Senate of Venice

“ At the age of twenty-five, the beginning of manhood, he must enter the Great Council, serve on laborious committees, go thence to the Senate, and be elected or appointed to one position after another that demanded all his power of service. Sometimes he must fill several offices at once, and to the last day of life he can give himself no repose if the State finds his service valuable. No matter how old he is, nor how feeble, if Venice chooses him for her Doge, he must assume the beretta, the mantle of gold and ermine, and bear them as well as he can until the end of life brings his release. ”

“ But the prudence of her senate awakened Venice to a just sense of her own want of intrinsic strength to preserve these immense dependencies; and it was wisely resolved to retain under the public government of the state only the colony at Constantinople, with the island of Candia and those in the Ionian Sea. The subjects of the republic were not required to imitate the forbearance of the senate, and many of the great Venetian families were encouraged, or at least permitted, to found principalities among the ruins of the Eastern Empire, with a reservation of feudal allegiance to their country. ”

“ That of Venice (by the faithful testimony of my most excellent Lord Linceus de Stella) has obliged a world, sufficiently punished by its own blindness and ingratitude, to repent and be wiser: for whereas a commonwealth in which there is no senate, or where the senate is corrupt, cannot stand, the great Council of Venice, like the statue of Nilus, leans upon an urn or waterpot, which pours forth the Senate in so pure and perpetual a stream, as being unable to stagnate, is forever incapable of corruption. The fuller description of this Senate is contained in that of Oceana ”

“ The bell of the Campanile was tolled, and at once the armed citizens filled the Piazza. The sobs and moans of women were heard; elsewhere they were seen wringing their hands and tearing their hair in mute despair. Some men, too, yielded to fear; while others in their avarice hid their treasures. But the majority were true Venetians, and declared that "the State cannot be lost while those remain who can man a galley and handle a pike;" and the aged Doge, the Council, and Senate refused to allow any reason for despair. ”

“ When the Senate met to consider this outrageous act, Carmagnola distinctly stated his price. He must have a thousand ducats a month, in peace or war. And now the mortification of Venice was complete. Through distrust of her own sons, and by her own laws, no Venetian gentleman could command more than seventy-five men. Had their General been one of their own countrymen, with Venetian soldiers, as in the old days, how great would the difference have been! But now, with the Duke of Milan ready to attack them, they were at the mercy of the great condottiere. ”

“ Nothing but such things as forms of government, custom, manners, and education have made sacred: and that which men are able to make honourable at one time, it is in their power to make dishonourable at another, whenever the humour takes them; had not the senate forbidden us to give opinions freely respecting the politics of Venice, there would have been nothing wrong in giving such opinions; and were the senate to declare that it is right to give such opinions, that which to-day is thought a crime would be thought meritorious to-morrow. ”

“ As to the election by the scrutiny, it is easily perceived to be Venetian, there being no such way to take in the knowledge; which in all reason must be best in every council of such men as are most fit for their turns, and yet to keep them from the bias of particular affection or interest under that pretence; for the cause why the great Council in Venice scarce ever elects any other than the name that is brought in by the scrutiny, is very probable to be, that they may... This election is the last of those appertaining to the Senate. ”

“ The Venetian Senate was the most august assembly in the world. The Venetian Navy was the finest which Europe had ever seen. During war, Venice employed, even at an exorbitant stipend, the best troops to be procured and the ablest generals of the age; and among her Captains of Companies it was not unusual to find Hereditary Princes. Her patricians, so far from being purely political in their education or sordid in their tastes, prided themselves on the extent and versatility of their acquirements. They excelled in all manly exercises and in all enlightened pursuits. ”

“ It is not possible to fail in loyalty to the Republic on this first occasion of moment."
"Thy father might be won, if thou hast but courage. Thou art a Giustinian; it is thy duty to speak in time of peril, and thy words would make others brave to follow thee. Thus shalt thou save Venice."
"If thou didst but know, carina, how the Senate and the Ten are set against this wish of thine! I should not speak of this matter to thee, for it is secret—but to calm thee and help thee understand." ”

“ 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. ”

“ The news of the occupation of Verona produced the utmost alarm in Venice, yet the Great Council was not summoned, nor was there a regular sitting of the Senate. The days had gone by when the great bell of Saint Mark’s was rung backward to call every fighting man to arms, and every aged Senator to the Council. The handful of scared and vacillating men who had steered Venice to her end met stealthily by night in the Casino Pesaro, more like conspirators than defenders of their country. Most of them fancied the French already in the lagoons, if not in the city ”

“ They cannot understand the need, for to them the
Madonna hath not revealed the desperate state of Venice."
"Yet thou knowest, Marina, that already the great cardinal—but lately come from France—hath started for Rome to make up this quarrel?"
"That is what the Senate will not understand!" she cried, with flashing eyes. "The Holy Father will have submission and penance, in place of embassies and pomp. One must go to him quite simply, from the people, saying, 'We have sinned; have mercy upon Venice!' Piero, thou knowest that awful vision of the Tintoret? ”

“ At thy age all is viewed in colors of gold, or life is rendered bootless, because we are thwarted in our ill-digested wishes. I deny not, however, that thy fortune is tempered by some peculiar passages. Venice is ruled by a policy that is often calculating, and haply some deem it remorseless." Though the voice of the Carmelite had fallen, he paused and glanced an uneasy look from beneath his cowl ere he continued. "The caution of the senate teaches it to preclude, as far as in it lies, the union of interests that may not only oppose each other, but which may endanger those of the state. ”

