HISTORY OF VENICE (991 - 1032 A.D.)

(Napisao: gosp. Marko Marelić -  S. Francisco - USA)
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The tenth century had opened in Venice on a note of triumph with the repulse of the Magyar invaders. It had not however, fulfilled its early promise. Of the past fifty years, all but two - those covering the brief reign of Pietro Orseolo I - had seen the fate of the Republic entrusted to members, by blood or marriage, of the family of Candiano, whose policies had brought it to the brink of disaster. By their arrogance and ambition - or, as with the last reigning member of their clan Tribuno Memmo, by sheer ineptitude and the inability to give a strong lead in moments of crisis - they had alienated the Empire of the West, largely ignored that of the East, and encouraged dissention at home. As the final decade of the century began, Venice was sick to the heart. A casual visitor might have been impressed by the outward signs of prosperity - the ships in the harbor, the merchandise on the Rialto, the sables and the silks and the spices; but the Republic was no longer feared and respected by her neighbors as once she had been and, as her reputation had waned, so too had her morale. Her own particular form of national pride - that consciousness of being a race apart, springing from a different element, pursuing an individual destiny - which had given courage and cohesion to her founding fathers and impelled their successors to the threshold of greatness seemed to be draining away. Desperately now, Venice needed a strong hand to guide her, to weld her again into a nation, to restore her self-confidence and her self-respect.

And she found it. Old Pietro Orseolo, when he had fled from family and responsibilities thirteen years before, had left behind him a young son, also called Pietro; and it was this son, still only thirty years old, that the Venetians acclaimed in 991 as their new ruler. They could not have made a better choice. Statesman, warrior and diplomatist of genius, Pietro Orseolo II towers above the other Doges of his day like a giant among pygmies; and from the outset his subjects seem to have recognized his greatness. With his accession, the feuding that had so long poisoned civilized life stopped as suddenly as if it had never happened. It was as though the Venetians had grown up once again into an adult, a responsible and gifted people, and now stood ready to follow him on the road to glory.

But for Venice glory meant trade; and the first task of Pietro Orseolo as Doge was to restore friendly and mutually advantageous trading relations with the two Empires. Within a year he had negotiated with Basil II in Constantinople commercial terms more favorable than any that Venice had previously enjoyed. An imperial chrysobul dated March 992 undertook to admit bona fide Venetian goods - at tariffs far lower than those imposed on foreign merchandise in general. Almost as important, Venetian merchants in Constantinople were henceforth to be directly subject to the Grand Logothete, a high palace official roughly comparable to the Minister of Finance. This spared them the delays and frustrations for which Byzantine bureaucracy was famous and virtually assured them the ear of the Emperor himself, in case of emergencies. In return, the Venetian fleet was to be kept ready to transport imperial troops at short notice wherever they might be needed.

With the young Emperor of the West the Doge achieved similar success - perhaps even more, due to the mutual admiration and affection that rapidly grew up between them. Otto III was an extraordinary child. Born in 980, Emperor at the age of three, he grew up combining the traditional ambitions of his line with a romantic mysticism inherited from his Greek mother, and forever dreaming of a great Byzantinesque theocracy that would embrace Germans, Italians and Slavs alike, with God at its head, and himself and the Pope - in that order - as his twin viceroys. The pursuit of this dream made him still more preoccupied with affairs in Italy than his father had been before him; and a young man's hero-worship for the ablest ruler west of Constantinople did the rest. In 996, when Otto crossed the Alps for the first time in his life on the way to his imperial coronation in Rome, he was able to make an impressive demonstration of his friendship. First he compelled two refractory bishops to restore to Venice certain territories that they had wrongfully appropriated for themselves; next he granted the Doge the right to establish Venetian warehouses and trading stations along the banks of the Piave and the Sile, simultaneously guaranteeing safe conduct and tax exemptions for all Venetians on imperial territory. Most significant of all, he personally sent for Orseolo's third son to join him at Verona, and there stood sponsor to him at his confirmation, bestowing on him his own name, Otto.

