Chapter III: Part 3

The loving pair were allowed to meet in the prison again, two days before the departure, but Apollonia was not permitted to follow her husband to Milan, and a heart-rending farewell took place at Lizzafusina, on the frontier. Having reached his destination, the unlucky Frangipane found himself in a much worse prison than the one he had occupied so long in Venice. Again his faithful wife succeeded in joining him, to share his captivity. But her strength was far spent, and she died on the fourth of September 1519, in the fortress of Milan; and soon afterwards Frangipane succeeded at last in escaping by sawing through the bars of his window and letting himself down by a rope.

III

VENETIAN DIPLOMACY

Before quitting the subject of Venetian official life, I must devote a few pages to the diplomacy of the Republic, which has remained famous in history.

The kings of France often confided diplomatic missions to the clergy, but the Venetian diplomatists were always laymen, without a single exception. The Signory constantly professed the most devout faith in Catholic dogma, and as constantly exhibited the most profound distrust of the popes. The Vatican was, indeed, the chief object of the government’s suspicion. From the fifteenth century onward, any noble who entered holy orders lost his seat in the Great Council, and I have already explained that during the discussion of matters relating to Rome,

[Sidenote: _Cecchetti, Corte Romana._]

all the ‘papalisti’ were ordered to withdraw. When Sixtus V. was elected Pope in 1585, and the Republic sent four ambassadors together to congratulate him, the sixteen nobles who attended the mission were most carefully chosen from among those who never could be ‘papalisti.’

In answer to any criticism of her methods, Venice was almost always able to bring forward the unanswerable argument of success; but the pages which record her diplomatic relations with other powers are not the fairest in her history. Her dealings with her neighbours were regulated by strictly business principles; and ‘business’ is, I believe, the art of becoming legally possessed of that which is not our own.

The marvellous accuracy with which the Venetian ambassadors related to their government the details of what they observed abroad is proverbial, and has been a godsend to students of history, such as M. Yriarte, to whom the world is so much indebted for his study of Marcantonio Barbaro.

The post of foreign representative was a most honourable one, but there were overwhelming responsibilities connected with it. In early times, when diplomatic relations were less close and less continuous, the Republic had sent permanent embassies only to Rome and Constantinople; to other capitals special envoys were only despatched when some matter was to be discussed. But in the sixteenth century Venice had ambassadors everywhere, and each week brought long letters from all countries teeming with details, not only of political or military events, but concerning social festivities, manners, customs, court intrigues, and every sort of gossip.

These letters were read aloud on Saturday to the Senate, which thus assisted at a sort of consecutive series of lectures on the history of the times; and as it was customary to choose the ambassadors from among the senators, it was tolerably sure that when chosen they would always be well informed, up to the latest moment.

The missions of the Republic were limited to a residence of two years in any one foreign capital; but this short time was amply sufficient to bring about the financial ruin of the ambassador if he was not very rich. It was his duty to display the most boundless magnificence for the greater glory of the Republic, and his expenses bore no proportion to his salary.

The following instructions, according to M. Yriarte, were given to Marcantonio Barbaro on his departure for the court of France:--

‘You are to keep eleven horses for your service, including those of your secretary and his servant, and four mounted messengers. You will

[Sidenote: _Yriarte, Vie d’un Patricien._]

receive for your expenses two hundred gold ducats monthly (about £1800 yearly), of which you are not required to render an account. You will receive a thousand gold ducats for presents, and three hundred for the purchase of horses, harness, and saddle cloths.’

The Secretary of Embassy was also named by the Senate, and though the attachés might be chosen by the ambassador, his choice had to be confirmed by the government. He was not allowed to take his wife with him, as her presence might have distracted him from business, and also because it might possibly have been a little prejudicial to the keeping of secrets; but he was allowed to take his cook. These same instructions appear as early as the thirteenth century.

Modern diplomatists, and especially Americans, will be interested to know that the post of ambassador was so little desired as to make it necessary to impose a heavy fine on any noble who refused it when he was appointed; and it actually happened more than once that men paid the fine rather than ruin themselves altogether in the service of their sordid government. Once having left Venice, however, no resignation was allowed, and the ambassador dared not return unless he was ordered to do so. Requests for leave were very rare, and were only made under the pressure of some very exceptional circumstances. Such a petition was considered so serious a matter that when one arrived from abroad all persons related to the ambassador were ordered to leave the Senate, lest their presence should interfere with the freedom of discussion; but the request was never granted unless two members of the family would swear that the reasons alleged in the petition were genuine.

Legend assures us that each ambassador received, together with his credentials, a box full of gold coin and a small bottle of deadly poison. This is childish nonsense, of course, so far as the portable realities were concerned, but ambassadors were instructed to hesitate at nothing which could accomplish the purpose of the State, neither at spending large sums which would be placed at their disposal when necessary, nor at what the Senate was good enough to call measures of exceptional severity--namely, murder.

The most important post in Venetian diplomacy was the embassy at Constantinople, where the chief of the mission enjoyed the title of Bailo, together with the chance of making a fortune instead of losing one. The Bailo of Constantinople and the ambassador to the Pope took precedence over all other Venetian diplomatists, and they were expected to make an even greater display, especially at the pontifical court. The four ambassadors sent to congratulate Sixtus V. on his election had each four noble attachés, four armed footmen, and five-and-twenty horses, and the one of the four who was already the resident in Rome was indemnified for his expenses in order that he might appear as magnificently as his three newly arrived colleagues.

