CHAPTER XIII

VENICE

DURING the period covered by this chapter the State of Venice did not reach maturity. She did not become a world-power till after the Fourth Crusade, nor was it till a full century later that she finally developed her constitution. But the germs of her constitution and the seeds of her sea-power are both to be found in these earliest years of her existence. The problems which dominate these years are the question of immigration, when and how did the inhospitable islands of the lagoons become settled; how did the community develop; how did it gradually achieve its actual and then its formal independence of Byzantium; how did it save itself from being absorbed by the rulers of the Italian mainland, Charles the Great, Otto II, and Frederick Barbarossa.

The earliest authentic notice we have of the lagoon-population is to be found in the letter addressed (c. 536) by Cassiodorus, in the name of Witigis, King of the Goths, to the Tribuni Maritimorum, the tribunes of the maritime parts. The letter, written in a tone between command and exhortation, is highly rhetorical in style, but gives us a vivid picture of a poor though industrious community occupying a site unique in the world.

This community, in all probability, formed part of the Gothic Kingdom, for it seems certain that the Tribuni Maritimorum whom Cassiodorus addresses were officers appointed by the Goths. The chief characteristics of this people are that they were salt-workers and seamen, two points highly significant for the future development of Venice. No doubt the population here referred to was largely augmented, if not actually formed, by the refugees who sought safety in the lagoons from the ever recurrent barbarian incursions on the mainland, Attila's among the number; but it is not till the Lombard invasion in 568 that we can begin to trace the positive influence of the barbarian raids and to note the first signs of a political constitution inside the lagoons themselves.

The campaign of Belisarius (535-540) brought Venetia once more under the Roman Empire (539); and, when Narses the Eunuch undertook to carry out Justinian’s scheme for the final extermination of the Goths (551), he was forced to recognize the importance of the lagoons. His march upon Ravenna by way of the mainland was opposed by the Franks and by the Goths under Teias. In these circumstances John, the son of Vitalian, who knew the country well, suggested that the army should take the lagoon and lidi route, through which it was conducted by the lagoon-dwellers with their long ships and light ships, thereby enabling the Greek army to reach Ravenna and incidentally leading up to the final victories of Busta Gallorum (552) and Mons Lactarius (553); after this the coast districts became definitely and undisputedly parts of the Roman Empire once more.

But the hold of Byzantium upon Italy generally was weak. The Persian war absorbed the imperial resources. There was little to oppose Alboin and his Lombards when in the spring of 568 they swept down from Pannonia and within the year made themselves lords of North Italy. Then began a general flight from the mainland; and the process was renewed during the next hundred years down to the second sack of Oderzo (667). Throughout this period the settlement of the lagoons definitely took place, and we find the first indication of a constitution in those obscure officials, the Tribuni Majores and Minores of the earliest chronicles. Paulinus, Patriarch of Aquileia, fled from his ruined diocese bearing with him the treasury and the relics. He was followed by his flock, who sought refuge in Grado. The refugees from Concordia found an asylum in Caorle; Malamocco and Chioggia were settled in 602, and possibly some of the Rialto group of islands, the site of the future City of Venice, received inhabitants for the first time. The final peopling of Torcello, with which the earliest Venetian chronicles are so much concerned, took place in 636, when Altino, one of the last remaining imperial possessions on the mainland, fell. Bishop Maurus and Tribune Aurius settled in the Torcello group of islands, and built a church. The tribune assigned certain islands as church-lands, and appointed, as his tribune-delegate in the island of Ammiana, Fraunduni, who likewise built a church and apportioned certain lands to furnish the revenue thereof. Twelve lagoon-townships were settled in this manner, Grado, Bibiones (between Grado and Caorle), Caorle, Heraclea, Equilio Jesolo (now Cavazuccherina), Torcello, Murano, Rialto, Malamocco, Poveglia, Clugies minor (now Sottomarina), and Clugies Major (now Chioggia). If, as is probable, a process similar to that which took place in the settlement of Torcello went on in the case of these other townships, then we find a solution of the vexed question as to the exact nature of the major and minor tribunes, the former being, like Aurius, the leaders of the immigrants, the latter, like Fraunduni, delegates in the circumjacent islands.

