o^ 3 1924 080 933 983 E B| Cornell University Vjij Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924080933983 EARLY HISTORY OF VENICE BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Hettrg W. Sage 1891 .A\5.^n..c- i LO.p..\l''.^r In compliance with current copyright law, Cornell University Library produced tliis replacement volume on paper that meets the ANSI Standard Z39.48-1992 to replace the irreparably deteriorated original. 1997 THE EARLY HISTORY OF VENICE FROM THE FOUNDATION TO THE CONQUEST OF CONSTANTINOPLE A.D. 1204 F. C. HODGSON, M.A. FELLOW OF king's COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE SOMETIME ASSISTANT SECRETARY IN THE (laTE) EDUCATION DEPARTMENT WITH MAP AND PLAN LONDON GEORGE ALLEN, 156, CHARING CROSS ROAD 1901 AH rights reserved Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson A' Co. At the Ballantyne Press CONTENTS BOOK I THE ORIGINS CHAP. PAGE I. THE LAGOONS AND THEIR FIRST INHABITANTS 3 II. THE EARLIEST GOVERNMENT OF THE LAGOONS THE CHURCH OF AQUILEIA AND THE SCHISM OF THE THREE CHAPTERS — SLAV SETTLEMENTS IN DALMATIA ■ • • "^7, III. EARLY DOGES AT HERACLEA AND MALAMOCCO . 58 IV. THE DOGES AT RIALTO BEFORE THE ORSEOLI . 76 V. THE ORSEOLI .122 VI. THE CITY AND LAGOONS IN THE TENTH CEN- TURY : THEIR EXTERNAL ASPECT, GOVERN- MENT, AND TRADE ... . I30 BOOK II THE BEGINNINGS OF EMPIRE I. THE CONQUEST OF DALMATIA . . . 169 II. RELATIONS WITH WESTERN AND EASTERN EM- PERORS . . .186 III. WAR WITH THE NORMANS AND ALLIANCE WITH EASTERN EMPIRE . . 209 vi CONTENTS BOOK III THE CRUSADES CHAP. PAGE I. THE FIRST CRUSADE AND CHRISTIAN SETTLE- MENTS IN THE EAST ..... 233 II. FREDERIC BARBAROSSA : HIS LOMBARD WARS AND THE PAPAL SCHISM . . . . 266 III. MANUEL COMNENUS AND HIS AGGRESSIONS ON VENICE . . . . . .277 IV. THE PEACE OF VENICE .... 300 BOOK IV VENETIAN EMPIRE IN THE LEVANT I. CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES OF ORIO MASTRO- PIERO : RELATIONS WITH CRUSADERS AND COURT OF CONSTANTINOPLE . . 327 II. ENRICO DANDOLO AND THE FOURTH CRUSADE 346 EXCURSUS ON THE SOURCES FOR THE HISTORY OF THE FOURTH CRUSADE . . . .428 INDEX . 439 MAPS I. THE LAGOONS . . . Frontispiece II. PLAN OF MODERN VENICE . Opposite page 130 INTRODUCTION ON THE SOURCES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF VENICE The chronicle of John the Deacon was formerly known as that of Sagornino, because the name of John Sagornino, an ironsmith, is signed to a memorandum written on a blank space ad calcem, and this was erroneously supposed to be the name of the author. It was edited under this name in the middle of the eighteenth century, and is so quoted in so late a work as Romanin's Storia Documentata. The memorandum really relates to an appeal which Sagor- nino made to Pietro Barbolano (doge 1026 to 1031) and Dominico Flabianico (doge 1032 to 1043) against the Gastaldo, or Head of the Corporation of Smiths, for a grievance connected with some corvee due by the smiths to the doge's palace, and is interesting as the earliest record of any corporation or " Arte " at Venice : but has nothing to do with the chronicle. The attribution of the latter to John the Deacon rests upon the fact that, in his account of Otto III.'s famous visit to Venice, the chronicler relates things that could have been known only to the Emperor, the doge, and John the Deacon. John was a person of consideration, who, as we know from documentary evidence, was sent to the Emperor at Aachen in the year 995, as an envoy from the doge. This mission is mentioned in our chronicle,^ without the name of the envoy, and in the miilute account of the Emperor's journey from Pomposia to Venice ^ the Deacon John is mentioned more than once, but without any intimation that he is the writer himself. He is mentioned in several other ' Page 150 in Monlicolo's Cron. Venez. Ant. ^ //;., pp. 160 sqq. viii INTRODUCTION documents as discharging important duties in the service of Pietro Orseolo II., and appears last in the year 1018, after that doge's death, as sent on a mission to the Em- peror Henry II. on behalf of the abbess of San Zaccaria. He is often called the doge's chaplain. It may certainly be accepted as highly probable that John the Deacon was the author of our chronicle. But whether he was so or not, there is no doubt that the work is of the highest authority, especially for the important reign of Pietro Orseolo II. It is written in very tolerable Latin, quite different from the rudeness of the lesser chronicles that have been confused with it in MSS. and editions, the Cronicon Gradense and the Cronica de Singulis Patriarchis Nove Aquileie, works belonging to the same category as the Altino Chronicle, of which I shall soon have to speak, con- taining passages of different dates, but some of a very high antiquity, some written by persons ignorant of chronology as well as of the elements of Latin grammar. Monticolo, the editor of these chronicles in the Fontiper la Storia d Italia} puts them on the same level with legends of the saints, of which, in fact, a good part of them consists, and from which they are distinguished by no intellectual superiority. The Cronaca Veneziana and the minor chronicles connected with it are published in the ninth volume of Pertz, Mon. Hist. Germ. S.S., vii., as well as in the series of Fonti referred to above. Pertz was the first to give to the second chronicle the name of Cronicon Gradense, which is