On their return from a foreign mission the envoys of the Republic were bound to appear at the chancery of the ducal palace, and to inscribe their names there in a special register; and within a fortnight they were required to render an account of what they had seen and learnt abroad, and of the affairs with which they had dealt. These accounts, called ‘relazioni,’ were brief recapitulations of their weekly letters to the Senate; the first phrases were always written in Latin, but the body of the discourse might be in Italian, or even in dialect. The ambassador presented himself in full dress, wearing his crimson velvet mantle and bringing the manuscript of his speech, which he afterwards handed to the High Chancellor; for as early as the fifteenth century all public speeches were required to be written out, in order that they might be preserved exactly as they had been spoken, or rather read, for it was not even allowable to recite them by heart. I need hardly add that no stranger was ever admitted to hear an ambassador’s account of his mission, and the senators swore a special oath of secrecy for the occasion, even with regard to the most insignificant details.

Any one who examines a number of these documents will soon see that they all begin with a portrait of the sovereign to whom the envoy was accredited, and there is often a great deal about the royal family, its surroundings, tastes, and habits. Almost invariably also the account ends with a list of the presents and titles or decorations bestowed upon the ambassador at the close of his mission, and all these he was required to hand over intact to the Signory. Not uncommonly, however, the presents were returned to him; but as no foreign titles could be borne by Venetians, the recipient of them was usually created a Knight of the Golden Stole, the only heraldic order recognised by the Republic and in the gift of the government.

It would be curious to examine into the first causes

of the relations between Venice and the other European states. It was the exchange of raisins for wool which obliged England and Venice to send each other permanent diplomatic missions. Up to that time only occasional special envoys had been necessary. The first time that England addressed a letter to the Signory she employed as her official agent a Neapolitan monk, the Bishop of Bisaccia, chaplain to King Robert, and this was in 1340. The envoy came to say that King Edward the Third of England had the honour to inform the Doge Gradenigo that he had defied Philippe de Valois to say that he was the anointed of the Lord. The envoy further stated that the two rivals were about to invoke the judgment of God, either by going unarmed into a den of wild beasts, who would of course respect the Lord’s anointed and promptly devour the pretender, or else by ‘touching for King’s Evil.’ Beginning in the

[Sidenote: _Rawdon Brown, Archives._]

fifteenth century there is a long list of English ambassadors and ministers resident in Venice. The last English diplomatic representative in Venice was Sir Richard Worsley, of whom I shall have occasion to speak hereafter.

All the foreign diplomatists in Venice were constantly on the look-out for the arrival of the special mounted messengers attached to each foreign embassy. These were celebrated throughout Europe for their speed and discretion. In the fifteenth century they were thirty-two in number, and formed a small guild which was under the protection of Saint Catharine; and they were almost all natives of Bergamo, a city which is still singularly noted for the honesty and faithfulness of its inhabitants, and which even now furnishes Venice with trusty house-porters and other servants of whom responsibility is required.

In the _Souvenirs_ of M. Armand Baschet, I find that the courier who brought the news of the signing of the treaty of Cambrai from Blois to Venice covered the distance in eight days, the best previous record to Paris, which is about the same distance, having been nine, and the usual time employed being fifteen. The employment of State courier could be bought and could be left by will.

Each ambassador of the Republic seemed to possess a part of the marvellously universal vision that belonged to the Council of Ten. Mr. Rawdon Brown made a special study of the weekly letters of the Venetian ambassadors in England, and found, for instance, that one of the Republic’s representatives succeeded in regularly copying the letters which Queen Elizabeth wrote to her lovers, which were therefore read aloud to the Senate with the greatest regularity, together with many other curious details of English court life.

I shall give two specimens, translated from the weekly letters in the Albèri collection. In 1531 the patrician Ludovico Falier came to render an account of his mission to the Court of Henry VIII. He expresses himself as follows, concerning that King and the English:--

In order that my discourse may be better understood I shall divide
it into two chief parts, of which the one concerns my journey, and
the other the most puissant King Henry VIII., and the manners and
customs of his country from the year 1528 to 1531.... On the tenth
of December I reached Calais [he had left Venice in the middle of
October, but had travelled by short stages with a numerous suite];
it is a city of the French coast which belongs to the most serene
King of England, as I shall have occasion to repeat hereafter.
There I went on board a vessel to cross the ocean, which after
behaving furiously during the passage at last threw me upon the
English shore. I therefore arrived at Dover much more tired by
these few hours of navigation than by a journey of ninety days on
dry land. Having rested a little at Dover I got on horseback to go
to London. At St. George’s I met my most illustrious predecessor
Venier with several personages of the Court, including the most
reverend the Cardinal (Thomas Wolsey), and we all entered the city
together, and they accompanied me to my house. I was ordered almost
at once to go to the Cardinal, in order to kiss his hand, for this
ceremony always preceded that of an audience with the King; such is
the power of this prince [of the Church]. On leaving his apartment
I was conducted to his most serene Majesty, with whom I then had
the interview which I described in detail in my letter to your
Signory and to this glorious Senate.

