IXTHE DECADENCE

1510. Rom. v. 246.

sat a young noble who personated the King, splendidly arrayed in the Byzantine fashion,and attended by his counsellors, his chancellor, and his interpreter. Before him there came in state one who played the Papal Legate, dressed as a bishop in silk of old-rose colour, and he presented a brief and his credentials; whereupon, after crowning and blessing the King, he observed that he should like to see a little dancing, and two of the Companions at once danced for him with two of the fairest ladies. The Legate was followed by the Ambassador of the Holy Roman Empire, and the Ambassadors of France, Spain, Hungary, and Turkey arrived in turn; each spoke in the language of his country, and his speech was interpreted to the King. Last of all came the Ambassador of the Pigmies mounted on a tiny pony accompanied by four dwarfs and the professional buffoon Zanipolo. We must suppose the speeches to have been very witty, and the dwarfs and buffoons highly comic, since this incomprehensible nonsense was a stupendous success and was talked of long afterwards.

The taste for these ‘momarie,’ literally ‘mummeries,’ grew in Venice. Marin Sanudo describes one which was produced in the Square of Saint Mark’s on the Thursday before Lent in 1532. I translate a part of the list of the masks, to give an idea of the whole.

First, the goddess Pallas Athene with her shield and a book in her hand, riding on a serpent.

Second, Justice riding on an elephant, with sword, scales, and globe.

Third, Concord, on a stork with sceptre and globe.

Fourth, Victory on horseback, with sword, shield, sceptre, and palm.

Fifth, Peace riding a lamb, and holding a sceptre with an olive branch.

And so on. Then Ignorance, riding an ass, and holding on by the tail, met Wisdom and fought and was beaten. And Violence appeared on a serpent, and Mars on a horse, and Want on a dog with a horn full of straw for its emblem. And Violence was soundly beaten by Justice, Discord by Concord, and Mars by Victory, and Abundance drove Want from the field.

Such were the shows that amused the Venetians, while written comedy was slowly growing out of infancy.

The Companions of the Hose Club revenged themselves cruelly on any one of their own number who

Tassini, under Osteria della Campana.

showed signs of meanness. Sanudo tells the following anecdote. Alvise Morosini, one of the ‘Eternals,’ on the occasion of his marriage with a daughter of the noble house of Grimani, gave his fellow-Companions a very meagre dinner. Not long afterwards they got into the Grimani palace and carried off two magnificent silver basins; these were placed in the hands of professional buffoons who paraded the city with them, informing the public that the bridegroom meant to pawn them to pay for the dinner which the Companions were going to eat at the sign of the Campana instead of the dinner which they should have eaten atthe Palazzo Morosini, and also to pay for wax torches for taking home the fair ladies who were to be asked to the feast.

The paternal and business-like government of Venice, seeing how much the Companions contributed to the national gaiety, allowed them to transgress the sumptuary laws which were so binding on every one else. For instance, ordinary mortals were forbidden to ask guests to more than one meal in the twenty-four hours, but the Companions eluded the law—with the consent of the police—by keeping an open table all night, so that breakfast appeared to be only the end of supper. Even in the matter of the gondolas, the rule was that the ‘felse’ should be of black cloth, yet the Companions covered theirs with scarlet silk and the Provveditori delle Pompe had nothing to say.

Then, suddenly, the government had a fit of morality, and in 1586 the Hose Club was abolished by law, all privileges were revoked, and the decree was enforced. Venice lost some amusement and much beautiful pageantry, and gained nothing in morality. It was not very long before the grave senators who objected to the Companions were seen in their scarlet togas presiding over authorised gambling establishments in the ‘ridotti.’

The Venetians were an imaginative people who delighted in fables, amusing, terrible, or pious, as the case might be. Their stories differ from those of other European races in the Middle Ages by the total absenceof the element of chivalry upon which most other peoples largely depended for their unwritten fiction. One can make almost anything of a business man except a knight.

Near the Ponte dell’ Angelo in the Giudecca stands a house which shows great age in spite of much

PONTE DELL’ ANGELO, GIUDECCA, OLD WOODEN BRIDGE

modern plastering. The windows are gothic, of the

Tassini, under ‘Angelo.’

ogival design, and on the façade there is an image of the Virgin with the infant Christ in her arms. Higher up, a bas-relief represents an angel standing with outstretched wings as if he were about to fly away after blessing with his right hand the globe he holds in his left.

