Venetians

by Paul Strathern

  It was at this point that Giorgio was forced to confront his sister with the ugly reality of the situation – for her, for Cyprus and even for himself. The waters around the coast were filled with Venetian ships, which would not hesitate to take over the island. And there was worse. With tears in his eyes, Giorgio pleaded with Caterina: the very honour of the Cornaro family was at stake. If she did not abdicate, the authorities had threatened that their ancient and noble family would be ruined. Her beloved father would be disgraced, and the entire family deprived not only of its wealth, but also its status and good name. A tradition of honour that had been built up over the centuries – one that included not only a doge but also many other holders of the highest offices in the city – would vanish from Venetian society. The power of the Council of Ten had now grown to such an extent that it was quite capable of enforcing such a decision, which would be to all extents and purposes incontestable. Venice may have remained a republic in name, but this was becoming increasingly limited to a ‘democratic’ oligarchy, which spoke through the voice of the Council of Ten. Caterina, queen though she may have been, was well aware of this and certainly understood the truth of her brother’s warning. This was no bluff.

  Caterina may now have regarded herself as a Cypriot rather than a Venetian, but she still remained a Cornaro. She loved her family, especially her father Marco, who had voyaged to see her in Cyprus during her time of virtual imprisonment. After all he had done to try and help her, she could not have borne to see him disgraced. She heard out her brother Giorgio’s arguments. Then, raising her voice so that those she knew had their ears pressed to the door of her chamber could hear her clearly, she replied to her brother, ‘If this is your opinion, then I respect it. This is also my opinion, and I will follow your advice.’

  Caterina dutifully signed the letter of abdication that had been dictated back in Venice by the Council of Ten, whereupon the Lusignan flag that had flown from Famagusta Castle more or less continuously for nearly 300 years was formally lowered.* In its place the crimson flag with the golden lion of San Marco was run up to a fanfare and a barrage of cannon – a ceremony that was to be repeated throughout the island. Caterina’s letter was then conveyed by Captain-General Priuli to Sultan Qaitbay in Egypt, where he accepted its contents without demur. The formality of Venice being officially recognised as ruler of his vassal state was now complete.

  The Venetians were well aware of the way the local population viewed what had happened. In an attempt to alleviate their unpopularity (and yet at the same time reinforce the finality of what had taken place), they sent ex-Queen Caterina on a carefully staged and monitored tour of the island, so that she could take leave of her subjects. The gathered crowds listened in sadness as their former queen read out the speech that had been prepared for her, reassuring them that their fate now lay in safe hands.

  On 14 March 1489, Caterina took ship at Famagusta to sail for Venice. The shore was lined by a vast crowd of her former subjects, and many are said to have waded into the sea to bid her farewell. Just over two months later, probably having put in at Rhodes, Caterina’s galley and her protective flotilla arrived at the Lido on 5 June, where she was greeted with an armada fit for a queen and escorted aboard the Bucintoro by no less than Doge Barbarigo himself.

  The procession that accompanied Caterina in the Bucintoro to the city was unprecedented in splendour, even in Venetian history. The blue-grey waters of the lagoon were filled with galleys, gondolas, merchantmen and craft of all kinds, while crowds lined the quaysides. Caterina was seated beside the doge on the raised poop deck at the stern of the Bucintoro and, according to some reports, her throne was elevated even higher than that of the doge himself, on account of her royal status. The Republic of Venice was welcoming its queen. The hypocrisy of the Venetian authorities, along with the unwitting collaboration of the citizenry, had now reached its apotheosis. In a special ceremony conducted at San Marco, Caterina Cornaro formally handed over the golden crown of Cyprus for the guardianship of the Republic. Despite being browbeaten and forced to abdicate, she was informed by the authorities that she would still be allowed to remain Queen of Cyprus, Jerusalem and Armenia and should continue to use this as her title. At the same time she would be granted by the Republic of Venice her own private kingdom, the small hill town of Asolo, together with its surrounding territory of mulberry groves, vineyards and wooded hills, which lay just thirty miles north-west of Venice itself, in the hinterland known as the Veneto. She would also be granted sufficient funds to maintain herself in a manner befitting the royalty of a small kingdom. On her arrival there she was greeted rapturously by all her 4,000 subjects.

