempt to 
 justify or defend himself, but frankly and at once 
 avowed his guilt, and made no attempt to escape 
 from its penalties. 
 
 His body was conveyed privately to the church of 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 183 
 
 SS. Giovanni and Paolo, the **Zanipolo'* with 
 which all visitors to Venice are so familiar, and was 
 buried in secrecy and silence in the atrio of a little 
 chapel behind the great church ; where, no doubt, 
 for centuries the pavement was worn by many feet 
 with little thought of who lay below. Even from 
 that refuge in the course of these centuries his 
 bones have been driven forth; but his name re- 
 mains in that corner of the Hall of the Great Coun- 
 cil which everybody has seen or heard of, and 
 where, with a certain dramatic affectation, the 
 painter-historians have painted a black veil across 
 the vacant place. "This is the place of Marino 
 Faliero, beheaded for his crimes," is all the record 
 left of the doge disgraced. 
 
 Was it a crime? The question is one which it is 
 difficult to discuss with any certainty. That Fali- 
 ero desired to establish, as so many had done in 
 other cities, an independent despotism in Venice, 
 seems entirely unproved. It was the prevailing 
 fear, the one suggestion which alarmed everybody, 
 and made sentiment unanimous. But one of the 
 special points which are recorded by the chroniclers 
 as working in him to madness, was that he was 
 senza parentado^ without any backing of relationship 
 or allies — sonless, with no one to come after him. 
 How little likely, then, was an old man to embark 
 on such a desperate venture for self-aggrandizement 
 merely! He had, indeed, a nephew who was in- 
 volved in his fate, but apparently not so deeply as 
 to expose him to the last penalty of the law. The 
 incident altogether points more to a sudden out- 
 break of the rage and disappointment of an old pub- 
 lic servant coming back from his weary labors for 
 the state, in triumph and satisfaction, to what 
 seemed the supreme reward; and finding himself 
 no more than a puppet in the hands of remorseless 
 masters, subject to the scoffs of the younger genera- 
 tion — supreme in no sense of the word, and with 
 his eyes opened by his own suffering, perceiving for 
 
134 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 the first time what justice there was in the oft- 
 repeated protest of the people, and how they and he 
 alike were crushed under the iron heel of that oli- 
 garchy to which the power of the people and that of 
 the prince were equally obnoxious. The chroniclers 
 of his time were so much at a loss to find any reason 
 for such an attempt on the part of a man 7ion abbi- 
 ando alcum propinquo that they agree in attributing 
 it to diabolical inspiration. It was more probably 
 that fury which springs from a sense of wrong, 
 which the sight of the wrongs of others raised to 
 frenzy, and that intolerable impatience of the im- 
 potent — which is more harsh in its hopelessness than 
 the greatest hardihood. He could not but die for 
 it; but there seems no more reason to characterize 
 this impossible attempt as deliberate treason than 
 to give the same name to many an alliance formed 
 between prince and people in other regions — the 
 king and commons of our early Stuarts, for one — 
 against the intolerable exactions and cruelty of an 
 aristocracy too powerful to be faced by either alone. 
 
 Francesco Foscari was a more innocent sufferer, 
 and his story is a most pathetic and moving tale. 
 
 Seventy years had elapsed since the dethrone- 
 ment and execution of Faliero, the fifteenth century 
 was in its first quarter, and all the complications 
 and crimes of that wonderful period were in full 
 operation when the old Doge Tommaso Mocenigo on 
 his deathbed reviewed the probable competitors for 
 his office, and warned the republic specially against 
 Foscari. The others were all men da be?ie, but Fos- 
 cari was proud and deceitful, grasping and prodigal, 
 and if they elected him they would have nothing but 
 wars. He was at the same time, gravely adds one 
 of the electors in the severe contest for his election, 
 a man with a large family, and a young wife who 
 added another to the number once a year; and 
 therefore was likely to be grasping and covetous so 
 far as money was concerned. 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 135 
 
 Notwithstanding these evil prognostications the 
 reign of Foscari was a great one and full of impor- 
 tant events. He fulfilled the prophecy of his pre- 
 decessor in so far that war was perpetual in his 
 time, and the republic under him involved itself in 
 all the contentions which tore Italy asunder, and, 
 joining with the Florentines against the victorious 
 Lord of Milan, Fillipo Maria Visconti, and having 
 the good fortune to secure Carmagnola for its gen- 
 eral, became in its turn aggressive, and conquered 
 town after town; losing, retaking, and in one or 
 two instances securing permanently the sovereignty 
 of great historic cities. The story of the great sol- 
 diers of fortune, which is to a large extent the story 
 of the time, will be told in another chapter, and we 
 need not attempt to discover what was the part of 
 the doge in the tragedy of Carmagnola. 
 
 From the limitations of the prince's power which 
 we have indicated it will, however, be evident 
 enough that neither in making war nor in the 
 remorseless punishment of treachery, whether real 
 or supposed, could the responsibility rest with the 
 doge, who could scarcely be called even the most 
 important member of the courts over which he 
 presided. It is not until the end of his brilliant 
 career that Francesco Foscari separates himself 
 from the roll of his peers in that tragic distinction 
 of great suffering which impresses an image upon 
 the popular memory more deeply than the greatest 
 deeds can do. Notwithstanding the reference 
 quoted above to the alarming increase of his fam- 
 ily, there was left within a few years, of his five 
 sons, but one, Jacopo, who was no soldier nor states- 
 man, but an elegant young man of his time, full of 
 all the finery, both external and internal, of the 
 Renaissance, a Greek scholar and collector of 
 manuscripts, a dilettante and leader of the golden 
 youth of Venice, who were no longer, as in the stout 
 days of the republic, trained to encounter the clang 
 of arms and the uncertainties of the sea. The bat- 
 
136 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 ties of Terra Firm a were conducted by mercenaries, 
 under generals who made of war a costly and long- 
 drawn-out game; and the young nobles of the day 
 haunted the Broglio under the arches of the pal- 
 azzo, or schemed and chattered in the antecham- 
 bers, or spread their gay plumes to the sun in fes- 
 tas and endless parties of pleasure. When Jacopo 
 Foscari was married the splendor of his marriage 
 feast was such that even the gravest of historians, 
 amid all the crowdmg incidents 6f the time, pauses 
 to describe the wedding procession. A bridge was 
 thrown across the canal opposite the Foscari palace, 
 over which passed a hundred splendid young cava- 
 liers on horseback, making such a show as must 
 have held all Venice breathless; caracoling cau- 
 tiously over the temporary pathway not adapted for 
 such passengers, and making their way, one does 
 not quite understand how, clanging and sliding 
 along the stony ways, up and down the steps of the 
 bridges to the Piazza, where a tournament was held 
 in honor of the occasion. They were all in the 
 finest of clothes, velvets and satins and cloth of 
 gold, with wonderful calze, one leg white and the 
 other red, and various braveries more fine than had 
 ever been seen before. The bride went in all her 
 splendor, silver brocade and jewels sparkling in the 
 sun, in a beautiful and graceful procession of boats 
 to San Marco. She was a Contarini, a neighbor 
 from one of the great palaces on the same side. 
 The palace of the Foscari, as it now stands in the 
 turn of the canal ascending toward the Rialto, had 
 just been rebuilt by Doge Francesco in its present 
 form, and was the center of all these festivities; the 
 house of the bride being near, in the neighborhood 
 of San Barnaba. No doubt the hearts of the 
 Foscari and all their retainers must have been up- 
 lifted by the glories of a festa more splendid than 
 had ever been given in Venice on such an occasion. 
 But this brilliant sky soon clouded over. Only 
 three years after Jacopo fell under suspicion 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 137 
 
 of having taken bribes to promote the interests of 
 various suitors, and to have obtained offices and 
 pensions for them per brogho; that is to say, in the 
 endless schemes, consultations, exchanges, and 
 social conspiracies ot the general meeting place, the 
 Broglio, a name which stood for all the jobbing and 
 backstairs influences which flourish not less in re- 
 publics than in despotisms. Against this offense, 
 when found out, the laws were very severe, and 
 Jacopo was sentenced to banishment to Naples, 
 where he was to present himself daily to the re- 
 presentative of the republic there — a curious kind of 
 penalty according to our present ideas. Jacopo, 
 however, fled to Trieste, where, happily for himself, 
 he fell ill, and after some months was allowed to 
 change his place of exile to Treviso, and finally, on a 
 pathetic appeal from the doge, was pardoned and 
 allowed to return to Venice. 
 
 Three years afterward, however, a fatal event 
 occurred, the assassination of one of the Council of 
 Ten who had condemned Jacopo, — Ermolao Do- 
 nato, — who was stabbed as he left the palace after 
 one of its meetings. The evidence which connected 
 Jacopo with this murder seems of the slightest. 
 One of his servants, a certain Olivieri, met on the 
 road to Mestre, almost immediately after, one of 
 the house of Gritti, and being asked *'What news?" 
 replied by an account of this assassination, a fact 
 which it was barely possible he could have heard of 
 by common report before he left Venice. This 
 was considered sufficient to justify the man's arrest 
 and examination by torture, which made him con- 
 fess everything, Sanudo tells us. Jacopo, too, was 
 exposed to this method of extorting the truth, but 
 *' because of his bodily weakness, and of some 
 words of incantation employed by him, the truth 
 could not be obtained from his mouth, as he only 
 murmured between his teeth certain unintelligible 
 words when undergoing the torture of the rack." 
 In these circumstances he had a mild sentence and 
 
138 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 was banished to the island of Candia. Here the 
 exile, separated from all he loved and from all the 
 refinements of the life he loved, was not long at rest. 
 He took, according to one account, a singular and 
 complicated method of further incriminating himself 
 and thus procuring his return to Venice, it even to 
 fresh examination and torture — by writing a letter 
 to the Duke of Milan, against whom the republic 
 had fought so long, asking his intercession with the 
 Signoria; a letter which he never intended to reach 
 the person to whom it was addressed, but only to 
 induce the jealous council to whom it was artfully 
 betrayed to recall him for further question ; which 
 at last, in the middle of whatever sufferings, would 
 give his impatient heart a sight of those from whom 
 he had been separated. That it should have been 
 possible even to invent such a story of him conveys 
 a kind of revelation of the foolish, hot-headed, yet 
 tender-hearted being, vainly struggling among 
 natures so much too strong for him — which sheds 
 the light of many another domestic tragedy upon 
 this. 
 
 The matter would seem, however, to have been 
 more serious, though Romanin's best investigations 
 bring but very scanty proof ot the graver accusation 
 brought against the banished man ; which was that 
 of an attempt on Jacopo's part to gain his freedom 
 by means of the Sultan and the Genoese, the ene- 
 mies of the republic. The sole document given in 
 proof of this is a letter written by the council to the 
 Governor of Candia, in which the account of the 
 attempt, given in his own communication to them, 
 is repeated in detail — ot itself a somewhat doubtful 
 proceeding. To say "You told us so and so," is 
 seldom received as independent proof of alleged 
 facts. There are, however, letters in cipher re- 
 ferred to, which may have given authentication to 
 these accusations. Romanin, however, is so mani- 
 festly anxious to justify the authorities of Venice 
 and to sweep away the romance which he declares 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 130 
 
 to have gathered about these terrible incidents, that 
 the reader can scarcely avoid a certain reaction of 
 suspicion against the too great warmth of the de- 
 fense. Some personal touches may, no doubt, have 
 been added by adverse historians to heighten the 
 picture. But it would be wiser for even the patri- 
 otic Venetian to admit that, at least three times in 
 that cruel century — in the case of the Carrari mur- 
 dered in their prison, in that of Carmagnola be- 
 guiled into the cell from which he came out only to 
 die, and in that of the unfortunate Foscari — that 
 remorseless and all-powerful Council of Ten, re- 
 sponsible to no man, without any safeguard even of 
 publicity, who were too much feared to be resisted 
 and all whose proceedings were wrapped in seeming 
 impenetrability, stands beyond the possibility of 
 defense. There are few historians who do not find 
 it necessary to acknowledge at some points that the 
 most perfect of human governments has failed, but 
 this the Venetian enthusiast — and all Venetians are 
 enthusiasts — is extremely reluctant to do. 
 
 Poor Jacopo, with his weak mind and his weak 
 body, and the lightness ot nature which both friends 
 and foes admitted, perhaps rejoicing in the success 
 of his stratagem, perhaps troubled in the conscious- 
 ness of guilt, but yet with a sort of foolish happiness 
 anyhow in coming home, and hoping, as such san- 
 guine people do, m some happy chance that might 
 make all right, was brought back in custody of one 
 of the Ten — a Loredano, the enemy of his house, 
 who had been sent to fetch him. It would seem 
 that when the unfortunate prisoner was brought 
 before this awftil tribunal, he confessed everything; 
 ^^ />/^/2^, says Sanudo, spontaneamente, adds Romanin, 
 probably forgetting the horrible torture chamber 
 next door, which Jacopo had too good reason to 
 remember, and to avoid which this easy-going and 
 light-minded sinner, intent only upon seeing once 
 again those whom he loved, would be ready enough 
 to say whatever their illustrious worships pleased. 
 
140 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 The stern Loredano would have had him beheaded 
 between the columns; but even the Ten and their 
 coadjutors were not severe enough for that; and his 
 sentence was only, after all, to be retransported to 
 Candia and to spend a year in prison there — a 
 sentence which makes any real and dangerous con- 
 spiracy on his part very unlikely. When the sen- 
 tence was given, his prayer — to which he had, as 
 some say, thus risked his head — that he might see 
 his family was laid before the court. The doge and 
 all other relations had been during the proceedings 
 against him excluded, according to the law, from 
 the sittings of the council; so that the statement 
 that he was sentenced by his father is pure romance. 
 His petition was granted, and father and mother, 
 wife and children, were permitted to visit the 
 unfortunate. When the moment of farewell came, 
 it was not in his prison, but in the apartments of the 
 doge, that the last meeting took place. Poor 
 Jacopo, always light-minded, never able apparently 
 to persuade himself that all this misery was in ear- 
 nest, and could not be put aside by the exertions of 
 somebody, made yet one more appeal to his father 
 in the midst of the sobs and kisses of the unhappy 
 family. "Father, I beseech you, make them let 
 me go home, " he said to the poor old doge, who 
 knew too well how little he could do to help or suc- 
 cor. ^' Padre, vi pre go proaire per mi che ritor?it a casa 
 mia:'' as if he had been a school-boy caught in 
 some trifling offense, with that invincible ignorance 
 of the true meaning of things which the Catholic 
 Church, with fine human instinct, acknowledges as 
 a ground of salvation. But it is not an argument 
 which tells with men. "Jacopo, go; obey the will 
 of the country, and try no more," said the doge 
 with the simplicity of despair. No romance is 
 needed to enhance the pathos of this scene. 
 
 When the exile had departed pity would seem to 
 have touched the hearts of various spectators, and 
 by their exertions, six months later, his pardon was 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 141 
 
 obtained. But too late. Before the news could 
 reach him the unhappy Jacopo had gone beyond 
 the reach of all human recall. 
 
 The aged doge, the father of this unfortunate 
 young man, had been the head of the Venetian 
 state through one of the most brilliant and splendid 
 periods of its history. He had been always at war, 
 as his predecessor had prophesied : but his wars had 
 been often victorious for the republic, and had 
 added greatly, for the time at least, to her territories 
 and dominion. Whether these acquisitions were of 
 any real advantage to Venice is another question. 
 They involved a constant expenditure of money 
 such as is ruinous to most states, but the glory and 
 the triumph were alwa5^s delightful to her. Foscari 
 had held the place of a great prince in the estima- 
 tion of the world, and his life had been princely at 
 home in every way that can affect the imagination 
 and stimulate the pride of a nation; he had received 
 the greatest personages in Christendom, the emper- 
 ors, of the East and of the West, and entertained 
 them royally to the gratification and pride of all 
 Venice ; he had beautified the city with new build- 
 ings and more commodious streets; he had made 
 feasts and pageants more magnificent than ever had 
 been seen before. But for the last dozen years of 
 this large, princely, and splendid life a cloud had 
 come over all its glory and prosperity. There is no 
 lack of parallels to give the interested spectator an 
 understanding of what a son such as Jacopo — so 
 reckless, so light-minded, so incapable of any serious 
 conception of the meaning of life and its risks and 
 responsibilities, yet with so many claims in his 
 facile, affectionate nature upon those who loved him 
 — must have been to the father, proud of his many 
 gifts, bowed down by his follies, watching his erratic 
 course with sickening terrors; angry, tender, indig- 
 nant, pitiful; concealing his own disappointment 
 and misery in order to protect and excuse and 
 defend the son who was breaking his heart. The 
 
142 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 Spectacle is always a sad one, but never rare ; and 
 the anguish of the father's silent watch, never 
 knowing what folly might come next, acutely feel- 
 ing the fault and every reproof of the fault, his 
 prid3 humbled, his name disgraced, his every hope 
 failing, but never the love that underlies all — is one 
 of the deepest which can affect humanity. Foscari 
 was over seventy when this ordeal began. Perhaps 
 he had foreseen it even earlier; but when he made 
 that most splendid of feasts at his son's bridal, and 
 saw him established with his young wife in the 
 magnificent new palace, with his books and his manu- 
 scripts, his chivalrous and courtly companions, his 
 Greek, — the crown of accomplishment and culture 
 in his time, — who could suppose that Jacopo would 
 so soon be a fugitive and an exile? The years 
 between seventy and eighty are not those in which 
 a man is most apt to brave the effects of prolonged 
 anxiety and sorrow, and Foscari was eighty-four 
 when, after the many vicissitudes of this melancholy 
 story, he bade Jacopo go and bear his sentence and 
 try no more to elude it. When the news came six 
 months after that his only son was dead — dead far 
 away and alone, among strangers, just when a 
 troubled hope had arisen that he might come back, 
 and be wiser another time — the courage of the old 
 doge broke down. He could no longer give his 
 mind to the affairs of the state, or sit, a venerable 
 image of sorrow, patience, and self-control, at the 
 head of the court which had persecuted and hunted 
 to the death his foolish, beloved boy. One can 
 imagine how the very touch of the red robe of. 
 Loredano brushing by would burn to the heart the 
 old man who could not avenge himself, but in whom 
 even the stillness of his age and the habit of self- 
 command could not take away the recollection that 
 there stood the man who had voted death betweer 
 the columns for poor Jacopo's follies! Who coulc 
 wonder that he forbore to attend their meetings, 
 and that in the bitterness of his heart it seemed not 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 143 
 
 worth while to go on appearing to fulfil] an office all 
 the real power of which had been taken from his 
 hands? 
 
 Thereupon there got up a low, fierce murmur 
 among the Ten ; not too rapidly developed. They 
 waited a month or two, marking all his absences 
 and slackness before gathering together to talk of 
 matters secrettsstme concerning Messer lo Doge; 
 they said to each other that it was a great inconve- 
 nience to the state to have a doge incapable of attend- 
 ing the councils and looking after the affairs ot the 
 republic; and that it was full time they should have 
 a zonta or junta of nobles to help them to discuss the 
 question. The law had been that in case of the 
 absence (which often happened on state affairs) or 
 illness of the doge, a vice-doge should be elected in 
 his place ; but of this regulation no heed was taken, 
 and the issue of their deliberations was that a depu- 
 tation should be sent to the doge to desire him 
 spontaneamente e libramente to resign his office. Fos- 
 cari had more than once in his long tenure of office 
 proposed to retire, but his attempt at resignation 
 had never been received by the council. It is one 
 thing to make such an offer, and quite another to 
 have it proposed from outside; and when the 
 deputation -suddenly appeared in the sorrowful 
 chamber where the old man sat retired, he refused 
 to give them any immediate answer. For one thing 
 it was not their business to make such a demand, 
 the law requiring that the Consiglio Maggiore should 
 be consulted, and shoald at least agree in, if not 
 originate, so important an act. But the Ten had 
 perhaps gone too far to draw back, and when the 
 deputation returned without a definite reply, the 
 ceremonial of waiting for the spontaneous and free 
 dismission of the disgraced prince was thrown aside, 
 and an intimation was made to him that his resig- 
 nation was a matter of necessity, and that, if within 
 eight days he had not left the palace, his property 
 would be confiscated. When this arbitrary message 
 
144 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 was conveyed to him the old man attempted no 
 further resistance. His ducal ring was drawn from 
 his finger and broken to pieces in the presence ot 
 the deputation who had brought^ him these final 
 orders,'headed by his enemy Loredano — not, says 
 the apologetic historian, because he was Foscari's 
 enemy, which was a cruelty the noble Ten were 
 incapable of, but because he was, after Foscari him- 
 self, the finest orator of the republic and most likely 
 to put things in a good light ! The ducal cap with 
 its circulet of gold, the historical Corno, was taken 
 from his tremulous old head, and a promise extracted 
 that he would at once leave the palace. The follow- 
 ing incident is too touching not to be given in the 
 words quoted by Romanin from the unpublished 
 chronicles of Delfino. As the procession of deputies 
 filed away, the discrowned doge saw one of them, 
 Jacopo Memmo, one of the heads of the Forty, look 
 at him with sympathetic and compassionate eyes. 
 The old man's heart, no doubt, was full, and a 
 longing for human fellowship must have been in 
 him still. He called the man who gave him that 
 friendly look and took him by the hand. 
 
 •* 'Whose son art thou?'* [It is the Venetian 
 vernacular that is used, not ceremonious Italian, 
 ''Di cht es tu ftoV'l^ I answered, *I am the son of 
 Marin Memmo. ' To which the doge — *He is my 
 dear friend; tell him from me that it would be sweet 
 to me if he would come and pay me a visit, and go 
 with me in my bark for a little pleasure. We might 
 go and visit the monasteries.* " 
 
 It is difficult to read this simple narrative without 
 a sympathetic tear. Despoiled of the vestments of 
 his office which he had worn for thirty-tour years, 
 amid all the magnificence of one of the richest and 
 most splendid states in the world, the old man 
 
 * " Di chi es tu fio? Rispose, lo son figlio di Messere Marin 
 Memmo. Al chi il doxe, L'e mio caro compagno ; dilli da mia 
 parte che avero caro ch' el mi vegna a visitar, accio el vegna 
 con mi in barca a solazzo: andaremo a visitare i monastieri." 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 145 
 
 pauses, with a tremulous smile more sad than weep- 
 ing, to make his last gracious invitation — the habit 
 of his past sovereignty exercised once more, at 
 once with sorrowful humor, and that wistful turning 
 to old friends which so often comes with trouble. 
 If it had ever been accomplished, what a touching 
 party of pleasure ! the • two old men in their barca 
 going forth a solazzoy making their way across the 
 shining waters to San Giorgio, perhaps as far as 
 San Servolo if the weather were fine ; for it was 
 October, and no time to be lost before the winter 
 set in for the two old companions, eighty and more. 
 But that voyage of pleasure never was made. 
 
 The same day the doge left the palace where he 
 had spent so many years of glory and so many of 
 sorrow, accompanied by his old brother Marco, and 
 followed sadly by his household and relations. 
 '''Seremisstmo^'' said Marco Foscari, *'it is better to 
 go to the boat by the other stair, which is covered." 
 But the old doge held on in the direction he had 
 first taken. "I will go down by the same stair 
 which I came up when I was made doge," he said, 
 much as Faliero had done. And then the mourn- 
 ful procession rode away along the front of the 
 palace, past all the boats that lay round the doganay 
 between the lines of great houses on either side of 
 the canal, to the new shining palace, scarcely faded 
 from its first splendor, where Jacopo sixteen years 
 before had taken his bride. The house that has 
 seen so many generations since and vicissitudes ot 
 life still stands there at its corner, the water sweep- 
 ing round two sides ot it, and the old gate- way, 
 merlatOy in its ancient bravery, on the smaller canal 
 behind. 
 
 This was on the 24th October, 1357. The new 
 doge was elected on the 31st, and on the ist Novem- 
 ber Francesco Foscari died. The common story 
 goes that the sound of the bell which announced the 
 entry of his successor was the old man's final death- 
 blow, but it is unnecessary to add this somewhat 
 
 10 Venice 
 
146 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 coarse touch ot popular effect to the pathetic story. 
 The few days which elapsed between the two events 
 were not too much for the operation of dying, which 
 is seldom accomplished in a moment. When the 
 new prince and his court assembled in San Marco 
 on All Saints' Day to Mass, Andrea Donato, the old 
 doge's son-in-law, came in and announced, no doubt 
 with a certain solemn satisfaction and consciousness 
 of putting these conspirators forever in the wrong, 
 the death of Foscari. The councillors who had 
 pursued him to his end looked at each other mute, 
 with eyes, let us hope, full of remorse and shame. 
 And he had a magnificent funeral, which is always 
 so easy to bestow. The Corno was taken again from 
 the head of the new doge to be put on the dead 
 brows of the old, and he lay in state in the hall from 
 which he had been expelled a week before, and was 
 carried, with every magnificence the republic could 
 give, to the noble church of the Frari, with tapers 
 burning all the way, and every particular of solemn 
 pomp that custom authorized. There he lies under 
 a weight of sculptured marble, his sufferings all 
 over for five hundred years and more ; but never 
 the story of his greatness, his wrongs, and sorrows, 
 \yhich last gave him such claims upon the recollec- 
 tion of mankind as no magnificence nor triumph 
 can bestow. 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 147 
 
 PART II.— BY SEA AND BY LAND. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE travelers: NISECOLO, MATTEO and MARCO POLO. 
 
 In the middle of the thirteenth century two 
 brothers of the Venetian family of Polo, established 
 for a long time in the parish of San Giovanni Cris- 
 ostomo, carrying on their business in the midst of 
 all the tumults of the times as if there had been 
 nothing but steady and peaceful commerce in the 
 world, were at the head of a mercantile house at 
 Constantinople, probably the branch establishment 
 of some great counting house at Venice. These 
 seem prosaic terms to use in a story so full of 
 adventure and romance ; yet, no doubt, they repre- 
 sent, as adequately as the changed aspect of mer- 
 cantile life allows, the condition of affairs under 
 which Niccolo and Matteo Polo exercised their 
 vocation in the great Eastern capital of the world. 
 Many Venetian merchants had established their 
 warehouses and pursued the operations of trade in 
 Constantinople in the security which the repeated 
 treaties and covenants frequently referred to in 
 previous chapters had gained for them, and which, 
 under whatsoever risks of convulsion and rebellion, 
 they had held since the days when first a Venetian 
 Bailo — an officer more powerful than a consul, with 
 something like the rights and privileges of a gov- 
 ernor — was settled in Constantinople. But the 
 ordinary risks were much increased at the time 
 when the Latin dynasty was drawing near its last 
 moments, and Paleologus was thundering at the 
 gates. The Venetians were on the side of the 
 
 147 
 
148 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 falling race ; their constant rivals, the Genoese, had 
 taken that of the rising ; and, no doubt, the position 
 was irksome as well as dangerous to those who had 
 been the favored nation, and once the conquerors 
 and all potent rulers of the great capital of the East. 
 Many of the bolder spirits would, no doubt, be 
 urged to take an active part in the struggle which 
 was going on; but its effect upon Niccolo and 
 Matteo Polo was different. The unsatisfactory state 
 of affairs prompted them to carry their merchandise 
 further East, where they had, it is supposed, 
 already the standing ground of a small establish- 
 ment at Soldachia, on the Crimean peninsula. 
 Perhaps, however, it is going too far to suppose 
 that the commotions in Constantinople, and not 
 some previously arranged expedition with milder 
 motives, determined the period of their departure. 
 At all events, the dates coincide. 
 
 The two brothers set out in 1260, when the con- 
 flict was at its height, and all the horrors of siege 
 and sack were near at hand. They left behind 
 them, it would appear, an elder brother still at the 
 head of the family counting house at Constantino- 
 ple, and, taking with them an easily carried stock 
 of jewels, went forth upon the unknown but largely 
 inhabited world of Central Asia, full, as they were 
 aware, of wonders of primitive manufacture, car- 
 pets and rich stuffs, ivory and spices, furs and 
 leather. The vast, dim empires of the East, where 
 struggles and conquests had been going on, more 
 tremendous than all the wars of Europe, though 
 under the veil of distance and barbarism uncom- 
 prehended by the civilized world, had been vaguely 
 revealed by the messengers of Pope Innocent IV., 
 and had helped the Crusaders at various points 
 against their enemies the Saracens. But neither 
 they nor their countries were otherwise known 
 when these two merchants set out. They plunged 
 into the unknown from Soldachia, crossing the Sea 
 of Azof, or traveling along its eastern shores, and 
 
The makers of venice. 149 
 
 working their way slowly onward, sometimes 
 lingering in the tents of a great chief, sometimes 
 arrested by a bloody war which closed all passage, 
 made their way at last to Bokharat, where all fur- 
 ther progress seemed at an end, and where they 
 remained three years, unable either to advance or 
 to go back. Here, however, they had the good 
 fortune to be picked up by certain envoys on their 
 way to the court of "the Great Khan, the lord of all 
 the Tartars in the world" — sent by the victorious 
 prince who had become master of the Levant to 
 that distant and mysterious potentate. These am- 
 bassadors, astonished to see the Prankish travelers 
 so far out of the usual track, invited the brothers to 
 join them, assuring them that the Great Khan liad 
 never seen any Latins, and would give them an 
 eager welcome. With this escort the two Vene- 
 tians traveled far into the depths of the unknown 
 land until they reached the city of Kublai Khan, 
 that great prince shrouded in distance and mystery, 
 whose name has been appropriated by poets and 
 dreamers; but who takes immediate form and 
 shape, in the brief and abrupt narrative of his 
 visitors, as a most courteous and gentle human 
 being, full of endless curiosity and interest in all 
 the wonders which these sons of Western civiliza- 
 tion could tell him. The Great Khan received 
 them with the most royal courtesy, and questioned 
 them closely about thir laws and rulers, and still 
 more about their religion, which seems to have ex- 
 cited the imagination and pleased the judgment of 
 this calmly impartial inquirer. No doubt the 
 manners and demeanor of the Venetians, devout 
 Catholics in all the fervor habitual to their age 
 and city, recommended their faith. So much inter- 
 ested indeed was the Tartar prince that he deter: 
 mined to seek for himself and his people more 
 authoritative teaching, and to send his merchant 
 visitors back with a petition to thus purpose 
 addressed to the Pope. No more important mission 
 
150 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 was ever intrusted to any ambassadors. They were 
 commissioned to ask from the head of the Church a 
 hundred missionaries to convert the Tartar multi- 
 tudes to Christianity. These were to be wise per- 
 sons acquainted with the "Seven Arts," well quali- 
 fied to discuss and convince all men by force of 
 reason that the idols whom they worshiped in their 
 houses were things of the devil, and that the Chris- 
 tian law was better than those, all evil and false, 
 which they followed. And, above all, adds the 
 simple narrative, "he charged them to bring 
 back with them some of the oil from the lamp 
 which burns before the sepulcher of Christ at Jeru- 
 salem." 
 
 The letters which were to be the credentials of 
 this embassy w^re drawn out "in the Turkish lan- 
 guage, " in all likelihood by the Venetians them- 
 selves, and a Tartar chief, "one of his barons," was 
 commissioned by the Great Khan to accompany 
 them ; he, however, soon shrank from the fatigues 
 and perils of the journey. The Poli set out, carry- 
 ing with them a royal warrant inscribed on a tablet 
 of gold, commanding all men wherever they passed 
 to serve and help them on their way. Notwith- 
 standing this, it took them three years of travel, 
 painful and complicated, before they reached Acre 
 on their homeward — or rather Romeward — journey. 
 There they heard, to their consternation, that the 
 Pope was dead. This was terrible news for the 
 ambassadors, who doubtless felt the full import- 
 ance of their mission. In their trouble they ap- 
 pealed to the highest ecclesiastic near, the pontifi- 
 cal legate in Egypt, who heard their story with 
 great interest, but pointed out to them that the 
 only thing they could do was to wait till a new 
 Pope was elected. This suggestion seems to have 
 satisfied their judgment, although the conflict over 
 that election must have tried any but a very robust 
 faith. The Poli then concluded — an idea which 
 does not seem to have struck them before — that. 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE 161 
 
 having thus certain time vacant on their hands, 
 they might as well employ it by going to see their 
 family in Venice. They had quitted their home 
 apparently some fifteen years before, Niccolo hav- 
 ing left his wife there, who gave birth to a son 
 after his departure and subsequently died. Colonel 
 Yule suggests that the wife was dead before Niccolo 
 left Venice, which would have given a certain ex- 
 planation of the slight interest he showed in revisit- 
 ing his native city. But at all events, the brothers 
 went home ; and Niccolo found his child, whether 
 born in his absence or left behind an infant, grown 
 into a sprightly and interesting boy, no doubt a 
 delightful discovery. They had abundant time to 
 renew their acquaintance with all their ancient 
 friends and associations, for months went by and 
 still no Pope was elected, nor does there seem to 
 have been any ecclesiastical authority to whom they 
 could deliver their letters. Probably, in that time 
 any enthusiasm the two traders may have had for 
 the great work of converting those wild and won- 
 derful regions of the East had died away. Indeed, 
 the project does not seem to have moved any one, 
 save to a passing wonder; and all ecclesiastical 
 enterprises were apparently suspended while con- 
 clave after conclave assembled and no result was 
 attained. 
 
 At length the brothers began to tire of inaction, 
 and to remember that through all those years of 
 silence Kublai Khan was looking for them, wonder- 
 ing perhaps what delayed their coming, perhaps be 
 lieving that their return home had driven all their 
 promises from their memory, and that they had 
 forgotten him and his evangelical desires. Stirred 
 by this thought, they determined at last to return 
 to their prince, and setting out, accompanied by 
 young Marco, Niccolo's son, they went to Acre, 
 where they betook themselves once more to the 
 pious legate, Tebaldo di Piacenza, whom they had 
 consulted on their arrival. They first asked his 
 
152 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 leave to go to Jerusalem to fetch the oil from the 
 
 holy lamp, the only one of the Great Khan's com- 
 missions which it seemed possible to carry out; and 
 then, with some fear apparently that their word 
 might not be believed, asked him to give them let- 
 ters certifying that they had done their best to ful- 
 fill their errand, and had failed only in consequence 
 of the strange fact that there was no Pope to 
 whom their letters could be delivered. Provided 
 with these testimonials they started on their long 
 journey, but had only got as far as Lagos, on the 
 coast of the then kingdom of Armenia, which was 
 their point of entrance upon the wild and immense 
 plains which they had to traverse, when the news 
 followed them that the Pope was at last elected, 
 and was no other than their friend, the legate 
 Tebaldo. A messenger, requesting their return to 
 Acre, soon followed, and ^the brothers and young 
 Marco returned with new hopes of a successful 
 issue to their mission. But the new Pope, Gregory 
 X., though he received them with honor and great 
 friendship, had not apparently a hundred wise men 
 to give them, nor the means of sending out a little 
 Christian army to the conquest of heathenism. All 
 that he could do for them was to send with them 
 two brothers of the order of St. Dominic, frati pre- 
 dicatori to do what they could toward that wast 
 work. But when the Dominicans heard that war 
 had broken out in Armenia, and that they had to 
 encounter not only a fatiguing journey but all the 
 perils of perpetual fighting along their route, they 
 went no further than that port of Lagos beyond 
 which lay the unknown. The letters of privilege — 
 indulgences, no doubt, and grants of papal favor to 
 be distributed among the Tartar multitude — they 
 transferred hastily to the sturdy merchants, who 
 were used to fighting as to most other dangerous 
 things, and had no fear, and ignominiously took 
 their flight back to the accustomed and known. 
 It is extraordinary, looking back upon it, to think 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 153 
 
 of the easy relinquishment of such a wonderful 
 chance as this would seem to have been. Pope and 
 priests were all occupied with their own affairs. It 
 was of more importance in their eyes to quell the 
 Ghibellines than to convert and civilize the Tartars. 
 And perhaps, considering that even an infallible 
 Pope is but a man, this was less wonderful than it 
 appears • for Kublai Khan was a long way off, and 
 very dim and undiscernible in his unknown steppes 
 and strange primeval cities — whereas the emperor 
 and his supporters were close at hand, and very 
 sensible thorns in consecrated flesh. It seems some- 
 what extraordinary, however, that no young monk 
 or eager preacher caught fire at the suggestion of 
 such an undertaking. Some fifty years before Fra 
 Francisco from Assisi, leaving his new order and 
 all its cares, insisted upon being sent to the Soldan 
 to see whether he could not forestall the CruSaders 
 and make ail the world one, by converting that 
 noble infidel— which seemed to him the straight- 
 forward and simple thing to do. If Francis had 
 but been there with his poor brothers, vowed to 
 every humiliation, the lovers of poverty, what a 
 mission for them! a crusade of the finest kind, with 
 every augury of success, though all the horrors of 
 the steppes, wild winters and blazing summers, and 
 swollen streams and fighting tribes, lay in their 
 way. And had the hundred wise men ever been 
 gathered together, what a pilgrimage for minstrel 
 to celebrate and story-teller to write; a new ex- 
 pedition of the saints, a holier Israel in the desert! 
 But nothing of the kind came about. The two 
 papal envoys, who had been the first to throw light 
 upon those kingdoms beyond the desert, had no 
 successors in the later half of the century. And 
 with only young Marco added to their band the 
 merchant brothers returned, perhaps a little 
 ashamed of their Christian rulers, perhaps chiefly 
 interested about the reception they would meet 
 
154 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 with, and whether the great Kublai would still 
 remember his luckless ambassadors. 
 
 The journey back occupied once more three years 
 and a half. It gives us a strange glimpse into the 
 long intervals of silence habitual to primitive life 
 to find that these messengers, without means of com- 
 municating any information of their movements to 
 their royal patron, were more than eight years 
 altogether absent on the mission from which they 
 returned with so little success. In our own days 
 their very existence would probably have been for- 
 gotten in such a long lapse of interest. Let us 
 hope that the holy oil from the sepulcher, the only 
 thing Christianity could send to the inquiring 
 heathen, was safely kept, in some precious bottle of 
 earliest glass from Murano, or polished stone less 
 brittle than glass, through all the dangers of the 
 journey. 
 
 Thus the Poll disappeared again into the un- 
 known for many additional years. Letters were 
 not rife anywhere in those days, and for them, lost 
 out of the range of civilization, though in the midst 
 of another full and busy world — with another civil- 
 ization, art, and philosophy of its own — there was 
 no possibility of any communication with Venice 
 or distant friends. It is evident that they sat very 
 loose to Venice; having perhaps less personal 
 acquaintance with the city than most of her mer- 
 chant adventurers. Niccolo and Matteo must have 
 gone to Constantinople while still young — and 
 Marco was but fifteen when he left the lagoons. 
 They had apparently no ties of family tenderness 
 to call them back, and custom and familiarity had 
 made the strange world around, and the half savage 
 tribes, and the primitive court with its barbaric 
 magnificence, pleasant and interesting to them. It 
 was nearly a quarter of a century before they ap- 
 peared out of the unknown again. 
 
 By that time the Casa Polo in San Crisostomo had 
 ceased to think of its absent members. In all like- 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 165 
 
 lihood they had no very near relations left. Father 
 and mother would be dead long ago; the elder 
 brother lived and died in Constantinople ; and there 
 was no one who looked with any warm expectation 
 for the arrival of the strangers. When there sud- 
 denly appeared at the gate of the great family 
 house, full of cousins and kinsmen, one evening in 
 the year 1295, about twenty-four years after their 
 departure, three wild and travel-worn figures, in 
 coats of coarse homespun like those worn by the 
 Tartars, the sheepskin collars mingling with the 
 long locks and beards of the wearers, their com- 
 plexions dark with exposure, their half forgotten 
 mother tongue a little uncertain on their lips — who 
 could believe that these were Venetian gentlemen, 
 members of an important family in the city which 
 had forgotten them? The three unknown persons 
 arrived suddenly, without any warning, at their 
 ancestral home. One can imagine the commotion 
 in the courtyard, the curious gazers who would 
 come out to the door, the heads that would gather 
 at every window, when it became known through 
 the house that these wild strangers claimed to 
 belong to it, to be in some degree its masters, the 
 long disappeared kinsmen whose portion perhaps 
 by this time had fallen into hands very unwilling 
 to let it go. The doorway which still exists in the 
 Corte della Sabbionera, in the depths of the cool 
 quadrangle, with its arch of Byzantine work, and 
 the cross above which every visitor in Venice may 
 still see when he will, behind San Crisostomo, is, 
 as tradition declares, the very door at which the 
 travelers knocked and parleyed. The house was 
 then — according to the most authentic account we 
 have, that of Ramusio — un bellissimo e molto alto 
 palazzo. Absolute authenticity it is perhaps impossi- 
 ble to claim for the story. But it was told to Ra- 
 musio, who flourished in the fifteenth century, by 
 an old man, a distinguished citizen who, and whose 
 race, had been established for generations in the 
 
156 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 same parish in the immediate vicinity of the Casa 
 Polo, and who had heard it from his predecessors 
 there, a very trustworthy source of information. 
 The family was evidently well off and important, 
 and, in all probability, noble. "In those days," 
 says Colonel Yule, making with all his learning a 
 mistake for once, "the demarcation between patri- 
 cian and non-patrician at Venice, where all classes 
 shared in commerce, all were (generally speaking) 
 of one race, and where there were neither castles, 
 domains, nor trains of horsemen, formed no very 
 wide gulf." This is an astounding statement to 
 make in the age of Bajamonte's great conspiracy; 
 but as Marco Polo is always spoken of as noble, no 
 doubt his family belonged to the privileged class. 
 
 The heads of the house gathered to the door to 
 question the strange applicants, "for, seeing them 
 so transfigured in countenance and disordered in 
 dress, they could not believe that these were those 
 of the Ca' Polo who had been believed dead for so 
 many and so many years." The strangers had 
 great trouble even to make it understood who they 
 claimed to be. "But at last these three gentlemen 
 conceived the plan of making a bargain that in a 
 certain time they should so act as to recover their 
 identity and the recognition of their relatives, and 
 honor from all the city." The expedient they 
 adopted again reads like a scene out of the "Arabian 
 Nights." They invited all their relatives to a great 
 banquet which was prepared with much magnifi- 
 cence "in the same house," says the story-teller; 
 so that it is evident they must already have gained 
 a certain credence from their own nearest relations. 
 When the hour fixed for the banquet came, the fol- 
 lowing extraordinary scene occurred : 
 
 The three came out of their chamber dressed in long robes 
 of crimson satin, according to the fashion of the time, which 
 touched the ground. And when water had been offered for 
 their hands, they placed their guests at table, and then taking 
 off their satin robes put on rich damask of the same color, 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. l5t 
 
 ordering in the meanwhile that the first should be divided 
 among the servants. Then after eating something [no 
 doubt a first course], they rose from table and again changed 
 their dress, putting on crimson velvet, and giving as before 
 the damask robes to the servants, and at the end of the repast 
 they did the same with the velvet, putting on garments of 
 ordinary cloth such as their guests wore. The persons invited 
 were struck dumb with astonishment at these proceedings. 
 And when the servants had left the hall, Messer Marco, the 
 youngest, rising from the table, went into his chamber and 
 brought out the three coarse cloth surcoats in which they had 
 come home. And immediately the three began with sharp 
 knives to cut open the seams, and tear off the lining, upon 
 which there poured forth a great quantity of precious stones 
 — rubies, sapphires, carbuncles, diamonds, and emeralds — 
 which had been sewed into each coat with great care, so that 
 nobody could have suspected that anything was there. For, 
 on parting with the Great Khan, they had changed all the 
 wealth he bestowed upon them into precious stones, know- 
 ing certainly that if they had done otherwise they never 
 could by so long and difficult a road have brought their prop- 
 erty home in safety. The exhibition of such an extraordinary 
 and infinite treasure of jewels and precious stones, which 
 covered the table, once more filled all present with such 
 astonishment that they were dumb and almost beside them- 
 selves with surprise ; and they at once recognized these hon- 
 ored and venerated gentlemen of the Ca' Polo, whom at first 
 they had doubted, and received them with the greatest honor 
 and reverence. And when the story was spread abroad in 
 Venice, the entire city, both nobles and people, rushed to the 
 house to embrace them, and to make every demonstration of 
 loving-kindness and respect that could be imagined. And 
 Messer Matteo. who was the eldest, was created one of the 
 most honored magistrates of the city, and all the youth of 
 Venice resorted to the house to visit Messer Marco, who was 
 most humane and gracious, and to put questions to him about 
 Cathay and the Great Khan, to which he made ansAver with 
 so much benignity and courtesy that they all remained his 
 debtors. And because in the continued repetition of his 
 story of the grandeur of the Great Khan he stated the rev- 
 enues of that prince to be from ten to fifteen millions in gold, 
 and counted all the other wealth of the country always in 
 millions, the surname was given him of Marco Millione, 
 which may be seen noted in the public books of the republic. 
 And the courtyard of his house, from that time to this, has 
 been vulgarly called the Corte Millione. 
 
 It is scarcely possible to imagine that the narrator 
 of the above wonderful story was not inspired by 
 
158 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 the keenest humorous view of human nature and 
 perception of the character of his countrymen when 
 he so gravely describes the effectual arguments 
 which lay in i\iQ gioie preciosissime — the diamonds and 
 sapphires which his travelers had sewed up in their 
 old clothes — and which, according to all the laws 
 of logic, were exactly fitted to procure their recog- 
 nition "as honored and venerated gentlemen of the 
 Ca' Polo." The scene is of a kind which has 
 always found great acceptance in primitive romance : 
 the cutting up of their seams, the drawing forth of 
 one precious little parcel after another amid the 
 wonder and exclamations of the gazing spectators, 
 are all familiar incidents in traditionary story. 
 But in the present case this was a quite reasonable 
 and natural manner of conveying the accumulations 
 of a long period through all the perils of a three- 
 years' journey from far Cathay; and there is noth- 
 ing at all unlikely in the miraculous story, which, 
 no doubt, would make a great impression upon the 
 crowded surrounding population, and linger, an oft- 
 repeated tale, in the alleys about San Giovanni 
 Cristostomo and along the Rio, where everyody 
 knew the discreet and sensible family which had the 
 wit to recognize and fall upon the necks of their 
 kinsmen as soon as they knew how rich they were. 
 The other results that ensued — the rush of golden 
 youth to see and visit Marco, who, though no 
 longer young, was the young man of the party, and 
 their questions, and the jeer of the new, mocking 
 title, Marco Millione — follow the romance with 
 natural human incredulity and satire and laughter. 
 It is true, and proved by at least one public docu- 
 ment, that the gibe grew into serious use, and that 
 even the gravest citizens forgot after a time that 
 Marco of the Millions was not the traveler's natural 
 and sober name. There was at least one other 
 house of the Poli in Venice, and perhaps there were 
 other Marcos from whom it was well to distinguish 
 him of San Crisostomo. 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 159 
 
 It would seem clear enough, however, from this, 
 that these travelers* tales met with the fate that so 
 often attends the marvelous narratives of an ex- 
 plorer. Marco's Great Khan, far away in the distance 
 as of another world ; the barbarian purple and gold 
 of Kublai's court; the great cities out of all mortal 
 ken, as the young men in their mirth supposed ; the 
 incredible wonders that peopled that remote and 
 teeming darkness, which the primitive imagination 
 could not believe in as forming part of its own nar- 
 row little universe — must have kept one generation 
 at least in amusement. No doubt the sunbrowned 
 traveler had all that desire to instruct and surprise 
 his hearers which came natural to one who knew so 
 much more than they, and was capable of being 
 endlessly drawn out by any group of young idlers 
 who might seek his company. They would thread 
 their way through the labyrinth of narrow passages 
 with all their mediaeval bravery, flashing along in 
 parti-colored hose and gold-embroidered doublets 
 on their way from the Broglio to get a laugh out of 
 Messer Marco — who was always so ready to commit 
 himself to some new prodigy. 
 
 But after a while the laugh died out in the grave 
 troubles that assailed the republic. The most 
 dreadful war that had ever arisen between Venice 
 and Genoa had raged for some time, through various 
 vicissitudes, when the city at last determined to 
 send out such an expedition as should at once over- 
 whelm all rivalry. This undertaking stirred every 
 energy among the population, and both men and 
 money poured in for the service ot the common- 
 wealth. There may not be any authentic proof of 
 Colonel Yule's suggestion that Marco Polo fitted 
 out, or partially fitted out, one of the boats, and 
 mounted his own flag at the masthead when it went 
 into action. But the family were assessed at the 
 value of one or more galleys, and he was certainly 
 a volunteer in the fleet; a defender of his country 
 in a terrible warfare which was draining all her 
 
160 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 resources. The battle of Curzola took place in 
 September, 1298, and it ended in a complete and 
 disastrous defeat for the Venetians. Of the ninety- 
 seven galleys which sailed so bravely out of Venice, 
 only seventeen miserable wrecks found refuge in 
 the shelter of the lagoons, and the admiral and the 
 greater part of the survivors, men shamed and mis- 
 erable, were carried prisoners to Genoa with every 
 demonstration ot joy and triumph. The admiral, 
 as has already been said, was chained to his own 
 mast in barbarous exultation, but managed to 
 escape from the triumph of his enemies by dashing 
 his head against a timber, and dying thus before 
 they reached port. 
 
 Marco Polo was among the rank and file who do 
 not permit themselves such luxuries. Among all 
 the wonderful things he had seen, he could never 
 have seen a sight at once so beautiful and so ter- 
 rible as the great semicircle ot the Bay of Genoa, 
 crowded with the exultant people, gay with every 
 kind of decoration, and resounding with applause 
 and excitement when the victorious galleys with 
 their wretched freight sailed in. No doubt in the 
 Tartar wastes he had longed many a time for inter- 
 course with his fellows, or even to see the face of 
 some compatriot or Christian amid all the dusky 
 faces and barbaric customs of the countries he had 
 described. But now what a revelation to him must 
 have been the wild passion and savage delight of 
 those near neighbors, with but the width of a Euro- 
 pean peninsula between them, and so much 
 hatred, rancor, and fierce antagonism!. Probably, 
 however, Marco, having been born to hate the 
 Genoese, was occupied by none of these sentimental 
 reflections; and knowing how he himself and all his 
 countrymen would have cheered and shouted had 
 Doria been the victim instead of Dandolo, took nis 
 dungeon and chains, and the intoxication of tri- 
 umph with which he and his fellow-prisoners were 
 received, as matters of course. 
 
tttE MAKERS OF VENICE. 161 
 
 He lay for about a year, as would appear, in this 
 Genoese prison; and here, probably for the first 
 time, his endless tales of the wonders he had seen 
 and known first fulfilled the blessed office of story 
 telling, and became to the crowded prison a foun- 
 tain of refreshment and new life. To all these un- 
 fortunate groups — wounded, sick, especially sick for 
 home, humiliated and forlorn, with scarcely any- 
 thing wanting to complete the round of misery — 
 what a solace in the tedium of the dreary days, 
 what a help to get through the lingering time, and 
 forget their troubles for a moment, must have been 
 this companion, burned to a deeper brown than even 
 Venetian suns and seas could give, whose memory 
 was inexhaustible; who day by day had another 
 tale to tell; who set before them new scenes, new 
 people, a great, noble, open-hearted monarch, and 
 all the quaint habits and modes of living, not of 
 one, but of a hundred tribes and nations, all differ- 
 ent, endless, original ! All the poor expedients to 
 make the time pass, such games as they might 
 have, such exercises as were possible, even the 
 quarrels which must have arisen to diversify the flat 
 and tedious hours, could bear no comparison with 
 this fresh source of entertainment, the continued 
 story carried on from day to day, to which the 
 cramped and weary prisoner might look forward as 
 he stretched his limbs and opened his eyes to a new, 
 unwelcome morning. If anyone among these pris- 
 oners remembered then the satire of the golden 
 youth, the laughing nickname of the Millione, he 
 had learned by that time what a public benefactor 
 a man is who has something to tell ; and the trav- 
 eler, who perhaps had never found out how he had 
 been laughed at, had thus the noblest revenge. 
 
 Among all these wounded, miserable Venetians, 
 however, there was one whose presence there was 
 of more immediate importance to the world — a cer- 
 tain Pisan, an older inhabitant than they of these 
 prisons, a penniless derelict, forgotten perhaps of 
 
 UT«nioe 
 
162 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 his own city, with nobody to buy him out—Rusti- 
 ciano, a poor poetaster, a rusty brother of the pen, 
 who had written romances in his day, and learned a 
 little of the craft of authorship. What a wonderful 
 treasure was this fountain of strange story for a 
 poor mediaeval literary man to find in his dungeon! 
 The scribbler seems to have seized at once by 
 instinct upon the man who for once in his life could 
 furnish him with something worth telling. Rusti- 
 ciano saw his opportunity in a moment, with an ex- 
 ultation which he could not keep to himself. It 
 was not in his professional nature to refrain from a 
 great fanfare and flourish, calling upon heaven and 
 earth to listen. ^'Signori imperatori e re, duchi e 
 marc he si, conti, cavalieri, principi, baroni, " he cries 
 out, as he did in his romances. "Oh, emperors and 
 kings, oh, dukes, princes, marquises, barons and 
 cavaliers, and all who delight in knowing the 
 different races of the world, and the variety of 
 countries, take this book and read it!" This was 
 the proper way, according to all his rules, to present 
 himself to the public. He makes his bow to them 
 like a showman in front of his menagerie. He 
 knows, too, the language in which to catch the ear 
 of all these fine people, so that every noble may de- 
 sire to have a copy of this manuscript to cheer his 
 household in the lingering winter, or amuse the 
 poor women at their embroidery while the men are 
 at the wars. For, according to all evidence, what 
 the prisoner of Pisa took down from the lips of the 
 Venetian in the dungeons of Genoa was written by 
 him in curious antique French, corrupted a little by 
 Italian idioms, the most universal of all the lan- 
 guages of the Western world. Nothing can be 
 more unlike than those flourishes of Rusticiano by 
 way of preface, and the simple strain of the unvar- 
 nished tale when Messer Marco himself begins to 
 speak. And the circumstance of these two Italians 
 employing another living language in which to tell 
 their wonderful story is so curious that many other 
 
tHE MAKERS OF VENICE. 163 
 
 theories have been set forth on the subject, though 
 none which are accepted by the best critics as 
 worthy of belief. One of the earliest of these^ 
 Ramusio, pronounces strongly in favor of a Latin 
 version. Marco had told his stories over and over 
 again, this historian says, with such effect that ''see- 
 ing the great desire that everybody had to hear 
 about Cathay and the Great Khan, and being com- 
 pelled to begin again every day, he was advised that 
 it would be well to commit it to writing" — which 
 was done by the dignified medium of a Genoese 
 gentleman, who took the trouble to procure from 
 Venice all the notes which the three travelers had 
 made of their journeys; and then compiled in 
 Latin, according to the custom of the learned, a 
 continuous narrative. But the narrative itself and 
 everything that can be discovered about it are 
 wholly opposed to this theory. There is not the 
 slightest appearance of notes worked into a perma- 
 nent record. The story has evidently been taken 
 down from the lips of a somewhat discursive 
 speaker, with all the breadth and air in it of oral 
 discourse. *'This is enough upon that matter; now 
 I will tell you of something else." "Now let us 
 leave the nation of Mosul and I will tell you about 
 the great city of Baldoc. " So the tale goes on, 
 with interruptions, with natural goings back — "But 
 
 first I must tell you " "Now we will go on 
 
 with the other." While we read we seem to sit. 
 one of the eager circle, listening to the story of 
 these wonderful, unknown places, our interest 
 quickened here and there by a legend — some illus- 
 tration of the prolonged conflict between heathen 
 and Christian, or the story of some prodigy accom- 
 plished; now that of a grain of mustard-seed which 
 the Christians were defied to make into a tree, now 
 a curious Eastern version of the story of the Three 
 Magi. These episodes have all the characteristics 
 of the ordinary legend; but the plain and simple 
 story of what Messer Marco saw and heard, and the 
 
i64 tHE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 ways of the unknown populations among whom h^ 
 spent his youth, are like nothing but what they are 
 — a narrative of tacts, with no attempt to throw any 
 fictitious interest or charm about them. No doubt 
 the prisoners liked the legends best, and the circle 
 would draw closer, and the looks become more 
 eager, when the story ran of Prester John and 
 Genghis Khan, of the Old Man of the Mountain, or 
 of how the Calif tested the faith of the Christ- 
 ians. 
 
 When all this began to be committed to writing, 
 when Rusticiano drew his inkhorn, and pondered 
 his French, with a splendor of learning and wisdom 
 which no doubt appeared miraculous to the specta- 
 tors, and the easy narrative flowed on a sentence 
 at a time with half a dozen eager critics ready no 
 doubt to remind the reconteur if he varied a word of 
 the often told tale what an interest for that melan- 
 choly crowd! How they must have peered over 
 each other's shoulders to see the miraculous manu- 
 script, with a feeling of pleased complacency as of 
 a wonderful thing in which they themselves had a 
 hand! No doubt it was cold in Genoa in those sun- 
 less dungeons, the weary winter through ; but so 
 long as Messer Marco went on with his stories, and 
 he of Pisa wrote, with his professional artifices, and 
 his sheet of vellum on his knee, what endless enter- 
 tainment to beguile dull care away! 
 
 The captivity lasted not more than a year, and 
 our traveler returned home, to where the jest still 
 lingered about the man with the millions, and no 
 one mentioned him without a smile. He would not 
 seem to have disturbed himself about this — indeed, 
 after that one appearance as a fighting man, with 
 its painful consequences, he would seem to have re- 
 tired to his home as a peaceful citizen, and awoke 
 no echoes any more. He might perhaps be dis- 
 couraged by the reception his tale had met with, 
 even though there is no evidence of it; or perhaps 
 that tacit assent to a foolish and wrong popular 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 165 
 
 verdict, which the instructors of mankind so often 
 drop into, with a certain indulgent contempt as of 
 a thing not worth their while to contend against, 
 was in his mind, who knew so much better than his 
 critics. At all events it is evident that he did noth- 
 ing more to bring himself to the notice of the 
 world. 
 
 It was in 1299 that he returned to Venice — on the 
 eve of all those great disturbances concerning the 
 Serrata of the Council, and of the insurrection which 
 shook the republic to its foundation. But in all 
 this, Marco of the Millions makes no appearance. 
 He who had seen so much, and to whom the great 
 Kublai was the finest of imperial images, most 
 likely looked on with an impartiality beyond the 
 reach of most Venetians at the internal strife, know- 
 ing that revolutions come and go, while the course 
 of human life runs on much the same. And be- 
 sides, Marco was noble, and lost no privilege, prob- 
 ably indeed sympathized with the effort to keep the 
 canaille down. 
 
 He married in these peaceful years, in the obscur- 
 ity of a quiet life, and had three daughters only, 
 Faustina, Bellela, and Moretta; no son to keep up 
 the tradition of the adventurous race, a thing which 
 happens so often when a family has come to its cli- 
 max and can do no more. He seems to have kept 
 up in some degree his commercial character, since 
 there is a record of a lawsuit for the recovery of 
 some money of which he had been defrauded by an 
 agent. But only once does he appear in the char- 
 acter of an author responsible for his own story. 
 Attached to two of the earliest manuscript copies 
 of his great book, one preserved in Paris and the 
 other in Berne, are MS. notes, apparently quite 
 authentic, recording the circumstances under which 
 he presented a copy of the work to a noble French 
 cavalier who passed through Venice while in the 
 service of Charles of Valois in the year 1307. The 
 note is as follows: 
 
166 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 This is the book of which my Lord Thiebault, Knight and 
 Lord of Cepoy (whom may God assoil !), requested a copy from 
 Sire Marco Polo, citizen and resident in the City of Venice. 
 And the said Sire Marco Polo, being a very honorable person 
 of high character and report in many countries, because of 
 his desire that what he had seen should be heard throughout 
 the world, and also for the honor and reverence he bore to the 
 most excellent and puissant Prince, my Lord Charles, son of 
 the King of France, and Count of Valois, gave and presented 
 to the aforesaid Lord of Cepoy the first copy of his said book 
 that was made after he had written it. And very pleasing it 
 was to him that his book should be carried to the noble 
 country of France by so worthy a gentlemen. And from the 
 copy which the said Messire Thiebault Sire de Cepoy above 
 named, carried into France. Messire John, who was his eldest 
 son and is the present Sire de Cepoy, had a copy made after 
 his father's death, and the first copy of the book that was 
 made alter it was brought to France he presented to his very 
 dear and dread Lord, Monseigneur de Valois ; and afterward 
 to his friends who wished to have it. . . . This happened in 
 the year of the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ one thou- 
 sand three hundred and seven, and in the month of August. 
 
 This gives a pleasant opening through the mist of 
 obscurity which had fallen over the Ca' Polo. If 
 Messer Marco was illustrious enough to be sought 
 out by a young stranger of Thiebault's rank and 
 pretensions, then his labors had not been without 
 their reward. It is possible, however, that the 
 noble visitor might have been taken to see one of 
 the amusing personages of the city, and with the 
 keenness of an accustomed eye might have found 
 out for himself that Messer Marco of the Millions 
 was no braggart, but a remarkable man with a uni- 
 que history. In any case, the note is full of inter- 
 est. One can imagine how the great traveler's eye 
 and his heart would brighten when he saw that the 
 noble Frenchman understood and believed, and how 
 he would turn from the meaning smile and mock 
 respect of his own countrymen to the intelligent in- 
 terests of the newcomer who could discriminate be- 
 tween truth and falsehood. ^^ Et moult lui estoit 
 agreable quayit par si preudomme esioit avanciez etpottez 
 es nobles parties de Fra7ice!' 
 
 The final record of his will and dying wishes is 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 167 
 
 the only other document that belongs to the history 
 of Marco Polo. He made this will in January, 
 1323, ''finding myself to grow daily weaker through 
 bodily ailment, but being by the grace of God of 
 sound mind, and senses and judgment unim- 
 paired," and distributing his money among his wife 
 and daughters, whom he constitutes his executors, 
 and various uses of piety and charity. He was at 
 this time about sixty-nine, and it is to be supposed 
 that his death took place shortly after — at least that 
 is the last we know of him. His father, who had 
 died many years before, had been buried in the 
 patrio of San Lorenzo, where it is to be supposed 
 Messer Marco also was laid: but there is no cer- 
 tainty in this respect. He disappears altogether 
 from the time his will is signed, and all his earthly 
 duties done. 
 
 It is needless here to enter into any description of 
 his travels. Their extent and the detailed descrip- 
 tions he gives at once of the natural features of the 
 countries, and of their manners and customs, give 
 them, even to us, for whose instructions so many 
 generations of travelers have labored since, a re- 
 markable interest; how much more to those to 
 whom that wonderful new world was as a dream ! 
 The reason why he observed so closely, and took so 
 much pains to remember everything he saw, is very 
 characteristically told in the book itself. The young 
 Venetian to whom the Great Khan had, no doubt, 
 been held up during the three years' long journey 
 as an object of boundless veneration ; whose favor 
 was the sum of existence to his father and uncle ; 
 observed that potentate and his ways, when they 
 reached their destination, with the usual keen in- 
 spection of youth. He perceived the secret of the 
 charm which had made these Latin merchants so 
 dear to Prince Kublai, in the warm and eager in- 
 terest which he took in all the stories that could be 
 told him of other countries and their government, 
 and the habits of their people. The young maa 
 
168 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 remarked that when ambassadors to the neighboring 
 powers came back after discharging their mission, 
 the prince listened with impatience to the reports 
 which contained a mere account of their several 
 errands and nothing else, saying that it would have 
 pleased him more to have heard news of all they 
 had seen, and a description of unknown or strange 
 customs which had come under their observation. 
 Young Marco laid the lesson to heart, and when he 
 was sent upon an embassy, as soon happened, kept 
 his eyes about him, and told the monarch on his 
 return all the strange things he had seen, and what- 
 ever he heard that was marvelous or remarkable, so 
 that all who heard him wondered, and said, ''If this 
 youth lives he will be a man of great sense and 
 worth." It is evident throughout the book that 
 the Venetians were no mere mercenaries, but had 
 a profound regard and admiration for the great, 
 liberal, friendly monarch, who had received them 
 so kindly and lent so ready an ear to all they could 
 tell, and that young Marco had grown up in real 
 affection and sympathy for his new master. In- 
 deed, as we read, we recognize, through all the 
 strangeness and distance, a countenance and person 
 entirely human in this half savage Tartar, and find 
 him no mysterious voluptuary like the Kublai Khan 
 of the poet, but a cordial, genial, friendly human 
 being, glad to know about all his fellow creatures, 
 whoever they might be, taking the most wholesome 
 friendly interest in everything, ready to learn and 
 eager to know. One wonders what he thought of 
 the slackness of the Christian powers who would 
 send no men to teach him the way of salvation; of 
 the shrinking of the teachers themselves who were 
 afraid to dare the dangers of the way; and what of 
 that talisman they had brought him, the oil from the 
 holy lamp, which he had received with joy. It was 
 to please him that Marco made his observations, 
 noting everything — or at least, no doubt the young 
 embassador believed that his sole object was to 
 
THE MAKERS 01^ VENICE. 169 
 
 please his master when he followed the character- 
 istic impulses of his own inquisitive and observant 
 intelligence. 
 
 Since his day the world then unknown has opened 
 up its secrets to many travelers, the geographer, 
 the explorer, and those whose study lies among the 
 differences of race and the varieties of humanity. 
 The curious, the wise, the missionary, and the 
 merchant, every kind of visitor had essayed in his 
 turn to lift the veil from those vast spaces and pop- 
 ulations and to show us the boundless multitudes 
 and endless deserts, which lay, so to speak, outside 
 the world for centuries, unknown to this active 
 atom of a Europe, which has monopolized civiliza- 
 tion for itself; but none of them, with all the light 
 of centuries of accumulated knowledge, have been 
 able to give Marco Polo the lie. Colonel Vule, his 
 last exponent in England, is no enthusiast for 
 Marco. He speaks, we think without reason, of his 
 "hammering reiteration" his lack of humor, and 
 many other characteristic nineteenth-century objec- 
 tions. But when all is done, here is the estimate 
 which this impartial critic makes of him and his 
 work : 
 
 Surely Marco's real, indisputable, and in their kind unique, 
 claims to glory may suflBce. He was the first traveler to trace 
 a route across the whole longitude of Asia, naming and de- 
 scribing kingdom after kingdom which he had seen with his 
 own eyes; the deserts of Persia, the flowing plateaus and wild 
 gorges of Beloochistan, the jade-bearing rivers of Khotan, 
 the Mongolian steppes, cradle of the power which had so 
 lately threatened to swallow up Christendom ; the new and 
 brilliant court that had been established at Cambaluc ; the 
 first traveler to reveal China in all its wealth and vastness, its 
 mighty ruins, its huge cities its rich manufactures, its 
 swarming population, the inconceivably vast fleets that 
 quickened its seas and its inland waters ; to tell us of the 
 nations on its borders, with all their eccentricities of manners 
 and worship ; of Thibet with its sordid devotees, of Burmah 
 with its golden pagodas and their tinkling crowns, of Caos, 
 of Siam, of Cochin-China, of Japan, the Eastern Thule, with 
 its rosy pearls and golden-roofed palaces; the first to speak of 
 that museum of beauty and wonder, the Indian Archipelago, 
 
170 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 source of the aromatics then so prized and whose origin was so 
 dark ; of Java, the pearl of islands ; of Sumatra, with its many 
 kings, its strange costly products, and its cannibal races ; of the 
 naked savage of Nicobar and Andaman ; of Ceylon, the isle of 
 gems, with its sacred mountain and its tomb of Adam ; of India 
 the great, not as a dreamland of Alexandrian fables, but as 
 a country seen and partially explored, with its virtuous Brah- 
 mins, its obscure ascetics, its diamonds and the strange tales 
 of their acquisition, its soabeds of pearls, and its powerful 
 sun; the first in mediaeval times to give any distinct accornt 
 of the secluded Christian empire of Abyssinia, and the semi- 
 Christian isle of Socotra; to speak, though indeed dimly, of 
 Zanzibar, with its negroes and its ivory, and of the vast and 
 distant Madagascar bordering on that dark ocean of the 
 south, and in a remotely opposite region, of Siberia, and the 
 Arctic Ocean, of dog sledges, white bears, and reindeer-riding 
 Tanguses. 
 
