Chapter X: The Commerce of Venice (1)

In the preceding chapter we have followed the political development of Venice, and seen that city acquire undisputed supremacy on the water and then reach out for land conquests as well. We shall now interrupt the rather depressing story of political wrangles, to consider the commercial prosperity of the new world-emporium.

“Venice,” says Burckhardt,[b] “recognised itself from the first as a strange and mysterious creation--the fruits of a higher power than human ingenuity. The key-note of the Venetian character was a spirit of proud and contemptuous isolation, which, joined to the hatred felt for the city by the other states of Italy, gave rise to a strong sense of solidarity within. The inhabitants meanwhile were united by the most powerful ties of interest in dealing both with the colonies and the possessions on the mainland; and forcing the population of the latter, that is of all the towns up to Bergamo, to buy and sell in Venice alone. A power which rested on means so artificial could only be maintained by internal harmony and unity. On the other hand, within the ranks of the nobility itself, travel and commercial enterprises, and the incessant wars with the Turks, saved the wealthy and dangerous from that fruitful source of conspiracies--idleness. A free government in the open air gave the Venetian aristocracy, as a whole, a healthy bias.”

The Venetian did, in point of fact, seem to differ materially from his Italian neighbours. We have seen that the city did not come into prominence until a relatively late period of the Middle Ages. Isolated geographically, it held aloof from its neighbouring states and never conceded allegiance to the Western Empire. Nominally, it sought the protection of Constantinople; but in reality it neither needed nor received aid from that quarter, and its allegiance to the Eastern emperor was probably due largely to the harmlessness of his supposed authority. The seafaring life had developed here, as so often elsewhere, a hardy and liberty-loving race. The Venetian reminds us strongly of his prototype, the old-time Phœnician. But in one regard the citizen of Venice proved even more self-reliant than his prototype: he insisted always on choosing his rulers; moreover, he not merely elected them, but he held them amenable to the law. We have seen a striking illustration of this in the preceding chapter, in the legal execution of the doge Marino Falieri. Seldom, if ever, has that incident been precisely duplicated. The doge of Venice, elected for life, was surrounded with all the semblance of royalty and was to all intents and purposes a sovereign. Yet when this distinguished incumbent of the office had proven himself disloyal to the constitution, he was adjudged in practically the same manner with his associates in crime, and subjected to the same punishment.

Nothing could be more characteristic than the manner in which the punishment of Falieri was carried out. Up to the very last the doge was treated with all respect. Even when led out to execution, he was still clothed in his ducal robes. The mandate of the law was carried out not in anger, but in sorrow; everything was legal, constitutional; there was no breach of dignity. A vast concourse of people waited at the door of the palace to view the corpse; but it was no clamouring mob: it was a quiet and orderly gathering of citizens. The fall of the sovereign had come about through no reign of terror such as pertained in latter-day France, when Louis XVI was executed; no revolution like that which brought Charles I to the block. The successor to the doge was elected in precisely the same manner as if the previous incumbent of this office had died a natural death. In all history, let it be repeated, there is scarcely a precise parallel for this exhibition of the far-reaching scope of Venetian justice.

We have now to view the real source of the power of this strange nation; a power based, as has repeatedly been suggested, upon the old familiar foundation of commercial prosperity. It was the independence born of this prosperity that made Venice feared and hated by all the other powers of Italy--feared and hated, but also admired. We read in Villani[c] that when in the early part of the fourteenth century Venice condescended to take common cause with Florence against the tyrant of Milan, the Florentines regarded it as a singular honour for their country to have become the confederate of the Venetians, “who, for their great excellence and power, had never allied themselves with any state or prince, except at their ancient conquest of Constantinople and Romania.” We learn, on the other hand, from the Venetians, how some of the wise men of their city regretted this same alliance with its attendant grasping after political conquests, on the mainland. A remarkable account has been preserved to us by Sanuto,[d] of the warning said to have been given to his people by the doge Mocenigo, who died in 1423, and whose alleged words we shall quote in some detail, because they furnish us with statistics that will serve as introductory to our further studies of the national commerce.

