F. Marion Crawford

“ The characteristic of the nation is its gaiety.’
In the midst of this laughing decadence, in the very depth of this gay and careless disintegration of a country’s body and soul, we come across one devoted, energetic character, a fighting man of the better days, who reminds us of what Venice was in her greatness.
Angelo Emo was great, considering the littleness of Venice in his time. If we compare him with Vittor Pisani, Carlo Zeno, or Sebastian Venier, he seems small as a leader; but as a plain, brave man, he is not dwarfed by comparison with men who were colossal in an age of giants. ”

“ In a republic he was a sovereign, and therefore idle; but he was apparently necessary.
I am not aware that any other republic ever called its citizens subjects, or supported a personage who received royal honours, before whom the insignia of something like royalty were carried in public, and who addressed foreign governments by his own name and title as if he were a king. But then, how could Venice, which was governed by an oligarchy chosen from an aristocracy, which was the centre of a plutocracy, call herself a republic? ”

“ Perhaps we should like to ask them the secret of Carpaccio’s melancholy soul. But the lips move not, nor do the eyes answer; the eleven thousand maidens seem rather to beckon us away to that place of refreshment, light and peace, where we may hope that the great painter’s sadness ended at last. They tell us not of him, nor of themselves, but of heaven.
A hundred years have gone by, and still artists paint pictures; but they tell us no longer of anything but their own selves, their own lives, their own passions. It is the world that has changed ”

“ This Venice, unless I am mistaken, would please you as little as it pleases me. It is a city against nature; one cannot take a step without being obliged to get into a boat, or else one is driven to go round by narrow passages more like corridors than streets! The Square of St. Mark alone is by its general effect worthy of its reputation. The architecture of Venice, which is almost altogether Palladio’s, is too capricious and too varied;{261} it is as if two or three palaces were built one upon the other. ”

“ At a time when France set the fashions, which she was before long to impose on the greater part of Europe, every rich Venetian noble dreamt of making a little Versailles of his own villa. The residences of the Marcello, the Corner, the Gradenigo, the Foscarini, and the Pisani, on the road{251} to Treviso and on the banks of the Brenta, were so many little courts, in which every element was represented from the sovereign to the parasite, from the parasite to the buffoon, and the lesser nobles imitated the greater throughout a scale which descended from the sublime to the ridiculous. ”

“ The men who guarded the docks were absolutely incorruptible. In the sixteenth century it seemed as if the pure blood of the old Venetians ran only in their veins, and as if they alone still upheld the noble traditions of loyalty and simplicity which the founders of the Republic had handed down from braver days. ”

“ Every sort of Venetian game was played, and all the traditional contests of strength and skill between Niccolotti and Castellani were revived, and with such earnestness on both sides as to lead to a fresh outbreak of their hereditary hate. Two hundred men fought with sticks at the Ponte del Carmine, as savagely as if the safety and honour of their wives and children depended on the result. At the most critical moment the fisherman Luca, the famous chief of the Niccolotti, fell into the canal, his followers were momentarily thrown into disorder by the accident, and the Castellani won the day. ”

“ The traditional splendour which the Venetian ambassadors of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had inaugurated was dear to the Senate, and had come to be officially required, if not actually prescribed in so many words. These great families had long been accustomed to play the leading parts, and as the business spirit which had made Venice the richest power in Europe died out, their pride was often greater than their sense of responsibility. ”

“ Signor Molmenti compares the gifts of Carpaccio and the two{133} Bellini to rays that warm and gladden, those of Titian and Tintoretto to lights that dazzle but give no heat. In two centuries that immense change in art had taken place; from having spoken to the soul it had come to appeal to the eye.
The best painters of the fifteenth century touch us, and remain impersonal to us. What do we know, for instance, of Carpaccio’s dreams or struggles or sufferings while he was painting his great picture of Saint Ursula and her maiden company? ”

“ He was also as brave as the bravest man in any of his armies. Giustiniani’s speech affected him strangely, for he well knew what terror he inspired in most people. His sudden admiration for the Venetian patriot was as boundless as everything else in his nature, and broke out in words of praise. He concluded by promising that even if he confiscated the property of every noble in Venice, whatsoever belonged to Giustiniani should be respected. There spoke the man of the middle class that Bonaparte always was. ”

“ Merchants of all the nations of the earth spread out their merchandise for sale in booths and tents, and under every sort of improvised shelter. For more than a week the Square of Saint Mark’s was a vast bazaar of little shops, following the most irregular and winding lanes, just wide enough for two persons. Every merchant, foreign or Venetian, was free to set up his booth as he pleased and where he pleased, and there were thousands of them, in each of which at least one person had to sleep at night. ”

“ They were especially affected by the nobles, for the burgher class wore them of much more moderate size. Altogether the life of the burghers’ wives was far more enjoyable; they occupied themselves with music and painting; they held gatherings at which men and women really exchanged ideas, and ‘academies’ at which women with a turn for poetry or science could compare themselves with the most gifted men of Venice.
The most alive of the noble women of the sixteenth century, the one of whom we have the most vivid impression, was assuredly Bianca Cappello, who was a monster of iniquity. ”

