The Lion City
As Venice grew richer, it became more powerful. A city needs
a ruling authority, and the acquisition of authority invites arrogance and
belligerence. It encourages the will for further power. Venice, surrounded by
the sea, could not grow out of its own frontier. But it could be enlarged and
enriched by its extension in other lands and in other cities. It could become
an empire.
In earliest times la Serenissima, the city of the Virgin,
had been given a masculine identity by its citizens. It was the Lion City. The
very conditions of its existence made warfare an inevitable part of its
history. There was warfare against the natural world and then warfare against
its competitors. It was obliged to fight for its survival. Venice had archers and
oarsmen and maritime warriors. Sea powers are natural competitors. While land
powers may agree to the division of land into frontiers, the ocean has no
frontier. Wherever there is sea, there are hostile ships. Throughout its long
history, Venice could never rest.
The drawing books of Jacopo Bellini, composed in the
mid-fifteenth century, contain many studies of cavaliers and crossbowmen
preparing themselves for combat. Half of Bellini’s lifetime was spent in the battles
of Venice against other powers. “This nation of sailors,” Petrarch wrote, “was
so skilful in the handling of horses and weapons, so spirited and so hardy,
that it surpassed all other warlike nations whether by sea or by land.” So it
can indeed be construed as a masculine city. The history of Venice was
conceived, and composed, as the history of patriarchal families. The government
of Venice was patriarchal in all of its elements. The society of Venice was
considered to be patrilinear in nature. The image of the city was wholly
dependent upon the exercise of paternal authority.
The patrician youth were trained to use the bow, and to
command galleys at sea. They were educated in all the knightly virtues, in a
period when the chivalric code of warfare was honoured throughout Europe. The
first jousts, in Saint Mark’s Square, are recorded as early as 1242. From that
time forward they were staged at regular intervals. In Bellini’s drawing books,
chivalric opponents dash upon each other in spectacular tournaments. On these
occasions the city was given up to the celebration of militarism and the
military virtues. It provided the theatre of war. Painters were employed to
embellish shields and armour as well as icons and portraits. Artists, among
them Bellini himself, were used to design fortifications and draw military
maps. In the sacred paintings of Venice the saints are often seen wielding
swords. Saint George, one of the patrons of the city, was the archetypal
military saint. This is very different from the picture of Venetians as
quick-witted traders or as earnest statesmen. But knightly valour was once an
aspect of their culture. How else could the Venetians have created an empire?
So they knew how to use force when it was required. They
were quick to strike, when the opportunity presented itself. One conquest led
to another conquest. In fact, one conquest demanded another conquest. In a
state that never felt itself secure, the condition of the world was always
perilous. Unsuccessful generals and admirals were imprisoned, exiled, or
killed. When they employed the newly invented cannon against a recalcitrant
Italian town, an old chronicle reported that “one would think that God were
thundering.” One cannon was named “the Venetian Woman who Casts down Every Wall
and Spike.”
The first colonies of Venice were in the lagoon itself;
originally the smaller islands had self-ruling or self-sustaining communities.
Once each island had its monastery, and its church. But, soon enough, they all
became part of Venice itself. The leaders of the city might then take comfort
from the opening words of the ninety-seventh psalm: “The LORD reigneth; let the
earth rejoice; let the multitude of isles be glad thereof.” The multitude of
islands were swallowed up by the great city growing in their midst. Or their
communities simply withered away.
Torcello, seven miles (11 km) to the north of the most
serene city, was once a thriving place. Before the city of Venice ever rose
from the waters, it was a great civic centre for the exiles from Venetia. They
had first come in the middle of the fifth century. A cathedral of Byzantine
form was raised here in the seventh century. It was built as a refuge and a
strength by exiles fleeing from the mainland; the windows of the church have
shutters of stone. Wealthy monasteries were founded on its fertile soil. In the
tenth century it was described by the Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus
as “magnum emporium Torcellanorum.” Yet the success of Venice led ineluctably
to the decay of Torcello. There was no room for two thriving centres of trade
in the lagoon. There are some, however, who say that it was poisoned by the
malarial waters of the lagoon. The sea was silted up, and the island was
surrounded by stagnant ponds. There may be truth to this, but the visitation of
disease added only the final blow to a long process of disintegration.