 We get to the end of this sentence with a gasp of 
 exhausted breath. But though it may not be an 
 example of style, in a writer who has no patience 
 with our Marco's plainer diction, it is a wonderful 
 resume of one man's work, and that a Venetian 
 trader of the thirteenth century. His talk of the 
 wonders he had seen, which amused and pleased 
 the lord ot all the Tartars in the world, and 
 charmed the dreary hours ot the prisoners in the 
 dungeons of Genoa — an audience so different — is 
 here for us as it came from his lips in what we may 
 well believe to be the selfsame words, with the 
 same breaks and interruptions, the pauses and 
 digressions which are all so natural. The story is 
 so wonderful in its simplicity of spoken discourse 
 that it is scarcely surprising to know that the 
 Venetian gallants jeered at the Man of the Mil- 
 ions ; but it is still full of interest, a book not to be 
 despised should it ever be the reader's fate to be 
 shut up in any dungeon, or in a desolate island, or 
 other enforced seclusion. And not all the flood of 
 light that has been poured since upon these 
 unknown lands, not the progress of science or evolu- 
 tion, or any great development of the last six hun- 
 dred years, has proved Messer Marco to have been 
 less than trustworthy and true. 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 171 
 
 Meanwhile the archway in the Corte della Sab- 
 bioaera, in its crowded corner behind San Crisos- 
 tomo, is all that remains in Venice of Marco Polo. 
 He has his (imaginary) bust in the loggia of the 
 Ducal Palace, along with many another man who 
 has less right to such a distinction, but even his 
 grave is unkown. He lies probably at San Lorenzo 
 among the nameless bones of his fathers, but even 
 the monument his son erected to Niccolo has long 
 ago disappeared. The Casa Polo is no more ; the 
 name extinct, the house burned down except that 
 corner of it. It would be pleasant to see restored 
 to the locality at least the name of the Corte 
 Millione, in remembrance of all the wonders he 
 told, and of the gibe of the laughing youths to 
 whom his marvelous tales were first unfolded; and 
 thus to have Kublai Khan's millions once more 
 associated with his faithful ambassador's name. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 A POPULAR HERO. 
 
 About seventy years after the events above re- 
 corded, in the latter half of the fourteenth century, 
 there occurred a crisis in the life of the Venetian 
 republic of a more alarming and terrible character 
 than had ever been caused before by misfortunes 
 external or internal. Since those early times when 
 the fugitive fathers of the state took refuge in the 
 marshes and began to raise their miraculous city out 
 of the salt pools and mud-banks, that corner of the 
 Adriatic had been safe from all external attacks. 
 A raid from Aqujleia, half ecclesiastical, half war- 
 like, had occurred by times in early days, threaten- 
 ing Grado or even Torcello, but nothing which it 
 gave the city any trouble to overcome. The Greek, 
 with all his wiles, had much ado to keep her con- 
 quering galleys trom his coasts, and lost island after 
 
172 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 island without a possibility of reprisals. The Dal 
 matian tribes kept her in constant irritation and 
 disturbance, yet were constrained over and over 
 again to own her mistress of the sea, and never 
 affected her home soveignty. The Turk himself, 
 the most appalling of invaders, though his thunders 
 were heard near enough to arouse alarm and rage, 
 never got within sight of the wonderful city. It 
 was reserved for her sister republic, born of the 
 same mother, speaking the same language, moved 
 by the same instincts, Genoa, from the other side of 
 the peninsula, the rival, from her cradle, of the 
 other seaborn state, to make it possible, if but for 
 one moment, that Venice might cease to be. This 
 was during the course of the struggle called by 
 some of the chroniclers the fourth, by others the 
 seventh, Genoese war — a struggle as causeless and 
 as profitless as all the wars between the rivals were; 
 resulting in endless misery and loss to both, but 
 nothing more. The war in question arose nom- 
 inally, as they all did, from one of the convulsions 
 which periodically tore the Empire of the East 
 asunder, and in which the two trading states, the 
 rival merchants, seeking ever pretense to push their 
 traffic, instinctively took different sides. On the 
 present occasion it was an Andronicus who had 
 dethroned and imprisoned his father, as on a former 
 occasion it had been an Alexius. Venice was on 
 the side of the injured father, Genoa upon that of 
 the usurping son — an excellent reason for flying at 
 each other's throats wherever that was practicable, 
 and seizing each other's stray galleys on the high 
 seas, when there was no bigger fighting on hand. 
 It is curious to remark that the balance of success 
 was with Genoa in the majority of these struggles, 
 although that state was neither so great nor so 
 consistently independent as that of Venice. Our 
 last chapter recorded the complete and ignominious 
 rout of the great Venetian squadron in which 
 Marco Polo was a volunteer, in the beginning of the 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 173 
 
 century; and seventy years later, 1379, ^he fortune 
 of war was still the same. In distant seas tlie 
 piracies and lesser triumphs of both powers main- 
 tained a sort of wavering equality, but when it came 
 to a great engagement Genoa had generally the 
 upper hand. 
 
 The rival republic was also at this period re- 
 enforced by many allies. The Carrarese, masters 
 of Padua and all the rich surrounding plains, the 
 nearest neighbors of Venice, afterward her victims, 
 had joined the league against her. So had the King 
 of Hungary, a hereditary foe, ever on the watch to 
 snatch a Dalmatian city out of the grip of Venice, 
 and the Patriarch of Aquileia, a great ecclesiastical 
 prince, who from generation to generation never 
 seems to have forgiven the withdrawal of Venice 
 from his sway and the erection of Grado into a rival 
 primacy. This strong league against her did not 
 at first daunt the proud republic, who collecting all 
 her forces, sent out a powerful expedition, and so 
 long as the war went on at a distance regarded it, if 
 not without anxiety, yet with more wrath than fear. 
 But when Vittore Pisani, the beloved admiral in 
 whose powers all Venice believed, was defeated at 
 Pola, a thrill of alarm ran through the city, shortly 
 to be raised into the utmost passion of fear. Pisani 
 himself and a few of his captains escaped from the 
 rout, which v/as so complete that the historian rec- 
 ords "almost all the Venetian sea forces" to have 
 been destroyed. Two thousand prisoners, Sabellico 
 tells, were taken by the Genoese and the entire fleet 
 cut to pieces. When the beaten admiral arrived in 
 Veoifce he met what was in those days the usual fate 
 of a defeated leader, and was thrown into prison; 
 but not on this occasion with the consent of the pop- 
 ulace, who loved him, and believed that envy on 
 the part of certain powerful persons, and not any 
 fault of his, was the occasion of his condemnation. 
 After this a continued succession of misfortunes 
 befell the republic. What other ships she had were 
 
174 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 away m Eastern seas, and the authorities seem to 
 have been for the moment paralyzed. Town after 
 town was taken. Grado once more fell into the 
 power of that pitiless patriarch; and the Genoese 
 held the mastery of the Adriatic. The Venetians, 
 looking on from the Lido, saw with eyes that 
 almost refused to believe such a possibility, with 
 tears ot rage and shame, one of their own merchant- 
 men pursued and taken by the Genoese, and plun- 
 dered and burned while they looked on, within a 
 mile of the shore. The enemy took Pelestrina; they 
 took part of Chioggia, burning and sacking every- 
 where, then sailed off triumphant to the turbulent 
 Zara, which they had made their own, dragging the 
 Venetian banners which they had taken at Pola 
 through the water as they sailed triumphantly 
 away. The Venetian Senate, stung to the quick, 
 attempted, it would seem, to raise another fleet; 
 but in vain, the sailors refusing to inscribe them- 
 selves under any leader but Pisani. A few vessels 
 were with difficulty armed to defend the port and 
 Lido, upon which hasty fortifications, great towers 
 of wood, were raised, with chains drawn across the 
 navigable channels and barges sunk to make the 
 watery ways impassable. When, however, the 
 enemy, returning and finding the coast without 
 defense, recaptured, one after another, the Vene- 
 tian strongholds on the west side of the Adriatic, 
 and finally took possession in force of Chioggia, the 
 populace took up the panic of their rulers. 
 
 When the fall of Chioggia was known, which was toward 
 midnight, the city being taken in the morning, there arose 
 such a terror in the Palace that as soon as day dawned there 
 was a general summons to arms, and from all quarters the 
 people rushed toward the Piazza. The court and square were 
 crowded with the multitude of citizens. The news of the tak- 
 ing of Chioggia was then published by order of the Senate, 
 upon which there arose such a cry and such lamentations as 
 could not have been greater had Venice itself been lost. The 
 women throughout the city went about weeping, now raising 
 their arms to heaven, now beating upon their breasts ; the 
 men stood talking together of the public misfortune, and that 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 175 
 
 there was now no hope of saving the republic, but that the 
 entire dominion would be lost. They mourned each his pri- 
 vate loss, but still more the danger of losing their freedom. 
 All believed that the Genoese would press on at once, overrun 
 all the territory, and destroy the Venetian name ; and they 
 held consultations how to save their possessions, money, and 
 jewels, whether they should send them to distant places, or 
 hide them underground in the monasteries. All joined in this 
 lamentation and panic, and many believed that if in this 
 moment of terror the enemy's fleet had pressed on to the city, 
 either it would have fallen at once or would have been in the 
 greatest danger. 
 
 **But," adds Sabellico piously, *'God does not 
 show everything to one man. Many know how to 
 win a battle, but not how to follow up the victory." 
 This fact, which has stood the human race in stead 
 at many moments of alarm, save Venice. The 
 Genoese did not venture to push their victory ; but 
 their presence at Chioggia, especially in view of 
 their alliance with Carrara at Padua, was almost as 
 alarming. The Venetian ships were shut out from 
 the port, the supplies by land equally interrupted ; 
 only from Treviso could any provisions reach the city 
 and the scarcity began at once to be felt. Worse, 
 however, than any of the practical miseries which 
 surrounded Venice was the want of a leader or any- 
 one in whom the people could trust. The doge was 
 Andrea Contarini, a name to which much of the 
 fame of the eventual success has been attributed, 
 but it does not seem in this terrible crisis to have 
 inspired the public mind with any confidence. 
 After the pause of panic, and the troubled consulta- 
 tions of this moment of despair, one thought sud- 
 denly seized the mind of Venice. *' Finally all 
 concluded that in the whole city there was but one 
 Pisani, and that he, who was dear to all, might still 
 secure the public safety in this terrible and danger- 
 ous crisis. ' ' That he should lie in prison and in 
 darkness, this man whose appearance alone would 
 give new heart to the city! There was a general 
 rush toward the Palazzo when this thought first 
 burst into words and flew from one to another. 
 
176 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 The Senate, unable to resist, notwithstanding "the 
 envy of certain nobles, ' ' conceded the prayer of the 
 people. And here for a moment the tumultuous 
 and complicated story pauses to give us a glimpse 
 of the man che ad ognuno era molto caroy as the histo- 
 rian, impressed by the universal sentiment, assures 
 us again and again. The whole population had 
 assembled in the Piazza to receive him : 
 
 But so great was his modesty that he preferred to remain 
 for this night in the prison, where he begged that a priest 
 might be sent to him, and confessed, and as soon as it was 
 day went out into the court, and to the church of San Niccolo, 
 where he received the precious Sacrament of the Host, in 
 order to show that he had pardoned every injury both put)lic 
 and private ; and having done this he made his appearance 
 before the Prince and the Signoria. Having made his rever- 
 ence to the Senate, not with angry or even troubled looks, but 
 with a countenance glad and joyful, he placed himself at the 
 feet of the doge, who thus addressed him: "On a former 
 occasion, Vittore, it was our business to execute justice; it is 
 now the time to grant grace. It was commanded that you 
 should be imprisoned for the defeat of Pola ; now we will that 
 you should be set free. We will not inquire if this is a just 
 thing or not, but leaving the past, desire you to consider the 
 present state of the republic and the necessity for preserving 
 and defending it, and so to act that you fellow-citizens, who 
 honor you for your great bearing, may owe to you their 
 safety, both public and private. ' ' Pisani made answer in this 
 wise: "There is no punishment, most serene Prince, which 
 can come to me from you «r from the others who govern the 
 republic which 1 should not bear with a good heart, as a good 
 citizen ought. I know, most serene Prince, that all things 
 are done for the good of the republic, for which I do not 
 doubt all your counsels and regulation are framed. As for 
 private grievances, I am so far from thinking that they should 
 work harm to anyone that I have this day received the Blessed 
 Sacrament, and been present at the Holy Sacrifice, that noth- 
 ing may be more evident than that I have forever forgotten 
 to hate any man. ... As for what you say inviting me to 
 save the republic, I desire nothing more than to obey it, and 
 will gladly endeavor to defend her, and God grant that 1 may 
 be he who may deliver her from peril, by whatsoever way, 
 with my best thought and care, for I know that the will shall 
 not be wanting. " With these words he embraced and kissed 
 the Prince with many tears, and so went to his house, passing 
 through the joyful multitude, and accorn'mnied by the entire 
 people. 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 177 
 
 It may afford some explanation of the low ebb to 
 which Venice had come at this crisis, that not even 
 now was Pisani appointed to the first command, 
 and it was only after another popular rising that the 
 invidia d alcuni nobili was finally defeated, and he 
 was put in his proper place as commander of the 
 fleet. When this was accomplished the sailors 
 enlisted in such numbers that in three days six gal- 
 leys were fully equipped to sail under the beloved 
 commander, along with a great number of smaller 
 vessels, such as were needful for the narrow chan- 
 nels about Chioggia, only navigable by light flat- 
 bottomed boats and barges. A few successes fell 
 to Pisani's share at first, which raised the spirits of 
 the Venetians, and another fleet of forty galleys was 
 equipped, commanded by the doge himself, in the 
 hope of complete victory. But it was with the 
 greatest difficulty that the city, once so rich, could 
 get together money enough to prepare these arma- 
 ments; and poverty and famine were in her streets, 
 deserted by all the able-bodied and left to the fear 
 and melancholy anticipations of the weaker part of 
 the population. To meet this emergency the Senate 
 published a proclamation holding out to all who 
 would furnish money or ships or men, the prize of 
 admission into the Great Council, offering that 
 much-coveted promotion to thirty new families from 
 among the most liberal citizens, and promising to 
 the less wealthy or less willing interest for their 
 money, five thousand ducats to be distributed 
 among them yearly. "Many moved by the hope of 
 such a dignity, some also for love of their country," 
 says Sabellico, came forward with their offerings, 
 no less than sixty families thus distinguishing them- 
 selves; and many fine deeds were done. Among 
 others there is mention made of a once rich Chiog- 
 giote, Matteo Fasnolo by name, who, having lost 
 everything, presented himself and his two sons, all 
 that was left to him, to give their lives for the 
 republic. 
 
 12 Venice 
 
178 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 The rout of Pola took place in March, 1379; i^^ 
 August the Genoese took possession of Chioggia 
 and sat down at the gates of Venice. It was as if 
 the mouth of the Thames had been in possession of 
 an assailant of London, with this additional misfor- 
 tune, that the country behind, the storehouse and 
 supply on ordinary occasions ot the city, was also in 
 the possession of her enemies. How it came about 
 that Pisani with his galleys and innumerable barks, 
 and the doge with his great fleet, did next to noth- 
 ing against these bold invaders, it seems impossible 
 to tell. The showers of arrows with which they 
 harassed each other, the great wooden towers erected 
 on both sides, for attack and defense, were, no 
 doubt, very different from anything that armies 
 and fleets have trusted in since the days of artillery. 
 But with all these disadvantages it seems wonderful 
 that this state of affairs should languish on through 
 the winter months— then universally considered a 
 time for rest in port and not for action on the seas 
 — without any result. A continual succession of 
 little encounters, sallies of the Genoese, assaults of 
 the besiegers, sometimes ending in a trifling victory, 
 sometimes only adding to the number ot the name- 
 less sufferers — the sailors sweating at the oars, the 
 bowmen on the deck — went on for month after 
 month. The doge's fleet, according to one account, 
 went back every night to Venice ; the men sleeping 
 at home and returning to their hopeless work every 
 day, with it may be supposed, but little heart for 
 it. And not only their enemies but all the evils of 
 the season, cold and snow and storm, fought against 
 the Venetians. Sometimes they would be driven 
 apart by the tempestous weather, losing sight of 
 each other, occasionally even coming to disastrous 
 shipwreck; and lovely as are the lagoons under 
 most aspects, it is impossible to imagine anything 
 more dreary and miserable than the network of 
 slimy passages among the marshes, and the gray 
 wastes of sea around, in the mists and chill of 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 179 
 
 December, and amid the perpetual failures and 
 defeats of an ever unsuccessful conflict. Want grew 
 to famine in Venice, her supplies being stopped 
 and her trade destroyed; and even the rich plebe- 
 ians, who had strained their utmost to benefit their 
 country and gain the promised nobility, began to 
 show signs of exhaustion, and "the one Pisani, " in 
 whom the city had placed such entire confidence, — 
 though, wonderfully enough, he does not seem to 
 have lost his hold upon the popular affections, — had 
 not been able to deliver his country. In these cir- 
 cumstances the eyes of all began to turn with fever- 
 ish impatience to another captain, distant upon the 
 high seas, after whom the Senate had dispatched 
 message after message, to call him back with his 
 galleys to the help of the republic. He was the 
 only hope that remained in the dark mid- winter; 
 when all their expedients failed them, and all their 
 efforts proved unsucessful, there remained still a 
 glimmer ot possibility that all might go well if Carlo 
 were but there. 
 
 Carlo Zeno, the object of this last hope, at the 
 moment careering over the seas at the head of an 
 active and daring little fleet, which had been 
 engaged in making reprisals upon the Genoese 
 coasts, carrying fire and flame along the eastern 
 Riviera — and which was now fighting the battles of 
 Venice against everything that bore the flag of 
 Genoa, great or small — was a man formed on all the 
 ancient traditions of the republic, a soldier, a sailor 
 a merchant, adventurer, and orator, a born leader 
 of men. Of the house of Zeno, his mother a Dan- 
 dolo, no better blood is in the Golden Book (not 
 then, however, in existence) than that which ran in 
 his veins; and his adventurous life and career were 
 most apt to fire the imagination and delight the pop- 
 ular fancy. His father had died, a kind of martyr 
 for the faith, in an expedition for the relief of 
 Smyrna, when Carlo was but seven years old. He 
 was then sent to the Pope at Avignon, who endowed 
 
180 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 the orphan with a canonicate at Patras, apparently 
 a rich benefice. But the boy was not destined to 
 live the peaceful life of an ecclesiastical dignitary. 
 He passed through the stormy youth which in those 
 days was so often the beginning of a heroic career 
 — ran wild at Padua, where he was sent to study, 
 lost all that he had at play, and having sold even his 
 books, enlisted, as would appear, in some troop of 
 free lances, in which for five years he was lost to his 
 friends, but learned the art of war, to his great after 
 profit and the good of his country. When, after 
 having roamed all Italy through, he reappeared in 
 Venice, his family, it is probable, made little effort 
 to prevent the young trooper from proceeding to 
 Greece to take up his canon's stall, for which, no 
 doubt, these wanderings had curiously prepared 
 him. His biography, written by his grandson, 
 Jacopo, Bishop of Padua, narrates all the incidents 
 of his early life in full detail. At Patras, the 
 adventurous youth, then only twenty-two, was very 
 soon placed in the front during the incessant wars 
 with the Turks, which kept that remote community 
 in perpetual turmoil — and managed both the st rategy 
 of war and the arts of statesmanship with such 
 ability that he obtained an honorable peace and the 
 withdrawal of the enemy on the payment of a cer- 
 tain indemnity. However great may be the danger 
 which is escaped in this way, there are always 
 objectors who consider that better terms might have 
 been made. "Human nature," says Bishop Jacopo, 
 *'is a miserable thing, and virtue always finds 
 enemies, nor was anything ever so well done but 
 envy found means of spoiling and misrepresenting 
 it." Carlo did not escape this common fate, and 
 the Greek Governor, taking part with his adversar- 
 ies, deprived him of his canonicate. Highly indig- 
 nant at this affront, the angry youth threw up 'Var- 
 ious other ecclesiastical dignities," which we are 
 told he possessed in various parts of Greece : where- 
 upon his life took an aspect much more harmonious 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 181 
 
 with his character and pursuits, "Fortune," says 
 our bishop, '* never forsakes him who has a great 
 soul. There was in Chiarenza a noble lady of great 
 wealth, who having heard of Carlo's achievements, 
 and marveling at the greatness of his spirit, con- 
 ceived a desire to have him for her husband. And 
 Carlo, being now free from the ecclesiastical yoke, 
 was at libert)'' to take a wife, and willingly con- 
 tracted matrimony with her." This marriage, 
 however, was not apparently of very long dura- 
 tion, for scarcely had he cleared himself of all the 
 intrigues against him, when his wife died, leaving 
 him as poor as before. "Her death, which, as was 
 befitting, he lamented duly, did him a double injury, 
 for he lost his wife and her wealth together, her 
 property consisting entirely of feoffs, which fell at 
 her death to the Prince of Achaia. " This misfor- 
 tune changed the current of his life. He returned 
 to Venice, and after a proper interval married again, 
 a lady of the house of Giustiniani. "Soon after, 
 reflecting that in a maritime country trade is of the 
 highest utility, and that it was indeed the chief sus- 
 tenance of his city, he made up his mind to adopt 
 the life of a merchant; and leaving Venice with 
 this intention, remained seven years absent, living 
 partly in a castle called Tanai on the banks of the 
 river Tanai, and partly in Constantinople." 
 
 Such had been the life, full of variety and expe- 
 rience, of the man to whom the eyes of Venice turned 
 in her humiliation. He had been all over Italy in 
 his youth, during that wild career which carried 
 him out of the view of his family and friends. He 
 had been even further afield in France, Germany, 
 and England, in a short episode of service under 
 the Emperor Charles IV. , between two visits alia 
 sua chiesha di Patrasso. He had fought the Turks 
 and led the armaments of Achaia during his resi- 
 dence at his canonicate; and now, all these tumults 
 over, resettled into the natural position of a Vene- 
 ian, with a Venetian wife and all the traditions of 
 
182 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 his race to shape his career; had taken to com- 
 merce, peacefully, so far as the time permitted, in 
 those golden lands of the East where it was the 
 wont of his countrymen to make their fortunes. 
 And success, it would appear, had not forsaken cht 
 ha-V aninta grande^ the man of great mind — for when 
 he reappeared in Venice it was with a magnificence 
 of help to the republic which only a man of wealth 
 could give. He was still engaged in peaceful occu- 
 pations when war broke out between Genoa and 
 Venice. Carlo had already compromised himself by 
 an attempt to free the dethroned emperor, and had 
 been in great danger in Constantinople, accused 
 before the Venetian governor of treasonable prac- 
 tices, and only saved by the arrival of the great con- 
 voy from Venice *' which reached Constantinople 
 every year," and in which he had friends. Even 
 at this time he is said to have had soldiers in his 
 service, probably for the protection of his trade in 
 the midst of the continual tumults; and his his- 
 torian declares that no sooner had he escaped from 
 Constantinople than he began to act energetically 
 for the republic; securing to Venice the wavering 
 allegiance of the island of Tenedos, from which the 
 Venetian galleys under his (part) command chased 
 off the emissaries of the emperor, and where a 
 Venetian garrison was installed. His first direct 
 action in the service of the state, however, would 
 seem to have been that sudden raid upon the 
 Genoese coast at the very beginning of the war, to 
 which we have referred, with the purpose of mak- 
 ing a diversion and, if possible, calling back to the 
 defense of their own city the triumphant armies of 
 Genoa. This intention, however, was not carried 
 out by the result, though otherwise the expedition 
 was so successful that "the name of Carlo Zeno," 
 says his historian, writing more than a hundred 
 years after, **is terrible to that city even to the 
 present day." After this exploit he seems to have 
 returned to the east, per neiiafe la mare^ sweeping 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 1^3 
 
 the sea clear of every Genoese vessel that came in 
 his way, and calling at every rebellious port with 
 much effect. 
 
 In the midst of these engagements the news of 
 the defeat at Pola did not reach him till long after 
 the event, and even the messengers dispatched by 
 the Senate, one boat after another, failed to find 
 the active and unwearied seaman as he swept the 
 seas. Such a ubiquitous career — now here, now 
 there, darting from one point to another with a 
 celerity which was a marvel in those days of slow 
 sailing and long pauses, and the almost invariable 
 success which seemed to attend him — gave Carlo a 
 singular charm to the popular imagination. No 
 one was more successful at sea, n^o one half so suc- 
 cessful on land as this leader, suddenly improvised 
 by his own great deeds in the very moment of need, 
 whose adventures had given him experience ot 
 everything that the mediaeval world knew, and who 
 had the special gift of his race in addition to every- 
 thing else — the power of the orator over a people 
 specially open to that influence. Sanudo says that 
 Carlo at first refused to obey the commands of the 
 Senate, preferring the nettar la mare to that more 
 dangerous work of dislonging the Genoese from 
 Chioggia. But there would seem to be no real 
 warrant for this assertion. The messengers were 
 slow to reach him. They arrived when his hands 
 were still full and when it was difficult to give im- 
 mediate obedience; and when he did set out to 
 obey, a strong temptation fell in his way and for a 
 time delayed his progress. This was a great ship 
 from Genoa, the description of which is like that of 
 the galleons which tempted Drake and his brother 
 mariners. It was grande oltre misura, a bigger ship 
 than had ever been seen, quite beyond the habits 
 and dimensions of the time, laden with wealth of 
 every kind, and an enormous crew, *'for besides 
 the sailors and the bowmen it carried two hundred 
 Genoese, each of whom was a senator or a son of a 
 
184 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 senator.** It was winter, and the great vessel was 
 more at home on the high seas than the navigli 
 leggieri with which our hero had been flying from 
 island to island. The sight of that nimble fleet filled 
 the Genoese commander with alarm ; and he set all 
 sail to get out of their way. It was evidently con- 
 sidered a mighty piece of daring to attack such a 
 ship at all, or even to be out at all at such a season 
 instead of in port, as sensible galleys always were 
 in winter. When, however, the wind dropped and 
 the course of the big vessel was arrested, Carlo's 
 opportunity came. He called his crews together 
 and made them a speech, which seems to have been 
 his habit. The vessels collected in a cluster round 
 the high prow on which he stood, reaching with his 
 great voice in the hush of the calm all the listening 
 crews, must have been such a sight as none of our 
 modern wonders could parallel ; and he was as em- 
 phatic as Nelson, if much longer winded. The 
 great Bichignona,, with her huge sails, drooping and 
 no wind to help her from her pursuers, was no 
 doubt lying in sight, giving tremendous meaning 
 to his oration. **Men," he cried, *'valente uomini, 
 if you were ever prompt and ardent in battle, now is 
 the time to prove yourselves so. You have to do 
 with the Genoese, your bitter and cruel enemies, 
 whose whole endeavor is to extinguish the Venetian 
 name. They have beaten our fleet at Pola, with 
 great bloodshed; they have occupied Chioggia; and 
 our city itself will soon be assailed by them to 
 reduce her to nothing; killing your wives and 
 children, and destroying your property and, every- 
 thing there by fire and sword. Up then, my 
 brothers, compagm mieif despise not the occasion 
 here offered to you to strike a telling blow ; which, 
 if you do, the enemy shall pay dearly for their mad- 
 ness, as they well deserve, and you, joyful and full 
 of honor, will deliver Venice and your wives and 
 children from ruin and calamity." 
 When he had ended this speech he caused the 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 186 
 
 trumpets to sound the signal of attack. The oars 
 swept forth, the galleys rushed with their high- 
 beaked prows like so many strange birds of prey 
 round the big, helpless, overcrowded ship. *'They 
 fought with partisans, darts, arrows, and every kind 
 of arm ; but the lances from the ship were more vehe- 
 ment as reaching from a higher elevation, the form 
 of the ship [nave'] being higher than the galleys, 
 which were long and low ; nevertheless the courage 
 of the Venetians and their science in warfare were 
 so great that they overcame every difficulty. Thus, " 
 goes on the historian, *'this ship was taken, which 
 in size exceeded everything known in that age." 
 Carlo dragged his prey to Rhodes, *'not without 
 difficulty," and there burned her, giving up the 
 immense booty to his sailors and soldiers; then "re- 
 calling to his mind his country," with great trouble 
 got his men together laden with their spoils, and, 
 toiling day and night without thought of danger or 
 fatigue, at length reached the Adriatic. Calling at 
 an Italian port on his way to victual his ships, he 
 found other letters from the Senate still more im- 
 perative, and on the ist day of January, 1380, he 
 arrived before Chioggia, where lay all the force that 
 remained to Venice, and where his appearance had 
 been anxiously looked for, for many a weary day. 
 
 The state of the republic would appear to have 
 been all but desperate at this miserable moment. 
 After endless comings and goings, partial victories 
 now and then which raised their spirits for the mo- 
 ment, but a ceaseless course of harassing and 
 fatiguing conflict in narrow waters where scarcely 
 two galleys could keep abreast, and where the 
 Venetians were subject to constant showers of 
 arrows from the Genoese fortifications, the two 
 fleets, one of them under the doge, the other under 
 Pisani, seem to have lost heart simultaneously. In 
 the galleys under the command of Contarini were 
 many if not all the members of the Senate, who had 
 ^rom the beginning shown the teeblest heart; and 
 
186 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 meetings were held, and timorous and terrified con-, 
 saltations, unworthy their name and race, as to the 
 possibility of throwing up the struggle altogether, 
 leaving Venice to her fate, and taking refuge in 
 Candia, or even Constantinople, where these ter- 
 rified statesmen, unused to the miseries of a winter 
 campaign on board ship, and the incessant watch- 
 ings and fighting in which they had to take their 
 part, thought it might be possible to begin again, 
 as their fathers had done. While these cowardly 
 counsels were being whispered in each others' ears, 
 on one hand, on the other, the crews with greater 
 reason were on the verge of mutiny. 
 
 The galleys were so riddled with the arrows of the enemy 
 that the sailors in desperation cried with one voice that the 
 siege must be relinquished, that otherwise all that were in the 
 galleys round Chioggia were dead men. Those also who held 
 the banks, fearing that the squadrons of Carrara would fall 
 upon them from behind, demanded anxiously to be liberated, 
 and that the defense of the coast should be abandoned. Pisani 
 besought them to endure a little longer, since in a few days 
 Carlo Zeno must arrive, adding both men and ships to the 
 armata, so that the Genoese in their turn would lose heart. 
 Equal desperation of mind was in the other division of the 
 fleet, where cold, hunger, and the deadly showers of arrows 
 which were continually directed against the galleys, had so 
 broken and worn out all spirit that soldiers and all who were 
 on board thought rather of flight than combat. The presence 
 of the doge somewhat sustained the multitude, and the exhor- 
 tation he made, showing them what shame and danger would 
 arise to their country if they raised the siege, since the 
 Genoese, seeing them depart, would immediately follow them 
 to Venice. But neither by prayers nor by promises could the 
 spirits of the men be emboldened to contmue the siege. And 
 things had come to such a pitch that, tor two days, one after 
 the other on either side had determined to raise the siege, 
 when Carlo Zeno, just in time, with fourteen galleys fully 
 equipped with provisions and men, about noon, as if sent by 
 God, entered the port of Chioggia. 
 
 Carlo turned the balance, and supplied at once the 
 stimulus needed to encourage these despairing 
 squadrons, unmanned by continual failure and by 
 all the miseries of sea and war; troubles to which 
 tl;ie greater part were unaccustomed, since in the 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 187 
 
 failure of fighting men this armada of despair had 
 been filled up by unaccustomed hands — mostly 
 artisans, says Sabellico — whose discouragement is 
 more pardonable. Great was the joy of the Vene- 
 tians, continues the same authority, "when they 
 heard what Carlo had done; how he had sunk in 
 the high seas seventy ships of divers kinds belong- 
 ing to the enemy, and the great bark Bichignona, 
 and taken three hundred Genoese merchants, and 
 three hundred thousand ducats of booty, besides 
 seamen and other prisoners. " The newcomer passed 
 on to Pisani after he had cheered the doge's squad- 
 ron, and spread joy around, even the contingent 
 upon the coast taking heart; and another arrival 
 from Candia taking place almost at the same mo- 
 ment, the Venetians found themselves in possession 
 of fifty-two galleys, many o^ them now manned 
 with veterans, and feared the enemy no more. 
 
 It is impossible to follow in detail the after inci- 
 dents of this famous siege. Carlo in concert with, 
 and partial subordination to, Pisani, succeeded in 
 blockading Chioggia so completely that the enemy 
 began to feel the same stress of famine which they 
 had inflicted upon the Venetians. But the various 
 attacks and assaults, the varying fortunes of the 
 besieged and besiegers, are too many to be re- 
 corded, as the painstaking and leisurely chronicler 
 does, event by event. According to the biographer 
 of Carlo, that hero was never at a loss, but encoun- 
 tered every movement of the Genoese, as they too 
 began to get uneasy, and to perceive that the circle 
 round them was being drawn closer and closer, 
 with a more able movement on his side, and met 
 the casualties of storm and accident with the same 
 never-failing wit and wealth of resource. Accord- 
 ing to Bishop Jacopo, the entire work was accom- 
 plished by his ancestor, though other writers give a 
 certain credit to the other commanders. But as 
 soon as operations of a really important and practi- 
 cal character had begun, a new danger, specially 
 
188 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 characteristic of the age, arose on the Venetian 
 side. Bishop Jacopo Zeno would have us believe 
 that up to this time the Venetians had hired no 
 mercenaries, which is an evident mistake, since we 
 have already heard, even in this very conflict, of 
 forces on shore, a small and apparently faithful 
 contingent, led by a certain Giacomo Cavallo of 
 Verona. But perhaps it was the first time that a 
 great armament had been collected under the ban- 
 ner of San Marco. With that daring of despair 
 which is above calculation as to means of payment 
 or support, the Senate had got together a force of 
 six thousand men — a little army, which was to be 
 conducted by the famous English condottiere, Sir 
 John Hawkwood, Giovanni Aguto according to the 
 Italian version of his name. These soldiers assem- 
 bled at Pelestrina, an island in the mouth of the 
 lagoons, not far from Chioggia. But when the band 
 was collected and ready for action, the Senate, 
 dismayed, found the leader wanting. Whether the 
 Genoese had any hand in this defalcation, or 
 whether the great condottiere was kept back by 
 other engagements, it is certain that at the last 
 moment he failed them ; and the new levies, all un- 
 known and strange to each other, fierce fighting 
 men from every nationality, stranded on this island 
 without a captain, became an additional care in- 
 stead of an aid to the anxious masters of Venice. 
 Fierce discussions arose among them, u?ia pcricolosa 
 cofitesa^ the Italians against the French and Ger- 
 mans. In this emergency the Senate turned to 
 Carlo Zeno as their only hope. His youthful expe- 
 riences had made him familiar with the ways of these 
 fierce and dangerous auxiliaries, and he was consid- 
 ered a better leader, Sabellico tells us, by land than 
 by sea. To him accordingly the charge of pacify- 
 ing the mercenaries was given. "Carlo, receiving 
 this commission to pass from the fleet to the camp, 
 and from war at sea to war on land," put on his 
 armor, and quickly, with a few companions, trans- 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 189 
 
 ferred himself to Pelestrina, where he found every- 
 thing in a deplorable condition, 
 
 It would be hard to tell the tumult which existed in the 
 army, in which there was nothing but attack and defense, 
 with cries of blood and vengeance, so that the uproar of men 
 and weapons made both shore and sky resound. Carlo 
 announced his arrival by the sound of trumpets, calling upon 
 the soldiers to pause and listen to what their captain had to 
 say. His voice, as soon as it was heard, so stilled that 
 commotion that the storm seemed in a moment to turn into a 
 calm ; and everyone, of whatever grade, rushed to him expos- 
 ing his grievances, and demanding, one justice, the other re- 
 venge. There wefe many among them who had served under 
 him in other wars, and were familiar with him. ' 
 
 To these excited and threatening men he made a 
 judicious speech, appealing at once to their gener- 
 osity and their prudence; pointing out the embar- 
 rassed circumstances of the Senate, and the ingrati- 
 tude of those who received its pay yet added to its 
 troubles; and finally succeeded in making a truce 
 until there was time to inquire into all their griev- 
 ances. When he had soothed them for the moment 
 into calm, he turned to the Senate for the one sole 
 means which his experience taught him could keep 
 these unruly bands in order. He had been told, 
 when his commission was given to him, that '*it ap- 
 peared to these fathers [the Senate] that it was his 
 duty to serve the republic without pay," which was 
 scarcely an encouraging preliminary for a demand 
 on their finances. Carlo, however, did not hesitate. 
 He wrote to the Senate informing them of his tem- 
 porary success with the soldiery, and suggesting 
 that, like medicine in the hands of a doctor, money 
 should be used to heal this wound. To make the 
 proposal less disagreeable to the poverty-stricken 
 state, he offered himself to undertake the half of the 
 burden, and to give five hundred ducats to be di- 
 vided among the soldiers, if the Senate would do 
 the same; to which the rulers of Venice— partly 
 moved by the necessities of the case and partly by 
 his arguments, and that the republic might not seem 
 
190 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 less liberal than a simple citizen — consented, and 
 peace was accordingly established among the 
 always exacting mercenaries. Peace, however, 
 lasted only for a time ; and it gives us a lively im- 
 pression of the troubles of Mediaeval powers with 
 these artificial armies, to trace the violent scenes 
 which were periodically going on behind all other 
 difficulties, from this cause. 
 
 When Carlo finally got his army in motion, and 
 landed them on the edge of the shore at Chioggia, 
 he found occasion almost immediately to strike a 
 telling blow. Understanding by the signals made 
 that the enemy intended to make a sally from two 
 points at once — from Brondolo on one side, and 
 from the city of Chioggia on the other — he at once 
 arranged his order of battle ; placing the English, 
 French, and Germans on the side toward Chioggia 
 while the Italians faced the parting coming from 
 Brondolo. I would seem from this that Carlo's con- 
 fidence in his own countr5''men was greater than in 
 the strangers' ; for the sallying band from Chioggia 
 had to cross a bridge over a canal, and therefore lay 
 under a disadvantage of which he was prompt to 
 avail himself. 
 
 The following scene has an interest, independent 
 of the quaint story, to the English reader: 
 
 When Carlo saw this [the necessity of crossing the bridge] 
 he was filled with great hope of a victory, but adding a num- 
 ber of the middle division to the Italians, he himself joined 
 the foreign band, and having had experience of the courage 
 and truth of the English captain, whose name was William, 
 called by his countrymen // Coquo [Cook? or Cock?!, he called 
 him and consulted with him as to the tactics of the enemy, 
 and how they were to be met, and finding that he was of the 
 same opinion. Carlo called the soldiers together \a parlamentd\ 
 and addressed them thus. 
 
 Carlo's speeches, it must be allowed, are a little 
 long-winded. Probably the bishop, his grandson, 
 with plenty of leisure on his hands, did not reflect 
 that it must have been a dangerous and useless ex- 
 pedient to keep soldiers a patlamento^ however ener- 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENlCfi. l9l 
 
 getic the words were, when the enemy was visibly 
 beginning to get over the bridge in face of them. 
 We feel, when these orations occur, something as 
 spectators occasionally do at an opera, when in de- 
 fiance of common-sense the conspirators pause to 
 roar forth a martial ditty at the moment when any 
 whisper might betray them, or the lovers perform 
 an elaborate duo when they ought to be running 
 away with all speed from the villain who is at their 
 heels. Probably the hero's speech was very much 
 shorter than his descendant makes it — just long 
 enough, let us suppose, with William the Cock at 
 his elbow, who would naturally have no faith in 
 speechifying at such a moment, to let the Genoese 
 get completely started upon that bridge which, 
 though assailargo, allowed the passage of but a small 
 number abreast. The enemy themselves came on 
 gayly, with the conviction that, taken thus between 
 assailants on two sides. Carlo would lose heart and 
 fly — and had passed a number of their men over the 
 bridge before the Venetian army moved. Then 
 suddenly Carlo flung his forces upon them with a 
 great shouting and sound of trumpets. "The Eng- 
 lish were the first who with a rush and with loud 
 cries assailed the adversaries, followed by the others 
 with much readiness and noise" [romore\ The 
 Genoese, taken by surprise, resisted but faintly 
 from the first, and driven back upon the advancing 
 files already on the bridge, were disastrously and 
 tragically defeated — the crowd, surging up in a 
 mass, those who were coming confused and arrested, 
 those who were flying pushed on by the pursuers 
 behind, until with the unwonted weight the bridge 
 broke, and the whole fighting, flying mass was 
 plunged into the canal. The division which ap- 
 proached from Brondolo was not more fortunate. 
 On seeing the rout of their companions they too 
 broke and fled con velocissimi corsi, as it seems to 
 have been the universal habit to do in the face of 
 any great danger — the fact that discretion was the 
 
m THE MAKERS OE VENICE. 
 
 better part of valor being apparently recognized by 
 all, without any shame in putting the maxim into 
 practice. This victory would seem to have been 
 decisive. The tables were turned with a rapidity 
 which is strongly in contrast with the lingering 
 character of all military operations in this age. / 
 Veneziani di ve7iti diveniarono vindori, the vanquished 
 becoming victors; and the Genoese lost courage 
 and hope all at once. The greater part of them 
 turned their eyes toward Padua as the nearest place 
 of salvation, and many fled by the marshes and 
 difficult tortuous water passages, in which they 
 were caught by the pursuing barks of the Vene- 
 tians and those Chioggiotes whom the invaders had 
 driven from their dwellings. Of thirteen thousand 
 combatants who were engaged in the zuffa here 
 described, six thousand only, we are told, found 
 safety within the walls of Chioggia. Bishop Jacopo 
 improves the occasion with professional gravity, yet 
 national pride. **And certainly," he says, ** there 
 could not have been a greater example of the 
 changeableness of human affairs than that those 
 who a little time before had conquered the fleets, 
 overcome with much slaughter all who opposed 
 them, taken and occupied the city, despised the con- 
 ditions of peace offered to them and made all their 
 arrangements for putting Venice to sack, in full 
 confidence of issuing forth in their galleys and lead- 
 ing back their armies by the shore, proud of the 
 hosts which they possessed both by land and sea — 
 now broken and spent, having lost all power and 
 every help, fled miserably, wandering by dead 
 waters and muddy marshes to seek out ferries and 
 hiding places, nor even in flight finding salvation. 
 Such are the inconstancy and changeableness of 
 human things." 
 
 We cannot but sympathize with the profound 
 satisfaction of the bishop in thus pointing his not 
 very original moral by an event so entirely gratify- 
 ing to his national feelings. 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 198 
 
 This sudden victory, however, as it proved, was, 
 if decisive, by no means complete; the Genoese who 
 remained still obstinately holding their own within 
 the shelter of their fortifications. It was in Febru- 
 ary that the above recorded events occurred, and it 
 was not till June that Chioggia was finally taken; a 
 delay to be attributed, in great part at least, to the 
 behavior of the mercenaries. No sooner was the 
 first flush of delight in the unaccustomed triumph 
 over, than the troops who had done their duty so 
 well again turned upon their masters. On being 
 ordered by sound of trumpet to put themselves in 
 motion and establish their camp under the walls of 
 Chioggia, these soldiers of fortune bluntly refused. 
 
 The captains of the different bands sought Carlo 
 in his tent, where two Proveditori, sent by the 
 Senate to congratulate him, and to urge him to fol- 
 low up his victory, were still with him. Their mes- 
 sage was a very practical one. They rejoiced that 
 their victory had been so helpful to the republic, 
 which they regarded with great reverence and 
 affection, ready at all times to fight her battles; but 
 they thought that in the general joy the Senate might 
 very becomingly cheer the soldiers by a present, 
 qualche donativo — something like double pay, for ex- 
 ample, for the month in which the victory had been 
 won. This would be very grateful and agreeable 
 to all ranks^ the captains intimated, and whatever 
 dangerous work there might be to do afterward the 
 authorities should find them always ready to obey 
 orders and bear themselves valorously ; but if not 
 granted, not a step would they make from the spot 
 where they now stood. To this claim there was 
 nothing to be said but consent. Once more Carlo 
 had to use all his powers, con buo?ie parole di addol- 
 cire gli animi loro, for he was aware "by long trial 
 and practice of war that soldiers have hard heads 
 and obstinate spirits." He therefore addressed 
 himself once more to the republic, urging the pru- 
 dence of yi^^^iiig this donativo lest worse should 
 
 18 Yeniea 
 
194 THE MAKERS OF V£N1CE. 
 
 come of it, adding, "that he, according to his cus- 
 tom, would contribute something from his own 
 means to lighten the burden to the republic." Such 
 scenes, ever recurring, show how precarious was 
 the hold of any authority over these lawless bands, 
 and what power to exact and to harass was in their 
 merciless hands. 
 
 Some time later, when the Genoese shut up in 
 Chioggia had been well-nigh driven to desperation, 
 a rescuing fleet of thirty galleys, laden with provi- 
 sions and men, having been driven off and every 
 issue closed either by sea or land, the mutinous free 
 lances appear on the scene again — this time in the 
 still more dangerous guise of traitors. "The mer- 
 cenaries were not at all desirous that the Genoese 
 should give themselves up, being aware that their 
 occupation and pay would be stopped by the con- 
 clusion of the war. " This fear led them to open 
 negotiations with the besieged, and to keep up their 
 courage with false hopes, the leaders of the con- 
 spirators promising so to act as that they might have 
 at least better conditions to surrender. A certain 
 Robert of Recanati was at the head of these un- 
 faithful soldiers. Carlo, who seems to have kept up 
 a secret intelligence department such as was highly 
 necessary with such dubious servants, discovered 
 the conspiracy, and that there was an intention 
 among them of taking advantage of a parade ot the 
 troops for certain mutinous manifestations. The 
 wisdom and patience of the leader, anxious in all 
 things for the success of his enterprise and the 
 safety of the republic, and dealing with the utmost 
 caution with the treacherous and unreasoning men 
 over whom he held uneasy sway, come out conspicu- 
 ously in these encounters. Carlo forbade the pa- 
 rade, but finding that mutineers pretended to be 
 unaware of its postponement, took advantage of their 
 appearance armed and in full battle array to re- 
 monstrate and reason with them. While the men 
 in general, overawed by their general's discovery of 
 
tHE MAKERS OF VENICE. 1% 
 
 their conspiracy and abashed by his dignified re- 
 proof, kept silence, Robert, ferocious in his madness 
 and hot blood, sprang to the front, and facing Carlo 
 adroitly pressed once more the ever-repeated exac- 
 tions. "We come to you armed and in order ot 
 battle," he said, "as you see, to demand double pay 
 till the end of the war. We are determined to have 
 it, and have sworn, by whatsoever means, to obtain 
 it; and, if it is denied to us, we warn you that, with 
 banners flying, and armed as you see us, we will go 
 over to Chioggia to the enemy." The much-tried 
 general was greatly disturbed by this defiance, but 
 had no resource save to yield. 
 
 Believing it to be better to moderate with prudence the im- 
 petuosity of this hot blood, without showing any alarm, with 
 cheerful countenance and soft words, Carlo replied that noth- 
 ing would induce him to believe that these words were spoken 
 in earnest, knowing the good faith and generosity of the 
 speaker's mind, and believing that they were said only to try 
 him ; that he had good reason for believing this, since other- 
 wise Robert would have committed a great villainy and intro- 
 duced the worst example, such as it was impossible a man of 
 his high reputation could intend to do. Nor could the Senate 
 ever believe it of him, having always expected and thought 
 most highly of him and rewarded him largely, according to 
 the faith they had in his trustworthiness and experience in 
 the art of war ; for nothing rendered soldiers more dear to the 
 republic than that good faith which procured them from the 
 said republic and other princes great gifts and donations. If 
 soldiers were indifferent to the failure and violation of this 
 faith, who could confide to their care the safety of the state, 
 of the women and children? Therefore, he adjured them to 
 lay down their arms, and he would watch over their interests 
 and intercede for them with the Senate. While Carlo thus 
 mildly addressed them the multitude renewed their uproar, 
 opposing him furiously and repeating the cry of double pay, 
 which they demanded at the top of their voices, and certain 
 standard-bearers posted among them raised their banners, 
 crying out that those who were of that opinion should follow 
 them; to whom Carlo turned smiling, and declared, "That he 
 also was on that side, and promised, if they were not con- 
 tented, to fight under their ensigns." 
 
 While this struggle was still going on, the gen- 
 eral, with a smile on his lips, but speechless anx- 
 
196 tHE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 iety in his heart, facing the excited crowd which 
 any touch might precipitate into open mutiny 
 beyond his control, a sudden diversion occurred 
 which gave an unhoped-for termination to the 
 scene. The manner in which Carlo seized the 
 occasion, his boldness, promptitude, and rapid 
 comprehension of an occurrence which might under 
 less skilltvil guidance have turned the balance in 
 the opposite direction, show how well he deserved 
 his reputation. The Genoese, who had been 
 warned by secret emissaries that on this day the 
 mercenaries intended some effort in their favor, 
 and probably perceiving from their battlements 
 that something unusual was going on in the camp, 
 seized the moment to make a desperate attempt at 
 escape. They had prepared about eighty small 
 vessels, such as were used to navigate the passages 
 among the marshes, and filled them with every- 
 thing of value they possessed in preparation for such 
 an occasion. The propitious moment, seeming 
 now to present itself, they embarked hastily, and 
 pushing out into the surrounding waters, seeking 
 the narrowest and least-known passages, stole forth 
 from the beleaguered city. "But vain," cries the 
 pious bishop, *' are the designs of miserable man!" 
 
 The boatmen whose attention was fixed upon every move- 
 ment within the walls had already divined what was going on 
 and with delight perceivin g them issue forth, immediately 
 gave chase in their light barks, giving warning of the escape 
 of the enemy with shouting and a great uproar. And already 
 the cry rose all around, and the struggle between the fugi- 
 tives and their pursuers had begun, when Carlo, fired by the 
 noise and clash of arms, suddenly turned upon the soldiers, 
 and with stern face and terrible eyes addressed them in an- 
 other tone. "What madness is this," he cried, "cowards, that 
 keeps you standing still while the enemy pushes forth before 
 your eyes laden with gold and silver and precious things, 
 while you stand and look on, chattering like children?" Upon 
 which he ordered the banners to move on, and with a great 
 voice, so that the whole army could hear him, commanding 
 all who kept faith with the republic to follow him against the 
 enemy. Without loss of time, with his flag carried before 
 him, he among the first rushed to the marshes, plunging 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 197 
 
 breast-high in the water and mud, and his voice and the 
 impetuosity with which he called them to their senses and 
 rushed forth in their front had so great a power that the whole 
 army, forgetting their complaint, followed their captain, 
 flinging themselves upon the enemy, and thus, with little 
 trouble, almost all fell into Carlo's hands. The booty thus 
 obtained was so great that never had there been greater, nor 
 was anything left that could increase the victory and the fury 
 until night fell upon the work. In this way and by this 
 means was an end made of the controversy of that day. 
 
 This accidental settlement, however, was only 
 for the moment. Robert of Recanati was not to 
 be so easily driven from his purpose. The rem- 
 nant of the imprisoned and discouraged Genoese, 
 greatly diminished by these successive defeats and 
 now at the last point of starvation, were about to 
 send messengers to the doge with their submission, 
 when he and the other conspirators, seducing the 
 soldiers in increasing numbers to their side by 
 prophecies of the immediate disbandment which 
 was to be anticipated if the war were thus brought 
 to an end, and promises of continued service in the 
 other case — again hurried their movements to the 
 brink of an outbreak. Carlo, who was advised of 
 all that happened by his spies, at last in alarm in- 
 formed the Senate of his fears, who sent a deputation 
 of two of their number to address the captain and 
 mitigate gli animi dei soldati con qualche donaiivo, 
 the one motive which had weight with them. This 
 process seemed again so far successful that the 
 captains in general accepted the mollifying gift and 
 undertook to secure the fidelity of their men — all 
 but Robert, who, starting to his feet in the midst 
 of the assembly, protested that nothing would make 
 him consent to the arrangement, and rushed fortn 
 into the camp to rouse to open rebellion the men 
 who were disposed to follow him. Carlo, perceiv- 
 ing the imminent danger, rushed forth after him 
 and had him seized, and was about to apply the 
 rapid remedy of a military execution, when the 
 deputation from Venice — popular orators perhaps, 
 
198 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 trembling for their reputation as peacemakers and 
 friends of the soldiers — threw themselves before 
 the angry general and implored mercy for the 
 rebel. Against his better judgment Carlo yielded 
 to their prayers. But it was very soon proved how 
 foolish this clemency was, since the same after- 
 noon, the orators being still in the tents, the sound 
 of cries, ''Armef Arme/ " and ''Saccof resounded 
 through the camp, and it soon became apparent 
 that a rush was about to be made upon Chioggia 
 without discipline or prearrangement, a number of 
 the troops following Robert and his fellow conspir- 
 ators in hope of a sack and plunder, and in spite of 
 all the general could say. When Carlo found it 
 impossible to stop this wild assault, he sent a 
 trusted retainer of his own to mix in the crowd and 
 bring a report of all that wen^ on. This trusty emis- 
 sary, keeping close to Robert, was a witness of the 
 meeting held by the conspirators with the Genoese 
 leaders under cover of this raid, and heard it 
 planned between them how on that very night, 
 after the Venetian mercenaries had been driven 
 back, a sudden attack should be made by the Gen- 
 oese on the camp with the assistance of the traitors 
 with it, so that the rout and destruction of the 
 besiegers should be certain and the way of exit 
 from Chioggia be thrown open. The soldiers 
 streamed back defeated into the camp when the 
 object of the raid had been thus accomplished, the 
 poor dupes of common men, spoiled of their arms 
 and even clothes by the desperate garrison, while 
 Robert and his friends returned "almost naked" to 
 carry out the deception. Carlo met them as they 
 came back in broken parties with every appearance 
 of rout, and in a few strong words upbraided them 
 with their folly and rashness; but when he heard 
 the story of his spy, the gravity of the position be- 
 came fully apparent. Night was already falling, 
 and the moment approaching when the camp, un- 
 prepared, might have to sustain the last despairing 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 199 
 
 assault of the besieged, for whom life and freedom 
 hung upon the possibility of success, combined with 
 the still more alarming danger of treachery within. 
 The soldiers were at supper and occupied, those 
 who had come back from Chioggia probably lament- 
 ing their losses, and consoling themselves with 
 hopes of the sack of the town, which Robert had 
 used as one of his lures — when the captains of the 
 mounted troops (which is what we imagine to be 
 the meaning of the expression "/ capi degli uommi 
 d'arme — de fante 7io, perche sapeva ehe iutti erano 
 nella congiura'')^ leaving their own meal, stole 
 toward the general's tent in the quiet of the brief 
 tvvilight. Carlo made them a vigorous speech, 
 more brief than his ordinary addresses, first thank- 
 ing and congratulating them on their former 
 exploits and their fidelity to the republic; then lay- 
 ing before them the discovery he had made, the 
 risk that all they had done might be lost through 
 the treachery of one among them, and the desper- 
 ate necessity of the case. The captains, startled by 
 the sudden summons^ and by the incidents of the 
 day, sat round him, with their eyes fixed upon their 
 leader, hearing with consternation his extraordinary 
 statement, and for the moment bewildered by the 
 revelation of treachery and by the suddenness of the 
 peril. This moment, upon which hung the safety 
 of the Venetian name and the decisive issue of the 
 long struggle, must have been one of overwhelming 
 anxiety for the sole Venetian among them, the 
 only man to whom it was a question of life or 
 death; the patriot commander unassured of what 
 reply these dangerous subordinates might make. 
 But he was not kept long in suspense. 
 
 There was a certain captain among the others called Wil- 
 liam, of Britannic origin. He, who was a man of great valor 
 and the greatest fidelity, rose to his feet, and looking round 
 upon them all, spoke thus: "Your words, oh, general [impe- 
 ratore], have first rejoiced and then grieved us. It rejoiced 
 us to hear that you have so much faith in us, and in our love 
 aod devotion to your republic, than which we could desire u.q 
 
200 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 better— and for this we thank you with all our hearts. We 
 have known you always not only as our general and leader 
 \imperatore e duce\, but as our father, and it grieves us that 
 there should be among us men so villainous as those of whom 
 you tell us. It appalls my soul to hear what you say ; and, 
 for my own part, there is nothing I am not ready to do in 
 view of the hardihood of the offender, of our peril, and the 
 discipline of our army, matters which cannot be treated with- 
 out shame of the military art. But you are he who have 
 always overcome by your care and vigilance, and, with that 
 genius which almost passes mortal, have always secured the 
 common safety, defended us from ill fortune and from our 
 enemies, and trusted in our good faith. We can never cease 
 to thank you for these things, and God grant that the time 
 may come when we shall do more than thank you. In the 
 meantime we are yours, we are in your power; we were 
 always yours, and now more than ever ; make of us what 
 pleases you. And now tell us the names of those who have 
 offended you, let us know who are these scoundrels and 
 villains, and you shall see that the faith you have had in us is 
 well founded." 
 
 It is satisfactory to find our unknown countryman 
 taking this manly part. Robert was sent for, the 
 entire assembly echoing the Englishman's words; 
 and when the traitor's explanations had been sum- 
 marily stopped by a gag, Carlo and his faithful 
 captains came out of the general's quarters with a 
 shout for the republic, calling their faithful followers 
 round them, and a short but sharp encounter fol- 
 lowed, in which the conspirators were entirely sub- 
 dued. The Genoese meanwhile, watching from 
 their walls for the concerted signal, and perplexed 
 by the sounds of battle, soon learned by flying 
 messengers that the plot was discovered and their 
 allies destroyed. An unconditional surrender fol- 
 lowed, and the invaders, who had for ten months 
 been masters of Chioggia, and for half that time at 
 least had held Venice in terror and had her in their 
 power, driving the mistress of the seas to the most 
 abject despair, were now hurried off ignominously 
 in every available barge and fisherman's cobble, 
 rude precursors of the gondola, to prison in Venice 
 — five thousand of them, Bishop Jacopo says. He 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 201 
 
 adds that after their long- starvation they ate raven- 
 ously, and that the greater part of them died in 
 consequence, a statement to be received with 
 much reserve. Sabellico tells us that four thou- 
 sand men altogether fell into the hands of the 
 republic, three thousand of whom were Genoese. 
 The soldiers among them, mercenaries no doubt 
 and chiefly foreigners, had their arms taken from 
 them and were allowed to go free. The plunder 
 was taken to the church of St. Maria, and there 
 sold by auction, the Venetians fixing the price, 
 which was handed over to the soldiers, the chron- 
 iclers say. One wonders if the bargains to be had 
 under these circumstances satisfied the citizens to 
 whom this siege had cost so much. 
 
 It would be interesting, though sad, to follow 
 the fate of these prisoners, shut up in dungeons 
 which it is not at all likely were much better than 
 the pozzi at present exhibited to shrinking visitors, 
 though these prisons did not then exist. They had 
 no Marco Polo, no chosen scribe among them to 
 make their misery memorable. The war lasted 
 another year, during which these were moments in 
 which their lives were in extreme peril. At one 
 time a rumor rose of cruelties practiced by the 
 Genoese upon the Venetian prisoners, many of 
 whom were reported to have died of hunger and 
 their bodies to have been thrown into the sea — 
 news which raised a great uproar in Venice, the 
 people breaking into the prisons and being with 
 difficulty prevented from a general massacre of the 
 prisoners, who were punished for the supposed sin 
 of their compatriots by losing all comforts and con- 
 veniences and being reduced to bread and water, 
 the women who had cooked their food "for pity" 
 being ordered away. Afterward, however, the 
 city, according to ancient custom, had compassion, 
 and restored to them everything of which they had 
 been deprived. On the conclusion of the war, when 
 peace was made and the prisoners exchanged, there 
 
M THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 is a little record which shows, however far behind 
 us were these mediaeval ages, that charity to our 
 enemies is not, as some people think, an invention 
 of the nineteenth century. 
 
 The Venetian ladies [matrone] collected among themselves 
 money enough to supply the Genoese, who were almost 
 naked, with coats, shirts, shoes, and stockings, and other 
 things necessary for their personal use before their departure, 
 that they might not have any need to beg by the way, and 
 also furnished them with provisions for their journey. And 
 those who were thus sent back to their home were of the num- 
 ber of fifteen hundred. 
 
 Half of the prisoners, it would thus appear, per- 
 ished within the year. 
 
 The war with Genoa did not end with the resto- 
 ration of Chioggia, but it was carried on hencefor- 
 ward in distant waters, and among the Dalmatian 
 towns and islands. Carlo Zeno himself w^as sent 
 to take at all hazards a certain Castle of Marano, 
 against his own will and judgment, and failed, as 
 he had previously assured his masters he must fail ; 
 and there were many troubles on the side of 
 Treviso, which Venice presented to Duke Leopold 
 of Austria, in order to preserve it from the Car- 
 rarese, now the obstinate enemies of the republic. 
 Here the difficulties with the condottieri reappeared 
 again, but in a less serious way. The soldiers whose 
 pay was in arrears, and who, hearing of the pro- 
 posed transfer, felt themselves in danger of falling 
 between two stools, and getting pay from neither 
 side, confided their cause to a certain Borato Mala- 
 spina, who presented himself before the Venetian 
 magistrates of Treviso, and set his conditions before 
 them. "We have decided," he said, "in con- 
 sideration of the dignity of the Venetian name and 
 the good faith of the soldiers, to take our own 
 affairs in hand, and in all love and friendship to ask 
 for our pay. We have decided to remain each man 
 at his post until one of you goes to Venice for the 
 money. During this interval everything shall be 
 
tHE MAKERS OF VENICE. M 
 
 faithfully defended and guarded by us. But we 
 will no longer delay, nor can we permit our busi- 
 ness with the Senate to be conducted by letter. 
 Your presence is necessary in order that everything 
 may go well. And we will await the return of him 
 who shall be sent to Venice, with a proper regard 
 to the time necessary for his coming and going. 
 There is no need for further consultation in the case, 
 for what we ask is quite reasonable." The as- 
 tounded magistrates stared at this bold demand- 
 but found nothing better for it than to obey. 
 
 And at last the war was over, and peace, in which 
 to heal her wounds, and restore her half-ruined 
 trade, and put order in her personal affairs, carae to 
 \renice. According to the promise made in her 
 darkest hour, thirty families from among those who 
 had served the republic best were added to the 
 number of the nobles. "Before they went to the 
 Palazzo they heard the divine Mass, then, present- 
 ing themselves before the prince and Senate, sv/ore 
 to the republic their faith and silence. " The last is 
 a remarkable addition to the oath of allegiance, and 
 curiously characteristic of Venice. "Giacomo Cav- 
 allo, Veronese," adds Sabellico, "for his strenuous 
 and faithful service done during this war, obtained 
 the same dignity." It was the highest which the 
 republic could bestow. 
 
 The subsequent history of Carlo Zeno we have 
 entirely upon the word of his descendant and 
 biographer, who, like most biographers of that age, 
 is chiefly intent upon putting every remarkable act 
 accomplished in his time to the credit of his hero. 
 At the same time, we have every reason to trust 
 Bishop Jacopo, whose work is described by Foscar- 
 ini as the most faithful record existing of the war 
 of Chioggia; the author, as that careful critic adds, 
 "being a person of judofment and enlightenment, 
 and living at a period not far removed from these 
 acts." He was indeed born before the death of his 
 grandfather, and must have had full command of 
 
204 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 all family memorials as well as the evidence of 
 many living persons, for the facts he records. We 
 may accordingly take his book, with perhaps a little 
 allowance for natural partiality, as a trustworthy 
 record of the many wonderful vicissitudes of Carlo's 
 life. And whether the bold pirate-like countenance 
 which serves as frontispiece to Quirini's translation 
 of the bishop's book be taken from any authentic 
 portrait (which is little likely), there can be at least 
 no doubt of the family tradition, which describes 
 the great soldier-seaman thus : 
 
 '*He was square-shouldered, broad-chested, solidly 
 and strongly made, with large and speaking eyes, 
 and a manly, great, and full countenance; his 
 stature neither tall nor short, but of a middle size. 
 Nothing was wanting in his appearance which 
 strength, health, decorum, and gravity demanded." 
 With the exception perhaps of the gravity and 
 decorum, which are qualities naturally attributed 
 by a clergyman to his grandfather, the description 
 is true to all our ideas of a naval hero. At the time 
 of the struggle before Chioggia, which he conducted 
 at once so gallantly and so warily, he was forty-five, 
 in the prime of his strength; and that solid and 
 steadfast form which nothing could shake, those 
 eyes which met undaunted the glare of so many 
 mutinous troopers, always full of the keenest 
 observation, letting nothing escape them, stand out 
 as clearly among the crowd as if, forestalling a cen- 
 tury, Gentile Bellini had painted him, strongly 
 planted upon those sturdy limbs to which the rock 
 of the high seas had given a sailor's double security 
 of balance, confronting the heavy, furious Germans, 
 the excited Frenchmen, the revengeful Italians of 
 other states, scarcely less alien to his own than the 
 foresiierivfiih. their strange tongues — whose sole bond 
 of allegiance to their momentary masters was the 
 double pay, or occasional do7iativo^ which they 
 exacted as the price of their wavering faith. A 
 trvier type of the ideal Venetian — strong, subtle, 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 205 
 
 ready-witted, prompt in action and prepared for 
 everything; the patriot, pirate, admiral, merchant, 
 general, which ever character was most needed at 
 the moment — could not be. 
 
