Intro
Legends are important. They’re told, retold and promoted for many reasons. All societies have their legends, and Venice had too. Some such legends become part of a national narrative, which is one of the glues holding together a society. In this episode, we’ll discuss a few such legends, so get ready for pirates, maidens, box-makers, fierce battles, and good wine and oranges.
Links
- Festa delle Marie
- Feasts, celebrations and ceremonial
- Oranges and straw hats (newsletter, January 2024).
Transcript
Episode 24 — The Festa delle Marie
Pirate attack
On an early winter morning, a dozen or so of young Venetian girls are waiting in the semi-darkness, near the altar of the church of San Pietro on the island of Olivolo.
Most of the light comes from the wide open main door behind them.
Each of the girls is dressed in their finest, with a wooden box on their lap. Some of the boxes are simple, but others have fine inlay in dark wood, mother-of-pearl and even ivory. The girls’ gaze is modestly on the floor, or towards the altar in front them, as in silent prayer.
It’s rather cold, but the girls are still, in silence.
A commotion outside disturbs their contemplation.
Have their grooms arrived with their families? Their new families.
But it didn’t sound right. It didn’t sound joyous and festive.
They hear shouts and groans, in a language they don’t understand. What’s going on?
As they lift their gaze and turn their heads, men enter the church running, but they’re not the grooms. They’re armed, with axes and lances, one has a sword.
The men grab the girls, and fumble for the boxes. Some fall on the ground, break open, and shimmering gold and gemstones scatter across the floor.
Carrying and dragging the screaming girls, others scurrying to collect the treasure from the church floor, the men flee the church. Outside they head across the small field, avoiding the bloodied bodies on the ground, to a galley, oars lifted for mooring, but otherwise ready to go.
The raiders shove the girls into the boat, and threw the boxes and their contents haphazardly inside, before grabbing the oars and pushing away from the shore.
Communal marriage
Needless to say, these were not the men the girls were waiting for.
The girls were the Venetian brides of that year, and they had been waiting for their grooms and their new families to arrive for the ceremony.
The event happened at some time in the 930s or 940s. Some chronicles assign it to the reign of doge Pietro Candiano II (932–939), while others to the years of Pietro Candiano III (942–959). The most common years mentioned for the event are 936 or 943.
As is often the case with such early events, we have few sources, they’re generally from a much later date, even centuries later, and we don’t know what lost sources they in turn used. The surviving accounts are therefore often incomplete and contradictory.
Another point, where the sources disagree, was on the purpose of such a communal wedding.
Some chronicles say, that in the early centuries, the community, which was becoming Venice at the time, had all weddings celebrated annually by the bishop, in a collective ceremony held on the day of the translation of the body of St Mark to Venice, on January 31st.
One such account appears in the mariegola — the statute and notary book — of the guild of the box-makers, from 1449:
In ancient times, the custom of Venice was that all the novices of Venice, when they married, were wed in the Church of San Pietro di Castello by the bishop on the day of St Mark, which is the 31st day of January, bringing with them to the said church their dowries and wows.
Others state that this was not the actual weddings, but a collective blessing of the couples and the dowries, before the real weddings, which would happen separately throughout the year. In this case, it was a kind of official betrothal under the auspices of St Mark.
Finally, it could have been an annual charitable event, where the republic sponsored the marriage of twelve poor girls, either orphans or from poor families, who didn’t have the means to be married decently.
Such charities, which sponsored the education and dowries of orphaned or poor girls, were quite common in Venice and elsewhere in the past. The alternative to a decent marriage was too often sexual exploitation, prostitution, and therefore, as the girl was surely to blame for her misery, a life in sin. Consequently, eternal damnation of the immortal soul.
In any case, the raiders knew exactly where and when to strike, so the event was well-known, also outside of Venice.
The pirates
So, who were these pirates?
The statute book of the guild of the box-makers has this version:
And at the time when the doge was Mr. Pietro Candiano, who are now the Sanudi, which was in 943, people of Trieste, who were enemies of the Venetians, and who knew of such usage, armed a galley and a brigantina, and came on the vigil of said St Mark, which was the 30th day of January, and the night they hid in the bishopric of San Pietro di Castello, and the following morning, which was the day of St Mark, when the brides were in the church for the weddings with their dowries and wows, the triestini came out, and finding the Venetians unprepared, they cut many to pieces, and removed the novices with all their dowries and belongings, and forced them onto their galley, and went past the three harbours, and started to divide that which they had stolen and taken.