In the year 1552 this house was inhabited by a barrister of the ducal court who professed unbounded devotion to the Madonna, and practised the most indelicate methods of improving his fortunes.

One day the lawyer asked to dinner a holy Capuchin monk who enjoyed the highest reputation for sanctity. Before sitting down to table he explained to the good friar that he had a most wonderful servant in the shape of a learned ape, that kept his house clean, cooked for him, and did his errands. The holy man at once perceived that the ape was no less a personage than the Devil in disguise, and asked to see him; but Satan, suspecting trouble, hid himself till at last he was found curled up in his master’s bed, trembling with fright.

‘I command thee,’ said the monk, ‘in the name of God, to say why thou hast entered this house.’

‘I am the Devil,’ answered the ape, seeing that prevarication would be useless, ‘and I am here to take possession of this lawyer’s soul, which is mine on several good grounds.’

The monk inquired why the Devil had not flown away with the soul long ago, but the fiend replied that so far it had not been possible, because the lawyer said ‘Hail, Mary,’ every night before going to bed. Thereupon the Capuchin bade the Devil leave the house at once; but the Devil said that if he went he would do great damage to the building, as the heavenly powers had authorised him to do. But the monk was a match for him.

‘The only damage you shall do,’ said the friar, ‘shall be by making a hole in the wall as you leave, which shall be a witness of the truth of what we have seen and heard and of the story we shall tell.’

The Devil obeyed with alacrity and disappeared through the wall with a formidable crash, after which the lawyer and his guest sat down to table, and the monk discoursed of leading a good life; and at last he took the table-cloth and wrung it with both hands, and a quantity of blood ran out of it which he said was the blood the lawyer had wrung from his clients. Then the sinner began to shed tears and promised to make full reparation, and he told the monk that if the hole in the wall were not stopped up, he feared the Devil would come in by it again. So the friar advised him to place a statue of the Madonna before the hole and an angel over it, to scare the Devil away. And so he did.

Another Venetian legend of slightly earlier date tells how there was once in the confraternity of Saint John

Tassini, under ‘San Lio.’

the Evangelist a man who led a bad life, to the great scandal of all who knew him. One of the brethren having died, the Superior hoped to touch the heart of that wicked man by asking him to bear the Cross in the funeral procession. ‘I will neither walk in the procession to-day,’ answered the sinner, ‘nor do I wish to be so accompanied when the Devil carries me off.’ After some time he died, and the brethren proceeded to bury him, walking in procession after the Cross; but when they reached the bridgeof San Lio it became so heavy that it was impossible to lift it from the ground, much less to carry it. The Superior now remembered the words of the blasphemer, and told the story to the brethren while

Picture representing the scene, Mansueti; Accademia delle belle Arti.

they halted. So they all decided that the Cross must not follow the procession, and thereupon it instantly became light again, and was carried back to the chapel of Saint John the Evangelist.

The fireside is the natural place for telling stories, and there is certainly some connection in the human mind between firelight and the fabulous. Dante tells that in his time the women of Venice consulted the fire in order to know the future. When a girl was engaged to be married she appealed to one of the burning logs, and decided from the augury whether she was to be happy or unhappy. Those who wanted money struck the log with the tongs, calling out softly, ‘Ducats! ducats!’ If the sparks flew out abundantly there was some hope that a rich relation might die and leave the inquirer a legacy. When the sparks were few and faint, poverty was prophesied.

Unlike all other Italians, who believe that hunchbacks bring good luck, the Venetians feared them excessively. A Venetian proverb says, ‘Leave three steps between thyself and those whom God has marked, eight if it is a hunchback, and twenty-eight if the man be lame.’

One of the pretty superstitions of Venetian mothers was that if they took their little children out beforedawn on Saint John’s Day, the twenty-fourth of June, so that the morning dew might dampen their cheeks and hair, they would have lovely complexions and golden locks. There are old Venetian lullabies that promise babies the midsummer dew.

