CHAPTER 4
In November 1095 medieval Europe groaned and gave birth to something genuinely new—something that would claim Venetian attention for centuries. On a wide, grassy plain in France, Pope Urban II addressed a great assembly of nobles and knights who had traveled to the Council of Clermont to receive his blessing. He told them a heartbreaking story of recent Turkish conquests, both in Asia and the Holy Land, and of the Turks’ brutal persecutions of Christians living in the East and attacks on European pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem. It was a tale oft-told in the Middle Ages. For more than four centuries the armies of Islam had overrun the old Christian world, capturing two-thirds of it by 1050. In 1071 the Turks had defeated Byzantine armies at the Battle of Manzikert and subsequently claimed all of Asia Minor. Out of options, Constantinople pleaded with the popes for military assistance against the Muslim invaders. For decades the struggle between the German emperor and the papacy had kept the pope from fulfilling Alexius I Comnenus’s desperate request for assistance. By the 1090s, though, the popes had gained the upper hand in that struggle, and were at last in a position to do something about the dramatic decline of the Christian world.
On that French plain in 1095, Urban II delivered a sermon that has passed from history into legend. He implored the knights and nobles of Europe to do penance for their sins by joining a grand expedition to aid their brothers and sisters in Christ, who were even then suffering under the cruel oppression of the Turks. He urged them to march to the East and expel the Muslims from the lands that they had wrongfully conquered, restoring them to Christianity once more. With God’s help they would not only right these wrongs, but could even press on to Jerusalem itself, returning it at last to Christendom.
The response to Urban’s speech was tremendous. “Deus vult!” (God wills it!), the warriors cried with piety and passion. The same shouts echoed all across Europe as the First Crusade was preached everywhere. It was a phenomenon like no other in world history. Thousands of Christians spent extraordinary sums and left behind family and lands in a fervent desire to serve Christ by aiding the least of his brethren—the subjugated Eastern Christians. And by helping them, the crusader also helped himself—for he knew well his sins and the penalty for them. This expedition was not only an act of charity but a means of salvation. Waves of pious enthusiasm swept through a vigorously recharged Europe. Something new, something utterly unprecedented, was in the air.
The Italian merchant cities were not immune to these sentiments. Indeed, they shared them, just as they shared their Catholic faith with their northern neighbors. The main army of the First Crusade soldiered forth from Europe in 1096 and the next year Genoese merchants sent off a small fleet of thirteen vessels to catch up with it. Venice and Pisa, though, had grander visions. They were the only two states in Europe to collectively take up the crusader’s cross. In France, Great Britain, and Germany, monarchs stood aloof from the seemingly impossible project, while their vassals prepared for departure. By contrast, the governments in Venice and Pisa poured enormous resources into the Crusade from the start.
By the time word reached Venice of Pope Urban’s call to arms, Doge Vitale Falier was close to death. Infirmity may have kept him from embracing the Crusade, or he may simply have shared the skepticism of his royal counterparts. But in December 1096, as the various armies of the First Crusade were beginning to depart, Doge Falier died. When the Venetians assembled to choose a new doge, they turned to Vitale Michiel (1096–1101), a strong proponent of Venetian participation in the Crusade. Immediately after he was crowned in San Marco, Michiel sent word to the towns on the Dalmatian coast to prepare for a glorious enterprise to free the lands of Jesus Christ. In the lagoon, shipwrights began work on war galleys, cutting and bending the wooden planks, crafting oared vessels both swift and deadly. At Rialto the government issued orders to merchants, pressing their great roundships into service as supply transports. It was a large, expensive, and time-consuming task. One year later, when Pisa launched its fleet, Venice was still preparing its own. In the spring of 1099, though, it was finally ready: a mighty armada of some two hundred vessels—the largest single contribution to the First Crusade.
Doge Vitale Michiel called together the citizens of Venice and, much like Urban at Clermont, exhorted them to leave their families and country behind to take up the cross of Christ. As he spoke of the great spiritual and material benefits they could win in this holy mission, the Venetians cheered mightily; thousands of them took the cross that very day. The bishop of Castello, Enrico Contarini, was made the spiritual head of the Crusade, while Giovanni Michiel, the doge’s son, took command of the fleet. In an emotional ceremony, the patriarch of Grado, Pietro Badoer, gave to Bishop Contarini a banner emblazoned with a large cross. The doge then gave his son the banner of St. Mark to carry into battle against the Muslims. In July 1099, with some nine thousand Venetian crusaders on board, the fleet sailed out of the lagoon and into the Adriatic Sea.
Thus began a tradition imprinted powerfully on the Venetian civic character—one of grand expeditions in the service of the faith. This voyage would be replayed frequently in later years: during the Venetian Crusade of 1122, the Fourth Crusade of 1202, and a host of other expeditions and wars. In this case, however, although the Venetians could not have known it at the time, within a few days or weeks of their departure the grand prize of the Crusade, Jerusalem, had fallen into Christian hands. The First Crusade, against all odds, had succeeded.
