Venetians

by Paul Strathern

  This may have disposed of a potential Neapolitan claim to Cyprus, at least for the time being, but the Venetian takeover of the island remained under threat from the deposed Queen Charlotte, who was backed by the pope and other powerful anti-Venetian Italian allies. In 1472 Charlotte’s husband Louis of Savoy had died at Geneva, and from then on her health began to deteriorate, largely owing to the decadent and extravagant lifestyle she pursued in Rome, where she lived under the protection of Innocent VIII. The ailing forty-four-year-old Charlotte had finally died in 1487, but not before bequeathing the sovereignty of Cyprus to the House of Savoy, so that her husband’s family could continue to lay rightful claim to the island throne, which had remained an obsession ever since she had been deposed. To emphasise this point, Innocent VIII ordered that her remains be buried in the Chapel of St Andrew within St Peter’s in Rome, and on her tomb was inscribed the legend Karlota Hierusalem Cipri et Armenia Regina (‘Charlotte, Queen of Jerusalem, Cyprus and Armenia’). The claims of the Savoys would persist in the background for many years.

  However, during the 1480s a more serious threat to Venetian control of the island now came from the new Ottoman sultan Bejazit II, who gave every indication of wishing to expand his empire further east along the Anatolian shoreline through the former Armenian kingdom of Cilicia and into Syria, with the ultimate aim of conquering Egypt. However, on the few occasions when the Ottoman fleet moved to invade Cyprus from its ports on the Anatolian coast just fifty miles away, it was quickly put to flight by the superior power of the Venetian galleys, which maintained a constant patrol between the northern coast of the island and the mainland. The Venetians had commenced a comprehensive strengthening of the defences around the island’s coast, reinforcing the many castles that guarded the ports and employing some of the finest military engineers in Italy for this task. There has long been a legend that Leonardo da Vinci, himself a renowned military architect by this time, was amongst those who contributed to this task. Indeed, there are several indications that Leonardo’s visit may be more than just a legend. The renowned Leonardo historian Jean Paul Richter acknowledges that ‘between the years of 1481 and 1487 there are unexplained gaps in the chronology’. It seems likely that Leonardo travelled and even visited foreign lands. In his various notebooks there are several passages describing ‘The Levant’. Some of them are recognisably second-hand information, others are indisputably imaginary, but several have an unmistakably authentic ring. A notebook in the Royal Library at Windsor explicitly describes how ‘departing south from the coast of Cilicia, the beauties of the island of Cyprus hove into view’. Indicating that he may well have travelled around at least part of the island’s coastal defences, he describes the many wrecks littering the northern shoreline:

  How many vessels have been sunk, how many there are that have been broken on these rocks. Here you can see countless wrecked barques, many crushed on the rocks, others half covered with sand, some broken in two, with only the poop or the prow visible, while others are reduced to just a keel or ribs.

  There is no questioning the vividness of this account, which is reinforced by a sketch labelled ‘A Temple of Aphrodite’, many of which are to be found on the island with which she is so famously associated. Moreover, Leonardo is known to have had connections with the city of Venice, especially in a military capacity, so there is a possibility that he may have helped with the reinforcement work. On the other hand, his descriptions of Cyprus make no mention of castles or defences, though it is of course possible that these are amongst his notebooks that are known to have been lost.

  Despite Egypt’s support for Venice, as it continued to resist Ottoman attempts on Cyprus and thus established an effective buffer zone between the Turks and their Egyptian goal, the Sultan of Egypt’s attitude towards his allies remained ambivalent. He allowed Rizzo di Marino to continue living in Egypt and plotting on behalf of the Neapolitan claim to Cyprus. And in 1488 Rizzo duly hatched what, on the face of it, was an even more spectacular plan. Queen Caterina’s faithful lady-in-waiting Vera de Giblet happened to be the sister of Rizzo’s great friend Tristan de Giblet, who had also taken part in the failed coup led by Archbishop Fabregues. He too had managed to escape, and had eventually joined up again with Rizzo in Egypt. By means of smuggled letters from her brother, Vera was persuaded to encourage Queen Caterina to seek another husband. This proved to be an easy task, as Caterina was longing to find release from her solitary confinement, which by now had lasted well over a decade and had reduced her to a state of almost permanent depression. She confessed to Vera that above all else she longed for a husband who would be her lover, her companion and her protector. Initially Vera began heartening her mistress by reading her love sonnets; then, on the instigation of her brother Tristan, she informed Caterina that none other than Alfonzo of Aragon, the son of Ferrante I of Naples, had let it be known that he wished to have Caterina as his bride. By any standards, this appeared unlikely. Caterina was now thirty-four years old and beginning to show her age: judging from later portraits, the young fresh-faced queen was no longer in the first flush of youth and had grown a little plump. On the other hand, Alonzo of Aragon was just twenty-four years old and had continued to live in Egypt, where he had taken up residence in cosmopolitan Alexandria and now ‘gave himself up to the pleasures of the town’. Despite Caterina’s romantic delusions, any such arranged marriage between the Neapolitan rake and the ageing Venetian lady would have been a mainly political union.