In the confusion and obscurity of the early chronicles it is difficult to arrive at a clear idea of the political conditions in the lagoon-townships. In the structure of the Empire, Venetia formed part of the province of Istria. We know from the inscriptions of Santa Eufemia in Grado that the Greeks maintained a fleet in the lagoons down to the sixth century; but as they gradually lost ground on the mainland before the Lombard invaders, they withdrew their forces, leaving the islanders of the lagoons to defend themselves as best they might. The lagoon-dwellers gathered round their leading men or tribunes; but their powers of defence were feeble, as is proved by the raid of Lupus, Duke of Friuli, upon Grado (630), and it was probably only the intricate nature of their home-waters which saved them from absorption by the barbarian. These tribunes wielded both military and civil authority, and in theory were undoubtedly appointed by and dependent on the Exarch of Ravenna as representing Byzantium in Italy. The office tended to become hereditary and gave rise to the class of tribunitian families. Side by side with the secular power, as represented by the tribunes, grew the ecclesiastical power centring round the patriarchate of Grado (568), and the lagoon sees of Caorle (598), Torcello (635), Heraclea (640), Malamocco (640), Jesolo (670), Olivolo (774). The Arianism of the Lombards drove the orthodox bishops from their mainland churches to seek asylum in the lagoons. The clergy as was natural, thanks to their education, played a large part in the developing life of the lagoon communities; but, if we may draw a conclusion from the instance of Torcello, it would seem that the secular power reserved a kind of superiority or patronage over the ecclesiastical: a fact significant in the future development of ecclesiastico­-political relations in Venice. Besides the leading, or “noble”, families represented by the tribunes, and the clergy gathered round their bishops, we find that there was a general assembly of the whole population which made its voice heard in the choice of both tribunes, priests, and bishops, but otherwise appears to have been of little weight.

Throughout the seventh century the imperial possessions on the mainland were gradually shorn away by the Lombard kings. The second sack of Oderzo (667), which had been the seat of an imperial Magister Militum, seems to have caused the rise of Heraclea, the lagoon-township where the refugees from Oderzo found asylum, to the leading place among the twelve tribunitian centres. So great was the number of the fugitives that they overflowed into the neighbouring township of Jesolo, and its population was soon large enough to demand a separate bishopric (670). The collapse of the Roman Empire on the mainland led to the severing of all land-communication between the lagoons and Istria, of which they had hitherto formed a part. It seems that either directly and deliberately by the will of the imperial authorities, or by the will of the lagoon-dwellers with a view to their better protection, Sea-Venice was separated from Istria and erected into a distinct ducatus (after 680). The Venetian chronicler, John the Deacon, represents the creation of the first doge in the following terms: “In the times of the Emperor Anastasius and of Liutprand, King of the Lombards, the whole population of Venice, along with the Patriarch and the bishops came together and by common accord resolved that it would be more honourable for the future to live under dukes than under tribunes; and after long debate as to whom they should elect to this office, at length they agreed upon a capable and illustrious man named Paulitio”.

The first doge

The date usually given for the choice of the first doge is 697, but if John the Deacon be right it cannot be placed earlier than 713, the year in which Anastasius came to the throne. The question has been raised as to whether the lagoon population independently elected their first doge, or whether he was appointed by the imperial authorities. Both may be true in the sense that he was chosen by the community, as in all probability were the tribunes, and confirmed by the exarch or the imperial authority. In any case it is certain that there was no question of the lagoon population claiming formal independence of Byzantium at that time nor for long after; but, as a matter of fact, a very few years later (726), at the time of the Italian revolt against the iconoclastic decrees of Leo the Isaurian, the population of the lagoons undoubtedly made a free and independent election of their doge in the person of Orso, the third holder of that title.

The election of the first doge, Paulutius Anafestus, a “noble” of Heraclea, marks the close of the earliest period in Venetian history; the second period is concerned with the events which led up to the concentration of the lagoon-townships at Rialto, the city we now call Venice, in 810. The notes of the period are: first, the development of the dukedom as against the older order of the tribunes and against the ecclesiastical power of the Patriarchs of Grado; second, the internal quarrels between rival townships, Heraclea, Jesolo, Malamocco, which largely contributed to the final concentration at Rialto; third, the question of self preservation, the maintenance of such practical, de facto, independence of Byzantium as the community had acquired through the weakness of the Empire, and the struggle to avoid absorption by the powerful barbarian rulers of the mainland, Lombard and Frank.

The dependence of Venice on Byzantium has been maintained by modern historians, and it cannot for a moment be disputed that, in theory, it existed; as late as 979 we find public documents dated by the year of the imperial reign. But in practice it is the population of the lagoons which elects the doge, and murders, deposes, blinds, or tonsures him if dissatisfied with the tendency of his policy, while no one brings them to account for such acts of independence. An explanation of the frequent revolutions and ducal downfalls has been suggested in the jealousy of the various tribunitian families reduced in importance by the creation of the dukedom; but if it be permissible to consider the lagoon-dwellers as an individual community and to talk of the spirit of a race, viewed by the light of events as they occurred, it looks as though the Venetian population was inspired by an instinct towards independence and deliberately worked towards that goal.