Thus, by the end of his fifth year in office, Pietro Orseolo II had assured the commercial prospects of the Republic with the two greatest powers in Christendom. Now more than ever the broad rivers of northern Italy were thronged with Venetian barges, their gunwales sunk almost to the waterline beneath their cargoes of iron and wood, corn and wine, sale and - in spite of everything - slaves; battling their way upstream to the great clearing-houses of Verona, Piacenza or Pavia, from there to be transported by land across the Apennines to Naples, Amalfi and their neighbors or over the Alps to Germany and northern Europe. Other heavier vessels would meanwhile beat south-east down the Adriatic, round the Peloponnese, northwards again to Constantinople and, even occasionally, the Black Sea. Yet others concentrated on a newer market which was still more rapidly expanding - the world of Islam. Heretofore though, there had always been some measure of trade with the Arabs - it was, after all, Venetian merchants who had stolen the body of St. Mark from Alexandria - commercial dealings had always been inhibited by such factors as the Saracens' predilection for piracy, Venetian memories of their great attack on the lagoon that had so nearly succeeded 150 years before, and the revulsion still felt by much of western Christendom at the suggestion of any degree of friendly relations with the infidel. Here was yet another attitude that Pietro Orseolo was determined to dispel. Off went his ambassadors to every corner of the Mediterranean where the green banner of the Prophet flew - to Spain and Barbary, Sicily and Levant, to the courts of Aleppo, Cairo and Damascus, to Cordova, Kairouan and Palermo. Emir after Emir received them with courtesy and accepted their proposals. Agreement after agreement was brought back with pride and satisfaction to the Doge. His imperial neighbors to the East and West, ever anxious at the growing Muslim menace in South Italy, might be horrified at his actions and accuse him of treachery to the Faith. But for Pietro, true Venetian that he was, commerce was always preferable to bloodshed - and a good deal more profitable as well.

To the unfettered expansion of Venetian trade, only one obstacle now remained - the Slav pirates of the Dalmatian coast. The last major expedition against them, led by Pietro Candiano I in 887, had ended in catastrophe, with the death of the Doge in battle; and though some sixty years later his grandson had managed in part to retrieve the honor of his family and the Republic, the menace was now as great as it had ever been - so great in fact that throughout the second half of the tenth century Venice had acquired the habit of paying an annual tribute of protection money to ensure free passage of her ships through the narrow Adriatic waters. But Pietro Orseolo was not a man to submit to blackmail. On his accession he forbade all further payments and, when the next payment was due, he sent his Venetian galleys across to Dalmatia to guard against possible reprisals. Inevitable a battle followed. The island of Lissa (Vis), one of the principal pirate strongholds, fell to the Venetians who returned joyfully to the lagoon, their vessels crammed to capacity with prisoners of both sexes.

Venice had won the first round, but the pirates were not beaten. Their main concentrations, around the mouths of the Narenta and the Cetina rivers, had not even been affected; and they now turned the full force of their anger against the defenseless inhabitants of the coastal cities. Racially and linguistically, these people had nothing in common with their assailants. The pirates were Croats, a Slav people who had pushed westward from the Carpathians in the sixth and seventh centuries as part of the general Slavonic expansion across the Balkan peninsula, and in the tenth century had founded a kingdom of their own. This Croatian Kingdom, however, had never comprised the whole coast of Dalmatia, where the populations of Pola (Pula), Zara (Zadar), Trau (Trogir), and Spalato (Split), and of many other smaller communities along the coast, were the descendants of a Latin-speaking race whose forebears had been citizens of the Roman Empire and who looked upon their Croatian neighbors as barbarian upstarts. These populations, except that of Zara, were all technically subject to Constantinople; their subjection, however, was more theoretical than real. As one historian put it, "the name of the Emperor was officially honored and respected, but he was not obeyed, for he gave no orders." Knowing only too well, therefore, that help could never be expected from that direction, they appealed to Venice.

If Orseolo needed any further excuse to complete the work he had started, here was the perfect one ready to hand. On May 9, 1000 A.D. it was Ascension Day - the Doge heard Mass in the cathedral of St. Pietro di Castello, and received from the Bishop of Olivolo a consecrated standard (banner). Then he proceeded in state to the harbor where the great Venetian fleet lay waiting for him. He boarded his flagship and gave the signal to weigh anchor. After a night at Jesolo, the fleet came the next morning to Grado where the Patriarch - still that same old Vitale Candiano who, after over thirty years in office, seems to have given up political intrigue and settled down as a loyal servant of the Republic - ceremonially greeted them and invested the Doge with relics of St. Hermagoras. Finally on May 11, 1000 A.D., now spiritually as well as materially equipped for the tasks that lay ahead, the expedition set sail across the Adriatic.