The doge asserted that the trade with Lombardy alone brought into Venice each year no less than 28,800,000 ducats.[a] “My lords,” he is reported as saying, “from the infirm state in which I find myself, I judge that I am drawing near the close of my career; and the obligations under which I lie to a country which has not only bred me, but has permitted me to attain such lofty prominence, and has showered upon me so many honours, have prompted me to call you together around me, in order that I may commend to your care this Christian city, and persuade you to live in concord with your neighbours, and to preserve this city, as I have done to the best of my ability. In my time, 4,000,000 ducats of the public debt have been paid though 6,000,000 remain, the latter of which were contracted for the war of Padua, Vicenza, and Verona. We have regularly paid the half-yearly interest on the funds and the salaries of the public offices. Our city at present sends abroad for purposes of trade in various parts of the world 10,000,000 ducats a year, of which the interest is not less than 2,000,000. In this city there are 3000 vessels of smaller burden, which carry 17,000 seamen; 300 large ships carrying 8000 seamen; 45 galleys and dromons constantly in commission for the protection of commerce, which employ 11,000 seamen, 3000 carpenters, 3000 caulkers. Of silk cloth-workers there are 3000; of manufacturers of fustian, 16,000. The rent-roll is estimated at 7,050,000 ducats. The income arising from let houses is 150,000. We find 1000 gentlemen with means varying between 700 and 4000 ducats a year. If you continue to prosper in this manner, you will become masters of all the gold in Christendom. But, I beseech you, keep your fingers from your neighbours, as you would keep them out of the fire, and engage in no unjust wars, for in such errors God will not support princes. Everybody knows that the Turkish war has rendered you expert and brave in maritime enterprises. You have six able captains, competent to command large fleets. You have many persons well versed in diplomacy and in the government of cities, who are ambassadors of perfect experience. You have numerous doctors in different sciences, and especially in the law, who enjoy high credit for their learning among strangers. Your mint coins annually 1,000,000 ducats of gold and 200,000 ducats of silver, of minor pieces, 800,000. Of this sum 500,000 go to Syria, 100,000 to the Terra Firma, 100,000 to various other places, 100,000 to England. The remainder is used at home. You are aware that the Florentines send here every year 16,000 pieces of fine cloth, of which we dispose in Barbary, Egypt, Syria, Cyprus, Rhodes, Romania, the Morea, and Istria, and that they bring to our city monthly 60,000 (70,000?) ducats’ worth of merchandise, amounting annually to 840,000 or more, and in exchange purchase our goods to our great advantage.

“Therefore it behoves you to beware lest this city decline. It behoves you to exercise extreme caution in the choice of my successor, in whose power it will be, to a considerable extent, to govern the republic for good or for evil. Many of you are inclined to Messer Francesco Foscari, and do not, I apprehend, sufficiently know his impetuous character, and proud, supercilious disposition. If he is made doge, you will be at war continually. Those who now possess 10,000 ducats will have only 1000. Those who possess ten houses will be proprietors of one, and those who now own ten coats will be reduced to a single coat. You will lose your money and your reputation. You will be at the mercy of a soldiery. I have found it impossible to forbear expressing to you thus my opinion. May God help you to make the wisest choice! May he rule your hearts to preserve peace.”

Such [says Hazlitt[e]] were the last words of a great and prophetic statesman. The glaze of death was soon upon those eyes. Those lips were soon mute. On the 4th of April, 1423, Tommaso Mocenigo expired, leaving his country more prosperous and opulent than she had ever yet been. Her treasury was full. Her debt was considerably reduced. The statistics of her taxation and expenditure exhibited a surplus of 1,000,000 a year. Her home and foreign trade was flourishing beyond any precedent. No European power was more highly respected, and the alliance of none was more eagerly sought and cultivated.[e]

These calculations of Mocenigo are declared by Hallam[f] to be so strange and manifestly inexact as to deserve little regard; they are, however, viewed with greater consideration by Daru,[g] and by Hazlitt[e]. Doubtless they have not the accuracy of the reports of modern statisticians, yet, as a general statement of what at least are approximate facts, they have the fullest interest, and the utmost significance. They furnish a clew to the power and greatness of this remarkable city; a city which in the year 1422 is said to have had a population of only 190,000, yet which was the most powerful state of Italy, and which after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 was the uncontested world metropolis.

In considering the precise conditions of Venetian commerce and manufacture it will be well to take at the same time a general view of the commerce of late antiquity, that the conditions of trade in the East to which Venice fell heir may be understood.[a]

It was to their political and territorial situation that the Venetians owed their direction towards commercial operations--the cause of their prosperity. Fugitives from the Italian continent, refuged in small, uncultivated, barren islands, without certain communication with the continent, they saw nothing round them but the sea, in their hands a few fleeting possessions which they had saved from the general devastation, but which would soon be lost if work and industry could not fructify them.

Salt was the only product of the soil they trod. Fishery could only imperfectly provide a subsistence. But this fishery, this salt, became a means of exchange to provide things necessary for life. Nearly everything was lacking. The inhabitants of the lagunes were reduced to seek on the neighbouring continent grain, wood, metals, stone, even water. Happily for them their neighbours could bring them nothing. These people, desolated by continual war, were not given to navigation. If at that time, when so many fugitives took refuge in the lagunes, there had been near them a commercial maritime town eager to bring them all they wanted, such a town would have taken from them the few riches they had brought into the islands, and little by little these fugitives, instead of creating a country on uncultivated wastes, would have sought safety, ease, or work with the foreigner. But the rigour of their condition, the deprivation of all help condemned them to make great efforts, and their heroic works contributed also to their happiness and glory.

Again, they would hardly have believed it to be a good thing that the severity of their lot made them exert themselves on the sea. Continually obliged themselves to seek what was lacking, they necessarily acquired a habit of braving the ocean. When what they wanted was not to be found on the neighbouring coast they sought it on the opposite one. Gradually they noted at what points they could make their purchases or exchanges with most advantage. These frequent crossings, made on their own account, furnished occasion for becoming intermediaries for the two Adriatic shores. These journeys had at first for object only the provisioning of the islands. The spirit of commerce gave them wider views; their limits were extended, their means perfected. Art and cupidity essayed more difficult routes, and it was seen that this new town, placed in a position so easy to defend, almost on the borders which separate Europe from Asia, was called to become through the industry of its inhabitants the principal market for western peoples. Other local circumstances gave it the means of easy communication with a large number of consumers. Italy being separated from Germany by the Alps was impracticable for commerce. A port situated at the end of the Adriatic and the mouth of the Po would be the natural market for wools, silks, cotton, saffron, oil, manna, and all the other productions which Italy furnished to Hungary and Germany.