Ineluctably Torcello sank in the significance of the world. In the nineteenth
century a nobleman of spurious or dubious origin was dubbed as “a count of
Torcello.” Now the once thriving island supports a handful of people; all
around are wastes of mud-filled creeks and rivulets and what Ruskin described
as “salt morass.” The brick campanile, and the mosaics within the cathedral
itself, are the only remnants of its faded splendour. The civic square is
covered by wild grass. Yet the silence of this island, interrupted sometimes by
the soughing of the wind through the reeds or the rustle of rippling waters, is
a vivid token of the primeval lagoon to which the first Veneti came. Another
symbol can be found here of the Venetian world. There is a restaurant on the
island, frequented by the tourists who journey to Torcello as an outdoor
museum. It is really no more than that. And might it then somehow anticipate
the fate of Venice itself?
On the majority of the islands could once be found a tall
campanile and brick-built church; there was a small piazza, with the image of
the lion on wall or pillar; there were little clusters of whitewashed houses,
their gardens protected from the depredations of the salt wind by neat red
fences. Then they were touched by decay more insidious than the wind. The
island of Ammiana once boasted eight churches; then it was depopulated and
turned into a salt farm. And where did the inhabitants go? They migrated to
Venice. All of these dead towns and cities and settlements could once have been
proposed as alternatives to Venice; they might have flourished and grown
strong, as Venice did. If we were to follow the precepts of Italo Calvino’s
Invisible Cities, we might create the possible cities of the lagoon; the
distinct customs and dialects of each island might then have created several
different cities, resembling and yet not resembling Venice itself. But, then,
this would be a fantasy.
Other islands, once under Venetian control, have disappeared.
The island of Constanziaca was engulfed by the waters. It had once contained
monasteries and churches. It became so woeful, however, that it was turned into
a burial site where the bones of the dead were left to bleach in the sun. Then
with all its churches and bones it simply subsided into the sea. No one knows
its precise position. Other islands suffered a similar fate, among them Terra
dei Mani and Terra dei Soleri. Five little islands encircling Murano have been
washed away by tides and currents. There is seaweed now where once tall
cypresses grew. Some islands were overcome by earthquakes or tidal waves;
others were claimed by a slow and general desuetude. They could not compete
against the most serene city.
The Venetian authorities turned some of these once
flourishing islands into prisons or hospitals. It was one way of pushing the
undesirable elements of the population to the margins. It was also an exercise
in total power. The island of S. Servolo was turned into a lunatic hospital for
men, while the island of S. Clemente was a mental asylum for Venetian women.
Sacca Sessola was a place of exile for those suffering from consumption, while
the Isola della Grazia held those who burned with fever. On the island of
Poveglia were laid out huts for the lepers banished from the city. All these
islands were known to the Venetians as “isole del dolore” or the islands of
sorrow.
The island of S. Biagio, now called Giudecca, was once a
green haven of orchards and gardens; here were a convent, a home for penitent
prostitutes and a pilgrims’ hostel. But the secular world of Venice intervened.
It became essentially a suburb of the city. Other islands were used as
agricultural factories for the markets of the Rialto. In the second half of the
fifteenth century the island now known as the Lido became an extension of
Venice’s port. It became part of the economic zone that now encircled and
sustained the city.
The beginning of the Venetian empire beyond the lagoon can
be found in the ninth century. Venice was not as yet a leading sea-power. That
position was reserved for the Spanish and for the North Africans. But it needed
to control its immediate environment. It had to find, and maintain, a reliable
food supply for an increasing population. It needed to secure access to water
and to agricultural land. It needed to control the lifelines of its trade. So
Venice turned to the mainland. The people of the sea were obliged to conquer
terra firma.
Towards the close of the ninth century Venice sacked the
rival cities on the Italian coast and took control of the mouths of the Adige
and Po rivers. The rivers gave them access to the markets of northern Italy;
within a short time the bargemen of the city were offering their wares in
Pavia, the capital of Lombardy. The merchants of Venice were prominent, too, in
the markets of Verona and Cremona. In the tenth century Venetian markets and
warehouses were built on the banks of the rivers Sile and Piave. The Venetians
occupied a castle beside the Livenza river, so that their goods could reach the
German traders coming down into Italy. By 977 the Venetian traders had a colony
in Limoges, and by the next century they had diffused themselves into
Marseilles and Toulouse. The corn-growing areas of Treviso and Bassano were
acquired. In this period, too, the Venetians began the slow process of
purchasing mainland property and territory. Some of the great families of
Venice, like the Badoer and Tiepolo, acquired land around Treviso. The larger
monasteries purchased estates along the coastal plain. This gradual enlargement
of Venetian property continued for seven centuries. The key issue, as always,
was that of commerce and in particular of the supply of grain.