Relations with the Lombards

The earliest and most important act of Paulutius was the conclusion of a treaty (713-716) with Liutprand, the powerful King of the Lombards. The treaty is lost, but we can gather its terms from the reference to it in subsequent pacta with the kings of Italy. It consisted of two parts: the first a guarantee of security for Venetian traders on the mainland; protection of Venetian flocks and horses; right to cut wood in Lombard territory; in return for these privileges the doge agreed to pay an annual tribute. The second part contained a definition of boundaries on the mainland. This second part is said to have been “concluded in the days of King Liutprand, between the Duke Paulutio and the Magister Militum Marcellus”. Of this difficult passage three explanations have been suggested. It is said that Marcellus was the Magister Militum (the chief imperial authority) of Istria, and that it was he who concluded the treaty with the consent of the doge. But Istria and Sea-Venice were by this time separated; “Dux” is superior in rank to “Magister Militum”, and as a matter of fact the doge’s name comes first; finally the agreement is said to be not between Marcellus and Liutprand but between (inter) Paulutio and Marcellus. The second theory is that Marcellus was Magister Militum in Venice and associated himself with the doge in treating with Liutprand; but here again the word inter seems fatal. The third and most plausible theory is that Marcellus was the imperial Magister Militum in Venice, and that acting on imperial orders he and the doge delimited the territory of Heraclea and obtained from Liutprand a confirmation of the same, as is proved by the “precept” of 25 March 996. Whichever view be correct, the treaty with Liutprand is of the highest importance as shewing us the Venetian community under its first doge securing treaty rights from the masters of the mainland.

It is certain that the early doges did not exercise a wide or undisputed power in the lagoon community. Not until the ninth century, after the concentration at Rialto, did they assume the unchallenged headship of the State. The office of tribune persisted long after the creation of the dukedom; as late as 887 we hear of the Tribune Andrea rescuing the body of the Doge Peter I Candianus from the Slays. But the establishment of the dogeship roused jealousy among the tribunitian families, and the choice of Heraclea for the ducal seat stirred the envy of other lagoon-townships and so began the long series of struggles between the rival centres in one of which the first doge lost his life (717).

He was succeeded by Marcellus Tegalianus, whose identification with Marcellus, Magister Militum of Istria, is by no means certain. He was probably appointed or confirmed by the imperial authorities. During his reign Serenus, Patriarch of Aquileia, supported by Liutprand, attacked Donatus, Patriarch of Grado. The doge, afraid of drawing down on the lagoons the wrath of the Lombards if he employed Venetian arms in support of the lagoon Patriarch, contented himself with an appeal to the Pope, who sharply reprimanded Serenus. Subsequently the Lateran Council (732) formally decreed the separation of the two jurisdictions, declaring Grado to be the metropolitan see of Istria and the lagoons, thereby conferring definite form on the lagoon patriarchate. Marcellus died in 726, at the moment when Italy, following the lead of Pope Gregory II, was in open revolt against the iconoclast decrees of the Emperor Leo III. The various districts expelled or slew the imperial officers and elected dukes for themselves. The bolder spirits even talked of electing a new Emperor and marching with him on Constantinople. Venice shared in the general movement, and, whether Marcellus' death was due to the revolutionary party or not, his successor Ursus was undoubtedly elected by the lagoon population without consulting the imperial authorities.

  Relations with Byzantium

The Italian revolt of 726 brought to light the difficulty in which the growing lagoon community found itself between east and west. The Pope in his hostility to Leo invited Liutprand to invade the Exarchate and expel the Greeks. The Lombard king was nothing loth, seeing in the request an opportunity for extending his domains. In a first attack on Ravenna, Paul the Exarch was slain. The Emperor despatched Eutychius with gold and troops to take his place. The new exarch came to terms with Liutprand and assisted him to subdue the revolted Dukes of Benevento and Spoleto. But when Gregory III came to the papal throne in 731 he arrived at an understanding with Eutychius which resulted in a fresh revolt of the Duke of Spoleto. Liutprand at once attacked the Exarchate (739). Ravenna fell to Duke Hildebrand and Duke Peredeo. Eutychius fled to the lagoons and summoned the Venetians, by their allegiance to the Emperor, to lend aid in restoring him. They obeyed. The Venetian fleet replaced the exarch in his capital (741).

In the meantime the doge, whose loyalty to Byzantium had been rewarded with the title of Hypatos or Consul, had died (737). Both he and his two predecessors were nobles of Heraclea, belonging to the aristocratic or Byzantine party, and ruling in Heraclea. Local jealousy between the rival townships combined with the hostility of the revolutionary party, whose policy was anti-Byzantine and ranged, with the Pope for the freedom of Italy from Byzantine suzerainty, led, as the chronicles tell us, to an attack by Jesolo upon Heraclea, and in the fighting the doge fell. Whether the story be strictly true or not, the episode is of importance as showing us the formation of two distinct parties inside the lagoons, and in its bearing upon the election of the next doge which took place not in Heraclea but at Malamocco, an important step towards the final concentration at Rialto. The reigns of the first three doges had yielded results not altogether satisfactory, and on the death of Ursus, the imperial authorities, or, according to the Venetian tradition, the population of the lagoons, resolved to substitute for the dogeship the yearly office of Magister Militum. The new magistracy was of short duration (737-741), and was marked by the continued violence of party strife. The last Magister Militum, Fabriacus, was blinded and, in 742, the community returned to the system of ducal government, electing Deusdedit, son of the late Doge Ursus, to that office. But the seat of government was removed from Heraclea—not only the scene of violent faction-fights, but also accessible from the mainland and therefore exposed to the influence of the mainland rulers—to Malamocco, a township on the lido which divides the lagoon from the open sea. The choice of Malamocco was a compromise, preluding the final compromise at Rialto, and was determined by the anti-Byzantine party; but the new doge was still an Heracleote and member of the Byzantine party, though no longer ruling in Heraclea.