wanting in the MSS. and is not altogether appropriate, as it deals with Torcello as much as with Grado. From internal evidence we may conclude that both this chronicle and that de Singulis Patriarchis were the work of a priest of the church of Grado living in the early years of the eleventh century. The recent editions above referred to of the Cronaca Veneziana have been printed from a MS. in the Vatican Library formerly belonging to the Dukes of Urbino, and known as Urbinas, 440. Pertz was inclined to think this 1 Cronache Veneziane Aniichissime, vol. i. Roma, 1890. INTRODUCTION ix MS. was the actual autograph of John the Deacon; whether it is or not, it is certainly very nearly contem- porary, its date being earlier than a.d. 1032. The Altino Chronicle was known in old times. Andrea Dandolo has several times quoted it, and Martino da Canale and Marco and an anonymous chronicler, supposed to be of the Giustiniani family, all writers of the thirteenth century, have incorporated fragments of it in their history. Filiasi, who wrote about the year 1800, deplores its loss, but as some verbatim quotations from it are found in his works, he must have had access to it without attaching a name to it. Indeed early in the eighteenth century it had been described in print by Apostolo Zeno, a Venetian antiquary (who found a copy in the famous library of the Senator Bernardo Trevisano, and published an account of it in 1 7 1 2 in the Giornale de' Lettcrati (T Italia), and by Mont- faucon, who ten years before gave a short sketch of its contents in the Diarium Italicum. Flaminius Cornelius or Cornaro, the learned historian of the churches of Venice and Torcello, quoted it many times in his great work published in 1 749. The Trevisano MS. is now at Dres- den ; but there is another in the library of the Patriarchal Seminary at Venice and a third in the Vatican ; all three belong to the thirteenth century, and all are more or less incorrect copies of lost originals. The oldest part of our chronicle is that which relates the destruction of Altino and the foundation of Torcello and Grado. This served as the rough sketch of the Chronicle of Grado described above, and is quoted in the Venetian Chronicle of John the Deacon, who died early in the eleventh century; it must therefore be earlier than that date, while its mention of Obelerius and Beatus, doges early in the ninth century, gives a terminus a quo. It is a highly composite product, as indeed appears at first sight, and has been proved with perhaps needless de- tail by its latest editor, Henry Simonsfeld;i besides the 1 Venetianische Stitdien I., von Dr. Henry Simonsfeld, MUnchen, 1878. X INTRODUCTION narratives I have mentioned as its oldest part are lists of Patriarchs of Grado and Bishops of Olivolo and TorceUo, and of the families that had migrated to Rialto by the beginning of the ninth century, with an account of their religious foundations, and a purely fabulous history begin- ning with the Exarch Longinus and mixed up with an equally fabulous account of the war of the Franks against Venice. All this part of the chronicle is written in the most atrocious Latin, so that much of it is absolutely unintel- ligible. The best authorities, however, Waitz and Simons- feld, are disposed to think it contains some trustworthy traditional information. I have referred in my text to the prominent part that a tribune Aurius is made to play in the first settlement of Torcello and the other lidi of the lagoon. The family name of Aurio, Dauro, or Doro, which was well known in later times in Venice, and is perpetuated in the Ca' Doro on the Grand Canal, is found frequently in old documents relating to Torcello and the surrounding islands. And there is no reason to doubt the accounts it gives of the roda or wheel in the pave- ment of the cathedral of Torcello, or of the water brought into the font of the baptistery by pipes, and poured out of the mouths of bronze images of beasts. It is in references such as these and in mentions of feudal or quasi-feudal tenures and customs, and not in history proper, that the value of the greater part of the chronicle consists. But an important addition to it, occupying pages 72-97 in the edition in Pertz SS., vol. xiv., is quite distinct from the rest, and a valuable historical document, giving in intel- ligible Latin an account, probably nearly contemporary, of the events between the accession of the doge Domenico Michieli about 1120 and the peace of Venice in 1177. This addition, which is separately entitled Historia Ducum Vencticorum, is our most valuable authority for the period of which it treats. I should add that Simonsfeld, the editor of the Altino Chronicle in Pertz, used a better MS. from the Vatican INTRODUCTION xi Library than was available for either of the earlier recen- sions in the Archivio Storico Italiano, series i. vol. viii. Cfrom a Venetian MS.), series i. App. v. (from a Dresden MS.). Andrea Dandolo,i the most famous of Venetian chroniclers, is a conspicuous person in Venetian history. He was elected doge in 1343, at an unusually early age, either thirty-three, thirty-six, or , thirty-eight, according to different accounts. But several years before he had held high and dignified offices, that of Procurator of St. Mark in 1331, that of Podesta of Trieste in 1333, and that of provveditore in campo in the war against Mastino della Scala in 1336. He was