The Venetian Crusade fleet sailed first to the Greek island of Rhodes, home of the famed Colossus of antiquity, where it spent the winter. Shortly after its arrival the Venetians received a surprising message from Alexius I, warning that if they persisted in sailing east to join the Crusade, he would revoke Venetian commercial privileges in the empire. Although the emperor had for years begged for Crusades, now he was forcefully admonishing the Venetians to stay away. From Alexius’s perspective, the whole expedition had gone off the rails, though it had started splendidly. With the crusaders’ assistance, Alexius had reclaimed from the Turks the city of Nicaea, the site of the First Ecumenical Council where the ancient Church fathers had forged the Nicene Creed. But the rest of the expedition had not gone as well. While Alexius returned to Constantinople to tie up loose ends, the First Crusade had marched across Anatolia, making its way to Antioch, one of the ancient patriarchates of the Church where the name “Christian” was first coined. There the crusaders met their gravest challenge. Famine, starvation, and renewed Turkish attacks conspired against them. But somehow they persevered and captured Antioch. Desperate for reinforcements, they put their hopes in Alexius I, who was due to arrive with a powerful Byzantine army. But the emperor never came. Having received faulty intelligence that the crusaders were destroyed at Antioch, he had returned to Constantinople. When the crusaders learned of Alexius’s betrayal, they disclaimed their oaths to restore the Crusade’s conquests to the Byzantine Empire, and instead kept Antioch for themselves. From Alexius’s perspective, therefore, the crusaders had become almost as dangerous as the Turks.
This is the strange turn of events that led Alexius to warn off the Venetians, and his message contained not just a threat but a promise: If the Venetians abandoned the expedition, he would furnish rich rewards. Bishop Contarini warned his countrymen that if they turned their backs on the cross for worldly gains, they risked not only shame before men but also the wrath of God. And so, the Venetians remained true to their crusader vows.
As the blossoms of spring emerged in 1100, the Venetian crusaders set sail from Rhodes for the Holy Land, making one very important stop along the way. On May 27 they landed at the Byzantine coastal town of Myra (modern Demre), made holy by the life of its famous bishop and the patron of sailors, St. Nicholas. Thirteen years earlier the Venetians, who were of course sailors, had made plans to steal the body of St. Nicholas from its church in Myra. In preparation, they built a new church and monastery for the saint on the Lido, close to the channel from which Venetians left the lagoon and began their sea voyages. Unfortunately for them, the sailors of Bari had the same idea—and they got there first, carrying away Nicholas’s bones in 1087. Losing this race remained a sore point for the Venetians, who now had a church with a conspicuously vacant altar.
The Venetian crusaders decided to stop at Myra and investigate the situation for themselves, just to be certain. The local Greek clergy insisted, even under torture, that the body of St. Nicholas had already been taken by the men of Bari. In an attempt to appease the Venetians, though, the priests suggested that they take the body of the saint’s uncle and namesake. It was not as good as the real St. Nicholas, but it was something. While the Venetians were taking the bones of the uncle, they smelled the sweet aroma that emanated from relics of great sanctity. Following the scent, the Venetians discovered yet another group of bones, which they concluded must be the “true” body of St. Nicholas. Either the men of Bari had been duped into taking the wrong body or they did not collect it all. Joyously, the Venetians loaded both relics aboard ship. They were later deposited and revered at the church of San Nicolò on the Lido, where they still remain. For centuries afterward, Venetian sailors implored the aid of the saintly bishop as they sailed past his church on their way to the wide world. The Bariense, who had their own St. Nicholas, naturally disputed the authenticity of the one on the Lido. A modern study of both sets of relics has concluded, remarkably, that they were both right. Although the Bari relic consists of larger pieces, both cities have what amounts to a collection of bone fragments. Investigators concluded that the sailors from Bari had seized the larger pieces, but left many broken bits, which the Venetians later claimed. Although a difficult jumble, the thousands of pieces do appear to have come from the skeleton of one man.
With St. Nicholas on board, the Venetian Crusade fleet sailed east, arriving at Jaffa in June 1100. There the Venetians met the remnants of the First Crusade. After capturing Jerusalem, most of the crusaders had returned home, leaving a small number of westerners to consolidate the gains and attempt to create a new Christian state in an otherwise Muslim Middle East. The crusaders’ leader, Godfrey of Bouillon, praised God for the Venetians’ arrival, for he commanded only a thousand men, while the crusaders from the lagoon numbered nine times that figure. Along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, the Christians held only Jaffa, but they hoped to conquer the rest. Heavily defended Acre was the key. In return for commercial rights in the captured city, the Venetians agreed to assist Godfrey with a large-scale siege. But Godfrey’s subsequent death changed their plans. Instead of Acre, Doge Michiel helped Tancred, the regent of Antioch, to capture nearby Haifa. The siege lasted more than a month, but the city fell on August 20, 1100. Unfortunately, Haifa was no Acre, lacking the population, wealth, ports, and markets of its much larger neighbor. Instead of property and riches, the Venetians returned home with almost nothing. Like most crusaders, they had hoped for salvation and wealth, but were disappointed in the latter.
The success of the First Crusade would nevertheless be an economic boon to Venice, for it not only opened new eastern ports but also provided new sources of revenue by transporting pilgrims to the Holy Land. During the following decades smaller Crusades or bands of armed pilgrims made their way to the East to assist those few Europeans (mostly French and therefore referred to collectively as “Franks”) who chose to live there permanently. Although the Muslims surrounding the crusader states were victims of their own disunity, they nonetheless posed a serious risk to the small Christian outposts.