The Franks 

During the reign of Deusdedit the pressure of external events was never relaxed; the danger that the lagoons might be absorbed by the lords of the mainland was ever present. The remains of Greek lordship in North Italy had all but disappeared; the lagoons were almost all that survived. In 751 Aistulf, the Lombard king, finally captured Ravenna, and so imminent seemed the threat from the south-west that the doge undertook the building of a strong fort at Brondolo to protect his frontiers. Aistulf, however, did not prove hostile; he was at the moment engaged with his scheme for reducing the Papacy to the position of a “Lombard bishopric”, and could afford to wait as far as the lagoons were concerned. He therefore willingly renewed the treaty made with Liutprand. But a greater power than that of the Lombards was about to appear on the scene, a power destined to act with decisive effect on the development of Venice. The Pope, alarmed at the threatening attitude of the Lombard sovereign, and unable to claim aid from the weak, distant, and also iconoclastically heretical Emperor, turned to the Franks for protection. Pope Stephen II in 754 made a personal appeal to Pepin, son of Charles Martel. That same year the Franks entered Italy by the Fenestrelle pass. They immediately proved their superiority over the Lombards. Aistulf was defeated and only saved a remnant of his territory through Papal mediation (756). His son Desiderius saw the destruction of the Lombard Kingdom, and by 774 Pavia was in the hands of the Franks.

The Venetians, meanwhile, had been profiting by the disturbed state of the mainland; the decline of Ravenna, in particular, allowed them to extend their trade, which was now beginning to assume its prominent characteristic of a carrying-trade between East and West. We hear of Venetian merchants in Constantinople sending valuable political information to the Papal authorities in Ravenna; and possibly about this period Torcello began to assume its position of “great emporium”, as Constantine Porphyrogenitus styles it. But prosperity did not allay the internal jealousies of the lagoon-townships. Jesolo still nursed her ancient hatred of Heraclea. The Jesolans, headed by Egilius Gaulus, attacked the Heracleote noble Deusdedit, the Doge. They blinded and deposed him, and their leader seized the ducal chair, only to be blinded and banished, in his turn, within the year (755). The point of the struggle for supremacy between the various townships is emphasized by the fact that the next doge, Dominicus Monegarius, was not an Heracleote but a native of Malamocco, the seat of the government. Either the Venetian population or the imperial authorities seem to have thought that these perpetual revolutions were due to the fact that the doges enjoyed too free a hand. The ducal independence of action was therefore curtailed by the appointment of two tribunes to act in concert with the doge. The effort to shake himself free of these trammels cost Monegarius his throne. He was deposed and blinded and, perhaps by a reaction of party feeling, an Heracleote, Mauritius, was elected in 764. The election of Mauritius has, however, been taken as a proof and a result of a movement which had undoubtedly been going on for some time. The internecine quarrels of Heraclea and Jesolo, ending in the removal of the capital to Malamocco, had seriously injured both town­ships; a general exodus took place from both into the new capital, where the Heracleotes were soon in sufficient numbers to secure the election of one of themselves to the ducal chair. However that may be, the fact remains that both Heraclea and Jesolo ceased to be of great importance among the lagoon-townships, and their territory was assigned to the fist, forming the origin of what afterwards became the domainlands of the Ducatus.

   Olivolo. Charles the Great

The reign of Mauritius is marked by two points of importance: first, the beginning of the custom of appointing a doge-consort, naturally, as the appointment lay with the doge, a member of his own family, thereby paving the way for the establishment of the dynastic principle which was to play so large a part in the early history of Venice; secondly, the founding of the bishopric of Olivolo. The influx of Heracleotes and Jesolans, which we have already recorded, proved to be so abundant that the immigrants overflowed to Rialto, and so great were their numbers that they soon demanded and obtained a see of their own (774), with its cathedral on the island of Olivolo, one of the north-eastern islets of the Realtine group, afterwards known, and known to this day, as Castello. The foundation of the see of Olivolo may be taken as the first step in the formation of the city of Venice.

