Arsenal. With such forces at his command, it is perhaps not surprising that the Doge was not intimidated by the conspiracy. As soon as he was assured of being defended by his servants and the workmen, he sent messages to the Mayors of Chioggia, Torcello, and Murano, with orders to arrest the conspirators who were to enter Venice under the guidance of Badoer. At the same time the members of the School of Charity and many of the guild of painters took arms to watch the entrance to the Piazza.
Meanwhile the conspirators made their way through a tempest of rain and wind to the Quirini palace, and arms were distributed to them; Badoer, however, did not come, and his absence was attributed by his friends to the storm. Without waiting for him they went out at dawn, during a terrific thunderstorm, crying ‘Death to the Doge Gradenigo!’ The Quirini, following the direction agreed upon, came out at Saint Mark’s by the Bridge dei Dai, which thereafter received the name of ‘Ponte del Malpasso’ (the Bridge of Evil Crossing). But instead of finding the Square deserted, as they had expected, they were assailed by a strong contingent of armed men. Marco and his son Benedetto were soon killed; the other son, Niccolò, was wounded, and he probably obtained on that day the surname of ‘the Lame,’ which he ever afterwards bore. The remaining conspirators now scattered, to meet again soon afterwards in the Square of Saint Luke, where they were again defeated by the guild of painters. Meanwhile Bajamonte was coming down towards Saint Mark’s from the Merceria, and in order to gather his followers together he halted at the knot of elder-trees, where it was the custom to tie up the horses of the councillors on the days of assembling. Here, by chance or by intention, a woman of the people, who lived in a little house overlooking the trees, dropped from her window a stone mortar, or the stone of a hand-mill, which killed Bajamonte’s standard-bearer. The banner inscribed with the word ‘Liberty’ was dashed to the ground, and Tiepolo’s men fell into such confusion that he had great difficulty in taking them back to the island of Rialto, burning behind him the bridge which connected the island with the rest of the city. A regular siege now followed, the insurgents defending themselves with the courage of despair; and they might even then have been victorious if Badoer had been able to reach Venice and to take the Doge’s forces in the flank, but Badoer, with a great number of his rebellious companions, had been taken and thrown into prison early in the morning, having been caught on his way to Venice by the Mayor of Chioggia, who was a Giustiniani. Tiepolo now held his own upon the island of Rialto, where he had entrenched himself; but the Doge, in order not to prolong the bloodshed of a conflict between citizens, wished to prevail by some gentler means, and promised all the rebels their lives, provided they would submit, throw down their arms, and quit the territory of the Republic. The negotiations were first attempted by some Milanese merchants, and then by Giovanni Soranzo, who, as the father-in-law of Niccolò Quirini, the latter having married his daughter Soranza, seemed to have a better chance of being heard; but it was in vain. Tiepolo continued to resist with mad obstinacy, and preferred anything rather than submission; until at last one of the counsellors of the Doge, a certain Filippo Belegno, succeeded in bringing about an understanding. Tiepolo consented to retire from the island of Rialto, and to go into an exile which was to last four years ‘in the Slavonic countries beyond the island of Zara,’ but not in any country that was hostile to Venice; his noble followers were also to be exiled during four years, and might reside in any part of Italy that was outside the Venetian territories, but not within the territories of Padua, Treviso, or Vicenza. They were informed that if they were found beyond the limits to which they were assigned they should pay for the indiscretion with their lives. By a decree of the Great Council their wives were ordered to follow them into exile, and were instructed to leave Venice within eight days. The other conspirators, i.e. the servants of the nobles, and those who were considered less responsible, were pardoned on condition that they would submit and lead quiet lives. Thus of all those who had taken part in the revolutionary movement, only Badoer and his friends were in the hands of justice on the evening of the fatal day. When, according to the custom of the times, they had confessed their crime under torture, Badoer was beheaded, and the rest were all hanged between the columns. One-third of the Quirini family property having been claimed by Giovanni, who had taken no part in the conspiracy, the remaining two-thirds of the Quirini palace on the Rialto were demolished, the share in the Cà Grande being allowed to stand which had been Giovanni’s; but lest it should remind posterity of the greatness of the family, the Republic bought out his third part and turned it into a place for raising and killing poultry.