For the same reason, all that the north had to get from the Levant, Africa, and Spain had to pass by Venice. Journeys beyond the straits of Gibraltar towards the eastern coast of Europe then meant a voyage of long duration. Navigation was so imperfect that the eastern peoples had not yet learned to seek Mediterranean products, and it was very rarely that they made expeditions, which meant so much expense, danger, and loss of time. The result was that the end of the Adriatic Sea was the sole point of communication with the navigable sea, and Venice was a mart offering equal security against all enemies and tempests. The Po, the Brenta, and the Adige seemed to empty into the basin of the lagunes expressly to offer the Venetians an easy route by which they could take without danger or great expense all productions demanded by eastern Italy. Also it was a constant care with this growing republic to assure free navigation and all kinds of franchise on these waters and their numerous affluents. About the year 713 the first doge of the republic concluded a peace with Liutprand, king of Lombardy, which preserved to Venetians commercial privileges in the ports and lands of this kingdom. Not only were they exempt, with their neighbours, from all dues, but they held sovereign rights in perpetuity, and the exercise of these gave them the means of making themselves a burden to their rivals. One even sees them, in the fifteenth century, offering to furnish Filippo Maria Visconti, duke of Milan, with ten thousand foot and ten thousand horse, if he would let them administer the custom-houses of his capital.

The republic did not give less attention to keeping the exclusive privilege of furnishing this continent with products of her own small territory. She perfected the art of extracting salt, and appropriated, as far as she could, all the salt beds of her coasts. She prevented her neighbours from exploiting those they had. The Venetians sold two qualities of salt--that manufactured by themselves in their lagunes, called Chioggia salt, and that drawn from the salt beds of Cervia, Istria, Dalmatia, Sicily, the African coasts, the Black Sea, and even Astrakhan. All these foreign salts were comprised under the name of sea-salt or ultramarine salt. The first was of superior quality and consequently of higher price. The Cervian salt beds belonged to the Bolognaise. With them the Venetians treated, and, to preserve the commerce of all the salt from this source, the latter determined the quantity which should be allowed to be sold, establishing surveillance even on the place of fabrication. The republic even obtained the right to transport rocksalt which southern Germany and Croatia took from their mines. They forced the king of Hungary to close his. The coast people on the Adriatic were not allowed to send away their salt, while the inhabitants of Italy could not take any but Venetian salt.

For any subject of the republic to buy foreign salt was a crime. The house of the offender was razed, and he himself banished forever. Yet while Venice made this monopoly she furnished all these people, now her tributaries, with excellent salt at a very low price. Sales were effected by companies, which undertook to provision such and such a country. It is almost incredible how much treasure this one branch of commerce for fourteen centuries procured the Venetians. These privileges cost some bloodshed. But the defence of their pretensions and the wars they had to sustain against the corsairs and jealous neighbours put them under the necessity of forming a military marine. After some centuries of effort, the flag of St. Mark was seen proudly flying all along the Mediterranean. Venetian fleets made conquests, the republic founded rich colonies, extended its navigation and commerce in all then known seas, and arrogated the sovereignty of the Adriatic Sea. The continual wars which divided other peoples, their gross ignorance, their almost general isolation with regard to commerce and navigation, were so many favourable circumstances which gave the republic time to establish the power of her marine and the prosperity of her industry quite firmly.

VENICE IN THE LEVANT

After the fall of the Eastern Empire, Venice became mistress of nearly all the maritime points of that empire, and had immense advantages in all the Levant markets. Her merchants there enjoyed all the privileges of the natives, and in every port her ships found not only free harbourage but special protection. For eight centuries, that is from the epoch when the Venetians wanted to become conquerors over the Italian lands, legislation and politics had for their principal object the prosperity of commerce. Privileges from the foreigner, assured safety with them, facilities for the moving about of men, goods, and capital, the establishment of banks, perfecting of money, encouragement of industrial manufactures, a vigilant but not officious policy, a religious tolerance little known among other nations, all concurred to make for Venetian commercial greatness.

If to these advantages one adds the possibility of obtaining civic rights, and considers that a share in sovereignty was attached to this title, one can imagine what an influx of strangers augmented the population of Venice and increased its prosperity by bringing capital and new industries. One can conceive also how citizens of such a state would be attached to their country, and what would be the strength and resources of this government. One would feel at the same time that the republic would lose with regard to all these things when she adopted, or rather submitted to, an aristocratic government. It has been said that those of the citizens who arrogated all authority compensated the others by abandoning to them all the advantages resulting from commerce. Indeed, this has been given as a mark of disinterestedness and moderation from the aristocratic classes. But this is an error. It is evident that, in spite of a prohibitive law, the nobles continued to be merchants until that epoch when the republic was already shorn of its power and commerce of its splendour. Instances of this are to be found at every step in history.

