CHAPTER 3
Finding two merchants in Muslim Alexandria in the ninth century pilfering the body of a saint is good evidence that Venetians were conducting trade across the Mediterranean Sea at that time. Their overall business model was a simple one: Buy low, sell high. The ninth-century markets on the island of Torcello teemed with activity, just as they would at Rialto in the late tenth century. Venetian businessmen paid handsomely for a wide range of commodities, many of which were grown or produced in Europe and then transported overland or by river to the lagoon. These included foodstuffs, timber, and, of course, the locally produced salt. These goods were then loaded aboard a sailing vessel by an enterprising merchant, who would head out of the lagoon, down the Adriatic, and into the wide Mediterranean in search of profit. Invariably, he turned left, as Venetians did virtually all their overseas trade in the eastern Mediterranean—primarily in the Byzantine Empire. The markets there were larger than anything in Europe and the goods they offered were in high demand back home. This cycle of buying and selling, with Venice the nexus between Europe and Byzantium, brought wealth to a growing number of Venetian families.
Venice’s success as a commercial center was based in large part on its location at the head of the Adriatic Sea. It was a convenient place from which to move goods to and from other European markets, while also providing plenty of commercial docks and local markets for overseas shipping. In short, Venice was a medieval businessman’s paradise—a place where fortunes were made (and presumably lost). More commerce in the ninth and tenth centuries meant more wealth, more people, and more power concentrated in the Venetian lagoon. Crucial to this trade, however, was the safety of shipping in the Adriatic. When Byzantine fleets policed those waters, all was well. Yet, by the ninth century, as the empire continued to lose territories to the Arabs in the East and the government was rocked by a series of scandals and palace coups, Constantinople could no longer maintain regular patrols. As a result, during the 830s conditions in the Adriatic became intolerable. Slavic pirates raided coastal towns and plundered Venetian vessels at will. Even worse, Muslim armies were wresting control of Sicily from the Byzantine Empire. Twice in the 840s the Venetians outfitted fleets to help the Byzantines battle the Muslims, but with little success. As for the Adriatic, the Venetians came reluctantly to the conclusion that they would simply have to police it themselves. The stability and safety of shipping there was so important to them that it soon became known as the Sea of Venice. It had become their waterway, the long blue entrance to the ballroom of Venice.
The Venetians were blessed during those years with some stability in leadership. Doge Pietro Tradonico (836–64) reigned longer than anyone who had previously held the office. Like his predecessors, the Galbaios, he made his son co-doge in an attempt to keep the position in the family. However, his son died in 863, weakening his support and providing an opening for those who opposed his dogeship. On what seemed a quiet evening one year later, the aged doge was attending vespers at the nearby convent of San Zaccaria. As he left the church to walk home, eight conspirators surrounded and killed him. Fearing a coup, his bodyguard and servants fled to the fortified Ducal Palace, locking it up tight. As word of the murder spread, the city descended into mayhem, with various factions clashing violently. The details are not altogether clear, but it seems that the conspirators and their sympathizers resented the attempt of one man to monopolize the dogeship for his family. As individual wealth had risen in Venice, newly prosperous families aspired to their own political power, and they naturally opposed those who excluded them from it. This potent dynamic would continue to drive events in Venice for centuries.
In all ages, privilege and economic mobility are enemies. Complicating this picture was the essentially conservative nature of the Venetians. Resisting concentrated power was, they believed, praiseworthy. But many of them wondered if it justified the cold-blooded murder of an elderly doge. As days passed, popular sentiment in Venice turned against the conspirators. At last, they were rounded up and executed or exiled. The arengo, which consisted of little more than a throng of men gathering noisily in the open field that would one day be the Piazza San Marco, elected another member of the previous ducal family, Orso I Partecipazio (864–81). This may have been a reaction against the reaction—in other words, a return to an established clan so as to deny the conspirators their victory. Whatever the reason, it is interesting (although baffling) that at about this time the Partecipazio family changed its surname to Badoer, a name that would echo across the history of medieval Venice.