In 1119 King Baldwin II of Jerusalem wrote to the pope and to Venice begging for assistance against his Muslim enemies. Pope Calixtus II passed the request on to the Republic of St. Mark, which had already proved itself capable of mustering the necessary force. In 1120 ten papal legates arrived in the lagoon with a letter from the pope imploring the Venetians to come to the aid of the Holy Land. Doge Domenico Michiel (1118–29) accompanied the papal legates to San Marco, where he summoned the people to hear the pontiff’s letter, and followed with a stirring speech of his own. In the ominous glow of a thousand candles and beneath the gaze of dozens of mosaic saints, the words of the doge echoed through the vast church.
Venetians, what splendid renown and immortal glory will you receive through this? What rewards will you receive from God? You will earn the admiration of Europe and Asia; the standard of St. Mark will fly triumphantly over those distant lands: new profits, new sources of greatness will come to this most noble country. . . . Enflamed with the holy zeal of religion, moved by the suffering of your brethren, excited by the example of all Europe, prepare your arms, think on the honors, think on your triumphs, and be guided to the blessings of heaven.
The response was tremendous. With the excited acclamation of the people, the doge himself took the cross, leaving his son Leachim and another kinsman, also named Domenico, as vice-doges. The pattern established in 1099 was followed once again. Venice was on Crusade.
The Venetian shipworks sprang back to life, and the city’s industries spent the remainder of 1120 and part of 1121 building and outfitting the large crusading fleet. Michiel ordered all Venetians engaged in overseas commerce to return home and assist with the effort. The forces of the Venetian Crusade consisted of a fleet of approximately 120 vessels and more than fifteen thousand men. Doge Domenico Michiel, though, planned to make use of these forces to advance state interests along the way. During the first year of Michiel’s dogeship the aged emperor Alexius I Comnenus had died and was succeeded by his eldest son, John II Comnenus (1118–43). The new emperor had been born two years after the war with Robert Guiscard, too late to remember Venice’s great service to Byzantium at Durazzo. But he had seen the effects of Venice’s tax reward, and his generation had stewed in resentment at what they saw as Venetian arrogance borne of the spoils. Indeed, by virtue of Alexius’s chrysobull of 1082, Venetians had become richer and more numerous in the eastern empire than ever before. They were contemptuous of Byzantine officials, many of whom, because of the chrysobull, had no power over them anyway. The freedom that some Venetians felt in flouting Byzantine law is evident enough in their cavalier thefts of the relics of St. Nicholas from Myra and St. Stephen from Constantinople. Behind all this Venetian impetuousness, John believed, was his father’s chrysobull. He refused to renew it.
From the Venetian perspective, John’s decision was the height of ingratitude. Yet at the time, aside from sending ambassadors with complaints, there was little that Doge Michiel could do. Now as he looked across the Bacino San Marco at the brightly colored war fleet at his command, a fleet not unlike the one Domenico Silvio had led to Byzantium’s defense in 1081, the doge saw a new and more persuasive instrument of diplomacy. The memory of the Venetian dead in the war against Robert Guiscard and the Normans was still powerful in the lagoon, for they had fought long and hard, and paid a heavy price to protect the Byzantine Empire. They would not now be dismissed out of hand by this young emperor. If John II would not honor his father’s promises, then let him lose Corfu, purchased for him with the blood of Venetians. The doge and his council made plans to capture the island on their way to the Holy Land.
John II was not the only one with something to fear from the Venetian crusading fleet. Dalmatian rebels could also expect swift punishment. Farther south, the citizens of Bari, too, remained wary. There was, after all, that delicate matter of the body of St. Nicholas. The Venetians might well be tempted to use their Crusade fleet as they had at Myra, forcing their way into the city of Bari and capturing another body of the saint to accompany them on their journey. That would certainly put an end to the competing claims. But the doge did not want to provoke Bari. If the Bariense believed they were in danger, their ships could pose a threat to the Venetian fleet and its operations at Corfu. Therefore, in May 1122, three months before the fleet’s departure, the doge issued a solemn oath that no Venetian would harm the property, life, or limb of the citizens of Bari. The document, which survives, was signed by the doge as well as by 372 of the greater men of Venice who had taken the cross. It is a fascinating document, providing a roll call of the leading Venetians who left family and home to serve God and St. Mark.
The fleet set sail on August 8, 1122. After receiving supplies and men from the Dalmatian towns, Doge Michiel led the armada to Corfu, where it besieged the Byzantine citadel. Although one often imagines medieval warfare as a violent clashing of great armies, in truth the most effective tactic was a siege. Fortifications, like that of the citadel at Corfu, were designed to withstand powerful assaults. As a result, most medieval warfare consisted of doing nothing at all. The besiegers surrounded a fortification and attempted to starve out the defenders before they were forced to leave themselves. At Corfu, the siege lasted all winter. In early spring 1123, messengers from the kingdom of Jerusalem finally persuaded the doge to leave aside his quarrel with the emperor and sail immediately to aid the Holy Land. When the Venetians arrived at Acre in May, they discovered a desperate situation. The Arab navy from Egypt had blockaded Jaffa on the coast in an attempt to cut Jerusalem off from its closest access to the sea. Perhaps hearing of the arrival of the Venetian fleet, the Arab commanders decided to return the navy to its base at Ascalon. Swiftly the doge ordered a small group of Venetian merchant vessels to lure the Egyptians into battle. Once the engagement began, the republic’s warships surrounded and destroyed the Muslim vessels. Michiel, we are told, led his own galley against the opposing Egyptian flagship and sank it. The victory was total: Hardly a Muslim vessel survived the engagement. The next year the doge led the Venetians against the Muslim-controlled city of Tyre, assisting a Frankish attack. After a difficult siege, it fell in July 1124, upon which the grateful king Baldwin II amply rewarded the Venetians. In every city in the kingdom of Jerusalem the republic received a street, bakery, bath, and church, freedom from all tolls and customs, and the right to use its own weights and measures. It also received one-third of Tyre as its own Venetian Quarter there. With great celebration, the Venetians raised their sails and headed back home. On the way, they received even more good news. Rather than endure additional attacks on his empire, Emperor John II agreed to renew his father’s chrysobull. All was again right in the East.