John the Deacon's account of the journey down the Dalmatian coast reads more like the record of a triumphal progress than that of a military campaign. Bishops, barons and city priors welcomed the Venetians at every port of call; civic receptions were held in the Doge's honor; holy relics were brought out for his inspection and adoration. Oaths of fidelity were freely sworn; on occasion young men even rallied uninvited, to the Venetian colors. At Trau the brother of the Croatian King made voluntary submission, even leaving a hostage in the person of his young son, who was later to receive the Doge's daughter in marriage. It was only when the fleet reached Spalato that Orseolo made direct contact with the enemy, whose leaders came up from the Narenta delta to discuss terms. They were in no position to drive a hard bargain; in return for the Venetian withdrawal they willingly agreed to forgo their annual tribute and to cease their molestation of the Republic's galleys traveling on their lawful occasions.

Unfortunately, however, the Narentines could not speak for all the offshore islands. Curzola (Korcula) proved rather less cooperative and had to be subdued by force, while the men of Lagosta (Lastovo), putting their trust in the almost legendary impregnability of their island fortress, prepared a still more formidable resistance. But the besiegers were equal to the challenge. Advancing under a hail of rocks and stones from the upper ramparts, they soon succeeded in breaching the base of one of the towers - unfortunately for them, the one on which Lagosta depended for its water supply. And so, writes John the Deacon - who as Orseolo's friend and most trusted servant, was very probably present: "...the enemy, now dejected in spirit, laid down their arms and on bended knees begged nothing more than they should be delivered from the dreaded peril of death. Therefore the Doge, who was a merciful man, resolved to spare them all, insisting only that their town should be destroyed....The Archbishop of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) met him with his clergy, swore allegiance to the Doge and made him many signs of homage ... Thence, passing once again by the cities through he had come, he returned in great triumph to Venice...."

His subjects greeted him with jubilation, and no wonder. How long the pirates of the Narenta would keep their oath was an open question. But they had at least seen that the Republic was not in a mood to be trifled with, and the fate of Lagosta would not quickly be forgotten. Besides, Venice had now gained a hold over the eastern coast of the Adriatic such as she had never before enjoyed. It was still not technically Venetian territory; the cities and towns of Dalmatia, while swearing their oaths of fidelity and agreeing to pay an annual tribute, had been careful to recall the overall suzerainty of Byzantium, which the Doge in his turn had willingly recognized. But the way was now clear for the opening of warehouses and trading posts in the principal sea ports, and for the consequent expansion of trade in the interior of the Balkan peninsula.

Strategically, too, Venice had gained much; henceforth she would have an alternative source of food in an emergency. Although the Rialtine islands were still only partially built over, the patches of productive land remaining on them had long been inadequate to satisfy a rapidly growing population. For her food supplies, Venice was obliged to look to the mainland; hence her consternation during Otto II's landward blockade seventeen years before. In the foreseeable future any such blockade might be a mild inconvenience; it would certainly be no worse. A few ships dispatched across the Adriatic would be back in a few days with all the corn and provisions the city might need. Finally the pine forests of Curzola and other islands guaranteed a virtually inexhaustible stock of timber for the Venetian shipyards.

And so there was added to the Doge's other honorifics the mellifluous title of Dux Dalmatiae; and in further commemoration of the expedition it was decreed that on every Ascension Day - the anniversary of the fleet's departure - the Doge, with the Bishop of Olivolo and the nobles and citizens of Venice, should sail out again by the Lido port into the open sea for a service of supplication and thanksgiving. In those early days the service was short and the prayer simple, though it asked a lot: "Grant, O Lord, that for us and for all who sail thereon, the sea may ever be calm and quiet." The Doge and his suite were then sprinkled with holy water while the choir chanted the text from the fifty-first Psalm "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean" and what was left of the holy water was poured into the sea. Later, as the tradition grew more venerable, so the ceremony grew more elaborate, and included the casting of a propitiatory golden ring into the waves. Thus it was slowly to become identified with a symbolic marriage to the sea - the Sposalizio del Mar - a character that it was to retain until the end of the Republic itself.

For Otto III, the new millennium had had less auspicious beginnings. In furtherance of his wild politico-mystical ambitions, the young Emperor had settled in Rome, where he had built himself a magnificent new palace on the Aventine. Here he lived in a curious combination of splendor and asceticism, surrounded by a court rigid with Byzantine ceremonial, eating in majestic solitude off gold plates, then occasionally shedding his purple dalmatic for a pilgrim's cloak and trudging barefoot to some distant shrine. But he had retained all his old admiration for Venice - seeing her, perhaps, as the one place in Italy where Western practicality and Byzantine mysticism were fused into one - and he hoped, as ever, to make her the instrument of his Italian policies.