The new doge brought much-needed stability to the lagoon, at a time when the world outside was anything but stable. Muslim raiders continued to make incursions into the Adriatic, preying on towns and Venetian shipping. Just as bad were the Slavic pirates working from their bases in the crannied coasts of Croatia. And all across Europe the Vikings were raiding and pillaging at will, although they do not seem to have bothered with Venice, which could defend itself on the sea. The doge was kept busy responding to these external threats. Despite the opposition such practice had previously engendered, Orso took his son, Giovanni, as his colleague in the dogeship. He also took part in what would become a long-standing custom, having his daughter elected abbess of San Zaccaria. Because of the prestige and wealth of this religious house, the position of its abbess was highly coveted. There is some evidence that Orso also did away with the old tribunes, replacing them with judges. The latter were officials, probably elected, who served in the court of the doge. The earliest surviving charters make plain that judges were present at all official events and signed all acts, so they probably still served as a check on the doge’s power. However, unlike elsewhere in Europe, churchmen did not serve in Venice’s ducal court. The church and state were separate in Venice in a way that they were not elsewhere.
Doge Giovanni Badoer (881–88) maintained a steady hand on the Venetian ship of state until his health failed in 887, when he abdicated. The people replaced him with Pietro Candiano (887), a vigorous man who promised to deal personally with the pirates along the Dalmatian coast. This he did with vigor, although he was killed in the war, thus forcing Badoer to once again take up the dogeship. Pietro Candiano probably settled the problem of Adriatic piracy, since we hear no more of it for some time. However, a new and much greater danger was on its way from the East.
The Magyars, a warlike nomadic people, had migrated from southwest Asia into southeastern Europe and settled in what is today Hungary. From there they launched devastating raids across central Europe and Italy. Like the other invaders pouring into Europe at this time, the Magyars were neither Christian nor Romanized. Like the Huns centuries earlier, they tore into the shattered West with unparalleled ferocity. Indeed, many Europeans believed that they were Huns, which may explain the origin of their name “Hungarian.”
By 899 the Magyars covered the mainland of northern Italy. The Venetian lagoon was not spared. Once again the towns on the periphery were the first to fall. The Magyars captured Eraclea and Equilo as well as Lombard towns on the mainland such as Altino, Treviso, and Padua. Having surrounded the lagoon, they quickly conquered Chioggia in the south and began marching north toward the city along the lido of Pellestrina—in other words, moving precisely in King Pepin’s footsteps. Yet like Pepin’s, the Magyars’ assault stalled at Malamocco. There the new fortifications stopped the invasion and the Venetians rallied, forcing the Magyars to retreat. It was a tremendous victory. The powerful Magyars, who had defeated even the Carolingian king, were unable to threaten seriously the new Venetian capital at Rialto. The foresight of Doge Agnello Partecipazio had paid rich dividends. Venice was secure from the most awesome foe of its day, and would remain so for centuries.
It is perhaps not surprising that in the aftermath of the frightening Magyar attacks, the Venetians decided to further strengthen their defenses. The doge, we are told, ordered the construction of a long wall along the shoreline of the city facing the lidi. It stretched from the modern Riva degli Schiavoni—today packed with hotels, restaurants, and trinket sellers—to the church of Santa Maria Zobenigo (del Giglio), west of San Marco. Needless to say, it ruined the view. In addition, a heavy chain was suspended across the Grand Canal entrance, and secured at the church of San Gregorio, very near the present location of Santa Maria della Salute. Given the continued effectiveness of the waves in shielding Venice, it is uncertain how long the Venetians maintained these new constructions. The oldest surviving map of Venice, drawn in the fourteenth century, depicts no such wall or chain, although it does clearly indicate that the Ducal Palace remained fortified.
The decades after the Magyar invasion were prosperous and relatively peaceful for Venice. The dogeship alternated between the Badoer and Candiano families with little strife. This was a time of building, when Venetian entrepreneurs, fully supported by their pro-business government, were establishing trade agreements on the mainland and in ports across the eastern Mediterranean. Venetian fleets not only beat back the threat of piracy in the Adriatic, but also deployed patrols to make certain that cargo from all vessels, whether Venetian or not, was unloaded at the markets in Venice, where the government naturally took its share of taxes.