It is a singular circumstance, but quite authentically recorded, that the government was just then without sufficient funds to pay Giovanni for his share in the house, and it was actually proposed to pawn the city’s silver trumpets, which were used in all public solemnities. The government, however, succeeded in raising the sum in a more dignified way.
The house of Bajamonte Tiepolo, at Sant’ Agostino, was levelled to the ground, and on the spot a column recorded the traitor’s infamy. This space is still open and desolate in our own time, after a lapse of six hundred years.
The column was set up in 1314, and it bore the following inscription, which is one of the most ancient specimens of Venetian dialect. It is in the form of a rhymed quatrain: ‘This ground belonged to Bajamonte, and now for his infamous treachery it has been turned common, that all may look upon it now and ever, and be afraid.’
It is not long since writers of democratic tendency still attempted to make Tiepolo seem a martyr to liberty. The Provisional Government of Venice, on July 13, 1797, invited the citizens to restore to honour the memory of those heroes, born in times of tyranny, who had fallen victims to their own generous efforts, and much more in the same manner. It was proposed to set
up a statue to Tiepolo, as well as to the proto-martyr, Marin Bocconio; but in the end, even the democratic government was obliged to concede that its hero had been nothing but a seditious egotist, and the name of Bajamonte has not lost the odium it deserves even to our own time; for in spite of his standard blazoned with the word ‘Liberty,’ he had really meant to seize the government of his country and to make the dogeship hereditary in his family. After the conspiracy the public feeling against the Tiepolo and Quirini families was so strong that those branches of the Tiepolo which had remained faithful to the republic changed their coats-of-arms. The innocent branches of the Quirini, however, resorted to an expedient which is quite unique in heraldry, so far as I know. In Italian ‘bono’ means ‘good’; the Quirini simply charged their coat with a capital B, to show how good they had been!
Marco Donà, the man who had revealed the plot, was rewarded by being admitted to the Great Council, and his name was inscribed in the ‘Golden Book,’ making the honour hereditary. The woman who had killed Bajamonte’s standard-bearer, and whose name was Rossi, on being asked what reward she would prefer, requested to be allowed to fly the standard of Saint Mark from her window on the day of Saint Vitus (June 15), and on the other solemn festivals of the year; and that neither she nor her descendants should ever be required to pay a higher rent for the house in which she lived, and which belonged to the patrimony
of the Basilica of Saint Mark. There exists under date of the year 1468 the protest of a certain Rossi, her descendant, whose rent had been raised from fifteen ducats to twenty-eight. He won his case. The house is called in our own time the ‘House of the Miracle of the Mortar.’ It is in the Merceria, at the corner of the Calle del Cappello. The standard which Lucia Rossi used to display at her window is preserved in the Correr Museum.
The Rector of the guild of painters also received special honours, as well as the brethren of the Carità, who had lent armed assistance.
One might be surprised at the lenity with which the Republic judged the ringleaders of the Tiepolo-Quirini conspiracy; but it must not be forgotten that the conspirators, entrenched on the Rialto, were beyond the Doge’s power, and still threatened the safety of the city and of the Republic, which was no doubt glad to be rid of them at any price. Moreover, we have record of a pitiful episode, which shows that the Venetian government could be severe to cruelty without necessarily employing the executioner.
Among the nobles who went into exile beyond Zara after the affair at Rialto was Niccolò Quirini, Marco’s son, surnamed ‘the Lame.’ His wife, who was, as we have said, the daughter of Giovanni Soranzo, joined him in his exile. At the end of four years, says Molmenti, she felt an irresistible longing to see her family again, and asked permission to return home, but it was not granted to her. Her father, however, had been made Doge in 1311, and she began the journey, trusting to his influence. No sooner had she reached Venice than she was arrested and condemned to perpetual confinement in the convent of Sta. Maria delle Vergini, in one of the most distant districts of the city.