Difficult times were at hand for the lagoon-community. Pepin, son of Charles Martel, in the course of his campaign against the Lombards had captured Ravenna and the Pentapolis. These he presented to his ally the Pope. Pepin's son, Charles the Great, after the final destruction of the Lombard kingdom, confirmed his father's donation. In con­sidering his new kingdom he must have observed that Maritime-Venice and the lagoon-townships alone in North Italy still owned allegiance to Byzantium. He probably resolved to bring them within the bounds of his new territory, all the more so that, in the almost inevitable clash with the Greek Empire, Venice alone seemed able to furnish a fleet and a sea-base. In any case Charles ordered the expulsion of Venetian traders from the Pentapolis (784) and took Istria (787), thus enclosing the lagoons in an iron circle. These actions opened the eyes of the lagoon-population to the approaching crisis.

The situation was complicated by the attitude of the Patriarchs of Grado, who, as good Churchmen, favoured the Pope's allies, the Franks. Thus two parties were clearly defined inside the lagoons: the party of the doges, the Byzantine party which clung to its allegiance to the Empire as its safeguard against the danger of being absorbed by the Franks; and the party of the Patriarchs, the party of the Church, the Francophile party which seemed willing to carry the whole community over to Charles, rather than risk the loss of commerce on the mainland which would be entailed by a rupture with the Franks. How far there was a third party, a Venetian party, determined to save the State from the Franks while preserving its de facto independence of Byzantium, is not clear. Inside the lagoon the crisis was brought to an issue and the party positions defined over the newly-created see of Olivolo. The Doge John, son of Mauritius, who had first been doge-consort to his father (778) and then reigning doge (787), nominated to the see a young Greek, named Christopher, only sixteen years old. The Patriarch of Grado refused to consecrate him (798). A little later it was known that the Patriarch was urging Charles' son, Pepin of Italy, to form a navy in Ravenna for the subjugation of the lagoons. The doge sent his son, Mauritius the younger, to attack Grado, and the Patriarch was flung from the highest tower of his palace and killed (802).

But this high-handed act made no difference in the policy of the patriarchal see. The murdered John was succeeded by his nephew Fortunatus, a restless, capable, enterprising man, of Francophile leanings even more pronounced than those of his uncle. Fortunatus received the pallium in 803 and at once set to work to develop the Frankish party. Along with others of the faction, Obelerius and Felix the Tribune, he formed a plot against the doge. It was discovered, and the conspirators fled to Treviso, whence Fortunatus proceeded alone to the court of Charles at Seitz. He brought the Emperor many and costly presents, and found him in a mood to listen to his plans for the expulsion of the Byzantine doges and their party, as the Frankish embassy to the court at Constantinople (803), commissioned to secure recognition of Charles’ new imperial title, had just been haughtily repulsed.

Meanwhile, encouraged no doubt by news from Fortunatus, the Francophile conspirators in Treviso elected Obelerius as doge (804). He made a dash for the lagoons, entered his native town. Malamocco amid popular acclaim, and the Doges John and Mauritius were forced to fly along with their creature Christopher, Bishop of Olivolo.

This revolution of 804 meant the complete triumph of the Francophile party. How complete that triumph was is proved by the fact that the Doge Obelerius and the Doge-consort, his brother Beatus, paid a visit to the court of Charles at Thionville (Theodonis Villa) about Christmas 805, and early in the next year the Emperor made an ordinatio or disposition for the government of the doges and populace of Venice as well as for Dalmatia. Venice, Istria, and Dalmatia were declared to be parts of Pepin's kingdom of Italy.

This deliberate challenge to Nicephorus and the Eastern Empire was at once taken up. In 807 the patrician Nicetas appeared in the Adriatic with the imperial fleet. Charles and Pepin were possessed of no sea-power capable of offering resistance, and Nicetas met with none. If Charles had counted on the Venetians for support he was deceived. Dalmatia returned to its allegiance, as did the doges. Obelerius was rewarded with the title of Spatharius, but Beatus was sent to Constantinople as a hostage for Venetian loyalty. Nicetas made a truce with Pepin and withdrew his fleet in the autumn of 807. The truce came to an end in the autumn of 808, and the patrician Paul appeared with the Greek fleet in the Adriatic. After wintering in Venetian waters, he attacked Comacchio and was repulsed. The Frankish party in the lagoons was strong enough to render his position insecure. He withdrew his fleet down the Adriatic (809), leaving Venice to the wrath of Pepin, who was resolved to make good his claims to the lagoons and to punish the doges for their perfidy in violating the ordinatio of Thionville. In the autumn of 809 the attack was delivered from north and south, by land and by sea. The lagoon-dwellers offered a vigorous resistance, and the king’s progress was slow. What remained of Heraclea fell; so did Brondolo, Chioggia, Pelestrina, Albiola, and even the capital Malamocco; both doges were taken prisoners; but the lagoons were not conquered. The population of Malamocco withdrew to the central group of islands, called Rialto, and thence defied the conqueror. In vain he attempted to reach and capture the core of the lagoons; the intricate channels through the mud banks baffled him; he was eventually forced to withdraw in 810; and he died in July of the same year.