learned in jurisprudence, per- haps a doctor and Professor of Law in Padua. He was an honoured friend of Petrarch, who wrote the inscription on his monument in the baptistery of San Marco, and contemporaries and later writers agree in praise of his justice, his liberality, his cheerful gentleness, as well as of his learning and eloquence. He tells us in a passage of his history (Mur., xii. col. 237) that he was of the same family as the great doge Enrico Dandolo : but the stemma drawn up by Simonsfeld shows that he was not a lineal descendant. Of the troubled but not inglorious eleven years for which he governed the republic, his Turkish and Genoese wars, and the terrible black death, which in those years visited Venice as it did the rest of Western Europe, this is not the place to speak. He seems to have been all his life a student, interested in old laws, of which he added a sixth book to the existing collection of Statuta, and in the ancient relations of Church and State in Venice,^ and always prepared to appeal to history for guidance. It was he who collected in the Liber A/bus the treaties with ^ He .spells his own name " Dandulus," but the spelling Dandolo for his very famous family has been so long accepted, that it would be a pity now to alter it. ■^ See the edict with its proeniium prefixed to his chronicle at p. 9 of IVIuratori SS., vol. xii., in which the doge takes up, at least with reference to his chapel of St. Mark, its priraicerius and chaplains, whom he will not allow to call themselves Canons, the highest Erastian ground. xii INTRODUCTION Oriental states, and in the Liber Blancus those with Italian states, the two great collections still in the Archives of Venice, of which so much use has been made by Tafel and Thomas and other writers. These books were compiled after the sixth book of Statuta, which came out in 1346. Of his historical writings we have two different accounts. Raifaele Caresini, the author of a continuation of the chronicle coming down to the year 1388, who was in 1379 Chancellor of the Signoria, and speaks of Andrea Dandolo as his lord, tells us that he wrote two chronicles of the memorable deeds in the days of his predecessors, one Seriose et per extensum, the other breviloquiam eleganti stilo." 1 Muratori concluded, apparently with good reason, that the chronicle which he published was the longer work ; the " brief and elegant " compendium he identified with an abridgment confined to books four and five^ of the chronicle we know, with all the parts relating to the general history of the world omitted. But another writer, Marino Sanudo the younger, who wrote the Vite de^ Duchi di Venezia, printed in the twenty-second volume of Muratori, and who was living in 1522, describes Andrea Dandolo's works as " a Latin chronicle called Mare Magnum of the origin of the noble families of Venice, which appears to be in the Council of Ten," and the Compendia Latino di Venezia." These we might probably identify with the two chronicles mentioned by Caresini, if Sanudo's testimony stood alone. But the editor of the collection of official historiographers of Venice says that Dandolo wrote three historical works, of which the longest, called Mare Magnum Historiarum, and containing a general history from the creation of the world, was lost, when he wrote (a.d. i 7 i 8) ; the other two derived from this, one called annals,- the ' Muratori SS., xii. col. 417. " Seriose," I suspect, means " in form of a series," and refers to the curious arrangement in books, chapters, and parts. ^ The first three books are not known to exist. The fourth book begins with the Episcopate of St. Mark, so that we can easily dispense with its predecessors. Both the MSB. that Muratori himself used were in the Este Library at Modena. INTRODUCTION xiii other a chronicle. The annals, he says, omitted only the first three books of the Mare Magnum, the chronicle was less full than the annals, but for the most part transcribed from them. I do not think there is much difficulty in coming to the conclusion that the Mare Magnum, the greatest of the three works, stands for the complete work in ten books (whether it ever existed or was merely imagined from the fact of the chronicle beginning with the fourth book), though it is no doubt strange that in no MS. of the chronicle known to us is there any trace of such a title as Mare Magnum. Romanin^ thought he had found in the Ubrary of St. Mark at Venice a MS. of the Mare Magnum which he considered to be the work as published by Muratori, and another of the shorter chronicle. But according to Simonsfeld, who has looked at the two MSS. referred to, there is no reason for calling the former the Mare Magnum. The chronicle we have in Muratori consists of the seven books (four to ten inclusive) of the annals, and a " second volume," or rather an appendix from the lesser chronicle. The former ends with the year 1280; the latter brings us down to 1342, the year of the death of Dandolo's immediate predecessor, Bartolomeo Gradonico. It is much more compendious, and the division into books, chapters, and parts is not continued. Besides the two Este MSS. that Muratori consulted, he was furnished by Saxius, the librarian of the Ambrosiaij Library at Milan, with a copy of a MS. in that library, which owed its existence to a most laborious and accurate scholar of the end of the sixteenth century, Pinelli, who spent forty