Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/697

 DAN0OLO

OIU

DANDOLO

liincipally of the arms, body, and feet, intended to ^liiiw forth all the flexibility, agility, and grace of the Ininian body. Such exliibitions were usually given fnr the pleasure of the guests, at great banquets, and ^mii. Female dancers — there were also male dancers
 * iirfonned by professional dancers hired for the occa-

were preferred. They were generally persons of rniisiderable beauty and indifferent morals, and their performances were calculated to set forth, even at the rust of modesty for which they cared little, all the rharms and attractiveness of their graceful figures. riii.s class of persons, common m ancient Greece and Italy, were not altogether unknown in Palestine, at least in later times, if we believe the ir.dication of ImcIus., ix, 4. The author of Eccles., impersonating Solomon, relates he had procured for his own enjoy- ment "singing men and singing women" (ii, 8), that i-Un say, very likely, dancers, for singing and dancing ^\ ere scarcely distinct. At any rate, the performance of llerodias' daughter, recorded in Matt., xiv, 6, and the pletisure it afforded to Herod and his guests, show liDw Greek and Roman corruption had, about the time of Christ, made headway among the higher ehisses of Palestine.

Although perhaps less common, and certainly less I liliurate than with us, social dancing appears never- t Ill-less to have been a pleasurable diversion in ancient times, at lea-st among the Jews. For, understood in the light of Judges, xxi, 21, such statements as those of Is., xvi, 10, and Jer., xxv, .30, indicate that the vintage season was one of public merriment exhibited in dances. Dancing was likewise indulged in, even by most grave persons (Bab. Talm., Ketuboth, 16b), at weddings and the Feast of Tabernacles. Men and women danced apart, as is still the custom in the East. Social dancing has undergone consitlerable develop- ment in the last few centuries, both as to prevalence and elaborateness. The introduction into modern fashion of the so-called round dances has quickened the interest of the old question anent the morality of dancing. As an exercise of physical culture, aside from the generally unhealthful conditions of dancing- halls, dancing may have advantages; we should not wonder, therefore, that from this viewpoint Plato recommended it. From the moral standpoint, relig- ious and military dancing has never met with any criticism. Mimetic shows, on the contrary, mostly representing love-stories and mythological subjects, were at times so offensive to modesty that even the pagan emperors deemed it their tluty to banish them repeatedly from Italy. In no wise better, as has been shown above, were scenic dances; and male and female dancers were in Rome considered, as are nowadays in Egypt, India, and Japan, the almehs, the bayaderes, and the geishas, as a lower and degraded class. Ac- cording to Roman law, such persons were infantes. Against their performances the Fathers of the Church raised a strong voice. The Decretals went farther, forbidding clerics to attend any mimic or histrionic exhibitions and enacting that any cleric taking active part in them should forfeit all his privileges, and (hat all persons engaged in professional dancing, mimic or histrionic performances, should incur irregularity and be thereby forever debarred from the clerical state and rendered incapable of receiving orders. As to social dancing, now so much in vogue, whilst in itself it is an indifferent act, morali.sts are inclined to place it tmder the ban, on account of the various dangers iussociated with it. Undoubtedly old national dances in which the performers stand apart, hardly, if at all, holding the partner's hand, fall tmder ethical censtire scarcely more than any other kind of social intercourse. But, aside from the concomitants — place, late hours, dca>l- leie, escorting, etc. — common to all such entertain- ments, round dances, although they may possibly be carried on with dccoriun and modesty, are regarded by moralists as fraught, by their very nature, with

the greatest danger to morals. To them perhaps, but unquestionably still more obviously to masked balls, si nil 1 1. 1 lie ipiilied the warning of the Second Council of H.ili iniiire ;ie:im.st "those fashionable dances, which, as :it |ire-eiii carried on, are revolting to every feeling of delicacy and propriety". Needless to add that decency as well as the oft-repeated decrees of particu- lar and general councils forbid clerics to appear, in any cajie itv \\ii;iiever, on public dancing floors.

l; ' .:,r,slic .\aliomil Danccx (London. 1S53); Tris-

TK 1 \-. ! Saci.io, Diclionnaire dcs anlnj'ur.s (/)'v//f/, ,s> et ronuiines (Paris); Maspero, Histoire anctrnrf r/. i„u,,l,:i de VOrient (Paris. 1895), I, 126; II, 220; Dai.xhn, J ;, I < i ■ i inischer Diwan (Leipzig, 1901); Ferraris, Biblintluoi caiummi (Rome, 1886), s. V. ChorecB, Clericus^ Irregularitas; Acta el Decrcta Cone. Balti- mor. II, Pastoral Letter; Deer. n. 472.

Charles L. Souvay.

Dandolo, Enrico, Doge of Venice from 1192 to 1205 ; d., aged about a hundred years, in 1205. He be- longed to one of the electoral families who claimed descent from the twelve tribunes by whom the first doge had been elected in 697. In the course of the twelfth century one of his relations was Patriarch of Grado for fifty years (Mon. Germ. Hist.: Script., XIV, 71). Of his life, we only know the role he played in history, but he appears to have been a man of uncom- mon physical and mental strength. At the age of almost a hundred he took the cross, and led the expe- dition against Constantinople; a fearless knight and the first to scale the walls of a city, he was also a dis- tinguished diplomat, and his influence seems to have been predominant in the Fourth Crusade. He is first mentioned as taking part in the war between Venice and the Emperor Manuel Comnenus in 1171. The Venetians, decimated by the plague, were at Chios, and Dandolo was sent to Constantinople to make a treaty of peace. According to a tradition quoted by the "Clironicle of Novgorod", the emperor burnt out his eyes. Andrea Dandolo (1307-1.354), a descendant of the same family, makes the statement that he was partly ili |.ri\ed of his sight in the service of his coun- try |in. -ilnie patriic constanter resistens, visa ali- qiKililei ul,i, iieliratusest, "Chronic", ed. Muratori,xii, 29b). It would seem that in spite of all the torture he underwent Dandolo was not completely deprived of sight (see Luchaire in "Jovu'nal des Savants", 1907, p. 110). In 1172 he went on a mission to Wil- liam II of Sicily, then once more to Constantinople. In 1178 Dandolo was one of the forty electors com- missioned, for the first time, to elect the doge. He himself was elected doge in his tiu-n (1 June, 1192). In spite of his advanced age he displayed great activ- ity, put an end to the commercial quarrels with Verona, declared war against the inhabitants of Zara for uniting their city to Hungary, and against the Pisans, who had attempted to establish themselves in Istria. In 1198 he concluded a treaty of alliance with the Emperor Alexis III of Constantinople, but as early as 1201 Venice had disagreements with Alexis, who broke all his promises and granted numerous privileges to the Genoese and the Pisans.

At this time (March, 1201) the leaders of the Fourth Crusade came to negotiate with Venice for the transport of the troops to the Orient; Dandolo him- self took the cross as well as several other Venetian nobles. In consequence of circumstances not yet clearly explained, the crusade, originally directed against Egy^Jt, was turned first against Zara and then against Constantinople. Streit (Venedig und die Wendung des vierten Kreuzzuges, 1877) attributes to Enrico Dandolo the principal role in the intrigues which preceded these events. Riant (Revue des ques- tions historiqiies. XXIIl, 109) has pointed out very truly that the initiative of the doge was strictly lim- ited by the Constitution of Venice. If Dandolo di- rected the negotiations he did it in agreement with the