 Carlo did not return to his merchandise after this 
 absorbing struggle. He was made captain-general 
 of the forces on the death, not long after, of Vit- 
 tore Pisani ; and when the old Doge Contarini died 
 he was for a time the favorite candidate for that 
 honor. The electors indeed had all but decided in 
 his favor, the bishop tells us, when a certain Zac- 
 caria Contarini, *'a man ot great authority and full 
 of eloquence and the art of speech," addressed an 
 oration to them on the subject. His argument was 
 a curious one. Against Carlo Zeno, he allowed, not 
 a word could be said ; there was no better man, 
 none more worthy, nor of higher virtue in all Ven- 
 ice ; none who had served the republic better, or to 
 whom her citizens were more deeply indebted; but 
 these were the very reasons why he should not be 
 made doge — for should another war arise with 
 Genoa, who could lead the soldiers ot Venice against 
 her rival but he who was the scourge of the Ge- 
 noese ; a man with whom no other could compare for 
 knowledge of things naval and military; for pru- 
 dence, judgment, fidelity to the country, greatness, 
 and good fortune? "If you should bind such a man 
 to the prince's office, most noble fathers, to stay at 
 home, to live in quiet, to be immersed in the affairs 
 of the city, tell me what other have you?" Thus 
 Carlo's fame was used against him, "whether with 
 a good intention for the benefit of the republic, or 
 from envy of Carlo," Bishop Jacopo does not under- 
 take to say. Neither does he tell us whether his 
 illustrious ancestor was disappointed by the issue. 
 But when peace was proclaimed, and there was no 
 more work for him nor further promotion possible, 
 Carlo left Venice and went forth upon the world 
 "to see and salute various princes throughout Italy 
 with whom he was united by no common friend- 
 
206 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 ship." A man so celebrated was received with 
 open arms everywhere, especially where fighting 
 was going on, and made himself useful to his 
 princely friends in various emergencies He served 
 Galeazzo Visconti of Milan in this way, and was 
 governor of that city for several years and also of 
 the province of Piedmont, which was under Vis- 
 conti 's sway, and absorbed in such occupations was 
 absent from Venice for ten years, always with 
 increasing honor and reputation. While thus occu- 
 pied, what seemed a very trifling incident occurred 
 in his career. At Asti he encountered Francesco 
 da Carrara, the son of the lord of Padua, sometime 
 the enemy but at that moment at peace with Ven- 
 ice, an exile and in great straits and trouble; and 
 finding him sad, anxious, and unhappy, and in want 
 of every comfort, per no?i mancare aW ufficio di gefittl- 
 uomo, not to fail in the duty of a gentleman, did his 
 best to encourage and cheer the exile, and lent him 
 four hundred ducats for his immediate wants. 
 Some years after, when Francesco had been restored 
 to Padua, and regained his place, Carlo passed 
 through that city on his way to Venice, and was 
 repaid the money he had lent. The incident was a 
 very simple one, but not without disastrous conse- 
 quences. 
 
 On his return to Venice Carlo was again employed 
 successfully against the Genoese under a French 
 general, that proud city having fallen under the 
 sway of France, and covered the Venetian name 
 once more with glory. This, to all appearance, was 
 his last independent action as the commander of the 
 forces of Venice. He was growing old, and civil 
 dignities, though never the highest, began to be 
 awarded to him. When the war with the house of 
 Carrara broke out. Carlo Malatesta of Rimini, one 
 of the great condottieri of the time, held the chief 
 command, and Carlo Zeno accompanied the army 
 only in the capacity of Proveditore. A strong mil- 
 itary force was by this time in the pay of the repub- 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 207 
 
 lie ; but again, as ever, it was as hard a task to keep 
 them from fighting among themselves as to 
 overcome the enemy. Malatesta threw up his com- 
 mission in the midst of the campaign, and Paolo Sav- 
 ello was appointed in his stead ; but either this did 
 not please the mercenaries, or personal feuds among 
 them breaking out suddenly on the occasion of the 
 change, the camp was immediately in an uproar, 
 and the different factions began to cut each other 
 in pieces. Carlo forced his way into the middle of 
 the fight, and when he had succeeded in calming it 
 for the moment, called before him the chiefs of the 
 factions, and after his usual custom addressed them. 
 His speech is no longer that of a general at the head 
 of an army, but of an old man, much experienced 
 and full of serious dignity, before the restless and 
 ferocious soldiers. "I thought," he said, *'that the 
 uses and customs of war would have moderated your 
 minds and delivered you from passion; for there is 
 true nobleness where prudence is conjoined with 
 courage, and nothing so becomes a generous man as 
 a tranquil modesty and gravity in military opera- 
 tions. The shedding of blood becomes a sordid 
 business if not conducted and accompanied by a 
 decorous dignity." He then points out to them 
 that thefr work is nearly accomplished ; all the diffi- 
 culties have been overcome; Padua is closely 
 besieged and famishing, the end is at hand: 
 
 We have come, oh, captains, to the conclusion of the war ; a 
 fortunate end is near to your toils and watches, and nothing 
 remains but the prize and the victory. What then would you 
 have, oh, signori? What do you desire? What fury moves 
 you? Why are these arms, which should subdue the enemy, 
 turned against each other? Will you make your own labors, 
 your vigils, your great efforts, and all the difficulties you have 
 overcome but useless pains, and the hope of success in so hard 
 a fight as vain as they? And can you endure, oh, strong 
 men, to see the work of so many months destroyed in one 
 hour? I pray you then, generous captains, if any sense of 
 lotty mind, of valor, and of fidelity is in you, come, lay down 
 your arms, calm your rage, conciliate and pacify the offended. 
 
208 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 make an end of these feuds and conflicts, return to your former 
 brotherliness, and let us condone those injuries done to the 
 republic and to me. 
 
 The old warrior was seventy when he made this 
 speech. Yet it was he, if his biographer reports 
 truly, who had explored in his own person the 
 marshes about Padua, sometimes wading, some- 
 times swimming, pushing his way through bog and 
 mud, to discover a way by which the troops could 
 pass. He had a right to plead that all the labors 
 thus gone through should not be in vain. 
 
 When Padua was taken Carlo was made governor 
 of the city. The unfortunate Carrarese were taken 
 to Venice and imprisoned in San Giorgio, where 
 was enacted one of the darkest scenes in Venetian 
 history. But with this Zeno had nothing to do. 
 He left his post soon after, a colleague having been 
 appointed, in the belief that nothing called for his 
 presence, and returned to Venice. The colleague, 
 to whom Bishop Jacopo gives no name, among his 
 other labors, took upon him to examine the expend- 
 iture of the city for many years back, and there 
 found a certain strange entry: "To Carlo Zeno, 
 paid four hundred ducats." No doubt it was one 
 of the highest exercises of Christian charity on the 
 part of the bishop to keep back this busybody's 
 name. With all haste the register was sent to Ven- 
 ice to be placed before the terrible Ten. "The 
 Ten," says Jacopo, "held in the city of Venice the 
 supreme magistracy, with power to punish whom- 
 soever they pleased; and from their sentence there 
 is never any appeal permitted for any reason what- 
 ever, and all that they determine is final, nor can it 
 be known of anyone whether what they do is accord- 
 ing to reason or not." Called before this tribunal 
 Carlo gave the simple explanation with which the 
 reader has been already furnished. But before that' 
 secret tribunal, his honor, his stainless word, his 
 labors for his country, availed him nothing. Per-^ 
 haps the men whose hands had strangled Francesco 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 209 
 
 da Carrara and his son in their prison, still thrilling 
 with the horror of that deed, felt a secret pleasure 
 in branding the hero of Chioggia, the deliverer of 
 Venice, her constant defender and guard, as a traitor 
 and miserable stipendiary in foreign pay. The pen- 
 alty for this crime was the loss of all public place 
 and rank as senator or magistrate, and two years of 
 prison. And to this Carlo Zeno was sentenced as a 
 fitting end to his long and splendid career. 
 
 It is unnecessary to tell, though our bishop does 
 it with fine suppressed indignation, how the people, 
 thunderstruck by such an outrage, both in Venice 
 itself and in the other surrounding cities, would 
 have risen against it: 
 
 But Carlo [he adds], with marvelous moderation of mind 
 and with a strong and constant soul, supported the stroke ot 
 envious fortune without uttering a complaint or showing a 
 sign of anxiety; saying solely that he knew the course of 
 human things to be unstable, and that this which had happened 
 to him was nothing new or unknown, since he had long been 
 acquainted with the common fate ot men, and how vain was 
 their wisdom, or how little value their honors and dignities, 
 of which he now gave to all a powerful example. 
 
 But Venice is not alone in thus rewarding her 
 greatest men. 
 
 Bishop Jacopo does not say in so many words 
 that Carlo fulfilled his sentence and passed two 
 years in prison; so we may hope that even the 
 Ten, with all their daring, did not venture to exe- 
 cute the sentence they had pronounced. All we 
 are told is that "as soon as he was free to go where 
 he pleased" he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, 
 turning his soul to religion and sacred things. 
 Here a curious incident is recorded, to which it is 
 difficult to say what faith should be given. In the 
 Holy City Carlo, according to his biographer, met 
 and formed a warm friendship with a Scotch prince, 
 "Pietro, son of the King of Scotland," who insisted, 
 out of the love and honor he bore him, on knight- 
 ing the aged Venetian. We know of no Prince 
 
 14 Venice 
 
210 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 Peter in Scottish history, but he might have been 
 one of the many sons of Robert II., the first Stew- 
 art king. The rank of knight, so prized among the 
 Northern races, seems to have been, like other 
 grades, little known among the Venetians, the 
 great distinction between the noble and the ple- 
 beian being the only one existing. To be made a 
 knight in peaceful old age, after a warlike career, 
 is a whimsical incident in Carlo's life. 
 
 But though he was old, and a peaceful pilgrim on 
 a religious journey, his hand had not forgotten its 
 cunning in affairs of war; and on his way home he 
 lent his powerful aid to the King of Cyprus, and 
 once more, no doubt with much satisfaction to him- 
 self, beat the Genoese and saved the island. Re- 
 turning home the old man, somewhere betv/een 
 seventy and eighty, married for the third time, but 
 very reasonably, a lady of a noble Istrian family, 
 of an age not unsuitable to his own, "for no other 
 reason than to secure good domestic government, 
 and a consort and companion who would take upon 
 herself all internal cares, and leave him free to 
 study philosophy and the sacred writings. " Let us 
 hope that the old couple were happy, and that the 
 lady was satisfied with the position assigned her. 
 Having thus provided for the due regulation of all 
 his affairs, the old warrior gave himself up to the 
 enjoyment of his evening of leisure. He made 
 friends with all the doctors and learned men of his 
 day, a list of names eruditissmii in their time, but, 
 alas! altogether passed from human recollection; 
 and his house became a second court, a center of. 
 intellectual life in Venice as well as the constantv 
 haunt of honest statesmen and good citizens seeking) 
 his advice on public questions and material dii^cul- 
 ties as they arose. As for Carlo, he loved nothing 
 so much as to spend his time in reading and writ- 
 ing, and every day, when he was able, heard Mass 
 in San Stefano, *'nor ever went out," adds the 
 bishop with satisfaction, "that he did not go to 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. '^11 
 
 church or some other religious place." "In the 
 cold winter [neir orrida e gelida inver?tata] he had 
 his bed filled with books, so that when he had slept 
 sufficiently he could sit up in bed and pass the rest 
 of the night in i-eading, nor would he put down his 
 book save for some great necessity." One wonders 
 what books the noble old seaman had to read. 
 Scholastic treatises on dry points of mediaeval phi- 
 losophy, hair-splitting theological arguments most 
 probably. Let us hope that there blossomed be- 
 tween some saintly legends, some chronicle newly 
 written of the great story of Venice, perhaps some 
 sonnet of Petrarch's, whom Carlo in his early man- 
 hood must have met on the Piazza, or seen looking 
 out from the windows on the Riva — or, perhaps, 
 even some portion of the great work of Dante the 
 Florentine. He forgot himself and the troubles 
 of his old age among his books; but before he had 
 reached the profounder quiet of the grave Carlo 
 had still great sorrows to bear. The worthy wife 
 who took the cares of his household from him grew 
 ill and died, to his great grief; and — a pang still 
 greater — Jacopo, his youngest son, the father of the 
 bishop, died, too, in the flower of his manhood, at 
 thirty, leaving the old father desolate. Another 
 son, Pietro, survived, and was a good seaman and 
 commander; but it was upon Jacopo that the 
 father's heart was set. At last, in 1418, at the age 
 of eighty four, — in this point, too, following the 
 best traditions of Venice, — Carlo Zeno died, full of 
 honors and of sorrows. He was buried with all 
 imaginable pomp, the entire city joining the funeral 
 procession. One last affecting incident is recorded 
 in proof of the honor in which his country- 
 men and his profession held the aged hero. The 
 religious orders claimed, as was usual, the right of 
 carrying him to his grave; but against this the sea- 
 faring population, quasi tutii i Veueziani allevati 
 sid mare, arose as one man, and hastening to the 
 doge claimed the right of bearing to his last rest 
 
212 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 the commander who had loved them so well, 'i ,*^ir 
 prayer was granted ; and with all the ecclesiastical 
 splendors in front of them, and all the pomp of the 
 State behind, the seamen of Venice, i Ve?iezia7ii 
 spermejiiaii iielle cose maritime, carried him to his 
 grave; each relay watching jealously that every 
 man might have his turn. This band of seamen, 
 great and small, forming the center of the celebra- 
 tion, makes a fitting conclusion to the career of the 
 great captain, who had so often swept the seas, the 
 alto mare^ of every flag hostile to his city. 
 
 But in modern Venice the tomb of Carlo Zeno is 
 known no more. He was buried "in the celebrated 
 church called La Celestia, " attached to a convent 
 of Cistericans, but long ago destroyed. Its site and 
 what unknown fragments may remain of its original 
 fabric now form part of the Arsenal, and there per- 
 haps under some forgotten stone lie the bones of the 
 great admiral, the scourge of Genoa — not, after all, 
 an inappropriate spot. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE: CARMAGNOLA. 
 
 The history of Venice opens into a totally new 
 chapter when the great republic, somewhat humbled 
 and driven back by the victorious Turk from her 
 possessions beyond sea, and maintaining with diffi- 
 culty her broken supremacy as a maritime power, 
 begins to turn her eyes toward the green and fat 
 terra firma — those low-lying plains that supplied her 
 with bread and beeves, which it was so natural to 
 wish for, but so uneasy to hold. The suggestion 
 that her enemies, if united, could cut her off at any 
 time from her supplies, so nearly accomplished in 
 the struggle for Chioggia, was a most plausible and 
 indeed reasonable ground for acquiring, if possible, 
 the command in her own hands of the rich Lom- 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 213 
 
 hardy pastures and fields of grain. And when the 
 inhabitants of certain threatened cities hastily threw 
 themselves on her protection in order to escape 
 their assailant.s, her acceptance was instantaneous, 
 and it would seem to have been with an impulse of 
 delight that she felt her foot upon the mainland, 
 and saw the possibility within her power of estab- 
 lishing a firm standing, perhaps acquiring a perma- 
 nent empire there. It would be hopeless to enter 
 into the confused and endless politics ot Guelf and 
 Ghibelline, which threw a sort of veil over the fact 
 that every man was in reality for his own hand, and 
 that to establish himself or his leader in the sov- 
 ereignty of a wealthy city, by help of either one fac- 
 tion or the other, or in the name of a faction, or on 
 any other pretext that might be handy, was the 
 real purpose of the captains who cut and carved 
 Lombardy, and of the reigning families who had 
 already established themselves upon the ashes of 
 defunct republics or subdued municipalities. But 
 of this there was no possibility in Venice. No 
 Whites and Blacks ever struggled in the canals. 
 The only rebellions that touched her were those 
 made by men or parties endeavoring to get a share 
 of the power which by this time had been gathered 
 tightl}^, beyond all possibility of moving, in patri- 
 cian hands. Neither the Pope nor the emperor 
 was ever the watchword of a party in the supreme 
 and independent city, which dealt on equal terms 
 with both. 
 
 There was no reason, however, why Venice 
 should not take advantage of these endless conten- 
 tions; and there was one existing in full force which 
 helped to make the wars of the mainland more easy 
 to the rich Venetians than war had ever been be 
 fore. All their previous expeditions of conquest 
 which had been neither few nor small, were at the 
 cost of the blood as well as the wealth of Venice; 
 had carried off the best and bravest; and even, as 
 in the romantic story of the Giustiniani, swept 
 
214 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 whole families away. But this was no longer the 
 case when she strode upon terra firma with an alien 
 general at her elbow, and mercenary soldiers at her 
 back. Though they might not turn out very satis- 
 factory in the long run, no doubt there must have 
 been a certain gratification in hiring, so to speak, a 
 ready-made army, and punishing one's enemy and 
 doubling one's possessions without so much as a 
 scratch on one's own person or the loss even of a 
 retainer. The condottieri, conductors, leaders, 
 captains of the wild spirits that were to be found all 
 over the world in that age of strife and warfare, 
 were, if not the special creation of, at least most 
 specially adapted for the necessities of those rich 
 towns, always tempting to the ambitious, always by 
 their very nature exposed to assault, and at once 
 too busy and too luxurious at this advanced stage of 
 their history to do their fighting themselves — which 
 divided Italy among them, and which were each 
 other's rivals, competitors, and enemies, to the sad 
 hindrance of all national life, but to the growth, 
 by every stimulus of competition, of arts and indus- 
 tries and ways of getting rich — in which methods 
 each endeavored with the zeal of personal conflict to 
 outdo the rest. The rights, the liberties and inde- 
 pendence of those cities were always more or less at 
 the mercy of any adventurous neighboring prince 
 who had collected forces enough to assail them, or 
 of the stronger among their own fellows. We must 
 here add that between the horrors of the first mer- 
 cenaries, Grmide Campagfiia^ which carried fire and 
 sword through Italy, and made Petrarch's blood run 
 cold, and even the endless turbulence and treach- 
 ery of the men whom Carlo Zeno had so much ado 
 to master, and the now fully organized and reor- 
 ganized armies, under their own often famous and 
 sometimes honorable leaders, there was a great 
 difference. The free lances had become a sort of 
 lawful institution, appropriate and adapted to the 
 necessities of the time. 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICJE. 215 
 
 The profession of soldier of fortune is not one 
 which commends itself to us nowadays; and yet 
 there was nothing necessarily in it dishonorable to 
 the generals who carried on their game of warfare 
 at the expense of the quarrelsome races which em- 
 ployed them, but at wonderfully little cost of human 
 life. No great principle lay in the question whether 
 Duke Philip of Milan or the republic of Venice 
 should be master of Cremona. One of them, if 
 they wished it, was bound to hav.e the lesser city; 
 and what did it matter to a general who was 
 a Savoyard, coming down to those rich plains to 
 make his fortune, which of these wealthy paymas- 
 ters he should take service under? His trade was 
 perhaps as honest as that of the trader who buys in 
 the cheapest market and sells in the dearest all the 
 world over. He obeyed the same law of supply and 
 demand. He acted on the same lively sense of his 
 own interests. If he transferred himself in the 
 midst of the war from one side to the other there 
 was nothing very remarkable in it, since neither of 
 the sides was his side ; and it was a flourishing trade. 
 One of its chief dangers was the unlucky accident 
 that occurred now and then, when a general, who 
 failed of being successful, had his head taken off by 
 the Signoria or Seigneur in whose employment he 
 was, probably on pretense of treason. But fightingof 
 itself was not dangerous, at least to the troops en- 
 gaged, and spoils were plentiful and the life a merry 
 one. Ital}^ always so rich in the bounties of na- 
 ture, had never been so rich as in these days, and 
 the troops had a succession of villages always at 
 their command, with the larger m.orsel of a rich 
 town to sack now and then, prisoners to ransom, 
 and all the other chances of war. Their battles 
 were rather exercises of skill than encounters of per- 
 sonal opponents, and it was not unusual to achieve 
 a great feat of arms without shedding a drop of 
 blood. The bloodshed was among the non-combat- 
 ants — the villagers, the harmless townsfolk who 
 
216 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 were mad enough to resist them — and not among 
 the fighting men. 
 
 Such was the profession, w^hen a wandering Savoy- 
 ard trooper — perhaps come home with his spoils in 
 filial piety, or to make glad the heart of a rustic love 
 with trinkets dragged from the ears or pulled 
 bloody from the throat of some Lombard maiden — 
 took note among the fields of a keen-eyed boy, who 
 carried his shaggy locks with such an ana fiera^ so 
 proud an air, that the soldier saw something beyond 
 the common recruit in this young shepherd lad. 
 Romance, like nature, is pretty much the same in 
 all regions; and young Francesco, the peasant's 
 son, imder the big frontier tower of Carmagnola, 
 makes us think with a smile of young Norval "on 
 the Grampian Hills" — that noble young hero whose 
 history has unfortunately fallen into derision. But 
 in those distant days, when the fifteenth century 
 had just begun, and through all the Continent there 
 was nothing heard but the clatter of mail and the 
 tread of the war-horse, there was nothing ridiculous 
 in the idea that the boy, hearing of battles, should 
 long "to follow to the field some warlike lord," or 
 should leave the sheep to shift for themselves, and 
 go off with the bold companion who had such 
 stories of siege and fight to tell. He appears to 
 have entered at once the service of Facino Cane, 
 one of the greatest generals of the time, under 
 whom he rose, while still quite young, to some dis- 
 tinction. Such, at least, would seem to have been 
 the case, since one of the first notices in the history 
 of the young Piedmontese is the record in one of 
 the old chronicles of a question put to Facino — Why 
 did he not promote him? To which the great con- 
 dottiere replied that he could not do so — the rustic 
 arrogance of Francesco being such that, if he got one 
 step, he would never be satisfied till he was chief of 
 all. For this reason, though his military genius 
 was allowed full scope, he was kept in as much sub- 
 jection as possible, and had but ten lances under 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 217 
 
 him, and small honor, as far as could be seen ; yet 
 was noted of the captains as a man born to be some- 
 thing beyond the ordinary level when his day should 
 come. 
 
 The Italian world was, as usual, in a state of great 
 disturbance in these days. Giovanni or Gian 
 Galeazzo, the Duke of Milan, in his time as master- 
 ful an invader as any, had died, leaving two sons — 
 the one who succeeded him, Gian Maria,, being a 
 feeble and vicious youth, of whose folly and weak- 
 ness the usual advantages were soon taken. When 
 the young duke was found to be unable to restrain 
 them, the cities of Lombardy sprang with wonder- 
 ful unanimity each into a revolution of its own. 
 The generals who on occasion had served the house 
 of Visconti faithfully enough, found now the oppor- 
 tunity to which these free lances were always look- 
 ing forward, and established themselves, each with 
 hopes of founding a new dukedom, and little inde- 
 pendent dominion of his own, in the revolted cities. 
 Piacenza, Parma, Cremona, Lodi, all found thus a 
 new sovereign, with an army to back him. The 
 duke's younger brother, Filippo Maria, had been 
 left by his father in possession of the town of Pavia, 
 a younger son's inheritance; but Facino Cane made 
 light of this previous settlement, and in the new 
 position of affairs, with the house of Visconti visibly 
 going downhill, took possession of the city, retain- 
 ing young Philip as half guest, half prisoner. When 
 matters were in this woeful state the duke was 
 assassinated in Milan, and by his death the young 
 captive in Pavia became the head of the house — to 
 little purpose, however, had things remained as 
 they were. But on the very same day Facino died 
 in Pavia, and immediately all the prospects of Philip 
 were altered. There was evidently no one to take 
 the place of the dead soldier. The troops who had 
 brought him to that eminence, and the wealth he 
 had acquired, and the wife who probably mourned 
 but little for the scarred and deaf old trooper who 
 
218 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 had won her by his bow and spear, were all left to 
 be seized by the first adventurer who was strong 
 enough to take advantage of the position. Whether 
 by his own wit or the advice of wise counsellors, the 
 young disinherited prince sprang into the vacant 
 place, and as once a counter revolution began. 
 
 It would seem that the death of his leader raised 
 Francesco, the Savoyard, by an equally sudden 
 leap, into the front of the captains of that army. He 
 had taken the name of his village, a well-sounding 
 one and destined to fatal celebrity, perhaps by 
 reason of the want of a surname which was com- 
 mon to Italian peasants, and which probably told 
 more among the condottieri, whose ranks included 
 many of the best names in Italy, than it did in art. 
 He was still very young, not more than twenty-two. 
 But he would seem to have had sufficient sense and 
 insight to perceive the greatness of the opportunity 
 that lay before him, and to have at once thrown the 
 weight of his sword and following upon Philip's side. 
 Probably the two young men had known each other, 
 perhaps been comrades more or less, when Car- 
 magnola was a young captain under Facino's orders 
 and Philip an uneasy loiterer about his noisy court. 
 At all events Carmagnola at once embraced the 
 prince's cause. He took Milan for him, killing an 
 illegitimate rival, and overcoming all rival factions 
 there; and afterward, as commander-in-chief of the 
 Duke of Milan's forces, reconquered one by one the 
 revolted cities. This was a slow process, extending 
 over several seasons — for those were the days when 
 everything was done by rule, when the troops 
 retired into winter quarters, and a campaign was a 
 leisurely performance, executed at a time of year 
 favorable for such operations, and attended by little 
 danger except to the unfortunate inhabitants of the 
 district in which it was carried on. 
 
 The services thus rendered were largely and lib- 
 erally rewarded. A kinswoman of Philip's, a lady 
 pf th$ Visconti family, whose first husband had been 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 219 
 
 high in the duke's confidence, became Carmagnola's 
 wife, and the privilege of bearing the name of 
 Visconti and the arms of the reigning house was con- 
 ferred upon him. He was not only the commander- 
 in-chief of the troops, but held a high place at 
 court, and was one of the chief and most trusted of 
 Philip's counsellors. The Piedmontese soldier was 
 still a young man when all these glories came upon 
 him, with accompanying wealth, due also to Philip's 
 favor, as well as to the booty won in Philip's cause. 
 He seems to have lived in Milan in a state con- 
 formable to these high pretensions and to the 
 position of his wife, and was in the act of building 
 himself a great palace, now known as the Broletto, 
 and appropriated to public use, when the usual fate 
 of a favorite began to shadow over him. This was in 
 the year 1424, twelve years after he had thrown in 
 his fate with the prince in Pavia. The difference 
 in Philip's position by this time was wonderful. He 
 had then possessed nothing save a doubtful claim 
 on the city where he was an exile and prisoner. 
 He was now one of the greatest powers in Italy, 
 respected and feared by his neighbors, the master 
 of twenty rich cities, and of all the wealthy Lom- 
 bard plains. To these Carmagnola had lately added 
 the richest prize of all, in the humiliation and over- 
 throw of Genoa, superbest of northern towns, with 
 her seaboard and trade, and all her proud tradi- 
 tions of independence, the equal and rival of the 
 great republic of Venice. Perhaps this last feat had 
 unduly exalted the soldier, and made him feel him- 
 self as a conqueror, something more than the duke's 
 humble kinsman and counsellor; at all events, the 
 eve of the change had come. 
 
 The tenure of a favorite's favor is always uncer- 
 tain and precarious. In those days there were many 
 who rose to the heights of fame only to be tumbled 
 headlong in a moment from that dazzling eminence. 
 Carmagnola was at the very height of fortune when 
 glouds began to gather over his career, though nq 
 
220 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 idea of treachery was then imputed to him ; he had 
 been, if anything, too zealous for his duke, to whose 
 service in the meantime, as to that of a great and 
 conquering prince, full of schemes for enlarging his 
 own territory and affording much occupation for a 
 brave soldiery, many other commanders had flocked. 
 The enemies of Carmagnola were many. Generals 
 whom he had beaten felt their downfall all the 
 greater that it had been accomplished by a fellow 
 without any blood worth speaking of in his veins; 
 and others whom it would have pleased Philip to 
 secure in his service were too proud to serve under 
 a man who had thus risen from the ranks. 
 
 The first sign which the doomed general received 
 of his failing favor was a demand from Philip for 
 the squadron of horsemen, three hundred in number, 
 who seem to have been Carmagnola's special troop, 
 and for whom the duke declared that he had a par- 
 ticular use. The reply of the general is at once 
 picturesque and pathetic. He implored Philip not 
 to take the weapons out of the hands of a man born 
 and bred in the midst of arms, and to whom lite 
 would be bare indeed without his soldiers. As a 
 matter of fact, it is to be presumed that this was 
 but the thin end of the wedge, and that other indig- 
 nities were prepared to follow. The clique at Milan 
 which was furthering his downfall was led by two 
 courtiers, Riccio and Lampugnano. "Much bet- 
 ter," says Bigli, the historian of Milan, who narrates 
 diffusely the whole course of the quarrel, "would it 
 have been for our state had such men as these never 
 been born. They kept everything from the duke 
 except what it pleased him to learn. And it was 
 easy for them to fill the mind of Philip with sus- 
 picions, for he himself began to wish that Francesco 
 Carmagnola should not appear so great a man." 
 Carmagnola received no answer to his remonstrance, 
 and by and by discovered, what is gallmg in all cir- 
 cumstances, and in his especially so, that the matter 
 had been decided by the gossips of the court, and 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 221 
 
 that it was a conspiracy of his enemies which was 
 settling his fate. Fierce and full of irritation, a man 
 who could never at any time restrain his master- 
 ful temper, and still, no doubt, with much in him of 
 the arrogant rustic whom Facino could not make a 
 captain of, lest he should at once clutch at the 
 baton, Carmagnola determined to face his enemies 
 and plead his own cause before his prince. The 
 duke was at Abbiate-grasso, on the borders of Pied- 
 mont, a frontier fortress, within easy reach of 
 Genoa, where Carmagnola was Governor; and 
 thither he rode with few attendants, no doubt 
 breathing fire and flame, and, in his consciousness 
 of all he had done for Philip, very confident of turn- 
 ing the tables upon his miserable assailants, and 
 making an end of them and their wiles. His letters 
 had not been answered — no notice whatever had 
 been taken of his appeal; but still it seemed impos- 
 sible to doubt that Philip, with his trusty champion 
 before him, would remember all that had passed 
 between them, and all that Francesco had done, 
 and do him justice. His swift setting out to put 
 all right, with an angry contempt of his assailants, 
 but absolute confidence in the renewal of his old 
 influence as soon as Philip should see him, might 
 be paralleled in many a quarrel. For nothing is 
 so difficult as to teach a generous and impulsive 
 man that the friend for whom he has done too much 
 may suddenly become incapable of bearing the bur- 
 den of obligation and gratitude. 
 
 Arrived at Abbiate, he was about to ride over the 
 bridge into the castle, when he was stopped by the 
 guards, whose orders were to hinder his entrance. 
 This to the commander-in-chief was an extraordi- 
 nary insult ; but at first astonishment was the only 
 feeling Carmagnola evidenced. He sent word to 
 Philip that he was there desiring an audience, and 
 waited with his handful of men, the horses pawing 
 the ground, their riders chafing at the compulsory 
 pause, which no one understood. But instead of 
 
222 " THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 being then admitted with apologies and excuses, a^ 
 perhaps Carmagnola still hoped, the answer sent 
 him was that Philip was busy, but that he might 
 communicate what he had to say to Riccio. Curb- 
 ing his rage, the proud soldier sent another message 
 to the effect that he had certain private matters for 
 the duke's ear alone. To this no reply was given. 
 The situation is wonderfully striking, and full of 
 dramatic force. Carmagnola and his handful of 
 men on one side of the bridge; the castle rising on 
 the other with all its towers and bastions dark 
 against the sky; the half-frightened yet half-inso- 
 lent guards trembling at their own temerity, yet 
 glad enough to have a hand in the discomfiture of 
 the rustic commander, the arrogant and high- 
 handed captain, who of his origin was no better 
 than they. The parley seems to have gone on for 
 some time, during which Carmagnola was held at 
 bay by the attendants, who would make him no 
 answer other than a continual reference to Riccio, 
 his well-known enemy. Then as he scanned the 
 dark, unresponsive towers with angry eyes, he saw, 
 or thought he saw, the face of Philip himself at a 
 loophole. This lit the smoldering fire of passion. 
 He raised his voice — no small voice it may well be 
 believed — and shouted forth his message to his un- 
 grateful master. ''Since I cannot speak before my 
 lord the duke," he cried, "I call God to witness my 
 innocence and faithfulness to him. I have not 
 been guilty even of imagining evil against him. I 
 have never taken thought for myself, for my blood 
 or my life, in comparison with the name and power 
 of Philip." Then, ''carried on in the insolence of 
 his words," says the chronicle, "he accused the per- 
 fidious traitors, and called God to witness that in a 
 short time he would make them feel the want of 
 one whom the duke refused to hear." 
 
 So speaking, Carmagnola turned his horse and 
 took his way toward the river. When the conspira- 
 tors in the castle saw the direction he was taking, a 
 
THE MAKERS OF VEKIC£. ^^3 
 
 thrill of alarm seems to have moved them, and one 
 of them, Oldrado, dashed forth from the gate with 
 a band of followers to prevent Carmagnola from 
 crossing the Ticino, which was then the boundary 
 of Savoy. But when he saw the great captain "rid- 
 ing furiously across the fields" toward Ticino, the 
 heart of the pursuer failed him. Carmagnola would 
 seem never to have paused to think, — which was not 
 the fashion of his time, — but, carried along in head- 
 long impulse, wild with the thought of his dozen 
 years of service, all forgotten in a moment, did not 
 draw bridle till he reached the castle of the Duke of 
 vSavoy, his native prince, to whom he immediately 
 offered himself and his services, telling the story 
 of his wrong. Notwithstanding his fury, he seems 
 to have exonerated Philip — a doubtful compliment, 
 since he held him up to the contempt of his brother 
 potentate as influenced by the rabble of his court, 
 *'the singers, actors, and inventors of all crimes, 
 who make use of the labors of others in order to live 
 in sloth. " Mere vituperation of Philip's advisers, 
 however, was not to the purpose, and Carmagnola 
 artfully suggested to Duke Amadeo certain towns 
 more justly his than Philip's Asti, Alessandria, and 
 others, which it would be easy to withdraw from the 
 yoke of Milan. It must have been difficult for a 
 fifteenth- century prince to resist such an argument, 
 but Amadeo, though strongly tempted, was not 
 powerful enough to declare war by himself against 
 the great Duke of Milan; and the fiery visitor, leav- 
 ing excitement and commotion behind him, contin- 
 ued his journey, making his way across a spur of the 
 Pennine Alps, by Trient and Treviso (but as secretly 
 as possible, lest the Swiss, whom he had beaten, 
 should hear of his passage and rise against him), till 
 he reached Venice, to stir up a still more effectual 
 ferment there. 
 
 We are now brought back to our city, where for 
 some time past the proceedings of Philip, and the 
 progress he was making, especially the downfall of 
 
224 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 Genoa, had filled the Signoria with alarm. The 
 Venetians must have looked on with very mingled 
 feelings at the overthrow of the other republic, 
 their own great and unfailing enemy, with whom, 
 over and over again, they had struggled almost to 
 the death, yet who could not be seen to fall under 
 the power of a conqueror, with any kind of satisfac- 
 tion. The Florentines, too, had begun to stir in 
 consternation and amaze, and communications had 
 passed between the two great cities even in the 
 time of the Doge Mocenigo, the predecessor of 
 Foscari, who was the occupant of the ducal throne 
 at the time of Carmagnola's sudden appearance on 
 the scene. Old Mocenigo had not favored the alli- 
 ance with the Florentines. There is a long speech 
 of his recorded by Sanudo which reminds us of the 
 pleadings in Racine's comedy, where the sham advo- 
 cates go back to the foundation of the world for 
 their arguments — and which affords us a singular 
 glimpse of the garrulous and vehement old man, 
 who hated his probable successor, and the half of 
 whose rambling discourse is addressed, it would 
 seem, personally to Foscari, then junior procurator, 
 who had evidently taken up the cause of the neigh- 
 boring republics. 
 
 "Our junior ^TocvLVsd,OT {procuratore gtovane), Ser Francesco 
 Foscari, Savio del Consiglio, has declared to the public 
 {scopra rarrmgo) all that the Florentines have said to the 
 council and all that we have said to your Excellencies in reply. 
 He says that it is well to succor the Florentines because their 
 good is our good, and, in consequence, their evil is our evil. 
 In due time and place we reply to this. Procuratore giovane; 
 God created and made the angelical nature, which is the most 
 noble of all created things, and gave it certain limits by 
 which it should follow the way of good and not of evil. The 
 angels chose the bad way that leads to evil. God punished 
 them and banished them from Paradise to the Inferno, and 
 from being good they became bad. This same thing we say to 
 the Florentines who come here seeking the evil way. Thus 
 will it happen to us if we consent to that which our junior 
 procurator has said. But take comfort to yourselves that you 
 live in peace. If ever the Duke (of Milan) makes unjust war 
 against you, God is with you, Who sees all. He will sa 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 225 
 
 arrange it that you shall have the victory. Let us live in 
 peace, for God is peace : and he who desires war, let him go 
 to perdition. Procuratore giovane ; God created Adam wise, 
 good, and perfect, and gave him the earthly Paradise, where 
 was peace, with two commandments, saying, 'Enjoy peace 
 with all that is in Paradise, but eat not the fruit of a certain 
 tree. ' And he |was disobedient and sinned in pride, not be- 
 ing willing to acknowledge that he was merely a creature. 
 And God deprived him of Paradise, where peace dwells, and 
 drove him out and put him in war, which is this world, and 
 cursed him and all human generations. And one brother 
 killed the other, going from bad to worse. Thus it will hap- 
 pen to the Florentines for their fighting which they have 
 among themselves. And if we follow the counsel of our 
 junior procurator thus will it happen also to us. Procuratore 
 giovane: Aiter the sin of Cain, who knew not his Creator nor 
 did His will, God punished the world by the flood, excepting 
 Noah, whom He preserved. Thus will it happen to the Flor- 
 entines in their determination to have their own way, that 
 God will destroy their country and their possessions, and 
 they will come to dwell here, in the same way as families 
 with their women and children came to dwell in the city of 
 Noah, who obeyed God and trusted in Him. Otherwise, if 
 we follow the counsel of our junior procurator, our people 
 will have to go away and dwell in strange lands. Procuratore 
 giovane: Noah was a holy man elect of God, and Cain de- 
 parted from God; the which slew Japhet (Abel?)* and God 
 punished him; of whom were born the giants, who were 
 tyrants and did whatever seemed good in their own eyes, not 
 fearing God. God made of one language sixty*six, and at 
 the end they destroyed each other, so that there remained no 
 one of the seed of the giants. Thus will it happen to the 
 Florentines for seeking their own will and not fearing God. 
 Of their language sixty-six languages will be made. For 
 they go out day by day into France, Germany, Languedoc, 
 Catalonia, Hungary, and throughout Italy ; and they will thus 
 be dispersed, so that no man will be able to say that he is 
 of Florence. Thus will it be if we follow the advice of our 
 junior procurator. Therefore, fear God and hope in Him." 
 
 We can almost see the old man, with fiery eyes 
 and moist mouth, stammering forth these angry 
 maunderings, leaning across the council table, with 
 his fierce personal designation of the procuratore 
 giovane, the proud young man in his strength, 
 whom not all the vituperations of old Mocenigo, or his 
 warnings to the council, could keep out of the ducal 
 chair so soon as death made it vacant. And there 
 
 15 Venice 
 
226 tHE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 is somewhat very curious in this confused jamble 
 of arofuments, so inconsequent, so earnest — the old 
 man's love of peace and a quiet life mingled with 
 the cunning of the aged mediaeval statesman who 
 could not disabuse his mind of the idea that the 
 destruction of Florence would swell the wealth of 
 Venice. In the latter part of the long, rambling 
 discourse, mixed up with all manner of Scripture 
 parallels not -much more to the purpose than those 
 above quoted, the speaker returns to and insists 
 upon the advantage to be gained by Venice from 
 the influx of refugees from all the neighboring 
 cities. "If the duke takes Florence," cries the old 
 man, *'the Florentines, who are accustomed to live 
 in equality, will leave Florence and come to Venice, 
 and bring with them the silk trade, and the manu- 
 facture of wool, so that their country will be with- 
 out trade, and Venice will grow rich, as happened 
 in the case of Lucca when it fell into the hands of a 
 tyrant. The trade of Lucca and it wealth came to 
 Venice, and Lucca became poor. Wherefore, re- 
 main in peace." 
 
 Romanin, always watchful for the credit ot 
 Venice, attempts to throw some doubt upon this 
 wonderful speech, which, however, is given on the 
 same authority as that which gives us old Mocen- 
 igo's report of the accounts of the republic and 
 his words of warning against Foscari, which are 
 admitted to be authentic. It gives us a remarkable 
 view of the mixture of wisdom and folly, astute 
 calculation of the most fiercely selfish kind, and 
 irrelevant argument, which is characteristic of the 
 age. 
 
 It was in the year 142 1 that Mocenigo thus dis- 
 coursed. He died two years later at the age of 
 eighty, and the procuratore giovane, whom he had 
 addressed so fiercely, succeeded as the old man fore- 
 saw. He was that Francesco Foscari whose cruel 
 end we have already seen, but at this time in all the 
 force and magnificence of his manhood, and with a 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 227 
 
 great career before him — or, at least, with a great 
 episode of Venetian history, a period full of agita- 
 tion, victory, and splendor before the city under 
 his rule. When Carmagnola, in hot revolt, and 
 breathing nothing but projects of vengeance, ar- 
 rived within the precincts of the republic, a great 
 change had taken place in the views of the Vene- 
 tians. The Florentine envoys had been received 
 with sympathy and interest, and as Philip's troops 
 approached nearer and nearer, threatening their 
 very city, the Venetian government, though 
 not yet moved to active interference, had felt it 
 necessary to make a protest and appeal to Philip, to 
 whom they were still bound by old alliances made 
 in Mocenigo's time, in favor of the sister republic. 
 Rivalships there might be in time of peace; but the 
 rulers of Venice could not but regard "with much 
 gravity and lament deeply the adversity of a free 
 people, determining that whosoever would retain 
 the friendship of Venice should be at peace with 
 Florence." The envoy or orator, Paolo Cornaro, 
 who was sent with this protest, presented it in a 
 speech reported by the chronicler Sabellico, in 
 which, with much dignity, he enjoins and urges 
 upon Philip the determination of the republic. 
 Venetians and Florentines both make short work 
 with the independence of others; but yet there is 
 something noble in the air with which they vindi- 
 cate their own. 
 
 Nothing (says Cornaro) is more dear to the Venetians than 
 freedom ; to the preservation of which they are called by just- 
 ice, metcy, religion, and every other law, both public and 
 private ; counting nothing more praiseworthy than what is 
 done to this end. And neither treaties nor laws, nor any 
 other reason, divine or human, can make them depart from 
 this, that before everything freedom must be secured. And 
 in so far as regards the present case, the Venetians hold 
 themselves as much bound to bestir themselves when Flor- 
 ence is in danger as if the army of Philip was on the frontier 
 of their own dominion ; for it becomes those who have free- 
 dom themselves to be careful of that of others ; and as the re- 
 publican forms of government possessed by Florence resemble 
 
22^ THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 greatly their own, their case is like that of those who suffer 
 no less in the sufferings of their brethren and relations than 
 if the misfortune was theirs. Nor is there any doubt that he 
 who in Tuscany contends against freedom in every other 
 place will do the same, as is the custom of tyrants,— who have 
 ever the name ot freedom in abhorrence. 
 
 The speaker ends by declaring that if Philip car- 
 ries on his assaults against the Florentines, Venice 
 for her own safety, as well as for that of her sister 
 city, will declare war against him as a tyrant and an 
 enemy. "This oration much disturbed the soul of 
 Philip." But he was full of the intoxication of 
 success, and surrounded by a light-hearted court, to 
 whom victory had become a commonplace. The 
 giovanotti dishojiestissimi^ foolish young courtiers 
 who, from the time of King Rehoboam, have led 
 young princes astray, whose jeers and wiles had 
 driven Carmagnola to despair, were not to be 
 daunted by the grave looks of the noble Venetian, 
 whom, no doubt they felt themselves capable ot 
 laughing and flattering out of his seriousness. 
 
 The next scene of the drama takes place in 
 Venice, to which Philip sent an embassy to answer 
 the mission of Coniaro, led by the same Oldrado, 
 who had made that ineffectual rush after Car- 
 magnola from the castle gates, and who was one of 
 his chief enemies. An embassy from Florence 
 arrived at the same tim.e, and the presence of these 
 two opposing bands filled with interest and excite- 
 ment the City of the Sea, where a new thing was 
 received with as much delight as in Athens of old, 
 and where the warlike spirit was always so ready to 
 light up. The keen eyes of the townsfolk seized at 
 once upon the difference so v isible in the two par- 
 ties. The Milanese, ruffling in their fine clothes, 
 went about the city gayly, as if they had come for 
 no other purpose than to see the sights, which, says 
 Bigli, who was himself of Milan, and probably 
 thought a great deal too much fuss was made about 
 this wonderful sea-city, seemed ridiculous to the 
 Venetians, so that they almost believed the duke 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 229 
 
 was making a jest of them. The Florentines, on 
 the contrary, grave as was their fashion, and 
 doubly serious in the dangerous position of their 
 affairs, went about the streets ''as if in mourning," 
 eagerly addressing everybody who might be of 
 service to them. Sabellico gives a similar account 
 of the two parties: 
 
 There might then be seen in the city divers ambassadors of 
 divers demeanor (he says), Lorenzo (the Florentine), as was 
 befitting, showed tue siidness and humble condition of his 
 country, seeking to speak with the senators even in the streets, 
 following ihem to tliei: houses, and neglecting nothing which 
 might be to the profit of the embassy. On the other hand, 
 those of Philip, not to speak of their pomp, and decorations 
 of many i .iids, full of hope and confidence, went gazing about 
 the city so marvelously. built, such as they had never seen 
 before, full of wonder how all these things of the earth could 
 be placed upon the sea. And they replied cheerfully to all 
 who saluted them ; showing in their faces, in their eyes, by all 
 they said, and, in short, by every outward sign of satisfaction, 
 the prosperity of their duke and country. 
 
 The dark figure of the Florentine, awaiting anx- 
 iously the red-robed senator as he made his way 
 across the Piazza, or hurrying after him through the 
 narrow thoroughfares, while this gay band, in all 
 their finery, swept by, must have made an impress- 
 ive comment upon the crisis in which so much was 
 involved. While the Milanese swam in a gondola, 
 or gazed at the marbles on the walls, or here and 
 there an early mosaic, all blazing, like themselves, 
 in crimson and gold, the ambassador, upon whose 
 pleading hung the dear life of Florence, haunted 
 the bridges and the street corners, letting nobody 
 pass that could help him. "How goes the cause 
 to-day, illustrious signor?" onecan hear him saying. 
 "What hope for my country, la patria mia? Will 
 the noble Signoria hear me speak? Will it be given 
 me to plead my cause before their Magnificences?" 
 Or in a bolder tone, "Our cause is yours, most 
 noble sir, though it may not seem so now. If Philip 
 sets his foot on the neck of Florence, which never 
 
230 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 shall be while I live, how long will it be, think 
 you, before his trumpets sound at Mestre over the 
 marshes, before he has stirred your Istrians to re- 
 volt?" The senators passing to and fro, perhaps 
 in the early morning after a long night in the coun- 
 cil chamber, as happened sometimes, had their 
 steps waylaid by this earnest advocate. The 
 Venetians were more given to gayety than their 
 brothers from the Arno, but they were men who 
 before everything else cared for their constitution, 
 so artfully and skillfully formed — for their free- 
 dom,' such as it was, and the proud independence 
 which no alien force had ever touched; and the 
 stranger with his rugged Tuscan features and dark 
 dress, and keen inharmonious accent, among all their 
 soft Venetian talk, no doubt impressed the imag- 
 ination of a susceptible race. Whereas the Milanese 
 gallants, in their gayety affecting to see no serious 
 object in their mission, commended themselves only 
 to the light-minded, not to the fathers of the city. 
 And when Carmagnola, the great soldier, known 
 of all men — he who had set Philip back upon this 
 throne as everybody knew, and won so many bat- 
 tles and cities — with all the romantic interest ot a 
 hero and an injured man, came across the lagoon 
 and landed at the Piazzetta between the fatal pil- 
 lars, how he and his scarred and bearded men-at- 
 arms must have looked at the gay courtiers with 
 their jests and laughter, who, on their side, could 
 scarcely fail to shrink a little when the man whose 
 ruin they had plotted went past them to say his say 
 before the Signoria, in a sense fatally' different 
 from theirs, as they must have known. 
 
 The speeches of these contending advocates are all 
 given at length in the minute and graphic chron- 
 icle. The first to appear before the doge and Sen- 
 ate was Lorenzo Ridolfi, the Florentine, who con- 
 joins his earnest pleading for aid to his own state 
 with passionate admonitions and warnings, that if 
 Venice gives no help to avert the consequence, her 
 
THE MAKERS OP^ VENICE. 231 
 
 fate will soon be the same. "Serene Prince and 
 illustrious senators," he cries, "even if I were 
 silent you would understand what I came here to 
 seek." 
 
 ' ' And those also would understand who have seen us leave 
 Tuscany and come here in haste, ambassadors from a free 
 city, to ask your favor, and help for the protection of our lib- 
 erties, from a free people like yourselves. The object of all 
 my speaking is this, to induce you to grant safety to my coun- 
 try, which has brought forth and 'red me, and given me 
 honor and credit— which if I can attain, and that you should 
 join the confederation and friendship of the Florentines, and 
 join your army with our Tuscans against the cruelest tyrant, 
 enemy of our liberties, and hating yours, happy shall be my 
 errand, and my country will embrace me with joy on my 
 return. And our citizens, who live in this sole hope, will hold 
 themselves and their city by your bounty alone to be saved 
 from every peril. ... I tremble, noble Prince, in this place 
 to say that which I feel in my soul ; but, because it is neces- 
 sary, I will say it. If you will not make this alliance with us, 
 Philip will find himself able without help, having overthrown 
 Florence, to secure also the dominion of Venice. If it should 
 be answered me that the Venetians always keep their promises 
 and engagements, I pray and implore the most high God that, 
 having give you goodness and faith to keep your promises, 
 He would give you to know the arts and motives of this 
 tyrant, and after discovering them, with mature prudence* to 
 restrain and overrule them. . . . That tyrant himself, who 
 has so often broken all laws, both divine and human, will 
 himself teach you not to keep that which he, in his perfidity, 
 has not kept. But already your tacit consent gives me to 
 understand that I have succeeded in convincing you that in 
 this oration I seek not so much the salvation of my republic as 
 the happiness, dignity, and increase of your own." 
 
 This speech moved the senators greatly, but did 
 not settle the question, their minds being divided 
 between alarm, sympathy, and prudence, — fear of 
 Philip on the one hand and of expense on the other, 
 — so that they resolved to hear Philip's ambassadors 
 first before coming to any decision. Time was 
 given to the orator of the Milan party to prepare 
 his reply to Ridolfi, which he made in a speech full 
 of bravado, declaring that he and his fellows were 
 sent, not to make any league or peace with Venice, 
 
232 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 since their former treaties were still in full force, 
 and any renewal was unnecessary between such 
 faithful allies— but simply to salute the illustrious 
 Signoria in Philip's name. 
 
 "But since these people, who have by nature the gift of 
 speech, delicate and false, have not only to the Senate, but in 
 the Piazza and by the streets, with pitiful lamentations, wept 
 their fate, declaring that the war which they have carried on 
 so badly was begun by Philip; he desires to leave it to your 
 judgment, not refusing any conditions which you may pre- 
 scribe. What they say is false and vain, unheard of things, such 
 as they are accustomed to study in order to abuse your grav- 
 ity, your constancy, the ancient laws of friendship, and all the 
 treaties made with Philip. They bid you fear him and the 
 increase of his power. But you know they are our enemies 
 who speak. They tell you that kings hate the name of repub- 
 lics. ... It is true that King Louis was a cruel enemy of the 
 Venetian name, and all the house of Carrara were your ene- 
 mies. But the Visconti, who for a hundred years have flour- 
 ished in the nobile duchy of Milan, were always friends of the 
 Venetian republic. . . . Philip has had good reasons to war 
 against the Florentines, and so have all the Visconti. They 
 ought to accuse themselves, their pride and avarice, not Philip, 
 who is the friend of pace and repose, the very model of lib- 
 erality and courtesy. Let them therefore cease to abuse and 
 injure our noble duke in your presence. Being provoked, we 
 have answered in these few words, though we might have said 
 many more ; which are so true that they themselves (although 
 they are liars) do not venture to contradict them." 
 
 This address did not throw much light upon the 
 subject, and left the Senate in as much difficulty as 
 if it had been an English Cabinet Council at certain 
 recent periods of our own history. ''Diverse opin- 
 ions and various decisions were agitated among the 
 senators. Some declared that it was best to oppose 
 in open war the forces of Philip, who would 
 otherwise deceive them with fair words until he had 
 overcome the Florentines. Others said that to leap 
 into such an undertaking would be mere termerity, 
 adding that it was an easy thing to begin a war but 
 difficult to end it.'* The Senate of Venice had, 
 however, another pleader at hand, whose eloquence 
 was more convincing. When they had confused 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 233 
 
 themselves with arguments for and against, the 
 doge, whose views were warlike, called for Car- 
 magnola, who had been waiting in unaccustomed 
 inaction to know what v/as to happen to him. All 
 his wrongs had been revived by an attempt made to 
 poison him in his retreat at Treviso by a Milanese 
 exile who was sheltered there, and who hoped by 
 this good deed to conciliate Philip and purchase his 
 recall — a man who, like Carmagnola, had married a 
 Visconti, and perhaps had some private family 
 hatred to quicken his patriotic zeal. The attempt 
 had been unsuccessful, and the would-be assassin had 
 paid for it by his lite. But the result had been to 
 light into wilder flame then ever the fire of wrong 
 in the fierce heart of the great captain, whose love 
 had been turned into hatred by the ingratitude of 
 his former masters and friends. He appeared 
 before the wavering statesmen, who, between their 
 ducats and their danger, could not come to any 
 decision, flaming with wrath and energy. ''Being 
 of a haughty nature, tma natura sdegnosa, he spoke 
 bitterly against Philip and his ingratitude and per- 
 fidity, " describing in hot words his own struggles 
 and combats, the cities he had brought under 
 Philip's sway, and the fame he had procured him, 
 so that his name was known not only throughout all 
 Italy, but even through Europe, as the master of 
 Genoa. The rewards which Carmagnola had 
 received, he declared proudly, were not rewards, 
 but his just hire and no more. And now qitell' 
 ingrato, whom he had served so well, had not only 
 wounded his heart and his good name, for the sake 
 of a set of lying youths, —giovattotti dishonestissimi, 
 — and forced him into exile, but finally had at- 
 tempted to kill him. But yet he had not been with- 
 out good fortune, in that he was preserved from this 
 peril; and though he had lost the country in which 
 he had left wife and children and much wealth, yet 
 had he found another country where were justice, 
 bounty, and every virtue — where every man got his 
 
234 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 due, and place and dignity were not given to vil- 
 lains! After this outburst of personal feeling, 
 Carmagnola entered fully into the weightier parts 
 of the matter, giving the eager senators to under- 
 stand that Philip was not so strong as he seemed; 
 that his money was exhausted, his citizens impov- 
 erished, his soldiers in arrears; that he himself, 
 Carmagnola, had been the real cause of most of his 
 triumphs; and that with his guidance and knowl- 
 edge the Florentines themselves were stronger 
 than Philip, the Venetians much stronger. He 
 ended by declaring himself and all his powers at 
 their service, promising not only to conquer Philip, 
 but to increase the territory of the Venetians. 
 Greater commanders they might have; and names 
 more honored, but none of better faith toward Ven- 
 ice, or of greater hatred toward the enemy. 
 
 Carmagnola's speech is not given in the first per- 
 son like the others. By the time the narrative was 
 written his tragic history was over, and the enthus- 
 iasm with which he was first received had become a 
 thing to be lightly dwelt upon, where it could not 
 be ignored altogether; but it is easy to see the furi- 
 ous and strong personal feeling of the man, injured 
 and longing for revenge, his heart torn with the ser- 
 pent's tooth of ingratitude, the bitterness of love 
 turned into hate. So strong was the impression 
 made by these hoarse and thrilling accents of reality 
 that the doubters were moved to certainty, and 
 almost all pronounced for war. At the risk of over 
 prolonging this report of the Venetian Cabinet coim- 
 cil and its proceedings, we are tempted to quote a 
 portion of the speech of the doge, in which the 
 reader will scarcely fail to see on the contrary side 
 some reflection or recollection of old Mocenigo's 
 argument which had been launched at his succes' 
 sor's head only a few years before. 
 
 "There are two things in a republic, noble fathers, which 
 by uarae and effect are sweet and gentle, but which are often 
 the occasion of much trouble to the great and noble city — 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 285 
 
 these are peace and economy. For there are dangers both dis- 
 tant and under our eyes, which either we do not see, or seeing 
 them, being too much devoted to saving money, or to peace, 
 esteem them little, so that almost always we are drawn into 
 very evident peril before we will consider the appalling name 
 of war, or come to manifest harm to avoid the odious name of 
 expense. This fact, by which much harm and ruin has been 
 done in our times, and which has also been recorded for us by 
 our predecessors, is now set before us in an example not less 
 useful than clear in the misfortunes of the Florentine, who, 
 when they saw the power of Philip increasing, might many 
 times have restrained it, and had many occasions of so doing, 
 but would not, in order to avoid the great expense. But now 
 it has come to pass that the money which they acquired in 
 peace and repose must be spent uselessly ; and what is more 
 to be lamented, they can neither attain peace, save at the cost 
 of their freedom, nor put an end to their expenditure. I say, 
 then, that such dangers ought to be considered, and being 
 considered, ought to be provided for by courage and counsel. 
 To guide a republic is like guiding a ship at sea. I ask if 
 any captain, the sea being quiet and the wind favorable, 
 ceases to steer the ship, or gives himself up to sleep and repose 
 without thinking of the dangers that may arise; without keep- 
 ing in order the sails, the masts, the cordage, or taking into 
 consideration the sudden changes to which the sea is subject; 
 the season of the year ; by what wind and in what part of the 
 sea lies his course ; what depth of water and what rocks his 
 vessel may encounter? If these precautions are neglected, 
 and he is assailed by sudden misfortune, does he not deserve 
 to lose his ship, and with it everything? A similar misfortune 
 has happened to the Florentines, as it must happen to others 
 who do not take precautions against future dangers to the 
 republic. The Florentines (not to have recourse to another 
 example) might have repressed and overcome the power of 
 Philip when it was growing, if they had taken the trouble to 
 use their opportunities. But by negligence, or rather by 
 avarice, they refrained from doing so. And now it has come 
 about that, beaten in war, with the loss of their forces, they 
 are in danger of losing their liberty. And to make it worse, 
 they are condemned everywhere, and instead of being called 
 industrious are called vile, and held in good repute by none; 
 instead of prudent are called fools; and instead of getting 
 credit for their wariness are esteemed to be without intelli- 
 gence. These evils, therefore, ought to be provided against 
 when far off, which, when near, can cause such serious evil." 
 
 Words so plain and honest, and which are so ger- 
 mane to the matter, come to us strangely from -un- 
 der the gilded roofs of the ducal palace, and from 
 
236 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 the midst of the romance and glory of mediaeval 
 Venice. But Venice was the nation of shopkeepers 
 in those days which England is said to be now, and 
 was subject to many of the same dangers which 
 menace ourselves — though wrath was more prompt, 
 and the balance of well-being swayed more swiftly, 
 both toward downfall and recovery, than is possible 
 in our larger concerns. 
 
 "The energetic speech and great influence of the 
 doge, which was greater than that of any prince 
 before him," says the chronicler (alas! though, this 
 was that same Francesco Foscari who died in down- 
 fall and misery, deposed from his high place), set- 
 tled the matter. The league was made with the 
 Florentines, war declared against the Duke of 
 Milan, and Carmagnola appointed general of the 
 forces. The Senate sent messengers, we are told, 
 through all Italy to seek recruits, but in the mean- 
 time set in movement those who were ready; while 
 Carmagnola, like a valorous captain, began to con- 
 trive how he could begin the war with some great 
 deed. It does not quite accord with our ideas that 
 the first great deed which he planned was to secure 
 the assassination of the Governor of Brescia and 
 betrayal of that city, which is the account given by 
 Sabellico. Bigli, however, puts the matter in a 
 better light, explaining that many in the city were 
 inclined to follow Carmagnola, who had once already 
 conquered the town for Philip, who had always 
 maintained their cause in Milan, and whose wrongs 
 had thus doubly attracted their sympathy. The 
 city was asleep and all was still when, with the aid 
 from within of two brothers, htiofmni di anima 
 gra?tde, the wall was breached, and Carmagnola got 
 possession of Brescia. "It was about midnight, in 
 the month of March, on the last day of Lent, which 
 is sacred to St. Benedict," when the Venetian 
 troops marched into the apparently unsuspecting 
 town. The scene is picturesque in the highest de- 
 gree. They marched into the Piazza, the center of 
 
THE MAKERS OF VEiNICE. 237 
 
 all city life, in the chill and darkness of the spring 
 night, and there, with sudden blare of trumpets and 
 illumination of torches, proclaimed the sovereignty 
 of Venice. It is easy to imagine the sudden panic, 
 the frightened faces at the windows, the glare of 
 the wild light that lit up the palace fronts and 
 showed the dark mass of the great cathedral rising 
 black and silent behind, while the horses pawed the 
 ringing stones of the pavement and the armor shone. 
 The historian goes on to say: "Though at first 
 dismayed by the clang of the trumpets and arm, the 
 inhabitants as soon as they perceived it was Carmag- 
 nola, remained quiet in their houses, except those 
 who rushed forth to welcome the besiegers, or who 
 had private relations with the general. No move- 
 ment was made from the many fortified places 
 in the city." The transfer from one suzerain to 
 another was a matter of common occurrence, which 
 perhaps accounts for the ease and composure with 
 which it was accomplished. This first victory, how- 
 ever, was but a part of what had to be done. The 
 citadel, high above on the crown of the hill which 
 overlooks the city, remained for some time uncon- 
 scious of what had taken place below. Perhaps the 
 Venetian trumpets and clang of the soldiery 
 scarcely reached the airy ramparts above, or passed 
 for some sudden broil, some encounter of enemies 
 in the streets, such as were of nightly occurrence. 
 The town was large, and rich, and populous upon 
 the slopes underneath, surrounded with great walls 
 descending to the plains — walls "thicker than they 
 were high," with fortifications at every gate; and 
 was divided into the old and new city, the first of 
 these only being in Carmagnola's hands. It seems 
 a doubtful advantage to have thus penetrated into 
 the streets of a town while a great portion of its 
 surrounding fortifications and the citadel above 
 were still in other hands; but the warfare of those 
 times had other laws than those with which we are 
 acquainted. The fact that these famous fortifica- 
 
238 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 tions were of little use in checking the attack is de- 
 voutly explained by Bigli as a proof that God v/as 
 against them — "because they were erected with 
 almost unbearable expense and toil," "the very 
 blood of the Brescians constrained by their former 
 conqueror to accomplish this work, which was mar- 
 velous, no man at that time having seen the like." 
 The Brescians themselves, he tells us, were always 
 eager for change, and on the outlook for every kind 
 of novelty, so that there was nothing remarkable in 
 their quiet acceptance of, and even satisfaction in, 
 the new sway. The reduction of the citadel was, 
 however, a long and desperate task. The means 
 employed by Carmagnola for this end are a little 
 difficult to follow, at least for a lay reader. He 
 seems to have surrounded the castle with an elabo- 
 rate double work of trenches and palisades, with 
 wooden towers at intervals; and wearing out the 
 defenders by continued assault, as well as shutting 
 out all chances of supplies, at last, after long vigiK 
 ance and patience, attained his end. Brescia fell 
 finally with all its wealth into the hands of the 
 Venetians, a great prize worthy the trouble and 
 time which had been spent upon it — a siege of 
 vseven months after the first night attack, which had 
 seemed so easy. 
 
 This graveachievement accomplished, Carmagnola 
 secured with little trouble the Brescian territory; 
 most of the villages and castles in the neighbor- 
 hood, as far as the Lago di Garda, giving them- 
 selves up to the conqueror without waiting for any 
 assault of arms. The tide of ill fortune seems to 
 have been too much for Philip; and, by the good 
 offices of the Pope's legate, a temporary peace was 
 made — at the cost, to the Duke, of Brescia, with all 
 its territory, and various smaller towns and vil- 
 lages, together with a portion of the district of 
 Cremona on the other bank of the Oglio, altogether 
 nearly forty miles in extent. Philip, as may be 
 supposed, was furious at his losses— now accusing 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 239 
 
 the bad faith of the Florentines, who had begun 
 the war; now the avarice of the Venetians, who 
 were not content with having taken Brescia, but 
 would have Cremona too. The well-meant exer- 
 tions of the legate, however, were of so little effect 
 that before his own departure he saw the magis- 
 trates sent by the Venetians to take possession of 
 their new property on the Cremona side driven out 
 with insults, and Philip ready to take arms again. 
 The cause of this new courage was to be found in 
 the action of the people of Milan, who, stung in 
 their pride by the national downfall, drew their 
 purse-strings andcame to their prince's aid, offering 
 both men and money on condition that Philip would 
 give up to them the dues of the city, so that they 
 might reimburse themselves. Thus the wary and 
 subtle Italian burghers combined daring with pru- 
 dence, and secured a great municipal advantage, 
 while imdertaking a patriotic duty. 
 
 It would be hopeless to follow the course of this 
 long-continued, often-interrupted 'war. On either 
 side there was a crowd of captains — many Italians, 
 men of high birth and great possessions, others 
 sprung from the people like Carmagnola; a certain 
 John the Englishman, with a hundred followers, 
 figured in the special following of the commander, 
 like William the Cock in the train of Zeno. The 
 great battles which bulk so largely in writing, the 
 names and numbers of which contuse the reader 
 who attempts to follow the entanglements of alli- 
 ances and treacheries which fill the chronicle, were 
 in most cases almost bloodless, and the prisoners 
 who were taken by the victors were released imme- 
 diately, '^according to the usage of war," in order 
 that they might live to fight another day, and so 
 prolong and extend the profitable and not too labo- 
 rious occupation of soldiering. Such seems to have 
 been the rule of these endless combats. The men- 
 at-arms in their complete mail were very nearly 
 invulnerable. They might roll off their horses and 
 
240 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 be stifled in their own helmets, or, at close quar- 
 ters, an indiscreet ax might hew through the steel 
 or an arrow find a crevice in the armor ; but such 
 accidents were quite unusual, and the bloodless bat- 
 tle was a sort of game which one general played 
 against another, in ever renewed and changing 
 combinations. The danger that the different bands 
 might quarrel among themselves, and divided coun- 
 sels prevail, was perhaps greater than any other in 
 the composition of these armies. In Philip's host, 
 when the second campaign began, this evil was 
 apparent. Half a dozen captains of more or less 
 equal pretensions claimed the command, and the 
 wranglings of the council of war were not less than 
 those of a village municipality. On the other hand, 
 Carmagnola, in his rustic haughtiness, conscious of 
 being the better yet the inferior of all round him, 
 his anima sdegnosa stoutly contemptuous of all lesser 
 claims, kept perfect harmony in his camp, though 
 the names of Gonzaga and Sforza are to be found 
 among his officers. Even the Venetian commission- 
 ers yielded to his influence, Bigli says, with awe- 
 though he hid his irpn hand in no glove, but ruled 
 his army with the arrogance which had been his 
 characteristic from youth up. Already, how- 
 ever, there were suspicions and doubts of the great 
 general rising in the minds of those who were his 
 masters. He had asked permission more than 
 once, even during the siege of Brescia, to retire to 
 certain baths, pleading ill health; a plea which it is 
 evident the Signoria found it difficult to believe, 
 and which raised much scornful comment and criti- 
 cism in Venice. These Carmagnola heard of, and 
 in great indignation complained to the Signoria; 
 which, however, so far from supporting the vulgar 
 plaints, sent a special commissioner to assure him 
 of their complete trust and admiration. 
 
