A Short History of Venice

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Preface

No other people has been the victim of more misconceptions than the Venetians. They have been praised for qualities they did not possess and blamed for crimes they did not commit. Romancers and poets have unwittingly belied them; enemies have traduced; historians have turned partisans for or against them. It seems as if posterity were in league never to understand them.

There are several reasons why the history of Venice has suffered in this way. First of all, its duration renders it difficult to make plain its continuity amid the transformation's of a thousand years. The life of Venice begins with the invasion of Attila; it was just ending when George Washington retired from the presidency of the United States, iljext, the noble part which the Venetians played in the world, as intermediaries between Western Christendom and the Orient and as merchants during the era when the trade of soldier was deemed the most respectable, has rarely been sufficiently magnified. Historians usually concentrate their attention on the breaking up of the Roman civilization, or on the medieval institutions which replaced it, — the Church and the

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Empire, with the Papacy and the Monastic System, and with Feudalism — or on the origin of those nations which, like the German, the French, and the English, have dominated the modern epoch. Venice pursued her own way independent of all these, and although she was in a large sense the product of the Middle Age, she was the least medieval of her contemporaries. To them she seemed abnormally progressive because she was stable ; while moderns, mistaking her stability for stagnation, have hastily concluded that she was incapable of progress. The trend of political evolution sets toward popular government ; the Venetians formed a powerful state after a different plan. They developed a national organism perfectly adapted to their unique conditions, but so opposed to modern political ideals that few students have investigated it and fewer still have treated it sympathetically. Moreover, the decadence of Venice, being the most recent part of her career, is the best known; the last two centuries of excessive luxury and exhaustion have caused the five centuries of hardy growth and the five centuries of vigorous prime to be forgotten. But her decadence offers nothing peculiar to her; whereas her growth and prime were truly characteristic. By these she should be judged; just as the greatness of Imperial Kome should be judged by the achievements of Julius and Augustus and the Antonines, and not by the failures of the Valentinians. Assuming that for the most part decay explains

PREFACE ix

itself, my purpose in this little book is to set forth the greatness of the Venetians. By epitomizing long stretches of comparatively regular development, I have secured space for describing in detail those episodes through which the national spirit best reveals itself and those crises which mark structural changes in the political life. And since the complaint is often heard that Venice stifled individuality, I have taken care to outline the portraits of many of the great men who wrought out her destiny. Whoever will compare her remarkable doges — Orseolo the State-Builder, Domenico Michiel, Enrico and Andrea Dandolo, Pietro Gradenigo, Tommaso Mocenigo, Francesco Foscari, Sebastiano Venier, and Morosini the Peloponnesian — with the kings of France and of England, will recognize that Venice did not crush out individuality. In Vettor Pisani and Fra Paolo Sarpi she produced a patriot and a statesman of the highest order, world-heroes, if ever there were such.

To the student of government, the history of Venice affords an unparalleled opportunity, since it records the rise, uniform growth, uninterrupted functioning, and gradual decline of an important political system. We have no similar specimen of republic or of monarchy, because nowhere else has a republic or a monarchy been able to put into practice its principles imdisturbed, during even a brief period. Foreign invasion, internal rebellion, dynastic or class rivalry, military ambition, — these are the dislocating influences which arrest or mod-

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ify or cripple the orderly development of nations ; from these Venice was singularly free.

But the very word "oligarchy" sounds so hateful to some ears that more than one writer has imputed to the Venetian oligarchy all the evils which overtook the Republic, including its decline and falL The true historian, however, will not allow himself to be fooled by names; he will search for facts, and though he be a stanch democrat, he will do full justice to the Venetian oligarchy, even to the point of regretting that no democracy has thus far come as near perfection as the political system of Venice came.

