provisioners and prostitutes, along with the bankers and insurance underwriters, all had a direct stake in the merchant republic.
In other places, princes and caliphs skimmed as much of the surplus as they could from their own merchants, but not in Venice. Here, money bred money. As a result, the relatively puny republic could take on vastly bigger and more populous powers such as the kingdom of Hungary, which repeatedly (and unsuccessfully) tried to muscle in on Venice’s backyard, and more fatefully, even populous Byzantium. The vast sums that eddied and flowed down the Grand Canal made it possible for a city of fewer than one hundred thousand souls to take on an empire of millions.
When it comes to the Byzantines, once again, La Serenissima suffers from selective memory. In the beginning, Venice had been a part of that Eastern realm—though, admittedly, an inconsequential little town on its western periphery. The city was officially a part of the empire until the early ninth century, when, through a series of treaties, it entered a kind of legalistic limbo, still technically a province of Byzantium but paying tribute to the German emperors. As late as 1082, the emperor would refer to the Venetians as “true and faithful servants,” and at least theoretically, they remained subject to the same laws as Byzantines. In the early years, Venetians took full advantage of this intimate relationship; later, they ruthlessly exploited it and then finally slit the throat of their once-great overlord. Yet you don’t hear much about this in Venice. There is an almost Oedipal reluctance to discuss the city’s indebtedness to Byzantium. Still, much of the history of Venice, and especially her role as the spice merchant of Europe, makes sense only when you remember her origins in that ancient empire.
V ENICE AND B YZANTIUM
Right next to the great Basilica of Saint Mark and the eponymous piazza is the long quay called the Molo. This is where everybody stands to take the stereotypical snapshot of the green lagoon with the sparkling white church of San Giorgio Maggiore in the background. If you want to buy a gondolier’s hat for your nephew or a Carnival cap for your niece, a dozen kiosks here will be happy to oblige. This is where you catch the ferry to the beach on the Lido or to visit the glassworks on Murano or make the trip to the airport. Ships have unloaded passengers and cargo here for a thousand years. It was from this wharf that each doge mounted his gilt-encrusted galley for the annual ceremony in which he married the sea. This has always been Venice’s front porch. Yet what is notable, though not immediately obvious, about the pier is its orientation: the Molo faces south and east. It turns its back on the European mainland, the terra firma of the barbarians, to look in the direction of Constantine’s glittering metropolis.
When they originally built Saint Mark’s, it was no more than the doge’s modest private chapel, propped up right next door to his walled fortress. Its claim to fame was that it held the relics of Saint Mark the Apostle, stolen from a church in Alexandria in the ninth century. (Legend claims that the merchants sandwiched the remains between slices of pork to keep the caliph’s customs officials at bay.) Some two hundred years on, though, the city had come of age, and like every medieval city of ambition, it needed a grand church to announce her coming out. For a model, the Venetians turned, as they usually did, to Constantinople. They decided to crib the design from the Church of the Holy Apostles, not least because it had been commissioned by Constantine the Great. The doge could now boast of a church to rival the one built by a legendary Roman emperor, with bragging rights to relics just as good as any Byzantine church.
Much of medieval Venetian culture was in fact stitched together from scraps imported from the East. Venetian law followed the Roman tradition of the Eastern Empire more
In other places, princes and caliphs skimmed as much of the surplus as they could from their own merchants, but not in Venice. Here, money bred money. As a result, the relatively puny republic could take on vastly bigger and more populous powers such as the kingdom of Hungary, which repeatedly (and unsuccessfully) tried to muscle in on Venice’s backyard, and more fatefully, even populous Byzantium. The vast sums that eddied and flowed down the Grand Canal made it possible for a city of fewer than one hundred thousand souls to take on an empire of millions.
When it comes to the Byzantines, once again, La Serenissima suffers from selective memory. In the beginning, Venice had been a part of that Eastern realm—though, admittedly, an inconsequential little town on its western periphery. The city was officially a part of the empire until the early ninth century, when, through a series of treaties, it entered a kind of legalistic limbo, still technically a province of Byzantium but paying tribute to the German emperors. As late as 1082, the emperor would refer to the Venetians as “true and faithful servants,” and at least theoretically, they remained subject to the same laws as Byzantines. In the early years, Venetians took full advantage of this intimate relationship; later, they ruthlessly exploited it and then finally slit the throat of their once-great overlord. Yet you don’t hear much about this in Venice. There is an almost Oedipal reluctance to discuss the city’s indebtedness to Byzantium. Still, much of the history of Venice, and especially her role as the spice merchant of Europe, makes sense only when you remember her origins in that ancient empire.
V ENICE AND B YZANTIUM
Right next to the great Basilica of Saint Mark and the eponymous piazza is the long quay called the Molo. This is where everybody stands to take the stereotypical snapshot of the green lagoon with the sparkling white church of San Giorgio Maggiore in the background. If you want to buy a gondolier’s hat for your nephew or a Carnival cap for your niece, a dozen kiosks here will be happy to oblige. This is where you catch the ferry to the beach on the Lido or to visit the glassworks on Murano or make the trip to the airport. Ships have unloaded passengers and cargo here for a thousand years. It was from this wharf that each doge mounted his gilt-encrusted galley for the annual ceremony in which he married the sea. This has always been Venice’s front porch. Yet what is notable, though not immediately obvious, about the pier is its orientation: the Molo faces south and east. It turns its back on the European mainland, the terra firma of the barbarians, to look in the direction of Constantine’s glittering metropolis.
When they originally built Saint Mark’s, it was no more than the doge’s modest private chapel, propped up right next door to his walled fortress. Its claim to fame was that it held the relics of Saint Mark the Apostle, stolen from a church in Alexandria in the ninth century. (Legend claims that the merchants sandwiched the remains between slices of pork to keep the caliph’s customs officials at bay.) Some two hundred years on, though, the city had come of age, and like every medieval city of ambition, it needed a grand church to announce her coming out. For a model, the Venetians turned, as they usually did, to Constantinople. They decided to crib the design from the Church of the Holy Apostles, not least because it had been commissioned by Constantine the Great. The doge could now boast of a church to rival the one built by a legendary Roman emperor, with bragging rights to relics just as good as any Byzantine church.
Much of medieval Venetian culture was in fact stitched together from scraps imported from the East. Venetian law followed the Roman tradition of the Eastern Empire more
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