They are generally referred to as either triestini — from Trieste, a bit to the north of Venice — or as narentini — from the area of the Naretva river, in modern-day Croatia.
The 800s and 900s was a period of growing prosperity for Venice. That prosperity was based on sea trade with Constantinople and the Levant. The good luck of Venice was a combination of a Byzantine origin, with close cultural and economic ties to the Eastern Roman Empire, and a geographical position, which allowed Venice to serve as a bridge between an emerging Western Europe, and the old world in the east.
Venetian ships were, by the mid-900s, travelling up and down the Adriatic Sea in ever larger numbers, heavily laden with luxury goods destined for Western Europe.
The people living on the opposite side of the Adriatic had neither of the advantages of Venice.
They did, however, have a very rugged coastline, with many nooks and crannies where ships could seek shelter, hide, and lay in ambush. One way of getting their hands on some part of the riches travelling past them, was therefore piracy.
Venice, getting richer and more assertive throughout the 800s and 900s, reacted by sending navies to fight the pirates. This happened repeatedly, as it was of national importance for Venice, keeping the trade routes safe. In 887, the doge Pietro Candiano I died in such a war with the Slavonic people living around the Naretva river.
The attack on the Olivolo island, and the abduction of the girls, therefore fits nicely into the conflictual relationship between Venice and the peoples across the Adriatic Sea, even if this raid was more daring than most.
The Olivolo island
Venice was, in the 900s, a much smaller place than it is today. The city existed mostly around the Rialto and the Grand Canal, with the area of St Mark’s almost on the eastern periphery.
A large area, centred on what is now the Arsenale, was still open marsh with scattered islands and small villages.
Further east, towards the Adriatic Sea, were a few smaller and mostly uninhabited islands. The only notable settlement was on the Olivolo island.
When the central lagoon area became a bishopric in 774, the seat of the bishop was established on the Olivolo island, and the first church of St Peter was constructed there.
That church was where the raid took place, so it didn’t happen in the city. It happened on the approaches to the city from the sea.
Also, the city wasn’t yet called Venice. It was called Rialto because that was where it was.
Approaching from the sea, the Olivolo was the first settlement that a ship would encounter. The distance from the open sea to the Olivolo is only about one kilometre.
There were, at the time, marshes and smaller islands around Olivolo, some with vegetation, and even trees, which provided cover for the raiders, as they waited for the right time to strike.
After the raid
Naturally, the alarm was sounded around Rialto as quickly as possible after the attack on the Olivolo, and the abduction of the girls.
As an aside, this is the original meaning of the word ‘alarm’. It comes from some Italian language, as the military command all’armi — to arms, as in: get your arms and be ready for a fight.
This was precisely the message which went out in the city of Rialto.
From the book of the box-makers:
And (the news of) this having spread across the land, everybody hurried to Castello, and the said Doge had boats armed very quickly from Chioggia and Malamocco, and he went himself on said boats…
How long did this mobilisation take?
There are a couple of kilometres between the Olivolo and Rialto, and all communication was by rowed boat. There were no roads and bridges in the marshy areas.
Furthermore, Malamocco is some ten kilometres south of Venice, and Chioggia over thirty. A round trip to Chioggia by rowed boats would take the entire day.
Of course, the grooms, the families and many others would already be out and about, in boats, but dressed for a feast, not for a fight. They, too, would have to return, prepare, and then head to Olivolo, or Castello as they called it later.
Add to this that the day was short.
It was on January 31st, the sun set at around five in the afternoon, and after dark, they would never be able to find the pirates at sea.
Consequently, it took all the rest of the day to get the message out, and for the men to pick up theirs arms, muster, ready the galleys, and prepare to set out in pursuit of the pirates.
In practise, they must have set out the following morning, at daybreak, to rescue their daughters, sisters and future wives from a terrible fate.
The future prospects of the girls
Now, it is fairly obvious why the raiders stole the dowries. Money is money, valuables are valuables.
But, why the brides? What fate awaited the girls if the Venetians didn’t recover them?
The answer is slavery, probably prostitution, or in the best of cases, a forced marriage to somebody, who wasn’t too violent.
Slavery was everywhere. Slavery had always been everywhere. Ancient Rome was a slave society, so was Ancient Greece, and before them Egypt, Mesopotamia and so on.
Ancient Rome still existed in Constantinople, and there were slaves there too. Likewise, the Caliphate and other Muslim societies had no issues with slavery.
Slavery was normal. It was a part of life and society. It was normal, accepted and even natural.