On whichever side we examine her institutions, we find order, intelligence, foresight, and harmony. The political worked in unison with the commercial ; but it worked equally, at least in intent, with the social. Venice employed experts to apply the best knowledge of her age to government, law, commerce, business, and public health; of what state to-day can we affirm as much ? She rose to that attainment of balance and solidarity which stamps a high civilization. Every one, noble or plebeian, lived for Venezia, and in return she shed her benefits on every one. If we assume that an oligarchy is necessarily bad, we shall never understand her history, nor the devotion which all of her children felt for her.

The example of the unremitted application of intelligence to government which she set may well be pondered by nations groping after a political

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and social reorganization which shall prove stable. Venice learned to adjust herself to her extraordinary geographical conditions and to her complex political environment. She solved, satisfactorily to herself, her social, industrial, and commercial problems. In a word, she found herself, lived her own life, grew to full stature, and then slowly passed away, not because she was oligarchic, but because she was mortal.

Her career has this further lesson for us to-day : it shows that not numbers but wisdom and character make a people great. Venice was a city-state, y^ In her prime the capital never had a population of more than two hundred thousand inhabitants; the rest of the Dogado, before the annexation of the mainland provinces, probably did not number one hundred thousand more. Yet this little state established a colonial empire relatively larger than the British Empire, and it carried on a commerce relatively more extensive than the British has eyer been. There are, indeed, so many parallels between Venice and England that I have not hesitated, in the following pages, to call attention to them, or to cite other modern instances which may help to interpret the Venetian story. I have also tried to mark at each period the position of Venice in respect to the general development of her neighbors, and to the great currents which bore Europe on from the invasion of the barbarians, through Feudalism and Koman Theocracy, to the Keformation and modern times.

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For most persons the final reason and the strongest for interest in Venice springs from her Beauty. The incomparable city captivates all her visitors; her spell of romance charms even the dullest. "What poets dreamed these marvels? what romancers dwelt in these enchanted halls?" they ask as they glide through the canals or float on the opaline Lagoon. To answer these questions is one of the objects of this sketch, which will show that the Venetians were a practical, earnest, far-seeing, sagacious people, no day dreamers, but men who looked facts squarely in the face, mastered them, and perpetually delighted in Beauty. The proof they gave that a genius for the Practical need not exclude a genius for the Beautiful is, next to their Art itself, the most precious of their legacies.

In scope and method, not less than in point of view, therefore, this short history differs from other works in this field. Like every modern who has dealt with the Venetians, I have found the ^^ ten volumes of Komanin's Storia Documentata di Venezia an invaluable quarry. While Venice was still under Austrian domination the modest E,omanin produced his life work, which stands a monument to his patriotism and scholarship. One cannot use his volumes constantly during several years without recognizing his fairness. He frankly defends Venice, just as Daru frankly assails her, and in so far he is partisan ; but the investigations of recent historical students have almost always

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confirmed his judgments. I have refrained from overloading my text with footnotes and from citing authorities, but for the sake of readers who wish to go deeper into the subject, I have added a short list of the more important books.

In conclusion, I wish to express my gratitude for various assistance during the preparation of this little book, — to Professor Charles Eliot Norton, for much friendly criticism ; to Professor Albert Bushnell Hart, for reading a part of the manuscript ; to Captain A. T. Mahan and to Professor Pompeo Molmenti, — who is easily first among those now living who know Venice in all her aspects, — for replies to special questions; and to the Harvard College Library, which sets the world an example in laying open its treasures to scholars.

W. R. T.

Cambridge, Massachusetts, January 21, 1905.