In connection with this story it should be noted that the convent in which she was imprisoned was not one of cloistered nuns. Until the end of the fifteenth century they bore the title of ‘canonesses’; they were under the government of an abbess, but took no solemn vows, wore no veils, and could even leave the convent and marry. The convent itself was under a sort of tutelage of the Doge. It had been founded and endowed at the beginning of the thirteenth century by the Doge Pietro Ziani, together with a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and became the common residence of many noble ladies, and of many noble girls who were educated there. The Doge conferred the investiture upon the abbess, according to the custom of those times, by means of a golden ring, and once a year he went to visit the convent. This was in the month of May; and after hearing mass the Doge went into the parlour, where the abbess received him, being dressed in a magnificent white mantle, with two veils upon her head, one white and the other black. She presented the Doge with a small bunch of flowers, set in a golden handle, for which the Doge expressed his thanks in a set form. The Doge Soranzo must have gone through this function many times while his own daughter was a prisoner in the nunnery, and not allowed to assist in the ceremony. The old building of the Vergini was destroyed by fire in 1375, but was restored with greater splendour than before as a place for educating noble Venetian girls.
It must not be supposed that the convent had barred windows, nor that there were gratings at the parlour door, from behind which the novice never returned again to the outer world. Gratings and bars and the strict cloister were not introduced into the rules of Italian nuns until much later, when the Church was obliged to check the grave abuses which had gradually crept into convent life. In the time of Soranza, and particularly in the convent of the Vergini, there was much freedom, and any reasonable excuse was admitted for allowing the canonesses to go out into the city; they not infrequently visited their relations, and even stopped with them in the country.
Soranza had been placed in custody in a little house that was built against the wall of the convent; its door had two different keys, one of which was given to the abbess, and the other to the housekeeper sister, so that the two were obliged to enter together, and while guarding their prisoner they watched each other. Soranza was allowed one woman servant, who was allowed to go out in order to wash linen, but she was warned that she would be condemned to a heavy fine if the smallest bit of writing were ever found upon her.
Four years Soranza languished uncomplaining in her narrow dwelling. Then she appealed to the Council of Ten for permission to walk in the convent garden. The Council allowed her this liberty for only four months. Fearing that it would not be continued to her she wrote again before the term expired, to beg that it might be extended, representing that she could not live without a little air; and the Council made the permission permanent.
At last it was known that Niccolò was dead, stabbed by an unknown hand, and Soranza was a widow; nevertheless, for the sake of the name she yet bore, the Republic still treated her as a prisoner. Amongst the archives of the Council of Ten are found more than sixty documents concerning her, and there are letters from her entreating to be allowed to visit her father, the Doge, at the ducal palace, or to go and take care of a sick friend. Sometimes she obtained what she asked, sometimes the most innocent indulgences were refused her, and it is clear that the Republic did not mean her to think that she could have anything otherwise than as a special favour.
When Soranza breathed her last in the little house that had been her prison, she had occupied it for twenty-five years. During the last ten years, however, the wife of Andreolo Quirini was confined with her.
She was not the last of those unhappy ladies who had been exiled with their husbands. In 1320 a man called Riccio arrived in Venice, bringing the head of Pietro Quirini who had been treacherously assassinated by an ‘unknown’ hand—possibly the hand of Riccio himself, who brought the victim’s head in order to claim his fee. Pietro left a widow, still young, who at once asked permission to come home to Venice. She was told plainly that if she had no children and expected none she might return, but that otherwise she must remain in exile ‘at the disposal of the Ten.’
In the following year another Niccolò Quirini died abroad, and his widow was allowed to return on condition of living in a convent, never to go out without permission of the Council of Ten. She had in Venice a devoted admirer, one Angelo Bembo, who obtained permission to have her placed in the convent of Santa Maria di Valverde, on the island of Mazzorbo, a lovely and retired spot, where seclusion would be more bearable than in the city. The young widow seems to have made good use of her stay there, for the papers in the archives of the Ten which concern her contain the information that she soon afterwards married her friend, and was allowed to return to the world. She had recovered all her liberty by the mere change of name.