RIO S. SOFIA, NIGHT

Theseventeenth century, like the fourteenth, was one of transition; but whereas the earlier period was one of improvement, the latter was one of decay. When time at last began to do its work upon the Republic, Venice had been independent nine hundred years; she was still at the height of her glory, still in the magnificence of her outward splendour, but the long-strained machinery of government was beginning to wear out.At the commencement of the seventeenth century all Italy seemed to be threatened by war; the peace

1598. Rom. vii. 5.

patched up between Philip II. of Spain and Henry IV. of France at Vervins had been of an unsatisfactory and precarious nature; the Holy See was more and more on its guard against the Protestant powers, and Spain took advantage of this in order to sow discord between the court of Rome and other governments. Venice was especially involved in these difficulties, because she had signed in 1589 a commercial treaty with the Grisons which had greatly displeased Spain, the latter being then in

Rom. vi. 412.

possession of Milan. The Republic was accused of being too obliging to Protestants, and her enemies assured the Pope that she had seriously endangered the safety of the Catholic Church by allowing the English ambassador to have an Anglican Church service in his private oratory. The complaints of Clement VIII. and Paul V. were received with stony indifference by the Republic, which never had the slightest respect for Rome. The latter had many causes of complaint. Venice had been granted in former times the privilege of trying priests for ordinary crimes in the ordinary courts, on condition that the Patriarch should sit among the judges. Little by little the Venetian government stretched this privilege to make it apply to all suits whatsoever brought

Rom. vii. 43, notes.

against ecclesiastics, and in most cases the Patriarch was not even represented. It chanced, at the very time when the Pope had

CAMPIELLO DELLE ANCORE

complained of the liberty granted to the English ambassador, that two priests were accused of an abominable crime, and were tried like ordinary delinquents. This encroachment upon the bulls of Innocent VIII. and Paul III. took place just when the Senate was passing a law which greatly restricted the holding of property by the clergy. As if these facts were not enough to show the Pope that the Venetian flock intended to manage its own corner of the Catholic fold in its own way, the government, on the death of the Patriarch, named as his successor a member of the house of Vendramin, and merely announced the fact to the court of Rome, although the old canonical law required that in cases where governments were authorised to appoint their bishops, the latter should be examined and approved by the Pope’s delegates.

Spain took advantage of all these circumstances to bring about a complete rupture between Venice and

Rom. vii. 45, 50-51.

the Holy See. Paul V. now hesitated no longer, and discharged a major excommunication against the whole Venetian State. This measure produced little impression on the Senate, and none at all on the Doge Leonardo Dandolo. He declared openly that the sentence was unjust, and therefore null and void. The Capuchin, Theatin, and Jesuit orders closed their churches in obedience to the Pope, and were immediately expelled from Venetian territory by the government. The Pope’s wrath was as tremendous as it was futile, and it is impossible to say how farmatters might have gone if Henry IV. had not used his influence to bring about a reconciliation. It was his interest to do so in order that Venice, being friendly to him, might in a measure balance the power of hostile Spain, and he sent the Cardinal de Joyeuse to Italy to try and obtain from the Pope some concession which

Rom. vii. 53.

might facilitate an act of submission on the part or the Republic. Spain was playing a double game as usual, but the Cardinal was too much for the Spanish diplomatists, and he brought about an arrangement by which Venice handed over to the Pope the two priests who were on trial, and

Rom. vii. 64.

permitted the Patriarch to undergo the examination required by the canonical law. On his side the Pope exempted from that examination all future Patriarchs.

It is a singular fact that the usually docile Venetian population greatly resented the attitude taken by the government towards the Holy See. The Doge himself was hissed and howled at when he went to the church of Santa Maria Formosa on the Feast of Candlemas. ‘Long live the Doge Grimani, the father of the poor,’ yelled the rabble, for Grimani had been a man of exemplary piety and had been dead and buried for some time. ‘The day will come when you shall wish to go to church and shall not be able!’ screamed others. Even after the reconciliation with the Pope,

Rom. vii. 251.

Spain did not cease to conspire against the Republic, and while persecuting the Catholics in Valtellina tried to make out that theRepublic was allied with the Protestant powers because it opposed those persecutions.

