Excerpt
Conquest, empire, naval battles, conspiracies, insurrections. The 1200s and 1300s were interesting times for Venice.
Links
- The Venetian constitution
- Chronology of major Venetian state institutions
- The testament of Marco Polo
Transcript
Venice had been extremely successful, and at the start of the 1200s, it was one of the wealthiest cities in Europe, and an important regional power.
In particular, Venice had succeeded in dominating trade, both within the Byzantine Empire and with the west, to such an extent that it had caused setbacks in Constantinople.
Venice was born as a Byzantine duchy — which is why Venice had a doge — but during the 1100s Venice had gone to war against Byzantium twice, in defence of its trade.
The relationship was changing.
The Fourth Crusade
In 1201, a delegation of French knights arrived in Venice. They needed a fleet to carry a large crusader army to the Holy Land, which had returned under the control of Muslims.
This was to be the fourth crusade.
After some wrangling, a deal was struck and a price agreed. Venice was to build a navy of three hundred and fifty ships, to be equipped, manned and ready the next year.
The Venetians built a ship a day for a year. It is quite a testament to the technological and organisational skills of the Venetians.
The crusaders arrived during the next spring, and set up camp on the Lido, awaiting departure. There was a problem, though.
They were too few.
A crusade was also an act of penitence, and each crusader had to pay for his own journey. Being too few, they couldn’t foot the bill for the fleet which had been agreed the previous year.
The doge, Enrico Dandolo, eighty years old and blind, was also very shrewd. Another agreement was made, that the crusaders had to solve some problems for the Venetians along the way, to pay their debts.
In particular, the city of Zara in Dalmatia had rebelled yet again, so when the fleet with the crusaders lifted anchors, their first destination was Dalmatia.
Ironically, the first thing the fourth crusade did, was to take and subdue a Christian city.
When the Pope heard, he excommunicated the entire crusade — a detail the commanders didn’t tell the rank and file, though.
A change of plans
Further along the journey, during a stopover in a harbour for provisioning, the leaders of the crusade — which included the blind octogenarian doge of Venice — were contacted by Alexios Angelos, the son of the deposed Byzantine emperor Isaac II.
He promised them money and soldiers for the continuation of the crusade, if they made a detour to Constantinople to return his father to the imperial throne.
Most of the crusaders took the offer, and the fleet changed course towards the Bosphorus, where they arrived in the summer of 1203.
After a month of fighting, where the crusaders made some gains, the emperor fled the city, and the blinded Isaac II was restored to power.
This was the stated goal of the crusaders, but they were cheated of their reward.
They demanded that Alexios Angelos be made co-emperor, so he could keep his promises. This happened on August 1st.
Alexios (now Alexios IV Angelos) had difficulty gathering the money he had promised the crusaders, and took to destroying icons and religious items to extract the gold.
He succeeded in satisfying nobody.
The crusaders grew more and more impatient, and the citizens of Constantinople restive, as religious objects were desecrated to reward people they saw as barbarians.
Isaac II died in January 1204, and in February, the leader of the anti-crusader faction in Constantinople overthrew Alexios IV and became Alexios V.
The Sack of Constantinople
When Alexios V refused to honour the promises Alexios IV had made, the crusaders renewed their siege of the city.
Constantinople was heavily fortified, but on April 12th, the crusaders managed to breach the sea walls, and then opens passages in the triple land walls.
The crusaders sacked Constantinople for three days, stealing and destroying immense treasures.
Constantinople had been the Roman capital for nine centuries, and it contained unimaginable wealth, much of which was now lost or scattered.
The porphyry statues of the Tetrarchs, mounted on a corner between the Doge’s Palace and the Basilica of St Mark in Venice, were part of the loot of 1204.
Likewise, the four gilded horses adorning the façade of the Basilica, came from the hippodrome — the chariot racing grounds in Constantinople, just under the Imperial Palace.
The treasury of the Basilica of St Mark contains numerous Byzantine objects looted in Constantinople in 1204.
Dividing the empire
The crusaders had already made an agreement on the division of the spoils. Venice got three eights, or a bit more than a third of the entire Eastern Roman Empire.