Contents

PACE

Preface vii

List of Maps xvii

Chapter I The Beginnings, 421-810

At the beginning of the Christian Era, the northwestern shore of the Adriatic, from the mouth of the Piave on the north, to the mouth of the Bacchiglione in the south, some fifty miles' distance, was formed by long, narrow strips of sand. They enclosed a lagoon, twelve miles across in its broad-* est part, dotted with innumerable islets, and threaded by channels, sinuous and variable, through which the silt-burdened streams of the mainland wound slowly to the sea. At low tide, the shallows of the Lagoon lay bare. Sometimes, after the great rains, the rivers rose and flooded all but the highest of the islands; or the southwest gale, blowing long and furiously up the Adriatic, drove the heaped water through the four openings of the sandy coast-rim, to startle the marsh fowl in their reedy haunts. But ordinarily, so placid was the bosom of the Lagoon, that the incessant making and unmaking of soil below the surface would not have been suspected. The land-locked islands, covered with verdure, had

B 1 then no habitations, unless perhaps here and there a flimsy hut offered precarious shelter to some fisherman more venturesome than his fellows. On the outer islands, or lidij there may have been, even then, small settlements ; especially on the southernmost, which commanded the waterway to Padua. But the first impression produced on a visitor to the Lagoon, and the last, must have been of solitude, of sluggish waters and shifting lands, — waters through which the boa;ts of men could with difficulty find a passage, lands on which men themselves could hardly hope to build firmly or to get a meagre subsistence.

Passing to the continent, however, one entered the luxuriant plain watered by the Po and fifty smaller rivers. -Then, as now, that plain was one of the garden-spots of the world. Populous cities, thriving towns, busy villages, lived on its exhaustless harvests. For hundreds of years its people, the Veneti, shared the culture of Kome, and they gave to Roman literature three of its masters. Livy was born near Padua, Virgil at Mantua, and Catullus made the shores of Lake Garda forever lovelier for his presence. Where the Veneti came from, or when they first established themselves in the Delta of the Po, seems now past finding out. Some conscientious historians remind us that before the Trojan War a tribe of Eneti dwelt in Paphlagonia ; others report that much later there were Veneti in Brittany ; still others would ally them with the Slavic Wends ; but such gossip helps no more than silence.

Possibly they were kinsmen of the Etruscans. Ail that we kn ovy certainl y is that they had J>een prospering jor centuries in their t'w^ p1a.in^ wt?^^^ Jnling CaesM* admitted them to Roma n citizen ship. Then they saw emperor after emperor leadTis" armies across their plain and disappear northward into the vast wilderness beyond the Alps where the barbarians swarmed. — i Gradually, the vigor of Imperial Rome grew | slack, and the barbarians, no longer withheld by the Roman legions, poured through the passes into Italy. In the land of the Veneti they found booty and ease hitherto undreamt of by them. At their coming, the most fearful of the citizens fled to the islands of the Lagoon, and remained there until the enemy, glutted with spoils, marched on. The refugees crept back to their dismantled homes, leaving behind them, after each flight, some of their companions, who preferred privation with safety to civilized comforts with danger. But at the beginning of the fifth century, the incursions from the North became more frequent and more terrible. In 401, Alaric led his Visigoths through Venetia ; in 405, Rhadagasius headed a host of Ostrogoths, Vandals, Suevi, Burgundians, and other barbarians ; thenceforward, the people of Venetia lived in consternation until the coming of Attila and his Huns in 452. Atrocious though he was, rumor born of panic made him more atrocious still. He devastated lUyria; he put to the sword the inhabitants of Aquileia, the most important city beyond Padua 3 and as he moved southward, whoever could, rushed to cover. This time the fugitives resorted in larger numbers than ever to the islands of the Lagoon, and most of them never went back to their old homes.

So the year 452 stands as the date of the origin of Venice, although the old chroniclers, with the suspicious precision of ignorance, set March 25, 421, as the very day when, " about noon,'' the foundation stone of the city was laid. Their earlier date doubtless refers to an actual event — the sending from Padua of maritime tribunes to govern the settlers on the islands of Kivoalto, or Kialto ; but to Attila's scourge we trace the decisive emigration from the mainland to the Lagoon out of which the Venetian Republic sprang.

