Venice, the Italian name being
Venezia and the Latin, Venexia, is the capital of the region of Veneto. The
region has an approximate population of 270,000 people and the city itself
around 62,000. The city is located at
the northern end of the Adriatic Sea and consists of the mainland, called
Terrafirma, (firm land) and 118 islands, with 150 canals in a shallow lagoon
and 400 bridges. The Italians built a causeway from the mainland to Venice in
1930, under the administration of Benito Mussolini. One can now travel to the
city by train or car. However, any further travel is by foot or boat. The
Venetian community is a part of the islands stretching from the Po River
estuary to the city
Venice is the largest urban-
car-free area in Europe. The most famous form of traveling in Venice is by
Gondola, but this form of travel is limited to tourists, funerals, and other
ceremonies. People, who live and work there, travel by a vaporetto (similar to a city bus) or a traghetto, a large foot passenger ferry that crosses the Grand
Canal at certain locations. Interestingly, the name of the Rialto Bridge
stretching over the Canal is a contraction of
riva-alto, high bridge from shore to shore.
Some historians conjecture that the
city developed from an influx of people fleeing from the invasions of German
tribes, the Quadi and Marcomanni, to the estuary of the Po River, in the years
of 166-168 AD. The legendary origins of the city relate that Roman refugees
escaping from the Goths founded Venice in 422 AD.
After the overthrow of the Roman defenses by
the Goths in the fifth century, some fifty years later, Attila the Hun invaded
Italy. However, the longest and most enduring conquerors were the Lombards, a
German tribe who came in 568 and fought the Byzantines, the eastern Roman
Empire legions, and took under their control many of the islands. The original Italian name of the Lombards was
Longobardi, meaning those of the long beards.
After the Lombards ceased their
encroachment, a small strip island, Malamocco, in the Venetian lagoon, remained
under Byzantine power. It was the seat of the local Byzantine governor, the
Doge. In 811-827 AD the prestige of the new city increased significantly with
the theft of the Evangelist St. Mark’s relics, from Myra, Turkey during the
Ottoman Empire incursion. The Saint was
originally from Alexandria, Egypt. The people placed these relics in a recently
built basilica. As the town developed and the Byzantine power declined an
independent character emerged, leading to autonomy and eventual independence as
a Maritime Republic she was La Serenissima Repúbblica Véneta.
The title to this extension is the
Venetian dialect form, in Italian it is La Repubblica di Venezia. Serenissima
means most serene and as a republic
it existed from the eighth to the eighteenth century AD. Its beginnings as such
were due to the fall of the Byzantine Empire. As it crumbled, Venice developed
into a city-state or a marine republic during the ninth to the tenth century
AD. Three other maritime republics were developing at the same time, Genoa,
Amalfi, and Pisa. All became rivals of Venice and of each other.
Venice, in comparison to the
others, was in a very unique position, the North end of the Adriatic Sea, which
afforded it the opportunity to become a great land and sea power. She extended
her holding to the North, East, West and South. The region
Friuli-Venezia-Giulia till this day maintains the name of Venice in its
descriptive label and to the West of Venice is a region called Veneto. The
Republic of Venice extended west to Bergamo, south to the Po River, and north
to what today is Austria and southeast to include the Peninsula of Istria,
which today is part of Croatia.
As Venice expanded, she also
acquired control of most of the islands in the Aegean Sea, including Cyprus and
Crete. This they called the Duchy of the Archipelago. Venice was able to expand
and become an imperial power by aiding in the Fourth Crusade 1201-1204 AD,
whereby she accepted ships into her harbor from other cities and trained 33,500
soldiers and 3,500 horses for battle. Consequently, with her physical position
on the Adriatic Sea, she also developed extensive trade with the Byzantines and
the Moslems; thereby becoming the most prosperous city in Europe. During this
time, Venice’s leading families vied with each other in building palaces,
churches and other structures, creating a magnificent art filled city.
The Venetian government was, in some
way, modeled after the republican form of government used in ancient Rome. It
had an elected head of government, the Doge and an elected Senate, an assembly
of nobles and many people of wealth. The
great council, consisted of up to two to three hundred individuals. This senate
elected ten individuals who held the utmost power in administering the city;
they were a secret group who were unknown to the population. This group
selected one of their members as the Doge, who was a ceremonial head of city and
held the position for life.
The religious circumstance of the
people was orthodox Catholic in practice and belief. During the Counter
Reformation period, even though the people were very devout, Venice had the
recognition of having religious freedom and had not executed anyone for heresy.
Due to their attitude the city had problems with the Popes and suffered an
Interdict five times. (Interdict is a penalty imposed by the church that
suspends public worship and withdraws the administering of the church’s
sacraments from a country or territory.) The fifth one, imposed by Pope Julius
II in 1509, is the most renowned.
When Napoleon conquered Venice on
the twelfth of May 1797, it lost, after one-thousand and seventy years, its
independence. Despite its reputation of religious freedom the Jews lived in
ghettos and had other restrictions imposed on them. But when Napoleon came, he
removed the restrictions against them and opened the doors of the Ghetto; thus,
the Jews looked upon him as a liberator.
The Hebraic population traces its
origins to their antecedent’s expulsion from Spain in 1492, when King Ferdinand
and Queen Isabella issued, The Alhambra
Decree or The Edict of Expulsion, on the thirty-first of March 1492. It
expelled all Hebrews from the Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon and all Spanish
lands. These expellees became Sephardim―Sefarad, which is the Hebrew word for
Spain. Interestingly, a recent draft of a law has been presented to the Spanish
Cortes Generales which seeks to allow
any Jew demonstrating that they are descendants of these Sephardim can apply
for and receive dual Spanish citizenship. (See http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/religion/sephardic-jews-eager-to-apply-for-spanish-citizenship/2014/02/17/e56978dc-9810-11e3-ae45-458927ccedb6_story.html.
Or www.jpost.com/Jewish/-World/Jewish-Feature/Spain-grants.
)
After the fall of Napoleon, Venice
came under the rule of the Austrian Empire until 1866, when a plebiscite held
on the twenty-second of October of that year resulted in Venice becoming a part
of the unified Italy. Below are photographs of the Piazza San Marco, The Doge's Palace 1340, and the Ponte Rialto.
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