  Still, Vera de Giblet’s stories of her prospective fiancé had quite won over Queen Caterina, who viewed her coming marriage with heartfelt anticipation. At last she would have someone at her side who would be able to stand up against the Venetian interference in her realm. Vera’s brother now sent a letter warning her that there was a possibility the Venetians were aware of their plan. (Ironically, this may have been the information that confirmed for the Council of Ten what had until then appeared to them a preposterous rumour.) In fear of her life, Vera de Giblet fled immediately, taking ship for Rhodes, which was at the time ruled by the former Crusading order now known as the Knights of Rhodes and thus lay beyond Venetian jurisdiction. Back in Egypt, neither Rizzo di Marino nor Tristan de Giblet appeared unduly worried that the Venetians were now cogniscant of their plan. Indeed, the evidence (such as it is) indicates that they may even have decided to leave for Rhodes themselves, with the intention of making contact with the Venetian representative there, so that arrangements could be made for the marriage. Possibly with this in mind, yet maintaining a certain amount of secrecy, they hired a French barque at the more remote port of Damietta on the Nile delta, ordering the captain to make preparations for a long voyage to an unknown destination. They then set sail north-east, in the direction of Rhodes. However, after several days at sea the captain was ordered to change course and head west for Cyprus. The French barque eventually made landfall at the remote north-western tip of Cyprus, where Rizzo di Marino and Tristan de Giblet asked to be put ashore, together with their two servants, informing the captain that they would return in four days, when they would light a fire on the beach as a signal for him to send a boat to pick them up.

  It has been speculated that Rizzo and Tristan were so blasé concerning their supposed mission to Rhodes that their intention was to undertake a short hunting trip, during which they would visit the famous Fontana Amorosa (Fountain of Love), a spring whose crystal-clear waters were said to have been blessed by the Ancient Greek goddess Aphrodite and were renowned as a love-potion. At the time it appeared far more likely that they intended to make contact with leaders of the patriotic Cypriots, both ancient Venetian gentry and indigenous Greek, who had joined the cause with the aim of putting an end to Venetian rule of their island.

  The waters off northern Cyprus were constantly patrolled by Venetian naval vessels, which had already forced the Ottomans to abort more than one serious attempt to invade the island. Inevitably, the sight of a French barque sailing off the north-western coast imme
diately raised suspicions. The barque was approached and boarded by a Venetian galley, and its captain was interrogated under threat of being sentenced to death for spying. He quickly confessed that he had been hired by Rizzo di Marino and Tristan de Giblet and was awaiting their return. Four nights later, a fire was spotted on the beach, and the captain sent a boat to collect them. The moment they stepped aboard the barque, Rizzo and Tristan were clapped in irons by the waiting Venetians, whose galley immediately set out to transport its important prisoners to Venice. With a blend of bravado and half-truth Rizzo protested that he was acting as an envoy of Sultan Qaitbay of Egypt, but Tristan knew there could be no denying the involvement of his sister in the plot. Rather than face torture in Venice, he swallowed a phial of poison that he had secreted in a ring, and was found to be dead by the time the galley entered the Adriatic.