As these emigrants, like the English Puritans who colonized Massachusetts, were civilized folk suddenly transplanted to a wilderness, the mean conditions into which they were forced did not fairly-represent their culture. Moreover, as every class joined in the exodus, social distinctions were brought ready-made into the new communities. Above all, the Veneti had from of old the love and practice of liberty: their offspring, the Venetians, as we shall henceforth call the island settlers, were to preserve their freedom longer than any other nation. During more than thirteen hundred years from, the time when they fled from Attila, they never submitted to domination from abroad, nor suffered a tyrant at home. Through countless vicissitudes of hardship, of glory, of disaster, they maintained inviolate the supremacy of the Venetian state ; guarding it jealously ; sacrificing everything else, personal and family ambition, and class interests, to keep it free and paramount. No other government has exacted more from its citizens ; no other citizens have obeyed their state more willingly or loved it with a nobler passion. This is the more wonderful because Venice was in truth not a popular government in the modern sense, but the most highly organized oligarchy. Otber oligarchies have flourished for a while, but the Venetian oligarchy alone knew how to identify its own interests with those of the entire population, so as to command, during a thousand years, not only the respect and obedience but the devotion of every child of Venice. And thus the history of the Venetian Republic unfolds the gradual identification of the dominant class with the inner life of the state, not less than the dealings of the state with the outside world.

But the fugitives from Attila's wrath had no vision of empire, or even of statehood ; happy they, if in their watery refuge they might merely exist. They set themselves to build, not a political fabric, but such dwellings as they could, out of mud and clay and rough-hewn logs. They learned where fish, their chief food, abounded, and where to plant their few vegetables. From landsmen they became seamen, but we have absolutely no details of the transformation. How did the upper classes, accustomed to luxurious idleness, now fare ? How close were the relations with the old homes ? How much was saved from the wreck and transferred to the infant colonies, after the devastating Huns swept by ? This and much more must be left to conjecture : records are not written down during an earthquake.

We do know, however, that the new settlements differed one from another, just as the cities from which they had sprung differed, — Malamocco, for instance, was reputed democratic, while Heraclea was aristocratic, — and that the differences led in time to discord. But the need of harmony was most urgent, and in 466 representatives of the various townships met at Grado and chose officers to govern each community. The election of these tribunes, or gastaldi, marks the first step in the political evolution of the Republic. Hitherto, the parent cities had exercised a real, and then a nominal, suzerainty over the islands; now the islands proclaimed that they would have no more consuls from Padua, but local rulers of their own choosing ; no more tutelage, but independence ; and the cities of the mainland were too feeble to recover control.

A large word is independence to apply to these island townships, whose population could have numbered even then only a few thousand souls, widely scattered in precarious homes. They had elected independence — could they maintain it ? The Ostrogoth should come, the Lombard, the Greek, the Frank, and each should strive, by force or flattery or guile, to put asunder Venice and her independence : how could she, apparently so weak, baffle them all ?

No matter how often we may have read the story, which of us can realize, even faintly, what the dissolution of the Roman Empire meant to those who witnessed it in Italy? We can, indeed, taking a philosophical view, " explain it " according to our present lights. We see xhsii politically it involved the breaking up and passing away of an empire which had impressed its administration on the entire ancient world ; we see also that ethnically it worked in Europe for the replenishing of the exhausted Latin and Latinized stocks by the Teutons and the Slavs, with their barbaric virility. Knowing the sequel, — the tedious forming of new nations, having other institutions, laws, and religions, and culminating at last in a civilization higher than the Roman, — we declare the rotting of Rome a necessary stage in human progress.

But contemporaries could not peer into the future; they saw only the catastrophe. If any prophet could have revealed to them that the horrors they were suifering would in a thousand years lead to a better condition, little would it have consoled them. To the victims on the rack, the present was all in all. Carried down in the crash of a system which they had believed to be indestructible, they could hardly have been more appalled if the laws of nature had come to a standstill. From the past they could get neither encouragement nor instruction; for the past had witnessed no similar calamity.