The ambassador goes on to speak in the past tense of Cardinal Wolsey, who had fallen into disgrace in the interval. He goes on to speak of the Queen, who was then Catharine of Aragon.

My lady the Queen is small of stature, and plump, and has an honest
face; she is good and just, affable and pious. She speaks fluently
Spanish, Flemish, French, and English. Her subjects love her more
than they ever loved any Queen; she is five and forty years old,
and she has already lived thirty-five years in England.

The ambassador speaks of the King next.

God has united in King Henry VIII. beauty of soul with beauty of
body, so that every one is astonished by such wonders ... he has
the face of an angel, for it would not be enough to say that he is
handsome; he resembles Cæsar, his look is calm, and contrary to
English fashion, he wears his beard; who would not admire so much
beauty accompanied with so much strength and grace? He rides very
well, jousts and handles a lance with great skill; he is a very
good shot and an excellent tennis player. He has always cultivated
the extraordinary qualities with which nature has adorned him from
his birth, for he thinks that nothing is more unnatural than a
sovereign who cannot dominate his people by his moral and physical
qualities.

And here the ambassador seems to have thought that he had gone rather far, for he finds something to say about Henry’s less admirable characteristics.

Unhappily this prince, so intelligent and reasonable, is given up
to idleness, has allowed himself to be led away by his passions,
and has left the government of the State in the hands of a few
favourites, the most powerful of whom was the Cardinal, until he
fell into total disgrace. Since then, from having been generous, he
has become miserly, and whereas formerly all those who treated of
affairs with him went away satisfied and covered with gifts, he now
allows all to leave the Court with discontent. He makes a show of
great piety, hears two low masses every day, and high mass also, on
feast days. He gives to the poor, to orphans, widows, young girls,
and infirm persons, and for these charities he gives his almoner
ten thousand ducats yearly. He is beloved by all. He is forty years
of age and has reigned twenty-two.

Falier speaks next of the climate of Great Britain and the products of the country, and gives a long description of a brewery. He briefly but sufficiently describes the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and gives some account of the British Constitution. He gives also a statement of the King’s sources of income with their amount, and the accuracy of the figures suggests that he must have got access to papers not intended for his perusal.

His Majesty may count upon over five hundred thousand ducats
[£375,000] a year, divided as follows:--

Ducats. From the Crown (Lands) 190,000 Customs 150,000 Vacant Benefices 40,000 Privy Seal 10,000 Rebels (Confiscations, etc.) 50,000 Lands on the Continent 10,000 Fines for Crimes 25,000 Royal Guards 50,000 _______ Total 525,000 =======

I cannot tell exactly what he gets from taxes, but from information
which I have endeavoured to obtain from grave and experienced
persons, His Majesty exacts from his subjects about a million of
ducats; for the six millions of ducats which he had inherited from
his father were all spent in the wars with France, Flanders, and
Scotland. His Majesty usually spends 425,000 ducats for his Court,
which consists of five hundred men; namely, twenty-six
chamberlains, of whom one is Treasurer of the Chamber [keeper of
the privy purse?], one is a Majorduomo called a ‘Steward,’ his
assistant, who carries a little white stick as a sign of his
dignity; the Treasurer General, who pays all accounts; the
accountant who distributes [the payments]; the ‘cofferers’ in
charge of the said accounts; the Master of the Horse who has the
management of the royal stables. There are three hundred horses,
between Arabs, Turkish horses and racers, hackneys and others. His
Majesty has also eight chaplains, of whom one distributes his
charities, and there are many persons for his service of whom I do
not speak in detail lest I should fatigue Your Serenity. His
Majesty has always in his pay three hundred halberdiers who are on
guard by tens at a time for the King’s person, and pass the night
in the private antechamber.

His Majesty spends as follows:--

Ducats. For the Maintenance of his Court 100,000 Presents 120,000 Horses 20,000 Parks, and Packs of Hounds 50,000 Soldiers who guard the Fortresses 30,000 His Majesty’s Chamber (Privy Purse) 30,000 Buildings 10,000 Charities 10,000 Embassies and King’s Messengers 40,000 Expenses of the Queen (Catharine of Aragon), and the Princess (Mary) 30,000 ------- Total 440,000 =======

In case of war his Majesty could arm four thousand light horse and
sixty thousand infantry. The latter would fight in the
old-fashioned way, with bow, sword, shield, helmet, and with pikes
of one or two points which are excellent against charges of
cavalry. They are now beginning to use guns and artillery. The
English do not fear death. As soon as the battle commences, they
provoke the enemy and charge furiously; in very quick engagements
they are generally victorious, but they often yield if the war
drags on. They have not the slightest fear of Frenchmen, but they
are much afraid of the Scotch.

During forty days they are obliged to serve in the army without
receiving pay; after that time they receive three crowns and a half
for a period of service determined beforehand. The fleet consists
of one hundred and fifty vessels.

It now only remains for me to tell you who are the friends of the
King, and what consequences his divorce might have, and I shall
then add a few words on the most Reverend the Cardinal York.

