History of the Venetian Republic

W. Carew Hazlitt

• Éditeur: Jovian Press
• Année: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781537810881
• Sujet: Histoire
• Sous-sujet: Histoire de l'Italie

The ancient Italian province of Venetia is of interest to us in the present inquiry as the source to which the first Venetians looked as the home of their fathers or of their own youth. It was a region of Northern Italy, which extended from the foot of the Alps to the Adriatic Sea; but its boundaries seem to have undergone changes. After its subjugation by the Romans, Venetia was considered as forming part of Cisalpine Gaul. The people are described as a commercial, rather than a warlike, community; and it is a curious circumstance that they displayed in their dress, like their insular descendants, a predilection for black...

CHAPTER I

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THE ANCIENT ITALIAN PROVINCE OF Venetia is of interest to us in the present inquiry as the source to which the first Venetians looked as the home of their fathers or of their own youth. It was a region of Northern Italy, which extended from the foot of the Alps to the Adriatic Sea; but its boundaries seem to have undergone changes. After its subjugation by the Romans, Venetia was considered as forming part of Cisalpine Gaul. The people are described as a commercial, rather than a warlike, community; and it is a curious circumstance that they displayed in their dress, like their insular descendants, a predilection for black. An immense amount of confusion has arisen in the accounts of this country and its inhabitants by a failure to discriminate with proper care between the Veneti of America and their Adriatic namesakes. The former were remarkable for their proficiency in martial pursuits and their brave resistance to the Roman legions and navy; yet it is at the same time questionable whether the trade in amber conducted by Greeks and Phoenicians between Western Europe and the Baltic does not really belong to the Transalpine Veneti, who are also more likely to be the people among whom Herodotus relates that it was a custom to sell their marriageable daughters by auction.

There seems to be some plausibility in the suggestion that a colony passing in the course of migration from their native soil to Asia Minor, proceeded thence, in process of time, to Northern Italy, on the shores of which they formed numerous settlements. These colonists were called Tyrrhenians or Etruscans; they became the founders, at successive periods, of Spina at the mouth of the Po, and Hadria or Hatria in its vicinity, both of which attained the highest degree of commercial prosperity. No vestiges of the former are now visible, though the name may seem to have survived in the islet of Spinalunga, a later alluvial formation. The gradual deposits of nature have had the effect of removing Hadria to a distance of more than fourteen miles from that sea on which it once stood, and which still bears its name—the Hadria iracunda of Horace. Nor has the decline been recent; for even in the time of the Romans these places presented little more than the shadow of their pristine greatness.

In the Augustan age Venetia and Istria united to form the Tenth Legion; under Constantine, the two districts were reckoned as the seventeenth province of Rome. Venetia itself was divided, during the reign of the latter prince, into Prima and Secunda or Maritima, the last of which had long been known to the conquerors as the Gallicae Paludes. Venetia Maritima appears to have been bounded on the east by the Adriatic, on the north by the Julian Alps, on the west by an imaginary line drawn between the Adige and the Po, and on the south by the latter river.

The inclining plain of Northern Italy, which verges continually toward the sea, is irrigated by several rivers. Of these, the Livenza and Isonzo take their rise in the Alps; the Brenta, the Musone, the Piave, and the Adige in the Tyrol; while the Po, after receiving the tributary waters of the Alps and the Apennines, disembogues in the Adriatic at its western angle. That the strength and vehemence of the currents of these several streams would be greatly increased by the sloping nature of the country through which they flow, is sufficiently obvious; and it will also be easy to conceive the process by which, in their passage to the gulf, the force of the tide would loosen and remove the sand and mud accumulated on their shores, and deposit it as sediment at their respective confluences, which lay within a short distance of each other. This fluviatile drift, which served to attest the active and unrestricted operations of nature in that quarter, naturally assumed, in the course of ages, the form of mounds, or lid, while many acquired a degree of size and solidity which entitled them to the name of islands. The final result which was to be expected, however, from this large formation of new and artificial soil close to the terra firma, was that the whole intermediate expanse of morass, or lagoon, would have been girt by an unbroken belt of sand, and that an extensive tract of country would have been permanently reclaimed from the ocean; and this, indeed, was only obviated by the estuaries which along the upper coast of Northern Italy were created by the frequent confluence of opposite currents, and which, by a series of winding and deep channels, divided the lid at irregular intervals, at the same time affording a certain access to the wide and terraqueous tract which had now interposed itself between the true shore and the exterior margin of the Adriatic.