In 1129 the crusader doge Domenico Michiel fell ill. Knowing that his time was short, he resigned the dogeship and took monastic vows. The newly tonsured hero was borne to the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore, where he spent the last months of his life. His tomb, modest and inconspicuous, was placed in a small passageway leading from the church to the monastery. Yet the Venetians did not forget him. More than a decade later an inscription was added to the bare tomb:
Here lies the terror of the Greeks and the glory of the Venetians, Domenico Michiel whom Manuel fears; a doge honorable and strong, whom all the world cherished; prudent in counsel and consummate in intellect. His manly deeds are declared by the capture of Tyre, the destruction of Syria, and the anguish of Hungary; he made the Venetians to live in peace and tranquility, for while he flourished his country was safe from all harm. You who come to look on this beautiful sepulcher, bow low before God because of him.
When the Venetians sought a successor to one of their greatest leaders, it was natural to look to Michiel’s family. Yet the days of ducal dynasties had ended with the death of Otto Orseolo in 1032. Venice was a different place. Population in the city had been expanding rapidly. The success of Venetian merchants brought healthy infusions of new wealth into the lagoon, prompting increasing numbers of new families to demand political authority to match their economic clout. It was in the interest of these wealthy clans to expand the avenues of power, and that meant keeping any one family from gaining too tight a grip on the dogeship.
Their desire to honor Michiel and determination to avoid tyranny were satisfied in their final choice. Pietro Polani (1129–48) was a member of the Michiel family, but only by virtue of his marriage to the doge’s daughter. He came from a new family, one that had made its fortunes in the markets of Constantinople. Early in his reign, Doge Polani favored the members of other new families, like the Dandolos, Zianis, and Mastropieros, by appointing them as judges in his court. In a city without nobles, ducal judges were as close as one could come to nobility. By Polani’s reign, they were the peers of the doge. Yet, just as with the dogeship itself, power flowed from the office, not from the officeholder. Judgeships were not hereditary, nor were they very often held for more than a year or two. Depending on the occasion, one could find at this time anywhere from two to five judges in court. The doge could not conduct business without them. By the mid-twelfth century the road to the ducal throne invariably passed through the judiciary.
Among the most notable political events of Polani’s reign was the institution of the Venetian “commune.” Reflecting prevailing fashions in other Italian towns, the Venetians began to refer to their government in this way. On the mainland a commune denoted a newly won element of self-rule—something that Venetians had enjoyed for centuries. Nonetheless, the change in nomenclature did recognize some political and social changes at work in Venice. Power was shifting incrementally away from the doge and into the hands of an expanded ducal court, which began to include not only the judges but also a new body known as the consilium sapientium, or Council of the Wise. It was made up of well-connected men from important families who, in one form or another, represented the people of Venice during the day-to-day activities of the doge’s court. These political reforms were slow, but in them one can see the rise of Venice’s evolving representative councils.
Change also came to the Church in Venice. An ecclesiastical reform movement had swept Europe in the eleventh century, yet had little effect on Venice. The simple fact was that the Church in Venice did not need as much reform. On the Continent many of the clergy had become lax or corrupt. Priests took wives and bishops purchased their offices—an offense known as simony. The office of bishop was worth paying for on the mainland because it brought with it rich lands, wealth, and power. In Venice, where land was scarce, the bishops and the patriarch of Grado lived primarily off voluntary tithes—which meant that they were perpetually short of cash. Venetians were usually generous toward pious works, but much of their largesse found its way into monasteries or other charitable institutions. Parish tithing was a legal obligation and, therefore, conformed to only minimally at best. On the mainland, reformers worked hard to remove lay control over the appointment of ecclesiastical offices. While this was a common practice in Venice as well, it had not led to any clerical abuses. Ecclesiastical offices were simply not attractive enough in Venice to warrant corruption, and as a result, they tended to draw only the genuinely pious.
The peace between church and state in Venice was shaken, however, during the dogeship of Pietro Polani. He had nominated his boyhood friend, Enrico Dandolo, as patriarch of Grado. Accepted by the bishops of the lagoon, Dandolo was duly ordained in 1134. However, Dandolo, much like his contemporary, Archbishop Thomas à Becket of Canterbury, was changed by his high ecclesiastical office. In June 1135 the young patriarch attended the Council of Pisa, where he likely met St. Bernard of Clairvaux, one of the most famous men of his time. Bernard, a Cistercian monk, was the standard-bearer of reform in twelfth-century Europe, preaching a message of purification of every element of Christian society. It appears that Dandolo learned from Bernard the importance of ecclesiastical liberty and the duty of a shepherd of souls to instruct even the most powerful.