years at Padua in investigating Venetian archives and conversing with learned Venetians. The copy made for him was constructed in a peculiar manner : the base appears to have been a MS. of the lesser chronicle, in the margin of which, or on pages inserted between those of the original, he has added the readings of the larger work, the ' iii. 173- xiv INTRODUCTION annals, and also a mass of notes made by himself or other scholars, so that the whole forms, in the words of Saxius, " confusa indigestaque farrago." Much of this additional matter is of uncertain date and doubtful authenticity, but it contains much of value, and moreover one of the MSS. that Pinelli used, belonging to the Contarini family and now in the library of St. Mark, is thought by Simonsfeld i to be of the fourteenth or the earliest years of the fifteenth century, and so very near the time of Dandolo himself. Many of the marginal additions in the Ambrosian MS. are passages of authors such as Thomas, Archdeacon of Salona, whose works were known to Dandolo. Simonsfeld has shown that so many of these marginal additions correct mistakes in the text or improve the expression, that it is almost credible that some of them may have come from an annotated copy belonging to the author himself. We find in Dandolo's Chronicle much information taken from earlier writers now known to us, such as the Altino Chronicle, the Grado Chronicle, and that of John the Deacon : others from later writers nearer his own time, such as Martino da Canale and Marco, which have been published in the Arcltivio Storico Italiano. In other passages it is probable that he made use of chronicles now lost. Simonsfeld has traced in places, especially in Dandolo's account of the Fourth Crusade, facts taken from Paulinus, Bishop of Puteoli, a writer of hagiologies. We have also evidence of the care taken by our doge to collect and arrange ancient documents. When Romanin at Vienna examined the Liber Albus and Liber Blancus, he found prefixed to each a patent of Andrea Dandolo, in which he says that desiring to spend the little leisure left him by the business of government in some way qseful to the public, after compiling the sixth book of Statuta he found, on a careful examination, " the privileges, juris- dictions, and treaties of our most holy city, procured at divers times by our predecessors or ourselves, scattered about through many volumes, with no separation of ' Aiuireas Dandole uitd Seine Gesch., p. 27. INTRODUCTION xv subjects, places, or times, in uncertain or, to speak more truly, unsuitable places; whence the eyesight of readers was dimmed, the understanding of searchers dulled, and the finding of what was sought rendered often most difficult and almost impossible." Desiring to redress this notable defect, he had ordered the documents to be collected, arranged by a proper comparison, and distri- buted in suitable places and in nw-turely considered order, leaving nothing in a bad or unbecoming situation, but all in consecutive series as subject, place, or time required : and had thus made access to them pleasant instead of difficult, clear instead of obscure, inserting in the present volume (2.1?. I presume the Liber Blancus) documents relating to the affairs of Lombardy, Tuscany, the Romagna, the March, and Sicily. He ends the patent with expressing the wish, " ut venerabili patrias comissisque nobis divinitus populis quibus principaliter nati sumus pro- desse quam prseesse potius valeamus," ^ a wish that, to judge from the testimony of his contemporaries, was characteristic of this humane and public-spirited doge. Of sources of information not contemporary I have not thought it necessary to consult specially the collection of the official historiographers for this early period of the History. Of modern books Romanin's Storia Docutnentata di Venezia, 1853, in ten volumes, is indispensable to the historian, and my opinion of its value has increased with my familiarity with it. The author is not a scholar : I have mentioned in one place, and might have done so in others, his ignorance of Greek : and I strongly suspect that many of the documents he prints might have been made more intelligible by better editing. But the history is a work of great learning and industry, if dry and unattractive in style, and has made knowledge of Venetian history much more accessible, as Dandolo's arrangement of the Archives did. Le Bret's Staatsgeschichte der Republik Venedig, Leipzig and Riga, 1769, which professes to be founded on the French history of the Abbe Langier, seems • Romanin, i. pp. 354, 355. xvi INTRODUCTION to be a more scholarlike, if not a more attractive book. It contains some ancient documents that are nowhere else to be found in so correct a form. Of Filiasi's Memorie Storiche dei Veneti primi e secondi I wish I could have read more: they are full of the most interesting antiquarian and topographical learning, but given on such a scale as would make a history that did justice to them a work only to be undertaken by a Methuselah. The collection of Urkunden zur alteren Handels- und Staatsgeschichte der Republik Venedigs, by Tafel and Thomas, published in the Fontes rerum Austriacarum, Abth. ii. Bde. xii-xiv, is a book that any historian of Venice must have constantly in his hands, especially for those parts of his subject which connect it with Byzantine history. Both the editors were experts in