 The great battle ot Maclodio or Macalo was the 
 chief feature in Carmagnola's second campaign. 
 This^ place was surrounded by marshes, the paths 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 241 
 
 across which were tortuous and difficult to find, 
 covered with treacherous herbage and tufts of wood. 
 Carmagnola's purpose was to draw the Milanese 
 army after him, and bring on a battle, if possible, 
 on this impracticable ground, which his own army 
 had thoroughly explored and understood. Almost 
 against hope his opponents fell into the snare, not- 
 withstanding the opposition of the older and more 
 experienced captains, who divined their old com- 
 rade's strategy. Unfortunately, however, for the 
 Milanese, Philip had put a young Malatesta, incom- 
 petent and headstrong, whose chief recommendation 
 was his noble blood, at the head of the old officers, 
 by way of putting a stop to their rivalries. When 
 the new general decided upon attacking the Vene- 
 tians, his better instructed subordinates protested 
 earnestly. *'We overthrow Philip to-day," cried 
 Torelli, one of the chiefs. "For either I know noth- 
 ing of war, or this road leads us headlong to destruc- 
 tion; but that no one may say I shrink from 
 panger, I put my foot first into the snare. " So say- 
 ing, he led the way into the marsh, but with every 
 precaution, pointing out to his men the traps laid 
 tor them, and, having the good fortune to hit upon 
 one of the solid lines of path, escaped with his son and 
 a few of his immediate followers. Piccinino, another 
 of the leaders, directed his men to turn their pikes 
 against either friend or foe who stopped the way, 
 and managed to cut his way out w4th a few of his 
 men ; but the bulk of the army fell headlong into 
 the snare; the general, Malatesta, was take almost 
 immediately, and the floundering troops surrounded 
 and taken prisoners in battalions. 
 
 Sabellico talks of much bloodshed, but it would 
 seem to have been the innocent blood of horses that 
 alone was shed in this great battle. 
 
 Nearly five thousand horsemen and a similar number ot 
 toot-soldiers, were taken — there was no slaughter [says 
 Bigli]; the troops thus hemmed in, rather than be slain, 
 yielded themselves prisoners. Those who were there affirm 
 
 18 Venice 
 
242 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 that they heard of no one being killed, extraordinary to relate, 
 though it was a great battle. Philip's army was so com- 
 pletely equipped in armor that no small blow was needed to 
 injure them; nor is there any man who can record what could 
 be called a slaughter of armed men in Italy, though the 
 slaughter of horses was incredible. This disaster was great 
 and memorable [he adds] for Philip — so much so that even the 
 conquerors regretted it, having compassion on the perilous 
 position of so great a duke; so that you could hear murmur- 
 ings throughout the camp of the Venetians against their own 
 victory. 
 
 Were it not that the bloodless character of the 
 combat involves a certain ridicule, what a good 
 thing it would be could we in our advanced civiliza- 
 tion carry on our warfare in this innocent way, and 
 take each other prisoners with polite regret, only 
 to let each other go to-morrow ! Such a process 
 would rob a battle of all its terrors; and if, in cer- 
 tain eventualities, it were understood that one party 
 must accept defeat, how delightful to secure all the 
 pomp and circumstance of glorious war at so easy 
 a cost! There is indeed a great deal to be said in 
 favor of this way ot fighting. 
 
 This great success was, however, the beginning 
 of Carmagnola's evil fortune. It is said that he 
 might, had he followed up his victory, have pushed 
 on to the walls of Milan and driven Philip from his 
 duchy. But, no doubt, this would have been 
 against the thrifty practices of the condottieri, and 
 the usages of war. He returned to his headquar- 
 ters after the fight without any pursuit, and all the 
 prisoners were set free. This curious custom would 
 seem to have been unknown to the Venetian com-, 
 missioners, and struck them with astonishment. In. 
 the morning, after the din and commotion of the» 
 battle were over, they came open-mouthed to the 
 general's tent with their complaint. The prisoners 
 had in great part been discharged. Was Carmag- 
 nola aware of it? ''What then," cried those lay 
 critics with much reason, **was the use of war? 
 when all that was done was to prolong it endlessly 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 243 
 
 — the fighting men escaping without a wound, and 
 the prisoners going back to their old quarters in 
 peace?" Carmagnola, ever proud, would seem to 
 have made them no reply; but when they had done 
 he sent to inquire what had been done with the 
 prisoners, as it this unimportant detail was un- 
 known to him. He was answered that ahnost all 
 had been set free on the spot, but that about four 
 hundred still remained in the camp — their captors 
 probably hoping for ransom. '* Since their com- 
 rades have had so much good fortune," said Car- 
 magnola, "by the kindness of my men, I desire that 
 the others should be released by mine, according 
 to the custom of war." Thus the haughty general 
 proved how much regard he paid to the remon- 
 strances of his civilian masters. "From this," says 
 Sabellico, "there arose great suspicion in the minds 
 of the Venetians. And there are many who believe 
 that it was the chief occasion of his death. " But 
 no hint was given of these suspicions at the time; 
 and as Carmagnola's bloodless victory deeply im- 
 pressed the surrounding countries, brought all the 
 smaller fortresses and castles to submission, and, 
 working with other misfortunes, led back Philip 
 again with the ever convenient legate to ask for 
 peace, the general returned with glory to Venice, 
 and was received apparently with honor and de- 
 light. But the little rift within the lute was never 
 slow of appearing, and the jealous Signoria feasted 
 many a man whom they suspected, and for whom, 
 under their smiles and plaudits, they were already 
 concocting trouble. The curious "usage of war," 
 thus discovered by the Venetian envoys, is frankly 
 accounted for by a historian, who had himself been 
 in his day a condottiere, as arising from the fear the 
 soldiers had, if the war finished quickly, that the 
 people might cry, "Soldiers, to the spade!" 
 
 A curious evidence of how human expedients are 
 lost and come round into use again by means of 
 that whirligig of time which makes so many re vol u- 
 
244 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 tions, is to be found in Carmagnola's invention for 
 the defense of his camp, of a double line of the 
 country carts which carried his provisions, standing 
 closely tog-ether — with three archers, one authority 
 says, to each. Notwithstanding what seems the 
 very easy nature of his victories, and the large use 
 of treachery, it is evident that his military genius 
 impressed the imagination of his time above that of 
 any of his competitors. He alone, harsh and 
 haughty as he was, kept his forces in unity. His 
 greatness silenced the feudal lords, who could not 
 venture to combat it, and he had the art of com- 
 mand, which is a special gift. 
 
 The peace lasted for the long period of three 
 years, during which time Carmagnola lived in great 
 state and honor in Venice, in a palace near San 
 Eustachio which had been bestowed upon him by 
 the state. His wife and children had in the former 
 interval of peace been restored to him, and all 
 seemed to go at his will. A modern biographer 
 (Lomonaco), who does not cite any authorities, in- 
 forms us that Carmagnola was never at home in his 
 adopted city, — that he telt suspicions and unfriend- 
 liness in the air, — and that the keen consciousness 
 of his low origin, which seems to have set a sharp 
 note in his character, was more than ever present 
 with him here. "He specially abhorred the liter- 
 ary coteries," says this doubtful authority, "calling 
 them vain as women, punctilious as boys, lying and 
 feigning like slaves" — which things have been 
 heard before, and are scarcely worth putting into 
 the fierce lips of the Piedmontese soldier, whose 
 rough accent of the north was probably laughed at 
 by the elegant Venetians, and to whom their con- 
 stant pursuit of novelty, their mental activity, poli- 
 tics, and commotions of town life, were very likely 
 nauseous and unprofitable. He, who was conver- 
 sant with more primitive means of action than 
 speeches in the Senate, or even the discussions of 
 the Consiglio Maggiore, might well chafe at so much 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 245 
 
 loss of time; and it was the fate of a general of 
 mercenaries, who had little personal motive beyond 
 his pay, and what he could gain by his services, to 
 be distrusted by his masters. 
 
 The occasion of the third war is sufficiently difficult 
 to discover. A Venetian cardinal — Gabrielle Con- 
 dulmero — had been made Pope, and had published a 
 btill, admonishing both lords and people to keep 
 the peace, as he intended himself to inquire into 
 every rising and regulate the affairs of Italy. This 
 declaration alarmed Philip of Milan, to whom it 
 seemed inevitable that a Venetian Pope should be 
 his enemy and thus, with no doubt a thousand 
 secondary considerations, on all hands, the penin- 
 sula was once more set on fire. When it became 
 apparent that the current of events was setting 
 toward war, Carmagnola, for no given reason, but 
 perhaps because his old comrades and associates had 
 begun to exercise a renewed attraction, notwith- 
 standing all the griefs that had separated him from 
 Philip, wrote to the Senate of Venice, asking to 
 resign his appointments in their service. This, 
 however, the alarmed Signoria would by no means 
 listen to. They forced upon him instead the com- 
 mand in general of all their forces, with one thou- 
 sand ducats a month of pay, to be paid both in war 
 and peace, and many extraordinary privileges. It 
 seems even to have been contemplated as a possi- 
 ble thing that Milan itself, if Philip's powers were 
 entirely crushed, as the Venetians hoped, might be 
 bestowed upon Carmagnola as a reward for the 
 destruction of the Visconti. Nevertheless, it is 
 evident that Carmagnola had by this time begun a 
 correspondence with his former master, and received 
 both letters and messengers from Philip while con- 
 ducting the campaign against him. And that cam- 
 paign was certainly not so successful, nor was it 
 carried on with the energy which had marked his 
 previous enterprises. He was defeated before 
 Soncino, by devices of a similar character to those 
 
246 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 which he had himself employed, and here is said to 
 have lost a thousand horses. But that shedding of 
 innocent blood was soon forgotten in the real and 
 terrible disaster which followed. 
 
 The Venetians had fitted out no only a land 
 army, but what ought to have been more in conso- 
 nance with their habits and character, an expedi- 
 tion by sea under the Admiral Trevisano, whose 
 ships, besides their crews, are said to have carried 
 ten thousand fighting men, for the apture of 
 Cremona. The fleet went up the Po to act in con- 
 cert with Carmagnola in his operations against that 
 city. But Philip, on his side, had also a fleet in 
 the Po, though inferior to the Venetian, under the 
 command of a Genoese, Grimaldi, and manned in 
 great part by Genoese, the hereditary opponents 
 and rivals of Venice. The two generals on land, 
 Sforza and Piccinino, then both in the service of 
 Philip — men whose ingenuity and resource had 
 been whetted by previous defeats, and who had thus 
 learned Carmagnola's tactics — amused and occupied 
 him by threatening his camp, which was as yet im- 
 perfectly defended, piutostoal eggiamento che ripari: 
 but in the night stole away, and under the walls of 
 Cremona were received in darkness and silence into 
 Grimaldi 's ships, and flung themselves upon the 
 Venetian fleet. These vessels, being sea-going 
 ships, were heavy and difficult to manage in the 
 river — those of their adversaries- being apparently 
 of lighter build; and Grimaldi's boats seem to have 
 had the .advantage of the current, which carried 
 them "very swiftly" against the Venetians, who, 
 in the doubtful dawn, were astonished by the sight 
 of the glittering armor and banners bearing down 
 upon them with all the impetus of the great 
 stream. The Venetian admiral sent off a message 
 to warn Carmagnola; but before he could reach the 
 river bank, the two fleets, in a disastrous jumble, 
 had drifted out of reach. Carmagnola, roused at 
 last, arrived too late, and standing on the shore, 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 247 
 
 hot with ineffectual haste, spent his wrath in 
 shouts of encouragement to his comrades, and in 
 cries of rage and dismay as he saw the tide of for- 
 tune drifting on, carrying the ships of Philip in wild 
 concussion against the hapless Venetians. When 
 things became desperate, Trevisano, the admiral, 
 got to shore in a little boat, and fled, carrying with 
 him the treasure of sixty thousand gold pieces, 
 which was one of the great objects of the attack. 
 But this was almost all that was saved from the 
 rout. Bigli says that seventy ships were taken, of 
 which twenty- eight were ships of war; but in this 
 he is probably mistaken, as he had himself described 
 the fleet as one of thirty ships. "The slaughter," 
 he adds, "was greater than any that was ever 
 known in Italy, more than two thousand five hun- 
 dred men being said to have perished, in witness of 
 which the Po ran red, a great stream of blood, for 
 many miles. '* A few ships escaped by flight, and 
 many fugitives, no doubt, in boats and by the 
 banks, where they were assailed by the peasants, 
 who, taking advantage of their opportunity, and 
 with many a wrong to revenge, killed a large num- 
 ber. Such a disastrous defeat had not happened to 
 Venice for many a day. 
 
 The Venetian historian relates that Carmagnola 
 received the warning and appeal of the admiral 
 with contempt — "as he was of a- wrathful nature, 
 di natura iraconda — and with a loud voice reproved 
 the error of the Venetians, who, despising his 
 counsel, refused the support to the army on land 
 which they had given to their naval expedition ; nor 
 did he believe what the messengers told him, but 
 said scornfully that the admiral fearing the form of 
 an armed man, had dreamed that all the enemies in 
 their boats were born giants." This angry speech, 
 no doubt, added to the keen dissatisfaction of the 
 Venetians in knowing that their general remained 
 inactive on the bank while their ships were thus 
 cut to pieces. The truth probably lies between 
 
248 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 the two narratives, as so often happens; for Car- 
 magnola might easily express his hot impatience 
 with the authorities who had refused to be guided 
 by his experience, and with the admiral who took 
 the first unexpected man in armor for a giant, 
 when the messengers roused him with their note 
 of alarm in the middle of the night, and yet have 
 had no traitorous purpose in his delay. He himself 
 took the defeat profoundly to heart, and wrote let- 
 ters of such distress excusing himself, that the sen- 
 ators were compelled in the midst of their own 
 trouble to send ambassadors to soothe him — *'to 
 mitigate his frenzy, that they might not fall into 
 greater evil, and to keep him at his post" — with as- 
 surances that they held him free of blame. It is 
 evident, we think, that the whole affair had been 
 in direct opposition to his advice, and that, in- 
 stead of being in the wrong, he felt himself able to 
 take a very high position with the ill-advised Sig- 
 noria, and to resent the catastrophe which, with 
 greater energy on his part, might perhaps have 
 been prevented altogether. The Venetians 
 avenged the disaster by sending a fleet at once to 
 Genoa, where, coursing along the lovely line of the 
 eastern Riviera, they caught in a somewhat similar 
 way the Genoese fleet, and annihilated it. But 
 this is by the way. 
 
 Carmagnola, meanwhile, lay, like Achilles, sul- 
 len in his tent. Philip himself came in his joy and 
 triumph to the neighborhood, but could not tempt 
 the'disgusted general to more than a languid passage 
 of arms. An attempt to take Cremona by surprise, 
 made by one of his officers, a certain Caval- 
 cabo, or as some say by Colleoni, seemed as if it 
 might have been crowned with success had the 
 general bestirred himself with sufficient energy — 
 "if Carmagnola had sent more troops in aid. " As 
 it was, the expedition, being tmsupported, had to 
 retire. If he were indeed contemplating treachery, 
 it is evident that he had a great struggle with him- 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 249 
 
 self, and was incapable of changing his allegiance 
 with the light-hearted ease of many of his contem- 
 poraries. He lay thus sullen and disheartened in 
 his leaguer even when spring restored the means of 
 warfare, and though his old enemy Piccinino was 
 up and stirring, picking up here and there a castle 
 in the disturbed precincts of the Cremonese. "The 
 marvel grew," cries Sabellico, "that Carmagnola 
 let these people approach him, and never moved." 
 The Signoria, in the meantime, had been separ- 
 ately and silently turning over many thoughts in 
 their mind on the subject of this general who was 
 not as the others, who would not be commanded 
 nor yet dismissed; too great to be dispensed with, 
 too troublesome to manage. Ever since the memor- 
 able incidents of the battle of Maclodio, doubts of 
 his good faith had been in their minds. Why did 
 he liberate Philip's soldiers, if he really wished to 
 overthrow Philip? It was Philip himself— so the 
 commissioners had said in their indignation — whom 
 he had set free ; and who could tell that the treach- 
 ery at Soncinowas not of his contriving, or that he 
 had not stood aloof of set purpose while the ships 
 were cut in pieces? Besides, was it not certain that 
 many a Venetian had been made to stand aside 
 while this northern mountaineer, this rude Pied- 
 montese, went swaggering through the streets, 
 holding the noblest at arm's-length? A hundred 
 hidden vexations came up when some one at last 
 introduced his name, and suddenly the senators 
 with one consent burst into the long-deferred dis- 
 cussion for which every one was ready. 
 
 There were not a few [says Sabellico] who, from the begin- 
 ning, had suspected Carmagnola. These now openly in the 
 Senate declared that this suspicion not only had not ceased 
 but increased, and was increasing every day ; and that, except 
 his title of commander, they knew nothing in him that was 
 not hostile to the Venetian name. The others would not be- 
 lieve this, nor consent to hold him in such suspicion until 
 some manifest signs of his treachery were placed before 
 them. The Senate again and again referred to the Avoga- 
 
250 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 dori the question whether such a man ought to be retainsd in 
 the public service or whether, if convicted of treacher}', he 
 ought to be put to capital punishment. This deliberation, 
 which lasted a very long time, ought to demonstrate how 
 secret were the proceedings of the Senate when the affairs of 
 the country were in question, and how profound the good 
 faith of the public counsellors. For when the Senate was 
 called together for this object, entering into counsel at the first 
 lighting of torches, the consultation lasted till it was full day. 
 Carmagnola himself was in Venice for some time while it was 
 proceeding, and going one morning to pay his respects to the 
 doge, he met him coming out of the council chamber of the 
 palace, and with much cheerfulness asked whether he ought 
 to bid him good-morning or good-evening, seeing he had not 
 slept since supper. To whom that prince replied, smiling, 
 that among the many serious matters which had been talked 
 of in that long discussion, nothing had been oftener men- 
 tioned than his [Carmagnola' s] name. But in order that no 
 suspicion might be awakened by these words, he immediately 
 turned the conversation to other subjects. This was nearly 
 eight months before there was any question of death ; and so 
 secret was this council, holding everything in firm and per- 
 petual silence, that no suggestion of their suspicions reached 
 Carmagnola. And though many of the order of the senators 
 were by long intimacy his friends, and many of them poor, 
 who might have obtained great rewards, from Carmagnola 
 had they betrayed this secret, nevertheless all kept it faith- 
 fully. 
 
 There is something grim and terrible in the smil- 
 ing reply of the doge to the man whose life was 
 being played for between these secret judges, that 
 his name had been one of those which came often- 
 est uppermost in their discussions. With what eyes 
 must the splendid Venetian in his robes of state, 
 pale with the night's watching, have looked at the 
 soldier, erect and cheerful, con jroiiteijiolto allegra^ 
 who came across the great court to meet him in the 
 first light of the morning, which, after the dimness 
 of the council chamber and its dying torches, would 
 dazzle the watcher's eyes? The other red-robed 
 figures, dispersing like so many ghosts, pale-eyed 
 before the day, did they glance at each other with 
 looks of baleful meaning as the unsuspicious gen- 
 eral passed with many salutations and friendly 
 words and greeting — "Shall it be good-even or 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 251 
 
 good-morrow, illustrious gentlemen, who watch for 
 Venice while the rest of the world sleeps?" Would 
 there be grace enough among the secret councillors 
 to hurry their steps as they passed him, or was 
 there a secret enjoyment in Foscari's double entendre 
 — in that fatal smile with which he met the victim? 
 The great court which has witnessed so much has 
 rarely seen a stranger scene. 
 
 At what time this curious encounter can have hap- 
 pened it is difficult to teU — perhaps on the occasion 
 of some flying visit to his family, which Carmag- 
 nola may have paid after laying up his army in 
 winter quarters, after the fashion of the time. The 
 Signoria had sent messengers to remonstrate with 
 him upon his inaction to no avail; and thaj: he still 
 lingered in camp, doing little or nothing, added a 
 sort of exasperation to the impatience of the city, 
 and gave their rulers a justification for what they 
 were about to do. The Venetian senators had no 
 thought of leaving their general free to carry over 
 to Philip the help of his great name in case of an- 
 other war. Carmagnola's sword thrown suddenly 
 into the balance of power, which was so critical in 
 Italy, might have swayed it in almost any conceiv- 
 able direction— and this was a risk not to be lightly 
 encountered. Had he shaken the dust from his 
 feet at Mestre, and, instead of embarking upon the 
 lagoon, turned his horse round upon the beach and 
 galloped off, as he had done from Philip's castle, to 
 some other camp — the Florentines, perhaps, or his 
 own native Duke Amadeo of Savoy — what revolu- 
 tions might happen? He had done it once, but the 
 magnificent Signoria were determined that he 
 should not do it again. Therefore the blow, when 
 finally resolved upon, had to be sharp and sudden, 
 allowing no time for thought. Thanks to that force 
 of secrecy of which the historian brags, Carmag- 
 nola had no thought of any harm intended to him. 
 He thought himself the master of the situation — he 
 to whom only a year before the rulers of Venice 
 
252 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 had sent a deputation to soothe and caress their 
 general, lest he should throw up his post. Accord- 
 ingly, when he received the fatal message to return 
 to Venice in order to give his good masters advice 
 as to the state of affairs, he seems to have been 
 without suspicion as to what was intended. He 
 set out at once, accompanied by one of his lieuten- 
 ants, Gonzaga, the lord of Mantua, who had also 
 been summoned to advise the Signoria, and rode 
 along the green Lombard plains in all the brilliancy 
 of their spring verdure, received wherever he 
 halted with honor and welcome. When he reached 
 the Brenta he took boat; and his voyage down the 
 slow-flowing stream, which had been always so dear 
 to the Venetians, was like a royal progress. The 
 banks of the Brenta bore then, as now, long lines 
 of villas, inhabited by all that was finest in Venice ; 
 and such of the noble inhabitants as were already 
 in villegiatura^ ''according to their habit," Sabellico 
 says, received him, as he passed, co7i molio festa. 
 And so he went to his fate. At Mestre, he was 
 met by an escort of eight gentlemen from Venice — 
 those, no doubt, to whom the historian refers as 
 bound to him by long intimacy, who yet never 
 breathed to him a word of warning. With this 
 escort he crossed the lagoon, the towers and lofty 
 roofs of Venice rising from out the rounded line of 
 sea; his second home, the country of which he had 
 boasted, where every man received his due. 
 
 How did they talk with him, those silken citizens 
 who knew but would not by a look betray whither 
 they were leading their noble friend? Would they 
 tell him the news of the city: what was thought of 
 the coming peace; what intrigues were afloat; 
 where Trevisano, the unliicky admiral, had gone to 
 hide his head in his banishment? or would the con- 
 versation flow on the last great public show, or 
 some rare conceit in verse, or the fine fleet that fol- 
 lowed the Buceiitoro when last the Serenest Prince 
 took the air upon the lagoon? But Carmagnola was 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 353 
 
 not lettered, nor a courtier, so that such subjects 
 would have little charm for him. When the boats 
 swept past San Stai, would not a waving scarf from 
 some balcony show that his wife and young 
 daughter had come out to see him pass, though 
 well aware that the business of the Signorfa went 
 before any indulgence at home? Or perhaps he 
 came not by Canereggio but up the Giudecca, with 
 the wind and spray from the sea blowing in his face 
 as he approached the center of Venetian life. He 
 was led by his courtier-attendants to the Palace 
 direct — the senators having, as would seem, urgent 
 need of his counsel. As he entered the fatal doors, 
 those complacent friends, to save him any trouble, 
 turned back and dismissed the retainers, without 
 whom a gentleman never stirred abroad, informing 
 them that their master had much to say to the doge, 
 and might be long detained. 
 
 Here romance comes in with unnecessary aggra- 
 vations of the tragic tale; relating how, not finding 
 the doge, as he had expected, awaiting him, Car- 
 magnola turned to go to his own house, but was 
 stopped by his false friends, and led, on pretense of 
 being shown the nearest exit, another gloomy way 
 — a way that led through bewildering passages into 
 the prisons. No sentimental Bridge of Sighs existed 
 in these days. But when the door of the strong- 
 room which was to be his home for the rest of his 
 mortal life was opened, and the lively voices of his 
 conductors sank in the shock of surprise and horror, 
 and all that was about to be rushed on Carmag- 
 nola's mind, the situation is one which requires no 
 aid of dramatic art. Here, in a moment, betrayed 
 out of the air and light, and the freedom which he 
 had used so proudly, this man, who had never feared 
 the face of men, must have realized his fate. At the 
 head of a great army one day, a friendless prisoner 
 the next, well aware that the light of day would 
 never clear up the proceedings against him, or com- 
 mon justice, such as awaits a poor picker and 
 
254 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 Stealer, stand between him and the judges whos^ 
 sentence was a foregone conclusion. Let us hope 
 that those intimates who had accompanied him thus 
 far slunk away in confusion and shame from the 
 look of the captive. So much evil as Carmagnola 
 had done in his life — and there is no reason to sup- 
 pose, and not a word to make us believe, that he 
 was a sanguinary conqueror, or abused the position 
 he held — must have been well atoned by that first 
 moment of enlightenment and despair. 
 
 During the thirty days that followed little light is 
 thrown upon Carmagnola's dungeon. He is swal- 
 lowed up in the darkness, ''examined by torture 
 before the Secret Council," a phrase that chills 
 one's blood— until they had the evidence they want, 
 and full confirmation in the groans of the half-con- 
 scious sufferer of all imagined or concocted accusa- 
 tions. Sabellico asserts that the proof against him 
 was "in letters which he could not deny were in his 
 own hand, and by domestic testimony," whatever 
 that may mean; and does not mention the torture. 
 It is remarkable that Romanin, while believing all 
 this, is unable to prove it by any document, and can 
 only repeat what the older and vaguer chronicler 
 says. "The points of the accusation were these, " 
 Sabellico adds: "succor refused to Trevisano, and 
 Cremona saved to Philip by his treacherous absti- 
 nence. " The fact, however, is more simply stated 
 by Navagero before the trial, that "the Signoria 
 were bent on freeing themselves" from a general 
 who had apparently ceased to be always victorious 
 — after the excellent habit of republics, which was 
 to cut off the head of every unsuccessful leader — ■ 
 thus effectually preventing further failure, on his 
 part at least. 
 
 Carmagnola was not a man of words. Yet he 
 might have launched with his dying breath some ring- 
 ing defiance to catch the echoes, and leave in, Vene- 
 tian ears a recollection, a watchword of rebellion to 
 come. The remorseless council thought of this, 
 
THE MAKERS OF V£:NIC£, 255 
 
 with the vigilance and subtle genius which inspired 
 all the proceedings of their secret conclave; and 
 when the May morning dawned which was to be 
 his last, a crowning indignity was added to his 
 doom. He was led out con uno sbadocchio in bocca^ 
 gagged, "in order that he might not speak," to the 
 Piazzetta, now so cheerful and so gay, which then 
 had the most dreadful associations of any in Venice. 
 "Between the columns," the blue lagoon, with all 
 its wavelets flinging upward countless gleams of 
 reflection in the early sun; the rich-hued sails stand- 
 ing out against the blue; the great barges coming 
 serenely in, as now, with all their many-colored 
 stores from the Lido farms and fields — the gondolas 
 crowding to the edge of the fatal pavement, the 
 populace rushing from behind. No doubt the win- 
 dows of the ducal palace, or so much of the galleries 
 as were then in existence, were crowded with 
 spectators too. Silent, carrying his head high, like 
 him of whom Dante writes who held great Hell 
 itself in despite — sdegnoso — even of that gag be- 
 tween his lips, — the great soldier, the general whose 
 praises had rung through Venice, and whose 
 haughty looks had been so familiar in the streets, 
 was led forth to his death. By that strong argu- 
 ment of the ax, unanswerable, incontestable, the 
 Signoria managed to liberarsi of many an inconven- 
 ient servant and officer, either unsuccessful or too 
 fortunate. Carmagnola had both of these faults. 
 He was too great, and for once he had failed. The 
 people called *'5z'^;z/^r^z.^ SventuraT' "Misfortune! 
 Misfortune!" in their dark masses, as they strug- 
 gled to see the wonderful sight. Their sympathies 
 could scarcely be against the victim on that day of 
 retribution; and perhaps, had his voice been free to 
 speak to them, they might have thought of other 
 things to shout, which the Signoria had been less 
 content to hear. 
 
 Thus ended the great Carmagnola, the most 
 famous of all Italian soldiers of fortune. Over one 
 
S56 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 of the doors of the noble church of the Frari there 
 has hung for generations a coffin covered with a 
 pall, in which it was long supposed that his bones 
 had been placed, suspended between heaven and 
 earth per i famia, as a romantic Custode says. This, 
 however, is one of the fables of tradition. He was 
 buried in San Francisco delle Vigne (not the present 
 church), whence at a later period his remains were 
 transferred to Milan. His wife and daughter, or 
 daughters, were banished to Treviso with a modest 
 pension, yet a penalty of death registered against 
 them should they break bounds — so determined, it 
 is evident, were the Signoria to leave no means by 
 which the general could be avenged. And what 
 became of those poor women is unknown. Such 
 unconsidered trifles drop through the loopholes of 
 history, which has nothing to do with hearts that 
 are broken or hopes that cannot be renewed. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 BARTOLOMMEO COLLEONI. 
 
 The lives of the other condottieri who tore Lom- 
 bardy in pieces among them and were to-day for 
 Venice and to-morrow for Milan, or for any other 
 master who might turn up with a reasonable chance 
 of fighting, have less of human interest, as they 
 have less of the tragic element in their lives, and 
 less of what we may call modern characteristics in 
 their minds, than the unfortunate general who 
 ended his days "between the columns," the victim 
 of suspicion only, leaving no proof against him that 
 can satisfy posterity. If Carmagnola was a traitor 
 at all, he was such a one as might be the hero of an 
 analytical drama of our own day ; wavering between 
 truth and falsehood, worked upon by old associa- 
 tions and the spells of relenting affection, but never 
 able to bring himself to the point of renouncing his 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 257 
 
 engagements or openly breaking his word. Such a 
 traitor might be in reality more dangerous than the 
 light-hearted deserter who went over with his lances 
 at a rousing gallop to the enemy. But modern art 
 loves to dwell upon the conflicts of the troubled 
 mind, driven about from one motive or object to 
 another, now seized upon by the tender recollec- 
 tions of the past, and a longing for the sympathy 
 and society of the friends of his youth, now sternly 
 called back by the present duty which requires him 
 to act in the service of their enemy. 
 
 It is difficult to realize this nineteenth-century 
 struggle as going on under the corselet of a mediae- 
 val soldier; a fierce, illiterate general, risen from 
 the ranks, ferocious in war and arrogant in peace, 
 according to all the descriptions of him. But there 
 is nothing vulgar in the image that rises before us 
 as we watch Carmagnola lying inactive on those 
 devastated plains, letting his fame go to the winds, 
 paralyzed between the subtle wooings of old associa- 
 tions, the horror of Philip's approaching ruin 
 wrought by his hands — of Philip who had been his 
 play-fellow when they were both youths at Pavia, 
 the cousin, perhaps the brother, of his wife — and 
 the demands of the alien masters who paid him so 
 well, and praised him so loudly, but scorned with 
 fine ridicule his rough, military ways. Philip had 
 wronged him bitterly, but had suffered for it; and 
 how was it possible to keep the rude heart from 
 melting whenj;he rage of love offended had passed 
 away, and the sinner pleaded for forgiveness? Or 
 who could believe that the woman by his side, who 
 was a Visconti, would be silent, or that she could 
 see unmoved her own paternal blazon sinking to the 
 earth before the victorious Lion of the Venetians? 
 The wonder is that Carmagnola did not do as at one 
 time or another every one of his compeers did — go 
 over cheerfully to Philip, and thus turn the tables 
 at once. Some innate nobility in the man, who was 
 not as the others were, could alone have prevented 
 
 17 Veniwi 
 
258 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 this very usual catastrophe. Even if we take the 
 view of the Venetian Signoria, that he was in his 
 heart a traitor, we must still allow the fact, quite 
 wonderful in the circumstances, that he was not so 
 by any overt act — and that his treachery amounted 
 to nothing more than the struggle in his mind of 
 two influences which paralyzed and rendered him 
 wretched. The ease with which he fell into the 
 snare laid for his feet, and obeyed the Signoria's 
 call, which in reality was his death warrant, does 
 not look like a guilty man. 
 
 The others were all of very different mettle. 
 Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, who, with a few gen- 
 erations of forefathers behind him, might have been 
 supposed to have learned the laws of honor better 
 than a mere Savoyard trooper, went over without a 
 word, at a most critical moment of the continued 
 war, yet died in his bed comfortably, no one think- 
 ing of branding him with the name of traitor. 
 Sforza acted in the same manner repeatedly, with- 
 out any apparent criticism from his contemporaries, 
 and in the end displaced and succeeded Philip, and 
 established his family as one of the historical famil- 
 ies of Italy. None of these men seem to have had 
 any hesitation in the matter. And neither had the 
 lesser captain who has so identified himself with 
 Venice that when we touch upon the mainland and 
 its wars, and the conquests and losses of the repub- 
 lic, it is not possible to pass by the name of Col- 
 leoni. This is not so much for the memory of any- 
 thing he has done, or from any characteristics of an 
 impressive nature which he possessed, as from the 
 wonderful image of him which rides and reigns in 
 Venice, the embodiment of martial strength and 
 force unhesitating, the mailed captain of the Middle 
 Ages, ideal in a tremendous reality which the least 
 observant cannot but feel. There he stands as in 
 iron — nay, stands not, but rides upon us, unscrup-l 
 ulous, unswerving, though his next step should be 
 on the hearts of the multitude, crushing them tO: 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 259 
 
 pulp with remorseless hoofs. Man and horse 
 together, there is scarcely any such warlike figure 
 left among us to tell in expressive silence the tale 
 of those days when might was right, and the sword, 
 indifferent to all reason, turned every scale. Colle- 
 oni played no such emphatic part in the history of 
 Venice as his great leader and predecessor. But he 
 was mixed up in all those, wonderful wars of Lom- 
 bardy; in the confusion ot sieges, skirmishes, sur- 
 prises ever repeated, never decisive; a phantas- 
 magoria of moving crowds; a din and tumult that 
 shakes the earth, thundering of horses, cries and 
 shouts of men, and the glancing of armor, and the 
 blaze of swords, reflecting the sudden blaze of burn- 
 ing towns, echoing the more terrible cries of sacked 
 cities. From the miserable little castello, taken 
 again and again, and yet again, its surrounding 
 fields trampled down,' its poor inhabitants drained 
 ot their utmost farthing, to such rich centers as 
 Brescia and Verona, which lived for half their time 
 shut up within their walls, besieged by one army 
 or the other, and spent the other half in settling 
 their respective ransoms, changing their insignia, 
 setting up the Lion and Serpent alternately upon 
 their flags, what endless misery and confusion, and 
 waste of human happiness! But the captains who 
 changed sides half a dozen times in their career, 
 and were any man's men who would give them high 
 pay and something to fight about, pursued their 
 trade with much impartiality, troubling themselves 
 little about the justice or injustice of their cause, 
 and still less, it would appear, about any bond of 
 honor between themselves and their masters. Col- 
 leoni alone seems to have had some scrupulousness 
 about breaking his bond before his legal time was 
 up. The others do not seem to have had conscience 
 even in this respect, but deserted when it pleased 
 them; as often as not in the middle ot a campaign. 
 Bartolommeo Colleoni, or Coglioni, as his bio- 
 grapher calls him, was born in the year 1400, t)f a 
 
^60 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 family of small rustic nobility near Bergamo, but 
 was driven from his home by a family feud, in the 
 course of which his father was displaced from the 
 fortress which he seems to have w^on in the good old 
 way by his spear and his bow — by a conspiracy 
 headed by his own brothers. This catastrophe scat- 
 tered the children of Paolo Colleoni, and threw into 
 the ranks of the free lances (which probably, how- 
 ever, would have been their destination in any case) 
 his young sons as soon as they were old enough to 
 carry a spear. The first service of Bartolommeo 
 was under the condottiere Braccio, in the service of 
 the Queen of Naples, where he is said, by his bio- 
 grapher Spino, to have acquired, from his earliest 
 beginnings in the field, singular fame and reputa- 
 tion. It is unfortunate that this biographer, 
 throughout the course of his narrative, adopts the 
 easy method of attributing to Colleoni all the fine 
 things done in the war; appropriating without 
 scruple acts which are historically put to the credit 
 of his commanders. It is possible, no doubt, that 
 he is right, and that the young officer suggested to 
 Gattamelata his famous retreat over the mountains, 
 and to the engineer who carried it out the equally 
 famous transport overland to the Lago di Garda of 
 certain galleys to which we shall afterward refer. 
 Colleoni entered the service of Venice at the begin- 
 ning of Carmagnola's first campaign, with a force 
 of forty horsemen, and his biographer at once cred- 
 its him, on the authority of an obscure historian, 
 with one of the most remarkable exploits of that 
 war, the daring seizure of a portion of the fortifica- 
 tions of Cremona, before which Carmagnola's army 
 was lying. He was at least one of the little party 
 which executed this feat of arms. 
 
 Bartolommeo, accompanied by Mocimo da Lugo, and by 
 Cavalcabue, the son of Ugolino, once Lord of Cremona, both 
 captains in the army, the latter having friends in the city, 
 approached the walls by night, with great precaution, and, on 
 that sJide where they had been informed the defenses were 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 261 
 
 weakest, placed their ladders. Bartolommeo was the first, con 
 intrepidissimo animo, to ascend the wall and to occupy the 
 tower of San Luca, having killed the commander and guards. 
 News was sent at once to Carmagnola of this success, upon 
 whijfh, had he, according to their advice, hastened to attack, 
 Cremona, without doubt, would have fallen into the hands of 
 the Venetians. 
 
 The young adventurers held this tower for three 
 days, as Quentin Durward or the three Mousque- 
 taires of Dumas might have done, but finally were 
 obliged to descend as the had come up, and return 
 to the army under cover of night, with nothing but 
 the name of a daring feat to reward them — though 
 that, no doubt, had its sweetness, and also a certain 
 value in their profession. The curious complication 
 of affairs in that strange, distracted country, may 
 be all the more clearly realized if we note that one 
 of the three, and most probably the leader of the 
 band, was a Cremonese, familiar with all the points 
 of vantage in the city, and the son of its former 
 lord, with, no doubt, partisans and a party of his 
 own, had he been able to push his way out of the 
 Rocca to the interior of the city. Thus there was 
 always someone who, even in the subjection of his 
 native place to the republic, may have hoped for a 
 return of his own family, or at least for vengeance 
 upon the neighboring despot that had cast it out. 
 
 We hear of Colleoni next in a rapid night march 
 to Bergamo, which was the original home of his 
 own race, and which was threatened by the Milanese 
 forces under Piccinino. Knowing the city to be 
 without means of defense, though apparently still 
 in a state of temporary independence, Colleoni pro- 
 posed to his commanders to hurry thither and 
 occupy and prepare it for the approaching attack, 
 with the condition, however, that the affairs of the 
 city, le cose de Bergamaschi, at least within the walls, 
 j'hould receive no damage — another consolatory 
 g.leam of patriotism in the midst of all the fierce 
 selfishness of the time. With his usual prompti- 
 tude, and what his biographer calls aiiimo$itay impe^- 
 
262 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 uosity, he rushed across the country while Piccinino 
 was amusing- himself with the little independ- 
 ent castles about; *' robbing and destroying the 
 country, having given orders that whatever could 
 not be carried away should be burned: so that m a 
 very short time the villages and castles of the val- 
 leys Callepia and Trescoria were reduced to the 
 semblance and aspect of a vast and frightful soli- 
 tude. " Colleoni had only his own little force of 
 horsemen and three hundred infantry, and had he 
 come across the route of the Milanese,, would have 
 been but a mouthful to that big enemy: But he 
 carried his little band along with such energy and 
 inspiration of impetuous genius that they reached 
 Bergamo while still the foe was busy with the blaz- 
 ing villages; and had time to strengthen the fortifi- 
 cations and increase both ammunition and men 
 before the approach of Piccinino, who, finally 
 repulsed from the walls of the city in which he had 
 expected to find an easy prey and harbor for the 
 stormy season, — and exposed to that other enemy, 
 which nobody in those days attempted to make head 
 against, the winter, with its chilling forces of rain 
 and snow, — streamed back disconsolate to Milan 
 al suo Duca, who probably was not at all glad to see 
 him, and expected with reason that so great a cap- 
 tain as Piccinino would have kept his troops at the 
 expense of Bergamo, or some other conquered city, 
 until he could take the field again, instea.l of bring- 
 ing such a costly and troublesome following home. 
 
 We cannot, however, follow at length the feats 
 which his biographer ascribes to CoUeoni's a?iimosita 
 and impetuous spirit, which was combined, accord- 
 ing to the same authority, with a prudence and fore- 
 sight *'above the captains of his time.'* 
 
 One of these was the extraordinary piece of engin- 
 eering by which a small fleet, including one or two 
 galleys, was transported from the Adige to the Lago 
 di Garda over the mountain pass, apparently that 
 between Mori and Riva. Near the top of the pass 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 263 
 
 is a small lake called now the Lago di Loppio; a 
 little mountain tarn, which afforded a momentary 
 breathing space to the workmen and engineers of 
 this wonderful piece of work. The galleys, two of 
 great size and three smaller," along with a number 
 of little boats which were put upon carts, were 
 dragged over the pass, with infinite labor and pains, 
 and it was only in the third month that the mmata 
 — the little squadron painfully drawn dow hill by 
 means of the channel of a mountain stream — found 
 its way to the lake at last. This wonderful feat was 
 the work, according to Sabellico, of a certain Sor- 
 bolo ot Candia. But the biographer of Colleoni 
 boldly claims the idea for his hero, asserting with 
 some appearance of justice that the fathers of Ven- 
 ice would not have consented to such a scheme upon 
 the word of an altogether unknown man, who was 
 simply the engineer who carried it out. It was for 
 the purpose of supplying provisions to Brescia, then 
 closely besieged, that this great work was done. 
 Sabellico gives a less satisfactory but still more 
 imposing reason. *'It was supposed," he says, 
 "that the intention of the Venetian senators was 
 rather to encourage the Brescians, than for any 
 other motive, as they were aware that these ships 
 were of no use; the district being so full of the 
 enemy's forces that no one could approach Brescia, 
 and great doubts being entertained whether it 
 would be possible to retain Verona andVicenza. " 
 On the other hand, Spino declares that the armata 
 fulfilled its purpose and secured the passage ot 
 provisions to Brescia. It was, at any rate, a mag- 
 nificent way of keeping the beleaguered city, and 
 all the other alarmed dependencies of Venice in good 
 heart and hope. 
 
 None of our historians have, however, a happy 
 hand in their narratives of these wars. They are 
 given in endless repetitions, and indeed, were with- 
 out any human interest, even that of bloodshed'; an 
 eternal see-saw of cities taken and retaken, of 
 
264 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 meaningless movements of troops, and chess-board 
 battles gained and lost. One of the greatest of 
 these, in which Colleoni was one of the leaders 
 against Sforza, who led the troops of Milan, bore a 
 strong resemblance to that battle of Maclodio, in 
 which Carmagnola won so great but so so unfortun- 
 ate a victory. Sforza had established himself, as 
 his predecessor had done, among the marshes; and 
 although, at the first onset, the Venetians had the 
 best of it, their success was but momentary, and the 
 troops were soon wildly flying and floundering over 
 the treacherous ground. Colleoni, who led the 
 reserve and who made a stand as long as he could, 
 escaped at last on foot, Sanudo says, who writes the 
 woeful news as it arrives at the fifteenth hour of the 
 15th of September, 1448. "The Proveditori Almoro 
 Donato and Guado Dandolo were made prisoners," 
 he says, *' which Proveditori were advised by many 
 that they ought to fly and save themselves, but 
 answered that they would rather die beside the 
 ensigns than save themselves by a shameful flight. 
 A.nd note," adds the faithful chronicler, "that this 
 rout only one of our troops was killed, the rest 
 being taken prisoners and many of them caught in 
 the marshes. " The flight of the mercenaries on 
 every side, while the two proud Venetians stood by 
 their flag, perhaps the only men of all that host 
 who cared in their hearts what became of St. Mark's 
 often -triumphant Lion, affords another curious pic- 
 ture in illustration of surely the strangest warfare 
 ever practiced among men. 
 
 But not for this [Sanudo goes on] was the doge discouraged, 
 but came to the council with more vigor than ever, and the 
 question was how to reconstruct the army, so that, having 
 plenty of money, they should establish the came again as it 
 was at first. 
 
 Thus Venetian pride and gold triumphed ever 
 misfortune. The most energetic measures were 
 taken at once with large offers of pay and remit- 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 265 
 
 tances of money, and the broken bands were gradu- 
 ally regathered together. Sforza, after his victory, 
 pushed on, taking and ravaging everything till he 
 came once more to the gates of Brescia, where again 
 the sturdy citizens prepared themselves for a siege. 
 In the meantime pairs of anxious Proveditori with 
 sacks of money went off at once to every point of 
 danger; thirty thousand ducats fell to the share of 
 Brescia alone. At Verona, these grave officials 
 *'day and night were in waiting to enroll men, and 
 very shortly had collected a great army by means 
 of the large payments they made." 
 
 While these tremendous efforts were in the course 
 of making, once more the whole tide of affairs was 
 changed as by a magician's wand. The people of 
 Milan had called Sforza back on their duke's death, 
 but had held his power in constant suspicion, and 
 were now seized with alarm lest, flushed with vic- 
 tory as he was, he should take that duke's place— 
 which was indeed his determination. They seized 
 the occasion accordingly, and now rose against hi? 
 growing power, "desiring to maintain themselves 
 in freedom." Sforza no sooner heard of this than 
 he stopped fighting, and by the handy help of one 
 of the Proveditori who had been taken in the battle 
 of the marshes, and who turned out to be a friend 
 of his secretary Simonetta, made overtures of peace 
 to Venice, which were as readily accepted. So that 
 on the 1 8th of October of the same year, little more 
 than a month after the disastrous rout above re- 
 corded, articles of peace were signed, by which the 
 aid of four thousand horsemen and two thousand 
 foot was granted to Sforza, along with a subsidy of 
 thirteen thousand ducats a month, according to 
 Sanudo, though one cannot help feeling that an ex- 
 tra cipher must have crept into the statement. 
 Venice regained all she had lost; and the transfor- 
 mation scene having thus once more taken place, 
 our Colleoni among others, so lately a fugitive be- 
 fore the victorious Milanese, settled calixily down in 
 
^66 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 his saddle once more as a lieutenant of Sforza*s 
 army, as if no battle or hostility had ever been. 
 
 A curious domestic incident appears in the midst 
 of the continued phantasmagoria of this endless 
 fighting. The Florentines, more indifferent to con- 
 sistency than the Venetians, and always pleased to 
 humiliate a sister state, not only supported Sforza 
 against the Milanese, but presumed to remonstrate 
 with the Signoria when, after a time, getting 
 alarmed by his growing power, they withdrew from 
 their alliance with him. This was promptly an- 
 swered by a decree expelling all Florentine inhabi- 
 tants from Venice, and forbidding them the exercise 
 of any commercial transactions within the town. 
 Shortly before. King Alfonso of Naples had made 
 the same order in respect to the Venetians in his 
 kingdom. These arbitrary acts probably did more 
 real damage than the bloodless battles which, with 
 constant change of combinations, were going on on 
 every side. 
 
 The remaining facts of Colleoni's career were few. 
 Notwithstanding a trifling backslinging in the 
 matter of aiding Sforza, he was engaged as cap- 
 tain-general of the Venetian forces in 1455, and 
 remained in this office till the term of his engagement 
 was completed, which seems to hav^e been ten years. 
 He then, Sanudo tells us, "treated with Madonna 
 Bianca, Duchess of Milan" (Sforza being just dead, 
 "to procure the hand of one of her daughters for 
 his son. But the marriage did not take place, and 
 he resumed his engagements with our Signoria." 
 It is difficult to understand how this proposal could 
 have been made, as to all appearance Colleoni left 
 no son behind him, a fact which is also stated in- 
 spect to most of the generals of the time — a benevo- 
 lent interposition of nature, one cannot but think, 
 for cutting off that seed of dragoons. The only 
 other mention of him in the Venetian records is 
 the announcement of his death, which took place in 
 October, 1475, i^ his castle of Malpaga, surrounded 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 267 
 
 by all the luxury and wealth of the time. He was 
 of the same age as the century, and a completely 
 prosperous and successful man, except in that mat- 
 ter of male children with which, his biographer 
 naively tells us, he never ceased to attempt to pro- 
 vide himself, but always in vain. He left a splen- 
 did legacy to the republic which he had served so 
 long — with abberrations, which no doubt, were by 
 that time forgotten — no less than two hundred and 
 sixteen thousand ducats, Sanudo says, besides arms, 
 horses, and other articles of value. The grateful 
 Signoria, overwhelmed by such liberality, resolved 
 to make him a statue with a portion of the money. 
 And accordingly, there he stands to this day, by 
 the peaceful portals of San Zanipolo; ready at any 
 moment to ride down any insolent stranger who lifts 
 a finger against Venice. Appropriately enough 
 to such a magnificent piece of work it is not quite 
 clear who made it, and it is impossible to open at 
 guidebook without lighting upon a discussion as to 
 how far it is Verocchio's and how far Leopardi's. 
 He of the true eye at all events had a large hand in 
 it, and never proved his gift more completely than 
 in the splendid force of this wonderful horseman. 
 
 The power and thorough-going strength in him 
 have impressed the popular imagination, as it was 
 very natural they should, and given him a false im- 
 portance to the imaginative spectator. It is a great 
 thing for a man when he has some slave of genius 
 either with pen or brush or plastic clay to make his 
 portrait. Sforza was a much greater general than 
 Colleoni, but had no Verocchio to model him. In- 
 deed our Bartolommeo has no pretensions to stand 
 in the first rank of the mediaeval condottieri. He is 
 but a vulgar swordsman beside Carmagnola, or 
 Sforza or Piccinino. But perhaps from this fact he 
 is a better example than either of them of the hired 
 captains of his time. 
 
 The possessions of Venice were but little in- 
 creased by the seventy years of fighting which 
 
268 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 ensued after Carmagnola had won Brescia and Ber- 
 gamo for her, and involved her in all the troubles 
 and agitations of a continental principality. She 
 gained Cremona in the end of the century, and she 
 lost nothing of any importance which had been once 
 acquired. But her province of terra firma cost her 
 probably more than it was worth to her to be the 
 possessor even of such fertile fields and famous 
 cities. The unfailing energy, the wealth, the de- 
 termined purpose of the great republic were, how- 
 ever, never more conspicuous than in the struggle 
 which she maintained for the preservation of the 
 province. She had the worst of it in a great num- 
 ber of cases, but the loss was chiefly to her purse 
 and her vanity. The pawns with which she played 
 that exciting game were not of her own flesh and 
 blood. The largo paga?ne?ito with which she was 
 prepared was always enough to secure a new army 
 when the other was sped ; and notwithstanding all 
 her losses at sea and in the East, and the idleness 
 which began to steal into the iDeing of the new 
 generations, she was yet so rich and overflowing 
 with wealth that her expenditure abroad took noth- 
 ing from the lavish magnificence of all her festivals 
 and holidays at home. Her ruler during all the 
 period at which we have here hurriedly glanced was 
 Francesco Foscari, he against whom his predecessor 
 had warned the Signoria as a man full of restless- 
 ness and ambition, whose life would be a constant 
 series of wars. Never did prediction come more 
 true; and though it seems difficult to see how, amid 
 all the stern limits of the doge's privileges, it could 
 matter very much what his character was, yet this 
 man, in the time of his manhood and strength, must 
 have been able, above others, to influence his gov- 
 ernment and his race. The reader has already seen 
 amid what reverses this splendid and powerful 
 ruler, after all the conflicts and successes in which 
 he was the leading spirit, ended his career. 
 
PART IIL—THE PAINTERS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE THREE EARLY MASTERS. 
 
 It is one of the favorite occupations of this age to 
 trace every new manifestation of human genius or 
 force through a course of development, and to prove 
 that in reality no special genius or distinct and in- 
 dividual impulse is wanted at all, but only a gradual 
 quickening, as might be in the development of a 
 grain of corn or an acorn from the tree. I am not 
 myself capable of looking at the great sudden ad- 
 vances which, in every department of thought and 
 invention, are made from time to time, in this way. 
 Why it should be that in a moment by the means of 
 two youths in a Venetian house, not distinguishable 
 in any way from other boys, nor especially from the 
 sons of other poor painters, members of the scuola 
 of S. Luca, which had long existed in Venice, and 
 produced dim pictures not without merit, the art of 
 painting should have sprung at once into the 
 noblest place; and that nothing which all the gen- 
 erations have done since with all their inventions 
 and appliances, should ever have bettered the Bel-^ 
 lini, seems to me one of those miraculous circum- 
 stances with which the world abounds, and which 
 illustrate this wayward, splendid, and futile 
 humanity better than any history of development 
 could do. 
 
 The art of painting had flourished dimly in Venice 
 for long. The love of decorative art seems indeed 
 deed to have been from its very beginning charac- 
 
 269 ,.. 
 
270 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 teristic of the city. Among the very earliest pro- 
 ducts of her voyages, as soon as the infant state was 
 strong enough to have any thought beyond mere 
 subsistence, were the beautiful things from the 
 East with which, first the churches, and then the 
 houses, were adorned. But the art of painting, 
 though its earliest productions seem to have been 
 received with eagerness and honor, lingered and 
 made little progress. In Murano — where glass- 
 making had been long established, and where fancy 
 must have been roused by the fantastic art, so 
 curious, so seemingly impossible, of blowing liquid 
 metal into forms of visionary light, like bubbles, 
 yet hard, tenacious, and clear, the first impulse of 
 delineation arose, but came to no remarkable suc- 
 cess. There is much indeed that is beautiful in the 
 pictures of some of these dim and early masters 
 amid the mists of the lagoons. But with the Bellini 
 the pictorial art came like Athene, full arrayed 
 in maturity of celestial godhood, a sight for all 
 men. 
 
 It is a doubtful explanation of this strange differ- 
 ence to say that their father had foregathered in the 
 far distance, in his little workshop, with Donatello 
 from Florence, or studied his art under the instruc- 
 tions of Gentile da Fabriano. The last privilege at 
 least was not special to him, but must have been 
 shared with many others of the devout and simple 
 workmen who had each his little manufactory of 
 Madonnas for the constant consumption of the^ 
 Church. But when Jacopo Bellini with his tw 
 sons came from Padua and settled near the Rialto 
 the day of Venice, so far as the pictorial art is con 
 cerned, had begun. They sprang at once to a^ 
 different standing ground altogether, as far beyond 
 the work of their contemporaries as Dante was 
 above his. No theory has ever explained to the 
 human intelligence how such a thing can be. It is; 
 and in the sudden bound which Genius takes out of 
 all the trammels of the ordinary — an unaccountable, 
 
 ^ 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 271 
 
 unreasonable, inimitable initiative of its own — arise 
 the epochs and is summed up the history of Art. 
 
 It must have been nearly the middle of the fif- 
 teenth century when the Bellini began to make 
 themvSelves known in Venice. Mediaeval history 
 does not concern itself with dates in respect to such 
 humble members of the commonwealth, and about 
 the father of Jacopo, it is impossible to tell how 
 long he lived or when he died. He was a pupil, as 
 has been said, of Gentile da Fabriano, and went 
 with him to Florence in his youth, and thus came 
 in contact with the great Tuscan school and its 
 usages; and it is known that he settled for some 
 time at Padua, where his sons had at least a part of 
 their education, and where he married his daughter 
 to Andrea Mantegna; therefore the school of Padua 
 had also something to do with the training of these 
 two young men; but whether they first saw the 
 light in Venice, or when the family returned there, 
 it is not known. Jacopo, the father, exercised his 
 art in a mild, mediocre way, no better or worse 
 than the ordinary members of the scuola. Prob- 
 ably his sons were still young when he returned to 
 the Rialto, where the family house was; for there 
 is no indication that Gentile or Giovanni were 
 known in Padua, nor can we trace at what period 
 it began to be apparent in Venice that Jacopo Bel- 
 lini's modest workshop was sending forth altar- 
 pieces and little sacred pictures such as had never 
 before been known to come from his hand. That 
 this fact would soon appear in such an abundant 
 and ever-circulating society of artists, more than 
 usually brought together by the rules of the scuola 
 and the freemasonry common to artists everywhere, 
 can scarcely be doubted ; but dates there are few. 
 It is difficult even to come to any clear understand- 
 ing as to the first great public undertaking in the 
 way of art — the decoration of the hall of the Con- 
 siglio Maggiore. It was begun, we are told, in the 
 reign of Marco Cornaro, in the middle of the previ- 
 
272 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 ous century; but both the brothers Bellini were en- 
 gaged upon it when they first come into sight, and 
 it seems to have give occupation to all the painters 
 of their age. Kugler mentions 1456 as the probable 
 date of a picture of Giovani Bellini; but though 
 this is conjectural, Bellini (he signs himself "Juan" 
 in the receipt preserved in the Sala Margherita at 
 the Archivio, which is occasionally altered into 
 *'Zuan" in the documents of the time) would at that 
 date be about thirty, and no doubt both he and his 
 brother were deep in work and more or less known 
 to fame before that age. 
 
 It was not till a much later period, however, that 
 an event occurred of the greatest importance in the 
 history of art — the arrival in Venice of Antonello 
 of Messina, a painter chiefly, it would seem, of por- 
 traits, who brought with him the great discovery of 
 the use of oil in painting which had been made by 
 Jan van Eyck in Bruges some time before. Anto- 
 nello had got it, Vasari says, from the inventor him- 
 self; but a difficulty of dates makes it more probable 
 that Hans Meraling was the Giovanni di Bruggia 
 whose confidence the gay young Sicilian gained, per- 
 haps by his*lute and his music and all his pleasant 
 ways. Antonello came to Venice in 1473, ^.nd was 
 received as a stranger — especially a stranger with 
 some new thing to show — seems to have always 
 been in the sensation-loving city. But when they 
 first saw his work, the painter brotherhoods, the 
 busy and rising scuole, received a sensation of 
 another kind. Up to this time the only known 
 medium of painting had been distemper, and in 
 this they were all at work, getting what softness 
 and richness they could, and that jnorbidezsa., the 
 melting roundness which the Italians loved, as much 
 as they could, by every possible contrivance and 
 exertion out of their difficult material. But the 
 first canvas which the Sicilian set up to show his 
 new patrons and professional emulators was at once 
 a revolution and a wonder. Those dark and glow- 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 273 
 
 ing faces, which still look at us with such a force of 
 life, must have shone with a serene superiority 
 upon the astonished gazers who knew indeed how to 
 draw from nature and find the secret of her senti- 
 ment and expression as well as Antonello, but not 
 how to attain that luster and solidity of texture, 
 that bloom ot the cheek and light in the eye, which 
 were so extraordinarily superior to anything that 
 could be obtained from the comparatively dry and 
 thin colors of the ancient method. This novelty 
 created such a flutter in the workships as no wars 
 or commotions could call forth. How could that 
 warmth and glow of life be got upon a piece of can- 
 vas? One can imagine the painters gathering, dis- 
 cussing in storms of soft Venetian talk and boundless 
 argument; the Vivarini hurrying over in their 
 boats from Murano, and every lively cena and moon- 
 light promenade upon the lagoon apt in a moment 
 to burst into tempests of debate as to what was this 
 new thing. And on their scaffoldings in the great 
 hall of the Palazzo, where they were dashing in 
 their great frescoes, what a hum of commotion 
 would run round. How did he get it, that light 
 and luster, and how could they discover what it 
 was, and share the benefit? 
 
 The story which is told by Ridolfi, but which the 
 historians of a more critical school reject as fabu- 
 lous, is at all events in no way unlikely or untrue 
 to nature, or the eager curiosity of the artists, or 
 Venetian ways. These were the days, it must be 
 recollected, when craftsmen kept the secret of their 
 inventions and discoveries jealously to themselves, 
 and it was a legitimate as well as a natural effort, 
 if on^; could, to find them out. The story goes that 
 Giovanni Bellini, by this time at the head of the 
 painters in Venice, the natural and proper person 
 to take action in any such matter, being unable to 
 discover Antonello's secret by fair means, got it 
 by what we can scarcely foul, though it was a trick. 
 But the trick was not a very bad one, and doubtless, 
 
 18 Venice 
 
274 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 among men of their condition, might be laughed 
 over as a good joke when it was over. What Bel- 
 lini did, "feigning to be a gentleman," was to com- 
 mission Antonello to paint his portrait — an expedi- 
 ent which gave him the best opportunity possible 
 for studying the stranger's method. If it were nec- 
 essary here to examine this tale rigorously, we 
 should say that it was highly unlikely so distin-. 
 guished a painter as Bellini could be unknown to 
 the newcomer, who must, one would think, have 
 been eager to make acquaintance, on his first 
 arrival, with the greatest of Venetian artists. But 
 at all events it is a picturesque incident. One can 
 imagine the great painter, "feigning to be a gentle- 
 man," seating himself with a solemnity in which 
 there must have been a great deal of grim humor 
 in the sitter's chair — he had put on "the Venetian 
 toga" for the occasion, Ridolfi says, evidently some- 
 thing different from the usual garb of the artist, and 
 no doubt felt a little embarrassment mingling with 
 his professional sense of what was most graceful 
 in the arrangement of the unaccustomed robe. But 
 this would not prevent him from noting all the 
 time, under his eyelids, with true professional 
 vision, the colors on the palette, the vials on the 
 table, the sheaf of brushes — losing no movement of 
 the painter, and quick to note what compound it 
 was into which he dipped his pencil — "osservando 
 Giovanni che di quando in quando inten geva 11 
 pennello nell' oglio di lin, venne in cognizione del 
 modo," "seeing him dip his brush from time to 
 time in oil," which perhaps was the primitive way 
 of using the new method One wonders if Anto- 
 nello ever finished the portrait; if it was he who 
 set forth the well-known image of the burly master 
 with his outspreading mop of russet hair; or if the 
 Venetian after a while threw off his toga, and with 
 a big laugh and roar of good humored triumph 
 announced that his purpose was served and all that 
 he wanted gained. 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 275 
 
 There is another version of the manner in which 
 Antonello's secret was discovered in Venice. Of 
 this later story it is Vasari who is the author. He, 
 on his side, develops out of the dim crowd of lesser 
 artists a certain Domenico Veniziano, who was the 
 first to make friends with the Sicilian. Antonello, 
 tor the love he bore him, communicated his secret, 
 Vasari says, to this young man, who for a time 
 triumphed over all competitors; but afterward, 
 coming to Florence, was in his turn cajoled out of 
 the much-prized information byaFlorentine painter, 
 Andrea del Castegna, who, envious of Domenico's 
 success, afterward waylaid him and killed him as 
 he was returning from his usual evening diversions. 
 This anecdote has been taken to pieces as usual by 
 later historians jealous for exactness, who have 
 discovered that Domenico of Venice outlived his 
 supposed murderer by several years. Vasari is so 
 very certain on the point, however, that we cannot 
 help feeling that something of the kind he de- 
 scribes, some assault must have been made — a quar- 
 rel perhaps sharper than usual; an attempt at 
 vengeance for some affront, though it did not have 
 the fatal termination which he supposes. 
 
 Vasari, however, in telling this story, affords us 
 an interesting glimpse of the condition of Venice 
 at the period. Politically, it was not a happy mo- 
 ment. While the republic exhausted her resources 
 in the wars described in our last chapters, her 
 dominion in the East, as well as her trade, had been 
 greatly impaired. The Turk, that terror of Chris- 
 tendom, had cruelly besieged and finally taken 
 several towns and strong places along the Dalmatian 
 coast; he had been in Fruii murdering and ravag- 
 ing. The interrupted and uncertain triumphs of 
 the terra-firma wars were but little compensation 
 for these disasters, and the time was approaching 
 when Venice should be compelled to withdraw from 
 many more of her Eastern possessions, leaving a 
 town here, an island there, to the Prophet and his 
 
276 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 hordes. But within the city it is evident nothing of 
 the kind affected the general life of pleasure and 
 display and enjoyment that was going on. The 
 doges were less powerful, but more splendid than 
 ever; the canals echoed with song and shone with 
 gay processions ; the great patrician houses grew 
 more imposing and their decorations more beautiful 
 every day. The ducal palace had at last settled, 
 after many changes, into the form we now know ; 
 the great public undertaking which was a national 
 tribute to the growing importance of art was being 
 pushed forward to completion ; and though the 
 great Venetian painters, like other painters in 
 other ages, seem to have found the state a shabby 
 paymaster, and to have sometimes shirked and 
 always dallied in the execution of its commissions, 
 yet, no doubt, public patronage was at once a sign 
 of the quickened interest in art and a means of in- 
 creasing that interest. 
 
 The frescoes in the hall of the Great Council were 
 in full course of execution when the Sicilian Anto- 
 nello with his great secret came to seek his fortune 
 in the magnificent and delightful city of the seas — 
 a place where every rich man was the artist's 
 patron, and every gentleman a dilettante, and a 
 new triumphant day of art was dawning, and the 
 streets were full of songs and pleasure, and the 
 studios of enthusiasm, and beauty and delight were 
 supreme everywhere, notwithstanding that, in the 
 silence, — by anyone who listened, — the wild and 
 jangled bells might almost be heard from the 
 besieged cities that were soon no longer to be Vene- 
 tian, calling every man to arms within their walls, 
 and appealing for help to heaven and earth. Such 
 vulgar external matters do not move the historian 
 of the painters, and are invisible in his record. 
 The account of Antonello is full of cheerfulness and 
 light. *' Being a person much given to pleasure, 
 he resolved to dwell there forever and finish his 
 life where he had found a mode of existence so much 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 277 
 
 according to his mind. And when it is understood 
 that he had brought that great discovery from Flan- 
 ders, he was loved and caressed by those magnifi- 
 cent gentlemen as long as he lived." His friend 
 Domenico is also described as "a charming and 
 attractive person, who delighted in music and in 
 playing the lute ; and every evening they found 
 means to enjoy themselves together" {far buon tempo 
 — literally, have a good time, according to the 
 favorite custom of our American cousins) "serenad- 
 ing their sweethearts; in which Domenico took 
 great delight." Thus the young painters lived, as 
 'Still in Venice the young and gay, as far as the 
 habits of a graver age permit, love to live — roaming 
 half the night among the canals or along the sil- 
 very edge of the lagoon, intoxicated with music and 
 moonlight and the delicious accompaniment of 
 liquid movement and rhythmic oars; or amid the 
 continual pageants in the Piazza, the feast of bril- 
 liant color and delightful groups which made the 
 painters wild with pleasure ; or with a cluster of 
 admiring and splendid youths at every hand 
 caressed and flattered by all that was noblest in 
 Venice. We scarcely think of this high-colored 
 and brilliant life as the proper background for those 
 early painters, whose art, all the critics tell us, 
 derives its excellence from their warmer faith and 
 higher moral tone ; but we have no reason to be- 
 lieve that any great social revolution took place 
 between the day of the Bellini and Carpaccio, and 
 that of Titian, Vasari's description, corroborated 
 as it is by many others, refers to a period when the 
 Bellini were in the full force of life. 
 