Once the trade with northern Italy and much of Europe was
considered secure, the governors of Venice turned their attention towards the
sea. The merchants already effectively controlled the trade in eastern goods,
but the success of that trade demanded that the routes to the East should be
strengthened and defended. The sea was to be made safe for the mass transport
of goods. The principal cities of Istria, immediately across the sea from
Venice, submitted. The northern part of the Adriatic became known as the Gulf
of Venice. Then the Venetian navy worked downwards. By the end of the tenth century
it effectively controlled the Middle Adriatic, and set about the conquest of
Dalmatia (now part of modern Croatia). The islands and cities of the region
surrendered to the superior force and numbers of the Venetians. Some cities,
more alarmed by the depredations of the pirates who found safe haven in the
small islands and inlets along the Dalmatian coast, invited the doge and his
troops to enter their gates. Other cities were tormented by the demands of the
petty despots, characteristically living in fortress outposts, and preferred
the more benign sovereignty of Venice. Other places were simply happy to enter
stable trading relations with the great sea-city. All of them were treated as
allies, rather than as subjects, of Venice. Yet in truth the empire was being
born. The pirates were defeated. The marauding Slavs were pushed back from the
coast. In 998, the doge added the honorific of “dux of Dalmatia” to his title.
The seaway was open for increased traffic with Egypt and,
more particularly, with Byzantium. Venice had already become that ancient
city’s single most important trading partner, sending slaves and timber in
exchange for wine, oil and wheat. In 991 Greek and Arab envoys travelled from
the East to pay respect to the new doge, and a year later a treaty confirmed
that Venice had been granted “most favoured” status by the Byzantine emperor.
It confirmed what was already known. Venice had become the dominant trader of
Europe, its commercial supremacy sustained by a vigorous and expanding navy. In
return Venice offered its ships as transport for Byzantine soldiers crossing
the Adriatic. The city was also, for all practical purposes, inviolable. At the
time of the Magyar invasions of Lombardy, at the end of the ninth century, a
stone wall was built to defend the islands of the Rialto. A great chain was
placed across the water to prevent enemy ships from entering the Grand Canal.
But the precautions were unnecessary. The Magyars could not reach the sea-girt
city. They were beaten off in the shallow waters of the lagoon, where their
ships foundered and sank. The great wall itself was demolished in the
fourteenth century. It was not required.
By the eleventh century, therefore, Venice had become an
autonomous and influential state. In the latter part of that century it fought
with the troops of Byzantium against the Norman invaders of Sicily. The reason
for the Norman adventure, as well as all the other policies and actions of
Venice in this period, was very simple. No other state or city could be allowed
to block the mouth of the Adriatic, thus imprisoning Venice within its own
waters. This was the great fear and the abiding preoccupation.
It has become customary to describe the eleventh century as
the period in which Latin Christendom emerged triumphant. This is nowhere more
powerfully evinced than in the history of the Crusades. They have been
construed as a direct attack upon the Muslim world, or as a form of spiritual
imperialism, but the participation of Venice in the First Crusade had no such
motives. The Venetians were waging economic warfare by other means. They were
not concerned with the cross, or with the sword, but with the purse. The point
was that rival trading cities, Genoa and Pisa in particular, were already
taking part. Venice could not permit its competitors to gain an advantage in
the lucrative markets of Syria and Egypt. To have a permanent presence in
Antioch, or in Jerusalem, would be a source of innumerable commercial benefits.
So, in the summer of 1100, a fleet of two hundred Venetian ships arrived at
Joppa (Jaffa); the Venetian commanders agreed to help the crusaders on
condition that the merchants of their city were given the rights of free trade
in all dominions recovered from the Saracens. The terms of this practical
bargain were accepted. The Venetians were then despatched to besiege the town
of Caifa (Haifa) and, having achieved the surrender of that place, they returned
to the lagoon before the end of the year. They were not content, however, with
this single and relatively simple victory. They wished to acquire more profit
from their participation in the holy cause. They established trading stations
within the Syrian ports, and began a lucrative business in transporting
pilgrims to the newly captured Jerusalem.
On their way to Joppa, too, they had engaged in a peculiarly
Venetian piece of business. The fleet had cast anchor at the ancient Lycian
town of Myra (Bari), in search of the bones of Saint Nicholas who had been
bishop of that place; the saint is now better known as the progenitor of Santa
Claus but, in the eleventh century, he was revered as the patron saint of
sailors. The Venetians, naturally enough, wanted him. It is alleged that they
arrived in the town and put to the torture four Christians, the keepers of the
shrine. They learned nothing of any consequence from these unholy proceedings,
however, and made do with the theft of the bones of Saint Theodore. Theodore
had been the patron saint of Venice before the arrival of Mark; he was a good
second-best. Yet before their departure, according to the Venetian chronicles
of Andrea Morosini, a wonderful fragrance issued from a recess beneath an altar
in the church itself. The scent was that of Saint Nicholas. So he was removed,
too, and brought back in triumph to Venice where his bones were lodged in the
monastery of Saint Nicholas on the Lido. That is the story, at least. In fact
the remains of Saint Nicholas, if such they are, have remained in Bari to this
day. Whether the tale reveals more of Venetian mendacity, or of Venetian greed,
is an open question.
