Fluir nº1 - Renascimentos - 2018
Figure 1- View of Santa Maria Assunta
in Torcello;. Ruskin climbed the 11th C.
bell tower and wrote of the beauty of
the lagoon.
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fishermen, living in wooden houses built precariously
on a vast swamp. A description of the early Venetians
has come down to us, written by Cassiodorus, the
prefect of Ravenna under Theodoric, the Gothic king
of Italy (493 – 526). The American historian T.R.
Madden, in his recent book “Venice, a New History”,
translates it as follows:
The inhabitants have only one concept of plenty: that of filling
their bellies with fish. Poverty and wealth, therefore, are on equal
terms. One kind of food sustains everyone. The same kind of
dwelling shelters all.
Clearly it all got off to a slow start. At first, the
scattered inhabitants of the Venetian lagoon seemed to
have lived in a semi-Hobbesian world with each tiny
island settlement in a permanent state of conflict with
the rest, all claiming a spiritual membership of the
Byzantine Empire. However, in the year 697 the twelve
local headmen of the lagoon, known as the Tribunes,
agreed to elect a common leader. They called him the
Doge, from the Latin dux (leader).
And so began the story of the Venetian Republic. It
was to last, unconquered, more than a thousand years;
from the twilight of Classical Rome, to the French
Revolution and the advent of Napoleon. In due course,
the descendants of those fisherman were to acquire an
empire in the eastern Mediterranean. They were to
develop modern systems of trade, banking, investment
and insurance, becoming fabulously wealthy. They were
to spend their wealth producing some of the most
sublime schools of architecture, painting and music of
all Western culture. None of this could have happened
without one further original creation; a unique non-
monarchical system of government. For the Venetian
Republic was, up to now and by far, the longest lasting
republican state in the history of mankind.
Venice Today
Venice is a city of the dead. Calvino uses that refrain in
his psychological parables of Venice. Madden describes
it as an “exquisite corpse”. To a casual visitor those
eminent Venetians, staring severely from oil portraits,
seem members of a dead race. Perhaps such
impressions arise from the contrast between the past
and the present. Venice's physical aspect evidences a
past of vigorous commerce, military adventures, lively
politics and innovative art. Yet its modern inhabitants,
hard to spot among the throngs of tourists, appear to
have only one activity; tourism.
Venice's transition to a tourist attraction began before
the end of the republic. At the time of Goethe 's visit
in 1786, Venice was already an obligatory stop for rich
travelers from northern Europe, on the semi-
educational “Grand Tour”. Traditional events such as
the carnival and the sensa (“marriage to the sea”
ceremony) were made more opulent and extended in
duration for the benefit of the visitors. The Doge and
his officials became part-time Disneyland actors. The
republic was forced to make an inventory of its
priceless oil paintings, including those in private hands,
to restrict their sale to foreigners. But, commerce and
trade, the vital energy source, was dying as Venice was
inexorably bypassed by events of modern history; the
fall of Constantinople, the Portuguese opening of trade
routes to the East, the loss of trading outposts in the
Mediterranean, the Industrial Revolution.
Nowadays the impression of Venice that greets its
millions of visitors is predominantly that of a
renaissance and baroque city. It is Proust's urbanization
of the sea; a man-made jewel set in the natural beauty
of its lagoon. Unlike Florence or Siena, Venice's
renaissance buildings are not fortified, a result of the