As some justification for this excessive rigour on the part of the government, it should be remembered that the exiled Tiepolo and Quirini families had never ceased to plot against the Republic after their defeat, both in the countries where they were allowed to live and in Venice itself, by means of agents. A letter of the Council of Ten confers upon Federigo Dandolo and Marin Falier full powers to get rid of the obnoxious Bajamonte, in any way they might, for the good of the country. The note is dated in 1328. From that time forward his name was never pronounced in council, nor mentioned in any document; and it may be supposed that he, like Niccolò Quirini, came to his end, murdered by some emissary of the Republic. The fact that we find no allusion in the subsequent history of Marin Falier to the part he possibly played in that side tragedy is not evidence that he failed to carry out his instructions.
A careful examination of early documents seems to show that the Council of Ten existed before the Tiepolo-Quirini conspiracy, which is generally held to be the circumstance which called it into existence. It is certain, however,
that in earlier times the Council had not such great importance, and it was always more or less a temporary affair until the year 1335. Ten magistrates, who were called together, on the occasion of the conspiracy, to form a sort of court-martial, gave their judgments, but by no means in an arbitrary manner. They were elected for a period not much longer than three months, which was to expire on Saint Michael’s Day, September 29, a day always kept as a great festival in Venice. But when that date was reached, it appeared necessary to prolong the time of their power, as their task was not yet finished; for it consisted not only in punishing the guilty, but also in closely watching the immediate consequences of the conspiracy. The same extension was granted again and again, until the following year, when it was determined to establish the tribunal for a term of five years, appointing its members anew, however, on every successive Saint Michael’s Day. These five years being passed, a further decree prolonged the tribunal’s existence ten years more, and so on. Finally, in 1335, it was decreed to be permanent, under an extremely strict code of rules called the ‘Rite,’ well devised for a body which was to treat of the very important affairs that came before it. On election, every member of the Ten took an oath, which included the
following clauses: ‘I, as one of the Council of Ten, do swear upon the holy Gospels of God to act for the advantage and honour of Venice; and in good faith and conscience to advise our Lord the Doge and his
counsellors such things as I shall believe useful to the honour and preservation of our country; and I swear to obey our Lord the Doge and to do what the heads of the Ten shall command me.... I bind myself to keep secret whatever is said or commanded to me, concerning all matters which may be proposed by the said Council, communicated or discussed in the sittings, and concerning any letters or reports which may be communicated to us, etc., etc.’
The ordinary meetings of the Ten were held by day in the ducal palace; not in a room hung with black and feebly lighted, as some have written and believed, but in a hall appointed for that purpose by the Doge, until one should be properly furnished and decorated for the tribunal. Under extraordinary circumstances the Council also met by night. All sittings began with an invocation to the Holy Spirit. These sittings were never attended by the Ten only; from the time of the institution of the tribunal, the Doge and his counsellors, one avogador of the commonwealth and the High Chancellor, who, it should be remembered, was not a noble, were also obliged to be present. The imagination of posterity, amused by fantastic tales which have no historic basis, has lent this tribunal a character of mystery and arbitrary authority which it never possessed, as is proved by documents still in existence. In all trials, after the accusation had been read, the defence was heard immediately, and when the defendant was not able to conduct his own case, a law of 1443 allowed him to be represented by a
lawyer. The avogador put the following question to the Ten: ‘According to what has been read and said, is it your opinion that the accused should be condemned?’ Sometimes the following question was asked: ‘Is it your opinion that the accused, in consequence of what has been already heard, should be put to the torture, in order to obtain from him the whole truth, and further details; or that the court should proceed, as having already sufficient proof of his guilt?’ The Council of Ten could not impose fines; their sentences necessarily affected the body of the condemned person. When a vote had decided that the accused was convicted, each member of the Council could propose the punishment which he thought fit, but it was not usual to propose any more severe penalty than that asked for by the avogador. He was the first to make the proposition, then came the heads of the Ten, then the Doge’s counsellors, and last of all the Doge himself. Each proposal was balloted for, every member of the Council retaining the right to propose a diminution or commutation of the sentence, or to ask for a new trial.
We know that the Council of Ten had a fund for secret service, ever since the fourteenth century. It also possessed a small armoury.
