Post by Katie on Aug 23, 2019 23:13:08 GMT -5
Historical Venice and Where We are Today
The early period
Origin of the city
Uniquely among Italy’s chief cities, Venice came into being after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West. The Lombard hordes, whose incursions into northern Italy began in AD 568, drove great numbers of mainlanders onto the islands of the lagoon, previously the homes of itinerant fishermen and salt workers. The isolated communities, literally islands of Veneto-Byzantine civilization, became part of the exarchate of Ravenna when it was created in 584. When the mainland Byzantine city of Oderzo fell to the Lombards in 641, political authority was shifted to one of the islands in the Venetian lagoon.
The first elected doge, or duke, was Orso, chosen in an anti-Byzantine military declaration in 727, but he was succeeded by Byzantine officials until about 751, when the exarchate of Ravenna came to an end. There followed decades of internal political strife among various settlements vying for supremacy and between pro- and anti-Byzantine factions; also involved were attempts by church authorities to acquire temporal influence. Finally the doge Obelerio and his brother Beato formed an alliance with the Franks of Italy and placed Venice under the authority of the Italian king Pippin (died 810) in order to free themselves from Byzantine control.
Pro-Byzantine reaction to this event under the doges of the Parteciaco family led to the transfer of the seat of government to the Rialto group of islands, by then the centre for exiles in the factional fighting. Though a Franco-Byzantine treaty of 814 guaranteed to Venice political and juridical independence from the rule of the Western Empire, it did not confirm any effective dependence on the Byzantine Empire, and by 840–841 the doge was negotiating international agreements in his own name. The unusual legal and political position of the small independent duchy, situated in territorial isolation between two great empires, contributed greatly to its function as a trading intermediary.
A long succession of serious disputes between leading families concerning the office of doge did not halt the rapid development of trade. Increase in private wealth led to the gradual achievement of internal stability by creating a broader ruling class that was capable of putting a limit to the power of the doge. Gradually a national consciousness developed. Beginning in the late 9th century, the doges were chosen by popular election, though the right was frequently abused during times of civil strife. Finally the group of Rialto islands was solemnly transformed into the city of Venice (civitas Venetiarum).
The new order
The final collapse of family faction rule led to a change in the system of government, inaugurated by Doge Domenico Flabanico (1032–42). He restored to the people the sovereign right to elect the doge, but the term populus was in practice restricted to the residents of the Rialto and, more narrowly, to a select group of nobles. The executive organ was the ducal curia, and the legislative assembly was summoned to approve the doge’s acts. A new church was built for St. Mark, symbol of the Venetian spirit, under Doge Domenico Contarini (1043–70), an energetic defender of the religious independence of the duchy.
Growth of trade and power
In the conflict between papacy and empire, Contarini and his successors remained neutral (despite the complaints of Pope Gregory VII), while safeguarding Venetian economic interests in the Adriatic when the conflict began to be reflected on the Dalmatian coast. But the greatest danger to Venetian interests was the 11th-century Norman expansion under Robert Guiscard, which threatened to cut Venetian communications to the south. The successful action taken against the Normans by Doge Domenico Selvo and his successor Vitale Falier helped to assure Venetian freedom on the Mediterranean Sea.
Relations with the Byzantine Empire
In gratitude for Venetian aid against the Normans, the Byzantine emperor Alexius I Comnenus granted Venice unrestricted trade throughout the Byzantine Empire, with no customs dues, a privilege that marked the beginning of Venetian activity in the East (1082). The Adriatic was not yet secured, however; Dalmatian ports were threatened by the Hungarians and Slavs, with whom it was difficult to come to agreement.
Toward the end of the 11th century, the Crusades focused the newly awakened trading interests of the West on the Mediterranean. At first Venice was chiefly concerned with gaining control of the European trading ports of the Byzantine Empire, leaving to private interests the commercial opportunities in Syria and Asia Minor. Although they had been the first to win trade concessions and a commercial quarter in Constantinople, the Venetians antagonized the Byzantines by their arrogance and lawlessness as well as by their superior enterprise. In helping the emperor Manuel I Comnenus drive the Normans out of Corfu (1147–49), they offended him by their aggressive behaviour.