 Nor are we led to suppose that they were distin- 
 guished by special devotion, or in any way sepa- 
 rated from their class. Venice had never been 
 austere, but always gay. There were the light and 
 glow of a splendid, careless, exuberant life in her 
 very air, a current ot existence too swift and full 
 of enjoyment to be subdued even by public misfor- 
 
^78 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 tunes which were distant, and intensified by the 
 wonderful spring, superior to every damping influ- 
 ence, of a new and magnificent development of art. 
 The two Bellini lived and labored together during 
 their father's lifetime, but when he died, though 
 never losing their mutual brotherly esteem and 
 tender friendship, separated, each to his own path. 
 Giovanni, the youngest but greatest, continued 
 faithful to the subjects and methods in which he had 
 been trained, and which, though all the habits of 
 the world were changing, still remained most per- 
 fectly understood and acceptable to his countrymen. 
 The Divine Mother and Child, with their attendant 
 saints and angels, were the favorite occupation of 
 his genius. He must have placed that sweet and 
 tender image over scores of altars. Sometimes the 
 Virgin Mother sits, simple and sweet, yet always 
 with a certain grandeur of form and natural nobil- 
 ity, not the slim and childish beauty of more con- 
 ventional painters, with her Child upon her knees; 
 sometimes enthroned, holding the Sacred Infant 
 erect, offering Him to the worship of the world; 
 sometimes with reverential humility watching Him 
 as He sleeps, attended on either side by noble 
 spectacular figures, a little court of devout behold- 
 ers, the saints who have suffered for His sake; often 
 with lovely children seated about the steps of her 
 throne, piping tenderly upon their heavenly flutes, 
 thrilling the chords of a stringed instrument, with 
 a serious sweetness and abstraction, unconscious of 
 anything but the Infant Lord to whom their eyes 
 are turned. No more endearing and delightful 
 image could be than that of these angel children. 
 They were a fashion of the age, growing in the 
 hands of Florentine Botticelli into angelic youths, 
 gravely meditating upon the wonders they foresaw. 
 In Raphael, though so much later, they were more 
 divine, like little kindred gods, waiting in an un- 
 speakable awe till the great God should be revealed ; 
 but in Bellini more sweet and human, younger, all 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 279 
 
 tender interest and delight, piping- their lovely 
 strains if perhaps they might give Him pleasure. 
 One cannot but conclude that he who painted these 
 children at the foot of every divine group in twos 
 and threes, small exquisite courtiers of the Infant 
 King, first fruits of humanity, must have found his 
 models in children who were his own, whose dim- 
 pled, delightful limbs were within reach of hi's kiss, 
 and whose unconscious grace of movement and 
 wondering sweet eyes were before him continually. 
 The delightful purity and gravity, and at the same 
 time manliness, if we may use such a word, of 
 these pictures, are beyond expression. There is 
 no superficial grace or ornament about them, not 
 even the embrace and clinging together of mother 
 and child, which in itself is always so touching and 
 attractive, the attitude of humanity which perhaps 
 has a stronger and simpler hold on the affections 
 than any other. Bellini's Madonna, raising the 
 splendid column of her throat, holding her head 
 high in a noble and simple abstraction, offers not 
 herself but her Child to our eager eyes. She, too, 
 is a spectator, though blessed among women in 
 holding Him, presenting Him to our gaze, making 
 of her own perfect womanhood His pedestal and 
 support, but all unconscious that prayer or gaze 
 can be attracted to herself, in everything His first 
 servant, the handmaid of the Lord. The painter 
 who set such an image before us could scarcely have 
 been without a profound and tender respect for the 
 woman's office, an exquisite adoration for the 
 Child. 
 
 V\7'hile the younger brother kept in this tradi- 
 tional path, giving to it all the inspiration of his 
 manly and lofty genius, his brother Gentile entered 
 upon a different way. Probably he too began in 
 his father's workshop with mild Madonnas; but 
 ere long the young painter must have found out 
 that other less sacred yet noble subjects were bet- 
 ter within his range of power. His fancy must have 
 
280 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 Strayed away from the primitive unity of the sacred 
 group into new compositions of wider horizon and 
 more extended plan. The life that was round him 
 with all its breadth and rich variety must have be- 
 guiled him away from the ideal. The pictures he 
 has left us set Venice before us in the guise she then 
 wore, as no descrption could do. In the two great 
 examples which remain in the Venetian Accademia 
 there is a sacred motive: they are chapters in the 
 story of a miraculous holy cross. In one, the sacred 
 relic is being carried ac'ross the Piazza, attended by 
 a procession of wonderful figures in every magnifi- 
 cence of white and red, and gilded canopy and em- 
 broidered mantle. And there stands S. Marco in a 
 softened blaze of gold and color, with all the fine 
 lines of its high houses and colonnades, the Cam- 
 panile not standing detached as now, but forming 
 part of the line of the great square: and in the 
 midst, looking at the procession, or crossing calmly 
 upon their own business, such groups of idlers and 
 busy men, of Eastern travelers and merchants, of 
 gallants from the Broglio, with here and there a 
 magistrate sweeping along in his toga, or a woman 
 with her child as no one had thought of painting 
 before. We look, and the life that has been so 
 long over, that life in which all the offices and cere- 
 monies of religion occupy the foreground, but 
 where nothing pauses for them, and business and 
 pleasure both go on unconcerned, rises before us. 
 The Venice is not that Venice which we know; but 
 is still most recognizable, most living and lifelike. 
 No such procession ever sweeps now through the 
 great Piazza; but still the white miters and glisten- 
 ing copes pour through the aisles of S. Marco, so 
 that the stranger and pilgrim may still recognize 
 the unchangeable accompaniments of the true 
 faith. The picture is like a book, more absolutely 
 true than any chronicle; representing not only the 
 looks and the customs of the occasion, but the very 
 scene. How eagerly the people must have traced 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 281 
 
 it out when it first was made public, finding out in 
 every group some known faces, some image all the 
 more interesting because it was met in the flesh 
 every day! Is that perhaps Zuan Bellini himself, 
 with his hair standing out round his face, talking 
 to his companions about the passing procession; 
 pointing out the curious effects of light and shade 
 upon the crimson capes and birettas, and watching 
 while the line defiles with its glimmer of candles 
 and sound of psalms against the majestic shadow of 
 the houses? Still the more characteristic is the 
 other great picture. The same procession, but more 
 in evidence, drawn out before us with the light in 
 their faces as they wind along over the bridge, with 
 draperies hung at every window and the women 
 looking out, at every opening one or two finely 
 ornamented heads in elaborate coifs and hoods; 
 while along the Fondamenta, on the side of the 
 canal, a row of ladies in the most magnificent cos- 
 tumes, pilgrims or votaries kneeling close together, 
 with all their ornaments — jeweled necklaces and cor- 
 onets, and light veils of transparent tissue through 
 which the full matronly shoulders and counte- 
 nances appear unobscured — look on, privileged 
 spectators, perhaps waiting to follow the procession. 
 It is a curious instance of the truth of the picture 
 that this is no file of youthful beauties such as a 
 painter would naturally have chosen, but, with 
 scarcely an exception, consists of buxom and full- 
 blown mothers with here and there a child thrust 
 in between. It is said by tradition that the first of 
 those figures, she with the crown, is Catherine 
 Cornaro, the ex-queen of Cyprus, probably come 
 from her retirement at Asolo to view the procession 
 and see a little life and gayety, as a variation on the 
 cultured retirement of that royal villa. The object 
 of the picture is to show how the cross, which has 
 fallen into the canal by much pushing and crowd- 
 ing of the populace, floats upright in the water and 
 is miraculously rescued by its guardian in full 
 
282 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 priestly robes, notwithstanding the eager competi- 
 tion of all manner of swimmers in costumes more 
 handy for the water who have dashed in on every 
 side, but this, though its pious purpose, is not its 
 most interesting part. 
 
 It is difficult, as has been said, to find any guid- 
 ance of dates in the dimness of distance, in respect 
 to matters so unimportant as pictures; and accord- 
 ingly we are unable to trace the progress of the 
 decoration in the great hall. It was delayed by 
 many causes — the indifference of the Signoria and 
 the lukewarm interest of the painters. Gentile 
 Bellini received permission from the Signoria to go 
 to the East in 1479, ^^^ ^^ there described as en- 
 gaged on the restoration of a picture in this mag- 
 nificent room, originally painted or begun by his 
 namesake, or, as we should say in Scotland, his 
 name-father, Jacopo Bellini having named his eldest 
 son after his master. Gentile da Fabriano — a work 
 which the magnificent Signoria consider his brother 
 Giovanni may well be deputed to finish in his 
 place. Nor is it more easy to discover what the 
 principle was which actuated the Signoria in select- 
 ing for the decoration of the hall that special his- 
 torical episode which is so problematical, and of 
 which even Sanudo says, doubting, that *'if it had 
 not happened, our good Venetians would never 
 have had it painted" — a somewhat equivocal argu- 
 ment. The pertinacity with which the same sub- 
 jects were repeated three times — first by the earliest 
 masters then in the full glory, of art by all the 
 best of the Bellini generation and by that of Titian; 
 and at last in the decay of that glory, after the 
 great fire, by the Tizianellos and Vecellini, the 
 successors of the great painters departed, whose 
 works remain — is very curious. Perhaps some- 
 thing, even in the apocryphal character of this 
 great climax of glory and magnificence for Venice, 
 may have pleased the imagination and suggested a 
 iDolder pictorial treatment, with something of allQ- 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 283 
 
 gorical meaning, which would have been less 
 appropriate to matters of pure fact and well- 
 authenticated history. And no doubt the people 
 who thronged to look at the new pictures believed 
 it all entirely, if not the great gentlemen in their 
 crimson robes, the senators and councillors who 
 selected these scenes as the most glorious that 
 could be thought of in the history of the city; how 
 Venice met and conquered the naval force of Bar- 
 barossa and made her own terms with him, and 
 reconciled the two greatest potentates of the world, 
 the Pope and the emperor, was enough to fill with 
 elation even the great republic. And the authority 
 of fact and document was but little considered in 
 those stormy days. 
 
 The subject on which Gentile Bellini was at work 
 when he left Venice was the naval combat between 
 the Doge Ziani and Prince Otto, son of Barbarossa, 
 which ended in the completest victory; while that 
 allotted to Giovanni Bellini was the voyage in state 
 of the same Doge Ziani to fetch with all splendor 
 from the Carita the Pope who was there in hiding 
 under a guise of excessive humility — as the cook of 
 that convent. At that period, identified thus by his 
 brother's departure, Giovanni Bellini must have 
 been over fifty, so that his promotion did not come 
 too soon. It is not, however, till a much later 
 period that we obtain the next glimpse, authentic 
 and satisfactory, of his share of the great public 
 work, in which there were evidently many lapses 
 and delays for which the painters were to blame, 
 as well as weary postponements from one ofificial's 
 term of power to another. Early in the next cen- 
 tury, however, in 1507, in some pause ot larger 
 affairs, the council seems fo have been seized with 
 a sudden movement of energy, and resolved that it 
 would be no small ornament to their hall if three 
 pictures begun by the late Alvise Vivarini could be 
 finished, along with other two, one of which was 
 not even begun, *'so that the said hall might bq 
 
284 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 completed without the impediments which have 
 hitherto existed." It would almost seem to be the 
 pictures confided to the Bellini which were in this 
 backward condition, for the Signoria makes an 
 appeal over again to "the most faithful citizen, our 
 Zuan Bellini," to bestir himself. But the negligent 
 painter must by this time have been eighty or 
 more, and it was evidently necessary that he 
 should have help in so great an undertaking. His 
 brother had died that year a very old man, and a 
 younger brotherhood was coming to light. And 
 here we find what seems the first public recognition 
 of another man which is closely connected with 
 those of the Bellini in our minds, and to which 
 recent criticism has allotted even a higher place 
 than theirs. The noble senators or councillors, 
 suddenly coming out of the darkness for this 
 object, appear to us for a moment like masters of 
 the ceremonies introducing a new immortal. 
 "Messer Vector, called Scarpazza," is the assistant 
 whom they designate for old Zuan Bellini, along 
 with two names unknown to fame, "Messer Vector, 
 late Mathio, " and "Girolamo, painter,"' no doubt 
 a novice whose reputation was yet to win. Car- 
 paccio was to have five ducats a month for his 
 work ; the other, Messer Vector, four ; Girolamo, the 
 youth, only two — "and the same are to be diligent 
 and willing in aid of the said Ser Zuan Bellini in 
 painting the aforesaid pictures, so that as diligently 
 and in as little time as is possible they may be 
 completed." A warning note is added in Latin, 
 (perhaps to make it more solemn and binding) of the 
 conditions above set forth — in which it is "ex- 
 pressly declared" that the little band of painters 
 bind themselves to work "continuously and every 
 day" — laborare de co7itinuo et omni die. This betrays 
 an inclination on the part of the painters to avoid 
 the public work which it is amusing to see. Let 
 us hope the Signoria succeeded in getting their 
 orders respected ; no absences to finish a Madonna 
 
tHE MAKERS OF VENICE. ^5 
 
 or St. Ursula which paid better, perhaps both in 
 fame and money; no returning to the public service 
 when private commissions failed ; no greater price 
 tor what may be called piece-work, for specially 
 noble productions; but steady labor day by day at 
 four or five ducats a month as might be, with the 
 pupil-journeyman to clean the palettes and run 
 the errands! In Venice, as in other places, it is 
 clear that the state service was not lucrative for art. 
 
 Six years after we find the work still going on, 
 and another workman is added. *'In this council 
 it was decided that Tiziano, painter (pytor), should 
 be admitted to work in the hall of the Great Council 
 with the other painters, without, however, any 
 salary, except the agreed sum which has usually 
 been given to those who have painted here, who are 
 Gentile and Zuan Bellini and Vector Scarpazza. 
 This Tiziano to be the same." It will strike the 
 reader with a certain panic to see with what in- 
 difference these great names are bandied about as 
 if they were the names of a set of decorators; one 
 feels an awed desire to ask their pardon ! But not 
 so the great Ten, who held the lives and fortunes 
 of all Venetians in their hands. 
 
 About the date when old Bellini was thus con- 
 jured to complete or superintend the completion of 
 the wanting pictures, another painter from a very 
 different region — from a landward town fortified to 
 its ears and full of all mediaeval associations, in the 
 middle of Germany — came to Venice. The high- 
 peaked roofs and picturesque turrets of Nuremburg 
 were not more unlike the rich and ample facades of 
 the Venetian palaces, or the glow and glory of 
 Venetian churches, than was the sober life of the 
 Teuton unlike the gay and genial existence of the 
 Venetians. Albert Durer found himself in a south 
 ern paradise. He gives the same account of that 
 Venetian life at first hand as Vasari does in his histor- 
 ical retrospect. He finds himself among a crowd ol 
 pleasant companions; players on the lute, so accom- 
 
286 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 plished and sensitive that their own music makes 
 them weep; and all, great and small, eager to see, 
 to admire, to honor the great artist. "Oh, how T 
 shall freeze after this sunshine! Here 1 am a gen- 
 tleman, at home only a dependent," he cries; 
 elated, yet cast down by the difference, and to 
 think that all these fine Italian lords think more 
 highly of him than his bourgeois masters in Nurem- 
 burg. Sanbellini, he tells his friends, has come to 
 see him, the venerable old man — very old, but still 
 the best painter of them all, and a good man, as 
 everybody says; and from this master he receives 
 the sweetest praise and a commission to paint 
 something for him for which he promises to pay 
 well. Old Zuan Bellini, with his vivacious Vene- 
 tian ways, and the solemn German, with his long 
 and serious countenance, like a prophet in the 
 desert — what a contrast they must have made ! But 
 they had one language between them at least; the 
 tongue which every true artist understands, the 
 delightful secret freemasonry and brotherhood 
 of art. 
 
 It was when he had arrived at this venerable age, 
 over eighty, but still coming and going about these 
 pictures in the great hall, and alert to hear of and 
 visit the stranger from Germany who brought the 
 traditions of another school to Venice, that Bellini 
 painted his last or almost last picture, — so touching 
 in its appropriateness to his great age and conclud- 
 ing life, — the old "St. Jerome" in San Giovanni 
 Crisostomo, seated high upon a solitary mount with 
 a couple of admiring saints below. Perhap she had 
 begun to feel that old age needs no desert, but is 
 always solitary, even in the midst of all pupils and 
 followers. He did not die till he was ninety. It 
 was the fashion among the painters of Venice to 
 live to old age. Among other works for the great 
 hall, it is understood that Bellini painted many por- 
 traits of the doges, of which one remains, familiar 
 to us all, the picture now in our National Gallery of 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 287 
 
 that wonderful old man with his sunken eyes of age, 
 so full of subtle life and power. History bears no 
 very strong impression of the character of Leon- 
 ardo Loredano. He held the helm of state bravely 
 at a time of great trial, but the office of doge by this 
 time had come to be of comparatively small import- 
 ance to the constitution of Venice ; however, of all 
 the potent doges of Venetian chronicles, he alone 
 may be said to live forever. With all these think- 
 ings, astute yet humorous, which are recorded in 
 his eyes, and his mouth scarcely sure whether to set 
 with thin lips in the form it took to pronounce a 
 fatal sentence, or to soften into a smile, this dry and 
 small, yet so dignified and splendid old man remains 
 the impersonation of that mysterious and secret 
 authority of the republic by which, alas! the doges 
 suffered more than they enjoyed. The painter is 
 said in his moinejits perdus to have painted many por- 
 traits — among others that Imagine celeste shining like 
 the sun, which made Bembo, though a cardinal, 
 burst into song: 
 
 "Credo che il mio Bellin con la figura, 
 T'habbia dato il costume anche di lei, 
 Che rn^ardi s'io to mira, e pur tu sei, 
 Freddo smalto a cui gionse alta ventura." 
 
 In the meantime the elder brother. Gentile, had 
 met with adventures more remarkable; In the 
 year 1479, ^s has been noted, the Signoria commis- 
 sioned him to go to Constantinople at the request of 
 the sultan, who had begged that a painter might be 
 sent to exhibit his powers, or — as some say — who 
 had seen a picture by one of the Bellini carried 
 thither among the stores of some Venetian mer- 
 chant, and desired to see how such a wonderful 
 thing could be done. This is, we may point out by 
 the way, a thing well worthy of remark as a sign of 
 the wonderful changes that had taken place in the 
 East without seriously altering the long habit of 
 trade and the natural alliance, in spite of all inter- 
 ruptions, between buying and selling communities. 
 
288 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 Even within these simple pages we have seen the 
 Venetians fighting and struggling, making a hun- 
 dred treaties, negotiating long and anxiously for 
 charters and privileges from the Greek empire in 
 the capital of the East; then helping to destroy that 
 imperial house, seizing the city, setting up a short- 
 lived Latin empire, making themselves rich with 
 the spoils of Constantinople. And now both these 
 races and dynasties are swept away, and the infidel 
 has got possession of the once splendid Christian 
 city, and for a time has threatened all Europe, and 
 V^enice first of all. But the moment the war is 
 stopped, however short may be the truce, and how- 
 ever changed the circumstances, trade indomitable 
 has pushed forward with its cargoes, sure that at 
 least the Turk's gold is as good as the Christian's, 
 and his carpets and shawls perhaps better — who 
 knows? There is nothing so impartial as commerce, 
 so long as money is to be made. Scutari had 
 scarcely ceased to smoke when Gentile Bellini was 
 sent to please the Turk and prove that the republic 
 bore no malice. One can imagine that the painter 
 went, not without trepidation, among the proud and 
 hated invaders who had thus changed the tace of 
 the earth. The grim monarch before whom Europe 
 trembled received him with courtesy and favor, and 
 Gentile painted his portrait, and th^t of his queen 
 — no doubt some chosen member of the harem 
 whom the Venetian chose to represent as the sharer 
 of Mohammed's throne. 
 
 The portrait of the sultan, formally dated, has 
 been brought back to Venice, after four hundred 
 years and many vicissitudes, by Sir Henry Layard. 
 It represents no murderous Turk, but a face of 
 curious refinement, almost feeble, though full of the 
 impassive calm of an unquestioned despot. The 
 Venetian, as the story goes, had begun to be at his 
 ease, cheered, no doubt, by the condescension of 
 the autocrat before whom all prostrated themselves, 
 but who showed no pride to the painter, and by the 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 289 
 
 unanimous marveling surprise, as at a prodigy, of 
 all beholders, when a horrible incident occurred. 
 He would seem to have gone on painting familiar 
 subjects, notwithstanding the inappropriateness of 
 his surroundings, and had just finished the story of 
 John the Baptist "who was reverenced by the 
 Turks as a prophet." But when he exhibited the 
 head of the Baptist on the charger to the sultan, 
 that potentate began to criticise, as a man who at 
 last finds himself on familiar ground. He told the 
 painter that his anatomy was wrong, and that when 
 the head was severed from the body, the neck dis- 
 appeared altogether. No doubt with modesty, but 
 firmly, the painter would defend his work; probably 
 forgetting that the sultan had in this particular a 
 much greater experience than he. But Mohammed 
 was no man to waste words. He called a slave to 
 him on the spot, and whether with his own ready 
 sword or by some other hand, swept off in a trice 
 the poor wretch's head, that the painter might be no 
 longer in any doubt as to the effect. This horrible 
 lesson in anatomy was more than Gentile's nerves 
 could bear, and it is not wonderful from that 
 moment he never ceased his efforts to get his dis- 
 missal, "not knowing," says Ridolfi, "whether some 
 day a similar jest might not be played on him. ' ' Fin- 
 ally he was permitted to return home with laudatory 
 letters and the title of Cavaliere, and a chain of gold 
 of much value round his neck. The Venetian author- 
 ities either felt that a man had risked so much to 
 please the sultan and keep up a good understanding 
 with him was worth a reward, or they did not ven- 
 ture to neglect the recommendation of so great a 
 potentate — for they gave the painter a pension of 
 two hundred ducats a year for his life. And he was 
 in time to resume his pencil in the great hall where 
 Ridolfi gives him the credit of five of the pictures, 
 painted in great part after his return. All this no 
 doubt splendid series was destroyed a hundred years 
 after by fire ; but, as has been already noted, the 
 
 19 Venice 
 
290 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 subjects were repeated in the subsequent pictures 
 which still exist, although these, with the exception 
 of one by Tintoretto and one by Paolo Veronese, 
 were executed by less remarkable hands. 
 
 Gentile Bellini died in 1507, at the age of eighty, 
 his brother nearly ten years after; they were both 
 laid with so many others of their brotherhood in 
 the great church of San Giovanni e Paolo, where 
 the traveler may see their names upon the pave- 
 ment in all humility and peace. 
 
 The nearest to these two brothers in the meaning 
 and sentiment of his work is Victor Capaccio. His 
 place would almost seem to lie justly between them. 
 He is the first illustrator of religious life and legend 
 in Venice, as well as the most delightful story-teller 
 of his time, the finest poet in a city not given to 
 audible verse. The extreme devotion which Mr. 
 Ruskin has for this painter has perhaps raised him 
 to a pedestal which is slightly factitious — as least, so 
 far as the crowd is concerned, who follow the great 
 writer without comprehending him, and are apt to 
 make the worship a little ridiculous. But there is 
 enough in the noble series of pictures which set 
 forth the visionary lite of St. Ursula to justify a 
 great deal of enthusiasm. No more lovely picture 
 was ever painted than that which represents the 
 young princess lying wrapped in spotless slumber, 
 seeing in her dream the saintly life before her and 
 the companion of her career, the prince — half 
 knight, half angel — whose image hovers at the door. 
 The wonderful mediaeval room with all its slender, 
 antique furniture; the soft dawn in the window; 
 the desk where the maiden has said her prayers; 
 the holy water over her head, form a dim, harmoni- 
 ous background of silence and virgin solitude. And 
 what could surpass the profound and holy sleep, so 
 complete, so peaceful, so serene in which she lies, 
 lulled by the solemn sweetness of her vision, in 
 which there is no unrest, as of earthly love always 
 full of disquiet, but a soft awe and stillness as of 
 
rni^ MAKERS OF VENICE. 29i 
 
 great tragic possibilities foreseen? The other pic- 
 tures of the series may be more rich in incident and 
 expression, and have a higher dramatic interest, 
 but the sleep of Ursula is exquisite and goes to 
 every heart. 
 
 The San Giorgio in the little church of the Slavs 
 detaches itself in a similar way from all others, and 
 presents to the imagination a companion picture. 
 Ursula has no companion in her own story that is 
 so worthy of her as this St. George, Her prince is 
 only a vision; he is absorbed in her presence, a 
 shadow, whom the painter has scarcely taken the 
 trouble to keep of one type, or recogfnizable 
 throughout the series. But the San Giorgio of the 
 Schiavoni remains in our thoughts, a vision of 
 youthful power and meaning, worthy to be that 
 maiden's mate. No sleep for him, or dreams. He 
 puts his horse at the dragon with an intent and 
 stern diligence as if there were (as truly there was 
 not) no moment to lose, no breath to draw, till his 
 mission had been accomplished. A swift fierceness 
 and determination is in every line of him ; his spear, 
 which seems at first on the wrong side of the horse, 
 is so on purpose to get a stronger leverage in the 
 tremendous charge. The dragon is quite a poor 
 creature to call forth all that force of righteous pas- 
 sion; but we think nothing of its abject meanness, 
 all sympathy and awe being concentrated in the 
 champion's heavenly wrath and inspiration of pur- 
 pose. We do not pretend to follow the great critic 
 who has thrown all his own tender yet fiery genius 
 into the elucidation of every quip and freak of fancy 
 in this elaborate mediaeval poem. The low and half 
 lighted walls of the little brown church, which bears 
 a sort of homely resemblance to an English Little 
 Bethel, enshrine for us chiefly this one heroic semb- 
 lance, and no more; and we do not attempt to dis- 
 cuss the painting from any professional point of 
 view. But we are very sure that this knight and 
 maiden, though they never can belong to each other 
 
292 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 will find their places in every sympathetic soul that 
 sees them, together — George charging down in 
 abstract holy wrath upon the impersonation of sin 
 and evil ; Ursula dreaming of the great, sad, yet 
 fair life before her — the pilgrim's journey, and the 
 martyr's palm. 
 
 The lives of the saints were the popular poetry of 
 Christendom, catholic and universal beyond all folk- 
 lore and folks-lieder, before even the limits of exist- 
 ing Continental nations were formed. All the ele- 
 ments of romance, as well as that ascetic teaching 
 and doctrine of boundless self-sacrifice which com- 
 mends itself always to the primitive mind as the 
 highest type of religion, were to be found in these 
 primitive tales, which are never so happy as when 
 taking the youngest and fairest and noblest from all 
 the delights of life, and setting them amid the mediae- 
 val horrors of plague and destitution. Carpaccio's 
 saints, however, belong to even an earlier variety of 
 the self-devoted, the first heroes of humanity. It 
 is for the faith that they contend and die; they are 
 the ideal emissaries of a divine religion but newly 
 unveiled and surrounded by a dark and horrible 
 infidel world which is to be converted only by the 
 blood of the martyrs; or by mysterious forms of 
 evil, devouring dragons and monsters of foul 
 iniquity, who must be slain or led captive by the 
 spotless warriors in whom there is nothing kindred 
 to their rapacious foulness. Perhaps it is because 
 of the vicinity of Venice to the East, and of the con- 
 tinual conflict with the infidel which Crusades and 
 other enterprises less elevated had made more fam- 
 iliar than any other enemy to the imagination of the 
 city of the sea, that Carpaccio's story-telling is all 
 of this complexion. The German painter from over 
 the Alps had his dreams of sweet Elizabeth, with 
 the loaves in her lap which turned to roses, and the 
 leper whom she laid in the prince's bed, when our 
 Venetian conceived his Ursula forewarned of all 
 that must follow, leaving home and father to con- 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 293 
 
 vert the heathen; or that strenuous, grave St. 
 George, with stern, fierce eyes aflame, cutting down 
 the monster who was evil embodied. 
 
 These were the earliest of all heroic tales in 
 Christendom, and Carpaccio's art was that of the 
 minstrel-historian as well as the painter. He knew 
 how to choose his incidents and construct his plot 
 like any story-teller, so that those, it there were 
 any, in Venice, who did not care for pictures, might 
 still be caught by the interest of his tale, and follow 
 breathless the fortunes of the royal maiden, or that 
 great episode of heroic adventure which has made 
 so many nations choose St. George as their patron 
 saint. Gentile Bellini had found out how the as- 
 pect of real life and all its accessories might be 
 turned to use in art, and how warm was the inter- 
 est of the spectators in the representation of the 
 things and places with which they were most fami- 
 liar; but Carpaccio made a step beyond his old mas- 
 ter when he discovered that art was able, not only 
 to make an incident immortal, but to tell a story, 
 and draw the very hearts of beholders out of their 
 bosoms, as sometimes an eloquent friar in the pul- 
 pit, or story-teller upon the Riva, with his group of 
 entranced listeners, could do. And having made 
 this discovery, though it was already the time of 
 the Renaissance and all the uncleanly gods of the 
 heathen, with all their fables, were coming back, 
 for the diversion and delight of the licentious and 
 the learned, this painter sternly turned his back 
 upon all these newfangled interests, and entranced 
 all Venice — though she loved pleasure, and to pipe 
 and sing and wear fine dresses and flaunt in the 
 sunshme — with the story of the devoted princess 
 and her maiden train, and with St. George, all 
 swift and fierce in youthful wrath, slaying the old 
 dragon, the emblem of all ill, the devouring 
 lust and cruelty whose ravages devastated an entire 
 kingdom and devoured both man and maid. 
 
 But of the man who did this we know nothing, 
 
294 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 not even where he was born or where he died. He 
 has been said to belong to Istria because there has 
 been found there a family of Carpaccio, among 
 whom, from time immemorial, the eldest son has 
 been called Victor or Vettore; but that this is the 
 painter's family is a matter of pure conjecture. 
 The diligent researches of Signer Molmenti, who 
 has done so much to elucidate Venetian manners 
 and life, have found in the archives of a neighbor- 
 ing state a letter, perhaps the only intelligible trace 
 of Carpaccio as an ordinary mortal, and not an in- 
 spired painter, which is in existence. It affords us 
 no revelation of high meaning or purpose, but only 
 a homely view of a man with no greater pretensions 
 than those of an honest workman living on his 
 earnings, reluctant to lose a commission and eager 
 to recommend himself to a liberal and well-paying 
 customer. It shows him upon no elevation of 
 poetic meaning such as we might have preferred to 
 see : but, after all, even in heroic days, there was 
 nothing contrary to inspiration in selling your pic- 
 ture and commending yourself as much as was in 
 you, to who would buy. And it is evident that Car- 
 paccio had much confidence in the excellence of the 
 work he had to sell and felt that his wares were 
 second to none. The letter is addressed to the well 
 known amateur and patron of artists, he who was 
 the first to make Titian's fortune, Francesco Gon- 
 zaga. Lord of Mantua. 
 
 Illustrissimo Signor Mio: 
 
 Some days ago a person, unknown to me, conducted by cer- 
 tain others, came to me to see a "Jerusalem" which I have 
 made, and as soon as he had seen it, with great pertinacity in- 
 sisted that I should sell it to him, because he felt it to be a 
 thing out of which he would get great content and satisfac- 
 tion. Finally we made a bargain by mutual agreement, but 
 since then I have seen no more of him. To clear up the mat- 
 ter. I asked those who had brought him, among whom was a 
 priest, bearded and clad in gray, whom I had several times 
 seen in the hall of the Great Council with your highness ; of 
 whom asking his name and condition I was told that he was 
 Messer Laurentio, painter to your illustrious highness— by 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 295 
 
 which I easily understood where this person might be found, 
 and accordingly I direct these presents to your illustrious 
 highness to make you acquainted with my name as well as 
 with the work in question. First, signor mio, I am that 
 painter by whom your illustrious highness was conducted to 
 see the pictures in the great hall, when your illustrious high- 
 ness deigned to ascend the scaffolding to see our work, which 
 was the story of Ancona, and my name is Victor Carpatio. 
 Concerning the "Jerusalem" I take upon me to say that in 
 our times there is not another picture equal to it, not only for 
 excellence and perfection, but also for size. The height of 
 the picture is twenty- five feet and the width is five feet and a 
 half, according to the measure of such things, and I know 
 that of this work Zuane Zamberti has spoken to your sublimity. 
 Also it is true, and I know certainly, that the aforesaid painter 
 belonging to your service, has carried away a sketch incom- 
 plete and of small size which I am sure will not be to your 
 highness' satisfaction. If it should please your highness to 
 submit the picture first to the inspection of some judicious 
 men, on a word of guarantee being given to me it shall be at 
 your highness' disposal. The work is in distemper on canvas, 
 and it can be rolled round a piece of wood without any detri- 
 ment. If it should please you to desire it in color, it rests with 
 your illustrious highness to command, and to me with pro- 
 f oundest study to execute. Of the price I say nothing, remit- 
 ting it entirely to your illustrious highness, to whom I humbly 
 commend myself this fifteenth day of August, 15 ii, at Venice. 
 Da V. Subl. humilo. Servitore, 
 Victor Carpathio, Pictore. 
 
 Whether the anxious painter got the commission, 
 or if his sublimity of Mantua thought the humble 
 missive beneath his notice, or if the "Jerusalem" 
 was ever put into color cum summo studio, will prob- 
 ably never be known ; but here he appears to us a 
 man very open to commissions, eager for work, 
 probably finding the four ducats a month of the 
 Signoria poor pay, and losing no opportunity of 
 making it up. But though the painter is anxious 
 and conciliatory, he does not deceive himself as to 
 the excellence of his work. He takes upon him to 
 say that there is no better picture to be had in his 
 time, and gives the measure of it with simplicity, 
 feeling that this test of greatness, at least, must be 
 within his correspondent's capacity. And one can* 
 not but remark, with a smile, how this old demi-goa 
 
296 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 of art in the heroic age was ready to forward his 
 picture to the purchaser rolled around a piece of 
 wood, as we send the humble photograph nowadays 
 by the post! How great a difference! yet with 
 something odd and touching of human resemblance, 
 too. 
 
 Of the great painters of the follov/ing generation, 
 who raised the Venetian school to the height of 
 glory, almost all who were born subjects of the 
 republic passed through the studio of the Bellini. 
 The historians tell us how young Giorgio of Castel 
 Franco awoke a certain despite in the breast of his 
 master by his wonderful progress and divination in 
 the development of art — seizing such secrets as 
 were yet to discover, and conjuring away a certain 
 primitive rigidity which still remained in the work 
 of the elders; and how young Tiziano, from his 
 mountain village, entered into the method of his 
 fellow-pupil, and both together carried their mys- 
 tery of glorious color and easy, splendid composition 
 to its climax in Venice. But the feeling and criti- 
 cism of the present age, so largely influenced by 
 Mr. Ruskin, are rather disposed to pass that graad 
 perfection by, and return with devotion to the sim- 
 ple splendor of those three early master who are 
 nearer to the fountain-head and retain a more abso- 
 lute reality and sincerity in their work. Gentile 
 Bellini painting behind and around his miracle the 
 genuine Venice which he saw, a representation more 
 authentic and graphic than any that history can 
 make; and Carpaccio giving life and substance to 
 the legends which embodied literature and poetry 
 and the highest symbolical morals to the people — 
 express the fact of everyday life and the vision and 
 the faculty divine of a high and pure imagination, 
 with a force and intensity which are not in their 
 more highly trained and conventionally perfect suc- 
 cessors. And as for the third, in some respects the 
 noblest of the three — he whose genius sought no 
 new path, who is content with the divine group 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 29l 
 
 which his homely forefathers had drawn and daubed 
 before him, but which it was his to set forth for the 
 first time in Venice in all the luster of the new 
 method of color which he and his successors carried 
 to such glow and splendor that all that is most 
 brilliant in it is called Venetian — where shall we 
 find a more lovely image of the Mother and the 
 Child than that which he sets before us, throned in 
 grave seclusion in the Frari, humbly retired behind 
 that window in the Accademia, shining forth over so 
 many altars in other places, in a noble and modest 
 perfection? Tlie angel children sounding their sim- 
 ple lutes, looking up with frank and simple childish 
 reverence, all sweet and human, to the miraculous 
 Child, have something in them which is as much 
 beyond the conventional cherubic heads and artifi- 
 cial, ornamented angels of the later art as heaven is 
 beyond earth, or the true tenderness of imagination 
 beyond the fantastic inventions of fiction. And if 
 Raphael in our days must give way to Botticelli, 
 with how much greater reason should Titian in the 
 height of art, all earthly splendor and voluptuous 
 glow, give place to the lovely imaginations of old 
 Zuan Bellini, the father of Venetian art! 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE SECOND GENERATION. 
 
 The day of art had now fully risen in Venice. 
 The dawning had been long ; progressing slowly, 
 through all the early efforts of decoration and orna- 
 ment, and by the dim, religious light of nameless 
 masters, to the great moment in which the Bellini 
 revealed themselves, making Venice splendid with 
 the sunrise of a new faculty, entirely congenial to 
 her temperament and desires. It would almost ap- 
 pear as if the first note, once struck, of a new de- 
 parture in life or in art, was enough to wake up in 
 
298 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 all the regions within hearing the predestined 
 workers, who, but for that awaking, might have 
 slumbered forever, or found in other fields incom- 
 plete development. While it is beyond the range 
 of human powers to determine what cause or 
 agency it is which enables the first fine genius — the 
 Maker, who in every mode of creative work is like 
 the great priest of the Old Testament, without 
 father and without mother — to burst all bonds and 
 outstep all barriers, it is comparatively easy to trace 
 how, under his influence and by the stimulus of a 
 sudden new impulse felt to be almost almost divine, 
 his successors may spring into light and being. 
 Nothing, to our humble thinking, explains the Bel- 
 lini; but the Bellini to a certain extent explain 
 Titian and all the other splendors to come. 
 
 When the thrill ot the new beginning had gone 
 through all the air, mounting up among the glorious 
 peaks and snows, to Cadore on one side, and over 
 the salt-water countries and marshy plains on the 
 other to Castel Franco, two humble families had 
 each received the uncertain blessing of a boy, who 
 took to none of the established modes of living, and 
 would turn his thoughts neither to husbandry nor 
 to such genteel trades as became the members of a 
 family of peasant nobility, but dreamed and drew, 
 with whatsoever material came to their hands, upon 
 walls or other handy places. At another epoch it 
 is likely enough that parental force would have been 
 ^employed to balk, for a time at least, these indica- 
 jtions of youthful genius; but no doubt some of the 
 Vecelli family, the lawyer uncle or the soldier 
 father, had some time descended from his hilltop to 
 the great city which lay gleaming upon the edge of 
 those great plains of sea that wash the feet of the 
 mountains, and had seen some wonderful work in 
 church or senate chamber, which made known a 
 new possibility to him, and justified in some sort 
 the attempts of the eager child. More certainly 
 still a villager from the Trevisano, carr3''ing his 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 299 
 
 rural merchandise to market would be led by gossip 
 in the Erberia to see the new Madonna in San 
 Giobbe, and ask himself whether by any chance 
 little Giorgio, always with that bit of chalk in his fin- 
 gers, might come to do such a wonder as that if the 
 boy had justice done him? They came accordingly, 
 with beating hearts, the two little rustics, each from 
 his village, to Zuan Bellini's bottega in the Rialto 
 to learn their art. The mountain boy was but ten 
 years old — confided to the care of an uncle who lived 
 in Venice; but whether he went at once into the 
 headquarters of the art is unknown, and unlikely, 
 for so young a student could scarcely have been far 
 enough advanced to profit by the instructions of the 
 greatest painter in Venice. It is supposed by some 
 that he began his studies under Zuccato, the mo- 
 saicist, or some humbler instructor. But all this 
 would seem mere conjecture. Vasari, his contem- 
 porary and friend, makes no mention of any pre- 
 liminary studies, but places the boy at once under 
 Giovanni Bellini. Of the young Barbarella from 
 Castel Franco the same story is told. He, too, was 
 brought to Venice by his father and placed under 
 Bellini's instruction. Messrs. Crowe and Cavalca- 
 selle have confused these bare but simple records 
 with theories of their own respecting the influence 
 of Giorgione upon Titian, which is such, they 
 think, or thought, as could only have been attained 
 by an elder over a younger companion, whereas all 
 the evidence goes to prove that the two were as 
 nearly as possible the same age, and that they were 
 fellow-pupils, perhaps fellow-apprentices, in Bel- 
 lini's workshop. We may, however, find so much 
 reason for the theory as this, that young Tiziano 
 was in his youth a steady and patient worker, fol- 
 lowing all the rules and discipline of his master, and 
 taking into his capacious brain everything that 
 could be taught him, awaiting the moment when 
 he should turn these stores of instruction to use in 
 his own individual way; whereas young Giorgio 
 
800 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 was more masterful and impatient, and with a 
 quicker eye and insight (having so much less time 
 to do his work in) seized upon those points in which 
 his genius could have full play. Vasari talks as if 
 this brilliant youth, with all the fire of purpose in his 
 eyes, had blazed all of a sudden upon the workshop 
 in which Bellini's pupils labored- Titian among 
 them, containing what new lights were in him in 
 dutiful subordination to the spirit of the place — 
 "about the year 1507," with a new gospel of color 
 and brightness scattering the clouds from the firma- 
 ment. Ridolfi, on the other hand describes him as 
 a pupil whom the master looked upon with a little 
 jealousy, "seeing the felicity with which all things 
 were made clear by this scholar. And certainly," 
 adds the critic in his involved and ponderous 
 phraseology, "it was a wonder to see how this boy 
 added to the method of Bellini (in whom all the 
 beauties of painting had seemed conjoined) such 
 grace and tenderness of color, as if Giorgione, par- 
 ticipating in that power by which Nature mixes 
 human flesh with all the qualities of the elements, 
 harmonized with supreme sweetness the shadow and 
 the light, and threw a delicate flush of rose tints 
 upon every member through which the blood flows. " 
 Giorgione, with his bolder impulse and that haste 
 which we perceive to have been so needful for his 
 short life, is more apparent than his fellow student 
 in these early years. When he came out of Bel- 
 lini's workshop, his apprenticeship done, he roamed 
 a little from bottega to bottega; painting now a sacred 
 picture for an oratory or chapel, now a marriage 
 chest or cabinet. '' Quadri di devotiojie, ricinti da 
 leitd e gabiiietti,'' says Ridolfi — not ashamed to turn 
 his hand to anything there might be to do. Going 
 home afterward to his village, he was received, the 
 same authority informs us, with enthusiasm, as hav- 
 ing made himself a great man and a painter, and 
 commissions showered upon him. Perhaps it was 
 at Castel Franco, amid the delight and praise of 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 301 
 
 his friends, that the young painter first recognized 
 fully his own powers. At all events, when he had 
 exhausted their simple applauses and filled the vill- 
 age church and convent with his work, he went back 
 to Venice, evidently with a soul above the ricinei de 
 letto, and launched himself upon the world. His 
 purse was, no doubt, replenished by the work he 
 had done at home; a number of the wealthy neigh- 
 bors having had themselves painted by little Giorgio 
 — an opportunity they must have perceived that 
 might not soon recur. But it was not only for 
 work and fame that he returned to Venice. He was 
 young, and life was sweet, sweeter there than any- 
 where else in all the world ; full of everything that 
 was beautiful and bright. He took a house in the 
 Campo San Silvestro, opposite the church of that 
 name, not far from the Rialto, in the midst of all the 
 joyous companions of his craft; and "by his talent 
 and his pleasant nature, "drawing round him a multi- 
 tude of friends, lived there amid all the delights of 
 youth — dtlettandosi suoiiar il liuto — dividing his days 
 between the arts. No gayer life nor one more full 
 of pleasure could be ; his very work a delight, a con- 
 tinual crowd of comrades, admiring, imitating, 
 urging him on, always round him, every man with 
 his ca?tzone and his picture ; and all ready to fling 
 them dow^n at a moment's notice, and rush forth to 
 swell the harmonies on the canal, or steal out upon 
 the lagoon in the retirement of the gondola, upon 
 some more secret adventure. What hush there 
 would be of all the laughing commentaries when a 
 fine patrician in his sweeping robes was seen ap- 
 proaching across the campo, a possible patron; what 
 a rush to the windows when, conscious perhaps of 
 all the eyes upon her, but without lifting her own, 
 some lovely Aladonna wrapped in her veil, with her 
 following of maidens, would come in a glor}^ of silken 
 robes and jewels out of the church door! ''Per certo 
 suo decoroso aspetto si detto Giorgione,'' says Ridolfi, but 
 perhaps the word decoroso would be out of place ia 
 
302 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 our sense of it — for his delightsome presence rather 
 and his pleasant ways. The Italian tongue still 
 lends itself to such caresses, and is capable of mak- 
 ing the dear George, the delightful fellow, the 
 beloved of all his companions, into Giorgione still. 
 And amid all this babble of lutes and laughter, 
 and all the glow of color and flush of youth, the 
 other lad from the mountains would come and go, 
 no less gay perhaps than any of them, but working 
 on, with that steady power of his, gathering to him- 
 self slowly but with an unerring instinct the new 
 principles which his comrade, all impetuous and 
 spontaneous, made known in practice rather than in 
 teaching, making the blood flow and the pulses 
 beat in every limb he drew. Young Tiziano had 
 plodded through the Bellini system without mak- 
 ing any rebellious outbreak of new ideas as Gior- 
 gione had done; taking the good of his master, so 
 far as that master went, but with his eyes open to 
 every suggestion, and ever ready to see that his 
 comrade had expanded the old rule, and done some- 
 thing worth adopting and following in this joyful, 
 splendid outburst of his. It was in his way, no 
 doubt, that the one youth followed the other, half 
 by instinct, by mingled sympathy and rivalry, by 
 the natural contagion of a development more 
 advanced than that which had been the starting 
 point of both — confusing his late critics after some 
 centuries into an attempt to prove that the one 
 must have taught the other, which was not neces- 
 sary in any formal way. Titian had ninety years 
 to live, and Nature worked in him at leisure, while 
 Giorgione had but a third of that time, and went 
 fast; flinging about what genius and power of in- 
 struction there were in him with careless liberality; 
 not thinking whether from any friendly comrade 
 about him he received less than he gave. Perhaps 
 the same unconscious hurry of life, perhaps only 
 his more impetuous temper, induced him, when 
 work flagged and commissions were slow of coming 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 303 
 
 in, to turn his hand to the front of his own house 
 and paint that, in default of more profitable work. 
 It was, no doubt, the best of advertisements for the 
 young painter. On the higher story, in which most 
 probably he lived, he covered the walls with figures 
 of musicians and poets with their lutes, and with 
 groups of boys, the putti ^o dear to Venice, as well- 
 as altra fantasie, and historic scenes of more pre- 
 tension which were the subject of "a learned eulogy 
 by Signor Jacopo Pighetti, and a celebrated poem 
 by Signor Paolo Vendramin, " says Ridolfi. The 
 literary tributes have perished, and so have the 
 frescoes, although the spectator may still see some 
 faded traces of Giorgione's/^^//^' upon the walls of 
 his house; but they answered what, no doubt, was 
 at least one of their purposes by attracting the 
 attention of the watchful city, ever ready to see 
 what beautiful work was being done. It was at 
 this moment that the Fondaco d' Tedeschi, the 
 German factory, so to speak, on the edge of the 
 Grand Canal, was rebuilding; a great house want- 
 ing decoration. The jealous authorities of the 
 republic, for some reason one fails to see, had 
 forbidden the use of architectural ornamentation in 
 the new building, which, all the same, was their own 
 building, not the property of the Germans. Had 
 it belonged to the foreigner there might have been 
 a supposable cause in the necessity for keeping 
 these aliens down, and preventing any possible em- 
 ulation with native born Venetians. We can only 
 suppose that this was actually the reason, and that, 
 even in the house which Venice built for them, 
 these traders were not to be permitted to look as 
 fine or feel as magnificent as their hosts and supe- 
 riors. But a great house with four vast walls, cap- 
 able of endless decoration, and nothing done to 
 them, would probably have raised a rebellion in 
 the city, or at least among the swarms ot painters on 
 the other side of the Rialto, gazing at it with hungry 
 eyes. So it was conceded by the authorities^that 
 
304 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 this square, undecorated house — a singularly unin- 
 teresting block of buildings to stand on such a site 
 — should be painted at least to harmonize in so far 
 with its neighbors. It is not to be supposed that 
 this was the first piece of work on which Titian had 
 been engaged. No doubt he had already produced 
 his tale of Madonnas, with a few portraits, to make 
 him known. But he steps into sight for the first 
 time publicly when we hear that the wall on the 
 landside, the street front, was allotted to him, while 
 the side toward the canal was confided to Giorgione. 
 Perhaps the whole building was put into Gior- 
 gione's hands, and part of the work confided by him 
 to his comrade ; at all events, they divided it between 
 them. Every visitor to Venice is aware of the faint 
 and faded figure high up in the right-hand corner 
 disappearing, as all its neighboring glories have 
 disappeared, which is the last remnant of Gior- 
 gione's work upon the canal front of this great, 
 gloomy house. Of Titian's group over the 
 great doorway in the street there remains 
 nothing at all; the sea breezes and the keen 
 air have carried all these beautiful things 
 away. In respect to these frescoes, Vasari 
 tells one anecdote which is natural and character- 
 istic, and may indicate the point at which these two 
 young men detached themselves, and took each his 
 separate way. He narrates how "many gentle- 
 men," not being aware of the division of labor, met 
 Giorgione on the evening of the day on which Titian 
 had uncovered a portion of his work, and crowded 
 round him with their congratulations, assuring him 
 that he had never done anything so fine, and that 
 the front toward the Merceria quite excelled the 
 river front! Giorgione was so indignant, sentiva 
 tanto sdegno, at this unlucky compliment that, until 
 Titian had finished the work and it had become 
 well known which portion of it was his, the sensi- 
 tive painter showed himself no more in public, and 
 from that moment would neither see Titian nor 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 305 
 
 acknowledge him as a friend. Ridolfi tells the same 
 story, with the addition that it was a conscious mis- 
 take made maliciously by certain comrades, who 
 feigned not to know who had painted the great 
 "Judith" over the door. 
 
 This is not a history of the Venetian painters, 
 nor is it necessary to follow the life and labors of 
 these two brilliant and splendid successors of the 
 first masters in our city. Whether it was by the 
 distinct initiative of Giorgione in painting his own 
 house that the habit of painting Venetian houses in 
 general originated, or whether it was only one of 
 the ever increasing marks of luxury and display, 
 we do not pretend to decide. At all events, it was 
 an expedient of this generation to add to the glory 
 of the city and the splendid aspect which she bore. 
 The nobler dignit}^ of the ancient architecture had 
 already been partially lost, or no longer pleased in 
 its gravity and stateliness the race which loved color 
 and splendor in all things. A whole city glowing 
 in crimson and gold, with giant forms starting up 
 along every wall, and sweet groups of cherub boys 
 tracing every course of stone, and the fables of 
 Greece and Rome taking form upon every facade, 
 must have been, no doubt, a wonderful sight. The 
 reflections in the Grand Canal, as it flowed between 
 these pictured palaces, must have left little room 
 for sky or atmosphere in the midst of that dazzling 
 confusion of brilliant tints and images. And every 
 campo must have lent its blaze of color, to put the 
 sun himself to shame. But we wonder whether it 
 is to be much regretted that the sun and the winds 
 have triumphed in the end and had their will of 
 those fine Venetian houses. Among so many losses 
 this is the one for which I feel the least regret. 
 
 It is recorded among the expenses of the republic 
 in December, 1508, that 150 ducats were paid to 
 Zorzi da Castel Franco for his work upon the 
 Fondaco, in which, according to this business-like 
 record, Victor Carpaccio had also some share; but 
 
 20 Venice 
 
306 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 this is the only indication of the fact, and the total 
 disappearance of the work makes all other inquiry 
 impossible. 
 
 By this time, however, Giorgione's brief and gay 
 life was approaching its end. That stormy, joyous 
 existence, so full of work, so full of pleasure, as 
 warm in color as were his pictures, and pushed to a 
 hasty perfection, all at once, without the modesty 
 of any slow beginning, ended suddenly as it had 
 begun. Vasari has unkindly attributed his early 
 death to the disorders of his life ; but his other 
 biographers are more sympathetic. Ridolfi gives 
 two different accounts, both popularly current; one 
 that he caught the plague from a lady he loved; the 
 other, that being deserted by his love he died of 
 grief, 7ion trovando altro remedio. In either case the 
 impetuous young painter, amid his early successes 
 — more celebrated than any of his compeers, the 
 leader among his comrades, the only one of them 
 who had struck into an individual path, developing 
 the lessons of Bellini — died in the midst of his loves 
 and pleasures at the age of thirty- four, not having 
 yet reached the mezzo del ca?nmi?i di 7iostra vita^ 
 which Dante had attained when his greatwork began. 
 
 This was in the year 151 1, only three years after 
 the completion of his work at the Fondaco, and 
 while old Zuan Bellini was still alive and at work, 
 in his robust old age, seeing his impetuous pupil 
 out. It was one of the many years in which the 
 plague visited Venice, carrying consternation 
 through the gay and glowing streets. It is said 
 that Giorgione was working in the hall of the Great 
 Council, among the other painters, at the picture in 
 which the emperor is represented as kissing the 
 Pope's foot, at the time of his death. At all events, 
 he had lived long enough to make his fame great in 
 the city, and to leave examples of his splendid work 
 in many of the other great cities of Italy, as well as 
 in his own little borgo at Caste! Franco, where still 
 they are the pride and glory of the little town. 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 307 
 
 It would almost seem as if it were only after the 
 death of Giorgione that Titian began to be esti- 
 mated at his just value. The one had given the 
 impulse, the other had received it, and Vasari does 
 not hesitate to call Titian the pupil of his contem- 
 porary, though not in the formal sense attached to 
 the word by modern writers, notwithstanding the 
 fact that they were of the same age. Ridolfi's 
 formal yet warm enthusiasm for the painter ''to 
 whom belong perpetual praise and honor, since he 
 has become a light to all those who come after 
 him," assigns to Giorgione a higher place than that 
 which the spectator of to-day will probably think 
 justified. His master, Bellini, appeals more warmly 
 to the heart; his pupil, Titian, filled a much greater 
 place in the world and in art. But "it is certain," 
 says the historian and critic of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury, with a double affirmation, "that Giorgio was 
 without doubt the first who showed the good way in 
 painting, fitting himself \approssi-nia?idosi\ by the 
 mixture of his colors to express with facility the 
 works of nature, concealing as much as possible 
 the difficulties to be encountered in working, which 
 is the chief point; so that in the flesh tints of this 
 ingenious painter the innumerable shades of gray, 
 orange, blue, and other such colors, customarily 
 used by some, are absent. . . The artificers who 
 followed him, with the example before them of his 
 works, acquired the facility and true method of 
 color by which so much progress was made. " 
 
 The works of Giorgione, however, are compara- 
 tively few; his short life, and perhaps the mirth of 
 it, the sounding of the lute, the joyous company, 
 and all the delights of that highly colored existence 
 restrained the splendid productiveness which was 
 characteristic of his art and age. And yet perhaps 
 this suggestion does the painter injustice; for amid 
 all those diversions, and the ceaseless round of 
 loves and festivities, the list of work done is always 
 astonishing. Many of his works, however, were 
 
308 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 frescoes, and the period in which he and Titia.. 
 were, as Mr. Ruskin says, house-painters, was the 
 height of his genius. The sea air and the keen 
 tramoniana have thus swept away much that was 
 the glory of the young painter's life. 
 
 The moment at which Titian appears publicly on 
 the stage, so to speak, of the great hall, called to 
 aid in the work going on there, was not till two 
 years after the death of his companion. Whether 
 Giorgione kept his hasty word and saw no more of 
 him after that unfortunate compliment about the 
 "Judith" over the doorway of the Fondaco we are 
 not told; but it was not until after the shadow of 
 that impetuous, youthful genius had been removed 
 that the other, the patient and thoughtful, who had 
 not reached perfection in a burst, but by much 
 consideration and comparison and exercise of the 
 splendid faculty of work that was in him, came 
 fully into the light. Messrs. Crowe and Caval- 
 caselle make much of certain disputes and intrigues 
 that seem to have surrounded this appointment, and 
 point out that it was given and withdrawn, and 
 again conferred upon Titian, according a s his 
 friends or those of the older painters were in the 
 ascendant in the often changed combinations of 
 power in Venice. Their attempts to show that old 
 Zuan Bellini, the patriarch of the art, schemed 
 against his younger rival, and endeavored to keep 
 him out of state patronage are happily supported 
 by no documents, but are merely an inference from 
 the course of events, which show certain waverings 
 and uncertainties in the bargain between the Sig- 
 noria and the painter. The manner in which this 
 bargain was made, and in which the money was 
 provided to pay for the work of Titian and his asso- 
 ciates, is very characteristic and noticeable. After 
 much uncertainty as to what were the intentions of 
 the Signoria, the painter received an invitation 
 to go to Rome through Pietro Bembo, which, how- 
 ever bona fide in itself, was probably intended to 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 309 
 
 bring matters to a crisis, and show the authorities, 
 who had not as yet secured the services of the most 
 promising of all the younger artists then left in 
 Venice, that their decision must be made at once, 
 Titian brings the question before them with much 
 firmness — will they have him or not? must he turn 
 aside to the service of the Pope instead of entering 
 that of the magnificent Signoria, which, "desirous 
 of fame rather than of profit," he would prefer? 
 Pressing for a decision, he then sets forth the pay 
 and position for which he is willing to devote his 
 powers to the public service. These are : The first 
 brokership that shall be vacant in the Fondaco de' 
 Tedeschi, "irrespective of all promised reversions 
 of such patent," and the maintenance of two pupils 
 as his assistants, to be paid by the salt office, which 
 also is to provide all colors and necessaries required 
 in their work. The curious complication of state 
 affairs which thus mixes up the most uncongenial 
 branches, and defrays the expenses of this, the 
 supremest luxury of the state, out of the tarry purse 
 of its oldest and rudest industry, is very remarka- 
 ble ; and the bargain has a certain surreptitious air, 
 as if even the magnificent Signoria did not care to 
 confess how much their splendors cost. If our own 
 government, ashamed to put into their straightfor- 
 ward budget the many thousands expended on the 
 purchase of the Blenheim "Madonna," had added 
 it in with the accounts of the inland revenue, it 
 would be an operation somewhat similar. But such 
 balancings and mutual compensations, robbing 
 Peter to pay Paul, were common in those days. 
 The brokership, however, is about as curious an 
 expedient for the pay of a painter as could be 
 devised. The German merchants were forbidden to 
 trade without the assistance of such an official, and 
 the painter of course fulfilled the duties of the office 
 by deputy. It affords an amazing suggestion, 
 indeed, to think of old Bellini, or our magnificent 
 young Titian, crossing the Rialto by the side of 
 
310 THE MAKERS OF VENIC£. 
 
 some homely Teuton with his samples in his pocket, 
 to drive a noisy bargain in the crowded Piazza 
 round San Giacomo, where all the merchants con- 
 gregated. But the expedient was perfectly natural 
 to the times in which they lived, and, indeed, such 
 resources have not long gone out of use even among 
 ourselves. 
 
 Titian's proposal was accepted, then modified, 
 and finally received and established, with the odious 
 addition that the broker's place to be given to him 
 was not simply the first vacancy, but the vacancy 
 which should occur at the death of Zuan Bellini, 
 then a very old man, and naturally incapable of 
 holding it long. This brutal method of indicating 
 that one day was over and another begun, and of 
 pushing the old monarch from his place, throws an 
 unfavorable light upon the very pushing and prac- 
 tical young painter, who was thus determined to 
 have his master's seat. 
 
 When Bellini died, in 1 516, it is gratifying to know 
 that there was still some difficulty about the mat- 
 ter, other promises apparently having been made, 
 and other expectations raised as to the vacant brok- 
 ership. Finally, however, Titian's claim was 
 allowed, and he entered into possession of the in- 
 come about which he had been so eager. He then 
 established himself at San Samuele, abandoning, it 
 would seem, the old center of life at the Rialto 
 where all the others had been content to live and 
 labor. It was like a migration from the business 
 parts of the town to those of fashion, or at least 
 gentility; and perhaps this change showed already 
 a beginning of pretension to the higher social posi- 
 tion which Titian, in his later days at least, evi- 
 dently enjoyed. They were noble in their rustic 
 way up at Cadore, and he who was presently to 
 stand before kings probably assumed already some- 
 thing more of dignity than was natural to the son 
 of painters, or to the village genius who is known 
 to posterity only by his Christian name. 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 311 
 
 Another day had now dawned upon the studios 
 and workshops. The reign of the Bellini was over 
 and that of Titian had begun. Of his contempo- 
 raries and disciples we cannot undertake any 
 account. The nearest in association and influence 
 to the new master was the gentle Palma, with all 
 the silvery sweetness of color which, so far as the 
 critics know, he had found for himself in his village 
 on the plains, or acquired somehow by the grace 
 of heaven, no master having the credit of them. 
 Some of these authorities believe that, from this 
 modest and delightful painter, Titian, all acquisi- 
 tive, gained something too; so much as to be almost 
 a pupil of the master who is so much less great 
 than himself. And that is possible enough, tor it 
 is evident that Titian, like Moliere, took his goods 
 where he found them, and lost no occasion for 
 instruction, whoever supplied it. He was, at all 
 events for some time, much linked with Palma, 
 whose daughter was long supposed to be the favor- 
 ite model of both these great painters. The splen- 
 did women whom they loved to paint, and who now 
 stepped in, as may be said, into the world of fancy, 
 a new and radiant group, with the glorious hair 
 upon which both these masters expended so much 
 skill, so that "every thread might be counted," 
 Vasari says, represent, as imagination hopes, the 
 women of that age, the flower of Venice at her 
 highest perfection of physical magnificence. So, at 
 least, the worshiper of Venice believes; finding in 
 those grand forms, and in their opulence of color 
 and natural endowment, something harmonious 
 with the character of the race and time. From the 
 same race, though with a higher inspiration, Bellini 
 had drawn his Madonnas, with stately throats like 
 columns and a noble amplitude of form. There is 
 still much beauty in Venice, but not of this splendid 
 kind. The women have dwindled, if they were 
 ever like Violante. But she and her compeers have 
 taken their place as the fit representatives of that 
 
312 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 age of splendor and luxury. When we turn to 
 records less imaginative, however, the ladies ot 
 Venice appear to us under a different guise. They 
 are attired in cloth of gold, in brocaded silks and 
 velvets, with cords, fringes, pendants, and em- 
 broidery in gold, silver, pearls, and precious stones; 
 "even their shoes richly ornamented with gold," 
 Sanudo tells us; but they are feeble and pale, prob- 
 ably because of their way of living, shut up indoors 
 the greater part of their time, and when they go out, 
 tottering upon heels so high that walking is scarcely 
 possible, and the unfortunate ladies in their gran- 
 deur have to lean upon the shoulders of their ser- 
 vants (or slaves) to avoid accident. Their heels 
 were at least half the Milanese braccio in height 
 (more than nine inches), says another authority. 
 Imagination refuses to conceive the wonderful lady 
 who lives in Florence, the "Bella" of Titian, in all 
 her magnificent apparel, thus hobbling on a species 
 of stilts about the streets, supported by one of those 
 grinning negroes whose memory is preserved in the 
 parti-colored figures in black and colored marble 
 which pleased the taste of a later age. Such, how- 
 ever, were the shoes worn in those very days of 
 Bellini and Carpaccio which the great art critic of 
 our time points out as so much nobler than our own \ 
 even pausing in his beautiful talk to throw a little 
 malicious dart aside as modern English (or Scotch) 
 maidens in high heeled boots. The nineteenth cen- 
 tury has not after all deteriorated so very much 
 from the fifteenth, for the veriest Parisian abhorred 
 of the arts has never yet attempted to poise upon 
 heels half a braccio in height. 
 
 These jeweled clogs, however, which, if memory 
 does not deceive us, are visible on the floor in Car- 
 paccio's picture of the two Venetian ladies in the 
 Museo Correr, so much praised by Mr. Ruskin, 
 were part of the universal ornamentation of the 
 times. The great wealth of Venice showed itself in 
 every kind of decorative work, designed in some 
 
THE MAKER'S OF VENICE. 313 
 
 cases rather b)^ skill than by common sense. The 
 Venetian houses were not only painted without, 
 throwing abroad a surplus splendor to all the 
 searching of the winds, but were all glorious within, 
 as in the Psalms, the furniture carved and gilded, 
 the curtains made of precious stuff, the chimney- 
 pieces decorated with the finest pictures, the beds- 
 magnificent with golden embroidery and brocaded 
 pillows, the very sheets edged with delicate work 
 in gold thread. When Giorgione opened his studio, 
 setting up in business, so to speak, he painted ward- 
 robes, spinning wheels, and more particularly 
 chests, the wedding coffers of the time, of which so 
 many examples remain; and — a fact which takes 
 away the hearer's breath— when Titian painted that 
 noble pallid Christ of the Tribute money, he did it, 
 oh! heavens, on a cabinet; a fact which, though 
 the cabinet was in the study of Alfonso of Ferrara, 
 strikes us with a sensation of horror. Only a prince 
 could have his furniture painted with such work ; 
 but, no doubt, in Titian's splendid age there might 
 be many armari, armoires — aumries, as they were 
 once called in Scotland — with bits of his youthful 
 work, and glowing panels painted by Giorgione on 
 the mantel-pieces to be found in theVenetian houses. 
 This was the way of living of the young painters, 
 by which they cam.e into knowledge of the world. 
 Perhaps the doors of the wardrobe in a friend's 
 house, or the panels over the fireplace, might catch 
 the eye of one of the Savii, now multiplied past 
 counting in every office of the state, who would 
 straightway exert himself to have a space in the 
 next church allotted to the young man to try his 
 powers on; when, if there was anything in him, he 
 had space and opportunity to show it, and prove 
 himself worthy of still higher promotion. It would 
 seem, however, that Titian was not much appre- 
 ciated by his natural patrons during all the begin- 
 ning of his career. There is no name of fondness 
 tor him such as there was for Giorgio of Castel 
 
314 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 Franco. Was it perhaps that these keen Venetians, 
 who, notwithstanding that failure ot religious faith 
 with which they are suddenly discredited, and which 
 is supposed to lie at the root of all decadence in art, 
 perceived that in the kind of pictures they most 
 desired something was wanting which had not been 
 wanting either in the Madonnas of Bellini or the 
 saints of Carpaccio — a something higher than 
 manipulation, more lovely than the loveliest color of 
 the new method? These sacred pictures might be 
 beautiful, but they were not divine. The soul had 
 gone out of them. That purity and wholesome 
 grace which was in every one of old Zuan's Holy 
 Families had stolen miraculously out ot Titian, just 
 as it had stolen miraculously in, no one knowing 
 how, to the works of the elder generation. If this 
 was the case indeed it was an effect only partially 
 produced by the works of the young master, for his 
 portraits were all alight with life and meaning, and 
 in other subjects from his hand there was no lack of 
 truth and energy. Whatever the cause might be, 
 it is clear however that he was not popular, though 
 the acknowledged greatest of all the younger 
 painters. It was only the possibility of seeing his 
 services transferred to the Pope that procured his 
 admission to the privileges of state employment; 
 and it was after his fame had been echoed from Fer- 
 rara and Bologna and Rome, and by the great em- 
 peror himself — the magnificent patron who picked 
 up his brush, and with sublime condescension 
 declared that a Titian might well be served by Caesar 
 — that the more critical and fastidious Venetians, or 
 perhaps it might only be the more prejudiced and 
 hardly judging, gave way to the strong current of 
 opinion in his favor, and began to find him a credit 
 to Venice. As soon as this conviction became gen- 
 eral the tide of public feeling changed, and the 
 republic became proud of the man who, amid all the 
 disasters that began to disturb her complacence and 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 315 
 
 interrupt her prosperity, had done her credit and 
 added to her fame. 
 
