Chapter VI: Part 6

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

[Sidenote: _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 bridge of 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

[Sidenote: _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 before dawn 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.

IX

THE DECADENCE

The seventeenth 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

[Sidenote: _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

[Sidenote: _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

[Sidenote: _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

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

[Sidenote: _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 far matters 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

[Sidenote: _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

[Sidenote: _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,

[Sidenote: _Rom. vii. 251._]

Spain did not cease to conspire against the Republic, and while persecuting the Catholics in Valtellina tried to make out that the Republic 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

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 was now fifty-four years old. In more than forty years

[Sidenote: _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

[Sidenote: _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 caught a 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 were made 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

[Sidenote: _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

[Sidenote: _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

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 suspect that they had made a mistake, and before long the dreadful truth was only too clear. Foscarini

[Sidenote: _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 the error 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

[Sidenote: _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 different Councils. 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 called the 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.

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 by five-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,

[Sidenote: _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

[Sidenote: _Rom. vii. 276._]

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

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 got the 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

[Sidenote: _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

[Sidenote: _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

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 was boundless; 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 the safety 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

[Sidenote: _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

[Sidenote: _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 MAUROCENO
Peloponnesiaco adhuc viventi
Senatus.

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

[Sidenote: _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 broke out 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

[Sidenote: _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 gold brocade 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.

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 the Republic, 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

[Sidenote: _Rom. vii. 370, 371, 487; Quadri, 293._]

completely broken down. Nothing gives the measure of the situation better than the fact that in order to meet the expenses of the war in Crete any Venetian who would engage to support a thousand soldiers for one year, or any foreigner who would support twelve hundred for the same period, was allowed thereby to have and hold all the privileges of nobility. This speculation was never sanctioned by law, and was even rejected by the Great Council when proposed, but it was nevertheless actually practised, and a number of seats in the Great Council were sold to the highest bidder. The government went one step farther, and sold the office of procurator of Saint Mark. The decadence had reached the point of decay.

X

THE LAST HOMES--THE LAST GREAT LADIES

Two men, a painter and a dramatist, have left us the means of knowing exactly what the eighteenth century

[Sidenote: _Pictures of Venetian life by Longhi; Accademia, Room XIV., and Museo Correr, Rooms II. and IX._]

was in Venice. It is not a paradox to say that Longhi painted comedies, and that Goldoni wrote portraits. Both were Venetians, and they had the courage to depict and describe respectively the glaring faults of their own people, not realising, perhaps, that the general corruption was beyond remedy, and that the end was at hand.

Look at Longhi’s ‘Fortune-Teller’ or ‘Dancing-Master,’ at his ‘Tailor,’ his ‘Music-Master,’ or his ‘Toilet,’ and you may see precisely what the Republic was when it died of old age; there are all the successions of light colours, as in a pastel-painter’s box; you can hear the high running laughter that rings from rosy lips, you can guess what dreams of pleasure fill those pretty heads, and yet there is something sad about it all; unless one belongs to that little band of human beings who love the eighteenth century, it sets one’s teeth on edge--like the dance music in the ‘Ballo in Maschera,’ danced while Riccardo is dying. Something rings false; I think there is too much discrepancy between what we see or read and what we really know about that time. About other centuries, even the nineteenth and twentieth, we can still have illusions, but the eighteenth was all a sham that went to pieces with the French Revolution.

As for the position of women at that time, it was never lower. They were dolls, and nothing more. They were perhaps more neglected in the sixteenth century, but, at least in theory, there was still some respect for them. In the eighteenth they existed only to adorn places of amusement, theatres, and gambling houses. The biographer of that remarkable woman, Giustina Renier Michiel, says they were so little esteemed that it seemed useless to teach them anything, and he adds that the Signory looked upon an educated woman as a being dangerous to society and the State.

Most young girls of noble family were brought up in convents, where the most crass ignorance accompanied the loosest ideas of morality. The greater number of these convents were only nominally connected with the ecclesiastical authorities. In practice

[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 351._]

they were controlled by lay inspectors, ‘Provveditori sopra Monasteri,’ who were commissioned by the government to superintend the morals of convents in general, but found it much more diverting to help in undermining them.

While the girls were being brought up in such places, their father was chiefly preoccupied in assuring and increasing the fortune which was to be inherited by his eldest son. The natural consequence of this was that the marriage portions of the daughters became smaller and smaller, so that it was found hard to marry them at all, and much less troublesome to leave them in their convents for life. Each of the fashionable convents was a little court of noble ladies; in the one, Her Most Reverend Excellency the Mother Abbess was a Rezzonico; in another, the Noble Dame Eleonora Dandolo was Mistress of the Larder.