The crusading venture had been a success for Venice, and in
1108 the Venetian fleet once more sailed under the flag of the cross. It may be
noted that the governors of the city were particularly interested in the
seaports of the Mediterranean, and that Venetian merchants were established in
Acre, Jerusalem and elsewhere. Yet the attentions of the doge and senate were
not confined to the principalities and powers of the Middle East. They thought
it prudent to maintain and consolidate their presence on the mainland. They
took Ferrara and Fano under their control, and moved against Padua. In the
process they reasserted their rights over the principal rivers of the
territory. On the other side of the Adriatic, they struggled with the
Hungarians over the coastal regions of Dalmatia. They now had many enemies. The
cities of the mainland were jealous of Venetian wealth, and fearful of Venetian
power. The Norman kingdom of Sicily had long regarded Venice as a foe. The
German empire of Hohenstaufen still laid claim to northern Italy.
There emerged one other formidable enemy. In 1119 the new
emperor of Constantinople decreed that the trading privileges of Venice were at
an end. He ordered all Venetian residents within the boundary of his empire to
remove themselves and their business. He also proposed a treaty with the king
of Hungary, thereby recognising Hungarian claims to the Venetian settlements in
Dalmatia. The reaction of Venice was slow but assured. The Venetian fleet
raided and sacked a number of Byzantine territories; Rhodes, Chios, Samos,
Lesbos and Modon were some of the objects of their vengeance. They had set out
to prove that they were now the single most important sea power in an area
previously deemed to be the preserve of Constantinople. The emperor signed a
new trade agreement with Venice in 1126.
The Venetian empire could justify its existence with the
claim that trade, and not conquest, was its purpose. It naturalised its
subjects with a spirit of enlightened commercialism. The motive was one of
constructive self-aggrandisement. There was no true cult of empire, as there
was in nineteenth-century London or in third-century Rome. There was no
interest in massiveness or monumentality for their own sake. The only
concession to the appetite for glory lay in the construction of gateways at key
points in the city—the Torre dell’Orologio, the Porta della Carta, and the Arco
Foscari among them. The gateway to the Arsenal is in every guide to the city.
These were the Venetian equivalent of the triumphal arch, all the more striking
in a city without a defensive wall.
Yet the Venetians who lived and traded in Constantinople,
and in the other markets of the kingdom, became increasingly unpopular. They
were judged to be arrogant and greedy. Away from Venice, the Venetians became
insecure and fractious. They attacked their Genoese and Pisan rivals in trade,
and refused to obey Byzantine edicts. They even stole the relics of saints from
the churches of Constantinople. They were generally considered by their hosts
to be vulgar, mere merchants looking for bargains. In turn the Venetians
despised the Greeks, as effete and indolent. Then in 1171, on the command of
the emperor, all the Venetians in Constantinople and elsewhere were arrested
and imprisoned. A Venetian fleet, despatched to threaten the lands of the
emperor, was reduced to impotence by the onset of plague. The commander of the
unsuccessful expedition, on his return to Venice, was assassinated in the
streets. It was the condign justice meted out to all perceived failures. The
Byzantine emperor then sent a message to the doge in which he asserted that the
Venetian nation had acted with great foolishness. He noted that they were “once
vagabonds sunk in the utmost poverty” who had somehow claimed the right to
imperial ambitions. But their abject failure and “insolence” had rendered them
“a laughing stock.”
The leaders of Venice reacted cautiously. They formed
alliances with some of the emperor’s enemies, and began an insidious campaign
against Byzantine territories. There were secret talks and clandestine
meetings. An accord was eventually reached and in 1183, twelve years after
their arrest, the Venetian merchants were finally permitted to leave the
prisons; a formal peace treaty between Venice and Byzantium was signed. It had
represented a great crisis, and a vivid token of the real enmity between
Constantinople and Venice; one city was dying, and the other was impatiently
waiting to emerge supreme. Over the next few years there were pacts and
agreements and messages of mutual confidence between the two cities. But in
truth there could be no end to the struggle other than a fatal one.