Recent historians, relying on the testimony of Einhard, claim that this event was a Venetian defeat, a Frankish victory. But Einhard, though a contemporary, was far away from the scene of action, and was moreover in the service of the Carolingians. Though there can be no doubt that Pepin captured the lidi up to Malamocco, the capital, and made the doges prisoners, compelling them to consent to a yearly tribute, yet the fact remains that he did not conquer Rialto, the heart of the lagoons, and that the lagoon-population compelled him to abandon his enterprise and to retire. It is not surprising that Constantine Porphyro­genitus in the next century, and the Venetians ever after, should have looked upon the repulse of Pepin as the cardinal point in their early history and have eventually surrounded it with a mass of patriotic legend.

Pepin's attack on the lagoons, and the large measure of success which crowned it, alarmed Constantinople; and in 810 Arsafius, the Spatharius, Rialto, the City of Venice was sent to negotiate with the king, but finding him dead the envoy proceeded direct to Charles at Aix-la-Chapelle. In the spring of 811 Arsafius left Aix on his return to Constantinople, bearing Charles’ terms, which were that he would surrender Venice, Istria, Liburnia, and Dalmatia in return for recognition of his imperial title. It may be observed that, even if Charles considered that Pepin had conquered Venice, Dalmatia certainly was in no sense his, as Pepin's fleet had immediately retired before the fleet of Paul, the of Cephalonia. More probably Charles based his claim to Venice on the ordinatio of Thionville. Arsafius on his way through Venice nominated an Heracleote noble, Agnellus Particiacus, to the vacant dogeship. The Doges Obelerius and Beatus were both in the custody of Arsafius, the former to be consigned, as Charles had ordained, to his lawful sovereign (ad dominum), the Emperor Nicephorus, a phrase which can hardly be reconciled with the claim that Venice and the Venetians were Frankish territory and people. By the summer of 812 the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle was signed, and Venice returned to her ancient position as vassal of the Eastern Empire. The result of the whole episode, as far as Venice was concerned, was that internally a concentration of all the lagoon-townships took place at Rialto, which now became the capital. The rivalries and jealousies between the lagoon-centres came to an end. Further, the new city emerged from Pepin’s attack Byzantine in sympa­thies, and with an Heracleote Byzantine noble as doge. And, with the failure of the Francophile policy of the Patriarch Fortunatus, the power of the Church as an independent political element in Venice began to decline, and Grado slowly waned in power and influence. Externally Venice remained Eastern not Western, aloof from the rest of Italy, looking eastward for the most part, a fact of the highest importance in determining the subsequent character and career of the race.

We are now entering on a new period of Venetian history which goes down to the reign of Peter II Orseolo (991-1009). It is possible now to talk of Venice as a city-state. The characteristic notes of the period are: firstly, the development of the dukedom with its growing dynastic tendencies; the accumulation in single houses of dignities and wealth, thanks to private trading by the doges under special privileges; and the revolt of the Venetian people against these dynastic tendencies. Secondly, we note the relations of the state with the Western Empire, the effort to maintain its independence and to extend its commerce, which are revealed in the series of pacta and praecepta. And thirdly, the relations, of the state with the East; the gradual loosening of the formal bonds which bound it as a vassal to the Eastern Empire, and the extension of its trading privileges in the Levant. For many years to come (down to 979 at least) the formal dependence on the Eastern Empire was fully recognized by the use of the imperial date in public documents, by public prayers for the Emperor, and by the obligations of transport, affirmed and acknowledged in the various imperial bulls; but in fact, owing to the growing sea-power of the Venetians, the relations gradually became rather those of allies. The final note of the period is the growth and the embellishment of the new capital.

Commerce

The young state soon began to display those commercial instincts which were destined to mark its whole career. Either by a separate treaty—a theory strenuously combated by recent historians—or at least by a special clause in the Treaty of Aix, Charles renewed the privileges, endorsed the tribute, and confirmed the frontiers established by the treaty with King Liutprand. This treaty formed the charter of Venetian trading rights on the mainland, and was frequently rehearsed and reconfirmed during the ninth and tenth centuries.

The valley of the Po formed the natural trade: route from the head of the Adriatic to Lombardy, France, and West Germany; but for the command of this route the lagoon-city of Comacchio was an active competitor, lying as it did near the mouth of that river. At Pavia, the capital of the Italian kingdom, two great trade-routes converged, the Po-valley route, and the route from Rome across the Apennines. Already in the days of Charles, the monk of St Gall reports, Venetian merchants frequented the markets of Pavia, bringing with them "from overseas all the wealth of the orient", chiefly, it seems, silks, spices, golden pheasant and peacock feathers. The life of St Gerald, of Aurillac shows us how a Venetian merchant at Pavia acted as expert-adviser on the current prices of silk webs in the markets of Constantinople: The trade of Comacchio was chiefly confined to salt, but we shall presently see how Venice went to war with her rivals in order to secure a monopoly of this commodity.