Since the affair of the divorce has come up [Falier is writing in
1531, and Henry VIII. married Anne Boleyn the next year] the Pope
[Clement VII.] is not in his Majesty’s good graces. If the Holy
Father will not grant the King permission to divorce, the result
will be a very great advantage for the English crown, and a great
danger to the Roman Church, for the King will detach himself from
the latter, and will seize all the revenues of the ecclesiastical
benefices; this will yield the Crown more than six million ducats
[£4,500,000].

Falier was not mistaken, unless, perhaps, in his figures. He proceeds to speak of the relations between England and all the other European states, after which he returns to the question of the divorce, expressing himself in a very singular way for a Catholic. It must be remembered, however, that he was a Venetian, and therefore a man of business first, and a baptized Christian afterward.

The Englishman [Henry VIII.] must necessarily divorce, for he
wishes to have a legitimate son, and he has lost all hope of one
being born to him by the Lady Catharine [of Aragon]. He will
therefore marry his favourite [Anne Boleyn] the daughter of the
Earl of Vuilcer (_sic_) [Wiltshire--note the Venetian’s phonetic
spelling!] as soon as possible. He will have trouble, for the
faction that is for the Queen will rise.

It is quite clear that Venetian diplomatists did not indulge themselves in sentiment, and the information they presented to the Senate was as brutally frank and coldly precise as a medical diagnosis. They sought for facts and did not philosophise about them. Here is Falier’s opinion of Cardinal Wolsey:--

The King and the kingdom were in his hands, and he disposed of
everything as the King himself might have done, or the Pope. All
the princes were obliged to bow down to him. He received one
hundred and fifty thousand ducats yearly over and above the gifts
which he had from the English and the foreign princes. He counted
much on France, with which kingdom he kept up extremely
affectionate relations. His court was magnificent, more magnificent
than the King’s. He spent all his income, he was very proud, and he
wished to be adored like a god rather than respected as a prince.

In connection with the great Cardinal, I shall translate a passage of the letter in which Falier had informed the Senate of his disgrace. The fragment has some value also, from the light it throws on the comparative values of coins at that time. It must be remembered that the value of the gold ducat never changed to the last, while that of all other European coins varied greatly.

The King of England has had the Cardinal put in prison, has
deprived him of the government, and has confiscated all his
property. His fortune is valued at forty thousand pounds English,
equal to twenty thousand of our grossi [the silver mark], or two
hundred thousand [silver] ducats; in these forty thousand pounds
must be included thirty thousand pounds English in cash, that is,
fifteen thousand of ours or one hundred and fifty thousand
[silver] ducats. His real estate has also been confiscated,
consisting of his Archbishopric, which brought him a very large
sum.

At the risk of wearying my readers I give a short extract from the report of another ambassador to England, Jacopo Soranzo, which was read before the Senate on the ninth of August 1554 (Queen Mary then reigning). The Venetian expresses his surprise at the way in which trials by jury were conducted in England.

Crimes are tried before twelve judges who may not leave the court,
nor eat, nor drink, until they all agree, without one exception, on
the sentence to be passed.... When sentence has been passed, the
judges execute it immediately, but without ever resorting to the
mutilation of a member or exile. If the accused is innocent, he is
acquitted; if he is guilty, he is condemned to death.

I need not lay stress on the defective form of such trials; your
Lordships see for yourselves how reprehensible such a mode of
procedure is, for it often happens that eleven persons who wish to
acquit the accused decide to condemn him to death in order to be of
the opinion of the twelfth, who is determined to bear starvation
till this verdict is given.

Before closing this chapter it is worth while to note that if the Venetian ambassadors abroad succeeded in knowing almost everything that was happening, the

[Sidenote: _A. Bashet, Archives._]

government took good care that foreign representatives residing in Venice should not follow their example. They were never told anything in the way of news, and though honours and privileges were heaped upon them, they were kept at arm’s length. As far back as the fourteenth century there was a law forbidding all patricians to have any acquaintance or social intercourse with any foreign representative except under the most exceptional circumstances, and M. Baschet has found material in the Archives sufficient to prove that the foreign ambassadors lived in something very like the seclusion of exile, and were altogether banished from all intercourse with the upper classes. The same writer adds that the diplomatists resented this rude exclusion, and that the practice of it made the Republic not a few enemies.

To such a criticism Venice would have answered, as usual, by the argument of success on the whole during many centuries. Those who care to examine the point more closely may read M. Baschet’s interesting work on the Secret Chancery.

IV

THE ARSENAL, THE GLASS-WORKS, AND THE LACE-MAKERS

The old Arsenal is such a museum of shadows nowadays that it is hard to realise what it once meant to the Venetians. Six hundred years ago, the sight of it inspired one of Dante’s most vivid descriptions of activity, and I have sometimes wondered whether in his day the three dwelling-houses of the Provveditors were already nick-named Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell, as they were always called at a later date.

The Arsenal was founded in the twelfth century, and from the very first was one of the institutions most jealously watched over by the government. In the sixteenth century it had grown to be a vast enclosure of docks and basins, protected by a crenellated wall, and having but one entrance, which was guarded by sentinels. In the interior, the houses of the Provveditors had grown to be three great palaces, built round a courtyard, each officer occupying one of them during the thirty-two months of his term of office.

