Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 20.djvu/84

* VENICE. 58 VENIEE FACIAS. of Ten with executive and judicial functions. Still higher in power was the college or cabinet of 'sages,' who prepared the State business for the Senate or the Ten. Above the college were the si. ducal councilors, who really performed the chief duties of the Doge. The Doge presided over all these bodies. His position was magnificent; Jiis powers were strictlj- limited. The liistory of Venice in the thirteenth and fourteentli centuries was marked by struggles with her colonies, with Oenoa, and with the Carrara family, who held Padua. Her colonies were reduced to subjection; her great rival, Genoa,. was humbled by the war of Chioggia (1378-80) : the Carrara were finally forced to become vassals. In these struggles, some of which were almost fatal to her existence, Venice was forced to build up a land empire in the north of Italy as a base of food supplies. By 1405 she held Treviso, Padua, Vicenza, Verona, and the adjacent lands. Brescia and Bergamo were soon after annexed. In 1473 Cyprus came under Venetian dominion. At this time Venice was the leading maritime State of Christendom. She traded with the whole civilized world. The State owned 3300 vessels, manned by 30.000 men. Venice had become a city of mercliant princes, who lavished their wealth upon magnificent palaces and the patronage of painters and sculptors. But her success on the mainland aroused new ■enemies; after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 the Republic had to face a struggle with the Turks, in which she lost gradually most of her possessions in the Morea and the Archi- pelago ; the discovery of the sea route to India by way of the Cape of Good Hope ( 1497-98) gave a fatal blow to her commerce, and corruption began to appear in the city itself. Outwardly this was the most splendid period in her history; in reality her power was already waning. The decisive blow came in 1508, when the German Emperor, the Pope, France, and Spain combined against Venice in the League of Cambrai to ■divide her dominions among themselves. In the struggle Venice at one time had lost all of her possessions on the mainland, but by diplomacy she detached one iiower after another from the League, and in 1516 she again held all her former possessions ; but she never regained her former power. From this time, protected by the impregnable position of the capital, she exerted Iierself by diplomacy merelj- to retain her posi- tion. Only in the East did Venice show her old energy'. There, almost single-handed, she struggled against the. Turks, but in vain. In 1571 she lost Cyprus, ifllthough she and her allies ■won the naval battle of Lepanto. In 1009 Crete was lost after a war of tAventy-five years. In 1718, by the Peace of Passarowitz, the Morea, after having been for a sliort time again in the pos- session of the Republic, w'as ceded (o Turkey. The morals of the citizens declined steadily, and in the eighteenth century Venice was a city of pleasure for the rest of Europe, and was marked hy its constant fetes and extravagant life. In 1707 the Venetian Republic was extinguished by Bonaparte, and in the Peace of Campo Forniio (q.v.) most of its possessions (including Istria and Dalmatia) were transferred to Austria, France taking the Ionian Islands. In ISO.") .us- tria was compelled to cede her Venetian dominions to the Kingdom of Italy. She regained thcni in 1814, and in 1815 Venetia and Loniliardv were constituted the Lombardo-enetian Kingdom. In 184S Venice revolted under Daniele ilanin (q.v.), but in 1849 Austrian dominion was reestablished. In 18UG Austria relinquislied Venetia, which was incorporated with Italy. See .Seve.n Weeks' Wab. Bibliography. Romanin, fitoria docume7itata di Yenezia (10 vols., Venice, 1853-61); Hare, Venice (London, 1884) ; Wiel, Icwice (ib., 1894) ; IMolinier, ^'enise, ses arts dccoraiifs. ses musics (Paris, 1889) ; Brown, Venice (New York, 1893) ; Papadopoli, Le moneic di ^'enezia dcscritte cd il- lustrate {enice, 1893) ; Balten and Geuter, Yene- diq (Linz, 1895); Molmenti, Yerte::ia (Florence, 1897) ; "Reading List on Venice," in lieio York State Library Bulletin Bihliorjra'phy, vol. vii. (Albany, 1898) : Carew Hazlitt, The ^ enetian Kepubllc (London, 1900). VENICE PRESERVED. The greatest work of Otway, a tragedy produced at Dorset Gar- dens in 1682 and published the same year. It was meant partly as an attack on the Whigs, Lord Shaftesbury being pilloried in the licentious senator, Antonio. The plot was drawn from a translation into English (1675) of the Abbg Saint Rtal's Conjuration des Espafrnols contre la Yenise en KSIS. It deals with the betrayal by Jaffier of his friends and fellow con- spirators owing to his wife's frenzied entreaties that he should save her father, Antonio, who, ear- lier in the play, has cast her off because of her marriage with this insignificant man of the peo- ple. The play offered De la Fosse the founda- tion of his famous Manlius, which Voltaire is said to have preferred to the original. VE'NI CREA'TOR SPIRITUS. An ancient and very celebrated liynni of the Roman breviary,* which occurs in the offices of the feast of Pente- cost, and is used at other times as a solemn invocation of the Holy Spirit. Its author is not known with certainty. It is ascribed by some ancient authorities to Charlemagne, but its correct classical metre, and the purity of its language bespeak an earlier age. It is high- ly probable that it is the composition of Pope Gregory I. A translation (ascribed to Cranmer) forms a part of the Anglican ordination service. The VcHi Creator Spiritns must not be con- founded with another hymn, Yeni Sancte Spiri- tus, which somewhat resembles it. The latter belongs not to the breviary, but to the missal, in which it forms a sequence in the mass of Whit- sunday. It is not in classical metre, but in rhyme: and its language is plainly of a later age. The author of the Yeni Sancte Spiritus is believed to be King Robert of France. VENIRE FACIAS, v6-nl're fa'shi-os (Lat., cause to come). A conunon-law writ directed to a shcrilT, conunandiiig him to summon a certain number of acceptalde citizens of his county to serve as jurors. Formerly the selection of per- sons legally qualifi(>d to serve as jiirors was made Iiy the slierifi' in his discretion, but in Englami and most of the United States to-day the requisite numlicr is dniw'n by lot from a list of persons comiictent to serve, and the sheriff thus summons the persons whose names are thus drawn. Where a sulTicient number do not re- spond, or are excused from atlendanee, the above writ may still be used in a number of States to fill up the panel. Where a trial was a nullity for some fatal defect or irregularity, the writ issued