The Venetians: A New History: from Marco Polo to Casanova (7 page)

On 7 September 1354, in the midst of the renewed hostility with the Genoese, the venerable doge Andrea Dandolo had died. Although his eleven-year reign had witnessed disasters ranging from earthquakes to the plague and the two wars with Genoa, he remained a highly respected figure throughout. Dandolo came from a distinguished family, which had already provided the city with doges and an admiral. As a young man he had shown such marked legal talent that he had been elected to a senior post within the administration in his early twenties, and this had led to him being elected doge at the exceptionally young age of thirty-six. Previous doges had often been elected from the city’s leading families on account of their military achievements, but it was felt that Dandolo’s legal preoccupations would enable him to avoid becoming embroiled in the increasing disputes between the city’s leading families. And this proved to be the case. Dandolo instituted a review of the city’s legal system, which resulted in the ironing out of many potentially conflicting anachronisms, and he played a similar role with regard to the city’s external affairs, rationalising Venice’s
treaty obligations towards foreign powers both within Italy and beyond. He also found time to write a history of Venice, but in the words of the distinguished Renaissance historian Frederic C. Lane, this further task was unfortunately undertaken ‘in the same lawyer-like spirit. His chronicle contained a mass of documents selected to prove that Venice was always right.’ As Dandolo’s friend Petrarch wrote: ‘Death was kind to him, in sparing him the sight of his country’s bitter sorrow [after the defeat of Porto Longo], and the still more bitter letters I would have written him.’ Although Petrarch referred to Dandolo as ‘a good man, beyond any corruption, he remained angry at Dandolo’s rejection of his peace mission.

The doge was traditionally chosen by a specially selected council of forty-one nobles, and the cautious policy of this council ensured the choosing of a man who was both old and wise (the average age of a doge on election was seventy). Dandolo’s successor, the sixty-nine-year-old Marin Falier, was chosen for office on the first ballot by a resounding thirty-five votes. During a long and distinguished career Falier had served as commander of the Black Sea fleet and had led an army in the city’s service, as well as being the Republic’s
podestà
(provincial governor) in both Chioggia and Treviso. Back home, he had frequently been elected a member of the Council of Ten. Despite his age, he remained vigorous and was deemed the ideal man to lead the city during this dark time of war.

At the time of his election Marin Falier had been on a diplomatic mission to Pope Innocent IV in Avignon, petitioning him to mediate in the conflict between Venice and Milan (and, by extension, Genoa). When Falier returned to Venice, the lagoon was shrouded in a thick October fog, causing his boat to miss the official jetty and put in at the stone quay known as the Molo. When Falier stepped ashore and walked between the two columns, which to this day stand between the landing stage and the Doge’s Palace, many saw this as an evil omen – here was the site where public executions were held. The story of what ensued is equally enshrouded in fog, but this time the fog of legend.

Falier is said to have been a headstrong man, who not only bore long-term grudges, but had a quick temper (whilst
podestà
of Treviso, he had publicly slapped the local bishop for arriving late at a ceremony). When he had been recalled to become doge, he had expected to take on the role
of forceful wartime leader. Instead he was forced to sign a
promissione
(a solemnly sworn, legally binding document) containing restrictions on the doge’s power, which had recently been.voted into law.

Falier’s chagrin had been reinforced when news of the defeat at Porto Lungo reached Venice just a month after he had taken office. There was a widespread feeling in the city that the catastrophe of Porto Lungo had been the culmination of bad leadership by the nobles, whose arrogance was becoming intolerable to the wider section of the populace. Falier decided that in this time of need the city required leaders who had expertise rather than breeding, and ordered the commissioning of four armed galleys under the command of experienced sea captains who were commoners. This appointment was greeted with some consternation by the nobles, and matters are said to have come to a head at the pre-Lenten Carnival banquet, a boisterous occasion that was traditionally hosted by the doge in his palace. When a young noble called Michele Steno began drunkenly molesting one of the dogaressa’s female attendants, Falier ordered him to be removed.

Several years earlier Falier had married a second wife, who was some decades his junior, and Steno now avenged himself by placing a placard on the doge’s throne in the council chamber, on which was written the following scurrilous verse:

Marin Falier has a wife who’s a cracker,

While he keeps her, others fuck her.

Falier immediately reported this insult to the Forty, the council ultimately responsible for justice, expecting them to give Steno an exemplary punishment. However, in the light of Steno’s youth and previous good character, the Forty chose to treat the matter as little more than a Carnival jape, instead passing a light sentence. Falier was outraged at what he saw as an insult to himself, his wife and his office – and at the connivance of nobles who had turned against him.