The Venetian weren’t above any of this. They were very much part of it. For most of the Middle Ages, Venetian merchants were among the first to make good money on the slave trade.
Slaves were often procured during wars, but also in slave raids on coastal communities. Such raids were common, everybody engaged in them, and the Venetians had no more qualms about such profitable propositions than anybody else.
Much later than this story, in the mid-1500s, slave raids by ships from Western Europe, on Ottoman lands in the Levant, became the pretext for the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1570. The people of Cyprus still struggle today with the aftermath of that invasion.
One of the commanders of the Turkish navy, which was defeated at the battle of Lepanto in 1571, was a Christian who had been taken in a coastal slave raid in Southern Italy, He was brought to the Ottoman Empire, where he became a galley slave. He was later freed, converted to Islam, and went on to become a Turkish admiral. He was, needless to say, universally detested in the West as an apostate and a traitor, but he didn’t choose his fate.
Returning to the Venetians of the 900s, besides saving their daughters, sisters and future wives from a fate worse than death, there was also honour.
In a patriarchal society, where women are halfway the property of men, there can be few humiliations worse than “they stole our women.”
Second Sabines?
We don’t know anything about the motives of the raiders.
They could have done it simply for monetary gain, selling the girls and their belongings for cash.
It could also have been an act of warfare and domination, to put the plucky Venetians back in their place and show them who’s actually in charge, as in “we’ll take your women and force them to birth our sons, and you can do nothing about it.”
Not nice, but humankind has never been kind.
Alternatively, they could have taken a leaf out of the book of the early Romans.
According to legend, Rome was founded by outcasts of surrounding societies, and there were almost no women in Rome in the beginning. The settlement in Rome wasn’t viable. The Romans therefore raided the neighbouring Sabines, and stole their young women. Not only that, but they cleverly did it at the very end of war season.
In primitive agricultural societies, war is second to farming. You cannot fight if you have no food. Winning a war, only to starve to death because you neglected the harvest, makes little sense. Consequently, there was a war season, subject to the need to tend to the fields and the crops.
The Sabines couldn’t pursue the Romans until next spring, and when the two armies finally faced off, the women entered the battlefield between the two groups, to keep them apart. They didn’t want their fathers and brothers to kill, or be killed by, their now husbands and fathers of their children.
The women forced a peace on the men, and the result was an alliance of blood between the two societies. From being enemies, they became family.
However, if the raiders of Olivolo thought they could pull off another Rape of the Sabines, they thought wrong.
Battle
On February 2nd, the Venetians caught up with the raiders some seventy kilometres north of Venice, in a place, which today is called Porto Santa Margherita, just south of Caorle, which was a major settlement at the time.
The pirates had stopped there, in the river estuary, and were arguing between themselves about the division of the booty.
The Venetians fell on them, and killed them all. The bodies of the raiders were ditched in the sea on the order of the Doge, who didn’t want to concede them a proper Christian funeral.
The place was henceforth known as Porto delle Donzelle — the Harbour of the Maidens.
The girls, and the boxes with the dowries, were taken back to Venice, directly to the Church of St Peter on the Olivolo island, where the bishop wed the couples.
Sometimes life gives you more adventure than you had bargained for, and it is unlikely that any of the girls would ever forget their wedding days.
The Festa delle Marie
One of the long-lasting results of these dramatic events, was that the Doge instituted the tradition of the republic offering dowries each year to twelve young, virtuous women of poor families, so they could be decently married.
This developed in a major feast in Medieval Venice.
Starting on January 25th, each sestiere chose two girls each.
The twelve girls, known as the Marie were dressed in the finest, paraded around the city, and feasts, celebrations and masses were held in their honour.
On the morning of February 2nd — Candlemas — the twelve girls were taken to the Doge’s Palace, and with the procession of state they went to the cathedral on the Olivolo island for mass, presided by the bishop.
From St Peter, the procession went to St Mark’s, where the girls received blessed candles, and then to Santa Maria Formosa — the most ancient church in Venice dedicated to the Madonna — for the mass of the Purification of Mary, Candlemas proper.
The event became hugely popular with common people, who saw some of their own daughters be treated like a noblewoman for a week. Then, who’s going to refuse eight days of feasts and celebrations.
However, it also led to conflicts.
Families competed to have their girl chosen, a competition, which sometimes deteriorated into physical violence and even rape, taking girls out of the race that way.