 It is evident, however, that even when he finally 
 got his chance, and painted, for the church of the 
 Frari, the magnificent "Assumption" which occu- 
 pies now a kind of throne in the Accademia as if in 
 some sort the sovereign of Venice, doubts pursued 
 him to the end of his work. Fra Marco Jerman or 
 Germano, the head of the convent, who had ordered 
 it at his own expense and fitted it, when completed, 
 into a fine framework of marble for the high altar, 
 had many a criticism to make during the frequent 
 anxious visits he paid to the painter at his work. 
 Titian was troubled indeed by ali the ignorant 
 brethren coming and going, molestato dalle freque?iti 
 visite loro, and hy il poco loro intendimento, their small 
 understanding of the necessities of art. They were 
 all of the opinion that the Apostles in the fore- 
 ground were too large, di troppo smisuraia grandezza, 
 and though he took no small trouble to persuade 
 them that the figures must be in proportion to the 
 vastness of the space, and the position which the 
 picture was to occupy, yet nevertheless the monks 
 continued to grumble and shake their heads, and 
 make their observations to each other under their 
 hoods, doubting even whether the picture was good 
 enough to be accepted at all, after all the fuss that 
 had been made about it, and the painter-fellow's 
 occupation of their church itself as his painting 
 room. The ignorant are often the most difficult to 
 please. But the condition of the doubting convent, 
 with no confidence in its own jtidgment, and a 
 haunting terror lest Venice should sneer or jeer 
 when the picture was uncovered, is comprehensible 
 enough. Titian, it is evident, had not even now 
 attained such an assured position as would justify 
 his patrons in any certainty of the excellence of his 
 work. He was still on his promotion, with no set- 
 tled conviction in the minds of the townsfolk as to 
 his genius and power. No doubt the brethren alj 
 
316 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 though that their guardiano had done a rash thing in 
 engaging him, and Fra Marco himself trembled at 
 the thought of the mistake he might perhaps have 
 made. It was not until the emperor's envoy, 
 already, it is evident, a strong partisan of Titian, 
 and bringing to his work an eye unclouded by local 
 prepossessions, declared that the picture was a mar- 
 velous picture, and offered a large sum if they would 
 give it up, in order that he might send it to his mas- 
 ter, that the /rati began to think it might be better 
 perhaps to hold by their bargain. "Upon which 
 offer," says Ridolfi, ''the fathers in their chapter 
 decided, after the opinion of the most prudent, not 
 to give up the picture to anyone; recognizing fin- 
 ally that art was not their profession, and that the 
 use of the breviary did not convey an understand- 
 ing of painting." 
 
 It is curious to find that Vasari makes no particu- 
 lar note of this picture except to say that it cannot 
 be well seen (that is, in its original position in the 
 Frari), and that Marco Sanudo, in recording its 
 first exhibition, mentions the frame as if it was a 
 thing quite as important as the picture. Such is 
 the vagueness of contemporary opinion. It seems, 
 at all events, to have been the first picture of 
 Titian's which at all struck the imagination of his 
 time. By this time, however, he had begun to be 
 courted by foreign potentates, and it is evident that 
 his hands were very full of commissions, and that 
 some shiftiness and many of the expedients of the 
 dilatory and unpunctual were in his manner of deal- 
 ing with his patrons, to whom he was very humble 
 in his letter, but not very faithful in his promises. 
 And now that he has reached the full maturity of 
 power, Titian unfolds to us a view, not so much of 
 Venice, as of a corrupt and luxurious society in 
 Venice, which is of a very different character from 
 the simplicities of his predecessors in art. Even 
 young Giorgione's gay dissipations, his love of lute 
 and song, his pretensions to gallantry and finery, 
 
Tim MAKERS OF VENICE. 3it 
 
 mischiante sempre amove with all his doing-s, have a 
 boyish and joyous sweetness, in comparison with 
 the much more luxurious life in which we now find 
 his old companion; the vile society of the Aretino 
 who flattered and intrigued for him, and led Titian, 
 too, not unwilling, to intrigue and flatter and some- 
 times betray. Perhaps at no time had there been 
 much virtue and purity to boast of in the career of 
 the painter who had half forced the Signoria into 
 giving him his appointment, and seized upon old 
 Zuan Bellini's office before he was dead; then dal- 
 lied with the work he seemed so eager to under- 
 take, and left it hanging on hand for years. But 
 the arrival of Pietro Aretino in Venice seems to 
 have been the signal for the establishment there of 
 a society such as the much boasted Renaissance of 
 classical learning and art seems everywhere to have 
 brought with it; shaming the ancient g-ods which 
 were thus proved so little capable of reinspiring 
 mankind. There is no one in all the sphere of his- 
 tory and criticism who has a good word to say of 
 Aretino. He was the very type of the base-born 
 adventurer, the hanger-on of courts, the entirely 
 corrupt and dazzlingly clever parasite, whose wit 
 and cunning and impudence and unscrupulousness, 
 his touch of genius and cynical indifference to every 
 law and mortal restraint, gave him a power which 
 it is very difficult to understand, but impossible to 
 ieny. That such a man should be able to recom- 
 mend the greatest painter of the day to the greatest 
 potentate — Titian to Charles V.-~is amazing beyond 
 description, but it would seem to have been directly 
 or indirectly the case. Aretino had an immense 
 correspondence with all the cultured persons of his 
 time, and in the letters which were a sort of trade 
 to him, and by which he kept himself and his gifts 
 and pretensions before the great people who min- 
 istered to his wants, he had it in his power to spread 
 the fame of a friend, and let the dukes and princes 
 know — the young men who were proud of a corre- 
 
sis THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 spondent so clever and wise and learned in all 
 depravity as well as all the sciences of the beautiful ; 
 and the old men who liked his gossip and his pun- 
 gent comments, and thought they could keep a hold 
 upon the world by such means — that here was 
 another accomplished vassal ready to serve their 
 pleasure. How such a mixture of the greatest and 
 the basest is practicable, and how it has so often 
 happened that the lovers of every beautiful art 
 should be in themselves so unbeautiful, so low in 
 all the true loveliness of humanity, while so sensi- 
 tive to its external refinements, is a question of far 
 too much gravity and intricacy to be discussed here. 
 Titian found a better market for his Venuses and 
 Ariadnes among the Hellenized elegants of the 
 time, at the courts of those splendid princes who 
 were at the summit of fashion and taste, and a far 
 more appreciative audience (so to speak) than he 
 ever found at home for the religious pictures which 
 his countrymen felt to be without any soul, beauti- 
 ful though their workmanship might be. 
 
 In another region of art, however, he was now 
 without a rival. The splendid power of portraiture, 
 in which no painter of any age has ever surpassed 
 him, conducted him to other triumphs. It was this 
 which procured him the patronage of Charles V., 
 who not only sat to him repeatedly, but declared 
 him to be the only painter he would care to honor, 
 and called him an Apolles, and all the other fine 
 things of that classical jargon which was so con- 
 ventional and so meaningless. Certainly nothing can 
 be more magnificent than the portraits with which 
 Titian has helped to make the history of his age. 
 The splendor of color in them is not more remark- 
 able than that force of reality and meaning which 
 is so wanting in his smooth Madonnas, so unneces- 
 sary to his luxurious goddesses. The men whom 
 Titian paints are almost all worthy to be senators 
 or emperors; no trifling coxcomb, no foolish gal- 
 lant, ever looks out upon us from his canvas, but a, 
 
tHE MAKERS OF VENICE. 3lS 
 
 series of noble personages worthy their rank and 
 importance in the world. It is difficult to overrate 
 the power which has this fine effect. Even in the 
 much discussed decorative tableau of the "Presenta- 
 tion," with its odious old woman and her eggs, 
 which are ianto naturale, according to the vulgar, the 
 group of gentlemen at the foot of the stair are 
 noble every one, requiring no pedigree. It was only 
 just that in recompense of such a power the great 
 emperor should have ennobled Titian and made him 
 Cavalier and Count Palatine and every other splen- 
 did thing. Such rewards were more appropriate in 
 his case than they would have been in almost any 
 other. It was in his power to confer the splendor 
 they loved upon the subjects of his pencil, and hand 
 them down to posterity as if they all were heroes 
 and philosophers. The least the emperor could do 
 was to endow the painter with some share of that 
 magnificence which he bestowed. 
 
 And when we look back upon him where he still 
 reigns in Venice, it is not with any thought of his 
 matronly Madonna among her cherubs, notwith- 
 standing all the importance which has been locally 
 given to that imposing composition, any more than, 
 when we turn to the magnificent picture painted 
 for the same church, the altar-piece of the Pesaro 
 chapel, known as the Madonna of the Pesaro family, 
 it is the sacred personages who attract our regard. 
 In vain is the sacred group throned on high : the 
 Virgin with her Child is without significance, no 
 true Queen of Heaven, with no mission of blessing 
 to the world, but the group of Venetian nobles 
 beneath, kneeling in proud humility, their thoughts 
 fixed on the grandeur of their house and the 
 accomplishment of their aims, like true sons of the 
 masterful republic — not negligent of the help that 
 our Lady and the saints may bestow if properly 
 propitiated, and snatching a moment accordingly to 
 lay their ambitions and keen, worldly desires dis- 
 tinctly before her and her court — live forever, gen- 
 
820 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 uine representatives of one of the most powerful 
 civilizations of the mid- ages, true men of their 
 time. And with a surprise of art, a sudden human 
 gleam of interest, an appeal to our kindred and 
 sympathy which it is impossible to withstand, there 
 looks out at us from the canvas a young face, care- 
 less of all, both the Madonna and the family, a little 
 weary of that senseless kneeling, a little wondering 
 at the motive of it, seeking in the eyes of the spec- 
 tator some response more human, full of the 
 abstraction of youth, to which the world is not yet 
 open, but full of dreams. If our practical, money- 
 making, pleasure-loving painter had found in his 
 busy life any time for symbols, we might take this 
 beautiful face as a representation of that new unde- 
 veloped life seen only to be different from the old, 
 which, with a half weariness and half disdain of the 
 antiquated practices of its predecessors, kneels there 
 along with them in physical subordination but men- 
 tal superiority, not sufficiently awakened to strain 
 against the curb as yet, with opposition only nas- 
 cent: and instinctive separation and abstraction 
 rather than rebellion of thought. But Titian, we 
 may be sure, thought of none of these things. He 
 must have caught the look, half protest, half appeal, 
 that the tired youth (at the same time partially 
 overawed by his position) turned toward him as he 
 knelt; and with the supreme perception of a great 
 artist of meanings more than he takes the trouble 
 to fathom, save for their effect, have secured the 
 look, for our admiration and sympathy evermore. 
 
 In the full maturity of his age and fame Titian 
 removed from his dwelling at San Samuele, where 
 he had lived amid his workshops midway between 
 the two centers of Venetian life, the Rialto and the 
 Piazza, to a luxurious and delightful house in San 
 Cassiano, on that side of Venice which faces Murano 
 and the wide lagoon with all its islands. There is 
 no trace to be found now of that home of delights. 
 The water has receded, the banks have crept out- 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 321 
 
 ward, and the houses of the poor now cover the gar- 
 den where the finest company in Venice once looked 
 out upon one of the most marvelous scenes in the 
 world. The traveler may skirt the bank and linger 
 along the lagoon many a day without seeing the sea 
 fog lift, and the glorious line of the Dolomite Alps 
 come out against the sky. But when that revela- 
 tion occurs to him he will understand the splendor 
 of the scene, and why it was that the painter chose 
 that house, looking out across the garden and its 
 bosquets upon the marvelous line of mountains com- 
 ing sheer down, as appears, to the water's edge, 
 soaring clear upward in wild yet harmonious variety 
 of sharp needles and rugged peaks — here white with 
 snow, there rising in the somber grandeur of the 
 living rock, glistening afar with reflections, the 
 lines of torrents, and every tint that atmosphere 
 and distance give. When the atmosphere, so often 
 heavy with moisture and banked with low-lying 
 cloud, clears, and the sun brings out triumphantly 
 like a new discovery that range of miraculous hills, 
 and the lurid line of the lagoon stretches out and 
 brims over upon the silvery horizon, and the towers 
 of Torcello and Murano in the distance, with other 
 smaller isles, stand up out of the water, miraculous 
 too, with no apparent footing of land upon which to 
 poise themselves, the scene is still beautiful beyond 
 description, notwithstanding the frightful straight 
 lines of red and white wall which inclose San Mich- 
 ele, the burial place of Venice, and the smoke and 
 high chimneys of the Murano glassworks. The 
 walls of San Michele did not exist in Titian's day; 
 but I wonder whether Mr. Ruskin thinks there was 
 no smoke over Murano, even in the ages of primal 
 simplicity and youth. 
 
 There is nothing now but a crowd of somewhat 
 dilapidated houses in these inferior parts of the city, 
 sadly mean and common on close inspection, amid 
 the bewildering maze of small streets through which 
 the traveler is hiirried now to see what is left (which 
 
 21 Venice 
 
i322 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 is nothing) of the house of Titian; and very squalid 
 along the quays of the Fondamenta Nuova, with 
 obvious signs everywhere that this is the back of the 
 town, and freed from all necessity for keeping up 
 appearances. In Titian's day it was a retired 
 suburban quarter, with green fields edging the level 
 shore, and stretching on each side of that garden in 
 which grew the trees, and over which shone the sky 
 which formed the background of the great "Peter 
 Martyr," the picture which was burned in 1867, and 
 which everybody is free to believe was Titian's chef 
 dceuvre. Here the painter gathered his friends 
 about him, and supped gayly in the lovely evenings, 
 while the sun from behind them shot his low rays 
 along the lagoon, and caught a few campaniles here 
 and there gleaming white in the dim line of scarcely 
 visible country at the foot of the hills. If the sun 
 were still too high when the visitors arrived there 
 was plenty to see in the house, looking over the pic- 
 tures with which it was crowded: the wonderful, 
 glowing heads of dukes and emperors; great 
 Charles in all his splendor; or — more splendid still 
 the nymphs and goddesses without any aid of orna- 
 ment, which were destined for all the galleries in 
 Europe. A famous grammarian from Rome, Pris- 
 cian by name, in the month of August, 1540, 
 describes such a party, the <;^wz/2Wj being Aretino ("a 
 new miracle of nature"), Sansovino the architect of 
 San Marco, Nardi the Florentine historian, and 
 himself. 
 
 The house [he says] is situated in the extreme part of Ven- 
 ice on the sea, and from it one sees the pretty Httle island of 
 Murano and other beautiful places. This part of the sea, as 
 soon as the sun went down, swarmed with gondolas, adorned 
 with beautiful women, and resounding with the varied har- 
 mony and music of voices and instruments which till midnight 
 accompanied our delightful supper, which was^no less beauti- 
 ful and well arranged than copious and well provided. Be- 
 sides the most delicate viands and precious wines there were 
 all those pleasures and amusements that were suited to the 
 geason, the guests, and the feast. 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 823 
 
 While they were at their fruit letters arrived 
 from Rome, and there suddenly arose a discussion 
 upon the superiority of Latin to Italian, very excit- 
 ing to the men of letters — though the painters, no 
 doubt, took it more quietly, or looked aside through 
 the trees to where the wonderful silvery gleaming 
 of the sea and sky kept light and life in the evening 
 landscape, or a snowy peak revealed itself like a 
 white cloud upon the gray ; while the magical atmo- 
 sphere, sweet and cool with the breath of night after 
 the fervid day, a world of delicious space about 
 them, thrilled with the soft rush ot the divided water 
 after every gondola, the tinkle of the oar, the sub- 
 dued sounds of voices from the lagoon, and the 
 touching ot the lute. Round the table in the gar- 
 den the sounds of the discussion were perhaps less 
 sweet; but, no doubt, the Venetian promenaders, 
 taking their evening row along the edge of the 
 lagoon, kept as close to the shore as courtesy per- 
 mitted, heard the murmur of the talk with admira- 
 tion, and pointed out where Messer Tiziano, the 
 great painter, feasted and entertained his noble 
 guests in the shade. 
 
 For doubtless Titian, Knight, Count Palatine, 
 with jeweled collar and spurs at heel, was by this 
 time a personage who drew every eye, notwith- 
 standing that the Signoria were but little pleased 
 with him, and after a hundred fruitless representa- 
 tions about that picture in the great hall, took the 
 strong step at last of taking his brokership from 
 him, and calling upon him, in the midst of his care- 
 less superiority, to refund the money which he had 
 been drawing all these years in payment of work 
 which he had never executed. This powerful ap- 
 peal made him set aside his royal commissions for a 
 time and complete the picture in the hall, which 
 was that of a battle, very immaterial to any one 
 now, as it perished with all the rest in the fire. 
 This, however, was a most effectual way of recall- 
 ing the painter to his duties, for he never seems 
 
324 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 throughout his life to have had enough of money, 
 though that indeed is not an unusual case. His 
 letters to his patrons are, however, full to an un- 
 dignified extent with this subject. The emperor 
 had granted him a certain income from the reve- 
 nues of Naples, which however turned out a very 
 uncertain income, and is the subject of endless 
 remonstrance and appeals. To the very end of his 
 life there is scarcely one of his letters in which the 
 failure of this, or of a similar grant upon Milan, or 
 of some other mode in which his royal and imperial 
 patrons had paid for their personal acquisitions by 
 orders upon somebody else's treasury, is not com- 
 plained of. Titian, it would seem, eventually got 
 his money, but not without a great deal of trouble ; 
 fighting for it strenuously by every means that 
 could be thought of. And he pursued his labors 
 ceaselessly; producing pictures of every kind — a 
 Christ one day, a Venus the next — with a serene 
 impartiality. Anything is to be got from Titian 
 for money, says the envoy of King Phlip, after the 
 great days of Charles are over. He pleads for a 
 benefice for his son who is a priest, for the enforce- 
 ment of his claims upon state revenues because of 
 the betrothal of his daughter, and because he is 
 growing old, and for a number of reasons, always 
 eager to have the money at any cost. '*He is old 
 and therefore avaricious," says Philip's ambassador. 
 But to the last he could paint his Venuses, though 
 coarsely, and in the midst of all these studies from 
 the nude suddenly would produce a "Last Sup- 
 per, " credited once more among so many, by the 
 busy coteries and critics, as likely to be Titian's best. 
 At the same time this great and celebrated 
 painter, who thought no harm to fleece the dukes, 
 and to insist upon their money, had and, alas! for- 
 got, it seems, the honor and glory of being Titian, 
 and aimed at a rich man's substance and estimation 
 —this magnificent Venetian, with his feudal powers 
 and title, never forgot little Cadore among the 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 325 
 
 hills, toward which his windows looked, and where 
 his kindred dwelt. There is a letter extant from 
 his cousin, another Titian, but so different, thanking 
 him for his good offices, which among all those let- 
 ters about money is a refreshment to see. The 
 Tiziano of the village regrets deeply to have been 
 absent when his "all but brother" the great Titian, 
 whose name was known over all the world, 
 visited Cadore, and therefore to have been pre- 
 vented from "making proper return for all we owe 
 you, in respect of numerous proofs of friendship 
 shown to our community at large, and in special to 
 our envoys, for all of which you may be assured we 
 have a grateful memory." He then informs his 
 kinsman that two citizens have been appointed as 
 orators or spokesmen of the city to the Signoria of 
 Venice, and implores for them Titian's "favor and 
 assistance, which must insure success." "My son 
 Vecello," continues the writer, "begs you to give 
 him your interest in respect of the place of San 
 Francesco, and this by way of an exchange of serv- 
 ices, as I am ready at all times to second your 
 wishes and consult your convenience"; and finally 
 requests to know when the money is to be paid 
 "which you so courteously lent to the community." 
 "In conclusion we beg of you to command us all ; 
 and should this exchange of services be carried out 
 on both sides, it will be a proof of the utmost kind- 
 ness and charity, in which it is our wish that God 
 should help you for many years. " 
 
 It would be curious to imagine what the little 
 highland borgo could do for Titian in exchange for 
 liis kindnesses. He painted them a picture at a 
 later date for which they paid him in a delightful 
 way, granting him a piece of land upon which he 
 built a cottage. This house jvas pitched on a mar- 
 velous mount of vision on the side of one of those 
 m-agnificent hills; so that his dwelling above and 
 his home below must have exchanged visions, so to 
 speak, in the vast space of blue that lay between. 
 
3L'6 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 But notwithstanding all this glory and honor, 
 there were critics in his own craft and a prevailing 
 sentiment underneath the admiration extorted 
 from Venice, which detracted a little from the fame 
 of Titian. The common people would not love his 
 goddesses, though the princes adored them. The 
 commonalty, with a prejudice which no doubt 
 shows their ignorance, yet has its advantages, 
 never out of Greece approves the nude, whatever 
 connoisseurs may say. And the ambassadors were 
 wanting in respect, yet true to fact, when they said 
 that for money anything could be got from the 
 great painter who never had enough for his needs. 
 Another criticism, which would have affected him 
 more than either of these, was that of some of his 
 great rivals in art, who, with all their admiration, 
 had still something to find fault with in the method 
 of his work. When Titian visited Rome it was the 
 good fortune of Vasari, who had already some ac- 
 quaintance with him, to show him. the great sights 
 of that capital of the world. And one day while 
 Titian was painting his portrait of the Pope, Messer 
 Giorgio, the good Florentine, accompanied by a 
 great countryman of his, no less a personage than 
 Michael Angelo, paid the Venetian painter a visit 
 at his studio in the Belvedere, where they saw the 
 picture of Danae under the rain of gold, a wonder- 
 ful piece of color and delicate flesh painting, which 
 they applauded greatly. But afterward, as they 
 came away, talking together in their grave Tuscan 
 style, the great master of design shook his serious 
 head while he repeated his praises. What a pity, 
 che peccato! that these Venetian painters did not 
 learn to draw from the beginning and had not a 
 more thorough method of teaching — for, said he, 
 "if this man were aided by art, and laws of design, 
 as he is by nature, and by his power of counterfeit- 
 ing life, no one could attain greater excellence than 
 he, having such a noble genius and such a fine and 
 animated manner of working." In almost the 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 327 
 
 same words Sebastian del Piombo lamented to 
 Messer Giorgio the same defect; which certain!}^ 
 must have been Vasari's opinion, too, or his friends 
 would not have remarked it so freely. But they 
 all allowed that he was il piu bello e maggiore imita- 
 tore della Natura than had ever been seen ; and per- 
 haps this was praise enough for one man. 
 
 He lived till ninety, a splendid, successful, pros- 
 perous, but not very elevated or noble life; working 
 on till the very end, not from necessity, or from 
 any higher motive, but apparently from a love of 
 gain and tradesmanlike instinct against refusing 
 any order, as well as, no doubt, from a true love of 
 the beautiful art to which his life had been devoted 
 from childhood up. The boy of ten who had come 
 down from his mountains to clean Zuan Bellini's 
 palette, and pick up the secrets of the craft in his 
 bottega before he was old enough for serious teach- 
 ing, had a long career from that beginning until the 
 day when he was carried to the Frari in hasty state, 
 by special order of the Signoria, to be buried there 
 against all law and rule, while the other victims of 
 the plague were taken in secret to outlying islands, 
 and put into the earth out of the way, in the hideous 
 panic which that horrible complaint brought with 
 it. But never during all this long interval, three 
 parts of a century, had he given up the close pur- 
 suit of his art. And what changes during that time 
 had passed over Art in Venice ! The timid tempera 
 period was altogether extinct — the disciples of the 
 old school all gone; and of the first generation 
 which revolutionized the Venetian botiegas, and 
 brought nature and the secret of lustrous modern 
 color, and ease and humanity into Art, none were 
 left. Bellini and Carpaccio and all the throng of 
 lesser masters had been swept away in the long in- 
 evitable procession of the generations. And their 
 principles had been carried into the sensuous brill- 
 iancy of a development which loved color and the 
 pimpled roundness of flesh, and the beauty which 
 
3'28 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 is of the body rather than the mind. When Titian 
 began, his teachers and masters applied all their 
 faculties to the setting forth of a noble ideal, of per- 
 fect devotion and purity of manhood and woman- 
 hood, with the picturesque clothing and sentiment 
 of their century, yet consecrated by some higher 
 purpose, something in which all the generations 
 should sympathize and be of accord. When he 
 ended, the world was full of images, lovely in their 
 manner, in which the carnagio?ie of the naked limbs, 
 the painting of a dimple, were of more importance 
 than all ttie emotions that touch the soul. It is 
 none of our business to make moral distinctions be- 
 tween the one method and the other. This was the 
 result in Venice of that new inspiration which the 
 older painters had first turned to every pious and 
 noble use. And it was Titian in his love of 
 beauty, in his love of money, in his magnificent 
 faculty of work adaptability to the wishes of the 
 time, that brought it about. His associates of youth 
 all dropped from him, the gentle Palma, now 
 called il Vecchio, dying midway in the career of the 
 robuster companion, as Giorgione had fallen at its 
 beginning. In his long life and endless labors, as 
 well as in his more persevering and steady power, 
 Titian, whatever hints and instructions he may 
 have taken, as his later prosaic biographers sug- 
 gest, from each of them, outdid them both. And 
 there can be no doubt that he still stands above 
 them all, at least in the general estimation, dwell- 
 ing in a supremacy of skill and strength upon the 
 side of the deep, flowing stream that divides 
 Venice, dominating everything that came after 
 him, like the white marble mountain of the Salute, 
 but never learning the heavenly secret of the elder 
 brotherhood who first instructed his youth. 
 
 There are some picturesque anecdotes of Titian 
 which everybody knows, as, for instance, that of 
 the astounding moment in which the painter hav- 
 ing dropped a brush, great Charles, the lord of so 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 329 
 
 many kingdoms, a Spaniard and accustomed to the 
 utmost rigidity of etiquette, the Roman emperor at 
 the apex of human glory, made the hair stand on 
 end of every courtly beholder by picking it up. 
 "Your servant is unworthy of such an honor," said 
 Titian, in words that might have been addressed to 
 something divine. "A Titian is worthy to be 
 served by Caesar," replied his imperial majesty, 
 not undervaluing the condescension, as perhaps a 
 friendly English prince who had acted on impulse, 
 or a more light-hearted Frenchman with the de rien 
 of exquisite courtesy, might have done. Charles 
 knew it was an incident for history, and conducted 
 himself accordingly. There is a prettier and more 
 pleasant suggestion in the scene recorded by 
 Ridolfi, which describes how Titian, while painting 
 Alfonso of Este, the Duke ot Ferrara, was visited 
 by Ariosto with the divino suopoema in his pocket, 
 which he was still in the course of writing— who 
 read aloud his verses for the delight of both sitter 
 and painter, and afterward talked it over, and de- 
 rived much advantage from Titian's criticisms and 
 remarks, which helped him "in the description of 
 landscapes and in setting forth the beauty of Alcina, 
 Angelica, and Bradamante." "Thus," Ridolfi 
 adds, "Art held the office of mute poetry, and 
 poetry of painting eloquent." 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 TINTORETTO. 
 
 When Titian was at the height, or rather ap^ 
 proaching the height, of his honors, a certain little 
 dyer, or dyer's son, a born Venetian, from one of 
 the side canals where the tintori are still by times to 
 be seen, purple-limbed from the dye-houses, was 
 brought to his studio. The lad had daubed with 
 his father's colors since he could walk, tracing fig- 
 ures upon the walls and every vacant space, andj no 
 
m THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 doubt, with his spirito stravagante making- himself a 
 nuisance to all his belongings. Robusto, the father, 
 was a man of sense, no doubt, and saw it was vain 
 to strive against so strong a natural impulse; be- 
 sides, there was no reason why he should do so, for he 
 had no position to forfeit, and the trade of a painter 
 was a prosperous trade, and not one to be despised 
 by any honest citizen. We are not told at what age 
 young Jacopo, the tintorettino^ the little dyer, came 
 into the great painter's studio. But he was born in 
 15 1 2, and if we suppose him to be fifteen or so, no 
 doubt that would be the furthest age which he was 
 likely to have reached before being set to his ap- 
 prenticeship by a prudent Venetian father. The 
 story of his quickly interrupted studies there is told 
 by Ridolfi with every appearance of truthfulness. 
 
 "Not many days after, Titian came into the room 
 where his pupils worked, and seeing at the foot of 
 one of the benches certain papers upon which fig- 
 ures were drawn, asked who had done them. 
 Jacopo, who was the author of the same, afraid to 
 have done wrong, timidly said that they were from 
 his hand. Titian perceiving from these beginnings 
 that the boy would probably become a great man, 
 and give him trouble in his supremacy of art, had 
 no sooner gone upstairs and laid aside his mantle 
 than he called Girolamo, his pupil (for in human 
 breasts jealousy works like a canker), to whom he 
 gave orders to send Jacopo away." 
 
 "Thus," adds Ridolfi, "without hearing the 
 reason, he was left without a master." The story 
 is an ugly one for Titian. Though it is insinuated 
 of other masters that they have regarded the prog- 
 ress of their pupils with alarm, there has been no 
 such circumstantial account of professional jealousy 
 in the very budding of youthful powers. Vasari, 
 who was a contemporary of both, and a friend of 
 Titian, though he does not mention this incident, 
 gives in his sketch of the younger painter a picture 
 which accords in every respect with Ridolfi's de- 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 331 
 
 tailed biography, though the criticism of Vasari has 
 all the boldness of a contemporary, and that lively, 
 amused appreciation with which a calm looker-on 
 beholds the eccentricities of a passionate genius 
 which he admires but cannot understand. Tintor- 
 etto's violence and extravagance had become classi- 
 cal by Ridolfi's time. They were still half ridicu- 
 lous, a thing to talk about with shrugged shoulders 
 and shaken head, in the days when Messer Giorgio 
 of Florence had the story told to him, or perhaps 
 saw with his own eyes the terrible painter rushing 
 with the force of a giant at his work. 
 
 In the same city of Venice [says Vasari, suddenly bursting 
 into this lively narrative in the midst of the labored record of 
 a certain Battista Franco who was nobody] there lived and 
 lives still a painter called Jacopo Tintoretto, full of worth and 
 talent, especially in music and in playing divers instruments, 
 and in other respects amiable in all his actions; but in matters 
 of art, extravagant, capricious, swift, and resolute ; and the 
 most hot-headed \il piu terribile cervello] that ever has taken 
 painting in hand, as may be seen in all his works and in the 
 fantastic composition which he puts together in his own way, 
 different from the use and custom of other painters ; surpassing 
 extravagance with new and capricious inventions, and strange 
 whims of intellect ; working on the spur of the moment and 
 without design, almost as if art was a mere pleasantry. 
 Sometimes he will put forth sketches as finished pictures, so 
 roughly dashed in that the strokes of the brush are clearly 
 visible, as if done by accident or in defiance rather than by 
 design and judgment. He has worked almost in every style 
 — in fresco, in oil, portraits from nature, and at every price ; 
 in such a way that, according to their different modes, he has 
 painted and still paints the greater number of the pictures 
 that are executed in Venice. And as in his youth he showed 
 much understanding in many fine works, if he had known the 
 great principle which there is in nature, and aided it with 
 study and cool judgment, as those have done who have fol- 
 lowed the fine methods of their predecessors, and had not, as 
 he has done, abandoned this practice, he would Ijave been one 
 of the best painters who have ever been known in Venice — 
 not that it should be understood by this that he is not actually 
 a fine and good painter, of a vivid, fanciful, and gracious 
 spirit. 
 
 How this swift, imperious, masterful genius was 
 formed, Ridolfi tells us with much more detail than 
 
332 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 is usual, and with many graphic touches; himself 
 waking up in the midst of his somewhat dry biog- 
 raphies with a quickened interest, and that pleasure 
 in coming across a vigorous, original human being 
 amid so many shadows which none but a writer of 
 biographical sketches can fully know. No one of 
 all our painters stands out of the canvas like the 
 dyer's son, robust as his name, a true type, perhaps 
 the truest of all, of his indomitable race. When he 
 was turned out of Titian's studio, "everyone may 
 conceive," says Ridolfi, "what disgust he felt in his 
 mind." 
 
 But such affronts become sometimes powerful stimulants to 
 tlie noble spirit, and afford material for generous resolutions. 
 Jacopo, excited by indignation, altbcugh still but a boy, 
 turned over in his mind how to carry on the career be had be- 
 gun — and not allowing himself to be carried away by passion, 
 knowing the greatness of Titian, whose honors were predicted 
 by all, he considered in every way how, by means of studying 
 the works of that master, and the relievos of Michael Angelo 
 P>uornarotti, reputed father of design, he might become a 
 painter. Thus, with the help of these two divine lights, 
 whom painting and sculpture have rendered so illustrious in 
 modern times, he went forward toward his desired end ; well 
 advised to|[provide himself with secure escort to point out the 
 path to him in difficult passages. And in order not to deviate 
 from his proposed course he inscribed the laws which were to 
 regulate his studies upon the walls of the cabinet in which he 
 pursued them, as follows: 
 
 "II desegno di Michel Angelo, e'l Colorito di Titiano." 
 
 Upon this he set himself to collect from all quarters, not 
 without great expense, casts of ancient marbles ; and procured 
 from Florence the miniature models done by Daniele Volter- 
 rano from the figures upon the tombs of the Medici, in San 
 Lorenzo in that city; that is, the "Aurora," the "Twilight," 
 the "Day" and the "Night," of which he made a special 
 study ; making drawings of them from every side, and by the 
 light of a lamp, m order, by the strong shadows thrown from 
 this light, to form in himself a powerful and effective manner. 
 In the same way, every arm, hand, and torso which he could 
 collect he drew over and over again on colored paper with 
 charcoal, in water-colors, and every other way in which he 
 could teach himself what was necessary for the uses of art. 
 . . . Nor did he give up copying the pictures of Titian, upon 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 333 
 
 which he established an excellent method of color so that 
 many things painted by him in the flower of his age retain all 
 the advantages of that style to which he added those of much 
 observation from his continual studies, and thus following the 
 traces of the best masters, advanced with great steps toward 
 perfection. 
 
 We need not follow Ridolfi in his detailed account 
 of all the experiments of the self-instructed painter 
 — how he "departed from the study of nature alone, 
 which for the most part produces things imperfect, 
 not conjoining, except rarely, all the parts of cor- 
 responding beauty" ; how he improvised for himself 
 a course of anatomy; how he forestalled the lay 
 figures of modern times by models of wax and plas- 
 ter, upon which he hung his draperies: how he ar- 
 ranged his lights, both by day and night, so as to 
 throw everything into bold relief. His invention 
 seems to have been endless; in his solitary work- 
 shop, without the aid of any master, the young man 
 faced by himself all the difficulties of his art, and 
 made for himself many of the aids which the inge- 
 nuity of later ages has been supposed to contrive 
 for the advantage of the student. Nor did he con- 
 fine himself to his studio, or to those endless expe- 
 dients for seeing his models on every side, and 
 securing the effect of them in every light. 
 
 He also continued, in order to practice himself in the man- 
 agement of color, to visit every place where painting was 
 going on — and it is said that, drawn by the desire of work, he 
 went with the builders to Cittadella, where round the rays of 
 the clock he painted various fanciful matters, solely to relieve 
 his mind of some of the innumerable thoughts that filled it. 
 He went much about also among the painters of lower pre- 
 tensions who worked in the Piazza of San Marco on the 
 painters' benches, to learn their method too. 
 
 The painters' benches, le banche per depintori, 
 were, as Ridolfi tells us in another place, under the 
 porticoes in the Piazza, where, according to an 
 ancient privilege granted by the Senate, the poorer 
 or humbler members of the profession plied their 
 trade; painting on chests and probably other arti- 
 
334 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 cles of furniture *' histories, foliage, grotesque, and 
 other bizarre things." They would seem to have 
 worked in the open air, unsheltered save by the 
 arches of the colonnade, where now tourists sip their 
 ices, and gossiping politicians congregate; and to 
 have sold their wares as they worked, a lowly but 
 not unprofitable 'branch of an already too much fol- 
 lowed profession. The depintori da banche seem to 
 have been a recognized section of artists, and such a 
 painter as Schiavone was fain by times in his pov- 
 erty, we are told, to get a day's work from a friend 
 of this humble order. The dyer's son, it is evi- 
 dent, had no such need. He went but to look on; 
 to watch how they got those bold effects which told 
 upon the cassetto?ie for a bourgeois bride, or the finer 
 ornamentation of the coffer which was to inclose the 
 patrician lady's embroideries of gold. He scorned 
 no instruction, wherever he could find it, this deter- 
 mined student, whom Titian had refused to teach. 
 And it adds a new feature to that ancient Venice 
 which was so like, yet unlike, the present city of the 
 sea, to behold thus clearly, in the well-known scene, 
 the painters on their benches, with their long pan- 
 els laid out for sale, and admiring groups lingering 
 in their walk to watch over the busy artist's shoul- 
 der the progress he was making, or to cheapen the 
 fine painted lid of a box which was wanted for some 
 approaching wedding. The new porticoes were not 
 yet quite completed, and the chippings of the stones, 
 and all the dust of the mason's work, must have 
 disturbed the painters, who were of too little ac- 
 count to trouble Sansovino, the fine architect, who 
 was then piling up the Procuratie Nuove in those 
 dignified masses, over the heads of all the gay and 
 varied life going on below. 
 
 In those days [adds Ridolfi], which may be called the happy 
 days of painting, there abounded in Venice many youths of 
 fine genius, who, full of talent, made great progress in art, 
 exhibiting in emulation one with another the result of their 
 labors in the Merceria in order to kuow the opinions of the 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 335 
 
 spectators; where also Tintoretto, with his inventions and 
 fancies, did not fail to show the effects which God and nature 
 had worked in him. And among the things which he thus 
 exhibited were two portraits, one of himself with a relievo in 
 his hand , the other of his brother playing the harp, repre- 
 sented by night with such tremendous force [co7t si ierribile 
 7naiiiera\ that every beholder was struck with amazement; at 
 sight of which a gentle bystander, moved by the sight of so 
 much poetic rapture, sung thus: 
 
 "Si Tinctorettus noctes sic lucet in umbris 
 Exorto faciet quid radiante Die?" 
 He exhibited also in Rialto a history with many figures, the 
 fame of which reached the ears of Titian himself, who, going 
 up to it in haste, could not contain his praises, though he 
 wished no good to his despised scholar; genius \la virtu] 
 being of that condition that, even when full of envy ; it can- 
 not withhold praise of true merit though in an enemy. 
 
 With all this, however, Tintoretto did not prosper 
 in the exercise of his profession. He got no com- 
 missions like the other young men. The cry was 
 all for Pal ma Vecchio, for Pordenone, for Bonfazio, 
 says Ridolfi, perhaps not too exact in his dates; but 
 above all, for Titian, who received most of the com- 
 missions of importance. Titian himself, however, 
 was, at the probable time referred to, about 1530, 
 the earliest date at which Tintoretto could possibly 
 match himself against the elder painters, much 
 pressed by Pordenone, to whom the Senate were 
 anxious to hand over his uncompleted work. In 
 short, it is evident that the brotherhood of art was 
 already suffering from too much competition. The 
 dyer's energetic son, who seems to have had no 
 pinch ot necessity forcing him to paint cassettoni like 
 the other poor painters, moved heaven and earth 
 with the high-handed vigor which pecuniary inde- 
 pendence gives, to get work for himself, and to 
 make himself known. If it was work which did not 
 pay, no matter; the determined painter took it in 
 hand all the same; and to poor churches in need of 
 decoration his advent would be a godsend. 
 AVhether it was an organ that wanted painting, or the 
 front of a house, or an altar-piece for a little out- 
 of-the-way chapel, he was ready for all. On one 
 
336 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 occasion a house which was being built near the 
 Ponte deir Angelo seemed to him to afford a fitting 
 opportunity for the exhibition of his powers. He 
 addressed himself, accordingly, to the builders — 
 with whom it seems to have been the interest of the 
 painters to keep a good understanding, and who 
 were often intrusted with the responsibility of 
 ordering such frescoes as might be required, — who 
 informed him that the master of the house did not 
 want any frescoes painted. But Tintoretto, intoxi- 
 cated, no doubt, with the prospect of that fine, fair 
 wall all to himself, to cover as he would, "deter- 
 mined, in one way or another, to have the painting 
 of it," and proposed to the master-mason to paint 
 the house for nothing: for the price of the colors 
 merely. This offer, being submitted to the propri- 
 etor, was promptly accepted, and the painter had 
 his way. 
 
 Something of the same kind happened, according 
 to Ridolfi, in a more serious undertaking at the 
 church of the Madonna dell' Orto. With his many 
 thoughts "boiling in his fruitful brain," and with 
 an overwhelming desire to prove himself the bold- 
 est painter in the world, he suddenly proposed to 
 the prior of this convent to paint the two sides of 
 the chief chapel behind the great altar. The fres- 
 coed house-fronts are visible no longer, but the 
 two vast pictures in this chapel remain to tell the 
 tale. The spaces were fifty feet in height, and the 
 prior laughed as the mad suggestion, thinking that 
 for such a work the whole year's income of the con- 
 vent would scarcely be enough; and, without taking 
 any notice of the proposal, bade the painter good-day. 
 But Tintoretto, taking no heed of this dismissal, 
 went on to say that he would ask nothing for the 
 work, but only the cost of the material, giving his 
 own time and labor as a gift. These words made 
 the prior pause; for who could doubt that to have 
 two such huge illustrations, superior to all around, 
 without paying anything for them, would be balm 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 337 
 
 to any Venetian's thoughts? Finally the bargain 
 was made and the work begun, the painter flinging 
 himself upon it with all his strength. The two 
 great pictures — one representing the return of 
 Moses, after receiving the Tablets of the Law, to 
 find that all Israel was worshiping the golden calf, 
 the other the Last Judgment — were promptly exe- 
 cuted, and still remain, gigantic, to the admiration 
 of all spectators. The fame of this strange bargain 
 ran through the city, and attracted the attention of 
 all classes. The critics and authorities shook their 
 heads and lamented over the decay of art which had 
 to resort to such measures. "But little cared Tin- 
 toretto for the discussions of the painters, proposing 
 to himself no other end than self-satisfaction and 
 glory — little useful as these thing are." 
 
 Both Vasari and Ridolfi concur in the story of a 
 certain competition at the school of San Rocco, in 
 which Tintoretto was to contend with Schiavone, 
 Salviati, and Zucchero for the ornamentation of a 
 portion of the ceiling. While the others prepared 
 drawings and designs, this tremendous competitor 
 had the space measured, and with all his fire of 
 rapid execution, in which nobody could touch him — • 
 so that Vasari says, when the others thought he had 
 scarcely begiin, he had already finished — set to work 
 to paint a picture of the subject given. When the 
 day of the competition arrived he conveyed his 
 canvas to the spot, and had it secretly fixed up in 
 its place and covered— and after the other competi- 
 tors had exhibited their drawings he, to the conster- 
 nation of all, snatched away the linen which covered 
 his picture and revealed it completed. A great 
 uproar, as might be supposed, arose. What the feel- 
 ings of his rivals were, seeing this march which he 
 had stolen upon them, may be imagined; but he 
 authorities of the confraterniia, solemnly assembled 
 to sit upon the merits of the respective designs, 
 were no less moved. They told him with indigna- 
 tion that they had met to inspect designs and choose 
 
 22 Venice 
 
338 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 one which pleased them for after-execution, not to 
 have a finished picture thrust upon them. To which 
 Tintoretto answered that this was his method of 
 designing, that he could not do otherwise, and that 
 designs and models ought to be so executed, in order 
 that no one should be deceived as to their ultimate 
 effect; and finally, that if they did not wish to pay 
 him he willingly made a present of the picture to 
 the saint. "And thus saying," adds Vasari, 
 "though there was still much opposition, he pro- 
 duced such an effect that the work is there to this 
 day." Ridolfi, enlarging the tale, describes how 
 the other painters, stupefied by the sight of so great 
 a work executed in so few days and so exquisitely 
 ftnished, gathered up their drawings and told the 
 fraternity that they withdrew from the competition, 
 Tintoretto by the merit of his work having fairly 
 won the victory. Notwithstanding which the heads 
 of the corporation still insisted that he should take 
 away his picture; declaring that they had given 
 him no commission to paint it, but had desired only 
 to have sketches submitted to them that they 
 might give the work to whoever pleased them best. 
 When, however, he flung the picture at their heads, 
 so to speak, and they found themselves obliged to 
 keep it, whether they liked it or not (for they could 
 not by their law refuse a gift made to their saint) 
 milder counsels prevailed, and finally the greater 
 part of the votes were given to Tintoretto, and it 
 was decided that he should be paid a just price for 
 his work. He was afterward formally appointed to 
 do all that was necessary for the future adornment 
 of the scuola, and received from the society a grant 
 of a hundred ducats yearly for his whole life; he 
 on his side binding himself to paint a picture for 
 them every year. 
 
 This proceeding proves the justice of what Vasari 
 says, always with a certain half-amusement, 
 "These works, and many others which he left 
 behind him, were done by Tintoretto so rapidly that 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 339 
 
 when others scarcely believed him to have begun 
 he had finished; and the wonderful thing was that 
 though he had adopted the most extravagant 
 methods in the world to secure commissions, yet, 
 when he failed to do so by interest or friendship, he 
 was ready to sacrifice all gain and give his work at 
 a small price, or for nothing, so as to force its 
 acceptance, in order that one way or other he should 
 succeed in getting the work to do." 
 
 Ridolfi adds that the Scuola of San Rocco, when 
 completed, became in itself a sort of Accademia, 
 
 The resort of the studious in painting, and in particular of all 
 the foreigners from the other side of the Alps who came to 
 Venice at that time; Tintoretto's works serving as examples 
 of composition, of grace, and harmony of design, of the man- 
 agement of light and shade, and force and freedom of color ; 
 and, in short, of all that can be called most accurate and can 
 most exhibit the gifts of the ingenious painter. 
 
 The pilgrim from beyond the Alps, who follows 
 his predecessors into the echoing halls of San 
 Rocco, can judge for himself still of the great works 
 thus eulogized, and see the picture which Tinto- 
 retto fixed upon the roof, while his rivals prepared 
 their drawings, and which he flung, as it were, at 
 the brotherhood when they demurred. His footsteps 
 are all over Venice, in almost every church and 
 wherever pictures are to be seen — from the great 
 **Paradiso" in the Council Hall, the greatest picture 
 in one sense in the world, down to the humblest 
 chapels, parish churches, sacristies, there is scarcely 
 an opportunity which he has neglected to make him- 
 self seen and known. According to the evidence of 
 the historians of art, Titian never forgave the boy 
 whose greatness he had foreseen, and there is at 
 least one subject, that of the Presentation, which 
 the two painters have treated with a certain sim- 
 ilarity, with what one cannot but feel must, in the 
 person of the younger at least, have been an in- 
 tended rivalry. These two splendid examples of art 
 remain, if not side by side, as the pictures of Tur- 
 
340 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 ner hang beside the serene splendor of the Claudes 
 in our own National Gallery, yet with an emulation 
 not dissimilar, which in some minds will always 
 militate against the claims of the artist whose aim 
 is to prove that he is the better man. The same 
 great critic who has been the life-long champion of 
 Turner against the claims of his long dead rival has 
 in like manner espoused those of the later master 
 in Venice And in respect to these particular 
 pictures, they are, we believe, a sort of test of art 
 understanding by which the Illuminati judge the 
 capacity of the less instructed according to the 
 preference they give. However that may be, Tin- 
 toretto's greatness, the wonderful sweep and gran- 
 deur which his contemporaries call stravagajite, the 
 lavish power with which he treats every subject — 
 nothing too great, too laborious, for his hand — can- 
 not fail to impress the beholder. He works like a 
 giant, flinging himself abroad "upon the wings of 
 all the winds"; with something of the immortal 
 Bottom in him, determined to do the lion too, at 
 which a keen observer like Visari cannot but smile; 
 and yet no clown but a demi-god, full of power, if 
 also full of emulation and determination to be the 
 best. But the man is still more remarkable than 
 his work, and to the lover of human nature more 
 interesting — an ideal Venetian, rather of the 
 fifteenth than of the sixteenth century, in his impe- 
 rious independence and self-will and resolution to 
 own no master. All the arrogance of the well- 
 to-do citizen is in him: he who will take the wall of 
 any man, and will not yield a jot or tittle of his own 
 pretensions for the most splendid gallant or the 
 greatest genius in Christendom; one who is not to 
 be trifled with or condescended to — nor will submit 
 to any parleying about his work or undervaluing of 
 his manhood. No fine patrician, no company even 
 ot his townsfolk, he was resolved should play 
 patron to him. He did not require their money — 
 one large ingredient in such a character; he could 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 341 
 
 afford to do without them, to fling his pictures at 
 their heads if need were, to execute their commis- 
 sions for love, or, at least, for glory, not for their 
 pay, or anything they could do for him ; but all the 
 same not to be shut out from any competition that 
 w^as going, not to be thrust aside by the foolish 
 preference of the emploj^er for any other workman; 
 determined that he, and he only, should have every 
 great piece of work there was to do. 
 
 Ridojfi, who lingers upon every incident with the 
 pleasure of an enthusiast, and who is entirely on 
 Tintoretto's side against Titian and all his fine com- 
 pany of critics, tells how the painter once inquired 
 — with the naivete of an ignorance which he was 
 rather proud to show of all court practices and finery 
 — what was the meaning of a certain act which he 
 saw performed by King Henry of France on the 
 occasion of his visit to Venice. Tintoretto had 
 made up his mind to paint a portrait of the king, 
 with a sort of republican sentiment, half admiration, 
 half contempt, for that strange animal, and in order 
 to do this threw aside his toga (which his wife had 
 persuaded him to wear, though he had no real right 
 to that patrician garment), and, putting on the 
 livery of the doge, mingled in the retinue by which 
 his majesty was attended, and hung about in the 
 antechambers, marking the king's individuality, 
 his features and ways, until his presence and object 
 were discovered, and he was admitted to have a 
 formal sitting. The painter observed that from 
 time to time certain personages were introduced to 
 the king, who touched them lightly on the shoulder 
 with his sword, adding divers ceremonies. What 
 did it mean, he asked with simplicity, probably 
 somewhat affected, as the courtier chamberlain, who 
 was his friend, approached him in all the import- 
 tance of office? The Polonius of the moment 
 explained with pompous fullness, and added that 
 Tintoretto must prepare to go through the same 
 ceremony in his own person, since the king intended 
 
342 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 to make a knight of him. Ridolfi says that the 
 painter modestly declined the honor — more proba- 
 bly strode off with sturdy contempt and a touch of 
 unrestrained derision; very certain that, whatever 
 Titian and the others might think, no king's touch 
 upon his shoulder, or patent of rank conferred, could 
 make any difference to him! 
 
 And notwithstanding that all the historians are 
 anxious to record, as a set-off against these wild 
 ways, the fact that he was very amiable in his pri- 
 vate life, and fond of music, and to suonare il liuto, 
 here is a little story which makes us feel that it must 
 have been somewhat alarming if he had any griev- 
 ance against one, to be left alone with Tintoretto. 
 On some occasion not explained, the painter met 
 Pietro Aretino, the infamous but much-courted man 
 of letters, who was the center of the fine company, 
 the friend of Titian, the representative ot luxury 
 and corruption in Venice, and invited him to his 
 house, under pretense of painting his portrait. 
 
 When Aretino had come in and disposed himself to sit, 
 Tintoretto with much violence drew forth a pistol from under 
 his vest. Aretino, in alarm, fearing that he was about to be 
 brought to account, cried out, "What are yoti doing, Jacopo?" 
 "I am going to take your measure," said the other. And 
 beginning to measure from the head to the feet, at last he 
 said sedately, "Your height is two pistols and a half." "Oh, 
 you mad fellow!" cried the other, recovering his courage. 
 But Aretino spoke ill of Tintoretto no more. 
 
 Perhaps it is the absence of what we may call the 
 literary faculty in these great painters that makes 
 their appeal so much more exclusively to the con- 
 noisseur in art, to the critic qualified to judge on 
 technical and classical rounds — to the expert, in 
 short — than to the amateur who seeks in pictures 
 and in books the sympathy of humanity, the fine 
 suggestion which rouses the imagination, the touch 
 that goes to the heart. The earlier masters, perhaps 
 in all regions (after they have a little surmounted 
 the difficulties of pictorial expression), possess this 
 gift in higher development than their successors, 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 343 
 
 who, carrying art to its perfection of design and 
 color, not unusually leave the heart and the imagin- 
 ation of the spectator altogether out of the reckon- 
 ing. The Bellini and Carpaccio are all strong in this 
 impulse, which is common to poet and story-teller, 
 whether in the graver paths of history or in the 
 realms of fiction. They appeal to something in us 
 which is more than the eye; they never lose touch 
 of human sentiment, in the Venetian streets all full 
 of a hundred histories; in the legends of love and 
 martyrdom which are of universal potency; in the 
 sweetest ideal of life, the consecrated women and 
 children. Ursula wrapped in maiden sleep, with 
 the winged angel knight touching the sweet edge 
 of her dreams ; or throned in a simple majesty of 
 youth and sacred purity and love divine, the Mother 
 holding up to men and angels the Hope and Savior 
 of mankind; or with a friendly glow of sympathetic 
 nature diffused all round, the group of neighbors 
 gazing at the procession in the Piazza, the women 
 kneeling on the edge of the waterway to see the 
 sacred relic go by. Such visions do not come to us 
 from the magnificence of Titian or the gigantic 
 power, stravagame^ of Tintoretto. A few noble 
 heads of senators are all that haunt our memory, or 
 enter into our friendship from the hand of the latter 
 painter; and even they are too stern sometimes, 
 too authoritative and conscious of their dignity, that 
 we should venture to employ such a word as friend- 
 ship. Titian's senators are more suave, and he 
 leaves us now and then a magnificent fair lady to 
 fill us with admiration — but except, one or two of 
 such fine images, how little is there that holds pos- 
 session of our love and liking, and as we turn away, 
 insists on being remembered! Not anything cer- 
 tainly in the great "Assumption," splendid as it is, 
 and perfect as it may be. Light, shade, color, 
 science, and beauty, are all there, but human feel- 
 ing has been left out in the magnificent composition. 
 1 return for my part with a great and tender pleas- 
 
344 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 ure to the silence and vast solemnity of the Frari, 
 where that one young serious face in the great 
 Pesaro picture looks out of the canvas suddenly, 
 wistfully, asking the meaning of many things, into 
 the spectator's heart — with a feeling that this is 
 about the one thing which the great Titian has ever 
 said to me. 
 
 It is impossible and unnecessary for us, standing 
 in the place of the unlearned, to go into full detail 
 of the painters of Venice, or discuss the special 
 qualities of Cima in all his silvery sweetness, or the 
 gentle Palma, or the bolder Pordenone, or the long 
 list of others who through many glowing and 
 beautiful pieces of painting conducted art from per- 
 fection to decay. The student knows where to find 
 all that can be said on the subject, which has indeed 
 produced an entire literature of its own. When all 
 is said that can be said about the few inaccurate 
 dates, and mistaken stories, with which he is cred- 
 ited, Messer Giorgio of Florence, the graphic and 
 delightful Vasari, remains always the best guide. 
 But, alas! he was not a Venetian, and his histories 
 of the painters of Venice are generally modified by 
 the reflection, more or less disguised, that if they 
 had but had the luck to be Florentines they might 
 have been great: or at least must have been much 
 greater — even the great Titian himself. 
 
 We have ventured to speak of some of the works 
 of Titian as decorative art. The productions of the 
 last great painter whose name will naturally recur 
 to every lover of Venice, the splendid and knightly 
 Paul Veronese, claim this character still more dis- 
 tinctively — as if the great republic, unapproachable 
 in so many ways, had seized a new splendor, and 
 instead of tapestries or humbler mural adornments, 
 hadcontentedherself with nothing less than the hand 
 of genius to ornament her walls. These wonderful 
 halls and balconies, those great banquets spread as 
 upon a more lordly dais of imagination and exquis- 
 ite skill, those widening vistas of columns and bal- 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 345 
 
 ustrades thronged with picturesque retainers, the 
 tables piled with glowing fruit and vessels of gold 
 and silver, in a mimic luxury more magnificent than 
 any fact, transport the spectator with a sense of 
 greatness, of wealth, of width and space, and ever 
 beautiful adornments, which perhaps impairs our 
 appreciation of the art of the painter in its purer 
 essence. No king ever enlarged and furnished and 
 decorated his palace like the Veronese; the fine 
 rooms in which these pictures are hung are but ante- 
 chambers to the grander space which opens beyond 
 in the painter's canvas. It is scarcely enough, 
 though magnificent in its way, to see them hanging 
 like other pictures in a gallery, amon'g the works of 
 other masters — for then their purpose is lost, and 
 half their grandeur. The "Marriage of Cana" is 
 but a picture in the Louvre ; but in Venice, as we 
 walk into such a presence and see the splendid party 
 serenely banqueting, with the sky opening into 
 heavenly blue behind them, the servants bringing 
 in the courses, appearing and disappearing behind the 
 columns, the carpet flung in all its Oriental wealth 
 of color upon the cool semi-transparence of the 
 marble steps, the room, of which this forms one 
 side, is transformed forever. Were it the humblest 
 chamber in the world, it would be turned into a 
 palace before our eyes. Never were there such 
 noble and princely decorations; they widen the 
 space, they fill the far-withdrawing anterooms 
 with groups worthy the reception of a king. Mr. 
 Ruskin gives a lively account, from the records of 
 Venice, of how Messer Paolo was had up before the 
 Inquisition, no less, on the charge of having intro- 
 duced unbecoming and undignified figures, negra 
 pages, and even little dogs, into pictures meant for 
 the church — where, indeed, such details were, no 
 doubt, out of places. But Paul of Verona was not 
 the man to paint religious pictures, having no turn 
 that way. He is a painter for palaces, not for 
 churches. Mind of man never devised presence 
 
346 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 chamber or splendid hall that he could not have 
 rendered more splendid. Notwithstanding the 
 prominence of the negro pages, and many an attend- 
 ant beside, his lords of the feast are all the finest 
 gentlemen, his women courtly and magnificent. It 
 is the best of company that sits at that table, 
 whether the wine is miraculous or only the common 
 juice of the grape; even should the elaboration of 
 splendid dress be less than that which Titian loves. 
 The effect is a more simple one than his, the result 
 almost more complete. So might the walls of hea- 
 ven be painted, the vestibules and the corridors: 
 still leaving, as poor Florentine Andrea sighs in 
 Mr. Browning's poem, "four great walls in the 
 New Jerusalem" for a higher emulation, 
 
 "For Leonard, Raphael, Agnolo, and me" 
 to try their best upon. 
 
 The fashion of fresco painting on the outsides ot 
 the houses still continued, and was largely practiced 
 also by Paolo Veronese ; but let us hope that the far 
 more splendid internal decoration supplied by his 
 pictures had some effect, along with the good sense 
 native to the Venetians and their sound practical 
 faculty, in putting an end to so great a waste of 
 power and genius as these outside pictures proved. 
 They were already fading out by Paolo's time, sink- 
 ing into pale shadows of what they had been, those 
 pictured images with which Giorgione and young 
 Titian had made the ugly German factory for a 
 moment glorious: and the art which had been so 
 superb in their hands had sunk also to the execution 
 of pictured colonnades and feigned architecture, 
 such as still lingers about Italy, not to anyone's 
 advantage. Upon such things as these, false per- 
 spectives and fictitious grand facades with imitation 
 statues in unreal relief, even Paolo spent much of 
 his time, though he could do so much better. And 
 thus the fashion wore itself into poverty and decad- 
 ence, as fashions have a way of doing, going out in 
 ridicule as well as in decay. 
 
PART IV.— MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE GUEST OF VENICE. 
 
 Nothing can be more difficult to explain than the 
 manner in which the greater gifts of human genius 
 are appropriated — to some regions lavishly, to 
 some scarcely at all, notwithstanding that the intel- 
 lectual qualities of the race may be as good, pos- 
 sibly indeed may reach a higher average in the one 
 neglected than in the one favored. We fear that no 
 theory that has ever been invented will suffice to 
 explain why the great form of Dante, like a moun- 
 tain shadowing over the whole peninsula, should 
 have been given to Florence, and nothing to Ven- 
 ice, not so much as a minor minstrel to celebrate 
 the great deeds of the republic which was the most 
 famous and the greatest of all Italian republics, and 
 which maintained its independence when all its 
 rivals and sisters lost theirs. Petrarch, too, was 
 a Florentine by origin, only not born there because 
 of one of the accidents of ■ her turbulent history. 
 Boccaccio, the first of Italian story-tellers, belonged 
 to the same wonderful city. But to Venice on her 
 seas, with the charm of a great poem in every vari- 
 ation of her aspect, with the harmonies of the sea 
 in her very streets, not one. We have to find her 
 reflected in the mild eyes of a temporary visitor, in 
 the learned and easy yet formal talk of the friendly 
 canon, half French, half Italian, who, all the vagar- 
 ies ot his youth over, came, elderly and famous, and 
 never without an eye to his own comfort and inter- 
 est, to visit the great Mistress for the Seas, taking 
 
 347 
 
348 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 refuge there, "in this city, true home of the human 
 race," from trouble and war and pestilence outside. 
 The picture given by Dom Francesco, the great 
 poet, laureate of all the world, the friend of kings 
 and princes, is in some ways very flattering to our 
 city. He was received with great honor there as 
 everywhere, and found himself in the center of an 
 enlightened and letter-loving society. But his res- 
 idence was only temporary, and, save Petrarch, no 
 poet of a high order has ever associated himself with 
 the life of Venice, much less owed his birth or 
 breeding to her. The reader will not fail to recol- 
 lect another temporary and recent visitor, whose 
 traces are still to be seen about Venice, and whose 
 record remains, though not such as any lover of 
 poetry would love to remember, in all the extrava- 
 gance and ostentatious folly natural to the character 
 of Lord Byron; but that was in the melancholy 
 days when Venice had almost ceased to be. Save 
 tor such visitors and for certain humble breathings 
 of the nameless, such as no homely village is entirely 
 without, great Venice has no record in poetry. 
 Her powerful, vigorous, subtle, and imaginative 
 race has never learned how to frame the softest 
 dialect of Italy, the most musical ot tongues, into 
 any lined sweetness of verse. The reason is one 
 which we cannot pretend to divine, and which no 
 law of development or natural selection seems cap- 
 able of accounting for. 
 
 Petrarch was not only a poet, but a patriot in the 
 larger sense of the word — a sense scarcely known 
 in his day. Perhaps the circumstances that he was 
 an exile from his birth, and that his youth had been 
 sheltered in a neighboring country, from which he 
 could see in all the force of perspective the madness 
 of those Italian states which spent all their strength 
 in tearing each other in pieces, had elevated him to 
 that pitch of enlightenment, unknown to the fierce 
 inhabitants of Genoa, Venice, and Florence, each 
 determined to the death that his own city should be 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 349 
 
 the first. Petrarch is worthy of a higher niche for 
 this than for his poetry, a civic wreath above his 
 laurel. His first appearance in connection with 
 Venice is in a most earnest and eloquent letter 
 addressed to his friend Andrea Dandolo, the first 
 serious chronicler of Venice, and a man learned in 
 all the knowledge of the time, whom the poet, who 
 probably had made acquaintance with the noble 
 Venetian at learned Padua, or in some neighboring 
 court or castle whither scholars and wits loved to 
 resort, addresses with an impassioned pleading for 
 peace. One of the endless wars with Genoa was 
 then beginning, and Petrarch adduces every arga 
 ment, and appeals to every motive — above all "Ital- 
 ian as 1 am," to the dreadful folly which drives to 
 arms against each other 
 
 the two most powerful peoples, the two most flourishing 
 cities, the two most splendid stars of Italy, which, to my judg- 
 ment, the great mother nature has placed here and there, 
 posted at the doorway of the Italian race. Italians, for the 
 ruin of Italians, invoke the help of barbarous allies [he adds]. 
 And what hope of aid can remain to unhappy Italy when, as 
 if it were a small matter to see her sons turn against her, 
 she is overrun also by strangers called by them to help in the 
 parricide? 
 
 But not even enlightened Dandolo, the scholar 
 doge, thought of Italy in those days, and though the 
 poet's protest does not seem to have alienated his 
 friend, it was entirely without avail. Two years 
 after, in 1353, an embassy, of which Petrarch was 
 one of the principal members, was sent from Milan, 
 on the part of the Visconti, to attempt to negotiate 
 a peace. This was not his first visit to Venice, and 
 it cannot hai^e been an agreeable one. One of the 
 chroniclers indeed says that much as Doge Andrea 
 loved the poet, and strong as was the attraction of 
 such a visitor to a man of his tastes, the occasion 
 was so painful that he refused to see Petrarch. It 
 does not seem, however, that this was the case, for 
 the poet, in a subsequent letter to Dandolo, reminds 
 the doge ot his visit and its object. After two 
 
S50 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 battles, — after the Hellespont and the Ionian sea 
 had twice been reddened by such a lake of blood as 
 might well extinguish the flames of cruel war, — *'at 
 mediator of peace, I was sent by our greatest 
 among great Italians to you, the most wise of all 
 the doges, and to your citizens. Such and so many 
 things I said in the council over which you presided, 
 such and so many in your private rooms, as must 
 still remain in your ears. But all was in vain; for 
 neither your great men, nor, what was more wonder- 
 ful, yourself, could be moved by any salutary coun- 
 sel or just prayer — the impetuosity of war, the 
 clamor of arms, the remains of ancient hatred hav- 
 ing closed the way." The letter in which Petrarch 
 repeats this fruitless attempt at mediation was writ- 
 ten in May, 1354, a year after, and still with the 
 same object. The Venetians had been conquerers 
 on the first occasion, but the fortune of war had 
 now turned, and in September of the same year 
 Doge Andrea died, just before one of those final and 
 crushing defeats which Venice over and over again 
 .had to submit to from Genoa, without ever ceasing 
 to seize the first opportunity of beginning again. 
 