With Venice’s gaze fixed on the rich emporia of the East, it is surprising that the feudal West made so abrupt an entry into Venetian life in the mid-tenth century. The doorway was Pietro IV Candiano (959–76), the son of Doge Pietro III Candiano (942–59). Although Pietro III had taken his son as co-doge, that was unsatisfactory to the latter, who apparently did not want to wait for his father’s death to seize power. The young Pietro was part of a faction with ties to feudal barons in northern Italy and Germany. In its most basic form, feudalism was a means by which lands were worked to produce surplus in order to raise and maintain medieval armies. Vassals, who managed the lands, owed military service and fealty to their lords, who, in turn, either owned the lands or owed similar service to their own lords. Although feudalism was—in one form or another—practiced across western Europe, it was nonexistent in Venice, which lacked the territories to support it. In other words, feudalism required land, something noticeably rare in Venice. The Venetians were capitalists who dealt above all in liquid assets. They purchased food from mainland feudal estates, but generated their own income from business transactions, chief of which involved commercial shipping. Venetians had no need of a medieval army—only an effective navy, which their state organized using the rich tax revenues of a vibrant economy. In this, too, Venice was out of step with its age.
Perhaps the young Pietro was seduced by the evolving romanticism of martial prowess or the ways of the increasingly independent barons of the mainland. Or perhaps it was simply a matter of power, for this was the age of King Otto I of Germany, who had successfully imposed his authority north of the Alps and was preparing to do the same in Italy. Whatever the case, Pietro staged a coup against his father in 950, a coup that failed spectacularly. Once again the Venetians had been asked to choose between the new order of feudal lords in Europe and their centuries-long loyalty to the Byzantine (or Roman) Empire in the East. And once again they repeated the choice that had given birth to their state. They refused to join what their ancestors had fled.
Pietro should have been executed for treason, yet his aged father begged for his life and the people reluctantly granted it. The young man fled the lagoon to his noble friends on the mainland and soon found his calling as a warrior, leading armies in the service of King Berengar of Italy. In gratitude, the king allowed Pietro to wage his own war of piracy against Venice, capturing merchant vessels on the Po River and the Adriatic Sea. If that were not bad enough, a disease of some sort hit the city of Venice causing widespread deaths, including that of the heartbroken doge. For reasons that are not altogether clear, when the people assembled to elect their new doge, they chose young Pietro, the treasonous pirate lord. He was, after all, the son of the doge and his election had the practical benefit of ending the attacks on Venetian shipping.
But the Pietro who moved into the Ducal Palace was not at all like the impetuous rebel who had left. In clothing, manner, and even language he resembled a feudal baron, not a Venetian doge. Almost immediately he leveraged his new title to propose marriage to Waldrada, the sister of the Marquis of Tuscany and a kinswoman of Emperor Otto himself. The fact that Doge Pietro IV already had a wife and a grown son was no impediment. He simply sent his wife to the cloister at San Zaccaria and his son, now forcibly tonsured, to a monastery. The new German wife brought to the doge her rich lands in The Marches, Treviso, Friuli, and elsewhere. She also brought armed retainers, who garrisoned the Ducal Palace and accompanied the ducal family everywhere. It seemed to many Venetians that the Germans had taken by marriage what they had failed to capture by force. Discontent spread rapidly in the lagoon and an opposition party soon sprang up, led by the Morosini family. A rival family, the Coloprinis, supported the doge.
Matters came to a head in 976, when a war between the factions broke out in the streets and canals of Venice. The Morosinis and their supporters won the day, pursuing their enemies all the way to the Ducal Palace. There they set fire to houses built around the fortified structure. The fire grew into a mighty blaze that cut across the San Marco area. Not only was the palace consumed, but so also was the wooden chapel of San Marco, the old church of St. Theodore, and some three hundred other buildings. The body of St. Mark, so carefully purloined from Alexandria and installed in the newborn Venice, was lost in the flames. When the doge’s family and servants rushed to escape the burning palace, their enemies barred the way. Pietro begged for mercy, promising to grant their every wish, but to no avail. He was run through with a sword while trying to force his way out. His infant son, born of his new German wife, was pierced with a spear while resting in his nurse’s arms. Only Waldrada survived, perhaps because the rebels feared retribution from her family or perhaps because she was simply absent from Venice at the time.