The city of Venice had its own bishop—the bishop of Castello—who at that time was Giovanni Polani, a kinsman of the doge. The patriarch of Grado was the metropolitan, or archbishop, with authority over all bishops in the Venetian lagoon, which stretched at that time from Chioggia to Grado. Although the patriarch’s home church was on the distant little island of Grado, by the twelfth century the population center of the area had shifted dramatically to the city of Venice. For that reason, patriarchs of Grado tended to spend much of their time in the city, residing in the parish church of San Silvestro, very near the Rialto markets and directly on the Grand Canal. Officially, they were “visitors,” since canon law did not allow one prelate (high-ranking member of the clergy) to reside within the jurisdiction of another. The extended stays of these patriarchal “visitors” naturally strained their relations with the bishops of Castello.
Patriarch Dandolo’s zeal to promote ecclesiastical reform in Venice quickly put him at odds with Bishop Polani. One of the papacy’s favored reform initiatives was to organize parish clergy into associations, called canons regular, under the monastic rule of St. Augustine. In this way, local priests lived more humbly, with more piety, and with much less worldliness. Dandolo joined forces with the Badoer clan, who were strong supporters of church reform in Venice, to oversee the conversion of the clergy of the parish church of San Salvatore, in the heart of the city, to the canons regular. When parishioners complained about this meddling in their neighborhood church, Bishop Polani ordered the priests who wished to become canons regular to abandon their plan. They refused. Bishop Polani then placed the church under interdict, meaning that the sacraments could not be performed there. Patriarch Dandolo responded by taking the parish under his own protection. The dispute between the two bishops ultimately ended up in Rome, where the pope sided with Dandolo. Against the will of Venice’s bishop, the priests of San Salvatore thus became canons regular. It was a wound that would not quickly heal.
The smoldering rancor between the patriarch and the bishop soon grew into a flame that burned across Venice’s political landscape. A new spark was struck sometime between 1141 and 1145, when Nella Michiel, the abbess of the convent of San Zaccaria, died. As was customary, the doge nominated a new abbess, probably one of his kinswomen. Doge Polani’s nominee was forwarded to the nuns of San Zaccaria, who dutifully elected her. However, before the doge could invest the abbess-elect, the patriarch of Grado condemned the election and the investment. With classic church reform arguments, Dandolo insisted that the sisters of San Zaccaria hold a free election without lay interference; under no circumstances should the abbess receive her office from the hands of the doge. Doge Polani was outraged. It was one thing for the patriarch to squabble with the bishop over ecclesiastical jurisdiction, but quite another for him to deny the doge’s right to nominate and invest the abbess of the wealthiest convent in Venice. With no obvious way to resolve the dispute, the patriarch took his case to Rome, where it would drag on for years.
In his zeal to promote reform, Patriarch Dandolo had managed to anger the two most important men in Venice. But matters were about to get worse. During the summer of 1147 a fleet of Normans sailed across the Adriatic and captured the Byzantine island of Corfu. From there they proceeded to plunder the Greek coast with little opposition. Once again the Normans were poised to invade the Byzantine Empire, and once again the emperor in Constantinople turned to Venice for help. There was never any question that the Venetians would oblige. Merchant families, like the Dandolos and the Polanis, had an enormous interest in a stable and peaceful Byzantine Empire. A Norman conquest of Greece or Constantinople would be economically and strategically cataclysmic for Venice. The son of John II, Emperor Manuel I Comnenus (1143–80), hastily sent off a chrysobull in October 1147 confirming all of Venice’s commercial privileges. Doge Pietro Polani then announced to the Venetians that they would once again wage war against the Normans, calling upon them to prepare a fleet to sail in the spring.
Although the Dandolo family had every reason to favor the defense of its commercial interests in Byzantium, the good of the clan no longer carried much weight with the Dandolo who was patriarch of Grado. His eyes were no longer on his earthly family, but on the welfare of the Catholic Church. When the patriarch learned of Venice’s alliance with Byzantium, he called together an assembly of clergy and laity to rebuke the doge and his policy. Faithful Christians, Dandolo asserted, should not come to the aid of the Byzantines, who refused to recognize the full authority of the pope. In a city that had long favored Byzantium, the patriarch’s opposition party was small, but nonetheless determined. It included many of Venice’s reform-minded clergy, including the canons of San Salvatore, as well as prominent members of the Badoer clan, who had defended the patriarch’s actions since at least 1145. With this controversy, Dandolo had introduced into Venice the most expansive elements of the ecclesiastical reform that were spreading throughout Europe. Already a defender of the Church against lay interference, Dandolo took the next step, asserting his right to overrule secular leaders when their decisions threatened the Church or the spiritual well-being of the faithful.
Doge Polani’s patience was at an end. He would not have churchmen dictating Venetian foreign policy. He likely issued an ultimatum to the patriarch, threatening to harm his family if he did not stand down. Dandolo remained resolute. And so, in late 1147 or early 1148 the doge lashed out at his enemies in a move unprecedented in Venetian history. He ordered the permanent exile of Patriarch Dandolo, his supporters, and all members of the Dandolo and Badoer families. To make doubly certain that the patriarch’s family could never return, the doge ordered the entire Dandolo compound in the parish of San Luca to be leveled to the ground.