It is impossible to speak of the quarrels between Venice and Rome without mentioning the monk Paolo Sarpi who played so large a part in them. At the

SANTA MARIA FORMOSA

time when the attitude of the Pope made it clear that serious trouble was at hand, the Signory felt the need of consulting a theologian in order to give her resistance something like an orthodox shape. There was at that time in Venice a monk well known for his profound learning and austere life. He had entered the order of the Servites as a novice at the age of thirteen, and wasnow fifty-four years old. In more than forty years

Rom. vii. 73, 77.

his love of retirement and study and his profound devotion had suffered no change. He was brought from his seclusion by an order from the Senate to give his opinions on the burning questions of the moment. Fra Paolo Sarpi vigorously sustained the cause of the Republic, and was at once denounced to the Pope as a sectarian and a secret partisan of the Protestants. Fanatics attempted to assassinate him, and the government spread the report that the murder

Statue of Fra Paolo Sarpi erected in 1812 in the church of Santa Fosca, near the spot where he narrowly escaped assassination, Marsili.

had been attempted by the court of Rome. These reports further exasperated the Vatican against him, while the Republic supported him all the more obstinately and consulted him on every occasion. He was installed in a little house in the Square of Saint Mark’s in order to be within easy reach of the ducal palace, and the severest penalties were threatened for any attempt against his life.

In spite of these precautions two more attempts were made to assassinate him, and he was heard to say that death would be preferable to the existence which the government obliged him to lead. Nevertheless he lived sixteen years in the service of the Republic. The unbounded confidence which was placed in him is amply proved by the fact that he, and he only, in the history of the Council of Ten, was allowed free access to its archives, a privilege which, oddly enough, proved fatal to him; for it was while working on his own account amongst those documents that he caughta cold from which he never recovered, and he died three months afterwards in the winter of 1622. On the fourteenth of January he felt his end approaching, and the news was at once known throughout the city. The Signory at once sent for Fra Fulgenzio, his most intimate friend. ‘How is Fra Paolo?’ inquired the Ten. ‘He is at the last extremity,’ answered the monk. ‘Has he all his wits?’ ‘As if he were quite well,’ answered Fra Paolo’s friend.

Immediately three questions regarding an important affair were sent to the dying man, who concentrated his mind upon them and dictated the answers with marvellous clearness and precision. His last words were a prayer for his country’s enduring greatness. ‘Esto perpetua!’ he prayed as he closed his eyes for ever.

The government gave him a magnificent funeral, and ordered the sculptor Campagna to make a marble bust of him for the church of the Servites; but the Venetian ambassador in Rome advised the Republic not to rouse the Pope’s anger again by such a tribute to the great monk’s memory. We are not called upon to decide upon the orthodoxy of Fra Paolo’s opinions, but he was undeniably one of the greatest and most gifted Italians of the seventeenth century.

The troubles with Rome, and the general excommunication which had brought them to a crisis, had disturbed the confidence of the Venetian people in their government more than anything that had happened for years; and soon afterwards matters weremade worse by the terrible judicial murder of Antonio Foscarini, in which England was deeply concerned.

Foscarini was a fine specimen of the patriotic Venetian noble, devoted to his country, imbued with the most profound respect for the aristocratic caste to which he belonged, haughty and contemptuous towards most other people, as the following anecdote shows. He was in Paris as ambassador when Maria de’ Medici, the wife of Henry IV., was crowned, and as he had only recently arrived he was not acquainted with all his diplomatic colleagues when he met them in the church of Saint Denis. After the ceremony he bowed to the Spanish Ambassador, who inquired who the stranger was who saluted him. Foscarini introduced himself. ‘Oh,’ exclaimed the Spaniard, ‘the Ambassador of the Pantaloons!’ ‘Pantaloon’ was a Venetian theatrical mask, and the word had become a contemptuous nickname for the Venetians. But the Spaniard

Molmenti, St. e Ric.

had counted without his host, for Foscarini fell upon him then and there. He described what he did in a letter to his government: ‘I loaded the Spanish Ambassador with vigorous blows and kicks, as he deserved.’

A Venetian, Pietro Gritti, who was in Foscarini’s suite, wrote a letter at the same time in which he said that his chief kicked the Spanish Ambassador down the whole length of the court.