As the last of the fires was extinguished, the Venetians began to see the rebellion differently. Once again a popular groundswell of violence became bitterly unpopular in the cold light of day. This recurring phenomenon in their history—violent defiance followed by remorse and sorrow—was the product of strong individualism mixed with a businessman’s natural desire for security, stability, and order. On the one hand, Venetians distrusted concentrated power and reacted passionately when they believed that a doge or anyone else was trying to acquire it. On the other hand, they were merchants and shopkeepers who relied on a peaceful and predictable marketplace and government. And there was also the matter of the destruction of the body of the Evangelist. To lose one’s spiritual patron and protector was no small thing to medieval men and women. Thus, while the ashes of the government buildings still smoldered, the people of Venice sought a new doge to bring healing to their state.
They settled on an inspired choice. Pietro Orseolo (976–78) was an aged man well respected for his wisdom, piety, and service to the state. Since at least 968 he had been planning to enter a monastery. One tradition even records that Orseolo and his wife took a holy vow of celibacy, living as brother and sister since the birth of their only son. On August 12, 976, the people of Venice gathered at the bishop’s church, San Pietro di Castello. There they persuaded old Orseolo to take on the dogeship, although he did so reluctantly and with a grim determination to complete his task quickly.
Doge Orseolo’s first priority was establishing peace with Germany. The distant successor to Charlemagne, Otto II, had been crowned Holy Roman emperor by Pope John XIII in 967. He was beside himself with rage over the treatment of Waldrada and her family. To smooth things over, the doge agreed to make restitution payments to Waldrada that were so large a special tax had to be imposed on the Venetians to raise it. Additional taxes were levied to fund the rebuilding effort in Venice, although Orseolo financed the reconstruction of the Ducal Palace himself. The entire San Marco area was soon echoing with the hammers and saws of workers. Venice was again building. Optimism for the future returned.
With that Doge Orseolo judged that his work was done. On the evening of September 1, 978, he packed what little belongings he still possessed and fled the city under cover of darkness. Unlike his predecessor, Orseolo was not seeking foreign allies, but eternal salvation. He traveled westward until he arrived at the new monastery of St. Michael of Cuxa in the Pyrenees. There he joyfully took up the coarse Benedictine habit, leaving aside the rich garments of the doge. For the next nine years he lived, worked, and prayed in that stone refuge—a building that has since been transported to New York City, where one can visit it in The Cloisters museum. Almost immediately after his death in 987 miracles were reported at his tomb. In time the Catholic Church recognized Pietro Orseolo as a saint—the only doge to attain that distinction in the long history of Venice.
Yet Orseolo’s project had not brought an end to the rivalry between the Morosinis and the Coloprinis, largely because the question of whether Venice should embrace the German empire in Italy remained unanswered. The new doge, Tribuno Menio (979–91), remained neutral enough to persuade both families to put their name to a very important document. In 982 Venice donated the Island of Cypresses, south of the Ducal Palace, to Abbot Giovanni Morosini for the foundation of a new Benedictine monastery dedicated to St. George. This island and its institution, San Giorgio Maggiore, would henceforward hold a special place for Venetians. Its proximity to the governmental center and its picturesque location still make it one of the most recognizable features of the city. The document, dated December 20, 982, was signed by the doge, three bishops, and 131 other leading citizens. First among the signers were the leaders of the two factions, Stefano Coloprini and Domenico Morosini.
This parchment, which still survives in the Venetian archives, provides a rare snapshot of the power structure in Venice at this crucial period. The number of new families, indeed the sheer number of families new or old, that appear on the signature list suggests that the factional struggle was expanding the base of participating citizens as both sides scrambled for support among wealthy men. Henceforth, this body of “good men” or “faithful ones,” as they were interchangeably called in documents, would become a permanent part of the doge’s court. Because of their new wealth, these elites had the interest and the time to concern themselves with matters of government. Initially they represented the “people of Venice,” who were too busy with their own affairs to be present for the increasing duties of the growing Venetian government. Yet these elites soon became a new political force carving out their own place between the doge and people. From this loose, ad hoc group would later evolve the Great Council of Venice.