Among the higher classes of Italy there were the alternating languor and frenzy that punish long dissipation. Laws ceased to guide or to restrain. The multitudes were resolved into their primary brutish instincts, — lust, robbery, murder. And everywhere, beside the Fury lurked the Fear. Possession was uncertain and brief. Death alone was sure. For, ever and anon, the hordes of the barbarians. Teuton or Hun, came like ravening wolves, whom no civilized pleasures had enervated, to devour and destroy ; until they learned at last that by settling in the land, and sparing the inhabitants to-do their bidding, they might enjoy its fatness continuously. Rome was dying, and the awfulness of her deaththroes was proportioned to her former grandeur and pride and strength. That spectacle has so astonished the world that only lately have historians sought to trace amid the chaos of those forces of death the forces which were at work to create society anew.

On the edge of such ruin, like a young cedar on the brink of a whirlpool, the Venetian state took root. Not to be engulfed in the vortex of the sinking Empire, nor to be swept away by the wild, new freshets — those the perils which had to be faced. The* repioteness of the island settlements, not less than- their poverty, proved their salvation. In 476, Romulus Augustulus, the last feeble Roman Emperor of the West, was deposed. Fourteen years later Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, invaded Italy, conquered much of it, set up his capital at Ravenna,

THE BEGINNINGS, 421-810 9

and maintained until 526 a better government than had been seen since Constantine. The Venetian towns grew, but not so visibly rich as to excite the covetousness of their Ostrogothic neighbors. Comparative tranquillity enabled them to extend their carrying trade up the rivers of the Po Delta and among the ports at the head of the Adriatic.

From this era dates the first description we have by an eye-witness of the Venetian state in its infancy. Cassiodorus, Theodoric's pretorian prefect, addressed in 523 a letter to the Maritime Tribunes, exhorting them to convey promptly to Ravenna the customary tributes of wine and oil from Istria. He praises their seamanship, which carried them over " infinite distances.'' " To your other advantages," he says, " it is added that you can always travel a safe and tranquil course ; for when through the angriness of the winds the sea is closed to you, there opens another way through the pleasantest rivers. Your ships fear not the harsh gusts. . . . With pleasure I recall how I have seen your habitations situated. The famous Venetian towns, already filled with nobles, border on the south Ravenna and the Po ; toward the east they enjoy the smiling Ionian shore, where the alternating tide now covers and now bares the surface of the fields. There are your houses like aquatic birds, now on sea and now on shore ; and when the aspect changes suddenly, these dwellings scattered far and wide, not produced by nature but founded by the industry of men, are like the Cyclades. The solid earth is there held together by woven willow boughs, and you have no doubts in opposing so frail a barrier to the waves, when the shore does not suffice, on account of its lowness, to hold back the mass of waters. Your inhabitants have abundance only of fish ; rich and poor live togetheik in equality. The same food and similar houses are shared by all; wherefore they cannot envy each other's hearths, and so they are free from the vice that rules the world. All your emulation centres on the salt-works ; instead of ploughs and scythes you turn cylinders, whence comes all your J gain. Upon your industry all other products dej pend; for though there may be somebody who does not seek gold, there never yet lived the man who desires not salt, which makes every food more savory. Therefore, repair your ships, which you keep hitched like animals to your walls."

From the tone of Cassiodorus's letter, it is evident that the Venetians had contrived to stay on friendly terms with Theodoric, and at the same time to preserve their virtual independence. But the great Ostrogoth had scarcely died, in 526, before a graver peril confronted them. Justinian, the Eastern Emperor, determined to bring Italy under the sway of Byzantium.