The Provveditors were nobles, of course, but they must necessarily have been men who thoroughly understood nautical matters, for it was their duty to oversee all work done in the place, to the minutest details, and they had absolute control of all the vast stores accumulated for building and fitting the fleet of the Republic. Every manufactured article was stamped with the arms of the Republic as soon as it was made or purchased, and not a nail, not a fathom of rope, not a yard of canvas could be brought out of the storehouses without the consent of one of the Provveditors. If anything was found outside the walls of the Arsenal with the public mark on it, the object was considered by law to be stolen, an inquiry was made, and if the culprit who had committed the misdemeanour could be caught, he was condemned to the galleys.

In order to enforce the rigid regulations the government not only required all three Provveditors to inhabit constantly the palaces assigned to them, but insisted that one of them should remain day and night within the

boundaries of the yard, during a fortnight, without going out at all. This service was taken in turn, and the official who was on duty was called the ‘Patron di Guardia.’ Into his hands all the keys were given every evening when work was over.

The artisans of the government ship-yard were the finest set of men in Venice, and their traditions of workmanship and art were handed down in their families from father to son for generations, as certain occupations still are in Italy. I know of a man-servant, for instance, whose direct ancestors have served those of the family in which he is still a servant for more than two hundred years without a break. In the Venetian Arsenal, it sometimes happened that an old man was foreman of a department in which his son was a master smith or carpenter, and his grandson an apprentice.

There was something military in the organisation, which bound the artisans very close together, for they trained themselves in fencing and gymnastics, and also in everything connected with extinguishing fires and saving wrecks or shipwrecked crews, for in any case of public danger it was always the ‘Arsenalotti’ who were called in. They were sober and courageous and excessively proud of their trade, and the government could always count on them. Twice, towards the end of the sixteenth century, the ducal palace took fire, and would have burnt down but for the prodigious energy of the workmen from the government docks. On the first occasion they proudly refused the present of five hundred ducats which the Doge offered them, but gratefully accepted an invitation to dine with him in a body; and as they numbered over fifteen thousand the Doge did not save money by the arrangement. Three years later, all their efforts could not hinder the hall of the Great Council from burning, and priceless works of art by such men as the two Bellini, Titian, Tintoretto, and Pordenone were destroyed in a few moments. But the Arsenalotti saved the rest of the building, and again refused any recompense for their services.

When Henry III. of France came to Venice, the Arsenal employed about sixteen thousand men, and could count on a budget of two hundred and twenty-four thousand gold ducats, of which one hundred and twenty-four went to pay the wages of the workmen, and the rest was expended for materials. Those were large sums in the sixteenth century, but Venice looked upon the Arsenal as the mainspring of her power, and spared nothing to keep it in a state as near perfection as possible. In the long struggle with Genoa, the enemy used every art to bring about its destruction, but always in vain. The men who guarded the docks were absolutely incorruptible. In the sixteenth century it seemed as if the pure blood of the old Venetians ran only in their veins, and as if they alone still upheld the noble traditions of loyalty and simplicity which the founders of the Republic had handed down from braver days.

Next to the construction of her war-ships and merchant fleets, one of the most important matters to the commerce of Venice was the manufacture of glass, which brought enormous profits to the State and to

individuals, as is usually the case when a valuable product is made out of cheap materials by processes which are secret, and therefore have the effect of a monopoly.

As early as the fourteenth century the government had understood the immense importance of the art, and the glass-blowers of Murano were protected and favoured in a most especial way. As in one part of France, a sort of nobility was inherent in the occupation, and an early law sanctioned the marriage of a master

glass-blower’s daughter with a patrician by allowing their children to be entered in the Golden Book.

The glass-works were all established in the island of Murano, as their presence in the city would have caused constant danger of fire at a time when many of the houses were still built of wood, and the whole manufacture was subject to the direct supervision of the Council of Ten, under whose supreme authority Murano governed itself as a separate city, and almost as a separate little republic. Not only were the glass-blowers organised in a number of guilds according to the special

branches of the profession, such as bead-making, bottle-blowing, the making of window-panes and of stained glass, each guild having its own ‘mariegola’ or charter; but over these the Muranese had their own Great Council and Golden Book, in which the names of one hundred and seventy-three families were inscribed, and their own Small Council, or Senate. The Ten gave Murano a ‘Podestà,’ but he had not the power which similar officers exercised in the other cities and islands of the Dogato, and it is amusing to see that the people of Murano treated him very much as the Venetians themselves treated their Doge. He was required to be of noble blood; he was obliged by law to spend three days out of four in Murano; he was forbidden to go to Venice when important functions were going on; he could not interfere in any affair without the permission of both the Councils of Murano, and altogether he was much the same sort of figure-head as the Doge himself. On the other hand, Murano supported a sort of consul in Venice with the title of Nuncio, whose business it was to defend the interests of the island before the Venetian government.

Neither the Missier Grande, the chief of the Venetian police, nor the ‘sbirri,’ were allowed to exercise their functions on the island. Offenders were arrested and dealt with by the officers of the Murano government, and were handed over to the Venetian supreme government only in extreme cases, most trials taking place on the island.