  The galley reached Venice on 14 October 1488, and Rizzo di Marino was brought ashore in chains and escorted under armed guard to a solitary dungeon in the Doge’s Palace, all the while protesting that this was a violation of his diplomatic status. As it was, papers found in Rizzo di Marino’s possession gave the Council of Ten cause for thought. His close friendship with Sultan Qaitbay was well known, and Venice had every reason not to disturb its close relationship with Egypt, upon which the large majority of its oriental trade now depended. The papers found on Rizzo made the Council of Ten suspect that Sultan Qaitbay may well have known of the plot, and may have looked with favour upon a marriage between Queen Caterina and Alonzo of Aragon. This would have brought him another powerful and much-needed ally in his defence against the invading Ottomans.

  The Venetians urgently needed to get to the bottom of this matter. The Council of Ten set up a four-man tribunal to try Rizzo, with permission to torture him if this became necessary to extract the truth concerning his mission. There were three traditional methods of torture at the tribunal’s disposal: the thumbscrew, plucking out pieces of skin from the body with red-hot pliers, and finally the rack. The torture yielded astonishing results: Rizzo made the amazing confession that during his four days ashore in Cyprus he had made personal contact with Queen Caterina, informing her of Alonzo of Aragon’s presence in Egypt and his willingness to marry her. Yet even in his extremity Rizzo insisted this was no secret plan initiated by himself and de Giblet under orders from Naples. Such a mission could only have been carried out under the auspices of Sultan Qaitbay. Rizzo was no spy: indeed, he was no mere diplomatic envoy; instead he had the status of a royal representative carrying a personal message between the monarchs of two independent countries. Likewise, he insisted that he was working in the interests of Venice as well as Naples. The torture tribunal dragged on, without reaching any final conclusion, and Rizzo was returned to his isolated dungeon. Indeed, none but the Council of Ten even spoke of his presence in Venice. The captain and crew of the galley that had brought him to Venice had been sworn to secrecy before being despatched back to sea.

  The fact is, the Council of Ten remained unsure what to do with Rizzo. They knew him for the treacherous rogue he was. At the same time, they knew that until his capture he had remained in close communication with Sultan Qaitbay, and so they had to tread carefully.

  Many months of deliberation followed, during which all aspects of Venetian foreign policy and commercial interest were debated in the light of the information gained from Rizzo, who meanwhile languished in the dank pestilential limbo of his secret cell. Finally, on 13 May 1489, an order was signed for Rizzo’s execution: death by hanging, to be carried out within three days. Yet this was not carried out: the Council of Ten had their own devious plans. Instead, news was leaked that Rizzo had committed suicide, the implication being that this had happened after he had been taken into custody by the Venetian authorities. No other details were forthcoming: why this had happened, whether it had happened recently, precisely where or how it had happened – all remained mysterious and unknown. The Council of Ten then waited for this information to reach Egypt, so that they could judge Sultan Qaitbay’s reaction. Should the sultan express outrage that his envoy had been forced to this extremity, or indeed suspect that Rizzo had been murdered on Venetian orders, then Rizzo could quietly be released and shown to be alive. Stories of his mistreatment could easily be denied, shown to be lies prompted by anti-Venetian sentiment. The Venetian administration was not known for its precipitate action in such matters. In 1491, after two long years and no significant reaction from the sultan, the Council of Ten at last considered that it was safe to execute Rizzo di Marino, who immediately demanded that, owing to his status, he wished to exercise his traditional right to be hanged publicly between the two columns on the Piazzetta outside the Doge’s Palace.

  The Council of Ten at once ruled against this: not only would it give the lie to the rumour of Rizzo’s suicide, but it might also give him the opportunity to reveal to the watching crowd certain compromising information or even dangerous state secrets. Instead, it was decided that just as he had been detained in circumstances of the utmost secrecy, so he would be executed. At dead of night Rizzo di Marino was led from his cramped cell, devoid of any means of identification: barefoot and clad only in a full-length cloth garment, with a hood over his head. This anonymous figure was hustled into the Armoury and was stood on a wooden bench, with a rope around his neck attached to a beam. The bench was then kicked from beneath his feet and he was left to hang. By now, all others had left the room apart from a single designated witness. Should news of Rizzo’s murder somehow leak out (as was so often the case in clandestine Venice, despite the utmost secrecy), the Council of Ten could deny any knowledge of what had happened, placing all blame on the hapless witness who had been designated to be present at this event, and naming him as Rizzo’s murderer. When Rizzo’s hooded, shrouded cadaver was cut down, it was then sewn into a sack and rowed across the darkness of the lagoon to the island of Murano. Here the monks of San Cristoforo were ordered to bury the unknown body in an unmarked grave within the confines of their enclosed monastery, and were sworn to secrecy. Such meticulous concealment ensured that the larger-than-life figure of Rizzo di Marino simply disappeared from history – to such an extent that even the sixteenth-century Cypriot scholar Flori Buston declared in his celebrated history of the island that, after leaving Egypt sometime in the late 1480s, nothing was ever again heard of Rizzo di Marino.

