For twenty-five years save one, Ziani presided over the destinies of the Republic. Her commercial influence was extended. Valuable treaties were concluded with Germany, Hungary, Aleppo, Egypt and Barbary.

The choice of Ziani’s successor gave rise to a novel incident. The votes of the College were equally divided between Marino Dandolo and Giacomo Tiepolo. For five days they were scrutinised in the vain hope of finding a casting vote. The Senate then authorised an appeal to chance. Lots were cast, and fortune declared in favour of Giacomo Tiepolo on the 6th of March 1229. During the interregnum between the resignation of Ziani and the election of his successor opportunity was taken to strengthen still further the power of the aristocracy and to weaken that of the Doge. A Board of Correctors of the Ducal Promissione or Coronation oath, and another of Inquisitors of the dead Doge were formed. The former was composed of five men of great wisdom and experience, whose duty it was to examine and reform the Promissione at the death of each Doge. On the latter board three sat who were charged to listen to the complaints of those who felt aggrieved at any action of the late Doge; to examine his papers for any unpaid debts, and award praise or blame of his conduct whether as citizen or as head of the state. As a result, the Promissione Ducale exacted from Dandolo and Ziani was made still more stringent in the case of Tiepolo. He was forbidden to communicate with foreign princes or to interfere in ecclesiastical matters: he was made to pay taxes. The Promissione sworn by Tiepolo is given in full by Romanin, and covers nine closely-printed large octavo pages. The details are curious: the number of his cooks was fixed; he swore to receive no gifts nor presents of any kind from any person save and except rosewater, flowers, sweet-smelling herbs and balsam, “which it shall be lawful for us and our agents to receive.”

Meanwhile anxious eyes were again turned to the East. As the Latin kingdom waned the Republic had increased her power at Constantinople, and in return for naval services the arsenal was ceded to her. On the death of Robert Courtenay the crown descended to his brother, Baldwin II., a lad of ten. But in stirring times a child emperor was impossible, and John of Brienne, titular king of Jerusalem, a heroic old crusader, was during his minority chosen as Emperor.

John of Brienne had filled his thankless office but two years when the capital was menaced by the allied forces of the Emperor of Nicea and the King of Bulgaria. It was a critical moment. The Latin army was much reduced by desertion, and it is said Brienne had less than two hundred knights and four hundred footmen to oppose an army of many tens of thousands. But the brave old Emperor—he was eighty years of age—put himself at the head of his little band and sallied forth to meet the host. An impetuous charge scattered them like chaff. The Venetians, too, were not slack. An urgent message had been sent for help, and a fleet of twenty galleys was hastily sent to Constantinople, which swooped down on the Greek fleet at the entrance to the Dardanelles. The whole Armata and transports were destroyed or taken, and the Venetian admirals made triumphant entry into Constantinople to receive the felicitations of the Emperor. Two years later the Greeks were again foiled by the irresistible onslaught of the Venetian and Latin fleets.

Commercial expansion continued through Tiepolo’s reign. Trieste renewed her fealty and treaties were concluded with Ravenna, Padua and Ragusa. The Sultans of Aleppo and of Egypt confirmed and extended privileges granted to the Venetians, and owing to the skill of their ambassadors Barbary and Armenia were generous in concessions. To the tale of saintly relics were added the bodies of St Marina and of St Paul the first hermit, minus the head.

Tiepolo is said to have possessed a prodigious memory. “This note I have found,” says Sanudo, “solum in one chronicle, yet it was the truth. This Doge was very wise and had great fame through all parts of the world. When any ambassadors came to deliver their suits he held his eyes shut: after he had heard he recited chapter by chapter and answered everything which they had expounded in such manner that all marvelled greatly at so profound a memory, for he was a most wise Doge.” On the 20th of May, 1249, Tiepolo, weary of his burden of the state, laid it down to retire to his house in S. Agostino.

