by Will Durant
Agriculture was almost unknown in Venice, but handicrafts were highly developed, for Venice had imported from the old cities of the Eastern Mediterranean arts and crafts half submerged by political upheavals in the West. Venetian products in iron, brass, glass, gold cloth, and silk were renowned in three continents. The building of boats for pleasure, commerce, or war was probably the greatest of Venetian industries; it reached a capitalistic stage of mass labor and corporate finance, and almost a socialistic stage through control by its chief client, the state. Picturesque galleys with lofty prows, painted sails, and as many as 180 oars bound Venice with Constantinople, Tyre, Alexandria, Lisbon, London, and a score of other cities in a golden chain of ports and trade. Goods from the valley of the Po came to Venice to be reshipped; the products of the Rhine cities came over the Alps to spread out from her quays to the Mediterranean world; the Rialto became the busiest thoroughfare in Europe, crowded with merchants, sailors, and bankers from a hundred lands. The wealth of the North could not compare with the opulence of a city where everything was geared to commerce and finance, and where one ship sent to Alexandria and back brought 1000 per cent on the investment—if it encountered no enemy, pirate, or destructive storm.11 In the thirteenth century Venice was the richest city in Europe, equaled perhaps only by those Chinese cities that her Marco Polo incredibly described.
Faith declines as wealth increases. The Venetians made much use of religion in government, and consoled the voteless with processions and paradise; but the ruling classes rarely allowed Christianity, or excommunication, to interfere with business or war. Siamo Veneziani, poi Cristiani, ran their motto: “We are Venetians; after that we are Christians.”12 Ecclesiastics were excluded from any share in the government.13 Venetian merchants sold arms and slaves, and sometimes gave military intelligence, to Moslems at war with Christians,14 A certain liberality went with this broad-minded venality: Moslems might come safely to Venice; and the Jews—especially in the Giudecca on the island of Spinalunga—might worship peacefully in their synagogues.
Dante denounced the “unbridled lasciviousness” of the Venetians,15 but we must not trust the strictures of one who cursed so ecumenically. More significant are the severe penalties prescribed in Venetian law for parents who prostituted their children, or the vainly repeated laws to check electoral corruption.16 The impression we get is of a hard and brilliant aristocracy stoically resigned to the poverty of the masses, and a populace solacing poverty with the uncornered joys of love. As early as 1094 we hear of the Carnival; in 1228 the first mention of masks; in 1296 the Senate made the last day before Lent (the French mardi gras) a public holiday. On such occasions both sexes flaunted their most expensive finery. Rich ladies crowned themselves with jeweled tiaras or hoods, or turbans woven with cloth of gold; their eyes gleamed through veils of gold or silver web; their necks held strings of pearls; their hands were gloved with chamois or silk; their feet were shod with sandals or shoes of leather, wood, or cork, embroidered in red and gold; their gowns were of fine linen, silk, or brocade, sprinkled with gems, and cut low in the neck to the scandal and fascination of their times. They wore false hair, they painted and powdered, they laced and fasted to be slim.17 They moved freely in public at any time, joined with shy allure in pleasure parties and gondola escapades, and listened willingly to troubadours importing Provence modes of song for the eternal themes of love.
The Venetians did not, in this period, go in for culture. They had a good public library, but seem to have made little use of it. No contributions to learning, no lasting poetry, appeared amid this unrivaled wealth. Schools were numerous in the thirteenth century, and we hear of private and state scholarships for poor students; but as late as the fourteenth century there were Venetian judges who could not read.18 Music was held in high esteem. Art was not yet the superb coloratura of later days; but wealth was bringing to Venice the art of many lands, taste was growing, the foundation was being laid, and old Roman skills survived, above all in glass.
We must not picture the Venice of that age as quite so lovely as Wagner or Nietzsche found it in the nineteenth century. Houses were of wood, and streets were simple earth; the Piazza di San Marco, however, was paved with brick in 1172, and the pigeons were there as early as 1256. Pretty bridges began to curve over the canals, and over the Grand Canal the traghetti already ferried many passengers. The side canals were probably less malodorous then than now, for time is needed for any full ripening. But no faults of street or stream could close the soul to the grandeur of a city lifting itself up, century by century, out of the marshes and mists of the lagoons; or the wonder of a people rising out of desolation and isolation to cover the sea with its ships, and levy tribute of wealth and beauty upon half the world.