 It was not, however, till several years after that 
 it occurred to the much- wandering poet to fix his 
 habitation in Venice. This was in the latter por- 
 tion of Petrarch's life. Romance and Laura had 
 long departed out of it. He was already the 
 crowned poet, acknowledged the greatest, and, 
 save for an occasional sonnet or two, cultivated 
 divine poetry no more. He was a person of ease 
 and leisure, much courted by the most eminent 
 persons in Europe, accustomed to princely tables 
 and to familiar intercourse with every magnate 
 within reach ; accustomed, too, to consider his own 
 comfort and keep danger and trouble at a distance. 
 Disorder and war and pestilence drove him from 
 one place to another — from Milan to Padua, from 
 Padua to Venice. He had fulfilled many dignified 
 missions as ambassador to various courts, and he 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. S5i 
 
 was not a man who could transfer himself from 
 one city to another without observation. It would 
 seem that when, driven by the fear of the plague, 
 and by the horror of those continued conflicts which 
 were rending Italy from day to day — that Italy 
 which he was almost alone in considering as one 
 country — he turned his eyes toward \renice, it was 
 with some intention of making it his permanent 
 home ; for the preliminary negotiations into which 
 he entered show a desire to establish himself for 
 which he does not seem to have taken any such 
 precautions before. One of the best known of all 
 facts in the history of literature is that the poet left 
 his library to the republic, and the unworthy man- 
 ner in which that precious bequest was received. 
 But it has not been noted with equal distinctness 
 that the prudent poet made this gift, not as a leg- 
 acy because of his love for Venice, which is the 
 light in which it has generally been regarded, but 
 as an offer of eventual advantage in order to pro- 
 cure from the authorities a fit lodging and reception 
 for himself. This, however, is the true state of 
 the case. He puts it forth in a letter to his old 
 friend and agent Benintendi, the chancellor of the 
 republic, in whose hands it would seem he had 
 placed his cause. A certain plausible and bland in- 
 sistence upon the great benefit to Venice of a public 
 library, of which the poet's books should be the 
 foundation, discreetly veils the important condition 
 that the poet's own interests should be served in 
 the meantime. 
 
 If the effort succeeds [he says] I am of opinion that your 
 posterity and your republic will owe to you, if not their 
 glory, yet at least the opening of the way to glory. And oh 
 [he adds piously] if it had but been thought of when the com- 
 monwealth was governed by that most holy spirit to whom, 
 as you who knew him well will understand, it would have 
 afforded so much delight. For my part, I do not doubt that 
 even in the heavens he is glad of our design and anxiously 
 awaits its success. I believe also that, looking down lovingly 
 without a grudge, it will greatly please him, having himself 
 
B52 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 earned such glory and honor as on other Venetian doge did 
 before him, that the glory of instituting a public library 
 should have been reserved for the fourth of his successors, a 
 man also so excellent, a noble doge and zealous of the public 
 good. 
 
 This invocation of the sainted shade of Andrea 
 Dandolo, the much-lamented doge, to sanctify an 
 effort the immediate object of which was the acqui- 
 sition of a handsome house for Dom Francesco the 
 poet, has a flavor of Tartu ffe, or at least cf Peck- 
 sniff, which may make the reader smile. It was, 
 however, a perfectly legitimate desire, and no 
 doubt Petrarch's books were valuable, and the sug- 
 gestion of a public library an admirable thing; and 
 it was to the credit of the republic that the bargain 
 was at once made, and the poet got his house, a 
 palace upon the Riva degli Schiavoni — the Palazzo 
 delle due Torri, now no longer in existence, but 
 which is commemorated by an inscription upon the 
 house which replaces it. It was situated at the cor- 
 ner of the Ponte del Sepolcro. In a curious illumi- 
 nation, taken from a manuscript in the Bodleian 
 Library, the two towers are visible, rising from 
 among the picturesque roofs, over the quay from 
 which the Eastern merchants, the Pali, are to be 
 seen setting out upon their voyage. 
 
 This was in the year 1362. He had visited Venice 
 in his youth, when a student at Bologna. He had 
 returned in the fullness of his fame as the ambassa- 
 dor of the Prince of Milan to negotiate peace with 
 Genoa, though the attempt was vain. He was now 
 approaching his sixtieth year, full of indignation and 
 sorrow for the fate of his country, denouncing to 
 earth and heaven the horrible bands of mercenaries 
 who devastated Italy, bringing rapine and pesti- 
 lence — and tor his own part intent upon finding a 
 peaceful home, security and health. His letters 
 afford us a wonderfully real glimpse of the condi- 
 tions of the time. In one of them, written soon 
 after his settlement in Venice, to an old friend, he 
 
THE MAKERS Ot VENICE. 368 
 
 defends himself for having fallen into the weakness 
 of age, the laudator temporis acti. He reviews in this 
 epistle the scenes in which his youth and that of his 
 friend were passed; the peace, the serenity, the 
 calm of these early days; comparing them with the 
 universal tumult and misery of the existing time; 
 denying that the change was in himself or his ideas, 
 and painting a dismal picture of the revolution 
 everywhere — the wars, the bands of assassins and 
 robbers let loose on the earth, the universal wretch- 
 edness. **This same city," he adds, "from which I 
 write, this Venice which, by the far-sightedness of 
 her citizens and by the advantage of her natural 
 position, appears more powerful and tranquil than 
 any other part of the world, though quiet and 
 serene, is no longer festive and gay as she once 
 was, and wears an aspect very different from that 
 prosperity and gladness which she presented when 
 first I came hither with my tutor from Bologna. " 
 But these words are very different from the phrases 
 he employs in speaking of other cities. Venice, as 
 has been seen in previous chapters, had trouble 
 enough with the mercenary armies of the time 
 when they were in her pay; but she was safe on her 
 sea margin with wide lagoons around her, unap- 
 proachable by the heavy-mailed troopers who might 
 appear any day under the walls of a rich inland city 
 and put her to sack or ransom. With all the force 
 of his soul the poet loathed these barbarous invad- 
 ers, the terror of his life and the scourge of Italy, 
 into whose hands the Italian states themselves had 
 placed weapons for their own destruction; and it is 
 with a sense of intense repose and relief that he 
 settles down in his stately house looking out upon 
 the wide harbor, upon San Giorgio among its trees, 
 and the green line of the Lido, and all the winding 
 watery ways, well defended by fort and galley, 
 which led to the sea. The bustle of the port under 
 his windows, the movement of the ships, would 
 seem at once to have caught, with the charm of 
 
 23 Venice 
 
§^4 THE MAKERS OF VENIC£. 
 
 their novelty and wonder, his observant eyes. 
 Shortly after his settlement on the Riva he wrote 
 a letter full of wise and serious advice to another 
 friend, who had been appointed secretary to the 
 Pope — an office not long before offered to himself. 
 But in the very midst of his counsels, quoting 
 Aristotle on the question of art, he bursts forth 
 into comment upon la nautica^ to which, he says, 
 "after justice, is owing the wonderful prosperity of 
 this famous city, in which, as in a tranquil port, I 
 have taken refuge from the storms of the world. 
 See," he cries, '*the innumerable vessels which set 
 forth from the Italian shore in the desolate winter, 
 in the most variable and stormy spring, one turning 
 its prow to the east, the other to the west; some 
 carrying our wine to foam in British cups, our fruits 
 to flatter the palates of the Scytians, and, still more 
 hard of credence, the wood of our forests to the 
 ^gean and the Achaian isles; some to Syria, to 
 Armenia, to the Arabs and Persians, carrying oil 
 and linen and saffron, and bringing back all their 
 diverse goods to us." 
 
 Let me persuade you to pass another hour in my company. 
 It was the depth of night and the heavens were full of storm, 
 and I, already weary and half asleep, had come to an end of 
 my writing, when suddenly a burst of shouts from the sailors 
 penetrated my ear. Aware of what these shouts should mean 
 from former experience, I rose hastily and went up to the 
 higher windows of this house, which look out upon the port. 
 Oh, what a spectacle ! mingled with feelings of pity, of won- 
 der, of fear, and of delight. Resting on their anchors close 
 to the marble banks which serve as a mole to the vast palace 
 which this free and liberal city has conceded to me for my 
 dwelling, several vessels have passed the winter, exceeding 
 with the height of their masts and spars the two towers which 
 flank my house. The larger of the two was at this moment — 
 though the stars were all hidden by the clouds, the winds 
 shaking the walls, and the roar of the sea filling the air — leav- 
 ing the quay and setting out upon its voyage. Jason and 
 Hercules would have been stupefied with wonder, and 
 Tiphys, seated at the helm, would have been ashamed of the 
 nothing which won hi: i so much fame. If you have seen it, 
 ^ou would have said it was no ship but a mountain swimming 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. ^S 
 
 upon the sea, although tinder the weight of its immense wings 
 a great part of it was hidden in the waves. The end of the 
 voyage was to be the Don, beyond which nothing can navigate 
 from our seas ; but many of those who were on board, when 
 they had reached that point, meant to prosecute their jour- 
 ney; never pausing till .they had reached the Ganges or the 
 Caucasus, India and the Eastern Ocean. So far does love of 
 gain stimulate the human mind ! Pity seized me, I confess, 
 for these unfortunates, and I perceived how right the poet 
 was who called sailors wretched. And being able no longer 
 to follow them with my eyes into the darkness, with much 
 emotion I took up mv pen again, exclaiming within myself, 
 "Oh, how dear is life to all men, and in how little account 
 they hold it!" 
 
 It is evident that the beginning of his stay in 
 Venice was very agreeable to the poet. He had 
 not been long established in the palace of the two 
 towers when Boccaccio, like himself seeking refuge 
 from the plague and from the wars, came to visit 
 him, and remained three months, enjoying the calm, 
 the lovely prospect, the wonderful city, and, what 
 was still more, the learned society which Petrarch 
 had already gathered around him. The scholars 
 and the wits of those days were sufficiently few to 
 be known to each other, and to form a very close 
 and exclusive little republic of letters in every cen- 
 ter of life. But in Venice even these learned per- 
 sonages owned the charm of the locality, and met 
 not only in their libraries among their books, or at 
 the classic feasts, where the gossip was of Cicero 
 and Cato, of Vergil and of Ovid, and not of nearer 
 neighbors — where every man had his classical 
 alhision, his quotations, his talk of Helicon and 
 Olympus — but on the soft and level waters, the 
 brimming, wide lagoon, like lesser men. When 
 Petrarch invites the great story-teller of Florence 
 to renew his visit, he reminds him of those **elect 
 friends" with whom he had already made acquaint- 
 ance, and how the dignified Benintendi, though 
 devoted to public business all day, yet in the falling 
 of the evening, with light-hearted and friendly 
 countenance, would come in his gondola to refresh 
 
S56 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 himself with pleasant talk from the fatigues of the 
 day. "You know by experience," he says, "how 
 delightful were those nocturnal rambles on the sea, 
 and that conversation enlightened and sincere. " To 
 think of Boccaccio stepping forth with Petrarch 
 upon the Riva, taking a boat in those soft summer 
 nights, m ml Jew della sera, m the making of the 
 evening, when the swift shadows fell across the 
 glimmering distance, and the curves of the lagoon 
 caught the first touches of the moonlight, comes 
 upon us with a delightful contrast, yet likeness to 
 the scenes more associated with their names. The 
 fountain of Vaucluse and Laura's radiant image, 
 the gardens and glades of the "Decameron," with 
 all their youths and maidens, were less suitable 
 now to the elderly poets than that talk of all things 
 in earth and heaven, which in the dusk, upon the 
 glistening levels of the still water, two friendly 
 gondolas, softly gliding on in time, would pass 
 from one to another in interchanges sometimes pen- 
 sive, sometimes playful, in gentle arguments long 
 drawn out, and that mutual comparison of the facts 
 of lite and deductions from them which form the 
 conversation of old men. There were younger 
 companions, too, like that youth of Ravenna of 
 whom Petrarch writes, "whom you do not know, 
 but who knov/s you well, having seen you in this 
 house of mine, which, like all that belongs to me, 
 is yours, and, according to the use of youth, watched 
 you daily," who would join the poets in their even- 
 ing row, and hang about the gondola of the great 
 men to catch perhaps some word of wisdom, some 
 classical comparison; while, less reverential, yet 
 not without a respectful curiosity, the other boats 
 that skimmed across the lagoon would pause a 
 minute to point out — the lover to his lady, the gon- 
 dolier to his master — the smooth and urbane looks 
 of him who had been crowned at Rome the greatest 
 of living poets, and the Florentine at his side, the 
 romancer of his age — two such men as could not be 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 357 
 
 equaled anywhere, the guests of Venice. No 
 doubt neither lute nor song was wanting to chime 
 in with the tinkle of the wave upon the boats and 
 the measured pulsation of the oars. . And as they 
 pushed forth upon the lagoon, blue against the 
 latest yellow of the sunset, would rise the separate 
 cones and peaks of the Euganeans, among which 
 lay little Arqua, still unnoted, where the laureate 
 of the world was to leave his name forever. The 
 grave discussions of that moment to come, of the 
 sunset of life, and how each man endured or took 
 a pensive pleasure in its falling shadows, would be 
 dismissed with a smile as the silvery /^rr^ glided 
 slowly round like a swan upon the water, and the 
 pleased companions turned to where the two tow- 
 ers rose over the bustling Riva, and the lighted 
 windows shone, and the table was spread. '"Vtem 
 dunque mvocato^'" says the poet, as he recalls those 
 delights to the mind of his friend. "The gentle 
 season invites to where no other cares await you 
 but those pleasant and joyful occupations of the 
 Muses, to a house most healthful, which I do not 
 describe, because you know it." It is strange, 
 however, to remember that these thoughtful old 
 men, in the reflective leisure of their waning 
 years, are the lover of Laura and the author of the 
 "Decameron." 
 
 On another occasion the poet puts before us a 
 picture of a different character, but also full of in- 
 terest. It is on the 4th of June, 1364, a memorable 
 day, and he is seated at his window with a friend, 
 looking out over the ampto mare^ the full sea which 
 spreads before him. The friend was one of his 
 oldest and dearest companions, his schoolfellow, 
 and the comrade of his entire life, now Archbishop 
 of Patras, and on his way to his see, but pausing to 
 spend the summer in that most healthful of houses 
 with the happy poet. The two old friends, newly 
 met, sat together looking out upon that lively and 
 brilliant scene, as they talked and exchanged 
 
358 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 remembrances, when their conversation was dis- 
 turbed by a startling incident. 
 
 Suddenly and without warning there rose upon our sight 
 one of those long vessels which are called galleys, crowded 
 with green branches, and with all the force of its rowers mak- 
 ing for the port. At this unexpected sight we broke off our 
 conversation, and telt a hope springing in our hearts that such 
 a ship must be the bearer of good news. As the swelling sails 
 drew near the joyful aspect of the sailors became visible, and 
 a handful of young men, also crowned with green leaves and 
 with joyous countenances, standing on the prow, waving flags 
 over their heads, and saluting the victorious city as yet una- 
 ware of her own triumph. Already from the highest tower the 
 approach of a strange ship had been signaled, and not by any 
 command, but moved by the most eager curiosity, the citi- 
 zens from every part of the town rushed together in a crowd 
 to the shore. And as the ship came nearer and everything 
 could be seen distinctly, hanging from the poop we perceived 
 the flag of the enemy, and there remained no doubt that this 
 was to announce a victory. 
 
 A victory it was, one of the greatest which had 
 been gained by Venetian arms, the recapture of 
 Candia (Crete), with little bloodshed and great glory 
 to the republic, though it is somewhat difficult to 
 understand Petrarch's grand assumption that it was 
 the triumph of justice more than of Venice which 
 intoxicated the city with delight. He rises into 
 ecstatic strains as he -describes the rejoicings of the 
 triumphant state. 
 
 What finer, what more magnificent spectacle could be than 
 the just joy which fills a city, not for damage done to the 
 enemy's possessions or for the gains of civic rivalry such as 
 are prized elsewhere, but solely for the triumph of justice? 
 Venice exults; the august city, the sole shelter, in our days, 
 of liberty, justice, and peace; the sole refuge of the good; the 
 only port in which, beaten down everywhere else by tyranny 
 and war, the ships of those men who seek to lead a tranquil 
 life may find safety and restoration ; a city rich in gold but 
 more rich in fame, potent in strength but more in virtue, 
 founded upon solid marble, but upon yet more solid founda- 
 tions of concord and harmony — and, even more than by the 
 sea which girds her, by the prudent wisdom of her sons 
 defended and made secure. Venice exults, not only over the 
 regained sovereignty of Crete, which, whatsoever great in 
 antique splendor, is but a small matter to great spirits accus- 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 859 
 
 tomed to esteem lightly all that is not virtue ; but she exults 
 in the event with good reason, and takes pleasure in the 
 thought that the right is victorious — that is to say, not her 
 proper cause alone, but that of justice. 
 
 It is clear from this that the triumph in the air 
 had got into the poet's head, and the g^reat con- 
 tagion of popular enthusiasm had carried him away. 
 He proceeds to relate, as well as "the poverty of my 
 style and my many occupations" will permit, the 
 joyful progress of the thanksgiving and national 
 rejoicing. 
 
 When the orators landed and recounted everything to the 
 Great Council, every hope and anticipation were found to fall 
 short of the truth ; the enemy had been overcome, taken, cut 
 to pieces, dispersed in hopeless flight; the citizens restored to 
 freedom, the city subdued ; Crete brought again under the 
 ancient dominion, the victorious arms laid down, the war 
 finished almost without bloodshed, and glory and peace 
 secured at one blow. When all these things were made known 
 to the Doge Lorenzo, to whose greatness his surname of 
 Celso* agrees perfectly; a man distinguished for magnan- 
 imity, for courtesy, and every fine virtue, but still more for 
 piety toward God and love for his country — well perceiving 
 that nothing is good but that which begins with heaven, he 
 resolved with all the people to render praise and homage to 
 God; and accordingly, with magnificent rites through all the 
 city, but specially in the basilica of San Marco Evangelista, 
 than which I know nothing in the world more beautiful, were 
 celebrated the most solemn thanksgivings which have ever 
 taken place within the memory of man ; and around the tem- 
 ple and in the Piazza a magnificent procession, in which not 
 only the people and all the clergy, but many prelates from 
 foreign parts, brought here by curiosity, or the great occasion, 
 or the proclamation far and near of these great ceremonies, 
 took part. When these demonstrations of religion and piety 
 were completed, every soul turned to games and rejoicings. 
 
 Our poet continues at length the record of these 
 festivities, especially of those with which the gfreat 
 festival terminated, two exercises of which he can- 
 not, he says, give the Latin name, but which in 
 Italian are called, one corsa^ a race, the other giostra^ 
 a tournament. In the first of these, which would 
 
 *E^ccelso^ excellent. 
 
360 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 seem to have been somethinglike the ancient riding, 
 at the ring, no strangers were allowed to compete, 
 but only twenty-four Venetian youths of noble race 
 and magnificently clad, under the direction of a 
 famous actor, Bombasio by name (from whence, we 
 believe, "Bombast"), who arranged their line in so 
 delightful a manner that one would have said it was 
 not men who rode but angels who flew, "so wonder- 
 ful was it to see these young men, arrayed in purple 
 and gold, with bridle and spurs, restraining at once 
 and exciting their generous steeds, which blazed 
 also in the sun with, the rich ornaments with which 
 their harness was covered." This noble sight the 
 poet witnessed in bland content and satisfaction, 
 seated at the right hand of the doge, upon a splen- 
 did balcony shaded with rich and many-tinted awn- 
 ings, which had been erected over the font of San 
 Marco behind the four bronze horses. Fortunate 
 poet! thus throned on high to the admiration of all 
 the beholders, who crowded every window and roof 
 and portico, and wherever human footing was to be 
 found, and filled every corner of the Piazza so that 
 there was not room for a grain of millet — an "in- 
 credible, innumerable crowd," among which was no 
 tumult or disorder of any kind, nothing but joy, 
 courtesy, harmony, and love! It is curious to note 
 that among the audience were certain "very noble 
 English personages, in office and kindred near to 
 the King of England," who, "taking pleasure in 
 wandering on the vast sea," faithful to the instincts 
 of their race, had been attracted by the news of 
 these great rejoicings. Among all the splendors of 
 Venice there is none which is more attractive to the 
 imagination than this grand tourney in the great 
 Piazza, at which the mild and learned poet in his 
 black hood and gown, half clerical and always 
 courtly, accustomed to the best of company, sat by 
 the side of the doge in his gold-embroidered mantle, 
 with all that was fairest in Venice around, and 
 gazed well pleased upon the spectacle, not without 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 361 
 
 a soothing sense that he himself in the ages to 
 come would seem amid all the purple and gold the 
 most notable presence there. 
 
 In the year 1366, when Petrarch had been estab- 
 lished for about four years in Venice, an incident 
 of a very different kind occurred to disturb his 
 peace, and did, according to all the commentaries, 
 so seriously disturb it, and offend the poet so deeply, 
 that when he next left the city it was to return no 
 more. Among the stream of visitors received by 
 him with his usual bland courtesy in the place of 
 the two towers were certain young men whom the 
 prevailing fashion of the time had banded together 
 in a pretense of learning and superior enlighten- 
 ment, not uncommon to any generation of those 
 youthful heroes whose only wish it was that their 
 fathers were more wise. Four in particular, who 
 were specially given to the study of .such Greek 
 philosophy as came to them broken by translators 
 into fragments fit for their capacity, had been among 
 the visitors of the poet. Deeply affronted as 
 Petrarch was by the occurrence which followed, he 
 was yet too magnanimous to give their names to any 
 of his correspondents; but he de^ribes them so as 
 to have made it possible for commentators to hazard 
 a guess as to who they were. "They are all rich, 
 and all studious by profession, devouring books, 
 notvv'ithstanding that the first knows nothing of 
 letters; the second little; the third not much; the 
 fourth, it is true, has no small knowledge, but has 
 it confusedly and without order." The first was a 
 soldier, the second a merchant {simplex mercator), the 
 third a noble {simplex fiobilis), the fourth a physician. 
 A mere noble, a mere merchant — significant words! 
 a soldier, and one who probably led them with his 
 superior science and information, the only one who 
 had the least claim to be called a philosopher, .the 
 young professional to whom no doubt those would- 
 be learned giovinastri looked up as to a shining light. 
 They were disciples of Averroes — or more likely it 
 
362 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 was the young physician who was so, and whose 
 reinterpretation charmed the young men; and by 
 consequence, in that dawn of the Renaissance, they 
 were all infidels, believers in Aristotle and nothing 
 else. Petrarch himself narrates with much naivete 
 the method he employed with one of these irrev- 
 erent and disdainful youths. The poet, in his argu- 
 ment with the young unbeliever, had quoted from 
 the New Testament a saying of an apostle. 
 
 "Your apostle." he replied, "was a mere sower of words, 
 and more than that, was mad." J^Bravo!" said I. "oh, philos- 
 opher. These two things have been laid to the charge of other 
 philosophers in ancient times ; and of the second, Festus, the 
 Governor of Syria, accused him whom I quote. But if he was 
 a sower of words the words were very useful, and the seed 
 sown by him, and cultivated by his successors and watered by 
 the holy blood of martyrs, has grown into the great mass of 
 believers whom we now see." At these words he smiled, 
 and "Be you, if you like, a good Christian," he said; "I don't 
 believe a word of all that ; and your Paul and Augustine and 
 all the rest whom you vaunt to much, I hold them no better 
 than a pack of gossips. Oh, if you would but read Averroes! 
 then you would see how much superior he is to your fable- 
 mongers." I confess that, burning with indignation, it was 
 with difficulty that I kept my hands off that blasphemer. 
 "This contest with heretics like you," I said, "is an old affair 
 for me. Go to the devil, you and your heresy, and come no 
 more here." And taking him by the mantle with less cour- 
 tesy than is usual to me, but not less than his manners de- 
 served, I put him to the door. 
 
 This summary method of dealing with the young 
 skeptic is not without its uses, and many a serious 
 man, wearied with the folly of youthful preachers 
 of the philosophy fashionable in our day, which is 
 not of Aristotle or Averroes, might be pardoned for 
 a longing to follow Petrarch's example. Perhaps 
 it was the young man described as simplex nobihs, 
 who, indignant, being thus turned out, hurried to 
 his comrades with the tale; upon which they imme- 
 diately founded themselves into a bed of justice, 
 weighed Petrarch in the balance, and found him 
 wanting. "A good man, but ignorant," was their 
 sentence after full discussion — dabbefi uomo^ ma 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 363 
 
 tlgnorante. The mild yet persistent rage with which 
 the poet heard of this verdict — magnanimous, re- 
 straining himself from holding up the giovi7iastri to 
 the contempt of the world, yet deeply and bitterly 
 wounded by their boyish folly — is very curious. 
 The effect produced upon Lord Tennyson and Mr. 
 Browning at the present day by the decision of a 
 tribunal made up of, let us say, a young guards- 
 man, a little lord, a millionaire's heir, led by some 
 young professional writer or scientific authority, 
 would be very different. The poets and the world 
 would laugh to all the echoes, and the giovinastn 
 would achieve a reputation such as they would 
 little desire. But the use of laughter had not been 
 discovered in Petrarch's days, and a poet crowned 
 in the Capitol, laureate of the universe, conscious of 
 being the first man of letters in the world, naturally 
 did not treat these matters so lightly. He talks of 
 them in his letters with an offended dignity, which 
 verges upon the comic. "Four youths, blind in the 
 eyes of the mind, men who consider themselves 
 able to judge of ignorance as being themselves most 
 ignorant — si tengono competejiti a giudicare della tgnor- 
 anza perche son essi tgnorantissimi — attempting to 
 rob me of my fame, since they well know that 
 they can never hope for fame in their own per- 
 sons," he says; and at last, in the bitterness of his 
 offense, Venice herself, the hospitable and friendly 
 city, of which he had lately spoken as the peaceful 
 haven and refuge of the human spirit, falls under 
 the same reproach. In every part of the world, he 
 says, such a sentence would be received with con- 
 demnation and scorn; "except perhaps in the city 
 where it was given forth, a city truly great and 
 noble, but inhabited by so great and so varied a 
 crowd that many therein take men without knowl- 
 edge for judges and philosophers." And when the 
 heats of summer came, sending him forth on the 
 round, of visits which seems to have been as neces- 
 sary to Petrarch as if he had lived in the nineteenth 
 
364 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 century, the offended poet did not return to Venice. 
 When his visits were over he withdrew to Arqua, 
 on the soft skirts of the Euganean hills, where all 
 was rural peace and quiet, and no presumptuous 
 giovmastn could trouble him more. 
 
 This incident, however, would seem to point to 
 an element of tumult and trouble in Venice, to 
 which republics seem more dangerously exposed 
 than other states. It was the insults of the 
 giovmastn^ insolent and unmannerly youths, which 
 drove Marino Faliero to his doom not very many 
 years before. And Petrarch himself implores 
 Andrea Dandolo, the predecessor of that unfortu- 
 nate doge, to take counsel with the old men of 
 experience, not with hot-headed boys, in respect to 
 the Genoese wars. The youths would seem to have 
 been in the ascendant, idle — for it was about this 
 period that wise men began to lament the abandon- 
 ment at once of traditional trade and of the accom- 
 panying warlike spirit among the young patricians, 
 who went to sea no more, and left fighting to the 
 mercenaries — and luxurious; spending their time in 
 intrigues on the Broglio and elsewhere, and taking 
 upon them those arrogant airs which make aristoc- 
 racy detestable. A Dandolo and a Contarini are in 
 the list (supposed to be authentic) of Petrarch's 
 assailants, and no doubt the supports of fathers in 
 the Forty or the Ten would embolden these idle 
 youths tor every folly. Their foolish verdict would 
 by this means cut deeper, and Petrarch, like the 
 old doge, was now sonless, and had the less patience 
 to support the insolence of other people's boys. He 
 retired accordingly from the ignoble strife, and on 
 his travels, as he says, having nothing else to do, 
 on the banks of the Po, began his treatise on *'the 
 ignorance of himself and many others"---^^ sui 
 ipstus et moltorum ignorantia, which was, let us hope, 
 a final balsam to the sting which the giovmastn,, 
 unmannerly and presumptuous lads, had left in his 
 sensitive mind. 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 365 
 
 The books which he had offered to the republic as 
 the foundation of a public library were left behind, 
 first in the hands of a friend, afterward in the 
 charge of the state. But Venice at that time had 
 other things to do than to think ot books, and these 
 precious manuscripts were placed in a small cham- 
 ber on the terrace of San Marco, near the four great 
 horses of the portico — and these forgotten. Half a 
 century later the idea of the public library revived; 
 and this was confirmed by the legacy made by Car- 
 dinal Besaroine of all his manuscripts in 1468 — 
 a hundred years after the gift of Petrarch; but 
 nearly two centuries more had passed, and the 
 splendid Biblioteca de San Marco had come into 
 being, a noble building and a fine collection, before 
 it occurred to some stray citizens and scholars to in- 
 quire where the poet's gift might be. Finally, in 
 1634, the little room was opened, and there were 
 discovered — a mass of damp decay, as they had 
 been thrown in nearly three centuries before — the 
 precious parchments, the books which Petrarch had 
 collected so carefully, and which he thought worthy 
 to be the nucleus of a great public library. Some 
 few were extracted from the mass of corruption, 
 and at last were placed where the poet had intended 
 them to be. But this neglect will always remain a 
 shame to Venice. Perhaps at first the giovinastri 
 had something to do with it; throwing into con- 
 tempt as of little importance the gift of the poet — a 
 suggestion which has been made with more gravity 
 by a recent librarian, who points out that the most 
 valuable of Petrarch's books remained in his posses- 
 sion until his death, and vvrere sold and dispersed at 
 Padua after that event. So that it is possible, 
 though the suggestion is somewhat ungenerous, 
 that, after all, the loss to humanity was not so very 
 great. At all events, there is this to be said, that 
 Petrarch did not lose by his bargain, though Venice 
 did. The poet got the dignified establishment he 
 wanted — a vast palace, as he himself describes it, in 
 
366 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 which he had room to receive his friends and from 
 which he could witness all the varied life of Venice. 
 He had not, we think, any great reason to complain 
 — he had received his equivalent. His hosts were 
 the losers by their own neglect, but not the poet. 
 
 It was but a short episode in his learned and leis- 
 urely and highly successful life; but it is the only 
 poetical association we have with Venice. He 
 shows us something of the cultured society of the 
 time, with its advantages and its drawbacks, a soci- 
 ety more ''precious" than original, full of commen- 
 taries and criticisms, loving conversation and 
 mutual comparison and classical allusion, not so gay 
 as the painters of an after age, with less inclination 
 to suonar iMiuto, or, indeed, introduce anything 
 which could interfere with that talk which was the 
 most beloved of all entertainments. Boccaccio, one 
 cannot but feel, must have brought something live- 
 lier and more gay with him when he was one of 
 those who sat at the high windows of the Palazzo 
 delle dueTorri and looked out upon all the traffic of 
 the port, and the ships going out to sea. But the 
 antechambers of the poet were always crowded as if 
 he had been a prince, thedoge ever ready to do him 
 honor, and all the great persons deeply respectful of 
 Dom Francesco, though the young ones might scoff, 
 not without a smile aside from their fathers, at the 
 bland laureate's conviction of his own greatness. 
 
 No other poet has ever illustrated Venice. Dante 
 passed through the great city and did not love her, 
 if his supposed letter on the subject is real — at all 
 events, brought no image out of her except that of 
 the pitch boiling in the Arsenal, and the seamen 
 repairing their storm-beaten ships. Nameless poets, 
 no doubt, there were, whose songs the mariners 
 bellowed along the Riva, and the maidens sang at 
 their work. The following anonymous relic is so 
 pure and tender thatj though far below the level of 
 a laureated poet, it may serve to throw a little 
 fragrance upon the name of^poetry in Venice, so 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 867 
 
 little practiced and so imperfectly known. It is the 
 lament of a wife for her husband gone to the wars 
 — alia Crociata m Oriente — a humble Crusader-sea- 
 man, do doubt; one of those, perhaps, who followed 
 old Enrico Dandolo, with the cross on his rough cap, 
 ignorant of all the wiles of statesmanship, while his 
 wife waited wistfully through many months and 
 years. 
 
 * Donna Frisa, in your way, 
 You give me good advice, to lay 
 By this grieving out of measure. 
 Saying to see me is no pleasure, 
 Since my husband, gone to war, 
 Carried my heart with him afar; 
 But since he's gone beyond the sea 
 This alone must comfort me. 
 1 have no fear of growing old, 
 For hope sustains and makes me bold 
 While I think upon my lord ; 
 In him is all my comfort stored, 
 No other bearing takes my eye, 
 In him does all my pleasure lie; 
 Nor can I think him far, while he 
 Ever in love is near to me. 
 Lone in my room, my eyes are dim, 
 Only from fear of harm "to him. 
 Nought else I fear, and hope is strong 
 He will come back to me anon ; 
 And all my plaints to gladness rise. 
 And into songs are turned my sighs. 
 Thinking of that good man of mine; 
 No more I wish to make me fine, 
 Or look into the glass, or be 
 Fair, since he is not here to see. 
 In my chamber alone I sit, 
 T\iQfesta may pass, 1 care not for it. 
 Nor to gossip upon the stairs outside. 
 Nor from the window to look, nor glide 
 Out on the balcony, save 't may be 
 To gaze afar, across the sea, 
 Praying that God would guard my lord 
 In Paganesse, sending His word 
 To give the Christians the victory. 
 And home in health and prosperity 
 To bring him back and with him all 
 In joy and peace perpetual. 
 
368 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 "When I make this prayer I know 
 All my heart goes with it so 
 That something woi thy is in me 
 My lord's return full soon to see. 
 All other comforts I resign. 
 Your way is good, but better mine, 
 And firm I hold this faith alone; 
 The women hear me, but never one 
 Contradicts my certitude, 
 For I hold it seemly and good, 
 And that to be true and faithful 
 To a good woman is natural ; 
 Considering her husband still. 
 All his wishes to fulfill 
 And with him to be always glad. 
 And in his presence never sad. 
 
 "Thus should there be between the two 
 No thought but how pleasure to do. 
 She to him and he to her. 
 This their rivalry; nor e'er 
 Listen to any ill apart. 
 But of one mind be, and one heart. 
 He ever willing what she wills, 
 She what his pleasure most fulfills. 
 With never quarrel or despite, 
 But peace between them morning and night. 
 This makes a goodly jealousy 
 To excel in love and constancy. 
 And thus is the pilgrim served aright, 
 From eve to morn, from day to night." 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE HISTORIANS. 
 
 The first development of native literature in Ven- 
 ice, and indeed the only one which attained any 
 greatness was history. Before ever poet had sung 
 or preacher discoursed, in the early days when the 
 republic was struggling into existence, there had 
 already risen in the newly founded community and 
 among the houses scarcely yet to be counted noble, 
 but which had begun to sway the minds of the 
 fishers and traders and salt manufacturers of the 
 marshes, annalists whose desire it was to chronicle 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 369 
 
 the doings of that infant state, struggling into ex- 
 istence amid the fogs, of which they were al ready- 
 so proud. Of these nameless historians the greater 
 number have dropped into complete oblivion ; but 
 they have furnished materials to many successors, 
 and in some cases their works still exist in codexes 
 known to the learned, affording still their quota of 
 information, sometimes mingled with fable, yet re- 
 taining here and there a vigorous force of life which 
 late writers, more correct, find it hard to put into 
 the most polished records. To all of these Venice 
 was already the object of all desire, the center of 
 all ambition. Her beauty — the splendor of her 
 rising palaces, the glory of her churches — is their 
 subject from the beginning; though still the foun- 
 dations were not laid of that splendor and glory 
 which has proved the enchantment of later ages. 
 This city was the joy of the wnole earth, a wonder 
 and witchery to Sagornino in the eleventh century 
 as much as to Molmenti in the nineteenth; and be- 
 fore the dawn of serious history, as well as with all 
 the aid of state documents and critical principles in 
 her maturity, the story of Venice has been the great 
 attraction to her children, the one theme of which 
 no Venetians can ever tire. It would be out of our 
 scope to give any list of these early writers. Their 
 name is legion — and any reader who can venture to 
 launch himself upon the learned, but chaotic, work 
 of the most serene Doge Marco Foscarini upon 
 Venetian literature, will find himself hustled on 
 every page by a pale crowd of half-perceptible fig- 
 ures in every department of historical research. 
 The laws, the church, the trade of Venice, her 
 money, her ceremonials and usages, the speeches of 
 her orators, her treaties with foreign powers, her 
 industries; in all of these by-ways of the history are 
 crowds of busy workers, each contributing his part 
 to that one central object of all— the glory and the 
 hisvory of the city, which was to every man the 
 chief object in the world. 
 
 24 Venice 
 
370 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 It was, however, only in the time of Andrea Dan- 
 dolo, the first man of letters who occupied the doge's 
 chair, the friend of Petrarch and of all the learned 
 of his time, that the artless chronicles of the early- 
 ages were consolidated into history. Of Andrea 
 himself we have but little to tell. His own appear- 
 ance is dim in the far distance, only coming fairly 
 within our vision in those letters of Petrarch already 
 quoted, in which the learned and cultivated scholar 
 prince proves himself, in spite of every exhortation 
 and appeal, a Venetian before all, putting aside the 
 humanities in which he was so successful a student, 
 and the larger sympathies which letters and philo- 
 sophy ought to bring — with a sudden frown over the 
 countenance which regarded with friendly apprecia- 
 tion all the other communications of the poet until 
 he permitted himself to speak of peace with Genoa 
 and to plead that an end might be put to those 
 bloody and fratricidal wars which devastated Italy. 
 Dandolo, with all his enlightenment, was not suffi- 
 ciently enlightened to see this, or to be able to free 
 himself from the prejudices and native hostilities of 
 his State. He thought the war with Genoa just 
 and necessary, while Petrarch wrung his hands over 
 the woes of a country torn in pieces; and instead of 
 responding to the ideal picture of a common pros- 
 perity such as the two great maritime rivals might" 
 enjoy together, flamed forth in wrath at the thought 
 even of a triumph which should be shared with that 
 most intimate enemy. The greater part of his reign 
 was spent in the exertions necessary to keep up one 
 of these disastrous wars, and he died in the midst 
 of defeat, with nothing but ill news of his armatas, 
 and Genoese galleys in the Adriatic, pushing for- 
 ward, perhaps, — who could tell, — to Venice herself. 
 '*The reptiblic, within and without, was threatened 
 with great dangers," says Sabellico, at the moment 
 of his death, and he was succeeded by the ill-fated 
 Faliero, to show how distracted was the state at this 
 dark period. Troubles of all kinds had distin- 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 371 
 
 guished the reign of the learned Andrea. Earth- 
 quakes, for which the philosophers sought strange 
 explanations, such as that they were caused by "a 
 spirit, bound and imprisoned underground," which, 
 with loud noises, and often with fire and flame, es- 
 caped by the openings and caverns; and pestilence, 
 which Sabellico believes to have been caused by cer- 
 tain fish driven up along the coast. Notwithstanding 
 all these troubles, Dandolo found time and leisure 
 to add a sixth volume to the collections of laws 
 already made, and to compile his history — a digni- 
 fied and scrupulous, if somewhat brief and formal, 
 narrative of the lives and acts of his predecessors in 
 the ducal chair. The former writers had left each 
 his fragment; Sagornino, for instance, dwelling 
 chiefly upon Venice under the reign of the Orseoli, 
 to the extent of his personal experiences. Dandolo 
 was the first to weave these broken strands into one 
 continuous thread. He had not only the early 
 chronicles within his reach, but the papers of the 
 state and those of his own family, which had already 
 furnished three doges to the republic, and thus was 
 in every way qualified for his work. It is remark- 
 able to note through all the conflicts of the time, 
 through the treacherous stillness before the earth- 
 quake and the horrified clamor after; through the 
 fierce exultation of victory and the dismal gloom of 
 defeat, and amid all those troubled ways where 
 pestilence and misery had set up their abode, this 
 philosopher, — doctor of laws, the first who ever sat 
 upon that throne, — the scholar and patron of letters, 
 distracted with all the cares of his uneasy sway, yet 
 going on day by day with his literary labors, lay- 
 ing the foundation firm for his countrymen, upon 
 which so many have built. How Petrarch's impor- 
 tunities about these dogs of Genoese, perpetual ene- 
 mies of the republic, as if, forsooth, they were 
 brothers an<i Christian men! must have fretted him 
 in the midst of his studies. What did a poet priest, 
 a classical half- Frenchman of peace, know about 
 
372 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 such matters? The same language! "Who dared 
 to compare the harsh dialect these wretches jab- 
 bered among themselves with the liquid Venetian 
 speech? The same country! As far different as 
 east from west. They were no brethren, but born 
 enemies of Venice, never to be reconciled; and in 
 this faith the enlightened doge, the philosopher and 
 sage, reigned and died. 
 
 After Dandolo there seems to have been silence 
 for about half a century, though no period was 
 without its essays in history; a noble patrician here 
 and there, a monk in his leisure, an old soldier after 
 his wars were over, making each his personal con- 
 tribution, to lie for the greater part unnoted in the 
 archives of his family or order. But about the end 
 of the fourteenth century there rose a faint agita- 
 tion among the more learned Venetians as to the 
 expediency of compiling a general history upon the 
 most authentic manuscripts and records, which 
 should be given forth to the world with authority as 
 the true and trustworthy history of Venice. There 
 was, perhaps, no one sufficiently in earnest to press 
 the matter, nor had they any writer ready to take 
 up the work. But. no doubt, it was an excellent 
 subject on which to debate when they met each 
 other in the public places whither patricians re- 
 sorted, and where the wits had their encounters. 
 Oh, for a historian to write that great book! The 
 noble philosophers themselves were too busy with 
 their legislations, or their pageants, or their classical 
 studies, to undertake it themselves, and'it was diffi- 
 cult to find anyone sufficiently well qualified to fill 
 the ofifice which it was their intention should be 
 that of a public servant encouraged and paid by the 
 state. During the next half century there were a 
 great many negotiations begun, but never brought 
 to any definite conclusion, with sundry professors 
 of literature, especially one Biondo, whciiiad already 
 written much on the subject. But none of them 
 came to any practical issue. The century had 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 373 
 
 reached its last quarter, when the matter was sum- 
 marily, and by a personal impulse, taken out of the 
 noble dilettanti's hands. Marco Antonio Sabellico, 
 a native of Vicovaro, among the Sabine hills, and 
 one of the most learned men and best Latinists of 
 his day, had been drawn to Venice probably by the 
 same motives which drew Petrarch thither: the 
 freedom ot its society, the hospitality with which 
 strangers were received, and the eager welcome 
 given by a race ambitious of every distinction, but 
 not great in the sphere of letters, to all who brought 
 with them something of that envied fame. How it 
 was that he was seized by the desire to write a his- 
 tory of Venice, which was not his own country, we 
 are not told. But it is very likely that he was one 
 of those men of whom there are examples in every 
 generation, for whom Venice has an especial charm, 
 and who, like the occasional love-thrall of a famous 
 beauty, give up their lives to her praise and ser- 
 vice, hoping for nothing in return. He might, on 
 the other hand, be nothing more than an enterpris- 
 ing author, aware that the patrons of literature in 
 Venice were moving heaven and earth to have a his 
 tory, and taking advantage of their desire with i 
 rapidity and unexpectedness which would forestall 
 every other attempt. He was at the time in Ver- 
 ona, in the suite of the captain of that city, Bene- 
 detto Trivigiano, out of reach of public documents, 
 and naturally of many sources of information which 
 would have been thrown open to an authorized his- 
 torian. He himself speaks of the work of Andrea 
 Dandolo as of a book which he had heard of but 
 never seen, though it seems incredible that any man 
 should take in hand a history of Venice without 
 making himself acquainted with the only authorita- 
 tive work existing on the subject. Neither had he 
 seen the book of Jacopo Zeno upon the work and 
 exploits of his grandfather Carlo, which is the chief 
 authority in respect to so important an episode as 
 the war of Chioggia. And he wrote so rapidly that 
 
874 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 the work was completed in fifteen months, "by 
 reason of his impatience," says Marco Foscarini. 
 Notwithstanding these many drawbacks, Sabellico's 
 history remains among the most influential, as it is 
 the most eloquent, of Venetian histories. It is sel- 
 dom that a historian escapes without conviction of 
 error in one part or another of his work, and Sabel- 
 lico was no exception to the rule. The learned of 
 the time threw themselves upon him with all the 
 heat of critics who have never committed themselves 
 by serious production in their own persons. They 
 accused him of founding his book upon the narra- 
 tives of the inferior annalists, and neglecting the 
 good — of transcribing from contemporaries, and 
 above all of haste, an accusation which it is impos- 
 sible to deny. "But," says Foscarini, "the thirst 
 for a general history was such that either these 
 faults were not discovered, or else by reason of the 
 unusual accompaniment of eloquence, to which as 
 to a new thing the attention of all was directed, 
 they passed unobserved." The eager multitude 
 took up the book with enthusiasm, although the 
 critics objected; and though Sabellico was in no 
 manner a servant of the state, and had never had 
 the office of historian confided to him, "the Senate, 
 perceiving the general approval, and having rather 
 regard to its own greatness than to the real value of 
 the work, settled upon the writer two hundred gold 
 ducats yearly, merely on the score of gracious re- 
 compense. " This altogether disposes, as Foscarini 
 points out, of the spiteful imputation of "a venal 
 pen," which one of his contemporaries attributed to 
 Sabellico; but at the same time he is careful to 
 guard his readers from the error of supposing that 
 the historian had the privileges and position of a 
 functionary chosen by the state. 
 
 The learned doge is indeed very anxious that 
 there should be no mistake on this point, nor any 
 undue praise appropriated to the first historian of 
 Venice. All foreign historians, he says, take him 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 375 
 
 as the chief authority on Venice, and quote him 
 continually; not only so, but the writers who imme- 
 diately succeeded him did little more than repeat 
 what he had said, and the most learned among them 
 had no thought of any purgation of his narrative, 
 but only to add various particulars, in the main fol- 
 lowing Sabellico, for which reason they are to be 
 excused who believe that they find in him the very 
 flower of ancient Venetian history ; but yet he can- 
 not be justly so considered. Foscarini cites various 
 errors in the complicated history of the Crusades, 
 respecting which it is allowed, however, that the 
 ancient Venetian records contain very little infor- 
 mation; and such mistakes as that on a certain occa- 
 sion Sabellico relates an expedition as made with 
 the whole of the armata, while Dandolo fixes the 
 number at thirty galleys — not a very important 
 error. When all has been said, however, there is 
 little doubt that as a general history, full in all the 
 more interesting details, and giving a most lifelike 
 and graphic picture of the course of Venetian 
 affairs, with all the embassies, royal visits, rebel- 
 lions, orations, sorrows, and festivities that took 
 place within the city, together with those events 
 more difficult to master that were going on outside, 
 the history of Sabellico is the one most attractive 
 and interesting to the reader, and on all general 
 events quite trustworthy. The original is in Latin, 
 but it was put into the vulgar tongue within a few 
 years after its publication, and was afterward more 
 worthily translated by Dolce in a version which 
 contains much of the force and eloquence of the 
 original. 
 
 After this another long interval elapsed in which 
 many patrician writers, one after another, whose 
 names and works are all recorded by Foscarini, 
 made essays less or more important, without, how- 
 ever, gaining the honorable position of historian of 
 the republic; until at last the project for establish- 
 ing such an office was taken up in the beginning of 
 
376 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 the sixteenth century for the benefit of a young 
 scholar, noble but poor, Andrea Navagero. He was 
 the most elegant Latin writer in Italy, Foscarini 
 says; indeed, the great Council ot Ten themselves 
 have put their noble hands to it that this was the 
 case. ''His style was such as, by agreement of all 
 the learned, had not its equal in Italy or out of it," 
 is the language of the decree by which his appoint- 
 ment w^as made. Being without means he was 
 about to leave Venice to push his fortune elsewhere 
 by his talents, "depriving the country of so great 
 an ornament" — a conclusion *'not to be tolerated." 
 To prevent such an imputation vipon the state, the 
 council felt themselves bound to interfere, and 
 appointed Navagero their historian, to begin over 
 again that authentic and authorized history which 
 Sabellico had executed without authority. The 
 chances probably are that the young and accom- 
 plished scholar had friends enough at court to make 
 a strong effort for him, to liberate him from the 
 alarming possibility, so doubly sad for a Venetian, 
 of being "confined within the boundaries ot private 
 life" — and that the authorities of the state bethought 
 themselves suddenly of a feasible way of providing 
 for him by giving him this long thought ot but 
 never occupied post. They were no great judges of 
 literature, more especially of Latin — their own 
 being of the most atrocious description; but they 
 were susceptible to the possible shame of allowing 
 a scholar who might be a credit to the republic to 
 leave Venice in search of a living. 
 
 Young Navagero thus entered the first upon the 
 post of historian of Venice, which he held for many 
 years without producing anything to justify the 
 council in their choice. It was probably intended 
 only as a means of providing for him pending his 
 introduction into public life; for we find a number 
 of years after a letter from Bembo, congratulating 
 him on his appointment as ambassador to Spain, 
 "the first thing which you have ever asked from 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 377 
 
 the country,** and prophesying great things to fol- 
 low. He was appointed historian in 15 15, but it is 
 not till fifteen years after that we hear anything of 
 his history, and that in the most tragical way. In 
 1530 he was sent on an embassy to France, and car- 
 ried there with him certain manuscripts, the fruit 
 of the intervening years — ten books, it is said, of 
 the proposed story of Venice. But he had not been 
 long in Paris when he fell ill and died. And shortly 
 before his death —on the very day, one writer 
 informs us — he threw his papers into the fire with 
 his own hands, and destroyed the whole. Whether 
 this arose from dissatisfaction with his work, or 
 whether it was done in the delirium of mor- 
 tal sickness, no one could tell. Foscarini quotes 
 from an unpublished letter of Cardinal Valiero some 
 remarks upon this unfortunate writer, in which he 
 is described as one who was never satisfied with 
 moderate approval from others, and still less capable 
 of pleasing himself. This brief and tragic episode 
 suggests even more than it tells. Noble, ambitious, 
 and poor, probably of an uneasy and fastidious 
 mind — for he is said on a previous occasion to have 
 burned a number of his early productions in disgust 
 and discouragement — the despondency of sickness 
 must have overwhelmed a sensitive nature. The 
 office to which he had been promoted was still in the 
 visionary stage; the greatest things were expected 
 of the new historian of the republic, a work super- 
 seding all previous attempts. Sabellico, who had 
 gone over the same ground in choicest Latin, was 
 still fresh in men's minds; and, still more alarm- 
 ing, another Venetian, older and of greater weight 
 than himself, Marino Sanudo, one of the most aston- 
 ishing and gifted of historical moles, was going on 
 day by day with those elaborate records which are 
 the wonder of posterity, building up the endless 
 story of the republic with details innumerable — a 
 mine of material for other workers, if too abundant 
 and minute for actual history. Ser Andrea was no 
 
378 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 doubt well aware ot the keen inspection, the crit- 
 icism sharpened by a sense that this young fellow 
 had been put over the heads of older men, which 
 would await his work ; and his own taste had all the 
 fastidious refinement of a scholar, more critical than 
 confident. When he found himself in a strange 
 country, though not as an exile but with the high 
 commission of the republic; sick, little hopeful of 
 ever seeing the beloved city again; his heart must 
 have failed him altogether. These elaborate pages, 
 how poor they are apt to look in the cold light dark- 
 ened by the shadow of -the grave! He would think 
 perhaps of the formidable academy in the Aldine 
 workshops shaking their heads over his work, pick- 
 ing out inaccuracies — finding perhaps, a danger 
 more appalling still to every classical mind, some- 
 thing here and there not Ciceronian in his Latin. 
 Nothing could be more tragic, yet there is a linger- 
 ing touch of the ludicrous too, so seldom entirely 
 absent from human afi:'airs. To tremble lest a 
 solecism should be discovered in his style when the 
 solemnity of death was already enveloping his 
 being! Rather finish all at one stroke, flinging with 
 his feverish dying hands the work never corrected 
 enough, among the blazing logs, and be done with 
 it forever. Amid all the artificial fervor of Renais- 
 sance scholarship and the learned chatter of the 
 libraries, what a tragic and melancholy scene! 
 
 The critics are careful to indicate that this is not 
 the same Andrea Navagero who wrote the chronicle 
 bearing that name, and whose work is of the most 
 commonplace description. It is confusing to find 
 the two so near in time, and with nothing to 
 identify the second bearer of the name except that 
 he writes in indifferent Italian (Venetian), and not 
 in classic Latin, and that his book was given to the 
 public while the other Andrea, lo Storico, was still 
 only a boy. The only prodiictions of the historian 
 SP called, though nothing of his history survives, 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 379 
 
 seem to have been certain Latin verses of more or 
 less elegance. 
 
 A very much more important personage in his 
 time, as in the value of the extraordinary col- 
 lections he left behind him, was the diarist and 
 historian already referred to, Marino Sanudo. 
 He too, we may remark in passing, is apt to be 
 confused with an older writer of the same name, 
 Marino Sanudo, called Torsello, who wrote on the 
 subject ot the Crusades, and on many other matters 
 more exclusively Venetian, something like a hun- 
 dred and fifty years before, in the middle of the 
 fourteenth century. The younger Sanudo (or San- 
 uto) was born in 1466, of one of the most noble 
 houses in Venice, and educated in all the erudition 
 of his time. He was of such a precocious genius 
 that between his eleventh and fourteenth years he 
 corresponded with the most eminent scholars of the 
 day, and gave the highest hopes of future great- 
 ness. Even in that early age the dominant passion 
 of his life had made itself apparent, and he seems 
 already to have begun the collection of docunients 
 and the record of daily public events. At the age 
 of eight it would appear the precocious historian 
 had already copied out with his own small hand the 
 fading inscriptions made by Petrarch under the 
 series of pictures, anttcchtssimi, the first of all painted 
 in the Hall of the Great Council. Sanudo himself 
 announces that he did this, though without men- 
 tioning his age; but the anxious care of Mr. Raw- 
 don Brown, so well known among the English stu- 
 dents and adorers of Venice, points out that these 
 pictures were restored and had begun to be repainted 
 in 1474, during the childhood of his hero. There 
 could be nothing more characteristic and natural, 
 considering the after-life of the man, than this 
 youthful incident, and it adds an interest the more 
 to the hall in which so often in latter days our his- 
 torian mounted the tribune, in re?iga, as he calls it, 
 and addressed the assembled parliament of VenicQ 
 
380 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 — to call before us the small figure, tablets in hand, 
 his childish eyes already sparkling with observation, 
 and that historical curiosity which was the inspira- 
 tion of his life —copying, before they should alto- 
 gether perish, the inscriptions under the old pic- 
 tures which told the half -fabulous triumphant tale 
 of Barbarossa beaten and Venice victrice. The 
 colors were no doubt fading, flakes of the old dis- 
 temper peeling off and a general ruin threatened, 
 before the Senate saw it necessary to renew that 
 historical chronicle. When we remember Sanudo's 
 humorous, only half-believing note on the subject 
 years after, "that if the story had not been true, 
 our brave Venetians would not have had it painted, ' ' 
 it gives a still more delightful glow of smiling inter- 
 est to the image of the little Marino, no doubt with 
 unwavering faith in his small bosom and enthusiasm 
 for his city, taking down, to the awe of many an 
 unlearned contemporary, the fading legends written 
 by the great poet, a record at once of the ancient 
 glories of Venice and of her illustrious guest. 
 
 He was seventeen, however, and eager in all the 
 exercises of a Venetian gentleman when he went 
 with his elder cousin, Marco Sanudo, who had been 
 appointed one of the auditors or syndics of Terra 
 Pirma, to Padua in the spring of 1483. The bril- 
 liant cavalcade rode from Fusina by the banks of 
 the Brenta, then as now a line of villas, castellos, 
 hospitable houses, where they were received with 
 great honor and pomp, and visited everything that 
 was remarkable in the city. Vtsto tutto^ is the 
 youth's record wherever he went: and there can 
 indeed be no doubt that in all his journeys the 
 young Marino saw and noted everything — the cir- 
 cumstances of the locality, the scenery, the his- 
 torical occurrences — all that is involved in the 
 external aspect of a place which had associations 
 both classical and contemporary. The character- 
 istics of his time are very apparent in all his keen 
 remarks and inspections. He is told, he says, that 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 381 
 
 Padua has many bodies of the saints, and in this 
 respect is second only to Rome — but the only sacred 
 relic in which he is especially interested is the corpo 
 e vero osse of Livy, to which he refers several times, 
 giving the epitaph of the classical historian at full 
 length. Strangely enough, at an age when the art 
 of painting was growing to its greatest develop- 
 ment in Venice, no curiosity seems to have been in 
 the young man's curious mind, nor even any knowl- 
 edge of the fact that the chapel of the Arena had 
 been adorned by the great work of a certain Giotto, 
 though that is the chief object now of the pilgrim 
 who goes to Padua. That beautiful chapel must 
 have been in its fullest glory of color and noble 
 art; but there is no evidence that our cavalier had 
 so much as heard of it, though he spies every scrap 
 of marble on the old bridges, and carefully quotes 
 epigrams and verses about the city, and records 
 every trifling circumstance. "The markets are 
 Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday." *' There are 
 forty parish churches, and four hospitals," etc., 
 etc. — but not a word of the then most famous pic- 
 tures in the world. 
 
 This is the *'Itinerario in Terra-firma, " which is 
 the first of the young author's works. It is full of 
 the sprightly impulses of a boy, and of a boy's 
 pleasure in movement, in novelty, in endless rides 
 and expeditions, tempered by now and then a day 
 in which the syndic data audientta per toto eljomo^ his 
 young cousin sitting no doubt by his side more 
 grave than any judge, to hide the laugh always 
 lurking at the corners of his mouth: data benigna 
 midieiitia^ he says on one occasion, perhaps on one 
 of those May days when he rode off with a caval- 
 cade of his friends through that green abundant 
 country to the village or castello where lived the 
 queen of his affections — "that oriental jewel [Gem- 
 ma], that lovely face which 1 seem to have always 
 before me, inspiring me with many songs for my 
 love." "Oh, me! Oh, me!" he cries in half-hum- 
 
882 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 orous distraction, *'I am going mad! Let me go 
 and sing more than ever. Long before this 1 ought 
 to have been in love. Fain would I sing of the 
 goddess, my bright Gemma, whose lovely counten- 
 ance I ever adore, and who has made me with much 
 fear her constant servant." Gemma shines out 
 suddenly like a star only in this one page of the 
 "Itinerario. " Perhaps he exhausted his boyish 
 passion in constant rides to Rodigio or Ruigo, 
 where the lady lived, and in his songs, of which the 
 specimens given are not remarkable. But the sen- 
 timent is full of delightful, youthful extravagance: 
 and the aspect of the young man gravely noting 
 everything by the instinct of his nature, galloping 
 forth among his comrades — one of whom he calls 
 Pylades — sorne half dozen of them, a young Cor- 
 naro, a Pisani, the bluest blood in Venice — scouring 
 the country, to see the churches, the castles and 
 palaces, and everything that was to be seen, and 
 Gemma above all, mingles with charming ease and 
 inconsistency the dawning statesman, the born 
 chronicler, the gallant, boyish lover. Sometimes 
 the cavalcade counted forty horsemen, sometimes 
 only three or four. The "Itinerario" is a- mass of 
 information, full of details which Professqr R. 
 Fulin, its latest editor, considers well worth the 
 while of the patriotic Venetian of to-day. "To 
 compare our provinces at four centuries' distance 
 with their present state is certainly curious, and 
 withoiit doubt useful also," he says — but the 
 glimpses between the lines of that sprightly, youth- 
 ful company is to us who are less seriously con- 
 cerned still more interesting. *'We have before 
 our eyes," adds the learned professor, "a boy — but 
 a boy who begins to bear very worthily the name 
 of Marino Sanudo. " It somewhat disturbs all 
 Marino's commentators, however, that, though his 
 education had been so good and classical references 
 abound in his writings, yet his style is never so ele- 
 vated as his culture. It is indeed very disjointed, 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 883 
 
 entirely unstudied, prolix, though full of an honest 
 simplicity and straightforwardness which perhaps 
 commends itself more to the English taste than to 
 the Italian. In his after-life Sanudo's power of 
 production seemed indeed endless. Besides his pub- 
 lished works, he left behind him fifty-six volumes 
 of his diary, chiefly of public events, a record day 
 by day of all the news that came to Venice and all 
 that happened there. It was by the loving care of 
 the Englishman already referred to, Mr. Rawdon 
 Brown, a kindred spirit, that portions of those 
 wonderful diaries were first given to the world. 
 They are now in course of publication ; a mass of 
 minute and inexhaustible information, from the first 
 aspect of which I confess to have shrunk appalled. 
 This sea of facts, of picturesque incidents, of an 
 eye-witness' sketches, and the reports of an immed- 
 iate actor in the scenes described affords to the care- 
 ful student an almost unexampled guide and assist- 
 ance to the understanding of the years between 
 1482 and 1533, from Sanudo's youth to the end of 
 his life. 
 
 The *'Vitae Ducum," from which we have already 
 quoted largely, is full of the defects of style which 
 were peculiar to this voluminous writer; they are 
 charged with repetitions and written without re- 
 gard to any rules of composition or prejudices of 
 style — but their descriptions are often exceedingly 
 picturesque in unadorned simplicity, and the reflec- 
 tions of popular belief and the report of the 
 moment give often, as the reader will observe on 
 turning back to our earlier chapters, an idea of the 
 manner in which an incident struck the contempo- 
 rary mind, which is exceedingly instructive, even 
 though, as often happens, it cannot be supported 
 by documents or historical proof. To my thinking 
 it is at least quite as interesting to know what 
 account was given among the people of a great 
 event, and how it shaped itself in the general 
 mind, as to understand the form it takes in the 
 
384 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 archives of the country when it has fallen into per- 
 spective, and into the inevitable subordination of 
 individual facts to the broader views of history. At 
 the same time Sanudo's story, while keeping this 
 popular character, is supported by the citation of 
 innumerable public documents to which he had 
 access in his character of politician and magistrate; 
 so that the essentially different characteristics of 
 the legendary and the documentary history are 
 combined in this loosely written, quaintly ex- 
 pressed, most real and interesting chronicle. The 
 work is said to have been composed by Sanudo be- 
 tween his eighteenth and his twenty-seventh years. 
 The garrulous tone and rambling narrative are 
 more like an old man than a young one; but it is 
 evident that the instinct of the chronicler, the min- 
 ute and constant observation — the ears open and 
 eyes intent upon everything small and great which 
 could be discussed, with a certain absence of dis- 
 crimination between the important and the unim- 
 portant which is the characteristic defect of these 
 great qualities — was in him from the beginning of 
 his career. 
 
 The great printer Aldus dedicated one of his 
 publications to Sanudo in the year 1498, when our 
 Marino was but thirty-two —in which already men- 
 tion is made, as of completed works, of the '*Mag- 
 istratus Urbis Venetse," the "Vitis Principium," 
 and the *'De Bello Gallico," all then ready for pub- 
 lication "both in Latin and the vulgar tongue, that 
 they may be read by learned and unlearned alike." 
 From this it is apparent that Sanudo had also 
 already begun his wonderful diaries, the collection 
 of his great library, and the public life which would 
 seem in its many activities incompatible with these 
 ceaseless toils. He followed all these pursuits, how- 
 ever, through the rest of his life. His diaries 
 became the greatest storehouses of minute informa- 
 tion, perhaps, existing in the world; his library was 
 the wonder of all visitors to Venice; and the record 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 385 
 
 of his own acts and occupations, chronicled along 
 with everything else in his daily story of the life of 
 the city, shows a perpetual activity which takes 
 away the beholder's breath. His speeches in the 
 Senate, generally recorded as '*/<? Manno Smmdo 
 Cofiiradixty'' were numberless. He was employed 
 in all kinds of public missions and work. He was 
 in succession a Signore di Notte, a Savio degli 
 Ordini, one of the Pregadi, one of the Zonta, a 
 member of the Senate, Avvogadore ; exercising the 
 functions of magistrate, member of Parliament, 
 statesman — and taking a part in all great discus- 
 sions upon state affairs, whether in the Senate or in 
 the Great Council. He was, as Mr. Raw don 
 Brown, using the terms natural to an Englishman, 
 describes, almost always in opposition — "contradict- 
 ing," to use his own expression; and for this rea- 
 son was less fortunate than many obscure persons 
 whose only record is in his work. Again and 
 again he has to tell us that the votes are given 
 against him, that he comes out last in the ballot, 
 that for a time he is no longer of the Senate, and 
 excluded from public office. But he never loses 
 heart nor withdraws from the lists. *'/<? Marino 
 Sanudo e dt la Zojita^'' he describes himself; 
 always proud of his position and eager to retain or 
 recover it, when lost. A man of such endless in- 
 dustry, activity of mind and actions, universal in- 
 terest and intelligence, would be remarkable any- 
 where and at any time. 
 
 His first entry into public life was in March, 1498 
 — *'a day to be held in eternal memory" ^ a few 
 months later he was elected Senator, and passed 
 through various duties and offices, always actively 
 employed. The first break in this busy career he 
 records on the ist of April, 1503: 
 
 Having accomplished my term of service in the Ordini 
 (Savii degli Ordini), in which I have had five times the reward 
 of public approbation, and having passed out of the college, 
 I now determine that, God granting it, I will let no day pass 
 
 25 Venice 
 
886 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 without writing the news that comes from day to day, so 
 that I may the better, accustoming myself to the strict truth, 
 go on with my true history, which was begun several years 
 ago. Seeking no eloquence of composition, I will thus note 
 down everything as it happens. 
 
 This retirement, however, does not last long; for 
 within a few months we read: 
 
 Having been, in the end of September, without any appli- 
 cation on my part, or desire to re-enter, elected by the grace 
 of the fathers of the Senate, in a council of the Pregadi, for 
 the sixth time, Savio degli Ordini, I have decided not to 
 refuse ojEce, for two reasons. First, because I desire always 
 to do what I can for the benefit of our republic ; the second; 
 because my former service in the college was always in times 
 of great tribulation during the Turkish war, in which I 
 endured no little fatigue of mind. But now that peace with 
 the Turk has been signed, as I have recorded in the former 
 book, I find myself again in the college in a time ot tranquil- 
 lity ; therefore, with the Divine aid, following my first deter- 
 mination, I will describe here day by day the things that 
 occur, the plain facts ; leaving for the moment every attempt 
 at an elaborate style aside. 
 