However, for the state and the nobility, who bore most of the costs, the expenses of these festivities rose and rose, and in the 1200s, the girls were replaced by twelve wooden figures, carried around the city in solemn procession.
The state had excluded the common people from a celebration, which had been theirs, and the common people reacted with disdain and protest.
The level of disdain is evident from the laws and decrees related to the celebrations. For example, in 1349, a law was promulgated forbidding throwing rotten vegetables at the statues, under penalty of prison.
The people weren’t happy of having their feast taken away.
A “wooden Mary” became a term for a skinny, unattractive girl.
The War of Chioggia
War broke out with Genoa in 1376, starting in Constantinople.
In 1379, a Genovese navy arrived in the upper Adriatic, and, allied with Padua, they took Chioggia. The enemy was in the lagoon, and for almost a year, Venice fought for its very survival.
Extraordinary taxation ensued, forced loans from anybody owning real estate, and all expenses, which didn’t go towards the war effort, were eliminated.
The Festa delle Marie was celebrated in 1378 more veneto, that is, early 1379 in our calendar, but not the following year, nor the next.
The war ended with a resounding Venetian victory, and a peace treaty was signed in 1381, but afterwards, there was no interest in the ruling elite of resuscitating the Festa delle Marie, and it fell wayside.
The only bit of the ancient popular celebration, which survived, was the visit of the Doge and the Signoria to Santa Maria Formosa on the eve of Candlemas. That visit had its own story, and it’s all about the box-makers.
The Cassellari
The cassellari — makers of boxes, crates, chests and such, including the decorated boxes for the dowry of the brides — traditionally lived in the area between St Mark’s and Santa Maria Formosa, where their guild maintained an altar.
There are still a couple of alleyways, called the casselleria, that is, the district of the box-makers.
Their relationship with the Festa delle Marie goes back to the original event itself, which is why I’ve been quoting their statute book from 1449.
It became one of the more odd events in the annual calendar of the Doge:
And (the news of) this having spread across the land, everybody hurried to Castello, and the said Doge had boats armed very quickly from Chioggia and Malamocco, and he went himself on said boats, and the box makers from the district of S. Maria Formosa were ready, and in good order, making shields of the planks with which they made the boxes, and everybody embarked on the galley, and they rammed it, and the box-makers were the first to board the galley, and many died on both sides, and they cut the Triestini to pieces, not taking anybody their prisoner. And this turned the Doge thus that they shouldn’t be buried on land, but that the sea would be their tomb, due to the great injustice and offence they had done the Venetians. And it should be known, that the said box-makers were those, who caused the great victory, and took the galley, and cut to pieces all the triestini because at time that time they were men of valour, and in good order.
That victory was on the second day of February, which is the day of the Madonna of the Candles. And by such request and insistence of those box-makers, it was instituted that henceforth the Doge of Venice, every year for as long as Venice lasts, is obliged to go, on the vigil of the said feast, for Vesper in the said church with the Signoria, and with all the princely insignias. And note, that the parish priest is obliged to give the Doge two flasks of Malvasia, with two oranges on top. And the said parish priest gives him two paper hats, with the coat of arms of the Pope and the Doge, and of the said parish priest: the Doge will never accept the flasks without the oranges. So it is done, and it always will be.
The reason for the odd selection of gifts, which were presented to the Doge, is another legend, related to the first, which the statute book of the guild doesn’t recount.
The battle for the donzelle had happened on February 2nd, which is the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Thirty-three days after the circumcision of Jesus, which was on January 1st, Mary went to the temple in Jerusalem, to offer a sacrifice. Candlemas is therefore the fortieth day of Christmas, like there are forty days of Lent and forty days of Easter.
St Mary was the protector of the guild of the box-makers, and the annual feast day in the church of Santa Maria Formosa, where the guild had its altar. It was also their annual feast day, but instead of celebrating, they had gone fighting.
The Doge had been on the ships pursuing the pirates. He had seen everything himself.
Therefore, on their return to Olivolo, he approached the gastaldo — the elected leader of the guild — of the box-makers, complimented them on the admirable service they had rendered in the defence of the republic’s honour, and to offer them a reward.
To his astonishment, the gastaldo simply asked, that the Doge come to hear mass with them, each year in perpetuity, in their church, on the vigil of the feast day of their patron saint, which was that same day, February 2nd.
The Doge, who had expected a request for money, thought the ask too modest, so to give them a chance to reconsider, he asked: “And if it should rain?”.
The gastaldo simply answered: “We will give you hats to cover you.”