The heraldic arms of Murano displayed on an azure field a cock with red legs, wearing a crown of silver.

In the sixteenth century the population was about thirty thousand souls, and the little city had a great reputation for the beauty of its churches and especially of its gardens, in which quantities of exotic plants and flowers were cultivated.

The two most powerful families amongst the glass-blowers were those of Beroviero and Ballarin. I have told at length in the form of a romance the true story

of Zorzi Ballarin and Marietta Beroviero, availing myself only of the romancer’s right to be the apologist of his hero. The facts remain. Angelo Beroviero, a pupil of Paolo Godi, the famous mediæval chemist, worked much alone in his laboratory, noting the results of his experiments in a diary which became extremely valuable. By some means this diary came into the hands of Zorzi Ballarin, so-called by his comrades on account of his lameness. He loved Marietta, and she loved him, but he was poor, and moreover, as far as I have been able to ascertain, he was of foreign birth, and could therefore not become a master glass-blower. When he found himself in possession of the precious

secrets, he used his power to extort Beroviero’s consent, he married Marietta, obtained the full privileges of a master, lived a highly honourable life, and became the ancestor of a distinguished family, one of whom was a Venetian ambassador, as may be read in the inscription on his tomb in Murano. Beroviero’s house, with the sign of the Angel, is still standing in Murano, and I think the ancient glass-works nearly opposite were probably his. As for Zorzi Ballarin, I daresay that the process by which he really got possession of the diary was not strictly legal, but love has excused worse misdeeds than that, and Beroviero does not seem to have suffered at all in the end. If there had been any foundation for the spiteful story some chroniclers tell,

a man of Beroviero’s power and wealth could have had Zorzi imprisoned, tortured, and exiled without the slightest difficulty.

Venice was almost as famous for her lace as for her glass. On the admittedly doubtful authority of Daru and Laugier, Smedley gives an anecdote of the Emperor Frederick III. for what it is worth. It at least illustrates the fact that all foreigners did not esteem Venetian glass as highly as the Venetians themselves. When Frederick visited the city on his way to Rome, he was most magnificently entertained, and amongst other presents offered to him was a very beautiful service of Murano glass. The Emperor was not pleased with the gift, which, to his barbarous ignorance, seemed of no value; he ordered his dwarf jester to seem to stumble against the table on which the matchless glass was set out, and it was all thrown to the ground and smashed to atoms. ‘If these things had been of gold or silver, they could not have been broken so easily,’ said the imperial boor.

In contrast with this possibly true story of the fifteenth century, I find that the lace collar worn by Louis XIV. at his coronation was made in Venice, and was valued at an enormous sum. He afterwards bribed Murano glass-blowers to settle in France.

In those times, more or less as now, women made lace at home, and brought the results of their long and patient labour to the dealers, who bought and sold it at a fabulous profit. A few specimens of the finest lace of the sixteenth century are still in existence, and are worn on great occasions by Italian ladies whose ancestresses wore them more than three hundred years ago; but the art of making such lace is extinct. Glance only, for instance, at a picture by Carpaccio, in the Museo Civico of Venice, representing two patrician ladies of the fifteenth century, one of whom wears white lace on her gown. It is of the kind known as ‘point coupé’ or cut point, and is the same which Francesco Vinciolo taught the French a hundred years later when it was no longer thought fine enough, in Venice, for ornamenting anything but sheets and pillow-cases. It is inimitable now. Or look at the exquisite lace of network stitch with which Gentile Bellini loved to adorn the women he portrayed. Yet in the sixteenth century still further progress had been made, and the ‘air point’ was created, which surpassed in fineness anything imagined before then, and for which fabulous prices were paid. The collar of Louis XIV. was of this point, and it is said that as no thread could be spun fine enough for it, white human hair was used. There is also a story to the effect that the Emperor Joseph II., who ascended the throne in 1765, ordered a set of air point worth the improbable, though not very great price of 77,777 francs. As neither Austrians nor Venetians used the franc, the story is most likely of French origin.

Another lace greatly valued in Venice was the ‘rose point,’ which is probably the best known of the ancient laces. It was preferred, for collars, both by high officials and great ladies, and the Dogesses often used it for their veils. The Doge Francesco Morosini possessed some wonderful specimens of it, which I am told are still in the possession of his descendants.

One more stitch was invented in the sixteenth century, which oddly enough obtained the generic name of ‘Venetian point.’ There is a pretty story about it. A sailor, says the legend, came home from a long voyage and brought his sweetheart a kind of seaweed known to botanists by the name of _Halimedia Opuntia_, of which the little branches were so fine that the people called the plant ‘Siren’s hair.’ The man sailed again on another voyage, and the girl, full of loving and anxious thoughts for him, occupied herself by copying the dried plant with her needle, and in so doing created the Venetian point.

The minister Colbert introduced it into France a century later, under Louis XIV., and gave it his own name; and the King and the Republic quietly quarrelled about this French infringement of a Venetian monopoly. In the end, the Inquisitors of State issued a decree which was intended to recall errant and erring Venetian lace-workers and glass-blowers to the security of their homes:--

‘All workmen or artisans who carry on their trade in foreign countries shall be ordered to come back; should they disobey, the members of their families shall be imprisoned, and if they then return, they shall be freely pardoned and again employed in Venice. But if any of them persist in living abroad, messengers shall be sent to kill them, and when they are dead their relations shall be let out of prison.’