The victors didn’t, however, manage to secure all parts of the empire for themselves.
Three parts of the Roman Empire survived as rump states, in Trabzon on the Black Sea coast of Anatolia, in Nicaea in the north-west of Anatolia, and in Epirus in what is now western Greece and Albania.
Venice got a third of Constantinople, including the harbour areas, and parts of the coast of the Marmara Sea, which was essential for access to the Black Sea, and several major Greek islands. They later bought more islands from other participants of the crusade.
Doge Dandolo styled himself “Doge of the Venetians and of the Dalmatians, and ruler of a quarter and a half of the Roman Empire”.
Enrico Dandolo never came back to Venice. He died in 1205, and was buried in the Hagia Sofia.
The Sea dominion
In the decade following the conquest of Constantinople, Venice acquired several major Greek islands.
Corfu — which has a strategic position at the entrance to the Adriatic Sea — was held by Venice in the years 1207–1214, after which they lost it again. It came back to Venice in 1386, and then remained Venetian until 1797.
The coastal cities of Corone and Methoni, on the southern Peloponnese, became Venetian in 1207.
Candia — the Venetian name for Crete — came under Venetian control in 1211. The people of Candia clearly didn’t approve, as there were many insurrections and rebellions in the following decades.
While Negroponte (modern Evia) near Athens, strictly speaking, wasn’t Venetian, the Venetians managed to exert a huge influence over it, until they took it over completely in 1390.
Together with the territories, which Venice already controlled in the Adriatic Sea, this became the Stato di Mar or the Dominio di Mar.
Venice had become a small empire, with its own overseas territories.
Overseas territories, which were perfectly located to support Venetian trade.
Venice did not, however, have political or administrative structures in the 1200s to manage such distant territories, so very often they were simply handed over to members of the Venetian elite, who then ran them as semi-autonomous, but Venetian aligned, mini states. Some, like the Duchy of Naxos, lasted for centuries.
Trade competitors
Before the Latin conquest of Constantinople, the Byzantine emperors had tried to curb the influence of the Venetian merchants on the economy of the city.
After the conquest, Venice governed a third of the city, and could do whatever it wanted.
The main competitors of Venice, in particular Pisa and Genoa, were favoured by the Byzantine rump states of Nicaea, Trabzon and Epirus, but Venetian dominance in the Eastern Mediterranean was as firm as ever.
Genoa was the most important of the competitors to Venice, and there would be many wars between the two in the 1200s and 1300s. Many of these fights would take place in the Eastern Mediterranean, but they also fought much closer to home, as we shall see later.
The loss of Constantinople
Acre in the Kingdom of Jerusalem was the main harbour city of the kingdom, and had both Venetian and Genovese merchants resident. In 1255, the enmity between the two groups flared up, and the Genovese raided the Venetian quarters.
The ensuing War of Saint Sabas lasted until 1270. The Venetians sent a fleet, which entered Acre, destroyed the Genovese quarters, and expelled the survivors.
Around Constantinople, the Latin Empire of the East was much weakened, as the Byzantine rump states of Nicaea and Epirus slowly took back territory.
Genoa approached Michael VIII Palaiologos of Nicaea, and made an alliance for the reconquest of Constantinople. Genoa would help Nicaea take back the city, and in return, they would get all the territories and privileges the Venetians had.
In 1261, Nicaea retook Constantinople, but before the Genovese arrived to help.
Trade to and from Constantinople and access to the Black Sea was now in the hands of Genoa, which thereby dealt a major blow to Venice.
The Venetians weren’t, however, completely expelled from the city. A few years later, as the relationship between the Byzantines and the Genovese soured, new treaties between Constantinople and Venice were negotiated.
Venice also tried to create a Latin alliance to make a repeat of the Fourth Crusade, but those attempts failed, partly because of an anti-French rebellion in Sicily in 1282 — the Sicilian Vespers.
The Byzantine Empire had been restored, but much weaker, and just as dependent on western merchants — predominantly Venetian and Genovese — as it had been before the Fourth Crusade.