It cannot be denied that on more than one occasion the execution of the verdicts of the Ten was performed quickly and in a secret manner; yet it does not appear that this was done because the sentence had been passed from any motive of private hatred or vengeance, but only because prudence required that the public should not be allowed to express an opinion on the matter. It may be remarked that in European countries the procedure nowadays is often similar in court-martials. If we take away the right of torture, the violet cloaks and hoods of the seven, and the red hoods of the three chiefs—in a word, if we erase from the picture the mediæval setting of the Council of Ten which looks theatrical to us, we may find that after all there is not such grave cause for accusing the famous Venetian tribunal of arbitrary cruelty. The proceedings of a military court-martial in our own times are often quite as secret and expeditious, and much more summary.
The manner in which the members of the Council were elected shows clearly enough that the abuse of authority was always feared on their part. In the year 1310 it was decreed that no two persons who were relatives might sit together in the Council, and that when a relative of any member was to be tried, that member should be excluded from the sitting. The members soon ceased to be elected on Saint Michael’s Day; and in order that greater prudence might be exercised in choosing them, they were elected one at a time at the meetings of the Great Council as each one’s term expired. Until 1356, when a place was to be filled, two candidates were proposed, and sometimes there were even three nominations. No member of the Council of Ten might receive gifts under pain of immediate death, nor was any salary attached to the office. At the end of their term they went back into private life, and were not protected in any way from such accusations as might be brought against them for their actions during their administration.
Nearly fifty years after the date of the Tiepolo-Quirini conspiracy, August 9, 1356, a number of rules were introduced, to increase the severity with which the powers of the Council of Ten might be exercised, and at the same time to ensure justice in their dealings with criminal cases. It is amply proved by documents of the fourteenth century that in the majority of cases, though possibly in those which were considered of minor importance, there was neither mystery nor secrecy about the meetings of the Ten, and that, on the contrary, the door of their place of meeting was sometimes open to the public. No other meaning can be attached to the law of 1575, which was passed in order to limit the too great facility of ingress to the hall of their meetings, on the ground that the proceedings might be prejudiced by too much publicity, as they were constantly interrupted by the persons present, so that practically any one might watch the trials, as Romanin says, even in cases of the highest importance. There was never at any time the least tendency to diminish the legal character of the tribunal in order to confer upon it an arbitrary power, since it disposed of weapons so powerful as to place it above the need of intrigue. As has been said, although the Ten were all chosen from the nobility, the High Chancellor was present at the sittings, albeit he had no right of voting, and his presence alone sufficed to remind the councillors that the citizens, whose chief representative he was, were all witnesses of whatsoever the Ten accomplished. On the whole, M. Baschet is right in saying that the Council’s activity was chiefly exercised against the nobles themselves for the protection of the people.
It undoubtedly disposed of great powers, and no one could expect a tribunal to be infallible in those times, or perhaps in any other; but though the Ten were no doubt sometimes guilty of grave mistakes, they were never at any time the instrument of a tyrannical government for oppressing the poor and innocent.
They elected three heads every month, whose duty it was to conduct the affairs of the Council, to study the cases it was to try, and to see to the execution of its judgments. The Council had under its immediate control the executives of its justice, which consisted of a large force of police, controlled by six principal officers, and by the so-called ‘Missier Grande,’ who was the head of the whole body.
The criminal and political prisons were under the special supervision of the Doge himself during the first half of the fourteenth century, and it was the duty or two or his counsellors to visit them once every month, and to make inquiry of the prisoners confined there concerning their wants and wishes. During the second half of the century this supervision and the duty of visiting became a part of the office of the heads of the Ten. I shall attempt to describe in passing the state of the prisons in which criminals and persons accused of grave crimes were confined in the fourteenth century, these only having been under the supervision of the Ten.