The expelled patriarch fled to Rome, where he informed Pope Eugenius III (1145–53) of events in Venice. Eugenius promptly excommunicated Doge Polani and placed the entire city of Venice under interdict. So severe a spiritual punishment on the eve of war with the Normans no doubt weighed heavily on the minds of the Venetians. Never before had they incurred the wrath of a pope, nor had the sacraments ever been denied to them in this way. Still, Doge Polani was unmoved. He personally took command of the war fleet, which sailed on schedule to restore the island of Corfu to Byzantine rule. Although the fleet was successful, the doge himself died on the voyage. The Norman danger thus averted, a grateful Emperor Manuel dramatically expanded the Venetian Quarter in Constantinople.
The death of the still-excommunicated Polani amid a smashing victory against the Normans allowed the Venetians to claim their reward from Byzantium while simultaneously opening a door to peace with the Church and the lifting of the interdict. The first action of the new doge, Domenico Morosini (1148–55), was to rescind Polani’s exile orders against the patriarch and his faction. Indeed, he decreed that the Dandolo compound should be rebuilt at state expense. Morosini then took an oath that he would forever preserve the liberty of the Church in Venice, allowing no lay power to have influence over ecclesiastical government or elections. What took more than a century in Europe was concluded in an instant in Venice. Every Venetian doge after Morosini took an oath of office that included a clause in which the liberty of the Church was guaranteed. As a result of these rapid reforms, the separation between church and state in Venice was greater than anywhere else in the world. Venetians remained intensely pious people. That is one of the fruits of living on the perilous sea. But the Church no longer had any direct role in the Venetian government, nor did the government interfere with the Church.
As for Patriarch Dandolo, he returned to Venice triumphantly. The convent of San Zaccaria was reformed into a Cluniac house, becoming part of one of Europe’s oldest reform orders. The new abbess was no relation to the doge—indeed, she was a German sent from the convent’s motherhouse on the Continent. Dandolo’s authority outside the lagoon grew as well. Because of Venice’s increasing control over the Dalmatian coast, Pope Anastasius IV (1153–54) elevated the city of Zara (modern Zadar) to a metropolitan see. The bishop of Zara (who was also the city’s ruler), therefore, became an archbishop. A few months later Pope Hadrian IV (1154–59) placed the archbishop of Zara under the jurisdiction of the patriarch of Grado. This was a remarkable move. By elevating one metropolitan over another, Hadrian had at last made Grado a true patriarchate: the only one of its kind in western Europe besides Rome. The pope did this, as Innocent III later wrote, “so that your Church would clearly possess the patriarchal dignity not only in name but also in full right.” Needless to say, the archbishop of Zara did not appreciate being the only metropolitan answerable to another metropolitan. The resentment engendered would fester for a very long time.
The reforms of the Venetian Church in the twelfth century continued to be mirrored in the accelerating reforms of the Venetian state. As with most such changes, the key impetus came from an unexpected direction. Relations between Venice and the emperor in Constantinople later soured after the Venetians refused to help Manuel Comnenus with a plan to invade southern Italy. In retaliation, the emperor began cultivating friendships with Venice’s commercial rivals, namely, the Pisans and the Genoese. He granted these other Italians their own quarters in Constantinople very near the Venetian Quarter. Rancor between the expatriates ran high. One day a group of Venetian residents of Constantinople raided the Genoese Quarter, spreading death and ruin until the imperial guard finally quelled the violence. This blatant act of disobedience convinced Emperor Manuel that the Byzantine Empire no longer needed Venice. It was a bold decision—one scarcely conceivable just a century earlier. But since then other Italian maritime states had grown in strength. Genoese warships were just as numerous in the Aegean as Venetian. They could see to the defense of Byzantine waters just as effectively as the Venetians, and without their arrogance—or so it seemed.
Manuel’s plan of attack against the Venetians was ambitious, to say the least. In early 1171 he sent secret messages to Byzantine officials across the empire ordering them to arrest, imprison, and confiscate the property of every single Venetian they could find. Amazingly, the secret was kept. Some months before, fearing just this kind of imperial retribution for the Venetian attacks in Constantinople, Doge Vitale II Michiel (1155–72) had sent high-level ambassadors to the emperor’s court to smooth things over. Manuel had assured his Venetian visitors that all was well. With a sigh of relief they returned to Venice to report the happy news.
And then, on the morning of March 12, the hammer fell. In Constantinople and every other Byzantine port, Venetian men, women, and children were rounded up and thrown into prisons. More than ten thousand were arrested in Constantinople alone. When the prisons were full they stuffed them into monasteries. Their houses, shops, and vessels—all that they owned—were taken from them. A handful of Venetians escaped. Romano Mairano, for example, was doing business in Constantinople when he was seized and thrown into prison. Faced with overcrowding, the Byzantine officials agreed to release him and a few other wealthy Venetians who could post extremely large bails. Mairano then bribed the commander of a large vessel to transport him and the other released Venetians out of Constantinople. In the dead of night, the refugees crept aboard the ship, which cast off and sailed slowly out of the imperial city’s secure harbor, the Golden Horn. But when the sun rose they found the seas alive with vessels carrying Byzantine officials seeking Venetians to arrest. One imperial vessel closed in on Mairano’s craft, ordering it to halt for inspection. Instead, the refugees put up full sails. The Byzantines tried to destroy the ship with Greek fire—an incendiary liquid propelled out of tubes—but failed. Mairano and his friends finally made it to Acre, where they told their countrymen about the tragedy. But Mairano’s wealth and luck made him unusual. Well over twenty thousand Venetians remained in indefinite captivity.