If one reflects on the influence that habits of work, emulation, riches, travel, and association with foreigners must necessarily have had on the manners of a people and the development of their intellectual faculties, one may guess that the Venetians must already have become a polished nation when other peoples, whom nature seemed to have placed in a different rank, were still barbarians. One is not surprised to read in the history of Charlemagne that the lords who composed his court were astonished to see, at the Pavia fair, valuable carpets, silken stuffs, gold tissues, pearls, and precious stones spread out by Venetian merchants. Doubtless these lofty barons very much despised the merchants and their business, but their pride would be lowered somewhat when Pepin was beaten by these same men; when European kings found themselves obliged to ask for Venetian ships to get into Palestine; and when the Baldwins, the Montmorencies, and the counts of Champagne and of Montfort contracted alliance with these merchants to conquer and share the empire of Constantinople.

This superiority of the Venetians over other European peoples--we except the Tuscans, whose literary glory gives them an infinite ascendency--was maintained until well into the fifteenth century. All French, German, and English towns were a formless mass of houses without architecture or monuments. The lords of these countries lived in melancholy fortresses, and hardly knew the meaning of luxury and art. At this epoch there was neither letters nor elegance except in Italy and the part of Spain occupied by the Moors. It would hardly be just to make out that all these advantages were derived from one sole cause. Venice no doubt owed her prosperity partly to the good fortune of having a regular government long before other nations. But this government which watched over the preservation of public fortune was not the cause of national wealth; that was entirely due to commerce. From the eighth century, the commerce of Venice with the East was sufficiently important to determine her to remain in alliance with the emperor Nicephorus, in spite of Charlemagne’s threats.

While, however, the Venetians enjoyed that opulence which is the just fruit of labour, they were kept by their sumptuary laws within the bounds of a wise economy--an economy which alone conserves the capital which feeds commerce and is sole regulator of the price of handiwork. Commerce has relations with the constitution. In the government of a despot it is founded on luxury, its only object being to procure the nation all that can minister to its pride, its luxuries, its fancies; in the government of many it is generally founded on economy. Standing between the voluptuous peoples of the East and the uncultivated European nations, the Venetians imitated the industry of the one and preserved the simplicity of the other.

During the first centuries of the Venetian Republic, all Europe was in an uncultured condition. Art had left ancient Italy to pass over to the empire and ornament the new capital of the world. But when Fortune arrived unexpectedly with gifts, she found no man ready to receive them. The peoples to whom Constantine had transported his throne had a taste for voluptuousness rather than a genius for activity. In this neighbourhood, a people of high antiquity, enlightened long before the barbarians of the West, owed to its traditions, its activity, its conquests, that variety of knowledge and works which distinguished civilised nations. The Venetians were continually changing the products of the East against merchandise from all Europe; to form such a chain of communication was much for a population of fishers. But they carried their industry even further. They saw that the Grecian Empire received many useful things from far-off countries and from peoples almost unknown, but also a multitude of superfluities which were becoming needful for a society more refined. They established themselves as near as they could to the source of these objects, and such was the success of their activity and courage that they became first the carriers and then the commercial masters of pleasure-loving Constantinople.

The peninsula of the Tauric Chersonese, situated at the end of the Black Sea, had long been for the great cities of the Hellespont and the Greek seas what Sicily had been for Rome--an inexhaustible storehouse assuring subsistence to the population. This peninsula fed Athens, and paid an annual tribute of 180,000 measures of wheat to Mithridates. It had abundant salt beds and furnished wools and hides. These objects of first necessity acquired a new value through the vicinity of a town like Constantinople. Marco Polo, the Venetian, speaks of a journey made on this coast by his father towards the middle of the thirteenth century.

The abundance of sequins throughout the East proves that the Venetians had great commerce there--that their coin was taken confidently, and that they were obliged to pay for a part of their purchases in ready money. There is another fact by which one can judge of the great number of Venetians spread through the Greek Empire. When Manuel Comnenus, imitating the example of Mithridates, arrested in one day all subjects of the republic found in the state, the prisons could hardly suffice to contain them; they had to fill the churches and monasteries. The difficulty of protecting their establishments in Asia, the jealousy of the Genoese, and the revolutions of the Eastern Empire, obliged the Venetians many times to seek new routes to re-establish their constantly interrupted commercial relations.

The story of the vicissitudes which have changed so often the course of commerce--that commerce which like a river pours continually into the West, is one well worthy of attention. It seemed that Europe could not suffice for herself. The activity of its inhabitants exhausted itself in a thousand ways which produced needs foreign to its welfare. From all time they counted eastern merchandise among objects of the first necessity, and this commerce has occupied the industry of several peoples more or less fortunately placed.[g]

Let us go back to Roman times, and trace briefly the development of trade routes.

THE COMMERCIAL FOREBEARS OF THE VENETIANS

The crowd of barbarian people who inundated the Roman Empire at the end of its existence brought with it the germs of a new life; when Rome had succumbed, these germs began to develop themselves in all parts of Europe--races young and vigorous but still half barbarous came, all at once, into the foreground of history; mingled with the people whom Rome, up till now, had kept under the yoke, they founded new nationalities; it was a general transformation in the state, in society, and in the ways and customs. Nevertheless, this overthrow did not affect all the conditions of the life of the people in the same degree. In the domain of commercial life we do not find, on the threshold of the Middle Ages, any event which approaches in importance the discovery of the sea route to the East Indies and the discovery of America, events which coincide with the beginning of the modern epoch, and which have unexpectedly opened new paths for commerce.