He was disappointed. When an imperial embassy arrived on the Rialto soon after the Doge's return from Dalmatia with a proposal for joint operations in North Italy, it was met with a firm but polite refusal. Orseolo understood, better than any Doge before him, how much Venice's fortunes depended on the sea. Territorial acquisitions on the mainland had no part in her greatness. He may, on the other hand, have been rather interested in another suggestion which was put to John the Deacon by the Emperor at about the same time: that Otto should pay a secret visit to the Doge in Venice "to hear his wise counsel and for the sake of the love he bore him."

Unless the Emperor feared an attempt at assassination, his insistence on secrecy is hard to understand. Historians have argued that it was made necessary by the confidential nature of the subjects that he wanted to discuss. But a publicly announced visit would not have prevented privately held discussions and, in any case, both Emperor and Doge were to reveal the fact, if not the details, of the visit within a day or two of Otto's departure. It was admittedly unusual, in those pre-Crusading days, for an Emperor to leave the boundaries of his Empire; there were however, no particular risks involved. Whatever the reasons, Otto was adamant, and the preparations - which involved John as the Doge's secret emissary, passing the best part of a year shuttling between the two rulers - were made far longer and more laborious than they would otherwise have been. They were doubtless complicated still further when, in February 1001, the people of Rome rose up in rebellion against the Emperor and drove him from their city.

Otto does not appear to have been unduly discouraged. He celebrated Easter at Ravenna, where John the Deacon was with him to discuss last-minute arrangements. He then gave out that he proposed to spend a few days taking a health cure on the island of Pomposa at the mouth of the Po River. Accommodation at the abbey was actually prepared for him, but within a few hours of his arrival he slipped unseen down to the shore where John had a boat waiting and, attended by only a few of his closest associates, sailed off to Venice. After a day and a night in heavy seas he landed during a violent storm on the island of St. Servolo, where Doge Pietro was waiting to greet him. John the Deacon has left us an eyewitness account of what followed. The night, he tells us, was so black that the two could scarcely see each other's faces. It was the Doge - who may not have been in the best of tempers - who began the conversation. "If you wish to see the monastery of St. Zaccaria," he remarked to the muffled shape beside him, "you had better go there at once so that you may be safely received before dawn within the walls of my palace." By now Otto and his friends must have been in a state of some exhaustion; but Pietro was merciless. The secrecy had been the Emperor's idea; it was Otto who had involved him in all this inconvenience, subterfuge and embarrassment; it was he, finally, who had dragged him out to this godforsaken island on this cold, stormy night. Very well; he must take the consequences.

There is no indication, in John's chronicle or anywhere else, that Otto was particularly eager to see St. Zaccaria or, even if he were, why his visit there should be so urgent. But he did as he was told. Orseolo did not accompany him. Instead he hurried back to the palace, ostensibly to prepare for the Emperor's reception; in fact, we may devoutly hope, to bed.

This further atmosphere was preserved throughout the Emperor's stay. The members of the imperial suite were publicly received by the Doge the next morning, as he emerged from the half completed basilica of St. Mark after Mass. They formally presented their letters of credence as representatives of their master - who, they claimed, had remained for reasons of health in Pomposa - whereupon Pietro Orseolo welcomed them in the name of the Republic, gave orders for their proper accommodation, and then himself slipped away to the remote eastern tower of the palace, where he had secretly installed Otto with a couple of attendants. Even now, John tells us, he took his meals publicly with the others, since "he could not spend all day with the Emperor for fear of arousing the suspicions of any of his subjects." If nothing else, it was a good excuse - and it allowed Otto, conspicuously disguised as a poor man, to visit the other churches and monuments in which he professed such an interest.

Some consultations were doubtless held, though no record of them has come down to us. Presents were exchanged, including an ivory throne and footstool for the Emperor. In return, Otto released the Venetians from the obligation to provide him every year with a pallium or state robe - a form of tribute, which together with an annual payment of fifty pounds of silver, had been in force since the days of his grandfather, Otto the Great - and, to cement their friendship still further, stood godfather for the second time to one of Pietro's children - on this occasion a new-born baby daughter, whom he personally held at the font. Then, probably not more than two days after his arrival, he slipped out of Venice as quietly as he had come, attended only by John the Deacon and his two personal servants, leaving the rest of his party to take their official departure on the following day.