“ And, verily, one saw that the displeasure of the Ten was great; the more so that in the interests of the government the return they would have made may not be kept from the knowledge of the people. Yet our senior master of Murano was suffered to depart with a gracious word of regret from this consummate Donate, 'that a new noble, so loyal in sentiment, should not be numbered among the councillors of Venice.' Truly this grandsire of our little one lacketh not pride, and his bearing became him well, though the Senate would have had it otherwise. ”

“ And bid Marcantonio himself tell her of the vote that hath passed the Senate, without dissent of a single voice, for letters to be sent to the imperious Paul to make an end of his demands, declaring that Venice recognizeth for the temporal government of her states no superior, save God alone."
Meanwhile in Rome, to the Ambassador Agostino Nani, Paul had already superbly made answer, "We are above all men, and God hath given us power over all men; we can depose kings and do yet more than that. ”

“ The Government threw themselves upon his mercy. Bonaparte pretended that he desired no more than to establish a popular government in Venice in the place of the oligarchy. His terms were accepted. The Senate consented to abrogate the ancient Constitution of the Republic, and to introduce a French garrison into Venice. On the 12th of May the Grand Council voted its own dissolution. Peace was concluded. The public articles of the treaty declared that there should be friendship between the French and the Venetian Republics; that the sovereignty of Venice should reside in the body of the citizens ”

“ The pursuit of the Archduke Charles into the heart of Austria encouraged the hopes which the Venetian Senate had conceived, that it would be easy to annihilate the feeble remnant of the French army, as the troops were scattered through the States of Venice on the mainland. Wherever the Senate had the ascendency, insurrection was secretly fomented; wherever the influence of the patriots prevailed, ardent efforts were made to unite the Venetian terra firma to the Lombard Republic. ”

“ He advised the Venetian Senate to write the names in the book, and the Senate refused. Venice had long been governed by a few families, and these few had the customary obstinacy and prejudice of a caste. They treated Venetia simply as a fief—an estate belonging to the nobles.
Again, republican leaven had been at work throughout Venetia, and Napoleon had advised the Senate to remodel its mediæval institutions. Other states in Italy were yielding to the trend of the times, and Venice should do likewise. The Senate refused, until its consent came too late to avert its doom. ”

“ The Florentine Ridolfi was the first to whom the Doge and Senate listened. He made a passionate and moving appeal, begging that the Venetians would unite with the Florentines to curb the power of Milan, and warning them that when Philip had once overcome Florence he would find the means to conquer Venice also. The Senate was greatly moved by his eloquence and the force of his arguments, but they were divided between sympathy for Florence and hesitation at the enormous cost of aiding her, between fear of Philip for themselves and doubt of his ability to overcome and dominate Florence and Venice ”

“ Yet if some had died unjustly, there was not less need of ceaseless vigilance against unceasing intrigue, within and without that body which held the power; and one morning the Senate was thrown into a state of great agitation by disclosures from one of the brothers of the Frari, indubitably confirmed by the papers which he delivered into the hands of the Doge.
"It is beyond belief!" Giustinian Giustiniani exclaimed to the Lady Laura, "how Spain findeth method to make traitors in Venice itself! ”

“ Gelsomina opened the casement, and both leaned forward to listen. When the little procession had reached the front of the cathedral, the trumpet sounded, and the voice of the officer was heard.
"Whereas many wicked and ruthless assassinations have of late been committed on the persons of divers good citizens of Venice,"—he proclaimed—"the Senate, in its fatherly care of all whom it is charged to protect, has found reason to resort to extraordinary means of preventing the repetition of crimes so contrary to the laws of God and the security of society. ”

“ Brescia and Genoa were quickly recovered, and assuring himself of Venetian neutrality, he seized Forlì and became a menace to Florence, who prayed for a Venetian alliance in the face of a common danger. The procurator, Francesco Foscari, his sails filled with successful acquisitions in Friuli, beckoned to a forward policy and favoured the Florentine alliance: Visconti was a danger to the State: when Florence had been bludgeoned he would turn on Venice and rend her. Foscari was answered in the Senate by Tomaso Mocenigo, in whose mouth Sanudo places a long oration. ”

“ It is a triple question: first, whether the oligarchy established by the efforts of individual ambition was the cause, in its subsequent operation, of the Fall of Venice; or (secondly) whether the establishment [Pg 21] of the oligarchy itself be not the sign and evidence rather than the cause, of national enervation; or (lastly) whether, as I rather think, the history of Venice might not be written almost without reference to the construction of her senate or the prerogatives of her Doge. ”

“ Over the throne, Doge Sebastiano Venier returning Thanks for the Victory of Lepanto, is by Veronese. The ceiling, designed by Ant. da Ponte and painted by Veronese in his grandiose style, is considered by Ruskin to be the finest in the palace. Parallel to the last two rooms is the Senate hall (Sala del Senato) . The paintings here are of but secondary interest: ceremonial portraits of Doges by Palma Giovane, Marco Vecelli and Tintoretto. The central panel of the gorgeous ceiling—Venice, Queen of the Sea—is by Domenico Tintoretto, son of Jacopo. ”

“ But for whom should they send in this moment, when life and death hung in the balance, to speak that authoritative word.
The Bishop of Aquileia, first and greatest of the Venetian bishops, had incurred the displeasure of the Senate for refusing to perform the duties of his office while the Republic remained under that fulminated but unacknowledged censure, and a new prelate, of opinions approved by the Most Serene Republic, sat in the vacated see. The Bishop of Vicenza had likewise signified his sympathy with the Holy See ”