As regards relations with the East we naturally find no treaties during the ninth century. The formal position of vassal and suzerain was fully recognised; the Emperors, through their officers and bulls, sent their orders, as, for example, those forbidding the Venetians to trade with enemies of the Empire in arms and timber; these orders were obeyed as long as the interests of Venice and of the East were identical. We have a proof that Venetians were already trading far afield in the Levant, for in 829 the body of St Mark was brought from Alexandria to Venice by Venetian merchants on board their own ship; and by 840, on the request of the Emperor Theophilus, Venice was able to send sixty ships to sea. Indeed we find that from the reign of Michael II (820-829) onwards the Emperors made frequent calls on the naval power of Venice. The claim was, no doubt, a right (see the chrysobull of 991), but it gradually assumed the aspect of an appeal to an ally, until it definitely took that form in the dogeship of Peter II Orseolo.

The city itself, during the reigns of the first three doges of the house of Particiacus, shewed a rapid extension in buildings. Agnellus began the first ducal palace, a wooden structure; his son Justinian founded the first church of St Mark, a small basilica, with apse and crypt, occupying the site of the present Capello Zen. The basilica was built to receive the body of St Mark, the translation of whose remains from Alexandria to Venice is an essential point in the ecclesiastical history of the City; for by the possession of the Saint's body the Venetians, in a manner, asserted their superiority to Aquileia and also to Grado, a superiority which was finally confirmed in 1445 by the removal of the patriarchal see of Grado to Venice. By his will (June 829) the Doge Justinian left instructions that the stones of the house of a certain Theophylact of Torcello were to be used in the construction of the Church. During this same period the famous monastery of Sant Ilario on the Brenta. the convent of San Zaccaria near the ducal palace, and the cathedral church of San Pietro at Olivolo, came into being and received large endowments from members of the ducal family.

Constitution. Dynastic tendencies

As to the constitution of the new state we have little information; we know that Agnellus had two tribunes appointed as assessors in the interests of the Greek Empire, but we hear nothing of their action. The doge seems to have had the sole disposal of the treasury and to have been, for administrative purposes, quite uncontrolled. The tribunes still existed in the various lagoon-townships, but after the concentration at Rialto they possessed but restricted powers. The national assembly seems to have been of vital significance only on the occasions when it was convened. Its voice was heard in the election of the doge, and the doges seem to have called it to confirm their public acts; for example, in May 819, the Doges Agnellus and Justinian Particiacus, who in a possibly spurious passage are styled per divinam gratiam duces, declare that, in a donation to the Abbot of San Servolo, they are acting in concert cum universis Venecie populis habitantibus.

The dynastic tendency in the dukedom was clearly marked under the first three doges of the house of Particiacus. We find the system of appointing a doge-consort from the reigning family in full force, while the important see of Olivolo-Castello was filled for the long period of thirty-two years (822-854) by Ursus, son of John. Resentment at this tendency to concentrate the supreme power in a single house took definite shape in two conspiracies against the Doge John Particiacus; the first, in 835, headed by the Tribune Carosus, failed after a brief success; the second, under the leadership of the noble family of the Mastalici, deposed the doge (836) and compelled him to retire to a monastery near Grado. The choice of the Venetians then fell upon Peter Tradonicus, a man of noble blood, strong and vigorous, but illiterate—he could not even sign his name. His long reign of twenty-eight years (836-864) was signal­ised by unsuccessful sea-campaigns against the Slav pirates of the Dalmatian coast, who had already begun to harass the rich and growing trade of Venice in the Adriatic, and against the Saracens in the south of Italy. At the request, or order, of the Emperor Theophilus, conveyed by the patrician Theodosius, the doge fitted out sixty ships for the unlucky expedition to Taranto (840). Unfortunate as were these earliest naval enterprises of the growing State of Venice, they were fruitful in calling out the energy and resolution of the people and in leading to a revolution in Venetian ship-building. It was under Tradonicus that the first great ships’ were built in Venetian docks, and the type established which was to serve both for trade and war.