The glass-blowers who were to be murdered were men, but the lace-makers were women, and the decree, which was made about 1673, is a fine instance of Venetian business principles, since the killing of men and women by assassination was a measure introduced solely for the protection of trade.

Coloured bobbin lace was also made in Venice, with dyed silk thread and threads of gold, in the fifteenth century, and Richard III. of England desired his queen to wear it on her cloak at their coronation in 1483.

The modern Burano lace was first made after the

end of the Republic, and is almost the only sort which is now manufactured in any quantity. Some of the finer points are imitated, it is true, and are vastly advertised, advertisement having taken the place of assassination in business methods as a means of creating a fictitious monopoly; but in spite of some really good pieces of needlework wrought with great care--as advertisements--the mass of the work turned out is of a cheap and commercial character.

The policy of Venice with regard to her manufactures was one of protection, as has been seen, and the result was on the whole very satisfactory to the people as well as to the great merchants. Very heavy duties were levied on almost all imported articles, and among the very few excepted were the silk fabrics from Florence known by the name of ‘ormesini.’ This material was in such common use in Venice that the local silk weavers could not meet the demand for it. One of the reasons why the working people of Venice were always satisfied was that they were almost always prosperous; the price of labour was high, while that of necessities was relatively low, and the people accordingly lived in comfort without excessively hard work.

On the other hand, some of them were always extravagant, as some of the nobles were, and some were unfortunate; and though there was no pauperism, there were many families of hopelessly poor persons. In a measure the hospitals, hospices, and orphan asylums provided for those in want, but in Venice, as in modern cities, the candidates for charity were always just a little more numerous than the shares into which charity could divide herself.

There were also those who, if not exactly poor, were in difficulties, the class that for ever feeds the pawnbroker and the small money-lender. The Republic exercised the strictest supervision over these industries, and few cities in the world ever turned a harder face against the inroads of the Hebrews. It was with the greatest unwillingness and with many precautions that Jews were ever admitted into the city at all, and a special code provided the most extraordinary and cruel penalties for the most ordinary misdemeanours when committed by them. They were forced to wear a special dress with a large patch of yellow on the chest, and they could only follow the meanest occupations. In mediæval Rome it was the business of the Jews to bury the Christian dead, but it often happened that the Pope’s private physician was a Hebrew. I do not find that in Venice they were ever forced to be gravediggers for the poor, but they were forbidden to act as physicians except for their own sick. Both Church and State rigorously forbade their intermarriage with Christians, and, so far as the happy ending of the love story is concerned, Lorenzo and Shylock’s daughter could never have married. More than once, before the sixteenth century, the Jews were expelled from Venice and made to live in Mestre, which seems to have been their regular headquarters, but they were allowed to come into the city during the time of certain public fairs. If they prolonged their stay beyond the limit, however, they became liable to fine or imprisonment. Some of these measures had been partly relaxed by the middle of the sixteenth century, but the Jews never enjoyed anything like equality with the other citizens.

Oddly enough the money-lender of the lower classes in Venice was the wine-seller, whom the people called the Bastionero. In the wine-shop it was customary to pawn objects for wine and money

simultaneously, one-third of the value being given in wine, which was generally watered. If the pledge were not redeemed within three months, the amount to be paid for getting it back was increased, and again at the end of the next three months, and so on, until,

at the end of the year, the original sum lent was doubled. If it was not paid, the wine-seller had a right to sell the object for what it would bring.

A modern Eastern proverb says that one Greek can cheat any ten Jews, but that one Armenian can cheat ten Greeks. Considering that Venice had a distinctly oriental character during the Middle Ages, and since we know that the small money-lending wine-sellers were not Jews, I suspect that they were principally Greeks and Armenians, the more probably so as we know that great quantities of Greek and Armenian wine were imported into Venice, and that those wines will bear a good deal of watering. The latter is an important point, for it is manifest that when the pledge was redeemed within the first three months, the lender’s profit was the difference between the nominal and the real value of the wine which formed one-third of the loan.

The government which tolerated this ignoble occupation exhibited the most extraordinary prejudice against the government pawnbroking offices which were common in other Italian cities. Historians have in vain endeavoured to discover why this prejudice went so far that, in 1524, the Council of Ten published a decree threatening with death on the scaffold any one who should even propose the creation of such an establishment. Without entering into any ingenious speculation, it seems possible that the Venetians, who were wise if not virtuous, considered that while it was impossible to prevent the poor from borrowing small sums on their little possessions, to authorise such borrowing by making the government the lender would greatly increase the temptations of that more shiftless class to whom borrowing seems to be a prime necessity of existence.

The centre and heart of all this activity, good and bad, was the bridge of the Rialto. We find it hard to realise that until near the end of the sixteenth century it was still built of wood with a movable drawbridge in the middle to admit the passage of larger vessels. Carpaccio, who lived in the fifteenth century, has left us a faithful representation of it as it remained for nearly a hundred years afterwards. It would be interesting to place beside that picture Turner’s lost painting of the same subject, a very beautiful canvas which I have twice had the good fortune to see in the course of its more than mysterious peregrinations. I last heard of it, though not certainly, as being in the south of France.

