Part One of my tourist musings on Venice addressed its creation story: the refugees building the lagoon, then constructing their legends about St. Mark and his winged lion. Story upon story upon story.
Venice rose in wealth, trading, fighting, and conquering, both infidels and allies. The Crusades increased their wealth, until they mounted a Crusade of their own that turned into atrocity. They covered their deeds with art, religion, and parties, even as the money dried up and their status as a maritime power was eclipsed. Once the facade peeled, they invested in attracting visitors to view their beautiful, decaying things. Even that has now become part of the problem.
How Venice Became A World Power
In 828, at the time when two men rowed the remains of their new patron saint across the Mediterranean, Venice was a rising economic and military power. They prided themselves as a republic, electing their leader (doge), but limiting his authority. This was no democracy, as a few of the richest families made the decisions. The Venetians were devout Christians that ignored the pope’s authority when it suited them. They had stronger political ties to the Holy Roman Emperor in Constantinople, even rescued by a Byzantine army when Charlemagne sent armies east to add territory. Venice remained independent, although they played to both sides. There were pro-Frankish factions and pro-Byzantine factions; Venice traded with everyone and fought with everyone.
The land-based Roman refugees became a superior seafaring people. A trade alliance with Constantinople was handy. The Byzantine Empire circled the Black Sea, but the Venetians had the ships to stop at Byzantine ports, to take the Silk Road goods that Arab and Persian traders had carried from China and India. The Venetians rowed the goods on to the other European ports: Marseilles, Bruges, London. They became rich trading with the infidels, the Muslims, Saracens, and later Ottomans.
Later, painters would incorporate this wealth into origin stories. Thus, Renaissance-clothed merchants could bring coins to the Virgin Mary, like the magi. Or, as Mansueti painted the “Arrest of St. Mark,” he shows a contemporary Venetian merchant delegation negotiating with Ottomans in the foreground. Mark was arrested by Egyptians in 79 CE, who preferred not to be Christianized, but the painter implies that it was the Muslims from a thousand years later. It’s no accident that today, the main wellsprings of culture offered to tourists are in art museums and cathedrals. Venetians did give a great deal to the Church.
Despite their religious fervor, the Venetians hung back when Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade in 1095. The Pope wanted Christian warriors to reclaim the Holy Land from the Muslims, but those were Venetian trading partners. The doge eventually sent a small naval group, but they skirmished as much with Italian trading rivals (Pisa), as they did help in regaining Jerusalem. The First and Second Crusades traveled mostly by land, but some of those knights sent armor and horses by boat. More went via the Mediterranean in the Third Crusade in Venetian ships.
Trading wealth and experience had led to better Venetian ships and weapons. By the end of the Third Crusade, the Venetians had favorable trading status and tax benefits from Constantinople and had built colonies or trading relationships with cities around the Adriatic and the Eastern Mediterranean. They had already traded with and attacked Muslims, traded with and attacked Hungarians, Franks, Pisans, Byzantines, Genoese.
Children learn that the ancient Greeks and Romans invented stories called mythology. The term myth is defined as stories told to explain scientific phenomena that is not understood, stories from the uneducated. Yet when other groups, say European Christians, invent stories, it’s called something else. “According to tradition.” Or part of “hagiography,” which is a twelve-dollar word that means a saint’s origin story. Try finding out how Mark became associated with Venice, and the phrases “according to legend” and “according to tradition” pepper the story of the thieves in the night, moving bones out of Alexandria. The medieval Church even created a word–translatio–to describe the sanctioned movement of relics, like Mark’s body. It’s Latin, so somehow it no longer means theft.
To the Venetians, the episode of the Fourth Crusade probably seemed a perfectly natural extension of their logic. If it was good for Venice, it was favored by God. There was a treasure trove relics sitting in Constantinople, waiting to become translatio.
The Fourth Crusade: Venice Eats Its Own
While the First Crusade had been successful, re-establishing European leaders in the desert cities–Damascus, Acra, Jerusalem–the Second and Third Crusades had ceded much of it back. The Roman Church was determined to keep on, if for no other reason but that European armies were kept away from fighting in Europe. Originally, the Fourth Crusade was to have the nobles of France and Flanders take back Holy Land territory, again. The Venetians, as before, were contracted as transport.
But the seafarers wanted more money than the crusaders could pay. They suggested an exchange, a first stop at the city of Zara, to show a bit of muscle. Zara lies across the Adriatic, in that place originally called Illyria (today called Croatia, the city of Zadar). The leaders of Zara had asked the Venetians for protection against pirates, and when the Venetians gave it, they also added the town to their “holdings.” When Zara’s people tried to assert their political independence, voila! The Fourth Crusaders sacked the Christian city of Zara.
Pope Innocent III was not pleased. Europeans could attack Europeans, but Christians should not attack Christians as part of a Christian plan. While they were debating the merits of the Zara situation, the ousted brother-in-law of the Holy Roman Emperor in Constantinople suggested a new plan to the Venetians. Constantinople was Christian–very Christian–but Eastern Orthodox Christian. There had been a religious schism, and the Eastern Orthodox were viewed as different. The exiled brother-in-law promised to return the city to the Western Church, in exchange for becoming Holy Roman Emperor again. Constantinople was full of wealth, and the Holy Land was becoming kind of picked over and dangerous. Guess where the Venetians went? Their giant galleys ferried the soldiers to this Christian city and promptly ripped it apart.