Soon the mutual dislike between Venetians and Byzantines ripened into hatred. The emperor encouraged merchants from the Italian republics of Genoa and Pisa to compete in Byzantine markets, and the Venetians responded by destroying the establishments of their rivals. In 1171, to maintain order in his dominions, the emperor arrested all Venetian residents in Constantinople and the provinces and confiscated their goods. Relations were patched up in 1187 and again in 1198, but the Venetians remained embittered.
The commune
All this time the expansion of Venice along the borders of the lagoon and across the Adriatic on the Dalmatian coast not only enriched its patrimony but also created an awareness of its own political power. Between 1140 and 1160, in response to the needs of its increased territory and growing economy, Venice underwent a revolutionary change in its political structure, reorganizing itself as a republic. The doge lost his monarchic character, becoming a mere official (though he still assumed resounding titles), and a commune took over the powers, functions, and prerogatives of the state. All political and administrative matters were placed in the hands of the Great Council of 45. A Minor Council of six members exercised executive powers alongside the doge, and magistrates were granted administrative and judicial functions.
Trade conflicts
Venetian bitterness against the Byzantines found an outlet in the Fourth Crusade, which captured and sacked Constantinople in 1204 with the doge Enrico Dandolo among its leaders. In the subsequent partition of Byzantine territory between Venetians and Crusaders, Venice acquired a commercial empire in the eastern Mediterranean. It included many of the Aegean islands, most importantly Crete and parts of Euboea, with valuable trading stations and fortified lookout posts on the Greek mainland. The doges adopted the title of Lord of One-Quarter and One-Eighth of the Entire Byzantine Empire (Quartae Partis et Dimidiae Totius Imperii Romaniae Dominator). A special magistrate, appointed from Venice, administered the substantial Venetian colony in Constantinople.
In 1261 the Byzantine emperor in exile at Nicaea, with the support of the Genoese, recovered the city and evicted the Venetians. The emperor rewarded the Genoese with privileges that challenged the Venetian monopoly of trade and opened up to Genoa the Black Sea markets. The Venetians retained control of many of the Greek islands, however, and gradually found their way back to partial favour in Byzantium through a series of treaties. But when the last of the Crusader strongholds in Syria fell to the Muslims in 1291, Venetian merchants who had been dispossessed moved north to dispute the Black Sea trade with the Genoese. For nearly two centuries thereafter, Venice and Genoa were periodically at war.
The patriciate
Meanwhile, at home the Venetian state was being built up. In 1242 the civil statutes of Jacopo Tiepolo regulated civil and economic relations; maritime statutes had been established in 1239. The number of elected members of the Great Council was raised from 45 to 60 and then to 100. The Council of 40 (Quarantia; first mentioned in 1223) received powers of jurisdiction, and the Consiglio dei Rogati (60 members; founded mid-13th century), invested with the control of economic affairs, in time assumed all legislative functions and the honorific title of Senate.
In the 11th and 12th centuries the Michiel and Falier families had tried in vain to perpetuate their ducal power, and restrictive electoral systems were instituted to prevent the formation of committed family factions. In the 13th century similar attempts by the Ziani and Tiepolo families also failed. In 1268 an interlocking process of choice by lot and voting alternately among the members of the Great Council was introduced to select the next doge.
Between 1290 and 1300, new laws restricted the right to take part in the government to families traditionally performing magistrate’s duties. The patrician class was not created by the “closing of the Great Council” (serrata del Maggior Consiglio) achieved by these laws, but it received its legal status from them. Henceforward anyone claiming personal power had to act outside the patrician order and rely on the people; and the people were linked so closely to the patricians by their economic needs that sufficient support was always lacking. Thus, the conspiracy of Marin Bocconio failed (1299), as did those of Bajamonte Tiepolo and the Querini brothers (1310) and later of Marin Falier (1354). The special character of Venetian society created a governing class very different from that of the other Italian communes or of the continental states. To counter any attempts at sole personal rule, the Council of Ten was established (1310) to police the patrician order and defend the existing regime.
Struggle for naval supremacy
By the beginning of the 14th century the republic was swept into struggles on the mainland of Italy and in the Adriatic and Mediterranean seas. When the Scaligeri came to power in Verona, the republic made alliance with the Carraresi of Padua, with the Florentines, and with the Visconti of Milan, who feared the rise of a strong territorial lordship in the heart of northern Italy. Deviating from its strictly maritime policy, Venice established sovereignty over Treviso, thereby ensuring its own food supply but also taking on the defense of a land frontier.