In the first place, there were certain narrow but not unhealthy prisons in the tower which formerly existed at the east end of the ducal palace, and these were on the same floor as the hall where the Council of Ten met, and were called the ‘upper’ prisons. Accused persons were generally kept here during their trial. In 1321 an order was issued for the construction of the so-called ‘Lower’ prisons, which the common people afterwards called ‘pozzi,’ wells; and these were undoubtedly hideous and narrow cells, though probably not worse than those in use at that time in other countries. They are not below the level of the ground, or rather of the water, as novelists have described them; but the fact that criminals descended to them from the hall of the tribunal by means of a little staircase less than a yard wide, which soon became quite dark, and the sound of the lapping water outside, helped to give the prisoner the impression that he was being taken down alive into a tomb dug deep in the earth, although he was actually on the level of the courtyard. A small door in the wall of the courtyard was opened in 1407, in order that the family of Vittor Pisani might enter the prison when he was lying there ill, and it was afterwards closed at his expense. On the side of the canal was a
corridor, little more than a yard wide, and faced with marble, through which escape was impossible. Upon this opened the doors of certain very small cells, marked with Roman numerals, in which, for some reason now impossible to explain, the ‘V’ was always turned upside down. The cells were completely lined with deal, but received air only from the dark corridor through an aperture in the door about eight inches square. The prisons on the other side, towards the harbour, had various names, among which we may mention that of ‘Mosina’ and ‘Liona’; then such names as ‘The Refreshing Joy,’ ‘The Vulcan,’ ‘The Strong,’ ‘The Lightless,’ and other similar epithets, probably suggested by the grim humour of the gaolers. Until 1357 the counsellors of the Doge went down into these places every month; and at that time the heads of the Ten inquired into the state of each individual prisoner, and gave an account thereof to the Doge and to the Council. There also the prisoner was allowed to speak, probably through the little aperture in the door, with his attorney, if he feared lest he should be unable to defend himself when called to justice. To this place came also at night the monk whose duty it was to comfort the last hours of such unfortunates as had received sentence of death, either by hanging between the columns of the Piazzetta, or, as frequently happened, at the place where the crime was committed, or in the cell, if the tribunal had decreed that the prisoner should be strangled. Sometimes, though more rarely, the sentence was this, ‘that to-night So-and-so be conducted to the Orfano Canal, with his hands tied behind his back and weights fastened to his body, and let him be drowned, and let him die.’
I shall have occasion to speak further of the prisons as they were in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.
In the natural order of things it is now time to say a few words about the manners and customs of the Venetians in the fourteenth century. Owing to lack of documents the subject is by no means an easy one. An ideal history would be a careful account of the daily doings and habits of a nation, concisely told and not out of proportion with the greater events of which an account is due. Such a history would be a fascinating tale, though it might be an almost interminable one. As in an endless gallery, the writer would show his readers an unbroken series of pictures, and the mind would be led without surprise, but without a moment’s dulness or boredom, from the beginning to the end of a people’s career.
Unhappily no such method can ever be even attempted where the remote past is concerned. The men and women of those times lived their own daily lives, found them not always interesting, and passed away without leaving us a single true record of twenty-four hours in the life of a man or a woman. Yet how intensely interesting even one such record would be! How the weary historian, seeking for the simple details of some simple life six hundred years ago, longs to discover a Horace Walpole, a Madame de Sévigné, or most of all a Paston family, amongst the yellow and dusty archives! Something, however, may still be got together to give an idea of what the non-political, non-historical Venice was in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
To begin with, though the Republic never showed much inclination to submit to any dictation from the popes, the Venetians were a practically religious people and extremely charitable. With the possible exceptions of Rome and Florence, no city of Italy possessed at that time so many hospices for the poor and hospitals for the sick; and considering the necessary limitations of all philanthropy at that early period, those institutions were managed and kept up with astonishing intelligence and care. I have no intention of compiling a catalogue of the buildings in which old people, invalids, widows, and pilgrims found a temporary or a permanent refuge, as the case might be; but it is worth while to notice here and there the sensitive delicacy with which charity was often exercised, and which seems so little in harmony with the nature of the more important historical events of the period.
There is something very touching, for instance, in the origin of the Ca’ di Dio—literally, ‘The House of God,’ as the old building is called to this day. In the year 1272, one of those pious souls that feel the true and natural intuitions of charity came across that saddest sort of misery which exists here and there in the world, hiding itself as far as possible from every eye, and preferring actual starvation and death to the humiliation of asking alms. These poor people were ladies of good birth, reduced to a condition in which they positively had neither a crust to eat nor a place to lay their heads. The charitable person who found them here and there gathered them at first into a refuge with other poor women where they could at least live and die in peace, but, even in the simplicity of those days, he soon understood that it was moral torture for a starving patrician woman, or the widow of some high magistrate of the Republic, to share bed and board with the poor widows of sailors, fishermen, and artisans, and he created for them, out of sheer delicacy and kindness of heart, a separate refuge in the Ca’ di Dio, where they could enjoy something more than the illusion of a home, and where they were at least blessed with that privacy which is almost the first and last necessity of the well-born.
