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This is the extraordinary city of Venice - today one of the world’s top tourist destinations,
but once capital of a maritime republic, that ruled the most powerful empire in the Mediterranean.
Venice’s history was shaped by its unique location.
At the height of the Roman Empire, these coastal lagoons were home only to small fishing communities.
But then, in the 5th century AD, the Western Roman Empire was overrun by barbarian tribes.
As Italy became a battleground for Huns, Goths, Eastern Romans and Lombards, many sought refuge
among the lagoons.
In 726, these refugees elected Orso to be their duke, or doge - the first in an unbroken
line of 117 Doges who’d rule Venice for a thousand years.
For nearly 200 years, much of Italy was ruled by a resurgent Eastern Roman, or Byzantine
Empire.
Its Italian province, known as ‘the Exarchate of Ravenna’, fell to the Lombards in 751.
Only Venice held out, protected by its lagoons.
Answering the pope’s call for aid, Charlemagne and the Franks came to Italy and crushed the
Lombards – but they also failed to take Venice.
Charlemagne’s son Pepin, King of Italy, was said to have died from a fever caught
in the marshes that surrounded Venice, as he tried to attack the city.
In the following decades, Venice asserted its independence from the Byzantine empire…
And thanks to its location, flourished as a trading hub between Europe and the East.
Venetian merchants sold Italian grain and wine to the great city of Constantinople,
where they bought spices and silk to sell to Western Europe.
Above all, Venice’s early success came from the trade of salt – the vital food preservative
of the medieval world, harvested from salt pans and lagoons.
The Venetians went so far as to describe salt as ‘il vero fondamento del nostro stato’
– the true foundation of our state.
In 828, two Venetian merchants visiting Alexandria smuggled the supposed body of St.Mark back
to Venice, to boost the standing of their home city. The saint’s relics were interred
in the city’s great new church – the Basilica di San Marco. The first basilica was destroyed
by fire in 976. Today’s cathedral, consecrated in 1094, stands on the same site.
St.Mark became the city’s patron saint; his emblem, the winged lion, became the symbol
of the Republic - and decorated its standard.
Venetian trade routes to the east were plagued by pirates from the Balkan and North African
coasts.
So Venice built a navy to drive them from the seas, and garrisoned strategic harbours
and islands along the Adriatic shore.
By the year 1000, Doges of Venice were also styling themselves ‘Dukes of Dalmatia’.
The distinctive Venetian warship was the galley, powered by up to 150 oars, and triangular
‘lateen’ sails, rigged fore-and-aft. Weapons included a battering ram, and around 30 crossbowmen.
Galleys were also used to transport high-value cargo, such as spices, silks or precious stones.
In 1103, construction began of Venice’s famous Arsenale - a giant state-owned shipyard
that would become one of Europe’s largest industrial centres, employing around 2,000
workmen, and turning out hundreds of ships a year.
The Arsenale pioneered many modern industrial techniques, and underpinned Venetian naval
power for centuries.
Armed with a powerful navy, and lucrative trading concessions from the Byzantine Emperor,
Venice rose to become the greatest commercial and naval power in the Eastern Mediterranean.
But Venetian power also came through shrewd negotiation and self-interest.
This was the age of the Crusades, and Venice was closely-involved with Crusader states
as allies and trading partners.
In 1202, the Fourth Crusade arrived in Venice seeking ships to take them to Egypt, but with
no money to pay for them.
Doge Enrico Dandolo sensed an opportunity.
In exchange for loans, he first persuaded the crusaders to capture Zadar for Venice…
then, relations having soured between Venice and the Byzantines, to attack Constantinople
itself.
In 1204 the world’s greatest Christian city was sacked and plundered by self-proclaimed
warriors of Christ.
Venice took its share of the loot, including, most famously, four bronze horses from the
Hippodrome of Constantine… which found a new home on the façade of St.Mark’s Basilica
in the centre of Venice.
Doge Enrico and the Crusaders carved up the Byzantine Empire between them: Venice got
the islands of the Aegean… Crete… and the strategically-placed ports of Modone and
Corone, known henceforth as ‘the eyes of the Republic’.
Empire brought Venice unprecedented wealth and power – but fuelled a bitter rivalry
with another Italian maritime republic: Genoa.
For more than a century, these two Italian city-states vied for supremacy in the Eastern
Mediterranean, their wars ranging from the Levant, to Sicily, the Aegean, Black Sea and
Adriatic.
During these wars a Venetian captain named Marco Polo was taken prisoner… and used
his time in a Genoese jail to dictate an account of his travels in China.
The rivalry became a regional conflict: Genoa making alliances with the Hapsburg Duke of
Austria, the King of Hungary, and Padua; Venice with a revived Byzantine Empire, Cyprus and
Milan.
The fortunes of war ebbed and flowed, until in 1379 Venice came under attack from land
and sea, with a Genoese force occupying Chioggia, just 15 miles south of the city.
But Venice miraculously turned the tables, using galleys, armed with gunpowder artillery
for the first time, to trap and capture the Genoese fleet.
The wars finally ended in 1381 with the Peace of Turin.
Venice had to make significant concessions, and like Genoa, had been exhausted by war.
But while Genoa soon fell victim to internal feuding, Venice would stage an astonishing
recovery – thanks, in large part, to the unique system of government by which the Republic
was now ruled.
The most miraculous city of Venice, rich in gold but richer in fame, strong in power but
stronger in virtue, built on both solid marble and the harmony of its citizens. Petrarch
While Western Europe was dominated by kings who claimed to rule by divine right, several
Italian city-states harked back to classical forms of government – chiefly, the idea
of the republic.
Res-publica, the thing of the people.
However at the height of its power, Venice’s republic, La Serenissima, as it was known,
was firmly in the hands of its nobility.
Only those whose names were listed in the Golden Book – the city’s registry of nobility
– could join the Great Council, which appointed all senior officials through a complex system
of voting and drawing lots.
They chose 40 of their members to form the Quarantia, who supervised economic affairs,
and two to three hundred to form the Senate, the main legislative body, attended in addition
by the Republic’s admirals, generals and diplomats.
The elected head of government remained the Doge. His powers had been steadily diminished
until by the 1400s, he was no more, Venetians joked, than ‘a tavern sign’ – a decorative
symbol of power – though he continued to wield huge influence.
The Republic’s day-to-day government was the Signoria, made up of the Doge, the six
members of his Minor Council, and three representatives of the Quarantia. They could be joined by
three boards of special advisors known as the Savi, or ‘wise men’… to form the
Full College.
The Council of Ten, meanwhile, had a special remit to sniff out subversion.
It was a system that eventually acquired so many checks and balances that change – for
good or ill – seemed both unimaginable, and undesirable.
“The constitution of Venice… an insuperable monument of wisdom and efficiency.”
Gasparo Contarini.
Over time, an idea developed across Europe that Venice’s constitution contained the
three classical forms of government - democracy, oligarchy, and monarchy - in perfect balance,
and so ensured social harmony and stability.
‘The myth of Venice’, as this became known, overlooked the Republic’s healthy tradition
of attempted coups, rampant corruption and social tension.
But the Venetians did achieve something rare in the medieval and Renaissance world: a durable,
stable and effective government.
The Serene Republic had one further, strikingly modern feature: the best diplomats in Europe:
skilled ambassadors in every capital and court, sending information back to Venice in secret
code from across the continent.
Venice would need every advantage, for the years ahead would be dominated by bitter wars
with her Italian neighbours, and new challenges to her empire…
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