Stones of Venice | Page 4

the motives of attempt are
forgotten; and the casual reader of her history may perhaps be surprised
to be reminded, that the expedition which was commanded by the
noblest of her princes, and whose results added most to her military
glory, was one in which while all Europe around her was wasted by the
fire of its devotion, she first calculated the highest price she could exact
from its piety for the armament she furnished, and then, for the
advancement of her own private interests, at once broke her faith
[Footnote: By directing the arms of the Crusaders against a Christian
prince. (Daru, liv. iv. ch. iv. viii.)] and betrayed her religion.
SECTION IX. And yet, in the midst of this national criminality, we
shall be struck again and again by the evidences of the most noble
individual feeling. The tears of Dandolo were not shed in hypocrisy,
though they could not blind him to the importance of the conquest of
Zara. The habit of assigning to religion a direct influence over all his
own actions, and all the affairs of his own daily life, is remarkable in
every great Venetian during the times of the prosperity of the state; nor
are instances wanting in which the private feeling of the citizens

reaches the sphere of their policy, and even becomes the guide of its
course where the scales of expediency are doubtfully balanced. I
sincerely trust that the inquirer would be disappointed who should
endeavor to trace any more immediate reasons for their adoption of the
cause of Alexander III. against Barbarossa, than the piety which was
excited by the character of their suppliant, and the noble pride which
was provoked by the insolence of the emperor. But the heart of Venice
is shown only in her hastiest councils; her worldly spirit recovers the
ascendency whenever she has time to calculate the probabilities of
advantage, or when they are sufficiently distinct to need no calculation;
and the entire subjection of private piety to national policy is not only
remarkable throughout the almost endless series of treacheries and
tyrannies by which her empire was enlarged and maintained, but
symbolized by a very singular circumstance in the building of the city
itself. I am aware of no other city of Europe in which its cathedral was
not the principal feature. But the principal church in Venice was the
chapel attached to the palace of her prince, and called the "Chiesa
Ducale." The patriarchal church, [Footnote: Appendix 4, "San Pietro di
Castello."] inconsiderable in size and mean in decoration, stands on the
outermost islet of the Venetian group, and its name, as well as its site,
is probably unknown to the greater number of travellers passing hastily
through the city. Nor is it less worthy of remark, that the two most
important temples of Venice, next to the ducal chapel, owe their size
and magnificence, not to national effort, but to the energy of the
Franciscan and Dominican monks, supported by the vast organization
of those great societies on the mainland of Italy, and countenanced by
the most pious, and perhaps also, in his generation, the most wise, of all
the princes of Venice, [Footnote: Tomaso Mocenigo, above named,
Section V.] who now rests beneath the roof of one of those very
temples, and whose life is not satirized by the images of the Virtues
which a Tuscan sculptor has placed around his tomb.
SECTION X. There are, therefore, two strange and solemn lights in
which we have to regard almost every scene in the fitful history of the
Rivo Alto. We find, on the one hand, a deep, and constant tone of
individual religion characterizing the lives of the citizens of Venice in
her greatness; we find this spirit influencing them in all the familiar and
immediate concerns of life, giving a peculiar dignity to the conduct

even of their commercial transactions, and confessed by them with a
simplicity of faith that may well put to shame the hesitation with which
a man of the world at present admits (even if it be so in reality) that
religious feeling has any influence over the minor branches of his
conduct. And we find as the natural consequence of all this, a healthy
serenity of mind and energy of will expressed in all their actions, and a
habit of heroism which never fails them, even when the immediate
motive of action ceases to be praiseworthy. With the fulness of this
spirit the prosperity of the state is exactly correspondent, and with its
failure her decline, and that with a closeness and precision which it will
be one of the collateral objects of the following essay to demonstrate
from such accidental evidence as the field of its inquiry presents. And,
thus far, all is natural and