Around this time another incident was to aggravate the tensions between the nobility and the new doge. A popular ship’s captain called Bertucci Isarello, who was a commoner, had been approached by the noble Giovanni
Dandolo, a naval administrator, and instructed to take on a family friend as a member of his crew. When Isarello refused, Dandolo struck him. This dispute took place in the Camera dell’Armamento, the armoury in the Doge’s Palace (of which the doge’s personal quarters formed only a small part; this building also contained the government offices, such as the Great Council chamber, as well as those of other councils and administrative departments, the law courts and prison). Incensed at his treatment, Isarello stormed out of the palace onto the quayside, where he soon gathered together a gang of sympathetic sailors who proceeded to pace menacingly back and forth outside the palace, waiting for Dandolo to come out. Realising the danger he was in, Dandolo fled to the doge, who summoned Isarello and sternly reprimanded him, yet in such a manner that Isarello understood he had the doge’s sympathy. The sailors dispersed from the Piazzetta, but this indication of where the doge’s sympathies lay soon reached the ears of the nobility.
*

A similar incident involved the noble Marco Barbaro, an important member of the city legislature known as the Great Council, and the commoner Stefano Ghiazza, the commander of the Arsenale. In the course of an altercation between them, Barbaro struck Ghiazza in the face – a very public humiliation for a senior commoner who was also a well-respected man throughout the city. When Ghiazza later complained to the doge, Falier once again privately indicated his sympathy – whereupon Ghiazza is said to have muttered, ‘Wild animals should be chained up; either that, or you should get rid of them by bashing them on the head.’

Falier quickly understood that he could trust Ghiazza, and that in him he had a considerable ally. As commander of the Arsenale, Ghiazza had the loyalty of the powerful
Arsenaloti
, who were also by tradition the doge’s bodyguards. Falier saw this as an opportunity to liberate himself from the
humiliating restraints imposed on him by the nobles who on his accession had made him sign the
promissione
. Between them, Falier and Ghiazza set in motion a plot. On 15 April 1355 rumours were to be spread throughout the city that the Genoese fleet was about to attack. This would draw a crowd of citizens, commoners and nobles alike, to the Piazzetta in front of the Doge’s Palace. Here, armed
Arsenalotti
would mingle with the crowd, ostensibly protecting the palace. At a signal, they would seal off the exits and begin murdering all the nobles they could identify. Falier would then appear on the balcony of the Doge’s Palace and offer himself to the people as Prince of Venice, their saviour in this time of turmoil. Encouraged by the
Arsenalotti
, the people would then confirm Falier as
Principe
by popular acclaim.

Such a plan involved considerable organisation, as well as the strictest secrecy, especially amongst the
Arsenalotti
. Yet word leaked out, and on 14 April a furrier from Bergamo by the name of Beltrami happened to warn his noble friend and customer Nicolò Lioni not to venture onto the streets the next day. Lioni immediately began questioning him, and Beltrami soon revealed all he knew: there was to be an uprising against the government. He let drop the names of a few nobles, but not that of Falier. Lioni then hurried to Doge Falier to inform him that he had uncovered a plot to overthrow the government. Lioni became suspicious when Falier dismissed this as mere tittle-tattle and at once called on a member of the Council of Ten to report his suspicions. The Council of Ten had meanwhile been informed of a rumour about an uprising by the
Arsenalotti
. The reliable source of this rumour had been a sailor called Marco Nigro, who lived amongst
Arsenalotti
residents in the Castello district, and his rumour was confirmed after enquiries by other informants. The Council of Ten immediately came to the obvious conclusion: the doge himself was intending to overthrow the noble government and set himself up as a dictator. A secret meeting of the Council of Ten was held, away from the Doge’s Palace at the monastery of San Salvatore, where those present decided to summon an emergency meeting of all members of the leading councils, with the exception of any members of the Falier family. This meeting took place in the Doge’s Palace that night, presumably under circumstances of the utmost secrecy. On the morning of 15 April, the entire militia of around 7,000
men was ordered into the Piazzetta, and at the same time 100 cavalry were assembled ready to put down any disturbances that broke out elsewhere in the city. Simultaneously, the arrest was ordered of all the major suspects now known to be taking part in the conspiracy. Ten of the principal conspirators were quickly condemned to death and pushed from the windows of the Doge’s Palace with a rope around their neck, where their bodies were left dangling in a row as a public example. Others were given lengthy prison sentences. However, according to a contemporary chronicler, ‘Many were acquitted and set free.’