Locking the council
The Greater Council, which was established after the crisis of 1172, had taken over the creation of doges and of most other magistrates of the republic. It had, de facto, become the constitutional backbone of the republic — the highest authority of the state.
The Venetian Republic didn’t have any formal constitution, and the creation of “constitutional bodies” (in air-quotes) happened as need arose. Venetian statehood wasn’t planned — it just happened — and there was no design, and no real constitution. The Venetian elite simply made up the rules as it went.
The concentration of power in the Greater Council, and the lack of formal rules, led to a conflict within the Venetian elite about who should be part of the council.
In practice, two dozen or so of the oldest and riches families in the city had dominated the council for the first century.
In the 1260s, of 430 members of the Greater Council, over half came from just twenty-seven families. Their names and coat of arms are still visible all over the city. They were, among others, the Contarini, Querini, Dandolo, Morosini, Michiel, Falier, Zorzi, Tiepolo, Gradenigo, Badoer, Zen, Dolfin, and Corner.
Two loose factions formed within the elite. One side wanted the membership to be more restricted and centred on the most important families, as it had actually developed.
The other side wanted a more open council, in which able and deserving men, also from less central families, could participate. This was also like the council had developed. Even if the ancient and wealthy families dominated the council, there were many members from minor families.
Several attempts at codifying the rules of membership of the Greater Council failed.
In 1286, the Council of Forty suggested letting all descendants of recent members of the Greater Council enter the council automatically. The proposal would have made membership partially hereditary, thus guaranteeing certain families access, but not necessarily excluding others. It proposal didn’t pass.
Another attempt to regulate the membership of the Greater Council was made in 1296, but that too failed to gather a majority.
Then, in 1297, the doge suggested that membership should, limited to six months period, be extended to all those who had taken part in the council within the previous four years, to their descendants, and to those who had been eligible, but unable to participate because they’d been away from Venice.
This limited proposal passed.
Six months later, the following year, when the first law expired, a proposal to make it permanent passed the council.
This is usually called the Serrata del Consiglio — the “Locking of the Council”.
They, figuratively speaking, locked the doors of the Greater Council. No new families would enter, and no old families would leave. The doors were closed, and the discussion over.
So who won this constitutional battle?
It is not that clear-cut.
Membership of the Greater Council became hereditary and limited to a well-defined circle of mostly wealthy families, which sounds like a restriction.
However, the actual result of the “Locking of the Council” was a substantial widening of membership, up to a point where in the 1500s the council had over two thousand members.
This reform did make Venice a fully aristocratic republic, where participation in the politics of the state was limited to certain families.
The families, whose men by right of birth participated in the Greater Council, became the “nobles” or the “aristocracy,” and everybody else were variations of “citizens.”
The Greater Council became where all major political matters were discussed and deliberated.
Conspiracies and secret police
The Republic of Venice went to war with the Papal state in 1308, over the possession of a fortress in Ferrara, which controlled an important crossing of the River Po.
As always in Venetian history, when you scratch a bit at the surface, you find mercantile interests behind their actions.
The Pope — Clement V, which Dante called “a lawless pastor” — furiously excommunicated Venice and all its citizens, and called for a crusade against the Venetians. The Doge — Pietro Gradenigo — responded, that “small children might be frighted by words, but men shouldn’t even be afraid of the points of swords.”
Nevertheless, the war didn’t go well for Venice. The Venetian stronghold of Castel Tedaldo in Ferrara had to surrender, and the commander, Marco Querini, fled back to Venice.
The conflict was eventually resolved by diplomatic means, and by paying a huge bribe to the Pope.
Money achieved what arms had failed to obtain.
The ruling elite in Venice — now organised in the Greater Council — was only ever united when there was an external threat to their collective control of the state. The normal state of affairs was one of ruthless in-fighting between factions for positions of power and status.
This less than honourable outcome — and maybe more than that, the trauma of excommunication — led to a major split in the Venetian elite.
A group of noblemen — around Baiamonte Tiepolo and Marco Querini — conspired to overthrow the faction of the doge.