The Europe of the new millennium was a changed place. The Germanic barbarian invasions were long since finished, their peoples settled across the landscape. The new invasions of Magyars from the east, Muslims from the south, and Vikings from everywhere had subsided and would soon cease altogether. After centuries of chaos, Europeans were at last able to lift their heads and survey their battered world. In some places they even began rebuilding. The Holy Roman emperors in Germany had once again established themselves as the preeminent power in the West, although they no longer ruled all of Charlemagne’s great empire. Carved out of it to the west was the kingdom of France, now led by the Capetian monarchs, whose dynasty would last throughout the Middle Ages. Other states were soon planted by the Normans, the Catholic descendants of the marauding Norsemen. From their base in Normandy they would capture England in 1066 under their leader, William the Conqueror, thus ushering in a new era in the history of that kingdom. They would also invade Sicily and southern Italy, cobbling together a kingdom that displaced the warring Arabs and Byzantines there.
The Church, too, was rebuilding. The tumult of the preceding centuries had taken a hard toll on an institution that relied on communication and discipline to ensure that clergy were seeing to the spiritual needs of the faithful. Because bishops and abbots were powerful men with lands and wealth, their offices were often sold to the highest bidder by the lay lord to whom they owed feudal service. It was an intolerable situation, for it meant that the shepherds themselves were little more than wolves. By 1000, though, the reform movement centered at the French monastery of Cluny was spreading quickly across Europe, changing minds, hearts, and not a few abbots. By the mid-eleventh century the reformers had captured the papacy, leading to an extraordinary rebirth of the Catholic Church almost everywhere. In time, this reinvigorated Church would find itself at odds with the restored German emperors, yet that church-state struggle was itself uniquely European. In other words, as the new millennium dawned, Europe was becoming something new, what we today call the West.
Like much of Europe, the Republic of Venice’s fortunes changed dramatically in the eleventh century. Factional strife withered under Doge Pietro II Orseolo (991–1008), a man who cultivated close relations with both German and Byzantine emperors. Otto III of Germany was Orseolo’s personal friend. The German ruler even visited Venice in 1001 as the doge’s special guest. For his part, the Byzantine emperor Basil II issued a chrysobull, or imperial edict, in 992 that defined Venetian merchants’ rights and privileges and reduced the tolls and tariffs they paid while doing business in eastern ports. In this important document, one can see the changing relationship between Venice and the Byzantine Empire. Slowly over centuries, Venice had become an independent entity. It was no longer a province or client of Constantinople. And yet, neither was it completely foreign. Instead, the Byzantine emperor referred to the Venetians as extraneos (outsiders), who, by regularly aiding imperial operations in Italian waters, had proved themselves to be steadfast allies of the Roman Empire.
And, indeed, they were. In 1000 Doge Orseolo led a war fleet against Croatian pirates based in Dalmatia, the lands along the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea. In short order the Venetians not only suppressed the privateers but extracted oaths of loyalty from all the Dalmatian towns. Orseolo promptly added to his title dux Dalmatiae (doge of Dalmatia), a designation that was later confirmed by the emperor in Constantinople. Whether by coincidence or design, this Venetian military action assisted Basil II in his war against the Bulgarians by weakening their allies, the Serbs and Croats. Four years later, the doge personally led Venetian warships to Bari on the southern Adriatic, where they broke the Arab siege of the Byzantine city.
Yet Venetian intervention could do little to arrest the decline of Byzantium, which continued to be battered by foes from every side. In 1071 the Normans conquered Bari, the last Byzantine outpost in Italy, and though they posed no direct threat to the city of Venice, they were a serious threat to Venetian control of the Adriatic Sea. In the same year a powerful Turkish invasion army met Byzantine forces at the Battle of Manzikert in Asia Minor (modern Turkey). The Muslim warriors scattered the Christians, quickly capturing the central region known as Anatolia. Within a few years the Turks had established a new state, the sultanate of Rum (Rome) with its capital at Nicaea. All that remained of the battered Byzantine Empire was the city of Constantinople, now within sight of the Turkish empire, and Greece.
In desperate need, Emperor Alexius I Comnenus sent an appeal to Pope Gregory VII asking for Western troops to help push back the Turkish conquests. Although Gregory was willing to help (indeed, he even considered leading an army himself to Constantinople), his ecclesiastical reforms soon led him into an intractable struggle with the German emperor, Henry IV, that would consume the papacy’s attention for the next three decades.
