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THE GOLDEN BOOK OF VENICE

A Historical Romance of the 16th Century


By

MRS. LAWRENCE TURNBULL

  'This noble citie doth in a manner
  chalenge this at my hands, that
  I should describe her... the
  fairest Lady, yet the richest Paragon,
  and Queene of Christendome.'

1900


  AS A TRIBUTE TO HIS GIFT OF VIVID
  HISTORIC NARRATION WHICH WAS
  THE DELIGHT OF MY CHILDHOOD,
  I INSCRIBE THIS ROMANCE TO THE
  MEMORY OF MY DEAR FATHER.



ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I desire gratefully to acknowledge my indebtedness to many faithful,
loving and able students of Venetian lore, without whose books my own
presentation of Venice in the sixteenth century would have been
impossible. Mr. Ruskin's name must always come first among the prophets
of this City of the Sea, but among others from whom I have gathered
side-lights I have found quite indispensable Mr. Horatio F. Brown's
"Venice; An Historical Sketch of the Republic," "Venetian Studies," and
"Life on the Lagoons"; Mr. Hare's suggestive little volume of "Venice";
M. Leon Galibert's "Histoire de la Republique de Venise"; and Mr.
Charles Yriarte's "Venice" and his work studied from the State papers in
the Frari, entitled "La vie d'un Patricien de Venise."

Mr. Robertson's life of Fra Paolo Sarpi gave me the first hint of this
great personality, but my own portrait has been carefully studied from
the volumes of his collected works which later responded to my search;
these were collected and preserved for the Venetian government under the
title of "Opere di Fra Paolo Sarpi, Servita, Teologo e Consultore della
Serenissima Repubblica di Venezia" and included his life, letters and
"opinions," and all others of his writings which escaped destruction in
the fire of the Servite Convent, as well as many important extracts from
the original manuscripts so destroyed and which had been transcribed by
order of the Doge, Marco Foscarini, a few years before.

FRANCESE LITCHFIELD TURNBULL.

_La-Paix, June_, 1900.



PRELUDE

Venice, with her life and glory but a memory, is still the _citta
nobilissima_,--a city of moods,--all beautiful to the beauty-lover, all
mystic to the dreamer; between the wonderful blue of the water and the
sky she floats like a mirage--visionary--unreal--and under the spell of
her fascination we are not critics, but lovers. We see the pathos, not
the scars of her desolation, and the splendor of her past is too much a
part of her to be forgotten, though the gold is dim upon her
palace-fronts, and the sheen of her precious marbles has lost its bloom,
and the colors of the laughing Giorgione have faded like his smile.

But the very soul of Venetia is always hovering near, ready to be
invoked by those who confess her charm. When, under the glamor of her
radiant skies the faded hues flash forth once more, there is no ruin nor
decay, nor touch of conquering hand of man nor time, only a splendid
city of dreams, waiting in silence--as all visions wait--until that
invisible, haunting spirit has turned the legends of her power into
actual activities.





_THE GOLDEN BOOK OF VENICE_



I

Sea and sky were one glory of warmth and color this sunny November
morning in 1565, and there were signs of unusual activity in the Campo
San Rocco before the great church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari,
which, if only brick without, was all glorious within, "in raiment of
needlework" and "wrought gold." And outside, the delicate tracery of the
cornice was like a border of embroidery upon the sombre surface; the
sculptured marble doorway was of surpassing richness, and the airy grace
of the campanile detached itself against the entrancing blue of the sky,
as one of those points of beauty for which Venice is memorable.

Usually this small square, remote from the centres of traffic as from
the homes of the nobility, seemed scarcely more than a landing-place for
the gondolas which were constantly bringing visitors and worshippers
thither, as to a shrine; for this church was a sort of memorial abbey to
the illustrious dead of Venice,--her Doges, her generals, her artists,
her heads of noble families,--and the monuments were in keeping with all
its sumptuous decorations, for the Frati Minori of the convent to which
it belonged--just across the narrow lane at the side of the church--were
both rich and generous, and many of its gifts and furnishings reflected
the highest art to which modern Venice had attained. Between the
wonderful, mystic, Eastern glory of San Marco, all shadows and
symbolisms and harmonies, and the positive, realistic assertions,
aesthetic and spiritual, of the Frari, lay the entire reach of the art
and religion of the Most Serene Republic.

The church was ancient enough to be a treasure-house for the historian,
and it had been restored, with much magnificence, less than a century
before,--which was modern for Venice,--while innumerable gifts had
brought its treasures down to the days of Titian and Tintoret.