When news arrived in Venice of this devastating blow, it was met with shock, outrage, and a fair amount of embarrassment on the part of the ambassadors who had been so thoroughly duped by Manuel. Doge Michiel summoned his high councillors, the sapienti,to advise him on the crisis. Chief among these councillors were representatives from the new families, Orio Mastropiero, Sebastiano Ziani (the richest man in Venice), and Vitale Dandolo (the brother of the patriarch). The councillors advised caution. The reports they had received seemed fantastic, almost unbelievable. They urged the doge to dispatch envoys to Constantinople to ascertain the facts on the ground. If the reports were true, the envoys should assess the damage, inquire as to Manuel’s reasons for inflicting it, and demand release of the hostages and the restoration of their property.
The doge agreed to follow this cautious, careful approach, but events soon veered out of his control. A convoy of twenty Venetian vessels that had escaped the clutches of the emperor sailed noisily into the lagoon. With great passion the sailors told their harrowing stories to all who would listen. People poured out of their houses, inflamed with passion and eager for revenge. They gathered together, probably outside the Ducal Palace, and formed the arengo, the theoretical basis of all authority in Venice. As a group the people of Venice demanded a retaliatory strike against the Byzantine Empire. They ordered the doge to personally lead a war fleet of a hundred galleys and twenty transports to exact revenge against Manuel and win the release of the hostages. Doge Michiel obeyed. He had little choice. Four months later the fleet was prepared. Against his better judgment, and against the wishes of the sapienti, the doge led Venice to war against its parent state.
The imposing armada sailed along the coast of Dalmatia, quickly reinforcing Venetian control there. It then swung around into the Aegean Sea and landed on the prosperous Greek island of Negroponte (Euboea), laying siege to the capital, Chalkis. The Venetian strategy was simple: inflict as much pain as possible on the emperor until he released the captives. Realizing that the city would likely fall, the Byzantine governor in Chalkis requested a meeting with the doge and his councillors. In that meeting, the Venetian leaders made clear that they preferred a diplomatic solution to the quarrel if one could be found. In return for the withdrawal of Venetian forces, the governor agreed to send an envoy to Constantinople to urge the emperor to release the hostages.
With high hopes for peace, the doge ordered the fleet to withdraw from Negroponte to the island of Chios, where the Venetians spent the winter waiting for word from Constantinople. But Manuel Comnenus refused to receive the envoy. He would listen to no words of peace while Venetians waged war in his empire. Manuel did, however, send his own envoy, who held out hope for a negotiated settlement. On Chios the doge and his men listened to the optimistic words of the imperial messenger, who urged them to send another embassy to Constantinople. Of course, Manuel’s real game is clear enough. By dangling the possibility of peace before the doge, the emperor hoped to forestall further attacks on his territories while he prepared his own forces to meet the Venetians. The ruse worked. The doge sent a group of Venetian envoys to Constantinople.
Shortly after the embassy departed, a devastating plague descended on the Venetian camp. More than a thousand men died in the first days of the outbreak. Many blamed Byzantine agents, whom they believed had poisoned the wells. There was also a good deal of grumbling against the doge, who had hardly dealt out swift vengeance against the Byzantines. In the only attack on a Greek city thus far, Michiel had withdrawn in order to pursue his original diplomatic strategy. Since then the Venetians had done little but wait—and die—on Chios. In March the fleet moved to the island of Panagia, but the plague followed. At the end of the month the Venetian delegation to Constantinople returned and gave its report. It was no better than the first. Once again it had been denied an imperial audience. However, Manuel did send another Byzantine envoy to the doge with a promise that if a third legation was sent, he would receive it.
Doge Michiel’s situation was dire. His armada was crippled and more of his men were dying every day. He had already received intelligence of a Byzantine plan to attack the Venetians on Chios or at sea, so he found it difficult to believe that peace was really on the emperor’s mind. But his options were limited. If he could shake off the plague, the Venetian fleet was still large enough to make trouble in the Aegean. Perhaps that threat, along with another embassy, would be enough to persuade Manuel to release the Venetian prisoners. It was, in any case, his only hope. He sent two high men, Enrico Dandolo, the son of Vitale Dandolo and nephew of the patriarch (and himself a future doge), and Filippo Greco to the emperor’s court. The doge then moved the fleet first to the island of Lesbos and then to Skyros—desperately island-hopping in an attempt to lose the plague. Nothing worked. As the numbers of Venetian dead mounted, it became depressingly clear that the fleet was no longer a threat to the emperor. Indeed, it was itself in grave danger. The surviving Venetians ordered their doge to take them home, and so he did.
Manuel had won. He had punished the Venetians for their insolence and then sent their retaliatory fleet home in disgrace. He could not resist a bit of crowing. According to John Kinnamos, a member of Manuel’s court, the emperor sent a letter to Doge Michiel that succinctly sums up what had become the Byzantine perception of the Venetians—a perception that struck at the core of Venetian history and identity.