Foscarini was afterwards ambassador in England, and the long series of circumstances which led to his tragic end dates from that period. He was still young,he was inclined to be fond of amusement, and for some unknown reason the secretaries of embassy who were sent with him hated him and calumniated him in the basest manner, accusing him to the Council of Ten of being a Protestant in secret, and of carrying on a treacherous correspondence with the Spanish government. But there was worse than this. A famous French spy, La Forêt, bribed Foscarini’s valet, Robazza, got access to the ambassador’s rooms when he was out, and copied his most important letters for the French government.

His second secretary of embassy, Muscorno, obtained leave to return to Venice on pretence of visiting his father who was ill, and when Foscarini was suddenly recalled he found the ground prepared for an abominable action against him. He himself, his valet, and his chaplain were all imprisoned, and his trial for high treason began. It proceeded very slowly, but he was acquitted after having been in prison three years, for Robazza confessed his treachery without being tortured. Having been declared innocent of high treason, Foscarini had little difficulty in disproving some minor accusations that were brought against him; and a few weeks after his release he appeared before the Senate to give an official account of his embassy in England. Muscorno, who had accused him falsely, was condemned to two years’ imprisonment in a fortress; Robazza, the valet who had been bribed, had his right hand struck off and was exiled for twenty years.

James I. of England sent Foscarini especial congratulations, and he was again employed in important affairs. Unhappily, however, Muscorno had a successor worthy of him in the person of Girolamo Vano, a professional spy in the service of the Republic. If by any chance the smallest State secret was known abroad, it was always insinuated by Foscarini’s enemies that he was responsible for divulging it, and it was quite in keeping with the ordinary practice of the Venetian government to employ spies to watch a man who had been once suspected, even though he had been declared innocent and was again in high office.

The spy Vano took advantage of Foscarini’s friendship, or affection, for the English Countess of Arundel, as a means of making out a strong case

Rom. vii. 183.

against him. Foscarini had known her in London, and she had afterwards made long visits to Venice, in order to be near her sons, who were making their studies at the university of Padua. At her house Foscarini often met the Envoy of Florence and the secretaries of the Spanish and Austrian embassies.

She did not spend all her time in Venice, however, but was often many months in England. It was when she was returning to Venice after one of these absences that she was stopped at some distance from the city by a messenger from the English ambassador, Sir Henry Wotton, who entreated her to turn back. The unfortunate Foscarini had been convicted of high treason and strangled, and his corpse was that very morning hanging between the two red columns of the fatal window in the ducal palace. Lady Arundel’s name had been connected during the trial with that of the condemned man, and the ambassador was anxious to save her any possible trouble.

But she was not of the sort that turns back from danger at such times, and that very evening she reached

GRAND CANAL, LOOKING TOWARDS MOCENIGO PALACE

the English Embassy and demanded an audience of the Doge; it was with the greatest difficulty that she could be made to understand the impossibility of being admitted until the next morning, and she reluctantly retired for the night to her hired house, that Mocenigo palace which was afterwards successively inhabited by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and by Lord Byron.

On the morrow the ambassador went with her to the ducal palace, and she must have passed below the window from which the body of her friend had hung all the previous day. She was admitted to the presence of the Signory, and the Doge made her sit on his right hand. She now learned that she was believed to have allowed Foscarini to use her house as a place from which to carry on intrigues with foreign courts. Sir Henry Wotton spoke in the Countess’s defence, and proved that her relations with Foscarini had always been of the most honourable character, and that the two had not met for many months. England’s star was in the ascendant, Elizabeth had reigned, and it was not good to contradict an English ambassador nor to speak lightly of an English lady. The Doge made the Countess his most humble excuses and promised to send them to her husband, the Earl Marshal, through the Venetian ambassador in London.

The Senate took cognisance of the affair also, and voted a small sum of money to be expended in a present of comfits and wax to the Countess, this being the custom for all persons of quality who appeared before the Signory. But that was all. Lady Arundel had exculpated herself, but so far Foscarini’s guilt seemed to be so incontrovertibly proved, that Fra Paolo Sarpi refused to accept a legacy which the unhappy patrician had left him in his last will.