 Other notices of a similar kind follow at inter- 
 vals. Now and then there occur gaps, and on sev- 
 eral occasions Marino puts on a little polite sem- 
 blance of being rather pleased than otherwise when 
 these occur; but gradually, as the tide of public 
 life seizes him. becomes more and more impatient 
 of exclusion, and cease to pretend that he likes it, 
 or that it suits him. His time of peace did not last 
 long. The league of Cambrai rose like a great 
 storm from west and south and north, threatening 
 to overwhelm the republic, which, as usual in such 
 great dangers, was heavy with fears, and torn with 
 intrigues within, when most seriously threatened 
 from without, Sanudo tells us of an old senator long 
 retired from public life for whom the doge sent in 
 the horror of the first disasters, and who, beginning 
 to weep, said to his wife, **Give me my cloak. I 
 will go to the council, to say four words, and then 
 die." The troubled council, where every man had 
 gome futile expedient to advise, a change of the 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. M 
 
 Proveciitori, or the sending of a new commissioner 
 to the camp of the defeated, is pnt before us in a 
 few words. Sanudo himself was strongly in favor 
 of two things — that the doge himself should take 
 the field, and that an embassy should be sent to 
 the Turk to ask for help. He gives a melancholy 
 description of the great Ascension Day, the holiday 
 of the year which fell at this miserable moment 
 when the forces of the republic were in full rout, 
 retreating from point to point. 
 
 17 May, 1509. — It was Ascension Day [La Sensa], but 
 there was nothing but weeping. No visitors were to be 
 heard, of, no one was visible in the Piazza; the fathers of the 
 college were broken down with trouble, and still more our 
 doge, who never spoke, but looked like a dead man. And 
 much was said for this last time of sending the doge in person 
 to Verona, to encourage our army and our people there, and 
 to send five hundred gentlemen with his Serenity, at their 
 own expense. Thus the talk went in the Piazza and on the 
 benches of the Pregadi, but those of the college (of senators) 
 took no action, nor did the doge offer himself. He said, how- 
 ever, to his sons and dependents, "The doge will do whatever 
 the country desires." At the same time he is more dead than 
 alive ; he is seventy-three. Thus those evil days go on ; we 
 see our own ruin, and do nothing to prevent it. God grant 
 that what I proposed had been done. I had desired to re- 
 enter as a Savio degli Ordini, but was advised against it, and 
 now I am very sorry not to have carried out my wish, to have 
 procured five or six thousand Turks, and sent a secretary or 
 ambassador to the Sultan ; but now it is too late. 
 
 Sanudo's project of calling, in the Turks their 
 ancient enemies to help them against the league of 
 Christian princes seemed, a dangerous expedient 
 but it must be remembered that the republic was in 
 despair. The poor old doge who was more dead 
 than alive, yet ready to do whatever the country 
 wished, was Leonardo Loredano, whose portrait is 
 so notable an object in our National Gallery. In 
 the midst of all these troubles, however, while the 
 Venetian statesmen were making anxious visits to 
 their nearest garrison, and reviewing and collecting 
 every band they could get together, the familiar 
 
388 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 strain of common lite comes in with such a para- 
 graph as the following : 
 
 17 July, 1509. — On the way to my house I met a man hav- 
 ing a beautiful Hebrew Bible in good paper, value twenty 
 ducats, who sold it to me as a favor for one marzello ; which 
 I took to place it in my library. 
 
 We are unable to say what was the value of a 
 marzello, but it is evident that he got his Bible at a 
 great bargain, taking in this case a little permissi- 
 ble advantage of the troubles- of the time. 
 
 There is something calming and composing to 
 the mind in a long record like this extending over 
 many years. There occurs the episode of a great 
 war, of many privations, misfortunes, and bereave- 
 ments, such as seem to cover the whole world with 
 gloom ; but we have only to turn a few pages, how- 
 ever agitated, however moving may be the record, 
 and we find the state, the individual sufferer, who- 
 soever it may be, going on calmly about the ordi- 
 nary daily businesses of life, and the storm gone 
 by. These storms and wars and catastrophes are 
 after all but accidents in the calmer career which 
 fills all the undistinguished nights and days, only 
 opening here and there to reveal one which is full 
 of trouble, which comes and departs again. His- 
 tory, indeed, makes more of these episodes than 
 life does, for they are her milestones by which to 
 guide her path through the dim multitude of une- 
 ventful days. Our historian, however, in his end- 
 less record, gives the small events of peace almost 
 as much importance as the confusion and excite- 
 ment of the desperate moment when Venice stood 
 against all Europe, holding her own. 
 
 Sanudo's public life was one of continual ups and 
 downs. He would seem to have been a determined 
 conservative, opposing every innovation, though at 
 the same time, like many men of that opinion ex- 
 ceedingly daring in any suggestion that approved 
 itself to his mind, as for instance, in respect to 
 asking aid from the Turks, which was not a step 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 889 
 
 likely to commend itself to a patriot of his princi- 
 ples. And he would not seem to have been very 
 popular even among his own kindred, for there are 
 various allusions to family intrigues against him, 
 as well as to the failure of his hopes in respect to 
 elections and appointments. But that extraordina- 
 rily limited, intense life of the Venetian oligarchy, 
 a world pent up within a city, with all its subtle 
 trains of diplomacy, determined independence on 
 its own side, and equally determined desire to have 
 something to say in every European imbroglio, was 
 naturally a life full of intrigue, of perpetual risings 
 and fallings, where every man had to sustain dis- 
 comfiture in his day, and was ready to trip up his 
 neighbor whenever occasion served. Marino's in- 
 clination to take in all matters a side of his own 
 was not a popular quality, and it is evident that, 
 like many other obstinate and clear-sighted pro- 
 testors, he was often right, often enough at least to 
 make him an alarming critic and troublesome dis- 
 turber of existing parties, being at all times, like 
 the smith of Perth, for his own hand. "I, Marino 
 Sanudo, moved by my conscience, went to the 
 meeting and opposed the new proposals" a?idai in 
 renga etcontradixi aquesto modo nove, is a statement 
 which is continually recurring. And as the long 
 list of volumes grows, there is a preface to almost 
 every new year, in which he complains, explains, 
 defends his actions, and appeals against unfavorable 
 judgments, sometimes threatening to relinquish his 
 toils, taking them up again, consoling himself by 
 the utterance of his complaint. On one occasion 
 he thanks God that notwithstanding much illness 
 he still remains able "to do something in this age 
 in honor of the eternal majesty and exaltation of 
 the Venetian State, to which I can never fail, being 
 born in that allegiance, for which I would die a 
 thousand times if that could advantage my coun- 
 try, notwithstanding that I have been beaten, worn 
 out, and evil entreated in her councils." 
 
390 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 In the past year [1522] I have been dismissed from the Giunta 
 [Zonta], of which two years ago I was made a member, but, 
 while 1 sat in that Senate I always in my speeches did my 
 best for my country, with full honor from the senators for 
 my opinions and judgment, even when against those of my 
 colleagues. And this is the thing that has injured me; for 
 had I been mute, applauding individuals as is the present 
 fashion, letting things pass that are against the interest of 
 my dearest country, acting contrary to the law, as those who 
 have the guidance of the city permit to be done, even had I 
 not been made Avvogadore, I should have been otherwise 
 treated. But seeing all silent, my conscience pushing me to 
 make me speak, since God has granted me good utterance, an 
 excellent memory, and much knowledge of things, having 
 described them for so many years, and seen all the records of 
 public business, it seemed to me that I should sin against my- 
 self if I did not deliver my opinion in respect to the questions 
 discussed, knowing that those who took the other side com- 
 plained of being opposed, because they hoped to reap some 
 benefit from the proposals in question. But I caring only for 
 the public advantage, all seemed to me nothing in comparison 
 with the good of my country. ... I confess that this repulse 
 has caused me no small grief, and has been the occasion of 
 my illness ; and if again I was rejected in the ballot for the 
 past year it was little wonder, seeing that many thought me 
 dead, or so infirm that I was no longer good for anything not 
 having stirred from my house for many months before. 
 But the Divine bounty has still preserved me, and, as 1 have 
 said, enabled me to complete the diary of the year; for how- 
 ever suffering I was I never failed to record the news of every 
 day which was brought to me by my friends so that another 
 volume is finished. I had some thought of now giving up 
 this laborious work, but some ot my countrymen who love 
 me say to me "Marin, make no mistake, follow the way you 
 have begun, remember tnoglie eviagistrato e del del destinato'* 
 (marriages and magistrates are made in heaven). 
 
 In another of these many prefaces, Sanudo reflects 
 that he has now attained his fifty-fifth year, and 
 that it is time to stop this incessant making of notes, 
 and to set himself to the work of polishing and set- 
 ting forth in a more careful style, and in the form 
 of dignified history, his mass of material, "being 
 now of the number of the senators of the Giunta 
 and engaged in many cares and occupations:'* 
 
 But I am persuaded by one who has a right to command, by 
 the noble lord Lorenzo Loredano, procurator, son of our Most 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 391 
 
 Serene Prince, who many times has exhorted me not to give 
 up the work which I have begun, saying that in the end it 
 will bring me glory and perpetual fame ; and praying me at 
 least to continue it during the lifetime of his Serene father, 
 who has been our doge for nineteen years, who has been in 
 many labors for the republic, and having regained a great part 
 of all that had been lost in the late great and terrible war, 
 now waits the conclusion of all things, being of the age of 
 eighty-four. He cannot be expected to live long, although of 
 a perfect constitution, lately recovered from a serious illness, 
 and never absent from the meetings of the Senate or council, 
 or failing in anything that is for the benefit of the state. For 
 these reasons 1 have resolved not to relinquish the work which 
 I have begun, nor to neglect that which I know will be of 
 great use to posterity, the highest honor to my country, and 
 to myself an everlasting memorial. 
 
 Thus our chronicler over and over again persuades 
 himself to continue and accomplish what it was the 
 greatest happiness and first impulse of his life to do. 
 
 It was when the great war against the League 
 was over, and all had returned in peace to their 
 usual occupations, Sanudo to the library which he 
 was gradually making into one of the wonders of 
 Venice, and to his still more wonderful work, that 
 the Senate executed that job — if we may be allowed 
 the word — and elected young Navagero, because he 
 was so poor, to the office, heretofore only an imag- 
 ination, of historian ot the republic. Marino was 
 nearly fifty, and still in the full heat of political 
 life, giving his opinion on every subject, "contra- 
 dicting" freely, and taking nothing for granted, 
 when this appointment was made; and there is no 
 doubt that to be passed over thus for so much 
 younger and less important a man must have been 
 a great mortification for the indefatigable chronicler 
 of every national event. He speaks with a certain 
 quiet scorn in one place of Messer Andrea Navagero 
 stipendiate pubblico per serivere la Histotia. Nor was 
 this the only wrong done him, for the successor 
 appointed to Navagero, after a long interval of 
 time, it would appear, was another man with oppor- 
 tunities and faculties much less appropriate than 
 his own, the learned dilettante, Pietro Bembo, after- 
 
392 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 ward cardinal. Bembo had spent the greater part 
 of his life out of Venice: in Rome, at the court of 
 the Pope, where he filled some important offices; at 
 Padua, which was his home in his later years; at 
 the court of Mantua at the period when that court 
 was the center of cultivation and fine sentiment. 
 Indeed, we find only occasional traces of him at 
 Venice ; though one of his first works was about the 
 fantastic little court of Queen Catherine Cornaro, 
 at Asolo, a small Decameron, full of the unreal 
 prettiness, the masques, and posturing, and versifi- 
 cations of the time. It was to this man that in the 
 second place the office of historian was given over 
 the head of our Marino; nor was this the only vexa- 
 tion to which he was exposed. One of the docu- 
 ments quoted by Mr. Rawdon Brown is a letter trom 
 Bembo, an appeal to the doge to compel Sanudo to 
 open to him the treasures of his collection, one of 
 the most curious demands, perhaps, that were ever 
 made. It is dated from Padua, the 7th August, 
 1531, and shows that not even for the writing of 
 the history did this official of the Senate remove his 
 dwelling to Venice. 
 
 Serene Prince, my lord always honored. Last winter, when 
 I was in Venice, I saw the histories of Messer Marin Sanudo, 
 and it appeared to me that they were of a quality, though 
 including much that is unnecessary, to give me light on an 
 infinite number of things needful for me in carrying out the 
 work committed to my hands by your Serenity. 1 begged 
 of him to allow me to read and go over these, as might be 
 necessary for my work ; to which he replied that these books 
 were the care and labor of his whole life, and that he would 
 not give the sweat of his brow to anyone. Upon which I 
 went away with the intention of doing wiihout them, though 
 I did not see how it would be possible. ow I perceive that 
 if I must see the public letters of your Serenity in order to 
 understand many things contained in the books of the Senate, 
 which are very necessary for the true understanding of the 
 acts of this illustrious Dominion, this labor will be a thing 
 impossible to me, and, if possible, would be infinite. Where- 
 fore I entreat your Serenity to exercise your authority with 
 Messer Marin to let me have his books in my own hands 
 according as it shall be necessary ; pledging myself to return 
 them safe and unhurt. 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. m 
 
 Perhaps it was the visible invidiousness of this 
 appeal, the demand upon a man who had been 
 passed over, for the use of his collections in the 
 execution of a work for which he was so much bet- 
 ter qualified than the actual holder of the office, 
 which shamed the Senate at last into according to 
 Marino a certain recompense for his toil. Mr. 
 Rawdon Brown makes it evident that this allow- 
 ance or salary came very late in the life of the 
 neglected historian. The Council of Ten gave him 
 a hundred and fifty ducats a year as an acknowledg- 
 ment of the existence of his books, '* which I vow to 
 God," he says, '*is nothing to the great labor they 
 have cost me." It is but a conjecture, but it does 
 not seem without probability, that the rulers of the 
 republic may have been shamed into bestowing this 
 provision by Bembo's peevish appeal, and that, 
 mollified by the grant, Marino permitted the use of 
 his sudoriy the sweat of his brow, the labor of his 
 life, to the official historian, whose work even Fos- 
 carini, dry himself to the utmost permissible limit 
 of aridity, confesses to be very dry, and which pos- 
 sesses nothing of the charm of natural animation 
 and verisimilitude which is in Sanudo's rough, con- 
 fused, and often chaotic narrative. 
 
 This wonderful work was carried on till the year 
 1533, and finally filled fifty-six large volumes, the 
 history of every day being brought down to within 
 two years and a half of the author's death. He left 
 this extraordinary collection to the republic in a 
 will dated 4th December, 1533, immediately after 
 the close of the record. 
 
 I desire and ordain that all my books of the history and 
 events of Italy written with my own hand, beginning with 
 the coming of King Charles of France into Italy, books bound 
 and inclosed in a bookcase to the number of fifty-six, should 
 be for my illustrious Signoria, to be presented to them by my 
 executors, and placed wherever it seems to them good by the 
 Heads of the Council of Ten, by which excellent council an 
 allowance of a hundred and fifty ducats a year was made to 
 
3^4 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 me, which I swear before God is nothing to the great labor I 
 have had. 
 
 Also I will and ordain that all my other printed books, which 
 are in my great study downstairs, and those manuscripts which 
 are in my bookcases {armeri, Scottice, aumries) in my cham- 
 ber, which are more than 6,500 in number, which have cost me 
 a great deal of money, and are very fine and genuine, many 
 of them impossible to replace ; of which there is an inventory 
 marked with the price I paid for each (those which have a 
 cross opposite the name I sold in the time of my poverty): I 
 desire my executors that they should all be sold by public 
 auction. And I pray my Lords Procurators, or Gastaldi, not 
 to permit these books to be thrown away, especially those in 
 manuscript, which are very fine and have cost me a great 
 deal, as will be seen in the inventory; and those in boards and 
 the works printed in Germany have also cost me no small 
 sum. And I made so much expenditure in books because I 
 wished to form a library in some monastery, or to find a place 
 for some of them in the library of S. Marco ; but this library 
 I no longer believe in, therefore, I have changed my mind and 
 wish everything to be sold — which books are now of more 
 value than when I bought them, having purchased them 
 advantageously in times of famine, and having had great 
 bargains of them. Wherefore, Messer Zanbatista Egnazio 
 and Messer Antonio di Marsilio, seeing the index, will be able 
 to form an estimate and not allow them to be thrown away, 
 as is the custom. 
 
 This resolution was taken because the new library 
 of S. Marco, so longf promised to the Venetians, had 
 not yet been begun; and the old collector, loving 
 his books as it they had been his children, had evi- 
 dently lost heart and faith in any undertaking of 
 this kind being carried out in Venice. No doubt he 
 had heard of the legacy made by Petrarch two hun- 
 dred years before to the republic, and how it had 
 disappeared, if not that the rotting remains of the 
 poet's bequest still lay in the chamber on the roof 
 of S. Marco, where they had been thrown with a 
 carelessness which looks very much like contempt, 
 and as if the busy city had no time for such van- 
 ities. This sale of his books would at least pay his 
 creditors and be an inheritance for the nephews 
 who had taken the place of children to him, yet 
 were not too grateful for his care. The fifty-six 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 398 
 
 volumes in the great oak press, however, profited 
 scarcely more than Petrarch's gift from being 
 placed in the custody of the tremendous Ten. 
 They were deposited somewhere out of reach of 
 harm, it is to be supposed, after the author's death, 
 but were so completely lost sight of that the con- 
 scientious Foscarini makes as little account of Mar- 
 ino Sanudo as if he had been but a mere chronicler 
 of the lives of certain doges, with a wealth of docu- 
 mentary evidence indeed, but no refinement of style 
 nor special importance as a chronicler. It was not 
 till the year 1805 that these books were found, in 
 the Royal Library at Vienna, got there, nobody 
 knows how, in some accident of the centuries. 
 They are now being printed in all their amplitude, 
 as has been already said; a mine of incalculable 
 historic wealth. 
 
 During the whole time of their composition 
 Sanudo was a public official and magistrate, taking 
 the most active part in all the business of his time. 
 And he was also a collector, filling his library with 
 everything he could find to illustrate his work, from 
 the great mappa?nondo, which was one of the chief 
 wonders of his study, down to drawings of cos- 
 tumes, and of the animals and flowers of those sub- 
 ject provinces of Venice which he had visited in his 
 gay youth, where he had found his first love, and 
 which, in later days, he had seen lost and won 
 again. "The illustrious strangers who visited Ven- 
 ice in those days went away dissatisfied unless they 
 had seen the Arsenal, the jewels of S. Marco, and 
 the library of Sanudo. ' ' On one occasion he himself 
 tells of a wandering prince who sent to ask if he 
 might see this collection, and above all its owner; 
 but Marino was out of humor or tired of illustrious 
 visitors, and refused to receive him. Some of these 
 visitors, quoted by the learned Professor Fulin, 
 have left records of their visits, and of how they 
 came out of the modest house of the historian stupe- 
 fied with wonder and admiration. *'vStupefied cer- 
 
396 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 tainly," adds the professor, "was that gentleman of 
 Vicenza, Federico do Porto, who exclaims in his 
 poem on the subject, 'He who would see the sea, 
 the earth, and the vast world, must seek your house, 
 O learned Marino!*" 
 
 Sanudo had indeed collected a series, marvelous for his 
 time, of ^ pictures (whether drawn, painted, or engraved we 
 cannot now ascertain), in which were represented not only the 
 different forms of the principal European nations, but the 
 ethnographical varieties of the human race in the Old World, 
 and also in the New, then recently discovered. Da Porto 
 continues as follows: 
 
 "Then up the stairs you lead us, and we find 
 A spacious corridor before us spread, 
 As if it were another ocean full 
 Of rarest things ; the wall invisible 
 With curious pictures hid — no blank appears 
 But various figures, men of every guise ; 
 A thousand unaccustomed scenes we see. 
 Here Spain, there Greece, and here the apparel fair 
 Of France ; nor is there any land left out. 
 The New World, with its scarce known tribes, is there. 
 Nor is there any place so far remote 
 That does not send some envoy to your walls. 
 Or can refuse to show its wonders there." 
 
 A great picture of Verona, where Marino had 
 filled the office ot Camerlengo, and where the uncle 
 who stood to him in place of a father was captain, 
 seems to have been a special attraction, and is cel- 
 ebrated by many visitors in very bad Latin. We 
 are obliged to admit that the description of the col- 
 lection sounds very much like that of a popular 
 museum, and does not at all resemble the high art 
 which we should expect from such a connoisseur 
 nowadays. But probably the things with which 
 we should fill our shelves and niches were the meer- 
 est commonplaces to Sanudo, to whom the different 
 fashions of men, and their dresses and their ways, 
 and their dwellings (his own youthful "Itinerario" 
 is illustrated by sketches of towns and houses and 
 fortifications, in the style of the nursery), would be 
 infinitely more interesting than those art productions 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 397 
 
 of his own time, which form our delight. His 
 books, however, were the most dear of all ; and the 
 glimpse we have of the old man seated among his 
 ancient tomes, so carefully catalogued and laid up 
 in these great wooden armen, no doubt rich with 
 carving, and for one of which a nineteenth century 
 collector would give his little finger, though they 
 are not worth thinking of, mere furniture to Mar- 
 ino, is most interesting and attractive. With what 
 pleasure he must have drawn forth his pen when he 
 came in from the council, having happily delivered 
 himself of a lu?igo e perfeita re?iga, to put it all down 
 — how he held out against the payment of the mag- 
 istrates, for example, and contradicted every modo 
 novo; or when sick and infirm himself, the quiet of 
 the study was broken by one after another visitor 
 in toga or scarlet gown, fresh from the excitements 
 of the contest, recounting how, at the fifteenth 
 hour, has come a messenger with news from the 
 camp, or a gallery all adorned with green, bearing 
 the report of a victory! The old man with his huge 
 book spread out, his ink-horn always ready, his 
 every sense acute, his mind filled with parallel 
 cases, with a hundred comparisons, and that 
 delightful conviction that it was not only for the 
 benefit of the canssima patna, but for his own eter- 
 nal fame and glory, that he continued page by page 
 and day by day, furnishes us with a picture charac- 
 teristically Venetian, inspired by the finest instmcts 
 of his race. He was no meek recluse or humble 
 scribe, but a statesman fully capable of holding his 
 own, and with no small confidence in his own opin- 
 ion; yet the glory of Venice is his motive above all 
 others_, and the building up of the fame of the city 
 for whose benefit he would die a thousand times, as 
 he says, and for whose honor he continues day after 
 day and year after year his endless and tardily 
 acknowledged toils. Would it have damped his 
 zeal, we wonder, could he have foreseen that his 
 unexampled work should drop into oblivion, after 
 
398 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 historians such as the best informed of doges, Marcc 
 Foscarini, knowing next to nothing of him till sud- 
 denly a lucky and delighted student fell upon those 
 great volumes in the Austrian Library ; and all at 
 once, after three centuries and more, old Venice 
 sprang to light under the hand of her old chron- 
 icler, and Marino Sanudo with all his pictures, his 
 knickknacks, his brown rolls of manuscript and 
 dusty volumes round him, regained, as was his 
 right, the first place among Venetian historians — 
 one of the most notable figures of the mediaeval 
 world. 
 
 Sanudo died in 1539, at the age of seventy- three, 
 poor, as would seem from his will, in which, though 
 he has several properties to bequeath, he has to 
 commit the payment of his faithful servants espe- 
 cially a certain Anna of Padua, who had nursed 
 and cared for him for twenty years ("who is much 
 my creditor, for 1 have not had the means to pay 
 her, though she has never failed in her service"), to 
 his executors as the first thing to be done, pnmo et 
 mite ommum, after the sale of his effects. But he 
 would seem to have had anticipations of a satisfac- 
 tory conclusion to his affairs, since he orders foi: 
 himself a marble sepulcher, to be erected in the 
 Church of S. Zaccaria, with the following inscrip- 
 tion: 
 
 Ne tu hoc despice quod vides Sepulchrum 
 Seu sis advena, seu urbanus. 
 
 ossa sunt hic sita 
 
 Marini Sanuti Leonardi filii 
 
 Senatoris Clarissimi, 
 
 Rerum Antiquarum Indagatoris 
 
 Historie Venetorum ex publico decreto 
 
 Scriptoris Solertissimi. 
 
 Hoc voLUi te Scire, nunc bene vade. 
 
 Vale. 
 
 Some time afterward, however, the old man, per- 
 haps losing heart, finding his books and his curiosi- 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 399 
 
 ties less thought of than he had hoped, gives up the 
 marble sarcophagus so dear to his age, and bids 
 them bury him where he falls, either at S. Zaccaria 
 with his fathers, or at S. Francisco della Vigna, 
 where his mother lies, he no longer cares which ; 
 but he still clings to his epitaph, the eterna memoria 
 with which he had comforted himself through all his 
 toils. Alas! it has been with his bodily remains as 
 for three centuries with those of his mind and spirit. 
 No one knows where the historian lies. His house, 
 with his stemma, the arms of the Ca' Sanudo, still 
 stands in the parish of S. Giacomo dell' Orio, behind 
 the Fondaco dei Turchi, an ancient house, once 
 divided into three for the use of the different 
 branches of an important family, now fallen out of 
 all knowledge of the race, and long left without even 
 a stone to commemorate Marino Sanudo's name. 
 This neglect has now been remedied, not by 
 Venice, but by the loving care of Mr. Rawdon 
 Brown, the first interpreter and biographer of this 
 long-foi gotten name. The municipality of Venice 
 is fond of placing Laptde on every point of vantage, 
 but the anxious exhortations of our countryman did 
 not succeed in inducing the then authorities to give 
 this tribute to their illustrious historian. 
 
 Since that period, however, his place in his be- 
 loved city has been fully established, and it is pleas- 
 ant to think that it was an Englishman who was 
 the first to claim everlasting remembrance, the 
 reward which he desired above all others, for the 
 name of Marino Sanudo, of all the historians of 
 Venice the greatest, the most unwearied, and the 
 best. 
 
400 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ALDUS AND THE ALDINES. 
 
 In the end of the fifteenth century, when all the 
 arts were coming to their climax, notwithstanding 
 the echoes of war and contention that were never 
 silent, and in the midst of which the republic had 
 often hard ado to hold her own, Venice suddenly 
 became the chief center of literary effort in Italy, 
 or we might say, at that moment, in the world. 
 Her comparative seclusion from actual personal 
 danger, defended as she was like England by some- 
 thing much more like a "silver streak" than our 
 stormy Channel, had long made the city a haven of 
 peace, such as Petrarch found it, for men of letters ; 
 and the freedom of speech, of which that poet ex- 
 perienced both the good and evil, naturally at- 
 tracted many to whom literary communion and 
 controversy were the chief pleasures in life. It was 
 not, however, from any of her native literati that 
 the new impulse came. A certain Theobaldo 
 Manucci, or Mannutio— familiarly addressed, as is 
 still common in Italy, as Messer or Ser Uldo — born 
 at the little town of Bassiano near Rome, and con- 
 sequently calling himself, Romano, had been for 
 some time connected with the family of the Pii, 
 princes of Carpi, as tutor. The dates are confused 
 and the information uncertain at this period of his 
 career. One of his earlier biographers, Manni, in- 
 troduces Aldo's former pupil as a man able to enter 
 into literary discussions and take a part in the 
 origination of great plans, whereas Renouard, the 
 accomplished author of the "Annales de I'lmpri- 
 merie des Aides," speaks of Alberto as a boy, pre- 
 cocious, as was not unusual to the time, but still in 
 extreme youth, when the new turn was given to his 
 preceptor's thoughts. The natural conclusion from 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 401 
 
 the facts would be that, having completed his edu- 
 cational work at Carpi, Aldo had gone to Ferrara 
 to continue his studies in Greek, and when driven 
 away by the siege of that city had taken refuge 
 with Count Giovanni Pico at Mirandola, and from 
 thence, in company with that young and brilliant 
 scholar, had returned to his former home and pupil 
 — where there ensued much consultation and many 
 plans in the intervals of the learned talk between 
 these philosophers, as to what the poor man of let- 
 ters was now to do for his own living and the 
 furtherance of knowledge in Italy. Probably the 
 want of text-books, the difficulty of obtaining books 
 of any kind, the incorrectness of those that could 
 be procured, the need of grammars, dictionaries, 
 and all the tools of learning, which would be doubly 
 apparent if the young Alberto, heir of the house, 
 was then in the midst of his education, led the con- 
 versation of the elders to this subject. Count Pico 
 was one of the best scholars of his time, very pre- 
 cocious as a boy and in his maturity still holding 
 learning to be most excellent and Messer Aldo was 
 well aware of all the practical disadvantages with 
 which the acquisition of knowledge was surrounded, 
 having been himself badly trained in the rules of 
 an old-fashioned *'Doctrinale," **a stupid and 
 obscure book written in barbarous verse. " Their 
 talk at last would seem to have culminated in a dis- 
 tinct plan. Aldo was no enterprising tradesman or 
 speculator bent on money-making. But his educa- 
 tional work would seem to have been brought to a 
 temporary pause, and in the learned leisure of the 
 little principality, in the fine company of the 
 princely scholars who could both understand and 
 help, some lurking desires and hopes no doubt, 
 sprang into being. To fill the world with the best 
 of books, free from the blemishes of incorrect 
 transcription, or the print which was scarcely more 
 trustworthy — what a fine occupation, better far 
 than the finest influence upon the mind of one 
 
 26 Venice 
 
402 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 pupil, however illustrious! The scheme would 
 grow, and one detail after another would be aaded 
 in the conversation, which must have become more 
 and more interesting as this now exciting project 
 shaped itself. We can hardly imagine that the 
 noble house in which the schenie originated, and 
 the brilliant visitor under whose auspices it was 
 formed, did not promise substantial aid in an un- 
 dertaking which the learned tutor had naturally no 
 power of carrying out by himself; and when all the 
 other preliminaries were settled, Venice was fixed 
 upon as the fit place for the enterprise. Pico was 
 a Florentine, Aldo a Roman, but there seems to 
 have existed no doubt in their minds as to the best 
 center for this great scheme. 
 
 The date of Aldo's settlement in Venice is un- 
 certain, like many other facts in this obscure be- 
 ginning. His first publication appeared in 1494, 
 and it was in 1482 that he left Ferrara to take shel- 
 ter in the house of the Pii. It would seem probable 
 that he reached Venice soon after the later date, 
 since, in his applications to the Senate for the ex- 
 clusive use of certain forms of type, he describes 
 himself as for many years an inhabitant of the city, 
 Manni concludes that he must have been there 
 toward 1488, or rather that his preparations for the 
 establishment of his Stamperia originated about 
 that time. He did not, however, begin at once with 
 this project, but established himself in Venice as a 
 reader or lecturer on the classical tongues; **read- 
 ing and interpreting in public for the benefit of the 
 noble and studious youth of the city the most 
 renowned Greek and Latin writers, collating and 
 correcting those manuscripts which it was his inten- 
 tion to print." He drew around him, while en- 
 gaged in this course of literature, all that was 
 learned in Venice. Senators, students, priests, 
 whoever loved learning, were attracted by his 
 already well known fame as a fine scholar, and by 
 the report of the still greater undertaking on which 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 403 
 
 he was bent when a favorable moment should 
 arise. No doubt Aldo had been furnished by his 
 patrons with the best of introductions, and friends 
 and brethren flocked about him, so many that they 
 formed themselves into a distinct society — the 
 Neacademia of Aldo — a collection of eager scholars, 
 all ready to help, all conscious of the great need, 
 and what we should call in modern parlance the 
 wonderful opening for a great and successful effort. 
 Sabellico, the learned and eloquent historian, with 
 whose new work Venice was ringing; Sanudo, our 
 beloved chronicler, then beginning his life-long 
 work: Bembo, the future cardinal, already one of 
 the fashionable semi-priests of society, holding a 
 canonicate ; the future historian who wrote no his- 
 tory, Andrea Navagero, but he in his very earliest 
 youth ; another cardinal, Leandro, then a barefooted 
 friar; all crowed about the new classical teacher. 
 The enthusiasm with which he was received seems 
 to have exceeded even the ordinary welcome ac- 
 corded in that age of literary freemasonry to every 
 man who had any new light to throw upon the 
 problems of knowledge. And while he expounded 
 and instructed, the work of preparation for still more 
 important labors went on. It is evident that he 
 made himself full known, and even became an 
 object of general curiosity; one of the personages 
 to be visited by all that were on the surface of 
 Venetian society, and that the whole ot Venice was 
 interested and entertained by the idea of the new 
 undertaking. Foreign printers had already made 
 Venice the scene of their operations, the English- 
 man Jenson and the Teutons from Spires having 
 begun twenty or thirty years before to print 
 Venezia on the title-pages of their less ambitious 
 volumes. But Aldo was no mere printer, nor was 
 his work for profit alone. It was a labor of love, 
 an enterprise of the highest public importance, and 
 as such commended itself to all who cared for edu- 
 cation or the humanities, or who had any desire to 
 
404 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 be considered as members or disciples of that 
 highest and most cultured class of men of letters, 
 who were the pride and glory of the age. 
 
 The house of Aldus is still to be seen in the cor- 
 ner of the Campo di San Agostino, not far from the 
 beautiful Scuola di S. Giovanni Evangelista, 
 which every stranger visits. It was a spot already 
 remarkable in the history of Venice, though the 
 ruins of the house of that great Cavaliere, Baja- 
 monte Tiepole, must have disappeared before Aldus 
 brought his peaceful trade to this retired and quiet 
 place — tar enough off from the centers of Venetian 
 life to be left in peace, one would have thought. 
 But that this was not the case, and that his house 
 was already a great center of common interest, is 
 evident from one of the dedicatory epistles to an 
 early work addressed to Andrea Navagero, in which 
 Aldus complains with humorous seriousness of the 
 many interruptions from troublesome visitors or 
 correspondents to which he was subject. Letters 
 from learned men, he says, arrive in such multi- 
 tudes that, were he to answer them all, it would 
 occupy him night and day. Still more importunate 
 were those who came to see him, to inquire into 
 his work: 
 
 Some from friendship, some from interest, the greater part 
 because they have nothing to do — for then "Let us go," they 
 say, "to Aldo's." They come in crowds and sit gaping: 
 
 "Non missura cutem, nisi plena cruoris hirudo." 
 
 1 do not speak of those who come to read to me either 
 poems or prose, generally rough and unpolished, for publica- 
 tion, for I defend myself from these by giving no answer or 
 else a very brief one, which I hope nobody will take in ill 
 part, since it is done, not from pride or scorn, but because all 
 my leisure is taken up in printing books of established fame. 
 As for those who come for no reason, we make bold to 
 admonish them in classical words in a sort of edict placed 
 over our door: "Whoever you are, Aldo requests you, if you 
 want anything, ask it in few words and depart, unless, like 
 Hercules, you come to lend the aid of your shoulders to the 
 weary Atlas. Here will always be found in that case some- 
 thing for you to do, however many you ^ay be." 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 405 
 
 This affords us a whimsical picture of one of the 
 commonest grievances of busy persons, especially 
 in literature. No doubt the idlers who said to each 
 other "Let us go to Aldo's" considered themselves 
 to be showing honor to literature, as well as estab- 
 lishing their own right to consideration, when they 
 went all that long way from the gayeties of the 
 Piazza or the livel)^ bottegas and animation of the 
 Rialto to the busy workshops in the retired and dis- 
 tant Campo, where it might be their fortune to rub 
 shoulders with young Bembo steeped in Greek, or 
 get into the way of Sanudo, or be told sharply to 
 ask no questions by Aldo himself; let us hope they 
 were eventually frightened off by the writing over 
 the door. The suggestion, however, that they 
 should help in the work was no form of speech, for 
 Aldo's companions and friends not only surrounded 
 him with sympathy and intelligent encouragement, 
 but diligently worked with him ; giving him the 
 benefit of their varied studies and critical experience 
 — collating manuscripts and revising proofs with a 
 patience and continuous labor of which the modern 
 printer, even in face of the most illegible "copy," 
 could form no idea. For the manuscripts from 
 which they printed were in almost all instances in- 
 correct and often imperfect, and to develop a pure 
 text from the careless or fragmentary transcripts 
 which had perhaps come mechanically through the 
 hands of ignorant scribes — taking from each what 
 was best, and filling up the gaps — was a work which 
 required great caution and patience, as well as in- 
 telligence and some critical power. 
 
 The first work published by Aldus, true to his 
 original purpose, was the Greek grammar of Con- 
 stantino Lascaris, conveyed to him, as he states in 
 his preface, by Bembo and another young man of 
 family and culture, "now studying at Padua." 
 
 Bembo, it is well known, had spent several years 
 in Sicily with Lascaris studying Greek, so that it 
 would seem natural that he should be the means of 
 
406 tHE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 communication between the author and publisher. 
 This is the first work with a date, according to the 
 careful Renouard, which came from the new press. 
 A small volume of poetry, but without date, the 
 "Musaeus, '* competes with this book for the honor 
 of being the first published by Aldus ; but it would 
 not seem very easy to settle the question, and the 
 reader v/ill not expect any bibliographical details in 
 this place. The work went on slowly; the first two 
 years producing only five books, one of which was 
 Aristotle — the first edition ever attempted in the 
 original Greek. In this great undertaking Aldus 
 had the assistance of two editors, Alexander Bon^ 
 dino and Scipione Fortiguerra, scholars well known 
 in their time, one calling himself Agathemeron, the 
 other Carteromaco, according to their fantastic 
 fashion, and both now entirely unknown by either 
 apellation. It was dedicated to Alberto Pio of 
 Carpi, the young prince with whom and whose train- 
 ing the new enterprise was so much connected. It 
 is not to be supposed that publishing of this elabo- 
 rate kind, so slow, so elaborately revised, so difficult 
 to produce, could have paid even its own expenses, 
 at least at the beginning. It is true that the 
 printer had a monopoly of the Greek, which he was 
 the first to introduce to the world. No competing 
 editions pressed" his Aristotle; he had the lim- 
 ited yet tolerably extensive market — for this new 
 and splendid . work would be emphatically, in the 
 climax of Renaissance enthusiasm and ambition, 
 one which no prince who respected himself, no car- 
 dinal given to letters, or noble dilettante could be 
 content without — in his own hands. And the poor 
 scholars who worked in his studio, some of them 
 lodging under his roof, with itistancabili co7ifro7ih de^ 
 codici miglion, collation of innumerable manuscripts 
 according to the careful "judgment of the best men 
 in the city, accomplished not only in both the clas- 
 sical languages but in the soundest erudition" — 
 would probably have but small pay for their labo- 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. iOl 
 
 rious toila But under the most favorable circum- 
 stances the aid of his wealthy patrons was, no 
 doubt, indispensable to Aldo in the beginning of 
 his career. 
 
 Nor was the costly work of editing his only ex- 
 pense. From the time when the scholar took up 
 the new trade of printer, it is evident that a new 
 ambition rose within him ; not only the best text, 
 but the best type occupied his mind. The Lasca- 
 ris, Renouard tells us, was printed in ''caractere 
 Latin un peu bizarre'' — of which scarcely any further 
 use was made For some time indeed each succes- 
 sive volume would seem to have been printed in 
 another and another form of type, successive essays 
 to find the best; which is another proof of the 
 anxiety of Aldus that his work should be perfect. 
 Not content with ordinary Roman character with 
 which Jenson in Venice and the other printers had 
 already found relief from the ponderous dignity of 
 the Black Letter, he set himself to invent a new 
 type. The tradition is that the elegant handwriting 
 of Petrarch, so fine and clear, was the model chosen 
 for this invention, which was received with enthu- 
 siasm at the moment. It was founded by Francesco 
 of Bologna, and called at first Aldino, after its inven- 
 tor, and then Italic. No one who knows or pos- 
 sesses books in this graceful and beautiful type will 
 doubt that it is the prettiest of all print ; but after 
 a little study of these beautiful pages, without the 
 break of relief or a single paragraph, all flowing on 
 line after line, the reader will probably succumb 
 halt blinded and wholly confused, and return with 
 pleasure to the honest everyday letters, round and 
 simple, of the Roman type. A copy of the '*Corti- 
 giano," one of the best known of old Italian books, 
 lies before us at this moment, with the delicate 
 Aldine mark, the anchor and dolphin, on the title- 
 page. Nothing could be more appropriate to the 
 long, unending dialogue and delightful, artificial 
 flow of superfine sentiment and courtly talk, than 
 
408 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 the charming minute and graceful run of the letters, 
 corsivo, like a piece of the most beautiful penman- 
 ship. No reader could possibly wish to read the 
 "Cortigiano" straight through, at one or a dozen 
 readings; but were the subject one of livelier inter- 
 est, or its appeal to the heart or intellect a deeper 
 one, the head would soon ache and the eyes swim 
 over those delightful pages. In the enthusiasm of 
 invention Aldus himself describes his new type as 
 ''of the greatest beauty, such as was never done 
 before," and appeals to the Signoria of Venice to 
 secure to him for ten years the sole right to use it 
 — kindly indicating to the authorities, at the same 
 time, the penalty which he would like to see 
 attached to any breach of the privilege. 
 
 I supplicate that for ten years no other should be allowed to 
 print in cursive letters of any sort in the dominion of your 
 Serenity, nor to sell books printed in other countries in any 
 part of the said dominion, under pain to whoever breaks this 
 law of forfeiting the books and paying a fine of two hundred 
 ducats for each offense ; which fine shall be divided into three 
 parts, one for the officer who shall convict, another for the 
 Pieta, the third for the informer ; and that the accusation be 
 made before any officer of this most excellent city before 
 whom the informer may appear. 
 
 Aldus secured his privilege from a committee (if 
 we may use so modern a word) of councillors, among 
 whom is found the name of Sanudo, cousin of our 
 Marino, who himself, according to a note in his 
 diary, seems to have prepared the necessary decree. 
 But the essential over-delicacy of the type was its 
 destruction. It continued in use for a number of 
 years, during which many books were printed in it: 
 but after that period dropped into the occasional 
 usage for emphasis or distinction which we still re- 
 tain — though our modern Italics, no doubt the natu- 
 ral successors and descendants of the invention of 
 Aldus, are much more common place and not nearly 
 so beautiful. 
 
 It is pretty to know, however, that the first 
 Italian book published in this romantic and charm- 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 409 
 
 ing form was the poems of Petrarch, "Le Cose Vol- 
 gari di Messer Francescoo Petrarcha," edited with 
 great care by Bembo, "who," writes a gentleman 
 of Pavia to the illustrious lady, Isabella, Duchess of 
 Mantua, "has printed the Petrarch from a copy 
 of the verses written in Petrarch's own hand, 
 which I have held in mine, and which belongs to a 
 Paduan. It is esteemed so much that it has been 
 followed letter by letter in the printing, with the 
 greatest diligence." The book is described on the 
 title-page as "taken from the handwriting of the 
 Poet," and not only the year but the month of the 
 date, July, 1501, carefully given. Renouard tells a 
 charming story of a copy he had seen, inscribed 
 from one fond possessor to another, through three 
 or four inheritances, avec une sorte didolatne^ and 
 which contained at the end a sonnet in the hand- 
 writing of Pietro Bembo: 
 
 "Se come qui la fronte onesta e grave 
 Del sacro alrao Poeta 
 Che d'un bel Lauro colse eterna palma 
 Cosi vedessi ancor lo spirto e I'alma 
 Stella si chiara e lieta, 
 Diresti, certo 11 ciel tutto non ave. 
 
 "Tu chevieni a mirar 1' onesta e grave 
 Sembianza dei divin nostro Poeta, 
 Pensa, s'in questa il tuo desio s'acqueta, 
 Quanto fu il veder lui dolce e soave, 
 
 Lorenzo of Pavia (the same man apparently who 
 visited Carpaccio on behalf of Gonzaga, the hus- 
 band of Isabella, and saw that painter's picture of 
 Jerusalem) secured a copy of this true amateur's 
 book, printed with such love and care "on good 
 paper, very clear and white and equal, not thick in 
 one part and thin in another, as are so many of 
 those you have in Mantua," as a "rare thing, which 
 like your Ladyship, has no paragon," for Duchess 
 Isabella. 
 
 After this fine beginning, however, there followed 
 darker days. In 1506 Aldus had to l^ave Venice to 
 
410 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 look after properties lost or in danger; a troubled 
 enterprise which he sweetened as he could by his 
 usual search after manuscripts and classical infor- 
 mation. In the month of July of that year an acci- 
 dent happened to him which affords us an interest- 
 ing glimpse of the scholar-publisher. He was riding 
 along with his servant, who was a Mantuan, but un- 
 der sentence of banishment from the princedom, 
 returning to Asola, where his family were, from a 
 prolonged journey through Lombardy. The pair 
 rode along quietly enough, though there were fight- 
 ings going on round about — in short stages, ever 
 ready to turn aside to convent or castle where co- 
 dexes might be found, or where there was some 
 learned chaplain or studious friar who had opinions 
 on the subject of Aristotle or Vergil to be consulted 
 — when suddenly, as they crossed the Mantuan fron- 
 tier, the guards, who had been set to watch for cer- 
 tain suspected persons, started forth to seize the 
 passengers. The servant, terrified, fled, thinking 
 that he was the object of their suspicions, and his 
 master was seized and made prisoner, his precious 
 papers taken from him, and himself shut up in the 
 house of the official who had arrested him. Aldus 
 immediately wrote to the Prince of Mantua, him 
 self an amateur of the arts, stating his hard case. 
 His servant's foolish flight had aroused all manner 
 of suspicions, and perhaps the old manuscripts 
 which formed his baggage strengthened the doubts 
 with which he was regarded. He writes thus with 
 modest dignity, explaining his position: 
 
 I am Aldo Manutio Romano, privileged to call myself of 
 the family of the Pii by my patron Alberto of Carpi, who is 
 the son-in-law of your illustrious Highness — and am and have 
 always been your humble servant, as is my lord whom I natu- 
 rally follow. At present, in consequence of my undertaking 
 as a printer of books, I dwell in Venice. Desiring to print 
 the works of Vergil, which hitherto have been very imperfectly 
 rendered, correctly and according to the best texts, I have 
 sought through all Italy and beyond ; and in person I have 
 gone over almost all Lombardy to look for any manuscripts of 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 411 
 
 these works that may be found. On my way back to Venice, 
 passing by your Highness' villa at Casa Romana, and having 
 with me Federico de Ceresara, my servant, who is a native of 
 and banished from these parts, he took fright when your 
 Highness* guards seized his bridle, and, striking his horse with 
 his feet, fled outside the boundaries of your Highness' terri- 
 tory. Having got to the other side of the frontier he sent back 
 his horse ; for which cause I am detained here with my horses 
 and goods, both those which my servant carried and those 
 which I myself had. And this is the third day that I am de- 
 tained here, to the great injury of my business, and I entreat 
 your Highness to be pleased to command Messer Joanpetro 
 Moraro, in whose house I am, to permit me to proceed upon 
 my journey, and to restore to me my horses and my goods. 
 As I am illustrating the works of Vergil, who was a Mantuan, 
 it appears to me that I do not deserve evil treatment in Man- 
 tua, but rather to be protected. 
 
 Two days after Aldus was compelled to write 
 again, having received no answer; but on the 25th 
 of July, when his detention had lasted a week, he 
 was liberated with Gonzaga's apologies and excuses. 
 He did not like the incident, complaining bitterly 
 of the shame of being incarcerated; but it forms an 
 interesting illustration in history to see him, with 
 all his precious papers in his saddle-bags, and his 
 consciousness of a name as well known as their mas- 
 ter's, answering the interrogatories of the guards, 
 appealing to the prince, who could not mistake, 
 though these ignorant men-at-arms might do so, 
 who Aldo Manutio was. 
 
 Among the various assistants whom Aldus em- 
 ployed during these first busy years, and whom his 
 biographer, Manni, calls corretton delta Stampena, 
 figured among others, a man more illustrious than 
 any yet mentioned — Erasmus of Rotterdam, uoino 
 d ampca e spaziosa fama. It is said that Erasmus 
 wrote from Bologna to propose for publication his 
 collection of "Adages," a proposal which was re- 
 ceived eagerly by Aldus; but when the philosopher 
 came to Venice, he shared at first the fate of those 
 unfortunates who were warned by the placard over 
 the door of the Stamperia to state their business 
 quickly and be gone. When Aldus knew, however, 
 
412 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 who his visitor was he hurried from his workshop 
 and his proofs to receive with honor a guest so wel- 
 come. The Dutchman would seem to have entered 
 his house at once as one of his recognized assist- 
 ants. The famous Scaliger, in a philippic directed 
 against Erasmus, declares that, when he found ref- 
 uge there, he ate for three and drank for many 
 without doing the work of one; but such amenities 
 are not unknown among scholars any more than 
 among the ignorant. Perhaps the heavier Teuton 
 always seems to exceed in these respects amid the 
 spare living and abstemious sobriety of Italians. 
 Erasmus himself allows that after the publication 
 of his "Proverbs" he had worked with Aldus on the 
 comedies of Terence and Plautus and the tragedies 
 of Seneca — not the loftiest perhaps, of classical 
 works — "in which," he says, *'I think that I have 
 happily restored some passages with the support of 
 ancient manuscripts. We left them with Aldus," 
 he adds, "leaving to his judgment the question of 
 publication." This work never seems to have been 
 published by the elder Aldus, so that perhaps Eras- 
 mus' indignant denial afterward of ever having 
 done any work of correction, except upon his own 
 book, may after all be reconcilable with the above 
 statements. 
 
 The busy house on its quiet Campo, with all the 
 bustle of Venice distant — not even the measured 
 beat of the oars on the canal, most familiar of sounds, 
 to disturb the retired and tranquil square ; but all 
 the hum of incessant work within, the scholars with- 
 drawn in silent chambers out of the way of the 
 printing presses, poring over their manuscripts, 
 straining after a better reading, a corrected phrase, 
 with proofs sent from one to another, and the master 
 most busy of all, giving his attention now to a new 
 form, now to an old manuscript — how strange a con- 
 trast it offers to the gay and animated life, the 
 intrigues, the struggles, the emulations, outside! 
 No doubt the Stamperia had its conflict too. Ser 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 41^ 
 
 Merino, stepping round in his senator's robes from 
 the Ca* Sanudo not far off, would not meet perhaps 
 without a gibe the youngster Navagero, who had 
 been named to the post of historian over his head ; 
 nor could the poor Italian scholars refrain from 
 remarks upon the big appetite and slow movements 
 of that Dutch Erasmus, whose reputation has proved 
 so much more stable than their own. But these 
 jealousies are small in comparison with the struggles 
 of the council chamber, the secret tribunals, the 
 betrayals, the feuds and frays that went on every- 
 where around them. When the Neacademia met 
 upon its appointed days, and the learned heads were 
 laid together, and the talk was all of Vergil and 
 Ovid, of Plato and Aristotle, how full of an inspir- 
 ing seUvSe of virtue and work that was for the world 
 was that grave assembly! When Aldus wrote his 
 preface to the grammar of Lascaris, which was his 
 first publication, he declares himself to have deter- 
 mined to devote his life to the good of mankind, for 
 which great end, though he might live a life much 
 more congenial to him in retirement, he had chosen 
 a laborious career. They were all inspired with 
 the same spirit, and toiled over obscure readings 
 and much-corrected proofs with the zeal of mis- 
 sionaries, bringing new life and light to the dark 
 place. *' Everything is good in these books, " says 
 the French critic Renouard. "Not only for their 
 literary merit, most of them being the greatest of 
 human works, but also in the point of view ot 
 typographical excellence, they are unsurpassed." 
 Neither rival nor imitator has reached the same 
 height — even his sons and successors, though with 
 the aid of continually improving processes, never 
 attained the excellence of Aldo tl Vecchso, the scholar- 
 printer, the first to devote himself to the production 
 of the best books in the best way; not as a mercan- 
 tile speculation, but with the devout intention of 
 serving the world's ^ est interests, as well as follow- 
 
4i4 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 ing his own cherished tastes and working out the 
 chosen plan of his life. 
 
 It is one remarkable siorn of the universal depres- 
 sion and misery that Aldus and his studio and all 
 his precious manuscripts disappeared during the 
 troubled years of the great Continental war in 
 which all the world was against Venice. In 15 lo, 
 1511, and 1512, scarcely any book proceeded from 
 his press. The painters went on with their work, 
 and notwithstanding the misery and fear in the city 
 the statesmen, councillors, all public officials, were 
 more active and occupied than ever. Had Venice 
 possessed a great poet, he would not in all proba- 
 bility have been put to silence even by the terrible 
 and unaccustomed distant roar upon the mainland 
 of the guns. But the close and minute labors of 
 the literary corrector and critic were not compatible 
 with these horrible disturbances. Even in the 
 height of the Rennaissance men were indifferent to 
 fine Latin and fine Greek and the most lovely vari- 
 eties of type in the vehemence of a national struggle 
 for life. 
 
 After the war Aldus returned to his work with 
 renewed fervor. 
 
 It is difficult [says Renouard] to form an idea of the passion 
 with which he devoted himself to the reproduction of the 
 great works of ancient literature. If he heard of the existence 
 anywhere of a manuscript unpublished, or which could throw 
 a light upon an existing text, he never rested till he had it it 
 in his possession. He did not shrink from long journeys, 
 great expenditure, applications of all kinds; and he had 
 also the satisfaction to see that on all sides people bestirred 
 themselves to help him, communicating to him, some freely, 
 some for money, an innumerable amount of precious manu- 
 scripts for the advantage of his work. Some were even sent 
 to him from very distant countries, from Poland and Hun- 
 gary, without any solicitation on his part. 
 
 It is not in this way, however, that the publisher, 
 that much-questioned and severely criticised mid- 
 dleman, makes a fortune. And Aldus died poor. 
 His privileges did not stand him in much stead; 
 copyright, especially, when not in books but in new 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 415 
 
 forms of type, being non-existent in his day. In 
 France and Germany, and still nearer home, his 
 beauriful Italic was robbed from him, copied on all 
 sides; notwithstanding the protection granted by 
 the Pope and other princes, as well as by the Vene- 
 tian Signoria. His fine editions were printed from 
 and made the foundation of foreign issues which 
 replaced his own. How far his princely patrons 
 stood by him to repair his losses there seems no in- 
 formation. His father-in-law, Andrea of Asola, a 
 printer who was not so fine a scholar, but perhaps 
 more able to cope with the world, did come to his 
 aid, and his son Paolo Manutio, and his grandson 
 Aldo tl Giovane^ as he is called, succeeded him in 
 turn; the first with kindred ambition and aim at ex- 
 cellence, the latter perhaps with aims not quite so 
 high. We cannot further follow the fortunes of 
 the family, nor of the highly cultured society of 
 which their workshops formed the center. Let us 
 leave Aldo with all his aids about him, the senators, 
 the schoolmasters, the poor scholars, the learned 
 men who were to live to be cardinals, and those who 
 were to die as poor as they were famous; and his 
 learned Greek Musurus, and his poor student from 
 Rotterdam, a better scholar perhaps than any of 
 them — and all his idle visitors coming to gape and 
 admire, while our Sanudo swept round the corner 
 from S. Giacomo dell' Orio, with his vigorous step 
 and his toga over his shoulders, and the young men 
 who were of the younger faction came in, a little 
 contemptuous of their elders and strong in their own 
 learning, to the meeting of the Aldine academy 
 and the consultation on new readings. The Stam- 
 peria was as distinct a center of life as the Piazza, 
 though not so apparent before the eyes of men. 
 
 Literature ran into a hundred more or less artifi- 
 cial channels in the Venice of the later centuries; 
 it produced countless works upon the antiquities of 
 the city, often more valuable than interesting; it 
 brightened into the laughter, the quips and quirks 
 
4i6 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 of Goldoni; it produced charming verses, pastorals, 
 descriptions of pageants and feasts; but never has 
 risen into any of the splendor which is the dower of 
 the neighbor republic, the proud and grave Tuscan 
 city. The finest of literary memories for Venice is 
 that of the Aldine Stamperia, where for once there 
 was a printer-publisher who toiled and spent his 
 life to fill the world with beautiful books, and hold 
 open to all men the gates of learning— •'* all for love 
 and nothing for reward." 
 
 I had hoped to have introduced as the last in this 
 little gallery of Venetians a personage more grave 
 and great, a figure unique in the midst of this ever- 
 animated, strong, stormy, and restless race. He 
 should have stood in his monastic robe, the Theolo- 
 gian of Venice; he too, like every other of her sons, 
 for his city against every power, even those of 
 Church and Pope. But Fra Paolo is too great to 
 come in at the end without due space and perspec- 
 tive about him. The priest was forestalled with his 
 quick-flashing genius half the discoveries of his time ; 
 who guessed what it meant when the golden lamp 
 with its red glimmer swayed as it hung in the 
 splendid gloom of San Marco, before ever Galileo 
 had put that heresy forth; who divined how the 
 blood made its way through our veins before Har- 
 vey; who could plan a palace and sway a senate, as 
 well as defy a Pope; who was adored by his order 
 and worshiped by his city, yet almost murdered at 
 his own door, is perhaps of all Venetians the one 
 most worthy of study and elucidation. It is only 
 natural, according to the common course of human 
 events, that he should therefore be left out. The 
 convent of Fra Paolo lies in ruins; his grave, just 
 over the threshold of that funeral place, is shown 
 with a grudge by the friar at San Michele, who 
 probably knows little of him save that he was in 
 opposition to the Holy See. To us at the present 
 moment, as to so many in his city, Fra Paolo must 
 continue to be only a name. 
 
THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 417 
 
 The critics of recent days have had much to say 
 as to the deterioration of Venice in her new activity, 
 and the introduction of alien modernisms in the 
 shape of steamboats and other new industrial 
 agents into her canals and lagoons. But in this 
 adoption of every new development of power Venice 
 is only proving herself the most faithful representa- 
 tive of the vigorous republic of old. Whatever preju- 
 dice or even angry love may say, we cannot doubt 
 that the Michaels, the Dandolos, the Foscari, the 
 great rulers who formed Venice, had steamboats 
 existed in their day — serving their purpose better 
 than their barges and peati — would have adopted 
 them without hesitation, without a thought of what 
 any critics might say. The wonderful new impulse 
 which has made Italy a great power has justly put 
 strength and life before those old traditions of 
 beauty which made her not only the *' woman- 
 country" of Europe, but a sort of odalisque trading 
 upon her charms rather than the nursing mother of 
 a noble and independent nation. That in her 
 recoil from that somewhat degrading position she 
 may here and there have proved too regardless of 
 the claims of antiquity, we need not attempt to 
 deny; the new spring of life in her is too genuine 
 and great to keep her entirely free from this evi- 
 dent danger. But it is strange that anyone who 
 loves Italy, and sincerely rejoices in her amazing 
 resurrection, should fail to recognize how venial is 
 this fault. 
 
 And we are glad to think that the present Vene- 
 tians have in no respect failed from the love enter- 
 tained by their forefathers for their beautiful city. 
 The young poet of the lagoons, wohse little sonnet 
 I have placed on the title-page of this book, blesses 
 in his enthusiasm not only his Venice and her beau- 
 tiful things, but in a fervor at which we smile, yet 
 understand, the sirocco which catches her breath, 
 and the hoarseness which comes of her acquaintance 
 with the seas. But he and his tellow-townsmen 
 
 27 Venice 
 
418 THE MAKERS OF VENICE. 
 
 have happily learned the lesson which the great 
 Dandolo could not learn nor Petrarch teach, that 
 Venice, glorious in her strength and beauty, is but 
 a portion of a more glorious ideal still — of Italy for 
 the first time consolidated, a great Power in Europe 
 and in the world. 
 
 THE END 
 
CALUMET SERIES— Continued 
 
 *eter Simple Capt. Marryat 
 
 'ilgrim's Progress John Bunyan 
 
 Pioneers J. Fenimore Cooper 
 
 ^lain Tales From the Hills Rudyard Kiplfng 
 
 Pleasures of Life .........Sir John Lubbock 
 
 I'oe's Tales , ......Edgar Allan Poe 
 
 'olite Life and Etiquette ..' [. . 
 
 Prisoners and Captives. , Henry Seton Merriman 
 
 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen 
 
 Prima Donna of the Slums, The Stanley McKenna 
 
 Prince of the House of David Kev. J. H. Ingraham 
 
 ;»oor and Proud Oliver Optic 
 
 *rofesspr at the Breakfast Table Oliver Wendoll Holmes 
 
 'rairie, The J. Fenimore Cooper 
 
 I'rue and I George William Curtis 
 
 Jueen of the Air John Euskin 
 
 iab and His Friends ,Dr. John Brown 
 
 ilepresentative Men Ralph Waldo Emerson 
 
 levenge of Circe AloxiuaLorqugen 
 
 Reveries of a Bachelor (Ik Marvel) Donald G. Mitchell 
 
 lo hi hson Crusoe Daniel De Foe 
 
 I ismond Mary J, Holmes 
 
 lloyal Robber, The .' Herbert Kau 
 
 Ux to Sixteen Mrs. Juliana H. Ewing 
 
 Sketches from Life C Dickens 
 
 5artor Resartus : Thomas Carlyle 
 
 Jcarlet Letter, The Nathaniel Hawthorne 
 
 >elf Raised, or From the Depths Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth 
 
 >eneca'8 Morals Sir Roger L' Estrange 
 
 Sesame and Lilies John Ruskin 
 
 Shadow of a Sin Berth a M. Clay 
 
 She's All the World to Me Hall Caine 
 
 Ships that Pass in the Night Beatrice Harraden 
 
 Sign of the Four. A. Conan Doyle 
 
 Single Heart and Double Face Charles Reade 
 
 Singularly Deluded Sarah Grand 
 
 Six Gray Powders, The ^.. Mrs. Henry Hood 
 
 Sketch Book, The Washington Irving 
 
 inowlra.ige, The Nathaniel Hawthorne 
 
 Squire's Darling Bertha M. Clay 
 
 Stickit Minister, The • S. R. Crockett 
 
 Stories From the French Gr.y de Maupassant and others 
 
 Story of an African Farm (Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner 
 
 Strange Case of Henry Toplass John W. Postgate 
 
 Stronger Than Death Emile Richebourg 
 
 5tudy in Scarlet A. Co nun I'oyle 
 
 5 w iss Family Robinson J. D." an d J. R. Wy ss 
 
 [ales From Shakespeare Charles and Mary Lamb 
 
 Pales From the Odyssey Walter C. Perry 
 
 Canglewood Tales i Nathaniel Hawthorne 
 
 rhree Men in a Boat Jerome K. Jerome 
 
 L'helma Marie Corel li 
 
 ["hrough the Looking Glass Lewis Carrol 1 
 
 Com Brown at Oxford , .' Thomas Bwghes 
 
 Com Brown's School Days Thomas Hughes 
 
 treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 rrue and Beautiful John Ruskin 
 
 ["ry Again Oliver Optic 
 
 rempest and Sunshine Mary Jai.e Holmes 
 
 Cwice Told Tales Nathaniel Hawthorne 
 
 Jnderthe Maples Walter N. Hinman 
 
 Jncle Tom's Cabin Harriet Beec)i«r Stowe 
 
 /^ashti and Esther Author of Belle's Letters 
 
 7ic&T of Wakefield Oliver Goldsmith 
 
 /^oyagc of the Sunbeam Lady Brassey 
 
 Virtue's Reward Mrs. Lewis 
 
 Vater Babies Charles Kingsley 
 
 Veddedand Parted Bertha M. Clay 
 
 Vhat Will the World Say? .Mary Jane Holmes 
 
 Vhat Would You Do, Love? Mary Jane Holmes 
 
 t^'hite Company, The A. Conan Doyle 
 
 Vicked Girl, A Mary Cecil Hay 
 
 Vide, Wide World. , .Susan Warner 
 
 Villiams Brothers Adrian Percy 
 
 Vjndow in Thrums J. M. Barrie 
 
 Vife But in Name O. M. Braeme 
 
 Vender Book, The , Nathaniel Hawthorne 
 
 fellow Aster, The Iota 
 
 f oungeet Soldier of the Grand Army Du Boisgobey 
 
THE CALUMET SERII 
 
 Attractive Paper Covered Books 
 
 Illustrated Covers in Colon 
 
 i:2iTio Size. Retail Price, 14 Cents 
 
 This new line of popular-priced paper books is all thread-sewed [not wired], comprising U 
 standard works of fiction. A number of new copyright books have been put in this line 
 
 1. Abbe Constantin , •. Ludovic : 
 
 2. Adam Bede Georgi 
 
 5. A Woman' s Love C. M . i 
 
 8. All Aboard Oliver 
 
 9. Allan Quatermain H. Rider Hi 
 
 10. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Lewis ( 
 
 11. American Siberia, The J. (' 
 
 16. Angeline J. N. 
 
 18. A True Hero E. 
 
 20. Attic Philosopher in Paris, An Emile S 
 
 21. Aurette ; Henry G 
 
 24. Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin 
 
 25. Autocrat of the Breakfast Table Oliver Wendell J 
 
 26. Aunt Martha's Corner Cupboard Mary and Elizabet" 
 
 29. Back to the Old Kome Mary ( 
 
 87. Bag of Diamonds G. Manvi 
 
 39. Banditti of the Prairies Edw.-ird x^ 
 
 Bay Path J. G. H 
 
 Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush Ian Ma 
 
 Beulah Augusta u. 
 
 Black Beauty Anna 
 
 Black Rock Rul ph C 
 
 Boat Club Oliver 
 
 Biglow Papers •. James l; 
 
 Book of Golden Deeds Char 1. 
 
 Blithedale Romance Nathuni - 
 
 Bracebridge Hall Washin f_'f on 
 
 Brooks' Addresses Phi 1 1 1 }>si 1 
 
 Oal led Back Hup h C 
 
 Cardinal Sin Eu;.'" 
 
 Charlotte Temple... Susannah 
 
 Country Town, A Mrs. A . 
 
 Child's History of England Charles 
 
 Chimes and Christmas Carol , Charles 
 
 Clemenceaa Case Alexandn 
 
 Crown of Love, A CM 
 
 Cousin Maude Mary Janf 
 
 Cranford Mrs. 
 
 C3ricket on the Hearth Charles 
 
 Crime of Philip Guthrie, The Lulu ] 
 
 Crown of Wild Olives John 
 
 Captain of the Pole Star A. Con 
 
 Deerslayer James Fenimor« 
 
 Divorced Madeline Vinton D 
 
 Dodo E. F 
 
 Dog Crusoe and His Master R. M. Bn 
 
 Dog of Flanders, A 
 
 Dolly Dialogues Anthci 
 
 Dora Deane Mary J. 
 
 Dream Life (Ik Marvel) Donald G. Mi 
 
 Drummond's Addresses .. Henry Drum 
 
 Duchess (The Duchess) Mrs. Hungi 
 
 Elizabeth and Her German Garden 
 
 Engl ish Woman's Love Letters, An 
 
 Engl ish Orphans Mary Jane H 
 
 Esther Waters George ] 
 
 Ethics of the Dust '. .- John B 
 
 Evil Eye, The Theophile Gai 
 
 Fatal Love, A , Ramiriz 
 
 Fairyland of Science Arabella Bi 
 
 Flower Fables Louisa M. 
 
 Fifteen Decisive Battles Edward S. C 
 
 First Violin Jessie Foth 
 
 Forging the Fetters M rs. Al ex 
 
 Frankenstein Mary Si 
 
 Gold Dust Charlotte M. 1 
 
 Grandfather's Chair Nathaniel Hawt 
 
 Green Dragon, At the Beatrice Har: 
 
 Heir of Lynne Robert Bucl 
 

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 THE UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORNIA LIBRARY