Your nation has for a long time behaved with great stupidity. Once you were vagabonds sunk in abject poverty. Then you slinked into the Roman Empire. You have treated it with the utmost disdain and have done your best to deliver it to its worst enemies, as you yourselves are well aware. Now, legitimately condemned and justly expelled from the empire, you have in your insolence declared war on it—you who were once a people not even worthy to be named, you who owe what prestige you have to the Romans; and for having supposed that you could match their strength you have made yourselves a general laughing-stock. For no one, not even the greatest powers on earth, makes war on the Romans with impunity.
What was left of the retaliatory fleet limped into the Venetian lagoon in late May 1172. Rather than revenge, Michiel brought home defeat, humiliation, and plague. Once again the Venetian people took matters into their own hands. A general meeting was held in the Ducal Palace on May 27. The doge and his councillors were there to discuss the tragedy with the assembled citizens. Things went badly from the start. Amid tears for fallen loved ones were angry cries of accusation. The people of Venice had given the doge the means and a mandate to retaliate against the emperor, yet he had done nothing of the kind. Instead, he had used the fleet merely as a tool of diplomacy. Many of the survivors angrily denounced the doge, saying, “We were poorly led, and if we had not been betrayed by the doge dragging out matters with legates, then all of these troubles would not have overtaken us!” Among the crowd stones and knives began to appear. While Michiel attempted to reason with the people, his councillors slipped out of the room one by one. Finding himself alone, Michiel made a break for the sanctuary of nearby San Zaccaria, but was overtaken and stabbed to death before getting that far.
As the body of the doge was prepared for burial, once again the popular act of regicide became bitterly unpopular in hindsight. A good man and a “lover of peace,” Michiel had been put into an impossible situation by the people themselves. Marco Casolo, the doge’s assassin, became the scapegoat for the people’s rage, but his execution did not wash away their guilt. After an emotional funeral at San Zaccaria, the people assembled at nearby San Marco to choose Michiel’s successor. Medieval Venetian chroniclers give sparse details about what happened next, but in the end the people elected not a new doge, but instead an eleven-man commission charged with electing a new doge. This was an extraordinary change, unprecedented in Venetian history. What convinced the people of Venice that they should give away their cherished right to choose their own doge?
Based on subsequent events, it seems clear that the revolution of 1172—for revolution it was—drew its breath from the sapienti, those wealthy men from powerful and largely new families that had been carving out a position for themselves between the doge and the people. Filled with grief for their loved ones and the death of their doge, the Venetian people listened attentively to these conservative, wise men. If their cautious advice to the doge had been heeded, after all, hundreds of Venetians would still be alive and they would be that much closer to securing the release of the hostages. It was the rashness of the people and the arengo that had put them on their present course. The selection of a new doge was crucially important. Would it not be better to leave it to those same wise men? Unfortunately, we cannot know precisely what arguments were made at this assembly, but we do know that when it was over, the people had given away their authority to select their doge. It was a moment of profound importance, a milestone in the creation of a new Venetian government. The last direct tie between doge and people had been severed.
The eleven men chosen for the commission were the friends and advisers of the slain doge—all of them sapienti. Not surprisingly, they elected one of their own, the seventy-year-old Sebastiano Ziani (1172–78). When Ziani’s election was publicly announced (with the diplomatic insertion “if it pleases you”), the people of Venice approved the choice enthusiastically, shouting, “Long live the doge, and may we be able to obtain peace through him!”
It is impossible to adequately understand medieval or Renaissance Venice without taking into account the lessons learned by the Venetians in their failed mission of vengeance of 1172. They learned that the fury of the mob was a poor substitute for the reasoned consideration of experienced statesmen. Those statesmen, the friends and councillors of Vitale II Michiel, became the new leaders of a reformed republic. The next three doges were marked by their association with Michiel and were probably elected for that very reason. They were men who knew firsthand the importance of a doge’s councillors and who feared rash actions, whether by the people or the doge. A fundamental shift was occurring in the history of Venetian government as well as in the development of the later “myth of Venice.” Venice, the republic where powerful doges ruled powerful people, was becoming something different—a government in which a distinct body of elites, known for their wisdom and service to the state, began to draw into themselves the powers of both people and doge. It was not, and never would be, an oligarchy. Rather, the Venetian republic was being outfitted with new bodies and procedures, which ensured that it would act prudently, cautiously, and predictably. Not surprisingly, these are precisely the attributes that businessmen most value in a government.
Venice had been harmed gravely—but by no means mortally—by the Byzantine Empire. Banned from trading in Greek ports, the Venetians made up the business in the markets of the crusader states, especially the city of Tyre. Ziani and his successors pursued a measured, cautious approach to their ongoing state of war with Byzantium, continuing to seek the release of the long-held hostages. It would take more than a decade to achieve. In the meantime, the people of Venice had crafted a government of both church and state that was far more stable and more efficient than any other in western Europe. With a free Church, the Venetians avoided the strife that beset the German empire, where kings and emperors held tightly to their customary control over ecclesiastical appointments. With a new, more stable government watched over by those businessmen who had the most to lose by instability, the factionalism and vendettas that plagued other Italian cities withered and died in Venice.