But as time went on the whole of Vano’s fabricated evidence began to go to pieces. The Inquisitors of State themselves seem to have been the first to suspectthat they had made a mistake, and before long the dreadful truth was only too clear. Foscarini

Rom. vii. 196; Armand Baschet, Arch. 631.

had been perfectly innocent and had been murdered by justice. It was not a case that could be hushed and put out of the way, either, for too many people knew what had happened.

The Council of Ten made amends: let us give them such credit as we can for their public repentance, without inquiring too closely what pressure was brought to bear upon them by the public, and not improbably by England. Monsieur Baschet becomes lyric in his praise of their magnanimity. For my part, I do not think it would have been safe for the Council to try and hide its mistake. The Ten apologised amply before the world: that is the important matter. Monsieur Baschet gives the original text of the apology, of which I translate a part from the Italian:—

‘Since the Providence of our Lord God has disposed, by means truly miraculous and incomprehensible to human intelligence, that the authors and promoters of the lies and impostures machinated against our late beloved and noble Antonio Foscarini should be discovered ..., it behoves the justice and mercy of this Council, whose especial business it is, for the general quiet and safety to protect the immunity of the honour and reputation of families, to rehabilitate as far as possible those who lie under the imputation of an infamous crime ...,’ and so on.

The Ten also decreed that an inscription should be set up in the church of Sant’ Eustachio, recording theerror of the court, a unique example of such a public and enduring retractation.

Other circumstances occurred to prove that organisation of the Venetian tribunals was beginning to wear out. Too many conflicting regulations had been introduced, and there were too many magistracies. Venice was ‘over-administered,’ as generally happens to old countries, and sometimes to new ones that are too anxious to be scientifically governed. The jurisdictions of the different officials often encroached upon one another. The three Inquisitors of State were frequently at odds with the other seven members of the Council of Ten, and in the confusion which this caused it was impossible that the laws should be as well administered as formerly.

About this time a grave case enlightened the public as to certain abuses of which the existence had not

Rom. vii. 210, 215, 223, 229.

been previously suspected. The Council of Ten was always charged with the duty of seeing that the Doge performed to the letter the promises of the ‘Promission ducale.’ These solemn engagements were several times violated by the Doge Corner for the advantage of his sons. He allowed one of them to accept the dignity of the Cardinalate while two others were made senators, but as the Council of Ten did not like to interfere, one of its heads, Renier Zeno, took upon himself to impeach the Doge. The latter was accused of illegal acts in contradiction with the ‘Promission,’ and the question was taken up by the whole aristocracy and discussed before all the differentCouncils. The opposite parties were fast reaching a state of exasperation, when one of the Doge’s sons attempted the life of Renier Zeno. He and his accomplices were merely exiled to Ferrara, and the lenity of the sentence sufficiently shows the weakness of the government.

At the same time Renier Zeno was arbitrarily forbidden, contrary to all law, to call into question the conduct of the courts in general, but he was too proud and energetic to submit to such despotism, and what it pleased the Council of Ten to call his ‘pride’ served his adversaries as a pretext for accusing him. The Council had the imprudence to condemn him to ten years’ imprisonment in the fortress of Cattaro; but this was too much, and the Ten were soon forced to revoke the sentence as completely as they had annulled that of the unfortunate Foscarini. But the world saw, and the prestige of the Council was gone; the government cast about in vain for some means of restoring it, and could find nothing to do except to make a few reforms and changes in its old system of spying and repression.

Ever since the fourteenth century there had been a locked box with a slit in it, placed in a public part of the ducal palace, into which any one might drop an anonymous written accusation against any one else, from the Doge down. Little by little the use of this means of ‘informing’ developed, until it had now become common to try cases on the mere strength of such unsupported accusations. The boxes were calledthe Lions’ Mouths on account of the shape they had taken, and there was much talk about them when it was attempted to reform the Code of Laws in the seventeenth century. A decree of the year 1635 restored the old regulations as to the nature of the misdeeds which might be thus denounced.