Let loose into the streets of Constantinople, the Crusaders started killing anybody and everybody. The city had itself brought ancient Greek and Roman art works from Rome to protect them from the Goths and the Huns; the French, German, and Venetian invaders carried them off. They looted cathedrals, monasteries, and convents. They smashed altars and pulled out the valuable gold and marble.
The famous horses atop the Church of Saint Mark in San Marco are a visible reminder of the Sack of Constantinople. The sculptures are thought to date back to classic animal sculpture techniques from Greece, a triumph of design. The Venetians pulled them down from the Hippodrome, chopped their heads off, and loaded them on a barge. When they were re-installed in Venus, collars were added to obscure where the heads had been severed. Today, the tour guides simply point and ask visitors to marvel.
The End of Empire, the Beginning of Dreams
The Fourth Crusade was not the end for Venice, although it might be seen as a horror that no amount of fancy artwork could cover up. The Republic of Venice continued to expand and grow for another half-millennium. They stayed independent until Napoleon’s armies overran the lagoon in 1797 and ripped down a bronzed winged lion in San Marco’s plaza. People in the know point out that the lion had originally come from China. The Venetians eventually got it back.
Officially, the story is that the Venetians “declined,” despite expanding their famous Carnivals, the masked balls of the nobles, and building museums that glorified their historical triumphs in art and sculpture. The biggest reason for the decline was not a vague sense of moral decay. Plague came to Italy in 1347.
Venice, being both island and trading post, would be hit hard. Ships would repeatedly bring infections, and it was hard to leave. The island of Lazzaretto was designated as a quarantine area by the mid 1400s, but every few decades, another wave of infection would hit. The population dropped by a third to a half, multiple times. By 1630, which turned out to be the last instance of the bubonic epidemic, those who remained commissioned the building of Santa Maria della Salute, a magnificent cathedral that thanked the Virgin Mary. Mark was nowhere to be found here.
There was still Carnival, masked balls, regattas (rowing races). But the mask variations now incorporated the plague doctor’s mask, with its long snout and covered eyes.
Fewer traders were able to go out to bring back wealth (or plunder). By the time the population started to rebound, the Mediterranean was no longer the main route for the Spice Trade. Portuguese, Dutch, and Spanish sailors had created new ships that went around the oceans to China and India. The Venetians had lost some of their monopolies, while the elaborate palazzos began to sink and peel. Glory needed maintenance. The Venetians did the only thing left; they appealed to outsiders to come and gawk at what they had once built.
Today’s Venice: Symbiotic Parasites and Climate Change
Venice today has new problems. It has built an economy that relies heavily on tourism. It lures thousands of visitors and detests them at the same time. Estimates of how much Venus relies on tourists vary — one study says 11% of GDP while another says 90% of their financial support. What’s clear is that roughly 50,000 residents have remained to prop up the sinking palazzos, while a hundred times that number (5-6 million) tramp through its narrow streets each year. By the early 21st century, cruise ships, short-term rentals, and other tourism advancements were dumping so many people and so much pollution that the city felt overrun.
Venice managed to move the cruise ships to Ravenna, a port on the western mainland. They started imposing fees, though five Euros would hardly prevent people from coming. Covid-19 at first seemed a blessed pause from all the people. But, with an economy built around visitors, the drop in infrastructure funding was just as devastating. Currently, Venice is trying to figure out how it can best be seen. There is talk of emphasizing local food and local artisans rather than overseas imitations.
And the Aqua Alta will be a wild card. Venice floods; it always has. Certain times of the year, month, and day, the water on the streets can’t be tamed. The narrow shape of the Adriatic intensifies the problem, as tidal water moving from laterally gets sloshed around like water in a bathtub. Add to that rising sea levels as the glaciers melt. Venice will be hit hard by climate change. Some estimates even suggest it will be “gone” by 2100, but that requires definition. Venice was built by those who adapted, and people who take water taxis to work already live differently than most of us can imagine.
The response to climate change started with improved warning systems. City infrastructure now responds when high tide comes. We were there to observe a mild form of acqua alta and saw pre-printed vaporetto signs quickly erected, explaining which waterbus stops were closed and which streets became out of commission. The locals understood it, though it was a nightmare for us to navigate. Perhaps, acqua alta and rising tides may do what failed attempts at regulation, fines, and public media campaigns did not. Fewer tourists will come when it isn’t so easy to walk through the streets, especially without tripping over a sewage pump.
An elaborate engineering plan, called MOSE, has been in the works for decades. Sea walls lift up to push back the worst of the floods. It helps a little. But as those two thousand year old alders continue to rot and the tourist population can only be capped at current over-stuffed levels, the question remains: What future does Venice dream of for itself?
It’s no longer sufficient to steal old bones in the night as proof of divine protection or to paint artwork that covers over atrocity. At some point, the basements of the museums will disappear. Even Tintoretto couldn’t paint over four feet of water sloshing across the piazza of San Marco. But the Venetians were always dreamers; at first, they looked back to their Golden Age as Romans even as they constructed houses in the lagoon. They became the world’s foremost glassmakers, taming fire while living among the waters. They had a vision of beauty, and if they declined, their visions remained. They created a city like no other, and they have always adapted.
Venice will simple have to dream itself a new future. They’ve done it before.