  Queen Caterina immediately made plans for a palace to be built for her, called significantly Il Barco (the ship), as if she were still on a voyage that might one day carry her back across the sea to Cyprus. Here she would maintain her own court, which she staffed according to her own particular taste, with the entourage that had been allowed to follow her into exile from Cyprus. These included her favourite personal female attendant, a black former slave who originated from Nubia; the pet parrots that so amused her; a small collection of monkeys; some peacocks; and her dwarf jester, who knew how to amuse and enliven her during her not-infrequent periods of depression. Yet Caterina’s court was more than just a whimsical collection of exotica; it also reflected the considerable intellectual powers that she had continued to develop since her education in Venice. She had also cultivated a wide variety of cultural interests. Indeed, the court of Queen Caterina at Asolo was soon gaining such a reputation that it began attracting artists, philosophers and poets of the newly burgeoning Renaissance, which was now beginning to spread throughout Italy.

  Despite the political difficulties posed by Caterina’s persistent widespread popularity amongst the people of the Republic (and its far-flung empire in Cyprus), she was permitted to visit Venice, but only on special occasions. Thus she kept in contact with her family, especially her favourite brother Giorgio, who as a reward for persuading his sister to abdicate had been awarded by the doge with the highly prestigious honour of being made a Cavaliemto di Stola d’Oro (Knight of the Golden Sash). The Council of Ten also personally invited Queen Caterina to Venice during the severe winter of 1491, when the Grand Canal froze hard and a jousting contest was held in her honour. This was evidently a covert experiment that proved satisfactory to the Council of Ten, for Caterina was later asked to preside as hostess over the festivities when Eleanor, Duchess of Ferrara, arrived on a state visit. Ferrara may have had a duke and duchess, but Venice could trump them with a queen. Yet, as ever with the Council of Ten, there was more than met the eye here: Queen Caterina’s presence was much more than civil one-upmanship. Eleanor of Aragon was the daughter of King Ferrante I of Naples, who still harboured dynastic ambitions with regard to Cyprus, and Venice wished to make it clear that the island still had a queen, whom they could produce as the official monarch. Such doublethink was now very much a part of Venetian power diplomacy.

  Caterina was still only in her mid-thirties, and wished to forget the tragedies that had befallen her; likewise, she was determined to put behind her the grim atmosphere of her court in Cyprus, its air poisoned by suspicion and competing interests. At Asolo she ensured that her court was staffed with handsome courtiers and beautiful young ladies-in-waiting. In the evenings, poets and musicians performed amidst the fragrant palace gardens, whose layout and planting she had personally supervised. The Venetian scholar and poet Pietro Bembo was particularly attracted to Asolo. Twenty-nine years old in 1499 and at the height of his imaginative powers, he thrived amidst this cultural ambience. He would go on to become one of the most distinguished intellectuals of his age, and one of his finest works would be Gli Asolani (The People of Asolano), a philosophical discourse on love between three young beaux and three girls, set in the gardens of Il Barco. This was written in the manner and style of Petrarch, and was intended to evoke the atmosphere of the years he had spent visiting thi
s idyllic spot. Indeed, such was the popularity of Gli Asolani that it even gave rise to a new verb in the Italian language: asolare, meaning ‘to enjoy oneself in a pleasant aimless fashion’. It was this work that also led the great Jacob Burckhardt to compare the court depicted by ‘Pietro Bembo at the castle of Asolo’ with ‘the ideal society’.