Between antiquity and the Middle Ages the transition was less abrupt; the commercial intercourse and markets remained, generally, the same as of old. Since the conquests of Alexander had brought the civilised people of the West into contact with the remote East, the main currents of commerce set thitherward, for there was the source of production of those articles which had become necessary to the insatiable masters of the world. From the Indies were obtained those spices which the Greeks and Romans put into their food to heighten its flavour, the greater part of the perfumes which they sprinkled on their persons and in their apartments, and the ivory with which they made their precious utensils. China furnished the silk with which the women, and later on, with the growth of luxury, even the men of the imperial epoch loved to clothe themselves; for jewels, the mountains of Persia and India sent their precious stones; the Indian Ocean, its pearls.

Little by little, this commerce increased to such an extent, that in the time of Pliny, the Roman Empire expended each year in Asia, in payment of merchandise obtained from thence, 100,000,000 sesterces (about £800,000), of which India alone absorbed one-half. In the Middle Ages, the Levant was still the principal goal of the merchant of the West. The commodities which later generations brought from America, such as sugar and cotton, were then obtained from Smyrna, Asia Minor, or Cyprus; condiments from India, spices and especially pepper, were some of the most highly appreciated commodities at this period. But if we seek the origin of the delicate fabrics, or the carpets which were used at the courts and among the wealthy burghers of the Middle Ages, we have almost always to go to the East. Thence came the raw material, very often the tissue or the embroidery, and finally the name of the material.

As trade followed the same lines as in ancient days, so the great commercial routes remained the same. To obtain the products of the Levant, the merchantmen of the West, not knowing the route by the Cape of Good Hope, confined themselves to the short voyage through the Mediterranean or the waters which communicate directly with it. There they were certain to find, along the shore, markets already famous in ancient times, Alexandria, Tyre, Berytus, Antioch, Byzantium, Trebizond; the creation of a new market was a great exception. Merchandise still arrived at the ports of the Mediterranean or of the Pontus from the remote East by the old ways of the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf; that coming from the centre of Asia overland still followed the route we find already quoted in Greek and Roman geographies from the narratives of the merchants.

The only elements which had changed in commerce were the mediums; Italians, Provençals, and Catalans had taken the place of Greeks and Romans as commercial nations. But, with respect to this, do not let us forget that the transition between antiquity and the Middle Ages was gradual. In fact, when the empire was divided into two parts, the Byzantine half had inherited the commerce of the East as a natural result of its geographical situation. Having survived invasions, it played the part of medium in the commercial relations between the West and the East, until the time when the citizens of the sea-port towns of Italy, southern France, and Spain were grown strong enough to do without one.

We possess a sufficient number of documents dating from the time of Justinian (527-565 A.D.) to make a complete picture of the state of the East at this time, from the commercial point of view. The most remote countries of Asia with which the Greeks of Byzantium maintained a regular commerce were also those which furnished the most precious and choice products. For centuries, the silk industry had flourished in China, but the secret of it had been so well kept that strangers had never been able to learn the process of its manufacture. At length there came a time when another country was able, in its turn, to cultivate this important branch of industry. This good fortune fell to the lot of the small kingdom of Khotan, in the centre of Asia, in consequence of the marriage of its king with a Chinese princess who, it is said, betrayed the secret of her compatriots and, managing to elude the supervision of the custom-house officers, brought silkworms, eggs, and the seeds of the mulberry tree into her new country.

We cannot say with certainty whether, in the seventh century, the manufacture of silk had already spread from the East to the West, and passed beyond the borders of Khotan, but we may assume that the greater part of the silk which the western merchants received came from China. The Chinese exported their products themselves; but at this time, with rare exceptions, their ships only conveyed them as far as Ceylon, and their caravans did not go beyond the frontiers of Turkestan. There other nations received the precious wares and carried them farther west. But it is difficult to make a distinction, for the ancient classical writers, and those of the Byzantine epoch after them, gave the name of Seres, not only to the producers of silk, but also to the various peoples engaged in its distribution.

Such a silk-trading nation were the inhabitants of Sogdiana, in the lowlands of Bokhara, a race distinguished from the remotest times for their taste and aptitude for commerce. The silk was brought to them by caravans from China, and they, in their turn, conveyed it either to the markets of the north of Iran, or to those south of the Caspian Sea. Our sources of information do not, indeed, positively state this as a fact. In his chronicle, Theophanes of Byzantium [j] relates that the markets and ports frequented by the silk merchants had changed masters three times at short intervals; having originally been in the possession of the Persians, they were taken from them by the so-called White Huns (the Yue-thsi or Yuechi of the Chinese), and finally were occupied by the Turks.