To-day the people were coming in throngs, as to a _festa_, on foot from
under the Portico di Zen, across the little marble bridge which spanned
the narrow canal; on foot also from the network of narrow paved lanes,
or _calle_, which led off into a densely populated quarter; for to-day
the people had free right of entrance, equally with those others who
came in gondolas, liveried and otherwise, from more distant and
aristocratic neighborhoods. This pleasant possibility of entrance
sufficed for the crowd at large, who were not learned, and who preferred
the attractions of the outside show to the philosophical debate which
was the cause of all this agreeable excitement, and which was presently
to take place in the great church before a vast assembly of nobles and
clergy and representatives from the Universities of Padua, Mantua, and
Bologna; and outside, in the glowing sunshine, with the strangers and
the confusion, the shifting sounds and lights, the ceaseless unlading of
gondolas and massing and changing of colors, every minute was a
realization of the people's ideal of happiness.

Brown, bare-legged boys flocked from San Pantaleone and the people's
quarters on the smaller canals, remitting, for the nonce, their
absorbing pastimes of crabbing and petty gambling, and ragged and
radiant, stretched themselves luxuriously along the edge of the little
quay, faces downward, emphasizing their humorous running commentaries
with excited movements of the bare, upturned feet; while the gondoliers
landed their passengers to a lively refrain of "_Stali_!" their curses
and appeals to the Madonna blending not discordantly with the general
babel of sound which gives such a sense of companionship in
Venice--human voices calling in ceaseless interchange from shore to
shore, resonant in the brilliant atmosphere, quarrels softened to
melodies across the water, cries of the gondoliers telling of ceaseless
motion, the constant lap and plash of the wavelets and the drip of the
oars making a soothing undertone of content.

From time to time staccato notes of delight added a distinct jubilant
quality to this symphony, heralding the arrival of some group of Church
dignitaries from one or other of the seven principal parishes of Venice,
gorgeous in robes of high festival and displaying the choicest of
treasures from sacristies munificently endowed, as was meet for an
ecclesiastical body to whom belonged one half of the area of Venice,
with wealth proportionate.

Frequent delegations from the lively crowd of the populace--flashing
with repartee, seemly or unseemly, as they gathered close to the door
just under the marble slab with its solemn appeal to reverence,
"Rispettati la Casa di Dio"--penetrated into the Frari to see where the
more pleasure could be gotten, as also to claim their right to be there;
for this pageant was for the people also, which they did not forget, and
their good-humored ripple of comment was tolerant, even when most
critical. But outside one could have all of the festa that was worth
seeing, with the sunshine added,--the glorious sunshine of this November
day, cold enough to fill the air with sparkle,--and the boys, at least,
were sure to return to the free enjoyment impossible within.

A group of young nobles, in silken hose and velvet mantles, were met
with ecstatic approval and sallies deftly personal. Since the beginning
of the Council of Trent, which was still sitting, philosophy had become
the mode in Venice, and had grown to be a topic of absorbing interest by
no means confined to Churchmen; and young men of fashion took courses of
training in the latest and most intellectual accomplishment.

Confraternities of every order were arriving in stately processions,
their banners borne before them by gondoliers gaudy and awkward in
sleazy white tunics, with brilliant cotton sashes--habiliments which
possessed a singular power of relieving these sun-browned sons of the
lagoon of every vestige of their native grace. On such days of Church
festival--and these alone--they might have been mistaken for peasants of
some prosaic land, instead of the graceful, free-born Venetians that
they were, as, with no hint of their natural rhythm of motion, they
filed in cramped and orderly procession through the avenue that opened
to them in the crowd to the door of the church, where they disappeared
behind the great leather curtain.

It was a great day for the friars of the Servi, who were rivals of the
Frari both in learning and splendor, and the entire Servite Brotherhood,
black-robed and white-cowled, was just coming in sight over the little
marble bridge, preceded by youthful choristers, chanting as they came
and bearing with them that famous banner which had been sent them as a
gift from their oldest chapter of San Annunziata in Florence, and which
was the early work of Raphael.

A small urchin, leaning far over the edge of the quay and craning his
neck upward for a better view, reported some special attraction in this
approaching group which elicited yells of vociferous greeting from his
colleagues, with such forceful emphasis of his own curling, expressive
toes, that he lost his balance and rolled over into the water; from
which he was promptly rescued by a human ladder, dexterously let down to
him in sections, without a moment's hesitation, by his allies, who, like
all Venetian boys of the populace, were amphibious animals, full of
pranks.

But now there was no more time for fooling on the quay, for at the great
end-window of the library of the convent of the Frari it could be seen
that a procession of this body was forming and would presently enter the
church, and the fun would begin for those who understood Latin.

A round-faced friar was giving obliging information. The contest would
be between the Frari and the