Venetians

by Paul Strathern

  The Venetian Senate’s justification for this betrayal of an empire, of their religion and even of their own countrymen was summed up in an infamous public declaration of their present policy: ‘Siamo Veneziani, poi Cristiani’ (‘We are Venetians, then Christians’). From now on the Republic would pursue a foreign policy guided by commercial principles alone. In the Venetian imperial age, conscience would be utterly overruled by expediency.

  Despite Mehmet II’s contempt for such self-serving hypocrisy, he consented to open negotiations with ambassador Marcello, which dragged on for months on end. After a long process of cat-and-mouse, Mehmet eventually agreed in April 1454 to let the Venetians re-establish a trading colony in Constantinople, and the Senate appointed Marcello as its first resident bailo, a post accepted with some trepidation.

  But the Venetians had made an irreparable miscalculation. Their Levantine trade was no longer conducted in vitalising competition with their fellow city state, namely Genoa, nor was it able to take advantage of the ailing Byzantine Empire. Instead it was now wholly dependent upon the whim of the powerful and expansive Mehmet II, who soon made his position transparently clear. As early as 1458 the Venetian protectorate of the Duchy of Naxos (which included all the central Aegean islands of the Cyclades) was forced to become a tributary of the Ottoman Empire, and the following year the Turks took Tenedos. Four years years later the Ottomans seized the strategic Venetian colony of Argos in the eastern Peloponnese. The Venetian trading empire was now coming under increasing encroachment.

  * It is now known as Rumeli Hisan, meaning Roman castle, as it was built on the site of an ancient Roman fort; its impressive ruins still stand on the hillside overlooking the Bosphorus.

  * Often known simply as the 5th Military Gate. Confusingly, there was also a Civil Gate of San Romano half a mile or so to the south.

  * What we know as ‘Greek Fire’ was probably first concocted by alchemists in Constantinople in the seventh century. It was a particularly effective naval weapon and was used with great effect in the waters of the Bosphorus. Thought to have been a mixture of bitumen, petroleum and other inflammables, the liquid floated on the surface of the sea, could be ignited and remained alight even in fairly choppy seas, setting fire to any ships it came up against.

  * At this time a modest Venetian merchant could maintain his house, his family and his servants for around 200 ducats a year.

  † Some contemporary sources suggested that Halil Pasha, a man known for his tolerance of Christians, may in fact have been bribed by the Byzantines. Although this seems unlikely, such a story was soon being circulated by Halil Pasha’s enemies. In fact, his family had become inordinately powerful and rich in the service of the sultans, to the point where Halil Pasha was said to have been richer than the sultan himself. At any rate, a week after this council meeting Mehmet II had Halil Pasha executed and ordered his possessions to be seized.

  * According to the prevailing rules of war, such behaviour by the soldiery was condoned at the end of any siege in Europe and further afield. Customarily it was allowed to continue for three days – though in this case Mehmet II ordered an end to the looting after just one day.

  6

  Father and Son

  THE FALL OF Constantinople in 1453 emphasised the split between East and West, which had first come into being more than a thousand years previously when the Roman Empire had split in two, leading to the establishment of the (Byzantine) Orthodox Church and the (Roman) Catholic Church. Now this was to be replaced by the division between the Moslem East and the Christian West, which roughly followed the same tectonic fault-line through the Balkans, a feature that has continued to this day. Although it had been a long time coming, the final demise of Constantinople can be blamed on Venetian short-sightedness, prompted by what it saw as its own self-interest.