Byzantine scholarship, and their annotations on the documents they collected, especially on points of geography that arise, are models of German thoroughness. They help their reader less in the very difficult task of interpreting the documents, many of them Latin translations of Greek charters, from the hands of clerks who understood little Latin. The Greek originals would probably not have been easy to understand, but they appear not to be in existence, at least for the earliest times : the great collection of Mik- losich and Miiller (Acta et Diplomata Grceca. Vindobonce, i860, &c.) contains hardly any documents earlier than the Latin conquest of 1204. In the Latin translations, as in the barbarous chronicles of Altino and Grado, we find ourselves in a world where the rules of Priscian are unknown, and where the encyclopaedic learning of Du- cange seldom helps us. Still we learn much from them, especially in connexion with the passages from the Byzantine historians and Andrea Dandolo t^at _ the editors have collected and printed as illustrations of their work. The close connexion of Venice with Constanti- nople in early times makes it necessary for the historian of Venice to have some acquaintance with the vast stores of historical literature that fill the forty-nine volumes of INTRODUCTION xvii the Bonn Corpus, a rather dreary field of study, which would however be less uninviting if all the editors fur- nished us with the abundant illustration that is to be derived from the notes e.g. of Reisk and Ducange. The only Byzantine historians I have made any acquaintance with are Constantine Porphyrogennetus, Anna Comnena, and Nicetas Choniates, all of whom were in a position to know the history of their times the first two being members of the Imperial family, the third a high officer of state. But all had conspicuous defects that impair the literary and historical value of their writings, Constantine being one of the dullest of antiquaries; the princess, one of the most foolish and superstitious of court ladies; and Nicetas, a rhetorical theologian, spoiled by a bad school, who is however quite capable of telling his story with clearness and good sense, and even, in his more inspired moments, with a pathos that touches us still. The mention of the connexion between Venice and Constantinople reminds me that I should say something of a book very frequently referred to in this volume, Gfrorer's Byzantinische Geschichten, a work compiled by Dr. J. B. Weiss of the University of Graz, after Gfrorer's death, from lectures given by the latter at Freiburg. The University of Freiburg in Switzerland is one of the great centres of Ultramontanism, and Professor Gfrorer's most elaborate work was a history of Gregory VII., which I do not myself know. We may therefore expect to find in his Byzantine Histories an ultramontane tendency. And this in fact we do find, and an animus against what he calls " Byzantinismus," which is much the same as what we call Erastianism. But the chief char- acteristic of his book — the first volume of which is entirely taken up with the History of Venice down to the war with Robert Guiscard and Alexius Comnenus' Golden Bull of 1082 — is its accentuation of the dependence of Venice on the Eastern Empire of early times. This dependence had no doubt been overlooked by Italian writers, and Romanin xviii INTRODUCTION had, from patriotic sensitiveness, striven to minimise it : but most readers will, I believe, think that Gfrorer has given this feature of the History undue prominence, and there is visible in other parts of his work a tendency to paradox, which detracts from its value. It has not, how- ever, the effect, which love of paradox sometimes has, of banishing the dryness, which we have a right to expect in a work of German erudition. It is a very dry book, but accurate and well-informed ; one never finds a fact in any ancient authority that has escaped Gfrorer's vigilance. I have used Daru very little. His great history is a French classic, and he was himself conversant with la haute politique, and in that respect a competent historian of the famous republic. But his special gifts would come into play more in the later parts of his history : on the earlier history his authority is not great, and his accuracy and impartiality have been much called in question by recent writers who have resented, some his injustice to Venice, others his hostility to the Church.^ Gibbon has been very frequently in my hands through- out the compiling of this volume, and Milman's "Latin Christianity," and Giesebrecht's Deutsche Kaiserseit have also been most useful. No books show more clearly the interdependence of the histories of all parts of Europe during the Middle Ages. My references to Gibbon are to the edition of Dr. W. Smith, in eight vols. (Murray, i8S4). Another authority to whom any one dealing with the early history of Venice must constantly have recourse is ' In Vctiedig ah Wellmacht und Weltstadt, von Hans v. Zwiedineck- Siidenhorst (Bielefeld, Leipzig, 1899), p. 145, we may read " def Franzoie Daru, eine gewissenlose Kreatur Napoleons I., der in acht Banden die Geschichte Venedigs entslellt und gefalscht hat," and a reference to his fables about the Inquisition at Venice, which for half a century might compete in success with the romances of chivalry or brigandage. The book of Zwiedineck-Siidenhorst is short and interesting, and