By whatever route the silk was conveyed, the Persians always endeavoured to receive it first, and they watched jealously that it did not reach the Romans of the East by any other route than that which traversed their country or by any other hands than theirs. Nevertheless, a certain portion of the silk was despatched from China to Ceylon by sea; there it was transhipped and reached the Persian Gulf by the west coast of India and the south coast of Carmania. It is obvious that when Chinese wares followed the sea route, they might escape the Persians, for from Ceylon it was possible to take them by the south of Arabia and Ethiopia. Herein lay a danger to the Persian monopoly which the emperor Justinian contrived to turn to his advantage. The Byzantines found it a great hardship to be reduced to having no other intermediaries for these, to them indispensable, articles than the Persians. There was no other nation with whom they were so frequently at war, and how could they see with indifference their own merchants supplying their enemies with enormous sums in payment for the silks they purchased; or how bear patiently the frequent interruptions to trade due to a state of warfare?

With a view to remedying these inconveniences, the emperor Justinian attempted in the year 532 to open a road for the silk trade through Ethiopia; the Ethiopians could, he thought, purchase the silk from the Indians, and sell it to the Byzantines. Their king, an ally of Byzantium, allured by the prospect of gain, entered into the emperor’s views. But when his subjects arrived at the ports which the vessels from India had just entered, they found the Persians masters of the situation in their double capacity of neighbours and ancient clients; they were forced to return empty-handed, and the Persians remained, for the nonce, in uncontested possession of their monopoly.

When it was proved that the Ethiopians were neither strong nor enterprising enough to wrest the silk trade from the hands of the Persians, the problem seemed, for an instant, insoluble. Happily Justinian succeeded in securing some silkworms’ eggs, brought back by missionary monks who had penetrated to the heart of the countries which produced them, probably to Khotan (about the year 552). Thus it is that the manufacture of silk was introduced into the Grecian Empire, and from the year 568 Justin II, the successor to Justinian, was able to show it in full activity to a Turkish ambassador who happened to be at his court. Many years elapsed, it is true, before sufficient raw silk was produced in Greece to satisfy the demands of the native industry. For a long time the greater part of the raw material and the better qualities of silk had to be brought from China, and the exorbitant claims of the Persian middlemen to be endured.

But the Persians were not merely transmitters, they were manufacturers also. Hwen Tsang, who traversed the eastern frontier of Persia at the beginning of the seventh century, says that the Persians were skilled in the weaving of silken or woollen stuffs and carpets, and that products of their industry were highly prized in the neighbouring kingdoms. They were assisted by foreign workmen, who came to settle in Persia voluntarily or under coercion from the Asiatic countries subject to Byzantium. By the adoption of an unwise system of monopoly ruinous to the silk-weavers of his country, Justinian promoted their emigration in large numbers to Persia, others were brought there by force by King Sapor II as part of the spoils he brought back from his victorious campaign in Mesopotamia and Syria. A tradition current several generations later traced the origin of the silk manufacture in Tuster, Susa, and other Persian cities, to the colonies of Greek craftsmen.

To satisfy the luxury of the Sassanidian court, quantities of stuffs of great value were necessary. When the victorious Greek army, led by the emperor Heraclius against the Persians, took possession of the royal castle of Dastagerd, in the year 627, they found there a quantity of raw silk and piles of silken garments, embroidered carpets, and other articles of this kind. It is permissible to suppose that they were of native manufacture. The spoil gained on this occasion comprised other things worthy of note. Large quantities of spices, evidently of Indian origin, pepper, ginger, aloes, and aloe-wood (_agallochum_) fell into the hands of the victors; they were consigned to the flames with the rest, as it was impossible to carry everything off. Let us add that in the year 636-637, at the storming of Madain (Ctesiphon), the capital of the Sassanid Empire, by the Arabs, there were found large supplies of musk, amber, sandalwood, and enough camphor to freight a ship; this last produced nowhere but in the islands beyond India. The Arabs were so ignorant of its uses, that they proposed to use it to flavour their bread. All this proves to us that the luxury of the Sassanidian court was one of the principal causes which turned the stream of Levantine commerce towards Persia.

After the Persians had levied their supplies on the merchandise in transit, there yet remained enormous quantities which passed directly into the Byzantine Empire.[h] These goods were brought across Lake Aral or down the Oxus into the Caspian Sea. From this sea they entered the Volga, which flows into it, and thence were carried as far as that place, which is eighteen miles from the Tanaïs. Man had even tried to dig a canal of communication between the two rivers. Arrived in the Tanaïs, Asiatic productions thence descended into the Palus-Mæotis, crossed the Black Sea, and went to fill the stores of Constantinople, then the most flourishing town in the world. An Armenian king thought of shortening this journey by avoiding the Volga, Tanaïs, and Palus-Mæotis. He established direct communication between the Cyrus, which flows into the Caspian Sea, and the Phasis, which runs towards the end of the Pontus-Euxinus. The crossing by land was only fifteen leagues. One hundred and twenty bridges were thrown between the mountains to make this route practicable for commerce, and these still witness to the greatness, utility, and difficulties of the enterprise.

So long as commerce followed this route it enriched the maritime towns of Kaffa, Trebizond, Sinope, and Byzantium, on the Black Sea. The greed of the Tatars multiplied dangers on this route; they diverted towards Lake Aral the Gihon and the Sihun, two rivers which discharged into the Caspian Sea, and thus destroyed one of the communications between India and Europe. Saracen industry reopened communication with the Red Sea, Egypt, and Alexandria, and all the Syrian ports became marts for oriental merchandise. This furnished the opportunity to the Venetian trader. Never did people destined to rise to such great commercial enterprise begin under narrower circumstances. The Venetians had no territory. They were tributary to their neighbours for all necessaries of life, and had nothing to offer in exchange save fish and salt--natural products, of which man could not considerably augment the value. Yet, inasmuch as the profits of this commerce were mediocre, so it was important to extend them. To increase the consumption of fish, it was necessary to prepare it in such a way that it would keep; and to have no rivals in the sale of salt, it was imperative to sell at the lowest price.