Once back in Ravenna, however, he immediately announced where he had been; and obviously by prior arrangement, the Doge made a similar and roughly simultaneous public statement in Venice - which, if John's account is to be believed, was enthusiastically acclaimed by the people. Again it is not easy to see why; the Venetians dearly loved a show, and the secrecy surrounding the imperial visit had robbed them of a splendid one. But Orseolo's declaration would not have failed to emphasize the effect on the Republic's prestige - to say nothing of his own - of a free decision by the Emperor of the West to leave his dominions for the first time in his life in order to see Venice for himself, to worship at her shrines, to admire her beauty and to drink at her fountain of experience and political wisdom. We can only assume that their gratification outweighed their disappointment.

Certainly Venice derived greater benefit from the visit than did Otto. Determined to re-establish himself in Tome, the young Emperor not returned there and prepared to besiege the city. Reinforcements were summoned from Germany; but just as they reached him, and while the Byzantine bride he had so long desired was still on her way from Constantinople, he was struck down by a sudden fever - probably smallpox - and he died at the castle of Paterno, near Civita Castellana on January 24, 1002. He was just twenty-two years old. Surprisingly - though in the circumstances fortunately - he had expressed a wish to be buried not in Rome with his father, but in Charlemagne's old capital of Aachen. His body was taken there, through hostile Roman territory, by a group of his faithful followers; and there it lies to this day, in the choir of the cathedral.

The death of Otto III did not deflect Pietro Orseolo II from his policy of close friendship with the Empire of the West. When, a month later, the Lombards rose in revolt under Ardoin, Marquess of Ivrea, and crowned him King in defiance of imperial claims, Pietro unhesitatingly backed the legitimate Emperor, Otto's second cousin, Henry II "the Holy" of Bavaria. He was rewarded before the year's end with a new charter in which he was addressed as "Doge of Venice and Dalmatia" and all previous privileges were confirmed; and he was also fortunate enough to have other children to whom he could invite an Emperor to stand godfather. The usual arrangements were made, and when Henry paid his first visit to Italy in 1004 the youngest of those sons was there at Verona to meet him. A service of confirmation followed, at which the Emperor acted as sponsor and gave the boy his name. The future of Venetian-imperial relations seemed to be set fair.

It might have been expected that the Doge would have chosen his eldest son rather than his youngest for so signal an honor; but Giovanni Orseolo was being kept for Byzantium. Pietro had never allowed his rapprochement with Otto or Henry to affect his friendship with Basil II. His Dalmatian adventure, if not actually cleared in advance with Constantinople, had certainly found favor with the Emperor of the East, whose rights he had been scrupulously careful to uphold and who was only too happy that Venice should take on the responsibility of policing a region that he was unable to cope with himself. Since then the Doge had acquired even more merit in Byzantine eyes by leading another expedition, smaller but still more valiant, to the relief of the city of Bari. As capital of the so-called Capitanata - the Byzantine province of South Italy which claimed suzerainty over all the land south of a line drawn from Terracina in the west to Termoli on the Adriatic coast - Bari was the largest and most important Greek community in the Peninsula. In April 1002 however, it had been attacked by the Saracens and all that summer it lay under siege. Then on September 6, 1002 a Venetian fleet under Orseolo's personal command had forced the blockade, brought provisions to the starving city and, after a three day battle outside the harbor, had put the aggressors to flight.

The fact that Venice's intervention had been unsolicited - though she had had obvious reasons of her own for wishing to check the expansion of Saracen power in Italy - had further increased the gratitude of the Byzantines; and Orseolo must have seen that now was the moment to consolidate his advantage. Having first associated the nineteen-year-old Giovanni with him on the ducal throne, he sent him off with his younger brother to marry the Princess Maria Argyra, niece of the two joint Emperors, Basil II and Constantine VIII. The ceremony took place in the imperial chapel, with the Patriarch officiating and the co-Emperors both present to crown the bridal pair in the Eastern fashion - simultaneously bestowing upon them the relics of St. Barbara. Magnificent celebrations followed, after which the couple withdrew to a palace which had been put at their disposal. The young Dogaressa was in an advanced state of pregnancy by the time they returned to Venice.