The scholars did not leave the convent at all while their education lasted, but nothing was neglected which could amuse them, and their principal lessons were in dancing, singing, and reciting verses. In Carnival, the convent parlours were turned into theatres or ballrooms; dames and cavaliers danced the minuet or the ‘furlana’; ‘Punch,’ ‘Pantaloon,’ and ‘Pierrot’ vied with each other to make the bevies of aristocratic young ladies laugh at jests they should never have understood.

Even during the rest of the year the convents were what would now be called brilliant social centres, to

[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult. 92._]

which married women came accompanied by their officially recognised ‘cicisbei,’ while young gentlemen of leisure flirted with the

[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult. 61-62._]

scholars. It was even common for the girls to keep up a regular correspondence with their admirers.

Take the following passage which I translate from Goldoni’s autobiography, a book which may

[Sidenote: _Goldoni, vol. i. chap. xix._]

be trusted and is singularly free from exaggeration. The adventure happened to him in Chioggia.

I had always cultivated the acquaintance of the nuns of Saint
Francis, where there were some very beautiful scholars, and the
Signora B. (one of the nuns) had one under her direction who was
very lovely and very rich and amiable. She would have been exactly
to my taste, but my youth, my condition, and my want of fortune did
not allow me to entertain any illusions.

However, the nun did not refuse me hope, and when I went to see her
she always made the young lady come down to the parlour. I felt
that I should become attached to her in good earnest, and the
governess (the nun) seemed glad of it; and yet I could not believe
it possible. But one day I spoke to her of my inclination and of my
timidity; she encouraged me and confided the secret to me. This
young lady had good qualities and property, but there was something
doubtful about her birth. ‘This little defect is nothing,’ said the
veiled lady; ‘the girl is well behaved and well brought up, and I
will be surety to you for her character and conduct. She has a
guardian,’ she continued, ‘and he must be won over, but leave that
to me. It is true that this guardian, who is very old and ruined in
health, has some pretensions as to his ward, but he is wrong,
and--well, as I am also interested in this--leave it to me,’ she
repeated, ‘and I will manage for the best.’ I confess that after
this talk, after this confidence and this encouragement, I began to
think myself happy. The Signorina N. did not look unkindly on me,
and I considered the matter as settled. All the convent had noticed
my inclination for the pupil, and there were some young ladies who
knew the intrigues of the parlour and had pity on me, and explained
to me what was happening; and this is how they did it. The windows
of my room were precisely opposite the belfry of the convent. In
building it there had been placed in it several casements of cloudy
glass through which one could vaguely make out the outlines of
people who came near them. I had several times noticed at those
apertures, which were oblong, both figures and gestures, and in
time I was able to understand that the signs represented letters of
the alphabet, and that words were formed, and that one could talk
at a distance: almost every day I had half an hour of this mute
conversation, in which, however, we conversed properly and
decently.

By means of this hand-alphabet I learned that the Signorina N. was
very soon to be married to her guardian. Angry at the Signora B.’s
way of acting, I went to see her during the day in the afternoon,
quite determined to show her all my displeasure. She is sent for,
she comes, she looks steadily at me, and perceiving that I am
angry, guessing what had happened, she does not give me time to
speak but is the first to attack me vigorously, with a sort of
transport.

‘Well, sir,’ she said to me, ‘you are displeased, I see it in your
face’--I tried to speak, but she does not hear me, raises her voice
and goes on--‘Yes, sir, the Signorina N. is to be married, and she
is going to marry her guardian.’ I tried to raise my voice too.
‘Hush, hush,’ she cries, ‘listen to me; this marriage is my doing:
after having reflected upon it, I helped it on, and on your
account I wished to hasten it.’ ‘On my account?’ I said. ‘Hush,’
she replied, ‘you shall understand the conduct of a prudent woman
who has a liking for you. Are you,’ she went on, ‘in a position to
take a wife? No, for a hundred reasons. Was the Signorina to wait
your convenience? No, she had not the power to do so; it was
necessary to marry her; she might have married a young man and you
would have lost her forever. She marries an old man, a man in his
decline and who cannot live long; and though I am not acquainted
with the joys and disappointments of marriage, yet I know that a
young wife must shorten the life of an old husband, and so you will
possess a beautiful widow who will have been a wife only in name.
Be quite easy on this point, therefore; she will have improved her
own affairs, she will be much richer than she is now, and in the
meantime you will make your journey. And do not be in any anxiety
about her; no, my dear friend, do not fear; she will live in the
world with her old fellow and I shall watch over her conduct. Yes,
yes! She is yours, I will be surety to you for that, and I give you
my word of honour----’

And here comes in the Signorina N. and approaches the grating. The
nun says to me with an air of mystery, ‘Congratulate the young lady
on her marriage!’ I could bear it no longer; I make my bow and go
away without saying more. I never saw either the governess or her
pupil again, and thank God it was not long before I forgot them
both.

After reading such stories and looking into the archives of the ‘Superintendents of Convents,’ it is easy to understand that Pope Gregory XIII.