It was on these narrow strips of land, ill sheltered from the waves, yet by them only protected, of which it might have appeared that man would hardly care to dispute possession with the sea-fowl, that a few hundred stragglers, exiles from their native soil, were driven, in the fifth century of our era, by the force of adversity, to seek a temporary home; and on this unique site the fugitives laid the foundations of the proud and powerful Venice, by erecting here and there a few huts of mud and osiers.

In the singular encroachment of the land upon the water which was to be observed in the conformation of the Venetian lagoons, and the slow creation of a firm soil, where before there had been nought but liquid expanse, it was not unnatural for the men of that time to see an evidence of preparation for things that were to come. The remarkable changes which had taken place during the lapse of ages in that part of the coast might well seem to a less incredulous age than ours to point to the distant contemplation of a City of Refuge in the midst of the waves.

We are told by Strabo that in his day the country immediately contiguous to the Gulf of Adria was intersected in every quarter by rivers, streams, and morasses; Aquileia and Ravenna were then cities in the marshes; and it appears probable that, had not the inroads of the sea been checked by a circumvallation of dykes, the whole region would have presented the aspect of a salt-lake.

The climate of ancient Venetia was generally tepid, occasionally chilly. In the spring, the atmosphere was gratefully tempered by the sea-breezes; during the summer, the frequent recurrence of storms cleared the air, and deluged the plains; snow was rare and transient. The soil was rich and fertile: it was composed of ashes, dust, and bitumen, varied at certain levels by layers of salt. Salt also formed, with honey oil, fish, and wine, the staple commodities of the country.

After the successive fall of Spina and Hadria, three other cities, which had remained down to that time in comparative obscurity, acquired in their turn prominence and celebrity. Of these the most conspicuous in wealth and in industry was Aquileia. This place continued, for some length of time, to hold the first rank among the cities of Northern Italy. The river and maritime commerce of the Aquileians was equally considerable. Their traders penetrated by the Danube to Goritz and Belgrade, and perhaps even to Byzantium and the Roman colonies on the Cimmerian Bosporus and the Black Sea. The Po, the Tagliamento, the Livenza, the Adige, and the Brenta were covered with their carooes and freights. Their port was regarded as the general emporium of that part of the peninsula.

Other towns of leading importance at the same period were Patavium (Padua)—in the time of Strabo a manufacturing place of some note—Ravenna, Concordia, and Altinum.

The ancient port of Aquileia was the large island which extended along the upper margin of the salt lagoon to the south of Frijilili, and which was known as Grado. In the palmy days of Aquileia, with which it was connected by a mole of Roman construction, Grado seems to have been a place of some consideration. It is likely that it derived no small advantage from the unceasing traffic maintained by the Aquileians with every part of Italy. In the second century, or even earlier, the island formed a favorite residence of the bishops of Aquileia. who embellished it with orchards, pastures, vineyards, and olive-yards, and, in conjunction with Caprulae, one of the harbors of Altinum, it was frequently chosen as the quarters of the Roman array and the anchorage of the Roman fleet. More northward, and at a somewhat higher level, lay Torcello. In the time of the Romans, Torcello enjoyed considerable eminence. It was one of the ports of Altinum, the aristocracy of which were in the habit of resorting thither in the summer season for change of air. It was full of gardens and country-houses, and it was probably the fashionable watering-place of the day. Within quite recent times vestiges of Roman life and civilization have been recovered in excavating on the site of Venice for a variety of purposes, and there seems slight room for doubt that in remote ages the coast line was lower, and that the river silt and artificial embankment gradually and jointly buried many of the former human memorials of this locality, and obliterated many landmarks. It has been supposed that a branch of the Via Emilia passed or started very close to this point, and that here in the second century there was a Roman military station, since a grave discovered about six feet below the surface in the Bacino Orseolo bore the inscription: Milt. Coort. III, B. Centuria. The revolutionary changes, however, which have taken place on the present spot posterior to the Roman occupation, render it difficult to speak with confidence or to fix with certainty.

