Republic of Venice

“ For the Venice of every day is a dead city, with nothing left of its ancient glories but wealth. Though the millions be reckoned in lire, there are over a hundred millionaires in Venice. But of that mighty artistic and religious impulse which produced countless churches and palaces, pictures and frescoes, which strewed the very street walls with spirited sculpture, and warmed even parochial offices with priceless paintings, there is as little trace as of the indomitable energy that founded a great Republic on wooden piles and guarded it from the sea by dykes and from its enemies by the sea. ”

“ This Venice, which was a haughty, invincible, magnificent Republic for nearly fourteen hundred years; whose armies compelled the world's applause whenever and wherever they battled; whose navies well nigh held dominion of the seas, and whose merchant fleets whitened the remotest oceans with their sails and loaded these piers with the products of every clime, is fallen a prey to poverty, neglect and melancholy decay. Six hundred years ago, Venice was the Autocrat of Commerce ”

“ To the east of the Duchy of Milan stood the republic of Venice. Once a democracy, she had by the close of the thirteenth centuryVenice. become a commercial oligarchy. At the close of the fifteenth century, not only did the Great Council monopolise the electoral functions of the state, but the Doge himself had become little more than an ornamental figure-head.4 Venice originally had concerned herself little with the politics of the mainland. Entrenched behind her lagoons, she had turned her attention to the Mediterranean and the East, from whence came her commerce, the source of her wealth. ”

“ Venice had not then fallen. The gorgeous standards of the sovereign republic, and its tributary kingdoms, still waved in the Place of St. Marc; the Bucentaur was not rotting in the Arsenal, and the warlike galleys of the state cruised without the Lagune; a busy and picturesque population swarmed in all directions; and the Venetian noble, the haughtiest of men, might still be seen proudly moving from the council of state, or stepping into a gondola amid a bowing crowd. All was stirring life, yet all was silent ”

“ But in this adoption of every new development of power, Venice is only proving herself the most faithful representative of the vigorous republic of old. Whatever prejudice or angry love may say, we cannot doubt that the Michiels, 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. ”

“ Vitale Michieli II., who came into power in 1117, was the last Doge elected by this dubious form of universal suffrage. The people had grown in experience and intelligence, and demanded more real power for themselves.
A century had now passed since Venice had begun to replace the mud huts and primitive houses of her founders and their descendants with marble palaces; and the churches and monasteries of the tenth and eleventh centuries show full well the riches of the Republic at that period, and foreshadow the abounding magnificence which followed so rapidly. ”

“ But when we turn to Venice the effect is very different. We do not think of the makers of that marvellous city, but rather of what they made. The idealized image of Venice herself meets us everywhere. The mother is not overshadowed by the too great glory of any of her sons. In her records the city is everything—the republic, the worshipped ideal of a community in which every man for the common glory seems to have been willing to sink his own. ”

“ The little republic grew strong and powerful, captured and retained possessions in Italy and the islands of the Mediterranean. Venice was one of the powers of Europe about the fifteenth century, and thought she had the world by the tail. But the Turks captured Constantinople, other routes to Asia were discovered about the time Columbus reached America, and Venice as a great political power and business center suffered a collapse. ”

“ All these misfortunes occurred at the time when travellers and chroniclers who wrote of Venice failed to find words rich enough in their meaning to convey the just impression of the magnificence of the "Queen of the Adriatic,"—the time of which Brown says:—
"And yet, while the Republic was really hurling headlong to its ruin, the outward pomp, the glory, the splendor of Venice were just beginning to attract the eyes of Europe, blinding many Venetians and all foreigners to the real aspect of the situation. ”

“ Venetian citizens were tempted to settle in the island by the gift of certain villages with their districts. These they were expected to hold for the Republic in the case of a revolution. The Governor of the island, who bore the title of Duke of Candia, was a Venetian noble elected in the Great Council at Venice ”

“ The state of Venice existed Thirteen Hundred and Seventy-six years, from the first establishment of a consular government on the island of the Rialto,1 to the moment when the General-in-chief of the French army of Italy pronounced the Venetian republic a thing of the past. Of this period, Two 3 Hundred and Seventy-six2 years were passed in a nominal subjection to the cities of old Venetia, especially to Padua, and in an agitated form of democracy, of which the executive appears to have been entrusted to tribunes,3 chosen, one by the inhabitants of each of the principal islands. ”

“ On the sea the Turk was already in sight; on the mainland the Visconti of Milan, with their claim to Verona and Vicenza, had to be faced. But before proceeding to narrate the history of the full-grown Republic during the period of her greatest brilliancy, we must consider for a moment two important points, her relations to the Church, and the nature of the Venetian constitution which played so striking a part in the creation and preservation of her glory. ”

“ All historians agree that the fifteenth century was the period of the greatest luxury and magnificence of Venice. In 1457 it seemed that the Republic would march on to greater power over a larger territory than had yet been held by any one of the North Italian States. Brescia, Bergamo, and Ravenna were securely hers. She was attempting to cross the Adda to the west, and to encroach upon the Romagna on the south. ”

“ Here France, Spain, the Emperor Maximilian, the Pope, the Dukes of Ferrara and Savoy, and the King of Hungary were all combined against the Republic, or against what the preamble to the treaty called "the insatiable cupidity of the Venetians and their thirst for dominion." This is not the place to trace the steps, through a quarter of a century and more, by which all these powers and others had gradually crushed the prestige of Venice, in Italy, outside her own lagoons, as essentially as the Turks had destroyed her Levantine precedence. ”