The very poor profits that the islanders could make on these two objects furnished them the means of buying larger products from the neighbouring coasts. Wood from Dalmatia they made into boats, their islands became dockyards that provided means of navigation on the neighbouring rivers and ports. In proportion as the towns of Aquila, Padua, and Ravenna acquired prosperity, so handicraft became dearer, and the inhabitants more disdainful of this kind of work. Thus to the Venetians there resulted not only the advantage of selling objects augmented in value by their labour, but the still greater one of perfecting themselves in the art of naval construction, while other peoples did not make similar progress. Moreover, they always found plenty of material, and could consequently always increase their marine. Their commerce becoming more profitable, they transported into their isles other rough products, higher priced and capable of receiving a still greater value when worked; flax and hemp to make naval equipage, iron to forge anchors and arms. These were the things which they bartered for the coveted products of the East. Growing still richer, they exercised their talents on things more valuable--wool, cotton, silk, silver, gold, even making a high-priced ware of such common material as glass.[g]

Indeed, the manufacture of ornamental glass vessels became so distinctively a Venetian specialty, and one carried to such unrivalled perfection, that a more detailed reference to this branch of manufacture may well occupy our attention.[a]

VENETIAN GLASS

The glass manufactories, to believe the Venetian authors, were almost contemporaneous with the founding of the city itself. A great event which marked the beginning of the twelfth century was the means of increasing their prosperity, and contributed to the introduction of art into a manufacture until then purely industrial. The Venetian Republic had, in short, participated in the taking of Constantinople by the Latins (1204), and imbued as she was with the spirit of commerce, she sought to derive every possible advantage from this victory, in favour of her dawning manufactures. The glass manufactories of the Eastern Empire were inspected by agents of the republic, and Greek workmen were allured to Venice. It is certain that, to date from the end of the thirteenth century, an uninterrupted series may be produced of acts of the Venetian government, which prove both the importance of the glass manufactories from that remote period, and the special interest ever taken by the state in the cultivation of the art, which, to use the expression of a Venetian writer, it guarded as the apple of its eye. In this it displayed great sagacity, since for many centuries the four quarters of the world were inundated by the various productions of the glass manufactories of Venice; and the sums of money procured to the republic by this branch of industry alone would utterly defy calculation.

From the end of the thirteenth century, the manufactories of glass had so multiplied in the interior of Venice, that the city was incessantly exposed to fires. In 1287, a decree of the great council prohibited any manufactory of glass to be established within the city, unless by the proprietor of the house in which it was to be carried on. As this exception in favour of the proprietors perpetuated the inconveniences which the government had endeavoured to guard against, a new decree was issued on the 8th of October, 1291, by which all the manufactories of glass still existing in the interior of Venice were ordered to be demolished and removed out of the city.

It was then that choice was made of the island of Murano, which is only separated from Venice by a canal of small extent, for establishing in it the manufactories of glass. In a few years, the whole island was covered with glass manufactories of various descriptions. But a new decree of the 11th of August, 1592, modified the rigour of the previous regulations in favour of the manufactories of small glassware (_fabbriche di conterie_) for the making of beads, false stones, and glass jewels. These were now allowed to be set up in the very interior of Venice, with the sole condition of their being insulated at least five paces from any habitation.

This favour granted to glass jewelry proceeded from the immense trade in it carried on by Venice at that period, and the government was careful in no way to check a branch of industry which extended its relations in Africa and Asia, and consequently favoured the extension of its navy, upon which depended the increase of the power of the republic.

The Venetian glass-makers were soon engaged almost exclusively in this branch of its manufacture, a circumstance which may be accounted for as follows: About 1250, a Venetian Matteo Polo and his brother Niccolo, father of the celebrated Marco Polo, were attracted by commercial views to Constantinople. In 1256 they both visited the khan of Tatary, who inhabited the banks of the Volga. War having obliged them to leave the states of Bereke,[19] in which they had been stopping, they passed on to Bokhara, to the south of the Caspian Sea, and afterwards proceeded to the court of Kublai, great khan of the Tatars, whose sovereignty extended over the greater part of Asia. On their return to their own country, after twenty years’ absence, they found Marco Polo, whom they had left in the cradle. Their narrations inflamed the imagination of the young man, who desired to accompany his father and uncle in a new journey, on which they set out. Marco Polo went with them in 1271. In 1274 he arrived at the court of Kublai-Khan, attached himself to the service of that monarch, became governor of one of his provinces, and was trusted by him with the most important missions.