Between Venice and the Alps lay the city and March of Treviso, of which we shall note only that its people so loved life that it won the name of Marca amorosa or gioiosa. In 1214, we are told, the city celebrated the festival of the Castello d’amore: a wooden castle was set up, and hung with carpets, drapes, and garlands; pretty Trevisan women held it, armed with scented water, fruit, and flowers; youthful cavaliers from Venice competed with gay blades from Padua in besieging the ladies, bombarding them with like weapons; the Venetians, they say, won the day by mingling ducats with their flowers; in any case the castle and its fair defenders fell.19
IV. FROM MANTUA TO GENOA
West of the Veneto the famous cities of Lombardy ruled the plains between the Po and the Alps: Mantua, Cremona, Brescia, Bergamo, Como, Milan, Pavia. South of the Po, in what is now Emilia, were Modena, Reggio, Parma, Piacenza; lovers of Italy will not resent these sonorous litanies. Between Lombardy and France the province of Piedmont enclosed Vercelli and Turin; and south of these Liguria bent around the gulf and city of Genoa. The wealth of the region was the gift of the Po, which crossed the peninsula from west to east, carrying the commerce, filling the canals, watering the fields. The growth of industry and trade gave these cities the wealth and pride that enabled them generally to ignore their nominal sovereign, the German emperor, and to subdue the semifeudal lords of their hinterland.
Usually a cathedral stood at the center of these Italian towns, to brighten life with the drama of devotion and the spur of hope; near it a baptistery to mark the entry of the child into the privileges and responsibilities of Christian citizenship, and a campanile to sound the call to worship, assembly, or arms. In the neighboring piazza or public square peasants and craftsmen offered their products, actors, acrobats, and minstrels performed, heralds cried their proclamations, citizens chatted after Sunday Mass, and youths or knights engaged in sports or tournaments. A town hall, some shops, some houses or tenements helped to form a guard of brick around the square. From this center ran the crooked, winding, climbing streets, so narrow that when a cart or horseman passed, the pedestrians dodged into a doorway or flattened themselves against a wall. As the thirteenth century progressed and wealth grew, the stucco houses were roofed with red tiles, making a pic turesque pattern for those who could forget the odors and the mud. Only a few streets, and the central square, were paved. Around the city ran a towered and battlemented wall, for war was frequent, and a man had to know how to fight if he cared to be other than a monk.
The greatest of these cities were Genoa and Milan. Genoa—la superba, its lovers called it—was perfectly placed for business and pleasure, rising on a hill before a sea that invited commerce, and sharing in the warm climate of a Riviera that reached out to Rapallo on the east and San Remo on the west. Already a busy port in Roman days, Genoa developed a population of merchants, manufacturers, bankers, shipwrights, sailors, soldiers, and politicians. Genoese engineers brought in clear water from the Ligurian Alps by an aqueduct worthy of ancient Rome, and raised a gigantic mole out in the bay to give her great harbor security in storm and war. Like the Venetians of this epoch, the Genoese cared little for letters or art; they spent themselves in conquering competitors and exploring new avenues for gain. The Bank of Geno
a was almost the state; it lent money to the city on condition of collecting the municipal revenue; through this power it dominated the government, and every party that came into office had to pledge loyalty to the Bank.20 But the Genoese were as brave as they were acquisitive. They cooperated with Pisa to sweep the Saracens from the Western Mediterranean (1015–1113), and then fought Pisa intermittently until they shattered their rival’s power in the naval battle of Meloria (1284). For that last conflict Pisa called all men between the ages of twenty and sixty, Genoa all between eighteen and seventy; we may judge from this the spirit and passion of the age. “As there is a natural loathing between men and serpents,” wrote the monk Salimbene, “so is there between the Pisans and the Genoese, between the Pisans and the men of Lucca.”21 In that engagement off the coast of Corsica the men fought hand to hand until half the combatants were dead; “and there was such wailing in Genoa and Pisa as was never heard in those cities from their foundation to our times.”22 Learning of this disaster to Pisa, the good men of Lucca and Florence thought it an excellent time to send an expedition against that unfortunate city; but Pope Martin IV commanded them to stay their hands. Meanwhile the Genoese pushed into the East, and came into competition with the Venetians; and between these two rose the bitterest hatred of all. In 1255 they contested the possession of Acre; the Hospitalers fought on the side of Genoa, the Templars for Venice; in that battle alone 20,000 men fell;23 it destroyed Christian unity in Syria, and perhaps decided the failure of the Crusades. The struggle between Genoa and Venice continued till 1379, when the Genoese suffered at Chioggia the same culminating defeat that they had inflicted upon the Pisans a century before.