Pietro Orseolo II was now at the climax of his career. By his statesmanship he had raised the Republic to new heights of prosperity and prestige. By his valor he had averted, for many years to come, the two principal threats to its security - the Slavs to the east and the Saracens to the south. He had established a Venetian presence - and a modified form of dominion - over the Dalmatian coast. Meanwhile, on a personal level, he had bound his family by bonds of marriage or compaternity to both the Byzantine and the Western Empires and, for the first time in sixty years, had associated a son with him as Doge. But as his power and reputation grew, so too did the trappings of majesty with which he tended to surround himself. It was not surprising that many Venetians began to wonder whether success was not going to his head and whether he was not secretly planning, as more than one of his predecessors had planned before him, to establish a hereditary monarchy throughout the lagoon.

Then suddenly his world collapsed. In the autumn of 1005 a blazing comet appeared in the southern sky, remaining there for three months. Everyone knew it to be a portent; and sure enough early the following year Venice was struck by famine - a famine that the new Dalmatian sources of supply - which had suffered as much as those on the Italian mainland - could do nothing to alleviate. In its wake came a plague, carrying off - among many hundreds of more humble citizens - young Giovanni, his Greek wife and their baby son. St. Peter Damian, with ill-concealed satisfaction, attributes the Dogaressa's death to divine retribution for her luxurious oriental ways: "Such was the luxury of her habits that she scorned even to wash herself in common water, obliging her servants instead to collect the dew that fell from the heavens for her to bathe in. Nor did she deign to touch her food with her fingers, but would command her eunuchs to cut it up into small pieces, which she would impale on a certain golden instrument with two prongs and thus carry to her mouth. Her rooms, too, were so heavy with incense and various perfumes that it is nauseating for me to speak of them, nor would my readers readily believe it. But this woman's vanity was hateful to Almighty God; and so, unmistakably, did he take his revenge. For He raised over her head the sword of His divine justice, so that her whole body did putrefy and all her limbs began to wither, filling her bedchamber with an unbearable odor such that no one - not a handmaiden, nor even a slave - could withstand this dreadful attack on the nostrils; except for one serving-girl who, with the help of aromatic concoctions, conscientiously remained to do her bidding. And even she could only approach her mistresses hurriedly and then immediately withdraw. So, after a slow decline and agonizing torments, to the joyful relief of her friends she breathed her last."

Giovanni and his wife died within sixteen days of each other, and were buried at St. Zaccaria in a single tomb. Pietro Orseolo was heart-broken. His dreams for the future vanished. Though not yet fifty, he seems to have lost the desire to live. Perhaps, like his father, he underwent a religious crisis. Unlike old Pietro however, he did not retire to a monastery. Instead, he raised his third son, Otto, to the dogeship with him, made his will, leaving the bulk of his possessions to the Church and the poor, and then withdrew to a remote wing of the palace, separating himself even from his wife. Less than two years later in 1008 he died.

Young Otto was still only sixteen. In the circumstances, it is odd that the Venetians should have made no objection when he joined his father on the throne; it is odder still that they should have allowed him to succeed to power without, so far as we know, a single voice being raised against him - the youngest Doge in Venetian history. But in the Middle Ages both men and women matured younger than they do now - for sixteen-year-olds to be given command of armies was by no means unheard of - and Otto Orseolo seems to have been old beyond his years. "Catholic in faith, calm in purity, strong in justice, eminent in religion, decorous in his manner of life, well-endowed with wealth and possessions, and so filled with all forms of virtue that he was universally considered to be the most fitting successor of his father and grandfather" - thus Andrea Dandolo was to describe him, after a three century interval which, if a poor guarantee of historical accuracy, at least argues a relatively unprejudiced standpoint. Otto Orseolo had indeed inherited many of his father's characteristics, among them his taste for splendor and his love of power. The new Doge was familiar with the imperial courts of the West and the East, having received his religious confirmation at one and several high honors from the other; and the Magyar princess - daughter of the subsequently canonized King Stephen of Hungary - whom he married shortly after Pietro's death added still more luster to his position. Like his father, he was quick to build up his image as a magnificent and majestic potentate - so far, at least, as the traditionally austere sensibilities of his subjects permitted.

Excerpted from: "A History of Venice" by John Julius Norwich,
published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1982, pg. 49 - 61.

Compiled by: Marko Marelich
Retired Mechanical Engineer
San Francisco, California - USA
September 5th, 2007