On the demise of Constantine the Great (337), his extensive dominions were divided among his three sons, Constantine, Constantius, and Constans. In 353 the violent death of his two brothers left the second son sole emperor. In 360, however, Constantius feeling incapable of sustaining the undivided weight of a vast and sinking empire was under the necessity of decorating his nephew Gallus with the purple, and of entrusting to his care the Eastern provinces. But the feeble and odious character of the new Caesar speedily procured his deposition and imprisonment in the fortress of Pola, where he died; and by the decease of Constantius himself in 361, the monarchy devolved on the accomplished Julian, who again was succeeded, after a reign of two years, by Jovian (363). The history of Rome from the accession of the last-named prince to the final partition of the empire forms a well-known page in history. The temporary check which the genius of Theodosius had given to the enemies of his country was far more than neutralized by a variety of influences. The Roman empire was overturned, in 409, by the Goths under Alaric.

Forty-three years later Attila or Etzel, king of the Huns, invaded Italy, where he hoped to find and to conquer a rich and feeble province, which the Romans, disunited by faction and enervated by luxury, seemed unable to protect. The horde of warriors, of whom Attila was the general and the sovereign, and which spread itself from the Caspian to the Danube, proudly traced their descent from the pastoral tribes which, two thousand years before the Christian era, were dwelling beyond the frontiers of China. As the newcomers, who, in the absence of fortified positions, had few or no obstacles to surmount, advanced toward the sea. the whole peninsula was laid waste and desolate; and the level plains of Lombardy, and the smiling fields of Umbria and Liguria, soon became a pre to invaders whose strange and uncouth mien was regarded by their victims with a feeling of pious horror. The maritime districts of Italy underwent, in their turn, a similar fate; and such of the inhabitants of those regions as had the courage and self-possession to effect their escape, sought shelter by a natural impulse in the neighboring lagoon. The Paduans fled to Malamocco and Rialto; those of Belluno and Feltre commenced the formation of a settlement to which they gave the name of Heracla. In Grade, which had hitherto been their Wapping or Leith, the Aquileians were happy to find an asylum for their wives and families. Eight miles from their native town of Concordia, in the Aquae Caprulanae, whose soil had hitherto yielded only to the footprints of the goatherds and their flocks, another colony founded the modern Caorlo. The inhabitants of Oderzo and Asolo betook themselves in the extremity of their distress to the Lido Cavallino (so called from its celebrated breed of horses), where they became the founders of a city, on which they bestowed the name of Jesulo or Equilo. Lastly, one third of the population of the once proud and opulent Altinum, unwillingly forsaking the banks of the Silis, set up a memorial of the home they had left behind them, by christening the six islands, on which they planted their new settlements, under the names of the six ports of their old home. Such was the origin of Torcello, Murano, Burano, Maggiorbo, Costanziaco, and Amiano.

The constituent elements of the new community, while they were slightly varied in regard to the place of immediate origin, bespoke the possibility of the early arrival at some definite scheme of policy borrowed from the system under which they had previously lived. Among the fugitives and exiles were persons of both sexes of the highest birth and of the most distinguished associations; and they brought with them to the lagoons some fruits of political training and some tincture of social cultivation. They were not barbarians or primitive aborigines, who had slowly to acquire the arts of civilized life, but men and women, who saw before them the arduous yet achievable problem of reconstructing on a fresh soil the shattered constitutional and social fabric which they had left behind them.