Of the Lombard cities Milan was the richest and most powerful. Once a Roman capital, she was proud of her age and her traditions; the consuls of her republic defied the emperors, her bishops defied the popes, her people shared or sheltered heresies that challenged Christianity itself. In the thirteenth century she had 200,000 inhabitants, 13,000 houses, 1000 taverns.24 Herself loving liberty, she did not willingly concede it to others; she patrolled the roads with her troops to force caravans, withersoever bound, to go to Milan first; she ruined Como and Lodi, and struggled to subjugate Pisa, Cremona, and Pavia; she could not rest until she controlled all the commerce of the Po.25 At the Diet of Constance in 1154 two citizens of Lodi appeared before Frederick Barbarossa and implored his protection for their town; the Emperor warned Milan to desist from her attempts upon Lodi; his message was rejected with scorn and trampled under foot; Frederick, eager to subdue Lombardy to imperial obedience, seized the opportunity to destroy Milan (1162). Five years later her survivors and friends had rebuilt the city, and all Lombardy rejoiced in her resurrection as a symbol of Italy’s resolve never to be ruled by a German king. Frederick yielded. But before he died he married his son Henry VI to Constance, daughter of Roger II of Sicily. In Henry’s son the Lombard League would find a more terrible Frederick.
V. FREDERICK II: 1194–1250
1. The Excommunicate Crusader
Constance was thirty when she married Henry, forty-two when she gave birth to her only child. Fearing doubts of her pregnancy and of her child’s legitimacy, she had a tent erected in the market place of Iesi (near Ancona); and there, in the sight of all, she was delivered of the boy who was to become the most fascinating figure of the culminating medieval century. In his veins the blood of the Norman kings of Italy merged with the blood of the Hohenstaufen emperors of Germany.
He was four when, at Palermo, he was crowned King of Sicily (1198). His father had died a year earlier, his mother died a year afterward. Her will besought Pope Innocent III to undertake the guardianship, education, and political protection of her son, and offered him in return a handsome stipend, and the regency and renewed suzerainty of Sicily. He accepted gladly, and used his position to end that union of Sicily with Germany which Frederick’s father had just achieved; the popes reasonably dreaded an empire that should encompass the Papal States on every side and in effect imprison and dominate the papacy. Innocent provided for Frederick’s education, but supported Otto IV for the German throne. Frederick grew up in neglect, sometimes in poverty, so that compassionate citizens of Palermo had on occasion to bring the royal gamin food.26 He was allowed to run free in the streets and markets of the polyglot capital, and to pick his associates wherever he pleased. He received no systematic education, but his avid mind learned from all that he heard or saw; the world would later marvel at the scope and detail of his knowledge. In those days and ways he acquired Arabic and Greek, and some of the lore of the Jews. He grew familiar with different peoples, garbs, customs, and faiths, and never quite lost his youthful habit of tolerance. He read many volumes of history. He became a good rider and fencer, and a lover of horses and hunting. He was short but strong, with “a fair and gracious countenance,”27 and long, red, curly hair; clever, positive, and proud. At twelve he dismissed Innocent’s deputy regent and took over the government; at fourteen he came of age; at fifteen he married Constance of Aragon, and set out to reclaim the imperial crown.
Fortune favored him, for a price. Otto IV had violated his agreement to respect the sovereignty of the Pope in the Papal States; Innocent excommunicated him, and ordered the barons and bishops of the Empire to elect as Emperor his young ward Frederick, “as old in wisdom as he is young in years.”28 But Innocent, so suddenly turning toward Frederick, did not veer from his purpose of protecting the papacy. As the price of his support he required from Frederick (1212) a pledge to continue tribute and fealty from Sicily to the popes; to guard the inviolability of the Papal States; to keep the “Two Sicilies”—Norman southern Italy and the island—perpetually separated from the Empire; to reside in Germany as Emperor and leave the Sicilies to his infant son Henry as King of Sicily under a regent to be appointed by Innocent; furthermore, Frederick bound himself to maintain all the powers of the clergy in his realm, to punish heretics, and to take the cross as a crusader. Financing his trip and retinue with money provided by the Pope, Frederick entered a Germany still held by Otto’s armies. But Otto was defeated by Philip Augustus at Bouvines; his resistance collapsed; and Frederick was crowned emperor in a splendid ceremony at Aachen (1215). There he solemnly renewed his pledge to undertake a crusade; and in the full enthusiasm of triumphant youth he won many princes to make the same vow. For a moment he seemed to Germany a God-sent David who would free David’s Jerusalem from the heirs of Saladin.