At Tiepolo’s death the electoral college increased to forty-one, chose Marin Morosini, an experienced magistrate and civil servant, as his successor. Meantime the Inquisitors had met and decided that the late Doge had been too zealous in the advancement of his sons. A new clause was therefore added to the coronation oath forbidding the Doge to ask or cause to be asked any office for any person, or to accept any charge outside Venetian jurisdiction or in Istria.

At St Jean d’Acre was a church dedicated to St Sabbas, and there the Genoese and Venetians were wont to worship in common—each, however, claiming exclusive ownership in the building. A dispute as to an alleged Venetian corsair captured by the Genoese ended in a riot. The Genoese raided the Venetian ships, sacked their quarter of the city, and burnt the church.

After vain and perhaps insincere attempts at pacification Venice determined to wreak vengeance on her rival, and in 1286 Lorenzo Tiepolo was despatched with a fleet to Acre. He spoiled and burned the Genoese vessels in harbour, landed and destroyed part of their settlement, and after some fighting captured their stronghold, the castle of Mongioia. They sued for a truce, which was granted for two months. As trophies and palpable sign of his success, Tiepolo sent to Venice the short column of porphyry which now stands at the south-west angle of St Mark’s known as the Pietra di Bando, (proclamation stone), because there were promulgated the laws of the Republic; and the two beautifully decorated, square, marble columns that stand side by side facing the Piazzetta, over against the south side of the church.

It was a heartrending spectacle to Christian Europe: another act in that pitiful and suicidal struggle between the two most powerful maritime states which in the end reduced one to impotence, and left the other too exhausted to resist the advancing tide of Turkish conquest. The Papacy, generally solicitous to compose the differences of Christian states, intervened, and an honourable but temporary peace was made.

BUT Venice was yet in the full vigour and buoyancy of lusty manhood, and nerved herself to regain her lost position. Alone among the Italian states she was able to evoke a fervent, whole-hearted patriotism. Rich and poor, patrician and plebeian were stirred. To the amazement of her enemies, fleet after fleet was expedited against the Genoese. Some minor engagements were fought with varying success, and at length the two powers met off Trapani in 1264 for a final battle. The Genoese were superior in numbers, and had the wind in their favour. The Venetians, having intoned the gospel for the day and called for help on Christ and Monsignor S. Marco, began the attack. A fierce struggle ensued on the interlocked vessels, which formed a vast battlefield. The carnage was terrible. At length Venetian courage and Venetian skill inflicted a crushing defeat on the Genoese, who lost the whole of their fleet.

The affection of the Greek Emperor for the Genoese was now chilled; he sued for terms, and after much debate, in which the forward party in Venice vainly pushed their policy of founding a new empire, with its centre at Constantinople, a treaty was signed in 1268, by which Venice recovered her commercial standing in the capital, though she chafed under the necessity of tolerating the presence of her rivals.

The firm hand kept by the aristocracy on civil government was felt during Zeno’s reign. The Genoese were too high-spirited to submit to terms while under the shame of defeat and a new naval war was imminent. To meet the cost the corn tax was increased and a bread riot took place on the Piazza. The Doge tried in vain to reason with the mob, and at last was driven to resort to force. Troops were levied; the sedition was crushed; the ringleaders were beheaded between the red columns. But when order was restored the obnoxious tax was quietly withdrawn. The Government was severe to aristocratic brawlers. Two of the Dandolo family sided with the people, and Lorenzo Tiepolo, son of Doge Giacomo, headed the Government party. The rival leaders met in the streets and Tiepolo was assaulted. The Dandoli were at once heavily fined and a law was passed forbidding the people to have the escutcheons of any nobles painted on their houses or to wear any of their emblems. The Doge died in 1268 and was honoured with a sumptuous State funeral in S. Zanipolo.

Before the election of a successor the most complicated machinery ever devised by the wit of man for the election of a chief magistrate was elaborated by the Venetian aristocracy.

How many were the Guilds that took part in the procession we know not for Da Canale stays his narrative to tell of the Genoese wars, after describing the goldsmiths wearing on their caps and cloaks, pearls and gold and silver, sapphires, emeralds, jacinths, amethysts, jaspers and carbuncles and other precious stones. After the procession an exhibition was held in the palace, of all the arts of Venice, in honour of the Dogaressa.