THE FONDAMENTA S. GIORGIO, REDENTORE IN DISTANCE

It was decided that if the accusation was signed, four-fifths of the judges must agree before the case could be brought to trial; if the information was anonymous there could be no trial without the consent of the Doge, his counsellors, and the chiefs of the Ten to bring the case before the Great Council, and the trial could not be opened unless it were voted necessary byfive-sixths of the assembly. These measures were no doubt prudent, but it was the system itself that was at fault; any Venetian was authorised by it to take upon himself the duties of a detective, and was encouraged to spy on his neighbours, because the courts generally rewarded the informer after a conviction.

It is always a fault in a government to make laws unchangeable like those of the Medes and Persians, and some authors have said that the Venetian Republic never looked upon any of its decrees as immutable. This is true as regards the form, for no government ever remodelled its laws more often in their text. Sometimes the same decree appears in more than one hundred shapes, but neither the spirit nor the point of view is modified. A law passed against the freemasons in the eighteenth century is conceived in precisely the same spirit as the decrees against the conspirators in the days of Baiamonte Tiepolo and Marin Faliero; the last Missier Grande of the police was very like the sbirri of the Middle Ages in character and in methods. The Republic was growing old; the tree might still bear fruit, but the fruit it bore had no longer within it the seeds of future life.

It cannot be denied that Venetian diplomacy was better of its kind than Venetian magistracies. During the thirty years’ war, for instance,

Rom. vii. 275.

Venice never once lost sight of the great object it had in view, which was to abase the closely related powers of Spain and Austria, while skilfully avoiding any action which might bring about reprisals.

On the other hand, it was impossible to remain neutral in the war of succession to the Duchy of Mantua, in which Carlo Gonzaga, Duke

Rom. vii. 276.

of Nevers, was supported by France, and Ferrante Gonzaga by the Emperor. As Austria’s

STEPS OF THE REDENTORE

enemy, Venice naturally backed the former. Venice furnished him abundantly with money and soldiers, and between the month of November 1629 and the month of March following, spent six hundred and thirty-eight thousand ducats to support the party which was defending the cause of Italian independence against the Empire. Austria nevertheless succeeded, and gotthe better of the formidable coalition; but though the Imperials took possession of Mantua at the time, they were obliged to give it up to Carlo Gonzaga soon afterwards, in April 1631, by the treaty of Cherasco.

About the same time Venice suffered another terrible visitation of the plague, and more than thirty-six thousand persons perished in the city

Rom. vii. 302.

alone. On a similar occasion in 1575 the Venetians had vowed a church to the Redeemer if the plague was stayed, and the church they built is that of the Redentore; in 1630 a church was vowed to the Blessed Virgin, under the name of the Madonna della Salute. This was at first only a wooden

Rom. vii. 306.

building, in which a great thanksgiving took place on the first of November. The present church was not finished until 1687.

Amongst the many circumstances which hastened the decadence of the Republic during the seventeenth century was the terrible war in Crete. In

Quadri, 275.

that memorable struggle with the Turks for the possession of the island the Venetians displayed much of their old heroism and good generalship, but the Republic was no longer young, and could not make such gigantic efforts with impunity; Venice was permanently weakened by that last great war. It originated in a piece of rash imprudence on the part of the Knights of Malta, who seized a number of Turkish vessels; it lasted twenty-five years, and it cost the Republic her best generals and her bravest soldiers, besides vast sums of money. Yet the enthusiasm wasboundless; mindful of Enrico Dandolo and Andrea Contarini, the aged Doge Francesco Erizzo determined to take command himself, but death overtook him on the eve of his departure.

Prodigies of valour were performed. Tommaso Morosini, with a single ship, victoriously resisted the attack of forty-five Turkish galleys, but lost his life in the engagement. Lorenzo Marcello took eighty-four Turkish vessels and their crews with a far inferior force, but like Morosini he was killed in the fight. Ten thousand Turks were slain and five thousand were taken prisoners.

Europe looked on in amazement and admiration, and many brave captains and soldiers thought it an honour to serve under the standard of Saint Mark. There were more Germans and Frenchmen among these volunteers than soldiers of other nations, and Louis XIV. himself hoped to associate his name with the campaign. He sent the Duc de Beaufort with a considerable fleet, twelve of his best regiments, and a detachment of the Guards, besides a great number of volunteers under the command of the Duc de Noailles. Yet all was in vain, and after a quarter of a century of fighting Venice was obliged to yield Crete to the Turks.