The present bridge was begun after infinite hesitation in 1588, and was built after the designs of Antonio da Ponte, whose name was certainly prophetic of his career. Twelve thousand elm piles had to be driven into the soil on each side of the canal to a depth of sixteen feet to make the foundations of the arch. The construction occupied three years, and is said to have cost 250,000 ducats, presumably of silver. The bridge as it stands is a remarkable piece of work, and would be beautiful if the hideous superstructure of shops could be removed. It is interesting to note that fifty years before its completion, Michelangelo offered the Doge Andrea Gritti a plan for a bridge, as is amply proved by the existence of a picture in the Casa Buonarotti in Florence representing the subject.

V

CONCERNING SOME LADIES OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

The clever modern Italian playwright, Signor Martini, makes one of his witty characters say that there are ‘women,’ but that there is no such thing

[Sidenote: _Martini, ‘Chi sa il giuoco non l’ insegni.’_]

as ‘woman’ in the abstract. In other words, ‘women’ are a fact, but ‘woman’ is a myth. Though this may be a little paradoxical, there are certainly distinct types of women in each class of life. The smart society woman of to-day and the labourer’s wife, like the Venetian patrician lady of the sixteenth century and the fisher-wives of Chioggia, have in common only their sex, their weaknesses and their sufferings; there is very little resemblance between their virtues, and none at all between their joys.

The noble ladies of Venice in the sixteenth century were as idle and frivolous as Orientals. The fact must be admitted by any one who studies the times; and if it is not of a nature to please those who idealise that period, it may be partly excused by the consideration that the Venetian nobleman treated his womankind very much as a Turk treats his harem. He was not jealous, as lovers understand jealousy; granted a certain degree of beauty and a dowry of a certain value, he cared very little whom he married. When Kugler, the famous art critic, says of Titian’s picture of the Schiava, the Slave, in the Barberini Gallery in Rome, that the name is utterly meaningless, he shows that he knew nothing of Venetian life. The slave in the sixteenth century not seldom meant everything, where the wife meant nothing; and if the wives were idle and frivolous, we must remember that when they were young and good-looking, they often found themselves in competition with beautiful Georgian and Circassian women for their masters’ favour. Where women are plentiful, beautiful, and not clever, the men who love them are rarely jealous. But those grave and magnificent Venetians, who had not a scruple in politics, nor in matrimony, were excessively sensitive about anything which touched their technical honour, and it seemed to them altogether safer and wiser to teach their wives and daughters what they were pleased to call ‘habits of domestic seclusion.’ To be plain, they encouraged them to stay at home; and sometimes, by way of making obedience easier, they locked them up. M. Yriarte says with partial truth that their ‘seclusion’ was that of the harem, not that of the classic gynaeceum; he did not realise that the latter was nothing but a harem too, and that if the Greeks kept their wives at home, it was that they might sup undisturbed in the society of Phryne.

The influence of the East on everything connected with private life in Venice increased with the Renascence, and is even more perceptible then than during the nominal domination of the Byzantine Empire, when Roman traditions still had great force, and new currents of thought reached Venice from the Lombards.

Yet in one respect there was nothing oriental about the Venetian noble of the sixteenth century. When he ordered his women to appear in public at all, he sent them out adorned like those miraculous images which are covered with ‘ex voto’ offerings, and they mixed in the crowd that filled the Piazza of Saint Mark’s, shoulder to shoulder with the shameless free.

The Venetian gentleman, so sensitive about his technical honour, was not even displeased when the chronicler, the reporter of his day, confounded ladies and courtesans in pompous praise of their beauty and dress. One of the nobleman’s principles seems to have been that a woman was never in danger in public, nor when her door was locked on the outside and the key was in her husband’s pocket, but that any intermediate state of partial liberty was fraught with peril.

At home the Venetian ladies suffered the pains of boredom in common with the Georgians and Circassians, who not infrequently lived under the same roof, but who presumably saw something more of their masters. The young mother had not even a resource in her children, for it was necessary that the latter should be brought up to be precisely like their fathers and mothers, and in order to accomplish this the fathers kept the boys with themselves, and made them serve in the Senate when they were still quite small; whereas it seems that the girls were brought up largely in convents, such as that of the Vergini, lest they should learn too well from their mothers what it meant to be the wife of a member of the Great Council.

Does any one remember, in all the portraits of Venetian ladies by Carpaccio, Tintoretto, Veronese, or Titian, to have seen a mother accompanied by her little child? There is the conventional flower, there is the jewel, there is often the lap-dog; but the child is as conspicuously absent as the effigy of Brutus at Junia Tertia’s funeral. Children were born and were splendidly baptized; but after that they had no part in their mothers’ lives. And the ladies themselves had no great part in Venetian social life, except on its great occasions of baptisms, marriages, and funerals, or in public ceremonies, when they appeared in a body, by order of the Ten, in their richest clothes and as a part of the decoration. It is no wonder that they had few friends and were bored to extinction.

As a specimen of what a young and noble Venetian girl could become if emancipated, one cannot do better than take Bianca Cappello. She was

[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Annali._]