Trying a second time, the Doge continued: “And if we’re thirsty?”
“We will give you something to drink,” the gastaldo replied.
At that point, the Doge accepted that this was the request of the box-makers, and he agreed, and so it was.
For the following over eight centuries, the Doge would go to the church of Santa Maria Formosa to hear mass with the guild of the box-makers on the evening of February 1st, the vigil of the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
In 1762, on January 30th, more veneto, the visit was moved, by formal decree of the government of the republic, to the morning of February 2nd, but that was the only ever change made to the arrangement.
The last time it happened, was on Candlemas in 1797. The year after, there was no Doge and no republic.
Access to power
Why did the gastaldo of the box-maker’s guild ask for so little?
In reality, he didn’t ask for something small. The gastaldo of the guild of the box-makers, back sometimes in the mid-900s, was very clever.
He asked for access.
Access to power is power, and the box-makers, as lowly commoners, had little recourse if something untowardly happened to them.
Early Venetian society was, like most other medieval societies, a very unequal society.
The wealthiest elite monopolised political power, and only the men from the richest families had a vote in public affairs — in the res publica, the republic. In the early period this group was rather fluid, but they were richer than any box-maker was ever likely to get.
If you’re not part of the ‘public’ of the res publica, your best chance of getting heard is through somebody who is.
With such an annual ceremony, the box-makers got a direct line to the highest level of government. If they had a grievance, they always had a chance to bring it up with those in power.
Since the annual meeting was public and official, everybody in Venice would know, and other groups would be much less likely to mess with the guild of the box-makers, knowing that they had that direct line to the top.
All in all, the members of the guild got so much more, and for much longer, than any bag of gold ever would.
Social cohesion
On the other side of that exchange, what was in it for the Doge and the ruling elite?
Why didn’t they ditch the mass with the box-makers, as they eliminated the popular feast of the Marie?
For an agreement to last that long, both sides must draw a benefit from it, and especially the more powerful part, for whom it is easier to withdraw.
Consequently, the Doge, the government and the wider ruling elite must have perceived some kind of benefit from the exchange, and it is unlikely that two flasks of even excellent wine would tip the balance.
Like with the Festa delle Marie, the ruling elite could have discontinued the tradition at any time, if it was no longer convenient for them.
They didn’t. They didn’t end the Candlemas event because it still served a purpose.
The purpose was that of maintaining social cohesion and allegiance to the state.
Societies with a high level of inequality easily build up social tensions, which can become social conflict if not alleviated somehow. The Romans had bread and circuses, and the Venetians had feasts, celebrations and competitions that involved the lower classes, exactly for this reason.
They were safety valves for that social tension, to let out some of the pressure, but in a controllable way.
Sometimes, like with the Festa delle Marie, the safety valve let out too much steam. The event became too rowdy and risked getting out of control, so the tradition was terminated.
It became more a liability than an asset for the rulers.
Having an ancient guild of respectable artisans present the Doge with symbolic gifts, on the other hand, was rather innocuous. The guild showed their allegiance to the state, even if they didn’t have a direct say in government matters.
Such bonds were important to keep society together, despite the built-in differences between the classes.
On the other hand, the state — and hence the ruling elite — showed that it could be trusted, that a promise was a promise. Even if it was made centuries earlier, by and to people who were long dead. Even if it was in their power to terminate it at any time.
This was not the only event of its kind in the annual calendar of the Doge. Over time the position became less political and more representational, so there was time in the schedule for symbolic acts to show that somehow “we’re all in the same boat,” even if they weren’t.
Then, tradition has inertia. It carries its own weight. The longer it lasts, the harder it is to change, even if it makes little sense centuries later.
Today
The Festa delle Marie ended in 1379, and the exchange of wine and oranges at Candlemas in 1797.
What is there left today?
There’s nothing. Nothing, whatsoever.
The two events were parts of the Venetian national narrative, which explained what it meant to be a citizen of the Republic of Venice.
That republic no longer exists, and the national narrative of that nation is now mostly forgotten.
Venice is now part of the Republic of Italy, which has its narrative, its legends and stories.
Venice, however, has no part in that national narrative. It is an entirely separate story.
There is something, which is called the Festa delle Marie today.
It is a beauty pageant, organised by a modelling agency, and part of the modern carnival, which the ancient Festa delle Marie never was.
In a few weeks, it is carnival time here in Venice, so next time, we’ll talk about that. Like with the Festa delle Marie, what was and what exists today have little in common.
Leave a Reply