  Indicative of Venice’s moral malaise was the fact that Doge Francesco Foscari, elected despite Tomasso Mocenigo’s deathbed warning, had now been in office for thirty years, the longest any man had ever held this post. The administration was in a rut, and the Republic had now been at war almost continuously on the mainland since Foscari had become doge; financially the city’s coffers were drained, and its commerce with the eastern Mediterranean was severely reduced. From the very inception of Foscari’s rule, things had not augured well. He was the first doge to have secured his election by deception and widespread bribery. Such practices were not unknown in gaining the city’s highest office, but the choice of Foscari in 1423 was generally reckoned to have been the first in which fraudulence proved crucial. During his previous occupancy of the post of procurator, in charge of the city’s charitable fund for impoverished nobles, his scrutiny of the neglected accounts had uncovered an overlooked surplus of 30,000 ducats. This he had judiciously distributed amongst various noble families, thus ensuring their support when it came to the election. Even so, it was generally assumed that the popular Pietro Loredan would quickly emerge as victor amongst the list of candidates. However, Foscari’s supporters amongst the forty-one noble electors had secretly decided upon a deceptive strategy. During the early ballots they voted for a candidate whom they knew to be detested by Loredan’s supporters, causing them to vote for Loredan in order to exclude their bête noire. Then, on the tenth ballot, Foscari’s supporters suddenly switched their votes to their genuine choice, enabling him to secure more than the necessary twenty-five votes.

  The newly elected fifty-year-old Foscari was in fact a man of considerable intellect and ability – he had been a leader of the Council of Ten no fewer than three times. Mocenigo’s characterisation of him as an ‘arrogant windbag’ and an ‘impetuous rabble-rouser’ was mainly directed at his declared intention to pursue the ruinous war against Milan. Indeed, Foscari had soon fulfilled Mocenigo’s worst forebodings, launching into a long and expensive campaign in Lombardy. Meanwhile the Loredan family had not forgiven him for his deception, and swore to do all they could to oppose him.

  Foscari eventually attempted to heal this breach in the time-honoured fashion, by arranging a marriage between the two families. But during the engagement a dispute led to this being broken off, such that it only ended up making matters worse. Foscari was well aware of Pietro Loredan’s continuing popularity, which grew considerably after he led the Republic’s army to a crucial victory in the Po delta during the war. However, in 1439 Pietro fell ill and died under circumstances that were never fully explained. Opposition to Foscari had now lost its able and popular leader; and although there was no proof of Foscari’s involvement in Loredan’s death, many suspected that he had been poisoned at the doge’s behest.

  Foscari was now able to consolidate his position, and two years later arranged for his son Jacopo to be married to Lucrezia Contarini. This cemented an alliance with one of the most prestigious noble families: Foscari was the first of his family to become doge, whereas the Contarinis had already produced three doges. Foscari was determined that the marriage of his son should be remembered as a historic event, and despite the city’s straitened circumstances his extravagance ensured this would be so. His son Jacopo was also noted for his extravagance. Unlike the sons of most noble families of the period, Jacopo had not received a practical education in mercantile trading, but had been privately tutored in the new humanism by the Renaissance scholar Francesco Barbaro (a relative of Nicolò, the physician who would record the fall of Constantinople). Jacopo had studied Greek and Latin texts intended to instil in him an understanding of the nobility of the ancieńt philosophers and legislators. However, his education appears instead to have given him something of a superiority complex, and he soon joined a number of like-minded young nobles in a recently formed exclusive society known as the Campagna della Calza, whose members disported themselves in a uniform that consisted of calza (multicoloured stockings) and crimson velvet robes lined with silver brocade, and who rode horses clad in similar fashion attended by six liveried grooms.

  Whereas most sons of the nobility did not mar
ry until they were around thirty, Jacopo was probably little more than twenty at the time of his marriage, and the indications are that his bride was barely a teenager. Jacopo was Foscari’s sole surviving son, and the doge was determined to consolidate his family’s future prospects with the birth of grandsons during the course of his reign. No expense was to be spared on Jacopo’s wedding, and contemporary sources as well as Foscari’s own accounts indicate that he must have spent more than 20,000 ducats on gifts, jewellery and gowns for Lucrezia, which would have graced ‘any great queen’. The celebrations began on the last days of January 1441 and appear to have continued for well over a week of officially declared public holidays, during which widows were even forbidden to wear mourning dress.