Venetians were not much affected by this struggle between church and state—at least not in the eleventh century—but a persistent weakened Byzantine Empire spelled economic trouble for them. Venice’s prosperity was built on a peaceful Adriatic and profitable trade in the East. The former was essential for the latter. The emboldened Norman leader in Italy, Robert Guiscard, threatened both. Like William the Conqueror, Robert longed for a grand conquest of a new kingdom, and his attention was naturally drawn to the wounded and weak Byzantine Empire. The seat of imperial power and the richest city in the Western world, Constantinople seemed like the burial goods of a dying world. For Robert, the way was clear. From Bari he would head due east across the Adriatic and capture the Byzantine coastal city of Durazzo (modern Durrës). From there the ancient Roman road, the Via Egnatia, stretched some five hundred miles to the capital itself.
Venetians looked on the coming Norman invasion of Byzantium with dread. Normans were wild and warlike—in other words, bad for business. It was not long before Norman freebooters were actively disrupting Venetian shipping in the Adriatic. In 1074 the Norman count Amico of Giovinazzo even attacked Dalmatian cities under Venetian control. Doge Domenico Silvio (1070–85) immediately led a war fleet against Amico, defeated him, and reasserted Venetian dominance in the area. Reeling from external attacks and torn by internal unrest, the Byzantines, however, could no longer project any effective force into the Adriatic. The authoritative force of Doge Silvio’s campaign made clear that control of that sea had passed from Byzantium to Venice.
The Venetian war fleet, though already formidable, was not yet in the eleventh and twelfth centuries the well-oiled naval juggernaut it would eventually become. At the time of Doge Silvio’s campaign, it was composed of a mixture of public and private vessels organized on an ad hoc basis to deal with specific missions. Two main types of vessels dominated its ranks. The first were merchant ships pressed into service as transports to carry men, supplies, and siege weapons. These round-hull vessels could generally carry 350 tons, but there were some larger varieties that could move twice that. They were powered by two and sometimes three lateen sails, each on its own mast, and were maneuvered by steering oars on either side of the stern rather than by single sternpost rudders as in modern ships. On average, six hundred men could fit on their two or three levels. The lateen sails allowed the vessels to tack reasonably well into the wind, yet they were unwieldy to manage and therefore required large crews.
The other vessel was the rowed galley, designed for naval warfare, repelling enemies and protecting the transports. Venetian galleys in the Middle Ages were long, sleek boats that carried one mast with a single lateen sail. At the bow they had a beak—a hinged plank with an iron spike designed to be lowered onto enemy vessels. The oarsmen were seated in a single bank with two oarsmen per bench, each rowing a separate oar. The galley was designed to be swift and nimble, no matter the weather. When it closed upon a vessel, the beak could be used either to damage it sufficiently to sink it, or as a bridge so that the marines could run across and fight hand to hand.
These vessels were built in shipyards scattered across the city. Several of these are mentioned in medieval documents at places along the Grand Canal or on nearby islands. These were the days before the great Arsenale, when shipbuilding was still farmed out to private entrepreneurs. Because ships were important to Venice, so, too, was the lumber necessary to build those ships. Indeed, the Venetians were obsessed by the constant need for fine timber, and their intervention in Dalmatia was in large measure predicated on the rich forests that could be found there. In later centuries, when the Venetians were established on the Italian mainland, they practiced an exacting sort of forestry, keeping meticulous records of every tree and imposing harsh fines on those who poached in the state groves.
Robert Guiscard launched his much-anticipated attack against Durazzo in the summer of 1081. Emperor Alexius I Comnenus dispatched envoys to Venice, promising rich rewards in return for military aid, but Doge Silvio needed little convincing. If Robert was successful at Durazzo, he would hold strong points on both sides of the mouth of the Adriatic. From there he could cripple or halt altogether Venetian overseas trade—the very lifeline of Venice’s prosperity. The Venetians quickly assembled an impressive war fleet and Doge Silvio again took command. In the late summer or autumn of 1081 the fleet reached Durazzo, where it found the Normans already besieging the Byzantine city. Silvio ordered his countrymen to attack the Norman fleet, which outnumbered the Venetians by a considerable margin. Nonetheless, the expert Venetian sailors destroyed the Norman navy in short order. Once in control of the port, the Venetians supplied the people inside Durazzo and assisted with their defense. But the Normans did not give up. With additional men and ships they continued to besiege Durazzo. Finally, on October 15, Emperor Alexius arrived from the east with a large mercenary army. He tried to break the Norman siege, but failed miserably. Robert’s men scattered the Byzantine forces and even managed to wound Alexius in the melee. Thus chastened by this show of strength, the emperor returned home, leaving the defense of Durazzo to Venice.