most beautifully illustrated. S. A. F. Rio, Epilogue cl FArt Chritien, i. p. 349, quoted in a note to p. viii. of Gfrorer's first vol., speaks of Daru having ' ' robbed of all its charm, edification and grandeur, the history of this heroically Christian republic." INTRODUCTION xix the great Ducange — Charles Du Fresne, Sieur Ducange. His greatest work, the Glossarium Medice et Infimce Latinitaiis, is indispensable for any student of the Middle Ages, but the rest of his works, that represent the pro- duct of the larger part of his long life of learned activity, relate more or less to Constantinople, the city which more closely than any other is connected with the early history of Venice. His history of the Latin Empire of Constantinople, the first work he published, his edition of Villehardouin, that of the Greek metrical chronicles of the Latin conquest, in a language then almost unknown, to which his Glossarium Grcecitatis was the first introduction, his notes on Anna Comnena, Nicephorus Bryennius, Cinna- mus, the Paschal Chronicle and Zonaras, his account of the churches and palaces of the city in Constantinopolis Christiana, show, taken altogether, an almost unexampled mass of learning. It is obvious to speak of him as a Gibbon, of equally encyclopaedic learning, but without the literary gifts that make a history a work of art. But in comparing him with Gibbon one must always remem- ber that the century which separated their lives had immensely facilitated the research of Gibbon, by printing much of the material of ancient and mediaeval learning, which Ducange had to acquire laboriously from MSS. To any one using the great Glossary, or his full and ex- haustive notes to Villehardouin or the Byzantine historians, it is difficult to conceive how even in seventy-eight years of opulent leisure, spent not in a monastery, but amid the distractions of family and social life, such a vast apparatus of learning could be accumulated. I should lastly mention, as a book to which I owe very much, Heyd's Geschichte des Levantehandels im Miltelalter, a very learned and interesting book on a most attractive subject. I have used the French translation of M. Furcy Raynaud (Leipzig, 1885), which was translated from the second edition of the original before that had appeared in German. The special authorities for the History of the Fourth XX INTRODUCTION Crusade, a complicated and highly controversial subject, I have discussed in an excursus at the end of this volume. But I ought to mention here that I owe my acquaintance with these authorities to a very learned and interesting English monograph, " The Fall of Constantinople, being the story of the Fourth Crusade," by Mr Edwin Pears (Longmans, 1885). The map of the lagoons is from a reduced photograph of an Admiralty chart. It gives the whole of the seaboard " from Grado to Capo d'Argine," in Dandolo's words. The plan of Venice I owe to the kindness of Mr. Augustus J. C. Hare, who has done so much to make more attractive the study of Venice and other Cities of Italy. ERRATA Page 5, note \,for ' iropff/ieious,' read ^ irop9iieloi.^.' „ lo, note I, add at end 'and Jackson's "Dalmatia, the Quarnero, &C.," iii. 412 sqq.' 1 1, line 29, for ' Maesia,' reat^ ' Mcesia.' 12, line 6, „ „ 13, line 5, 13, line 37, 16, line yi„for 'seder,' read 'sedes.' 17, line 14, for ' of,' read ' by.' 18, line 36, for ' Gelarius,' read ' Gelasius.' ig, last Vine, for 'ands,' read 'lands.' 28, line 34, for 'Stiller,' raid 'Stie[er.' 43, line Si, for ' ,' read ' dlov.' 55, line 23, for ' Maesia,' read ' Moesia.' 77, line II, for 'salt-marches,' reorf 'salt-marshes.' 84, line ST, for 'Du Canale,' read 'Da Canale.' 86, line 3, for ' Quamero,' read ' Quarnero.' 91, line Zs,' read ' apxTi^^- * , ,, line 36,^0^ 'occursa,' «ai/ 'occursu.' , ,, line 3T,for ' Sanctur,' read ' Sanctus.' , 403, line g,for ' Bishop,' read ' Bishops.' , 422, line I, for 'F.rckU,' read 'EreUi.' , 431, line 12, for 'Natalie,' read 'Natalis.' , 437, line 13, for ' Riaut,' read ' Riant.' Early History 0/ Venice. BOOK I THE ORIGINS THE EARLY HISTORY OF VENICE CHAPTER I THE LAGOONS AND THEIR FIRST INHABITANTS The northern part of the west coast of the Adriatic is, and appears always to have been, the scene of very remarkable geological effects. The Po and Adige and many of their tri- butaries bring down from the Alps, especially at the time of the melting of the snows, vast quantities of detritus, some- times in the form of blocks of stone or rounded pebbles, sometimes in that of fine sand or mud. The stones and pebbles do not travel any great distance, and are said not to be found in the Po at a lower point than its junction with the Trebbia ; ^ but the sand and mud are longer held in solution. In old times, before the industry of man had intervened, these rivers used, every summer and whenever a storm of unusual violence had swollen them, to spread themselves over the level ground in their basins, and there deposit a great part of the detritus they carried, but still a considerable residuum was borne on to the sea. Since the rivers have been confined by embankments, a still larger quantity of sediment reaches the sea. Hence has resulted a gradual decrease in the depth of the Adriatic, which is very shallow opposite Venice and yields, when dredged, river shells ; a decrease which, but for a simultaneous ' Lyell, "Principles of Geology," i. p. 423 (nth edition). 