Baiamonte Tiepolo — great-grandson of a doge, grandson of a doge, whose father almost became a doge — was extremely ambitious and very wealthy, the scion of a Venetian dynasty.
Marco Querini — from a family almost as ancient and important — was the commander who had abandoned the Castel Tedaldo in Ferrara during the war with the Pope.
The Doge was, however, forewarned of the insurrection. As the conspirators approached the Doge’s palace from several directions, they were intercepted.
The group led by Querini was defeated, and Marco Querini killed in the fight.
Another group failed for reasons which have become legendary. The armed column proceeded through the alleyways towards the Doge’s Palace, following a standard-bearer, who showed the way.
As they were about to enter the square, an old woman, from an upstairs window, dropped a stone mortar on the head of the standard-bearer.
The man fell to the ground in a pool of blood, apparently struck dead from above, and the conspirators fled in disarray.
Baiamonte Tiepolo hadn’t taken up arms himself, and was allowed to go into exile. The condition was that he didn’t seek refuge with any of the enemies of Venice. After some time, he did so anyway. He never returned to Venice.
At the Rialto, two ancient arches are embedded in the modern building of the fish market. They were left standing as a monument of shame, when the palace of Marco Querini was demolished as part of the punishment of the conspirators.
The Council of Ten
The Greater Council, in an emergency assembly, elected a group of ten members to hunt down and kill the surviving conspirators, wherever they had fled.
As was by then already an old tradition, such appointments were for short periods. In this case, with such a very specific task, for only two months. The task wasn’t finished after the first term, so it was extended for another two months, and another two, and then annually.
Continuing in this way, the Council of Ten became a fixture of the Venetian state. The charges were gradually extended, to include any risk or danger to the security of the state, and it became the tribunal, where criminal cases against members of the nobility were heard.
Every state excludes some people from the decision-making process, and therefore needs a repressive arm to keep dissent down. The Council of Ten became the repressive branch of the Venetian government.
The Ten Councillors would be the most feared Venetian magistrates until the end of the Republic.
The Black Plague
The Black Plague — also called the Bubonic Plague — arrived in Venice at some point in 1347 or 1348.
The plague originated somewhere in Central Asia, and arrived to the Black Sea through the ancient trade routes along the rivers.
With the merchant ships prowling the Black Sea — which included Venetian and Genovese ships — it arrived in Constantinople, and from there to Venice and Genoa.
Within five years, it had spread throughout all of Europe.
Neither the Venetians nor anybody else, for that matter, had any kind of cure or treatment for the plague. They could do nothing but look on while people died in agony, and fear that they’d be next.
Other waves of the plague hit Venice in 1361, 1371, 1374 and 1390, and they would continue well into the next century.
There was an awareness that the plague arrived with the merchant ships, but so did the wealth that had made Venice powerful. As a society, Venice couldn’t — and wouldn’t — stop the ships.
However, at the end of the 1300s, the population of Venice had halved. The economy was suffering due to a shortage of labour, but attempts at importing skilled labour led nowhere. People were dying all over Europe.
The problem was becoming existential — a matter of survival, not just of persons, but of the state as such.
Venice would learn to govern the plague in the 1400s, for that is for the next episode.
Showdown with Genoa
One of the many wars between Venice and Genoa almost took Venice off the map for good.
A fleet from Genoa appeared in the upper Adriatic in 1379, and quickly took Chioggia, which is at the southern end of the Venetian lagoon.
From there, the Genovese moved north, inside the lagoon, towards Venice. They established a forward base on the island of Poveglia, some ten kilometres south of Venice.
The two navies fought for much of 1380, inside the lagoon, within sight of Venice itself.
Venice — fighting for its very survival — threw everything it had into the fight, and in 1381 they dislodged the Genovese from Poveglia. Later that year, they took back Chioggia, and Genoa sued for peace.
This war, just like the war against the Franks in 809, could have been the end of Venice.
After this epic struggle, the Venetians started building defences in strategic places in the lagoon.
The original citizens of Poveglia were never allowed back on the island again. It became a shipyard for the navy, a defensive structure, and, much later, a quarantine station for the plague.
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