The Norman siege continued throughout the winter of 1081–82. It ended with treachery. In February the Normans bribed a Venetian renegade to open a gate while the citizens slept. With bloody fury, the Normans stormed the city, killing or capturing hundreds of Venetians. After securing Durazzo, Robert Guiscard began his march into the heart of the Byzantine Empire. Yet events in Rome intervened. The German emperor, Henry IV, was moving south through Italy, bent on capturing his enemy, Pope Gregory VII. At the pope’s summons, Robert returned to Italy to defend the Church, leaving his son Bohemond behind to prosecute the war against Byzantium. In Robert’s absence, Venetian and Byzantine forces rallied and in fierce battles erased most of the Norman victories. In the fall of 1083 a new Venetian fleet attacked Durazzo and recaptured the city, although the citadel, manned by a few Normans, tenaciously held out. After wintering there, the Venetians set sail to the south for the island of Corfu, which they also soon captured. The tables had turned. Venice now held the southeastern coast of the Adriatic.
But the Norman threat had not yet passed. After settling matters in Italy, Robert Guiscard assembled another large fleet. Bad weather delayed his departure, so it was not until November 1084 that his vessels set sail for Corfu. Well informed of the danger, Emperor Alexius again summoned Venice to muster an armada in defense of the Byzantine Empire, and once again, Doge Silvio complied, sending a fleet south where it joined with Alexius’s own makeshift navy. Learning of the defenders’ movements, Robert changed course, heading instead to Cassiopi in northeast Corfu. There one of the largest naval engagements of the Middle Ages took place. The allied fleet twice defeated the Normans, who took heavy casualties. It seemed to everyone, Robert included, that the great Norman offensive was over. The Venetians sent messengers home to herald their great victory. Hearing of the jubilant celebrations among his enemies, Robert sank into a deep despair.
Weeks later, though, the Norman leader shook off his depression and made plans for a bold counteroffensive. In January 1085, a time of year in which medieval ships never sailed, the Norman fleet appeared suddenly off Corfu. The Venetian and Byzantine commanders, amazed at Robert’s courage and audacity, scrambled to their vessels. But this time the Normans had caught the Venetians by surprise. After long and bloody fighting, the Normans defeated the allied fleet. According to the daughter of the emperor, Anna Comnena, thirteen thousand Venetians were killed in the battle and many more taken prisoner. Captured Venetians were cruelly mutilated and then ransomed back to their relatives. Robert hoped to use these prisoners as spokesmen for peace with Venice, but they openly defied him, swearing loyalty to the Byzantine emperor.
This devastating naval defeat was Venice’s worst yet. Back home the people exploded in outrage when news of glorious victory was followed by tales of humiliating defeat. Blaming their doge, they overthrew Domenico Silvio and replaced him with Vitale Falier (1085–96). But more amazing news was yet to come. Wintering in Greece, the victorious Norman forces were decimated by plague. In July 1085 Robert Guiscard himself contracted the disease and died, and with him his war against Byzantium. After so much strife and bloodshed, the Norman danger had miraculously evaporated.
Emperor Alexius I had promised great rewards for Venetian aid, and he made good on that promise. In a chrysobull he conceded the high imperial title of protosebastos to the doge, annual stipends for the doge and patriarch of Grado, annual tithes for Venetian churches, a church in Durazzo, and substantial buildings and properties in Constantinople. The latter would form the nucleus of the city’s new Venetian Quarter. This city within a city, located directly on Constantinople’s commercial docks, quickly became a cornerstone of Venetian overseas trade. The emperor also granted Venetian merchants the right to conduct trade in all Byzantine ports completely tax free. A few years later Alexius also gave the doge titled jurisdiction over the lands of Dalmatia and Croatia. Henceforth, all Venetian doges referred to themselves as “doge of Venice, Dalmatia and Croatia and also imperial protosebastos.” It was quite a mouthful.