4 THE EARLY HISTORY OF VENICE depression of the bottom of the sea, would have ere this filled up the head of the Adriatic. But part of the river deposits is not carried out to sea, but, turned aside by the action of the tide which at this corner of the Mediterranean- rises as much as five feet,^ or by sea-currents, has formed in the course of ages long narrow strips of sandy island, running in a direction parallel to the shore and separated from it by shallow land-locked basins. The shallow basins are called lagune, the sandy islands lidi. Where a stream of any size enters the sea, it breaks a channel through the lido, and these channels or porti are what made and still make the lagoons of Venice useful as a harbour for large ships. It is probable from the evidence of names and the expressions of old chroniclers that in ancient times the lidi were generally overgrown with pine-woods ; the famous pine-forest of Ravenna is situated on an old lido, which long ago, by the filling up of its lagoon, became terra firma, and now reaches some miles inland from the sea. The rivers that now water the fertile plain of Ravenna coming down from the Apennines, have a short and stag- nant course, and are not causing any great alteration of the coast-line. But in former times they must have worked much the same effect as the rivers to the north have worked in later times, or, as is more probable, the delta of the Po extended once as far south as Ravenna,^ and the river had 1 Strabo, v. i. (5), p. 212, mentions the Adriatic tides, /idpayap raOra t4 liipri ax^Sbv n t^s Ka.8' ij/ias flaXdTTijs 6/xoio7roS« T(f (hxeavi}, koI irapoirXTjffiws iKeli/ip TTOieirai rds re ifiiriliTeis Kal t&s irXij/ijuupi'Sar. * Pliny {ff. N., iii. c. 16 or 20) gives us an interesting account of the mouths of the Po, which is well illustrated in the notes to Franz's edition and the. art. " Padus " in Smith's Dictionary of. Geography. The mouth reaching the sea near Ravenna he calls Padusa or Fossa Augusta ; the latter name makes it probable that it was an artificial cutting of imperial times. Such cuttings have been made in these regions from lime immemorial. The name of Padusa is familiar to us from Virgil's mention of the wild swans that haunted it : — " Piscosove amne Padusse Dant sonitum rauci per stagna loquacia cycni." — ^n., xi. 457. THE LAGOONS AND THEIR INHABITANTS 5 the same operation there as farther north. Strabo, the greatest of ancient geographers, who lived in the reign of Augustus, describes Ravenna " in the marshes " in words that would apply to Venice. " It is," he says, " all built on wooden piles and water flows through it, and it is traversed by means of bridges and ferries ; " and he adds that the scour of the tide and the rivers combined made it a healthy place, notwithstanding the marshes that sur- rounded it, so that it was chosen as a place for training gladiators.^ Ravenna owes its important place in history to Augustus, who built a new harbour with a lighthouse, that is men- tioned by Pliny ^ as a wonder, at a place three miles off, afterwards called Classis, and made it the chief naval station on the Adriatic. For more than 400 years it was one of the most important cities of Italy ; in the decline of the empire of the West its impregnable situation made it the refuge of the Imperial family, and the seat of such government as then existed. After the fall of the Western Empire it reached its highest glory as the capital of Theodoric the Ostrogoth ; and it had still later a position of some dignity as the seat of the Exarch, the representa- tive in Italy of the Byzantine Caesars. We shall see how in this connection with the Eastern Empire, as in other things, Venice may be looked upon as the successor of Ravenna. Pliny tells us that the delta of the Po reached from Ravenna on the south to Altinum on the north, and Strabo speaks of both these cities and Spina and Butrium, which lay between them, as situated "in the marshes." Th'e chain of lagoons connecting Ravenna and Altinum, through which communication was carried on by boat, seem to have ^ Strabo, v. i. § 7, p. 213. fuXoTrayjJs SXr; /tat Sidppvros ye See Gibbon, iv. p. 311. ^ Ibid., v. pp. 151, 153. 3 The Franks, we are specially told by Procopius, conquered those ands without much bloodshed, oiiivX irbvi^ (Gotkica., iv. c. 24). 20 THE EARLY HISTORY OF VENICE motley host, in which Lombards (a name that Italy then first learned to dread), Heruli, Huns, and Persians marched side by side, along the edge of the lagoons,^ his fleet accompanying his march and providing boats to bridge the several rivers. The twenty years during which Justinian's armies were fighting to recover Italy are said to have been years of greater suffering for the Italians than those of any of the barbarian invasions.