  The festivities began with a grand procession around the Piazza San Marco, in which Jacopo rode on horseback escorted by a resplendent guard of his fellow members of the Compagna della Calza, followed by 200 men-at-arms and attendants. This proceeded through the streets to the Grand Canal near the church of San Samuele, where a bridge of boats had been built across the water to the San Barnaba district, where Lucrezia resided at the palazzo of her father, Leonardo Contarini.*

  This parade was followed by an itinerary of events, morning, noon and night, throughout the following week – the festivities often not coming to an end until three in the morning. On one notable occasion, after a grand midday banquet at the Doge’s Palace, 150 ladies-in-waiting accompanied by a band of musicians embarked upon the doge’s great golden barge, the Bucintoro, which was escorted down the Grand Canal by a host of smaller craft to San Barnaba, where Lucrezia made her way on board up the ceremonial gangway, accompanied by a further 200 ladies-in-waiting. Not a day passed without some grand ball, masque or musical serenade. Banquets were conspicuous for their extravagance – some were even held in the Great Council Chamber, lit with 120 torches (double the usual amount), and with ‘tables laden with only such fine delicacies as oyster, capons, partridges and peacocks, all served in such abundance that afterwards much of it was thrown away’.

  During the afternoons jousting contests between colourfully clad contestants were held in the Piazza San Marco; on one occasion no fewer than forty contestants competed for a prize of 120 ducats before a crowd of 30,000 spectators. Afterwards, at dusk, the piazza would be lit by hundreds of torches as the noble ladies in their finest gowns were serenaded on their way to yet another masked ball. The bride’s brother, Giacomo Contarini, proudly described Lucrezia’s various ballgowns and dresses, of which one was:

  a dress of gold brocade, whose long open sleeves lined with squirrel fur trailed behind her along the ground, as did the dress itself, which cost almost five thousand ducats. She also had a superb collection of jewellery including a particularly fine precious stone which she wore in her hair, a ruby, an emerald, a valuable diamond, as well as a diamond shoulder clasp, a pearl and a Balas-ruby worth 3,500 ducats. Besides this, she had a necklace which had been worn by the Queen of Cyprus, which was worth around 2,000 ducats, and many rings, amongst which were four with large rubies worth another 2,000 ducats.

  The insistence upon such items was typically Venetian: a commercial republic had no false modesty with regard to monetary value. On the contrary, Giacomo Contarini considered this a matter of pride, all the more honourable because these valuables were provided by the Contarini family, ‘who had no need to look to Monsignor il Doge for any assistance in that sort of way’. Likewise, he stressed that, as the bride’s family, the Contarini family hosted at least as many banquets as the doge, at which an abundance of nothing but the most fashionable dishes was served.

  All this took place in the middle of the long war with Milan – hence the marriage and its celebrations were held in January and early February, during the winter lull in the campaigning season. And despite the city’s near-bankruptcy, all the indications are that these celebrations were popular. They were certainly well attended: 30,000 spectators at a jousting competition represented almost one-third of the city’s entire population, and that on a chilly winter’s afternoon. Indeed, the daytime temperature is unlikely to have risen much above 45°F (7°C), while it may well have fallen below freezing at night; and contemporary sources mention some events being postponed because of heavy rain. Yet the Venetian poor and artisan classes would for the most part have delighted in such a prolonged holiday of free entertainments, with tables of free food and wine customarily laid out in front of the major palazzi (to say nothing of leftovers from the feasts at the Doge’s Palace); and even the merchants and all but a few of the noble families are known to have taken pride in these events, which reflected well upon the Republic. This was a matter of patriotism: no other city in Italy, or even Europe, could have staged such a display at this time. And the doge took much of the credit. Despite his enemies, Francesco Foscari had by this point been doge for eighteen years, achieving a venerable stature approaching that of the nineteen-year reign of his predecessor, Tommaso Mocenigo.

