Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/161

Rh HISTORY. VENICE 143 was perceived, and there came to be instituted special kinds of magistrates, such as the &quot;correctors of the ducal engage ment,&quot; whose function was to revise the charter to which he was to swear, and who steadily exercised it in the way of restricting his freedom in such a manner that about the IGth century his lot was little better than that of a prisoner of state. Then there were the &quot; examiners of the deceased doge,&quot; instituted in 1501, posthumous judges whose ver dicts on each departed doge on behalf of posterity still further conspired to neutralize the dangers arising from personal power. E od of The history of Venice was officially written by contem- 5 test porary chroniclers. The records they have left are of course ? P er ~ exceedingly valuable ; but, as they were subjected to a rigorous censorship, the element of criticism is quite ab sent. Modern investigators, viewing the events from the outside, have been much more successful in forming a true judgment upon them and in tracing effects to their actual causes. Those Venetians who, since the fall of their re public, have endeavoured to investigate its annals in an independent spirit have come to the conclusion that it was between the 12th and the 15th century that the state reached its highest prosperity and power. In point of fact, the republic had at the beginning of the 13th century become so powerful that the Byzantine empire fell into its hands through the conquest of Constantinople by the doge Enrico Dandolo (1204). The Venetians even sought to raise a Latin empire upon its ruins, but the attempt was frustrated by the jealousy of the rival republic of Genoa, which re-established the Greeks in 1261. The period be tween 1172, the date of the election of Sebastiano Ziani, and 1300, that of the election of Pietro Gradenigo, is one of the most brilliant in the history of Venice. The union that prevailed among all the citizens, the common effort of all classes, the military energy of the Government, the supple flexibility of its policy, had given them Constanti nople ; and the peace which they made with Palaeologus on his restoration to the Byzantine throne brought them many splendid advantages. It was in virtue of these successes and in the midst of the internal peace which they had secured that Pietro Gradenigo proposed the &quot; Shutting of the Great Council,&quot; a measure the importance of which can be traced throughout the subsequent history of the state. Its effect was to exclude from political power all who had not been members of that assembly during the previous four years ; in a word, it constituted an heredi tary legislature. Grave as the measure was, alternately accepted, rejected, modified, and never unopposed, it was finally carried. The new body enacted new laws and pro vided administrative heads for the ten departments of government, justice, legislation, worship, finance, com merce, education, war, marine, public health, and city ad ministration. The powerful and wealthy republic now found the honour of its alliance sought by emperors and popes ; the standard of St Mark was a familiar sight all over the Mediterranean ; and ultimately Venice entered the &quot;European concert.&quot; Now, too, she began to show that devotion to architecture and the fine arts generally of which the basilica of St Mark s and the ducal palace are the most striking monuments. ations Grown wealthy by commerce, and having acquired by h the the f orce O f arms considerable territory on the east of the Adriatic, the Venetians now cast their eyes towards Asia. Their adventurous travellers had penetrated to the central regions of that continent, and Marco Polo on his return dazzled the populace by his wondrous tales and excited the cupidity of the merchants with visions of the riches of the East. New commercial enterprises were entered on ; samples of Oriental industry with all their splendour of colour and delicacy of pattern were brought home : glass, enamels, tapestries, silks, served as models to the deft artisans, who drew from them new inspiration and, re-dis covering the secrets of the smith s and potter s and glass- blower s art, reproduced the artistic triumphs of their Oriental masters. Nor were letters neglected : rich and ancient manuscripts were brought from Greece ; a friendly asylum was offered to exiled men of genius and learning ; and freedom of thought and intellectual independence be gan to be exercised. If Venice in the course of its history was able at one Corn- period or another to show its superiority in every field of mercial activity, if at the same time it was able to show enduring ^f m stability in its institutions and a wealth and political power tians. quite out of proportion to the smallness of its territory and the number of its subjects, it owed these in the first instance to its genius for commerce and to its maritime ascendency. This commercial genius led in the first place to the de velopment of Venetian shipping, the growth of the arsenals, and large advances in the art of naval construction, and ultimately resulted in indisputable naval supremacy. The beginning of its fortune was in the salt trade, of which it had the monopoly throughout central Europe. Besides working the sources of salt which they had within their own territory, the Venetians rented those of their neigh bours the Bolognese, and found access to the rock-salt deposits of Austria and Hungary ; and in every instance where a treaty was made with a foreign power a clause was introduced reserving to Venice, whether as victor or as vanquished, the exclusive privilege of supplying this commodity. The arsenal of Venice, which still exists, was The ar- its palladium ; the high organization of this establishment, senal - the technical skill of its workmen, the specially selected body of the &quot;arsenalotti,&quot; to whom the republic entrusted the duty of guarding the senate and great council, and its admirable discipline were for centuries the envy of other European powers. The enemies of the republic frequently made special efforts to destroy it by espionage and treach ery. At the most critical period in its history, when it was engaged in its great struggle with the Turks towards the end of the 16th century, the arsenal regularly sent forth a fully equipped galley each morning for a hundred successive days. The power or decadence of the republic at each period may be measured by the extent of its build ing-yards and by the number of its workmen and seamen. Where an ambassador had once seen an imposing force of 200 galleys all fully equipped for sea, another two centuries later saw only 20 ships of war, 16 galleys, and 2 galeasses. At the acme of its prosperity the arsenal employed 16,000 workmen ; but a little more than a century afterwards, even at a time of war, that number had fallen to 2000, still further diminished in peace to 500. The 14th century is remarkable for a series of con- Conspi- spiracies, which the official historians have attributed to racies of mere turbulence and malignity, but which no doubt had* 4 their main cause much deeper, in the position to which the masses had been brought by the political changes of preceding centuries. The conspiracy of Marino Bocconio in 1300, that of Bajamonte Tiepolo ten years later, a third in 1328, and finally that associated with the name of Marino Faliero (1355), without actually imperilling the existence of the state, compelled the great council to take measures against the recurrence of such movements, and resulted in the creation of the &quot;council of the ten,&quot; that Council powerful and mysterious body the significance of which of teu - still continues to exercise the ingenuity of the modern historian. Of these four conspiracies the first three were certainly aimed at the restoration of popular rights ; the fourth, on the other hand, arose out of an ambitious attempt to seize personal power. The legend of Marino Faliero is well known (see FALIERO). It would be difficult