Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [7]
Tafur counted the launching of ten “fully-armed” galleys within a six-hour span: one new warship every thirty-six minutes. No wonder that the speed with which the Arsenal of Venice could turn a bare keel into a fully rigged craft was admired throughout Europe. And commanders could have their galleys in any color they wanted—as long as it was black.
VENICE’S SUCCESS DERIVED, in part, from its single-minded sense of civic and spiritual destiny. Venetian mythology was potent and telling. Marco’s namesake, Saint Mark, was the city’s patron saint. In 828, a group of Venetian merchants conspired to snatch Mark’s body from its resting place in Alexandria and deliver it in triumph to the doge of Venice.
To justify their deed, the merchants devised a theory that they were preserving the body from the evil designs of Muslims, and they concocted a beguiling but apocryphal story that Mark, while sailing the waters of the Adriatic, encountered a storm that blew his craft into the lagoon on which Venice would later rise, and the boat remained overnight at just the spot on which the Doge’s Palace would be built. To top off the story, an angel supposedly appeared to Mark in a dream, uttering the comforting words “Be at rest here.” Over time, those words came to mean both that Mark would be safe from the storm in the lagoon and that he belonged—where else?—in Venice. The transfer of Mark’s body to Venice became perhaps the most prominent theft of a relic in all Christian history.
Mark’s body remained in Venice up to Marco Polo’s day and beyond, sheltered in the private chapel of the doge. The doge’s residence was the only building in Venice known as a palace; every other dwelling, no matter how large or prominently situated, even those along the Grand Canal, was known as a casa—that is, a home—usually abbreviated as “Ca’.” Thus, the Polos’ home was known as the Ca’ Polo, and is to this day.
Venice was an oligarchy ruled by 150 families comprising the city’s merchant aristocracy. Less than 1 percent of the population controlled the destiny of the other 99 percent. Occasionally, a family managed to break into this tightly knit fraternity to become new aristocrats, but the practice was ended in 1297. The Council of Venice did permit the city’s middle class to form guilds to further commerce. These associations and schools trained workers and craftsmen and helped the poor, and even paid for hospitals. It is possible that the Polos belonged to one or more guilds to further their commercial interests. They were recognized as prosperous merchants, but not civic leaders. It seems unlikely they would have been remembered at all, were it not for Marco Polo’s fantastic exploits and his zeal for self-promotion.
DOGE IS A Venetian word, as well as a Venetian concept. It comes from the Latin dux, or leader. The first doges were military commanders appointed by the Byzantine emperor. Once Venice started to emerge from obscurity, the city needed its own leader, and the concept of the doge became localized and self-perpetuating.
The secular doge retained a close connection with the imported saint, and was required to defend the holy relic in his charge. In exchange, Saint Mark was believed to offer Venice his blessing and protection. The peculiar nature of the agreement ensured that Venice would retain a Western, and Christian, ethos rather than align with Eastern sects, whose saints yielded to Mark in the Venetian pantheon. Henceforth, Saint Mark and the doge shared control of Venetian destiny.
The combination of the doge’s secular power and Mark’s spiritual authority imparted a sense of political destiny to the Republic—a secular destiny, despite everything.
THE DOGE was