The peace was of no long duration, for the Turks attacked Austria next, and, though the brave Sobieski drove them away from Vienna, they allied themselves with the Hungarians, and became so dangerous to the Empire that the Pope himself was in anxiety for thesafety of Christianity in general. Exhausted by her long war in Crete, the Republic attempted to decline all requests that she should join a league against the Turks, but was at last obliged to yield, and war was renewed in the Archipelago and the Peloponnesus.

Francesco Morosini, the same general who a few years earlier had been obliged to evacuate Crete after the most heroic efforts, was placed in

Rom. vii. 490.

command of the Venetian forces and commissioned to drive the Turks from the islands of Santa Maura and other strong places in the Ionian Sea. On the eleventh of August 1687 a swift felucca brought to Venice news that Morosini had taken Patras and Corinth, besides Santa Maura. In joyful

Bust of Francesco Morosini, Hall of the Council of Ten.

enthusiasm the Senate forthwith voted the victor a bronze bust, which was placed in hall of the Council of Ten, with the standard taken from the Turks. It bears the inscription:—

Francisco MaurocenoPeloponnesiaco adhuc viventiSenatus.

Another monument in Venice recalls the glorious war of the Peloponnesus. After having taken Athens, Morosini hastened to the Parthenon, for he

Quadri, 302; Rom. vii. 491.

appears to have been a man of highly cultivated tastes. To his inexpressible disappointment he found the temple half ruined, for the Turks had used it as a powder magazine, and a Venetian bomb had blown it up. Morosini was so much overcome that he brokeout into lamentations over a loss which nothing could replace. But there amidst piles of ruins he saw two splendid lions of marble from Pentelicus, which he at once caused to be placed on board his vessel, rather to save them, perhaps, than to exhibit them as trophies. In Venice they were set up on each side of the gate of the Arsenal.

Morosini was one of the few Venetian generals who was not made to suffer for his success. When

1688. Rom. vii. 504.

at the very height of his triumph he learnt that he was elected Doge, and though he had little success in the campaign after that, and was even dangerously ill, he was magnificently received when he returned to Venice. Pope Alexander VIII., Ottoboni, sent him the staff and military hat which it was customary to give to generals who had distinguished themselves in war against infidels. But it was clear that in his absence nothing could be accomplished, and he soon obtained permission of the government to take command of the Venetian forces once more. His departure on the twenty-fourth of May 1693 was a sort of national festivity. The Senate went to fetch him in his own apartment, and a long procession accompanied him to Saint Mark’s. Preceded by halberdiers, singers, files of servants in liveries of scarlet velvet and gold, many priests, canons, and the Patriarch himself, besides the traditional silver trumpets, the Doge walked between the Pope’s nuncio and the French ambassador. He wore the full dress of a Venetian commander-in-chief, which was of goldbrocade with a long train. But even in his glory the Venetians noticed with displeasure and suspicion that he carried in his hand the staff of the General, which he evidently preferred to the sceptre of the Doge, and which suggested to the crowd the thought that he might seize the supreme power.

THE NAVE OF S. STEFANO

On the following day he embarked upon the Bucentaur, which took him on board his flagship amidst the applause of the crowd, the pealing of the church bells, and a salute of artillery from the fort of Saint Nicholas on the Lido, as his vessel got under way.

The expedition proved of little advantage to theRepublic, and cost Morosini his life, for his health was undermined by the fatigues of his previous campaigns, and he died in the Greek province of Romania, where he had hoped to rest for a few weeks. His body was brought back to Venice, and buried with great pomp in the church of Santo Stefano.

The war went on under his successor, Silvestro Valier, but it now entered upon a new phase, for the Czar Peter the Great threatened the Turks on their northern frontier, while the Venetian fleet held them in check in the south. A treaty of peace was signed at Carlowitz in 1699, by which the Republic kept her conquests in the Morea as far as the isthmus of Corinth, including the islands of Egina, Santa Maura, and other less important places. Dalmatia was also left to her, but she was obliged to withdraw her troops from Lepanto and Romania on the north side of the Gulf of Corinth.

From all this it is clear that the military spirit was still alive in Venice, when the administration had almost

Back to Index Next