The coronation oath sworn to by Tiepolo was made even more stringent on the accession of Jacopo Contarini in 1275. The Doge was fast becoming little more than the official mouthpiece of the aristocracy. A clause binding the Doge to keep himself informed of the number of prisoners in the cells at the Ducal Palace and to see that each and every prisoner should be brought to trial within a month of his incarceration, demonstrates how careful the aristocracy were to justify power by wise principles of government. Contarini was an old man of eighty when he accepted office, and after six years retired on an annuity of 1500 lire, the first pension ever granted to a Doge. The steady pursuance of commercial aggrandisement brought Venice in the previous reign into conflict with Bologna. Duties were levied on all ships trading in the ports between Ravenna and Fiume, and a captain of the Gulf of Adria appointed to exact them by force of arms. It was only too apparent that Venice aimed at making the whole Adriatic a Venetian sea, and in 1283 the territories of the Republic in Dalmatia were menaced by a formidable coalition of Aquileia, Ancona, and the Count of Goritz.

The sleepless eyes of Venetian statesmen were now turned southwards. Constance of Swabia, unhappy Manfred’s

Tiepolo, preferring his country’s peace to the gratification of his own ambition, exhorted the crowd to respect the law, and left for the mainland till the crisis should be past. But the delicate electoral machinery was never for a moment put out of gear. The provisional Government was appointed; through all the tumult the electors calmly rattled their ballots in the Ducal Palace, and to the sullen displeasure of the popular party a prominent aristocrat, Pietro Gradenigo, was proclaimed Doge twenty-three days after the death of his predecessor. For the first time the officer who recited the formula: Quest’è il vostro doge si vi piacerà, turned aside without staying to receive the approbation of the people.

The long reign of Gradenigo (1289-1311) is one of the most important in the annals of Venice. By the fall of Acre in 1291 the doom of the Christian power in the Holy Land was sealed, and Venice, whose interest in the Crusades and in the Latin dominion over Syria was frankly a commercial one, turned the new situation to her own advantage. Her policy was to frustrate her rivals, the Genoese. To the scandal of Christendom a treaty was concluded with the infidel in 1299, and ere long slaves and materials of war were openly sold by the Venetians in their ports. The Sultan declared in the charter his steadfast will that the Venetians should be protected and honoured beyond all people in the world, and entitled to the sole right of a Saracen escort for Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem. The Genoese found themselves squeezed out of the coast towns, and Venice in exclusive possession of the Syrian trade.

Early in 1295 news came to Venice which stung her to fury. A street row at Constantinople had developed into a general attack by the Genoese on the Venetians. The former were victorious, and after flinging the Venetian Governor out of the windows of the palace, dashing him to pieces, proceeded to an indiscriminate massacre of the inhabitants of the Venetian colony. The Greeks sent envoys to disclaim any responsibility in the outrage, but they were hectored by the Doge, who demanded an enormous indemnity, which served but to cement their alliance with the Genoese. Late in the spring the Venetian commander, Ruggieri Morosini, with a fleet of forty galleys, forced the Dardanelles, wasted the Genoese suburb of Galata and laid siege to Constantinople. Meanwhile another fleet, under Giov. Soranzo, entered the Black Sea and sacked the Genoese settlement of Caffa; but the elements amply avenged the Genoese. Soranzo returned to Venice bearing an unheroic story of vessels disabled and men frozen to death by the rigours of an Euxine winter. The year 1297 passed in petty expeditions, and towards the end of the autumn Boniface VIII. essayed to negotiate a peace. The magnanimous Pope (Dante’s pet enemy) went so far as to offer, if the Genoese paid one-half, to pay himself the other half of the claims of the Venetians, but the latter rejected all compromise, and Boniface despairing of success inculpated the pride of Venice, and washed his hands of the whole business. Each power prepared for a final struggle.