With this in view, he despatched to the Peninsula his general, Belisarius, who captured Ravenna in 540. Thenceforth the Exarchate, which touched the Lagoon on the north and east and represented a power at Constantinople whose strength had not yet been tested, might well be regarded by the Venetians as a menace ; but with characteristic adroitness they took care not to force a test. Whether from policy or from friendship, they lent their ships to transport the troops of Narses, who had succeeded Belisarius, and when Longinus, the next exarch, paid a friendly visit to the islanders, they welcomed him without reserve. He wished to make sure of their assistance against the Lombards, and he urged them to acknowledge the Eastern Emperor as their suzerain. The Venetians granted his first request readily enough. Their answer to his second showed that they already understood the advantage which their unique position gave them. " God, who is our help and protection, has saved us in order that we may dwell upon these watery marshes. This second Venice which we have raised in the Lagoons is a mighty habitation for us. No power of emperor or prince can reach us save by the sea alone, and of them we have no fear." Longinus freely acknowledged that their habitation was indeed mighty, and that they need fear neither prince nor emperor, but he coaxed them so pleasantly to send an embassy to Constantinople, promising that no formal oath should be exacted of them, that they complied. In due season their envoys returned, bringing the first treaty which the Venetians, as a separate state, negotiated with a foreign power (568).

And here we come to the question of the exact relation between Venice and the Eastern Empire.

Whatever may have been the wording of this document or of others, Venice never was in fact dependent on Constantinople. From policy she might claim the Emperor as her suzerain, and she certainly at times sent a nominal tribute to him ; but no Byzantine ever crossed her threshold to govern her. If an Imperial messenger brought a request, she would listen, but she brooked no command. ; From the beginning she shrewdly avoided entangling alliances with her neighbors, whose friendship might prove as dangerous as their enmity, and she professed for those whom distance rendered harmless a deference not to be construed too literally.) In the long run she got much more than she gave by her titular dependence on the Eastern Empire. Politically she gained much; commercially she gained more. The day never came when the pro- • tection she bought so cheap threatened her liberty. At the first sign of such a danger she would have averted it by seeking other allies. From the end • of the sixth century, therefore, we must think of her as politely acknowledging the supremacy of the Emperor at Constantinople, without allowing this to interfere in the least with her national .ambition.

But while the Venetians so early agreed on a policy to be held in their dealings with the outside world, they suffered from long discords at home. Among the twelve communities^ which comprised

1 These twelve were Grado, Bibiones, Caprulae (Caorle), Heraclea, Jesolo (CavaUino), Torcello, Murano, Rialto, Metathe little Eepublie, there were inevitable rivalries, , due to the feuds which they had inherited from their j parent cities, or to commercial competition, or to ■ different ideals in government, or to the clashing ! of family ambitions. The tribune had only a local authority ; too often he lacked even* that. In 584, in each township a second tribune was " elected by all the people," and these twelve new officers seem to have been the forerunners of a central government. From the earliest times, however, the people kept the final control in their own hands. Their airengoy or popular assembly, in which every citizen might speak and vote, resembled in its democracy the New England town meeting. That the magistrates thus chosen came to have much greater power than the New England selectmen was due to the violence of the age and to the Koman tradition. In every land where that tradition has penetrated there has been an invariable tendency, no matter what the system of government, to magnify the person in office at the expense of the citizens who created him. Nevertheless, in Venice, even after the election of the greater tribunes, the need of a centralized government was still strongly felt; for though the tribunes were often powerful enough to tyrannize over their fellow-townsmen, they were still too weak either to compel harmony or to set up a despotism throughout the Lagoons. From the outside, as usual, came the wholesome,

welding strokes. In 568 the Lombards, the last of the Teutonic barbarians, conquered Northern Italy and set up a vigorous rule down to the shore of the Lagoons. Then for the last time Venetians of the mainland fled for safety to the islands, and Tor- ' cello remains to this day as a memorial of that ; final settlement, which added several thousand inhabitants to the population, and, more important still, put an end to all thought of going back. (Thus " what Attila began, Alboin, the king of the Lombards, completed.^ The Venetians had now to learn to live beside an imperious neighbor. They agreed to pay certain dues, in return for which they were allowed to pursue their commerce along the rivers. They kept their friendship with the Eastern Emperor, who still held Ravenna. To make the port against both wind and tide is the seaman's art ; the Venetians were seamen in their statecraft too. put they still owed most to their comparative insignificance and to their fairy godmother. Poverty .^1