That the emigrants experienced meanwhile a long interval of wretchedness and poverty is almost unquestionable; and there is, at the same time, room for the hypothesis, that a certain number, to whose original pursuits and experiences their present home was more than ordinarily ill-adapted, endeavored, when the danger was removed, to retrace their steps. To what extent a reflux took place, we are left ignorant; and at any rate it was more than counteracted by the periodical succession of fresh irruptions and the slow growth of the insular settlement into habitability even for agriculturists and foresters.

The collapse of the Roman power under Romulus Augustus, numbering among its effects the withdrawal of Britain from imperial protection, may be said to have favored on the one hand the advance of the Saxon invaders and colonists to the shores of England, while on the other it exposed Italy to the aggression of the Huns and their successors. The incidents which accompanied the downfall of Rome formed the indirect basis of the rise of two empires, which were in turn to occupy a dominant position in the world—first, Venice, then Great Britain. On the ruins of the old Italy was to rise a new and even greater one, composed of different races, and governed by different conditions: not a single State, but a group of States, of which Venice was to become the foremost and almost the most durable, and to approach nearest to the Romans in a progressive policy of conquest and absorption.

It may be judged that in their choice of a government the members of the new commonwealth allowed themselves to be guided by the example of Rome herself, from which they in some measure traced their descent. At the outset the affairs of the exiles remained, it appears, under the management of Consuls elected at Padua; there was a brief interregnum, during which there was a sacerdotal government, presumably having its centre at Grado; and in 466 a convention of the principal citizens, finding, of course, that this species of administration was unsuitable, where the practical concerns of a trading and maritime society began to enter prominently into everyday life, assembled there, and formally constituted themselves into a Republic, with a Tribune for each island or each appointed division of the territory. The first political autonomy was therefore of ecclesiastical type, the consulate leaning on the mother-city, and lying more or less under its influence. The first Consular Triumvirate, which is traditionally reported to have been elected at Padua, and to have consisted of Alberigo Faliero, Tommaso Candiano (or Sanudo), and Zeno Daulo (or Dandolo)—names which circumstances render worthy of preservation—remained in office during three years; under the second, the dignity became triennial; and in 466 the Consuls were supplanted by annual Tribunes, who fluctuated in number, during a period of about 230 years, between one and twelve/ Of the nature and extent of an authority which has left few traces of its existence, it is of course difficult to form even an approximate notion: yet it is rational to suppose that at the outset these magistrates were required merely to administer justice and to preserve order; but it is quite worthy of remark that even at this early stage there was an incipient tendency to secure a balance of authority by the principle of nominating two officers either for the whole dominion or for the respective divisions of it, as at Sparta two kings were elected as mutual checks over each other; and this form of rule embraced an unrestricted jurisdiction over Church and State. At that primeval epoch, the general interests of the community were discussed and secured avowedly in periodical conventions (like the Roman Comitia), termed in the Venetian dialect Arrengo, composed of the whole adult male population of the islands, and long—indeed for centuries—held in the open air. Of such an assembly the desire to transform the right of public debate into a privilege or monopoly appears at least to be hardly predicable. But it is not difficult to trace in this representative system a fundamental want of compact organization. The Arrengo was manifestly too large and too factious an assembly to act in harmony, or to exercise a due control over public affairs. The weakness of the Legislature naturally strengthened the hands of the Executive; the Tribunes soon felt their power, and soon abused it; each aspired to absolute and undivided authority; and the nation had frequent cause to complain that their confidence was betrayed by a single magistrate who dared to infringe their dearest privileges.