[Sidenote: _Rom. vi. 360._]

should have exclaimed bitterly, ‘I am Pope everywhere except in Venice’; and more than one of his successors in the eighteenth century had cause to repeat his words. The Church protested in vain against the abuse of the veil by Venetian ladies, for the State protected them on the specious pretext of superintending their morals, and the remonstrances of the popes and of the patriarchs of Venice were not even heard within the walls of those sham cloisters. With such a system of education and such examples the bankruptcy of morality was merely a question of time. The number of marriages diminished amongst the aristocracy, and when a young man made up his mind to matrimony he consulted nothing but his financial interests.

The expenses of a fashionable marriage were considerable. There were always several festive ceremonies in the bride’s house. The first was the

[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult. 86; Goldoni, vol. i. chap. xxvi._]

signature of the contract; the second, which followed soon afterwards, was a gathering of all the relations and friends of the two families with a sort of standing collation, and it was on this occasion that the future bridegroom gave his betrothed the first present, which was generally a big diamond set in other stones, and was called the ‘ricordino,’ the ‘little remembrance.’

A few days before the wedding the two families and their friends met again, and if the man’s mother was still alive it was she who gave the bride a pearl necklace; otherwise the duty fell to one of his near female relations. This pearl necklace was thought absolutely indispensable for the honour of the family, and the bride was bound to put it on at once and to wear it till the end of the first year of her marriage. Where it would have caused financial difficulty it was simply hired for the time, and was returned to the jeweller at the end of the year.

After her marriage every well-born woman took a ‘cicisbeo’ or ‘cavalier servente.’ These cavaliers were in most cases, especially at the beginning

[Sidenote: _Rom. ix. 13._]

of the century, neither young, nor handsome, nor the least lover-like, though there were

[Sidenote: _Tassini, under ‘Grassi.’_]

exceptions to the rule. The choice of them was often the occasion of the first conjugal dispute, and a lady of the Condulmer family retired to a convent for life because her husband objected to the cavalier whom she wanted.

The serving cavalier accompanied his lady on all occasions, for the husband never did, and the two were

[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 207, 303, and ix. II; Molmenti, Vita Priv._]

seen everywhere together, and especially under the felse of the gondola; for ladies never used the gondola uncovered, even on beautiful summer evenings. And they were perpetually out, so that grave historians inform us that they only spent a few hours of the night in their palaces, and during the day the time they needed for dressing. When required, the ‘cicisbeo’ waited on his lady instead of her maid; her smallest caprices were his law, and she dragged him after her everywhere, to mass, benediction, and the sermon. ‘The object of mass is to go to walk,’ said Businallo in one of his satires, after saying that the proper purpose of pilgrimages was to make a great deal of noise.

Not unfrequently the cicisbei were mere adventurers who pretended to be great nobles from other Italian cities, and to have left their homes in consequence of some misfortune.

Goldoni wrote a comedy called ‘Il Cavaliere e la Dama’ on the subject of the ‘cicisbei,’ whom he calls ‘singular beings, martyrs to gallantry, and slaves to the caprices of the fair sex.’ In speaking of this piece, in his autobiography, he observes that he could not have printed the word ‘cicisbeatura’ on the bill for fear of offending the numerous class whom he intended to satirise.

He goes on to say of his play that a man is presented who is the husband of one lady and the serving cavalier of another, and the mutual satisfaction of the two women is exhibited. ‘A married woman,’ Goldoni says, ‘complains to her cicisbeo that one of her lacqueys has been disrespectful to her; the cavalier answers that the man should be punished. “And whose business is it but yours to see that I am obeyed and respected by my servants?” cries the lady.’

The playwright no doubt heard the speech in actual life. The cavalier was the real master of the house in many families, yet now and then a husband could be jealous, though not in the least in love.

Goldoni says that there were husbands who put up with their wives’ cavaliers in a submissive spirit, but that there were others who were enraged

[Sidenote: _Goldoni, vol. ii. chap. x._]

by those strange beings, who were like second masters of the house in disorganised families.

It is certain that the Venetian ladies cared more for gambling than for adornment, or anything else. In the morning they wore a dress of more or less rich stuff, but always black, and when they went out they wore a long scarf, also black, which they disposed with much grace upon their heads, crossed upon their bosom, and knotted loosely behind the waist. This dress went by the general name of ‘Cendaleto,’ and it was the custom to apply the appellation also to those who wore it. They said, for instance, that there were so many ‘Cendaleti’ at a ceremony, meaning that number of ladies. Giustina Renier Michiel, the historian of all that was left of grace and beauty in Venice, says that the scarf had the magic power of making the plainest women pretty.

Though dress was simple enough on ordinary occasions, conforming to certain rules, yet on gala occasions the latest fashions were consulted.

[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 303._]