  Yet the reality had a much darker side. The ‘kingdom of Asolo’ was in no way independent of the Venetian territory that encompassed it, and a close eye was kept on its queen by the appointment of former Captain-General Francesco Priuli as ambassador to her court. Moreover, Venice maintained the fiction that Queen Caterina was still the sovereign ruler of Cyprus, getting the Cypriot ambassador to Venice to make regular visits to Asolo in accordance with diplomatic protocol, to pay his respects to his monarch. On these visits he would be accompanied by his aide, a good-looking twenty-year-old Cypriot called Demetrios, who came from Nicosia. According to two Asolo chroniclers cited by Caterina’s biographer, Leto Severis, Demetrios fell in love with Caterina, who gave some appearance of reciprocating his feelings. One evening he made so bold as to approach Queen Caterina as she was sitting alone in her palace garden. Here he fell to his knees and confessed his love for her. She did nothing to discourage him: on the contrary, she agreed to a tryst in the gardens the following evening. However, as she approached their agreed meeting place, which was bathed in moonlight, she saw two shadowy figures suddenly leap out and attack Demetrios. At the very same moment ambassador Priuli materialised beside her and ‘in a cruel voice’ informed her: ‘The punishment of the [Council of] Ten is inexorable. Tomorrow Demetrios will be found dead in the forest and everyone will think that it is the work of thieves.’ As if to reinforce this message, he then added, And you, Caterina, do not forget that the Council of Ten is keeping watch and exacts punishment.’ Others have suggested that this ‘Demetrios’ may not have had amorous intentions at all, but may in fact have been an undercover agent conveying messages from Caterina’s network of loyal supporters in Cyprus.

  Mention is also made of visits from the ousted ruler of Rimini, the twenty-five-year-old Pandolfo IV Malatesta (known as ‘Pandolfaccio’ – that is, the bad Pandolfo), who was living in exile at the heavily fortified and moated castle in Citadella, just ten miles down the road. This had been given to Malatesta by the Venetian authorities (who had long-term territorial ambitions for Rimini that were not utterly dissimilar to those they had entertained for Cyprus). Malatesta was a particularly unsavoury character, who had ruled the small Adriatic coastal city state of Rimini as a tyrant, cowing his subjects and exercising his sexual rapacity at will on his young female subjects. (It was his failed rape attempt on a popular local beauty that had caused his people to revolt, only for him to be reinstated by the Venetians, though three years later he had been chased out of Rimini by the even more notorious Cesare Borgia.) A rumour had been spread that the reasons for Malatesta’s frequent visits to Queen Caterina’s court at Asolo were that he lusted after one of Caterina’s young ladies-in-waiting called Fiameca, yet curiously this appears to have been a cover story for his desire for the older Caterina. However, word of Malatesta’s visits to Asolo (whatever their motive) soon reached the Council of Ten, and his visits to Asolo abruptly ceased. The Venetians were taking no chances: there was to be no heir to the Lusignan line, which they intended would come to an end with the childless Caterina.

  Now isolated at Asolo, Caterina continued to live in some style at her Renaissance court; but none of the other poets, musicians or painters proved to be of the calibre of Bembo, either in ability or personality, and when he departed, the cultural life of Il Barco descended into provincial mediocrity, and Caterina soon began to tire of this vapid life. However, there were the occasional exceptions: sometime during the early 1500s the renowned Venetian artist Gentile Bellini visited Asolo and painted Caterina’s portrait, complete with a modest bejewelled crown. This is no flattering depiction, and the transformation in Caterina’s appearance is dramatic. The sensitive, intelligent fourteen-year-old girl painted by Titian was no more; indeed, all trace of the more mature ‘bella donna’ noted by the diarist Sanudo on her return from Cyprus some eleven years previously had vanished for ever. Bellini’s painting depicts a plump, plain middle-aged matron in a distinctly subdued dress, her intelligent subtlety of expression blunted into sullen obduracy by her years of tragedy and mistreatment.

  Caterina would continue living at Asolo until 1509, when the Veneto stood under threat from the north by the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I, who had joined the powerful anti-Venetian alliance created by Pope Julius II, known as the League of Cambrai – whose aim was to drive Venice from the mainland. Queen Caterina fled with her court for the safety of Venice, and in February 1509 was permitted by the Council of Ten to take up residence at the palazzo of her favouite brother, Giorgio Cornaro, whose supreme diplomatic skills in the service of the city had led to him being regarded as one of the most distinguished citizens of the Republic.