  Yet his son was another matter. During the years following his marriage Jacopo’s extravagance plunged him deep into debt. As a result he began trading on his father’s position, covertly accepting bribes in order to use his influence in the awarding of well-paid public appointments. On 17 February 1445, word of this finally reached the Council of Ten, one of whose leaders happened to be a close relative of the late Pietro Loredan.

  The Council of Ten moved swiftly, secretly apprehending Jacopo’s manservant Gasparo and taking him into custody for questioning. As a result of evidence gained from Gasparo, a warrant was issued the next day for Jacopo’s arrest. But by now he had got wind of what was happening, quickly gathered up all the loose money he had to hand and fled aboard a fast galley fifty miles up the coast to the port of Trieste, which lay beyond the jurisdiction of Venice.

  In view of the seriousness of the matter, the Council of Ten augmented itself with senior nobles to form a zonta, from which the doge was excluded, however, on account of his evident family interest. This created a significant precedent limiting the doge’s power and influence, and acted as a crucial counterbalance to the increasing autonomy that Foscari had begun to exercise as doge. Jacopo Foscari was duly tried in his absence, and when his servants were questioned they revealed the existence of a chest that he kept in the Doge’s Palace, in which were gifts that he had been given as bribes, as well as incriminating documents. Jacopo was found guilty of corruption and duly sentenced in his absence to banishment for life to the Venetian colony of Nauplia in the eastern Peloponnese. Whereupon a galley under the command of Marco Trevisano was despatched to Trieste to serve an arrest warrant on Jacopo and escort him to Greece. But Trevisano was obliged to report back to Venice: ‘I went to see my Lord Jacopo, but he rejected the warrant with disrespectful contempt, refusing point blank to allow me to convey him into exile.’ There was little the authorities in Venice could do, other than seize what remained of Jacopo’s possessions and declare him an outlaw.

  And so the stand-off continued, with seemingly no prospect of resolution. Then in the autumn of 1446 news reached Venice that Jacopo had fallen seriously ill. Distressed at this turn of events, his mother the dogaressa begged to be allowed to visit him, but this was refused. It soon became clear that the seventy-four-year-old doge had been extremely upset by these developments, to the point where he was having great difficulty in fulfilling his duties. Out of respect for Foscari senior, Jacopo’s sentence was rescinded by the Council of Ten in November 1446 and he was allowed to return to the Republic, on condition that he lived on the mainland at Treviso and returned anything left of the bribes he had taken.

  Jacopo duly returned and took up residence at his country home on the outskirts of Treviso. But the enemies of the Foscari family were none too pleased at this leniency, and it is probably no coincidence that some months later further incriminating evidence against Jacopo ‘accidentally’ came to light. A chest containing some 2,040 ducats, along with silver plate and other valuables, was discovered in
an obscure closet at the Doge’s Palace. It was soon confirmed that this constituted a bribe given to Jacopo by the Tuscan-born condottiere Francesco Sforza, who had been lured by Venice to command its forces on the mainland against his former employer, Milan. This represented a serious development: acceptance of gifts from foreign nationals, even if they were in the employ of the Republic, was a treasonable offence. And it now became clear that the doge himself must have known of the existence of this hidden cache. After prolonged discussions, in April 1447 the Council of Ten narrowly voted that the chest should be impounded by the authorities, but that no further action should be taken against either Jacopo or his ailing father. For the good of the Republic, the venerable doge was to be permitted to serve out his term free from disgrace.

  Yet such sentiments did not take into account Jacopo’s bitterness at his fall from grace. On the night of 5 December 1450, Ermolao Donato, a member of the Council of Ten, was waylaid in an alleyway and stabbed by an unknown assailant as he was returning to his home from a meeting of the Senate. Two days later he died from his wounds. Donato had been one of the leaders of the Council of Ten at the time of Jacopo Foscari’s trial; yet it was known that he had also recently made other enemies and these were soon hunted down. Despite persistent interrogation, none of these suspects confessed, and all were released. Consequently a reward was offered for information leading to the apprehension of the true culprit.