The pactum of Pavia

A second important point in the reign of Tradonicus, a point which bears upon Venetian relations with the West, was the conclusion of the pactum, or treaty, with the Emperor Lothar in 840, the very year in which the Emperor of the East had summoned the Venetians to his aid against the Saracens. This remarkable document, the earliest extant monument of Venetian diplomacy, was prepared during preliminary negotiations in Ravenna, but was signed on 22 February 840 at Pavia. It undoubtedly referred to and recited the terms of the special Venetian clauses in the Treaty of Aix (812), of the ordinatio of Thionville (806), and of King Liutprand’s treaty of 713. It was to last for five years, and as a matter of fact we find it being renewed every five years down to the Treaty of Millhausen (19 July 992). It stipulated for the payment of fifty librae of Venetian coinage (parve), equal to twenty-five librae of the Pavese coinage, as an annual tribute from Venice, due in March each year. But the payment of this tribute is not to be taken as in any sense a token of vassalage; it was merely a return for the privileges conceded by the pactum; peace and good friendship are to exist between Venice and various neighbouring districts inside the kingdom of Italy; these districts are specified and include Istria, Friuli, the Trevisan Marches, Vicenza, Monselice, Ravenna, and the ports on the Adriatic down to Fermo. Neither party is to injure the other. Venetian fugitives inside the kingdom are to be extradited; envoys and couriers are to be protected. The confines of Venetian territory as defined in the treaty with Liutprand are recognised. The Venetians may trade freely in the kingdom, except for the customary dues of water and land transit, and Italian subjects are to enjoy a like privilege by sea. The subjects of the Empire are to lend no aid to enemies of Venice, while Venice is to lend her aid by sea against all Slav freebooters. The importance of the document lies in the fact that it is an independent contract between the Doge of Venice and the rulers of the mainland, and that it confirms and extends existing trading privileges, which were subsequently still further enlarged. At Thionville, by a praeceptum dated 1 September 841, the Emperor formally recognised Venetian possessions inside the Empire.

Secular versus ecclesiastical power

The Doge Tradonicus did not escape the dynastic ambitions which were common to all the earlier holders of the ducal throne. He surrounded himself with a body-guard of foreign soldiers, Croats, devoted to his service. This, and his attempt to raise his relative, Dominicus, to the bishopric of Olivolo-Castello, gave the Particiaci faction, which was still strong, the desired opportunity. The doge was murdered on his way from the palace to San Zaccaria (13 September 864).

The murder of Tradonicus cannot be considered as a popular demonstration against the dynastic principle; it was carried out by a group of nobles instigated by the Patriarch of Grado who was a Particiacus, and in the interest of that family. Tradonicus was succeeded by Ursus Particiacus and subsequently by three other members of his house before the Particiaci gave way to the powerful family of the Candiani.

With the Western Empire Ursus maintained friendly relations and on 11 January 880 the pactum of Lothar was renewed with Charles the Fat in Ravenna. The modifications in the terms prove the extent to which Venice was growing in power and importance. It is no longer the case of certain specified places inside the kingdom entering on a treaty with Venice, but the Emperor himself treats on behalf of his whole kingdom. The slave trade is again to be condemned by a decree signed by doge and patriarch, and, most important of all, the doge's personal merchandise, his private trading stock, was to go free of customs dues. Ursus was further successful in a sharp encounter with the Patriarch of Grado, the upshot of which was to demonstrate and establish the supremacy of State over Church in Venice. The doge insisted on raising to the see of Torcello a eunuch named Dominicus. The Patriarch Peter Marturius refused to consecrate him as being canonically unfit, but had to fly before the doge's wrath. He appealed to the Pope, who summoned Dominicus and the Bishops Peter of Jesolo and Felix of Malamocco to Rome; in obedience to the doge they did not respond. The Pope convened a council in Ravenna (21 July 877), but the Venetian bishops did not appear till it was closing. Finally the Patriarch of Grado came to terms with the doge; he permitted Dominicus to reside at Torcello and to enjoy the revenues of the see, but the bishop was only consecrated by Marturius' successor. The whole episode, however, was a triumph for the doge and the secular authority.

Ursus was succeeded by his son John (881-887), in whose reign Venice embarked on her first aggressive commercial war. Comacchio, lying in its lagoons, near the mouth of the Po, was a serious commercial rival, both on account of its commanding position on the great trade-route and because of its salt industry which brought it into contact with the whole of North Italy. John made an effort to secure by diplomacy the lordship of Comacchio. He sent his brother Badoero to Rome to beg the Pope to grant him investiture. But on his way Badoero was wounded and captured by Marinus, Count of Comacchio, who was alive to the danger. Badoero returned to Venice and there died of his wounds. The doge and the whole population seized the opportunity to sack Comacchio and to establish Venetian officials in the town. Charles III, no more than the Pope, seems to have taken notice of this high-handed attack, and at Mantua (10 May 883) he confirmed by a praeceptum the Ravenna pactum of 880 with several important additions: the private goods of the doge and his heirs were exempt from the ordinary dues of teloneum and ripaticum (land and water transit) which other Venetians had to pay; conspiracy against the life of any prince, and therefore of the doge, on the part of any subject of the Empire was a crime; the doge was to enjoy full judicial powers over Venetian subjects in the Empire.

Pacta and praecepta