“ VENETIAN DIPLOMACY Before quitting the subject of Venetian official life, I must devote a few pages to the diplomacy of the Republic, which has remained famous in history.
The kings of France often confided diplomatic missions to the clergy, but the Venetian diplomatists were always laymen, without a single exception. The Signory constantly professed the most devout faith in Catholic dogma, and as constantly exhibited the most profound distrust of the popes. The Vatican was, indeed, the chief object of the government’s suspicion. ”

“ While I was thus alone, building castles in the air, I saw a woman of about thirty approaching me, not disagreeable in face, white, round, and plump, with a turned-up nose and wicked eyes, a great deal of gold on her neck, her ears, her arms, her fingers, and in a dress which proclaimed that she was a woman of the common class, but pretty well off. ”

“ Yet Nani’s letters determined the Savi to look about for some general into whose hands the whole defence might be given. It was the old tradition of employing the condottiero; but there was only one man alive just then who had the genius and the conviction that save a cause all but lost; he was a man who could have stopped a host with Falstaff’s ragged company, and he was at the gates of Venice. The Savi hit upon the Prince of Nassau as a possible captain, but Austria stepped in and forbade that he should be called. ”

“ For three hundred and seventy-seven years our goods, our blood, and our lives have always been devoted to you, and since you have been with us, and we with you, we have ever been happy, and famous on the sea, and victorious on land. No man ever saw us put to flight with you; with you none were ever found to overcome us. If these most wretched times of rash action, of corrupt manners, of dissensions and of lawless opinions that offend nature and the law of nations had not ruined you in Italy, our goods, our blood, our lives should still be yours ”

“ When Henry III. of France came to Venice, the Arsenal employed about sixteen thousand men, and could count on a budget of two hundred and twenty-four thousand gold ducats, of which one hundred and twenty-four went to pay the wages of the workmen, and the rest was expended for materials. Those were large sums in the sixteenth century, but Venice looked upon the Arsenal as the mainspring of her power, and spared nothing to keep it in a state as near perfection as possible. In the long struggle with Genoa, the enemy used every art to bring about its destruction, but always in vain. ”

“ He was a sort of general inspector of freemasons, rope-dancers, circus-riders, antiquaries, bravi, and gondoliers, and he exercised in his manifold functions all the civility of which a detective can dispose. He was a giant in body, a jester and a wit by nature, a combination certainly intended for the stage rather than the police.
His especial bugbear was freemasonry, together with all the secret societies which were then largely in the pay of France, employed by her to promote general revolution. ”

“ It was very common for the great Venetian nobles to play patron to poets, painters, and architects, and almost every name that became famous in the arts and sciences recalls that of some patrician or secretary who protected the artist, the writer, or the student. The Republic was often the refuge of gifted men whom political or personal reasons had exiled from their homes. Roman, Tuscan, and Lombard celebrities spent their lives in Venice and added their glory to hers. ”

“ It may be answered, I think, with justice, that the Doges of illustrious memory, during the latter centuries of the Republic’s existence, had become famous as individual officers before their elevation to the throne. The last great fighting Doge was Enrico Dandolo, the conqueror of Constantinople, who died almost a hundred years before the closure of the Great Council. In the war of Chioggia, Andrea Contarini’s oath not to return into the city till the enemy was beaten had the force of a fine example, but the man himself contributed nothing else to the most splendid page in Venetian history. ”

“ The Republic had long resisted the desire of the Popes to establish a branch of the Holy Inquisition in Venice, but by way of showing a conciliatory spirit, while maintaining complete independence, the government had created a magistracy which was responsible for three matters, namely, the condition of the canals, the regulation of usury, and—of all things—cases of heresy. It is perfectly impossible to say why three classes of affairs so different were placed under the control of one body of men. ”

“ But such men as Ludovico Manin and the Savi were not free to choose. No weak man is when the strong man has him by the collar. The Signory was used to humiliation, and was past shame, and it followed to the end the path it had chosen.
The truce between France and Austria continued, but only the possession of Venice could be the basis of{395} a durable peace. Bonaparte’s plan was to exasperate the Venetians till they really violated their neutrality, and then to seize the city. No one ever comments on the morality of conquerors nowadays. Virtue has nothing to do with the greatness of princes. ”

“ If a modern sociologist had to define{44} the government of Venice, he would perhaps call it a semi-constitutional aristocratic monarchy, in which the sovereign was elected for life—unless it pleased the electors to depose him.
What is quite certain is that when the Doge was a man of average intelligence, he must have been the least happy man in Venice; for of all Venetian nobles, there was none whose personal liberty was so restricted, whose smallest actions were so closely watched, whose lightest word was subject to such a terrible censorship. ”

“ The Church protested in vain against the abuse of the veil by Venetian ladies, for the State protected them on the specious pretext of superintending their morals, and the remonstrances of the popes and of the patriarchs of Venice were not even heard within the walls of those sham cloisters. With such a system of education and such examples the bankruptcy of morality was merely a question of time. The number of marriages diminished amongst the aristocracy, and when a young man made up his mind to matrimony he consulted nothing but his financial interests. ”