The excesses of these annual magistrates, who indeed seldom bequeathed to those who came after them anything beyond the task of perpetuating civil discord and public misery, led, however, as a natural consequence, to several modifications at successive periods in the government. In 503, after forty-six years of confusion and discontent, an intelligent effort was made to centralize authority; one Gastaldo or Administrator was clothed by the national assembly with supreme jurisdiction; and this new form of administration endured through seventy-one years. In 574 the monarchic system fell into disrepute; a fresh revolution was wrought in the government, and the direction of affairs was then entrusted to ten Tribunes. Finally, in 654, two Gastaldo having been assigned to the island of Heracla, recently colonized by fugitives from Oderzo and other places in the vicinity, these magistrates were added to the existing number, which remained unchanged till the close of the seventh century.

The pressure of misfortune had not produced any impression of an enduring character on the higher, or permanently bettered the condition of the humbler, class of refugees. Sympathy might perhaps level for a while social distinctions: and want of shelter and food might unite men of different ranks, training, and associations, in obviating a common danger. But it is unsafe to believe that such an order of things continued to exist when the little colony grew into a city, and when its origin faded into a tradition.

During a long and peaceful reign of thirty-three years, Theodoric the Great was the lawgiver and the sovereign of a docile people, whose virtue and barbaric pride prompted them to imitate the arts and refinements of the nation which they had vanquished, and for a while, at least, to shun the vices which with those arts and those refinements had insensibly grown up. The Goths, who rapidly acquired the dominion of the vast region extending from Sicily to the Danube, and from Belgrade to the Atlantic Ocean, affected to disguise their power under the pleasing name of alliance or hospitality; and the wise moderation of their king led him to admit the Romans to the civil offices of the government, and not merely to tolerate, but to protect, the established religion of Italy.

Under the successors of this enlightened prince, the rapid decline of the empire which he had created, and the victories, of the illustrious Belisarius, lieutenant of Justinian, betrayed the gradual and furtive influence of climate and example over the susceptible mind of the Goth and the partial regeneration of a martial spirit in the breast of the Roman; and although the brilliant achievements of two later monarchs, or Vitigis and Totila, shed a parting ray of glory on the horizon, the commanding talents of the Eunuch Narses dispelled for ever the once-cherished hope of restoring to the Gothic kingdom of Italy the vigor and stability which it had possessed under Theodoric.

Among the well-known Letters of Cassiodorus, Pretorian Prefect of this great ruler, two derive a peculiar value from the fact that no other monuments exist of the state of Venice and the adjoining territory during the domination of the Goths in the Peninsula, and they indirectly testify to the recognition of the tribunal government alike by the Goths and by the Venetians. The first records a famine which visited the inhabitants about the year 520, and from which it appears that they were relieved by the humane interposition of Theodoric, who not only furnished them in their distress with every kind of provision, but permitted them to convert to their own use the corn and wine which they had collected, according to their annual custom, for the Royal Bouche. The second epistle, which is the more remarkable, was addressed in 523 to the imperial Tribunes of Venetia Maritima, who were therein exhorted not to neglect the transmission of the expected supplies of wine, oil. and honey from certain towns of Istria to the royal palace at Ravenna.

In point of su...

Table des matières

• CHAPTER I
• CHAPTER II
• CHAPTER III
• CHAPTER IV
• CHAPTER V
• CHAPTER VI
• CHAPTER VII
• CHAPTER VIII
• CHAPTER IX
• CHAPTER X
• CHAPTER XI
• CHAPTER XII
• CHAPTER XIII
• CHAPTER XIV
• CHAPTER XV
• CHAPTER XVI
• CHAPTER XVII
• CHAPTER XVIII
• CHAPTER XIX
• CHAPTER XX
• CHAPTER XXI
• CHAPTER XXII
• CHAPTER XXIII
• CHAPTER XXIV
• CHAPTER XXV
• CHAPTER XXVI
• CHAPTER XXVII
• CHAPTER XXVIII
• CHAPTER XXIX
• CHAPTER XXX
• CHAPTER XXXI