The antagonism and rivalry with Genoa were rekindled. The conflict, carried on mainly in Dalmatia, was made more difficult for all by the spread of the Black Death (1348), by the economic and financial crisis caused by the war itself, and by the ineptitude of the military operations. In the alternation of victories and defeats, both sides exhausted their energies and resources. At last a second anti-Venetian coalition brought the war almost into Venice itself; at Pula (Pola) and at Chioggia, Venice first was defeated and then won the war (1380–81). The Peace of Turin (1381) eliminated Genoese political influence from the Mediterranean and the East, leaving the Venetian government arbiter of the sea routes.
Zenith of power
The Venetian victory over Genoa took place under the threat of Turkish advance in the East. The Venetians had to negotiate a state of neutrality with the Turks and find another economic base to compensate for the smaller yield now to be expected from trade with the East, so they turned to the Italian mainland, first to rid themselves of neighbouring lordships and then to defend and exploit the rich lands they had acquired. For a time, Venetian territorial rule went no further than the Mincio and Livenza rivers, but beyond the Livenza lay the politically and economically important principality of the patriarch of Aquileia, through which passed the main routes to Germany and to Istria. Because the patriarch could not guarantee peace and order, Venice incorporated the principality in the Venetian domains (1420).
Venetian territory now covered roughly the areas of the modern regions of Veneto and Friuli–Venezia Giulia, together with the Istrian Peninsula. The doge Tommaso Mocenigo maintained that his city had reached its political and economic zenith; it had a solid base in Italy that could compensate for its losses in the East, and it should not expect indefinite progress. In fact, efforts to enlarge its conquests might be dangerous, and it was better to preserve, not to risk, its accumulated wealth. Mocenigo’s successors, however, did not heed his warning.
Political and economic decline
When he became Venice’s doge in 1423, Francesco Foscari embarked upon a series of wars in mainland Italy, particularly against Milan. Greed for conquering new territory involved the Venetians in a tangled web of Italian balance-of-power politics and in conflicts between the great powers of Europe on a scale out of proportion to Venetian forces and direct interests. The Peace of Lodi (1454) was followed by the formation of the Italian League to restore political balance among the Italian states, but the accord was ephemeral and Italy was threatened with foreign intervention. And this is where we are today.
Vampires in Venice, Primed for Status, A Battle Over Influence
Venice is famed in Kindred circles as the headquarters of the Giovanni Clan, and everyone, from Camarilla Justicars over Anarch revolutionaries to Sabbat Archbishops, is forced to respect that claim, although some would challenge this arrangement. While the Giovanni have been native to the city since the time of the Lombard kings that first established the city, it was previously a center of the Cainite Heresy and under Lasombra dominion. The central hub of vampiric activity in Venice is the Mausoleum, rumored to be the resting place of Augustus Giovanni himself. A skyscraper made out of black glass and steel, it is thinly veiled as a bank. Each Giovanni is encouraged to tithe a certain percentage of his earnings to the Mausoleum, either in money or in souls.
Other Kindred find that they are not welcomed in Venice, and that they are shadowed and spied upon from hostile eyes hidden from their senses. No single leader, no Prince, claims Venice yet, the boasts of the Camarilla to the contrary. Rather, the job of ensuring the smooth functioning of the city falls to a select group of ancillae and relatively young elders, as Augustus and the eldest Giovanni have far too much to do worrying about clan activities worldwide. Although no concerted effort to keep all other vampires out of the city has been undertaken, the clan makes no secret of the fact that an outside vampire attempting to seize undue influence or power within Venice will meet with a very swift death – possibly followed by an eternity of servitude. On occasion, Ventrue visit the city for business affairs, and the city is home to a large Nosferatu population that lurks within the sewers and the island cemetery.
Rumors tell that Premascines, Giovanni that were embraced before 1444 by the Cappadocians, live in the sunken parts of Venice, guarding their territory jealously against intruders.
It is a prime spot and great place to gain power and influence. Will you claim your stake in this city of Islands?