  In June 1509 Maximilian’s army duly invaded the Veneto, occupying Asolo. A month later the Venetian army defended their territory at a site close to Il Barco and won a victory that forced the imperial troops to withdraw. The retreating soldiers avenged themselves by setting fire to Il Barco, gutting the interior of the building.* Now homeless, Caterina was permitted to remain in Venice, and was even allowed to move freely about the city. So transformed was this plainly clothed, bulky middle-aged woman that few passing citizens on the streets recognised their former favourite, for whom they had turned out in their thousands. The destruction of her palace had been the last straw in her long line of disappointments. Early in July 1510 she took to her bed with stomach pains. Her condition quickly deteriorated, and she died days later at the age of fifty-six.

  In keeping with the cruel charade that had been imposed upon Queen Caterina by the Venetian authorities, the Council of Ten decided that their distinguished fellow citizen should be accorded a royal funeral, a uniquely contradictory event in the Republic’s long history of glories and hypocrisies. By now, word had spread through Venice that ‘the Queen of Cyprus is dead’, and vast crowds turned out to watch her funeral, where the leading mourner was Doge Leonardo Loredan (though some sources claim that the doge was not able to attend the funeral, and that his place was taken instead by Caterina’s nemesis, Francesco Priuli). Amongst the long procession of dignitaries following Caterina’s coffin were the Signoria, all other members of the Council of Ten and the heads of the noble families of the city. The procession was accorded the honour of a bridge of boats across the Grand Canal. In a final grotesque touch, the actual crown of Cyprus, which Caterina had been made to surrender in San Marco on her arrival, was placed upon her coffin as it was carried to the church of San Cassiano, the traditional burial place of the Cornaro family. As if to add insult to injury, her simple marble tombstone was formally engraved in Latin with the inscription Catharinae Corneliae, Cypri, Hierosolymorum ac Armeniae Reginae Cineres [sic]. The emptiness of these titles was now utterly complete. And so, even in death Caterina came to epitomise the characteristic Venetian parable – the image of the individual manipulated and sacrificed in the interest of the Republic’s political gain.

  Coda: More than three centuries later the story of the Queen of Cyprus would inspire Donizetti’s opera Caterina Cornaro. This is set in Venice and Cyprus amidst the atmosphere of passion, intrigue and deception that surrounded Caterina’s early years as queen, though the composer’s highly imaginative evocation of such atmosphere bears only a passing resemblance to the historical reality. This can be seen from a synopsis of the opera:

  The wedding of Caterina, daughter of Andrea Cornaro, to a young Frenchman, Gerardo, is postponed when Mocenigo brings word that Lusignano, King of Cyprus, wishes to marry her. After much intrigue, involving Lusignano being slowly poisoned by Mocenigo, Gerardo joins the Knights of the Cross to help Lusignano defend Cyprus against the Venetians. Lusignano is mortally wounded; as he dies he entrus
ts his people to Caterina’s care. Gerardo then returns to Rhodes. (In the revised finale for the Parma production, Lusignano informs Caterina that Gerardo has been killed in battle.)

  In 1844 Donizetti’s Caterina, Cornaro opened at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, at the time regarded as the greatest opera house in Europe. The performance proved a disaster, and it was booed from the stage. Modern revivals, beginning more than two centuries later at the selfsame theatre in Naples in 1972, have proved only a little more successful, the opera being admired chiefly for the ‘menacing quality of the assassins’ chorus’.

  * Over the years variations of this flag developed, but it retained essentially an orange, white and blue motif quartered to represent the territories claimed by the Lusignan family line. In the top left-hand corner was the star of Jerusalem, and each of the other three quarters contained a crowned lion rampant – representing Armenia, Cyprus and Lusignan itself (in western France).