^ They had been preceded by more than thirty years (a.d. 494-526) during which the enlightened and generally peaceful reign of Theodoric had given the distracted country an interval of rest and prosperity. We read in the epistles of Cassiodorus, who was praetorian prefect under Theodoric and his succes- sors, contemporary evidence of the peaceful and luxurious life that was going on in Italy ; amid the natural warm- baths and the villas built far out over the sea, the oyster- beds and the fish reserves of Baiae:^ or on the coasts of Istria and Venetia, regions that overflowed with wine and oil and corn, where was as it were a Baise of the Ionian Sea, delicious retreats rightly called the Campania of Ravenna, the larder of the royal city,^ enjoying, though far advanced in the north, an admirably tempered climate. I have quoted this passage, which goes on to speak in a still more rhetorical style of magnificent country houses,® because it apparently relates to the Venetian lagoons, and ^ Procopius says that Totila thought 5ta iih ttjs irapaKias k&Xttov rod 'lopiou, 'Pw^tAttiots firproTe Sward, ^treadaL riji' iropeiav iroielaiOaLj itrsl pauffliropot TTorafiol Tra/j.Tr\Tjd€Ls ivravda iK^oXas ^xo^'^'^s d-jripevTa rravrdirain irapixo'^''''- f'""' Ta iKehri x'^pl-"- John, the son of Vitali- anus, who knew this coast, suggested the expedient of bridging the river with boats. (Procop., Goth., iv. 26). '^ Denina, Revoluz. cC Italia, lib. vi. c. vi. (i. pp. 394 jy(/.,ed. 1820). ' Cassiod. , Var. ix. 6. '' " Urbis Regite cella penaria, voluptuosa nimis at deliciosa digressio fruitur in Septentrione progressa coeli admiranda temperie." The whole letter is worth reading. (Cassiod., Var. xii. 22). ^ ' ' Prsetoria longe lateque lucentia in margaritarum speciem putes esse disposita." Prsetoria are country houses in Suet, Tib. 39, Calig. 37, and in several places of the Jurists. Cassiodorus, I suppose, com- pares them to pearls, because they were built out in the sea. THE LAGOONS AND THEIR INHABITANTS 21 would seem to show that more than fifty years after Attila's invasion some relics of the old luxury of Altinum still remained. Another letter of Cassiodorus ^ has been more frequently quoted than any other passage of an ancient author by those who have treated of the origins of Venice. It is a despatch to the tribunes of the maritimi or men of the sea- board, bidding them provide for the transport of wine and oil from Istria to Ravenna ; and it incidentally introduces a description of the mode of life of the dwellers in this mari- time region. Cassiodorus, in a vein of exaggerated compli- ment, dwells on their frequent voyages, not only over the immense spaces of the sea, but also on the rivers, where their boats are towed by their crews rather than driven by the wind. He then describes the situation of their homes, having Ravenna and the Po to the south, and to the east the pleasant shore of the Ionian Sea ; there they had settled, like sea-birds, on flats alternately covered and left bare by the tide, building up and keeping together with wattling the soil on which their houses rested. All enjoyed an equal share of wealth, and no one envied his neighbour. The only produce that was abundant was fish and salt, the latter of which furnished their staple industry, the cylinders of the saltworks taking the place of plough and scythe, salt itself serving for money instead of the less useful gold. His letter ends with repeating his request that they would fit out with all speed the vessels that lie in every man's shed, as elsewhere the cattle in the sheds of the farmyard. We need not perhaps see in this remarkable letter the evidence of a commercial power in its infancy, which some patriotic Venetians have found in it. Making allowance for the rhetorical colour that is introduced rather to beautify the prefect's letter than to express genuine admiration, we 1 Var. xii. ep. 24. An Italian translation is to be found in Romanin, Storia Documenlata, i. pp. 68, 69 ; a German in Gfrorer, Byz. Gesch., i. pp. 4-6. 22 THE EARLY HISTORY OF VENICE may think that the description given would have been applicable to the people of the lagoons at any time as the necessary result of their situation. The lagoons formed a highway of communication between Ravenna and Altinum ^ ; the mention of sea-trade by Cassiodorus is less full and detailed than that of barge-trafific on the rivers. Nor is it necessary to discuss, as Romanin does, the evidence of the independence of these tribunes ; they no doubt were officers of the Gothic government. The connection of this coast with Ravenna was always close and intimate ; in the time of Narses' invasion we are expressly told by Procopius ^ that the seaboard of Venetia was subject to the Romans, that is, to the Eastern Empire, whose viceroy was at Ravenna. So vigorous a prince as Theodoric would surely not have tolerated an independent commonwealth so near his court. To return to the campaign of 552. Narses marched on to Ravenna and Ariminum, and then struck into the Apen- nines, and there at a place called Taginae, where a legend said that Camillus had once beaten the Gauls, he defeated and killed Totila. Rome soon fell into his hands, and the Gothic power fell with Teias, Totila's successor, at the battle of Mount Lactarius^ in Campania. This was in March 553. In the next year Narses had to repel another inva- sion of Franks and Alemanni, who penetrated as far south as the Vulturnus. But from his defeat of these hordes till the year 568 Italy enjoyed another interval of peace and prosperity under his government as Exarch at Ravenna. At the end of this period Narses, now a very old man, was deprived of his office by the suspicions of Justin, the suc- cessor of Justinian, and a new Exarch, Longinus, was sent to take his place. It is said that Narses, in revenge,~from ' Filiasi (Memoi-ie Storiche, ii. 290 sqq.) refers this description to Altinum, which he thinks was restored by Theodoric. "^ Goth., iv. c. 24. Cf. also in c. 26, KaTqubav ir