The chrysobull of Alexius I forever changed relations between Venice and the Byzantine Empire. Most important was the tax exemption, which gave Venetian merchants a sizable advantage over their Genoese, Pisan, and even Greek competitors. In effect, Venetian wharves in Byzantine ports became duty-free zones. Merchants from Venice flocked to the eastern empire to take advantage of their privileged status, and in short order, many of them grew rich. Alexius could not see it then, but the new and conspicuous wealth of Venetian merchants and residents in Constantinople and other Greek ports would transform attitudes toward Venice among Byzantines from gratitude into envy and resentment. From the Byzantine perspective, the Venetians had always been poor cousins of the empire: not quite barbarians, but almost as crude and ill-mannered as the rest of western Europe. Now, as nouveaux riches, the Venetians were boorish as well. It was galling to see these rough sailors flaunting their wealth in the streets of Constantinople—wealth that had come to them from the generosity of the emperor and at the expense of the Byzantine people. These festering resentments would drive a wedge between the two peoples, fueling centuries of rancor.
By the late eleventh century Venice had become a city that scarcely resembled the muddy archipelago of islands to which Doge Agnello Partecipazio had led his people in 811. It now teemed with a population of some fifty thousand souls, making it the second-largest city in western Europe. Within a century it would double again in size. To sustain that kind of growth in a lagoon, additional land was a necessity. As rivers were filled in, marshes drained, and bridges built, parish boundaries in Venice came to separate neighborhoods rather than independent island communities. Although Venetians retained their parish identities, their various patron saints, once a sign of prestige and independence, were now displaced by devotion to St. Mark, the patron of the doge and the state. It is not surprising, then, that the Venetians decided to build a new church of San Marco, one that would better reflect the wealth and prestige of their vibrant community.
To construct a new San Marco—the third and final version of the doge’s great chapel—a battery of builders, craftsmen, and artists were hired in Constantinople during the reign of Doge Domenico Contarini (1043–70). The Greek architects modeled the new stone structure on the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople—a now-lost building that had served as the burial site for emperors since the time of Constantine the Great. San Marco was probably the first stone church to be built in Venice, and it was certainly the grandest to be found anywhere in the region, perhaps in the entire West. We can only imagine the difficulties of building so large a structure on a smallish island of sand. Undoubtedly there were false starts and mishaps. However, it is clear that the basic structure was nearing completion by 1070, when Doge Contarini died. His successor, Domenico Silvio, was crowned in the new, although still unfinished, church. Silvio ordered all Venetian merchants bound for eastern ports to purchase marbles or other decorative stone to beautify the building. He is also credited with beginning the mosaic program that would one day cover the length and breadth of the sanctuary.
The date of San Marco’s completion is not clear, probably because it would always remain a work in progress. The usual date given for its dedication is 1094, during the dogeship of Vitale Falier, who is buried in its atrium. The glorious new church, which still draws thousands of visitors daily, was both a gift to the patron saint of the republic and a declaration of independence from Byzantium. Venice was no longer a community of refugees, but had become a great power in its own right. The enormous edifice of San Marco made that statement eloquently enough to both friend and foe.
While stunning, the new San Marco conspicuously lacked the body of St. Mark, lost in the fire that destroyed the first church in 976. An insurmountable problem to the modern mind, perhaps, but it was nothing of the sort in the Middle Ages. If God wished to preserve the body of St. Mark, he could very well do so. After all, had he not sent his angel to foretell that the Evangelist would one day rest in Venice? A variety of stories soon developed to explain the rediscovery of St. Mark’s body after the dedication of his new church. In most of them, the doge, patriarch, and citizens prayed fervently to have the relic restored, now that a suitable temple had been built to house it. The body was then miraculously revealed by the falling away of plaster or stone from a wall or (in most versions) a column in the new church. Behind the broken material could be seen either the arm or the whole body of the patron saint. During the thirteenth century, the story was even rendered in mosaics on the west wall of the south transept of the church, where it can still be seen. This mosaic is one of the earliest depictions of Venetians, including women and children. In thePreghiera Sancti Marci the people and doge are shown attending a Mass to beseech God for the return of the holy relic. In the adjoining Apparitio Sancti Marci the doge, clergy, and people watch as the column opens and the miracle is complete.
Just as the magnificent edifice of San Marco rose from the ashes, so, too, the beloved St. Mark had at last returned to his people, at a moment when they were poised to expand their already considerable power to the farther reaches of this world.