One is reminded of the rules of that Florentine Confraternity for the relief of the ‘poor who felt shame,’ a body to which Dante belonged. By those rules the brethren were bound to give assistance without lifting the hood that covered their faces, or giving their names, or in any way betraying their individuality, lest the poor person whom they helped should be in some degree humiliated. This really exquisite delicacy of feeling showed itself in the very midst of the worst and fiercest quarrels of Guelph and Ghibelline, and the rule of the Confraternity expressly commanded the brothers to help their foes as freely as their friends, and to be especially careful never to do anything which could humiliate an enemy in distress.
The chronicles of Florence say nothing of that, and if the Venetian historians mention the Ca’ di Dio at all, it is only in the most passing way. But the historical writers of both cities carefully record the murders, poisonings, and stabbings which brought disaster on their citizens. Should not a true history of civilisation sometimes count also the tears that charity has dried and the anguish she has helped to soothe? The chroniclers abound in accounts of the trials, the sentences, and the executions of the fourteenth century; they can scarcely spare a line to tell us how the Doge and many other devout persons heard mass daily at dawn and recited the Office for the Dead in Saint Mark’s. We
know with the utmost exactness the precise number of light ladies who were living in Venice just then: there were eleven thousand six hundred and fifty—a respectable, or rather a disreputable, number for a city of two hundred thousand inhabitants. The quarter of the Castelletto, which had originally been given over to them, no longer sufficed for their needs, and they lived very much where they pleased.
We know these things, but few remember that at that very time a gentle beseeching voice was heard every evening in the streets and squares of Venice, crying out ‘Pity, pity!’ It was the voice of a poor monk slowly pursuing his way under the balconies of the great palaces, and through the narrower ways where the rich middle class had chosen its abode, for ever asking alms for the poor little children whom he found nightly thrust out, new-born, to die in the streets before morning, even as is done to this day in China. And though it was Venice that cast her children out to perish thus, yet Venice poured alms into the poor monk’s hands so abundantly that his labours prospered beyond his highest hopes. A lady of the Delfini family gave him no less than seventeen houses for his foundlings, and yet these were not enough; he appealed to the government for more room; and this same government, which seems in our view of its history to be for ever deep in politics, in commerce, and above all in spying upon its own citizens, answered Fra Pieruzzo della Pietà, as the monk was called, with a decree that has a very human and tender note in it. It was declared therein that the little foundlings should bring blessings and fortune to all honest people who would offer them a home; and whosoever adopted one of the children was thereby freely licensed to open a shop or to exchange a mean and vulgar occupation for one of the nobler arts. Besides this, the State settled upon
the Hospice of the Pietà one-half of the fines imposed upon blasphemers, which amounted to a very large sum.
The religious spirit of Venice in the thirteenth century is reflected not only in the public charities of the times, but also in the legends that have come down to us, founded on some small original basis of truth, concrete or abstract. There is one in particular which it is impossible to overlook, though it has been told by many writers of all nations during many hundred years. I mean the story of the little Countess Tagliapietra.
In the year 1288 a noble couple dwelt in their palace, not far from the home of Bajamonte Tiepolo, the great conspirator, in the central parish of Saint Agostino, which is one of those most cut up by the numberless lanes and canals which cross it in all directions. It pleased heaven to send a little girl child to Count Pier Nicola Tagliapietra and his wife Elena, one only, but she was of such exquisite beauty and rare loveliness of character that her parents esteemed themselves more blessed than those who could boast often stalwart sons. From her earliest years the child seemed destined to saintliness, and her chiefest pleasure was to follow her mother to church, for in the thirteenth century it had not yet become the custom to keep girls closely shut up at home from year’s end to year’s end.