The fate of Marin Falier was not so easily decided. In order to try him, the Council of Ten called for the formation of a
zonta
*
seconding twenty respected senior nobles to their number, a measure that was allowed by the constitution in times of extreme danger to the Republic. When confronted by his accusers, Marin Falier immediately confessed to his leadership of the plot, and on 17 April was condemned to death. He would be executed early on the morning of the following day. According to Petrarch (relying upon inside information from his friends in Venice), Falier was ‘dragged in servile fashion’ from his chambers to the top of the grand staircase leading down to the inner courtyard of the palace (the very place where just six months earlier he had been proclaimed doge). Here he was stripped of his insignia, in particular the
corno
, the distinctive hat worn by the doge as his symbol of office, with its characteristic single round horn (
corno
) at the back. He was then beheaded with a single blow of the executioner’s sword, whereupon he ‘fell down a headless corpse, and stained with his blood the doors of the church and the entrance of his palace, and the marble stairs often made glorious by solemn feasts or the spoils of enemies’.

Petrarch was in no doubt as to the significance of what had happened:

The sensation caused by this event is so great that, if one considers the form of government and the customs of that city, and what a revolutionary change the death of one man portends, a greater has hardly shown itself in our days in Italy.

The failure of the plot, and Falier’s execution, were in fact significant in affirming the strength of the nobility’s well-established grip on the Republic’s system of government, a reminder that the oligarchy and its councils could be threatened by no individual, no matter how strong they might seem.

After Falier’s beheading, the doors of the Doge’s Palace were thrown open, so that all those gathered outside could see for themselves what had taken place, and his body was then ‘displayed to the people’. Falier’s remains were then carried off, to be placed in an unmarked grave. In a later frieze that depicted portraits of the historical succession of doges, the place occupied by Falier was ordered to be painted over with a black veil bearing the inscription in Latin: ‘Here is the place of Marin Falier, beheaded for his crimes.’

Such is the legend that has come down to us, many parts of which are undeniably true. However, certain elements of this story remain open to question. For instance, there is little evidence to support the veracity of the incident at the Carnival banquet, and Steno’s subsequent insulting verse. Records indicate that dogaressa Aloica (née Gradenigo – like the Dandolo, one of the most distinguished families of the era) was probably over fifty years old at the time, making her a matronly figure hardly appropriate for Steno’s ribald verse, which only surfaces in written records more than a century later. Michele Steno would in fact one day become doge himself – an unlikely circumstance if he had made enemies of the Gradenigo family. Others, such as Petrarch, have questioned why a man of Falier’s undoubted popularity and advanced years should have sought to establish himself as a supreme ruler so late in life, especially when he had no children to succeed him.

The indications are that this was a time of extreme social tension in the city. The arrogance of the nobles had made them detested by the common people, who were not afraid to show this – as attested by the behaviour of the gang of sailors who quickly gathered to support Isarello, marching up and down in such menacing fashion outside the Doge’s Palace. The nobles certainly felt threatened, and it has been suggested that there was widespread support amongst them for a monarchist party, which sought a strong leader, untrammelled by quasi-democratic restraints,
during this nadir in Venice’s fortunes. Support for such leadership may even have existed amongst certain groups of commoners – the
Arsenalotti
being the most obvious candidates. If such was the case, Doge Falier, far from being consumed with ambition, may only have become privy to any plot when it was already well advanced. This would explain why the initial uncovering of the plot did not implicate him. In the end, his taking full blame may have been an act of noble self-sacrifice rather than ignominious confession – he had no wish for the Republic to fall victim to hopeless divisions and reprisals in the aftermath of the plot’s failure. Such an explanation would clarify why afterwards so ‘many were acquitted and set free’; and the mysterious fact that Falier’s name did not appear on the list of those condemned for the plot, which is set down in the usual meticulous records. And, tellingly, why the furrier Beltrami did not receive the full reward he expected for his part in revealing the plot; as well as the mysterious fact that some years later he would be stabbed to death by one of the conspirators. Indeed, there are indications that much of the ‘story’ concerning Falier was nothing more or less than a vast cover-up. If this is the case, it certainly reaffirms the power of the nobility, as well as their ruthlessness when faced with a challenge to their authority. The success of such a cover-up would also indicate the conspiratorial secrecy that was now increasingly adopted by the authorities.