  Back in late 1488, the fate of the leading figure in this drama had also been decided. Somehow Queen Caterina would also have to cease to exist – though not perhaps in the vicious manner planned for Rizzo. As long as she remained queen, unmarried and of child-bearing age, there remained the possibility that Cyprus would be snatched from Venice’s grasp. She would have to be persuaded to abdicate; this would leave the Venetians as de facto rulers of the island, a situation that Sultan Qaitbay would certainly accept. Cyprus could then to all intents and purposes become part of the Venetian Empire, with direct rule openly imposed from Venice itself. However, what if Queen Caterina chose not to abdicate? Her antipathy towards Venice was now an open secret, yet there was no question of deposing her by force. Sultan Qaitbay would be justified in viewing as an aggressive act any direct action against the ruler of what was, after all, an Egyptian tributary state. Venetian trade to Egypt would then in all likelihood be banned, leaving this lucrative route open to her Italian rivals. At the same time the sultan would also doubtless appeal to Naples, as well as all the other Italian states that continued to resent Venice, to form an alliance to protect him from the expanding Ottomans. Venice would thus at one fell swoop be deprived of her most lucrative trade route and left in a state of dangerous isolation. It was imperative that Queen Caterina was persuaded to abdicate, and as soon as possible.

  The Council of Ten decided to despatch an official diplomatic delegation led by the new captain-general, Francesco Priuli. This would travel first to Cyprus to meet Queen Caterina, and then on to Egypt to seek audience with Sultan Qaitbay. Priuli would carry with him a letter (alre
ady dictated by the Council of Ten) in which Caterina confessed to the sultan that she felt so threatened by recent events that she had begged the Venetian authorities to allow her to return to her homeland. She wished to abdicate and allow the Republic to take over responsibility for the protection of Cyprus. The Venetians had assured her that they would continue to maintain the island precisely as it had been under her reign, and would of course resume paying the annual tribute of 8,000 ducats which the sultan had so generously suspended for the previous two years. Only after Queen Caterina had signed this ‘letter’ and abdicated was Priuli to continue on to Egypt to present Sultan Qaitbay with what appeared to be an amicable fait accompli, which he would certainly accept.

  When Captain-General Priuli landed in Cyprus on 14 January 1489 he was under no illusions as to the difficulty of his task, and in order to help persuade Queen Caterina to abdicate he had brought along with him her brother, Giorgio Cornaro. Caterina was so overcome with emotion when she first saw Giorgio after so many years that she rushed forward and embraced him. She was under the misapprehension that he had come to Cyprus to protect her. Only when they retired alone to her private chamber did he reveal the true purpose of his visit: to facilitate the plan for her abdication.

  Owing to the presence of the Venetian delegation listening at the door as Giorgio attempted to persuade his sister, there remains a detailed report of their conversation, which was later included in a diplomatic despatch back to Venice. The conversation was emotional and continued for some time, raging back and forth; yet its salient points are easily outlined. In his attempt to win her over to the Venetian plan, Giorgio opened by appealing to his sister’s patriotism. But Caterina had now been sole ruling monarch of Cyprus for sixteen years, since the murder of her beloved husband, and for very obvious reasons now regarded herself as Cypriot rather than Venetian. She declared that she had no intention of abdicating voluntarily, and pleaded with her brother, ‘Are not my lords of Venice content to have their island when I am dead, that they would deprive me thus of what my husband left me?’ Giorgio persisted: if she abdicated, the Venetians had promised to reward her with a far less dangerous domain of her own. She would be granted her own large estate on the mainland, where she could hold court free from constraint; she could live in tranquillity and happiness, just as she wished, under the full protection of her country, which would reward her with a generous stipend commensurate with the magisterial services she had undertaken. Indeed, she would be able to live like a queen as she had never been able to live before. Yet still Caterina remained adamant.