“ All Italy was in a ferment. Each power sought to lessen the strength of its neighbor. Political combinations were made, apparently only to be broken. Everything was in dire confusion, and Venice would have had more than she could do to carry herself advantageously in her own nation, when the Turks, by their conquest of Constantinople, threatened her with the death of her commerce, which was essentially her death as a Republic, since on that she depended for her revenue to enable her to maintain herself against all enemies at home and abroad. ”

“ Spain and Portugal were reaping the splendid golden harvest while Venice was impoverished. Consternation filled the minds of the citizens. The great Republic had reached the height of its glory in the fifteenth century, but from the falling off of her commerce she never recovered. It is curious that in the period of decline, Venice expended much wealth in works of art, and in the embellishment of the buildings and palaces. ”

“ Every type of Venetian is seen in the Square, save one—the gondolier. Never have I seen a gondolier there, day or night: not because it is too grand for him, but it is off his beat. When he has done his work he prefers the wine shops of his own sestiere. No thought of any want of welcome would deter him, for Venice is republic to the core. In fact one might go farther and say that it is a city of the poor. Where the poor lived in the great days when the palaces were occupied by the rich, one cannot quite understand, since the palace is the staple building ”

“ Florence took alarm at Visconti's attitude and asked Venice to join her in a league against Milan. The position was a difficult one for the Republic; Filippo Maria was undeniably menacing and he had a claim in virtue of his father's conquest to both Verona and Vicenza, now Venetian territory; on the other hand Venice was extremely unwilling to embark upon the troubled waters of Italian mainland politics, and to find herself, in all probability, committed to costly mainland campaigns which would consume the wealth she was sweeping in from the sea. ”

“ It was on the 20th of July that a post galley brought the sad news to Venice that her greatest Doge lay dead. Pietro Ziani, a wealthy noble, experienced in Venetian statecraft, was chosen to second him. The Republic had now in fact become an empire. From the mother city along the Gulf of Trieste over Dalmatia, Croatia, the Morea, the islands of Corfù, Crete and the Archipelago from Greece to Constantinople, even up to Syria, the standard of St Mark was planted. ”

“ Accordingly leagues and treaties were formed occasionally between the two states; the Lombards in all probability imagining, that it would be in their power, at any time, to make themselves masters of this inconsiderable republic. But when that people had fully established their new kingdom, and were free from the expence of other wars, they then found Venice so much increased in strength, that, however much they might have wished to comprehend it within their dominions, it appeared no longer consistent with sound policy to make the attempt. ”

“ The Grand Canal, which is nearly two miles long, is lined with palaces, such as no modern capital can approach in costliness and splendor.
And Venice used her power for a defence to Christendom and to civilization, the former against the Turks, and the latter against Northern barbarians. When Frederick Barbarossa 214 came down with his hordes upon Italy, he found his most stubborn enemy in the Republic of Venice, which kept up the contest for more than twenty years, till the fierce old Emperor acknowledged a power that was invincible, and here in Venice, in the church of St. ”

“ Venice knew that the Lords of Padua were permanently hostile. The action of Francesco Carrara soon proved that the Republic could not, even if it would, leave him alone. In 1384 Carrara bought from the Duke of Austria, Treviso, Ceneda, and Feltre, commanding the great northern road into the Pusterthal by Cortina d'Ampezzo; he was now master of all the mainland between the Alps and the Lagoons; nothing remained for him to seize in that direction. But westward, between him and the Visconti of Milan, lay the territories of Vicenza and Verona, feebly held by Antonio, the last of the Scala family. ”

“ In Ferrara, as we have seen, Venice had established a commercial colony protected by treaty rights. These were swept away when Salinguerra held the city for the Emperor Frederick II, who was hostile to Venice on account of the part she was playing in the Lombard League, for which she acted as banker. Pope Gregory IX, while endeavouring to recover the city, which he claimed as part of Countess Matilda's legacy to the Church, applied to Venice for help. The Republic was largely instrumental in expelling the Imperial troops and recovered all her privileges and interests in the mainland city. ”

“ In their present situation there is little probability of their attempting new conquests; happy if they are allowed to remain in the quiet possession of what they have. Venice has a most formidable neighbour in the Emperor, whose dominions border on those of this republic on all sides. The independency of the republic entirely depends on his moderation ”

“ From the political chaos three great families of despots emerged in North Italy, the Scalas of Verona, the Viscontis of Milan and the Carraras of Padua. In 1329 the lords of Verona under Mastino della Scala held sway over Vicenza, Padua and Treviso. Mastino, an ambitious prince subtly urged by the deposed Marsilio da Carrara of Padua, determined to tap the wealth of the Republic by levying duties on all Venetian goods passing through his territories. Venice retaliated by cutting off the supply of salt and a tariff war began. ”

“ The evangelist was thenceforth made the patron saint of the city, and his emblem, the lion, became the arms of the republic. The Venetians had not as yet made foreign conquests, but the great Doge, Enrico Dandolo, who went to the Fourth Crusade, conquered Constantinople in 1204, and commenced the grand era of Venice. The breaking up of the Byzantine Empire was a great opportunity for Venice, the republic gaining possession of several islands in the Greek Archipelago, together with numerous cities on the Adriatic. ”

“ As no dissent was heard by this deputy, the election was considered legal. Gradenigo was at Capo d' Istria; and a squadron of honor, carrying twelve noblemen as his escort, was sent to announce his election and invite his return.
And now commenced a reign which continued twenty-two years (1289-1311) , during which time the most important changes were made in the government of Venice; serious wars were undertaken, and great disasters encountered; the Republic was placed under the ban of the Church; grave revolutions occurred. ”