But delays ensued. Otto’s brother Henry raised an army to depose Frederick, and the new Pope, Honorius III, agreed that the young Emperor must defend his throne. Frederick overcame Henry, but meanwhile he became involved in imperial politics. Apparently he already longed for his native Italy; the heat and blood of the South were in his temperament, and Germany irked him; of his fifty-six years only eight were spent there. He granted large feudal powers to the barons, gave charters of self-government to several cities, and entrusted the government of Germany to Archbishop Engelbert of Cologne and Herman of Salza, the able Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights. Despite Frederick’s apparent negligence Germany enjoyed prosperity and peace during the thirty-five years of his reign. The barons and bishops were so satisfied with their absentee landlord that to please him they crowned his seven-year-old son Henry “King of the Romans”—i.e., heir to the imperial throne (1220). At the same time Frederick appointed himself regent of Sicily for Henry, who remained in Germany. This rather inverted the plans of Innocent, but Innocent was dead. Honorius yielded, and even crowned Frederick emperor at Rome, for he was anxious that Frederick should embark at once to rescue the Crusaders in Egypt. However, the barons in South Italy and the Saracens in Sicily staged a revolt; Frederick argued that he must restore order in his Italian realm before venturing on a long absence. Meanwhile (1222) his wife died. Hoping to prod him to fulfill his vow, Honorius persuaded him to marry Isabella, heiress to the lost kingdom of Jerusalem. Frederick complied (1225), and added the title of King of Jerusalem to those of
King of Sicily and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Trouble with the Lombard cities again delayed him. In 1227 Honorius died, and the stern Gregory IX ascended the papal throne. Frederick now prepared in earnest, built a great fleet, and gathered 40,000 crusaders at Brindisi. There a terrible plague broke out in his army. Thousands died, more thousands deserted. The Emperor himself, and his chief lieutenant, Louis of Thuringia, caught the infection. Nevertheless Frederick gave the order to sail. Louis died, and Frederick grew worse. His doctors, and the higher clergy who were with him, advised him to return to Italy. He did, and sought a cure at Pozzuoli. Pope Gregory, his patience exhausted, refused to hear the explanations of Frederick’s emissaries, and announced to the world the excommunication of the Emperor.
Seven months later, still excommunicate, Frederick set sail for Palestine (1228). On learning of his arrival in Syria, Gregory absolved the subjects of Frederick and his son Henry from their oaths of allegiance, and began negotiations to depose the Emperor. Taking these actions as a declaration of war, Frederick’s regent in Italy invaded the Papal States. Gregory retaliated by sending an army to invade Sicily; monks spread a rumor that Frederick was dead; and soon a large part of Sicily and southern Italy were in papal hands. Two Franciscan delegates of the Pope reached Acre soon after Frederick, and forbade any man in the Christian ranks to obey the excommunicate. The Saracen commander, al-Kamil, astonished to find a European ruler who understood Arabic and appreciated Arabic literature, science, and philosophy, made a favorable peace with Frederick, who now entered Jerusalem as a bloodless conqueror. As no clergyman would crown him King of Jerusalem, he crowned himself in the church of the Holy Sepulcher. The bishop of Caesarea, calling the shrine and city desecrated by Frederick’s presence, laid an interdict upon religious services in Jerusalem and Acre. Some Knights Templar, learning that Frederick planned to visit the reputed site of Christ’s baptism in the Jordan, sent secret word to al-Kamil, suggesting that here was a chance for the Sultan to capture the Emperor. The Moslem commander sent the letter to Frederick. To free Jerusalem from its interdict, the Emperor left it on the third day, and went to Acre. There, as he walked to his ship, the Christian populace bombarded him with filth.29