The title of Countess was unheard of in Venice at that time, and yet every account of the legend assigns it to the little saint. Her favourite church was that of San Maurizio, and the little Countess seized every possible occasion for going there; sometimes she even went alone, for every one knew her, and she was perfectly safe in the streets; but in order to get there she was obliged to cross the canal in a boat—gondolas did not exist in that day. Now her father entertained ambitious projects for the marriage of his only daughter; and from having been at first merely surprised by her extreme devoutness, he now became seriously anxious for her future, and forbade the child to go to church except on feast-days and with her mother. She replied with quiet decision that he had no right to impose such a sacrifice upon her, and she continued going to San Maurizio every day. Her father did not wish to seem harsh or unkind, and he imagined that he could gain his end by simply forbidding the boatmen to take her across the canal. Having done so, and having doubtless enforced his wishes by giving the men money, Pier Nicola felt perfectly at ease, for he could not see that the girl had any chance of getting to San Maurizio without a boat.
On the following morning she went down to the ‘traghetto’ as usual, and called to one of the boatmen. One after the other they all refused to take her over, explaining that they were acting under her father’s orders. The little girl looked at them all sweetly with deep and innocent eyes; then, without the least hesitation, she took off her little apron, spread it upon the smooth water of the canal, and stepped upon it securely as if it had been the largest of the boats.
It not only carried her weight, but began to move of its own accord, and bore her swiftly across to the opposite bank; and when the boatmen and those who passed by saw what was done they raised a loud cry and praised God for the miracle they had seen, and it was noised abroad throughout all the city.
The first consequence seems to have been that a vast number of very eligible noble youths asked for the young saint in marriage, and her father had only to choose amongst so many brilliant matches the one best suited to his taste; but the child steadfastly refused matrimony, and declared that she would never live in the world. As she grew older it became harder and harder to sustain the struggle, and at the age of twenty she daily implored God to deliver her from this wicked world. And so, indeed, it pleased heaven, for she departed this life on the Feast of All Saints, in the year 1308. The whole city followed her to the grave, numberless wax candles were lit before her tomb, and no man dared to extinguish them. Is not the voice of the people the voice of God? The clergy would not interfere, and from the day of her death the little Countess received the title of Beata, and the church of San Vito, where she was buried, became the goal of constant pilgrimages. It was not until the sixteenth century that the Church interfered to put limits to a veneration which had degenerated to a superstition. It was no longer enough to invoke the prayers and aid of the blessed little Countess; it had become the custom to open her coffin at stated intervals, and mothers laid their infant children upon her bones to preserve them from the danger of drowning.
But now the sepulchre was sealed, the little Countess was officially admitted to be a saint, and those who should dare to profane her relics with any superstitious practice were threatened with immediate excommunication.
Another legend, of a slightly later date, has been gloriously handed down to us by the genius of Paris
Bordone. On the fifteenth of February 1340 a terrific storm burst upon the lagoons, lashing the shallow water into foam and howling through the narrow canals and dark byways of the city. It was late at night when a poor fisherman, who had narrowly escaped destruction, ran in and began to moor his boat. He had not finished when three venerable old men, of majestic countenance, suddenly appeared out of the darkness and earnestly begged him to take them across the lagoon in the teeth of the gale. The fisherman hesitated, and was on the point of refusing a request which seemed most unreasonable; but there was something in the faces, in the manner, gestures, and tone of the three which imposed itself upon him in spite of himself. They entered the stern of the fishing boat, and he shoved off into the rough water, which was close at hand. The wind howled, the frail skiff rocked as if she would capsize, the salt spray blinded the poor man as he stood up and bent to his oars in the Italian fashion, but the presence of the three venerable strangers gave him superhuman strength to go on.
They were already far out upon the seething water when an appalling vision burst upon his sight. In the heart of a black squall a great barge full of fire came flying towards the city, and the fire was full of demons, and fiery fiends swung red-hot oars that hissed each time they dipped into the water. The poor fisherman gave himself up for lost and fell upon his knees, but behind him in the stern of the boat the three majestic passengers stood upright and made the sign of the cross with wide and potent gestures; and suddenly the fiery barge stood still as if she had struck a rock and was thrown into the air, and turning upside down fell with all her fiery crew hissing into the raging sea, and all was dark, and suddenly the storm subsided and the moon shone out between the clouds as on a summer’s night.