Extensive travels, and the duties of his high station, filled up the best years of Marco Polo’s life. On returning to Venice, in 1295, after having explored the greater part of Central Asia, the shores and islands of the Indian Ocean, and those of the Persian Gulf, he pointed out to his fellow-citizens, whose intrepidity as navigators was equal to their love of enterprise as merchants, the routes they must follow to spread the productions of European industry over Tatary, India, and even as far as China; he described the manners of the people who inhabited these immense regions, and their extraordinary predilection for beads, coloured stones, and jewels of every description, with which they were fond of adorning their persons and of decorating their garments. Nothing more was needed to excite the industrial and mercantile spirit of the Venetians. The glass-makers particularly devoted themselves more zealously than ever to the manufacture of beads and glass jewels (_arte del margaritaio_, _arte del perlaio_), a manufacture which, from that time, formed a totally distinct branch from that of glass vessels (_fabbriche di vassellami o recipiendi di vetro e cristallo_). The names of Cristoforo Briani and of Domenico Miotto have been handed down to us as having been the inventors of coloured beads (_margarite_), and as having also been the first glass-makers who turned their attention to the imitation of precious stones.

This Miotto having been successful in a large speculation he had made at Bassora, almost all the Venetian glass-makers applied themselves to the manufacture of these objects, which were soon dispersed over Egypt, Ethiopia, and Abyssinia, along the coasts of North Africa, over central Asia, India, and even as far as China.

This commercial movement would necessarily retard during the course of the fourteenth century, any progress in the manufacture of glass vessels; in fact, all the information existing upon the glass-making of Venice at this period refers for the most part only to the making of the margarite, which were a source of such commercial advantages to the republic. Carlo Marino quotes a document from which it appears that a certain Andolo de Savignon, Genoese ambassador at the court of the emperor of China, obtained from the great council full powers to export this same glass jewellery to a very considerable amount. We learn also, from the inventories of the fourteenth century, that at that period richly ornamented vases of glass were still obtained from the East. Yet the manufacturers of glass vessels were already endeavouring to procure the documents most needed for the improvement of their productions. The learned Morelli has given an extract from a manuscript contained in the Naniana library, and dating from the fourteenth century, which gives an account of the processes employed by the Greeks for rendering glass colourless and spotless, for gilding and staining it, and for covering it with paintings.

The invasion of the Eastern Empire by the Turks, and the taking of Constantinople in 1453, which occasioned the immigration of so many artists into Italy, was beneficial to glass-making, as well as to the other industrial arts. To date from the fifteenth century, we find the manufacture of glass vessels taking a new direction. The Venetian glass-makers borrowed from the Greeks all their processes for colouring, gilding, and enamelling glass; and the Renaissance having restored a taste for the fine forms of antiquity, the art of glass-making followed the movement given by the great artists at that period who rendered Italy illustrious; and vases were produced in no wise inferior in form to those bequeathed by antiquity. Coccius Sabellicus,[k] a Venetian historian of the fifteenth century, affords us evidence of the admiration excited in his time by the beautiful and varied productions of the Venetian glass manufactories.

At the end of the fifteenth century, or rather in the first years of the sixteenth, the Venetian glass-makers distinguished themselves by a new invention, that of vases enriched with filagrees of glass, either white or coloured, which twisted themselves into a thousand varied patterns, and appeared as if encrusted in the middle of the paste of the colourless and transparent crystal. This invention, which, while it enriched the vases with an indestructible ornamentation, preserved at the same time their light and graceful forms, gave a new impulse to the manufactories of glassware, and caused their beautiful productions to be even more sought after by every nation of Europe. Accordingly the Venetian government used every possible precaution to prevent the secret of this new manufacture from being discovered, or Venetian workmen from carrying away this branch of industry to other nations.

Already, in the thirteenth century, a decree of the great council had prohibited the exportation, without the authority of the state, of the principal materials used in the composition of glass. On the 13th of February, 1490, the superintendence of the manufactories of Murano was intrusted to the chief of the Council of Ten, and, on the 27th of October, 1547, the council reserved to itself the care of watching over the manufactories to prevent the art of glass-making from being carried abroad. Yet all these precautions did not appear to have been sufficient, and the inquisition of the state, in the twenty-sixth article of its statutes, announced the following decision: “If a workman transport his art into a foreign country to the injury of the republic, a message shall be sent to him to return; if he does not obey, the persons most nearly related to him shall be put into prison. If, notwithstanding the imprisonment of his relatives, he persists in remaining abroad, an emissary shall be commissioned to put him to death.” M. Daru, who, in his _Histoire de la république de Venise_, has given us the text of this decree, which he had copied from the archives of the republic, adds that, in a document deposited in the archives of foreign affairs, two instances were recorded of the execution of this punishment on some workmen whom the emperor Leopold had enticed into his states.

If the government of Venice thought it needful, on the one hand, to display all its severity against the glass-makers who should thus betray the interests of their country, it, on the other hand, loaded with favours those who remained faithful to its service, and great privileges were accorded to the island of Murano. From the thirteenth century, the inhabitants of Murano, for instance, obtained the rights of citizens of Venice, which rendered them admissible to all the high offices of the state.[i]

OTHER MANUFACTURES

Needless to say, glass production was not the only manufacturing industry that flourished in Venice. From an early time there were brass or iron foundries, or both, in operation there; but much more important forms of manufacture than these were the making of cloth-of-gold and of purple dye. These with glass-making were the most ancient, the most extensive, and the most celebrated of Venetian industries.[a]